Researchers Reveal Cosmic Storm Phenomenon through Tree Structure
- NOAA
Because interpreting tree ring data necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the global carbon cycle, a team of researchers led by mathematician, Qingyuan Zhang of the University of Queensland set about reconstructing the global carbon cycle, based on every scrap of tree ring radiocarbon data they could get their hands on.
"When radiation strikes the atmosphere, it produces radioactive carbon-14, which filters the air, oceans, plants, and animals, and produces a record annual radiation in tree rings," Qingyuan Zhang explained.
"We modeled the global carbon cycle to reconstruct processes over 10,000 years, to gain insight into the scale and nature of the Miyake event," he said.
The results of this modeling gave the team an extremely detailed picture of some radiation events enough to conclude that the timing and profile are inconsistent with solar flares. The spikes in radiocarbon do not correlate with sunspot activity, which is linked with flare activity. Some spikes persisted across multiple years.
Researchers don't know, at this point, what might have caused the explosion, but there are several candidates. One of them is a supernova event, radiation that can explode across space.
A supernova may have occurred in AD 774, and scientists have made connections between radiocarbon spikes and other possible supernova events, but we do know of supernovae without radiocarbon spikes without associated supernovae.
And this, according to the researchers, is a worry. The human world has changed dramatically since 774 CE; a Miyake event now could cause what the scientists call an "internet apocalypse" as infrastructure gets damaged, harm the health of air travelers, and even deplete the ozone layer.
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