Solar cycle 25 kicked off
last year. Forecasters thought it would be a mild one, but it's turning out to be quite the opposite.
This solar cycle has
been steadily outpacing predictions, producing more sunspots and spewing way more solar wind, flares and eruptions
Most space weather
scientists are wrong about our star one heliophysicist's model of the sun's behavior seems to have gotten it right.
The number and size of
the spots ebbs and flows following a roughly 11-year solar cycle Since records began, the star has completed 24 cycles
As the number of spots grows
and recedes within one cycle the productivity varies from one cycle to another, patterns are still little explored
Cycle 24, which officially
ended in December 2019 but overlapped with the ensuing cycle 25 for quite a while, was one of the weakest on record.