Solar Physicists Worried Over Dearth of Sunspots RUSH: Solar physicists, ladies and gentlemen, are worried. Solar physicists are worried. For those of you in Rio Linda, this is scientists who study the sun. There has been a longer-than-average time with no sunspots on the sun. They're not worried yet, they say, they're not concerned yet. The last time the sun went without sunspots for 50 years led to the little ice age. Now it hasn't been near 50 years here, ladies and gentlemen, but there haven't been any sunspots and solar physicists cannot predict what happens on the sun, but they can observe it, and they have observed that it's a dull surface, no activity there. And the longer it goes on, the more concerned they're going to get.