The Sun as an inconstant star

Abstract

It has been thought for a long time that the luminosity of the Sun has remained constant since the Sun evolved into the Main Sequence stage almost 4.5 billion yr ago. However, many of recent data obtained from the isotopic analyses in the tree rings, meteoritic and lunar samples have shown that the luminosity and the activity of the Sun must have been varied for such long years. It seems that the one of the most important discoveries on the variability of the Sun is that of the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715), during which the solar activity had been extremely weak so that no sunspot had been observed for almost seventy years. Furthermore, this minimum was almost coincident with the severest period of the ‘Little Ice Age’ having covered the Earth from the early 14th to the middle 19th centuries. These results suggest a possible connection between the long-term variation of the Earth's climate and that of the solar activity. The Sun shines as emitting continuously the nuclear energy as light quanta. As well known, this energy is almost constantly being released from the thermonuclear reactions taking place in the central core of the Sun. Whenever the efficiency of these reactions changes due to some mechanisms to occur inside the Sun, the light emissivity from the Sun, namely, the Sun's luminosity, would change accordingly. Thus some change in the physical processes inside the Sun may always induce various kinds of variability as related to the rearrangement of the internal structure of the Sun. As a result of this kind of change, the Earth's climatic condition also seems to be critically influenced in association with the variation of the Sun's luminosity. Since it seems that the mean level of the solar activity for a long time, say, 100 yr, is dependent on the long-term change in the physical processes inside the Sun as related to the variation of the solar luminosity, the Earth's climatic condition may be necessarily changeable as dependent on the long-term variation of the solar activity. Some evidence is here shown by reviewing the historical records on the climatic change. A brief account is finally given on the possible origin of the inconstancy in the solar luminosity and activity.