Word: sunspots
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Meantime in the U. S. one Harry LawIon, a free-lance astronomer of New Orleans, succeeded in getting on Associated Press wires a story that he had found a sunspot 125,000 miles long. Few days later Mr. Lawton wrote to the Naval Observatory in Washington, chided it for not publicizing this gigantic blotch. Observatory officials coughed politely, admitted sighting an unusually large crop of spots but none of the size mentioned by Lawton, declined to engage in controversy with him pending scrutiny of his scientific credentials...
There was no doubt last week, however, that the sun was working up a fine case of sunspot pox. Sunspot activity waxes & wanes in cycles of about eleven years. A new cycle started in 1933, its peak is expected in 1939. Sunspots appear to be the mouths of whirling funnels of gas originating in the solar interior. It has been suggested that the shifting combination of gravitational pulls exerted by the planets is the cause of the internal commotion which gives rise to sunspots...
...traced a consistent parallel which would show that sunspots cause war, prosperity, disease epidemics or drought. Astronomers agree, however, that at times of sunspot intensity more ultraviolet radiation comes from the sun to earth, the air averages about one degree cooler, slightly more rain falls and there are disturbances of the terrestrial magnetic field. At such times ordinary radio reception is more troubled by static. But a U. S. Bureau of Standards scientist has found evidence that ultra-short-wave reception is better in the daytime when sunspots are rampant (TIME...
Ultraviolet radiation has a propensity for knocking electrons off molecules and thus creating ions-electrified particles. In the tenuous upper atmosphere of earth, far higher than any balloon has ascended, there are several layers of such ions which increase in density during sunspot peaks. This is to be expected since sunspots are accompanied by heavier ultra violet bombardment. These electrified layers serve to deflect most radio waves, curve them around the bulge of earth. In radio's pioneer days, when only one layer was known, it was called the Kennelly-Heaviside layer after its discoverers. Now the electrified region...
...these three phenomena show a close correlation with sunspot activity and particularly with the passage of an active sunspot group across the central area of the sun's disc; the aurorae, borealis and australis, perform beautifully, magnetic compasses oscillate to and fro over a small amplitude centered at their normal position, and long distance radio reception is either improved or hampered. In connection with the last of these it should be said that whether reception is improved or hampered depends upon the wavelength of the signals and other factors related to radio transmission. The assumed validity of a correlation...