I thought this headline was startling, and after reading through the article submitted here, I hunted up more reporting on the issue. The abstract of the underlying research report
leads to the full report in the journal Science for people who can get through the Science paywall, and other reporting on the research report from Science staff writers
Kind of funny that the most perfect sphere ever observed in nature was staring us in the face this whole time. :)
Also, how is it that this was only measured just recently? Astronomers suspected it was wider at the equator, like Jupiter, but never bothered to check?
As a spinning ball of gas, astronomers had always expected our nearest star to bulge slightly at its equator, making it very slightly flying-saucer shaped
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 16.5 ms ] threadhttp://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/08/15/science.1...
leads to the full report in the journal Science for people who can get through the Science paywall, and other reporting on the research report from Science staff writers
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/08/sun-slimmer-th...
and from other journalists
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/120817-sun-s...
http://www.nature.com/news/sun-stays-nearly-spherical-even-w...
fills in some of the details.
Also, how is it that this was only measured just recently? Astronomers suspected it was wider at the equator, like Jupiter, but never bothered to check?
I stopped reading at this point.