A page from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The entry for
774 AD refers to a “red crucifix” appearing in the sky.
Earlier this month, researchers found that Japanese trees had preserved a centuries-old spike in the atmosphere’s proportion of carbon-14, apparently caused by a burst of cosmic rays that hit earth between 774 and 775 AD. But that left a perplexing mystery: the most likely source of that excess carbon-14 would be cosmic rays emitted by a supernova. But any supernova powerful enough to generate carbon-14 should have been visible to people alive then, and there was no known record of what should’ve been a pretty notable event.
Enter Jonathon Allen, a polymath undergraduate who majors in biochemistry and also has a deep interest in history. Allen dug around in a contemporary manuscript and found a reference to a “red crucifix” appearing in the sky in 774 AD. This celestial signal may have marked a supernova that birthed the cosmic rays and created the trees’ carbon-14 peak.
The Old English Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains a collection of notable historical events. Although less than a dozen manuscripts survive, the entire text has been uploaded to the Avalon Project in a ...
"See also: http://ratserel.blogspot.nl/2012/06/mysterieuze-straling-in-bomen.html
