Earth inspires' 40,000 tons of cosmic dust every year

About 40,000 tons of cosmic dust and matter fall to Earth every year, and this has begun at a stable level in the past 30,000 years, a recent discovery by US and German scientists.

(Photo: TTO)

Research by scientists at the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Institute for Marine and Polar Research (AWI) of Germany and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) at Columbia University in New York, USA also suggested that dust The universe has not helped end the past cold period as some scientists say.

They identified cosmic dust contained in an Antarctic ice core by studying helium gas - a rare gas in Earth in the ice core. This allowed them to calculate how and the amount of cosmic dust falling to Earth in the last 30,000 years.

At some point about 120,000 years ago, temperatures across the Earth began to decline and the ice sheets headed further from the northern hemisphere. This cold period ended about 11,000 years ago.

Some scientists argue that extraterrestrial dust particles have helped end this cold period by altering the Earth's climate. Another hypothesis says that this dust helps to form clouds at very high altitudes - this is believed to affect the climate.

However, the recent discovery shows that these hypotheses are not reasonable, according to Winckler. The results of this study were published in the prestigious American Journal of Science.

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