Radiocarbon, Aurorae and Miyake Events

How common are massive solar storms? The problem is historical data, the only real event that has been recorded in modern times being the Carrington event of 1859. This itself was only noticed because Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson happened to be looking at the sun to record the event, and linked it to a magnetometer record by Scottish physicist Balfour Stewart. Without this unusual linking and connection, we might not even have been aware it was there. All other prior events have a dubious record and could be quite inexact, if recorded at all. A record in a book from 2000 years ago only is significant if someone from a later date discovers the book and looks at it closely with a questioning mind, thinking ‘this is odd.’

For many years I have been trying to document possibly unknown anomalous solar events using historical records that now recently seem to be being confirmed by research through dendrochronology and carbon spikes. The historical records show Miyake events, large scale aurorae and through carbon dating and calibration a number of dates that are concerning as to their common occurrence, the largest known one that would dwarf the most recent, what is called the Carrington Event, seemingly to come at the time of the end of the last ice age around 12350BC. This by coincidence? is around the time of the first records of human structured habitation and development of technology, mainly using copper tools.

Each area seems to be being studied separately and coming up with dates, a lot not linked to dates from other sources, and as far as I know not recorded in a sequential pattern, but the likelihood is that because such events are dependent on locations, observation and people with a scientific basis recording them, many stand a good chance of being missed.

The Carrington event was a major event 165 years ago that would have caused major problems for our modern chip based technology, but the is evidence that this event might have been very minor compared to some of those in the past 13,000 years, 165 years ago technology being quite crude and durable compare to todays, prior to that, such stuff being pretty much non-existent to show any effect. Probably prior to a few thousand years, if there was any, just decaying into an unrecognisable state, or being categorised without analysis as later technology. Many of our recent discoveries today are only due to people actively looking for them, prior to that dismissed as impossible and not even checked. Chicxulub, the one that was supposed to have helped wipe out the dinosaurs only discovered by chance and investigated as such 34 years ago, being confirmed by scientists maybe 14 years ago, but likely being a double event with the Deccan Traps confirmed about 11 years ago.

There is a possibility that if an event similar to around 12350BC happened today, none of our technology in society would function after it, with little capability of reconstructing any of it. Smelting rusting iron would be hard for a surviving population, so easy to work materials such as copper and tin would come first. The earliest stone tools date to around 3.3 million years ago, the earliest copper ones around 11,000 years ago.

It has always been a problem for me that all technological advances have happened during that period of 12,000 years, with virtually nothing at all for possibly ten times that length, maybe even 30 times that if you include Neanderthals, the mental capabilities of past humans probably equal to current day.

We are currently on day 16 of the latest set of higher than normal solar activity, the 11th such set this year, and we are approaching what seems to be one of the higher solar maximums due next year, probably around end of June time.

A full list of the dates I found are:

Combined

Year
12350BC
7176BC
5410BC
5259BC
967BC
660BC
327BC
34AD
774AD
993AD
1052AD
1230AD
1279AD
1574AD
1770AD
1859AD

Surviving records are more patchy and rare as you go back, so a good guess for a major event is between 100-200 years, but could be as much as 300 or as little as 50, but like with the increasingly faster sea rise rate, nothing that’s being prepared or planned for. A with that, ‘what’s our backup plan?’ There isn’t one.

Recently scientists have been looking at suns similar to our own in the cosmos and found that most stars like our own have superflares. The statistics suggest that a solar flare that is similar or exceeding the power of something like the Carrington event would on average happen every 100 years.