SAC Seminar - Benjamin Pope: Extreme Solar Events in the Radiocarbon Record
The science of dendrochronology allows us to assign precise years to individual tree rings, making such samples ideal calibration sources for radiocarbon dating. Recently, single-year radiocarbon measurements have allowed Miyake et al. (2012) to identify a 12% increase in radiocarbon in 774-775 AD, and another such event in 993-994 AD (Miyake et al., 2013). In this talk, presenting work in collaboration with Mike Dee (Oxford/Groningen), I will show that we do not observe such signals in years corresponding to known historical supernovae, briefly review evidence that these Miyake events may have a solar origin, demonstrate how Bayesian models can help us discover more of them, and discuss how they can be used both for archaeological dating and solar and stellar physics.