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back to article Earth bathed in high-energy radiation from colossal mystery blast

Sometime between 1,237 and 1,238 years ago, the earth was inundated by a massive blast of high-energy radiation greater than any known to have occurred either before or since – but no one knows its source. This startling fact was uncovered by tree-ring analysis – the same technique that has proved so useful to climate …

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  1. Joe Gurman

    Erm, magnetic charges?

    Unless you've managed to find the elusive magnetic monopole (and this contradict one of Maxwell's equations), there's no such thing as "magnetic charge." Coronal mass ejections can, however, accelerate electrically charged particles by bottling them up in a shock if the mass ejections are traveling fast enough.

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    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Erm, magnetic charges?

      But really, no-one cares about Maxwell's equations because of course they are classical approximations of "some other thing" (there is the photon quantum field, but getting Maxwell equations out of its description takes some serious operator algebra). So Maxwell's equations do not say much about the existence or not of magnetic monopoles.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Erm, magnetic charges?

      "...(and this contradict one of Maxwell's equations)"

      Not contradict, just extend. Maxwell derived his equations from observation, and since he never observed a monopole, he set the divergence of a magnetic field to be zero. Since he HAD observed electric charges, he set the divergence of the electric field to be proportional to the charge in the enclosed volume

      All that observing a monopole would do to Maxwell's equations would be to cause divB to be equal to the magnetic charge in the enclosed area.

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      1. Nigel 11
        Reply Icon

        Re: Erm, magnetic charges?

        I've always thought that Maxwell's equiations should be written with a term for the density of magnetic monopoles. They are far more symmetrical and elegant that way. Add a statement that magnetic monopoles have never been observed, and that for all everyday purposes this density is everywhere equal to zero, leading to the common formulation of the equations.

        On the other hand, cosmologically, in a universe having 4-spherical topology, there must be at least one monopole somewhere, or else magnetic fields could not exist at all.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Standard procedure

    Nothing unusual it was an asari exploration vessel discharging its drive core....

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Crucifix and serpents

    Yes, the crucifix could be interpreted from an explosion and the "wonderful serpents were seen in the land of the South-Saxons" could easily have been aurora's from the blast. "Wonderful serpents" indeed. Not terrible, but wonderful, which could mean pleasing which aurora's certainly are to the eye and mind. I have been close enough to hear them hiss and for ancient man they must have been a wonderful sight to behold and the edges could seem like "serpents" if I had no other explanation for them....

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  4. Isn't it obvious?

    Hidden supernova?

    I've wondered about what the observable effects would be of a supernova that's (mostly) obscured by a cold nebula (like the CoalSack nebula); might that selectively block most of the visible light, while letting other sufficiently energetic wavelengths and/or particles through? Or diffuse the light sufficiently for it to be lost in the general galactic glow?

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  5. Sureo
    Alien

    775

    775 was the year the earth was scanned by the Borg and found not worth assimilating.

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  6. sisk

    I for one welcome our not so new mysterious radioactive overlords.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It is part of the time machine paradox

    Every time someone creates one of those infernal time machine contraptions, they just can't leave well enough alone!

    No, they just have to travel back in time, to rape plunder and pillage, or try to make their fortune, or just to do the dead cat curiosity thing (this isn't Schroedinger's cat here, this is your time machine is a dead cat idea if you travel back in time. Or try to. You might even become dust to dustless. Time abhors a traveler moving at negative velocities).

    They kill off dinosaurs by accidentally timeporting their asteroid base to the Yucatan, they contaminate the primordiam with all one handedness of dimer, and now THIS. I mean really, don't these guys get it? You can't go back and change things the way you want. But Noooooo, Jack has to push the "go" button and whammo, nuke in Siberia and mystery C14 splattered all over the world. Archeologists will probably decide the hole, when they inevitably find it, was cause by an asteroid (if it quacks... yeah, no imagination those peer reviewers, never let the time machine hypothesis see the light of day! It has to be an asteroid, or unusual uranium formation that went critical, or even Mikhockski in his yurt building a home made thermonuclear device but never a time machine, no siree sir!).

    So you Reg readers with delusions of time transport and making a killing the stock market, just remember, Mother Nature doesn't like time machines. It gives her gas pains. And you really DON'T want Mom to have those kinds of gas pains when you are traveling!

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    1. The Aussie Paradox
      Reply Icon
      Childcatcher

      Re: It is part of the time machine paradox

      Sir, Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

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  8. Jean-Luc
    Boffin

    Eureka

    It was the birth of the great-great-great....(43x) grand-father of Kim Jong Il. The skies wept at the sight of his magnificence.

    Wait till the current fat boy has an offspring. Big spike in C14 coming!

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  10. Local Group
    Happy

    Lord of the Tree Rings

    If you want to know who we are,

    We are Gentlemen of Japan

    Selling many camera and car

    And 52" plasma tv and van.

    .

    We looked at tree rings back in 775

    And saw lots of carbon fourteen.

    That year most everyone did survive,

    Thanks to a weak force still unseen.

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