Junggar Basin Sediments Reveal Link Between Solar System Chaos and Earth's Carbon Cycle

It might sound surprising, but Earth’s climate isn’t controlled only by things on Earth. The way our planet moves through space — and how it interacts with other planets — can also play a big role. Now, scientists have found strong evidence that the orbits of planets like Mars actually helped change Earth’s climate millions of years ago.

And where did they find this evidence? Not in space — but buried in the ancient mud of a dried-up lake in northwest China.

A group of scientists from China and the U.S. studied layers of mud and rock in the Junggar Basin, a region that used to be home to a large lake around 183 million years ago. This was during the Jurassic Period, long before humans existed.

The team was looking at something called carbon isotopes — tiny chemical clues that show how much carbon dioxide (CO₂) was in the air at that time. Carbon dioxide is important because it affects Earth’s temperature. When there’s more CO₂ in the air, the planet gets warmer.

By carefully studying these layers, the scientists discovered something new: the levels of carbon changed in a regular pattern, about once every 1.6 million years.

This pattern matches the way Earth’s orbit around the Sun changes slowly over time. But it wasn’t just Earth—this pattern also connects to the orbit of Mars. That’s because all the planets in the Solar System pull on each other with gravity. These little tugs slowly change their paths around the Sun. Sometimes Earth’s orbit becomes more stretched out (oval), and other times more round.

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When Earth’s orbit stretches out, we get slightly different amounts of sunlight, which can change the climate. It can also affect how carbon moves between the air, water, and land.

So, what the scientists found is that these planetary movements, especially between Earth and Mars, may have caused big changes in Earth’s climate — even leading to events where the planet warmed up a lot.

One of those events is called the Jenkyns Event. It happened around the same time — about 183 million years ago — and during that event, the planet got much warmer, and CO₂ levels in the air increased. The new study suggests that the way Earth and Mars were moving around the Sun may have helped trigger that warming.

Even more interesting: this study proves something scientists have suspected for a long time — that the Solar System is not as simple and stable as it looks. Over millions of years, the planets’ orbits can become a bit chaotic, changing in ways that are hard to predict. Until now, scientists could only study this kind of chaos going back about 60 million years. But this discovery pushes that much further — to nearly 200 million years ago.

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Another key point is that this discovery didn’t come from the ocean, where most climate data comes from. It came from a shallow lake, which gives a clearer and more stable record of what was really happening in Earth’s atmosphere. In deep oceans, local changes in currents or temperature can mess up the climate signals. But the Junggar Basin preserved a cleaner, global picture.

In simple words: this ancient Chinese lakebed gave scientists a time machine — showing how the motion of the planets affected Earth’s climate long, long ago.

This is important for two big reasons. First, it helps astronomers understand how planets move and influence each other over long periods. Second, it helps climate scientists understand how natural cycles — like changes in Earth’s orbit — can shape the climate over millions of years.

And while today’s climate change is mostly caused by human activity, this study reminds us that Earth’s climate is very sensitive,and always has been. Even small changes in sunlight, caused by slow changes in Earth’s orbit, were enough to warm the planet in the past.

Now we’re adding CO₂ much faster than nature ever did — which makes this research even more valuable. It helps us understand how the climate works, how it has changed before, and why it matters now.