Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 25, 1993 TAG: 9305250028
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
According to two scientists who stumbled onto a startling statistical association, though not necessarily a cause-effect relationship: your life span may depend on the number of sunspots in the year your mother was born.
They found that if sunspots were at a maximum in their 11-year cycle, children of mothers born then would die two to three years sooner than those of mothers born during the sunspot minimum.
"This was definitely a surprise to find and, frankly, we were a little leery of it because it sounds like it's in the realm of `nut science,' " said Barnett Rosenberg, a Michigan State University biophysicist.
Royalties from cancer drugs he led in developing pay for his research institute, which works on new cancer drugs and a field he calls mortality theory - looking for patterns in people's death ages.
Rosenberg and David Juckett, a visiting professor at Michigan State, found a pattern among members of the House of Representatives, chosen for reliability of their birth and death records.
Longevities for those born between 1750 and 1900 rose and fell by two or three years in cycles over periods lasting nine to 12 years.
The scientists immediately thought of sunspots, and how they affected the amount of solar radiation reaching earth in the years the congressmen's mothers probably were born. They found a pattern that matched the men's life spans.
by CNB