A recent find deep in the Pacific Ocean has scientists buzzing with excitement. Researchers in Germany say they might have found serious evidence pointing to a nearby star that might have gone supernova fairly recently.
This year, they noticed an unusual increase in the levels of beryllium-10 on the ocean floor. Now, you might be wondering what exactly beryllium-10 is—it’s a radioactive isotope that generally makes its way to Earth when cosmic rays hit our atmosphere. These rays trigger the formation of beryllium-10, which then falls, settles down, and eventually integrates into the planet’s crust.
Typically, beryllium-10 shows up at stable levels worldwide. So when this team detected an unexpected spike dating back about 10 million years, they speculated that a supernova might’ve had a role to play around that time.
Curious to dig deeper, another research team peered into the skies. They tapped into the Gaia survey from the European Space Agency to track our Sun and 2,725 nearby star clusters for roughly the past 20 million years. Their goal? To estimate how many supernovae could have likely occurred in those clusters.
What did they find? There’s about a 68% chance that a star exploded within 326 light-years of the Sun just a million years post the beryllium-10 spike. They pinpointed 19 clusters with over a 1% chance of supernova activity, spotlighting this significant time period.
As one of the researchers put it, “Our findings bolster the idea of a supernova being the source of the beryllium-10 anomaly.” You can read more details in their published paper here.
However, the plot thickens! If this spike is only spotted in specific areas of the Pacific Ocean, it could hint at a local process—perhaps changes in ocean currents caused the beryllium-10 to concentrate there. On the other hand, if the supernova theory holds water, we should see similar levels globally.
Collecting samples from diverse locations is the key to unlocking this mystery.
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