Many prominent entomologists attributed the mass outbreak of the grain moth in 1957-1959 to the start of extensive breaking up of virgin lands, and to the combines used for harvesting the crops, i. e., to anthropogenic factors rather than to changes in weather conditions in the given areas.
We certainly acknowledge the potent effect of human activities on the dynamics of insect populations, but we categorically disagree with the statement that solar radiation has no effect whatever on the proliferation of insects. According to Ya. I. Chugunin, "Meteorological factors do not and cannot affect fluctuations of the gypsy-moth population." Such antiscientific "theories" that nullify Michurin's basic biological principles concerning the effect of environment on the development of every organism, rather than promoting the development of our science, obstruct the way to our understanding the patterns existing in nature, and cause real damage to agriculture.
Objections should be voiced unequivocally against such a primitive, antiscientific comment on the role in nature of that unique source of energy, the Sun, which exerts an incontestable, though very complex and often indirect influence over life on our planet. It induces changes in the atmospheric circulation, and hence in the weather conditions that govern insect breeding and the pathogenic microorganisms which attack them.
Immediate steps should be taken toward research performed jointly by biologists and heliophysicists. The relevant literature should be thoroughly read and the new criteria applied in order to evaluate the methods of forecasting mass outbreaks of crop pests.
It is regrettable that the majority of plant-protection experts ignore the wise statement made by one of the founders of Russian meteorology, P. I. Brounov /9/: "... The barometric conditions together with the Sun con stitute the basis of all processes on Earth, the basis of all life on Earth... The barometric conditions govern the winds, and the Sun governs humidity, temperature, cloudiness, precipitation, etc., i. e., the entire intricate complex of phenomena that constitute climate, upon which depend the soil, the vegetation, and the animal world." These statements not only give us the right but also compel us to emphasize the necessity of "raising our eyes toward the Sun," so to speak, to direct our thoughts toward a full understanding of those cosmic patterns and inexhaustible sources of energy (solar, wave, and corpuscular) which influence the physical and biological processes on Earth, including the biochemical changes in the cells of living organisms.
Extremely valuable data were obtained during the recent International Geophysical Year and the following International Geophysical Cooperation. These years were specially selected because they included a period of solar maximum activity.
The Soviet space satellites ("sputniks") and altitude rockets equipped with modern instruments were used for investigating the highly complex processes occurring inthe formerly Inaccessible upper layers of the atmo sphere. They revealed that extremely high-energy phenomena are generated in the ionosphere by the continuous invasion of solar radiations, including X-rays, ultraviolet and radio-frequency waves, as well as by innumerable material particles— corpuscles traveling at velocities ranging from a few thousand kilometers per second to those of the order of the speed of light.
Soviet space satellites and rockets discovered the hitherto unknown radia tion "belts" surrounding the globe at different altitudes corresponding to the geomagnetic field. Depending on the intensity of solar activity magni ficent polar auroras and magnetic storms are generated at high altitudes causing interruptions in radiocommunications.
Soviet scientists proved that solar energy affects the tropospheric circulation, and acts directly on the Earth's crust, on the flow of oceanic currents, and on all organic life.
There is no doubt that the periodic droughts reported by many Soviet scientists (L. S. Berg, V. R. Vil'yams, N. A. Maksimov, V. P. Mosolov, and others) are determined by the Sun. They studied drought periodicity in the vast areas of southern and southeastern USSR, where the yields of many crops had been extremely poor. Shnitnikov demonstrated that in Kazakhstan and West Siberia, where the grain moth multiplied periodically four times in the course of the last century, the rhythm of precipitation, temperature, and other meteorological parameters changed abruptly and synchronously with the solar activity cycles, while the water level in lakes varied by more than 5 meters.