Category: red crucifix in sky

Did a scribe in Britain during the Dark Ages record a supernova? Maybe. At Nature News Richard A. (Rick) Lovett reports this week the story of a Nature podcast over a puzzling spike in carbon-14 in the eighth century. It is recorded in tree rings and suggests that a wave of high energy radiation hit the upper atmosphere back then. Listening was an undergrad in biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz. He used his familiarity with ancient texts to search for any reference to anything at the time consistent with a supernova or other cosmic...