Wow! Surprised to see that this one hasn't been covered on ATS.
After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life.
"I think solar minimum is behind us," says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
His statement is prompted by an October flurry of sunspots. "Last month we counted five sunspot groups," he says. That may not sound like much, but
in a year with record-low numbers of sunspots and long stretches of utter spotlessness, five is significant. "This represents a real increase in
solar activity."
The Sun Shows Signs of Life, Nov. 7, 2008
I had read previously on ATS that the Sun's protective 'bubble' is shrinking Will Launch
MJission To Study
and that the Vanishing Sunspot Mystery Has Scientists Worried! The Beginning Of The Ice
Age?
Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age
Although the current solar minimum represents a 50-year low in sunspot counts, There is in fact nothing wrong with the sun
Solar minima this deep and long are common in the historical record and do not represent a fundamental breakdown of the sun's 11-year activity
cycle
There seems to be a lot of doom and gloom around lately... so it is great to read something positive.
[edit on 11-12-2008 by Thurisaz]
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I can verify.
Being a broadcaster I've noticed some spotty propagation the other day on the am bands. When the sun is active, signals tend to bounce around to
areas normally impossible to reach.
CB users call it skip.
HAM users call it scatter.
Great time to communicate to random parts of the world. It's a yahoo chat on steroids.
Though weak, I did hear some spanish stations. A short trip really but an indication that the sun "blinked" for a while. Hopefully things pick up
since I invested a lot in new gear this summer past.
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I have been tracking the sun activity since I read the book “Apocalypse 2012.” I usually track it through www.spaceweather.com . It is interesting
that during sunspot activity there are changes in our weather, volcanism, and plate movement. If you look back to the big quake in China there was
increased Sun spot activity. Also the last hurricane of the season just appeared, basically, and there were increased solar activity.
If you look at the forecast for tomorrow you will notice that Sun spot # 1009 will be a class “C” on 12/12/08.
This also plays in with another post about the Web Bots and the earthquake predicted from 12/10 to 12/15.
Lets hope the Web Bots are wrong.
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reply to post by Jasestrong2
I use spaceweather.com too...I have a street/crowd/people job, and what made me subscribe to the service is the correlation between solar
flare/geomagnetic storm activity and bad behavior...some days everybody would be squirrelly and fighting for no reason and I would discover later
there was solar activity in that time window...there hasn't been much lately but I anticipate the alerts will give me a heads-up on bad-monkey-nights
as the sun gets perky again... 
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