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Cosmic Radiation Makes Trees Grow Faster
Diamonddavej writes "The BBC reports that researchers at the University of Edinburgh have found that Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) somehow makes trees grow faster. GCRs vary according to the 11-year solar cycle, with more GCRs hitting the Earth during solar minimum when there is a lull in the solar wind, which normally acts to protect the inner solar system from external galactic radiation. The mechanism might have something to do with GCRs increasing cloud cover, which diffuses sunlight and increases the efficiency of photosynthesis. Nevertheless, the researchers remain mystified and are requesting further ideas and research collaboration to test hypotheses. (How about Radiation Hormesis, AKA 'Vitamin-R?')" Here is the paper's abstract at the journal New Phytologist. The researchers say: "The relation of the rings to the solar cycle was much stronger than to any climatological factors. ... As for the mechanism, we are puzzled."
researchers at the University of Edinburgh have found that Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) somehow makes trees grow faster
I don't think they need to look any further for answers than the Fantastic Four.
Geez and they're scientists? Just do a little research. I suggest Marvel Comics. Plenty of good info there. At the risk of starting war, I would caution them against research using DC Comics as they are for simple idiots that live in their mother's basements.
If the solar cycle is what determines the level of GCR that gets to Earth then it may very well have absolutely nothing to do with the tree growth its self but an indicator of solar conditions which influence tree growth rates.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
in one, two, tree ...
The mechanism might have something to do with GCRs increasing cloud cover, which diffuses sunlight and increases the efficiency of photosynthesis.
How about cloud cover leads to more precipitation?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Increased GCR's + light diffusion increasing photosynthesis...all natural organic compounds, this year has been heartier than most.
Especially in a case like this, where there are other tightly-correlated variables. Why is the authors' presumption that it's the cosmic rays (or lack thereof) that are regulating tree growth, rather than solar and sunspot activity itself? It seems at least as plausible to me that sunspot activity correlates to some other solar features (e.g., solar irradiance) that would have a more natural and direct effect on tree growth than cosmic rays.
What else grows from radiation? Cancer. Quod erat demonstratum, trees are cancer. Therefore we must cut them down and burn them. Perhaps form some sort of industry devoted to this.
What? The "logging" industry? Oh, well, very good then. Continue.
My work here is dung.
Now everyone with a grow op in their basement has to go out and buy new fancy lights which give off Galactic Cosmic Rays.
-hps
Allegations of misconduct have appeared regarding key IPCC dendrochronological 'evidence.' Several widely publicized papers may be based on a single flawed survey of cherry picked samples. Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.org has been analyzing long withheld data and has draw some disturbing conclusions.
The story involves, in part, the exposure of raw data left unprotected on a file server by jealous researchers. One would think it might be of interest here on Slashdot given that the NYT is talking about it.
Tree plantation at Chernobyl site proves highly profitable growth for the niche "glow in the dark" paper market.
Film at 11
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Cause increased carbon sequestration by bombarding the Earth with radiation! This also has the beneficial side-effect putting an eventual end to homocentric global warming.
Bruce Perens.
They used to grow plants with radiation in the soil because it would cause them to grow faster. However, the problem is that this would irradiate the food that grew off of these plants.
from many years ago. The experiment was two identical growing chambers using artificial sunlight. One was placed in a normal building, the other underneath a mountain or something shielded from cosmic rays like that. It had the same result: it was found that plants grew better when they were getting the radiation. Does anyone remember this experiment?
Damn, when I looked at it, I thought for sure it said "radiation horniness" -- following the sunspot cycle?
Why not?
People working with long distance radio communications -- whether it's LF for ships, ham radio, or spacecraft, knows the incredible variation the sunspot cycle can have on communications -- there are enormous swings in energy levels involved. Why shouldn't it show up in complex systems such as trees?
And yes, the link may be indirect, it may not be direct causation, merely correlation, but that's often a good reason to look again, more closely, as there may be something interesting going on.
The cool thing is that you get super powers from eating the giant vegetables, too.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
A 1964 publication by Paul Zindel entitled "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" predates this research by quite a bit.
Plants of course need nitrogen to grow, the trouble is they can't absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere (except for Legumes (pea, and beans and similar plants)). So for the majority of plants and trees, not feed by human fertilizers, the amount of fertilizing nitrate available to them, is directly proportional the cosmic ray flux.
Mystery Solved.
---
Dark Matter Feed @ Feed Distiller
No no no. You are supposed to be fixating on Superheros, not nitrogen!!!!!!
I thought this was thoroughly debunked already.
The professor in Gilligans Island already determined this. Old news, nothing new here.
Fight Spammers!
Summary: trees get a hard-on for radiation.
Table-ized A.I.
I contend that since they have no idea of the mechanism, they are not simply puzzled, but have clearly moved into BAFFLED territory. I mean if they had a few good guesses, maybe puzzled. I think TFA Article clearly indicates their BAFFLEMENT.
Homer: If we learned one thing from "The Amazing Colossal Man" and "Grasshopperus," it's that radiation makes stuff grow real big, real fast.
There is a system for subverting the system and you should use that system!
Does this mean that Galactus is coming??
Nevertheless, the researchers remain mystified and are requesting further ideas ...
Have they considered Ask Slashdot?
What about men with small dicks? Any enhanced growth there?
Quote:"One of the reasons people have difficulty in dealing with complex systems is that the linear causal chain way of thinking - A causes B causes C causes D ... etc - breaks down in the presence of feedback and multiple interactions between causal and influence pathways. One could say that complex systems are characterised by networked rather than linear causal relationships."
Keeping that in mind, I tend to be of the opinion that the best guess regarding an isolated cause is '42'.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
if it helps trees grow, then it helps capture more carbon. why not study the positive effect of this on global warming?
See http://jillandhal.home.att.net/halqn/comix2.htm#peanuts: the "republished November 16, 2007" strip, or just search for "Brazil" on that page.
This Google search will get you more pages which reference that cultural tidbit.
Now with Vitamin R!
Malk
At the university I studied physics at, they had a nice (old) telescope with which they projected solar images to count sun spots. They had a graph on the wall of the number of sun spots, going decades back. There was a nice periodicity in that graphc, and interesting thing is that they could point out two types of events: good wine years, and the occurrence of the "Elfstedentocht" (a major Dutch ice skating event which only happens when the outdoor ice conditions are exactly right).
I forgot which one happened at sunspot maxima and which at the minima, but there was a striking correlation.
I don't think they need to look any further for answers than the Fantastic Four.
I don't think they need to look any further for answers than increasing carbon dioxide amounts somehow makes trees grow faster.
(Really, it seems like this is to rebuff the notion that CO2 is Green)
Sadly, as much as I am wont to use it, there is no "-1 Retard." It would be inappropriate to misuse a different negative moderation for that purpose.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Mysterious and unclear correlation between GCRs and increased growth? Spam for Galactic Cosmic Ray tablets coming to an inbox near you...
Sunlight makes plants grow. In other news, water is wet.
That's why trees grow more during solar minimums.
It has nothing to do with diffused sunlight. Bah...
And weather could be affected by solar cycles. The correlation is there, but not a clear causal link. Solar minimums tend to be cooler periods, e.g. 2008 & 2009.
Looking at the paper itself.. it rests entirely on an allegedly strong correlation between "annual growth anomaly" (which is the absolute deviation from a cubic spline fitted to the entire data set) and annual cosmic ray flux. So far so good although the choice of a cubic spline is "interesting" (it has a very good fit to the tree ring data, well no shit Sherlock that's the whole point of a cubic spline isn't it).
The resulting 45-year record has a superficial resemblance to cosmic ray data over the same period although I rather suspect that this is dependent on the degree of smoothing specified for the cubic spline.
But now the good bit - the fit between the growth anomaly and cosmic ray flux has a correlation coefficient of 0.39, or if you prefer an "r^2" of 0.15, from 45 points. Alternatively you can (and the authors do) specify it as a probability of fit,which gets a mighty 0.8% (i.e. there is a less than 1% chance that the cosmic rays explain the growth ring data).
Of course the usual suspects that complain the entire field of anthropogenic global change is "junk science" will doubtless be all over this one like a rash. Different standards apply to research claiming an extraterrestrial effect, you see..
If you Google "Solar and climate signal records in tree ring width, from Chile (AD 1587-1994)" You find an article with similar findings from 2006.
The most interesting thing about this is not the 11 year cycle that the Brits in the previous email found this year, but the 50, 100, amd 200 year cycles that these guys found in 2006. If solar activity (and hence cosmic rays) is measurably affecting tree growth, what else is being affected. Also important is that this paper shows it is not just historical accounts about the lack of sunspots at the time that can be correlated with the Maunder Minimum (little ice age), but now there is concrete data correlating it with cosmic rays (through the measurement of C14 and Be10).
This is the kind of thing that GW people want to sweep under the rug because it puts their CO2 claims into doubt.
Abstract
Tree growth rings represent an important natural record of past climate variations and solar activity effects registered on them. We performed in this study a wavelet analysis of tree ring samples of Pilgerodendron cupressoides species, from Glaciar Pio XI (Lat: 491120S; 741550W; Alt: 25 m), Chile. We obtained an average chronology of about 400 years from these trees. The 11-yr solar cycle was present during the whole period in tree ring data, being more intense during Maunder minimum (1645\2261715). The short-term periods, around 2\2267 yr, that were found are more likely associated with ENSO effects. Further, we found significant periods around 52 and 80\226100 yr. These periodicities are coincident with the fourth harmonic (52 yr) of the Suess cycle (208 yr) and Gleissberg (80\226100 yr) solar cycles. Therefore, the present analysis shows evidence of solar activity effect/modulation on climatic conditions that affect tree ring growth. Although we cannot say with the present analysis if this effect is on local, regional or global climate, these results add evidence to an important role of solar activity over terrestrial climate over the past 400 yr.
Excerpt from text:
Techniques using cosmogenic isotopes permitted the reconstruction of solar activity variations on longer timescales. Two isotopes are commonly used, carbon-14 and beryllium-10, both produced by cosmic rays. Galactic cosmic rays are modulated by changes in the strength ofthe interplanetary magnetic field arising from changes in solar activity (Hoyt and Schatten, 1997). The existence of century scale variations caused by solar activity has been confirmed from 14C dating (Stuiver and Quay, 1980) and 10Be ice-core data (Beer et al., 1988). The Sun\222s long-term behavior also shows transient dynamics such as the Maunder minimum from AD 1645 to 1715 (Eddy, 1976),
Results and discussion:
The periods analyzed in this work are: (1) 1587\2261994 in tree ring chronology, (2) 1610\2261994 in Rg and (3) 1876\2261994 in SOI. In order to identify the main periodi- cities in each time series and study its time variation, wavelet spectrum was determined for Rg, SOI and tree ring data using the 95% confidence level contour (Torrence and Compto, 1998).
Fig. 1 shows the wavelet spectrum for the Chile tree ring data. It shows a signal associated to the 11-yr solar cycle and fourth harmonic (52 yr) of the Suess cycle (208 yr), in the interval 1645\2261715, and a strong signal associated with the Gleissberg ($80\226100 yr) solar cycles between 1720 and 1860. Fig. 1 also shows others signals in the 2\2268yr band, which are visible with more intensity for interval between 1616 and 1742 and weaker for interval between 1830 and 1950, approximately. This may be an indication of the response of the tree rings growth to environmental conditions at their location.
Fig. 2 shows the wavelet spectrum for the Rg. The signal near 11-yr is the strongest feature and it is persistent during the whole period, with higher intensity in the period 1940\2261994
If this really shows a causal link between cosmic rays and tree growth, you can bet it won't be long before it's pointed out that cosmic rays therefore impact the biospheres carbon absorbtion rate. Which is interesting. This will be misused by climate change denialists.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
"The BBC reports that researchers at the University of Edinburgh have found that Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) somehow makes trees grow faster.
That conclusion is so distant from the data as to be completely misleading.
What they really found was that tree growth rate in one particular site in Scotland seems to show an eleven-year cycle over the last fifty-three years (i.e., not quite five periods). The eleven year cycle was then connected with sunspots via this reasoning: "Hey, sunspots have an eleven-year cycle, too!". And then the mechanism was suggested: "Hey, galactic cosmic rays vary with the number of sunspots!"
The purported connection from tree-rings at a single spot in Britain, to sunspots, to cosmic rays is very, very tenuous.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I suggest you guys to cut this one first before we run out of paper ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
IF there is a true connection, then it should not be so mystifying. Radiation has been shown, in studies, to make animals healthier in low doses (i.e more than background radiation, but less than what you'd want to monitor). The reasoning was that it 'stressed' the animals systems, making them stronger, and thus healthier overall. The same could apply to trees - Cosmic rays may 'stress' them, causing them to grow faster as a result (trying to compensate).