A late Miocene dust shower from the break-up of an asteroid in the main belt

Kenneth A. Farley (), David Vokrouhlický, William F. Bottke and David Nesvorný
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Kenneth A. Farley: California Institute of Technology
David Vokrouhlický: Charles University
William F. Bottke: Southwest Research Institute
David Nesvorný: Southwest Research Institute

Nature, 2006, vol. 439, issue 7074, 295-297

Abstract: Gathering comet dust Earth is continually bombarded by interplanetary dust particles up to a millimetre in diameter, released from asteroids and comets by collision or fragmentation. The fact that the particles are rich in helium-3 means that they can be identified in the geological record. New measurements of 3He in seafloor sediments, together with numerical modelling, point to a single Solar System event as virtually the only source of interplanetary dust accreting to the Earth for a period of 1.5 million years in the late Miocene. The event was probably the destruction by collision of a 150-km-diameter asteroid some 8 million years ago, the same collision that produced the Veritas family of asteroids. Intriguingly, the climax of this bout of dust accretion coincides with modest cooling during the Miocene, although a causal link between the two phenomena remains a matter for speculation.

Date: 2006
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DOI: 10.1038/nature04391

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