A University ofQueensland study has shed new light on a type of astrophysical event.
To find out more about radiation storms, a team led by Dr. Benjamin Pope applied cutting edge statistics to data from millennia-old trees.
"These huge bursts of radiation, known as Miyake Events, have occurred once every thousand years, but what causes them is not known," Dr. Pope said.
They are thought to be huge solar flares. If one of these happened today, technology like satellites, internet cables, long distance power lines and transformers would be destroyed. The effect on the world's infrastructure would be impossible.
The tree ring can be entered.
The first author, a UQ undergrad math student, developed software to analyze the data on tree rings.
Historical events can be observed because you can count a tree's rings to determine its age. When radiation strikes the atmosphere, it creates radioactive carbon-14, which filters through the air, oceans, plants, and animals, and creates an annual record of radiation in tree rings. To understand the scale and nature of the Miyake Events, we modeled the global carbon cycle for 10,000 years.
The idea that Miyake Events are giant solar flares has been used for a long time.
Our results challenge this. They're not correlated with sunspot activity and some last for a couple of years. Rather than a single explosion or flare, what we may be looking at is a storm or eruption.
It's disturbing that scientists don't know what Miyake Events are or how to predict them.
There is a one percent chance of seeing another one in the next 10 years. We don't know what to do about it. The foundation for further research was laid by these odds.
The research was done with help from undergraduate math and physics students.
More information: Modelling Cosmic Radiation Events in the Tree-ring Radiocarbon Record, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2022.0497. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi … .1098/rspa.2022.0497 Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society A
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