2023-10-18 17:45:35
By analyzing annual growth rings from ancient trees found in the French Alps, an international team of scientists has discovered a huge spike in radiocarbon levels from 14,300 years ago. The radiocarbon spike was caused by a massive solar storm, the largest of any identified. A solar storm similar to the one that breaks out today would be catastrophic for modern technological society, cutting off communications at countless points, rendering communications satellites useless and causing massive electrical blackouts that could last for months.
The team, including Edouard Bard and Cécile Miramont of the University of Aix-Marseille in France, and Tim Heaton of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, examined trunks of ancient trees preserved on the eroded banks of the Drouzet River, near Gap, in the southern French Alps.
The tree trunks, which are subfossils (remains whose fossilization process has not been completed), were cut into thin slices to examine the annual growth rings as accurately as possible. Analysis of these rings identified an unprecedented spike in radiocarbon levels that occurred about 14,300 years ago. By comparing this radiocarbon spike with measurements of beryllium, a chemical element found in Greenland ice cores, the team has concluded that the spike was caused by a massive solar storm that must have ejected huge amounts of energetic particles. to the Earth’s atmosphere.
As Bard explains, radiocarbon is constantly produced in the upper atmosphere through a chain of reactions initiated by cosmic rays. In recent years, it has been found that extreme solar events, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, can also create short-lived bursts of energetic particles that leave traces in the form of huge spikes in radiocarbon production.
Annual growth rings of a subfossil tree that was buried in the Drouzet River. (Photo: Cécile Miramont)
Regarding the danger of a solar storm like that occurring again, the authors of the study recommend doing more research and, above all, implementing preventive measures to help mitigate the disaster that such a solar storm would cause in communication and supply networks. electric from around the world.
Today it is known that in the last fifteen thousand years, 9 of these extreme solar storms, called Miyake Events, have occurred. The most recent confirmed ones occurred in the years 993 and 774 AD. However, this newly identified 14,300-year-old storm is the largest found to date. Its magnitude is approximately double that of those two.
The largest directly observed solar storm occurred in 1859 and is known as the Carrington Event. It caused enormous disruption on Earth: it destroyed telegraph systems and created a nighttime aurora so bright that birds began to sing, believing that the Sun was already rising.
However, storms classified as Miyake Events are on the order of ten times more powerful than the Carrington Event.
The specific nature of the Miyake Events is largely unknown. These solar superstorms clearly demonstrate that we still have a lot to learn about the behavior of the Sun and the dangers it can bring to humanity. There is great ignorance about the causes of these extreme solar storms, and also about the frequency with which they are generated.
The study is titled “A radiocarbon spike at 14,300 cal yr BP in subfossil trees provides the impulse response function of the global carbon cycle during the Late Glacial”. And it has been published in the academic journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. (Source: NCYT by Amazings)
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