Scientists say the sun is lazy and boring
We're lucky the sun isn't causing more of a ruckus. (NASA/SDO/)Boring. Humdrum. Monotonous. Those aren’t words most of us would usually associate with the miasma of incandescent plasma that makes life as we know it possible, but a recent study suggests that, as far as sun-like stars go, our own sun is a bit of a layabout.In a study published this week in the journal Science, researchers compared our sun to 369 stars deemed similar to the one at the center of our own solar system—ones that take between 20 and 30 days to rotate on their axes, along with having comparable chemical compositions, masses, ages, and surface temperatures. Each of the studied stellar bodies had been observed by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope from 2009 to 2013, allowing the researchers to compare fluctuations in brightness during that period."We were very surprised that most of the sun-like stars are so much...