Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1940-07-11
Chart Changes
In Heat Of Sun
Scientists Make Analysis
Of Data Gathered Over
15-Year Period.

WASHINGTON.-S radiation
pulsations of the sun have been con-
firmed by Harvard university math-
ematicians, who have completed
rigid mathematical analysis of data
gathered by the Smithsonian in
stitution over IS years. .
Measurements with delicate in
struments on cloudless mountain
tops scattered over the earth for the
last 20 years have shown that the
solar heat received at the outer edge
of the earth's atmosphere varies
from day to day. The sun, upon
whose radiation all life depends, is
variable star.
The increases and decreases, how
ever, were interviewer into an al
most inextricable pattern. Some
times the peaks Of two or more
conceded and sometimes several
depressions came together. Several
years ago DR.. Charles G. Abbot,
secretary Of the Smithsonian insti-
tuition, found, by splitting up the
total curve Of the suns radiation,
that 1t consisted Of IL subsidiary
pulsations, all of which had a least
common denominator Of approx
mately % years. That Is, every q
years the star went through q COM
plete pulsation cycle.
Some Statistical Illusions.
The analysis. however. was ex-
tremely difficult. Some Of the ra-
diation differences, in so far as they
could be detected by any instru-
ments 10000. 900 miles away, were
very minute. An the complex eff.
fects Of passage through the earth's
atmosphere on solar radiation had
to be discounted. There was at
least a possibility that some Of the
apparent pulsations were statistical
illusions, difficult to recognize.
DR.. Theodore E. Sterne of Har-
ward university undertook, with the
aid Of his graduate students, to
analyze the data by a different,
more laborious and more rigid math-
ematical procedure. A mathemati-
clan familiar with the pitfalls of sta
tistical illusion, DR.. Sterne ap-
preached the problem with an OBJ
jectively skeptical attitude.
Only 10 of the IL periodicities pro-
posed by DR.. Abbot were susceptible
to the method of analysis used by
the Harvard mathematicians Out
Of these 10, his work shows seven
are certainly real and must be con-
sidered probably as actual happen
ings on the sun, although the mathe-
matics merely shows that they exist
and offers no explanation Of them.
The Real Periodicities. .
The Smithsonian observations
show, he says, that the periods Of
ga, II, 81, Is, 1914, as and So months
must be considered as actualities.
That is, every ga months the
SUMS heat, for some unknown cause,
seems to rise to a certain peak and
then decline. Every II months
there is similar rise and decline.
The same is true for the other five.
Each period may have a different
solar cause. If they all started to-
gether-and presumably they did in
the beginning-they all would APP
proximately coincide at the end Of
% years. Their complex combina-
tons would bring into the record
many features of increases in the
SUMS heat with associated declines.
This period Of % years is about
double the period Of the sunspot
cycle, when titanic whirlwinds in
the solar atmosphere 60 through q
maximum and minimum in fire.
quency.
These solar periodicities, DR.. ABB
bot believes. are a major element
in the earth's weather, although the
relationship is very complicated.
The independent confirmation of
seven Of them affords substantial
basis for further studies in this field