Are scientists close to discovering how Sunspots happen?
The question of how sunspots happen is similar in some ways to the question of how leopard spots happen. The answer depends on how much detail you want. How do leopard spots happen? This has to do not just with the leopards themselves, but also a lot with their environment. If their prey were blind, or very slow, then leopards did not have to have any camouflage spots. If they lived in the polar regions, then they’d stand out like a sore thumb against the white ice and snow unless they had a white coat and no spots. But then you can ask: why are their prey not slow or blind, and why do leopards live in grasslands and not in the polar regions? And so on: Every answer leads to more questions. To understand leopards, you cannot look at just them, but you have to look at how leopards and their surroundings influence each other. It is the same for sunspots. To understand sunspots, you have to understand their surroundings, too; you have to understand the whole Sun. Solar physicists have dis
