Is Our Sun Sick?

To tell you the truth I'd never thought about some object in the vast universe as being SICK? I mean, I know that the sun which gives us humanoids here on earth life is hot, has a temperature, but is our SUN SICK? And if that's the case, how do we know it and most importantly is there a cure? Who could get close enough to administer the needed remedies?  :-) 

Let's begin with the basics for those that wear sun glasses.

The sun has what's called a SOLAR cycle. This solar cycle was discovered in 1843 by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, who after 17 years of observations noticed a periodic variation in the average number of sunspots seen from year to year on the solar disk. Rudolf Wolf compiled and studied these and other observations, reconstructing the cycle back to 1745, eventually pushing these reconstructions to the earliest observations of sunspots by Galileo and contemporaries in the early seventeenth century.

While ELEVEN is the given cycle norm, the actual average length is only around 10.66 years- but whose measuring? Cycles as short as 9 years and as long as 14 years have been observed, but I digress.

During the eleven year cycle, the sun goes through a quiet time and a very active time. You'd probably guess that the active time will peak in 2012. Right? Sun spots erupt and send out what's known as coronal mass ejections and we just hope and pray that their direction isn't planet earth of course. Sunspots, being the manifestation of intense magnetic activity, host secondary phenomena such as coronal loops and reconnection events. Most solar flares and coronal mass ejections originate in magnetically active regions around visible sunspot groupings.

Other than the AL Gore global warming hoop-da-la, the whole solar system is showing weird signs that something is changing, things are happening, and they may not be good.  :-(

A growing body of scientists, are beginning to think that starting with 1997, the sun is exhibiting some strange malady. The quiet period (04-05) was 40% greater than normal and the current cycle (#24) isn't acting normal. So what is normal? Is our sun sick? And if it is, what does that mean for us on this 3rd rock from the sun? It seems to me a question worth asking.