Nearest Star: The Surprising Science of Our Sun Leon Golub and Jay M. Pasachoff , Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2001. $29.95 (304 pp.). ISBN 0-674-00467-1
Nearest Star: The Surprising Science Of Our Sun tells the story of our most important star, the Sun, and its relationship to our most important planet, Earth. It is a story with many facets, and multiple links to fundamental physics that might surprise as well as engage the reader. The book is beautifully written and conveys the love that the authors have for the subject.
One of its authors, Leon Golub, is a solar astronomer and one of the leaders of the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) team. The other, Jay Pasachoff, is a noted astronomer who has seen more total eclipses than perhaps any other person. Pasachoff has written several astronomy textbooks, including, one of the best middle-school science books available, Science Explorer: Astronomy (Prentice-Hall, 2000). Together, they are uniquely qualified to write a book on the Sun, and they have produced a truly fascinating tour, complete with an outstanding set of images.
Nearest Star takes us on a multidimensional journey—in space, from the center of the sun to the atmosphere of the Earth, and in time, from the Big Bang to our current arguments about global warming. If you ever wondered what the “saros” is, or how the solar wind is generated, this is the book for you. The breadth of information the authors provide is exceptional. I don’t think I will be the only reader to stop and reread sections, taking in all that these expert authors have to offer.
This book can appeal to a wide audience. Students of space science will find it provides a wonderful overview, and the wider public would enjoy it as well; Nearest Star is, for the most part, written at a Scientific American level. The chapter on current and future space missions might be less appealing to general readers, but space buffs will appreciate the birds-eye view that the authors provide. Overall, the grand scope of the book will engage folks who enjoy keeping abreast of current science.
One especially appealing feature of this book is the historical context provided by the authors. The Sun is the dominant feature in our sky and has absorbed the attentions of observers for millennia. In the scientific age, the Sun continued to be the source of such fundamental questions as How does it shine? Golub and Pasachoff treat the subject by essentially providing a biography of the Sun, weaving together current knowledge and history into a seamless tapestry.
The last chapters of the book deal with the Sun’s influence on Earth. As elsewhere, Golub and Pasachoff are thorough, leading the reader through a wide-ranging discussion of climate, ice ages, and global warming. They also point out that we are, after all, living with a variable star. Solar variability is a wild card in the global climate question, despite the clear anthropogenic forcing of the industrial age. A more direct effect of solar variability is “space weather.” For readers unfamiliar with the term, Nearest Star will provide a nice introduction. And it is gratifying to see a discussion of the aurora that gets the basics right—too many books, even today, still invoke an obsolete picture of direct entry of solar wind particles into the polar regions to explain the northern lights.
In sum, Nearest Star provides an excellent overview of our current understanding of the Sun and its effects on Earth. But, of course, science does not stand still. Already one of the questions left open by this book has been answered: The recent results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory have confirmed that neutrinos do change flavors, and that we do seem to understand the processes that power the Sun’s core. That new and fundamental understandings continue to emerge from the study of our nearest star is a testament to the importance of solar physics.
