We humans are strange creatures. We are so confident in the future, as if there had never been any incidents in our lives. But it cannot be said that it is particularly consistent... But, apparently, we consider ourselves sufficiently prepared for the unexpected things that can happen to us. And we really appreciate the measured course of things and our preparedness. As one businessman humorously told me: “The only thing above profit is stability.” And it’s true - what is profit without stability? Last year showed us all well what it is worth! And he also showed that many things that we consider immutable may, in fact, turn out to be completely different.

The sun had just set outside the window. For several months now, my thoughts have been constantly returning to him. What happens to us is connected precisely with him. And what happens to him is connected to us. The idea is simple and, in general, not new, but still this spring I lived it in a special way. Because it was this spring that scientists began to talk about an unusually deep and prolonged decline in solar activity.

Isn't it strange? After all, before this, we, civilians, were usually warned in advance by the media about unusual high solar activity...

Solar activity: highs and lows

Solar activity is a manifestation of solar magnetism. Among other things, it is associated with emissions of solar plasma into outer space.

The dangers of high solar activity are known: primarily problems with satellites and electronics. Satellites today are both communications and navigation systems. And without properly functioning electronics it is generally impossible to imagine modern life. So the threats were serious.

What could be interesting about the decline in solar activity? Just a coincidence. It exactly coincided with the current crisis! And it would be okay for the first time.

At the previous minimum, in 1985-1986, world oil prices, just like in 2008, fell several times. And many believe that that price jump started the process that led to the collapse of the USSR. But the subsequent events of 1991 occurred exactly at the maximum of the 22nd solar cycle, which happened just in June-August.

The minimums of solar activity also included the Cuban missile crisis (October 1962), the death of the “leader of the peoples” (March 1953), the famine of 1932-1933, and the last years of the Great Depression (1932-1933). All these historical events had their prerequisites, in disputes about which many copies were broken. However, they appeared during special periods of the solar cycle.

For completeness, I will also mention events that coincided with the peaks of activity: the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia, the beginning of World War II (1939), the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York (2000).

The facts speak for themselves. But all these are just parallels lying on the surface. And so far only in the context of social relations. However, we depend on the Sun much more.

Hale cycle The most important feature of the solar activity cycle is the law of changes in the magnetic polarity of sunspots. It is known that sunspots most often form bipolar groups, in which the two main spots: the head (or leading, that is, moving ahead on the rotating Sun) and the tail - have opposite magnetic polarities. During each 11-year cycle, all leading spots of bipolar groups have the same polarity in the northern hemisphere and also the same, but opposite, in the southern hemisphere. The same is true for tail spots. In the next cycle, the polarities of the leading and tail spots are reversed. At the same time, the polarity of the general magnetic field of the Sun, whose poles are located near the poles of rotation, also changes. Therefore, it is more correct to talk not about an 11-year, but about a 22-year cycle of solar activity.

What awaits us: global warming or an ice age?

Solar activity also affects our climate.

You can recall the famous Maunder Minimum - a long period of decline in solar activity from approximately 1645 to 1715. The Earth at this time was experiencing the coldest phase of the global cooling of the 14th-19th centuries, better known as the last little ice age.

It was in the middle of the 17th century that the harshest and longest winters in Europe occurred, marked by unusually deep snow cover and severe frosts. The winter cold penetrated far to the south. In some winters, even the Bosphorus Strait, the outlet from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, froze. Nicknamed the Year of the Great Frost in England, 1709 caused glaciation throughout Europe. Lakes and rivers were covered with ice, and the soil froze to a depth of one meter. There was ice even on the shores of the Adriatic Sea!

Surprisingly, these same years were marked by the last strong outbreaks of the plague - the scourge of that time, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Thus, in England the last plague epidemic occurred in 1665 (the “Great Plague of London”), and in Germany in 1711. At the same time, the plague swept across Russia: in Moscow and in the central region, the epidemic began in August 1654 and lasted until January 1655, killing up to 300 thousand people. Both in ancient times and to this day, climate has a significant influence on the course of human history itself.

In 1809 (the minimum of activity), during the Russian-Swedish campaign, Russian troops under the leadership of Prince Bagration crossed the usually ice-free Gulf of Bothnia of the Baltic Sea on ice and went straight to Stockholm. “General Frost” helped our army more than once: both in 1812 (minimum activity) and during the Great Patriotic War (the minimum occurred in 1942-1945, but unusual frosts struck already in the winter of 1941).

The period of warming in which we now live is considered by some scientists to be just one of the small (by geological standards) interglacial periods. After all, an ice age on Earth lasts on average 100,000 years, and an interglacial period lasts only 10-12 thousand years. It is this period of human history that is associated with the almost linear (or rather, even exponential) development of humanity, the growth of its numbers and technical capabilities - from primitive tools to modern technologies. It is possible that this period is already coming to an end. And perhaps it is solar activity that regulates this process...

Since solar activity does not have a noticeable effect on the amount of heat received by the Earth’s atmosphere, such a paradoxical relationship with climate has long earned the attention of scientists. According to the latest scientific hypotheses, condensation processes in the uppermost layers of the atmosphere are triggered by the solar wind - and thereby affect further atmospheric processes.

The same process is associated with the formation of noctilucent clouds, which are also of particular interest to scientists. To study them, NASA launched the AIM satellite in April 2007. However, there is still no good theory that would reliably connect all these phenomena.

Hurricanes and earthquakes: connection with the Sun

In recent years, scientific data have been obtained on the relationship between solar activity and the number of hurricanes and the frequency of earthquakes. It is not surprising that the maximum number of hurricanes occurs at the peaks of activity. But the maximum of seismic activity is associated, on the contrary, with the minimum of spot formation. The increasing volcanic activity during these periods contributes to the cooling noted above, but is not its sole cause. Again, a clear theory that would connect geological activity on Earth and the manifestations of solar magnetism does not exist today.

The current anomalous minimum of solar activity has already been remembered by such seismic phenomena occurring on Earth as the awakening of Anak Krakatoa, the famous volcano that caused a disaster in 1883; a powerful earthquake in the Chinese province of Sichuan, bordering Tibet (May 12, 2008); eruption of Mount Klyuchevskaya in Kamchatka, the highest and most active active volcano in Eurasia (from October 16 to mid-December 2008); the most destructive earthquake in Italy in the last 30 years in L'Aquila (April 6, 2009); activation of the most significant volcano in Hawaii, Kilauea (June 8, 2009); eruption of Sarychev Peak on Matua Island, central Kuril Islands (June 13, 2009); destructive earthquakes in Indonesia on the island of Java (September 2, 2009).

Solar activity and human society

But if we are still trying to explain the relationship between the number of sunspots and climate and geological activity scientifically, there are no modern scientific theories about the relationship between solar activity and social activity.

In this area, the best known is the work of the great Russian scientist Alexander Chizhevsky. In the book “Physical Factors of the Historical Process,” published back in 1924, he wrote about the impact of electricity on mental processes: “... an assumption arises that the increase in the sun’s sunspot activity, associated with an increase in its electrical energy, has a strong influence on the state of the electromagnetic fields of the Earth, one way or another stimulating the masses to action and promoting suggestion”; “... significant disturbances in the Sun, accompanied by the emission of electromagnetic waves and radioactive decay of solar matter, cause among the masses, in the presence of a generalizing mass factor, an explosion of unity, unanimity, immediately predisposing them to certain actions.”

The fact that electricity is associated with the manifestations of life has been known since the experiments of Luigi Galvani at the end of the 18th century. The previous century brought a lot of new things into the understanding of the laws of electricity. Indeed, Planck’s idea of ​​quanta was first confirmed in Einstein’s famous work on the photoelectric effect. (It was for these studies—and not for the theory of relativity, as is commonly believed—that Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.)

In the field of electricity, the 20th century gave us such reliable physical concepts as the theory of the electromagnetic field (which became the classical field theory), quantum electrodynamics (the most developed part of quantum theory), the theory of electroweak interaction (the first and so far the only successful step towards a theory uniting all known types of physical interactions). But official science is not one iota closer to understanding the relationship between electrical and psychic phenomena. In medicine, we use such sophisticated physical methods as nuclear magnetic resonance, scientists map the activity of areas of the human brain - but all this does not help us explain the mysterious connection between the activity of the Sun and the state of human communities.

Ended in 2006 23rd cycle of solar activity. Collage SOHO

Solar activity This is the name given to a complex of phenomena caused by the generation of strong magnetic fields on the Sun. These fields appear in the photosphere as sunspots and cause phenomena such as solar flares, the generation of streams of accelerated particles, changes in the levels of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun in various ranges, coronal mass eruptions, solar wind disturbances, and so on. Solar activity is also associated with variations in geomagnetic activity, which are a consequence of disturbances in the interplanetary medium reaching the Earth, caused, in turn, by active phenomena on the Sun. One of the most common indicators of the level of solar activity is the Wolf number, which is associated with the number of sunspots on the visible hemisphere of the Sun. The overall level of solar activity varies with a characteristic period of approximately 11 years. This period is not precisely maintained and in the 20th century was closer to 10 years, and over the last 300 years it has varied from approximately 7 to 17 years. It is customary to assign sequential numbers to cycles of solar activity, starting from the conventionally selected first cycle, the maximum of which was in 1761. In 2000, the maximum of the 23rd cycle of solar activity was observed.

The mysterious boundary between the objective and the subjective, between the physical and the mental has long confused all the cards for scientists. The scientific method itself is based on excluding the observer from consideration and thereby identifying objective laws. But how can we exclude the observer when considering mental processes? And quantum physics is faced with the same paradox: the measurement process is only possible in interaction with the observer, and therefore changes the measured object itself. An observer cannot be an “observer” - he is always an accomplice in the process!

Northern lights Aurora Borealis. Tromso, Norway

We need to admit that our modern faith in science and the technological progress associated with it, the false sense that everything has long been explored, the complexity of existing scientific theories has largely killed in us the very ability for impartial observation and philosophical surprise, both in what we ourselves and in open to others. At the same time, many complex natural phenomena still present many mysteries. But this is exactly what almost all natural processes are like.

For example, according to the generally accepted theory, it is solar activity that causes such a fascinating natural phenomenon as auroras. However, despite the decline in solar activity, geomagnetic storms and powerful auroras continue. Thus, on March 13, 2009, an aurora of exceptional intensity was observed from the Norwegian city of Tromsø. What is this? Just an anomaly or perhaps a manifestation of some kind of earthly activity? In any case, natural electrical phenomena only seem to be well explored.

What's happening to the Sun?

What then can we say about the Sun itself? After all, the scale of energy, gravity, electric and magnetic fields that the researcher has to deal with here goes far beyond our imagination. Our entire planet on these scales is just a grain of sand: the size of many sunspots exceeds its diameter.

In popular books there are beautiful and calming pictures “The Sun in Section”. But, for example, the question of what caused the sharp increase in temperature from 5500 degrees in the photosphere (the lower layers of the Sun’s atmosphere) to more than one million degrees in the inner corona of the star still does not have a clear answer.

And most importantly, we subconsciously treat our luminary in advance as a thermonuclear reactor, only a very large one. Or like a very large thermonuclear bomb. Like millions of such unquenchable bombs, simultaneously and continuously burning in the same place. We have absorbed this idea since school and are practically unaware of it. And it almost completely excludes the possibility of treating the Sun as a living being. It's funny, but back in the 19th century it was imagined as a large coal stove! Meanwhile, something unusual is really happening to him...

The minimum activity in which our star is currently located is the longest in the last 100 years. Since December 2006, there are almost no spots on the Sun that are associated with the manifestation of its magnetic activity. The appearance of the spots of the new cycle was expected back in 2007. Then the forecast was revised and it was hoped that they would appear in January 2008. But these calculations did not come true either. The new cycle did not begin for the entire 2008. Hopes were also pinned on a spot of “correct” polarity that appeared on January 4 of this year, 2009...

In early March, on the Sun, on its eastern edge (“eastern limb”), ten prominences immediately rose to a height of more than 100 thousand kilometers and remained there for three days. Until now, it was believed that such a phenomenon was possible only during periods of increased activity. And on April 1, signs of a revival of the previous 23rd cycle appeared (three large spots of reverse, “old” polarity appeared at once). For some time, spots with different polarities coexisted on the Sun, belonging to the outgoing and advancing cycles. Scientists who followed the development of the new 24th cycle were completely perplexed...

What confused everyone even more was the release of solar plasma in mid-April. “At the edge of the Sun, in the complete absence of visible activity, a gigantic prominence with a length of more than 600 thousand kilometers was unexpectedly formed and thrown into interplanetary space,” said a statement from the Physical Institute. Lebedeva. This is more than 45 times the diameter of the Earth.

New hopes that a new cycle had begun on the Sun appeared only in mid-May. And at the beginning of July, an unusually powerful group of sunspots No. 1024 appeared for this period. Its size is 125 thousand kilometers - 10 times larger than our planet. And after that, the Sun again plunged into complete silence, which lasted another 51 days...

Thus, the Sun has been “silent” for two and a half years. Such a long delay - which is all the more strange - happened against the general background of an acceleration of the solar rhythm: over the past 80 years, the average duration of the solar cycle has decreased to 10.5 years. It is also strange that this decline occurred against the backdrop of a general increase in activity over the last century. So, just six years ago, on October 28, 2003, the most powerful flare in the entire history of observations of the star occurred.

The reasons for these changes are completely unclear, but the parallel with the rapid development of humanity in the 20th century comes naturally. As well as a parallel with the current crisis: it began as a financial crisis, grew into an economic one, and many say that this is far from the end. It is no secret that over the past century humanity has fallen into a very disharmonious state. Perhaps the Sun is changing its rhythm and activity - and these changes can have serious consequences for our entire planet, civilization and our usual way of life.

Living Sun of the Ancients

It seems we have become victims of routine. We treat what determines our entire life as a lighting device. Somewhere subconsciously lives the famous saying of Kozma Prutkov: “If you are asked: what is healthier, the sun or the month? - answer: month. For the sun shines during the day, when it is already light; and the month is at night. But, on the other hand: the sun is better because it shines and warms; and the moon only shines, and then only on a moonlit night!”

But the Sun is not a light bulb. This is a great living being, on which our well-being on Earth directly depends. And it may be easy or difficult for him, he may like or dislike something, he may worry about something or simply be sick. Just like our Earth, from which we are sucking out all the resources, which was destroyed many times in the 20th century by nuclear explosions. The famous 11-year cycle (more correctly, Hale's 22-year cycle) is like the beat of his invisible heart. And the fading of this heart affects everything that happens to us.

The anomalies that scientists are now observing indicate only one thing: the Sun does not care what happens on Earth. It reacts to our disharmony, to our “overheated” society, which lives only on consumption. This means that the wheel of our history can decisively turn...

But if this creature is alive, then you can somehow communicate with it, making, of course, allowances for the difference in size, strength, antiquity, and therefore in experience and wisdom. And in the end, just feeling grateful for the opportunity to live. Since ancient times, this has been called worship... Moreover, it is fair to say that this is the most majestic and powerful living being, who cares about us, immeasurably insignificant in comparison with him. In fairness, the ancients treated him as a deity. In fairness, this should be the focus of our attention.

Is this why solar deities were given a special place in all ancient religions and cults? Remember the Egyptian Amon and Ra, the Indian Surya, the Persian Mithra, the Greco-Roman Apollo and Helios. Or the gigantic ancient sanctuary at Newgrange, oriented precisely to the sunrise on the day of the winter solstice... It would be difficult, perhaps, to find an ancient tribe that did not begin the day with worship and sacrifice to this god.

The famous Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung described one remarkable case in his autobiographical book. While visiting the Pueblo Indians, he asked the leader of the Tao tribe named Mountain Lake about the rituals of worshiping the Sun. “I asked if he did not admit that the sun could be a ball of fire, the shape of which was determined by the invisible God. My question did not cause him either surprise or indignation. The question seemed so ridiculous to him that he didn’t even consider it stupid - he simply didn’t pay attention to it. I felt as if I was in front of an impenetrable wall. The only thing I heard in response was: “The sun is God!” Anyone can see this.”... I felt that we were approaching a delicate area that touched on the sacred secrets of the tribe. “After all, we are a people,” he said, “who live on the roof of the world, we are the children of the sun, and by performing our rites we help our Father to walk across the sky. If we stop doing this, then in ten years the sun will not rise and eternal night will come.”<...>Now I knew where this man’s dignity and calm calm came from. He is the son of the sun, and his life is full of cosmological meaning - he helps his Father, the creator and preserver of life on earth, - he helps him make this daily ascent. If, in the light of such self-determination, we try to explain the purpose of our own life, then, as common sense suggests, its wretchedness will amaze us. We smile patronizingly at the primitive naivety of the Indian and boast of our wisdom. Why? Yes, because we are consumed by ordinary envy. Otherwise, our spiritual poverty and worthlessness will come to light. Knowledge does not make us richer, but it takes us further and further away from the mythological worldview that was once inherent to us by birthright.”

Something very significant changed in our relationship to the Sun with the advent of the new era and the subsequent dark ages of the collapse of ancient religions. Looking at its radiance, we stopped feeling natural awe, respect, awe and gratitude. We deprived it of the meaning of our sacred center - and the sacred quietly disappeared from our lives, endangering the very foundations of our coexistence.

“It should be emphasized that the worldly perception of the reality of the world in its entirety, the cosmos completely devoid of sacred properties, is a very recent “discovery” of the human mind. We do not seek to show in what historical ways, as a result of what changes in the spiritual world, modern man deprived his world of the sacred and accepted a secular existence. It is enough to note that this loss of sacredness characterizes the entire experience of the non-religious person in modern societies,” wrote the famous historian of religions Mircea Eliade.

But is it possible to realize the grandeur of celestial cosmic phenomena without sacred awe? Having lost it, man doomed himself to a hopeless feeling of loneliness, being lost in the endless expanse of “cosmic cold” and a feeling of the meaninglessness of his existence... How could we lose the feeling of our unity with the world - earthly and heavenly, which has been our natural heritage throughout ancient history?

We send spaceships beyond the solar system, peer into distant galaxies, wait for signals from other civilizations, look for planets similar to Earth - but this does not help us gain the feeling that someone needs us in this vast space, that we are not alone, not lost. We need to regain the awareness that we are a part of the great stream of cosmic Life, filled with meaning and joy of a single aspiration. Feel like children of the Sun again...

***

The night has passed. The wind carries low clouds across the sky, gradually getting lighter. The sun is hidden behind the clouds, but I know that it rises above the horizon and sheds its light and warmth on our side of the planet. The sounds of the city waking up are heard... However, the anxiety for all of us does not go away. What does the coming day have in store for us? I would like to simply and modestly ask for blessings from the great heavenly beings, whose light, warmth and kindness we use every minute - for ourselves and all living things.

to the magazine "Man Without Borders"

Solar maximum

Solar maximum- the period of greatest solar activity in the solar cycle. During solar maximum, the largest number of sunspots is observed on its surface (see figure on the right).

During maximum solar activity, sunspots descend to lower latitudes and are located closer to the solar equator. In this case, magnetic force lines from sunspots located on both sides of the equator are often closed with each other. Line closure occurs only between a spot with northern polarity and a spot with southern polarity. Due to the large number of sunspots and the differential rotation of the Sun, whose polar regions rotate slower than the equator, magnetic lines in the equatorial region become quite tangled.

The unreliability of solar maxima is demonstrated by the fact that NASA previously projected a solar maximum for 2010/2011. Even earlier, on March 10, 2006, NASA researchers announced that the next solar maximum would be the strongest since the 1859 all-time maximum, during which the northern lights could be observed both far south and north of the equator.

See also

• Solar minimum

Links

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Solar maximum” is in other dictionaries:

Distribution of the energy of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun in the wavelength range from several fractions of nm (gamma radiation) to meter radio waves. In the visible region, the solar spectrum is close to that of a black body at a temperature of approx. 6000 K;… … Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Hallstatt with a period of 2,300 years. "Solar cycle" periodic changes in the behavior of the Sun. It is assumed that there are a large number of cycles with different periods, but as of 2009, only 11 have been reliably confirmed from observations... Wikipedia

Distribution of the energy of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun in the wavelength range from several fractions of nm (gamma radiation) to meter radio waves. In the visible region, the solar spectrum is close to the spectrum of an absolutely black body at a temperature of about... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

Electrical energy distribution mag. solar radiation in the wavelength range from several. fractions of nm (gamma radiation) to meter radio waves. In the visible region of S. s. close to the spectrum of an absolutely black body at a temperature of approx. 6000 K; has energy. maximum in... ... Natural science. Encyclopedic Dictionary

Eschatology Christian eschatology Biblical texts Biblical prophecies Book of Revelation ... Wikipedia

ANOTHER SOLAR “GREAT MAXIMUM” IS ENDING.

WHAT IS WAITING FOR US?

The next twenty-fourth maximum of solar activity is nearing its end. According to scientists, the number of sunspots will soon decrease, and coronal ejections on the Sun will occur much less frequently. It seems like what's bad here? Solar activity will decrease and humanity will be much calmer. But it's not that simple. Some researchers see this process alarm signal.

There will be a decrease in the strength of the solar magnetic field. And a lot depends on him. The Sun's magnetic field helps control the amount of radiation or radiation entering our planet from space. The sources of this radiation are galactic cosmic rays. This radiation is very dangerous for satellites and poses a real threat to the crews of high-flying aircraft, as well as to astronauts on the ISS. If the intensity of the solar magnetic field decreases, then it will certainly the amount of cosmic radiation will increase and reaching the surface of the Earth. Scientist Luke Barnard from the UK believes that the drop in solar activity will be very significant. This level of solar activity was recorded in the seventeenth century. This period went down in the history of observing the luminary under the name “Maunder minimum.” Only a few sunspots were recorded. According to Luke Barnard, there will soon be a two and a half times increase in the cosmic ray flux, and this will become very dangerous for our planet. According to forecasts, the 24th peak of solar activity could end in a global catastrophe. The reason for this will be colossal solar flares, and then, unprecedented, powerful geomagnetic storms. According to University of Colorado professor Daniel Baker, the consequences of a solar storm can be compared with a giant asteroid falling on our planet or even with a nuclear war. The spectacle will be very enchanting. Over our entire planet September 22, 2012 will be very bright and colorful northern lights, which can be observed even during the day.

On the way to La Poma. The surrounding view as we exited the train energized us every time.

Superman by Kraja.

Flip knowhand from Kraja.

Great place to learn new tricks.

In addition to MTB, Kraja also enjoys surfing. The color of his Cody - “Miami Vice” emphasizes his style as much as possible.

"Miami vice" - two positive colors. You may know the inspiration behind the “sex on the beach” cocktail.

Discussion between Szymon and Andreu on his trail.

Forest, trail, Sun, relaxation - what else is needed for happiness? Motovip from Szymon.

There are a lot of bicycles, but still Cody "miami vice" stands out against their background, just as palm trees stand out against the background of the city of Barcelona.

Szymon makes such a stylish superman that comments are unnecessary.

Szymon simply decided to check if the landing was still in the same place before finishing the flip.

Szymon is a big fan of freestyle motocross. Superman doublesitgrab. Don't try this at home.

Dartmoor team riders meeting at La Poma. Elof Lindh, Piotrek Krajewski and Szymon Godziek

Ultimate cliffhanger by Szymon.

Unrealistically stylish one-foot H-up from Kraja

Most of the time the weather was wonderful. But still, twice we had to cancel skiing due to the wind and instead we walked along the beach, enjoying the sights.

Kraja and his opo-vip

Just flatspin. Nothing complicated.

The famous cashroll. He loves this trick.