SPOTS ON THE SUN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4046, 11 May 1938, Page 10

SPOTS ON THE SUN

STORMS ARE A SEQUEL. When Old Sol gets a bad attack of, spots the earth gets a sequel of storms. The cause and effect were well instanced during the week. Three thousand millions square miles of the sun’s surface were infested with spots and violent storms swept bur planet from end to end. Hurricanes follow increase in sunspots so regularly that the two phenomena, plottecLon charts, are found to coincide. Every 11.13 years the outbursts of sunspots come to a maximum. One is due this year. Consequently we may expect fierce gales, floods in the tropics, blocking and fading of long distance radio, cold winters, icebergs adrift north and south of the Poles, and displays of the aurora, tropical downpours of rain, electrical storms and atmospheric disturbances generally. Even so far away «as Mars, the sun’s spotted fever has effects. The so-called “snow caps” at the Martian poles (some believe them clouds) will melt earlier this year because the sun ie badly- spotted. Sun spots ai-<a eruptions of gas from below; when numerous, they actually made the sun hotter. Yet, by a paradox, the earth is. always colder in maximum spot years; probably because extra cloudiness repels the addl'd heat. Mars, which has few clouds and a thin atmosphere, shows the opposite effect. Thirty lives lost at sea in gales off Britain; 29 deaths from cold in Bulgaria; a cyclone on the Queensland coast; short wave beam radio held up —these news items of the week are really “news from the sun.” The parent of the solar system is racked with internal troubles and the planets (its children) are suffering the results of its irritability and hot temper.