Scientists have found new evidence that a massive comet trail may have caused climate upheaval on Earth more than 12,000 years ago.
Tiny particles detected in ocean sediment cores suggest that dust from a large, disintegrating comet entered Earth’s atmosphere around the beginning of the Younger Dryas event, a period of abrupt cooling that caused temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere to plummet by up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) within about a year. The researchers shared their findings Aug. 6 in the journal PLOS One.
“The amount of comet dust in the atmosphere was enough to cause a short-term ‘impact winter,'” which led to an extended period of cooling, study co-author Vladimir Tselmovich, an Earth scientist at Borok Geophysical Observatory in Russia, said in a statement.
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