{"id":242099,"date":"2026-08-03T05:04:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T10:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/how-the-sun-goes-to-sleep-could-reveal-future-space-weather-when-it-wakes"},"modified":"2026-08-03T05:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T10:04:28","slug":"how-the-sun-goes-to-sleep-could-reveal-future-space-weather-when-it-wakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/how-the-sun-goes-to-sleep-could-reveal-future-space-weather-when-it-wakes","title":{"rendered":"How the sun goes to \u2018sleep\u2019 could reveal future space weather when it wakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-the-sun-goes-to-sleep-could-reveal-future-space-weather-when-it-wakes.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have developed a new way to predict the strength of the sun\u2019s next activity cycle up to seven years before it reaches its peak.<\/p>\n<p>The new method uses the number of sunspots at a newly identified \u201cswitchoff\u201d point in the solar cycle, when the sun\u2019s most extreme space weather suddenly comes to an end. Using this approach, researchers have made an early prediction for the strength of Solar Cycle 26.<\/p>\n<p>A very early prediction shows a moderate Cycle 26 with a sunspot number of around 100\u2013120, similar to or weaker than the current Cycle 25. However, exact predictions won\u2019t be possible for another two years, and a weaker or stronger cycle is still theoretically possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have developed a new way to predict the strength of the sun\u2019s next activity cycle up to seven years before it reaches its peak. The new method uses the number of sunspots at a newly identified \u201cswitchoff\u201d point in the solar cycle, when the sun\u2019s most extreme space weather suddenly comes to an end. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}