Word: schwabing
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...unquestioned until Galileo and other early 17th century sky watchers pointed the newly invented telescope at the sun and saw black spots on its surface. So much for solar purity. Despite clerical disapproval, the reality of sunspots was quickly accepted. Still, more than two centuries passed before Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, a German apothecary and amateur astronomer, discovered the strange, cyclic behavior of the solar blemishes...
...Schwabe had been searching for the hypothetical planet Vulcan, supposedly the closest one to the sun, hoping to spot it in silhouette as it moved across the solar disk. In the process, he observed and kept meticulous records of sunspots over a 17-year period. Finally, in 1843, he recognized and announced the eleven-year cyclic nature of the spots and wrote, "I may compare myself to Saul, who went to seek his father's ass and found a Kingdom...
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...
...still going strong, with 15,000 members, a year and a half after Osborne Computer Corp. went bankrupt. The company, back in business under new management, once had 90 people answering help calls from users. Now it routinely refers these calls to the proper FOG chapter. Admits James Schwabe, Osborne's marketing vice president: "They probably do a better...
...Sears RoadHandler steel-belted radial tires; Hamilton Beach supplies many of its tabletop kitchen appliances; Sunbeam provides irons; Singer makes Craftsman electric drills; Sanyo, Hitachi and Toshiba produce Sears television sets, stereos and videocassette recorders. Most of the suppliers, though, are unknown outside their industries, firms like Irwin B. Schwabe of Great Neck, N.Y., a shirt supplier and the largest maker of flannel shirts...