A “termination event” on out Sun could be about to signal a new and very powerful solar cycle.
Getty Images
The Sun could be about to become a lot more active if the “termination event” that some scientists predict comes to pass.
The solar cycle tends to last between 10 and 14 years—and 11 years on average—during which the number of sunspots on its surface waxes and wanes.
The new solar cycle 25 is judged by NASA and NOAA to have begun in December 2019 and to be a weak cycle, a conclusion based on the number of observed sunspots (areas that appear dark on the surface of the Sun), but challenged by physicists late last year who put forward a different theory based on the Sun’s magnetism and the Hale cycle—a complete magnetic cycle of the Sun, which lasts about 22 years.
Scientists at the the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) predict that when oppositely-charged bands magnetism collide at the Sun’s equator,…