14 DAY TRIAL // The outermost part of the Sun may be rotating a bit slower than the rest of the star, a new study suggests. The conclusion is based on a careful analysis of the star's midsection. Experts say that the Sun is a lot slimmer than first calculated, and that its overall shape does not vary as much as thought.
These discoveries have significant implications on our understanding of how the object functions. The star works in 11-year cycles, and astronomers believed that its shape varied considerably during each such cycle. The new data appear to infirm previous hypotheses, ScienceNow reports.
If these results are correct, then only a small percentage of the Sun spins slower than the rest. The main implication here is that the object is not as oblate (bulging at the Equator and squished at the poles) as first established.
Data used in the investigation were collected by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which looks at the Sun at multiple wavelengths.