The Clock in the Sun

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 W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics. He is a recipient of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Yodh Prize, which celebrates those who have made important contributions to the field of cosmic rays and astroparticle physics throughout their career.

The Clock in the Sun is a one-of-a-kind history of our understanding of the Sun—and how it has often defied authorities' predictions. Sokolsky beautifully traces this story over nearly a thousand years and across the world, ranging from observations of sunspots through clouds and colorful wisps during solar eclipses to the Nobel Prize-winning research that has led us to believe we finally grasp how the Sun functions.

• PrefaceIntroduction1. Sunspots as Omens: Russian and Chinese Observations2. The Roots of Western Cosmology: Mesopotamia, Greece, and Islam3. Medieval Europe and the Islamic Empire: Where Have All the Sunspots Gone?4. The Invention of the Telescope: Sunspots as Heresy5. After Galileo: Sunspots as Windows Into the Sun and Omens of Weather6. Discovery of the Solar Cycle: Sunspots as Clocks7. The Business Cycle: Sunspots as Economic Indicator8. Solar Spectroscopy: Sunspots as Magnetometers9. The Sun and the Weather: Sunspots as Meteorological Omens10. Twentieth-Century Business Cycle ⇔ Solar Cycle Theories11. Sunspots, the Solar Wind, and the Sun-Earth Connection12. The Sun’s Energy Source: Solar Oscillations and Neutrinos13. Sunspots Today: Current Theories of the Solar Cycle and the Sun-Earth ConnectionAppendix A. Electric and Magnetic FieldsAppendix B. Atoms and Their SpectraNotesAdditional ReadingIndex