This is John Batchster, a conversation with my good colleague Bob Zimmerman about sunspots.

The prediction each year tracks the sun going maximum number of sunspots to minimum number of sunspots, up and down, 11-year cycle.

However, what we're witnessing right now is something that I've not seen before, and Bob says that many, if anybody, has seen before.

From a maximum, rather than ramping down slowly to a minimum, the number of sunspots dropped in one month inexplicably.

This is Bob Zimmerman to reveal what we know so far

and why this is out of step

with all the predictions, with all the

understandings. And Bob reassures us

nobody really understands sunspots, so

it's comforting. Here's Bob. More of this tonight. The sun is, apparently,

according to the solar science community, was apparently ramping down to solar minimum after a

maximum last year. That's what they predicted. And they had posted their prediction for the

trend that would head downhill.

I pointed out that there was no guarantee it was even going to go down.

It might even come back up again and be a double peak maximum as happened in the previous

maximum.

This is sunspot activity on the surface of the sun.

That activity appears to have some influence on the Earth's climate, so it's important to know

what's going on.

We're trying to also understand the sun itself, which we really don't understand very well.

Well, in the month of May that just ended, the sun did things that no one predicted.

It actually dropped significantly, I i mean really significantly the number of

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