The sun is entering a new period of activity, with one study predicting it will be one of the most active on record. But that is the opposite of what official agencies, including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), are predicting.
The sun is known to experience an active cycle every 11 years. But scientists have a different view.
Projections from NASA and NOAA
What is known is that the sun’s active cycle correlates with changes in the magnetic field above. Every 11 years, the sun’s poles will reverse and the South Pole will become the North Pole. The North Pole becomes the South Pole. Scientists do not know what causes this effect, except that each time the magnetic field reverses, the sun’s magnetic field is at its weakest.
The sun’s magnetic field controls sunspots (temporary regions of strong magnetic field), flares, coronal mass ejections (phenomena caused by breaking and reconnecting magnetic lines of force), and so on. The time when the magnetic field is weakest is called the solar minimum. After the poles turn around, the magnetic field starts to strengthen again, until it reaches the solar maximum, and then begins the next cycle again.
In general, scientists can only guess when the Sun was based on what has already happened, and what will follow. The latest solar minimum occurred in December 2019, according to the data. So we’re just entering our 25th solar cycle since the beginning of the record.
NASA and NOAA predict that this cycle will be relatively quiet. That is, they predict that by July 2025, the number of sunspots will be around 115. This is similar to cycle 24, when the maximum number of sunspots recorded was 114.
The new study predicts otherwise
But recent research published in the journal Solar Physics suggests otherwise. They looked at solar activity on a 22-year cycle.
“It’s difficult to predict the length of the solar active cycle and the strength of the sunspots because we don’t know what’s driving this cycle deep down,” said Solar physicist Scott McIntosh of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the authors of the study.
Mackintosh and his colleagues looked at the time when the sun’s poles returned to their original position as a complete cycle. What they found was interesting was that, over the course of more than 20 years, a shift in the magnetic field coincided with a cycle of sunspot activity.
They found that a number of magnetic bands parallel to the equator, constantly moving from the poles to the equator, near the equator will be and. Because these regions come from the poles and have different polarities, they interact in a way that cancels out with each other. The study found that each such event occurred at the same time as the sun’s magnetic field was weakest, usually every 11 years or so, but not always for the same length of time.
Looking at all the records over the past 270 years, the researchers found that the longer the events and events took, the weaker the peak of the sun in the next cycle; Conversely, the shorter the time the event takes, the stronger the solar peak in the next cycle.
They found that the longest association and event took was the fourth cycle, which took 15 years. After the fifth cycle, only 82 sunspots were found at their peak. This cycle will take 14 years, followed by the sixth cycle, with 81 sunspots at its peak.
But the periods take less than 11 years, and the number of sunspots at the peak of the cycle generally exceeds 200.
Mackintosh says that in cycle 23, the events took nearly 13 years, which is relatively long, so cycle 24, the sun’s peak activity was weaker.
If their theory is correct, this should be a high-intensity cycle, with sunspot numbers set to be one of the strongest on record at the peak of solar activity in the mid-2020s.
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