NASA says solar activity increases after decades: “the sun wakes up slowly”

The sun has become more and more active in the past 16 years, in a tour that has surprised scientists and could affect space weather and technology on Earth, NASA announced this week.

A new research, carried out by two scientists of NASA and published earlier in September in the astrophysical letters evaluated by peers, shows that solar activity increased after 2008 – an unexpected reversal after a drop of several decades which was initially considered as a period of historical inaction on the surface of the sun.

“All signs pointed out towards the sun in an extended phase of low activity,” said Jamie Jasinski, a spatial plasma physicist in the NASA jet propulsion laboratory and the main study of the study, in a press release. “It was therefore a surprise to see that the trend was reversed. The sun wakes up slowly.”

An increase in solar activity could influence spatial time, which potentially leads to more solar storms, solar eruptions And coronal mass ejections revealed the researchers. Space weather models have the potential to have a direct impact on space vessel operations and astronaut safety, but They can be felt on earthAs space weather can affect electrical networks, GPS systems and radio communication, according to NASA.

The downward trend was documented from the 1980s until 2008, when the space agency determined that the sun had reached its lowest point ever recorded. The action of the sun, or inaction, tends to fluctuate in 11 -year cycles, according to NASA, although some models rely longer.

The land is currently in the solar cycle 25, which started in 2020. The last cycle has maintained an average duration of 11 years and was the lowest solar cycle to occur in a century, according to the National Weather Service. Scientists thought that the sun would remain in what they nicknamed “Deep Solar minimum”, believing that the section of calm of the sun would continue, finally leading to a new phase of record low activity.

“But then, the downward trend in solar wind has ended,” said Jasinski in NASA’s announcement.

His study, co-written by Marco Velli, a colleague researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has rather followed growing solar plasma and stronger magnetic field measurements throughout the solar system, which are all affected by the sun.

The solar cycle 26 should start a certain time between January 2029 and December 2032, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but the agency has not yet been predicting for the next cycle.

In order to better follow the weather of space, NASA announced that it would launch the interstellar mapping and acceleration probe (IMAP) and the missions of the Carruthers Geocorona observatory, as well as the SWFO-L1 mission of the Noaa, Falcon 9 next week. It comes a few months later SpaceX helped NASA launching twin satellite tracers Who study how the electrically loaded solar wind interacts with the magnetic field of the earth.

“Spatial weather predictions are essential to support the spacecraft and astronauts from the NASA Artemis campaign, because understanding of the space environment is an essential element in the attenuation of the exposure of astronauts to space radiation,” NASA said on Monday.

In May 2024, NASA officials recorded the strongest geomagnetic storm in more than 20 years. Several class X solar pushes – the largest in class B, followed by C and M – sent the North Lights Latitudes much lower than normal, as far in the south as Mexico.

Geomagnetic storms have the capacity to have an impact on how and if the technology works on a massive scale, the electrician engineer David Wallace explained in The conversation Last year.

“Internet service providers could decrease, which in turn removes the capacity of different systems to be communicated between them. High frequency communication systems such as ground radio, short waves and the ship would be disturbed,” Wallace wrote.

Kiki Intarasuwan contributed to this report.