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CraigS
27-08-2010, 07:29 AM
"Distant star's sound waves reveal cycle similar to the Sun's"
http://www.physorg.com/news202032832.html

"In a bid to unlock longstanding mysteries of the Sun, including the impacts on Earth of its 11-year cycle, an international team of scientists has successfully probed a distant star. By monitoring the star's sound waves, the team has observed a magnetic cycle analogous to the Sun's solar cycle."
...
"The scientists studied a star known as HD49933, which is located 100 light years from Earth in the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn, just east of Orion."
...
"Whereas past surveys of stars have found cycles similar to the 11-year cycle of the Sun, this star has a cycle of less than a year.
This short cycle is important to scientists because it may enable them to observe an entire cycle more quickly, thereby gleaning more information about magnetic patterns than if they could only observe part of a longer cycle."

Looks like we're going to learn lots more by listening to the sounds from distant stars .. 100 lyrs !!
Pretty neat.

Cheers

renormalised
27-08-2010, 10:06 AM
Helioseismology....very interesting field of study. Looking at the way sound/pressure waves travel through the gases that makeup stars. They can tell quite a lot about the way sound waves behave as they pass through stars....density, temp, elemental abundance, internal physical structure and the processes occurring at depth etc etc etc.

Here's a couple of books to have a look at....

http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Science/General/9781851684519/?cf=3&rid=202580529&i=2&keywords=Helioseismology

http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Science/Astronomy_Space/9781402051784/?cf=3&rid=202580529&i=7&keywords=Helioseismology