feature
Under the Weather:
the Sun
Long before we humans had even the vaguest idea why, we realised that the sun was the source of all life on earth, and all of our ances-
by MAUREEN
CORBETT
tors, regardless of the branch they belonged to, worshipped the enormous, warm bright disc that appeared in the east every morn-
process next day. The ancient Romans called the sun-god Sol Invictus while, in Egypt, he was Ra, ferried across the skies in two boats, a morning and an evening one. The pharaohs claimed to derive their power, majesty and authority from him. In South America, sun worship was a bloody
Milk pale skin used to be a fashion must – only peasants, who had to work in the fields, had tans – but then style icon, Coco Chanel, accidentally got a tan. Around the same time, Parisians fell in love with a dusky singer named Josephine Baker and that sealed it. The tan had arrived.
ing and vanished in the west to lower once more the curtain of the night. Most of them regarded it as a god: to the Greeks, the sun was the crown of the god, Helios, who, every day, drove his chariot across the sky and down into Oceanus, only to circle around during the night through the depths of the ocean and repeat the
The hippo secretes a thick red substance through its pores known as ‘blood sweat’ which acts as a natural sunscreen and also has antiseptic qualities
affair. The Aztecs believed that offering the sun god, Huitzilpochtli, a human sacrifice was the highest form of worship; the ‘honoured’, chosen sacrifice would be lain upon the altar, the priest would cut open the chest, rip out the still beating heart and hold it skyward to honour the sun god. But early mankind also understood and could predict the annual ‘migrations’ of the sun and the megalithic structures at New Grange in Ireland and Mnajdra in Malta were oriented in such a way that the sun shines through narrow slits in their walls to illuminate their inner chambers only on significant days like equinoxes and solstices. And now we, being much smarter than our megalithic ancestors, know that the sun is really just a giant ball of burning gas, mostly Hydrogen, almost 150m km away from us and that it is the heart of our solar system.
We are the third planet out from the sun, just the right distance it seems: much closer, we’d be burned to a crisp and a bit further out, frozen solid. The sun’s diameter is over 100 times that of the earth and the temperature at its surface is over 5,500°C. We know about the corona, solar flares, solar winds, the effects on weather, growth on earth and all that kind of thing, and the really smart ones among us reckon that the sun is, by now, middle-aged – it’s been burning for 4.5 billion years, give or take, and will probably last the same again. So no need to worry for a while yet. Also, no need to worry if you didn’t know all those facts – you can look them up. But what you really do need to know is that, despite the warm pleasure it gives, lying in the sun is a dodgy hobby. Sure, we need sun to turn chemicals in our skins into Vitamin D, but you can have too much of a good thing, and especially of the sun. In the short term, there’s heatstroke (potentially fatal), severe sunburn (very painful), dehydration (potentially fatal), wrinkling (unsightly) and, most importantly, melanoma (sneakily potentially fatal). You know when you’ve got heatstroke, dehydration or sunburn, and wrinkles, which are nonfatal and will develop in time, but you don’t know that you’ve got melanoma, often until it’s much too late. So be careful – pace yourself and paste yourself; don’t stay too long in the sun and wear a high quality sun-block. And, if, like me, you’re a pale-skinned Celt, then you are particularly prone to melanoma. Pace and paste. Life’s a bummer sometimes.
Solar eclipses were often interpreted as evil omens. The ancient Chinese believed that a dragon was eating the sun. They beat drums and shot arrows into the air to try and scare it away. When royal astronomers, Hsi and Ho, failed to predict an eclipse, the Emperor had them beheaded for letting the dragon approach undetected.
12 THE WAITING ROOM MAGAZINE | SUMMER
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