Scientists Retrace Earth's Journey Through Galaxy, Reveal Strange 200 Million Year Rhythm
Scientists have studied the trajectory of our planet and the entire solar system through the galaxy and have come across a strange rhythm that repeats itself approximately every 200 million years.
In addition to rotating on its axis, our planet revolves around the Sun and travels through the Milky Way galaxy, which is itself in motion. We travel through the Milky Way galaxy like a giant cosmic family.
Besides being huge and massive, our Milky Way galaxy is also on the move. It includes stars, planets, gas clouds, dust grains, black holes, dark matter and more, all of which contribute to and are affected by its net gravity. From our perspective, the Sun rotates once every 220 to 250 million years, some 25,000 light-years from the center of our galaxy.
Everything is in motion
Known as the spiral galaxy, the Milky Way is made up of four main spiral arms and numerous arm fragments, called spurs.
Everything in our galaxy, including our solar system, travels through space through these spiral arms.
So how does this affect our planet, if there is one?
To find out, geologists decided to look not in space but in the Earth, observing tiny grains, in the hope of understanding how the planet was built and what processes may have contributed to its formation.
Ask a geologist
Geologists observe the composition of mineral grains smaller than a human hair. They then extrapolate the chemical processes they suggest to consider how the Earth was formed .
Currently, scientists are linking the tiny specks to Earth's place in the galaxy, taking that tiny attention to new heights. Their findings were the subject of a scientific paper published in the journal Geology titled "Did Transit Through the Spiraling Galactic Arms Promote the Production of the Earth's Crust in Early History?" » .
The goal of astrophysicists is to better understand the universe and our place in it. Physicists develop models to describe the orbits of astronomical objects using the laws of physics.
Despite what one might think, the surface of the planet has undoubtedly been affected by its cosmic environment. A meteorite impact, periodic changes in the Earth's orbit, variations in the power of the sun, and gamma-ray bursts are all part of this process.
Recently, meteor impacts have been associated with the formation of continental crust on Earth, forming floating "seeds" in the outermost layer of our planet.
A rhythm
Researchers have now identified a rhythm in the production of this early continental crust that suggests a powerful driving force.
Magma, a molten or semi-molten material, is responsible for the formation of many rocks on Earth. Besides the magma generated by the mantle (the slowly flowing solid layer beneath our planet's crust), older pieces of pre-existing crust can also be reheated to form magma. Solid rock forms when liquid magma cools.
Mineral grains grow during this cooling process of magma crystallization and can trap decaying elements like uranium, producing a sort of chronometer that records the age of minerals.
In addition to trapping other elements, crystals can also record the composition of their parent magma.
This information, combined with the composition of the crust, allows scientists to reconstruct a timeline of the production of the crust.
Using the Fourier transform , they can decode the main signal frequencies.
According to this approach, the production of the crust on the early Earth had a rate of approximately 200 million years.
An even stranger rhythm
We find a similar rhythm elsewhere. The Milky Way galaxy and our solar system orbit the supermassive black hole at its center, but at different speeds.
As our solar system races around the arms of the galaxy, the spiral arms spin at 210 kilometers per second as the sun moves forward at 240, meaning our solar system rolls along the spiral arms.
According to this model, our solar system enters a spiral arm of the galaxy approximately every 200 million years.
There's a possible link between the time it takes to spin around the galaxy's spiral arms and when Earth's crust forms - but why?
The Oort cloud is believed to orbit our sun at the edge of our solar system.
It is suggested that as the Solar System periodically moves through the spiral arms, the interaction between it and the Oort Cloud could dislodge material from the cloud, bringing it closer to the inner Solar System. It is even possible that some of this material hits the Earth.
Scientists believe that these periodic high-energy impacts can be spotted by the tiny mineral grains that keep track of the production of the Earth's crust. Comet impacts excavate large volumes of the Earth's surface, causing the mantle to melt as a result of decompression.
As it is enriched with light elements such as silicon, aluminum, sodium and potassium, it floats above the denser mantle. Continental crust can be generated in different ways, but the impact on our first planet likely formed seeds of floating crust. These early sprouts adhered to magma produced by later geological processes.
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