Andrew Cargill
By: Dennis Overbye
Overbye,
Dennis. "Living With a Star." The New York Times. The New York
Times, 04 Feb. 2015. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
The article, “Living With A Star” by Dennis Overbye, talks
about the positives and negatives that we have living with our star. For example, our star is relatively boring,
as Overbye stated, “In all of recorded history, as far as scientists have been able
to tell, the sun’s output has varied by only a tenth of a percent.” This is good new for us as the sun is able to
sustain the right amount of light and heat for us to live our daily lives
without worrying about the sun changing anything. However, in recent years, ‘sunspots’ have
begun to grow which raises concern. Sunspots
cause a rise in solar flares, which launch high-energy particles and radiation
into the solar system. Sunspots peaked in 2014, and still have
dangerously high numbers today. So
although day-to-day things seem to be fine with our sun, one unfortunate sunspot
has the ability to drastically change our lives.
This
significantly affects us and our daily lives.
Our sun is safe and has been working marvelously for millions of years,
but raises questions as to ‘what if’ a solar flare, so large, was launched toward
earth? It happens a lot and it results
in the “Northern or Southern Lights”, but it has the potential to change our
lives forever.
I
personally really liked this article. It
is relatively short and a fast read, yet delivers a lot of information and gives
you a good understanding of the subject.
I was not aware of the topic before reading so it was new to me and I’m
glad I chose it. However, Dennis Overbye
uses a lot of vocab words that I was not entirely familiar with. On top of this, he does not explain any
words, leaving it up to the reader to fully understand what he is trying to
say. Despite this, the article is
generally easy to understand, and his thoughts are well broken up into short
concise paragraphs. However, I still
have a lot of questions after reading it, and I believe that he didn’t do a
good job as to explaining what would happen with these “inevitable outbursts”.
I find this article review by Andrew Cargill very helpful in understanding the problems our sun has been outputting recently. The fact that our future here on earth could be not as long lived as we expected due to the rising occurrence of sunspots is quite frightening. I like that he clearly stated how the solar flare occurrences have been increasing over the years and peaked in 2014 but are still at dangerously high levels. This helps us grasp how quickly these solar flares have been getting worse and how they are still a danger today. Another thing he did well was how he worded this review. I like how he quoted the article numerous times because this let us understand the article he was reviewing fully without having to even open the link to the original article. I personally found this article very interesting and the way he wrote this allowed me to fully grasp all of the information. I also like the way he focussed very much on his personal thoughts of the article. This allowed me to compare what I thought about the article and what he thought and by reading his in depth thoughts about this article I was able to get a new perspective on it as well. One thing I wish he had done better was lengthen the paragraph where he told the reader the significance of the article so we could learn more about it. I found the topic very interesting in the way that we are not as safe as we previously thought, with the high numbers of these solar flares we never know when we will get one big enough to hit earth directly. Overall, I thought Andrew did a very good job at describing us the contents of the article "Living With A Star".
ReplyDeleteAndrew Cargill’s review on Living With a Star by Dennis Overbye gave a whole new perspective to the life of our star known as the sun. It was interesting to read about how the sun’s output is relatively predictable with the exception of sunspots. His review also related the sun back to our lives, which made it more relevant. Overall, I feel like his review gave a new perspective on the sun, explored the suns predictability, and related it back to our lives. The review would have been better if he had added more analysis from actual experts. It would have given the review a little more credibility. I also think he should have gone into more detail about the potential harm to humans from the sun. In general, reading Cargill’s review on Living With a Star impressed me and made me want to find out more about our sun.
ReplyDeleteThis article “Living With A Star” is very interesting to me. This article review was well written because it sparked my curiosity and drew in my concern. Also, Andrew Cargill uses a lot of detail and shows examples and facts about our sun. For exmaple, he uses the quote “In all of recorded history, as far as scientists have been able to tell, the sun’s output has varied by only a tenth of a percent.” This clearly shows that Andrew knows this topic well. Another thing that he has done well is that he can relate it to our lives such as he stated in the second paragraph how he asked what would happen if a solar flare was flung at earth. To make this review even better, Andrew could have put more length on the paragraph talking about how it relates to our everyday lives. For example, he could have mentioned ways to predict solar flares or ways to prevent it. Also, there were some hard vocabulary words to understand. Andrew could have gone more into detail with the Solar Flares, explaining more about what they were and how dangerous they are. Overall, this article and review was very interesting and I have learned a lot of information in a short period of time from “Living With A Star”.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOverbye, Dennis. "Living With a Star." The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Feb. 2015. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
ReplyDeleteFor this current events, I decided to read Andrew Cargill’s review of “Living With A Star”. Throughout his review, there are many elements that I enjoyed but also a few things I would have liked to been improved. As he wrote, I liked how he explained terms that he was talking about, such as, when he mentioned the ‘sunspots’ he went on to explain what they did and how they were able to do that. Also, I appreciated how he used direct examples from the text, which exemplified his understanding over what was being discussed, and more directly was able to give me a better understanding. In addition, he was well able to relate this topic to our lives, more specifically when he talks about the solar flares being launched towards the earth.
With all these great aspects of Andrew’s review, there was also room for improvement. In the first sentence, he refers to the sun as “our star” which I now am able to understand but when reading at first it was slightly unclear until I got further into the piece. I also wish that he added more depth to his second paragraph when talking about the solar flares having the potential to change our lives forever. I would have maybe liked him to discuss how it could change our lives and maybe if there are any ways to prevent, or be safe from these flares.
The part that was most shocking to me was that we are never fully sure when our sun could send a solar flare towards earth so large that it has the potential to be extremely dangerous and change our lives.
Overbye, Dennis. "Living With a Star." The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Feb. 2015. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
ReplyDeleteFor this current events, I decided to read Andrew Cargill’s review of “Living With A Star”. Throughout his review, there are many elements that I enjoyed but also a few things I think Andrew can improve upon. As he wrote, I appreciated how he used direct examples and quotes from the text, which showed the he really knew what he was talking about. Also, I liked how he went in depth and detail on what he was talk about, like when he mentioned the ‘sunspots’ he went in depth on what they did and how they were able to do that. In addition, he did a great job on stating the effects the sun can have on us and people all over the world.
With an abundance great parts of Andrew’s review, there was also some room for improvement. I wish that he added more depth to his second paragraph when talking about the solar flares having the potential to change our lives forever. I would have liked if he said ways it can change peoples lives and how it can change our lives. In the first part of his review, he refers to the sun as “our star” and it was hard to understand what he was specifically talking about, and he could have elaborated in the piece.
The part that was most interesting to me was the fact of solar flares in general. I was never aware of such thing and the fact that i t can have an impact on the world is even more interesting.