Things have been hotting up on the Sun over the last few years. In December 2019, its surface was a very quiet place, a time known as the solar minimum.
In the years since, it has been gradually waking up, with sunspots and flares being sighted across its surface. This activity is expected to reach its peak in the coming year or so, after which it will fall back into slumber once more, heading towards a new minimum. This pattern of rising and falling activity is known as the solar cycle.
“The solar cycle is driven by the magnetic field of the Sun,” says Stephanie Yardley, a solar scientist from the University of Reading. “Approximately every 11 years the Sun’s polar magnetic field reverses polarity – it swaps direction.”
This swapping is a chaotic process, with magnetic field lines becoming tangled and churning up the plasma the Sun is made of, which we see as an increase in solar activity around the solar maximum.
