INCREASING SOLAR ACTIVITY AND DISTURBANCES IN EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD AFFECT OUR BEHAVIOR AND INCREASE OUR HEALTH

Climaxing yesterday, the sun will have unleashed three X-class solar flares. These are the strongest flares of the year so far, and they signal a significant increase in solar activity with more to come. Historically, research has been conducted to link the 11 year cycle of the sun to changes in human behavior and society. Research done in the last hundred years that shows the most malefic effects from solar activity come at the sunspot minima.

Solar flares are intense blooms of radiation that come from the release of the magnetic energy associated with sunspots. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ranks solar flares using five categories from weakest to stongest: A, B, C, M, and X. Each category is 10 times stronger than the one before it. Within each category, a flare is ranked from 1 to 9, according to strength, although X-class flares can go higher than 9. According to NASA, the most powerful solar flare recorded was an X28 (in 2003).

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are bursts of solar material (clouds of plasma and magnetic fields) that shoot off the sun’s surface. Other solar events include solar wind streams that come from the coronal holes on the Sun and solar energetic particles that are primarily released by CMEs.

What is a Solar Cycle?

The number of sunspots increase and decrease over time in a regular, approximately 11-year cycle, called the solar or sunspot cycle. The exact length of the cycle can vary. More sunspots mean increased solar activity—flares and CMEs. The highest number of sun spots in any given cycle is designated “solar maximum,” while the lowest number is designated “solar minimum.”

Solar Minimum: According to NOAA and NASA, the sunspot cycle hit an unusually deep bottom from 2007 to 2009. In fact, in 2008 and 2009, there were almost NO sunspots, a very unusual situation that had not happened for almost a century. Due to the weak solar activity, galactic cosmic rays were at record levels.

Solar Maximum: The Sun’s record-breaking sleep ended in 2010. We are now in Solar Cycle 24, right in the middle of a peak or solar maximum this year 2013. The peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle is on queue, bringing us more solar flares, CMEs, and geomagnetic storms.

Maximum Sunspot Activity Correlates

With Mass Human Excitability

Historically, research has been conducted to link the 11 year cycle of the sun to changes in human behavior and society. The most famous research was been done by professor A.L. Tchijevsky, a Russian scientist, who presented a paper to the American Meteorological Society at Philadelphia in the late 19th century. He prepared a study of the history of mass human movement compared to the solar cycle, beginning with the division of the Solar cycle into four parts: 1) Minimum sunspot activity; 2) increasing sunspot activity; 3) maximum sunspot activity; 4) Decreasing sunspot activity. He then divided up the agitation of mass human movements into five phases:

1) provoking influence of leaders upon masses

2) the “exciting” effect of emphasized ideas upon the masses

3) the velocity of incitability due to the presence of a single psychic center

4) the extensive areas covered by mass movements

5) Integration and individualization of the masses

By these comparisons he constructed an “Index of Mass Human Excitability” covering each year from 500 B.C. to 1922 A.D. He investigated the histories of 72 countries in that period, noting signs of human unrest such as wars, revolutions, riots, expeditions and migrations, plus the number of humans involved. Tchijevsky found that fully 80% of the most significant events occurred during the years of maximum sunspot activity. He maintained that the “exciting” period may be explained by an acute change in the nervous and psychic character of humanity, which takes place at sunspot maxima.

Tchijevsky discovered that the solar minimum is the lag period when repression is tolerated by the masses, as if they lacked the vital energy to make the needed changes. He found that during the sunspot maximum, the movement of humans is also at its peak. Tchijevsky’s study is the foundation of sunspot theory on human behavior, and as Harlan True Stetson, in his book Sunspots and Their Effects, stated, “Until, however, someone can arrive at a more convincing excitability quotient for mass movements than professor Tchijevsky appears yet to have done, scientists will be reluctant to subscribe to all the conclusions which he sets forth.” Stetson did acknowledge that the mechanism by which ultraviolet radiation is absorbed was still a puzzle biologists had to solve.

Many animals can sense the Earth’s magnetic field, so why not people, asks Oleg Shumilov of the Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems in Russia.

Shumilov looked at activity in the Earth’s geomagnetic field from 1948 to 1997 and found that it grouped into three seasonal peaks every year: one from March to May, another in July and the last in October.

Surprisingly, he also found that the geomagnetism peaks matched up with peaks in the number of suicides in the northern Russian city of Kirovsk over the same period.

Shumilov acknowledges that a correlation like this does not necessarily mean there is a causal link, but he points out that there have been several other studies suggesting a link between human health and geomagnetism.

For example, a 2006 review of research on cardiovascular health and disturbances in the geomagnetic field in the journal Surveys in Geophysics (DOI: 10.1007/s10712-006-9010-7) concluded that a link was possible and that the effects seemed to be more pronounced at high latitudes.

Twinned peaks

The review’s author, Michael Rycroft, formerly head of the European Geosciences Society, says that geomagnetic health problems affect 10 to 15% of the population.

“Others have found similar things [to Shumilov's results] in independent sets of data,” says Rycroft. “It suggests something may be linking the two factors.”

A 2006 Australian study, for example, also found a correlation between peaks in suicide numbers and geomagnetic activity