born May 26, 1826, London, Eng. died Nov. 27, 1875, Churt, near Farnham, Surrey
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
By observing spots, R.C. Carrington found (c. 1860) that the Sun rotates not as a solid body but differentially, fastest at the equator. Sunspots are never seen exactly at the equator or near the poles. Vilhelm Bjerknes theorized in 1926 that spots are the erupting ends of magnetic vortices broken by the Sun’s differential rotation. Various elaborations on this idea have been proposed,...
in Sun: History of observation )
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