A disruption of the solar system's heliosphere by an interstellar cloud could have severely impacted life on our planet, according to scientists.
The Pleistocene Epoch—with its glaciers, woolly mammoths, and Neanderthals—still looms large in Earth’s rearview mirror, having ended a mere 12,000 years ago. Now, a team of researchers posit that those hundreds of thousands of years of our planet’s history may have been chilly due to a cloud in space that briefly removed Earth from the safety of the Sun ’s warm glow.
Outside of the heliosphere, the Earth would’ve been exposed to iron and plutonium in the interstellar medium, the team posited. Their timeline aligns with an uptick in the amount of plutonium-244 and iron-60, two isotopes of the respective elements which are known to occur from events in space, in Antarctic snow, deep-sea sediments, and samples from the Moon.
Solar System Local Interstellar Cloud Sun Heliosphere Interstellar Medium International Heliophysical Year Interstellar Probe Merav Opher Interstellar Probe Lynx Plutonium-244 Space Plasmas Gizmodo
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