How likely is a super solar flare?

[bwana]

In the usual summer spate of disaster movies, I noted a new twist. An extraterrestrial disaster from a super solar flare by our sun. The astrophysicist, (played by Nicolas Cage but not very convincingly) states that he wrote a paper on the liklihood of such an event. The mechanism of disaster is the ripping away of our ozone layer and huge radiation dose. Although the special effects were inaccurate, I was wondering if there is any evidence to support such a cataclysmic solar flare? Can we extrapolate the magnitude needed to cause irreversible damage to the Earth's ecosystems?

 

[Cyosis]

You may find this an interesting read http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm?p . Also check http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/21jan_severespaceweather.htm .

 

[bwana]

thank you for that informative and entertaining reference.

 

[Saul]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_bays

Evidence of cyclic massive solar coronal mass injections?


There are curiously burn marks all over the Northern hemisphere that have been dated to the same time as a group and that have occur at different times.

Based on the dating of the burn marks and assuming the burn marks and a concurrent cyclic abrupt change to the geomagnetic field that in turn causes an abrupt change to planetary temperature, is caused by a massive solar coronal mass ejection (CME), there would be roughly once in around 10000 years a solar event that results in multiple massive CME’s. I would assume, if the burn marks are the result of a solar event, that the charged particles in the CME are separated by the Earth magnetic field creating a charge zones above the earth. Following that hypothesis the burn marks would be massive electrical discharges from the ionosphere to the planet’s surface. The electrical discharge hypothesis would explain why the Carolina Burn marks are elliptical and overlapping with an axis that points in the North-west direction. As the planet turns the arc makes and breaks creating over lapping burn marks with an elliptical axis. (Have a look at the observational evidence. What do you think?)


This is the observational evidence (Carolina Bay burn marks and the Younger Dryas 12700 years ago burn marks) that requires explanation.

Carolina Bays. The Carolina Bays are a group of »500,000 highly elliptical and often overlapping depressions scattered throughout the Atlantic Coastal Plain from New Jersey to Alabama (see SI Fig. 7). They range from ≈50 m to ≈10 km in length (10) and are up to ≈15 m deep with their parallel long axes oriented predominately to the northwest. The Bays have poorly stratified, sandy, elevated rims (up to 7 m) that often are higher to the southeast. All of the Bay rims examined were found to have, throughout their entire 1.5- to 5-m sandy rims, a typical assemblage of YDB markers (magnetic grains, magnetic microspherules, Ir, charcoal, soot, glass-like carbon, nanodiamonds, carbon spherules, and fullerenes with 3He). …

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016/suppl/DC1#F7

Fig. 7. Aerial photo (U.S. Geological Survey) of a cluster of elliptical and often overlapping Carolina Bays with raised rims in Bladen County, North Carolina. …
…The largest Bays are several kilometers in length, and the overlapping cluster of them in the center is ≈8 km long.

In addition to the peculiar regular elliptical shape of the Carolina Bay burn marks and unusually large number (i.e. A forest fire would not create elliptical burn marks. What could cause the very sharp edges of the burn marks? It seems difficult to image a comet that could break in 500,000 pieces.), the burn marks show other anomalous patterns. There is evidence of overlapping burn marks. There are very small intense burn marks mixed in with large burn marks. The burn marks are separated by areas that are not burned.

Many radiocarbon dates, which were obtained from organic matter preserved within undisturbed sediments, which fill Carolina Bays, are greater than 14,000 BP radiocarbon in age. The finite radiocarbon dates range in age from 440 ± 50 to 27,700 ±2,600 BP radiocarbon in age (Whitehead 1981, Gaiser et al. 2001). Some samples are so old that they contained insufficient radiocarbon for dating, which results in "greater than dates". For example, samples from sediments filling Carolina Bays have been dated at greater than 38,000 to 49,550 BP radiocarbon years (Frey 1955, Brooks et al. 2001).

The cometary theory, on the other hand, popular among Earth scientists of the 1930s and 40's, is that the Bays are the result of an encounter between North America and a low density comet exploding above or impacting with the Laurentide Ice Sheet ~12,900 years ago [4]. Supporting evidence includes the failure of "wind and wave" theories to satisfactorily account for a number of the peculiar features of Carolina Bays, including the recent identification of markers suggestive of an extraterrestrial connection, the alignment of bays with points over the Great Lakes, and their tendency to overlap one another from east to west. Extraterrestrial markers include microspherules, magnetic grains with extraterrestrial chemistry, carbon spherules suffused with nanodiamonds, and levels of iridium sixty times background levels.

 

[Saul]

This is more information and thoughts concerning my above comment.

The Younger Dryas (12,900 yr BP) dated burn marks occur in multiple locations in North America and in Europe at different latitudes. In no case is there impact debris or a crater. I believe the magnetic microspherules are also caused by massive electrical arcs. (Such as that created by a nuclear detonation for example which also ionizes the air and to create an EMT pulse.)

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016/suppl/DC1#F7

Then, just before the Younger Dryas began, a thin layer of bleached sand was deposited and, in turn, was covered by the dark layer marked "YDB" above. That stratum is called the Usselo Horizon and is composed of fine to medium quartz sands rich in charcoal. The dark Usselo Horizon is stratigraphically equivalent to the YDB layer and contains a similar assemblage of impact markers (magnetic grains, magnetic microspherules, iridium, charcoal, and glass-like carbon). The magnetic grains have a high concentration of Ir (117 ppb), which is the highest value measured for all sites yet analyzed. On the other hand, YDB bulk sediment analyses reveal Ir values below the detection limit of 0.5 ppb, suggesting that the Ir carrier is in the magnetic grain fraction. The abundant charcoal in this black layer suggests widespread biomass burning. A similar layer of charcoal, found at many other sites in Europe, including the Netherlands (3), Great Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, and Poland (4), also dates to the onset of the Younger Dryas (12.9 ka) and, hence, correlates with the YDB layer in North America.