Govind Tekale
Scientists found something unusual at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean – a spike in a radioactive substance that shouldn’t be there. This discovery tells us something big happened to Earth 10 million years ago, but no one knows exactly what.
The substance they found is called beryllium-10, which forms when space rays hit our atmosphere. Think of it like a timestamp that gets stamped into rocks on the ocean floor. Usually, this timestamp fades at a steady rate, like a clock ticking backward. But scientists found places where the clock seemed to pause.
“We found almost twice as much as we had anticipated,” says Dominik Koll, who led the research. His team found this oddity by studying special rocks from the ocean floor that grow extremely slowly – just a few millimeters every million years.
To make sure this wasn’t just a one-time find, they checked rocks from different spots in the Pacific Ocean, almost 3,000 kilometers apart. The same pattern appeared in both places.
What could have caused this? Scientists have two main theories. First, ocean currents might have shifted dramatically, like a giant underwater conveyor belt changing direction. Second, something big might have happened in space – maybe a dying star or cosmic collision that showered Earth with extra space rays.
This finding matters because it helps scientists tell time – but not just any time. While regular carbon dating can tell us about things up to 50,000 years old, beryllium-10 can reach back millions of years, due to its half-life of 1.4 million years.
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The rocks they studied sit about 5,000 meters deep in the Pacific Ocean. One sample weighed 3.7 kilograms and had grown only 3.5 centimeters in 10 million years.
“Only new measurements can indicate whether the beryllium anomaly was caused by changes in ocean currents or has astrophysical reasons,” Koll explains. His team plans to look for similar patterns in other oceans to see if this was a worldwide event.
This discovery could help scientists better understand Earth’s history, from ancient climate changes to cosmic events that affected our planet. It provides a new way to study Earth’s past environmental changes and major events.
Scientists continue studying these ocean floor rocks, hoping to unlock more secrets about our planet’s past and improve our understanding of geological history.
