I found a reference to this article while looking at Leif Svalgaard’s website, and since I missed it the first time around, and because the message is still valid, I thought I’d reprint it here. Also, the artwork they provided a hi-res link to makes a great desktop wallpaper. – Anthony
Published: 2008/05/19 06:00:00 CDT
Many solar scientists expected the new sunspot cycle to be a whopper, a prolonged solar tantrum that could fry satellites and raise hell with earthly communications, the power grid and modern electronics.
But there’s scant proof Sunspot Cycle 24 is even here, let alone the debut of big trouble.
So far there have been just a couple minor zits on the face of the sun to suggest the old cycle is over and the new one is coming.
The roughly 11-year cycle of sunspot activity should have bottomed out last year, the end of Cycle 23 and the beginning of Cycle 24. That would have put the peak in new sunspot activity around 2012.
But a dud sunspot cycle would not necessarily make it a boring period, especially for two solar scientists with the Tucson-based National Solar Observatory.
Two years ago, William Livingston and Matt Penn wrote a paper for the journal Science predicting that this could not only be a dud sunspot cycle, but the start of another extended down period in solar activity. It was based on their analysis of weakening sunspot intensity and said sunspots might vanish by 2015.
And here’s the punch line: That last long-term down period, 1645-1715, coincided with the Little Ice Age, a period of bitter cold winters.
That kind of talk could ruffle some feathers in this time of climate change and global warming, starring man-made carbon dioxide as the devil.
The paper, rejected in peer review, was never published by Science. Livingston said he’s OK with the rejection.
“I accept what the reviewers said,” Livingston said. “‘If you are going to make such statement, you had better have strong evidence.’ ”
Livingston said their projections were based on observations of a trend in decreasingly powerful sunspots but reviewers felt it was merely a statistical argument.
He is aware that some opponents of the prevailing position that climate change and global warming are the result of manmade activity — greenhouse gas, specifically carbon dioxide, buildup — are very much interested in the idea that changes might be related to solar activity.
“But it has not been proven yet,” cautioned Livingston, an astronomer emeritus who still works out of an office at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory headquarters building on the University of Arizona campus.
“We may have to wait. We may be wrong. (But) the sun is going to entertain us one way or another,” he said.
It’s not just a scientific curiosity. There’s a lot at stake in predicting whether sunspot cycles are going to be tame or wild, said Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory.
The powerful blasts of radiation that come from solar activity can fry electronic equipment on Earth; particularly vulnerable are satellites.
The high-energy radiation produced by solar flares travels at near the speed of light, getting to Earth in just minutes.
But the magnetic effects of a solar flare can take between two and three days to reach Earth, said Penn, a solar scientist.
In the 1800s, magnetic blasts from intense solar activity induced currents in telegraph lines in the U.S. and Italy, starting fires and damaging equipment. Later, it was learned that solar activity affected radio transmission.
It can also affect the electrical-power grid. A solar tantrum in 1989 blew transformers and caused a blackout in Canada. And a number of satellites are thought to have failed from exposure to high-energy blasts from solar activity.
Satellite operators can turn them away or shut down vulnerable equipment aboard, and astronauts can use shielding to avoid those blasts.
If Cycle 24 is the big cycle predicted, Penn said, “it’s likely we’ll have geomagnetic storms with a lot of sunspots, a lot of flares on the sun.”
Penn said even so-called “quiet sun” periods are far from boring because the sun’s “surface consists of Texas-sized hot gas bubbles, which rise upward at a speed of about a mile per second. The gas cools and falls downward in narrower channels at about the same speed. That’s what we call the ‘quiet sun.'”
“As we get more into the space environment with satellites, GPS and communication satellites, it means money. People who are about to launch new communication satellites really want to know how much shielding to put on their satellites.
“But shielding amounts to weight, which is money. If they want them to last through (an intense cycle), they’re going to want to protect them more, and that will cost them more.”
Penn is the telescope scientist on the McMath-Pierce solar telescope, the strange angular white thing amid all the white and silver-domed things atop Kitt Peak. Specifically, Penn works with an instrument that “sees” in the infrared range to provide information about magnetic activity.
Sometimes, sunspot activity is more than theory or data to him.
Several years ago, he was making an early-morning run from Tucson up to Kitt Peak to do some solar observing. He noticed his gas gauge was dangerously low and decided to stop for gas at the convenience store in Three Points.
It was about 5 a.m., and no one was there to take cash, so he tried to use his credit card to gas up. But the pay-at-the-pump system was down.
Crossing his fingers and driving up the mountain, Penn said he hoped he’d have enough gas after work to make it back to the station on the way home.
When he got to work, he learned that “a communications satellite had been damaged by (a solar flare). Lots of communications were dropped that morning, and my credit-card pay-at-the-pump attempt was one of them.”
Though Aimee Norton appreciates the practical benefits of being able to predict the sun’s activity, solving some of the star’s mysteries that relate to the big picture are more compelling. Norton is a program scientist on the solar observatory’s SOLIS (Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun) facility at Kitt Peak.
“Part of what we’re trying to understand is how the magnetic field regulates or moderates the energy that is transported in the atmosphere,” Norton said. “Because one of the mysteries of the sun is, it’s hotter in the upper atmosphere than (at the surface). So there is energy being transported. Some people think the magnetic field is somehow magically getting that energy out there.”
Norton said she’s hoping for a powerful cycle, noting, “It would give us more things to do research with — either that or no cycle at all, which would be similar to the Maunder Minimum.”
She said she figures there’s little chance of a completely dead cycle but added, “Wouldn’t that be fascinating if the solar system managed to offset our contribution?”
Because you can’t go
–Visit Solar Cycle 24: www.solarcycle24.com/
–Mr. Sunspot’s Answer Book: http://eo.nso.edu/MrSunspot/answerbook/polarity.html
–NASA’s Solar Physics: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/whysolar.shtml
–Solar storms: www.solarstorms.org
–National Solar Observatory’s Solis solar telescope (Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun): http://solis.nso.edu
–For more information on sunspots: http://spaceweather.com or http://science.nasa.gov
–For a list of sometimes spectacular sunspot-induced problems: http://sw.astron.kharkov.ua/swimpacts.html
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[…] Comment on New Solar Cycle Not Packing Much Punch by Carsten …Leif Svalgaard (10:29:25) :. The distance to the Sun can be measured in many ways: the diameter of the Sun, radar ranging to the planets [check on Earth’s orbit], interplanetary probes, and TSI. No matter which measure, the result is … […]
Leif…so no comment on the phase catastrophes?
Leif Svalgaard (04:58:17) :
And i am sure that Carsten will back me up that the maximum barycenter adjustment is WAY more than 1% of the Suns radius.
nobwainer (07:18:31) :
so no comment on the phase catastrophes?
No, because there is general agreement that no cycle was lost. The ‘lost’ cycle rears it head now and then. It was first proposed by Faye in the 1880s, but with increasingly improved 10Be records we can clearly see that there was no extra cycle that was lost.
nobwainer (07:26:49) :
And i am sure that Carsten will back me up that the maximum barycenter adjustment is WAY more than 1% of the Suns radius.
Yes, and that proves that the adjustment should not be applied. The numbers i quoted are the result of the calculator at JPL [you can go there too, i gave the link] that NASA uses to calculate planetary orbits and interplanetary distances. The fact that spacecraft sent to Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and actually arriving there shows to my satisfaction that the JPL calculations are correct. And, as you point out, they show no evidence of the ‘wobble’ or barycentric adjustment that Carsten calculated. Now, I also realize that that is not going to change anybody’s mind [I have NEVER seen that happen with the barycenter crowd – they usually go and find some other website that supports their view instead – It will be interesting to watch what you do].
Pamela,
I don’t think that we can hold the schools responsible for the AGW theory. I guess we could if we could trace it back to James Hansen’s high school. 🙂 However, I think that you are narrowing the schools’ field of influence by a significant degree in trying to excuse them from any fault of indoctrination. This goes beyond specified science curricula or standardized tests. Teachers are in a unique position to advocate their opinions to a captive audience. Children are taught not to question teachers (necessary in order to maintain discipline). But, this requires that the teachers have the discipline to present a balanced viewpoint, in which they have sufficient expertise, and not to color the information with their own opinions. I have personal experience to prove to me that teachers advocate their own beliefs, I don’t need peer-review to prove it. (Incidentally, since such a large majority of researchers are also teachers, I wonder how motivated they are to analyze the subject?) But this isn’t only about the teachers. Look at the posters plastering the walls of the school. Look at the special projects that elementary school students bring home on how to reduce their “carbon footprints.” Read the articles about endangered species like polar bears and frogs that litter children’s magazines (and which teachers use as supplemental material). It’s these little tidbits of seemingly harmless propaganda that lead children to believe that AGW is an unquestionable fact of life. I agree, we can’t totally blame the public school system. Since the days of Socrates, we have lamented that schools don’t teach critical, creative thinking. So, by now, we’ll have to blame society as a whole. But, we can’t excuse the schools if they do nothing that goes against the tide of ignorance. My father is a high school science teacher. He does not hold AGW beliefs. He attempts to teach SCIENCE. When his students argue with him about AGW, where are they getting their misinformation? Their English teachers, their Art teachers, their social studies teachers, etc. So, my point is, this isn’t just about the curriculum, this is about the culture of the school system, and the power wielded by teachers who have more influence than knowledge. You are in the position of an educator, so I understand your defensive stance. But, don’t turn a blind eye to the faults of the institution. We can preserve what is good about public education, without perpetuating what is wrong. Schools fear the teaching of Intelligent Design beside Evolution because they know that they do not know how to teach the skills that will allow children to differentiate between the two theories. It is much simpler to teach only one viewpoint. The same is true for global warming. The safe path is to teach global warming as fact. There is much less risk to the teacher/school of being wrong, because even if they are wrong, they have Nobel laureates, former VPs, and NASA scientists to blame.
Here’s an interesting and related article in the Financial Times titled:
The Silent Sun’s Uncertain Course
By Clive Cookson
Published: October 1 2008 19:26 | Last updated: October 1 2008 19:26
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6f1ddaf0-8fd9-11dd-9890-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=02e16f4a-46f9-11da-b8e5-00000e2511c8.html
It’s a fair and balaced overview of the impacts of a quieter Sol until the final two paragraphs which digress into the typical AGW mantra:
–> Although some people who are sceptical about the human influence on global warming like to emphasise the link between solar variability and climate, Prof Mayewski turns their argument on its head: “The fact that we are not in conditions like the little ice age today shows that the atmosphere is being perturbed by human activities,” he says.
If the Sun stays quiet for the next few years, it may temper the effects of man-made global warming for a while but most experts believe that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will eventually push temperatures higher again. <–
Leif Svalgaard (04:58:17) :
For the Sun, I select Jan 4 and Jul 4 as perihelion and aphelion dates [close enough for this], then for years 1996 and 2002 [when your graph shows maximal barycenter ‘effect’] we get the two distances:
1996: 0.9832231… 1.01671101… many more decimals given
2002: 0.9832958… 1.01667561…
These are the same to about 0.00005 AU or ~7500 km about 1% of a solar radius.
So, no wobble.
The way I see it, the discussion is not only about the numbers, but also their correct interpretation. What you showed here, is that there exists a computer model that produces these results. Unless I am totally mistaken, It was designed based on the assumption that everything orbits the stationary Sun. It is obviously a good approximation given the purposes it was designed for. It may be right or it may be (slightly) wrong. It is not a convincing argument.
What is more convincing is your argument that TSI is measured to be varying according to the elliptic orbit with very high precision. So unless there is a hidden procedural bias or other mistake, this fact must be considered seriously. Even so, I find it perplexing.
nobwainer (07:26:49) :
The Sun moves up to max ~2.2 solar radii from the barycenter. The orbital speeds are rather slow.
Leif Svalgaard (07:53:33) :
nobwainer (07:18:31) :
so no comment on the phase catastrophes?
“No, because there is general agreement that no cycle was lost. The ‘lost’ cycle rears it head now and then. It was first proposed by Faye in the 1880s, but with increasingly improved 10Be records we can clearly see that there was no extra cycle that was lost.”
I am also skeptical of the lost cycle, but thought you may have been interested in the “phase catastrophes” that Usoskin & Mursula suggest at http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/SolPhys_Review_proof.pdf
SC4 at 14 yrs duration is unusual and it will be interesting to see if SC23 follows a similar trend and will we see any “phase catastrophes”?
In a paper by Makarov & Tlatov http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jaa/21/193-196.pdf
they discuss a similar event though the Maunder min using 10Be records showing cycle lengths of 20 years…if this is all correct something is upsetting the regular pattern during at least these 2 grand minima that may happen again in the very near future.
I have been looking for “improved 10Be records” to check the Wolf numbers in the 1800’s, could you provide a link?
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (15:11:34) :
What you showed here, is that there exists a computer model that produces these results.[…] It is not a convincing argument.
This is not just ANY model. This is probably the best, modern astronomy can do [more accurate than the Astronomical Almanac, and more accurate than Meeus’ tables which are based on a truncated set of coefficients]. It is used to guide spaceships to the planets.
It can also compute the distance to various barycenters. I recommend you go and check it out.
Leif Svalgaard (07:53:33) :
“Now, I also realize that that is not going to change anybody’s mind [I have NEVER seen that happen with the barycenter crowd – they usually go and find some other website that supports their view instead – It will be interesting to watch what you do”
I find it interesting you put me in the “barycenter crowd” as i certainly wouldn’t say that. Some of “their” data proves useful in tracking the movement of planets and their gravity effects etc, i am more interested in how the planets MIGHT have an effect on the Sun and keep an open mind (not like some). I have no barrow to push and I’m keenly focused on discovering the facts. So as this blog is also dedicated to the same mantra i will be around for awhile.
I took a walk through the two buildings I am currently assigned to in order to see if there are any signs of this extensive indoctrination that was mentioned above. Not one classroom had anything at all related to environmental issues posted anywhere. As I walked through the buildings here in NE Oregon, I was reminded of a middle school in the Willamette Valley (Sweet Home Jr High) that excuses its students for a week of hunting. When they get back they get to draw artwork of the animal they shot dead and the gun they used. The walls and halls are covered with pictures of dead animals and guns. Now mind you, this is a public school. Yet here in a very conservative corner of Oregon, not one picture of animals or guns hung on the wall. But in the Willamette Valley, a supposed bastion of liberal thought, I know exactly what is hanging on the walls, or about to. And it ain’t poor polar bears swimming in a melted ocean. Now if one of the students happened to bag a polar bear, THAT would be hanging on the wall. So again, unless you spend CONSIDERABLE time in public schools, my hunch is that most people talk from philosophy, not from critical, objective, and color-blind observation. Might some of us be talking with rose-colored glasses on? I am not defending my institution. I am simply telling you what I have observed on a day to day basis over the 12 years that I have spent in public schools, in both conservative and liberal towns and cities. One last comment. I have no end-of-the-argument belief about CO2 and global warming. I have no end-of-the-argument belief about solar effects. I am curious and interested in the data and will let it lead me wherever it will. When I get to where it leads me, I will likely continue to mull over what I see and say, “hmmmmm”.
nobwainer (16:44:32) :
I find it interesting you put me in the “barycenter crowd” as i certainly wouldn’t say that.
Then I apologize for putting you with the wrong crowd. Perhaps the ‘tidal effect’ crowd would have been better, or perhaps no crowd at at all. My confusion probably comes from the considerable overlap that there seems to be between the two crowds.
Anyway, I’m working up the 10Be series that McCracken and Beer has derived for 1428-present. Before I open it up for public consumption later today, I want to correct [there is that word again] a few mistakes in their series, like forgetting that there is a 2-year settling time from when 10Be is created and when it is embedded in the ice. You can have a preview at http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20From%20McCracken%20HMF.pdf
Note the large contaminating effect volcanic eruptions have on the 10Be record.
Stay tuned.
Leif Svalgaard (08:29:03) :
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (07:20:28) :
I have a hard time convincing myself that you are right, but I am trying. As far as I can tell, the logical conclusion from this is that it is theoretically impossible to detect extrasolar planets by observing their host star wobbling?
Of course not. Take the case of the double star again. We can observe both stars move against the background of distant stars because we have a reference point outside the system [the distant stars]. Viewed from one of the stars the barycenter will move, always following the other star around [being just in front of it, halfway out]. If you shrunk the other star to planet size, things will stay the same, except the barycenter would move closer to the first star; it will still move around just in front of the planet. Since both bodies are in free fall, they feel no forces resulting from their motion, no matter where the barycenter is.
In a two body system with circular orbits, I believe you are correct and the two bodies would feel no forces because they aren’t perturbed with respect to each other. The solar system is essentially a five body system. The effects of all bodies besides the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune can be ignored since they are much smaller than these five bodies (for all intents and purposes anyway).
Let’s go back to Newton. For every action there is an equal an opposite reaction. The solar system revolves around a barycenter that moves. That’s because at any instant in time all these particles are pulling on each other simultaneously. When masses are concentrated on one side of the Sun, the barycenter moves farther from the Sun and the Sun is pulled towards the concentrated masses by forces caused by the graviational attraction of the masses. Since the Sun acts like a solid, liquid, and gas, it’s hard to envision this force not perturbing the particles within the Sun differently.
On the JPL part of the thread…
Orbital mechanics equations take into consideration the barycenter of the systems that spacecraft fly to. Since the mass of the spacecraft is negligible compared to the body it flies to (usually) the spacecraft mass can be ignored. The masses of larger bodies can’t be. So of course, distances between bodies can be measured precisely because it’s factored in.
One other quick point…
On the Shuttle and ISS when they do experiments, it’s in a micro-gravity environment – not a gravity-free environment. Protein Crystal Growth experiments are affected by the micro-gravity environment…
From title onward, this is typical mainstream media sensationalistic skewing of facts and theory — the sole purpose of which is “excite” current and potential readership.
Alphajuno (19:24:43) :
When masses are concentrated on one side of the Sun, the barycenter moves farther from the Sun and the Sun is pulled towards the concentrated masses by forces caused by the graviational attraction of the masses. Since the Sun acts like a solid, liquid, and gas, it’s hard to envision this force not perturbing the particles within the Sun differently.
You are quite correct, there is a difference, it is called a ‘tide’. As we have already calculated, the tide from Jupiter is 0.47 mm high, that from Venus [the second largest is 0.45 mm high, from the others still smaller. In the most favorable case [when all the tides are aligned] they add up to 1 mm [=1/25 of an inch].
On the JPL part of the thread…
What you say there is just nonsense. The distances can be [and are] measured with great precision using radio signals and are just what is calculated by JPL. These distances are REAL distances not computational fiction.
from http://www.microgravity.com/introduction.html :
“Microgravity, also called weightlessness or zero gravity, is the absence of gravity. It is best illustrated by astronauts floating in their spacecraft.”
Wikipedia has a somewhat more correct definition: “A micro-g environment (also µg, often referred to by the term microgravity) is one where the acceleration induced by gravity has little or no measurable effect”.
But all this is irrelevant to the problem of calculating the real, correct, physical distance to the Sun [which was Carsten’s original question].
garron (21:51:34) :
“The Silent Sun’s Uncertain Course”
From title onward, this is typical mainstream media sensationalistic skewing of facts and theory — the sole purpose of which is “excite” current and potential readership.
I agree.
Thanks Leif…pretty much exactly what i am looking for. the 2nd last graph allows me to match up the 10Be records with sunspot records. before 1840 is where there seems to be a problem, if i look at the Mckracken peaks in the first graph (allowing for volcanic disturbance) they do not line up with the sunspot records(altho its not easy to plot) but there seems to be a mismatch, more peaks from 1800-1850 than the sunspot records show if i am not mistaken. If i had clear 10Be records back that far i could verify.
nobwainer (23:01:29) :
If i had clear 10Be records back that far i could verify.
I’m working on it…
Pamela,
You are lucky.
‘Today fifth graders at Lone Pine Elementary in Bloomfield Hills flip
through the pages of a workbook to describe a class called “Mother
Earth.”
Student 1: “I learned about Pangea – how, a long time the world was
connected.” Student 2: “We learned some words like environment
we learned how Indians, they didn’t waste anything, and we learned
about global warming.”‘ (from Michigan public radio)
Carsten Arnholm, Norway: Ok, we can end it here. I accept your statement that measurements show that TSI varies with extreme accuracy according to the elliptic orbit of Earth. But theoretically it does not make sense to me…
Here, Leif, let me give an attempt to explain the barycentric fallacy.
First let me point out that the gravitational many-body problem (N-body problem with N>2) does not have a closed-form solution. As a result, simulations of celestial dynamics are forced to approximate. One approximation is to consider bodies to be point masses, where the point is located at the center of mass of the object. Then the motion of any body is computed in discrete time steps by taking into account its instantaneous gravitational attraction to all the other bodies and computing a velocity vector. Since this computation occurs between every pair of bodies, it is easy to see that the computational complexity goes up as O(N^2). To reduce the computational complexity, it is often useful to take certain objects that are spatially clustered, such as our solar system, and do what amounts to a point mass approximation on them by computing their barycenter and then using this new point mass to compute the collective acceleration of the cluster on an object outside the cluster. This approximation reduces the effective value of N, resulting in a faster computation. However, and this is where I think the misconceptions arise, the barycenter cannot be used for calculating the dynamics of the bodies that comprise its cluster. The reason is that the barycenter includes the body for which you are trying to compute its velocity vector. For example, if we are trying to compute the net acceleration for the sun within the solar system, it makes no sense to use the solar system’s barycenter because that would include (in fact be overwhelmed by) a component of the sun attracting itself, even though we are modeling the sun as a point mass!
Consider the two-body case (which does have an exact solution), where we have masses m1 and m2 separated by a distance r. The gravitational attraction between them is G m1 m2/r^2, where G is the universal gravitational constant. The barycenter is located at a distance r/(1+m1/m2) on the line between body 1 and body 2. If we considered a point mass with weight (m1+m2) at the barycenter to compute the force on body 1, we would get a force of G m1 (m1+m2) / (r/(1+m1/m2))^2, which clearly gives the wrong answer.
The point is that the barycenter is a useful abstraction for items that do not comprise its cluster, but it has no physical meaning for the other items in the cluster.
Leif Svalgaard (17:28:41) :
nobwainer (16:44:32) :
” ‘I find it interesting you put me in the “barycenter crowd” as i certainly wouldn’t say that.’
Then I apologize for putting you with the wrong crowd. Perhaps the ‘tidal effect’ crowd would have been better…”
Anyone please, in a nutshell…
what is the creed of the “barycenter crowd” and what’s wrong with it?
I’m just trying to find my “crowd.”
Thanks
John-X (09:03:07) :
what is the creed of the “barycenter crowd” and what’s wrong with it?
That the Sun is whirling in a very tight orbit around a point [on the average] located about a solar radius from the surface. This whirling creates forces that upsets the interior or the rotation of the Sun and thereby creates or modulates solar activity.
What is wrong, we have discussed ad nauseam. Basically that the Sun does not feel any such forces except exceedingly tiny tidal forces [which to some seems to be effective anyway]. Is this your crowd?
Leif Svalgaard (09:19:26) :
“…What is wrong, we have discussed ad nauseam…”
Sorry, I’m usually long gone before the point of nausea.
If it is your argument that such barycentric motions do not occur, you are definitely in the scientific minority, and should better spend your time elsewhere, for example by cleaning up Wikipedia (watch the animation):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Orbit4.gif/160px-Orbit4.gif
and by correcting what NASA teaches elementary school children
http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/barycntr.shtml
otherwise I shall conclude that you DO accept that the sun orbits not its own center of mass, but a solar system barycenter which varies pretty much as Newton expected it would in 1687, and that the nauseating discussion is only about what if any effect such motion has.
Here’s the barycenter and its ‘importance’ as taught in a Geology 100 course
http://www.umt.edu/geosciences/faculty/hendrix/g100/L2.html
” Solar System Barycenter: Imaginary point about which planets and sun rotate. Barycenter is near (and sometimes within) sun, but is not center of sun.
Jupiter and Saturn aligned on same side of sun = sun furthest from barycenter
Jupiter and Saturn aligned on opposite sides of sun = sun minimum distance from barycenter (barycenter actually within sun)
Why is this important?
1) Rotation of sun about barycenter is related to formation of sunspots and solar flare activity.
· Sun at Max and Min distance from barycenter (Saturn and Jupiter aligned), solar flare and sunspot activity
very high (about once per 11 years).
· Sun between max and min distance to barycenter (Saturn and Jupiter not aligned), solar flare and sunspot activity low.
2) Sunspot and solar flare activity influences strength of solar wind (which bombards Earth)
3) Fluctuations in strength of solar wind affect Earth climate (e.g. length of growing season). ”
This may be a rather extreme example, but as I suggested, WUWT is no “hotbed” of Barycentrism.