A giant wave of undulating gas and dust appears, per new research, to have engulfed our Solar System millions of years ago.
As New Scientist reports, astrophysicists have discovered that the Radcliffe wave — a 9,000 light-year-long structure full of stars and the gas and dust needed to form new ones — seems to have swept over our entire Solar System around 14 million years ago.
Previous research into this fantastic galactic wave suggested that Earth passed through it some 13 million years ago, plunging our planet into "a festival of supernovae going off," as Harvard astrophysicist Catherine Zucker told the Washington Post last year.
Now, University of Vienna doctoral student Efrem Maconi thinks that our whole Solar System may have passed through this incredible structure.
Using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia telescope, Maconi and his team identified recently-formed stars and the gases surrounding them within the Radcliffe wave to see how the structure itself appears to be moving.
Comparing that data to estimates about our Solar System's trajectory, the Vienna researchers found that the Sun and the Radcliffe wave were near each other between 12 and 15 million years ago. Ultimately, the scientists estimated that we moved through the wave roughly 14 million years ago. On a geological and even evolutionary scale, that's incredibly recent; the dinosaurs are believed to have gone exstinct around 66 million years ago.
Along with the finding, Maconi also told New Scientist that the sky would have looked very different to anyone looking out from Earth when our Solar System passed through the Radcliffe wave.
"If we are in a denser region of the interstellar medium, that would mean that the light coming from the stars to you would be dimmed," he explained. "It’s like being in a foggy day."
Extrapolating this finding even further, the scientists behind this discovery also think there's a chance that the Radcliffe wave played a role in the climate cooling that occurred in the Middle Miocene epoch, when temperatures plunged and permanent ice sheets were established. According to Ralph Schoenrich, an associate climate and physics professor at University College London, that may be a stretch.
"A rule of thumb is that geology trumps any cosmic influence," Schoenrich, who was not involved in the research, told New Scientist. "If you shift continents or interrupt ocean currents, you get climate shifts from that, so I’m very skeptical you need anything in addition."
More on star stuff: James Webb Spots Mysterious Object Crossing Space Between Stars
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