A new study suggests that when supernovae exploded million of years ago near the solar system, it rained on radioactive dust on Earth, eventually getting absorbed by the oceans, which led to the first emergence of life on the planet.
This cosmic dust has been recorded by scientists on Earth's seabed which is known as iron-60 where this material are believed to be linked with massive stellar explosions of dying stars that occurred some 325 light years away. The first of these supernovae explosions occurred some 8.7 to 6.5 million years ago where the most recent ones happened some 3.2 to 1.7 million years ago.
According to Adrian Melott from the University of Kansas, the research team is working to identify the effects of these stellar elements that touched the Earth. The effects are not as massive as a mass extinction event however, these cannot be ignored either. This new study will investigate on the effects on the Earth's surface.
Supernovae are caused by different conditions around the stars that usually come in two kinds of explosions. The first type usually occurs within binary star systems when stellar material fallout from one star to its partner star. When this amount of deposit arrives at a critical level, a violent combustion will explode. The other cause of supernovae explosions usually happens when these gigantic stars die, where they collapse into their cores which will release plasma energy and trigger a powerful explosion that can be felt across the cosmos.
How powerful are supernovae explosions? In the event that a supernova blast occurs within 30 light years away from Earth, this would result in a mass extinction of the planet. If these supernovae explosions happen at a safe distance, this can even yield minimal effects to our world and even spawn new life.
Further study and investigation of these explosions are still needed to pinpoint the effects of these to the development of all living species on Earth. These two crucial supernovae events apparently occurred during a time when life is only beginning to evolve, which have already altered the evolution of the human species.
Before the solar system fully formed, the sun and a local family of planets are all enshrouded in a bubble of hot, diffused plasma which formed eons ago in between 14 to 20 supernova explosions and the evidence of the presence of isotope iron-60 under our oceans, indicate that this originated from a nearby supernova.
This new study is published in the journal Nature.