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The sun appears to be much the same day-in, day-out, year after year. But astronomers have long known that this is not true: the sun does change. Properly-filtered telescopes reveal a fiery disk often speckled with dark sunspots, which crackle with solar flares—magnetic explosions that illuminate Earth with flashes of X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation. The sun is a seething mass of activity. Until it’s not. Every 11 years or so, sunspots fade away, bringing a period of relative calm. This