Other Observations
Some scientists hypothesize that the dense wood used in Stradivarius instruments was caused by slow tree growth during the cooler period. Instrument maker Antonio Stradivari was born a year before the start of the Maunder Minimum.
Past solar activity may be recorded by various proxies including carbon-14 and beryllium-10. These indicate lower solar activity during the Maunder Minimum. The scale of changes resulting in the production of carbon-14 in one cycle is small (about one percent of medium abundance) and can be taken into account when radiocarbon dating is used to determine the age of archaeological artifacts.
Other historical sunspot minima have been detected either directly or by the analysis of carbon-14 in tree rings; these include the Spörer Minimum (1450–1540), and less markedly the Dalton Minimum (1790–1820). In a 2012 study, sunspot minima have been detected by analysis of carbon-14 in lake sediments. In total there seem to have been 18 periods of sunspot minima in the last 8,000 years, and studies indicate that the sun currently spends up to a quarter of its time in these minima.
One recently published paper, based on an analysis of a Flamsteed drawing, suggests that the Sun's rotation slowed in the deep Maunder minimum (1684).
During the Maunder Minimum auroras had been observed normally. Detailed analysis has been published by Wilfried Schröder and J. P. Legrand et al.
The fundamental papers on the Maunder minimum (Eddy, Legrand, Gleissberg, Schröder, Landsberg et al.) have been published in Case studies on the Spörer, Maunder and Dalton Minima.
Read more about this topic: Maunder Minimum
Famous quotes containing the word observations:
“The truth is, the Science of Nature has been already too long made only a work of the brain and the fancy: It is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of observations on material and obvious things.”
—Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
“The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled “a contemplative man’s recreation,” introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist’s observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man’s recreation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)