Remember the Sun?

The Sun is far more complex and important to humans than is commonly realised. The Japanese satellite Hinode is opening a startling new window on the Sun.

Hinode, Japanese for 'sunrise', was launched on 23 September 2006 to study the sun's magnetic field and how its explosive energy propagates through the different layers of the solar atmosphere.

"For the first time, we are now able to make out tiny granules of hot gas that rise and fall in the sun's magnified atmosphere," said Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division. "These images will open up a new era of study on some of the sun's processes that effect Earth, astronauts, orbiting satellites and the solar system."

Hinode's three primary instruments, the Solar Optical Telescope, the X-ray Telescope and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer, are observing the different layers of the sun. Studies focus on the solar atmosphere from the photosphere - the visible surface of the sun, to the corona - the outer atmosphere that extends outward into the solar system.

Thanks to coordinated measurements from the three instruments, Hinode is already showing how changes in the structure of the magnetic field and the release of magnetic energy in the low atmosphere spread outward through the corona and into interplanetary space.

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Australian scientists are learning how to use sunlight to produce hydrogen gas from seawater.

A revolutionary technology that uses sunlight and sea water to produce an unlimited supply of clean, hydrogen fuel could be developed within a decade, Sydney researchers say.

Leigh Sheppard, of the University of NSW, estimated that 1.6 million of the solar devices, installed on rooftops, would be able to produce enough hydrogen gas to supply Australia's entire energy needs. While other energy options under discussion, such as nuclear power, produce harmful wastes, the only by-products of this solar hydrogen technology would be oxygen and fresh water, Dr Sheppard said.

"It is the cleanest, greenest energy option for a sustainable economy."

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The light and heat from the sun allow life on Earth to exist, which is why the ancients worshiped the Sun. Modern people are too sophisticated to revere deities. But along with liberation from ancient superstitions, humans have lost a sense of perspective in the universe. By making the universe anthropocentric, humans blind themselves to the important forces impacting on Earth from outside the sphere of human influence.