From the August 3, 1929 issue
|
Africa, the once-thought "inexhaustible paradise of game," is going the way of the North America of the past century, and it may not be long before it will be impossible for even a Carl Akeley to assemble such a group as is depicted on the cover of this issue of the Science News-Letter. This great scientist-explorer-artist visited the gorillas, the biggest of the primates and in some ways the most manlike, in their homes in the remote fastnesses of the Congo, helped secure the specimens, and then set them up in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. HUGE SUNSPOT CAUSES MAGNETIC STORMS A sizable sunspot with extraordinary magnetic field has just passed across the sun’s face. It was seen in the solar telescopes of the Mt. Wilson Observatory by Dr. Seth B. Nicholson and his associates. To it are attributed the magnetic storms of a few days ago that affected instruments in various parts of the world. The ordinary solar magnetic field, surrounding a spot, has a value of 50 gausses, the units in which the physicist measures magnetic intensity, but the sunspot just observed has a value of 4,000 at its center. The Earth’s magnetic field, measured in the same units, is only one-half a gauss, but ordinary magnets used in electrical work often have fields of over 10,000 gausses. Seldom does the astronomer encounter such a highly magnetic spot. Intensities of 3,500 are usual. Although a greater intensity would not be unusual in a small magnet here on the earth, it is unusual when it occurs in a sunspot, such as the recent one. This spot was 33,000 miles long and 20,000 miles wide. It was a single solar marking located about 16º to the south of the sun’s equator. Two weeks from now it is likely to reappear on the sun’s surface, as by that time the sun’s slow rotation will have carried it completely around. Mt. Wilson astronomers sat that it will again cross the sun’s meridian on August 14, if it survives. Then it may again be accompanied by magnetic storms on Earth. MATTER BETWEEN STARS Space between the stars is not the empty nothingness that has previously been supposed. Great clouds of calcium and sodium, elements present on Earth in lime and table salt, respectively, are in interstellar space and make their presence known by the way they affect the starlight passing through them. |
