Word: solar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Some scholars believe that this peak rather than the modern Mt. Sinai, is the site of the burning bush through which God spoke to Moses. Because Mount St. Catherine is high, dry and dustless, the Smithsonian Institution now has a solar observatory thereon...
...Institution and famed sun observer, flatly affirmed before the Academicians that weather repeats itself in cycles of 23 years. All the assembled scientists realized that this hard & fast pronouncement was not based on sheer theory but was solidly documented by weather records for months, years, decades. Dr. Abbot studies solar radiation from his Washington station while his men study it from such farflung vantage points as Table Mountain, Calif.; Mt. Montezuma, Chile; Mount St. Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula. With the help of a "brass brain" (a periodometer or mechanical calculator) which he invented to co-ordinate chaotic masses...
...over the world last week astronomers expectantly watched the sun. Close to the solar equator a few small sunspots appeared, lasted a day or so, disappeared -sparse and sickly survivors of a decade-long sunspot cycle whose heyday was five years ago. The telescope men were looking for first signs of a new cycle-vigorous black splotches in the neighborhood of 30° north and south latitude, with magnetic polarities reversed in respect to the spots of the dying cycle. They had been looking for months, might have looked for months more (for sunspot changes cannot be forecast like eclipses...
...eight hours on a square mile in the tropics is equivalent to the energy stored in 7,400 tons of coal. The difficulty is to devise a sunshine catcher which is not expensive out of all proportion to the power produced. This is the defect of the commonest solar machines which have appeared so far-huge concave reflectors which focus on a boiler, make steam to drive small engines. One of the most optimistic U. S. experimenters, Dr. Charles Greeley Abbott of Smithsonian Institution, has invented a "sun cooker" with which he roasts meat, bakes bread. Two years ago Germany...
...experimenters placed oxygen in a test tube and induced a high excitation in it by electricity; they then examined the gas through a spectroscope and compared the results with the spectrum of the solar corona. Although a slight discrepancy appears in these observations, it can be readily accounted for by the inability to produce in the laboratory the exact conditions...