Münster 2011 – scientific programme
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 25: Nukleare Astrophysik II
HK 25.8: Talk
Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 18:30–18:45, HS3
Search for Supernova 60Fe in the Earth’s Microfossil Record — •Shawn Bishop1, Peter Ludwig1, Thomas Faestermann1, Gunther Korschinek1, Georg Rugel1, and Ramon Egli2 — 1Fakultät für Physik, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Straße 1, D-85747 Garching, Germany — 2Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Theresienstrasse 41, D-80333 Munich, Germany
Approximately 2.8 Myr before the present, our planet was subjected to the debris of a supernova explosion. The terrestrial proxy for this event was the discovery of live atoms of 60Fe in a deep-sea ferromanganese crust. The signature for this supernova event should also reside in magnetite (Fe3 O4) microfossils produced by magnetotactic bacteria extant at the time of the Earth-supernova interaction, provided the bacteria preferentially uptake iron from fine-grained iron oxides and ferric hydroxides. Using estimates for the terrestrial supernova 60Fe flux, combined with our empirically derived microfossil concentrations of a deep-sea drill core, we deduce a conservative estimate of the 60Fe fraction as 60Fe/Fe= 3.6 × 10−15. This value sits comfortably within the sensitivity limit of present accelerator mass spectroscopy capabilities. The implication is that a biogenic signature of this cosmic event resides, and is detectable, in the Earth’s fossil record.
In this talk we describe this idea in further detail and present our magnetic scanning data from a Pacific Ocean drill core (provided by the Ocean Drilling Program, ODP) that allows us to quantify the mass concentration of Fe within the microfossils.