Alyssa Goodman / Harvard University
The passage of our solar system through the Radcliffe wave may be responsible for disturbing the average myocene.
The solar system went through Orion star formation complex for about 14 million years. Thus reveals one published in February in Astronomy and Astrophysics, with a Portuguese author.
The Orion complex is inserted in a large structure called Radcliffe (RW) wave. This has a length of almost 9000 light years and contains many regions of star formation, explains the
“As our solar system orbits the Milky Way, it finds different galactic environments with variable interstellar densities, including hot voids, supernova explosions wave fronts (SN) and cold gas clouds,” wrote the study’s authors.
The investigators explains that the passage of the solar system through the Radcliffe wave and the Orion complex can be Responsible for the disturbance of the average myocene (MMD), which happened about 14.8-14.5 million years and coincided with a vacancy of terrestrial and aquatic life extinctions.
“Imagine it as a ship navigating variable conditions at sea,” explains the main author Efrem Maconi in a. “Our sun found a Gas density region when he went through the wave of Radcliffe in the Orion constellation. ”
“Our estimated time interval for the potential location of the solar system in a dense region of ISM (about 14.8-12.4 myr behind for a distance of 20-30 PC from the center of a gas cloud) overrides the climate transition of the Middle Miocene,” the researchers write.
“This discovery is based on our previous Radcliffe wave identification work,” says the Portuguese João Alves, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna and co -author of the study. Alves was the main author of the 2020 article who presented the
The investigation was carried out based on data from ESA’s Gaia mission. “We are inhabitants of the Milky Way,” says João Alves. “The Gaia mission of the European space agency gave us the means to trace our recent route in the Interstellar Sea from the Milky Way, allowing astronomers to compare notes with geologists and paleoclimatologists. It’s very exciting. ”
