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Has a Biochem Undergrad Solved a Cosmic Radiation Mystery?
scibri writes "A few weeks ago, reports of a mysterious spike in carbon-14 levels in Japanese tree rings corresponding to the year 775 intrigued astronomers. Such a spike could only have been caused by a massive supernova or solar flare, but there was no evidence of either of these at that time. Until Jonathon Allen, a biochem undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, Googled it. He found a reference in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to a 'red crucifix' appearing in the sky in 774, and speculates that it could have been a supernova hidden behind a cloud of dust, which could mask the remnants of the exploded star from astronomers today."
Uggghhh, the linked article only has some lame text, written in some script I can't decypher, in a language I cannot understand. Scholarship is too hard!
Pics or it didn't happen.
[tongue in cheek]
A.D. 774. This year the Northumbrians banished their king, Alred, from York at Easter-tide; and chose Ethelred, the son of Mull, for their lord, who reigned four winters. This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset; the Mercians and the men of Kent fought at Otford; and wonderful serpents were seen in the land of the South-Saxons.
http://omacl.org/Anglo/part2.html
Twas' a comment by JustOk.
Now this undergrad needs to get funding to track the source article down in it's original form and have it authenticated and cross verified with other ancient works. He will also need several other undergrads to cross check his work, several hours of super computer time or better their own workstations, also the usual funding for a trip (I mean "conference") of three weeks in the Bahamas to discuss all this with his peers after he writes the paper up and has it submitted to the proper journals to have the proper peer review that noone can afford to read in the correct publications. I figure 2 to 3 million dollars should do it. After all this could be the tiny spark of evidence as why reading tree rings and it's tree ring data should not or should be included in figuring out how Global Warming going back then and now, and how the whole normalizing of the tree ring data should be rethought! Micheal Mann should be all over this!
Man, sciencing is so much easier these days.
He proposed an explanation more plausible than people before.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That these days our understanding of the past can be improved just by increased aggregation of existing data.
This could not have been caused by a supernova. A supernova would have affected almost the entire planet, not just Japan.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Interesting to me, is that in the linked article there is a slashdot comment with the "red crucifix" text discussed in this article.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2893343&cid=40208359
The podcast that the student listened to was produced on June 7 and the slashdot comment was June 4. Hmm... to think user JustOK could have been in Nature.
"The increase in 14C levels is so clear that the scientists, led by Fusa Miyake, a cosmic-ray physicist from Nagoya University in Japan, conclude that the atmospheric level of 14C must have jumped by 1.2% over the course of no longer than a year, about 20 times more than the normal rate of variation"
Does this mean that new supernova contributed 1.2% of radiation of all stars, including Sun? Does Sun contribute to Carbon 14 contents in tree rings?
Were similar tree ring changes has been detected during known supernova events in history?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Number of times this has happened: too many to count.
That's not very scientific is it?
Centuries later, scientists figure out what actually happened using careful observation. Number of times this has happened: too many to count.
And most of these "observations" of weird stuff in the night sky were due to the aurorae. Even in modern light-polluted England where the telly rules the evenings, some people will always spot a decent aurora. Here are examples from England and Scotland, which are nothing compared to those visible at higher geomagnetic latitudes.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I didn't get way into physics in high school but I was interested. Hearing this explanation confuses me so there are probably more people than me who are wondering this. How exactly can cosmics radiation can cause carbon atoms in the atmosphere to gain neutrons? No new carbon is being formed, obviously, so existing carbon atoms would have to be turning into carbon-14 and I didn't think it was possible to just slip in another neutrons without basically blowing up the nucleus of any atom. I mean we don't "make" tritium for example by stuffing in more nuetrons magically, we have to sort it out of seawater. I would bet I could randomly throw my mouse and hit 3 physicists here at slashdot so could someone explain what the correlation between supernovas and carbon 14 is?
Hmmm given all the evidence, I'd say it's actually a 49% chance red crucifix = UFO explosion over Japan (since apparently the radiation-stuffed trees were localized to just Japan I guess, although not many trees elsewhere live to be 1300 years old) and 49% chance there's an obvious link between reactor meltdown and the year 775 via a magic quantum portal time teleportation particle traveling effect thing that blasted carbon-14 into the past and 2% chance that we're all living in a computer simulation and some programmer left incorrect calculations in for trees in the year 775 on accident or for lolz or as an easter egg :-P
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318649/
It's funny the movie had something like this in it. I don't want to do any spoiler of the movie
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Google existed in 774??
Dragons!!!
And yet, without the religious text, there wouldn't even be a written record of what happened at all. I'd say everyone wins.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Is there also a mysterious layer of ash for the year 793? That year the chronicle has "fiery dragons flying across the firmament".
And how might the people of that time and place describe near-miss asteroids that enter the atmosphere but do not impact the earth?
Perhaps the word "dragon" was not meant to be taken literally and was merely used as a metaphor, a literary device?
There was no year zero. Due to various historical "stuff" the year just before "year 1 after Christ" is "year 1 before Christ". Blame the Romans. The Christ from the mythology was born in "the year 1 after Christ". Funny. Also why the first day of the new millennium was January 1st 2001, making all the people who partied in 1999-2000 wrong :-)
I guess we can mark that UFC off the list. Next please.
Why go the facebook route?
The discussion is linked directly underneath the submission in the "related links" section.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Oh no. Prince told me to party like it was 1999. Prince is never wrong. How dare you say such a thing? Perhaps you just don't know how to party?
Sorry, I mean the Artist Formally Known as Prince. I don't want to confuse anyone...
And most of these "observations" of weird stuff in the night sky were due to the aurorae.
As opposed to today, where they are due to alcohol.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
More likely, the event would have been recorded more objectively without all the religious bullsh^Wovertones.
By whom exactly? Your prejudice is showing.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset;
I'm a little dubious that a supernova, even one visible only in the west after sunset, would be described as a red crucifix. In astronomical photos stars look like crosses, but that's an artifact of the telescope optics, which they didn't have in the dark ages. A supernova just wouldn't look like a cross.
On the other hand, I doubt it's aurora. Since England is pretty far north, and they didn't have artificial lights at night, they would see aurora far more often than we do now, and it just wouldn't rate such a mention. (Besides, an auroral manifestation in the shape of a cross? Dubious.)
A sun pillar plus a layer of clouds would make a crucifix, though. I'll go with that as my most-likely explanation.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Dragons!!!
That would explain the "wonderful serpents" ...
If you just read down a few years:
"A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter."
(from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle : Eighth Century)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There is danger in conducting a search for what you expect to see because you WILL find what your looking for if you look hard enough.
What separates real scientists from crackpots is what you do next after you get a hit.
Depends on the calendar system in use whether or not this is true; there is a year 0 in many calendar systems.
Actually, in both the major calendar systems that refer to a year "Before Christ" (B.C.), the years in the other direction are "Anno Domini" (or, in English, "Year of Our Lord"), not "after Christ".
The practice parallels the practice of numbering years within (not after) the reign of a particular monarch.
But, each of those calendars also has a widely used modern calendar whose year 0 corresponds the year 1 B.C. on the corresponding calendar system. (ISO 8601 year 0 is proleptic Gregorian year 1 B.C., whereas astronomical year 0 is Julian year 1 B.C.)
Also, a number of calendar systems that are unrelated to the Julian and Gregorian systems have a year 0; e.g., the Buddhist and Hindu calendar systems have a year 0, because they are based on an elapsed year count from the epoch point rather than an ordinal year number during a defined era.
The Christ from the mythology was born in "the year 1 after Christ". Funny.
Or, according to historians, more likely 7 years 'before Christ'.
Actually, I'm not sure if Yoshua of Nazereth was was 'the Christ' until about 26 'after Christ'. Some theologian will have to help out there.
Oh, the Causality!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Death star's right here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimas_(moon)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And yet, without the religious text, there wouldn't even be a written record of what happened at all. I'd say everyone wins.
What religious text? Since when are chronicles "religious texts"?
Ezekiel 23:20
Turns out it wasn't a religious text (didn't notice that till after I commented). The "red crucifix" is a somewhat religious snippet, though, even if the text itself was primarily a historical chronicle.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
That's because the church held a monopoly on education. If that weren't the case, the chroniclers wouldn't have been monks and the chronicles would have been more accurate. Your cowardice is showing.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
There was no year zero.
Actually, nobody was using the Julian calendar (as commonly understood) at the time anyway. Though month length rules were approximately the same as now (in the Roman empire) years were described in a completely different way, typically according to who was currently consul. Scholars of history used numbering, but they counted from the founding of the Rome. Dating according to AD rules was only proposed in the year 525, and took quite a long time to spread. Thus, arguably anyone talking about an AD year before 525 is inaccurate.
Or in other words, we can have 0 AD if we want. It's just a convention for our convenience, not the benefit of those two thousand years ago who wouldn't have known what we were talking about and would have cared even less.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
So instead we get to worry about modern idiots being offended by something that wasn't offensive back in the day. Your Dogma is showing.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
They drank more alcohol back then than in modern times. Before water treatment facilities, you drank the beer which was sterilized during the boiling, the alcohol would kill wild bacteria, and the hops inhibited growth of other bacteria. Beer is also a way to keep grains stored for a longer period of time; dry grain does eventually spoil.
Let me see, cosmic Japanese radiation and giant crosses in the sky?
First thing that comes to mind was the anime Evangelion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_(anime)
Did the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle look something like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eva_cross_explosion.png
Or in other words, we can have 0 AD if we want
Yes, we could, but we didn't, so we don't.
In those days, the earth was still stationary in the centre of the universe. Under those conditions astronomical phenomena may have only been visible from some parts of the earth and not others.
I treated 99/00 as a dress rehearsal for 00/01, now I'm just waiting for the next one.
as any fule kno
I looked into the literature on supernovas and carbon-14 and found this: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19690024196_1969024196.pdf also see: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0469(1964)021%3C0134%3APOCBSP%3E2.0.CO%3B2
The 775 C-14 spike is 20 times the normal level. According to this paper the closest recent supernova (the Crab Nebula supernova in 1054) was only capable of producing a spike 8% more than normal.
To get a 2000% increase over normal you need a supernova 16 times closer, about 400 light years away, and 250 times brighter than 1054. The angular diameter of such a remnant today would be larger than the full moon, it seems unlikely that there are any dense dust clouds of this visible size for an object like this to hide behind. An obscure reference in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle does no a credible supernova make.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Beer only keeps about eight to twelve months. Properly stored [whole] grain can keep for decades, possibly even centuries under the right conditions.
By the chroniclers of the time. Your religiousness is showing.
You seem to have a problem with the concept of past and present. The monks were the only chroniclers of time. Your ignorance is showing.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
You seem to have a problem with cause-effect relationships. The monks were the only chroniclers because the church held a monopoly on education. Probably, without the church's monopoly, there would have been non-religious chroniclers who would have reported the facts without religious interpretations.
Your ineptitude at logic reasoning is showing.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
The church held a monopoly because nobody else was interested. In case if you did not notice, society had collapsed into the dark ages when the Roman empire fell and the new rulers had no interest in a state sponsored educational system. They also had little interest in preserving knowledge from the past. So the monks had to step in and save what they could.
Why don't you do yourself a favour and just admit to yourself that you have prejudice and that your fear of religion is based on ignorance?
I cannot argue you into changing your mind. All I can do is point out the error and just leave it in god's hands in prayer. May god bless you and reveal himself to you. I forgive you because what you do is out of ignorance rather than malice.
This must be utterly confusing to you right? Why would I bless you when you are hostile towards me and my faith? That is what the upside-down kingdom is all about. You love your enemies, you bless those who curse you, you forgive rather than seek revenge. Finally, the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
The values of this world are often the opposite of god's values.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The reason why they had a monopoly has nothing to do with my point. They did, and that spurred the consequences I'm discussing.
You're wrong on all counts. First of all, I have no "fear of religion". Contempt is more like it. It's not based on ignorance, because I know the christian religion better than 95% of christians (and that percentage comes from personal experience). Lastly, it's not based on prejudice, but on factual evaluation of the many failures of religion vs. logic and science.
That's right, you can't. And that's because your belief has no rational basis.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.