Word: earthing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Since the sun in myriad ways governs the very existence of all terrestrial life, the cyclic changes in the sunspot population have, ever since Schwabe, inspired speculation about their effect on solar radiation and, consequently, on the earth. Though the sun is a rather ordinary star, its vital statistics are breathtaking by earthly standards. Some 865,000 miles in diameter, it consists largely of hydrogen (72%) and helium (27%) and is 333,000 times as massive as the earth. Solar temperatures range from about 27 million degrees F* in the core, where 600 million tons of hydrogen are fused into...
...fusion furnace in the sky, the sun radiates stupendous amounts of energy. Some of it departs in the form of speeding particles, mostly electrons and protons, that form a solar wind blowing from the sun in all directions. It is this continuously flowing wind that feeds particles into the earth's Van Allen radiation belts and distorts the terrestrial magnetic field into a teardrop shape. It also sets off the frequent minor auroral displays visible at higher latitudes...
Also radiating from the solar surface is energy in the form of visible light, ultraviolet and X rays. Enough of this energy penetrates the atmosphere to deliver some 100 trillion kW of power to the earth. Reduced to more comprehensible terms, solar radiation amounts to 1.35 kW falling on every square meter of earth, a number that scientists call the solar constant...
...sunspots were rare, as they were during the Maunder minimum, the amount of carbon 14 in the tree rings increased markedly; when they were numerous, the amount decreased. The explanation: during the sun's more active periods, its magnetic field, which ordinarily deflects some cosmic rays away from the earth, expands and becomes an even greater barrier to the rays. As a result, less carbon 14 is created in the atmosphere and less finds its way into trees...
Most explanations of that phenomenon liken the sun to a dynamo. Mighty currents of electricity flowing in the solar interior generate magnetic-field lines that, like the earth's, tend to be oriented in a north-south direction. But because the sun, unlike the earth, is gaseous, it does not rotate uniformly: bands of gases around the equator circle the solar axis once every 27 days, compared with a 34-day rotation rate near the poles...