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
Basil (05:09:31) :
The paper has been published.
Falsi cation Of
The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse E ects
Within The Frame Of Physics
Version 4.0 (January 6, 2009)
replaces Version 1.0 (July 7, 2007) and later
Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
arXiv:0707.1161v4 [physics.ao-ph] 4 Mar 2009
Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Modern Physics
B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275{364 , DOI No: 10.1142/S021797920904984X, c
World
Scienti c Publishing Company, http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb.
from the link of the publishers:
To ensure top quality, review articles are by invitation only and all research papers undergo stringent refereeing. We welcome you to submit your research papers to IJMPB for publication.
anna v (04:47:46) :
Very interesting to see how your views have changed. About 9 months ago on WUWT you said this in response to Ian Wilson’s paper:
I think the importance of this paper does not so much lie on the content, rather that it is a peer reviewed paper that introduces new theories in the mix.
The more the better to clarify for the public that the science is NOT settled and before humanity jumps into the economic chaos of CO2 witch chasing, it should be made aware of this.
It is unfortunate that a great number of national societies of this and that have come out for the AGW theory, I am sure without polling their members and stating percentages. It is like declaring their faith, and it is good that dissenting voices become loud.
As far as the content, as a physicist, and having seen elsewhere that the baricenter lies inside the fluid sun I do not exclude the possibility that these motions change the magnetic fields in tandem . Of course it needs a serious study by a magnetic dynamo solar theorist, and a fluid dynamics one for sure ( to see how the gravitational changes couple with the rotation) . In addition it needs proof that changes in the sun’s magnetic field create weather changes ( albedo and galactic cosmic rays? remains to be proven).
As I said, the science is not settled.
Seems it might be, you and others might be convinced by one person?
Harold Ambler (18:55:42) :
Gerry: Pretty interesting, don’t you think? I’m a retired orbit specialist, who worked at JPL from 1965 to 1980. I find barycentric solar orbits most fascinating.
REPLY: We don’t think much of barycentrism here. Too little mass to make any difference. Dr. Svalgaard has debunked it extensively here – Anthony
I would be tempted to treat an orbit specialist who worked for 15 years at JPL with some respect. Dr. Svalgaard is one scientist. Gerry is apparently another — maybe each of them knows some things that the other doesn’t?
Gerry’s point is that no one (including Dr. Svalgaard) predicted sc23’s length the way Fairbridge did (with the possible exception of Landscheidt), let alone 20 years ahead of the fact.
A revealing exchange. I would have to agree that no matter how sophisticated and knowledgable Dr. Svalgaard is, the predictive success of Fairbridge merits respect and can’t simply be laughed off by saying that his proposed causes are insufficient to produced the alleged results. Perhaps if the Barycentric forces are insufficient, there are other forces — e.g. electricity — involved.
That could explain how the orbital frequencies of planets effect the solar cycle even if the gravity alone cannot account for the reasons why.
Vukevic? Is that it?
-psi
Related to the topic brought up by Ninderthana and the barycentre discussion, there is a thing called …
… Atmospheric Angular Momentum – atmospheric winds literally create a drag on the Earth’s rotation (a few thousandth of a millisecond +/-) and it is carefully measured. This is the main cause of the change in the Length of Day noted by Ninderthana.
It seems to be modulated highly by ENSO events with the other ocean cycles playing a part.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=23097
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/clim/aam.rean.shtml
Anyone know where there is monthly average data on this or for the length of day. All I’ve found is daily data which is going to take too much time to turn into something useful.
Already the SC24 Sun Speck is only visible in the magnetogram.
Geoff Sharp (06:35:57) :
I had said: As I said, the science is not settled.
You comment: Seems it might be, you and others might be convinced by one person?
Not a person. The physics as explained by a person.
My field is particle physics. I had taken a general relativity course back in 1970s, and even taught mechanics from Goldstein for a season but that does not mean that I have celestial mechanics at my fingertips.
I have been convinced that gravitational forces of the solar system are not enough to produce the necessary effects on spin orbit, and by thinking a bit about it, that the barycenter business is an unnecessary complication, like the epicycle theory in a geocentric coordinate system.
In addition I have been reading a bit into chaos and complexity. Sinusoidal type of dependencies are very common in chaotic dynamical systems, so I am not impressed by periodical correlations as I would have been before delving into the subject of chaos.
I think the challenge is to come up with a dynamical mechanism, and thus the science is still open.
That odd high latitude SC23 pair of specks is gone this morning. All that’s left is a plage area. The specks were never even noted by SWPC or Catania. Too brief a phenom to bother with? So the string of {official} spotless days continue.
REPLY: See my newest post on the main page – Anthony
I personally like the barycentric theory, I have no idea if it is correct though. Sort of rests well with Milankovich and and other of the earths bio-rythms.
Anyway most of the UK population will have other things to worry about if Porritt gets his way. I assume he’ll (porritt) be one of the 30 million?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5950442.ece
“The Inconvenient Minimum”?
How often is the sun’s circumference measured? How is this done?
REPLY: In the old days, it was an asbestos tape measure…but in these modern times…. 😉 Anthony
AGW Minimum!
“REPLY: We don’t think much of barycentrism here. Too little mass to make any difference. Dr. Svalgaard has debunked it extensively here – Anthony”
With due respect, Will to disbelieve?, nothing to be discarded yet, after Newton came Einstein, perhaps there are no big newtonian forces in play but it seems there are other forces which we do not know yet, there is correspondence though it may no be causation, but who knows somebody sometime in the future, perhaps here in WUWT, will come out and explain the whole issue for us.
Basil (05:21:53) :
“[quoting Bill]I think it is evident that there is no VISIBLE TSI influence on temperature.”
but it can explain more modest cycles in temperature on the order of ±0.02C over decadal time periods. At least that is what you acknowledged a few days ago.
Bill was asking if he did anything wrong in his analysis, and my answer was that he did not. The tiny solar cycle variation we expect does not rise enough over the noise to be visible. For a 300-year series the noise on the average [or on an FFT peak] would be of the order of the standard deviation divided by the square root of 300 i.e. ~18. The standard deviation [variation from year to year] is certainly larger than a degree, hence the noise would be larger than 1/18 = 0.06 degrees, so no wonder that the TSI signal does not show.
Re prediction:
Our polar field method only predicts the size and not the timing. The 2011 time frame is a ‘nomimal’ time just adding 11 years to the 2000 maximum time [BTW, the referee’s wouldn’t let us speculate on the timing, pointing out (correctly, we conceded) that the polar field precursor method does not provide a timing prediction in itself]. So, this was not a prediction. In 2006 we made a stab at a timing prediction: page 15 of http://www.leif.org/research/Polar%20Fields%20and%20Cycle%2024.pdf . Based on a minimum in 2007.5 we estimated SC24 max in 2013.5. Since minimum is now a year later, we expect maximum to be similarly later, i.e. 2014.5. This is a ‘weak’ prediction based on the usual or statistical rise time for an Rmax = 75, and the statistical variation is not small, so we should allow for an error of +/-1 year at least.
On the barycenter/planetary stuff: so much has already been hashed on this that there is not much to add. Perhaps a bit about the tides: The tidal bulge from Jupiter is 0.46 millimeter high, and is there ALL the time, thus does not have an 11-year [or 11.86 yr for Jupiter] period. Enthusiasts now would say, “Ah, but the orbit of Jupiter is not a circle”. This is true and the result is that the tidal bulge varies from 0.41 mm to 0.55 mm over an 11.9 year period for a total of 0.14 mm, about the width of a human hair.
On the spin-orbit coupling: to change the rotation of the sun you need to apply a torque and a torque requires a lever arm that provides a couple. I cannot fasten a nut by waving my hand in pront of it. Only if I use a wrench to connect my hand with the nut, can I turn the nut.
So there is no way we know of that can achieve the coupling. this means that we are back to how good the correlations are. There is a historical precedent for this situation: in the 19th century it was noted that there is a correlation between sunspots and wiggling of the ‘magnetic needle’. The famous first observation of a solar flare by Carrington in 1859 was followed about a day later by a magnetic storm. It was suggested by ‘enthusiasts’ at the time that magnetic forces on the Sun were coupled with and caused disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field. The most eminent physicist at the time, Lord Kelvin [we name the temperature scale after him] proved conclusively [and his proof is still valid today] that it is physically impossible that a change in the Sun’s magnetic field could cause the magnetic disturbances we observe at the Earth, and that therefore the correlations were a mere coincidence.
But the correlations got better and better as more and more data accumulated, so the coincidence argument got weaker and weaker. The solution turned out to be ‘new physics’, a phenomenon that Lord Kelvin [real name W Thomson] did not know about [although he was a co-discover (confusingly together with another Thomson (J.J.) of the electron as part of atoms], namely the new state of matter we now call a plasma. Later [in the 1940s] Hannes Alfven showed that a magnetic field would be ‘frozen’ into a plasma and move with it, so the solar wind [predicted in the 1950s and discovered in the 1960s] could carry the magnetic field from the Sun to the Earth and thereby circumvent Lord Kelvin’s objection [based of the known distance-cubed falloff of a magnetic field in a vacuum and the distance-squared falloff you get from dragging the field out by the solar wind].
So, should we resort to invoking new physics? IMHO the correlations are not good enough for this.
Ninderthana (05:46:03) :
Thanks for the links to your paper and slide presentation. They were most informative.
Ohioholic (08:02:33) :
How often is the sun’s circumference measured? How is this done?
Every 96 minutes by looking at it.
Leif Svalgaard (09:05:05) :
How often is the sun’s circumference measured? How is this done?
Every 96 minutes by looking at it.
Those are quite the eyeballs, my friend. You must be a fantastic cook. Not to mention your retinas of steel. Gee, maybe I should go try it….. Harhar. Can’t help feeling a little hostility in that answer.
Surely there is some kind of satellite? I am just interested in knowing if it is public data, if it exists somewhere.
Leif Svalgaard (23:24:53) :
I never ignore anything [that is one my problems; if I only did, these discussions would wither on the vine], but I have yet to see a plausible physical explanation. Doesn’t have to be correct, just possible, i.e. not violating physical laws or being energetically inadequate.
Hi Leif,
firstly, thank you for responding, I’m sure the previous occasions on which I’ve tried to flag this one up, there was too much else going on. Thanks also to Anthony also for having the good grace to allow further discussion of these theories and results.
The theory I am referring to is that of a cycles and harmonics expert Ray Tomes. A year or so ago, Ray presented this theory on the bautforum.com website. I’ll give it a quick praisee and then provide the link to the original discussion. Bautforum is a fairly tersely run website where people putting forward new theories get a real grilling from physics and astronomy experts and questions must be answered to avoid the thread getting locked.
Ray’s theory is that the important effect of the gas giant planets on the sun arises out of the fact that the sun is tilted at 7 degrees or so to the plane of invariance the main planets orbit in. Whereas radial barycentric forces are cancelled out in the period of a solar rotation, the motion of the slow moving planets north or south of the solar equator continue for many years at a time. Because the matter and energy in the sun has a gradient from core to surface, the Einsteinian relativistic effect of the Jovian planets gravitation is to diferentially pull the matter of the sun north or south, creating internal pressure waves which result in the production of sunspots.
Because the Jovian planets lie in more or less the same plane, the times when the effect is at a maximum, also coincide with the times when the planets are in conjunction, which is why the radial barycentric effect more commonly discussed appears to fit the data, but lacks a viable physical mechanism. In fact, when Ray calculated the fourier transformation, he found a peak not produced in the more commonly considered theory, which matches the sunspot cycles more accurately.
The theory also postulates that there is a natural resonance period for the sun of around 10.5 years, with a variable ‘Q’ factor which Ray believes will turn out to be a cyclic function related to the interactions of planetary motions over a long period beyond the currently available data. I rememeber a discussion Leif and I had on climate audit a couple of years ago where we concluded the solar effects on earths climate may have a ‘lag’ of around 10 years, this may be why that is so.
Because the period of time it takes for energy to move from the centre of the sun to the surface and issues around relativistic mass-energy exchange are still uncertain, the strength of the effect can curently only be determined to within an order of magnitude or so, Ray comes up with a few possible figures throughout the thread, don’t dismiss the effect as being in inadequate at the first given figures.
So to summarise, the sun has an internal oscillation period of around 10.5 years, and the motion of the planets above and below the solar equator create harmonic resonances which ‘ring the sun’s bell’ and amplify or dampen the effect, modulating it to the varying length and amplitude solar cycles we see in the sunspot record. Because the effect is minimal if conjunctions occur at the crossing points of the sloar equatorial plane and the plane of the planets, this explains why some conjunctions of particular pairs of planets are more or less powerful depending on angle relative to the tilt of the suns axis. This may help us understand why some solar minima are deeper than others.
The thread where Ray proposed this theory requires attentive reading, and is tough going in places, but the four pages are worth sticking through to get the full gist of the theory, and it’s mathematical expression.
http://www.bautforum.com/against-mainstream/72665-explaining-planetary-alignments-relationship-sunspot-cycle.html
Thanks as always for your time and patience Leif, I hope you can find the time to give this theory the time and consideration I think it deserves.
Adolfo Giurfa (08:46:12) :
but it seems there are other forces which we do not know yet
imagine you are having a televised debate with Al Gore on this and when he shows a picture of polar bears and penguins struggling to stay on the same shrinking ice floe, your argument is that there must be ‘other forces which we do not know’ in play.
I will suggest to call the existing sun minimum the “WATTS MINIMUM” !
To late, you’re already a unit of energy. One Anthony = ten Blogaspheres.
Gravitational variations act “instantaneously” throughout a continuum. Doing so in a fluid that is governed by a bunch of 2nd order (I can’t remember if there are 3rd order terms) coupled partial differential equations suggest that the opportunity exists for some larger scale oscillatory solutions to arise to those equations.
I seem to recall that there a number of simplified cases in fluid mechanics where the Navier-Stokes equations can be solved explicity and they reveal oscillations that may not have been expected in advance (if you hadn’t first looked at the physical system to see them.)
Is there a very simplified scenario, perhaps with a sphere with 2 layers of immiscible fluid acted on by a small varying external gravity force, for which the equations can be solved numerically, (or even explicitly) that might support the contention that magnified effects can occur? Isn’t one of the theories regarding Sun cycles that oscillations are set up in the Sun between 2 “layers”?
Leif Svalgaard (22:55:56) : The problem with your picture is that there is a coupling [namely friction] between the rotating table and the liquid in the bowl, but there is no coupling between the rotating Sun and its orbital movement. It has been suggested many times that as a planet goes around the Sun in an elliptical orbit, i.e. changing its orbital speed that it would rotate slower or faster depending on its orbital speed. This doesn’t happen either, again because there is no couple between the two.
There is a coupling between an electromagnetically active sun and disturbances caused by movement about a barycenter. The solar systems immense magnetic field is accompanied by immense solar electrical currents. If one moves a current within a magnetic field, forces are involved, hence a couple! Immense electromagnetic disturbance can be caused by planets pulling the sun in different directions. These disturances might result in variations in sunspot cycles.
Leif Svalgaard (09:05:05) :
Ohioholic (08:02:33) :
How often is the sun’s circumference measured? How is this done?
Every 96 minutes by looking at it.
NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN.
One must be ever vigilant, even if one thinks that novices are absent.
Robert Bateman (09:57:24) :
“Every 96 minutes by looking at it.”
NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN.
SOHO looks, this is the only way it has to observe the Sun.
David Reese (09:31:51) :
If one moves a current within a magnetic field, forces are involved, hence a couple!
You need to have the force first and the tidal forces are so small that they have no effect compared to the other forces that are working on the Sun, like the convection of hot material from the interior. The convection consists of a million Texas-sized cells moving up and down at half a kilometer per second. Compare that to a hair-thickness-size movement of the tidal bulge.
Leif, there is a force that moves the electrical currents. It is the gravitation force of the planets which move the sun about it’s barycenter.
I noticed that my question has been left sitting. That often means that something contains an issue to be resolved… So I’ll repeat the question:
But the mass of the sun orbiting at 2 solar radii is not a small r x p and that must be conserved as r approaches zero. That is physics, not opinion. So where does it go?
We had some hand waving about tides, but I don’t think this is tides issue…
My take on it is given below as a “thought experiment”. I know these are fraught with all kinds of opportunities to delude yourself; and I also know that I’m no physicist (I did OK at it, but freshman college physics was as far as I went…). I’m not offering this as proof of anything; just as a way to get to the answer to the question of “Where does the angular momentum in solar r x p go as the position vector goes to zero?” It must be conserved.
While a lot of the articles I’ve seen talk about the tidal force transferring the momentum, I’ve done a thought experiment that does not use tides. Perhaps a physics major can critque it?
Draw a graph with a ‘center of orbit’ point. Put a hypothetical ‘planet’ center at distance of 10 units from the center of orbit with planet radius of 1 unit and planet spin of 1 per orbit (so the same face always faces the center of the orbit). At this point, the center of the planet is traveling a distance of 10pi in one time period (orbit) while the outer edge is travling 11pi and the inner edge is traveling 9pi per unit of time.
Now displace the planet in to a distance of 1 unit orbit for the planet center. Closest edge is at the orbit center, so no orbital velocity. Yet it had a speed before, and that speed had it making an orbit in 9/10 the distance of the planet center so 9/10 the speed. Now it’s zero of orbit so speed has to go into spin torque (conservation of MV).
Seems to me it would still have that speed, but that speed would now have to show up as spin of the leading edge in the direction of the orbit.
Repeat thought experiment for the trailing edge. It was going faster by a small amount (11/10 compared to planet center, or 11/9 compared to inner edge), but now is going at an even lesser percentage (i.e. it does 2pi distance when the core does 1pi distance and inner edge does 0pi; so it’s now 2x distance to travel as the center of planet, but only moving 11/10 as fast, ergo slow relative to the planet center, ergo spin force dragging against the orbit…) so it pulls to the trailing direction of the orbit.
Net result, increased spin…
And no tidal forces are involved. So Liefs complaint about free fall and gravity does not apply as near as I can tell. And no, I don’t think the center of orbit produced any forces on anything, it’s just the reference frame.
Now imagine said ball is a big fire ball of fluid plasma… I have to think that such a spin force difference would disrupt or modulate whatever ‘conveyor belt’ was working … and do something to the sun spot cycle.
(Please, be gentle… you are dealing with a non-physicist just trying to learn how angular momentum and spin-orbit coupling work… and I remember not liking the angular momentum part of my physics class, yet here I am voluntarily chasing it…)