Richard Cohen - Chasing the Sun: A Cultural and Scientific History of the Star That Gives Us Life

ALSO BY RICHARD COHEN

By the Sword: A History of Gladiators,
Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and
Olympic Champions

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2010
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright Narrative Tension Inc. 2010

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
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The right of Richard Cohen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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Excerpt from Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction by Wallace Stevens from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens, and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Kooser, Ted, excerpt from Telescope from Delights and Shadows.
Copyright 2004 by Ted Kooser. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Gogarty, Oliver St John, excerpt from Time, Gentlemen, Time from The Poems and Plays of Oliver St John Gogarty, reprinted with the permission of Colin Smyth Ltd on behalf of V.J. OMara.

Coward, Noel, excerpt from Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
Copyright Noel Coward, reprinted with the permission of
Methuen Drama, an imprint of A&C Black Publishers Ltd.

Auden, W.H., In Praise of Limestone in Collected Poems Of W.H. Auden, reprinted with the permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd.

Lyrics from Time: words and music by Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd (NS). All rights on behalf of Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd. Administered by Artemis Muziekuitgeverij BV.
All rights reserved.

Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. If any have inadvertently been overlooked, the publishers would be glad to hear from them and make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

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from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-74325-928-6
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85720-980-1

Typeset in Baskerville by M Rules
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD

For Toby, Mary and Guy
Stars in their own right

PART ONE THE SUN BEFORE SCIENCE

1 Telling Stories
Solar myths; Max Mllers discoveries; children of the Sun; an Inca festival

2 Celebrating the Seasons
Solstices and equinoxes; worshipping through the seasons; North American sun dances

3 The Three Thousand Witnesses
The Earths standing stones; Stonehenge; the Pyramids; Newgrange and New York

4 Terrors of the Sky
Auroras and eclipses; their respective histories, from 2000 BC to Shakespeare and Milton

PART TWO DISCOVERING THE SUN

5 The First Astronomers
The earliest sungazers; the Sumerians; the Babylonians; the ancient Egyptians

6 Enter the Greeks
From Homer and Hesiod to Pythagoras, Plato and Ptolemy

7 Gifts of the Yellow Emperor
Chinas separateness; modes of thought: yin and yang, the Way and the Sun

8 The Sultans Turret
Arabias great astronomers; India and Western Europe, AD 6001543

9 The Earth Moves
The great four: Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler and Galileo

10 Strange Seas of Thought
Newton on gravity and colour; the transit of Venus; Newtons successors to 1850

11 Eclipses and Enlightenment
From Captain Cook to Einsteins great moment; Antarctica 2003

12 The Sun Dethroned
Solar physics 18001950; the Copenhagen gang; making the atomic bomb

PART THREE THE SUN ON EARTH

13 Sunspots
Their make-up explained; cycles, flares and eruptions; their influence on weather

14 The Qualities of Light
Light in war, in sport and in crime; shadows, sunsets and twilight

15 Beneath the Beating Sun
Heat and its effects; skin colour fashions; from Sun avoidance to sunbathing

16 Skin Deep
Skin cancers and other solar disorders; how melatonin works; sungazing; Seasonal Affective Disorder

17 The Breath of Life
Photosynthesis and its discoverers; plants and the Sun; hibernation and migration

18 The Dark Biosphere
Creatures of the deep; currents and tides

PART FOUR HARNESSING THE SUN

19 The Heavenly Guide
Navigation and cartography as aided by the Sun

20 Of Calendars and Dials
Reckoning the years, from before Julius Caesar to after Gregory VII

21 How Time Goes By
Calculating the hours: the creation of Standard Time, Greenwich Mean Time and Daylight Saving Time

22 The Sun in Our Pocket
Solar energy, from Archimedes mirrors to solar-powered cars

PART FIVE INSPIRED BY A STAR

23 The Vital Symbol
Flags; the Sun King; the metaphors of gold, blondes and mirrors

24 Drawing on the Sun
The Sun in art, from the Renaissance through Turner, Van Gogh, Matisse and Hockney

25 Negative Capabilities
The Sun in photography, film and architecture

26 Talk of the Day
The Sun in classical and pop music, from Mozart to the Beatles

27 Busy Old Fool...
Homer and Dante, Chaucer and Donne, Lawrence and Nabokov

28 The Rising Star of Politics
Solar imagery and the Nazis; Japans divine emperor; the Sun as taken up by Mao and Benedict XVI

PART SIX THE SUN AND THE FUTURE

29 Over the Horizon
Solar astronomy from 1950 to the present

30 Under the Weather
The ozone layer; the Sun and global warming; will the Earth get too hot or freeze over?

31 The Impossible and Beyond
Science-fiction from ancient Rome, Swift, Verne, H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke

32 The Death of the Sun
Solar catastrophes; asteroids and meteors; what will happen when the Sun burns out

Solar Eclipse Chiapas, Mexico, in 1991. Photo by Antonio Turok

An 1857 painting of the sun goddess Amaterasu, with Mount Fuji in the background. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Gift of Louis W. Hill Jr.

The heroic archer Houyi, who shot down nine of the ten suns. Copyright Mona Caron

The sun chariot of Surya. Michaud Roland et Sabrina/Rapho/Eyedea Illustrations

Max Mller. Walker & Cockerell, ph. Sc

A map of the distribution of solar cultures round the world. Graphis magazine, 1962

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, standing in front of the Bocca della Verit in the Church of Santa Maria, Rome. Paramount Pictures

Celebrants jumping a bonfire during summer solstice festivities at St Jean in Alsace. Cabinet des Estampes et des Dessins de Strasbourg/Photo Muses de la Ville de Strasbourg/M. Bertola

A Mexican sun- ball game. Reuters/Henry Romero

The Okipa, the dance ritual of the Mandan Indians, as depicted by the artist George Catlin. Copyright the Library, American Museum of Natural History

The massive pillars of Stonehenge. Photo courtesy of Madanjeet Singh

The passageway at Newgrange burial mound in Ireland. Courtesy of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Ireland