First Person: James Bailey

摘要

Despite the fact that we see it every day, the Sun remains a mysterious place. Its interior is too opaque for distant instruments to see inside, and too hot for probes to survive. Analysis of the seismic activity in the Sun and other properties gives clues to its inner makeup, but for some time observations haven't agreed with solar models. To investigate, James Bailey (right), an experimental physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, and his colleagues found a way to re-create conditions deep within the Sun, albeit briefly and on a small scale. Their decade-long experiments show that iron holds part of the answer: That element's opacity-its ability to hinder propagation of radiation from the solar interior to the outside-is higher than predicted, partially rectifying theories and observations. Bailey discussed his team's results and their implications with Managing Editor Fenella Saunders.