Word: sunspots
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...recent months astronomical observatories have frequently reported huge, black spots marching across the face of the sun, seriously disturbing some kinds of radio transmission on Earth. Sunspot activity this year has been more intense than at any time since 1870. This year bitter warfare is being waged in Spain and China; in 1870 bitter warfare was being waged by Germany and France...
...Earth, the effect of excess radiation received during sunspot maxima is to evaporate more water, bring on heavier rainfall, and thus paradoxically make the average temperature slightly cooler than during sunspot minima. The eleven-year sunspot cycle has been traced in the growth rings of trees. Stronger ultraviolet radiation accompanies sunspot activity and the aurora borealis displays are more numerous and brilliant, probably due to an increased bombardment of electrified particles. Such influences are now generally accepted as proved. It is the problem of sunspot correlation with such human affairs as stockmarket trends that leads out on the limb...
...when darkness fell. In Peru, at the sunset end, bats flitted around the fast-working scientists. Radio crews of NBC at Canton Island and of CBS in Peru were able to broadcast lyrical descriptions. The sun's corona was almost circular, a form associated with the high sunspot activity currently manifested by the sun. Exulted white-thatched Clyde Fisher of Manhattan's Hayden Planetarium : "This was the most beautiful of four totalities I have observed...
...Berkner, the lowest (E) averages 65 miles high, the next (F1) 130 miles, the uppermost (F2) 190 miles. In summer the densities of these three, from top to bottom, are 16,000,000 ions, 5,300,000 ions and 2,800,000 ions per cubic inch. During the present sunspot cycle ionization has increased about 50% in the E and F1 layers, about 200% in the high F2 layer. Almost all the ionization in the lower layers seems due to radiation, but Dr. Berkner believes that much ionization in the F2 layer is caused by streams of particles hurled from...
...Berkner pointed out that better acquaintance with the ionosphere has made it possible to say which short-wave frequencies will be best at different seasons and various stages of the sunspot cycle. Few years ago when many short-wave police radio stations were set up, the ranges were generally limited to 30 or 40 miles, since the signals escaped through the thin ionosphere into outer space. Now, with greater ion density in the upper air, messages for New York City police radio cars sometimes even carry across the Atlantic Ocean...