A Wink in Space

Many years ago I read “A Year of the Quiet Sun – one year at Scott Base” (published 1968) by Adrian Hayter. It was about a year spent in Antarctica during a period when the sun flares are at their lowest ‘shrink’ so to speak. I can’t remember the book very well but I learned that the sun’s flares expand and shrink at a fairly regular pace, following a time pattern of around 11 years at a stretch. Not unexpectedly, this phenomenon affects our climate. In the flare years, there will be hotter t...