Super Solar Speeds

摘要

OUR SUN MAY literally be young at heart. New evidence suggests its core spins nearly four times faster than its outer layers. This finding sheds light on the initial conditions that formed the sun, which spun much faster overall when it was a young star. The window into the sun's core comes from measuring elusive "gravity waves" that wash back and forth through the solar interior like a sloshing bathtub. (These are unrelated to cosmic gravitational waves; for more on those, see page 13.) But the sun is a noisy place, and global pressure waves - more prominent and numerous - mask the gravity waves.