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For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.

Life as we know it couldn't exist without the sun.

But we know surprisingly little about our host star.

That's where the field of heliophysics comes in.

And 2025 is set to be a banner year for folks who study the sun. Here to tell us more is Megan Bartels,

a senior news reporter at Scientific American. Megan, thanks so much for coming on to chat today.

Thanks so much for having me. First question, obvious question. What is heliophysics?

Yeah, so heliophysics is the study of the sun and also its influence on the solar system.

And that's a really big topic because the solar wind, which is basically like plasma of particles

that flow off the sun, also the sun's magnetic field, those two phenomena stretch way beyond

the orbit of Pluto more than a hundred

times the distance that Earth is from the sun. Wow. Yeah. And why is 2025 such an exciting year

for heliophysics? Yeah. So there are a couple of different things that are aligning this year. First,

the sun has been and still is in the maximum phase of its 11-year

solar cycle. Solar max began more than two years ago, and scientists expect that it will last

about three or four years total this time around. And during solar max, and even as that activity

begins to wane, the sun will keep spitting

...