Dimensions of interstellar cold clouds encountered by the heliosphere

Ascertain the spatial dimensions of interstellar cold clouds that the Sun may encounter in order to constrain realistic heliosphere crossing durations and associated radiation exposure scenarios.

Background

To model potential 10Be signals from cloud encounters, the authors bracket crossing times between 100 years and 1 Myr, reflecting uncertainty in the physical sizes of candidate cold clouds. Cloud size directly controls Earth’s exposure to interstellar galactic cosmic rays and heliospheric energetic particles, which in turn governs 10Be production and detectability in marine records.

Resolving the dimensions of such cold clouds would enable more precise predictions of crossing durations and consequently improve assessments of 10Be signal detectability across different geological archives.