An interesting article caught my attention on spaceweather.com concerning new research on what is called the Gleissberg Cycle. Interested? Read on!

THE COUNTER-INTUITIVE QUIET CONTINUES: Big sunspots usually produce big solar flares. Giant sunspot 4079 is an exception to the rule. All week long, it has been strangely quiet, producing only a handful of puny C-class solar flares. If the quiet continues for a few more days, the behemoth sunspot will rotate off the sun’s western limb without having caused any significant space weather. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text

THE CENTENNIAL GLEISSBERG CYCLE: If you’ve been enjoying the auroras of Solar Cycle 25, we’ve got good news. The next few solar cycles could be even more intense–the result of a little-known phenomenon called the “Centennial Gleissberg Cycle.”

You’ve probably heard of the 11-year sunspot cycle. The Gleissberg Cycle is a slower modulation, which suppresses sunspot numbers every 80 to 100 years. For the past ~15 years, the sun has been near a low point in this cycle, but this is about to change.

New research published in the journal Space Weather suggests that the Gleissberg Cycle is waking up again. If this is true, solar cycles for the next 50 years could become increasingly intense.

“We have been looking at protons in the South Atlantic Anomaly,” explains the paper’s lead author Kalvyn Adams, an astrophysics student at the University of Colorado. “These are particles from the sun that come unusually close to Earth because our planet’s magnetic shield is weak over the south Atlantic Ocean.”

Above: The South Atlantic Anomaly (blue) is a weak spot in Earth’s magnetic field where particles from the sun can come relatively close to Earth [more]

For more details, go to spaceweather.com