From the National Science Foundation:
Answer lies in jets of plasma
One of the most enduring mysteries in solar physics is why the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, is millions of degrees hotter than its surface.
Now scientists believe they have discovered a major source of hot gas that replenishes the corona: jets of plasma shooting up from just above the Sun’s surface.
The finding addresses a fundamental question in astrophysics: how energy is moved from the Sun’s interior to create its hot outer atmosphere.
“It’s always been quite a puzzle to figure out why the Sun’s atmosphere is hotter than its surface,” says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., who was involved in the study.
“By identifying that these jets insert heated plasma into the Sun’s outer atmosphere, we can gain a much greater understanding of that region and possibly improve our knowledge of the Sun’s subtle influence on the Earth’s upper atmosphere.”
The research, results of which are published this week in the journal Science, was conducted by scientists from Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL), NCAR, and the University of Oslo. It was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR’s sponsor.
“These observations are a significant step in understanding observed temperatures in the solar corona,” says Rich Behnke of NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funded the research.
“They provide new insight about the energy output of the Sun and other stars. The results are also a great example of the power of collaboration among university, private industry and government scientists and organizations.”
The research team focused on jets of plasma known as spicules, which are fountains of plasma propelled upward from near the surface of the Sun into the outer atmosphere.
For decades scientists believed spicules could send heat into the corona. However, following observational research in the 1980s, it was found that spicule plasma did not reach coronal temperatures, and so the theory largely fell out of vogue.
“Heating of spicules to millions of degrees has never been directly observed, so their role in coronal heating had been dismissed as unlikely,” says Bart De Pontieu, the lead researcher and a solar physicist at LMSAL.
In 2007, De Pontieu, McIntosh, and their colleagues identified a new class of spicules that moved much faster and were shorter-lived than the traditional spicules.
These “Type II” spicules shoot upward at high speeds, often in excess of 100 kilometers per second, before disappearing.
The rapid disappearance of these jets suggested that the plasma they carried might get very hot, but direct observational evidence of this process was missing.
The researchers used new observations from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on NASA’s recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory and NASA’s Focal Plane Package for the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on the Japanese Hinode satellite to test their hypothesis.
“The high spatial and temporal resolution of the newer instruments was crucial in revealing this previously hidden coronal mass supply,” says McIntosh.
“Our observations reveal, for the first time, the one-to-one connection between plasma that is heated to millions of degrees and the spicules that insert this plasma into the corona.”
The findings provide an observational challenge to the existing theories of coronal heating.
During the past few decades, scientists proposed a wide variety of theoretical models, but the lack of detailed observation significantly hampered progress.
“One of our biggest challenges is to understand what drives and heats the material in the spicules,” says De Pontieu.
A key step, according to De Pontieu, will be to better understand the interface region between the Sun’s visible surface, or photosphere, and its corona.
Another NASA mission, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), is scheduled for launch in 2012 to provide high-fidelity data on the complex processes and enormous contrasts of density, temperature and magnetic field between the photosphere and corona. Researchers hope this will reveal more about the spicule heating and launch mechanism.
The LMSAL is part of the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, which designs and develops, tests, manufactures and operates a full spectrum of advanced-technology systems for national security and military, civil government and commercial customers.
-NSF-
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
tallbloke says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Lol. I already knew what I meant about the imprecision of your notion of ‘perfect freefall’ long before the publication of this paper Leif.
all that ‘lolling’ may not be good for you.
Anyway, the paper states:
“Except for the tidal distortion, the effect of planets on this mechanism is fully accounted for by the dC/dt term in the velocity that appears in Equation (1). A star in orbit about its barycenter is in a state of free fall (Shirley, 2006). At the center of the star, the attractive force from all the planets is exactly canceled by the orbital accelerations (centrifugal and angular). At other locations, the only externally-caused net-force sensed by the stellar fluid is the tidal force. It raises a tide ∼ 1 mm high at the solar surface, which is ∼ 10−11 to ∼ 10−9 times the vertical displacements of convective flows that will be involved in our mechanism. We ignore tidal effects in the rest of this paper.”
Re perfect freefall – is this saying there’s an up and down in the universe?! How?
Sorry, I’m not being critical here, I’ve just never imagined there was and up and down and sun in freefall not in my education background.
In the world of science, the word “nonsense” suggests that a weak hypothesis which has in some manner been disqualified.
And yet, after years of looking into this question, I’ve yet to see any record of any actual attempt to even test it.
Within philosophy of science, this is called a “dismissal”. It is a refusal to believe something which has not been tested.
This is how science breaks down. Jeff Schmidt explains in “Disciplined Minds” that the institution of science has “siloed” science into disciplines. Within the corporate world, this concept has proven to be successful for the purpose of creating stability. So long as each individual employee is only trained in certain “disciplines”, there is less chance that they can challenge corporate authorities. It has been adopted into the sciences, but people should ask if this is really what the institution of science really needs.
For many years in science, it was not like this. And it was for this reason that somebody like James Maxwell was able to bring together two disciplines which were formally thought to be completely separate — light and electricity — into one. This is what is missing today: the value of multi-disciplinary understanding has given way to a hierarchical system where particle physicists and cosmologists are placed at the top. It’s easy to see how this can lead to a dysfunctional institution.
This is all very important to realize.
So, to be clear, this debate over electricity in space is between some conventional solar physicists (who are versed in journals like the Astrophysical Journal, etc.) and some plasma physicists (who tend to read IEEE). And if you ask me personally, the very fact that a debate exists here is a direct result of this separation of the disciplines.
IMHO, the only way that this debate will be settled is for theorists to start reading *BOTH* journals, and training to be experts in *BOTH* disciplines. In other words, our theorists must become inherently multi-disciplinary such that they *dramatically* increase their training in plasma physics. Only then will they be able to communicate with one another as if they are speaking the same language.
But, as everybody can see here, we are still at the point of the conventional theorists dismissing the competing claims without any attempt to fully understand the other side’s argument.
We have a long ways to go. Conventional theorists refuse to even acknowledge that there exists a problem. And who can force them to? They are playing God with the plasma models, and in the process ignoring the repeated words of caution by the very man who created these models (Hannes Alfven), and who they gave the Nobel to for this very feat.
People who are trying to understand this debate need to ask themselves: Who do you trust to model cosmic plasmas? Conventional cosmologists and astrophysicists, who we’ve taught to assume that the universe is dominated by gravity?
Or, laboratory plasma physicists, who work with laboratory plasmas all of the time? And who we trained for this purpose?
These are intense thought-provoking questions which journalists in the future will write books about. They require more than dismissals.
Myrrh says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:27 pm
I’m not being critical here, I’ve just never imagined there was and up and down and sun in freefall not in my education background.
A satellite in orbit [and an astronaut] is in free fall around the Earth. It is falling all the time, just happens to have a transverse velocity it can’t get rid off [which we gave it with a big rocket], so the net result is the vector sum of the two which points transverse to the direction to the center of the Earth [that is the ever-changing ‘down’]
Or is it in freefall to the centre of the universe?
Re: Dr Svalgaards comment
Extrapolation is by Excel
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm
I agree is a bit steep, but any time between now and 2013 would be fine.
I don’t think there is anything random around polar fields, of course you can’t expect perfect curve (very few things are), but taking into account the Zeman effect measurement uncertainties, with atmosphere diffusion and absorption variables, than polar field appears to be far away from a random process.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
You can go on about numerology, wiggle fitting and so on, but you well know that the original equation was written for the sunspots in 2003. At the time I was not even aware of the polar fields existence, even less of various dynamo theories. You also may remember that when you sent me a file for the polar field data, I only moved the time base by 3 years (still in the formula as -3), and got perfect match, and it has been the same ever since.
Not much randomness there.
Re: “Firstly plasma is not gas, its the fourth sate of matter.
Plasma in the sun and in space is a gas too. And an almost perfect gas at that. In addition to sharing characteristics with a gas [e.g. compressibility], a plasma has some additional properties, so it is more correct to say that a plasma is a special type of gas.”
This is a perfect explanation for what is wrong with conventional science today. You’ve pretty much nailed it without even trying.
The two states of matter are conferred different names for the reason that they behave differently in the laboratory.
And there exists a point of clarification that needs to be made here: Electricity is the rule, not the exception. One need only look to the underlying cause for the solid and liquid states: They are actually *electrical* resonances of condensed gas. This is the action of the van der waals force. It is the lining up of electron orbits into resonating patterns, which random thermal movements tend to interfere with.
So, gas is the only state of matter which electricity is not directly involved in. Geckos have figured it out. But, humans depend heavily on what they can see for their perception of reality. And electricity is not easy for us to see. Many things — like the states of matter — are not immediately identified by humans to be the effect of electricity.
And so, in our search for the universe’s dominant force, we tend to cling to gravity (where things like compression are relevant). But, our children and grandchildren will one day ridicule us for this mistake. It is, by our modern standards for what we know about the universe, a somewhat amateur mistake. It’s what happens when people refuse to read about things they aren’t interested in — but which have major relevance for what’s going on.
Talk of the so-called “big bang” is way beyond this topic, but since it’s come up, here’s a simple approach:
The so-called “big bang” when boiled down to its philosophical essence is an infinitely dense point-source that occupies an infinitely small volume.
Infinite by definition can’t be quantified.
Two conditions (high density and small volume) that are infinite in the same definition just demonstrates how arrogant “big bangers” are.
The so-called “big bang” is a classic case of the emperor having no clothes.
So-called “magnetic reconnection” is a failed paradigm just like the s0-called “big bang”. So-called “magnetic reconnection” was a hypothesis developed in the pre-space age (1946) to explain CME’s, when only magnetic fields could be observed from ground observatories.
Electric fields can only be detected by in situ satellite probes.
So-called “magnetic reconnection” was developed without regard to electric fields, but that approach became untenable because electric fields were observed & measured in the plasma laboratory and more recently in space, via satellite probe, as well, so electric fields had to be incorporated into the theory, if just as a seemingly inconsequential secondary effect.
The reason why electrical engineers were taught that “reconnection” is impossible is because “reconnection” denies the process is a function of Electromagnetism or that it is part of a circuit, rather, “reconnection” allows the process to be viewed as an isolated, localized “island” process; any electromagnetism is strictly limited to a transitory and localized secondary effect.
In the Circuit Theory, Electromagnetism is a fundamental driver of overall astrophyscial processes and objects.
The Current Disruption Theory (aka the Circuit Theory) is explicitly an electromagnetic theory.
Early “reconnection” papers, as provided in prior posts by Dr. Svalgaard, make no mention of electric fields. Even recent “reconnection” papers deny the overall process is driven by the Fundametnal Force of Electromagnetism.
The attractiveness of “magnetic reconnection” to astrophysicists is specifically because it does not depend on the presence of a circuit, so leaves unchallenged the idea that stars and galaxies are isolated “islands”, whereas, the Current Disruption Theory (aka Circuit Theory as championed by Hannes Alfven) suggests the possibility that stars and galaxies are connected in circuits, and the Fundamental Force of Electromagnetism is what drives these circuits, not the Fundamental Force of Gravity (the sine qua non of the “big bang”).
So-called “magnetic reconnection” is supported because “magnetic reconnection” is not a threat to the conventional gravity “only” (read “big bang”) model of the Universe, thus, it can be safely incorporated within the conventional model without falsifying the paradigm. The conventional gravity “only” (read “big bang”) model is the overarching influence in the astronomical community.
Individual scientists are ostricized from the astronomical community if they don’t subscribe to the so-called “big bang” ideology.
Dr. Svalgaard is being intellectually dishonest when he claims there is no opposing viewpoint. It’s one thing to subscribe to a particular school of thought, it’s another thing, entirely, to deny that an opposing view exists.
Of all the positions Dr. Svalgaard puts forth, the claim there is no significant opposing viewpoint (to his viewpoint) is the most repugnant and dishonest.
But give Dr. Svalgaard credit, he knows that the Current Disruption Theory (aka Circuit Theory), extended to its full implications, has the potential to directly challenge the “big bang”.
And that simply can NOT be allowed to happen.
Too many applecarts are at stake.
tallbloke says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:16 pm
I already knew what I meant about the imprecision of your notion of ‘perfect freefall’ long before the publication of this paper Leif.
The paper starts out with:
“Figure 1 shows the center, O, of a star displaced by a vector distance C from the stationary point (barycenter, B) of a planetary system. The center of the star moves with velocity dC/dt in inertial space as the planets hurl it about B along never-repeating curves like those on Figure 2. This orbital motion adds no spin to a star with negligible tides and spherical symmetry so, for simplicity, we model stellar layers that rotate uniformly at a constant inertial rate ω.”
So it is not clear that you “knew what you meant…”. Perhaps expand on that?
The paper is interesting in pointing out the possible role of the Potential Energy if one could only find a way of extracting that. It is replete with detail, quantitative results, appropriate caveats, etc. In short what a scientific paper should be. It can now be studied and rebutted [if needed] and suggest new research. Contrast that to any of your’s, Sharp’s, Landscheidt’s, Scott’s, etc and you [should] get a feeling for why it is not possible to incorporate any of those in the corpus of scientific knowledge or paradigm [if you prefer].
Re: “The reason is that the E.U. view is qualitative and hand-waving and therefore cannot be worked in with anything. No equations, no numerical predictions. E.U. is not a theory in the accepted meaning of the word.”
You keep on saying that, but you also don’t appear to exhibit any familiarity with the content of the sources which I see EU Theorists pointing to. You rarely discuss the work of Alfven, Birkeland or Langmuir. Alfven’s work, in particular, is highly mathematical. And it is in fact the foundation for much of what the theorists discuss.
Also, on a pragmatic level, who do you imagine that they are trying to convince? In the discipline of marketing, you *ALWAYS* market towards a target audience. This is how you grow. I don’t think anybody would argue that conventional theorists and scientists are extremely hostile to these claims. You guys have disqualified yourselves as a target audience. That’s not their fault.
But, on a philosophical level, the mistake that you’re making is that you can use the best qualities of the conventional cosmology to judge a competing cosmology. This is a pseudo-scientific approach (in other words, it is biased to favor conventional wisdom). Clearly, *ANY* competitor will be less mathematical than the dominant one. The philosophical mistake you make is in claiming that this directly implies that theorists should never try to quantify it.
But, to be clear, if you were to quantify it, you’d have to start with the works of Alfven, Langmuir, Peratt and Verschuur — among others. So, to say that there is no quantification is highly misleading.
But, there is yet another important point which needs to be made: Plasma cosmology is based upon laboratory observations of plasmas. The Big Bang cosmology is by now a highly mathematical model which lacks laboratory backing. Plasma cosmology approaches the problem of cosmology from an empirical perspective. So, this is not a deficit. Plasmas are known to scale over enormous magnitudes. The claim being made is that we can infer the behavior of cosmic plasmas by pointing to laboratory experimentation. Yes, gravity does exhibit effects which must be taken into account (as Peratt does for his galactic rotation simulations). But, Wal Thornhill goes into good qualitative detail on how gravity works.
The work which remains is for people to quantify it. I suggest that a predictive solar model might come first. But, what everybody has to realize is that, if the conventional theorists refuse to quantify these models, the public will eventually just come together and bypass them.
And conventional “Big” science will come to have pie on its face. I propose that we’ll see all of this happen over the next few decades.
Science has never truly been a paved road, even if scientists consistently make the mistake of believing it is so.
“But, on a philosophical level, the mistake that you’re making is that you can use the best qualities of the conventional cosmology to judge a competing cosmology.”
… should read …
“But, on a philosophical level, the mistake that you’re making is that you can’t use the best qualities of the conventional cosmology to judge a competing cosmology.”
I write these in one pass. There is simply no time for editing.
kcevic says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:50 pm
I don’t think there is anything random around polar fields, of course you can’t expect perfect curve (very few things are), but taking into account the Zeeman effect measurement uncertainties, with atmosphere diffusion and absorption variables, than polar field appears to be far away from a random process.
Take it from me who have studied this for 40 years, it is indeed governed by happenstance. You can directly see the surges of magnetic flux that make it to the poles [ http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/torsional.html ], there is one underway as we speak in the North.The polar fields [flux to be correct] are only 1/1000 of the solar magnetic flux generated over a solar cycle. So, random fluctuations are all important.
and got perfect match, and it has been the same ever since.
beware of people who claim perfect match. There are very few degrees of freedom in a cyclic phenomenon when you only have 4 cycles. But it is evident why you don’t like the empirical observation that the polar fields are the result of a random walk process, working with leftover flux from a few large active regions.
Chris Reeve says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:52 pm
So, gas is the only state of matter which electricity is not directly involved in.
apart from that gaffe, perhaps I should point out that for the first 417 million years [minus 376,971 years in the beginning] there was only neutral gas in the universe. No ionized gas [aka plasma]. Gravity caused tiny density fluctuations to grow that eventually became galaxies and the first stars. Gravity compressed the stars until they were hot enough to ignite nuclear fusion. The newly hot stars re-ionized the gas, recreating a gaseous plasma which now makes up 4% of the total mass of the universe.
vukcevic says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Extrapolation is by Excel
I agree is a bit steep, but any time between now and 2013 would be fine.
and then add 18 months…
And ‘now’ is not in the cards.
Re: “Leif,
“It is a travesty that a ‘skeptical’ blog is burdened with the nonsense from the usual suspects and geniuses polluting the site.”
Hopefully you will come to view the “burden”, not as a travesty, but as a small price to pay for the openness that allows legitimate questioning of assumptions, data and lines of argument. The burden might be less, if we refer “usual suspects and geniuses” to the previous discussions if they are indeed “usual” in the sense of being repetitive.
Now speaking to the usual suspects, it would help if you were at least familiar with the orthodoxy, consensus or theory that you are disagreeing with, and were not disagreeing with it just because you didn’t understand it. If you have made a good faith effort to understand it, you should as least be able to be specific about where you find the theory makes certain leaps that don’t necessarily follow or where the theory is inconsistent with the data, and where the theory that you think is wrong, is consistent with the data, your theory should have an alternate explanation. That may be a daunting task because established theories may be consistent with large amounts of data.”
By the way, the requirement to understand is a philosophical one which does not favor conventional theorists. Conventional theorists only sit atop a perch insofar as they are in control of the funding. There exists an equal burden of understanding by all.
The problem is that when people are in control, they can “take their time” in addressing certain problems. The failure of the solar wind to appreciably decelerate even as it passes the Earth’s orbit is a great example. Verschuur’s widespread observation of the 35 km/s critical ionization velocity in interstellar space, affiliated with interstellar filaments of HI hydrogen, is yet another observation awaiting an explanation. After all, the “clouds” are still called “anonymous high-velocity clouds”. And Verschuur notes, quite adamantly, that they are in fact highly filamentary clouds.
And regardless of how much mathematics is out there on the subject of the CMB, everybody needs to keep in mind that plasma beams (electricity in space) *naturally* emit microwaves. One need only explain how the synchrotron becomes “thermalized” in order to explain it; and metaphysical inferences are not necessary.
What’s quite ironic is that your skepticism derives from your refusal to read. The qualitative picture of plasma cosmology is quite clear. The explanations are, for the most part, there, waiting to be quantified. You’ve just decided not to read to that point. And then you suggested to a forum that it was a problem for the cosmology.
It took me *years* to read up on this subject. Both cosmologies do. It is a never-ending process of learning for all of us. But, the problem does not pertain to EU Theory. The problem pertains to cosmology. It is a vast subject.
Leif – but that’s not the sun, that’s local to the earth and its local gravity. Are we back to the sun orbitting the earth…? (grin). I’ve been looking for what this means, but so far haven’t found anything, all so far on local gravity.
In the period that Einstein was active as a professor, one of his students came to him and said: “The questions of this year’s exam are the same as last year’s!” “True,” Einstein said, “but this year all the answers are different.”
http://www.juliantrubin.com/einsteinjokes.html
Chris Reeve says:
January 9, 2011 at 1:18 pm
You rarely discuss the work of Alfven, Birkeland or Langmuir.
Little of this has lasting value [as is the case with almost all scientists’ work after a while] and some of it plain wrong [also normal]. E.g. Birkeland’s claim that the solar particles were all electrons only [negatively charged]. This was understandable because that was all Birkeland knew about [ http://www.leif.org/EOS/Birkeland-1916.pdf ]. Later he wisened up [perhaps because of Lindeman’s criticism] that perhaps there were both positive and negative charges involved, i.e. a neutral plasma rather than a current of one charge only http://www.leif.org/EOS/Birkeland-1919.pdf . Now, how many of Birkeland’s papers have you read?
Alfven’s work, in particular, is highly mathematical. And it is in fact the foundation for much of what the theorists discuss.
Indeed, MHD with the frozen-in field lines is one one enduring results of Alfven that space physicists use every day. so you got that one right.
Also, on a pragmatic level, who do you imagine that they are trying to convince?
Who are ‘they’? Whomever they are, they are failing badly.
Clearly, *ANY* competitor will be less mathematical than the dominant one.
Any successful competitor will have to more mathematical.
Wal Thornhill goes into good qualitative detail on how gravity works.
But does not explain how the EU works except by showing pretty pictures he found on the internet.
Heads up:
The SETI Institute has just posted a seminar by de Pontieu.
Just started to watch it – the movies are amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/setiinstitute#p/u/0/o-v9kLLiK4s
James F. Evans says:
January 9, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Of all the positions Dr. Svalgaard puts forth, the claim there is no significant opposing viewpoint (to his viewpoint) is the most repugnant and dishonest.
‘My viewpoint’ is that of 99.9% of scientists in this field. There is no opposing view [and you didn’t show any – failed badly with Dr. A].
Dr S.
Ok, near perfect, then.
Last week we had few degrees below zero, this week few above zero (note meaning of words below and above), tomorrow may be zero, it all looks a bit random from one day to the next, but over period of a year it all works out to a nice sin-wave if you started on the 21st of March.
I recon it is same with the polar field, no need for statistics, fancy theories and 1 in 1000 chance (don’t forget there is a lot of difference between 1/1000 and 1.5/1000).
If I was inclined to believe that your theory is correct, I wouldn’t have bothered, but I hope you are correct about the Rmax=0.7 (or whatever it was), else the polar field is a waste of time, in which case I am off to get the NAP done.
Myrrh says:
January 9, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Leif – but that’s not the sun, that’s local to the earth and its local gravity.
The law of gravity is universal [valid everywhere]
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:20 pm
tallbloke says:
January 9, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Lol. I already knew what I meant about the imprecision of your notion of ‘perfect freefall’ long before the publication of this paper Leif.
all that ‘lolling’ may not be good for you.
On the contrary Leif, a laugh is good for the soul and beneficial to longevity. 🙂
Anyway, the paper states:
“Except for the tidal distortion, the effect of planets on this mechanism is fully accounted for by the dC/dt term in the velocity that appears in Equation (1). A star in orbit about its barycenter is in a state of free fall (Shirley, 2006). At the center of the star, the attractive force from all the planets is exactly canceled by the orbital accelerations (centrifugal and angular).
It’s almost like they were going out of their way not to upset certain people’s sensibilities. 😉 The key sentences and equations are spread around the paper. I’ll write a summary on my blog post.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/wolff-and-patrone-a-new-way-that-planets-can-affect-the-sun/
The main point is that the amount of energy released by the mechanism they propose (which involves angular momentum) to affect solar activity at the surface is (non linearly) proportional to the distance between the centre of the sun and the centre of mass of the solar system, the barycentre.
Also, they state:
“This would cause stars like the Sun with appropriate planetary systems to burn somewhat more brightly and have shorter lifetimes than identical stars without planets.”
If Wolff and Patrone are correct, the outer planets do significantly affect solar activity levels, and modulate the solar cycles.
I note that Wolff says the first to point out the similarity between the sunspot time series and planetary orbits was Wolf who very briefly summarized that work
in a letter to Carrington. Have you come across that work or the letter?
Leif – so where is the sun in free fall to?
tallbloke says:
January 9, 2011 at 2:57 pm
It’s almost like they were going out of their way not to upset certain people’s sensibilities. 😉 The key sentences and equations are spread around the paper.
They correctly state what the laws of Nature allows. Nothing to do with sensibilities.
One would expect the key sentences to be front-and-foremost [like their statement about free fall], not scattered about. That you think they are spread out suggests some creative cherry picking.
The main point is that the amount of energy released by the mechanism they propose (which involves angular momentum) to affect solar activity at the surface is (non linearly) proportional to the distance between the centre of the sun and the centre of mass of the solar system, the barycentre.
They do not say energy is relesaed. They calculate Potential Energy, but do not know or say how to turn that into actual energy.
If Wolff and Patrone are correct, the outer planets do significantly affect solar activity levels, and modulate the solar cycles.
No, they note that the effect is small and wonder if it is observable.
I note that Wolff says the first to point out the similarity between the sunspot time series and planetary orbits was Wolf who very briefly summarized that work
in a letter to Carrington. Have you come across that work or the letter?
Of course, I’m the great expert on all things barycentric. Here is Wolf’s take on it: http://www.leif.org/EOS/Wolf-VII.pdf . He returns to this topic several times later, but eventually abandons the whole thing as the various formulae he comes up with eventually all fail. Paul Charbonneau wrote the definitive article on this early work: http://www.leif.org/Rise-and-Fall.pdf
Vuk etc says:
January 9, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Ok, near perfect, then.
You always get that with only a few degrees of freedom. The typical case is with two data points, which have R^2 of a perfect 1.
I recon it is same with the polar field, no need for statistics
Indeed, just look at it and you’ll how random the creation of the polar fields are[the ~five pulses that rush to the poles and random times during the rising phase.]
else the polar field is a waste of time
Your correlation and speculation is, indeed, a waste of time.