7. The Enigmatic Sun

If you're looking for a career with a really bright future, become a solar physicist. Amazingly, we still don't fully understand the dynamics of the star we orbit.

New pictures of sunspots in 2002, the most detailed ever, revealed canal-like structures reaching from bright regions into the dark hearts of sunspots. The strange structures are fueled by the Sun's tremendous heat and magnetic energy, but beyond that, their generation is a mystery.

"Exactly what happens and why these kind of structures are formed, we don't know," said study member Dan Kiselman.

And the Sun in general? "The amazing zoo of structures and dynamic phenomena on the Sun are not well understood in general, though they have been observed for a very long time," Kiselman said. Sounds like serious job security.

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