The science involved in “Sunstorm”:
Science is used in this book to portray the high-technology world being hit by a major solar event which occurs on June 9th 2037, disrupting virtually all of the earth's electronic hardware. Dramatic as it is, this phenomenon is only a minor precursor of a far more massive solar eruption about five years off. Scientific models of the projected 2042 event make clear that the Earth will be sterilized completely by the upcoming solar burst. Eurasia, United States of America and China have less than five years to build a 30,000 kilometer layer of film shield that stretch across the Earth’s atmosphere in preparation from the flare. A dilemma arises whilst minimizing the shield’s design mass. If the shield is made too light, more sunlight would penetrate Earth. Even with the slightest of one degree of damage can have a harmful global warming effect, melting the ice caps and creating floods. The bigger the mass of the shield, that harder it would be to lift the shield into space. The further the shield drifts towards the Sun, the bigger the shield it has to be to shade Earth from radiation. These effects counteract, giving no solution, but more problems. They have to make the shield at equilibrium, where both effects are balanced, giving the most efficient shield to deflect the flare from the Earth.
Science extracts from “Sunstorm”:
“The Sun has been shining for five billion years, breathing out heat and light and the solar wing, a stream of high-energy charged particles…Meanwhile sunspots, cooler areas dominated by tangles of magnetic fields, were noticed by humans on the sun’s surface …From such troubled areas, flares and immense explosions can spew high-frequency radiation and fast moving charged particles out into space. All this is ‘weather’ batters against the layers of air and electromagnetism that shield the Earth.” – Pages 30 - 31.
This conveys the idea of the Sun being partitioned and having segments of which there are regions of the Sun where it was cool and active regions within the Sun’s surface which radiated vast amounts of energy. Except what is most peculiar about the formation of the Sun is that there is a new active region, which had caused the Sunstorm on the Earth, and other neighbouring planets orbiting the Sun such as Mars. The new active region will flare once more, in which it will hurl out in one day the energy it would normally spend in a year. For that day, there will be no night, no darkness. The Earth will become a ball of fire; so hot that nothing will survive.
“The sun is a ball of gas, mostly hydrogen, more than a million kilometres wide – that is, as wide as a hundred Earths strung side by side, and as massive as a million Earths. The source of its vast energy output is its core, a star within a star where, in complicated chains of reactions … But the core is swaddled by a thick belt of turgid gas called the ‘radioactive zone’, opaque as a brick wall, through which the inner heat passes in the form of X-rays. In the next layer out, the ‘convective zone’, the densities have lessened to the point where the sun’s material can boil … “ - Pages 70 - 71
The description of the Sun creates a vivid image of how vast the Sun actually is, in comparison to the Earth. It’s like a ball of fire, in which reactions within the nuclei consisting of hydrogen fusing to helium and other heavier elements, to make this hot layer of core in the Sun. There is enlightenment in this text which fascinates the reader with concise details and information about the Sun.
Personal Response:
“Sun Storm” is a well written novel; the chapters that I read from this abstract aid the explanation of the subject matter. It justifies the scenario of a flare pursuing towards the Earth, creating catastrophe down on the planet; however the text explains and considers the storm just as a precursor. Another sun storm will arise, on a much vast scale, enhancing the chances of human survival to a slim chance. The language used is very technical, with complex scientific language, which develops the setting of the text being displayed in a scientific area, and the vocabulary used shows the common technical science language used in a space station. The language is very informative and concise with detail. The extracts that I have studied are constructed well, and understandable to a mature audience, and I have enjoyed reading “Sun Storm” as it reflects on ideas that could happen at any time, and shows realism in today’s society.