It's Raining Stardust. It Has Been for Thousands of Years.
Researchers found iron-60 levels varied across 80,000 years of Antarctic ice, supporting a cloud-based source and ruling out ancient supernova decay.
- On Wednesday, researchers published a study in Physical Review Letters confirming Antarctic ice contains Iron-60, proving our solar system traversed the Local Interstellar Cloud over the past 80,000 years.
- Iron-60, a radioactive isotope with a 2.6 million-year half-life, forms only inside exploding stars; its presence in Antarctic ice indicates Earth is passing through a cloud of supernova debris.
- An international team led by Dominik Koll and Prof. Anton Wallner analyzed 300-kg of Antarctic ice dating from 40,000 to 80,000 years ago to isolate trapped stardust atoms.
- Analysis revealed varying Iron-60 levels, suggesting the solar system transitioned from a less dense section of the Local Interstellar Cloud into the thicker region where it currently resides.
- The Beyond EPICA project now aims to recover even older ice samples, potentially allowing scientists to pinpoint when the solar system first entered the Local Interstellar Cloud.
11 Articles
11 Articles
It's Raining Stardust. It Has Been for Thousands of Years.
Right now, as you read this, Earth is drifting through a cloud of debris from an ancient stellar explosion. Stardust, real stardust, is raining down on us so thinly scattered that we have only just found the proof. Locked inside Antarctic ice cores up to 80,000 years old, an international team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has discovered traces of iron-60, a radioactive isotope that can only be created in the heart of an explod…
The Solar System is immersed in a journey that seems to be taken out of a work of science fiction, although many facts have already been confirmed by science. An international team, led by experts from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), managed to identify that the space surrounding our stellar neighborhood is not an absolute void, but an environment full of vestiges of remote stellar explosions. The key to this discovery, recently…
For years scientists have been puzzling about mysterious iron atoms in the snow of Antarctica. Thanks to 80,000 years old ice, they have now discovered that they come from an interstellar cloud through which our solar system is flying.
By analyzing Antarctic ice cores covering a period of 40,000 to 81,000 years B.C.E., researchers have identified new evidence suggesting that the Earth and the Solar System pass through a cloud of debris from ancient supernovas that would have exploded millions of years ago. The samples presented [...] This article Earth would now cross the remains of ancient supernovas appeared first on Trust My Science.
Coverage Details
Bias Distribution
- 60% of the sources lean Left
Factuality
To view factuality data please Upgrade to Premium
