This is CBS I on the World Behind the Black Happy Birthday Bob Zimmerman, the annual subscription or donation. Most welcome because we're going space exploring with Bob.

First to the most important star in the Cosmos, our Sun watching the sun and its sunspots is a way of talking about what little we know about the sun.

However, there is this term I've learned to use from Bob, solar maximum.

Bob, are we in a solar maximum?

Can we tell?

What does it mean?

Well, no, we don't know.

We really don't know. In fact, it's the most important lesson one can take from the solar cycle, the 11 year solar cycle, where sunspots get inactive and then get active over 11 years and it goes up and down and it's been

doing this every 11 years now for about 250 years. The one lesson we can take

from it is we really don't know very much. What we do know is that the sun has been ramping up towards

maximum now since about 2020 and based upon the predictions of solar

scientists it would be certain level of activity, it would be a high or a week maximum, and that

maximum would occur sometime around 20, 25, 26, in 25. That's the prediction. There were two different predictions. One was a very

active, powerful maximum and one was calling for a week maximum. And of course the sun can do nothing that's predicted. It's been

consistently much more active than predicted and it looked like and it looks now

appears. I do this monthly so I give a real sense of how the sun's activity is

developing it really does appear now that the sun has reached a peak a

preliminary peak in a solar maximum and what looks like is going to happen

is the same thing that happened back in 2014 13 in the previous maximum we're

going to have a double peaked maximum.

We've seen the first peak.

We're now in that saddle in between the peaks, it looks like.

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