The Huge Power of the sun, the ultimate source of all earthly energy and life itself, is being scrutinised as never before. An extraordinary space probe has begun a million-mile odyssey that will take it to the cosmic spot where the Earth’s gravitational pull is balanced by that of the sun. There the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (or SoHo) will linger in vacuous limbo, directing its battery of instrument into the solar wind, probing the mysteries of the sun’s unimaginably hot surface, and transmitting back a stream of unprecedented data.
The mission is designed to illuminate our limited understanding of how the vast solar furnace works and how its energy swirls into space. That in turn has stimulated debate on the everlastingly hot question of whether it is feasible to extricate energy from the sun-say just enough to power the world