The sun shines ever brighter

Press, 15 April 1978, Page 15

The sun shines ever brighter

Is Earth cooling down? Is a mini-ice age imminent? Some scientists sav the answer is “Yes/’ But VLADIMIR NELMAN, a Soviet geologist and astronomer, savs the truth is the reverse:

Is life possible in a powder keg? Not when the powder is in an inactive state, but at the moment of explosion? It seems that it is, as long as ail vital processes are accelerated billions Of times over or the duration of the explosion is lengthened to the same degree. Many scientists maintain that the universe, including v r galaxy, is living through the consequences of an explosion which took place many billions of years ago. But it is to be borne in mind that for an enormous formation like the universe, or even the galaxy, the lifetime and the duration of an explosion are measured by quite another scale than that of a powder keg or even the solar system. Astronomers know that a system’s lifetime is proportional to the third power of its size. For in-

stance, if it equals billions of years for the earth it equals trillions of years for the sun. This is why even if the explosion of our galaxy is underway (which I will endeavour to prove), we can take it as a “smouldering,” rather than an explosion in the accepted sense of the word. Let us begin with the sun. The last 350 years, when solar observations have become sufficiently accurate, scientists have noted that its activity has been intensifying. An absolute increase in the number of sunspots is clearly traceable — by 2030 per cent in these 350 years.

But this applies not only to the sun. For example, in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs (and even much later, until the Middle Ages) the star called Sirius was described in chronicles as a red star.

Now.it is a white star. Another star, called Altahir, is now also white, but in Arabic its name means

“flaming” — red. The heating of the stars and the sun has thus been proceeding before the eyes of mankind; in other words, quite rapidly. Is this possible theoretically? It is. There is a theory of the gradual igniting of the stars, which is supported by statistical analysis.

Rapid heating should lead to flares and the emergence of novae and supernovae. Their number really has long been increasing. Basing himself on ancient Egyptian and Chinese chronicles and medieval catalogues, in 1972 the Soviet scientist, Y. Pskovsky, brought together all available data on non-telescopic observations of the explosions of novae and supernovae from the

second millennium B.C. to the end of the seventeenth century. Incidentally, cosmic phenomena at all times have been observed as carefully as they are today, and in the past the human eye was much sharper.

What did Pskovsky discover? While more than 2000 years ago explosions of novae and supernovae occurred only three to eight times a millennium, at the beginning of the Christian era their incidence had gone up to two to five a century and in the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries to 10-15 times a century. Presented graphically, these data form a curve characteristic of explosive processes.

Does the inside of the solar system (except the sun itself) furnish data confirming an increase in the galaxy’s activity? It does, and quite a lot.

The rate of this process — a 15 per cent increase in the Earth’s surface area in the last 6000 years — is fairly rapid even by cosmic standards.

According to data, in the first half of the nineteenth century the surface of Venus was directly visible from Earth. There was a fairly substantial magnetic field around Venus. The rise in temperature‘rapidly “degassed” this planet (the result was the opaqueness of its atmosphere) and destroyed the magnetic structures of its nucleus.

Amazing changes must also have taken place with Mercury. At the close of the nineteenth century two brilliant astronomical observers — Schiaparelli and Antoniadi — agreed that the periods of Mercury’s rotation around the ’sun and the period of its axial rotation coincided, equalling 88 days each. In

the 1950 s scientists discovered that while the period of Mercury’s rotation around the sun remained unchanged, that of its axial rotation had diminished by one-third, to 59 days. Thus, Mercury has quickened its rotation. Finally, Jupiter radiates much more energy than it absorbs from the sun. It is less well known (although perfectly credible) that its luminosity has been increasing in the process: it has grown by about 10 per cent in the last 100 years. It all confirms that we live in a galaxy whose activity has been intensifying. What does this spell to the inhabitants of Earth? The increase in activity began about 10.000 years ago, when the last ice age ended on our planet. This suggests that another ice age is not in store, and the climate will gradually grow warmer.