Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Originally published in Science Express on 3 May 2007
Science 15 June 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5831, pp. 1591 - 1593
DOI: 10.1126/science.1140598
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Tracking Solar Gravity Modes: The Dynamics of the Solar Core

Rafael A. García,1,2* Sylvaine Turck-Chièze,1,2 Sebastian J. Jiménez-Reyes,3 Jérôme Ballot,2,4 Pere L. Pallé,3 Antonio Eff-Darwich,3,5 Savita Mathur,1,2 Janine Provost6

Solar gravity modes have been actively sought because they directly probe the solar core (below 0.2 solar radius), but they have not been conclusively detected in the Sun because of their small surface amplitudes. Using data from the Global Oscillation at Low Frequency instrument, we detected a periodic structure in agreement with the period separation predicted by the theory for gravity dipole modes. When studied in relation to simulations including the best physics of the Sun determined through the acoustic modes, such a structure favors a faster rotation rate in the core than in the rest of the radiative zone.

1 DSM/DAPNIA/Service d'Astrophysique, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France.
2 AIM–Unité Mixte de Recherche CEA–CNRS–Université Paris VII–UMR 7158, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France.
3 Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
4 Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, Postfach 1317, 85741 Garching, Germany.
5 Departamento de Edafología y Geología, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
6 Département Cassiopée, UMR CNRS 6202, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, BP 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rafael.garcia{at}cea.fr

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)