Word: sunspots
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...stock market so often seems to be ruled by arcane forces that its more imaginative speculators have tried to correlate its gyrations with all sorts of noneconomic indicators: sunspot activity, hemline lengths, the 13th century "Fibonacci sequence" of numbers, or even the messages flashed on a Jehovah's Witnesses sign in Brooklyn that is visible from Wall Street's towers.* The newest indicator, and an unusually reliable one, is the itinerary of Henry Kissinger. When President Nixon's personal agent jets to Peking or Paris for talks about Viet Nam, stock prices often shoot...
...solar outbreak came at an unusual time-only about three years after sunspot activity (usually associated with such eruptions) had reached its maximum in what is generally an eleven-year solar cycle. Said Solar Forecaster Robert Doeker at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's observatory in Boulder, Colo.: "It's like getting snow in Atlanta in July...
Economist W.S. Jevons astounded the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1878 by postulating that ups and downs in the economy were caused by sunspot cycles, which he said governed agricultural cycles. Economic science has advanced notably since then, and forecasters now focus on more down-to-earth indicators-like housing starts, manufacturers' new orders and retail sales (which according to the most recent weekly report ran 11% ahead of a year ago). Yet countless Americans have their personal systems for handicapping the economy. Their idiosyncratic indicators are sometimes as reliable as the official measures...
...rotation: the 27-day cycle of disturbances in the earth's magnetic field. Again a pattern emerged, with more accidents occurring during the first seven days, the 13th and 14th and the 20th and 25th days of each cycle. Furthermore, there was a noticeable correlation between accidents and sunspot activity, which peaks on an average of every 11 years. In 1968 and 1969, for example, when the number of sunspots reached their peak in recent years, the accident rate at Sandia was the highest in the past two decades...
...they invariably last no more than a few minutes and often frustrate astronomers by what Veteran Eclipse Watcher Donald H. Menzel of Harvard calls their "perverse habit of hitting desolate regions." Because of its favorable viewing path and timing-near the peak of the sun's eleven-year sunspot cycle-the March 7 eclipse is being eagerly awaited by astronomers...