From what I understand the primary mission, once they had accomplished it, was to confirm the theory of recurring Novae.
There were a lot of soil samples taken which contained glass-like material, and scorched-fused solids which indicate the sun has reucurring-Novaed approximately every 12,000 years around the time our geological record indictates a magnetic polar reversal event and subsequent ice age occurred on earth. This also completely changes the geological scale of time required for the breakup of Pangaea, because a major nova would heat the layer beneath the mantle and allow for rapid movement of landmasses across a "more liquid" magma substrate layer. While also messing with our pottassium-argon beta-decay and alpha-decay contemporary radioactive dating methods.
The theory was posited after the discovery of the recurring supernova phenomenon. Basically once a star starts fusing Iron and heavier elements, in order to prevent the death of the star it novas to eject those heavier elements from itself, which is why we have Gold and other heavier elements scattered across the planets of still functioning solar systems.
If this phenomenon weren't the case, gold and elements heavier than iron would be exceedingly rare; nigh impossible to find, in an intact still-functioning solar system since the only mechanism by which it can exist is as an ejection from a star; that is to say, unless out solar system coalesced on top of an already dead super-novaed solar system, we wouldn't have heavy elements in it. Every planet would just be gaseous planets.
|