Every 11 years or so, the sun goes mad, flinging huge balls of plasma towards the Earth. It has been 12 years since the last solar maximum and there are signs that the sun is gearing up for another outburst. We should be worried, as the world has become increasingly vulnerable to solar storms. So it may be a blessing that the upcoming maximum is expected to be a feeble one (see page 14). That blessing, however, could be decidedly mixed. Whatever happens over the next year or two, there will be another solar maximum in the early 2020s, another about 11 years later, and so on until... well, who knows. One day a real monster will hit us and we need to be ready.
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