This is CBS I In The World. I'm John Batcher. From the surface of the planet Earth, we're

looking at the sunspots on our very important star with Bob Zimmerman, who watches the

sun very carefully for us once a month. There are predictions of the solar maximum.

And there is so far a tracking that is interesting telling us that the solar maximum is coming,

but perhaps more, what do you say Bob? Hotter, unusual, how do you explore activity?

More activity. More activity. More sunspots. There are indications that if there are a lot of

sunspots, the sun produces a little bit more heat and light, and therefore it warms our climate.

This is not totally confirmed, but there are strong hints of that circumstantial and direct.

But what's been happening over the last two, the last cycle, the last solar maximum back

in 14 was very weak. And the predictions from the nose panel of solar scientists, which they

considered to be the consensus of the entire solar science community, was that the upcoming,

the next maximum in 25, was going to also be weak and comparable to the one that just passed.

And since each month I track and from post on behind the black, a graph, an updated graph from

the nose showing how the actual sunspots compare to the predictions. And since 20, when we were in the last

minimum, the ramp up to maximum where each month is some number of sunspots increases on the

surface of the sun. It's been going up much faster than the prediction, much faster. And there were hints

that maybe over the last four or five months that maybe it's hit its peak and it's now going to be a flat

maximum for the rest of the, you know, not go up much higher, which will put a pretty close to the

prediction, even though it arrived at the high numbers much sooner. And I'm talking about like two, two, two years,

sooner, maybe three. This last month in June throws that out the window completely. In June,

the sun was more active than it has been since September in 2002. And that was, that was as the,

the solar maximum was ending around 2000. That's, that's, that's, that's two, two maximums passed. It

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