Sunspots' Tangled Tale: Why the Sun Has Spots

Paul Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University and the chief scientist at COSI science center. Explaining the source of sunspots is a pretty tough nut to crack. People have known about the features for centuries — early Chinese and medieval European stargazers noted down when they saw faint blotches in the morning or evening sun — but it wasn't until recently that scientists came up with a half-satisfactory answer for where the spots come from.