Every 11 years, our sun becomes a chaotic sphere that shoots out huge bursts of energy towards Earth, a period known as the ‘solar maximum’.
These energy bursts are responsible for the stunning Northern Light displays we’ve been treated to in recent months.
However, they can also disrupt internet and GPS satellites orbiting Earth, with blackouts for weeks.
Unfortunately, scientists have confirmed that solar maximum has officially arrived, and it could continue for the next 12 months.
So while opportunities to see the aurora will ramp up, so will the chance of a global internet blackout.
In a teleconference this, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel confirmed that the sun has reached its solar maximum period, which could continue for the next year.
Jamie Favors, director of NASA’s space weather programme said:
‘During solar maximum, the number of sunspots, and therefore, the amount of solar activity, increases,
‘This increase in activity provides an exciting opportunity to learn about our closest star, but also causes real effects at Earth and throughout our solar system.’
However, when exactly during this solar maximum activity on the sun will peak is yet to be known.
Elsayed Talaat, director of space weather operations at NOAA, added: ‘While the sun has reached the solar maximum period, the month that solar activity peaks on the sun will not be identified for months or years.’
It’s not just essential light and warmth that Earth receives from the sun, which is an average of 93 million miles away.
Our star is a huge ball of electrically-charged hot gas that moves, generating a powerful magnetic field, officially known as the dipole field.
This dipole field – which stretches from one pole of the sun to the other much like Earth’s – goes through a cycle, called the solar cycle.
Roughly every 11 years or so, the sun’s magnetic field completely flips, meaning the north and south poles switch places.
At the beginning of the solar cycle (just after the flip), the sun’s surface has the fewest black spots on its surface, known as ‘sunspots’.
The middle of the solar cycle is the solar maximum, when the sun has the most sunspots. And it’s during this solar maximum when the most violent space weather is expected, commonly known as solar storms.
Fortunately, solar storms aren’t dangerous to humans. However, they can impact satellites in orbit as well as power grids on Earth.
Scientists anticipate that the maximum phase will last another year or so before the sun enters the declining phase, which leads back to ‘solar minimum’ at the start of the solar cycle when the sun has the fewest sunspots.
