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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: Re: StarDate: July 8 The Solar Corona
Message-ID: <406@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 18:46:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.406
Posted: Wed Jul 24 18:46:59 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jul-85 06:50:24 EDT
References: <320@utastro.UUCP> <713@lsuc.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
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> dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) writes:
> > July 8 The Solar Corona
> > 
> > On today's date in the year 1842, there was a total eclipse of the
> > sun.  It became famous for some of the earliest scientific descriptions
> > of the sun's corona.
> > 
> 
> The reason there were no earlier scientific descriptions is that the
> present visible (excited) form of the corona has only existed since about
> that time, or perhaps a few decades previously.  Apparently the sun's
> level of activity tends to change at intervals on the order of a century,
> and the present level is exceptionally high.
> 
> Periods of high activity are characterized by the presence of sunspots
> and the appearance of auroras.  (Whether there is always a (2x11)-year cycle
> when there are sunspots is unknown due to the scarcity of pre-telescopic
> sunspot observations.)  But even in past periods of high activity there are
> no descriptions of eclipses resembling the way they appear now with the corona.
> The present level, as I said, must therefore be exceptionally high.
> 
> In periods of low activity there are almost no sunspots at all.  This most
> recently happened from 1645 to 1715.  (There were then almost no auroras
> in Scandinavia where they are now commonplace.)  This may be why, when Schwabe
> described the 11-year sunspot cycle about 1840, he was not believed at first.
> When he was seen to be correct, scientists fell into believing that it had
> always been that way, rather than that Schwabe had observed something new,
> and the 1645-1715 "Maunder minimum" had to be rediscovered more than once
> in historical records (Halley, Newton...) before IT was believed.
> 
> Anyway, the 1645-1715 period coincides with the coldest part of the "Little
> Ice Age", when places like Britain had what we here call a winter.  Evidence
> is that this is not a coincidence, and therefore the present global temperature
> is unusually high (but may stay that way in future due to man's CO2 output).
> 
> My source for all this is the article "The Case of the Missing Sunspots",
> by John A. Eddy, in Scientific American, May 1977, p.80.  Eddy was the
> second rediscoverer, after Maunder (mentioned above).  Anyone know of
> further developments since then?
> 
> Mark Brader

I just *know* I'm going to get flamed for this.

When I was a kid (about 8 or 9), I became very interested in the subject
of the sunspot period.  I grabbed the birth years of 100 randomly selected
Nobel laureates and plotted them versus sun spot records.  Fifty per cent
of the Nobel laureates were born in the 20% of the years when sun spot
activity was at its lowest.

Of course, only being 8 or 9, I didn't have a sufficient grasp of statistics
to do a more detailed analysis, nor quite the skills to get a Federal grant
to study this issue. :-)  Makes you wonder if the explosion of knowledge
and technology in the last few centuries might be connected to the increase
in solar activity?

Just a thought.  When the above ideas revolutionize biophysics, I'm sure
I won't get any credit for sparking it.:-)