Supernova-Dust in Deep-Sea Sediment Cores


Supernova-Dust in Deep-Sea Sediment Cores

Feige, J.; Wallner, A.; Winkler, S. R.; Merchel, S.; Fifield, L. K.; Korschinek, G.; Rugel, G.

Because supernovae (SNe) and their ejecta are a site for dust formation, there might be a chance of finding supernova-produced radionuclides in dust particles deposited in terrestrial archives, like deepsea sediments. Measurements will be carried out with Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), which provides the highest sensitivity for measurements of long-lived radionuclides with half-lifes in the order of million years.
An indication to recent SN activity in our solar neighborhood is the existence of a thin, hot cavity in the local insterstellar medium, embedding our solar system. This so called superbubble, the Local Bubble, was produced by multiple SN explosions, starting ~14 Myr ago (Fuchs et al. 2006). Nuclides, which are synthesized in massive stars and during their explosions, are then entrained in the SN shell, condensed into dust, and may be transported to the solar system and thus into Earth archives, if such an event happens within a short distance.
Two deep-sea sediment cores originating from the Indian Ocean have been selected to search for the SN-produced radionuclides 26Al, 53Mn, 60Fe and 244Pu in the time range of 2-3 Myr. We aim to measure these isotopes at different laboratories with high time resolution with the goal to confirm a previously found SN signal in a ferromanganese crust from the Pacific Ocean (Knie et al. 2004),

Keywords: supernovae; AMS; radionuclide; sediments

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Publ.-Id: 17776