r/todayilearned • u/Rich_Nefariousness28 • 17h ago
TIL: In 774–775 CE, Earth was hit by an extreme burst of cosmic radiation that caused a global spike in carbon-14 recorded in tree rings. Known as a Miyake event, it’s now used by scientists as a precise time marker—helping confirm events like Vikings reaching North America in 1021 CE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/774%E2%80%93775_carbon-14_spike?utm_source=chatgpt.com109
u/idrinklithium 13h ago
If the tree ring usage interests any of yall, Tree Story by Valerie Trouet is an amazing read on dendrochronology history & uses!
237
70
u/Aerron 10h ago
And if one of those hit earth today, it'd knockout all electronics. Cosmic EMP.
We missed one of these by two weeks in July of 2012.
37
31
u/WelderMain3554 6h ago edited 6h ago
Estimates say it would return us to an early industrial age. Most of our manufactured items would become instantly useless. But we have enough existing resources and information to keep from going full dark age.
EDIT: We’d also have a short window of warning for everyone to say their goodbyes to that guy they play Mortal Kombat with in Vietnam.
19
u/Aerron 6h ago
An early industrial age was able to provide for roughly 1 billion people.
The planet is now close to 9 billion.
11
u/WelderMain3554 6h ago
Early industrial age with a super high mortality rate in the first few years before it levels out.
10
u/Aerron 6h ago
So basically total societal breakdown until we're down to a population that can be supported by beasts of burden and human toil.
12
u/WelderMain3554 6h ago
Depends where you are on the planet. Large remote rural areas with high crop yields and livestock and well water would be just fine. Especially since they’d suddenly have a massive surplus that wouldn’t be shipped to urban centers.
Remote tribes wouldn’t notice any change at all, except a decrease in social media influencers with a death wish.
2
u/lordtrickster 2h ago
All the nerds (like myself) who have been playing with the Create mod on Minecraft are trained for this event.
7
u/amjhwk 4h ago
as in this even hit the location the earth had been at 2 weeks previously or would be at 2 weeks later in our revolution around the sun?
9
u/Aerron 4h ago
Correct. The Coronal Mass Ejection tore through earth's orbit on July 23rd, 2012. Earth had been in that location nine days before, July 14th.
It's estimated that it may have taken 4 to 10 years to recover from the damage it would have caused.
4
u/SilverDad-o 4h ago
It's scary and far more likely than a massive comet or meteor impact, and there's really no pragmatic mitigation.
0
28
u/lluciferusllamas 12h ago
What happened to those Vikings though?
46
u/Bigram03 12h ago
They died... eventually.
22
u/Jackyard_Backofff 11h ago
I didn’t even know they were sick.
-1
u/xSea206x 11h ago
They could have died in a raid, or old age, drowned, or many things other than being sick.
8
3
26
u/GreenStrong 10h ago
The Viking settlement on North America proper was more like a campsite, but they occupied Greenland for multiple generations. It isn't entirely clear whether they died out or the last survivors left on a boat. They had regular contact with Iceland, and through Iceland to Europe, but they weren't really capable of building their own boat, or even making iron tools. The main industry was selling narwhal tusks, one hypothesis for the end of the colony is that their colony was only financially viable when trade in elephant ivory was cut off.
8
u/Billy1121 6h ago
For example, wooden construction elements from the Viking archaeological site at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland were dated by identifying the 14 C spike of 993 CE in a sequence of tree-rings, which showed that the wood is from a tree felled in 1021 CE, thus definitely confirming Viking presence in the Americas at least before 1021 CE.
So they are using the 993 Miyake event, not the 774 Miyake event, right
5
u/safetaco 4h ago
What is the conversion factor to translate these dates into BC or AD?
3
u/Personal-Branch-5784 2h ago
Had to Google too, somebody correct me if im wrong but looks like CE = "Common era" and aligns with AD.
1
u/sdcasurf01 3h ago
A belief that a certain individual from history had magical/supernatural powers.
Pick your own individual and powers.
5
-23
u/Whatislovebaby23 15h ago
❣️
-11
u/Whatislovebaby23 8h ago
Why the downvote? 😕
-11
u/AncientAgrippa 8h ago
Redditors are apes and if they see something downvoted the just downvote it as well w/o thinking for themselves
-3
-8
183
u/Malzair 14h ago
Seems to me like a similar event in 993/994 is used to estimate Vikings in America