Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yachtold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.j.p.

That's y-A-K-U-L-T-C-O-J-P.

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on YacL.

For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.

Life as we know it couldn't exist without the sun.

But we know surprisingly little about our host star.

That's where the field of heliophysics comes in.

And 2025 is set to be a banner year for folks who study the sun.

Here to tell us more is Megan Bartels, a senior news reporter at Scientific American.

Megan, thanks so much for coming on to chat today. Thanks so much for having me.

First question, obvious question. What is heliophysics? Yeah, so heliophysics is the study of the sun and also its influence on the solar system. And that's a really big topic because the solar wind,

which is basically like plasma of particles that flow off the sun, also the sun's magnetic field,

those two phenomena stretch way beyond the orbit

of Pluto more than a hundred times the distance that Earth is from the sun. Wow. Yeah.

And why is 2025 such an exciting year for heliophysics? Yeah, so there are a couple of different

things that are aligning this year. First, the sun has been and still is in the maximum phase of its 11-year solar cycle.

Solar max began more than two years ago, and scientists expect that it will last about three or four years total this time around.

And during solar max, and even as that activity begins to wane,

the sun will keep spitting out radiation flares and blobs of plasma. And that gives scientists a

...