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ISSUE 157
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Did you know that stars have a habit of oscillating? These balls of hot gas vibrate in such a way that they’re releasing waves trapped in their interiors, a phenomenon that gives way to something commonly referred to as starquakes. While they’re analogous to earthquakes on our planet, our experts this issue warn us to err on the side of caution when we visualise them. “I know it’s a good way of catching people’s attention to call them starquakes, and there are some analogies with earthquakes, but we generally talk about starquakes as the oscillations of stars,” University of Toulouse scientist Sébastien Deheuvels tells us. “Perhaps the most common analogy that we make is with musical instruments – when you pluck a guitar string, the whole string of the guitar oscillates.”