Solar flare heads for Earth

[yeti]

(08-03-2010, 08:55 PM)mastermg Wrote: The last solar maximum occurred in 2001 and since then the star has been quiet.

This is not true. The sun was extremely active well past 2001. It was doing all kinds of crazy stuff that scientists could not explain, up to ~ 2006. It calmed down, then went into 2 years of extreme quiet, also unusual. For many many months there was not a single spot on the sun. Since May it has woken up, and rather quickly too...

How do I know? I have a SOHO link on my search page, so I normally see the sun many times daily. Currently SOHO is doing a CCD bakeout, which rejuvenates the imager.

Here is an animation from 2000 to 2008:



Notice how the sun suddenly speeds up and slows down? Nibiru!!

Unfortunately this montage misses out on the extremely quiet period, but you can see it falling off very noticeably into 2008...