1250 Years ago, The Sun blasted Earth with the biggest Solar Storm in 10,000 years.
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the article
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/in-774-ad-the-sun-blasted-earth-with-the-biggest-storm-in-10000-years
n the year 774 AD, an enormously powerful blast of matter and energy from space slammed into Earth.
Nothing like it had been felt on this planet for 10,000 years. A mix of high-energy light and hugely accelerated subatomic particles, when this wave impacted Earth it changed our atmospheric chemistry enough to be measured centuries later.
Our pre-electronic societies went entirely unaffected by it. But were this sort of event to happen today, the results would be bad.
It was first discovered by an analysis of tree rings, of all things. Scientists found that the level of carbon-14, an isotope of carbon, was much higher in rings from that year than usual. Some years later, looking at air samples from ice cores, scientists saw that there were elevated levels of beryllium-10 and chlorine-36 as well.
The common factor in all these elements is that they are created when extremely high-energy subatomic particles hit Earth's air and ground. They slam into the nuclei of atoms and change them, creating these isotopes. The only way to get particles at energies like this is from space, where powerful magnetic fields in exploding stars, for example, can accelerate the particles to such high speeds. We call these isotopes cosmogenic, made from space.
What could have created the space storm in 774 AD? The obvious candidate for such a thing is a very powerful solar flare, an explosion on the Sun created when intense magnetic field lines tangle up and short circuit, releasing huge blasts of energy and particles. But the 774 event was so powerful that at first scientists were skeptical it could be from a flare. Once any other type of astronomical phenomenon was ruled out, though, a flare was all that was left.
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PhilPlait_phaser
Phil Plait
Phil Plait
@BadAstronomer
Jan 6, 2021, 9:00 AM EST (Updated)
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Tag:Science
Tag:Features
Tag:Bad Astronomy
Tag:Sun
Tag:Solar Flares
Tag:Science
Tag:Magnetic Fields
In the year 774 AD, an enormously powerful blast of matter and energy from space slammed into Earth.
Nothing like it had been felt on this planet for 10,000 years. A mix of high-energy light and hugely accelerated subatomic particles, when this wave impacted Earth it changed our atmospheric chemistry enough to be measured centuries later.
MORE BAD ASTRONOMY
Artwork depicting the six-planet system orbiting the star TOI-178. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/spaceengine.orgA six-planet system dances in time to the tune of gravityDiagram of the orbits (not to scale) of the sextuple star TYC 7037-89-1: Three similar eclipsing binary stars orbiting each other. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterCool: Six-star system found. Cooler: Made of three binaries. Coolest: *Eclipsing* binaries.
Our pre-electronic societies went entirely unaffected by it. But were this sort of event to happen today, the results would be bad.
It was first discovered by an analysis of tree rings, of all things. Scientists found that the level of carbon-14, an isotope of carbon, was much higher in rings from that year than usual. Some years later, looking at air samples from ice cores, scientists saw that there were elevated levels of beryllium-10 and chlorine-36 as well.
The common factor in all these elements is that they are created when extremely high-energy subatomic particles hit Earth's air and ground. They slam into the nuclei of atoms and change them, creating these isotopes. The only way to get particles at energies like this is from space, where powerful magnetic fields in exploding stars, for example, can accelerate the particles to such high speeds. We call these isotopes cosmogenic, made from space.
What could have created the space storm in 774 AD? The obvious candidate for such a thing is a very powerful solar flare, an explosion on the Sun created when intense magnetic field lines tangle up and short circuit, releasing huge blasts of energy and particles. But the 774 event was so powerful that at first scientists were skeptical it could be from a flare. Once any other type of astronomical phenomenon was ruled out, though, a flare was all that was left.
A team of scientists has gone through the records to look at other such events in the hopes of categorizing this flare compared to other known flares. What they found is that this event was by far more powerful than even some relatively scary modern flares.
