[PVRCNC] Next Solar Cycle

[Keith Zeringue]

Aren't we fortunate to have had radio invented at this point of 
relatively high sunspot activity rather than at a "Maunder Minimum" type 
period?  Not much hope for 10 meters if we had that going on now. 
Decades of no sunspots at all.....eeeek!

Even the low end prediction of 45 sunspots would be better than a true 
minimum.

Guy, the plots that go all the way back to Galileo show that there are 
large variations in both the upward and downward trends--in the sequence 
  of cycle 11 thru cycle 16, what if cycle 13 is the oddball?  But then 
are these really large variations in a system as big as the sun?

O'course, that curve fitting exercise only reinforces the opinion that 
the next cycle should be lower, or trending down.  (That's my own 
guestimate too).  But what if the current group of higher activity 
cycles is going to last a few cycles longer than historical sunspot 
trends predict?  I'm betting that the data is too narrow to show the 
longer term(millennial) cosmic scale trends that may well exist in a 
system so large and complex as the variability of a star.  It may take a 
few thousand years of observations to see what's really happening.

Mayhaps time will bring fullness.  Perhaps our distant unborn 
descendants will be able to be certain.  Right now, I'm pretty certain 
that no one is certain.....

For now, I'm going to hope the guys pushing the 'conveyer belt' theory 
are right about predicting 'short term'(decades) behavior, that you and 
I are wrong about following the 'short term'(centuries) curves --and 
that we are all so fortunate as to be in good health to see the short 
term result over the next ten years.  :)

Woo hoo!

Maunder Minimum:
 > http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf051/sf051a05.htm

 > http://web.hao.ucar.edu/public/education/sp/great_moments.2.html

 > http://www.solarstorms.org/BerkeleyMaunder.html

careful with that SUV, Eugene.......or maybe not.

 > http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/lisa3/beckmanj.html


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