Ten Things You Didnʼt Know About The Sun

By Richard Cohen

1. The Sun's core burns at a sustained 15,000,000 degrees C°, 27,000,000 degrees
F°. A single photon from the core takes 150,000 years to reach the frontiers of
space.

2. In pagan times, the Sun's birthday was celebrated on December 25. Then in 354
A.D., Liberius, Bishop of Rome, decreed that day as the birthday of Jesus Christ.

3. The Sun is brighter than 85 percent of the Milky Way—but on Earth the brightest
sustained light isn't from the Sun at all but from the Sky Beam at the Luxor Resort
and Casino in Las Vegas.

4. Ancient worshippers believed our star was a man with three eyes and four arms,
abandoned by his spouse because his brightness made her weary.

5. Both Russian scientists and American historians have connected revolutions with
sunspots. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Paris Commune,
and both Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 all fell close to the years of
maximum solar activity.

6. Galileo was the first to observe blemishes on the solar surface—sunspots—but

hid his discoveries for fear of persecution.

7. The Sun is responsible for 44 percent of the Earth's tidal energy (the Moon the
remainder). When Sun and Moon are in alignment—in apogee—pulling the Earth in
the same direction, our bodies are stretched, making each of us taller—albeit by a
factor of ten to the minus sixteenth.

8. In India, even today, pregnant women are kept indoors during an eclipse, for fear
their babies will be born blind or with cleft palates.

9. The physicists who discovered the source of the Sun's power were the same
men who helped create the atomic bomb.

10. Twenty-five percent of people sneeze when exposed to sunlight (Francis Bacon,
in 1635, being one of several ancients to recognize the affliction). Pathologists
have dubbed this 'the Attishoo Syndrome.' It is well known as a hazard to fighter
pilots, especially when they turn towards the Sun.

Richard Cohen is the author of CHASING THE

SUN on sale November 9, 2010.

Read an excerpt from the book

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 Selected Sun Facts from Richard Cohen’s Journey Around the World

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