Does the Angel of Death Sometimes Use Solar Alpha Particles to Take Our Souls?

Abstract

Introduction: According to the World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, ischemic heart disease is the first in the list of the 10 most frequent causes of death in 2016, regardless of the state's economic situation. A study was conducted in order to get more information on whether and to what extent mortality from ischemic heart disease is related to external causes – the planetary magnetic field, the solar radiation, and the galactic cosmic rays. Material and Methods: Data for mortality of ischemic heart disease in the interval 2005 – 2017 from reliable statistical sources – Eurostat, OECD, UN data, and Bulgarian National Statistical Institute were used. Data on solar corpuscular radiation was obtained from an NOAA site – from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite series (GOES). High-energy protons and alpha particles path length through the atmosphere and corresponding energy were calculated by PSTAR and ASTAR databases and calculators. Data on the geomagnetic field for Bulgaria was obtained from a website of INTERMAGNET. Data on galactic cosmic rays were obtained from the NMDB database for 5 European neutron monitors. Correlation and regression analysis were used to process the data. Results: Between the annual fluxes of protons and alpha particles on the one side and the male and female ischemic disease mortality in a number of countries in Europe and Asia on the other side, a high statistically significant correlation was found. With the highest correlation coefficient: 0.939, a statistical significance level of 0.001, is the dependence of female ischemic heart disease on the alpha-particle flux for Bulgaria. Examples are given for a date intervals with intensive alpha particles and proton fluxes and ischemic mortality, correlated with it. Discussion: The results indicate a possible causal relationship between mortality from ischemic heart disease and the fluxes of solar positive corpuscular radiation. The contribution of these effects to the risk of mortality from ischemic heart disease in Bulgaria was estimated at 10%. A mechanism is proposed in which positively charged high-energy solar particles penetrate the atmosphere to the earth's surface through points where the particles are not affected by the earth's magnetic field, i.e. for which the condition is fulfilled that the directions of induction of the earth's magnetic field and the direction of the invasion of particles in the atmosphere are parallel. This condition allows calculating the width of the zone with possible impact - between 28°N and 48°N, as well as the dates with increased risk for points on the earth's surface in this zone. The energy required for the particles to overcome the interaction with the particles in the atmosphere was estimated - from 2.5 GeV to 3.4 GeV for the protons and from 6.2 GeV to 7.5 GeV for the alpha particles. According to satellite observational data (GOES 13), a significant flux of alpha particles with energies above 3.4 GeV is observed in geostationary orbit, while the proton flux with energies above 0.7 GeV is hundreds of times weaker. This makes it more likely to conclude that to the earth's surface reach high-energy alpha particles, which act as a trigger for circulatory processes that cause death, mainly in the elderly.