Medical News
By Abigail Beall
Antarctic snow is so pristine that we can spot interstellar dust in itGordon Wiltsie/Getty
Radioactive iron buried in Antarctic snow must have come to Earth from interstellar dust, according to a new study. This suggests that Antarctic snow and ice of different ages could be used to tell us about the patches of interstellar dust Earth has passed through, and so track its path across the Milky Way.
Dominik Koll at the Australian National University in Canberra and his colleagues collected 500 kilograms of Antarctic ice, melted it and studied what it contained. They found iron-60, a rare radioactive …