Cosmic Dust Storm is Coming
07-Aug-2003
We're at the beginning of a ten-year-long cosmic dust storm
and we don't know what the consequences will be. The Sun's
magnetic poles have flipped, as they do periodically, so now
some of the dust that floats around in our galaxy will be
sucked into our solar system. The Sun used to act as a
shield, protecting us from it. Cosmic dust bombardment in the
past may have caused ice ages and mass extinctions.
Stuart Clark writes in New Scientist that this data comes
from DUST, an experiment on the ESA/NASA mission Ulysses,
launched in 1990. ESA scientist Markus Landgraf found that
three times more galactic dust is now entering the Solar
System than during the 1990s. He doesn't know how this will
effect the Earth. He says, "Everything in interplanetary space
eventually affects the planets, but exactly how is very
speculative."
One way to find out how the dust will affect us will be to
analyze deep polar ice cores for the presence of cosmic dust
and compare dust storms of the past with periods of mass
extinction.
So many natural and man-made phenomena are converging to
change our climate?are we
prepared for the future?
For more information, click here.
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