Expert Pitch: Tree Ring Dating Confirms Historical Accounts of 'Blood Aurora'
Thursday, September 6, 2018 - 08:30
in Earth & Climate
In a paper published today in Nature Communications, a worldwide team of researchers has used tree ring dating to confirm that two significant "cosmic events" occurred in 774 and 993 CE. Cross-cultural eyewitness accounts of red or "blood" aurora correspond with these years. The study measured carbon-14 content in 44 wood samples taken from five continents, including two samples from Mongolia provided by West Virginia University geographer Amy Hessl, a co-author on the paper.