Scientists discover ancient asteroid collision sparked ice age by 'filling solar system with dust'

An illustration issued by the Southwest Research Institute of the giant asteroid collision
Don Davis/Southwest Research Institute/PA Wire
Jacob Jarvis18 September 2019

Scientists have discovered an ancient asteroid collision sparked an ice age by blasting masses of dust into the atmosphere.

The cosmic smash occurred in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars 470 million years ago.

It filled the entire inner solar system, which includes Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, with large quantities of dust, triggering an ice age and setting the stage for new species to evolve.

Scientists had already established that Earth was undergoing an ice age around this time - but its cause remained a mystery.

A 466-million-year-old fossil meteorite, created in the same asteroid collision that led to an ice age
John Weinstein/Field Museum/PA Wire

Birger Schmitz, professor of geology at Lund University and the leader of the study, said: "This result was completely unexpected. We have during the last 25 years leaned against very different hypotheses in terms of what happened. It wasn't until we got the last helium measurements that everything fell into place."

After analysing traces of space dust in ancient rocks from that time period, an international team of experts believe that the cooling was caused by enormous amounts of debris in the atmosphere from the collision.

While there are space particles, made up of tiny bits of asteroids and comets, constantly floating down to Earth, they make up only a tiny fraction of the dust present in the atmosphere.

This also includes debris from deserts, sea salt and volcanic ash.

But when the 93-mile-wide asteroid broke apart, it generated way more dust than usual, partially blocking sunlight from reaching Earth and causing the planet to cool.

The grey horizontal line in the rock at a fossil site in Sweden shows where the dust from the asteroid fell
Philipp Heck/Field Museum/PA Wire

In the study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers also say their "unexpected discovery" could be a step towards exploring different artificial methods to cool the planet if current approaches to reduce carbon dioxide emissions prove unsuccessful.

Study author Philipp Heck, a curator at the Field Museum in Chicago and associate professor at the University of Chicago, said: "Normally, Earth gains about 40,000 tonnes of extraterrestrial material every year.

"Imagine multiplying that by a factor of a thousand or 10 thousand."

The researchers said the dust floated down to Earth over two million years, leading to a gradual cooling process that divided the planet into climate zones - with colder temperatures at the poles and tropical conditions at the equator.

This slow cooling action allowed for an explosion of new species which were able to adapt for survival in regions with different climate conditions.

To understand how the process occurred, the researchers said they analysed the chemical composition of 466-million-year-old rocks from a fossil site in Sweden by treating them with acid and extracting space dust from them.

To prove this dust originated from space, they looked for the presence of a specific type of helium isotope that is often found in asteroids.

Over the last decade, researchers have explored the possibility of using artificial methods to cool the Earth in the event of a major climate disaster.

Computer simulations have shown that it would be possible to place asteroids - like satellites - to orbit around Earth in a way that allows them to continuously create fine dust to help block sunlight.

Mr Schmitz said: "Our results show for the first time that such dust at times has cooled Earth dramatically. Our studies can give a more detailed, empirical based understanding of how this works, and this in turn can be used to evaluate if model simulations are realistic."

But Mr Heck advocates a more cautious approach to these methods, saying: "Geoengineering proposals should be evaluated very critically and very carefully, because if something goes wrong, things could become worse than before."

Additional reporting by PA.

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