Calm expected from the sun.

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The sun has entered its weakest cycle of magnetic activity since 1928, meaning fewer solar flares and coronal mass ejections, scientists predicted in a May 8 teleconference. A panel assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center reported that the cycle, which scientists believe began in December 2008, will peak in May 2013. (Cycles usually last about 11 years.) "It's fair to say we probably won't see a whole lot of solar storms from this cycle," Douglas Biesecker of NOAA's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., said at the teleconference. "But a weaker cycle won't lessen the intensity of the storms, just the number of them." Scientists use the number of sunspots, blotches of concentrated magnetic activity on the surface of the sun, as a measure of solar activity. (This May 2009 image shows a quiet sun, with minimal magnetic activity.) The new predictions are based on the cycle's slow start.