l'important c'est d'aimer (Andrzej Zulawski, 1975)
"It must be what you people call life. I'd always wondered. Now I know."
What *is* the Sun? We see it every day, but we don't talk about it all that much. You might even say that it gets taken for granted (I don't think that's true), or that we misunderstand it (I think that's true). But whatever you know or don't know about the Sun hopefully we'll all be smarter by the end of this page.
So first off, here's something we all know about the Sun: it's a ball of fire. Of course, it's not a ball of fire at all, but that's a much easier way to summarise it. What it actually is is a very large amount of hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion, so it's glowing, rather than burning. A lot of people wonder how something can burn for such a long time without going out. Well, again, it's not burning. Down on Earth we use fission, rather than fusion. Fission is breaking things apart. Fusion is, as you might have guessed, sticking things together. Fusion creates a much larger amount of energy than fission, but we can't replicate it at the moment. Maybe one day. But not right now.
That's all kind of interesting, but is this really how we interact with the Sun? No, not really.
Our interactions begin when we're very young. It's a large yellow ball in the sky. We're told (as soon as we can understand what we're being told) not to look at it. Don't look at it? It's right there! In the sky! Every day! Don't put it up there if it's so dangerous! That whole thing takes me back to being at a friend's house as a child and being told 'don't eat the bay leaves in the sauce, they're poisonous.' Poisonous?! Why are you putting poison in my food!? Anyway... then we reach an age when we can pick up pencils we start drawing, and the Sun is frequently there. And then at some point we start drawing the Sun's rays. Does anyone tell children to do this? Do adults see pictures of a yellow circle and tell their young to surround it with emanating lines? I don't think so. But it's odd that this occurs, because the Sun doesn't have any lines coming out of it. Well, not that we can see anyway. So why do children draw those lines?
Maybe it's a case of copying what other people do. Maybe it's from squinting and creating a flare or diffraction (like when you look at streetlights). Maybe they're trying to summarise the *feel* of the sun. Maybe it's something else.
Of course, there are rays coming out of the Sun, including gamma rays. That's a part of the light spectrum that we can't see. All we can see is the visible spectrum, which is the colours of the rainbow that daylight (white light) makes visible. The full spectrum is vast, but most of it is completely invisible to our eyes. That doesn't mean it's not there, It just means we can't see it. If you were a scorpion, for example, you'd be able to see in the ultra-violet spectrum. But you're not a scorpion. Well, not literally.
That ultra-violet spectrum also (unsurprisingly) includes ultra-violet radiation. This gets into the cells of living creatures and (eventually) causes mutations to DNA. Some people think that this UV radiation is at the heart of evolution: and that without that radiation we'd all still be fish, or something. Back at the turn of the 20th century Thomas Hunt Morgan was busy doing work to show that Gregor Mendel's work on recessive genes and inheritance was a bunch of hogwash. To do this he needed to find a mutated fruit fly and he just had to sit and wait: copiously going over and over legions of fruit flies until he found one that had spontaneously mutated (thanks in part to UV radiation from the Sun). Sadly, his findings proved that Mendel had been right all along. Hey ho. These days scientists can simply force a mutation. Of course, if we hadn't reached this stage we wouldn't have worked out how to do it.
There's also a theory that the Sun is responsible for all of the creation/deity stories/facts we have. If you've seen Zeitgeist (Peter Joseph, 2007) then you'll know all about it. If you haven't, then here it is in brief: there are several religious/mythic/truthful stories that involve someone special being born, dying, and then coming back to life. These stories bear remarkable similarity to the cyclical pattern the Sun follows. It might sound like hogwash, but Zeitgeist makes a fairly compelling argument. At the same time you can find a large number of people speaking out against Zeitgeist. Opinions, don't you just love them?
But let's end this with Edvard Munch, who created a mural of the Sun in 1909 for Oslo University. At first he didn't want to do this at all, but after a great deal of thought he found a way to tackle it that satisfied him. As was Munch's wont, he then became obsessed with the image and painted it over and over and over again. Artists do love to get locked into a thing that no one else really understands, or which seems irrational. In 1899 Munch met a woman called Tulla Larsen and they embarked on an affair. Larsen wanted to get married, but Munch didn't, and things very much came to a head in a room with green walls. Details are sketchy, but it seems that in a naked, drunken, furious row Tulla Larsen shot Munch in the hand. As you might expect, Munch went over the events that took place in this green room again and again and again. Images of himself akin to those of Marat, executed by Charlotte Corday. Supine and bloody and (maybe) dying. And perhaps you're thinking 'well, if someone shoots you then it might be time to leave' but you should really try being shot by someone you love sometime, and then maybe all of this will make a great deal more sense.
What *is* the Sun? We see it every day, but we don't talk about it all that much. You might even say that it gets taken for granted (I don't think that's true), or that we misunderstand it (I think that's true). But whatever you know or don't know about the Sun hopefully we'll all be smarter by the end of this page.
So first off, here's something we all know about the Sun: it's a ball of fire. Of course, it's not a ball of fire at all, but that's a much easier way to summarise it. What it actually is is a very large amount of hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion, so it's glowing, rather than burning. A lot of people wonder how something can burn for such a long time without going out. Well, again, it's not burning. Down on Earth we use fission, rather than fusion. Fission is breaking things apart. Fusion is, as you might have guessed, sticking things together. Fusion creates a much larger amount of energy than fission, but we can't replicate it at the moment. Maybe one day. But not right now.
That's all kind of interesting, but is this really how we interact with the Sun? No, not really.
Our interactions begin when we're very young. It's a large yellow ball in the sky. We're told (as soon as we can understand what we're being told) not to look at it. Don't look at it? It's right there! In the sky! Every day! Don't put it up there if it's so dangerous! That whole thing takes me back to being at a friend's house as a child and being told 'don't eat the bay leaves in the sauce, they're poisonous.' Poisonous?! Why are you putting poison in my food!? Anyway... then we reach an age when we can pick up pencils we start drawing, and the Sun is frequently there. And then at some point we start drawing the Sun's rays. Does anyone tell children to do this? Do adults see pictures of a yellow circle and tell their young to surround it with emanating lines? I don't think so. But it's odd that this occurs, because the Sun doesn't have any lines coming out of it. Well, not that we can see anyway. So why do children draw those lines?
Maybe it's a case of copying what other people do. Maybe it's from squinting and creating a flare or diffraction (like when you look at streetlights). Maybe they're trying to summarise the *feel* of the sun. Maybe it's something else.
Of course, there are rays coming out of the Sun, including gamma rays. That's a part of the light spectrum that we can't see. All we can see is the visible spectrum, which is the colours of the rainbow that daylight (white light) makes visible. The full spectrum is vast, but most of it is completely invisible to our eyes. That doesn't mean it's not there, It just means we can't see it. If you were a scorpion, for example, you'd be able to see in the ultra-violet spectrum. But you're not a scorpion. Well, not literally.
That ultra-violet spectrum also (unsurprisingly) includes ultra-violet radiation. This gets into the cells of living creatures and (eventually) causes mutations to DNA. Some people think that this UV radiation is at the heart of evolution: and that without that radiation we'd all still be fish, or something. Back at the turn of the 20th century Thomas Hunt Morgan was busy doing work to show that Gregor Mendel's work on recessive genes and inheritance was a bunch of hogwash. To do this he needed to find a mutated fruit fly and he just had to sit and wait: copiously going over and over legions of fruit flies until he found one that had spontaneously mutated (thanks in part to UV radiation from the Sun). Sadly, his findings proved that Mendel had been right all along. Hey ho. These days scientists can simply force a mutation. Of course, if we hadn't reached this stage we wouldn't have worked out how to do it.
There's also a theory that the Sun is responsible for all of the creation/deity stories/facts we have. If you've seen Zeitgeist (Peter Joseph, 2007) then you'll know all about it. If you haven't, then here it is in brief: there are several religious/mythic/truthful stories that involve someone special being born, dying, and then coming back to life. These stories bear remarkable similarity to the cyclical pattern the Sun follows. It might sound like hogwash, but Zeitgeist makes a fairly compelling argument. At the same time you can find a large number of people speaking out against Zeitgeist. Opinions, don't you just love them?
But let's end this with Edvard Munch, who created a mural of the Sun in 1909 for Oslo University. At first he didn't want to do this at all, but after a great deal of thought he found a way to tackle it that satisfied him. As was Munch's wont, he then became obsessed with the image and painted it over and over and over again. Artists do love to get locked into a thing that no one else really understands, or which seems irrational. In 1899 Munch met a woman called Tulla Larsen and they embarked on an affair. Larsen wanted to get married, but Munch didn't, and things very much came to a head in a room with green walls. Details are sketchy, but it seems that in a naked, drunken, furious row Tulla Larsen shot Munch in the hand. As you might expect, Munch went over the events that took place in this green room again and again and again. Images of himself akin to those of Marat, executed by Charlotte Corday. Supine and bloody and (maybe) dying. And perhaps you're thinking 'well, if someone shoots you then it might be time to leave' but you should really try being shot by someone you love sometime, and then maybe all of this will make a great deal more sense.