Lights out

Regular readers of Skeptophilia may recall a post I did about a year ago about the Miyake Events, seven wild solar storms that occurred over the past ten thousand years that were powerful enough to alter the atmosphere's carbon-14 balance, leaving distinct traces in the composition of tree rings.  The last, and the only one that occurred during modern times, was the 1859 Carrington Event, which (even though it was one of the weakest of the recorded Miyake Events) was bad enough to short out telegraph lines, causing sparking and numerous fires, and triggered auroras as far south as the Caribbean.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Arctic light - Frank Olsen, Aurora Borealis I, CC BY-SA 3.0]

If anything like this happened today, it would be nothing short of catastrophic for the entire technological world, and I can say with little fear of contradiction that we are completely unprepared for any such eventuality.  A Miyake Event would very likely cause a near-total collapse of electrical grids, massive failure (or complete destruction) of satellites, and power surges in electrical wires that would almost certainly trigger widespread fires in businesses and residences.  Computers -- from home computers to massive mainframes -- would be fried.  Airline navigation systems and air traffic control would shut down pretty much immediately.  The disruption, and the cost, would be astronomical.

Well, a paper last week in The Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences describes evidence of a solar storm 14,300 years ago that makes the known Miyake Events look like gentle spring zephyrs.

The study focused on a site containing partially-fossilized tree trunks along the banks of the Drouzet River in Hautes-Alpes département, France, up in the Alps near the city of Gap, the location of which is coincidentally only ten miles from the tiny village (St. Jean-St. Nicolas) where my great-grandfather was born.  The carbon-14 levels in one ring in the tree trunks indicate the most powerful solar storm on record, consistent with a coronal mass ejection hundreds of times more powerful than the Carrington Event.

The worst part is that no one knows what causes solar storms.  They show no apparent periodicity -- the spacing between the known Miyake Events varies from a little over two hundred years to well over four thousand.  Even more alarming is that solar astronomers don't know if there's any warning prior to the storm occurring, or if we'll just be sitting here on our computers looking at funny pictures of cats, and suddenly be engulfed in a shower of sparks.

The damage from even a weak Miyake Event -- not to mention the one 14,300 years ago that was the subject of last week's paper -- is hard even to guess at.  "Extreme solar storms could have huge impacts on Earth," said Tim Heaton of the University of Leeds, who co-authored the study.  "Such super storms could permanently damage the transformers in our electricity grids, resulting in huge and widespread blackouts...  They could also result in permanent damage to the satellites that we all rely on for navigation and telecommunication, leaving them unusable.  They would also create severe radiation risks to astronauts."

Also unknown is how long it would take to repair the damage.  A conservative estimate is months.  Can you imagine?  Months with no computers, no email, no cellphones, no texting.  No online banking or business transactions.  No travel by airplane except for short hops.  No GPS.  No satellite contacts for television or radio... or national defense.  Restoring electrical grids would undoubtedly be first priority, and they'd likely be easier to repair, but still -- probably weeks with no electricity.

The result would be chaos on an unprecedented scale.

We've become so dependent on our high-tech world that it's hard to imagine what it would be like if suddenly it all just... went away.  I'm reminded of the last scenes of the brilliantly funny (if dark) Simon Pegg movie The World's End, where it turns out that the whole technological shebang is being run by a moderately malign intelligence (played to weary, long-suffering perfection by Bill Nighy) called The Network, who argues that humans need someone smart in control because we're just too idiotic to manage on our own:

The Network:  We are trying...

Gary:  Nobody's listening!

The Network:  If you'd only...

Gary:  Face it!  We are the human race, and we don't like being told what to do!
The Network:  Just what is it you want to do?

Gary:  We wanna be free!

Andrew: Yeah!

Gary:  We wanna be free to do what we wanna do!

Andrew:  Yeah!

Gary: We wanna get drunk!

Steven: Yeah!

Gary:  And we wanna have a good time!  And that's what we're gonna do!

The Network:  It's pointless arguing with you.  You will be left to your own devices.

Gary (incredulous that he's actually won the argument):  Really?

The Network:  Yeah.  Fuck it.

At which point The Network shuts down -- taking all of the world's technology with it.

Well, it looks like we might not need to fight The Network to destroy the whole superstructure of electronics we depend upon -- all it'd take is one good solar storm, and it'll be lights out for the foreseeable future.

****************************************

Vikings, auroras, and tree rings

The idea that people from Europe came to North America (long) before Columbus has not only generated interest amongst legitimate archaeological and historical researchers, it has generated a lot of nonsense.

One nonsensical bit is that the Mandan tribe not only descends from Welsh explorers (including quasi-mythical personages such as Prince Madog), but that they have blue eyes and their language is a dialect of Welsh.  None of this is even remotely true, but the story (which had dropped into well-deserved obscurity) regained currency with Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet.  While I have to admit it's a decent story in other respects, the whole thing about Native Americans having blue eyes -- and worse, that blue eyes = good and brown eyes = bad -- is seriously cringe-inducing.  In any case, the Mandans themselves live in what is now North and South Dakota, which last I looked is nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean, so the claim is pretty ridiculous anyhow.

Other accounts describe encounters with Welsh-speaking Monacans of Virginia and Tuscarora of New York.  There is no evidence, linguistic or otherwise, supporting those claims.  The brilliant historian of Welsh history Gwyn Williams summed up such stories as "a complete farrago [that] may have been intended as a hoax."

Then there's the Irish story of St. Brendan the Navigator, who supposedly crossed the Atlantic in a coracle with a group of monks, and which is shakier ground still.  The Brendan legend is so wound up in mythology and religious miracle stories that it's impossible to tell what, if anything, about it is true.  Even the Brendan enthusiasts don't agree on much.  "Brendan's Fair Isle," where the monks supposedly landed after defeating various sea monsters and demons, has been identified as coastal North America -- and also the Faeroes, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands.

There's no hard evidence of any of it.

More reliable -- and corroborated by actual science -- is the claim that the Vikings landed in northeastern North America in the late tenth and early eleventh century, founding colonies in what they called Vinland -- meaning either "land of grape vines" or "meadow-land," depending on which linguist you believe.  The Skraelings ("wearers of animal skins"), as they called the Natives they encountered, were described as unequivocally hostile.  (Funny how surprised the colonizers always seem to be when indigenous people resent someone walking in and saying, "Get out of the way, this is my home now.")  In any case, the whole enterprise is outlined in Eirík the Red's Saga, in which the eponymous Eirík, his son Leif Eiríksson, and their friend Thorfinn Karlsefni lead repeated expeditions between the Icelandic settlements in Greenland and the new ones in Vinland, and which is usually considered to be at least substantially true.

The whole topic was brought to my attention once again because of my sharp-eyed friend Gil Miller, who knowing my fascination with all things Scandinavian sent me a link to an article in SciTech Daily describing new research into the archaeological evidence at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.  L'Anse aux Meadows is the one and only certain settlement site by Europeans in North America prior to Columbus, and the current research -- using a clever twist on tree-ring analysis -- determined that the site was occupied in the year 1021, exactly a thousand years ago.

A recreation of the Scandinavian settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows [image licensed under the Creative Commons Dylan Kereluk from White Rock, Canada, Authentic Viking recreation, CC BY 2.0]

Between the sagas and the artifacts uncovered at L'Anse aux Meadows, the site seems to have flourished between the years 970 and 1030 C.E.  The problem is, trying to pin down the exact years of occupation of an abandoned settlement is not an easy task.  The key to the new study is an event that occurred in late 992 and early 993 (as verified by dendrochronological evidence from elsewhere, as well as historical records).  Apparently there was a huge solar storm that lasted at least a couple of months.  Historians from the era report vivid auroras that were visible way farther south than usual, and the tree rings show a sudden increase in the uptake of carbon-14, a form of carbon created by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere.  The researchers took samples of wood that were cut by the Scandinavian colonists at L'Anse aux Meadows, and after identifying the high C-14 rings in the wood -- corresponding to 993 C. E. -- they were able to determine that the wood had been cut from the living tree in the year 1021.

The research, which appeared in Nature last month, was led by Margot Kuitems of the University of Groningen.  The authors write:

Our result of AD 1021 for the cutting year constitutes the only secure calendar date for the presence of Europeans across the Atlantic before the voyages of Columbus.  Moreover, the fact that our results, on three different trees, converge on the same year is notable and unexpected.  This coincidence strongly suggests Norse activity at L’Anse aux Meadows in AD 1021...  This date offers a secure juncture for late Viking chronology.  More importantly, it acts as a new point-of-reference for European cognisance of the Americas, and the earliest known year by which human migration had encircled the planet.  In addition, our research demonstrates the potential of the AD 993 anomaly in atmospheric 14C concentrations for pinpointing the ages of past migrations and cultural interactions.  Together with other cosmic-ray events, this distinctive feature will allow for the exact dating of many other archaeological and environmental contexts.

It's always amazing to me when we can bring the tools of science to bear on historical or quasi-mythological claims.  The most famous one, of course, is Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of the city of Troy, supporting that The Iliad (minus the interference by various gods and goddesses, and possibly the involvement of a giant wooden horse) had its basis in a real war that led to the sack and burning of the city.  But here, we have far more conclusive evidence of a more recent event -- the arrival of Vikings in North America -- and are now able to state with confidence when it happened. 

Which is way more exciting that any spurious claims of blue-eyed, Welsh-speaking Natives.

***********************************

It's astonishing to see what the universe looks like on scales different from those we're used to.  The images of galaxies and quasars and (more recently) black holes are nothing short of awe-inspiring.  However, the microscopic realm is equally breathtaking -- which you'll find out as soon as you open the new book Micro Life: Miracles of the Microscopic World.

Assembled by a team at DK Publishers and the Smithsonian Institution, Micro Life is a compendium of photographs and artwork depicting the world of the very small, from single-celled organisms to individual fungus spores to nerve cells to the facets of a butterfly's eye.  Leafing through it generates a sense of wonder at the complexity of the microscopic, and its incredible beauty.  If you are a biology enthusiast -- or are looking for a gift for a friend who is -- this lovely book is a sure-fire winner.  You'll never look the same way at dust, pollen, algae, and a myriad of other things from the natural world that you thought you knew.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]