I have the cover story on BBC Sky at Night magazine’s August issue.

“The Sun is big, bright and close.  It’s also one of the most studied objects in the entire Universe and, up until 2004, solar physicists thought they knew how it worked.  Now they aren’t so sure.

“We thought we had a very clear understanding of the chemical composition of the Sun.  We now realise this might not be the case,” says Hector Socas-Navarro, a solar physicist from the High Altitude Observatory, Boulder, Colorado.  The chemical composition of the Sun is the foundation stone for computer models of the solar interior.  If the composition is wrong, the models are wrong and so our understanding of the Sun’s interior collapses.  This particular house of cards does not stop there.  The Sun serves as our reference for the other stars, so if our comprehension of the Sun falls down, so does our understanding of the universe.  “This is a scientific crisis, a crisis in our understanding of the Sun,” says Socas-Navarro. …”

BBC Sky at Night magazine is available in newsagents.  To visit them on-line, click here

To read the full article, visit your local newsagent and pick up the August issue.

Also in the same issue:

The Sun Kings: August Book of the Month
The Sun Kings has been chosen as BBC Sky at Night’s August book of the month.  The review generously says, “In this book, Stuart Clark, one of Britain’s best-known science writers, sets out to tell the stories of these ‘Sun Kings’ and at the same time outlines some of the most important aspects of present-day research.  He succeeds in these tasks admirably.
This book is as fascinating as the constantly changing field of research it describes.  Make haste to add it too your library.”

To read the full review, visit your local newsagent and pick up the August issue.