Taking time to twirl NASA/GSFC/SDO
Most sun-like stars rotate relatively quickly early in their history, spinning once every few days before slowing down as they age. But sodium and potassium on the moon show that our sun had a lazy start, which may explain why we are here today.
The moon has surprisingly fewer volatile elements and compounds – those that turn into gas and blow away relatively easily – than Earth. Prabal Saxena at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and his colleagues investigated whether solar activity in the first billion years or so after the moon formed…
