Wonders of the Solar System Text Only

Оглавление

Andrew Cohen. Wonders of the Solar System Text Only

Contents

Отрывок из книги

TEXT ONLY EBOOK EDITION

Brian Cox

.....

For decades scientists have sought to understand how these subtle changes in the Sun’s power might be affecting the Earth. It’s a puzzle that led one man to look away from the Sun and focus instead on the rivers around the Iguaçu Falls. Argentinean astrophysicist Pablo Mauas has spent the last decade analysing data that details every aspect of this river system – from water levels to flow rates – from 1904 all the way through the twentieth century. Unlike many of the world’s great rivers, the Parana is so large that it can be navigated by very big ships – and where there are ships there are records. These records enabled Pablo to uncover an extraordinary history and to reveal that, just like sunspots, the river too has a rhythm.

Pablo and his team found that the stream flow of the river fluctuated dramatically three times during the last century, but the records gave no indication as to what was behind these fluctuations. The amount of water in the river Parana seems to follow a pattern, and Pablo had a hunch that this rhythm might be connected to the rhythms of the Sun. To try to link events on the Sun, 150 million kilometres away, to the flow of the great Parana, Pablo looked first at the most obvious rhythm of our star.

.....