{"id":111023,"date":"2025-05-18T06:34:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T06:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/111023\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T06:34:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T06:34:17","slug":"scientists-warn-new-worst-case-scenario-sun-event-is-500x-stronger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/111023\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Warn New \u2018Worst-Case Scenario\u2019 Sun Event Is 500x Stronger"},"content":{"rendered":"

A massive solar particle storm during the last Ice Age was about 500 times stronger than any modern … More solar storm, according to new research.<\/p>\n

getty<\/p>\n

Did you see the Northern Lights<\/a> a year ago? According to NASA<\/a>, May 10-11, 2025\u2019s aurora displays were the most intense since 2003, with some scientists suggesting that they may have been the strongest for 500 years<\/a>. However, they barely register when compared to what appears to be the strongest solar event ever detected \u2014 a massive solar particle storm during the last Ice Age that was about 500 times stronger than any modern solar storm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ForbesSun Wakes Up: Aurora Alert After Biggest Solar Flare Of 2025By Jamie Carter<\/a>
\nExtreme Spike<\/p>\n

What happened 14,300 years ago is barely believable. A paper published<\/a> this week in Earth and Planetary Science Letters details a study of tree rings in the French Alps that reveals evidence of an extreme spike in radiocarbon corresponding to 12,350 B.C. during the final stages of the last Ice Age.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t a solar storm but a solar particle storm, during which a burst of fast-moving, highly energetic protons caused a solar radiation storm around Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis event establishes a new worst-case scenario,\u201d said Kseniia Golubenko, lead author and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oulu, Finland. \u201cUnderstanding its scale is critical for evaluating the risks posed by future solar storms to modern infrastructure like satellites, power grids, and communication systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

ForbesNorthern Lights May Be Visible In U.S. This Weekend After Solar FlaresBy Jamie Carter<\/a><\/p>\n

Modeling Solar Events<\/p>\n

Using a chemistry-climate model designed to reconstruct ancient solar particle storms \u2014 and verified using tree rings \u2014 the researchers calculated that the 12,350 B.C. event was about 18% stronger than the strongest solar storm ever recorded in tree-ring archives. That happened in 775 A.D. However, in the modern context, there is no close rival.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompared to the largest event of the modern satellite era \u2014 the 2005 particle storm \u2014 the ancient 12350 BC event was over 500 times more intense, according to our estimates\u201d, said Golubenko. \u201cThe ancient event in 12,350 BC is the only known extreme solar particle event outside of the Holocene epoch, the past 12,000 years of stable warm climate. Other massive solar particle storms have occurred around 994 AD, 663 BC, 5259 BC and 7176 BC.<\/p>\n

Miyake Events<\/p>\n

The solar particle event of 14,300 years ago is in a different class than the famous Carrington event in September 1859, when astronomer Richard C. Carrington observed the most powerful solar flare ever recorded. It sparked auroras down to the tropics. However, the Carrington event was not accompanied by a solar particle storm.<\/p>\n

Such standout solar events are known as Miyake events, after the Japanese researcher who named them. \u201cMiyake events allow us to pin down exact calendar years in floating archaeological chronologies,\u201d said Ilya Usoskin, a co-author of the paper and a professor at the University of Oulu. The radiocarbon signals from Miyake events have helped historians to precisely date Viking settlements in Newfoundland and Neolithic communities in Greece.<\/p>\n

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A massive solar particle storm during the last Ice Age was about 500 times stronger than any modern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[50397,50398,50401,50402,50400,50399,70,50396,50395,49542,12131,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-111023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-12350-bc-event","9":"tag-ancient-solar-storm","10":"tag-black-swan-events","11":"tag-ice-age","12":"tag-miyake-events","13":"tag-radiocarbon-dating","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-solar-particle-event","16":"tag-solar-radiation-storm","17":"tag-solar-storm","18":"tag-space-weather","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114527448063279311","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}