On a long-enough scale, our Sun is rather predictable. Roughly every 11 years, it goes through a cycle of high and low activity, the latter characterized by an uptick in sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections.
– characterized by a minimal level of sunspot and flare activity – marks the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new one, and it occurs when the Sun's magnetic field is at its weakest.
Other stars have been observed exhibiting spot activity too, although our records of these stars don't go nearly as far back in time. Baum and her colleagues collected data from multiple sources for several decades' worth of starspot activity for 59 stars.Of these, 29 stars showed clear starspot cycles, similar to what we've seen in the Sun.
"But we double- and triple-checked everything. The times of observation were consistent with the coordinates we expected the star to have. And there aren't that many bright stars in the sky that Mount Wilson observed. No matter how many times we checked, we always come to the conclusion that this star has simply stopped cycling."
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