The amount of comet dust in the atmosphere was sufficient to cause a short -term “impact winter”, followed by a cooling period of 1,400 years.
By 2024, scientists who studied old sediments in eastern US reported signs of explosion of a comet In the heavens of the earth 12,800 years ago.
This event, they suggested, may have plunged the planet in a period of cold of a thousand years, known as the Recent Dryas.
Now a new study has taken the investigation into the depths of the ocean, and the results reinforce this hypothesis.
South Carolina University researchers analyzed sediments from the background of the Baffin Bay near Granelândia, and found tiny comet dust particles and metallic debris compatible with a Cosmic explosion in the atmosphere.
The results of the were presented in an article recently published in the magazine PLOS One.
For years, scientists have discussed what has triggered the abrupt global cooling that interrupted the warming at the end of the last ice age.
Many associated him with defrosting water to flood the Atlantic and disturb ocean currents. Others believed that Something coming from space It would be responsible – but so far, the lack of a crater or concrete proof made the idea of the comet easy to reject.
This new line of evidence can change this perception.
“Our new results further support the hypothesis that the Earth has collided with a large comet about 12,800 years ago,” explains Vladimir Tselmovich, one of the study’s authors, to.
“The amount of comet dust in the atmosphere was sufficient to provoke a ‘impact winter‘short -term, followed by a period of cooling 1,400 years”Adds the investigator.
Looking for answers at the bottom of the ocean
The investigators wanted to test if the impact indications of comet found on land They also appeared in the ocean. For this, they resorted to sediment nuclei – long and cylindrical samples vertically perforated in the sea bed.
These nuclei preserve layers of mud and minerals deposited year after year, As if they were pages of the Earth Diary.
In Baffin Bay, near Granelândia and distant from human contamination, scientists collected four cores whose layers, according to radiocarbon dating, corresponded to the recent Dryas period.
“After we study the microscopic traces of this disaster in Baffin Bay, we got Identify multiple traces of cometory matter, identified by the morphology and composition of the microparticles found, ”explains Tselmovich.
To look “Fingerprints” extraterrestrialscientists used various advanced techniques. For example, electronic microscopes revealed the shape of microscopic particles, while spectroscopy and mass spectrometry measured their chemical composition with great accuracy.
The results were impressive.
Found metallic grains containing unusual levels of nickelcobalt, platinum and iridium, elements often associated with material from space. Some iron particles showed very little oxygen but very nickel, a typical chemical signature of comets and meteorites.
They also discovered tiny spheres of cast rock, or microspheories, which seem to have formed when land materials founded with a small amount of alien dust during the atmospheric explosion.
“As microsférulas They are geochemically more similar Terrestrial sediments with traces of extraterrestrial material, ”says the study’s authors.
Other nanoparticles reminiscent of twisted and deformed metal dropssuggesting the extreme heat and pressure of a cosmic explosion in the atmosphere. This discovery is consistent with what other studies have found on land by various continents – a distinct layer of about 12,800 years, rich in platinum, iridium, cast glass, nanodiamantes and framed quartz.
This consistency between terrestrial and oceanic places reinforces the idea that the cooling of recent dryas It was not only sudden, but also globaland potentially caused by a fragmented comet that disintegrated in the sky.
The cloud of comet dust dispersed in the upper atmospherereflecting sunlight back into space.
For humans and animals below, it would have been as if the sun had darkened suddenly. Temperatures fell, the plants wither And the delicate balance of the heating of the end of the ice age interrupted almost overnight.
“The results of this study support the hypothesis of the impact of recent Dryas, suggesting that Earth’s meeting and interaction with a great comet and its track of debris at the beginning of this period caused climate change and significant environmental, ”concluded the authors of the study.
