Athabasca (Canada), Nov 14 (The Conversation) Since ancient times, the sun has been known as a giver of light and heat, a source of life. Plants are coaxed from the Earth by its rays, bringing spring, followed by bountiful harvests. The Earth itself was found to have mystical properties when lore from China spread the use of compass magnets to find the north direction.
In 1600, after centuries of western compass use, William Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth I's personal physician, produced a book about magnets that also described the whole Earth as one. Also Read | Jammu and Kashmir: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Appoints Mexican General Ramon Guardado Sanchez As Head of UN Observer Group in Kashmir. American astrophysicist George Ellery Hale gained fame by building the largest telescope in the world in the mid-20th century.
Hale started his career studying the sun, and using polarized light, he showed that certain areas of the sun were highly magnetic, with fields thousands of times stronger than Earth's. This magnetism was strongest in dark regions called sunspots. In the 17th century, Galileo used the newly developed telescope to reveal that the sun was blemished with spots.
He observed many of their properties, including that they showed the sun to rotate each month, and that their size changed over time. Although Galileo conducted some experiments with magnets in the form of lodestones used as crude compasses, he certainly did not make a connection to sunspots. Also Read.
