FEW things in life are certain, but you can be sure of one thing: the sun will rise again tomorrow. It's been doing it every day for billions of years. As the only star in our cosmic backyard - a mere 150 million kilometres away-astronomers are using the dependable sun to probe the physics of a typical star in the prime of its life. So it came as a shock to discover that the sun is a far more unpredictable neighbour than anyone realised. It spits billion-tonne blobs of flaming gas into space, and without warning could plunge our planet into a mini ice age. Needless to say, astronomers are eager to learn how to predict its moods and the effect they'll have on the Earth's climate.
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