Scientists suggest that Earth lost its protective shield from the sun about two million years ago, exposing it to the harsh environment of interstellar space during a crucial phase of the ice age.
This event could have profoundly impacted Earth's climate and contributed to the onset of an ice age.
The Ice Age and Meetings with Other Stars
Three million years ago, there was a thick cloud of gas and dust between the stars. This is what scientists from Boston University and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute think happened.
Solar wind speeds up the heliosphere, a safe bubble around the sun. This thick cloud could have slowed down the solar wind. Space radiation and galaxy rays harm DNA and life on Earth, but the heliosphere protects us from them.
The study's lead author, Merav Opher, is a space scientist at Boston University. He said the heliosphere may have become smaller when the solar system came into contact with this thick cloud between the stars.
That short-lived loss of the shield that guards the solar system could have let heavy and radioactive matter from space between the stars reach Earth. Many isotopes, like iron-60 and plutonium-244, were found in Antarctic ice cores and on the moon about two million years ago, which supports this idea.
Many complicated computer models were used to determine how the sun would move through the sky. This showed that it was close to the Local Ribbon of Cold Clouds, a thick cloud in the space between the stars.
The Local Lynx of the Cold Cloud is in this area. It may have hit the heliosphere and let parts of other stars reach Earth. Around this time, there was a big cold event on Earth, which makes it possible that there is a link between meeting the alien and the ice age.
Based on the cloud's size, Opher and her team think the solar system may have been open to space between the stars for a few hundred to a million years. After that, the heliosphere would have grown again, protecting the solar system.
The study changes how we think about how things in space affect Earth's temperature and growth. It also shows how our solar system constantly changes as it moves through the Milky Way and meets new places between the stars.
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Getting to the bottom of the mysteries of cosmic influences
Avi Loeb, who helped write the paper and is the director of Harvard University's Institute for Theory and Computation, talked about its importance. They don't happen very often, but when they do, they can have a big effect on life and the environment on Earth, he said.
Scientists want to go back even further to find other times when the solar system may have encountered dense clouds between the stars and to find out how these events affected the weather on Earth.
Nature Astronomy released this important new study. It makes it possible to do more research into how changes in Earth's temperature affect how the solar system moves through the galaxy. It also shows how important it is to look into how space has changed the past and present of Earth.
Knowing how these things work together helps scientists guess how the temperature will change and how that might impact living things on Earth. Opher thinks this study will teach us more about the outside forces that have shaped our solar system and changed how people live on Earth over time.
She clarifies that this is just the beginning of a more in-depth look at how cosmic forces have affected Earth in the past. As we continue to work on these puzzles, we learn more about how our solar system is connected to the rest of the world.
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