BREAKING NEWS: New Discovery of Ancient Tree Rings Indicate Stable Predictable Sunspot Cycle Over 300 Million Years Period

I know your first instinct is to say something like “duh”. I would certainly support you in this analysis. However, setting this obvious notion aside, this new finding does attribute a great amount of credibility to the scientific discipline of cycles; furthermore, it provides a greater comprehension in regards to ‘time-linked’ measurements such as short-term, medium-term  and long-term cycles. Examples would be the 11 year sunspot cycle, the 26,000 year precession cycle, and the Milankovitch or Eccentricity cycle with a 100,000 and 410,000 cycle.

In a new study published in the scientific journal Geology, researchers Ludwig Luthardt, professor at the Natural History Museum in Chemnitz, and Ronald Rößler, professor at Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, describe how they found evidence in ancient tree rings, identifying a solar sunspot cycle that occurred millions of years ago and compared it to recent cycles . “The median tree-ring curve of that period revealed a 10.62 year cycle, the duration of which is almost identical to the modern 11 year solar cycle we see today,” said Luthardt.

Sunspot activity swings between a period known as ‘solar maximum’, at which time an enormous amount of radiation is released through the development of powerful streams of charged particles which is released in various forms such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, coronal holes, and purging filaments.

When a percentage of these particles penetrate the Earth’s magnetic field and continue into the upper and lower atmosphere, the measured effects are captured in assorted forms of Flora such as tree-rings, lake bottom sediment, and deep ice cores. Such high-resolution records are commonly used for reconstructing climatic variations in the younger geological history.

The team discovered large wooded tree trunks from the early Permian Fossil Forest of Chemnitz, southeast Germany. This region had been covered by lava during a volcanic eruption during the Permian period, offering a historical record of Sun activity. “For the first time we applied dendrochronological methods (tree-ring dating) – to Paleozoic trees in order to recognize annual variations; says Rößler.

The team found that sunspot activity recorded 300 million years ago as reflected in tree ring archived analysis, matches almost identically with today’s caused fluctuations of cosmic radiation input to the atmosphere.