Where to Find the Best Records of Past Supernova Events

[Jarvis323]

I attended an interesting talk the other day about supernova archeology, and the discovery of strong evidence that Earth was showered with debris from a nearby supernova ~60-300 light years, about 2 to 3 Mya. The evidence is the presence of ⁶⁰Fe in deep ocean crust at multiple sites, as well as in cores from the moon. Samples from the moon can help to determine the direction.

Because of ⁶⁰Fe decay, and other potential issues, I suppose it is not easy to detect events going much further back in time? The ability to better pinpoint the time of the event, or events, is also limited, and the time range of depositing was wider than expected. They have some hypothesis for why debris would travel here, or end up being deposited more gradually than expected. In the end, I believe there is a lot of uncertainty about the time frames.

I was wondering, what is the feasibility in general for detecting older events, and pinpointing the date more precisely? Are there other, reliable, non-radioactive markers? Where in the solar system should we go to look for the best records? For example, can we do better by looking at ice cores from Europa or something like that. There must be somewhere outside of Earth and the moon where records are better preserved?

Abstract, website, slides, and a video from past talks:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016ApJ...827...48F
http://publish.illinois.edu/bdfields/research/near-earth-supernovae/
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/Lectures/Colloquium/presentations/160127Fields.pdf

 

[Andrew Mason]

I attended an interesting talk the other day about supernova archeology, and the discovery of strong evidence that Earth was showered with debris from a nearby supernova ~60-300 light years, about 2 to 3 Mya. The evidence is the presence of ⁶⁰Fe in deep ocean crust at multiple sites, as well as in cores from the moon. Samples from the moon can help to determine the direction.

How so? Wouldn't we also have to know where the moon was relative to the Earth at the time the debris hit?

Because of ⁶⁰Fe decay, and other potential issues, I suppose it is not easy to detect events going much further back in time? The ability to better pinpoint the time of the event, or events, is also limited, and the time range of depositing was wider than expected. They have some hypothesis for why debris would travel here, or end up being deposited more gradually than expected. In the end, I believe there is a lot of uncertainty about the time frames.

It is difficult to imagine Earth not having been formed from debris from a SuperNova.

I was wondering, what is the feasibility in general for detecting older events, and pinpointing the date more precisely? Are there other, reliable, non-radioactive markers? Where in the solar system should we go to look for the best records? For example, can we do better by looking at ice cores from Europa or something like that. There must be somewhere outside of Earth and the moon where records are better preserved?

I am not sure why Earth would not be as good a place as any in the solar system to look. We seem to have all the elements in the Earth crust.

AM