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How did the Sun evolve, and what will it become? What is the origin of its light and heat? How does solar activity affect the atmospheric conditions that make life on Earth possible? These are the questions at the heart of solar physics, and at the core of this book. The Sun is the only star near enough to study in sufficient detail to provide rigorous tests of our theories and help us understand the more distant and exotic objects throughout the cosmos. Having observed the Sun using both ground-based and spaceborne instruments, the authors bring their extensive personal experience to this story revealing what we have discovered about phenomena from eclipses to neutrinos, space weather, and global warming. This second edition is updated throughout, and features results from the current spacecraft that are aloft, especially NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, for which one of the authors designed some of the telescopes.… (more)
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-It seems
-Our sun is so dense it can take 110,000 years and possibly ten times longer for x-ray “light” to get from its core to its surface. The waves are scattered, absorbed and re-emitted many times before they see the dark of the universe.
-Our sun is made up almost entirely of two common elements – hydrogen and helium - 99%. Everything else is just trace.
-From our outpost here, the smallest thing we can see on the surface is a granule, a roughening of a tiny area, the size of the entire eastern US seaboard blurred into one spot, if that gives a better idea of the difference in scale between earth and the engine that powers it. Granules are boiling bubbles of gas, that cool and sink again
There remain numerous unsolved factors. Solar flares, for example, are the subject of almost as many theories as theorists, the authors say. They then go on to list a seemingly endless variety of projects, probes, satellites and telescopes all aimed at answering questions about the sun. We’re quietly on it, committing billions to get the answers.
There is also an examination of auroras, the northern lights, which have finally ceased defying explanation. It seems there is a complete electrical circuit between the sun and our ionosphere, and when it is closed, the sky lights up. They explain the colors and the curtain effect such that it actually makes sense.
There is also the old saw of how the sun will swell up into a red giant and subsume the earth – in three billion years. But we will be long gone, because (although the book does not say, but) when our magnetic fields dissipate, the full force of the sun will hit earth relentlessly, and bake it. That we haven’t had a magnetic pole reversal in 700,000 years (normal is 100,000) is a good indicator that the georeactor powering our magnetic field is weakening. Measurements confirm this.
It is also fascinating that just slight fluctuations in the tilt of the earth and the ellipse of its orbit are the entirely predictable sources of ice ages. The band of livable climate provided by the sun is incredibly narrow, can be upset by the slightest variation, and the changes incurred are extreme. Add pollution, and all bets are off.
David Wineberg
Leon Goulb and Jay M. Pasachoff an astrophysicist and astronomer answer many
Other interesting things explored are the phenomenon of the northern lights and insights into global warming.
A perceptive read for anyone interested in the science of the sun or wanting to know more about how our solar system works.
This book was received for free in return for an honest review
Golub and Pasachoff lay out not just our knowledge of our star, but how we gained that knowledge. It has been a long process,
We look at the Sun, and we see a great, glowing ball. It doesn't look complicated at all. Yet even before we had more advanced instruments, eclipses and the telescope let us discover and begin to study the photosphere of the Sun. The authors make the tale of how we made crucial discoveries, as well as the substance of those discoveries themselves, exciting and compelling.
The subject matter is at times demanding, but the writing is clear and understandable.
Recommended for anyone who enjoys good science writing.
I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley.