The sun’s most violent space weather doesn’t taper off gradually at the end of each 11-year cycle, it shuts off almost overnight at a specific moment, and physicists at the University of Warwick say the sunspot count at that instant predicts the strength of the next solar maximum six to seven years before it peaks
Sandra Chapman and her crew at the University of Warwick’s Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics have recognized a sharp cutoff second inside each solar cycle — a level the place the solar’s most violent space weather stops almost overnight — and they say counting sunspots at that second can forecast the strength of the…
