'Starquakes' offer vision of how our sun will grow old and die

• The 'pulses' travelling through dying stars show how ther cores spin at huge speed
• Nasa Kepler space telescope watches red giants for two whole years
• 'Will help understand how sun will grow old'

Nasa's Kepler telescope is one of the space agency's most successful current space missions - but even so, looking into the heart of a dying star took two entire years' of almost continuous data.

By analysing the pulses - starquakes - travelling through the bloated red giants, a team led by PhD student Paul Beck from Leuven University in Belgium discovered their cores spin ten times faster than their surfaces.

'Understanding how a star rotates deep inside helps us to understand how stars like our Sun will grow old,' says Beck.

The surfaces of red giants revolve extremely slowly - taking more than a year to spin round just once - but researchers have discovered that their cores spin at ten times the speed. Our sun will become a red giant before it dies

'It is the heart of a star which determines  how stars like our Sun will grow old,' says Paul Beck

Our sun will become a red giant in about five billion years. 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.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2072199/Starquakes-offer-vision-sun-grow-old-die.html