A team of scientists led by Dr Benjamin Pope from the School of Mathematics
What's happening?
Huge bursts of cosmic radiation,Known as Miyake events, they occur approximately once every thousand years, but what causes them is unclear. The Miyake events themselves are phenomena of earthly history of a planetary nature, as a result of which scientists noted significant jumps in the atmospheric concentration of the radioactive carbon isotope. The last of them were in 774 and 993.
Have these events been studied before?
Yes.In 2012, a group of Japanese scientists used accelerator mass spectrometry to measure carbon-14 activity in Japanese cedar tree rings. As a result, they discovered a sharp jump in radiocarbon activity in the rings that appeared in 774 and 775. It is noteworthy that the number of isotopes was 20 times greater than normal changes.
The data was so surprising that scientistsThey officially stated that radiocarbon activity cannot be explained either by a large solar flare or by a supernova. The results were published on June 14, 2012 in the journal Nature.
Soon the same jump was found andin the growth rings of oak from Germany, larch from Yamal, pine from California and later on trees from several other regions. All jumps in isotope activity occurred during the same time period.
Additional amount of carbon-14,that appeared as a result of this event was 3.2 times more than the average amount that appears in the earth’s atmosphere per year under normal conditions. Then physicists said that a jump in such intensity could still be explained by a solar flare, only a very strong one. So much so that it has not been seen before and cannot be compared with those observed in the last millennia. However, scientists still refuted any hypotheses about the fall of a comet or a supernova explosion.
Later, ice experts - glaciologists - alsoconfirmed that some mysterious event did happen. In an attempt to solve the problem of unknown radioactivity on Earth, they studied Antarctic and Greenland ice cores. There they found cosmogenic isotopes of beryllium (¹⁰Be) and chlorine (³⁶Cl) in high concentrations.
Ice cores are cylindrical ice samples collected from a glacier or ice sheet, most commonly from ice from the polar ice caps in Antarctica, Greenland, or high mountain glaciers.
In 2013, Japanese scientists and authorsResearch from 2012 published another paper. They reported finding a similar but slightly smaller jump in carbon-14 concentrations in 994. Later, experts clarified the dates of unusual events: the peak of carbon-14 occurred in 774, not 775, and occurred in the summer (June-August). And the other peak of carbon-14 is dated in the winter or summer of 993 (February-June). Moreover, the amount of carbon-14 resulting from the 993 event was 1.8 times higher than average.
Did ancient people notice these events?
American and Chinese scientists have discovered moreseveral similar events in the more distant past. One of them happened in 660 BC. By the way, it looked more like a solar storm, but this burst of radioactivity is also attributed to the Miyake events. This is because the data correlates with the events of 774 and 993.
It is noteworthy that of all Miyake's events thisThe ancient people did notice. Scientists suggest that during this outbreak there was an aurora, which was included in the Assyrian records. Last year, experts found traces of two more such bursts. They occurred in 7,176 and 5,259 BC. e.
What is the main theory?
The main theory is that the burstsradiation appeared as a result of huge solar flares. Scientists are trying to understand if this is true and why. If something like this were to happen today, such a surge in solar activity would destroy technology including satellites, internet cables, power lines and transformers. The impact on global infrastructure will be unimaginable.
Now, after years of uncertainty and in an attempt to understand what awaits us, the University of Queensland has conducted research into Miyake's events. They also used tree rings.
What have the scientists done?
Qingyuan Zhang, first author of the study andundergraduate student at the University of Queensland, developed software to analyze all available tree ring data. They help not only determine the age of a tree, but also track historical cosmic events that took place thousands of years ago.
When radiation enters the atmosphere, itproduces radioactive carbon-14, which is filtered through the air, oceans, plants and animals, and creates an annual record of radiation in tree rings. As part of the study, scientists modeled the global carbon cycle to reconstruct the process over the past 10,000 years. The goal is to get an idea of the scale and nature of Miyake's events.
As we wrote earlier, still A common theory was that the Miyake events were giant solar flares. However, the new study's findings "challenge this theory," the scientists wrote.
What did scientists find out?
It turned out that the data do not correlatewith sunspot activity. In addition, the radiation bursts were not “instantaneous”; each event lasted a year or two. This, by the way, explains the discrepancies in the data that date the Miyake event to 774 or 775. Scientists are leaning toward “a kind of astrophysical storm.”
Are we expecting something similar?
The authors of the new study note that the fact that it is not known exactly what Miyake events are or how to predict their occurrence is “very worrying.”
Based on the available data, there isapproximately a 1% chance of seeing a surge in radiation within the next decade (not millennium). But experts don’t know how to predict this. They are also unsure how much harm this could cause and whether humanity can cope. In any case, the chances of modern humans experiencing the Miyake event are “very alarming and lay the groundwork for further research,” the scientists conclude.
Read more:
Archaeologists have officially confirmed the legends from the Bible
It turned out what happens to the cells of the body when the heart dies
Starlink signal hacked to be used as an alternative to GPS