Something Bizarre Is Happening at the Sun’s South Pole

In recent years, our sun has been behaving in ways that have left scientists perplexed.

Two years ago, it began unleashing gargantuan geomagnetic storms that took everyone by surprise.

Auroras were witnessed as far south as Florida and the Bahamas, with the most powerful storms recorded in 500 years.

Satellites malfunctioned, leading many to wonder if this was merely a glitch in the cosmic matrix.

However, the reality is far more complex.

Our sun is in the midst of its most active phase, known as the solar maximum.

This particular solar maximum is almost twice as powerful as scientists had predicted, prompting a scramble to understand the underlying causes.

The Solar Cycle and Its Anomalies

Every 11 years, the sun undergoes a solar cycle, transitioning between a calm period known as the solar minimum and an explosive phase called the solar maximum.

Typically, scientists gauge the sun’s position in this cycle by counting the number of sunspots on its surface.

More magnetic activity correlates with an increase in sunspots, leading to more frequent solar flares and coronal mass ejections—essentially, solar storms.

However, the last few years have shown that our star is behaving unusually.

In 2020, the sun entered solar cycle 25, which has proven to be significantly more violent and turbulent than anticipated.

At its peak in August 2024, a staggering 216 sunspots were observed, nearly double initial predictions and the highest count in 23 years.

The million-dollar question is: why?

The Polar Field Precursor

To predict the strength of a solar cycle, scientists rely on a concept known as the polar field precursor.

As sunspots decay during each cycle, their residual magnetic flux drifts toward the poles, building a strong magnetic field.

This polar field at solar minimum is critical for forecasting the next cycle’s activity.

Instruments like NASA’s Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) aboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory have been pivotal in observing the sun from Earth’s orbit.

By accurately measuring the sun’s polar fields, scientists can make predictions about the intensity of upcoming solar cycles.

However, in 2019, an international panel of experts, convened by NASA and NOAA, reviewed forecasts based on the previous cycle’s minimum.

They concluded that cycle 25 would peak at a mere 115 sunspots—a weak, below-average maximum.

This prediction seemed reasonable, considering that cycles 22, 23, and 24 were each weaker than the last.

But everything changed with a shocking realization in 2025.

A Groundbreaking Discovery

Researchers at the National Solar Observatory built a virtual model of the HMI and discovered that the real HMI had only been detecting about half of the sun’s true magnetic field strength at the poles.

This revelation explained why our predictions had been so far off.

Despite this, solar cycle 25 turned out to be far stronger than anyone anticipated, indicating that something deeper was at play.

For centuries, scientists have sought to understand what drives solar activity.

The prevailing theory placed the answer more than 200,000 kilometers below the surface at a boundary layer known as the tachocline.

The core idea was that differential rotation at this layer wound up magnetic field lines like coiled springs, generating the dynamo that drives solar activity.

However, in 2024, researchers from MIT, Northwestern University, Edinburgh, and other institutions challenged this assumption.

Using a NASA supercomputer, they conducted the most detailed solar simulations ever attempted.

Their findings revealed that the sun’s magnetic dynamo actually originates just 32,000 kilometers below the surface.

The Implications of a Near-Surface Dynamo

This discovery is significant because a near-surface dynamo would be driven by magneto-rotational instability.

This phenomenon occurs when a weak magnetic field connects two layers of plasma rotating at different speeds.

Instead of stabilizing them, it amplifies the difference, driving turbulence that generates and sustains the magnetic dynamo.

Such a mechanism could explain why consecutive solar cycles can vary significantly in strength.

It would also produce clear predictions that can be tested, unlike the old tachocline models, which relied on poorly constrained assumptions.

In 2018, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe, which aimed to study the solar dynamo firsthand.

After nearly three years, it arrived in April 2021, just as the sun began ramping up towards its maximum.

Transformative Observations from the Parker Solar Probe

On Christmas Eve 2024, the Parker Solar Probe made its closest approach to the sun, capturing images of the corona and solar wind streaming out of it from about 6 million kilometers above the surface.

It became the fastest human-made object in history, traveling at almost 700,000 kilometers per hour.

However, the most impressive aspects of this mission extend beyond its speed.

Over 27 orbits, the Parker Probe collected data that may have solved a decades-old mystery about the sun’s outer atmosphere.

The sun’s surface temperature is approximately 5,500 degrees Celsius.

Yet, the corona, the sun’s outermost layer, reaches temperatures ranging from 1 million to a staggering 10 million degrees Celsius in certain regions.

The reason for this temperature discrepancy has long puzzled scientists.

While we understood that magnetism played a role, the details remained unclear.

Magnetic fields accumulate, concentrate, and strengthen at the boundaries between convective cells known as supergranules.

When these fields become powerful enough, they can interact with solar plasma, launching jets and nanoflares.

In areas where the fields are especially strong, they can tear through the sun’s surface entirely, creating sunspots and giant magnetic loops.

Most of these loops are closed, with both ends attached to the sun.

However, some loops are ripped open, extending to the edge of the heliosphere, known as open magnetic fields.

In 1988, astrophysicist Eugene Parker proposed a radical idea that the churning convective supergranules on the sun’s surface could not only open and close magnetic fields but could also tangle them.

This would build up magnetic energy in the solar atmosphere until the field lines buckle, snap, and reconnect, transferring that stored energy into the solar atmosphere as heat.

Parker’s theory was initially ridiculed and dismissed.

However, the Parker Solar Probe’s findings vindicated his work beyond his wildest dreams.

New Insights into Solar Wind

Even into the 21st century, our understanding of the sun’s magnetism continued to evolve.

Data from ESA’s SOHO mission indicated that the solar magnetic field was far more variable than previously thought.

Solar wind readings taken near Earth also presented puzzling compositional patterns that contradicted the prevailing theories of the time.

Recently, the Parker Solar Probe has helped scientists connect the dots between these seemingly disparate observations.

Data collected by its WHISPR camera revealed that while the solar wind appears turbulent from near Earth, it flows outward in individual streamlets that mirror the sizes of the supergranules on the sun’s surface.

With each orbit, the probe examined these streams of particles and discovered peculiar formations known as switchbacks.

These structures likely occur when closed magnetic loops collide and connect with open magnetic loops in a process called interchange reconnection.

These events generate heat and eject solar material into space, warming the corona and accelerating particles in the solar wind.

This concept aligns closely with Parker’s original hypothesis.

Understanding Coronal Mass Ejections

Until recently, our model of coronal mass ejections assumed that material traveled in one direction from the sun outward.

However, during the December 2024 flyby, the Parker Probe captured an unexpected phenomenon.

A cloud of solar material burst out from the sun before curling inward in a U-turn formation.

According to NASA, this material that returns to the sun can subtly influence the solar atmosphere, affecting how subsequent coronal mass ejections erupt.

While hints of these inflows had been observed before through the SOHO and STEREO missions, this was the first time the process was captured in such high resolution.

With this data, scientists can make precise measurements about these inflows, including their speed, shape, and size.

This understanding will ultimately help us better predict solar cycles and space weather events, which can impact astronauts in space and everyone on Earth.

Venturing to the Sun’s Poles

To fully grasp solar cycles, scientists need to examine the hubs of the sun’s magnetic activity.

Traditionally, most spacecraft have orbited in the ecliptic plane, limiting our view of the sun’s poles.

To rectify this, the Solar Orbiter was designed to tilt its orbit gradually using a series of Venus gravity assists.

On March 23, 2025, it crossed 17 degrees below the solar equator, locking its instruments on the sun’s south pole and capturing the first-ever images of it.

The findings revealed that the South Pole is a chaotic and messy environment.

Unlike a typical magnet with clear north and south polarity, both north and south polarity magnetic fields were present at the south pole simultaneously during the solar maximum.

To emerge from this chaotic state, the sun flips its entire magnetic field.

The north pole becomes the south, and vice versa, in a cycle that repeats every 11 years.

This means it takes the sun 22 years to complete a full magnetic cycle, known as the Hale cycle.

Once the magnetic field flips, a single polarity gradually builds up and takes over at the sun’s poles, settling into an orderly configuration during the solar minimum.

Mapping Solar Material Movement

The Solar Orbiter’s onboard spectrometer, known as SPICE, mapped the movement of clumps of solar material in the transition region of the polar atmosphere.

This region experiences rapid temperature increases from 10,000 degrees Celsius to hundreds of thousands of degrees.

SPICE captures the light emitted by different elements like oxygen, neon, carbon, and hydrogen at specific temperatures, creating a velocity map of the South Pole.

These measurements represent the first time scientists have traced solar wind to its source rather than inferring it from downstream measurements.

The third and final finding ties back to solar cycle 25 and its unexpected strength.

In a November 2025 paper, Solar Orbiter data indicated that the migration of sunspot magnetic fields towards the poles might occur much faster than previously expected.

This has significant implications for forecasting future solar cycles.

The speed and strength of a cycle’s poleward drift determine the polar field strength at the next solar minimum, which, in turn, influences the strength of the next solar cycle.

If the magnetic flux arrives at the poles faster than our models predict, our estimates of future cycles could be fundamentally flawed.

The Impact of Geomagnetic Storms

While no massive solar flares or coronal mass ejections have impacted us yet, the potential consequences are dire.

On May 10, 2024, a significant geomagnetic storm struck Earth.

These storms occur when the sun releases a coronal mass ejection, hurling a billion tons of magnetized plasma toward our planet.

It can take several days for this material to arrive, but once it does, it collides with Earth’s magnetosphere, triggering a rapid and often violent exchange of energy.

Auroras illuminated the skies as far south as the Florida Keys, the Yucatan Peninsula, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii.

Just a month later, a faint red aurora appeared in Japan, reaching higher altitudes in Earth’s atmosphere than scientists had anticipated.

Despite this breathtaking display, geomagnetic storms pose significant dangers as they disrupt Earth’s magnetosphere.

Our planet is surrounded by a plasmasphere, a bubble of charged plasma that deflects incoming solar material.

When a geomagnetic storm strikes, the pressure from the solar wind compresses the plasmasphere inward, much like a deflating balloon.

After the storm passes, the plasmasphere is replenished by charged particles from the ionosphere, which is filled with ions created when the sun’s radiation strips electrons from particles in our upper atmosphere.

The May 2024 geomagnetic storm, part of cycle 25’s solar maximum, was the strongest in the last 21 years.

Fortunately, JAXA’s array satellite was in the right place at the right time to capture its effects on our magnetosphere.

A team led by Dr. Atsuki Shimbori of Nagoya University’s Institute for Space Earth Environmental Research collected continuous direct readings of the plasmasphere collapsing to low altitudes during the storm.

They observed the outer boundary of the plasmasphere collapse from 44,000 kilometers down to just 9,600 kilometers in under nine hours—roughly one-fifth of its usual size.

This marked the lowest altitude ever recorded for the plasmasphere’s outer edge since the ARISE mission began in 2017.

The Aftermath of the Storm

The compression left satellites in geostationary orbit and most in medium Earth orbit severely exposed to the storm’s full force.

This included critical satellites for weather monitoring, TV broadcasting, communication, and global navigation systems.

The peak of the storm interfered directly with GPS frequency bands, causing position errors, data gaps, and tracking failures across global airspace, with hundreds of spacecraft affected in Europe alone.

The ionospheric disturbances were so severe that sudden jumps and deviations appeared in aircraft flight tracks.

Open access data from the US Space Force revealed that over 5,000 satellites had to alter their positions to avoid deorbiting or crashing during the storm.

This is especially dangerous, as a single crash can lead to thousands of pieces of space debris that persist for decades, increasing the risk of further collisions and creating a vicious cycle.

After the storm, it typically takes one to two days for the plasmasphere to replenish.

However, this storm hit the plasmasphere so hard that it took over four days to recover.

What caused this delay?

About an hour after the solar wind struck, intense heating near the poles drove a surge of charged particles toward the polar caps.

This intense heating churned the upper atmosphere like a massive convective engine, dragging heavier molecular gases like nitrogen and molecular oxygen from lower altitudes into regions where they are not usually abundant.

Under normal conditions, the upper ionosphere is dominated by atomic oxygen ions.

However, when nitrogen and molecular oxygen flood into the upper atmosphere, they react with atomic oxygen ions, reducing their concentration.

This phenomenon is known as a negative ionospheric storm, and it poses a significant problem.

Oxygen ions play a crucial role in replenishing the plasmasphere after a geomagnetic storm.

When a positive oxygen ion collides with a neutral hydrogen atom in the ionosphere, it captures the hydrogen’s electron due to its higher affinity for electrons.

This ionizes the hydrogen, which then rises along magnetic field lines into the plasmasphere.

With fewer oxygen ions available, the production line of hydrogen ions is cut off at the source, slowing the upward flux of plasma into the plasmasphere to a trickle.

This marks the first time the link between negative ionospheric storms and delayed plasmasphere recovery has been directly established.

The Threat of Future Solar Events

But the sun was not finished battering our magnetosphere.

A few days after the May 10 storm, a massive X-class solar flare erupted—the strongest category of solar flare.

Despite its impact on Earth-based technology, it was only ranked an 8.7 on the solar flare classification chart.

The strongest recorded flare, which occurred in 2003, was estimated at 45—about five times stronger.

While the strongest geomagnetic storm on record was the Carrington event in 1859, we lack a measured solar flare ranking for it.

However, studies estimate that if an equivalent event were to strike the United States today, it could cause between $600 billion and $2.6 trillion in damages.

Additionally, 20 to 40 million Americans could lose power, although the duration remains uncertain, ranging from 16 days to two years depending on how quickly we can repair our transformers and power grid infrastructure.

The scariest aspect of a significant solar event is the limited warning time we would have.

The key factor determining the devastation of a coronal mass ejection (CME) is the orientation of its magnetic field.

If it points southward, it has the highest probability of connecting with and disrupting our own magnetic field.

Unfortunately, we cannot measure that magnetic orientation until the solar plasma reaches the L1 Lagrange point—1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

By then, we would only have 15 to 60 minutes to respond.

While Earth’s thick atmosphere provides us with relative protection from lethal radiation, astronauts in space would be at greater risk.

A significant solar event during a crewed mission could elevate radiation levels inside their spacecraft, increasing the long-term risk of cancer and other health disorders that could negatively impact cognition and performance.

For instance, this was a critical consideration in NASA’s recent Artemis II mission, where each astronaut was equipped with a personal radiation tracker.

Inside the Orion capsule, the hybrid electronic radiation assessor system contains six radiation sensors to measure dose rates in different parts of the cabin.

If radiation levels rise, Orion’s onboard systems display warnings accompanied by an audible alarm.

Preparing for Future Solar Events

What measures are we taking to prepare for extreme solar events in the future?

On January 23, 2026, NOAA’s SWF L1 satellite arrived at the L1 point.

Equipped with top-of-the-line instruments, this spacecraft will make real-time measurements of the solar wind, thermal plasma, and the magnetic field.

Additionally, it carries a compact coronagraph instrument designed to detect coronal mass ejections.

This marks the first satellite NOAA has fully dedicated to continuous operational space weather monitoring.

Alongside the SWF L1, NASA launched the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), which is also stationed at the L1 point.

Its mission is to deepen our understanding of how space storms develop and dissipate, enabling improved preparedness for adverse weather in the future through real-time observations of the solar wind.

The Vigil mission, set to launch in 2031, will go even further.

Positioned at the L5 Lagrange point, it will monitor active sun regions rotating toward Earth before they face us, potentially extending warning times from minutes to days.

On the ground, efforts are underway to mitigate the risks of blackouts and communication failures during future solar flares.

This includes implementing smart grid technologies, high-voltage surge protectors in power grids, building strategic transformer reserves for quick replacements, and investing in new materials like Faraday cages around critical electronic components to deflect electromagnetic pulses induced by large storms.

Slowly but surely, we are preparing.

Conclusion: The Ongoing Mystery of Solar Activity

Solar cycle 25 has exposed how much we still do not understand about our sun.

Yet, it has also led to several breakthroughs.

From the first photons captured at the sun’s poles to a revisited theory of its dynamo, the discovery of switchbacks, and how they heat the corona, our understanding is evolving.

Cycle 26 is expected to begin anytime between 2029 and 2032.

What it will bring remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: we will have even more missions in space and better instrumentation ready to uncover the mysteries of our sun.

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of solar phenomena.

We appreciate your support and encourage you to consider joining our community to continue this journey of discovery together.