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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 07 2017, @12:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-the-Sun-bakes-us dept.

The Sun's surface mysteriously rotates more slowly than its interior. Now researchers have observed the phenomenon with high resolution and proposed an explanation for the behavior. Using a new technique that tracks waves moving through the outer layers of the Sun, the team confirmed the speed difference and attributed the slowdown to the Sun's outer, 70-km "skin." Their model proposes that photons radiated from this layer extract angular momentum, slowing down the rotation. According to the researchers, such a slowdown should occur in all stars and could have a greater effect on larger stars.

The rotation rate of the Sun's plasma varies with latitude—faster at the equator than at the poles—and with distance from the core. Solar researchers noticed the core-surface speed difference decades ago but do not yet have a widely-accepted explanation.

Editorial summary

PRL Article

This rotational anomaly has been implicated in solar flares... so nice to know the cause.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 07 2017, @05:59PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday February 07 2017, @05:59PM (#464174) Homepage

    Although all the numbers up to the speed of light certainly point in that direction, apparently it's not de rigueur to say such a thing these days. Instead, photons just don't have frames of reference.

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    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:46PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday February 07 2017, @06:46PM (#464206) Journal

    That argument is basically the argument that just because you can divide by an arbitrary small positive number, you should also be able to divide by zero.

    Note that this is not just an analogy; if you try to actually describe a frame of reference for the photon, you will need to divide by zero.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 07 2017, @07:56PM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday February 07 2017, @07:56PM (#464235) Homepage

      But describing the proper time, at least, of faster particles involves multiplying by increasingly small numbers, and we know exactly what happens when you multiply by zero.

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      systemd is Roko's Basilisk