Studying the Dynamics of Cosmic Dust Flux on the Earth’s Surface from Peat Deposits

Abstract

Peat cores sampled from different climatic zones are studied. The petromagnetic and microprobe methods are used to find peat layers enriched with cosmic dust. It is established that the behavior of saturation isothermal remanent magnetization (SIRM) of peat deposits from the zones where the aeolian transfer of terrigenous particles is negligible can be used for studying the dynamics of the fall of cosmic matter on the Earth’s surface. The cosmic dust flux can be conditionally divided into the background and burst components. Here, the background flux of cosmic dust varies cyclically. The characteristic times of these cycles are about 100 years. The cyclicity in the background flux of cosmic material most clearly manifested itself in the interval of 1200 to 500 years ago. The most significant burst in the influx of cosmic material (by an order of magnitude above the background) is revealed in the layer that was formed about 5000 years ago. The microprobe studies established that the mineralogical content of cosmic dust differs between the background and burst fluxes.