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When the activity of the sun changes, it has direct effects on the earth. For example, when the sun is relatively inactive, the amount of a type of carbon called carbon-14 increases in the earth's atmosphere. Because carbon in the air is absorbed by trees, carbon-14 levels in tree rings actually reflect solar activity and unusual solar events in the past. The team took advantage of such a phenomenon by analyzing a specimen from a bristlecone pine tree, a species that can live for thousands of years, to look back deep into the history of the sun.
"We measured the 14C levels in the pine sample at three different laboratories in Japan, the US, and Switzerland, to ensure the reliability of our results," A. J. Timothy Jull of the University of Arizona says. "We found a change in 14C that was more abrupt than any found previously, except for cosmic ray events in AD 775 and AD 994, and our use of annual data rather than data for each decade allowed us to pinpoint exactly when this occurred."
[...] "Although this newly discovered event is more dramatic than others found to date, comparisons of the 14C data among them can help us to work out what happened to the sun at this time," Fusa Miyake of Nagoya University says. She adds, "We think that a change in the magnetic activity of the sun along with a series of strong solar bursts, or a very weak sun, may have caused the unusual tree ring data."
An abstract is available but the full article is paywalled; see: "Large 14C excursion in 5480 BC indicates an abnormal sun in the mid-Holocene" was published in PNAS at: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613144114
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:24PM
Such positive views of the universe. Could have just been that the star made itself noticed and got hit with a dark forest attack. One would need to be pretty far advanced to risk making oneself known, not sure I want to meet that race
\pessimest
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:34PM
Here's another weird sci fi plot... The universe being really big, the odds of two advanced civilizations being diametrically opposite to the Earth or the solar system or for that matter our galaxy is roughly equal to "1" isn't it? Therefore the assumption that the only SETI transmission we can receive is omnidirectional broadcast is false, in that there is a 100% chance that friends are talking right past the earth right now, using some weird technology we probably haven't invented yet.
Aside from two friendly civilizations theory, there's a weaker assertion the odds are lower but near enough 100% there exists a homeworld and a colony diametrically opposed from the Earth, and the homeworld and colony are at least occasionally friendly and communicate with each other.
The odds of something weird existing approach 100% when the universe is large enough. Americans (and probably Russians) have been trained for decades via the cold war that civilization relations are small and simple and rare, but the universe is really big and under no obligation not to have rare things occur all the time. A third of a percent of us being born on the same birthday smells very unusual at first glance, but when applied to a 300+ million person country means a hell of a lot of people none the less share your rare and unusual birthday.