Scientists found evidence of dust produced in nearby supernovae hiding under a thousand pounds of Antarctic snow, according to new research.
Our solar system is more than just the Sun, planets, moons, and asteroidsâitâs full of dust, much of which might originate from interstellar sources.
A team of scientists in Australia, Germany, and Austria hopes to find the elemental signature of this dust here on Earth in order to better understand the environment through which the solar system is moving.
âIâm excited about the possibility to learn something about the extreme stellar explosions and large structures around our planet which are unimaginably far away and large,â Dominik Koll, the studyâs first author and PhD candidate from The Australian National University, told Gizmodo in an email.
The researchers organised a transport of 1,100 pounds of relatively fresh snow (no older than 20 years) from the Kohnen Station in Antarctica to Munich, Germany, melted it in the lab, passed it through a filter, and evaporated it to collect dust and micrometeorites.
It allows the researchers to look for only specific atomic isotopes.