Cosmic radiation
¾high-energy particles entering the atmosphere from outer space¾splits the nuclei of atmospheric gases, the fragments splitting further nuclei, and the avalanche continuing until the energy is lost by absorption as the atmosphere gets denser. This is why higher elevations have a higher radioactive background¾Colorado has the equivalent of 200 TMI accidents a year (one every working day).Some of the fission products of this nuclear fission unauthorized by the NRC, particularly potassium 40 and carbon 14, get into the food chain without FDA permission, making the diners radioactive. Potassium 40, with a halflife of 1.2 billion years, is the main reason why Ralph Nader's blood is radioactive.
But carbon 14 (C^14), With a relatively short halflife of 5,570 years, can be put to a fascinating use. This was discovered by Willard F. Libby in 1947 and earned him a Nobel Prize. C^14 is continually produced in the atmosphere, and continually absorbed by living organisms. But they stop absorbing it when they die, so that by examining the C^14 Content in fossilized plants (or other corpses), one can infer the date of death.
But this clock of history, though the best we have, is not quite reliable. It assumes that the C^14 production in the atmosphere, i.e., the incidence of cosmic rays, is constant over the years, whereas in reality it varies. But the archaeologist's grief is the astronomer-climatologist's joy: By measuring the C^14 content of tree rings, he can determine how much cosmic radiation was bombarding the earth in what year.
That is what Dr Eddy did, correlating the history of cosmic rays with the years when Greenland was green, and with the years when Lorna Doone's lover heard the trees burst in the bitter cold gripping the Somerset forests.
Cosmic rays are tied to solar activity, since they are displaced by "solar wind"
¾streams of high-energy particles shot out by the sun. If you don't quite see exactly how the solar wind does that, you are in the good company of the world's great scientists' but obviously years with low C^14 in the air were years with high solar activity, which was thus recorded by tree rings long before astronomers knew about sunspots. (There are tree rings 5,000 years old.)Eddy identified 12 prolonged periods with either unusually severe, or unusually mild winters over the past 5,000 years, and the correlation with solar activity patterns seemed striking
¾at first. But being a genuine scientist and truth seeker, he is less sure now. As one gets deeper into a problem, new variables becloud the main rough results. Only charlatans discerningly pick from the available evidence to bolster a preconceived result.By Eddy's charts (see reference) the mid-20th century was an unusually warm period, and we would be about to move back to the colder normal
¾ if there were not other influences at work.[More: "The Case of the Missing Sunspots," Scientif. Amer. May 1977.]
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Vol. 9, No. 7
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 9, No. 7 Date: November 23, 2004 01:33 PM Title: Energy and Repression
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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