Planetary effects are too small by several orders of magnitude to be a main cause of the solar cycle.
Argiris Diamantis writes in with this tip:
Professor Cornelis de Jager from the Netherlands has put a new publication on his website. It is a study of Dirk K. Callebaut, Cornelis de Jager and Silvia Duhau. They conclude that planetary effects are too small by several orders of magnitude to be a main cause of the solar cycle. A planetary explanation of the solar cycle is hardly possible.
The paper is titled:
The influence of planetary attractions on the solar tachocline
Dirk K. Callebaut a, Cornelis de Jager b,n,1, Silvia Duhau c
a University of Antwerp, Physics Department, CGB, Groenenborgerlaan 171, B-2020 Antwerpen, Belgium
b Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, P.O. Box 59, NL 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands
c Departamento de Fı´sica, Facultad Ingeniera, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Abstract
We present a physical analysis of the occasionally forwarded hypothesis that solar variability, as shown in the various photospheric and outer solar layer activities, might be due to the Newtonian attraction by the planets.
We calculate the planetary forces exerted on the tachocline and thereby not only include the immediate forces but we also take into account that these planetary or dynamo actions occur during some time, which demands integration. As an improvement to earlier research on this topic we reconsider the internal convective velocities and we examine several other effects, in particular those due to magnetic buoyancy and to the Coriolis force. The main conclusion is that in its essence: planetary influences are too small to be more than a small modulation of the solar cycle. We do not exclude the possibility that the long term combined action of the planets may induce small internal motions in the sun, which may have indirectly an effect on the solar dynamo after a long time.
…
From the Introduction:
So far the study of solar variability has identified five solar periodicities with a sufficient degree of significance (cf. the review by De Jager, 2005, Chapter 11).
These periods are:
- The 11 years Schwabe cycle in the sunspot numbers. We note that this period is far from constant and varies with time, e.g. during the last century the period was closer to 10.6 years.
- The Hale cycles of solar magnetism encompasses two Schwabe cycles and shows the same variation over the centuries.
- The 88 years Gleissberg cycle (cf. Peritykh and Damon, 2003). Its length varies strongly over the centuries, with peaks of about 55 and 100 years (Raspopov et al., 2004). The longer period prevailed between 1725 and 1850.
- The De Vries (Suess) period of 203–208 years, with a fairly sharply defined cycle length.
- The Hallstatt cycle of about 2300 years. An interesting new development (Nussbaumer et al., 2011) is the finding that Grand Minima of solar activity seem to occasionally cluster together and that there is a periodicity in that clustering. An example of such a cluster is the series of Grand Minima that occurred in the past millennium (viz. the sequence consisting of the Oort, Wolf, Sp¨ orer, Maunder and Dalton minima). This kind of clustering seems to repeat itself with the Hallstatt period.
It should be remarked in this connection that virtually none of the papers on planetary influences on solar variability succeeded in identifying these five periodicities in the planetary attractions.
Another approach to this problem is the study of climate variations in attempts to search for planetary influences. As an example we mention a paper by Scafetta (2010), who found that climate variations of 0.1–0.25 K with periods of 20–60 years seem to be correlated with orbital motions of Jupiter and Saturn. This was, however, not confirmed in another paper on a similar topic (Humkin et al., 2011). This is another reason for a more fundamental look at the problem: can we identify planetary influences
by looking at the physics of the problem?
The challenge we face here is twofold: planetary influences should be able to reproduce at least the most fundamental of the five periodicities in solar variability, and secondly the planetary accelerations in the level of the solar dynamo should be strong enough to at least equalize or more desirably, to surpass the forces related to the working of the solar dynamo. In this paper we discuss the second aspect, realizing that the attempts to cover
the first aspect have been dealt with sufficiently in literature while the second aspect was grossly neglected so far. A first attempt to discuss it appeared in an earlier paper (De Jager and Versteegh, 2005; henceforth: paper I). They calculated three accelerations:
1) One by tidal forces from Jupiter. They found aJup=2.8=10^-10 m/s^2.
2) One due to the motion of the sun around the centre of mass of the solar system due to the sum of planetary attractions (ainert).
3) The accelerations (adyn) by convective motions in the tachocline and above it.
It was shown in their work that the third one is larger by several orders of magnitude than the first and second mentioned accelerations. Soon after its publication it was realized that some of the forces are effective for a long time, which demands an integration of the forces over the time of action. That might change the results. It was also realized that more forces may be operational than the two mentioned in paper I. Therefore, in the present paper, we improve and expand these calculations; we investigate a few more possible effects; moreover, we study the effect of the duration of these actions as well.
…
Conclusions
We calculated various accelerations near or in the tachocline area and compared them with those due to the attraction by the planets. We found that the former are larger than the latter by four orders of magnitude. Moreover, the duration of the various causes may change a bit the ratio of their effects, but they are still very small as compared to accelerations occurring at the tachocline.
Hence, planetary influences should be ruled out as a possible cause of solar variability. Specifically, we improved the calculation of ainert in paper I and gave an alternative estimation. If the tidal acceleration of Jupiter were important for the solar cycle then the tidal accelerations of Mercury, Venus and the Earth would be important too. The time evolution of the sunspots would then be totally different and the difference between the
solar maximum and its minimum would be much less pronounced.
Taking into account the duration of the acceleration aJup does not really change the conclusions of paper I: the planetary effects are too small by several orders of magnitude to be a main cause of the solar cycle (they can be at most a small modulation); moreover,
they fail to give an explanation for the polarity changes in the solar cycle. In addition, the periods of revolution of the planets (in particular Jupiter) do not seem compatible with the solar cycle over long times. In fact, a planetary explanation of the solar cycle
is hardly possible. Besides, we estimated various other effects, including the ones
due to the magnetic field (buoyancy effect and centripetal consequence)
and those due to the Coriolis force; their relation to the tidal effects can be indirect at its utmost best (by influencing motions which might affect the solar dynamo).
As all planets rotate in the same sense around the sun their combined action over times of years may induce a small motion e.g. at the solar surface. This may have an influence on the meridional motion or on the poleward motions of the solar surface (Makarov et al., 2000), having in turn an influence on the solar dynamo (maybe leading to an effect like the Gnevyshev–Ohl rule). Again, this will be very indirect and the effect of one planet or one orbital period will be masked.
Full paper: > http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2012-planetary-attractions1.pdf
Looks to me like Barycentrism just took a body blow – Anthony
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Last post is addressed to Dr. Svalgaard
Schitzree says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:13 pm
The problem I have with the “too small by several orders of magnitude” argument is the same one I have with the “It must be CO2 causing the warming because we don’t know of anything else that could do it” argument. Evidence can prove something but a lack of evidence doesn’t necessarily disprove it.
===================================================
You could try calculating it yourself. The planetary and solar masses
(to about 26 decimal places) as well as their orbital diameters are
available from NASA’s website. (I haven’t looked recently but I had
no trouble finding them in 1998 …). Watch out for Saturn’s orbit: when
I looked, NASA were apologising for the orbit having an uncertainty of
about 240 metres …. (ROTFL — that only matters for slingshotting
space craft, not for what we are looking at!!)
The force of gravity between two objects varies directly as the product of
the masses involved and inversely to the square of the distance between
them (inverse square law) thus:
F = G(m1m2)/d^2
where G is the gravitational constant = 6.67300 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2
There was a bit of hysteria at the end of the last century because of an
alignment of the planets (1997-8? ). An English insurance company hired
an “expert” to investigate it’s likely liabilities (I’m sure the expert knew
how to charge for his “services” appropriately)
Rather than dismiss the Insurance Company’s fears as trivial—the most
liability I saw they had was due to hysteria—I worked the exercise for
myself with respect to the forces applied to the Earth. I took the orbits
as circular for ease of use. I normalised all results to the Sun’s force
so the Sun’s gravitational force on the Earth = 1.
Jupiter’s value was 0.001, the moon’s 10,000. Distance counts!
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and the rest were at least (if my memory serves me
well) at least one order of magnitude less than Jupiter’s contribution when
summed. At 10^-4 or less, the forces are too trivial to matter for anything
except the most subtle effects—and these would probably take millions
of years to be felt.
More calculation showed the extra tidal height caused by the alignment
was somewhat less than 1mm—so no tidal waves or king tides to worry
about. Now, this is for all the planets lined up and the forces exerted on
the Earth.
Given the Sun’s immense mass and energy, and the distances the larger
planets are from the Sun, the forces acting against it by the planets are
trivial—too trivial for the observed effects. There’s a good book published
some years ago called “Orders of Magnitude” (I think that was it’s title)
which is worth absorbing. It brings home the reality of the differences between
the orders of magnitude we experience really well.
Steven Mosher, April 15, 2012 at 1:32 pm:
I agree with you about the failure of the barycenter conjecture to explain reality. However, I don’t think barycentrism is the “skeptical position”. Someone who claims that they KNOW the major cause of climate change to be barycentrism is every bit as closed-minded and unskeptical as those who claim they KNOW that CO2 is the major cause of climate change [like Dr. Lacis, who insists that CO2 is the “control knob” of the climate]. None of them are scientific skeptics, and they are using the argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy to make their case.
Real skeptics look at a conjecture or a hypothesis and say, “Show me.” In other words, provide us with a convincing, transparent, testable, observation- and evidence-based argument that cannot be falsified, no matter how hard everyone tries [and that must include the proponents of the hypothesis as well].
That seems to be much too rigorous for most climate scientists. But that is the scientific method. The alternative is post-normal science, or as I prefer to call it, pseudo-science. Feynman called it cargo cult science. None of it is true skepticism.
When a model provides consistent, testable and accurate predictions, I will accept that model and be grateful for it. But any such model is still in the future. When a model makes consistently accurate predictions for the next 1, 5, 7, 10, 30 years, etc., most all of us will sit up straight and pay attention. The corollary to such a model will be that the sensitivity number for 2xCO2 will be accurately known, and that will decisively settle the debate over “carbon”.
Intelligent decisions can then be made regarding CO2 emissions; maybe they are a problem, or maybe they are not a problem. Curent observations indicate that the rise in CO2 is harmless. If that begins to change, my view will change with it. But so far, we have good reasons to be skeptical of the claims that the rise in CO2 from a tiny trace gas, to a still tiny trace gas, is any kind of a problem at all. Where are the bodies?
Any effect on the sun that there might be from the planets only has an indirect relevance to climate changes particuarly since there is plenty of internal system variability in addition to anything that the sun affects.
However, the sun does seem to have some sort of top down effect on the atmosphere and it is apparently out of proportion to TSI changes but not so much out of proportion to UV changes.
If we were to note any sort of correlation between planetary positions and solar activity levels that would be helpful in predicting one component of the cause of climate changes.
We wouldn’t even need to know why the correlation occurs. It would still be useful for predicting trends and changes in trends which is about the best we could expect from the current science anyway.
We will soon enough find out whether the current quiet sun causes or contributes to a downward trend in tropospheric temperatures.
If it does, then that will be another success for those who anticipated both the low cycle 24 and a cooling climate in consequence.
For my part it doesn’t matter to me why the sun varies or what causes it. There is enough delay between changes in solar behaviour and the resulting effect on albedo and ocean heat content for us to be able to get an idea of future climate trends from what the sun is doing now.
Accurate predictions of solar changes would however be nice to have and it is interesting that the barycentric crowd got it righter than the solar establishment. Successful predictions are supposed to carry weight aren’t they ?
Crispin in Johannesburg says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:57 pm
“There is a clear relationship between the butterfly pattern and the position of the Earth-Moon-Venus barycenter. I found that very confirming re the ability of planets to affect the sun.”
Got a source/graph link?
This is hardly big news. Solar physicists have know for decades that the solar cycle is to do with an internal oscillation in the sun’s magnetic field, nothing to do with planets. See any textbook on the subject, such as Eugene Parker’s book.
Edim says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:41 pm
I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true; therefore P must be false. It’s a logical fallacy.
That is not the issue. The point was that in both cases, the driver is too small to account for the effects claimed, by known physics. This is not that we are ‘ignorant’ of the cause, on the contrary: according to what we know the driver is insufficient.
Smokey says:
April 15, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Someone who claims that they KNOW the major cause of climate change to be barycentrism is every bit as closed-minded and unskeptical
They have even on this blog used phrases like “us in the know…”.
David Ball says:
April 15, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Thank you for your kind response. Please correct me if I misunderstood, but does your response not contradict what you posted to Vukcevic?
No, I was talking about the solar wind’s effect on planetary magnetospheres, which is established. Vuk was talking about just the opposite: the effect of planetary magnetospheres on the Sun which is nil.
While I’m on the subject of Orders of Magnitude (OoM):
The Earth’s atmosphere is about 78% Nitrogen, Oxygen is about 21%
(20.9% for the pedantic) and Argon at about 0.93%. All the other gases
make up the remaining 0.17%. —which is less the 2 thousandths of
the atmosphere. Of this, CO2 is at 0.039% (or 390 billionths).
Between the tropics (Cancer and Capricorn), water vapour can make up
up to about 4% of the atmosphere. At less than 0.04% of the atmosphere
CO2 is one one-hundredth of the quantity of H2O —or two Oom less—
and, unless it was a magic gas, it would have about the same ORDER
of influence with respect to water vapour.
But it seems CO2 does have a little magic about it (but not as much as
has been attributed— enter the Rayleigh Effect. The RE is a saturable
effect. It’s best known for making the sky blue and colouring the iris in
eyes. Beyond an initial influence on the atmosphere, each doubling of
CO2 has less and less effect on temperature. We are well past the initial
effect stage. Nir Shaviv (see his blog http://www.sciencebits.com) demonstrates
(mathematically) an absolute maximum sensitivity to such doubling of
1.5 degrees C. Sherman Idso arrives at a figure of about 0.4 degrees C from
about 6 different paths. Others have suggested about 0.15 degrees C.
Steven Mosher says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Folks wanted to see the data, wanted to see the code, wanted to understand the physics before they claimed knowledge. Over time the skeptical position has been infected by people who actually believe they Know that the planets influence the sun and they Know that the sun drives the climate. When asked for proof, when asked for a physical mechanism with proper forces and units, when asked for experiments, falsifiable experiments or even predictions, the response is silence or speculation or desk pounding: it could be x, it could be y, you havent ruled out grelims, or leprauchans.
Folks want to see the data, want to see the code, want to understand the physics before they claimed knowledge.
Over time the skeptical position has been infected by people who reject that the planets influence the sun and they Know that the sun is not the driver the climate.
When asked for proof, when asked for a physical mechanism with proper forces and units, when asked for experiments, falsifiable experiments about the existence of time, the existence of space, the existence of velocities, the prove that gravitational forces between objects are delayed after Einstein – in case of Quaoar/Sun 6 hours in one direction – without any effect of the trace of the bodies after Kepler, the response is silence or very silence.
If there are simple questions whether the space is infinite or finite, whether has time a beginning or whether time has an end, whether physicians have falsified the dimension of time, there is only entertainment consumed.
If the folks want to understand the physics before they claimed knowledge, and claim knowledge about the physics of time, the physics of space, the physics of velocity, that’s fine. What velocity has a ball which is fling by a woman walking backwards in a running train to South East in Finland out of the window in noon on the 3th of January while the distance Earth/Sun is lowest, but the Earth is running clever without any energy input?
Who have knowledge how gravitational force is transmitted from Moon the Earth? Who have knowledge why time is decreases by gravitational force, and atomic clock running slower? Who have knowledge why the measured gravitational force is decreased if the Moon eclipses the Sun?
Who can give a physical prove about colors, from what folks has knowledge?
Who proves knowledge?
Who is infected?
People believe in physics, because the visible world of color, smell, space is defined as real by authorities.
V.
Leif Svalgaard says: April 15, 2012 at 1:19 pm
……..
You know well what I am talking about, but I am impressed with your ability to ‘wear your jacket inside out’, here is little reminder
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/papers/true_dimen/fig3.gif
For the readers of the blog, lines represent magnetic field and [field] aligned currents.
Steven Mosher says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:32 pm
……
Steve I’d like to draw your attention at Dr. Svalgaard’s quote:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
BTW. If you get anything as close in the CO2 department I’m your convert.
vukcevic says:
April 15, 2012 at 3:01 pm
For the readers of the blog, lines represent magnetic field and [field] aligned currents.
There are no field aligned currents and no magnetic back reaction on the sun. These will have to travel at the Alfven speed which is an order of magnitude less than the outward speed. The ‘current’ you are talking abound are streaming and counterstreaming electrons bouncing back and forth between the ‘foot points’ on the sun and thus there is no net current. The electron flux is very small compared to solar wind density and is mirrored back before actually reaching the sun. I have explained this a zillion times. You are still hard of leaning.
vukcevic says:
April 15, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Steve I’d like to draw your attention at Dr. Svalgaard’s quote
Except that the correlation is not REALLY good. It is in fact rather lousy and breaks down at the left hand side of your graph and before.
Now that is damn interesting, and much as i was taught in college. But with the recent observation of extra-solar planets, with mass determined by wobble, a second look was surely called for.
Sheesh. I’d like to add my voice to those saying just because we haven’t found a mechanism does not mean it can’t exist. The universe is wonderful with plenty of secrets yet to discover. A few centuries back *everybody* was certain that the sun went round the earth. Then Copernicus came along to say different. A few years back pretty much *everybody* said GCR’s were orders of magnitudes too small to nucleate clouds. Now we have Jasper Kirkbys physical CERN results which say different. Anthony: don’t decry people for looking and asking – that’s what it’s all about.
@ur momisugly sophocles
I understand that with what we know of Gravity that its effect is too small to cause what has been observed. That dosn’t mean that the planets CAN”T have an effect, just that IF there is a connection it is something we haven’t thought of yet. All that your post does is attempt to prove a negative to so many decimal places.
If there is an alignment between planetary motion and solar activity then something must be causing it, even if we don’t know what it could be. I seem to remember though that the alleged alignment is actually pretty weak, and if the alignment isn’t good the whole thing is meaningless anyway.
One the one hand you have a standard de Jager and Duhau paper, a collection of assertions without much science behind it, and on the other hand you have Ed Fix’s model, based on the NASA planetary data and the ideal spring relationship. Ed Fix’s model hindcasts very well which means that we can be confident about what it is predicting. The de Jager and Duhau paper is just noise.
Dr Svalgaard,
“It is in fact rather lousy and breaks down at the left hand side of your graph and before”.
Hubris
Steven Mosher says:
April 15, 2012 at 1:32 pm
In the begining climate skepticism was sound. Folks wanted to see the data, wanted to see the code, wanted to understand the physics before they claimed knowledge. Over time the skeptical position has been infected by people who actually believe they Know that the planets influence the sun and they Know that the sun drives the climate.
For some of us, climate skepticism has to be more than just haggling over the value of CO2 sensitivity and amplification. The present paper does not (yet) try to deny the existence of solar cycles – only to falsify claims of strong planetary forcing. Climatic cycles are clear over all timescales as are solar oscillations – but to frustrate easy attribution, their frequencies modulate. So the real scientist (who grew up just being curious about things) wants to know what are these oscillations and what causes them, and if they can be predicted in future.
However establishment climate scientists (who grew up with an instinct of which playground bullys to fawn in front of) established the CAWG hypothesis by looking only at the 20th century. “Preindustrial” climate was quietly assumed to be static in Edenic perfection before this (a position correctly ridiculed by Lindzen). The coincident rises of CO2 (over a volcano in the Pacific) and global temperatures was considered proof enough for a complacent view that the science was settled as a basis for activism.
It has been the skeptic community forcefully questioning this simplistic hypothesis and bringing alternative views, that has forced the AGW community – retrospectively and in a bolt-on way – to wake up to the existence of climate history data on all timescales over the earth’s age, that show fluctuation to be the norm, with suggestive frequencies but which resist stable correlation with any fixed periodic forcing. (Again as Lindzen puts it, it is climate stasis that would be the oddity – something akin to climate death.) The AGW brigade revisits data-series after data-series with sometimes absurdly concocted tortuous stories of how CO2 responds to temperature forcing then leads then amplifies, and is still the controller of climate even during significant periods when temperatures and CO2 levels move in the opposite directions. The latest example of this is the attempt to pin the AMO on anthropogenic aerosols (many AGW faithful reading the paper will at least be learning about the AMO for the first time.) Sort of education by rebuttal.
Callebaut et al. may have succeeded in showing the model of solar variation as a nonlinear oscillator strongly forced by orbital periods is not sustainable. This has in a sense always been obvious – if it were strongly forced then the fit with orbital periods and harmonics would be trivial and beyond dispute – no-one argues about what causes the sea tides for instance.
If solar (and also terrestrial climatic) cycles are NONLINEAR OSCILLATORS [linguistic note: the greek language would be useful here, it has 4 “if”s, (1) if and it is, (2) if and it isnt, (3) if and it might be but might not be and (4) I wish it was but it is not; the appropriate ones here are 1 or possibly 4 ] then there are 3 types of such nonlinear oscillators. These are (1) strongly and (2) weakly periodically forced from outside, and (3) internal (no external forcing).
What is ignored here is the other possibility that solar (and climatic) oscillations are weakly periodically forced. Lin et al showed that in the case of weak periodic forcing, the relation between the forcing frequency and the resultant system oscillation can be very complex and it can be hard or impossible to find a signature of the forcing frequency.
Ref:
Resonance tongues and patterns in periodically forced reaction-diffusion systems. Anna Lin et al., DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.69.066217, Cite as: arXiv:nlin/0401031v1 [nlin.PS].
Consider the well known corn starch forced nonlinear complex spatiotemperal oscillations :
In particular look at the periodic behaviour of the high order structures like holes and fingers. It would be easy to show this movement is on no way related to the 120 Hz forcing frequency of the bowl shaking. Does this disprove that the shaking causes the periodically moving structures? – no.
(Note the complex and possibly intractable relationship between weak forcer and system frequency / pattern raises questions of proof and falsifiability of such a model – some hard mathematical thinking might be needed to look for appropriate clues.)
So strong orbital forcing by itself might be a straw man. It may well be that the forces involved are far too low for this to be a possiblility. But in the stillness of space uninterrupted by other forces for millions of years, who is to say that even very small periodic gravitational fluctuations from the planets might set in motion weakly forced periodic oscillation.
An the third possibility of course is internally generated nonlinear oscillation such as in the classic Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactor, which requires no outside forcing.
David Ball
Steven Mosher
I hope one day Anthony may find time to read it.
Dr. Svalgaard knows all the facts just likes to play little hiding game.
Here how my hypothesis work
CMEs that emanate out of the sun, are linked to it via a loop made of electric currents and magnetic field
http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/pictures/Sept09/Fig8_7.MagCloud.gif
moving through heliosphere, while still connected to the sun, as shown by this NASA animation
If the swirling concentration of electro & magnetic energy (often referred to as magnetic cloud or magnetic rope) doesn’t hit a magnetosphere it progresses to the distant reaches of the heliosphere and disperses along the heliopause.
If it does hit a magnetosphere, a reconnection ensues, part of it is short-circuited and some of the energy is discharged.
http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/public/THEMIS/SCI/Pubs/Nuggets/reconnection/262351main_reconnect.mpg
Since the ‘magnetic rope’ is connected to the source, i.e. the sun, the short circuit effect is fed back to the solar surface (CME solar feedback) as an electro-magnetic energy shock-wave of great intensity (analogous to a short circuiting effect on any source of electric current).
Two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) have huge magnetospheres many hundreds times of the Earth’s (Jupiter’s magnetosphere extends to ~ 5AU), so the reconnection events are that more powerful and far more frequent.
Certain configurations of Jupiter and Saturn’s orbital locations will envelop larger or smaller extant of the heliosphere, thus changes in the volume of the electro-magnetic interaction space will result in modulating intensity of ‘CME solar feedback’ in the time domain. The feedback effect can be sufficiently strong to regulate behaviour of the weak sun’s magnetic polar field, which is widely accepted to be a precursor of the following sunspot cycle (known as Svalgaard’s theory).
Proposed result of the above spatio-temporal modulation can be expressed in numerical form as an equation where planetary orbital parameters modulate strength and polarity of the solar dipole:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
The above equation shows that there is high correlation between observed data and numerical interpretation of above postulated hypothesis.
Sunspots (as the solar activity in general) in the origin and the consequence are essentially of the electro and magnetic nature, where the gravitational effects are negligible. Thus the role of gravitation force is limited and only important as far as it moves two major magnetospheres along the planetary orbits.
Zillion times, heh.
Vukcevic formula as confirmed by the research results from
Hulburt Center for Space Research, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany
Links, data and graphics here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC17.htm
I hope some have looked at Castor and Pollux. it boggles the mind that this configuration can occur naturally. Imagine the field currents in that magnetic spaghetti junction.
There are probably even more bizarre configurations that are beyond our ability to see.
I did an experiment in my lab once… just for the heck of it since one of my old profs mentioned it one day. It is relevant.
In a very large room light a cigarette and allow the plume to develop. After about 3 minutes a laminar stream of smoke about 24 inches tall is formed above the cigarette it is very stable an looks like a solid.
At that point and while well on the other side of the room, simply snap your fingers.
The plume immediately disrupts and produces an log parade of VonKarmen vortices.
The acoustic energy from the snap is long dissipated while the cigarette smoke plume continues to generate the votices. I propose that small gravitational events trigger swirling events on the sun that outlast the trigger event.
Try it yourself with a candle plume.
Interesting that de Jager offers no rebuttal to the Wollf & Patrone paper which of course has nothing to do with tidal effects.
It is also interesting that no one has offered a valid rebuttal to the very accurate method of prediciting solar grand minimum and overall solar modualtion that results from Carl Smith’s AM graph.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/sunssbam1620to2180gs.jpg
Carl’s graph gives a a brand new method that is different from Landsche..t, Fairbridge & Charvàtovà that proves far more reliable and is exactly on track for SC24. A new article explaining the differences in methods and where the pioneers went wrong is now posted.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/?q=node/243
This article also addresses the incorrect statements posted on Tallbloke’s blog re Landschei..t’s failed 1990 grand minimum prediction along with Tallbloke’s incorrect use of the Landschei..t PTC event that he wrongly perceives as having control over solar output. Tallbloke’s use of censorship is an injustice to his readers by not allowing the facts to be presented through his biased moderation.
Leif,
Fluid instability requires infinitesimal triggers. A step gravitational event can have long lasting and durable consequences.
Look here:
Vukcevic, I have read your links for some time now. I wish I knew enough to say whether I think you are right or wrong. I do think it is a mistake to dismiss you out of hand. You have uncovered some very interesting connections that have been relatively unexplored. Your steadfast approach is reasonable and may prove fruitful. Doug Cotton made the mistake of trying to hammer his ideas down peoples throats. Slow and steady wins the race. I wish Dr. Svalgaard would take the time to look closely at your stuff and help guide you. Then all of us would benefit. Perhaps it may lead to more clues to how all of it works. Adversarial is never a good stance for anyone, IMHO. Part of the reason those promoting AGW have lost credibility.