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Scientists have peered inside the Sun and observed subtle shifts and “glitches” that have occurred over four decades, shedding light on the enigmatic long-term vibrations of our star, reports a study published on Tuesday in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The Sun goes through a roughly 11-year cycle that includes a period of high and low activity, known as solar maximum and minimum. The past few cycles have revealed changes in solar behavior that could have implications for predicting space weather and unraveling the internal dynamics of our Sun, along with other Sun-like stars.
To drill down on this mystery, researchers with the Birmingham Solar-Oscillations Network (BiSON), a network of telescopes that have monitored the Sun since the 1970s, compared the last four solar minima using this unique 40-year dataset and focused on internal vibrations that make the sun subtly oscillate.
“The entire Sun oscillates in a globally coherent way, and the oscillations are formed by sound waves trapped inside the Sun that make it resonate just like a musical instrument,”said Bill Chaplin, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Birmingham who co-authored the study, in a call with 404 Media.
“For this particular study, we were interested in seeing whether there are differences in what the Sun is doing in its structure when you focus on the periods or epochs when the Sun is very quiet,” he continued. “The last few cycles have seen some quite marked changes in behavior.”
For example, scientists have been perplexed for years by an unusually long and quiet solar minimum between cycle 23 to 24, which occurred from 2008 to 2009. Chaplin and his colleagues were able to use BiSON’s long record of asteroseismology—the study of stellar interiors—to directly contrast the interior vibrations of the Sun during this minimum to others.
“There were hints that there were things that were different” about this cycle, said Chaplin. “But now that we have the cycle 24-25 minimum—the last one in about 2019—in the bag, then we thought, ‘okay, now's the time to actually go back and look at this.’”
The team specifically looked for an acoustic wave “glitch” caused by an interior layer in which helium atoms lose electrons, producing a detectable change in the Sun’s internal structure. This glitch was significantly stronger during the 2008–2009 minimum, suggesting that the Sun’s outer interior was slightly hotter and allowed sound waves to travel faster at that time of magnetic weakness.
“The ionizing helium affects the speed at which the sound waves move through that region,” explained Chaplin. “It leaves a characteristic imprint.”
“It's not just that there is a difference with the other cycles, but it's starting to tell us about what physically has really changed beneath the surface,” he added. “They're quite subtle changes, but it's nevertheless giving us clues as to what is actually happening beneath the Sun during this very quiet period.”
The results confirm that the Sun doesn’t return to the same minimum baseline at the end of every cycle, and its activity varies within timescales of decades and centuries. For example, Chaplin pointed to one bizarrely long quiet period from 1645 to 1715, known as the Maunder Minimum.
Astronomers during this time marvelled at the prolonged lack of visible sunspots on the Sun’s surface, a sign of extremely low solar activity. Centuries later, BiSON and other solar observatories are allowing scientists to study the interior dynamics behind these shifts in depth for the first time.
“This is the first step in actually demonstrating that there are changes,” Chaplin said. “Does this mean that there are systematic changes in the way that the Sun is generating its field? It's really only now, because we have this long dataset, that we can start to ask questions like that. Previously, we just didn't have enough data to say.”
Scientists hope to keep recording the long-term behavior of the Sun with projects like BiSON so that we can better understand its mercurial nature over time. This is interesting work on its own merits, but it is also useful for refining forecasts of space storms that can wreak havoc on power grids and space assets (while also producing pretty auroras).
Chaplin also nodded to the European space telescope PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO), due for launch in 2027. This mission will search for analogous oscillations in stars beyond the Sun, building on similar work conducted by NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope.
Studying the vibrations of the Sun and other similar stars is not only important for life here on Earth; it also has implications in the search for extraterrestrial life, because local solar activity is one key to assessing the habitability of star systems similar to our own.
“The data that we have on other stars from Kepler has really helped to understand and get a better picture of the cyclic variability of other stars, like the Sun,” Chaplin concluded. “But it's still not an entirely clear picture; let's put it that way. Seismology now enables you to do really detailed analysis of stars that you can't do by other means.”
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Mr Mikage (ミスター御影) posted a photo:
“Warriorhood is an act of living an awakened life,” says Rupy C. Tut, referencing the continual battles that emerge from being a person in the world. Tut has long invoked her family’s history of migration and Punjabi heritage to consider kinship, a theme that has more recently evolved into a recurring warrior character. “The privilege of belonging and being seen as a part of a place, without needing explanations, is not available to my characters, who are finding ways to navigate and battle that out-of-place-ness,” she adds.
Depicting suited figures floating amid translucent jellyfish, the dream-like “Battle Ready” is one such work. The creatures’ tentacles trail across the composition, shrouding both the blue expanse and the subjects’ limbs in their wispy lines. These patterns also offer insight into the emotional register of the piece. “If the environment is meant to assuage, then the character’s bodysuit is chaotic distress,” the artist tells Colossal. “Similarly, if the bodysuit is meant to pacify the narrative of the character’s purpose, then the environment is lurking with dangers and chaotic, unsafe possibilities nearby.”

Tut is drawn to these kinds of metaphorical pairings, and her handmade pigments are another example. The artist assigns emotion and themes to each color that recur throughout her practice. “Yellow lead oxide predominantly signals a place or moment of struggle for my characters, whereas Cinnabar red deepens the earthiness of the conversation in the painting by rooting the story in blood and earth,” she says.
By limiting her palette, the artist has further constructed a world in which ideas evolve over time yet have a clear lineage to their forebears, adding, “This meaning-making is a way of indexing my thinking and making as well, where paintings from different times are placed in dialogue through this growing symbolism of color.”
For Tut, painting in this way is both therapeutic and devotional, particularly as she navigates life as a woman, mother, and artist continually struggling against stereotypes and convention. The slow act of creating pigments and working in the studio tethers her to something larger and excavates the voids she feels.
It could be a significant childhood building you felt small and safe in, or a home that allowed you to dream freely, or a road trip lined by trees you no longer see, or values of slowing down, of being present, of being happy in nothingness yet striving for excellence, of history books that didn’t cover your grandparents’ trauma, or politics that don’t notice nor praise the immigrant Indian girl wearing an American flag scarf in her senior pictures to prove her identity in a post 9/11 world; these are all examples of voids I hope to fill through my work and in my practice of making paintings.
This is also where the warrior returns. Tut sees this strong, fearless figure as representing “responsibility, honesty, justice, and a commitment to humility as an act of bravery,” values that emerge in both her life and work. Whether rendering the swirling pattern of a figure’s bodysuit or patiently waiting for a pigment to dry only to find the formula is wrong, the artist creates as both an homage to her ancestors and as a way to connect with people amid their own turmoil.

Tut’s work is currently on view at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the National Portrait Gallery. Later this week, she will also be included in a group exhibition opening at the Horton Art Gallery at San Joaquin Delta College. Explore more of her practice on Instagram.





Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Rendered in Handmade Pigments, Rupy C. Tut’s Warriors March Toward Belonging appeared first on Colossal.
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