Mark Anderson's Blog, page 3
May 28, 2012
Macleans (Canada): "A heck of a yarn... a real-life literal Star Trek"
From Macleans’ review of The Day the World Discovered the Sun:
“The second transit … in 1769, was a generation’s last chance. That set the finest minds in Europe dashing off, to risk terrifying sleigh rides in the Siberian wilds, shudder with hypothermia in the Norwegian Sea, and hallucinate in the grip of “jail fever” in Mexico. Not all would return alive to the comfortable salons of royalty. It’s a heck of a yarn—a sort of real-life literal Star Trek from the era of tall ships, terra incognita, and scientific Enlightenment.”
May 26, 2012
REVIEW: "A fast-paced narrative that has you on the edge of your seat"
Presidential historian Anthony Bergen gives The Day the World Discovered the Sun two thumbs up. From his review:
The Day the World Discovered the Sun follows French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche, whose 1761 observations from Siberia didn’t provide the answers he hoped for, and his Spanish partners as they crossed the Atlantic, made an overland journey across Mexico and built their makeshift observatory at San José del Cabo in present-day Baja California. In the Arctic, Denmark’s teenage King Christian VII invited the expedition of two Hungarian priests, Maximilian Hell and Joannes Sajnovics, who brave harrowing mountain roads, frigid Arctic waters, and the bitter cold and endless nights of a Nordic winter to observe the transit from the northern Norwegian village of Vardø. The English expedition is led by a soon-to-be-famous Captain James Cook and while they’re heading to the much more welcoming climate of Tahiti, the voyage through the South Atlantic and around Cape Horn is no less dangerous then the expeditions of Chappe and Father Hell.
All three expeditions are compelling, with riveting accounts of the voyages to the far-flung points of observation, and a fast-paced narrative that has you on the edge of your seat, rooting for each of the teams of astronomers to be able to have the opportunity to actually see the transit of Venus on June 3, 1769 without the threat of clouds, broken equipment, dangerous weather, angry natives, or debilitating illness. Anderson weaves the three stories together seamlessly and The Day the World Discovered the Sun is a book about scientific advancement and adventure that is somehow able to avoid being bogged down with the complexities of science. For those, like me, who are casual fans of astronomy, Anderson helpfully includes a technical appendix in the back of the back which further explains the calculations these astronomers and explorers needed to use.
Mark Anderson’s extensive research (and his master’s degree is astrophysics) is enhanced by the storytelling ability of a Shakespearean scholar (which he is). The Day the World Discovered the Sun is a captivating collection of stories about a rare phenomenon that also happens to be a valuable scientific opportunity — not just back in 1769 when the observations of the transit of Venus from around the world helped measure the dimensions of our solar system, but also today, as we prepare for the June 5, 2012 Venus transit.
A rising popular science star in the mold of Carl Sagan, Brian...
A rising popular science star in the mold of Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, and Neil deGrasse Tyson — someone I suspect you’ll be seeing much more of in the years to come — is a young Oxford physicist named Andrew Steele.
His excellent 3-and-a-half minute video on the Venus transit — and how it works and why it’s as rare as it is — is quite brilliant.
May 25, 2012
From the Royal Greenwich Observatory in the UK, this 4-minute...
From the Royal Greenwich Observatory in the UK, this 4-minute short film presents the techniques used to measure distances across the universe. It’s from the Observatory’s current exhibition (on display through Sept. 2, 2012) titled “Measuring the Universe: from the transit of Venus to the edge of the cosmos”
Christian Science Monitor - how the Venus transit opened up the world
from the Monitor’s Q&A:
Q: What was the big mystery that all these scientists were trying to solve?
A: In two words, it was “how far.”
How far is the most important thing in our universe, the sun? And how far would you go to find that answer? Would you be willing to lay down your life? A host of scientists and explorers at this time did just that.
The other question is essential to the story: How far is the shore? That’s the other question, the one that ship navigators could not answer. As a result, thousands of people died gruesome deaths at sea by shipwreck or being lost at sea.
These astronomers had invented an 18th-century GPS system that opened up the entire planet to seafaring nations. The voyages were the perfect testing grounds for this new technology.
The cool thing for the story is that to find the answer to both questions, you have to go to the ends of the earth. That sets the stage for an amazing adventure.
Space.com on the transit of Venus - between the Earth and a hot...
Space.com on the transit of Venus - between the Earth and a hot place
May 22, 2012
Nature on The Day the World Discovered the Sun: "Arresting ... a rich broth of details"
Owen Gingerich, perhaps the pre-eminent historian of astronomy today, praises The Day the World Discovered the Sun in Nature. From his book review:
Journalist Mark Anderson’s arresting The Day the World Discovered the Sun begins with the 1761 [Venus] transit, but concentrates on the three most significant journeys of the 1769 event. These were Captain James Cook’s voyage to Tahiti; the Hungarian Jesuit Maximilian Hell’s frigid journey to Vardø, above the Arctic Circle in Norway; and French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche’s sweaty and insect-ridden expedition to San José del Cabo in Baja California, present-day Mexico.
Anderson serves up a rich broth of details — such as that British sailors did not have soap in their rations until the 1780s, or that Cook’s small ship Endeavour had more than 90 people on board, in part because it was expected that half the crew on a round-the-world trip would die of scurvy. (In the event, Cook engaged in a medical experiment with a diet of sauerkraut for the crew, and not a single sailor was lost to the condition.)
The transit of Venus in popular culture
In 1883, John Philip...
The transit of Venus in popular culture
In 1883, John Philip Sousa wrote a march to commemorate the transit of Venus — which had captivated the world’s imagination just a few months before in Dec. 1882. Like popular interest in the transit itself, Sousa’s march quickly returned to obscurity, mostly unperformed for more than a century. But in the buildup to the 2004 transit of Venus, bands and orchestras around the world dusted off Sousa’s score and gave the old calliope a twirl once again. (One rock band from Virginia updated the soundtrack with a 2011 song called “Venus Transit.”)
In a slightly less astronomical vein, novelist Shirley Hazzard won the 1990 National Book Critics Circle Award for her poetic novel about the peripatetic lives of two orphan sisters called The Transit of Venus. (New Yorker online book club chat about the novel here.) From the book’s summary by GoodReads
The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard’s most brilliant novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England. What happens to these young women — seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal — becomes as moving and wonderful and yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves. Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Hazzard’s novel is a story of place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through the displacements and absurdities of modern life.
(hat tip to G.R.A.)
May 21, 2012
This week’s episode of “Viewpoints Radio”...
This week’s episode of “Viewpoints Radio” features an 11-minute interview about The Day the World Discovered the Sun. From Viewpoints’ website:
The Transit of Venus: What it is and why it’s still important
Mark Anderson, author of “The Day the World Discovered the Sun”
Coming up on June 5th is a rare astronomical event: the transit of Venus. We talk to a researcher and author Mark Anderson about what the transit is; how, in the 18th century, explorers and scientists travelled to the ends of the earth to observe and measure the transit; and what it means to science today.
May 18, 2012
Today (May 18) The Tim Danahey Show - 2:15 p.m. eastern
Today at 2:15 p.m. eastern/12:15 mountain time, the Tim Danahey Show (Castle Rock Radio, Castle Rock, Colo.) will be hosting a half-hour conversation with author Mark Anderson to talk about The Day the World Discovered the Sun. Live-stream here. Show archives here.
