National Diet Library of Japan
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Fragments from ancient China’s ‘Bamboo History’.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id – Scientists report having found the oldest known reference to a celestial event aurora. The reference is explained in the Old Chinese text in the form of bamboo writing or called bamboo history dating from around the 10th century BC (BC).
Text in Bamboo History or Zhúshū Jìnián is a historical record of ancient China from about 2400 BC to 299 BC. The findings have been published in the journal Advances in Space Research dengan judul “A candidate auroral report in the Bamboo Annals, indicating a possible extreme space weather event in the early 10th century BCE”.
Researchers from Nagoya University and researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology jointly analyzed reports of the sky written in the history of bamboo. According to them, these records describe aurora phenomena in the past.
Hisashi Hayakawa, a researcher from Nagoya University, said early reports of auroras expand knowledge about solar eruptions and long-term solar variability on millennial timescales beyond the scope of instrumental chronological observations, on time scales of decades to hundred years.
“Such a chronological expansion is beneficial to the scientific community, increasing the number of case studies of extreme space weather events with lower frequency but higher potential impact on modern technology infrastructure,” Hayakawa said. Sci-News.
So far, he continued, the earliest known report of the earliest reports of aurora is around the 7th century BC.
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Aurora in Scotland
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“Outside of this time series, we analyzed the sky reports in the Chinese Bamboo Annals (China’s bamboo history) has attracted little scientific interest, perhaps due to controversial interpretations of the physical identity and chronology of events,” Hayakawa explained.
Hayakawa with Dr. Marinus Anthonyvan der Sluijs of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology has analyzed the mention of the ‘five-colored light’ seen in the northern part of the sky on the eve of the end of the reign of king Zhao of the Zhou dynasty.
“We have found the observation site around Hàojīng (34°14′ N, 108°46′ E) and dated the event to either 977 or 957 BC,” the researchers said.
“On this basis, we have calculated the equatorial extension of auroral visibility as 39.0° in magnetic latitude and reconstructed the equatorial boundary of the auroral oval as 45.5° in invariant latitude.”
According to the researchers, the findings will be the earliest known aurora records from anywhere in the world. The find comes almost two years after the previous known auroral record. As is known, some of the earliest reports of aurora were written on cuneiform tablets by Assyrian astronomers in the period 679-655 BC.
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“Some scientists have also linked Ezekiel’s vision, which is now dated to 594 or 593 BC, with visibility of the aurora in the Middle East, but the report must be reliably tested,” the researchers said.
“Otherwise, another commendable record of the earliest reports of auroras has been found in 567 BC in the astronomical diaries of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II.”
However, it took scientists a long time to recognize the aurora in terms of ‘five-colored light’ in this ancient Chinese text. One reason is that the History of Bamboo has a divided history. The original manuscript was lost, rediscovered in the 3rd century AD (AD) and lost again during the Song dynasty, according to researchers.
“In the 16th century, a different text stated that the celestial object was a comet, not a five-colored light. Now a new study shows that this is not the original reading,” the researchers said.
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