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EXPERTS SAY NEW SOLAR CYCLE HAS JUST BEGUN!!!

With the appearance of Sunspot 981 — a high-latitude, reversed polarity sunspot — on Friday, January 4, experts at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that Cycle 24 is now here. “This sunspot is like the first robin of spring,” said solar physicist Douglas Biesecker of the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), part of NOAA. “In this case, it’s an early omen of solar storms that will gradually increase over the next few years.” Solar physicist David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama concurred, saying that new solar cycles begin with a “modest knot” of magnetism, like the one that appeared on December 11 on the east limb of the Sun: “That patch of magnetism could be a sign of the next solar cycle. New solar cycles always begin with a high-latitude, reversed polarity sunspot.” The region of magnetism that appeared back in December achieved high latitude (24 degrees North) and was magnetically reversed, but no supporting sunspot appeared until 25 days later.

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