Posted on 10/10/2023 5:47:04 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Evidence of the most powerful solar storm in history has been uncovered in an unlikely place: within the rings of a tree.
This immensely powerful solar storm is thought to have been at least 10 times as powerful as the Carrington Event of 1859, which caused chaos in the rudimentary telegraph system of the time.
The researchers found a strange spike in radiocarbon within the rings of subfossilized trees dating to around 14,300 years ago.
"Fusa Miyake discovered a sudden and unexpected spike in radiocarbon levels in a Japanese tree from 774 AD. Initially, this was thought to have been caused by a supernova, but after more study, it was instead identified as being due to a huge solar storm on the sun," Heaton said.
"Such extreme storms would throw out huge volumes of highly energetic particles from the sun. These energetic solar particles would have entered our atmosphere, leading to a sudden spike in radiocarbon production. Our storm is another Miyake event—but the largest that has ever been identified."
The radiocarbon spike in the tree rings was found to line up with patterns in beryllium levels in Greenland ice cores, indicating that the spike was caused by a huge solar storm.
"The fact that the 14,300-year event was supported by both the radiocarbon and the beryllium-10 indicated that the massive production spike we found was genuine (and not noise). It also supported the solar origin of the event— i.e., a massive solar storm considerably bigger than any previously identified."
Solar storms like this one and the Carrington Event are caused by solar flares, which are ejections of powerful X-rays from the sun.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Great question about how a 774 AD event is evidence for another apparently occurring 14,300 years ago. The article is not clearly written, but there seem to be two different trees and two different events involved:
“”. . . in 2012, Fusa Miyake discovered a sudden and unexpected spike in radiocarbon levels in a Japanese tree from 774 AD . . . Our storm is another Miyake event . . .”
I guess the totle of the article was poorly worded leading to my confusion.
oh read it as the telephone. ok. :)
Lol
:^)
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