Scientists Gaze Inside Sun, Predict Strength of the Next Solar Cycle ~ heavy computer simulation

This is somewhat garbled....go to link for images....my interest here is the computing aspect.

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Image right: These three images show the incredible changes in the Sun's atmosphere (corona) from near solar minimum (left panel) to near solar maximum (right panel). They are false-color images taken with SOHO's Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope. Credit: NASA and the European Space Agency.

print-resolution copy (2 meg tif image)

SOHO movie comparing quiet sun to active sun

The sun goes through a roughly 11-year cycle of activity, from stormy to quiet and back again. Predicting the sun’s cycles accurately years in advance will help societies plan for active bouts of solar storms, which can disrupt satellite orbits and electronics, interfere with radio communication, and damage power systems. The forecast is important for NASA’s long-term plans, since solar storms can be hazardous to unprotected astronauts as well.

Solar storms begin with tangled magnetic fields generated by the sun’s churning electrically charged gas (plasma). Like a rubber band that has been twisted too far, solar magnetic fields can suddenly snap to a new shape, releasing tremendous energy as a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Solar flares are explosions in the sun’s atmosphere, with the largest equal to billions of one-megaton nuclear bombs. Solar magnetic energy can also blast billions of tons of plasma into space at millions of miles (kilometers) per hour as a CME. This violent solar activity often occurs near sunspots, dark regions on the sun caused by concentrated magnetic fields. Sunspots and stormy solar weather follow the eleven-year cycle, from few sunspots and calm to many sunspots and active, and back again.

Image left: This is a false-color image of a huge sunspot group in active region 9393 as seen by SOHO's Michelson Doppler Imager instrument. On 30 March 2001, the sunspot area within the group spanned an area more than 13 times the entire surface of the Earth. Caused by intense magnetic fields emerging from the interior, a sunspot appears to be dark only when contrasted against the rest of the solar surface, because it is slightly cooler than the unmarked regions. Credit: NASA and the European Space Agency.

print-resolution copy (1.6 meg tif image)

movie of a different sunspot group taken with the TRACE satellite

Key to predicting the solar activity cycle is an understanding of the flows of plasma in the sun's interior. Magnetic fields are "frozen" into the solar plasma, so plasma currents within the sun transport, concentrate, and help dissipate solar magnetic fields. "We understood these flows in a general way, but the details were unclear, so we could not use them to make predictions before," said Dikpati, who published a paper on this research in the on-line version of Geophysical Review Letters March 3.

The new technique of "helioseismology" revealed these details by allowing researchers to see inside the sun. Helioseismology traces sound waves reverberating inside the sun to build up a picture of the interior, similar to the way an ultrasound scan is used to create a picture of an unborn baby.

govern the cycle. The first acts like a conveyor belt: deep beneath the surface, plasma flows from the poles to the equator. At the equator, the plasma rises and flows back to the poles, where it sinks and repeats. The second flow acts like a taffy pull: the surface layer of the sun rotates faster at the equator than it does near the poles. Since the large-scale solar magnetic field crosses the equator as it goes from pole to pole, it gets wrapped around the equator, over and over again, by the faster rotation there. This is what periodically concentrates the solar magnetic field, leading to the peaks in solar storm activity. Solar fireworks in the form of flares and CMEs dissipate some of the magnetic field, and the remnants are carried toward the poles by the conveyor belt flow. This becomes the input for the next cycle.

"Precise helioseismic observations of the 'conveyor belt' flow speed by the instrument on board the gave us a breakthrough," said Dikpati. "We now know it takes two cycles to fill half the belt with magnetic field – the part where it sinks at the poles and flows toward the equator, reaching mid-latitudes – and another two cycles to fill the other half – from the bottom at mid-latitudes, then rising at the equator and flowing toward the poles again. Because of this, the next solar cycle depends on characteristics from as far back as 40 years previously -- the sun has a magnetic 'memory'."

The magnetic data input comes from the SOHO/MDI instrument and historical records. To test the model, the researchers took magnetic data from the past eight solar cycles and fed it to the computer, and the results matched actual observations over the last 80 years. The team then added current magnetic data and ran the model ahead ten years to get their prediction for the next cycle.

We are currently back in the quiet period for the current cycle (cycle 23). The next cycle will begin with a rise in solar activity in late 2007 or early 2008, according to the team, and there will be 30 to 50 percent more sunspots, flares, and CMEs in cycle 24. This is about one year later than the prediction using previous methods, which rely on statistics, like the strength of the large-scale solar magnetic field and the number of sunspots, to make estimates for the next cycle.

Dikpati's team includes Dr. Giuliana De Toma and Dr. Peter A. Gilman. All are scientists in NCAR's , Boulder, Colo. SOHO is a project of international collaboration between NASA and the . NCAR's primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.

Related links:

Bill Steigerwald
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Here's a key paragraph:

We are currently back in the quiet period for the current cycle (cycle 23). The next cycle will begin with a rise in solar activity in late 2007 or early 2008, according to the team, and there will be 30 to 50 percent more sunspots, flares, and CMEs in cycle 24. This is about one year later than the prediction using previous methods, which rely on statistics, like the strength of the large-scale solar magnetic field and the number of sunspots, to make estimates for the next cycle.

Ah, you posted more. When I first saw the thread there was only the single paragraph. Thanks.

Well lets try this..

First image.....

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I got into this by chasing some threads on High Performance Computing......got more to add....

So...does this mean my winter utility bills will go down? Can I mover from PA to Yupperland?

I for one, WELCOME with open, sweaty arms global warming...manmade or natural!

prisoner6

Image left: This is a false-color image of a huge sunspot group in active region 9393 as seen by SOHO's Michelson Doppler Imager instrument. On 30 March 2001, the sunspot area within the group spanned an area more than 13 times the entire surface of the Earth. Caused by intense magnetic fields emerging from the interior, a sunspot appears to be dark only when contrasted against the rest of the solar surface, because it is slightly cooler than the unmarked regions. Credit: NASA and the European Space Agency.

Now to the meat of my interest:

NASA and NSF Computers Simulate Sun's Corona

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Breaking News:

NASA and NSF Computers Simulate Sun's Corona

For the first time, researchers have developed a computer simulation that can accurately create a model of the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona. Funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, the computer model marks the beginning of a new era in space weather prediction.

By accurately simulating the behavior of the corona, scientists hope to eventually predict when it will produce flares and coronal mass ejections, huge clouds of hot plasma ejected from the sun. It's the same approach the National Weather Service uses to predict when the Earth's atmosphere will produce thunderstorms or hurricanes.

Such predictions will help protect astronauts against radiation from flares and coronal mass ejections, in addition to mitigating disruptions on orbiting satellites and land-based communications and power systems.

"This confirms that computer models can describe the physics of the solar corona," said Zoran Mikic of Science Applications International Corp, San Diego, Calif. The turbulent corona is threaded with magnetic fields generated beneath the visible solar surface. The evolution of these magnetic fields causes violent eruptions and solar storms originating in the corona.

The computer model was based on spacecraft observations of magnetic activity on the sun's surface, which affects and shapes the corona. The observations were made with the Michelson Doppler Imager instrument on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. The Science Applications International Corporation team released simulated "photographs" of the March 29 total solar eclipse 13 days before and again 5 days before the actual event.

Previous computer simulations were based on simplified models, so the calculations could be completed in a reasonable time. The new simulation is the first to base its calculations on the physics of how energy is transferred in the corona. Even using NASA and the National Science Foundation supercomputers, the calculations required four days to complete on about 700 computer processors.

During a total solar eclipse, the moon blocks direct light from the sun, so the much fainter corona is visible. This is the only time the corona is visible from Earth without special instruments, and it resembles a white, lacy veil surrounding the black disk of the moon. Because the corona is always changing, each eclipse looks different.

Since the physics of the corona is still not completely understood, the accuracy of the simulation will improve when our understanding of how energy flows through the corona improves. More detailed measurements of magnetic activity on the solar surface, like those expected from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory scheduled to launch in 2008, will also improve the accuracy of the simulation.

Researchers are presenting the findings today at the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division Meeting in Durham, N.H. For additional information and graphics, visit http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/corona_telecon.html.

This research was sponsored in part by National Science Foundation's Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling program and NASA's Living With a Star and Sun-Earth Connection Theory Program. SOHO is a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency.

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A New Sun Born in Computer Wears the Right Look for Eclipse

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A New Sun Born in Computer Wears the Right Look for Eclipse	06.26.06
Introduction New NASA and National Science Foundation-funded research has produced the most true-to-life computer simulation ever made of our sun's multimillion-degree atmosphere, as confirmed by actual observations during the March 29 solar eclipse. This modeling effort marks the beginning of a new era in space weather prediction, showing that computer models can in fact describe the physics of the sun's active outer atmosphere, also known as the corona. The better scientists understand this region, the better prepared they are to understand and forecast space weather events and protect astronauts, satellites and communications and power systems on Earth. Panelists + Craig DeForest, American Astronomical Society/Solar Physics Division Press Officer + Zoran Mikic, Senior Research Scientist, Science Applications International Corp., San Diego, Calif. + Joe Davila, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. + Janet Luhmann, Senior Space Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.

This boggles the mind.....not sure what was used....

HPC Wire - Week of June 23, 2006 Vol. 15, No. 25

The latest CRAY :

Cray Previews Next-Generation Vector Supercomputer

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Cray Inc. has announced that the company's next-generation vector high-performance computing system is scheduled for general availability in the second half of 2007. Code-named "BlackWidow," the new system is part of an evolving heterogeneous processing capability that is the centerpiece of Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing vision.

A follow-on to current Cray vector supercomputers, BlackWidow will achieve superior sustained application performance with faster clock speeds, higher bandwidth and greater scalability. Applications developed for the Cray X1E system and its predecessor, the Cray X1 system, will port to BlackWidow. Vector processing enables breakthrough research in areas such as advanced aircraft design, weather forecasting and climate modeling, internal combustion simulation, structural and fluid analysis and plasma energy.

BlackWidow and Cray XT3-class supercomputers will use a new scalable infrastructure, called "Rainier" (the initial phase of Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing vision), which provides common input/output processing and system services. This will give customers a uniquely powerful way to combine best-in-class vector and scalar processing power in a more economical and flexible package, avoiding the administrative costs and complexities of having to install and manage separate systems.

"Building on the success of the Cray X1E system, the new BlackWidow supercomputer will give scientists and engineers a powerful computational tool that offers dramatically improved price/performance and enhanced capabilities designed to solve complex problems that are beyond the abilities of cluster systems using commodity processors," said Peter Ungaro, Cray's president and CEO. "The tightly integrated design will allow customers to configure an optimal mix of vector and scalar computing resources in a single supercomputer running the familiar Linux operating system. This will also give our Cray XT3 customers the opportunity to add high-bandwidth, vector capability in small, cost-effective increments."

ClearSpeed Teams with IBM to Deliver Hybrid Clusters

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ClearSpeed Technology, a provider of high-performance coprocessors, has announced it will team with IBM to integrate ClearSpeed Advance boards into the IBM System Cluster 1350 solution.

"IBM's selection of ClearSpeed validates the inclusion of coprocessor technology as a key component in the next wave of high performance computing architectures," said Tom Beese, CEO for ClearSpeed. "Our expanded relationship with IBM broadens the worldwide availability of the ClearSpeed Advance boards beyond Top 500-class systems to include the wider community of HPC customers looking to increase their system's floating-point performance without substantially impacting their energy or facilities costs."

At the heart of ClearSpeed's products lies the CSX600, an embedded parallel processor with 96 cores that executes up to 25 billion 64-bit floating point operations per second (Flops) while consuming less than 10 Watts of energy. The company claims it is the world's fastest and most power-efficient 64-bit floating point processor. The ClearSpeed Advance accelerator board combines two CSX600 processors in a PCI-X form factor that delivers up to 50 GFlops of sustained double-precision general matrix-matrix multiply (DGEMM) performance while averaging less than 25W.

The combination of the ClearSpeed Advance accelerator boards and the IBM System Cluster 1350 is a solution targeted for research as well as finance, oil and gas, life sciences and other production oriented HPC markets, and will be available in the second half of 2006.

The technologies from IBM and ClearSpeed are components of the recently announced advanced supercomputer architecture that the University of Bristol has designed to consolidate its position as one of the world's top HPC centers. This new facility will help to maintain the university's lead in delivering groundbreaking research.

"IBM is constantly striving to bring the best and most advanced technologies to market," said Wendy McGee, director, IBM Cluster Solutions. "By teaming with select specialist suppliers like ClearSpeed, we can enhance our ability to supply systems that enable our customers to deliver breakthrough research and to strengthen their competitive position in the global marketplace."

Another item

Cray to Deliver Petaflop Supercomputer to ORNL in 2008

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Cray Inc. has announced that they have signed a multi-year contract with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to provide the world's first petaflops-speed (1,000 trillion floating-point operations per second) supercomputer.

The total contract, including systems and services, is valued at about $200 million and calls for progressive upgrades to ORNL's existing Cray XT3 supercomputer. This system will be upgraded to dual-core processors later this year, accelerating peak speed from 25 teraflops (25 trillion calculations per second) to 50 teraflops. Further upgrades will increase the performance to 100 teraflops, planned in late 2006, and to 250 teraflops, planned in late 2007.

ORNL is then expected to install a next-generation Cray supercomputer in late 2008. This system, currently code-named 'Baker,' is designed to deliver peak performance of one petaflops, making it roughly three times faster than any existing computer in the world. All systems provided for in this contract will utilize current and future versions of the AMD Opteron processor.

"ORNL has had a long and rewarding partnership with Cray that has enabled us to accomplish breakthrough science," said ORNL Director Jeff Wadsworth. "The Department of Energy's Leadership Computing Facility at ORNL will help ensure that the United States remains a world leader by helping solve 'grand challenge' problems in nanoscience, biology and energy technologies."

"Without a doubt, this is a great day for Cray," said Cray president and CEO Peter Ungaro. "Cray supercomputers were first to achieve gigaflops sustained performance in 1989, and first to break the sustained teraflops barrier in 1998. Now ORNL and Cray are not only well on the way to breaking the petaflops barrier, we are also working together to realize Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing vision by making this immense processing power available for real-world scientific and engineering applications."

Staff and guest researchers at ORNL use Cray supercomputers to explore the frontiers of neutron science, biological systems, energy production and advanced materials. In addition, scientists and industry partners such as The Boeing Company, DreamWorks Animation SKG, Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology will be able to employ the enhanced Cray supercomputer configuration to conduct high-impact projects as part of DOE's INCITE program.

Cray expects to begin recognizing product revenue on the ORNL installation in the second half of 2006, with approximately one third of the revenue to be recognized over the next two years and the remainder expected to be recognized thereafter. The total approximate value of the contract is contingent upon Cray meeting certain delivery dates.

The ORNL contract was considered in Cray's prior revenue guidance for 2006, most recently updated on June 7, 2006. The size of the deliverables scheduled in late 2006 will influence total annual revenue and could modestly affect the range of outcomes for the year. The timing of revenue recognition on these deliverables could affect 2006 and 2007 by as much as $30 million.

From :

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Multicore at Hot Chips

The Stanford Hot Chips conference has a definite multicore flavor this year. There will be multicore related presentations and tutorials from Sun, Intel, AMD, IBM, Phillips, and several other big guys, as well as new information about products information from smaller companies like Ambric and Connex Technology.

And:

Start-up could kick Opteron into overdrive

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Start-up could kick Opteron into overdrive

By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View

Published Friday 21st April 2006 19:44 GMT

Exclusive The 2002 film Death to Smoochy reminds us that "friends come in all sizes." AMD executives must embrace this observation on a daily basis, especially when a company such as DRC Computer appears.

The tiny DRC works out of a no frills Santa Clara office, producing technology that has the potential to give servers based on AMD's Opteron chip a real edge over competing Xeon-based boxes. DRC has developed a type of reprogrammable co-processor that can slot straight into Opteron sockets. Customers can then offload a wide variety of software jobs to the co-processor running in a standard server, instead of buying unique, more expensive types of accelerators from third parties as they have in the past.

"Current accelerators costs about $15,000 each and deliver little performance improvements beyond what you could achieve by buying more blade servers for that same price," Larry Laurich, the CEO of DRC, told us in an interview. "We have taken the approach that we must deliver three times the price-performance of a standard blade."

Neither standalone server accelerators nor FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays), which is what the DRC modules are, stand as novel concepts in the hardware industry. Server customers, however, have largely shied from buying pricey, specialized co-processors even when such devices demonstrated dramatic performance improvements on certain workloads. The high costs of accelerators, a lack of supporting software and a large amount of custom design work needed to make the devices work well have made them not worth the trouble to most customers.

It's this tradition of disdain for accelerators that DRC will have to fight.

"People have tried a lot of special purpose processing devices over the years and, with the exceptions of graphics units and arguably floating point units, general purpose processors have always won out in the end," said Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata.

DRC thinks it has solved the price and performance problems by playing off AMD's open Hypertransport specification.

"DRC's flagship product is the DRC Coprocessor Module that plugs directly into an open processor socket in a multi-way Opteron system," the company notes on its web site. "This provides direct access to DDR memory and any adjacent Opteron processor at full Hypertransport bandwidth [12.8 GBps] and ±75 nanosecond latency."

AMD's decision to open Hypertransport could end up being a key factor in Opteron's future success. Intel looks set to compete better with AMD later this year when it releases a revamped line of Xeon processors. AMD, however, can now turn to third parties such as DRC for performance boosts unavailable with Intel's chip line.

A DRC module in a person's hand DRC appears to be making the most of its AMD ties by sliding right into Opteron sockets. That means that customers can outfit an Opteron motherboard with any combination of Opteron chips and DRC modules. Illuminata's Haff sees the DRC implementation as one way of overcoming past aversions to accelerators.

"It is true that one of the issues around PCI-based FPGA products and really anything specialized is that by the time you transfer the calculation over the special purpose board, you have often lost much of the benefit you had," Haff said. "So, putting the product within the CPU fabric certainly does help address this particular problem."

The notion of offloading certain routines to an FPGA should prove attractive to a wide variety of industries, stretching from the oil and gas sector to high performance computing buffs and possibly even mainstream server customers.

Today, for example, companies like Boeing that need specialized, embedded devices will buy a PCI board with an FPGA and do custom work designing software and a hardware unit for their system. "Those products could end up in something the size of a telephone or a bread box," said Laurich. "It may take them about six months to lay out that type of custom design."

With the DRC module, customers can pick from standard hardware ranging from blade servers on up to Opteron-based SMPs instead of building their own breadboxes.

Each DRC module will cost around $4,500 this year and likely drop to around $3,000 next year, Laurich said. That compares to products from companies such as SGI that cost well over $10,000.

So far, DRC has seen the most interest from oil and gas companies looking to put specific algorithms on the FPGAs. Manufacturing firms and financial services companies have also looked at the DRC products for help with their own routines. It's not hard to imagine companies such as Linux Networx, Cray or SGI (when it does the inevitable and backs Opteron) wanting to move away from more expensive FPGA products as well in order to service the high-performance computing market.

Eventually, standard server makers could turn to the FPGAs to help with security or networking workloads.

"There does seem to be this kind of general feeling in places like IBM and Sun that the time may be here to use some special purpose processors or parts of processors for various things," Haff said. "The FPGA approach is certainly one way of doing that. It does have the advantage that you're not locked into a particular function at any time because you can dynamically reprogram it."

The DRC products also come with potential energy cost savings that could be a plus for end users and server vendors that have started hawking "green computing." Power has become the most expensive item for many large data centers.

The first set of DRC modules will consume about 10 - 20 watts versus close to 80 watts for an Opteron chip. An upcoming larger DRC module will consume twice the power and be able to handle larger algorithms.

"We believe we will get 10 to 20x application acceleration at 40 per cent of the power," Laurich said. "At the same time, we're looking at a 2 to 3x price performance advantage."

A motherboard with DRC and Opteron chip It will, of course, take some time to build out the software for the DRC modules. The company has started shipping its first machines to channel partners that specialize in developing applications for FPGAs. An oil and gas company wanting to move its code to the product could expect the process to take about 6 months.

If DRC takes off, the company plans to bulk up from its current 13-person operation and to tap partners in different verticals to help out with the software work.

DRC also thinks it can maintain a competitive advantage over potential rivals via its patent portfolio. The modules result from work done by FPGA pioneer Steve Casselman, who is a co-founder and CTO of the company. Casselman told us that he had been waiting for something like Hypertransport to come along for years and that AMD's opening up of the specification almost brought tears to his eyes.

It's always difficult to judge how well a start-up will pan out, especially one that needs to build out systems and software to make it a success. DRC, however, does have - at the moment - that rare feeling of something special.

It's playing off standard server components and riding the Opteron wave. In addition, it is reducing the cost of acceleration modules in a dramatic fashion. That combination of serious horsepower with much lower costs is typically the right recipe for a decent start-up, and we'll be curious to see how things progress in the coming months.

You can have a look at the DRC kit here (http://www.drccomputer.com/pages/products.html). ®

GIGO ping. ;')

Ping.

Solar Minimum has Arrived
NASA | 03.06.2006 | Dr. Tony Phillips
Posted on 03/07/2006 5:30:00 AM EST by S0122017
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1591488/posts

Bumper sunspot crop forecast for next solar cycle
newscientist space | 7 March 2006 | Kimm Groshong
Posted on 03/09/2006 11:42:56 AM EST by S0122017
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1593170/posts

The Ancient Mayan Prediction regarding year 2012:
When it came to mathematics, time and calendars, the Maya were geniuses. Believing that time repeated itself in cycles, they devised two calendars, one ritualistic, which was used for religious celebrations and astrological predictions, and the other a solar calendar
End of the Mayan Great Cycle: December 21st, 2012 A.D.

Scholars today are recognizing that Mayan mythology is intimately related to the celestial movements of stars, the Milky Way and certain constellations. The sources of Mayan mythology are found in the sky, and the timetable of Creation Day is pinpointed by the end date of the Mayan Great Cycle.

My research into the nature of this date reveals that a rare celestial alignment culminates on it. Generally speaking, what occurs is an alignment between the galactic and solar planes. Specifically, the winter solstice sun will conjunct the Milky Way, which is the edge of our spinning galaxy as viewed from earth. Furthermore, the place where the sun meets the Milky Way is where the "dark-rift" in the Milky Way is - a black ridge along the Milky Way caused by interstellar dust clouds

From Scientist and Climatologist: Patrick Gwinneth

In Conclusion that in 2012 AD, the earth will be subjected to a huge disaster. The cause: the magnetic field of the earth will reverse in one go, resulting in an enormous shift of the earth’s crust. Virtually it will be hard for most people to will survive this, while at the same time all our acquired knowledge will disappear.

These scientific predictions originate from the Maya and the ancient Egyptians. Both civilizations are descendants of the legendary Atlanteans, and they had an very high-evolved astronomical knowledge. At the time, they were able to accurately predict the tidal wave that would herald the end of their civilization.

This put me to my quest for the background of their calculations. After years of intensive research, I finally succeeded in cracking the millennia-old codes of the Maya and ancient Egyptians. All my findings make up an amazing exploratory expedition into the secrets of a very distant past. What I discovered is astonishing and concerns everybody. At the same time this discovery explains why the Egyptians built the pyramids of Gizeh according to the star system of Orion.
Sunspots have Increased 1825%
From a New Scientist article of 02 November 2003: "There have been more sunspots since the 1940s than for the past 1150 years (combined)." That is a 1825% increase. Sunspot numbers were derived from levels of a radioactive isotope found in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica. Sunspots are the precursors of solar flares and coronal mass ejections and reflect the internal state of the sun.

2012.. FROM THE ATMOSPHERIC SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY
2012: Super Sunspot Cycle Peak!
Increasing sunspot activity was clearly visible as our star approached its latest maximum, in 1999.

The next 11-year sunspot cycle will be late but strong according to a new computer prediction. The model used was virtually spot on when applied retrospectively to "forecast" the last eight solar cycles.

"We predict the next cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the last cycle," says the model's creator, Mausumi Dikpati, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, US.
The Sun is currently near its minimum activity, at the tail end of a solar cycle, numbered 23. "Onset of the next cycle will be delayed by six to 12 months, to late 2007 or early 2008," Dikpati says. She expects the next peak to hit in 2012.

Although each solar cycle – from sunspot minimum to maximum and back again – is roughly 11 years, the periods can vary in length and intensity. The factors governing the cycle have been largely inscrutable.
Dikpati's team tackled the problem by incorporating updated solar dynamical theories along with observations of the Sun dating back to 1880. The result is a model of the Sun with a 20-year "memory" of its magnetic field activity.