When the Sun suddenly erupts, it creates what's known as solar flares and coronal mass ejections — and they can cause a lot of mischief when the resultant electromagnetic radiation reaches Earth. One particularly intense geomagnetic storm in 1859, the so-called Carrington Event, knocked out telegraph lines and tricked many people into thinking it was morning at 1 a.m. Yet that event pales in comparison to another solar storm that occurred 14,300 years ago, according to a recent study in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.
According to their research, the largest solar storm ever detected struck Earth 14,300 years ago, leaving evidence of its occurrence on the trees. Flash forward fourteen millennia and change, and scientists can use those ancient tree rings to partially reconstruct what happened during that solar event. The team of researchers were assembled from the Collège de France, CEREGE, IMBE, Aix-Marseille University and the University of Leeds. Their mission: Study the ancient trees in the banks of the Drouzet River, near Gap, in the Southern French Alps.
