Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?

PRB_Ohio writes "The sun is in the middle of a century long solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why. The gist is that there is a 'jet stream' like phenomenon about 7,000km below the surface of the sun. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear. Scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to track and analyze the streams."

Comments

Re:This is not an explanation

[Darby]

Publishing is the first step in peer review, not the final end all.

Now I could be wrong (seriously, I really don't know all that much about this), but I thought that "respectable" journals had peers to whom they send articles for review prior to publishing? So after publishing, certainly more peers get a chance to look over the results and the process continues.
But assuming that I'm correct, wouldn't that make submitting or maybe the assignment of the reviewers the first step?