Mark Anderson's Blog, page 2
June 4, 2012
A web extra from PRI’s program The World (from WGBH,...
A web extra from PRI’s program The World (from WGBH, Boston) — reading an excerpt from The Day the World Discovered the Sun, chapter 6, “Voyage en Californie”
PopMatters.com excerpts Chapter 1
Over the weekend the pop culture website PopMatters excerpted a section of chapter 1 from The Day the World Discovered the Sun.
“For reasons that were scientific and geopolitical—if not also theological—Venus transit expeditions had become paramount. Even if they meant traveling to a remote and frigid location like Siberia. Although Russian scientists were already preparing their own expeditions to observe the Venus transit, the French Academy of Sciences had secured Chappe an invitation to make his own competing measurements of the celestial event at Tobolsk. Entrée to the Russian empire, with the empress’s blessing no less, spurred Chappe and his party into the Siberian beyond.
For the next eight nights, however, Chappe would enjoy a warm bed in the comfort of one of the great cosmopolitan centers of Europe. His timing was propitious. New Year’s Day in imperial Vienna was like a red-carpeted runway, providing the excuse every monied house in the city needed to strut like a peacock in full fan….”
review in BookConscious
A review of The Day the World Discovered the Sun in the book blog BookConscious. An excerpt:
Anderson makes each expedition come alive; the challenges and detours, hopes and hubris. These small groups of explorers and scientists went places even modern travelers find hard to reach, from the arctic circle to the tropics, in search of perfect viewing. They knew success would be elusive. Some had failed to observe a similar event in 1761, foiled by weather or in at least one case, disappearing forever. Political and economic conditions impacted the expeditions as well and Anderson adroitly fills in these details along with the science behind the missions.
Guest blog for Mich. bookstore Schuler Books
A guest blog about The Day the World Discovered the Sun for indie bookstore Schuler Books
Here is where the book’s action lies: The intersection of science, technology and geopolitics. Animated by some phenomenal characters, motivated by both the brain and the gut — how to understand our universe? how to save untold thousands of lives by mastering the “haven-finding art”? how, astronomers wondered, to rescue our profession?!! Then add to that an obstacle course of some of the greatest perils of a candlelit age: sailing through polar ice storms and carting through arctic wastelands, journeying across vast stretches of uncharted ocean, discovering remote new civilizations, braving New World epidemics that threatened to ruin a Venus transit mission’s purpose and kill everyone on that mission to boot.
There, in essence, is the material for a good page-turner. That’s what I set out to write.
June 2, 2012
The CBC’s acclaimed program “Quirks and...
The CBC’s acclaimed program “Quirks and Quarks” this week features an extended interview discussing…
A new book by science journalist Mark Anderson - The Day The World Discovered The Sun - [that] chronicles the adventures of three of the more successful expeditions to measure the Transit of Venus in optimum locations on Earth. It was a race against the clock for British Naval officer James Cook, who led an excursion to Tahiti; Hungarian priest Maximilian Hell, who traveled to the Norwegian Arctic; and French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche, who navigated his way to the Baja Peninsula in present day California.
The CBC’s science program “Quirks and Quarks”...
The CBC’s science program “Quirks and Quarks” this week features an extended interview discussing…
A new book by science journalist Mark Anderson - The Day The World Discovered The Sun - [that] chronicles the adventures of three of the more successful expeditions to measure the Transit of Venus in optimum locations on Earth. It was a race against the clock for British Naval officer James Cook, who led an excursion to Tahiti; Hungarian priest Maximilian Hell, who traveled to the Norwegian Arctic; and French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche, who navigated his way to the Baja Peninsula in present day California.
Scientific American posts book excerpt
Here’s Scientific American’s post of an excerpt from The Day the World Discovered the Sun.
SciAm’s executive summary of the excerpt:
A French astronomer traveled to Siberia to observe the 1761 transit of Venus, assisting in a worldwide effort to determine the scale of the solar system for the first time
June 1, 2012
Huffington Post Science: "The Roaringest Eclipse"
My guest column for The Huffington Post on The Day the World Discovered the Sun. Anexcerpt:
On one summer day 243 years ago, the heavens became much larger than anyone had dared to imagine. And that same summer day had made them dare and imagine quite a bit.
The day was June 3, 1769, when some of the age’s top explorers and scientists had scattered themselves across the Earth to witness a rare celestial event. Like other wild, breakthrough moments in human history — think of the radio and the roaring 1920s or the fledgling Internet and the go-go 1990s — great minds of the time dared to think big and venture beyond the bounds of the merely acceptable to bring their visionary ideas to life.
SciAm’s podcast on The Day the World Discovered the Sun -...
SciAm’s podcast on The Day the World Discovered the Sun - part 2
(continued from last post)
Scientific American’s podcast (part 1):
With a transit of...
Scientific American’s podcast (part 1):
With a transit of Venus coming up on June 5th or 6th in different parts of the world, Mark Anderson, author of the book The Day The World Discovered the Sun, talks about the great efforts to track the transits of Venus in the 1760s and the science they would produce
