The sun has been without spots for 14 straight days. To find a similar stretch of blank suns, you have to go all the way back to April of 2010 when the sun was emerging from the deepest solar minimum in a century. However, two weeks without sunspots is not a long time. At the nadir of that century-class solar minimum in 2008, the sun was blank for 52 consecutive days. Conclusion: Solar minimum is just beginning and we have a long way to go. The Earth could be headed for a ‘mini ice age’ researchers have warned. A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out. This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over. The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research. Time will tell the whole story.