Plasma, Solar Outbursts, and the End of the Last Ice Age

The Official Website thereof ^ | prior to July 15, 2011 | Dr. Robert M. Schoch

[justa-hairyape]

Thanks for the Part II paper link. A lot of work went into that paper. Guess we should be glad the sun is forecast to be less active for the next couple of cycles. So they are talking about a very active sun radiating a solar wind strength 10 to 100 times normal. Wonder if there has ever been a correlation between solar wind strength and lighting activity ? And if there is one type of significant plasma storm possible, we should possibly also assume other types of plasma storms are also possible.

[aruanan]

Difficult to imagine them having the capability to blot out the sun. Excerpt - ..people from many parts of the earth witnessed a stupendous pillar of light reaching from the horizon to the highest region of the sky – the so-called axis mundi or 'cosmic axis', that defined the apparent 'centre' of the sky and blotted out the comparatively dim light of the moon, the stars, and even the sun.

It's a matter of intrinsic brightness and relative distance. The light an ophthalmologist shines in your eye is nowhere near as bright as the sun, but it's about 1 inch away from your eye shining into a dilated pupil. The sun is 93,000,000 miles away. If there are Birkeland currents surrounding the earth from a distance a fraction that of the moon, their brightness could easily overwhelm the light from the sun. The intensity of the light follows the inverse square law. Double the distance makes for 1/4 the brightness. So something of less intrinsic brightness can appear brighter than something else just by being closer. But things like lightning and arc welding produce light that is intrinsically brighter than the sun, so who knows how intense the brightness could be of Birkeland currents.

[justa-hairyape]

Believe that is called interference, not blotting. Blotting means something similar to what heavy atmospheric moisture does to sunlight. Unless they are insinuating that their will be more plasma gasses and the gasses themselves can blot out the sun similar to what happens in space nebulae. And they are incorrect to assume that putting pressure on our atmosphere will not affect climate change. New studies have shown that our atmosphere expands during low solar activity. Basically due to pressures (energy). And your linked study states that our atmosphere can drastically shrink with solar winds 10 to 100 times greater then present. That also increases pressure.

[aruanan]

Believe that is called interference, not blotting.

My impression is that the writer was speaking phenomenologically, not technically.

[aruanan]

I thought you guys would like to see this that was kindly passed along to me by someone working in the field:

June 1 2011 issue of Radiocarbon (vol. 53 no. 2, pp. 303-323) by Paul LaViolette:

"Evidence for a Solar Flare Cause of the Pleistocene Mass Extinction".

Published paper is available here:

http://digitalcommons.arizona.edu/holdings/journal/issue?r=http://radiocarbon.library.arizona.edu/Volume53/Number2/

Also a preprint may be downloaded here:
Starburstfound.org/downloads/superwave/SPE.html

Paper abstract:
The hypothesis is presented that an abrupt rise in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration evident in the Cariaco Basin varve record at 12,837±10 cal yrs BP contemporaneous with the Rancholabrean termination, may have been produced by a super-sized solar proton event (SPE) having a fluence of ~1.3 X 10^11 protons/cm^2. A SPE of this magnitude would have been large enough to deliver a lethal radiation dose of at least 3 - 6 Sv to the Earth's surface, and hence could have been a principal cause of the final termination of the Pleistocene megafauna and several genera of smaller mammals and birds. The event time-correlates with a large magnitude acidity spike found at 1708.65 m in the GISP2 Greenland ice record, which is associated with high NO^-3 ion concentrations and a rapid rise in ^10Be deposition rate, all of which are indicators of a sudden cosmic ray influx. The depletion of nitrate ion within this acidic ice layer suggests that the snowpack surface at that time was exposed to intense UV for a prolonged period which is consistent with a temporary destruction of the polar ozone layer by solar cosmic rays. The acidity event also coincides with a large magnitude, abrupt climatic excursion and is associated with elevated ammonium ion concentrations, an indicator of global fires.

Below is a summary of the paper's principle findings.

• The Pleistocene megafaunal extinction likely had a solar cause.

• An extinction level solar proton event (SPE) likely occurred around 12,837 ± 10 calendar years BP. (This date is based on the varve chronology established for Cariaco Basin ocean sediment core drilled off the coast of Venezuela.)

• The proposed super SPE is estimated to have been roughly 125 times more intense than the February 1956 SPE. On the assumption that its cosmic ray energy spectrum had a hardness comparable to the 1956 event, it is estimated to have produced a ground level radiation exposure ranging from 3 Sieverts (Sv) to over 6 Sv delivered over a two-day period. By comparison, LD-100 (lethal exposure) for most mammals is in the range of 3 to 8 Sv. Lethal dose for humans is 3.5 Sv.

• The magnitude of the super SPE is based on the size of a radiocarbon production spurt registered in the Cariaco Basin radiocarbon excess record. This spurt, which occurs during the early younger Dryas, is one of the two largest to have occurred during the four-millennia-long Cariaco Basin radiocarbon record.

• Correlations made between the Cariaco Basin climate profile and the GISP2 Greenland ice core climate profile show that this candidate radiocarbon spurt correlates with an acidity spike present in the Greenland ice record at a depth of 1708.65 meters, and which is the largest acidity spike to occur during the Younger Dryas period. Also this spike is found to be flanked by two nitrate ion concentration peaks which are the highest of the Younger Dryas period. It is also spanned by a large increase in beryllium-10 concentration. All of these are good indicators for the occurrence of a solar proton event.

• The acidity spike event is found to coincide with a nitrate ion minimum, which indicates that the nitrate ions were photolytically dissociated by exposure to intense UV radiation at the time of their deposition. This strongly suggests that the 12,837 years BP super SPE likely destroyed the polar ozone layer for a period of several years following its impact. This ozone hole may even have extended to mid latitudes allowing harmful UV radiation to penetrate through the Earth's atmosphere.

• Both the high levels of solar cosmic ray radiation and solar UV radiation associated with this event were responsible for the sharp decline in mammal population marked by the Rancholabrean termination which dates close to the time of this event, around 12,883 ± 60 calendar years BP (when converted to calendar years using the Cariaco Basin radiocarbon chronology). This super SPE date also follows the Clovis paleoIndian cut-off date, which lies in the interval 12,880 to 12,840 calendar years BP (Cariaco Basin chronology), and it precedes the black mat stratum at the Murray Springs, Arizona site, which lies between 12,750 and 11,850 Cariaco calendar years BP.

• The 12,837 years BP super SPE was sufficiently large that the main phase decrease produced by its storm time radiation belt ring current could have partially or totally collapsed the geomagnetic field, allowing a large fraction of the impacting cosmic rays to contact the Earth's atmosphere and produce a substantially enhanced particle shower.

• The Greenland ice record suggests that an abrupt climatic cooling occurred at the time of the 12,837 years BP super SPE acidity spike, which is an expected consequence of the generation of high concentrations of condensation nuclei in the stratosphere. The event is also found to be flanked by two very warm episodes separated from one another by about one solar cycle period. The warming following the SPE was one of the most pronounced Dansgaard/Oeschger climatic events of the entire Younger Dryas with polar temperatures reaching Allerod levels. High ammonium ion concentrations, occurring during each of these warm periods, indicate the occurrence of widespread wildfires. Hazards associated with these fires as well as the associated destruction of food supplies and habitats would have been a contributing factor in megafaunal termination.

• A second equally large radiocarbon production spurt is reported to date 12,639 ± 10 calendar years BP, separated by 198 years (one Suess solar cycle or 9 Hale solar cycles) from the primary super SPE event. Also two smaller C-14 spurts are shown to precede the primary event, each separated from one another by three Hale solar cycles. In addition, the GISP2 ice record is shown to record a more minor acidity spike event, i.e., a SPE of lesser intensity, that occurred about 18 years after the primary 12,837 years BP super SPE.

• Lunar rock studies suggest that the Sun was in an unusually active state close to the end of the last ice age. This could explain why these super SPEs were occurring during the terminal Pleistocene and have not occurred more recently.

• In the event that the geomagnetic field would have been substantially disturbed and possibly even temporarily collapsed at the time of SPE and coronal mass ejection impact, large amounts of extraterrestrial dust residing in the circumterrestrial dust sheath would have been consequently jettisoned into the stratosphere. This could account for the extraterrestrial debris-rich layer that has been sporadically reported to underlie the black mat layer in the early YD sediments and the nanodiamond rich layer found in Greenland ice. The comet impact scenario proposed by Firestone et al. to account for this layer is unlikely to have occurred since it has been reported that a comet impact should have produced a nitrate ion signal 10^5 times higher than the upper limit observed in the Greenland ice record.

[aruanan]

Check out the paper I cited immediately above.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for those links as well.

[SunkenCiv]

The geopolymerization thing pertained to Schoch, rather than V. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, I’m going to save that.

[justa-hairyape]

Must have been an incredible light show and probably one of the last things you would ever see. So we have correlation that significant solar activity occurred during the end of the last Ice Age. And the recent Ice Ages are supposed to be occurring with regular periodicity.

So how did humans survive ? How did they know they were getting bombarded with radiation ? Did the bright lights from plasma scare them into caves ?

[aruanan]

Must have been an incredible light show and probably one of the last things you would ever see. So we have correlation that significant solar activity occurred during the end of the last Ice Age. And the recent Ice Ages are supposed to be occurring with regular periodicity.

Well, if the periods of glaciation and ends of glaciation are controlled by changes in solar output, then we only have about 100,000 years until the next big show plus the remaining time of the current interglacial.

So how did humans survive ? How did they know they were getting bombarded with radiation ? Did the bright lights from plasma scare them into caves ?

Enough people observed the phenomenon long enough to draw pictures on south-facing cave walls and stones surfaces with a south view all over the world. I think the article said that the extinction was preferential to larger mammals. Since the proton bombardment was more intense the closer to the arctic, it may have selectively wiped out life in those northern climes. There are also reports that certain sounds are perceived in connection with auroras (though not necessarily through the ears). I wonder whether, with an aurora that is thousands of times stronger, such a phenomenon would make for perceptions that are so excruciating or creepy ("Inuit folklore says it’s the sound of the spirits of the dead, either playing a game or trying to communicate with the living") that people would tend to flee from such regions. Maybe the most tolerable place to be was one that was equidistant from both poles, lands near the equator.

[justa-hairyape]

So both poles got bombarded ?

They now think those cave paintings were made about 10,000 BC when the Ice Age ended ?

Equatorial regions have naturally thinner ozone layers so I would think they would be very difficult places to survive during catastrophic solar bombardments. Think they even stated the magnetosphere collapsed.

[aruanan]

So both poles got bombarded ?

Incoming protons at the north pole. Relativistic electrons at the south pole producing synchrotron radiation.

They now think those cave paintings were made about 10,000 BC when the Ice Age ended ?

Up to as late as perhaps 3000 BCE.

[justa-hairyape]

So the reports we have links too refer to a catastrophic event occurring about 10,000 BC that may have helped to end the last ice age. Along with other less catastrophic events that have occurred since then.

[aruanan]

So the reports we have links too refer to a catastrophic event occurring about 10,000 BC that may have helped to end the last ice age. Along with other less catastrophic events that have occurred since then.

Somewhere in the 13,000 to 3,000 BCE, initially just as the most recent period of glaciation of the current ice age was ending. It would be interesting to see if there was something similar initiating each of the past five or six interglacials. I think the ice records go back as far as about 420,000 years in Antarctica. That almost covers about 4 periods of glaciation. The Greenland ice cap is supposed to go back about 110,000 years, so I guess that for proton bombardment events one could correlate what one finds in the ice for the most recent event with sedimentary deposits and then look back farther in similar sedimentary records for more of the same and see if they fall with regularity at the end of glacial periods. I don't think it would be surprising to see periodicity in solar activity responsible, along with some orbital cycles, for initiating and ending glacial and interglacial periods.

[SunkenCiv]

First posted this topic two years ago.

Plasma, Solar Outbursts, and the End of the Last Ice Age
http://www.robertschoch.com/plasma.html

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 7/15/2011. Re-ping.

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[SunkenCiv]

Plasma, Solar Outbursts, and the End of the Last Ice Age
https://www.robertschoch.com/plasma_iceage.html

Robert M. Schoch: Research Highlights

Solar-Induced Dark Age (SIDA)
https://www.robertschoch.com/sida.html

[zot]

Thanks for the links.

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure.