Get a daily digest of the latest news in tech, science, and technology, delivered right to your mailbox. Subscribe now.Recently, scientists discovered evidence of an extraordinarily violent solar storm that slammed Earth some 14,300 years ago by analyzing ancient tree rings.Solar storms are caused by the Sun unleashing massive amounts of energy in the form of solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
“Radiocarbon is constantly being produced in the upper atmosphere through a chain of reactions initiated by cosmic rays.
The researchers then linked this radiocarbon increase to measurements of beryllium, a chemical element found in Greenland ice cores. According to the results, the surge was caused by a big solar storm that presumably sent large amounts of energetic particles into Earth's atmosphere. The team highlights that this newly confirmed solar storm is the most powerful ever detected, measuring almost twice as powerful as the previous two events.