Strange But True: The Solar Influence on The Sun

Strange But True: The Solar Influence on the Sun

By Mr Ghaz, July 16, 2010

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Strange But True: The Solar Influence on the Sun

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It was in 1611 that the telescope was first used, by Galileo, to look at the sun. Although philosophers had taught that the sun was unblemished and unchanging, Galileo’s telescope revealed that the surface was covered with sports. In addition, the number of spots grew and then decreased within an average cycle of 11 year. The phenomenon remains true today as it has, perhaps, since the birth of the sun.

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The maximum number of spots present during each cycle varies. For the period between 1640 and 1700, there were very few, although the 11-year cycle was still discernible. Intriguingly, this period coincided with what came to be called the latest phase of the Little Ice Age on earth-unprecedented cold years when the Thames River in England and the Zuider Zee in the Netherlands froze. Speculation about possible links between solar activity and earthly affairs has existed ever since.

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Some of the suggested relationships are very dubious. Enthusiasts claim to have found the rhythm of the sunspots in everything from the occurrence of earthquakes to the fluctuations in stock-market prices, the number of admissions to mental institutions, suicide rates, and declarations of war. Other people even claim that the 11-year cycle can be found in the statistics describing the number of driving licenses that are issued annually.

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Other research by an Italian professor, Giorgio Picardie, suggests that the speed of chemical reactions in ordinary water also varies according to sunspot activity.

More controversially, a Japanese researcher, Dr. Maki Toccata, claims that the time it takes laboratory samples of blood to clot varies with the sunspot cycle.

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Strange But True

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True, some events on earth are unquestionably linked with the sunspot cycle. When sunspots are at their maximum, the entire sun is more active. It is slightly brighter-by about 0.1 percent-than when sunspots are at a minimum.  Also, the gigantic eruptions of hot gas from the surface of the sun-solar flares-are more numerous. When the electrically charged particles flung out by the flares enter the earth’s magnetic field, they create magnetic “storms,’’ and compasses become unreliable.

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Unusually intense and widespread luminous displays, such as the aurora borealis, are also common during these periods of activity, and radio and telephone communication can be interrupted. Even changes in the rate at which the earth rotates can be related to sunspot activity.

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Scientific research also links variation in sunspot numbers with annual rainfall. Tree rings offer a reliable method of measuring past rainfall. A fresh ring forms in the trunk every year; its thickness depends on the amount of rain that fell during the growing season-and the formation of rings reflects the pattern of sunspot activity that has occurred during the entire life of the tree.

Sedimentary Evidence

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An equally impressive relationship is found in rocks in southern Australia that are 680 million years old. Each of the fine, is a record of the sediment that was laid down on a lake bed in one year; over the millennia, the sediment has been transformed into rock. That the bands regularly vary from thick to thin and back to thick again in a pattern closely resembling that of the sunspot cycle, confirms that the young sun behaved much as it does today.

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Among suggested explanations for the link between the formation of sedimentary rocks and the activity of sunspots are that either the sun was warmer in the past, or that more heat reached the earth’s surface because the atmosphere had little oxygen and no ozone layer to protect it. Extreme variations in the brightness of the sun over an 11-year cycle would lead to more dramatic changes in the spring thaw, and streams would transport down to the lake beds.

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Whatever effects the sun has had on the earth in the past, it still seems plausible that the sun could affect a wide range of processes in living beings today. In the words of Dr. Toccata, man might very well be ‘’a living sundial.’’

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