The Sun has shown very little activity despite being at the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, researchers report.
As the sun arrives at the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, researchers notice the star is being unusually quite. Every 11 years, the sun undergoes a solar maximum. A solar maximum is a time during the sun's solar cycle when the number of sunspots and general solar activity should increase. During this time, the sun usually hurls out more solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). This has left researchers worried as they begin discussing the possible causes of this unusual occurrence.
Researchers believe sunspots are caused by the play between the sun's plasma and its magnetic field, which lead to solar flares and solar ejections that send charged particles hurtling into space and sometimes at Earth. These can sometimes damage satellites, cause power grids surges and radio blackouts. When they aren't wreaking havoc, they are also responsible for creating breathtaking auroras above the planet.
"It's the smallest maximum we've seen in the Space Age," David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., told reporters in a teleconference, according to Space.com.
The unusually low level of activities in the sun has led scientists to wonder whether they actually missed the solar maximum but solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center confirms that this indeed is the solar maximum.
"This is solar maximum," Pesnell said in a NASA press release. "But it looks different from what we expected because it is double peaked. I am comfortable in saying that another peak will happen in 2013 and possibly last into 2014."
Giuliana de Toma, a scientist at the High Altitude Observatory in Colorado, is of the opinion that the low activity of the sun is normal.
"We just have fewer of them and this is normal," Huffington Post quoted de Toma as saying during Thursday's briefing. "This is why weak cycles are weak."
In 2009, researchers did predict that this year's solar maximum would be rather mild and that there was a huge possibility that the number of sunspots could be the lowest since 1928. Some scientists believe that the cause of low activity during this year's solar maximum is because it is part of a 100-year cycle, and there is a possibility that the sun might be on the verge of a Maunder Minimum, a period of time when it exhibits almost no sunspots. The last Maunder Minimum was observed in 1645.
