Tag: Half Life

The Nearby Supernova Revealed

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Remember last week when I was talking about the evidence for some ancient-but-astronomically-recent supernovae? It turns out there is other evidence! Evidence that has helped scientists narrow down the potential source locations. Data from the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS), an instrument aboard NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft, has helped us figure out where the recent supernovae might have come from.  CRIS measures what we call cosmic rays, atomic nuclei that have been accelerated across the galaxy at close to the speed of light.  CRIS has been around for a while, and through 17 years of cosmic ray observations,...

From One distant World to Another: How the Ocean Floor is Giving New Insight into Supernovae

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I always like to bring up the crazy ways in which two areas of science that seem completely disconnected can relate to each other, occasionally giving incredible insights. By looking at the ocean floor, a world human beings can’t reach without special pressurized equipment, we are learning about space, a world human beings can’t reach without special pressurized equipment. So how is the ocean teaching us about space? Physicists at the Australian National University have been studying seafloor dust that has been raining down on Earth as micrometeorites over the past 25 Million years.  The dust is thought to originate...