Solved - The Mystery Of Missing Sunspots

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 15:31 in Astronomy & Space

Sunspots are dark spots on the sun, at least as we see them, caused by magnetic activity in the plasma on the surface of Sol. For 200 years scientists have known that they occasional disappear but no one was sure exactly why.   A trio writing in Nature say they have solved the mystery and now can even predict the next time.   Piet Martens, Dibyendu Nandi and Andres Munoz-Jaramillo say they have discovered why sunspots were missing from 2008 to 2010, which coincided with an extra-long "solar minimum" and unusually weak magnetic fields at the sun's poles. The fields are ordinarily much stronger when solar activity is minimal. read more

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