Publication Abstracts

Stothers 1980

Stothers, R., 1980: Giant solar flares in Antarctic ice. Nature, 287, 365.

Rood et al. have discovered four prominent "spikes" in a long time record (circa 1150 to the present) of the NO3- concentration inside an Antarctic ice core. These four spikes rise 2-3 times higher than the upper envelope of a fluctuating background level of 0-20 µg/1 that has been plausibly attributed to the action of highenergy solar radiation (photons and particles) impinging on the Earth's upper atmosphere and ionizing N2, thereby leading to various chains of chemical reactions that culminate in the formation of NO3-, some of which is transported, within a few weeks or months, to Antarctica. Three of these dates have been tentatively associated by the same authors with the galactic supernovae of 1604, 1572 and 1181. At the outset, they have rejected energetic particles from the supernova explosion as a possible source of ionization of the terrestial N2 because galactic magnetic fields would have greatly delayed and diffused the particles on their way to Earth. As an alternative explanation, I suggest that the necessary ionizing radiation could have come from unusually powerful solar flares.

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BibTeX Citation

@article{st03810n,
  author={Stothers, R.},
  title={Giant solar flares in Antarctic ice},
  year={1980},
  journal={Nature},
  volume={287},
  pages={365},
}

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RIS Citation

TY  - JOUR
ID  - st03810n
AU  - Stothers, R.
PY  - 1980
TI  - Giant solar flares in Antarctic ice
JA  - Nature
JO  - Nature
VL  - 287
SP  - 365
ER  -

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