Word: peak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Agriculture Department outgo averaged $4.5 billion a year, and in the current fiscal year the total is estimated at a shocking $7 billion. The Federal Government's inventory of wheat, corn, cotton and other surplus farm commodities recently climbed to a new peak of $9 billion. And out in the wheat and corn belts, the soil is heavy with stored up moisture, hinting at bumper crops that may mock Benson's hopes of holding farm-program outlays to $6 billion in fiscal...
...reasons for choosing 1957-58 as as Geophysical Year was the anticipation of great solar activity--sunspots, flares and "plages" many times the size of the earth--which occurs in roughly eleven year cycles. As long ago as 1946, scientists were looking forward to last year as another peak in the sun-spot cycle; they were amply rewarded, for both 1946-47 and 1957-58 turned in high sunspot peaks. Donald H. Menzel, Director of the Harvard College Observatory, and long a specialist in solar research, agreed that the Sun cooperated beautifully during its intensive examination. In fact...
...attention was given to a study of cosmic rays, solar flares and radio reception. Involved in the project were three stations built by the Observatory--at Climax, Colorado; Sunspot, New Mexico; and Ft. Davis, Texas. The first station has been turned over to the University of Colorado; the Sacramento Peak Observatory at Sunspot is owned and operated by the H.C.O. under contracts from the Air Force; and the Ft. Davis Station is also supported by Air Force funds. The latter is devoted to recording the radio noise emitted by the sun, and operates the fastest sweeping radio receiver...
...most exiting test of the Observatory's Sacramento Peak staff came during one of the granddaddies of all magnetic storms on February 10 and 11, 1958. The first hint that something out of the ordinary was happening to the sun came early in the afternoon of the ninth, when an observer, looking through an instrument called a monochromatic heliograph, spotted a flare of breathtaking brilliance leaping out from the Sun's surface. Almost before he could notify the World Data Center on Solar Activity at Boulder, Colorado, confirmation came from the Radio Astronomy Station at Ft. Davis. Bursts of static...
...scientists have known for some time that flares generally occur where there is a large concentration of sunspots, thought by Menzel to be "islands of intense calm floating in the otherwise turbulent sea of the Sun's atmosphere." Accordingly, the staff at Sacramento Peak had been watching a large cluster of sunspots covering over three billion square miles of the Sun's surface. Before the giant flare was seen, seven smaller flares had been observed, like rumblings before a storm. When a flare breaks out it spews a large number of electrically charged particles out into space; the bombardment...