local interstellar cloud tagged posts

Our solar system is currently passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a region of highly diluted gas and dust between the stars. On its path, Earth continuously accumulates iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope of iron produced in stellar explosions. This has now been confirmed by an international research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) through the analysis of Antarctic ice tens of thousands of years old...

A mystery surrounding the space around our solar system is unfolding thanks to evidence of supernovae found in deep-sea sediments.

Professor Anton Wallner, a nuclear physicist at ANU, led the study which shows Earth has been travelling for the last 33,000 years through a cloud of faintly radioactive dust.

“These clouds could be remnants of previous supernova explosions, a powerful and super bright explosion of a star,” Professor Wallner said.

Professor Wallner conducted the research at the ANU Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF). He also holds joint positions at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and Technical University Dresden (TUD) in Germany.

The researchers searched through several deep-sea sediments from two different locations that date back 33,000 years using the...