Sun Disturbance Affects Earth 12 Aug 1921. “Many, how ever, believe that the spots cause the disturbances, and some go so far as to say that the weather is affected by sun spots.”
Sun Disturbance Affects Earth. (1921, August 12). The Richmond River Herald and Northern Districts Advertiser (NSW : 1886 – 1942), p. 8. Retrieved June 30, 2023, from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/126119980/13653293#
CABLE SERVICE UPSET
There has been a great storm in the sun which has upset the balance of the mysterious electrical forces that run throughout the universe; even the electrical cables on the ocean bed have in places been affected. An unusually fine display of the aurora borealis was seen in the British Isles about the same time, and was probably a result of the magnetic storm, which upset telegraphs and telephones and affected compasses and other kinds of magnetic and electrical instruments. These electrical disturbances seem to have been experienced over practically the whole of the northern hemisphere, and similar disturbances were reported in Australia, where a brilliant display of the aurora australis was witnessed.
In the British Isles telegraphs and telephones were interrupted for several hours, and a peculiar, feature of the affair was that lines running north and south were far more affected than those running east and west.
America, Russia, and Scandinavia had oven more dramatic experiences. Telegraphs and telephones were absolutely stopped; and at the Karlstad telephone exchange in Sweden the disturbance was so great that it caused a fire, which burned down the exchange and did damage to the extent of £15,000. Men of science attribute the magnetic storm to an immense sunspot 94,000 miles long and 21,000 miles wide. This would give it an area of about 2000 million square miles, or more than ten times the size of the earth.
What are these enormous spots that appear on the sun’s surface? No one can say definitely, though they are now, generally believed to be gigantic storms or explosions, lasting weeks and some times months, compared with which the mightiest cyclone or the most terrific dynamite explosion on earth would be but a feeble puff. Sunspots always have a black nucleus surrounded by a belt less dark and mottled in appearance. The dark centre has the appearance of a great cavity, while the belt appears elevated, and it is thought that the spots are plateau-like portions of the sun with depressions at their centres.
Of course, the dark part is not really black; it only appears so against the more brilliant part of tho sun’s surface. As a matter of fact, it is far brighter than the strongest electric arc light we can produce.
The intensely hot particles of the sun’s interior are believed to be continually rising to the surface, giving off their heat and then sinking back again, just as do the bubbles of steam in a kettle of boiling water. Generally this proceeds regularly and quietly, but at times the motion takes the form of a violent eruption, and a sunspot appears. The dark centre, is due to the falling back of the cooler particles from the surface into, the cavity caused by the explosion. From the facts that sunspots come with greater and less frequency over periods of about 11 years, and that. Jupiter takes roughly the same time, for his journey round the sun, has come the theory that Jupiter may cause the storms in the sun; but his influence must be too feeble to cause such terrific happenings.
Unusually fine displays of the aurora and great magnetic disturbances on the earth undoubtedly often occur when sunspots are most frequent, but all astronomers are not convinced that there is any necessary connection. Many, how ever, believe that the spots cause the disturbances, and some go so far as to say that the weather is affected by sun spots, and that by calculating when, the spots are likely to appear, we should be able to say when the monsoons would fall in India and famine be threatened.
According to the hose-pipe theory, as it is called by science, electrical corpuscles from the disturbed regions of the sun are thrown out with a speed like that of light, and those, meeting the earth, ionise the atmosphere— that is, separate the gases composing it into tiny electrified particles which act as a good conductor of electricity. When this is particularly intense there is a luminous effect, which is seen as the
aurora.