A new paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia titled:
Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?
contains a warning about earthly climate change not immediately obvious from the abstract:
Based on our claim that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in the Sun’s orbital motion about the barycentre, we propose that the mean period for the Sun’s meridional flow is set by a Synodic resonance between the flow period (~22.3 yr), the overall 178.7-yr repetition period for the solar orbital motion, and the 19.86-yr synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn.
According to an interview with Andrew Bolt, of the Australian Newspaper, Herald Sun, Ian Wilson, one of the authors explained:
It supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 – 30 years. On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by ~ 1 – 2 C.
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Hmmm, I’m not sold on this idea. This is a lot like what Dr. Theodor Landscheidt proposes. I have a little bit of trouble understanding how the “mass at a distance” gravitational effects of Jupiter and Saturn could have much effect on the solar dynamo.
I’m sure both my readers, and Dr. Leif Svalgaard, who regularly monitors this blog, will have something to add to provide additional insight. – Anthony
Hmmm…
So, Old Coach, If I read you right you are saying that the angular momentum of the sun vs the barycenter isn’t so important since it’s going to be insensitive to the barycenter (the actual effect being from the far off Jupiter so the spin axis of the sun doesn’t care about the common center of rotation of the planets) but that there might be some odd harmonic coupling of the Jovian apogee / perigee cycle tidal forces with the inherent frequency of the sun such that, over billions and billions of year (shades of Sagan!) the two might become locked in a slight flow of mass to/from the perimeter and thus have some oscillation of mass flow and rotation rate?
Hmm. Damn, I think I get it. Thanks.
BTW, your theory is far more interesting and gets bonus points for subtlety!
I suspect that the coincidence, correlation, causality manta is fairly well into the correlation camp for some kind of Jovian planet / sunspot connection. It’s just too tight to make it coincidence. The paper from I.R.G. Wilson at the Austraian Institute of Physics 17th national conference 2006 dispelled the numerology aspect for me. He showed that the misc. odd solar cycles were in fact sidebands of a carrier suppressed modulation via the Jovian periods. Suddenly the many odd unrelated cycles made sense; a direct formulaic connection to the clear planetary cycles. Unfortunately, it still left causality as an open unclear issue.
From the wiki:
In orbits, the angular momentum is distributed between the spin of the planet itself and the angular momentum of its orbit:
Ltotal = Lspin + Lorbit;
If a planet is found to rotate slower than expected, then astronomers suspect that the planet is accompanied by a satellite, because the total angular momentum is shared between the planet and its satellite in order to be conserved.
end wiki.
So as the Lorbit decreases (both sun and Jupiter approach barycenter) the Lspin goes up? Looks like a mechanism to cause variable spin in the sun… with the variable spin causing the kind of flow oscillations you posited.
More wiki:
The conservation of angular momentum in Earth-Moon system results in the transfer of angular momentum from Earth to Moon (due to tidal torque the Moon exerts on the Earth). This in turn results in the slowing down of the rotation rate of Earth (at about 42 nsec/day), and in gradual increase of the radius of Moon’s orbit (at ~4.5 cm/year rate).
end wiki.
I would expect the sun / jovian planet system to behave similarly, so that would imply a variation of the sun rotation rate proportional to the variation in the orbital distances of the jovian planets. OK. Now the leap…
If we have the suns spin variable with jovian apogee / perigee, what then happens to the physics of the sun as it has this spin oscillation?
Will the spin oscillation be poorly distributed over the mass of the sun (i.e. will some spin get distributed to the perimeter more than the poles due to fluid mass flow et.al.)?
Does the period of this spin oscillation bear any resonance with the mass flow oscillation period of the sun (posited above)? (And is there any physical evidence for such mass flow or spin oscilation and / or variations in the spin rate at poles vs equator over a jovian cycle?)
And finally, what happens to all those mag field lines that are winding up during the sunspot cycle when the spin starts changing (in particular during the retrograde part of the solar / barycenter orbit where the sun may be passing back through the mag field from it’s prior location and / or the spin that was winding up suffers a reverse force from winding down the spin?
I don’t know what’s going on in the sun, but it does look like there is a potential mechanism for a lot to go on, in sync with the jovian apogee / perigee cycle.
The thesis that “the sun is in free fall so no force is felt and nothing will happen” seems weak.
And finally, a pseudorandom google search “solar equatorial rotation rate sunspot” leads to (among others):
Long-term variations in solar differential rotation and sunspot activity
J Javaraiah
L Bertello
R K. Ulrich
ABSTRACT:
The solar equatorial rotation rate, determined from sunspot group data during the period 1879-2004, decreased over the last century, whereas the level of activity has increased considerably. The latitude gradient term of the solar rotation shows a significant modulation of about 79 year, which is consistent with what is expected for the existence of the Gleissberg cycle. Our analysis indicates that the level of activity will remain almost the same as the present cycle during the next few solar cycles (i.e., during the current double Hale cycle), while the length of the next double Hale cycle in Sunspot activity is predicted to be longer than the Current one. We find evidence for the existence of a weak linear relationship between the equatorial rotation rate and the length of sunspot cycle. Finally, we find that the length of the current cycle will be as short as that of cycle 22, indicating that the present Hale cycle may be a combination of two shorter cycles.
SUGGESTED CITATION:
J Javaraiah, L Bertello, and R K. Ulrich, “Long-term variations in solar differential rotation and sunspot activity” (2005). Solar Physics. 232 (1-2), pp. 25-40. Postprint available free at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/1536
REQUIRED PUBLISHER STATEMENT:
The original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com in Solar Physics.
end citation.
So it looks like there is some physical observational evidence for a coupling of spin variations with jovian planet modulations.
Please forgive 3 posts in a row… but I found this rather interesting citation showing an odd change in sunspot behaviour during the retrograde part of the solar orbit:
Titre du document / Document title
Sun’s retrograde motion and violation of even-odd cycle rule in sunspot activity
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
JAVARAIAH J. (1) ;
Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s)
(1) Department of Physics and Astronomy, 430 Portola Plaza, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, ETATS-UNIS
Résumé / Abstract
The sum of sunspot numbers over an odd-numbered 11-yr sunspot cycle exceeds that of its preceding even-numbered cycle, and it is well known as Gnevyshev and Oh1 rule (or G-O rule) after the names of the authors who discovered it in 1948. The G-O rule can be used to predict the sum of sunspot numbers of a forthcoming odd cycle from that of its preceding even cycle. However, this is not always possible because occasionally the G-O rule is violated. So far, no plausible reason is known either for the G-O rule or for the violation of this rule. Here, we show the epochs of the violation of the G-O rule are close to the epochs of the Sun’s retrograde orbital motion about the centre of mass of the Solar system (i.e. the epochs at which the orbital angular momentum of the Sun is weakly negative). Using this result, it is easy to predict the epochs of violation of the G-O rule well in advance. We also show that the solar equatorial rotation rate determined from sunspot group data during the period 1879-2004 is con-elated/anticorrelated to the Sun’s orbital torque before/after 1945. We have found the existence of a statistically significant ∼ 17-yr periodicity in the solar equatorial rotation rate. The implications of these findings for understanding the mechanism behind the solar cycle and the solar-terrestrial relationship are discussed.
Revue / Journal Title
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ISSN 0035-8711 CODEN MNRAA4
Source / Source
2005, vol. 362, no4, pp. 1311-1318 [8 page(s) (article)] (67 ref.)