Dr Jonathan Eastwood talks to Wired

Every 11 years, the magnetic field of the Sun flips... And it's happening right now. Inside the furnace that gives life to our planet, the incredible heat strips atoms into their constituent nuclei and electrons, which slosh around like water in an ocean. This 'flow and turbulent motion' of charged particles creates the Sun's magnetic field, says Jonathan Eastwood [Physics], a lecturer in Space and Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London... Across the solar system and beyond, the effect of this magnetic field is felt. It is carried out into space by the solar wind, a stream of particles emanating from the Sun... The flip coincides with a peak in solar activity. 'Solar maxiumum' as it is known, is when the Sun is feverish with activity...'At solar maximum, the magnetic field is just a big mess,' says Eastwood. 'Exactly how [it] reverses is still not well understood [but] what we can see is that the magnetic field becomes much more complicated.