The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced this week that a new study by two NASA scientists shows that solar activity had been declining for decades, which was believed to indicate that the Sun’s surface would enter a historically low activity period. However, since 2008, solar activity has increased.
The study was published in early September in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “All previous signs indicated that the Sun was entering a long-term low-activity phase. However, seeing this trend reverse is surprising. The Sun is slowly waking up,” said Jamie Jasinski, a space plasma physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the lead author of the study, in a statement. The researchers found that the increase in solar activity could affect space weather, potentially leading to more solar storms, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections. NASA stated that space weather patterns could directly affect spacecraft operations and astronaut safety, and could also directly impact human activities on Earth, as space weather affects power grids, GPS systems, and radio communications.