The Enigma Of Sunspots

Author : Willie Wei-Hock Soon
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9814486655
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (144 download)

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Download or read book The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection written by Willie Wei-Hock Soon and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2003-12-29 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes an excursion through solar science, science history, and geoclimate with a husband and wife team who revealed some of our sun's most stubborn secrets. E Walter and Annie S D Maunder's work helped in understanding our sun's chemical, electromagnetic and plasma properties. They knew the sun's sunspot migration patterns and its variable, climate-affecting, inactive and active states in short and long time frames. An inactive solar period starting in the mid-seventeenth century lasted approximately seventy years, one that E Walter Maunder worked hard to make us understand: the Maunder Minimum of c 1620–1720 (which was posthumously named for him). With ongoing concern over global warming, and the continuing failure to identify root causes driving earth's climatic changes, the Maunders' story outlines how our cyclical sun can alter climate. The book goes on to view the sun-earth connection in terms of geomagnetic variation and climatic change; contemporary views on the sun's operating mechanisms are explored, and the effects these have on the earth over long and short time scales are pondered. If not a call to widen earth's climate research to include the sun, this book strives to illustrate how solar causes and effects can influence earth's climate in ways we must understand in order to enhance solar system research and our well-being. Contents:A Sun Most Pure and Most LucidBackground of the Maunder MinimumThe Maunder Minimum: Europe, Asia, North AmericaSurveying the Maunder MinimumMaunder's Early Life and AssociationsThe Family Maunder: the BAA and Astronomy for AllA Particle Theory for the Sun-Earth ConnectionOur Knowledge of the Sun and Its Variability TodaySummary: Cycles of the Sun and Their Tie to EarthThe Maunders and Their Final Storyand other papers Readership: Researchers, scientists, college-level astrophysics students and readers interested in the history of solar science. Keywords:Maunder Minimum;Sun-Earth Connection;Sunspots;Solar Flares;Coronal Mass Ejections;Magnetic Dynamo;Geomagnetic Storms;Little Ice Age;History of Solar and Sun-Earth Connection SciencesReviews:“You have put together an impressive and fascinating collection of historical facts, combining the human condition and the condition of the climate and of the Sun. Your account is unique and valuable … When agriculture is disrupted by cold weather and the landlord still tries to collect the same rent, there is bound to be turmoil.”Eugene N Parker University of Chicago “Although the Maunder Minimum is a very well-known phenomenon in the history of paleoclimate, its explanation is still full of controversies. It is highly important, therefore, that the authors of this book have made a successful effort of collecting and discussing the entire existing factual information on the subject, as well as highlighting the theoretical considerations of the Maunder Minimum. This is an impressive step forward in the analysis of a most important phenomenon in the history of past climates. I find this effort both persuasive and perspective.”Kirill Ya Kondratyev Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences “This is an excellent, well-balanced and informative book on an important phase in the study of sun-climate relations. After a brief introduction on early, most naked eye solar observation, it centers on the period of globally low temperatures, now known as the Maunder minimum. Many unknown historical observational data, from the various continents, are described. The book then describes the Maunder couple and their family, their life history in Victorian England and at the Greenwich Observatory, and their discovery of the Maunder (‘butterfly’) diagram and of the 17th century minimum in the sunspot activity and in related features such as auroras and tree-ring data. Their finding that the sunspot minimum might be related to the globally reduced temperatures may be considered as the early beginning of the study of Sun-Climate relations. The third part of the book is devoted to modern views on the Sun-Earth connection. This part too is written in a critical, informative and balanced way. I find this volume a fine contribution to the study of the Sun-Climate problem.”Cornelis de Jager Distinguished Solar Physicist SRON Laboratory for Space Research, The Netherlands “This book is a wonderful reading which combines intellectual ideas from various branches of modern science, i.e. astronomy, climatology, physics, history of science, biology, etc. The content is very deep and the authors are not afraid to show the soul of scientific methods to the reader. Yet the book avoids complicated mathematical details. The book is interesting for specialists and understandable for general public. One learns from the book about a cataclysm which happened about 350 years ago on the Sun supported and probed by various observational methods including the novel technique of learning about the Sun from other ‘solar stars’. A coherent understanding of the information obtained perhaps requires a century and this story looks more intriguing, rather like many crime stories. The Maunder minimum of solar activity affected various aspects of life on Earth and it is impossible to ignore related experiences by discussing such important topics as global warming, greenhouse effect, sun-climate relation, etc. I believe that everybody who would like to know what modern science offers about these varieties of topics can learn a great deal from the book of W Soon and S Yaskell.”Dmitry Sokoloff Professor of Mathematical Physics Moscow University “This book opens with a Foreword by Eugene N Parker, the world's leading authority on the solar wind and the effects of magnetic fields on the heliosphere … The details of this Sun-Earth connection are still to be discovered, but this book provides the historical evidence that must be taken into account as we improve our understanding of both the Sun and Earth's climate.”Eugene H Avrett Division Director Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics “This book is a rich tapestry of scientific information and wide-ranging historical narrative, into which is woven the little-known personal story of Walter Maunder and his mathematician wife Annie. The authors see Maunder as clearly a man ahead of his time and his wife as a collaborator who brought the benefit of university training to an unusual and devoted partnership. They were among the most experienced eclipse observers of their day and were active promoters of amateur astronomy in Britain. They deserve a place in the annals of the Sun.”Mary Bruck Formerly from University of Edinburgh “This is a fascinating and wide-ranging book which deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in the Earth–Sun environment, in global warming and climatic change and in the history of science … it ends with a useful and non-mathematical summary on the modern view of solar magnetic mechanisms, and a short biography of the Maunders.”Journal of the British Astronomical Association “… offer a readable and engaging summary of the history and current status of sunspot understanding, sunspot observation, and linkages between sunspots and changes in Earth's atmosphere.”Choice “Drawing profitably from the latest research, this is a well-rounded, recommended read.”Astronomy Now “The main strength is that this book brings together a vast amount of diverse, but related, material … the authors have provided a very comprehensive and extremely valuable index of sources at the conclusion of the book. The compilation contains citations for many of the original sources, as well as recent reviews. This bibliography provides an excellent point of departure for those readers who, like numerous scientists, savants, and scholars of the last three centuries, have become hooked on deciphering the unfolding clues that underlie the variable Sun-Earth Connection.”Thomas J Bogdan Societal-Environmental Research and Education Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado