15 Million Degrees

15 Million Degrees

A Journey to the Centre of the Sun

Summary

110 times wider than Earth; 15 million degrees at its core; an atmosphere so huge that Earth is actually within it: come and meet the star of our solar system

Light takes eight minutes to reach Earth from the surface of the Sun. But its journey within the Sun takes hundreds of thousands of years. What is going on in there? What are light and heat? How does the Sun produce them and how on earth did scientists discover this?

In this astonishing and enlightening adventure, you'll travel millions of miles from inside the Sun to its surface and to Earth, where the light at the end of its journey is allowing you to read right now. You'll discover how the Sun works (including what it sounds like), the latest research in solar physics and how a solar storm could threaten everything we know. And you'll meet the groundbreaking scientists, including the author, who pieced this extraordinary story together.

Reviews

  • This is a fabulous introduction to our home star, written with an insight and an enthusiasm that makes it very approachable... there's far more to the Sun than you might suspect
    Helen Czerski, author of 'The Storm in a Teacup'

About the author

Lucie Green

Professor Lucie Green is a solar physicist at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory and regularly appears on the BBC's Star Gazing Live with Brian Cox, the Today programme, The Infinite Monkey Cage, BBC Breakfast, Sky at Night and 10 O'clock Live. She works with the world's major space agencies (including NASA), and is helping build Solar Orbiter, a European Space Agency spacecraft that will gradually work its way into an orbit that takes in closer to the Sun than the planet Mercury.
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