Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Applicability of the provisions of the Texas Internal Auditing Act, article 6252-5d, V. T. C. S., to the Texas Rehabilitation Commission (RQ-1869)

The light and velocity variations of the Sun and solar-like stars are unique among intrinsic variable stars. Unlike all other standard classes, such as Cepheids, B stars, and white dwarfs, the pulsation driving is caused by coupling with the acoustic noise in the upper convection zone. Each global pulsation mode is just another degree of freedom for the turbulent convection, and energy is shared equally between these g{sup {minus}}-modes and the solar oscillation modes. This driving and damping, together with the normal stellar pulsation mechanisms produce extremely low amplitude solar oscillations. Actually, the surface layer radiative damping is strong, and the varying oscillation mode amplitudes manifest the stochastic convection driving and the steady damping. Thus stability calculations for solar-like pulsations are difficult and mostly inconclusive, but calculations of pulsation periods are as straightforward as for all the other classes of intrinsic variable stars. The issue that is important for the Sun is its internal structure, because the mass, radius, and luminosity are extremely well known. Conventionally, we need the pulsation constants for each of millions of modes. Unknown parameters for constructing solar models are the composition and its material pressure, energy, and opacity, as well as the convection mixing length. …