Remember that 'tree ring mystery' that was in the news about 500 pages back? Well, I'd forgotten about it, too. Scientists were baffled by inexplicable C14 readings and were hemming and hawing about gamma ray bursts, supernovae or solar activity as the cause; eventually ruling them all out. Hence, the mystery.
A new peer-reviewed paper is coming out in the journal Geophysical Review Letters which..........wait for it.........blames it on the Sun. In fact they theorize
A MEGA-CME 20X the CARRINGTON EVENT!!! We may need to order more sun screen and a Faraday Cage for your Faraday Cage! Shit, we're worrying about a repeat of Carrington and we could get hit with something much, much more powerful. Here's a few teasers-
(snip)
They estimate that such a blast would have been about 70 times as powerful as that which knocked out power for millions in Quebec in 1989. It could also have been about 20 times as powerful as the blast behind the solar storm of 1859, which disrupted telegraph systems in North America and Europe. Our sun is probably capable of such a huge blast, given that many distant sunlike stars have been spotted releasing flares that big, if not bigger, the scientists say, though the blast would still have been too small to cause massive extinctions. (snip)
[
link to news.sciencemag.org]
Here's the Abstract and a link to order your copy of this paper:
Keywords:
solar proton event;ozone;carbon-14
ABSTRACT
[1]
We examine possible sources of a substantial increase in tree ring14C measurements for the years AD 774-775. Contrary to claims regarding a coronal mass ejection (CME), the required CME energy is not several orders of magnitude greater than known solar events.
We consider solar proton events (SPEs) with three different fluences and two different spectra. The data may be explained by an event with fluence about one order of magnitude beyond the October 1989 SPE.Two hard spectrum cases considered here result in moderate ozone depletion, so no mass extinction is implied, though we do predict increases in erythema and damage to plants from enhanced solar UV..
The modern technological implications of such an event may be extreme, and considering recent confirmation of super-flares on solar-type stars, this issue merits attention. [
link to onlinelibrary.wiley.com]
I'll say it merits attention!! SOLAR DOOM x20!!!
Are you reading this NIN?
