A new study challenges the common theory about Miyake Events.

A study conducted by the University of Queensland sheds fresh information on a strange, unpredictable, and potentially catastrophic type of cosmic occurrence.

To learn more about radiation ‘storms,’ a team led by Dr. Benjamin Pope from the UQ School of Mathematics and Physics applied cutting-edge statistics to data from millennia-old trees.

“These huge bursts of cosmic radiation, known as Miyake Events, have occurred approximately once every thousand years but what causes them is unclear,” Dr. Pope added.

“The leading theory is that they are huge solar flares.

“We need to know more, because if one of these happened today, it would destroy technology including satellites, internet cables, long-distance power lines and transformers.

“The effect on global infrastructure would be unimaginable.”

Here comes the humble tree ring.

Qingyuan Zhang, the first author and a UQ undergraduate math student, created software to analyze all of the tree ring data that was accessible.

According to Mr. Zhang, since “you can count a tree’s rings to identify its age, you can also observe historical cosmic events going back thousands of years.”

“When radiation strikes the atmosphere it produces radioactive carbon-14, which filters through the air, oceans, plants, and animals, and produces an annual record of radiation in tree rings.

“We modelled the global carbon cycle to reconstruct the process over a 10,000-year period, to gain insight into the scale and nature of the Miyake Events.”

Up until now, most people thought that Miyake Events were big solar flares.

“But our results challenge this,” Mr. Zhang remarked.

“We’ve shown they’re not correlated with sunspot activity, and some actually last one or two years.

“Rather than a single instantaneous explosion or flare, what we may be looking at is a kind of astrophysical ‘storm’ or outburst.”

According to Dr. Pope, it is extremely unsettling that scientists do not fully understand Miyake Events or how to predict their occurrence.

“Based on available data, there’s roughly a one per cent chance of seeing another one within the next decade.

“But we don’t know how to predict it or what harms it may cause.

“These odds are quite alarming, and lay the foundation for further research.”

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

Source: 10.1098/rspa.2022.0497

Image Credit: The University of Queensland

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