LaViolette: Super-sized Solar Proton Event
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A lot of serious cataclysm research revolves around the event of 10-12 thousand years ago, when the ice age abruptly ended and mega-fauna were wiped out, especially in the Americas. Paul LaViolette is one of best credentialed researchers into what might occur in 2012, and his latest research was published in the journal Radiocarbon. LaViolette believes that a super sized solar proton event (SPE) impacted our planet roughly 13,000 years ago:
The radiocarbon increase of the two largest 14C spurts was comparable to that produced by a SPE at least 125 times stronger than the hard spectrum SPE that occurred in February 1956.
Extrapolating upward from that event, LaViolette estimates that the 12,837 years BP extinction level SPE would have delivered over a two day period a radiation dose of from 3 to more than 6 Sieverts, lethal dose (LD-100) for most mammals being in the range of 3 – 8 Sieverts.
Hence it could have been a principal cause of the final termination of the Pleistocene megafauna and even of several genera of smaller mammals and birds.
The upper range of his estimate is a very conservative projection based on the assumption that the SPE would have been strong enough to overpower the Earth’s protective magnetic field sheath allowing the full intensity of the solar cosmic ray barrage to directly contact the Earth’s atmosphere and induce an intense shower of cosmic ray secondaries.
According to LaViolette our Sun is capable of unleashing a torrent of radiation capable of wiping out many species. He also feels that such events are cyclical in nature. While he may not have made a prediction for 2012, it does tie in nicely (bad choice of word?) with the possible strong peak of solar activity of 2012/2013.
He has also done research correlating gravity waves (created from a cosmic event), and gamma ray bursts. He notes that there was a Gamma Ray burst detected shortly after the earthquake spawned Tsunami in Indonesia, and upon looking closer, found evidence of a gravity wave preceding it, correlating it’s arrival at approximately the time of the Earthquake. He has looked at the possibility that the Gravity wave travelled faster than the speed of light. The event that was the source for this was a relatively small star about 10,000 light years away if I remember correctly; if Eta Carinae did go hyper nova as some suspect it might, I wonder how large the resulting Gravity wave would be. We could in theory suffer severe quakes worldwide because of that, and while trying to rescue survivors, be faced with a massive power loss (and destruction of electronics) due to the anticipated Gamma Ray burst. A real double whammy.