Detectability of a 2–3 Mya interstellar cold cloud crossing in cosmogenic 10Be records

Determine whether a heliosphere crossing of a dense interstellar cold cloud between 2–3 million years ago produces a detectable cosmogenic 10Be signal in marine geological archives, given that the cold cloud size is currently unknown.

Background

The paper investigates how encounters between the heliosphere and dense interstellar cold clouds could compress the heliosphere, exposing Earth to increased fluxes of galactic cosmic rays and heliospheric energetic particles and thereby enhancing atmospheric production of cosmogenic 10Be. Marine archives such as ocean sediments and iron-manganese crusts can record such changes in 10Be production.

Prior work suggests the Sun may have traversed dense interstellar regions 2–3 million years ago, but the physical size of the implicated cloud(s) is uncertain. Detectability of such events in 10Be records depends strongly on cloud size and crossing duration, motivating the explicit question of whether the proposed 2–3 Mya crossing yields a recognizable 10Be signal.