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For the past 33,000 years, a rare isotope that normally forms deep in the supernova has been falling from space to Earth, reports sciencealert.com.
This is not the first time that iron-60 isotope dust has reached our planet, but the fact that it is still crumbling shows that we are still traveling through the interstellar dust cloud that formed millions of years ago in the depths of the supernova.
The iron-60 isotope has been studied by scientists more than once. Its half-life (time during which the particle size of the substance is reduced by half) is 2.6 million. years, which means it will completely disintegrate after 15 million. years. Its remains found on Earth come from elsewhere, as the iron-60 isotope would in no way have survived after the planet’s formation 4.6 million years ago. years.
Anton Wallner, a nuclear physics researcher at the Australian National University, has previously said that dust from the ocean floor reached our planet about 2.6 to 6 million years ago. years.
But recently, the dust from these stars has been found in the snow of Antarctica, and judging by research, they have fallen for the past 20 years.
A few years ago, scientists announced that the iron-60 isotope had been found in space around Earth by NASA’s Advanced Composition spacecraft.
Wallner has now discovered that samples of five sediments have been found in two parts of the ocean floor, about 33,000 years old. The amount of iron-60 isotope is the same in all examples. In fact, this finding raises more questions than answers.
Earth is currently moving in a region called the local interstellar cloud, which is made up of gas, dust, and plasma. If this cloud was formed from the explosion of stars, it is logical to assume that dust with the iron-60 isotope is falling from the ground. It is this conclusion that emerges from the findings in Antarctica, and Wallner and his team want to corroborate this by studying ocean sediments.
If the local interstellar cloud is a source of iron-60, it had to grow very large when the solar system entered the cloud, which the researchers say has likely happened in the last 33,000 years. In the smaller, less ancient examples, the iron-60 should have been much less, but this is not the case.
As the researchers write in their analysis, it is possible that the local interstellar cloud and the supernova are related rather than a single structure, and the particles are the interstellar medium for supernovae that existed millions of years ago. In this case, the local interstellar cloud is not just a supernova remnant.
“Recent research has shown that the iron-60 isotope in dust particles is likely to rotate around an interstellar medium,” Wallner said. “So the iron-60 isotope could have come from an even older supernova explosion, and what we’re measuring are just echoes.”
Scientists believe that the most reliable way to obtain more accurate data is to look for more iron-60 from an earlier period of 40,000 to a million years.
If iron-60 turned out to be more abundant in ancient times, it would indicate that its source was an ancient supernova, and if higher amounts were found in the earlier period, it would indicate that the source of the iron-60 isotope is a local interstellar cloud.
The study is described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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