Auroras are seen when bursts of charged particles hit Earth's atmosphere -- but there is no record of these occurring at the same time as the 14C increase in tree rings. ©Nasa
Auroras are seen when bursts of charged particles hit Earth's atmosphere -- but there is no record of these occurring at the same time as the 14C increase in tree rings. ©Nasa
“The radiation burst, which seems to have hit between AD 774 and AD 775”
Were they prototyping the Fukushima Daiichi reactors then?
Is carbon-14 used for dating ? If so, would such bursts cause skewing in results?
Image above: Ground based Observation by W.M. Keck Observatory: The location of the gamma-ray burst as determined by the Swift X-Ray Telescope (XRT) is shown by the blue circle on this infra-red image of the sky from the W.M. Keck telescope. The burst went off in the outskirts of this huge galaxy 2.6 billion lights years away. The location outside, but near, the galaxy fits perfectly with the theory that short bursts are due to black hole formation when orbiting neutron stars collide. The gamma-ray source has not yet been securely identified and scientists are most interested in the 4 objects within Swift's X-ray telescopes error circle. Click on image to enlarge. Credit: Cenko, Soifer, Bian, Desai, Kulkarni (Caltech), Berger (Carnegie), Dey and Jannuzi (NOAO)
Crab Nebula supernova particles, about 300 years early?
Great Find. Thanks!
Just over 1,200 years ago, the planet was hit by an extremely intense burst of high-energy radiation of unknown cause ...... The only known events that can produce a 14C spike are floods of γ-rays from supernova explosions or proton storms from giant solar flares. But neither seems likely,
