A Bubbly Origin for Stars around the Sun (youtube.com)
This video describes new research linking an interstellar void known as the Local Bubble to nearby star-forming regions. It begins by zooming into an artist’s rendering of the Milky Way to our own galactic neighborhood. Next, an animation beginning 14 million years ago steps through time to show how a series of supernovas created the Local Bubble. As the bubble expands, it sweeps up gas and dust that condense to form star clusters. The video then resets to 14 million years ago and steps forward again to show how the Sun’s path through the Milky Way galaxy brought it into the Local Bubble about 5 million years ago. Today, we’re coincidentally close to the middle of the bubble. Finally, the video pans around a 3D model of the Local Bubble and associated star-forming regions as they exist today. Video Credit: STScIDuring the middle to late Miocene epoch, the Columbia River flood basalts engulfed about 163,700 km2 (63,200 sq mi) of the Pacific Northwest, forming a large igneous province with an estimated volume of 174,300 km3 (41,800 cu mi).During the Miocene era, what is now the catchment area of the lake was on the western side of an uplifted area that functioned as a continental divide, with streams on the western side flowing into the Congo River basin and streams on the eastern side flowing to the Indian Ocean.Miocene (Wikipedia)
The Miocene (/ˈmaɪ.əsiːn, -oʊ-/ MY-ə-seen, -oh-) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words μείων (meíōn, “less”) and καινός (kainós, “new”) and means “less recent” because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene is preceded by the Oligocene and is followed by the Pliocene.Washington State Fossil Sites and Collecting Localities (fossilspot.com)