As Earth passes through the spiral arm of the Milky Way, the crustal growth rate increases | TechNews Technology News

The earth revolves around the sun, and the sun revolves around the core of the galaxy with the planets, including earth. As Earth crosses the Milky Way’s spiral arms, more energetic comets will hit Earth and cause the crust to grow faster, according to a new study.

We usually think of Earth’s internal processes as causing changes to the planet, but scientists say we can think on a larger scale and see how Earth’s different positions as it travels through the Milky Way affect Earth itself.

The team of geologist Chris Kirkland of Curtin University in Australia examined the zircon crystals of the two oldest continents on Earth: the North American Craton and the Pilbara Craton, and measured the decay of uranium in the crystals to establish a craton formation timetable, with a time span of about From 2.8 to 3.8 billion years ago, reanalysis of hafnium isotopes to determine the time of magma influx associated with crustal formation revealed a pattern of crustal thickening corresponding to a galactic year over a long period of time.

More specifically, the researchers found that the rate of crustal production is related to the solar system’s repeated in and out of the galaxy’s spiral arms.

The sun orbits the center of the galaxy at a speed of about 240 km/s, while the spiral arms of the Milky Way rotate at a speed of about 210 km/s. Models suggest that the solar system enters the galactic spiral arms about every 200 million years, which is located in the Oort cloud. The icy star will interact with the dense gas cloud in the spiral arm, pushing the icy comet into the inner solar system, increasing the probability of hitting the earth,

The team hopes the discovery will further explain how forces outside the solar system shape Earth, and while proving these things is very difficult, studying Earth, geological processes beyond the solar system, and the factors that may drive those processes, may lead us to more than just isolation Survival comfort.

(Source of the first image: pixabay)