Researchers Find Iron-60 Stardust in 80,000-Year-Old Antarctic Ice as Solar System Crosses Local Fluff
Updated
Updated · Space.com · May 18
Researchers Find Iron-60 Stardust in 80,000-Year-Old Antarctic Ice as Solar System Crosses Local Fluff
8 articles · Updated · Space.com · May 18
300 kilograms of Antarctic ice and snow revealed radioactive iron-60 atoms, direct evidence that supernova-produced stardust reached Earth and was preserved in ice dating back 40,000 to 80,000 years.
Accelerator mass spectrometry let the team count single atoms and compare older ice with recent snow, showing lower iron-60 levels in the older samples and implying less interstellar dust reached Earth then.
That pattern points away from a single long-fading supernova and toward a more local source: material from a stellar explosion embedded in the Local Interstellar Cloud surrounding the solar system.
Researchers say the finding links nearby interstellar clouds to past stellar explosions and could help reconstruct the cloud's origin as the solar system, in it for 40,000 to 124,000 years, nears its exit in a few thousand years.
What does stardust in Antarctic ice reveal about our journey through the remnants of ancient supernovae?
Could Earth face new risks as our solar system travels through denser regions of this interstellar cloud?
Iron-60 in Antarctic Ice Cores Uncovers Earth’s Recent Encounters with Nearby Supernovae and the Local Interstellar Cloud
Overview
Recent research published in 2026 revealed traces of the rare isotope Iron-60 in Antarctic ice cores, showing that Earth was impacted by nearby supernovae between 40,000 and 80,000 years ago. Scientists used the Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility in Australia, the only lab capable of detecting such tiny amounts, to separate and identify just a handful of Iron-60 atoms from trillions. Since Iron-60 is only made in supernova explosions, its presence in the ice proves that material from these cosmic events reached Earth, offering a direct record of our planet’s journey through the galaxy and its encounters with interstellar clouds.