Remember in the last post, the Sun is described as a "miasma of incandescent plasma"? In order words, it isn't solid.
We have this large ball of plasma that rotates. But because it isn't solid, different latitudes orbit at different rates.
Imagine we have a long rope that can withstand the immense heat of the Sun. We tie either end to the rotational axis on either pole and attach the rope to the Sun's surface.. We have something like this.
We allow the Sun to rotate, and we begin to notice something. The rope nearest the equator is moving faster than the rope nearer the poles. Now the rope looks like this.
How do we know this happens? We are able to observe the sunspots on the Sun and can see those spots near the equator are farther ahead compared to the spots in higher latitudes. By measuring the speed of the spots, scientists were able to determine that the Sun takes about 30 days to rotate near the poles and only about 25 days at the equator.
We also notice the same differential rotation on the gas giants as well.
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