tree ring

So the first one I want to ask you about is dendrochronology.

So this is using tree rings as a way to measure a date or an age of something.

So the claim is that the use of these tree rings, that scientists have been able to establish a timeline of at least 12,000 years based on some of these tree rings.

And then that 12,000 years is way past a young Earth creation of 6,000 years.

So how do you answer that argument?

It's all based on the assumption that it's one tree ring per year.

And multiple tree rings can occur in one year.

It depends on many factors.

This is Space Time.

Still to come, what ancient tree rings are telling us about the next big solar storm and two giant blobs of hot rock discovered on the Earth's core-mantle boundary.

All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[upbeat music] New evidence in tree ring records are warning scientists that our sun can become far more violent than previously thought.

In 2012, Fusa Miyake was studying slices of ancient Japanese cedar taken from a tree felled in the 1950s.

It had grown on Yakushima Island, a protected site famed for its long-lived trees, some of which have stood for millennia, laying down one ring of wood after another, year after year.

Now, these tree rings are not just markers of age, they're also annual records of the Earth's atmosphere, and studying them could help scientists predict and prepare for future disruptive solar storms.

The key is the relative proportion of carbon-fourteen in each tree ring.