Absence Of Sunspots Make Scientists Wonder If They're Seeing A Calm Before A Storm Of Energy
Heaven soon
Absence
Of Sunspots Make Scientists Wonder If
They're
Seeing A Calm Before A Storm Of Energy
Sunspots come and go, but recently
they have
mostly gone. For centuries,
astronomers have
recorded when these dark blemishes on
the
solar surface emerge, only to fade
away after
a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to
their
efforts, we know that sunspot numbers
ebb and
flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.
But for
the past two years, the sunspots have
mostly
been missing. Their absence, the most
prolonged in nearly 100 years, has
taken even
seasoned sun watchers by surprise.
"This
is solar behavior we haven't seen in
living
memory," says David Hathaway, a
physicist
at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
in
Huntsville, Ala. The sun is under
scrutiny as
never before, thanks to an armada of
space
telescopes. The results they beam back
are
portraying our nearest star, and its
influence
on Earth, in a new light. Sunspots and
other
clues indicate that the sun's magnetic
activity is diminishing and that the
sun may
even be shrinking. Together, the
results hint
that something profound is happening
inside
the sun. The big question is: What?
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