The latest forecast revises an earlier prediction issued in 2007. At that time, a sharply divided panel believed solar minimum would come in March 2008 followed by either a strong solar maximum in 2011 or a weak solar maximum in 2012. Competing models gave different answers, and researchers were eager for the sun to reveal which was correct.

"It turns out that none of our models were totally correct," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's lead representative on the panel. "The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way."

In recent months, however, the sun has begun to show timorous signs of life. Small sunspots and "proto-sunspots" are popping up with increasing frequency. Enormous currents of plasma on the sun’s surface ("zonal flows") are gaining strength and slowly drifting toward the sun’s equator. Radio astronomers have detected a tiny but significant uptick in solar radio emissions. All these things are precursors of an awakening Solar Cycle 24 and form the basis for the panel's new, almost unanimous forecast.

"Go ahead and mark your calendar for May 2013," says Pesnell. "But use a pencil."

May 29, 2009: An international panel of experts led by NOAA and sponsored by NASA has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle. Solar Cycle 24 will peak, they say, in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots.

The group, led by Anatoly Akimov and Gennady Shipov,[3] began the research as the state-sponsored Center for Nontraditional Technologies, but was disbanded in 1991 when their research was exposed as a fraud and an embezzlement of State funding

Originally posted by Catch_a_Fire
reply to post by Myendica

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A bit more on Dr Brian Cox, for those who aren't familiar.

Brian Edward Cox, OBE (born 3 March 1968), also known as B. E. Cox, is a British particle physicist, a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a professor at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester, and works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. He is also working on the R&D project of the FP420 experiment in an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiment by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 metres (1,380 ft) from the interaction points of the main experiments.[1]

Brian Edward Cox, OBE (born 3 March 1968), also known as B. E. Cox, is a British particle physicist, a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a professor at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group at the University of Manchester, and works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. He is also working on the R&D project of the FP420 experiment in an international collaboration to upgrade the ATLAS and the CMS experiment by installing additional, smaller detectors at a distance of 420 metres (1,380 ft) from the interaction points of the main experiments.[1]

He is best known to the public as the presenter of a number of science programmes for the BBC. He also had some fame in the early 1990s as keyboard player in the UK pop band D:Ream. He is married to TV personality Gia Milinovich, and has a son and a stepson.[2] He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.[3]

Source.

The guys a genious.