The sun is the star of life. The fate of man and nature depends on her. The astronomer, philosopher and journalist Sibylle Anderl and political scientist Claus Leggewie shed light on the star from three perspectives. The first chapter of her book is initially about the physics of this huge gas ball, which turns around 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium per second. In doing so, it releases an enormous amount of energy – and has been 4.6 billion years ago since her birth. The star will live for about that long before it ends as an earth -sized white dwarf.
The second chapter comes to the fore the cultural -historical aspect. Even in the old cultures, the sun was considered one of the most important celestial bodies, which led to a myth formation and indeed. Last but not least, secular rulers used this for political purposes, such as the proverbial solar king Louis XIV in the European baroque age.
Technically, it becomes in the last section, which deals with the role of the sun in modern society: photovoltaics and its future, fusion power plants that are supposed to bring the sun fire to earth, or solar geoengineering to brake global warming. The illustrations in the compact and informative book are well selected, only the labels of the graphics are far too small. Helmut Hornung
Sibylle Anderl, Claus Leggewie
The sun. A discovery
Matthes & Seitz, 189 pages, € 22, –
ISBN 978-3-7518-2041-7