Jenny Feige (Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin)

As our Earth moves through space, it encounters cosmic particles originating from within our Solar System and from the surrounding interstellar medium. Their discovery on Earth’s surface can hint to past cosmic events such as asteroid break-ups producing interplanetary dust particles or nearby stellar explosions producing interstellar dust.The stable climate conditions in the Atacama Desert, Chile, over millions of years have allowed for a continuous accumulation of atmospheric dust, resulting in sedimentary records that represent an ideal trap for interplanetary and interstellar material. Furthermore, the hyper-arid conditions in the Atacama Desert facilitate the preservation of cosmic material and their traces over millions of years. We use Atacama soil profiles to search for micrometeorites and for the first continental signatures of nearby supernovae. We explore the diversity of cosmic material as well as variation in influx through time with the goal to reconstruct the recent history of our Solar System and beyond.