• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Deep Sea Beryllium Spike Shows Something Big Happened 10 Million Years Ago, But What?

February 11, 2025 by Deborah Bloomfield

The Pacific seafloor laid down around 10 million years ago is dramatically enriched in beryllium-10, compared to older and younger layers. The geologists who discovered this spike propose it could be the result of a major shift in ocean currents, which reshaped the climate for a period. Alternatively, it could indicate a nearby supernova we were not previously aware of.

ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE

Beryllium is a relatively rare element most people only know about because it occurs so near the start of the periodic table. However, geologists have a reason to love beryllium-10, as it can help date deposits too ancient to be measurable by traditional radiocarbon dating. That’s because beryllium-9 is stable, while beryllium-10 has a half-life of 1.4 million years.

The older a sedimentary sample is, therefore, the lower the ratio of 10Be:9Be, or at least that would be the case if the amount of beryllium-10 deposited in the first place was consistent. Beryllium-10 atoms are formed in the upper atmosphere when cosmic rays strike oxygen molecules, and fall to Earth within a year or two. Consequently, an upsurge in cosmic radiation could produce an increase in beryllium-10 in the sky, and soon after on land or in the deep ocean.

That’s one explanation for the spike in beryllium-10 abundance found by Dr Dominik Koll of Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and colleagues in samples of ferromanganese crusts deposited around 10.1 million years ago in the central and north Pacific Ocean.

Such sampling needs to allow for Be-10’s decay rate. Less than 1 percent of the beryllium-10 deposited at that time would still be present. Koll said in a statement, “At around 10 million years, we found almost twice as much 10Be as we had anticipated.” Naturally the first task was to check for contamination from more recent sources where less beryllium-10 has decayed.

Once the team had tested enough samples to assure themselves the spike was real, they set about looking for explanations. A burst of cosmic rays from a supernova roughly 70 light-years away, such as produced more recent iron-60 spikes, is the most obvious and dramatic one, but others are possible.

The heliosphere protects the Earth from most of the cosmic rays astronauts would experience if they ventured far enough into space. A temporary weakening of the heliosphere, for example from passage through an interstellar cloud, would cause a beryllium-10 spike like the one the team found.

ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE

Alternatively, the explanation might be oceanic, rather than astrophysical. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is known to have dramatically increased in strength 12-10 million years ago. “This could have caused 10Be to be unevenly distributed across the Earth for a period of time,” Koll said. “As a result, 10Be could have become particularly concentrated in the Pacific Ocean.”

Other possibilities, such as a pulse of beryllium released during a major ice-melting event, or changes to the Earth’s magnetic field, were also considered, but rejected as too small or too brief.

The ocean current explanation is relatively easy to test – if samples worldwide show the same rise, it would be refuted. On the other hand, if in other ocean basins beryllium-10 levels fell at the time, so the global average was fairly constant, currents would almost certainly be the reason.

Schematic showing how beyrellium-10 is formed in the upper atmosphere before being incorporated into sediments, and a time-adjusted chart of the amount deposited with time.

Schematic showing how beyrellium-10 is formed in the upper atmosphere before being incorporated into sediments, and a time-adjusted chart of the amount deposited with time.

Image credit: HZDR / blrck.de

The deep ocean isn’t easy to sample, but the team are seeking to obtain cores to conduct further tests, as well as hoping other teams will do their own investigations. If the increase is global, it could be the start of a long search to work out which astrophysical explanation is correct.

ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE

Solving the question will set off plenty of new research avenues, including what the consequences for life were from either exposure to increased cosmic rays or a major redistribution of oceanic warmth. 

Geologists would greatly benefit from confirmation of a global spike. Distinctive global events are needed to align the timelines for samples from different locations. Radioisotopes from nuclear testing provide these benchmarks for recent events, and solar storms known as Miyake Events serve the same purpose for thousands of years before. 

Going further back, Laschamp Events, when the Earth’s poles flip, are used to synchronize timelines. “For periods spanning millions of years, such cosmogenic time markers do not yet exist,” Koll said. “However, this beryllium anomaly has the potential to serve as such a marker.”

The study is published open access in Nature Communications.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Japan’s Kishida: Aim distribute COVID-19 drugs by year-end if elected PM
  2. Officials Warn Deadly Monkeypox Variant In DRC Could Soon Spread Worldwide
  3. Today’s Top Headlines
  4. Plane Captures First-Ever Photo Of High-Speed Satellite Reentering Earth’s Atmosphere

Source Link: Deep Sea Beryllium Spike Shows Something Big Happened 10 Million Years Ago, But What?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version