Heliobiology as a science
11. 10. 2017In the Soviet Union, astrology, like any other pseudo-teachings, was banned. Private practice could not be eradicated by the authorities, but censorship strictly controlled that nothing in astrology, including Nostradamus' famous quatrains, was published. However, even among Soviet scientists, there was one talented researcher who was able to give astrology a scientific basis.
Sun worshiper Čiževskij
Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky is considered one of the greatest Russian cosmists who created a new philosophy based on the unity of human, terrestrial and cosmic processes. In addition, he dealt with what he himself called contemporary astrology.
He was born in 1897. Astronomy occupied a special place in his children's plays. At the beginning of the 20th century, the name Camillo Flammarion became very famous, who contributed to the popularization of astronomy.
The future scientist Chizhevsky read his books, and when he was ten years old, he himself wrote a book called Popular Cosmography by Klein, Flammarion, and others. It is clear that he was also involved in astronomical observations, so telescopes appeared in their house.
When he became an extraordinary student of the Moscow Archaeological Institute in 1915, he learned to make drawings of the surface of the Sun. "Telling me why I turned to the Sun is now hard," he wrote subsequently, "But it is certain that my student teaching has not yet brought me mental nutrition, especially the learning of historical and archaeological sciences completely memorable."
The institute's program consisted of the study of ancient annals, annals and chronicles. Alexander immersed himself in all these sources. Increasingly, he found a correlation between "explosive" events on Earth and the Sun. He continued to study archeology and became a full student at Moscow Business University, where he taught mathematical statistics and natural sciences, which subsequently helped him a lot with his original theory.
He read about the influence of our star on the nature of the planet from ancient monographs, in which testimonies of unusual phenomena on the Sun, which caused natural disasters on Earth, have been preserved.
It seems at that time that his beliefs as cosmites matured, and because according to the concept of cosmic and biological unity, the Sun must act not only on the biosphere as a whole but also on individual organisms, Chizhevsky began careful observations of his physical condition and recorded these deviations.
He then suggested that some of his friends do the same according to the questionnaire he had compiled. When he compared them a few months later with astronomical data on solar activity (Wolf's number), he was amazed at how much the peaks of the curves coincided.
The scientist described the results of his observations in a report entitled "The Periodic Influence of the Sun on the Earth's Biosphere," presented in Kaluga in October 1915.
Forecast history
However, he did not have the data for a broader generalization, so he used the available statistics of mass natural phenomena of various kinds. At the beginning of the revolutionary year of 1917, he had gathered enough information and again came to the conclusion that changes in solar activity were followed by changes in living nature.
For example, the fact that mass epidemics are directly dependent on solar flares. Chizhevsky considered himself a direct successor to astrologers: "The idea of a connection between man and the forces of external nature seems to have originated at the dawn of human existence. On its basis, one of the oldest sciences was born and flourished abundantly, and that is astrology. "
In 1920, the connection between the Sun and the Earth again became the dominant feature of his scientific research, in the full breadth of their manifestations. He considered suggestion to be a mechanism for transmitting cosmic influence to the realm of social psychology.
In the book Physical Factors of the Historical Process, which later brought him a number of inconveniences, Alexander Leonidovich came to the idea that "phenomena of suggestion, both isolated and mass, can be explained by electromagnetic excitation of one individual's centers by corresponding centers of another."
Subsequently, the scientist touched upon the questionable question: "History is overflowing with the eloquent facts of the mass suggestion. In fact, there was not even one historical event involving the masses where it would not be possible to record suggestions that suppressed the will of the individual. "Cizhevsky assumed that" the power of suggestion, ie the influence of individuals on the masses, increases with the amplification of sunspot activity. "
Theories "Dependence of Human Mass Behavior on Cosmic Effect" it was not taken by Čiževský as a philosophical abstraction, but as a guide to action: “State power must know how the Sun behaves at a given moment. Before making any decision, the government must inquire about the status of our star; is its surface light and clean, or is it stained? The sun is a great military-political indicator and its statements are flawless and universal. That is why the state power must follow its hands - diplomacy according to the monthly, the strategy according to the twenty-four-hour. "
Heliobiology as a science
Chizhevsky's ideas met with sharp rejection. In 1935, the newspaper Pravda published an article entitled The Enemy Under the Mask of a Scientist, in which Chizhevsky was accused of counter-revolutionary activity. That's when he was saved by work. He was a universal specialist in ion aeration and was engaged in the construction of aerators for the Moscow Palace of Soviets. But he was still arrested in January 1942 and sentenced to eight years for anti-Soviet activity. He had to wait until 1962 for his rehabilitation, albeit only partially.
Today his theory is the basis of a scientific discipline called heliobiology. It is clear that she was deprived of astrology and does not make demands to predict political breakthroughs by the number of sunspots. Nevertheless, Western scientists have confirmed a clear connection between the physiological processes of living organisms on Earth and the Sun.
Changes in solar activity have been proven to affect the growth rate of annual rings, the fertility of cereals, the reproduction and migration of insects, fish and other animals, the emergence and worsening of a number of diseases.
Sunshine weather
Today's astrophysicists figuratively say that we all live in the Sun's atmosphere, and our lives depend on its "weather" changes. And it really is. The heliosphere extends over ten billion kilometers and inside it are the orbits of all the planets in our solar system. Therefore, how active our star is depends on its entire environment.
Geomagnetic storms, which are caused by repeated solar flares, have the greatest impact on humans. Their influence is mediated. The geomagnetic rhythms that have developed over millions of years have set our biological clock in a similar way to the degree of illumination, and the temperature has shaped a twenty-four-hour rhythm. But solar disorders also bring outages and provoke a stress response, especially in chronic diseases.
The most vulnerable are considered to be the cardiovascular system, autonomic nervous system and lungs. Accordingly, the basic risk groups were identified, which are patients with circulatory system pathology (especially those who have suffered a heart attack), healthy people exposed to excessive stress (pilots, astronauts, dispatchers of power plants, airports and similar facilities) and children in adolescence.
They all require special attention and prevention. Corresponding services use twenty-seven-day, seven-day, two-day and hourly forecasts, based on constant observations of the Sun and local changes near the Earth.
Although enough data has been collected, there is still no model to describe the processes of connection between the Sun and the Earth with sufficient accuracy. Therefore, it is possible to believe the predictions of heliobiologists, but with the fact that we are always talking only about the probability of the event and not about it itself.
In any case, on days when the Sun is active, everyone should be more careful, both ordinary people and politicians. And let us remember that our distant ancestors did not worship the Sun as an almighty deity just like that.