Scientists have found leftover material from supernovae in the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

New research said the rare discovery of the extraterrestrial dust at the ocean floor can change the perception of supernovae and eventually determine the impact of massive explosions that happened millions of years ago.

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"Small amounts of debris from these distant explosions fall on the earth as it travel through the galaxy. We've analyzed galactic dust from the last 25 million years that has settled on the ocean and found there is much less of the heavy elements such as plutonium and uranium than we expected," said Dr. Anton Wallner from the Research School of Physics and Engineering.

Supernovae are known to be capable of forming lead, silver and gold and radioactive elements like uranium and plutonium.

Dr. Wallner's team studied plutonium-244, which serves as a radioactive clock by the nature of its radioactive decay, and can exist for 81 million years.

Dr. Wallner said that any existing plutonium-244 from the time the earth was formed from intergalactic gas and dust over four billion years ago have decayed since then.

Plutonium-244 found on Earth might be created through explosive events that occurred recently, as well as for the past few hundred million years, he explained.

A 10 centimeter-thick sample of the planet's crust currently being analyzed by Dr. Wallner and his colleagues is known to represent 25 million years of accretion. It was also revealed that it had 100 times less plutonium-244 than they expected.

The heavy elements present seem to show there might be other explosive event that occurred close to earth during those times it formed.

Details of the study were published in Nature Communications.

Tagssupernovae, ocean floor, Pacific Ocean, Ocean, marine life