Sunquakes

One of the newest branches of astronomy, helioseismology - like its terrestrial counterpart - studies why the surface of the sun vibrates like a bell. Since the 1970s, astronomers have gained spectacular insights into the structure and composition of the sun's interior, transforming the way we understand stellar matter. In "Sunquakes", Jack B. Zirker tells the story of this new science and explains the physics behind these illuminating vibrations. Zirker recounts the discovery of solar oscillations in the early 1960s and international efforts throughout the rest of the decade to explain this phenomenon. By the mid-1970s, scientists working independently in France, Germany, Japan and the US had developed a new theoretical model of the sun that postulated the existence of trapped sound and gravity waves as the cause for the roiling of the sun's surface. Using solar oscillation data, scientists derived for the first time the thermal and dynamic properties of the solar interior and revealed its complicated rotation patterns; even such astronomical mysteries as the deficit of solar neutrinos were solved. Describing the competition and co-operation between astronomers, particle physicists and other theorists, and the technological innovations that makes solar observation more and more precise, "Sunquakes" provides professionals and non-scientists alike with an accessible guide to the field of helioseismology. The book concludes with an account of efforts to probe the interiors of stars far beyond our own solar system.