The Sunspot Cycle Explained

An anonymous reader writes "After the recent spate of auroras visible as far south as Florida and Greece, and radio amateurs having lots of fun bouncing their signals off the auroral curtain, maybe some explanation was needed. It has been known for a while that the peak of solar activity trail trails the sunspot cycle peak by a couple of years, but this BBC article appears to explain why. As you may expect most of the data came from the SOHO satellite and the theory has been put together by some scientists using what appears to be data mining."

Comments

Useful, I guess

[Space cowboy]

if only to the power and comms companies. Always useful to know more about what affects you.

I'm not sure there's much they can *do* about solar flares though, I mean, talk about force of nature! Volumes of incandescent plasma the size of the planet being ejected are always going to be tough to deal with!

Simon

Re:it's an attack

[WankersRevenge]

Actually that's pretty funny. For the movie illiterate, it's a reference to Flash Gordan and the destruction of the earth via. manipulated natural events.