Estimating the Superwave's Intensity

Estimating the Superwave’s Intensity

Cosmic ray electrons currently make up only about 1 percent of the total cosmic ray background flux, the other 99 percent being cosmic ray protons, mostly coming from outside our Galaxy. The current beryllium-10 background level is chiefly produced by this extragalactic proton component. Since the superwave would be almost entirely composed of cosmic ray electrons, its flux must increase by 100 fold above the present cosmic ray electron background for its intensity to equal that of the proton background. Since electrons are comparatively inefficient producers of the Be-10 isotope, the cosmic ray electron flux might need to increase a hundred fold to double the Be-10 production rate. In addition, the solar system’s heliopause magnetic field sheath screens out much of the incident cosmic ray flux, so superwave cosmic ray fluxes outside the solar system would be several fold higher still. So the cosmic ray electron intensity outside the solar system could easily have increased 30,000 fold with the arrival of this recent superwave. More-over, around 13,000 to 15,000 years ago, the solar wind was much stronger than it is today since flaring activity up to 50 fold higher. So an additional 7 fold increase should be included to account for the solar wind’s increased tendency to shield cosmic rays from the Earth. In all, cosmic ray electron intensities may have increased by over 10 to the power of 5 fold


The constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius plotted in celestial coordinates.

From Earth Under Fire by Paul LaViolette





Earth Under Fire by Paul LaViolette