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.
New research has now found that a radiocarbon spike found within ancient tree rings in the French Alps reveals the full extent of the sun's power and the potential danger it poses to us if a storm of this scale occurs today, according to a study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences.
The researchers found a strange spike in radiocarbon within the rings of subfossilized trees dating to around 14,300 years ago.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.
"We checked our 14,300-year-old radiocarbon spike by comparing it with beryllium-10 found in Greenland ice cores," Heaton said. "Beryllium-10 is another chemical isotope that is produced in a very similar way to radiocarbon (in the upper atmosphere by the same energetic particles).
"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.
