Just the one star is proving particularly interesting at the moment - the sun - and if things carry on they way they are, this will become more mainstream news; I'm a bit surprised it hasn't been picked up so far.
Bear with me on this. There will be science bits.
There is a solar cycle. The solar cycle is generally approximately 11 years and within that 11 years the sun moves from quiet (solar minimum) to active (maximum) and back again. The basic measurement of this is sunspots. Solar minimum = very few; solar maximum = lots.
The last solar cycle (cycle 23 since measurements began) was declared by NASA to have reached minimum in 2006. I was going to provide a link to that article but since it appeared on the excellent wattsupwiththat.com website this morning it has curiously been removed from NASA's site.
So, we should be well into solar cycle 24. There should be quite a few sunspots by now... but there are not (and those we are seeing would never have been visible at all to scientists from centuries ago). In fact the sun shows few signs of moving into solar cycle 24. Predictions keep on being revised to the point where they're nothing more than guesswork.
Now. What does this mean? Well no one is really sure. However there was a period of around 50 years with very few sunspots in the 17th century. That period coincides with what is known as "the little ice age". Temperatures dropped and as Blue Peter viewers of a certain age will know the Thames froze lots. Winters were bitterly cold.
The impact of the solar cycle on climate is not something that is understood much at all, but could the worry of global warming suddenly become a worry of global cooling?
Soon, I predict, sput's views on the matter.
