First Light

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The sun looked like a cheese pizza that had been broiled in hell’s hottest oven.

Dr. Daniel Chien frowned at the monitor, concerned less with the rippling cheese than the rising bubbles of red sauce. Each bubble erupted with a force equaling 100 billion megatons of TNT, spewing electromagnetic radiation across the solar system. Chien was intellectually aware that the pizza was really a massive star around which Earth and other planets revolved, but technology had reduced it to little more than a commercial-free reality-TV show.

Sir Isaac Newton nearly blinded himself staring at the sun, and I can do it from the comfort of my air-conditioned cubicle.

The images recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory were a marvel of modern technology. Not only was the space-based observatory performing a continuous, real-time monitoring of solar activity, it used an array of solar panels as its energy source. In turn, the data allowed Chien and other researchers to study the sun’s electromagnetic fluctuations, solar wind, sunspot activity, and particle radiation.

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