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Pierre Sokolsky provides a history of knowledge of the Sun through the lens of sunspots and the solar cycle, shedding new light on key discoveries and the people who made them.
List of contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Sunspots as Omens: Russian and Chinese Observations
2. The Roots of Western Cosmology: Mesopotamia, Greece, and Islam
3. Medieval Europe and the Islamic Empire: Where Have All the Sunspots Gone?
4. The Invention of the Telescope: Sunspots as Heresy
5. After Galileo: Sunspots as Windows Into the Sun and Omens of Weather
6. Discovery of the Solar Cycle: Sunspots as Clocks
7. The Business Cycle: Sunspots as Economic Indicator
8. Solar Spectroscopy: Sunspots as Magnetometers
9. The Sun and the Weather: Sunspots as Meteorological Omens
10. Twentieth-Century Business Cycle ⇔ Solar Cycle Theories
11. Sunspots, the Solar Wind, and the Sun-Earth Connection
12. The Sun’s Energy Source: Solar Oscillations and Neutrinos
13. Sunspots Today: Current Theories of the Solar Cycle and the Sun-Earth Connection
Appendix A. Electric and Magnetic Fields
Appendix B. Atoms and Their Spectra
Notes
Additional Reading
Index
About the author
Pierre Sokolsky is an experimental particle astrophysicist. He is distinguished professor of physics and astronomy emeritus at the University of Utah, where he was also dean of the College of Science. Sokolsky is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, and a recipient of the American Physical Society’s Panofsky Prize in High Energy Physics.
Summary
Pierre Sokolsky provides a history of knowledge of the Sun through the lens of sunspots and the solar cycle, shedding new light on key discoveries and the people who made them.
