[OAB 94] This claim was made in 1979 by J.A. Eddy and A.A. Boornazian (Science News, v.32, no.9, pp.17-19 (Sept 1979)), who analyzed 120 years of Sun measurements from the Greenwich Observatory in London. Eddy and Boornazian claimed that these measurements indicated that the Sun is shrinking at a rate of about 2 arcseconds per century (an arcsecond is a measure of angles, equal to 1/3600 of a degree). At such a rate, the Sun would shrink down to nothing in only 200,000 years, so this shrinking obviously could not be going on steadily for several billion years. However, even if these measurements were accurate, it would not be much of a problem for scientists because it could easily be explained by a shift in the Sun's fusion process which would cause a temporary change in size. In fact, Eddy and Boornazian's research was motivated by a desire to investigate the possibility of such a shift, which is an important point, because it shows that the shrinking Sun claim was not discredited in order to "preserve evolutionary timescales." However, these measurements were in fact shown to be incorrect only a year after they were first published. I.I. Shapiro (Science, v.208, pp.51-53 (4 April 1980)) analyzed measurements of transits of the planet Mercury across the solar disk from 1736 to 1973, and showed that the size of the Sun has remained constant during that time within 0.3 arcseconds. Parkinson, Morrison, and Stephenson (Nature, v.288, pp.548-551 (11 Dec 1980)) re-analyzed the Greenwich data from 1715 onward, taking into account the changes in instrumentation over that period, changes in the transparency of the atmosphere, and differences in the person making the measurements. They showed that the uncertainty in Eddy and Boornazian's data is much too large to support their claim. Even J.A. Eddy himself was so convinced by these refutations that he never again referred in print to his research on this subject. In summary, the claim of a shrinking Sun was refuted less than a year after it was published, and should not be used as evidence for the age of the Solar System.