While I’m not an apologist for them but the general idea of ‘cyclomainia’ is that the Jose cycle perturbs the electromagnahelic cycle via a teleconnection. Some versions include magnetic interactions with the planets possessing significant fields.

As Leif has ably argued, no physical cause has been identified and all the usual suspects eliminated.

Demanding that the Hale cycle and the Jose cycle march in lockstep, however, is a ‘strawman’ which is why Fourier analysis is used in their studies.

Ric…you might also hate this one…the interface is even more difficult but does serve as a cross check http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar

Yeah, that one certainly seems more designed to watch planetismals than planets.

Robert Vanderbei at Princeton has done a lot of neat stuff with N-body simulations. While he does have a solar system simulator, it’s more of an afterthought and instance of a highly configurable simulator than astronomical tool. Check out http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/astro/galaxy/nBody.html some day when you have time to play.

Only if you have a lot of time should you venture to his home page at http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb . Old fogeys like me who drooled over the Questar ads in Scientific American or Sky and Telescope and anyone who dismisses 3.5″ telescopes as inadequate for real observing will be amazed at http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/images/Questar/

It’s good to hear the math behind http://math-ed.com/Resources/GIS/Geometry_In_Space/java1/Temp/TLVisPOrbit.html is valid. Knowing the results are accurate makes it a lot more usable.

I have spoken with Jean thru this blog, for some reason this tool doesn’t work on his pc, but i gave him a few dates that he checked and it all seemed to line up as i was seeing it.

> Use this tool to follow the progress of the major 4 planets.

> http://math-ed.com/Resources/GIS/Geometry_In_Space/java1/Temp/TLVisPOrbit.html

No thanks, I’m a software engineer and I hate the user interface on it. There ought to be things to let you adjust the time forward or backward by a user-defined amount (like 178 years). Also buttons for jumping 10 steps at a time. (Maybe user selectable, 10, 12, 24, 30, 365.2422/12, etc all have their uses.

Have you checked its accuracy? I was hoping Jean Meeus would, but haven’t seen him report back. I figure something unpolished like that may need some polish in its orbital computation too.

nobwainer (23:06:29) :
I also think you are arguing the link between sunspot counts and climate.
“No, I do not think there are any links, planets, sunspots, climate.”

So we will just sweep it away with a simple statement….forget about the climate link if that troubles you. There is no proof that the planets can effect the Sun and we also don’t know how plasma is effected by gravity. Perhaps we should look for the causes while accepting there is a correlation of Neptune and Uranus coming together during the past 4 minimums….and perhaps this might help us to predict the next minimum which is more than science can offer presently.

http://math-ed.com/Resources/GIS/Geometry_In_Space/java1/Temp/TLVisPOrbit.html

Well Leif if the proxy records are correct, 178 yrs ago we had the Dalton minimum, 178 before that we had the Maunder, 178yrs before that the Spore, then another 178yrs we have the Wolf.

So, if 2008 is the start of the new (Eddy?) minimum, 1830 would be the start of Dalton, 1652 the start of Maunder, 1474 the start of Sporer, and 1296 the start of Wolf.

From Wikipedia (sorry, but it was handy), 1790 was the start of Dalton, 1645 the start of Maunder, 1420 was the start of Sporer, 1280 was the start of Wolf.

Differences betwen the pairs are 40, 7, 54, and 16. While 7 is pretty good, note that the length of the Maunder minimum was so different from the rest it’s hard to describe it as similar to the others, let alone a repeat. 40 and 54 year offsets are horrid – several Schwabe cycles and a large percentage of 178.

I am purely arguing how the planets effect the sunspot count….which some say has an effect on climate.

So does that mean that you do agree that there is a correlation in low sunspot numbers and the positions of the planets in the years quoted?

“No, of course not. >b>If there is such a strong correlation between solar activity and the climate as ‘everybody’ claims, and if solar activity is caused by the planets, then the climate should repeat every 178 years. Right? and does it?”

Well Leif if the proxy records are correct, 178 yrs ago we had the Dalton minimum, 178 before that we had the Maunder, 178yrs before that the Spore, then another 178yrs we have the Wolf.

And guess what…on each occasion we have Neptune and Uranus coming together.

Check out my amateur report on it here.

http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/gasgiants.pdf

So does that mean that you do agree that there is a correlation in low sunspot numbers and the positions of the planets in the years quoted?

No, of course not. >b>If there is such a strong correlation between solar activity and the climate as ‘everybody’ claims, and if solar activity is caused by the planets, then the climate should repeat every 178 years. Right? and does it?

nobwainer (17:02:39) :
Charvátová gets it all wrong…very unimpressive. If she went back further before 1830 as well as 1650, 1470, 1290 she would have picked up the same planetary pattern …..which looks the same today.
“So should the climate also be the same, then? since ‘everybody’ knows that there is such strong correlation…”

So does that mean that you do agree that there is a correlation in low sunspot numbers and the positions of the planets in the years quoted?

There has to be an external influence to the solar cycles
Why does there have to be an external influence? This sounds like wishful thinking to me, or a priory constraining the science.