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Solar scientists have noticed that the next solar cycle is starting. That’s despite the fact that it’s not due for another six years, and the current solar cycle (Cycle 25) is still ongoing.
The current solar cycle is expected to reach its peak or “solar maximum” midway through 2025 when our star’s magnetic field will flip and its poles will change. This solar activity has led to an increase in sunspots, solar flares and stellar plasma eruptions known as coronal mass eruptions (CMEs).
Despite Cycle 25 nearing its peak, it looks like Cycle 26 just can’t wait to tag in. The rumblings from the start of the next 11-year solar cycle came in the form of “starquakes,” sound waves ricocheting through the interior of the sun detected by researchers from the University of Birmingham.
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“It is exciting to see the first hint that the pattern will repeat itself in Cycle 26, which is due to start in about six years,” team leader Rachel Howe of the University of Birmingham said in a statement.
Wait for your turn Cycle 26!
To find the signs of this extreme solar cycle, Howe and his colleagues used a scientific technique called “helioseismology,” which measures tremors on our star.
Just as seismologists can use seismic waves on Earth to determine the interior of our planet, including its structure and composition, heliogeologists can do the same with sound waves and the sun .
Heliosiology can also determine how the sun rotates. Because the sun is a wrinkly ball of superheated gas, or plasma, it does not rotate like a solid body. Instead, it experiences a type of rotation called “differential rotation” that sees different layers of the sun moving at different angular speeds.
This creates a visible pattern of bands called “solar torsional oscillations” some rotating faster, some slower. During the solar cycle, these bands move to and from the sun’s poles and equator. The faster rotating zones tend to appear when the next photo is about to start.
The team at the University of Birmingham have seen a small indication that Cycle 26 is starting to show up in the rotational band data they are analyzing.
“If you go back one solar cycle – 11 years – on the plot, you can see something similar that seems to go along with the shape we saw in 2017. He continued to be a feature of the current solar cycle, Cycle 25 ,” Howe said. “We will probably see the first tracks of Series 26, which will not officially start until around 2030.”
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been observing the sun since 2010, collecting helioseismic data using its Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) to help scientists like Howe study signs of solar torsional oscillation.
In addition, researchers have similar data stretching all the way back to 1995, thanks to the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
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This means that Howe and his colleagues have a picture of the rising phases of Cycles 23, 24, and 25. In fact, Howe has been following the changes in the sun’s rotation for about 25 years, starting his investigation when only some of the scientists were. data from Cycle 23.
This revealed fast-moving matter with sunspots moving toward the sun’s equator, a pattern that repeated itself in similar ways during Cycle 24 and the growth of Cycle 25. Now, Howe has clues that the same pattern happening again ahead of Cycle 26.
“With more data, I hope we can understand more about the part these flows play in the complex dance of plasma and magnetic fields that make up the solar cycle,” she said.
The team’s research was presented at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomical Meeting 2024 (NAM 24) in Hull.
