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A team of scientists has found an anomalous concentration of beryllium-10 at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, a rare radioactive element that could change everything we know about Earth's geological timeline – and even hint at an unknown cosmic event!
Scientists have discovered something simply unbelievable at the bottom of the ocean. A research team has found a radioactive element that is more than 10 million years old and could hold the key to understanding events that shaped the planet. This unexpected find not only challenges some geological theories, but also raises an intriguing question: could a cosmic event have influenced Earth in the past?
The unexpected discovery in the depths of the ocean
It all started when researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), together with the TUD Dresden University of Technology and the Australian National University (ANU), were analyzing mineral crusts from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
These formations are like Earth diaries – over millions of years, elements accumulate in seawater, recording environmental changes that have occurred on the planet. And that's when the surprise came: scientists detected an absurd amount of beryllium-10, a radioactive isotope that is normally found in much lower levels.
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The question is: where did all this beryllium-10 come from and why is it accumulating there?
For those unfamiliar, beryllium-10 is an isotope produced when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere. It is widely used by scientists to measure geological events because its half-life is about 1,4 million years, allowing us to track changes up to 10 million years ago.
But the levels found now are almost double what was expected. This means that at some point in history, something extremely unusual happened.
At first, the researchers thought it might be a measurement error or contamination in the samples. But after collecting sediments from other areas of the ocean, the pattern remained the same. In other words, this excess of beryllium-10 is not a local anomaly – it is a global anomaly.
So what could have caused this bizarre increase?
One of the theories put forward by scientists has to do with drastic changes in ocean currents around 10 million years ago.
The currents of the oceans function as a transportation system, distributing heat, nutrients and even chemical elements across the planet. If there were any significant changes in these flows in the past, it is possible that large quantities of beryllium-10 were displaced and accumulated in some specific areas of the ocean.
“This could have completely messed up the distribution of the isotope across the planet, causing it to concentrate in certain regions,” explained Dr. Dominik Koll, one of the lead scientists on the research.
This theory makes a lot of sense. But if it wasn’t that, it could have been something even more impressive…
Could a supernova hold the key to the mystery?
Here's where things get even more interesting. Another hypothesis put forward by the team suggests that the excess beryllium-10 may have been caused by a cosmic event, possibly a supernova explosion that occurred relatively close to Earth.
Supernovae are violent explosions of stars, and one of the consequences of this phenomenon is the release of enormous amounts of cosmic rays. If a supernova occurred close enough to our solar system, it could have bombarded the Earth's atmosphere with an extra dose of radiation, dramatically increasing the production of beryllium-10.
If this hypothesis is correct, it means that cosmic events have had a much greater impact on Earth’s history than we previously thought. But to be sure, scientists need more samples and analyses to confirm whether the same pattern appears in other geological records around the world.
The importance of this discovery for scientists
Whatever the explanation – changes in ocean currents or a supernova explosion – the discovery of this excess beryllium-10 has enormous potential to revolutionize the way we study the history of the planet.
One of the biggest challenges scientists face is synchronizing different geological records, such as ice sheets, rock formations and marine sediments. If this beryllium-10 proves to be a global phenomenon, it could become a universal geological marker, helping to date past events with much greater precision.
“If we confirm this anomaly in different locations on the planet, we will have a new marker of geological time – something that does not yet exist for such long periods,” Koll highlighted.
In other words, This discovery could be a key piece in rewriting the timeline from the earth.
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