Scientists find that the sun is less active compared to similar stars

The sun has powers that make it the primary source of energy for life on Earth, but compared to some of its galactic counterparts, it can actually be a little sleepy.

According to recent research, our star appears to be less active than hundreds of similar stars due to changes in brightness.

When assigning up to 369 solar-like stars, scientists found that they have generally fluctuated about five times more than the sun in the past 140 years.

However, the researchers also examined more than 2,500 sun-like stars with unknown periods of rotation, showing that their brightness fluctuated much less than that of the other group.

“We were very surprised that most sun-like stars are so much more active than the sun,” said Dr. Alexander Shapiro from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS).

The scientists narrowed down the first batch of comparable candidates from an extensive catalog of measurement data recorded with NASA’s Kepler space telescope and selected stars with a similar surface temperature, age and rotation period.

They chose to look at stars that rotate once on their own axis within 20 to 30 days, although this does not determine the rotation period of all stars. Therefore, the team had to consider other factors, e.g. B. the reappearance of dips in the light curve of the star.

“It is conceivable that the sun has been in a calm phase for thousands of years and that we therefore have a distorted image of our star,” explained Dr. Timo Reinhold, first author of the new study, who published the results in the science diary.

It is not clear why the sun is less active than similar stars, although scientists behind the research found that it is possible that the sun may be more variable over long periods of time or different from similar stars in a way that is not yet was recognized.

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