Free Republic

Approximately 14,000 years ago, the unprecedented solar event—now judged to be the most powerful known to have occurred—marked Earth’s transition into the Holocene epoch, according to the findings of an international team of scientists. The team traces the event to around 12,350 BC using a new climate-chemistry model specifically designed to reconstruct ancient solar particle activity. This expands the known timeline for ancient solar storms and raises the bar on the upper boundaries of their intensity. Although the event in question was already known from past observations of radiocarbon spikes in ancient wood samples, its scale and magnitude remained unknown....

The atomic energy of betavoltaic batteries can power a variety of devices, from aerospace and robots to your future smartphone, for up to a century without recharging. ================================================================== In the world of batteries, duration is king. Whether nestled in the smallest wearable or providing back-up power for the electric grid, a battery that provides reliable energy for longer will always outlast the competition—figuratively and literally. The U.S. led the way in nuclear battery innovation over the past 70 years—and even developed the first battery that ran on nuclear radiation in the 1950s. But in the 21st century, China has become...

Scientists have been left baffled after discovering something vast and radioactive lurking in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. An international team of scientists has found unexpectedly high levels of the rare radioactive isotope beryllium-10 in samples from the Pacific seabed. And they believe it could have been caused by a blast of radiation from space more than 10 million years ago. Beryllium-10 is an isotope - a variant of an element with a different number of neutrons in its atomic nuclei, formed when cosmic rays hit oxygen and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. After forming, this isotope falls to...

Archaeologists have dated the lakefront Neolithic (7000–3200 b.c.) settlement of Dispilio in northern Greece using a method that involves detecting evidence of bursts of cosmic radiation in ancient wood samples. In 2012, physicist Fusa Miyake first identified sudden spikes in the level of radioactive carbon-14 in tree rings that could be attributed to bombardment by cosmic rays at precisely known points in the past. A handful of these spikes, called Miyake Events, which allow wood samples to be dated to a single year, can be identified in tree rings dating back as far as 12,350 b.c.A team including University of...

Radio luminescence produced by beta-emitting carbon-14 atoms in an artificial diamond film and captured by a low light intensity camera. Image credit: University of Bristol The first battery made from carbon-14 encased within a diamond that can replace a standard lithium-ion battery has been produced, culminating from years of research. As the original, the battery might fetch a price far above a conventional gemstone from collectors, but its makers have bigger goals than the jewelry market. Instruments powered by such a device could last millennia. Of more immediate relevance, they could last a lifetime when powering devices like pacemakers, avoiding...

According to a statement released by Public Library of Science, researchers have applied updated radiocarbon calibration techniques to revise the dating of the wreck of the Kyrenia, an ancient ship that was discovered and excavated off the coast of Cyprus in the late 1960s. Based on coins and ceramics recovered from the wreck, researchers had dated the ship to the late fourth or early third century B.C., which did not align with the radiocarbon dates from decades ago. Tree-ring dating is crucial in obtaining accurate radiocarbon dates because it helps correct errors caused by variations over time in atmospheric carbon....

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...

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient bridle and other artifacts from a mountain pass almost 2,000 meters above sea level.Near a mountain pass, not far from Norway's highest mountain Galdhøpiggen, archaeologists have found traces of horse travel.A metal bit and parts of the leather straps that fasten around the horse's head have emerged from under the ice...Traffic through a mountain pass on Lomseggen was at its peak during the Viking Age.Snow and ice melting in the area has previously uncovered hundreds of ancient artifacts. They have revealed that Norwegians used this mountain pass for more than 1,200 years (link in Norwegian)...The...

An ancient tree that contains a record of a reversal of Earth's magnetic field has been discovered in New Zealand. The tree -- an Agathis australis, better known as its M&Ccedilori name kauri -- was found in Ngawha, on New Zealand's North Island, during excavation work for the expansion of a geothermal power plant, stuff.nz reports. The tree, which had been buried in 26 feet of soil, measures eight feet in diameter and 65 feet in length. Carbon dating revealed it lived for 1,500 years, between 41,000 and 42,500 years ago... The lifespan of the kauri tree covers a point...

Scientists reveal the potential for massive, and potentially destructive, eruptions from the sun. On May 1, 2019, the star next door erupted. In a matter of seconds, Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun, got thousands of times brighter than usual — up to 14,000 times brighter in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum. The radiation burst was strong enough to split any water molecules that might exist on the temperate, Earth-sized planet orbiting that star; repeated blasts of that magnitude might have stripped the planet of any atmosphere. It would be bad news if the Earth’s sun ever...

Frozen bear mouth The frozen bear came with its teeth well preserved. (NEFU) An adult bear recovered from the Siberian permafrost in the Lyakhovsky Islands in 2020 is not, as originally thought, around 30,000 years old. In fact, its age is more in the region of 3,500 years old. That's the verdict of researchers from the North-Eastern Federal University in Russia, who carried out a new necropsy of the well-preserved specimen. It remains an incredible find, offering an intriguing window into a past that isn't quite as far back as presumed. Initially, the team thought they were dealing with a...

Named Miyake events after the lead author of the first study to describe them, the spikes occur roughly once every 1,000 years or so and are recorded as sudden increases in the radiocarbon levels of ancient tree rings. The leading theory among scientists is that Miyake events are solar flares that are 80 times more powerful than the strongest flare ever recorded. But a new study...suggests that the origin of the radiation bursts could be even more mysterious than first thought. Scientists have spotted six Miyake events in tree rings so far, indicated by sudden, single-year leaps in the concentrations...

Rising as high as 20 feet, ancient stone monoliths in southern Ethiopia are 1,000 years older than scientists previously thought, according to a new study in the Journal of African Archaeology. A Washington State University research team used advanced radiocarbon dating to determine the often phallic-shaped monoliths, or stelae, at the Sakaro Sodo archeological site in Ethiopia’s Gedeo zone were likely created sometime during the first century A.D. The only other attempt to determine the age of the more than 10,000 stele monoliths located at various sites in the Gedeo zone was conducted by French scientists in the 1990s. It...

"It is machination, it is deception," said the director general of the Berlin Royal Museums in his defense when criticized for buying a fake. Wilhelm Bode did not budge an inch: The sculpture he acquired in 1909 was an as-yet unknown production of the great Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci.After 100 years and numerous controversies, a group of scientists led by a CNRS researcher has just proven him wrong once and for all. The Flora wax bust, conserved at the Bode Museum in Berlin, recently underwent radiocarbon (14C) dating, which provided both a precise date and an incontrovertible result: It...

In 2015, archaeologists discovered a single human cranium (a skull without a lower jaw) in a gypsum cave in Northern Italy called Marcel Loubens cave. Caves are known to have been used for funerary practices in ancient Italy, but the fact that there are no other human remains in this cave has raised questions about how this skull came to be there, inspiring the researchers in this study to conduct a detailed analysis on the bone.The structure of the bone indicates that it belonged to a woman between 24 and 35 years old at death. Carbon dating places the remains...

Using the radiocarbon dating of 27 mud wasp nests, collected from over and under 16 similar paintings, a University of Melbourne collaboration has put the painting at 17,500 and 17,100 years old. “This makes the painting Australia’s oldest known in-situ painting,” said Postdoctoral Researcher Dr Damien Finch who pioneered the exciting new radiocarbon technique. “This is a significant find as through these initial estimates, we can understand something of the world these ancient artists lived in. We can never know what was in the mind of the artist when he/she painted this piece of work more than 600 generations ago,...

Denver Newsroom, Mar 19, 2021 / 03:01 am MT (CNA).- Israeli archaeologists announced this week the discovery of several new sets of Dead Sea Scrolls— ancient fragments of biblical text that have, for the past 70 years, contributed to scholars’ knowledge about the Old Testament. The new scroll fragments, which the Israeli Antiquities Authority announced March 16, include the books of Zechariah and Nahum, both minor prophets. Dr. John Bergsma, professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville who has written and spoken extensively on the Dead Sea Scrolls, told CNA that an interesting feature of the scrolls recently found...

On a day that saw the Israel Antiquities Authority unveil the first Bible scroll fragments found in decades and numerous other dazzling artifacts from the “Cave of Horror” above the Dead Sea — including a huge 10,500-year-old complete woven basket, the oldest in the world — perhaps the most extraordinary news is that there are another 20 promising caves, holding untold potential treasures, that have yet to be excavated. That means the dozens of fragments shown to the public on Tuesday could mark the beginning of an exciting new era of discovery, 60 years after the last major scroll finds....

Dozens of 2,000-year-old fragments from scrolls containing portions of the books of Nahum and Zechariah have been unearthed in Israel, an extremely rare discovery in the Judean Desert. The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the discovery of the uncovered fragments on Tuesday. They are the first of such discoveries in approximately 60 years. The Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments of religious manuscripts that were originally found in the Judaean Desert decades ago. The newly discovered fragments are Greek translations of the two minor prophets. Despite most of the fragments being in Greek, the name of God is written in Hebrew. The...

They also discovered a partially mummified 6,000-year-old skeleton of a child.For the first time in 60 years, archaeologists have discovered a new fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a cache of ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts uncovered in the Qumran Caves on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. The Israel Antiquities Authority, which carried out the excavations, believes the new scroll, written in Greek, is actually a missing part of the “Book of the 12 Minor Prophets” scroll, first discovered in 1961. It contains verses from Zechariah 8:16-17 and Nahum 1:5-6. The minor differences in the wording compared...