Supernova remnants in a million-year old sample

Tuesday 12 October 2021

How do you find the remnants of violent cosmic events? Look at the bottom of the ocean of course!

PhD student in nuclear physics, Dominik Koll, is searching for tiny traces of plutonium-244 and iron-60. Each of these originate in different cosmic events, that may have happened close enough to earth in the last few million years for the fallout to have reached us.

Cosmic fallout that settles on the ocean sinks to its floor, and ends up in sediment. In this video Dom talks about the research and shows off the sample as he carves it up and analyses the results.

More info is in this news story.

Contact

Mr Dominik Koll
E: dominik.koll@anu.edu.au
T: +49 351 260 3804

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Research School of Physics