A team of researchers has reignited the debate over why Earth’s climate shivered 12,800 years ago by discovering tiny metallic beads in deep Arctic mud. The finding comes from four sediment cores lifted out of Baffin Bay, which capture a razor-thin layer rich in comet-like debris.
The sudden cooling, known as the Younger Dryas, caused Northern Hemisphere temperatures to drop by around 18°F in just months. Dr. Christopher Moore’s team has linked this event to incoming space dust rather than glacial meltwater, contradicting the traditional theory that it was triggered by floods from a collapsing ice sheet.
The new evidence includes microspherules and metallic dust particles found at the Younger Dryas boundary, which are typical of flash-melt events. The team compared these particles with stardust scooped from Comet Wild 2 and with cosmic dust caught in the upper atmosphere, finding that they matched.
The implications of this discovery go beyond just understanding a specific climate event. It suggests that large asteroid or comet impacts could have a significant impact on global temperatures and ecosystems. Future research may uncover more evidence in oceanic records, which could help to settle the debate once and for all.
Source: https://www.earth.com/news/metallic-beads-in-arctic-mud-suggest-a-comet-slammed-into-earth-relatively-recently