Sunspots and Mass Behavior

Two chairs

In 1924 a Russian scientist mapped sunspot peaks onto centuries of riots and wars; he was later sent to the camps. The sun reaches Earth's grid; whether it reaches a crowd is less settled.

The question

In 1924, Alexander Chizhevsky published Physical Factors of the Historical Process, matching sunspot cycles against roughly 2,400 events from 500 BCE to 1922 CE, and found most clustered near sunspot peaks. He was arrested under Stalin in 1942. Solar storms provably hit power grids — one blacked out Quebec in 1989. Do they also move crowds?

Round 1

The chair that trusts the patternIn 1924, Chizhevsky matched eleven-year sunspot cycles against roughly 2,400 historical events back to 500 BCE, and found most clustered near sunspot peaks.

The chair that trusts the wireHis arrest under Stalin in 1942 makes a dramatic story, but persecution isn't evidence the finding was right.

Round 2

The chair that trusts the patternA pattern holding across 71 other countries and 2,400 years isn't nothing. Wars and revolutions cluster; so, he argued, does the sun's own violence.

The chair that trusts the wireSolar effects on people are hard to separate from everything else happening that year — harvests, epidemics, ordinary politics. A pattern that wide is also easy to find by accident.

Round 3

The chair that trusts the patternMeanwhile the sun's power over machines is proven, not argued: a coronal mass ejection blacked out all of Quebec in under two minutes in 1989.

The chair that trusts the wireThat's the honest split: grids have wires a storm can overload. Moods don't. No study has shown a mechanism by which geomagnetic activity changes what crowds do.

Where are you sitting?

The chair that trusts the pattern The chair that trusts the wire Neither — I’m still listening

Held open

What's checkable: Chizhevsky's 1924 study, his 1942 arrest, and the 1989 Quebec blackout, a real geomagnetic event. What isn't: that solar storms move crowds the way they move current. Heliobiology remains contested and unproven.

The grid felt it in 1989. Whether you did stays unproven.

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