I posted a story about the current solar minimum recently. There was one reason to hope for the best that I didn't mention. The current extended solar minimum was showing signs that it was progressing into Cycle 24 and having left behind Cycle 23. This is determined by the polarity of the sunspots. The 11 year (or more!) cycle is actually the period in which the sun swaps magnetic polarity. In other words, every 11 years or so the sun's north pole becomes the south pole and vice versa. Even though the sun has been very quiet, recent sunspots had been showing the polarity of Cycle 24 seeming to indicate that the sun was at least progressing towards the end of the current minimum. Unfortunately today Spaceweather.com indicates that a new sunspot is struggling to appear, but it has Cycle 23 polarity.

A sunspot is struggling to emerge at the circled location. The magnetic polarity of the proto-sunspot identifies it as a member of old Solar Cycle 23. Credit: SOHO/MDI

Interestingly enough, it's not only the sun that has been playing funny games with polarity reversal.

Our planet's magnetic field reverses about once every 200,000 years on average. However, the time between reversals is highly variable. The last time Earth's magnetic field flipped was 780,000 years ago, according to the geologic record of Earth's polarity.

This has led various conspiracy theory nuts to conclude the world is about to end. It tends to get mixed in with the whole Mayan Calendar 2012 thing.
In 2012 the next polar reversal will take place on earth... Scientifically this can only be explained by the fact that the earth will start rotating in the opposite direction, together with a huge disaster of unknown proportions. In my books I reveal the immense cataclysm that is going to torment the earth in the near future.
Of course, if he were right, then the sun would have to start rotating in the opposite direction every 11 years. Fortunately, it's probable that we aren't about to experience a change any time soon.