Our blazing sun has been eerily turn ing quiet and growing less active over the last two decades. Scientists and astronomers from Physical Research Laboratory in India and their counterparts in China and Japan are now relying on fresh evidence to indicate that we may be heading for another “little ice age“ or even a more extended period of low solar activity -a Maunder Minimum -by 2020 as indicated by the lower than average sunspot number count.The Maunder Minimum was a period between 1645 and 1715 AD when the sun was almost completely spotless and when Europe and much of the earth witnessed extremely harsh winters.In a recently published research, `A 20 year decline in solar photospheric magnetic field: Inner heliospheric signatures and possible implications' published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR) recently , astronomers indicate that over the last 20 years there has been a steady decline in the sun's photospheric (sun's surface) and interplanetary or heliospheric magnetic fields. This is indicated by a drastic decline in the number of sun spots on its surface and a corresponding decrease in solar wind microturbulence in the Sun's last two 11-year solar cycles. We are currently in solar cycle 24, which is expected to end in 2020.During peak solar cycle periods, the number of sunspots increase to 200. They dropped to as low as 50 during the solar cycle just preceding the Maunder Minimum. The research paper indicates that in solar cycle 23, there were a minimum average number of 75 sunspots towards the end of the cycle, while the peak number of sunspots in our current solar cycle 24 on November 2013 was 62, and this number has been steadily decreasing ever since.“During Maunder Minimum, the Sun becomes quiet, indicated by the near disappearance of sunspots that are typically present.In the last 11,000 years, there have been 27 Maunder Minimums,“ says dean of Physical Research Laboratory P Janardhan, who is the lead author of the research paper along with six others which includes Susanta Kumar Bisoi of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei jing, K Fujiki and M Tokumaru of Nagoya University Japan, L Jose and R Sridharan of PRL's space and atmospheric sciences division and S Ananthakrishnan of the depart ment of electronic sciences, Pune University .The Maunder Minimum condition is predicted to intensify beyond cycle 25, or between 2030 and 2040 during solar cycle 26.