For past four or more days, telescopes pointed at the sun have detected only a handful of sunspots, sometimes none at all, in a “very weird” development that is baffling scientists, said Alan Duffy, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University.

“Sunspots can change all the time, but when you should be seeing many dozens at any one point of time, it’s quite strange that we’re not seeing any at all,” Dr Duffy said. “We don’t have any idea why that is.”