Unusual phenomenon affecting the Sun

As we have been informed for some time now, the sun is behaving very strangely. Some time ago, this note was published:

Since 700 days, the sun is increasingly lazy and has very rare sunspots. This was stated by a group of astronomers who argue that if this situation continues, it can be compared to what occurred four centuries ago as what is known as the ‘little ice age’.

‘There is something unusual in the current sunspot cycles’, observed William Livingston and Matt Penn, astronomers from the American National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona.

The report published in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Eos, reveals that ‘the current solar minimum was unusually long’, to the point of equalling the record low of 1933, and ‘the solar winds are reaching the lowest energy levels registered in 40 years’.

The two astronomers have recorded the sunspot activity regularly since 199 and the trend they observed was a progressive weakening.

They added that the regularity of the solar cycles, with periods of activity and calmness, which changes every 11 years seems interrupted. And the magnetic storms, which created problems for satellites and telecommunications seem far away.

Last May, some ‘surprises’ have been observed on the solar disc which gave hope to a come back, but the illusion was short lived.

What experts are starting to fear now, is that the prolonged silence of solar activity will have similar consequences on Earth as to what happened in the period between 1645 and 1715.

In that period a phenomenon was verified and called ‘Maunder Minimum’, named after the English astronomer Edward Walter Maunder. This phenomenon coincides with an incredibly blunt decrease of temperatures in the northern hemisphere, to the point of going down in history as ‘the Little Ice Age’.

However, researchers say that these are only hypothesis, as systematic historic data only exists since 17 years.

On the other hand, the data gave the possibility of a sample of solar activity in a relatively short period. What is certain, they conclude, is that the behaviour of the sun in this period is truly exceptional, to the point that special vigilance and constant measures have to be made.