Radcliffe Wave, a range of dust and gas clouds (marked here in red) in milk mode. About 400 years of the sun marked yellow
Alyssa A. Goodman / Harvard University
Our solar system passed around 14 million years ago from a wide wave of gas and dust, the view of the earth’s night sky. The waves can leave traces in our geological record of our planet.
Astronomers have previously found Large sea waves, gas and powder millions of milk and down milk. The nearest and most studied radio is a radcliffe wave, it has almost 9000 light widths and is located just about 400 years of light from our solar system.
Now, Efrem Maconi At the University of Vienna and his colleagues found that the radcliffe wave has been much closer to our solar system between 11 million and 18 million years ago.
Maconi and his team used the issue of the space telescope, as it has been a millionaire stars in milk, along with the radcliffe wavel group, formed the dust and gas clouds.
Using these stars to express the wave as it moves, in time to discover the historical location in time in time. They also calculated the path of the solar system, returned to 30 million years of clock and found that the waves and our sun approached about 15 million and 12 million years ago. When the crossing began and ended, it is difficult, but the team believes that there was about 14 million years ago.
This would make the Earth’s galactic environment darker than today, as we are now quite lively empty region Space. “If we are in a denser medium plague region, that means the light that comes from the stars,” says Maconi. “It’s like being in a cloudy day.”
Meetings can also be evidence in the geological record of the Earth, stored in the crustal isotopes stored in the crust, even if it is hard to measure that it was very much time. Explaining the geological record of the Earth is a constant problem, so it is useful to find such galactic encounters, says Ralph schoenrich University College in London.
Greater accuracy, the crossing has occurred in the mid-miocene earth. Both are connected, says Maconi, though it would be difficult to prove that. Schoenrich is believed that it is unlikely. “It’s a base that geology trumps the cosmic impact,” he said. “If you change the continents or change the ocean currents, you get climate turns from there, so I’m very skeptical, you also need anything.”
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