Troublemaking Solar Cycle Kicks Off

Jan. 16, 2008 -- The small black spot that broke out on the sun's face just after New Year's hardly seems like something to get worked up about. The sun develops spots as regularly as teenagers sprout acne, and by the end of last week, it had already faded from view.

What caught scientists' attention was the spot's location and the direction of its magnetic field, features that separate this speck from all others that have appeared over the last 11 years or so.

This spot, number 10,981 since government labeling began on Jan. 5, 1972, is the first of what may be a very active new cycle for our mother star.

Officially, the period is known as Solar Cycle 24, though the sun has been having cycles far longer than humans have been watching and recording the signs. The spots are closely tied to flares and great, volcanic-like eruptions of charged particles from the sun's atmosphere.

Experts are divided about whether Solar Cycle 24 will be a doozy or just average, but either way, the forecast for Earth is not good: satellite-dependent systems -- everything from automated teller machines at banks to Global Positioning System receivers in cars --face the prospect of disrupted service and complete outages during periods of increased solar storms.

"The difference in the technology in the 1980s and what we can expect in 2010 is huge," said solar physicist Doug Biesecker with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo.