A rapid cosmic-ray increase in BC 3372-3371 from ancient buried tree rings in China

Abstract

Cosmic rays interact with the Earth's atmosphere to produce ${}^{14}$C, which can be absorbed by trees. Therefore, rapid increases of ${}^{14}$C in tree rings can be used to probe previous cosmic-ray events. By this method, three ${}^{14}$C rapidly increasing events have been found. Plausible causes of these events include large solar proton events, supernovae or short gamma-ray bursts. However, due to the lack of measurements of ${}^{14}$C by year, the occurrence frequency of such ${}^{14}$C rapidly increasing events is poorly known. In addition, rapid increases may be hidden in the IntCal13 data with five-year resolution. Here we report the result of ${}^{14}$C measurements using an ancient buried tree during the period between BC 3388 and 3358. We find a rapid increase of about 9\textperthousand~ in the ${}^{14}$C content from BC 3372 to BC 3371. We suggest that this event could originate from a large solar proton event.

23 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, published in Nature Communications

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Superflares on solar-type stars from the first year observation of TESS
• Revisited reference solar proton event of 23-Feb-1956: Assessment of the cosmogenic-isotope method sensitivity to extreme solar events
• Consequences of Energetic Magnetar-Like Outbursts of Nearby Neutron Stars: ${}^{14}$C Events and the Cosmic Electron Spectrum