there is a ~25000 year cycle broken up into 4 phases, and it is driven by a magnetic field oscillation that spirals outwards from the galactic centre, the so-called "galactic current sheet" because it carries electricity and energy particles along its flux lines

and yes, every time the field flips through 180 degrees all hell breaks loose and teher is often impactors formed from a mother of all solar flares from the sun that sets almost everything on fire and then with all that energy, the earth becomes covered in clouds, the ground is constantly shaking from piezoelectric discharge, lightning, the Cosmic Thunderbolt here and there completely nuking large regions via the God level electrostatic discharge, the atmosphere is full of ultraviolet and all kinds of gamma and beta and xray energy, most of the species of animals and plants get wiped out, the crust of the earth experiences so much twist from the magnetic field rotation that it usually reorients the entire surface of the earth to rotate at a different pair of poles, and last time it happened we got 1200 years of the Dryas period

there's way too many things to describe there but the notion that stars have flare events that are so big they could be called micro-novas is becoming more and more firmly established empirical science and our sun is gonna do that at some point too... i believe that it will be in the next 30 years, and the Carrington Event was a harbinger of what was to come

just look at the tracks of the magnetic poles in the last 30 years

here's some science, in case you thought i was just making all that up: