It is the ball of fire in our part of the galaxy, without it there would be no life on Earth. But our relationship with it has changed in recent years: whereas it used to be the celestial star that promised guidance and defined the day, today it is a threat to us. It ruthlessly burns down whole areas of land and melts the polar ice caps, we seek protection from its rays – and at the same time utopian ideas entwine around it, the seemingly infinite source of energy.
Together, Sibylle Anderl and Claus Leggewie approach the overwhelming nature of our star as a scientific and cultural-historical fact. Anyone who wants to say something about the Sun cannot remain silent about heliocentric cosmologies, solar deities, the functioning of semiconductors, solar geoengineering and nuclear fusion.
“Why discover the sun, which we see almost every day? Well, there is a lot to rediscover: thousands of years of human knowledge about weather and navigation, agriculture and plant cultivation, well-being and much more that today's people have forgotten or delegated to smartphones and experts. Since the sun has been burning down on us more and more frequently and whole areas of land have become deserted, people have been looking at this source of all life with fear and trying to protect themselves from it. On closer inspection, we discover how imperfect our star is – and how finite.”
Non-fiction
Sibylle Anderl, born in 1981, is an astrophysicist and philosopher. From 2017 she was an editor in the features section of the FAZ, in 2021 she became head of the science section in the FAZ and FAS, and since 2024 she has been head of ZEIT Wissen. She has also been co-editor of the cultural magazine Kursbuch since 2021.
Claus Leggewie, born in 1950, is a political scientist. He was Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen from 2007 to 2017 and has since been Head of the Panel on Planetary Thinking at the University of Giessen.
