NASA says solar activity is increasing after decades-long lull: "The sun is slowly waking up"
The sun has become more and more active over the last 16 years, in a turn that surprised scientists and could affect space weather and technology on Earth, NASA announced this week.
A new research, conducted by two NASA scientists and published earlier in September in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal Letters, shows that solar activity has ramped up after 2008 — an unexpected reversal following a decades-long decline that was initially thought to foreshadow a period of historic inaction on the surface of the sun.
"All signs were pointing to the Sun going into a prolonged phase of low activity," Jamie Jasinski, a space plasma physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the study's lead author, said in a statement. "So it was a surprise to see that trend reversed. The Sun is slowly waking up."
An uptick in solar activity could influence space weather, potentially leading to more solar storms, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, the researchers found. Space weather patterns have the potential to directly impact spacecraft operations and the safety of astronauts, but they may be felt on Earth, too, as space weather can affect power grids, GPS systems and radio communication, according to NASA.
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