At Quanta: Sun “stranger than astrophysicists imagined”

Sun/NASA

Naturally, they’re hoping for some new physics to come out of these surprises:

Gamma rays, the highest frequency waves of light, radiate from our nearest star seven times more abundantly than expected. Stranger still, despite this extreme excess of gamma rays overall, a narrow bandwidth of frequencies is curiously absent.

The surplus light, the gap in the spectrum, and other surprises about the solar gamma-ray signal potentially point to unknown features of the sun’s magnetic field, or more exotic physics.

“It’s amazing that we were so spectacularly wrong about something we should understand really well: the sun,” said Brian Fields, a particle astrophysicist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.Natalie Wolchover, “The Sun Is Stranger Than Astrophysicists Imagined” at Quanta

Just think, if new physics comes out of this, it will be real physics too, not rubbish about the multiverse or how we are all living in some space alien’s giant sim world.

See also: Michael Denton On Why The Sun Is Remarkably Fit For Life

Early Sun’s rotation rate was just right for us, it turns out

and

New study: Yes, our sun is peculiar

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