&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Antarctic cosmic dust proves Earth has been traversing through supernova debris for 80,000 years")
Scientists have found an iron isotope inside Antarctic ice that could have only come from a cosmic event, such as a supernova explosion. This discovery shows that our planet likely passed through an interstellar cloud of supernova dust, and when this happened, the rare iron isotopes got embedded in the Antarctic ice and froze for thousands of years. A team of scientists led by nuclear astrophysicist Dominik Koll of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in Germany is behind the discovery of this dust from a dead star. The iron-60 found frozen inside ice cores is believed to be 40,000 to 81,000 years old.
The Antarctic ice sheet has turned into a vault filled with valuable information about the history of Earth. It formed over 35 million years, meaning each layer is hiding particles from different times in the lifespan of our planet. Scientists drill through the ice and pull out vertical cylinders, revealing the atmospheric changes over millions of years. The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.
The "Iron-60" Connection
Iron-60 is not formed on Earth and needs extreme conditions, such as supernova explosions, to be formed. The researchers said that Earth possibly caught this isotope when it was formed 4.5 billion years ago. However, it only has a half-life of 2.6 million years, and all of it would have decayed in about 15 million years. This means that the latest discovery is much newer and from an event that happened long after Earth was born. Scientists say that the existence of Iron-60 in ocean sediments and in snowfall hints at an occurrence where our planet moved through supernova debris, and it is possible that it is still traversing through it.
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Key takeaway from the discovery
Koll and his team dug deep into the ice and gathered 295 kilograms of Antarctic ice. They analysed the samples to look for iron-60 atoms. They melted the ice and counted the extracted iron-60 atoms. They found a higher concentration of iron-60, which can be attributed to the cosmic rays that slam into Earth. This showed that some of it came from the universe. However, what stood out was the concentration of iron-60 in ice from tens of thousands of years ago.
Also Read: Milky Way's wormhole: Massive tunnel to another part of universe hidden in our own galaxy
It was found to be significantly lower than the concentration in snow from the past few decades. Scientists say that the solar system is journeying through a region called the Local Interstellar Cloud, consisting of gas, dust, and plasma. It is believed to have come from a supernova; hence, this cosmic dust is likely raining on the planet.
