Usually, and that means in the past year, when you look at the false color MDI image from SOHO, you can look at the corresponding magnetogram and see some sort of disturbance going on, even it it is not visible as a sunspot, sunspeck, or plage area.
Not today.
Left: SOHO MDI “visible” image Right: SOHO Magnetogram
Click for larger image
Wherefore art though, cycle 24?
In contrast, September 28th, 2001
Leif,
Methinks the hundreds of postings here have been in vain
Me too, your are as solar-centric as you’ve always been, feeling free to move the BC around.
“constant + X[Sun] – X[planets] = constant.” Fine, that proves the BC is the BC and nothing more. I call it transferring AM, you don’t, which is also fine.
But when the Sun gains AM it also gains rotational energy around the BC, which is not possible, so the rotation around it’s own axis must decrease to cancel.
Same thing is happening with the Earth-Moon system. Tidal friction slows down the Earth’s rotation. The rotational energy around the E-M BC must remain constant so the Earth has to move away from the BC and then so will the Moon of course, increasing the E-M distance.
Leif Svalgaard (06:18:34) :
if I define the ‘core’ to be the mass within a cubic inch at the south pole, I’ll get a different answer. And since the displacement 140m is already assumed, it seems hard to argue that there are open questions about what causes it [how much mass move how far].
The 140m is not assumed, it is calculated from data Ray clearly states to be uncertain due to disagreement between other physicists, but within a margin which is sufficient for his purpose in proposing an effect.
If the Sun suddenly jumped 300m ‘vertically’ with respect to Mercury’s orbit, Mercury would jump 300m too. But perhaps you don’t mean that, but only that the Sun expanded in all directions by 300m, in which case there will no effect, neither on Mercury nor on the Sun in terms of horizontal displacements.
The whole sun and it’s core go where the combined effects of the planets put it. It doesn’t ‘suddenly jump’. The vertical motion of the sun with respect to the barycentre oscillates between extremes over an average period of around 5 1/2 years. If the overall amplitude of the core shift is 280m this will cause mercury’s orbit to oscillate very slightly. As Grav stated in a follow up reply on my mercury orbit thread on the astronomy forum
“However, since I determined it for the sun “suddenly” moving the distance, instead of gradually as Mercury slowly follows suit, that just might be enough to reduce it another order of magnitude or so as well.”
What is the standard model explanation for the corrugations please Leif?
They are hot material welling up near strong magnetic fields in active regions. Take away the magnetic field and the corrugations go away too.
This is a non sequiteur. There could be a modulating factor which guides the positioning of the magnetic fields. Actually, I’m wondering if we are talking about the same thing, given your other reply about the 7km amplitude of the corrugations. The website with the graphic you linked (lost the link in a disk crash) showed large circular ‘mounds’ on the surface of the sun, the diameter of which was given in earth diameters (can’t remember how many – five?) This was linked to a discussion of apparent changes in the suns diameter over the solar cycle.
Checking the data I may have given the size of the corrugations as too small if half a kilometer is what was mentioned. The precise measurements by the RHESSI satellite place the height at 0.010 arc second which is 7.2 km…. contrast this to your 140m
In his thread, Ray points out that the movement of the dense matter nearer the core of the sun by 140m would have a much greater effect on the surface, notwithstanding the redistribution of matter by any convection currents which might be set up nearer the surface in the more fluid parts of the sun. Presumably, the pressure waves generated might shift stuff around too.
Please could you tell me if these regions you descibe are dynamic, and moving around, or if they are quasi-stable, how long that stability lasts on average.
Thanks.
Leif Svalgaard (12:34:05) :
to
vukcevic (12:16:15) :
B-L theory easily does that [and in several incarnations of the theory]. I think Figure 2 of Dikpati’s paper
http://www.leif.org/research/Dikpati-Prediction-2005GL025221.pdf
clearly shows that. I come to the same result using the very weak polar fields observed in 1965 [to the extent they could even be observed directly – below the noise level], so although the B-L theories are still hashing out the details [and boundary conditions], the theory itself has no problem with SC20.
Just a short note:
Your reference to Fig.2 in the above document (reproduced here),
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/LS-Fig2.gif
not only does not give credibility to Babcock-Leighton theory but looks like may discredit it for good.
Any polar fields measured before 1970 appear to be unreliable, and back extrapolation from the sunspot number, it is not only dubious but scientifically of very little value.
“Hashing out the details B-L theories” which are still going on some 50 years since it was formulated, to make it fit “for all man for all time” it is just a joke, indulged by people who consider themselves avanguard of the world of science!
My two formulae, one for polar fields
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/PolarFields-vf.gif
and the other identifying all known anomalies
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/Anomalies.gif
could be considered to have superior descriptive and predictive power of what is actually going on.
Here are rest my case (for the moment).
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk
We are taught that the planets orbit the sun. However it is more complex that.
Jupiter, the outer planets and the sun move around the solar system centre of mass. This can be over a million km outside of the suns surface.
The Earth moves around the sun. Actually, it moves around a point 450 km from the centre of the sun.
The reasons are explained here:
http://www.wxresearch.org/papers/orbit2004.htm
So the Earth motion is its motion around the sun the motion of the sun around the solar system centre of mass.
This additional part of the Earth’s motion is usually ignored but it has important effects on Earth’s climate.
Leif Svalgaard (12:34:05) :
to
vukcevic (12:16:15) :
B-L theory easily does that [and in several incarnations of the theory]. I think Figure 2 of Dikpati’s paper
http://www.leif.org/research/Dikpati-Prediction-2005GL025221.pdf
clearly shows that. I come to the same result using the very weak polar fields observed in 1965 [to the extent they could even be observed directly – below the noise level], so although the B-L theories are still hashing out the details [and boundary conditions], the theory itself has no problem with SC20.
Just a short note:
Your reference to Fig.2 in the above document (reproduced here),
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/LS-Fig2.gif
not only does not give credibility to Babcock-Leighton theory but looks like may discredit it for good.
Any polar fields measured before 1970 appear to be unreliable, and back extrapolation from the sunspot number, it is not only dubious but scientifically of very little value.
“Hashing out the details B-L theories” which are still going on some 50 years since it was formulated, to make it fit “for all man for all time” it is just a joke, indulged by people who consider themselves
a vanguard of the world of science!
My two formulae, one for polar fields
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/PolarFields-vf.gif
and the other identifying all known anomalies
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/Anomalies.gif
could be considered to have superior descriptive and predictive power of what is actually going on.
Here are rest my case (for the moment).
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk
Geoff Sharp (20:48:48) :
to
Leif Svalgaard (20:30:35) :
The correct answer is that there are no ‘orbits’ at all
You rightly use JPL to substantiate the position of Earth orbiting the Sun and not the SSB. But when asked which point The Jovians orbit you fall into some sort of scientific quasi-land.
Geoff, Idlex has perhaps implicitly identified what may be the root of the difficulties in reaching an understanding on these questions: Nomenclature. If the same words have different meanings to different people it gets complicated.
Let me try to narrow down what ‘orbit’ may mean here. One, possibly too strict, definition is that it only refers to ‘conic section’ type curves, i.e. straight lines, circles, ellipses, parabolas, hyperbolas. If using this definition, Leif is right in stating that there are no orbits. Every object in the solar system actually follows a ‘world line’, a curve more complex than these simple ‘conic section’ approximations.
The JPL software attempts to compute trajectories representing the ‘world lines’ from the laws of gravity, much like what the simulators of both Idlex’ and myself do (but the JPL one is more sophisticated). Clearly, what these methods produce are still approximations of the real world, but they are better approximations in the sense that they don’t assume orbits (or orbit focal points) as an input premise, but rather provide resulting trajectories as output.
So we have ‘orbits’ and we have ‘world lines’. For practical purposes, it is often possible to approximate the ‘world lines’ using the much simpler conical section ‘orbits’ for the planets, asteroids or comets. This works for a while, depending on what you want to do, when there is one dominant object (the Sun) and when there are few disturbances.
However, there are real world cases where such simple approximations do not work. In 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed spectacularly into Jupiter, it was correctly predicted and widely reported in the media. The predictions would never have succeeded using a simple ‘orbit’ for SL9, since it was disturbed by a close encounter with Jupiter in 1992. So I presume they used numerical integration (the JPL software) to compute the SL9 trajectory more closely matching the ‘world line’ and thus figure out in advance that SL9 would actually hit Jupiter and when. It worked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker-Levy_9
So “which point” do “The Jovians orbit”? “Jove” means Jupiter, but I guess you mean Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Do they have to ‘orbit’ the same ‘point’? As you may have seen from my previous posts, I don’t think so. Astronomical observations or accurate numerical integration of the ‘world line’ trajectory will provide the answer if needed. But I don’t understand why it is needed.
idlex (19:40:40) :
But I have another proposal. What if I think of the Sun as being a perfectly spherical body, a ‘flat’ surface on which I can place a perfectly spherical ball bearing, with zero rolling resistance? What would happen to such a ball bearing? Would it just sit there immobile on the Sun’s surface? Or would it go rolling around the Sun in some funny way? Since, on the surface of the Sun, the lateral or tangential force of the Sun’s gravitational attraction would be zero, the only tangential forces acting upon the ball bearing would be from the orbiting planets. That’s how it intuitively looks to me, doing this particular thought experiment. But what do I know? Not much! But perhaps my simulation model could tell me what happens to that ball bearing, if I could just think how to model it. But that’s probably easier said than done.
Lets explore this. You say that in your model presently the sun is a point source, so it has no spin?.
Take a small satellite around the sun, orbiting at the distance of the known sun radius. That could be considered a dV ( dxdydz) volume element of the real sun. Give it a rotation about the sun to agree with the sun rotation about its axis. Put it at the equator for a start.
Would it not be like your ball bearing, if the mass is small? Then see what happens in your simulation?
lgl (01:03:56) :
But when the Sun gains AM it also gains rotational energy around the BC, which is not possible, so the rotation around it’s own axis must decrease to cancel.
This is spin orbit coupling again lgl…not a lot different to all bodies in an elliptical orbit, the velocity increases but the rotation can stay the same…just as it does on earth with our slightly elliptical orbit, but the length of day does not vary.
Same thing is happening with the Earth-Moon system. Tidal friction slows down the Earth’s rotation. The rotational energy around the E-M BC must remain constant so the Earth has to move away from the BC and then so will the Moon of course, increasing the E-M distance.
Now your talking…and the reverse is also true. Tidal friction and more causes the slowdown which is not important, but AM must be conserved and the moon responds with a greater radius (and some say a change in rotation rate on the moon). Its an observed trade off in angular momentum. Turn the tables and move Earth closer to the moon and you would expect another trade off. The Sun does this dance every day, changing distance with the Jovians, that is exactly what JPL tells us.
Geoff Sharp:
Lets drop spin orbit coupling, while the branch is pruned its not totally cut off, and who knows, someone like you may discover a connection by going down an unused road.
Why does it have to be someone like me? Why not someone like you? Why don’t you build your own simulation model? Or figure out how to calculate orbits using orbital elements like Anna V does? Why do you dismiss doing that sort of thing as “re-inventing the wheel”?
When Galileo took a set of balls and rolled them down inclined planes, and measured how long it took for them to roll down, I bet some guy said to him, “Hey, Galileo! Why are you re-inventing the wheel? ” Because balls are just wheels. And every kid in the world has rolled balls down inclined planes. And wheels too. And every kid in the world knows that they accelerate. It’s something people learn when they’re 2 years old. Or earlier. So why was Galileo rolling balls down inclined planes? Was he a bit retarded or something?
But Galileo wanted to know something that most kids don’t know. He wanted to know how fast they accelerated. And whether the acceleration was constant.
I think that if you’re going to ask these sorts of deep questions, you have to be prepared to do things like build ramps and roll balls down them, and count the seconds it takes for them to roll down, and then mull over the numbers that came out to see whether they show anything. And Galileo’s numbers were the “soild JPL data” of the 16th century, that gave the acceleration and velocity and position of moving masses in a gravitational field.
Anyone who is going to “go down an unused road” has to do something like Galileo did. And until they’ve actually been down that road, they won’t know what they’ll find along the way.
Paul Vaughan (23:59:06) :
idlex (19:40:40) – “[…] But I really think that Leif has pretty thoroughly demolished that idea […]“
I can’t buy into this language. [snip] …after reading idlex’s sales pitches…
I’m not selling anything. I’m just expressing my agreement with Leif. I think that if there is some physical linkbetween Sun motion and the sunspot cycle, it’ll have to be found somewhere else than ‘spin-orbit coupling’.
And maybe there isn’t any link at all.
“soild JPL data”
Ooops. That should be “solid JPL data”.
lgl (01:03:56) :
to
Leif,
Methinks the hundreds of postings here have been in vain
Me too, your are as solar-centric as you’ve always been, feeling free to move the BC around.
“constant + X[Sun] – X[planets] = constant.” Fine, that proves the BC is the BC and nothing more. I call it transferring AM, you don’t, which is also fine.
But when the Sun gains AM it also gains rotational energy around the BC, which is not possible, so the rotation around it’s own axis must decrease to cancel.
lgl, it appears you have overlooked what the calculations demonstrate. It does not even try to prove anything wrt. BC. It also does not postulate the existence of spin orbit coupling like you do here. It demonstrates that
X[Sun] – X[planets] = constant.
where,
X[Sun] = Change in the Suns orbital AM
X[planets] = Change in the sum of the orbital AM for all the planets
The implication is that all variation in orbital AM over time has been accounted for because the orbital AM components all balance each other out exactly.
If you add an additional hypothetical varying AM component due to varying solar spin, it would have to be exactly balanced out by something else than orbital angular momentum, or else you would violate the conservation law. That “something else” does not appear to exist.
vukcevic (02:57:34) :
Your reference to Fig.2 in the above document (reproduced here), http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/LS-Fig2.gif
not only does not give credibility to Babcock-Leighton theory but looks like may discredit it for good.
Any polar fields measured before 1970 appear to be unreliable, and back extrapolation from the sunspot number, it is not only dubious but scientifically of very little value.
You have not understood what goes on. She does not use the polar fields [the poloidial field is not the same as the polar fields. Magnetic fields at 30 degrees can have a poloidial component]. But basically she takes the data for cycles n and n+1 and calculates the size of cycle n+2, so the small cycle 20 is the result of the large cycles 18 and 19. The very large cycle 21 in the result of cycle 19 and cycle 20. Since cycle 20 is so small, its poloidal field does not cancel the very strong poloidal fields from cycle 19, and similarly for the other cycles.
You formula [back extrapolation from the WSO data] has no physics behind it and is just cyclomania, and as usual one may ask how it matches the perfect correlations of Geoff [expecting, as usual, no answer]? The time you have spent on the present posting might have been better spent on a satisfactory reply…
idlex (04:55:58) :
Dont worry I know the path of the unused….but was leaving a little room for others. We all have our skill sets.
This debate is now verging on the non scientific, with difficulty getting a straight answer to a straight question.
Geoff Sharp (03:51:58) :
lgl (01:03:56) :
This is spin orbit coupling again lgl…not a lot different to all bodies in an elliptical orbit, the velocity increases but the rotation can stay the same…just as it does on earth with our slightly elliptical orbit, but the length of day does not vary.
I think the spin-orbit coupling is gone by now, so interest must turn to other things. lgl, It is a waste of words to keep misunderstanding the spin-orbit situation.
Tidal friction and more causes the slowdown which is not important, but AM must be conserved and the moon responds with a greater radius (and some say a change in rotation rate on the moon). Its an observed trade off in angular momentum. Turn the tables and move Earth closer to the moon and you would expect another trade off
The slowdown is the change in AM. The varying distance between the Earth and the Moon has nothing to do with this. It varies every month by 5,000,000,000 cm. The observed 30 ns/yr change in the LOD results in a 4 cm/yr increase of the lunar distance. The 5 billion cm monthly change [if you turn the tables] corresponds to a monthly 3 minute change of LOD, which clearly doesn’t happen.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (03:24:08) :
No offense, but I am hearing a lot of waffle from you and Svalgaard. Just as the Earth orbits the Sun as Svalgaard demonstrates through JPL, the Jovians orbit the SSB, also via JPL. We dont need to hear about the minor stuff. You cant have your cake and eat it too.
There is a simple test, measure a Jovian planet’s distance to the SSB and then move forward exactly 1 orbit in time, the distance will be the same (give of take a few days) then look at the planet’s distance to the Sun on both occurrences, it will be vastly different. End of story.
anna v (03:48:01) :
>i>Let’s explore this. [..] Take a small satellite around the sun, orbiting at the distance of the known sun radius. […] Give it a rotation about the sun to agree with the sun rotation about its axis. Put it at the equator for a start.
Then it would crash into the Sun. To stay in orbit at that place its speed has to be 426 km/s. The rotational speed is only 2 km/s.
anna v (03:48:01) :
Let’s explore this. [..] Take a small satellite around the sun, orbiting at the distance of the known sun radius. […] Give it a rotation about the sun to agree with the sun rotation about its axis. Put it at the equator for a start.
Then it would crash into the Sun. To stay in orbit at that place its speed has to be 436km/s. The rotational speed is only 2 km/s.
Leif Svalgaard (06:33:15) :
It varies every month by 5,000,000,000 cm.
Poor attempt, dont confuse the normal perigee/apogee distances of about 4.233 billion cm. This is where the data is hidden and has to be removed to see the net change. I am surprised to see how low you will go.
tallbloke (01:17:43) :
The 140m is not assumed, it is calculated from data. Ray clearly states…
and:
In his thread, Ray points out that the movement of the dense matter nearer the core of the sun by 140m …Nowhere in the thread does the number 140, or 280, or 300 appear.
The only number that seems to be important is the 10.5 year period and that is ‘assumed’, not calculated.
Please could you tell me if these regions you descibe are dynamic, and moving around, or if they are quasi-stable, how long that stability lasts on average.
They last as long as the active region [days to weeks]. In a very direct sense, they are the active regions. Here is more: http://www3.kis.uni-freiburg.de/~steiner/kodai.pdf and you can see them directly [as the bright areas] on http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/1206/images/1206samplings_sunspot.jpg
Leif Svalgaard (07:03:14) :
anna v (03:48:01) :
Let’s explore this. [..] Take a small satellite around the sun, orbiting at the distance of the known sun radius. […] Give it a rotation about the sun to agree with the sun rotation about its axis. Put it at the equator for a start.
Then it would crash into the Sun. To stay in orbit at that place its speed has to be 436km/s. The rotational speed is only 2 km/s.
Thanks.
Can one go far out enough as to have a heliostationary orbit?
I should be able to calculate this but (blush) my tools are rusty.
Geoff Sharp (07:30:35) :
“It varies every month by 5,000,000,000 cm.”
Poor attempt, dont confuse the normal perigee/apogee distances of about 4.233 billion cm. This is where the data is hidden and has to be removed to see the net change. I am surprised to see how low you will go.
You were asserting [“move Earth closer to the moon and you would expect another trade off”] that there is a relation between distance and LOD and there is not. The tides slow down the Earth’s rotation and the Moon moves away [4 cm/yr] correspondingly. This is not a result of the changing distance. There will be tides on the Sun from Jupiter [0.46 mm] as we have discussed; they will also slow the Sun down, and more so when all the other planets work together. The more in conjunction [direct or opposite] the higher the tide [for a total of 1.38 mm] and the more the Sun’s rotation is slowed down.
A well, good old wiki
By analogy with the geosynchronous orbit, a heliosynchronous orbit is a heliocentric orbit where the satellite’s period of revolution matches the Sun’s period of rotation. These orbits occur at a radius of 24.360 Gm (0.1628 AU) around the Sun, a little less than half of the orbital radius of Mercury.
Similar to the geostationary orbit, the heliostationary orbit is the heliosynchronous orbit of inclination zero and eccentricity zero, so that the satellite would appear stationary to an observer on the Sun’s surface.
To date, no satellites have been put in this kind of solar orbit.
Geoff,
just as it does on earth with our slightly elliptical orbit, but the length of day does not vary.
But it does, it’s shortest around aphelion. It’s of course explained with weather but I don’t think that’s the whole story.
Carsten,
it appears you have overlooked what the calculations demonstrate
No, all that is fine.
That “something else” does not appear to exist.
But you haven’t calculated the AM from the spin of the planets have you?
Leif,
The observed 30 ns/yr change in the LOD results in a 4 cm/yr increase of the lunar distance
This is what I’m referring to, not the monthly change, and it’s a spin-orbit coupling. A change of the Earth’s spin is changing the Moon’s orbit.
If not, what is the mechanism? There is no spin-orbit coupling so how can the moon orbit change?
Geoff Sharp (07:30:35) :
You were asserting [“move Earth closer to the moon and you would expect another trade off”] that there is a relation between distance and LOD and there is not.
If you were to shrink the Moon’s orbit [moving the Earth closer to the Moon] the Earth would indeed speed up because of conversation of AM. similarly, if you were to shrink [make the semi-major axis smaller] the Jupiter’s orbit by 1.2 million km, the Sun would speed up. Shrinking Jupiter’s orbit by 1.2 million km every time around would make Jupiter crash into the Sun in 7688 years
Leif Svalgaard (06:10:36) :
to
vukcevic (02:57:34) :
You have not understood what goes on. She does not use the polar fields [the poloidial field is not the same as the polar fields. Magnetic fields at 30 degrees can have a poloidial component]. But basically she takes the data for cycles n and n+1 and calculates the size of cycle n+2,….
Precisely, I may not have understood what goes on, and you may not wish not to understand what I am implying, and I understand that.
As far as Fig.2 is concerned
http://www.geocities.com/vukcevicu/LS-Fig2.gif
which you have put as a winning argument in support of solar scientists’ arguments, by now we should be reading SSN about 120 or above (a conservative estimate), so the theory on which it is based , to say it
politely, is inconsistent with reality we observe.
Suggested method of calculation is, and can be easily discredited, by starting with say SC14 and 15 and carry on forward, by now we would have been in a Maunder Minimum No.2 for about 50 or more years.
As far as polar fields are concerned, in my view, that argument has been more than exhausted, you may whish to have another go, but I will let my formula speak for itself “a picture is worth a thousand words” as per granddad of the visual advertising.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/PolarFields-vf.gif