Forecasters keep eye on looming 'Solar Max'

The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the Sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.

The Sun's magnetic field is about to flip

(Phys.org) —Something big is about to happen on the sun. According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to flip.

Solar storm sparks dazzling northern lights

A storm from the broiling sun turned the chilly northernmost skies of Earth into an ever-changing and awe-provoking art show of northern lights on Tuesday.

Solar cycle update: Twin peaks?

Something unexpected is happening on the sun. 2013 is supposed to be the year of Solar Max, the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle. Yet 2013 has arrived and solar activity is relatively low. Sunspot numbers are well below ...

SUNRISE offers new insight on sun's atmosphere

Three months after the flight of the solar observatory Sunrise – carried aloft by a NASA scientific balloon in early June 2013—scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany have presented ...

The sun also flips: 11-year solar cycle wimpy, but peaking

(Phys.org) —In a 3-meter diameter hollow aluminum sphere, Cary Forest, a UW-Madison physics professor, is stirring and heating plasmas to 500,000 degrees Fahrenheit to experimentally mimic the magnetic field-inducing cosmic ...

A taste of solar maximum

Forecasters say Solar Max is due in the year 2013.  When it arrives, the peak of 11-year sunspot cycle will bring more solar flares, more coronal mass ejections, more geomagnetic storms and more auroras than we have ...

Nemesis is a myth

Danger looms from out of space: asteroids and comets are a threat to our planet. The history of Earth has always been punctuated by cosmic catastrophes. Several studies have claimed to have found periodic variations, with ...

A unique glance into the Sun's atmosphere

Three months after the flight of the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany now present unique insights into the central layer of the Sun's ...

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