Feb. 28, 2025, 4:46 a.m.
Something from Outer Space Altered Evolution on Earth
The Conspiracy Report
Iron-60 shouldn't exist on Earth.
It's a form of iron that can't be made through any natural process on our planet. It could result from nuclear reactions, but not in significant quantities.
Could it have already been here when Earth was formed? Maybe.
But it really doesn't matter. The half-life of Iron-60 is 2.6 million years. Our planet was formed 4.5 billion years ago. If Iron-60 was part of our world at the beginning, it has long since disappeared by now.
Put simply, there is no terrestrial explanation for Iron-60 to exist on Earth.
Yet it does.
In 1999, an expedition to an area of the Pacific Ocean far from land was undertaken by German physicists from the Technical University in Munich. They targeted a spot deep in the ocean near the Mariana Trench, which, of course, is the deepest point on Earth.
But they didn't have to dig the astounding 36,000 feet below sea level reached by the famous trench. They took samples of the ocean floor 15,000 feet under the surface. They were looking for Iron-60.
We'd found it before, just not on Earth. During the moon landings, Iron-60 was found on the lunar surface. It was in moon rock. That proved it was cosmic. Extraterrestrial in origin.
In the 1999 excavation, those physicists discovered the isotope had, in fact, landed on Earth. The official report stated they found "an anomaly in the 60Fe abundance in a deep-ocean ferro-manganese crust".
Put simply, Iron-60 fell to the Earth and into the sea as stardust, incorporating into the crust. Scientists call it "interstellar fluence", which means energy from space hitting the Earth's surface over time.
They removed 28 different layers of crust, each corresponding to a different time period. Their analysis covered 13 million years of Earth's history.
What they found was surprising. This wasn't a continuous, random deposit of space dust over millions of years.
There was a distinct peak in the time profile.
This was a single event, 2.8 million years ago.
Scientists all over the world asked the same questions: what happened on the planet 2.8 million years ago? Did this sudden burst of cosmic energy have any effect? It was unlikely there'd be an answer.
There was a lot going on around that time. It was the early stages of the Ice Age, the earliest human ancestors were thriving, and sabertooth tigers and woolly mammoths roamed free. It would be hard to pin down a single cosmic event influencing life on Earth.
Except for the cichlid.
The cichlid are fish in Lake Tanganyika, the deepest lake in Africa (and the second deepest on Earth). They're famous in scientific circles because they experienced a sudden, stunning leap in evolution.
In just a short period of time the cichlid multiplied into over 250 different species, including a wide variety of forms and behaviors. Their "adaptive radiation" is considered extraordinary, the diversity of the species among the most spectacular in the natural world.
In February 2024, a study by scientists from the Sydney Institute for Infectious Disease discovered there was more going on than we realized with these fish. There was a startling increase in the diversity of viruses among the cichlid, matching their period of sudden growth.
These viruses were evolving along with the cichlids, and at a stunning pace. Where did these viruses come from? What sparked their sudden spread and evolutionary change? We aren't sure. But we do know when it happened.
Around 2.8 million years ago.
Exactly when a cosmic event hit the planet, these viruses suddenly evolved in unusual numbers. Scientists analyzed over 2,200 RNA samples and found 121 viruses which often switched hosts, jumping between different types of cichlids.
This was a fast-changing, thriving virus community.
Astrophysicist Caitlyn Nojiri of the University of California Santa Cruz suggests the explosion in virus diversity in Lake Tanganyika was sparked by cosmic radiation – whatever brought Iron-60 to the Earth.
It was already known that cosmic radiation can drive evolution. Stardust can push cells to mutate. But this singular spike in cosmic energy seems to have caused an eruption of virus diversity.
There are those who believe viruses are used by extraterrestrial life to infect the Earth, and ultimately colonize the planet across interstellar distances. Humans looking for flying ships are instead infected from within with outbreaks causing pandemics, maybe softening the population ahead of a coming invasion. It all sounds far-fetched.
Except 2.8 million years ago, something did arrive from deep space. We found the evidence. And we're beginning to understand, at the same time, a diverse population of viruses was born.
If we're waiting for aliens to arrive, it may be we just discovered they've been here all along. And they are spreading in microscopic form.
At the very least, stay away from anything emerging from Lake Tanganyika.
Sources:
https://www.sciencealert.com/radiation-from-an-exploding-star-may-have-altered-evolution-on-earth