Variations in the solar fluxes of helium and protons on the long-term scale

Abstract

A reconstruction of data on ancient (to ∼600 Ma ago) solar fluxes of protons and helium has been performed on the basis of isotopic investigations of helium and neon in lunar soil samples from columns delivered by the automatic stations Luna-16 and Luna-24 in 1970 and 1976. Recent investigations have shown the presence of long-term climate variations, which can be explained in the context of solar-terrestrial links. However, the “space” impact, simultaneously with the Sun’s influence on the Earth, takes place in the form of cosmic ray irradiation and as an influence on the Earth that is exerted by the flux of cosmic dust and meteorites (including the very large ones at the early stage of the Earth evolution). Therefore the existence of long-term variability of solar corpuscular fluxes may serve as direct evidence of the manifestation of solar-terrestrial links. The possibility of finding these links appears on the basis of the revealed variations of solar wind fluxes with an age from the contemporary level to the level of ∼600 Ma ago.