Thomas Faestermann, "Recent, Close Supernovae"

Thursday 24 Oct 2019, 09:30 → 11:30 Europe/Berlin

3268 (TUM Physik Department I)

The successful searches for radioactive material expelled by one or several close supernovae (SNe) and deposited on Earth and Moon are reviewed. A surplus of 60Fe (T1/2=2.6Myr) has been found at eight locations in terrestrial oceans as well as in Lunar samples. This surplus is attributed to supernova activity within 300 light years from the Sun about 1.5 to 3.0 Ma ago. The most recent success is the detection of SN produced 60Fe in half a ton of Antarctic snow what implies that some of this earlier SN ejecta still resides in the Solar neighbourhood and is collected by the Earth.

The mechanism of core-collapse SNe will be described as well as the extremely sensitive detection method of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). Independent hints on recent SNe as well as possible consequences will be discussed.