I have posted this image before but it is just so spectacular it is worth a revisit. If you look carefully at this image of the setting sun you can see sun spot 652 which was present on the suns surface in July 2004.

The number of sun spots varies over an 11 year cycle and they have a significant impact on global warming. Quite unsurprisingly then it has been found that they also have an impact on agricultural productivity. Astrophysicist Lev Pustilnik of Tel Aviv University and Gregory Yom Din, an agricultural economist at Haifa University have been studying this and found a link between wheat productivity in the US, and hence the price of wheat, and the sun spot activity of the time. Read more here.

It is quite disconcerting for many people that aspects of our wellbeing are so completely out of our control and speaking of being outside our control the next two asteroids that are due to just miss hitting the earth are 2004 RZ164 due on 8th December and 2004 VW14 due on Christmas Eve. Neither is on track to actually hit the earth which is probably just as well because the second one particularly could have significantly disrupted your planned Christmas party. Both are big enough to cause catastrophic damage to the earth, something along the lines of the asteroid that allegedly whiped our the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.