Mysterious figure appears in sky during extreme solar storms
Based on supercomputer simulations, scientists have theorised that aurora take on a more concentrated form during extreme solar storms. A figure matching the simulations appears in rock art around the planet.
The American astronomer Thomas Gold proposed that over the past 12,000 years, there were extreme solar storms one or two orders of magnitude greater than the Carrington Event of 1859, which was the most intense solar storm in living memory. The plasma physicist Anthony Peratt at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in USA explored computer simulations of auroral evolution under intense solar wind, using the Roadrunner supercomputer. This involved multiple currents merging into quadrupoles, creating structures such as helices, concentric circles and filamentary rays. Snapshots of these simulations closely resemble rock art found around the world. A page from Astronomical Petroglyphs – Searching for Rock Art Evidence for an Ancient Super Aurora is embedded below.
Similar experiments conducted at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow generated intense plasma columns, producing shapes that matched petroglyphs through evolution of pinched toroids. Rock art and paintings depicting these aurora-like stickmen are found in 139 countries around the world, typically carved on surfaces with a field-of-view towards the Earth's rotational South Pole or geographic South Pole. Similar petroglyphs are found USA, Italy, Korea, Mexico, UAE, Austria, Spain, China and Armenia. During the Carrington Event, the aurorae were not restricted to the poles, but were visible all the way to the equator.
Miyake Events
The appiritions require solar storms far exceeding the 1859 Carrington Event. The modeled storms involve solar plasma currents 10 to 100 times stronger, generating synchrotron radiation and thermonuclear temperatures in the trapped plasma, occurring approximately every 4,000 years. While there are some patchy records of such extreme solar storms (apart perhaps from the petroglyphs), ice cores and tree rings both contain evidence of about six extremely power solar storms that occurred over the last 14,500 years. The last such extreme event occurred in 993 CE, with another witnessed 2,700 years ago during the height of the Assyrian empire. These extreme solar storms are known as Miyake Events. Note that this is just a theory that remains to be confirmed.