The Earth’s Spasms in the Sun’s Embrace speak of exceptionally enormous reserves of energy that flow to us from the Sun, determining both our life and the movement of our thought. The Sun sends into all directions of space a colossal amount of energy, radiating about two ergs per gram of mass per second. This energy manifests in forms that must be divided into two main categories. The first category includes electromagnetic oscillations that propagate in cosmic space as an oscillatory process. In this regard, the Sun is a vibrator of electromagnetic oscillations. The second category includes corpuscular radiations: electronic, protonic, ionic, and dust streams moving from the Sun’s surface in the form of conical beams.
The electromagnetic wave, moving at the speed of light, encounters the Earth and its atmospheric envelope on its path after 8.3 minutes. The space separating the Sun from the Earth, the electromagnetic wave passes unimpeded. No methods have yet been able to detect the absorption of light in space. On the contrary, one of the remarkable properties of electromagnetic oscillations is that as the light wave expands and diverges over a large area, it does not lose its initial strength, only the possibility of its manifestation decreases. This quantum property has not yet received sufficient explanation4.
The Earth’s atmosphere exerts a dampening effect on electromagnetic oscillations. Only a small part of the electromagnetic oscillations reaches the Earth’s surface. These are the oscillations that we directly perceive with the organ of vision in the form of light. The rest is retained by the upper and middle layers of the atmosphere and is absorbed by them, transforming into other forms of energy. Depending on the degree of permeability, ultraviolet rays are partially retained at a significant altitude, causing air ionization. In turn, air ionization can affect the permeability of electromagnetic oscillations of other wavelengths. Such electromagnetic oscillations reach the Earth in a weakened form. If electromagnetic waves of the Sun of a known order of wavelength reached the Earth, the operation of terrestrial radio stations would be hampered due to constant interference5. Having the ability to tune into different wave ranges, radio stations, however, only in isolated cases receive waves that could not be explained by terrestrial causes. Nevertheless, short electromagnetic waves emitted by sunspots and prominences do reach the Earth’s surface6.
The second category includes the radioactive, or corpuscular, radiation of the Sun, which carries particles of solar matter from the Sun into space. It carries positive and negative charges. It can be noted here that the Moon, depending on its phase, can influence the magnitude of the influx of solar radiations7. Astronomical data on the locations of disturbances on the Sun and the phases of the Moon are very important (O. Mirbach). Although the Moon itself, emitting partially polarized light, also has an influence on the biosphere (Sidney-Siemens, S. Batnagar, L. Mercier).
The cathode radiation of the Sun takes with it large quantities of negative electricity from the Sun’s surface layers. Due to this circumstance, their positive charge should increase, and this increase could finally reach such a degree that it would prevent the removal of electrons from the Sun, even despite the pressure of the rays. Svante Arrhenius calculated the magnitude of the positive electric charge of the Sun. Thanks to the positive charge, the Sun exerts an attractive force on electrons wandering in space and approaching within a known distance to the Sun. These electrons, attracted by the Sun, replenish the expenditure of negative electricity on Earth. The Sun, in Arrhenius’s words, drains the surrounding space of negative electricity, and this drainage delivers to it such an amount of electricity that is directly proportional to its positive charge. Thus, a stationary state is established, in which the Sun must give off a very prolonged outflow of electrons and simultaneously receive them from the surrounding space in an equal amount8.
The paths of electrical particles between the Sun and the Earth are now known quite well. C. Størmer managed to calculate these paths and give a mathematical picture of the trajectory of an individual particle in connection with its motion in the Earth’s magnetic field. We will return to this question later.
To the same corpuscular radiation of the Sun should be attributed the so-called solar dust9, the presence of which in the Earth’s atmosphere has been repeatedly detected. These observations allow conclusions to be drawn about the composition of solar dust and its significance in the life of our planet.
Fig. 13. Secular course from 1840 to 1912 of the number of sunspots and atmospheric pressure in Madras. The red curve is the number of sunspots (the curve is given mirrored), the dotted curve is the smoothed course of atmospheric pressure in Madras, the black circles are annual averages8.
Chapter V
Solid dust particles carry with them, in minimal quantities, some gases found in the chromosphere and corona of the Sun, such as helium, krypton, argon, and other noble gases. Some scientists believed that the hydrogen found in our atmosphere has a solar origin, since it is not produced *in situ*. Solar dust carries on itself charges of electricity of both positive and negative signs, although some particles may be completely neutral.
We get a very visual picture of the motion of the corpuscular flow from a sunspot if we compare the Sun, rotating on its axis, with the lantern of a lighthouse projector rotating on its axis. Just as the narrow and directed beam of light bursting from the rotating lighthouse lantern performs its circular motion through the dark space, so the radiation bursting from the spot marks the cosmic space with a narrow and directed beam of its radiant flow. At known intervals of time, when the spot passes through the plane of the Sun’s central meridian, its radiation, falling perpendicularly to the Earth’s surface, bombards it with its corpuscles, according to the laws established by Størmer. The Earth is immersed in the Sun’s electric “broom.” This lasts a day or two, no more, until this group of spots or prominences, along with the Sun, moves further and thus deflects its beam away from the Earth. Simultaneously, the action of the electric radiations of the sunspot on the Earth ceases, and the Earth again begins to receive the usual dose of radiant energy from the Sun, somewhat increased during periods of maximum and somewhat decreased during epochs of minimum.
But then new spots, or eruptions, appear in the plane of the solar central meridian, and again the Earth bathes in their radiations. It is by such jumps that the influence of the spot-forming process on our planet is carried out. The jumpy and intermittent nature of the influence of sunspots on the Earth should be especially remembered10.
But one should not think that the influence of a spot, or eruption, passing through the Sun’s central meridian, is noted only in the enormous influx of corpuscular matter. The passage of a spot through the central meridian has another influence as well, the essence of which can be well understood from the following: as is known, the normal spectrum of the Sun, given by its photosphere, can be attributed to the spectrum of yellow stars, characterized by certain features. The spectrum of a sunspot differs significantly from the normal spectrum of the Sun, as Lockyer showed. It should rather be attributed to the spectrum of yellow-red stars. These two spectra are extremely different from each other, and they belong to bodies of different ages, different in chemical composition and physical state. Yellow stars are significantly younger than red ones, and the temperature difference of their upper layers reaches several thousand degrees.
Thus, it can be said that when a sunspot “illuminates” the Earth, the Earth is simultaneously illuminated as if by two Suns – a yellow and a red one, of which the second is many millions of years older than the first. And when the sunspot moves its beam-flow aside, then the old Sun abruptly interrupts its influence and disappears. Indeed, these sharp disturbances, as shown by Abbot’s research, exert a huge influence on the amount of thermal energy flowing to the Earth11.
The radiant energy of the Sun is the main source of most physico-chemical phenomena taking place in the atmo-, hydro-, and surface layer. …to one or another region of the Earth, due to the spherical shape of the Earth and the tilt of its axis, determine the dynamics of air and water masses, the difference in phenomena…
