Astronomers reveal a rapidly spinning core inside old stars
Thursday, December 8, 2011 - 05:00
in Astronomy & Space
(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of astronomers led by PhD student Paul Beck from Leuven University in Belgium have managed to look deep inside some old stars and discovered that their cores spin at least ten times as fast as their surfaces. The result appeared today in the renowned journal nature. It has been known for a long time that the surfaces of these stars spin slowly, taking about a whole year to complete one rotation. The team has now discovered that the cores at the heart of the stars spin much faster with about one rotation per month. The discovery was made possible because of the ultra high precision of the data from NASA's Kepler space telescope.