Word: sunspots
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What NASA did not reckon with was the unexpected intensity of solar disturbances accompanying the current sunspot cycle. More sunspots have appeared than were anticipated, great magnetic storms and solar flares are raging on the sun, and more charged atomic particles-which make up the solar wind-are being hurled into space. The stronger solar wind heats the thin gases in the outer fringe of the earth's atmosphere, which causes them to expand outward into the orbit of Skylab. That increases the drag on the craft...
...droughts, rather than surprised by them, because they are a regular feature of the U.S. climate. Although the timing of droughts cannot be predicted, they have been occurring in the plains states at roughly 20-to 22-year intervals, and are possibly related in an unknown fashion to sunspot activity (which has an average eleven-year, peak-to-peak cycle of intensity...
...working to increase the number of available CB channels, while Congress is considering legislation by Ohio Representative Charles A. Vanik that would require manufacturers to install filters on all new TV and radio sets as a shield against RFI. But nature may have the last word. By 1978, increasing sunspot activity may cause atmospheric changes that could interfere with, and sometimes blot out CB transmissions...
Despite concern about the harm that could be done by nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, scientists have yet to find any significant effect on climate. At present, many weather researchers are far more interested in the effects of sunspots, the fierce magnetic storms on the solar surface, which are often accompanied by the eruption of great flares of immensely hot gases. The streams of particles shot off during these episodes are already known to disturb the earth's magnetic field and disrupt communications. Astrophysicist Walter Orr Roberts, former director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, thinks that they...
...planets line up, they say, the combined gravitational tug will raise large tides and cause great flare-ups on the sun, which will then be at the peak of its eleven-year sunspot cycle. The solar storms will spew out streams of charged particles more intense than usual, disrupting radio communications on earth, creating exceptionally bright northern (and southern) lights, and affecting global weather patterns. Prevailing west-to-east winds will moderate, decreasing their contribution to the earth's rotation and allowing it to slow ever so slightly. The abrupt slowdown would provide the necessary nudge, as Gribbin...