Supernova Left Its Mark In Ancient Bacteria

[JMJones0424]

From Nature

 

Sediment in a deep-sea core may hold radioactive iron spewed by a distant supernova 2.2 million years ago and preserved in the fossilized remains of iron-loving bacteria. If confirmed, the iron traces would be the first biological signature of a specific exploding star.

...

In 2004, scientists reported finding the isotope iron-60, which does not form on Earth, in a piece of sea floor from the Pacific Ocean. They calculated how long ago this radioactive isotope had arrived by using the rate at which it decays over time. The culprit, they concluded, was a supernova in the cosmic neighbourhood.

 

Bishop wondered if he could find signs of that explosion in the fossil record on Earth. Some natural candidates are certain species of bacteria that gather iron from their environment to create 100-nanometre-wide magnetic crystals, which the microbes use to orient themselves within Earth’s magnetic field so that they can navigate to their preferred conditions. These 'magnetotactic' bacteria live in sea-floor sediments.

 

So Bishop and his colleagues acquired parts of a sediment core from the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, dating to between about 1.7 million and 3.3 million years ago. They took sediment samples from strata corresponding to periods roughly 100,000 years apart, and treated them with a chemical technique that extracts iron-60 but not iron from nonbiological sources, such as soil washing off the continents. The scientists then ran the samples through a mass spectrometer to see if any iron-60 was present.

 

And it was. “It looks like there’s something there,” Bishop told reporters at the Denver meeting. The levels of iron-60 are minuscule, but the only place they seem to appear is in layers dated to around 2.2 million years ago. This apparent signal of iron-60, Bishop said, could be the remains of magnetite (Fe3O4) chains formed by bacteria on the sea floor as radioactive supernova debris showered on them from the atmosphere, after crossing inter-stellar space at nearly the speed of light.

[Turtle]

From Nature

And it was. “It looks like there’s something there,” Bishop told reporters at the Denver meeting. The levels of iron-60 are minuscule, but the only place they seem to appear is in layers dated to around 2.2 million years ago. This apparent signal of iron-60, Bishop said, could be the remains of magnetite (Fe₃O₄) chains formed by bacteria on the sea floor as radioactive supernova debris showered on them from the atmosphere, after crossing inter-stellar space at nearly the speed of light.

 

 

From Turtle

 

 

Kewl!! :thumbs_up

 

 

I gather the uncertainty is the structure of the ocean sediment "grains" containing the iron-60? That is to say that but for the characteristic of magnetite chains, the iron-60 could have floated down on land and washed out to the seafloor. ??

 

 

Scanning electron micrography to settle the issue? The article gives "100-nanometre-wide magnetic crystals" and wiki gives a microscope resolution of 50 pm = 0.05 nm.

[tetrahedron]

Its amazing that some of the material in our own bodies likely traveled here from the other side of the known universe as cosmic rays, if one sums all such rays over the entire history of the solar system the amount might be substantial (not to make a punny point).

 

Jess Tauber