Scientists claim that something mysterious has passed over our entire solar system, reports the website Futurism.

According to new research, a giant wave of billowing gas and dust appears to have engulfed our solar system millions of years ago.

Astrophysicists have discovered that the Radcliffe Wave - a 9,000 light-year-long structure full of stars and the gas and dust needed to form new ones - appears to have swept across the entire solar system about 14 million years ago.

Previous studies of this incredible galactic wave have suggested that the Earth passed through it about 13 million years ago, plunging our planet into a "supernova eruption festival."

Now, University of Vienna PhD student Ephraim Maconie believes our entire solar system may have passed through this amazing structure.

Using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia telescope, Makoni and his team identified recently formed stars and their surrounding gases in the Radcliffe wave to see how the structure itself appears to be moving.

Comparing this data with estimates of our solar system's trajectory, the Vienna researchers found that the Sun and the Radcliffe wave were close together 12-15 million years ago. Ultimately, the scientists estimate that we moved through the wave about 14 million years ago. On a geological and even evolutionary scale, this is incredibly recent; dinosaurs are thought to have gone extinct about 66 million years ago.

Along with the discovery, Maconie states that the sky would have looked very different to anyone looking from Earth when our solar system passed through Radcliffe's wave.

"If we were in a denser region of the interstellar medium, it would mean that the light coming from the stars towards you would be fainter," he explained. "It's like being in a foggy day."

Extending this finding even further, the scientists behind this discovery also believe it is likely that Radcliffe's wave played a role in the climate cooling that occurred during the middle Miocene epoch, when temperatures dropped and permanent ice sheets formed. According to Ralf Schonrich, associate professor of climate and physics at University College London, this may be an exaggeration.

"The rule of thumb is that geology is more important than any cosmic influence," says Schonrich, who was not involved in the study. "If you shift continents or disrupt ocean currents, you get climate change from that, so I'm very skeptical that anything additional is needed." | BGNES