NASA scientists warn that the sun may be “waking up” from a short period of relative inactivity that contradicts past assumptions about our home star. If true, this could mean that there are decades of potentially dangerous space weather in storefronts.
The sun traces a cycle of solar activity of about 11 years, beginning with a long, quiet period known as the sun’s smallest and accumulating towards the explosive peak known as the sun’s largest. This pattern is known as the “Sunspot Cycle” as the number of dark patches on the surface of the sun rises and falls with solar activity. The Sunspot Cycle is dominated by a 22-year long cycle known as the Hale Cycle. Meanwhile, the solar magnetic field completely reverses and then returns again.
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In the early 2000s, downward trends of solar activity led some scientists to believe that we may be in a new “deep sun low.” This theory gained traction after the final solar maximum between 2013 and 2014. This was much weaker than the previous cycle. However, the current Sunspot Cycle, which reached its peak, significantly overturns this theory.
A new study published in a letter from the Journal of Astrophysics on September 8th, researchers analyzed multiple indicators of solar activity, such as solar wind, magnetic field strength, and sunspot count, and found that it has been on an upward trend since around 2008 and is rising even further in future cycles, suggesting that the minimum theory of deep sun is often dead.
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“All signs pointed to going to a long-term phase of low activity in the sun,” the work of Jamie Jacinski, a plasma physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a NASA statement. “So it was a surprise to see that trend reversed. The sun is slowly awake.”
We are currently heading towards the end of the recent solar 201 of the Sun, which officially began in early 2024, and is not unfolding as expected.
When the current Sunspot Cycle began in late 2019, experts at the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), including scientists at the NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), predicted that the solar maximum would begin in 2025 and would likely rival previous weaker cycles.
However, as the current cycle progressed, this was not true, and it soon became clear that the solar maximum would arrive earlier and become much more active than initially predicted. SWPC scientists later admitted the mistake and issued their first updated prediction.
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Since then, the sun has reached the most sun spots in over 20 years, spitting out a record number of powerful X-Class flares. This is the most powerful type of explosion the sun can produce.
During its current largest, Earth was also hit by several major geomagnetic storms, or disturbances into the planet’s magnetic fields. Most notably, the “extreme” event in May 2024, which caused some of the most vibrant Aurora Displays for centuries, causing more than $500 million in damage.
Now, the new research warns that what we’ve witnessed over the past few years is likely to become “as is” for decades to come. This can be particularly problematic, as humanity relies on far more on technologies that tend to interfere with space weather that can be knocked out of the sky by power grids, GPS-controlled machines, and solar storms.
It is unclear why the Sun has experienced blips in solar activity over the past decades, or why it is driving its current revival.
Another study earlier this year proposed that the recent surge in activity could be part of a lesser known, less-studied 100-year solar cycle known as the Centennial Grisberg cycle. However, the latest research has not mentioned this at all.
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