Helioseismologists:
It’s not easy to figure out what’s inside the sun. “We can’t go and take a sample,” says [Sarbani] Basu. There are two main ways to investigate. Helioseismologists such as Basu look at sound vibrations on the sun’s surface, which give outward evidence of the vast quantities of energy being unleashed within. That energy depends on the sun’s internal structure, as well as its ingredients, which Basu can identify by working backwards from observations beamed from her space-based probes. [“Hiding in plain sight: The mystery of the sun’s missing matter,” Shannon Palus, NewScientist (21 October 2017, print title “What’s wrong with the sun?”, paywall)]
What a doozy! Although if the Sun is wholly plasma, how can it have a seismology?
