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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u.k.(us) says:
April 15, 2012 at 9:23 pm
Where is her explanation? If being correct makes me no gentleman, so be it.
anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
The sun is a huge gravitational well and is pulling the planets in their dance around it
Not a great example of solar system dynamics displayed in your post anna. There is absolutely no doubt re the movement of the Sun around the SSB is a direct result of of the big 4 planet positions even though their combined mass is not superior, but yes once that movement is enacted the planets have no choice in following their gravitational host.
Izen, is your 20% including the water vapor connection or just the teeny, tiny rise in CO2 ppm itself? If you are including water vapor, this affect can be measured in terms of relative humidity. In CO2 theory, we should be seeing an increase in water vapor, thus relative humidity.
anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:33 am
Gross misunderstanding of Peter Hodges.
He said the sun was pulled around the barycentre by “the combined action of the planets”
Which is the correct physics.
Even this interpretation is wrong. The sun is a huge gravitational well and is pulling the planets in their dance around it; you are putting the cart before the horse. If one takes the center of mass of all the planets,
No, by definition, the Solar System Barycentre is the centre of mass of all the planets, AND THE SUN.
Exoplanets orbiting other stars are identified by the fact that the make the stars they are in orbit around wobble. It is the wobbling that is observed, not the planets. The existence, number, and mass, and approximate orbital distances are inferred from the wobble.
Our star is no different, “because the combined action of the planets” is pulling the Sun just as much as the Sun is pulling the planets, the Sun has to move wrt the Barycentre as the mass distribution changes. And move it does, by a maximum of around 2.2 solar diameters over a decade or so. Ivanka Charvatova tells us it averages around 50kmh.
Because the Sun is not a rigid body all the way through, there is both elastic and plastic deformation as it responds to the differential tidal forces it is subjected to, as it heaves around the SSB in a complex dance which looks like a clover leaf for around 50 years out of 180, and quite chaotically the rest of the time. There is a correlation between the periods of smooth, three leaf clover type motion, and shortened, more active solar cycles. In the chaotic periods, it tends to have smaller amplitude, longer solar cycles. These are Ivanka Charvatova’s EMPIRICAL, PEER REVIEWED OBSERVATIONS. Her diagrams appear in one of the standard US college physics textbooks. I suggest you read it.
Leif Svalgaard says:
………………
Yes, I’ve heard of geomagnetic activity, and actively follow it
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Tromso.htm
Indeed the Arctic is in direct link via the magnetosphere with the solar poles (as the 29 day component in the spectrum graph in the above link shows).
NASA also says: “The satellites have found evidence for magnetic ropes connecting Earth’s upper atmosphere directly to the Sun,”
So we all agree on that one, except you say it can only be uni-directional, I think it is likely to be a bi-directional link, the NASA is for time being silent.
The above isn’t only valid for the Arctic, but it is hugely magnified in the Jupiter’s magnetosphere since it is 5AU wide, it reaches to Saturn, it is regularly perturbed by the S’s magnetic field, as shown by second component of the equation:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
As far as sign is concerned, it is matter of choice of representing the sun’s dipole intensity polarised or as the absolute value, so really shouldn’t be matter of any concern.
It has to be to your credit that the THEMIS spacecraft is confirming that what you found on the terra firma is found in the space above.
anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
“and we know that the tides on the sun due to the planetary pull are just a few milimeters or so.”
“But” covers millions of square kilometers. Just a bit of mass there.
Stephen Wilde says
A small modulation of the solar cycle over enough time seems to be all that we need to produce an amplifying effect within Earth’s atmosphere involving air circulation and albedo changes.
————–
It’s not clear what this means. However the earth’s atmosphere is highly dissipation as is the sun’s, so I am betting friction will scotch any amplifying effect.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:11 am
“Anyway, the point is that the Earth and other magnetospheres extract only about one percent of the energy of the solar wind impinging on them so do not disturb the solar wind significantly”
And solar variation in TSI terms is maybe 0.1 to 0.3% on the centennial scale. And the Earth’s average surface temperature variation is maybe around 0.5% from the little ice age to now.
I’m not making any claim for causation here, just comparing the magnitude of some pertinent figures.
but you have no concept of proportions. What is important is also how much of the sky seen from the sun these magnetospheres take up compared to the rest. For the biggest one [Jupiter’s] the ‘target’ area is only 1/50,000 of the sky so the one per cent has to be divided by 50,000 for comparisons.
Peter Taylor says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:14 am
Can anyone explain to me how the magnetic field transfers angular momentum?
Basically because the field is frozen into the matter, so if matter [stellar wind] is ejected from the star to a larger distance, but forced to rotate with the same speed as the star [because of the frozen-in condition], the angular momentum of that matter increases [and that of the star decreases to conserve the total].
Given the power of the solar wind to impact the electric body of the Earth (through magnetic storms) – a power amplified by the angle of the fields as they interact, could not reverse currents have similar pulses and powers?
Any magnetic/electric changes cannot propagate upstream in the solar wind, because such disturbances move with the so-called Alfven speed [because the wind is a plasma] which is ten times slower [at the Earth] than the speed by which the plasma is moving away from the Sun.
the law of the conservation of matter and energy would lead me to infer that as no significant amount of energy/matter leaves the heliosphere
The conservation law is for a closed system, which the heliosphere is not. There is no return flow over the poles. We have had a spacecraft fly over the poles and it found at all time an outward flow [actually twice as fast as the latitude of the Earth].
Finally….often left out of everyone’s equations are voltage shocks.
There are lots of shocks in the solar wind, but they are not ‘voltage shocks’.
What is required is a combination of open minds, scientific scepticism and analytical skill married to a wilingness to actually investigate (along with some time and/or money)
Contrary to common beliefs [at least on the blog] scientists actually have these qualities [with the possible exception of the money], but they are impoverished ‘weapons’ against people who KNOW their cyclomania [but do not know basic physics].
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:33 am
the Wolff-Patrone mechanism for the general curve
The W&P effect [as I have said before] does not operate in a real star [read the comment].
cuibono1969 on April 15, 2012 at 11:17 am said:
Ah, yes, The Jupiter Effect, 1982. Yet another catastrophe that didn’t quite work out.
———–
Never fell for the Jupiter Effect.
Tidal forces vary as the inverse cube of the distance. The effect is tiny between the sun and Jupiter.
And there is the obvious thing that these alignments happen all the time with no ill effect.
Same reason I think this barycentric idea is dumb.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:59 am
These are Ivanka Charvatova’s EMPIRICAL, PEER REVIEWED OBSERVATIONS. Her diagrams appear in one of the standard US college physics textbooks. I suggest you read it.
Charvatova’s observations are perhaps the most pure amongst the planetary pioneers, but her observations are over very long time periods and only gives us a very vague perspective over many decades. To drill down further we need to understand what planetary positions control the disordered orbit…. which she was not aware of. Charvatova could roughly gauge an overall scale of solar downturn over an epoch but did not have the info to determine solar output down to the solar cycle. That information is now available along with the strength of the downturn at the solar cycle level.
Our sun wobbles due to the solar objects orbiting it. The sun is a gas body that readily changes “shape” by the actions of the sun’s planets. That shape changing may cause some changes in the solar activity.
vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:01 am
you say it can only be uni-directional, I think it is likely to be a bi-directional link, the NASA is for time being silent.
I have explained many times why it is not bi-directional. NASA is silent because the one-way street is not a research issue, but rather a fact [you also don’t see NASA trumpet that they have established that the Earth is not flat].
David Ball says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:04 am
“and we know that the tides on the sun due to the planetary pull are just a few milimeters or so.”
“But” covers millions of square kilometers. Just a bit of mass there.
You have to compare with the motions already going on: Millions of Texas-sized plasma cells move up and down at 500 meters/second.
“Hence, planetary influences should be ruled out as a possible cause of solar variability.”
Given a very large quantity of high quality correlations of short term solar variability, including successful astronomically based based forecasts of the most practical kind, i.e. terrestrial weather predictions, there is no way planetary influences can be ruled out. What is in question here is tidal forces, it`s not the only possible mechanism.
http://search.orange.co.uk/all?q=Wobbling+stars&brand=ouk&tab=web&p=searchbox&pt=newhptest_hp4&segment=4&home=fal
It seems pretty clear that the movements of stars are affected by the planets around them. Is our sun unique in that NOT being the case ?
“Thus, using the Doppler technique to analyze light from about 300 stars similar to the sun–all within 50 light-years of Earth–astronomers have turned up eight planets similar in size and mass to Jupiter and Saturn.”
vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:01 am
As far as sign is concerned, it is matter of choice of representing the sun’s dipole intensity polarised or as the absolute value, so really shouldn’t be matter of any concern.
It is not of choice, but of physcis. The sign is very important. And also a matter of misuse of statistics. Remove the sign and calculate your R^2 for the unsigned values and compare with the value of R^2 you quote now [0.9285]. Then report back.
To me, this is an excellent thread. Really gets the intellectual “juices” flowing. Perhaps someone will trigger an idea that will knock a giant piece of fruit off the tree of knowledge and advance the science that wee little bit. Nothing personal at my end. Grateful to all. Especially our host and mods.
Anna V … says …..
“The sun is a huge gravitational well and is pulling the planets in their dance around it; you are putting the cart before the horse. If one takes the center of mass of all the planets, when to first order one could legally add the planetary mass and look at it like a satellite of the sun, it will be going around the sun like a fly around honey. The sun is pulling the planets and not the other way around. It is as if you said that the moon pulls the earth around it, where what it does at most is create the tides; and we know that the tides on the sun due to the planetary pull are just a few milimeters or so.”
______________________________
Good point …. the idea is that the two planets are connected by a “string” of sorts, consisting of the gravitational pull. If this were not true, Jupiter would fly off into space by the pure inertia of the energy it produces in its orbit. In fact, I’d say that the gravitational pull of the Sun on Jupiter is more important on this than the gravitational pull of Jupiter [ie., the Sun could not orbit Jupiter, because it simply does not have the mass and gravitational pull to keep the Sun in orbit .. the sun would pull jupiter around as if it weren’t even there].
It seems to me that this discussion is all tied up in the extent of the gravitational pull of Jupiter on the Sun, but that is irrelevant. The two planets are connected, as if by a string, and the “center of mass’ between the two is 7% the Suns radius, “outside” of the limits of the sun’s space. Thus, it doesn’t matter what the gravitational pull is, The Sun will wobble as a result of Jupiter orbiting around it. And because of this connection, the energy of Jupiters orbit will be tranferred to the sun, and vice versa.
Further, as you noted, the Sun pulls the planets, but as anyone knows who has put a ball on a rope, any variation in the speed of the sun’s orbit will have an effect on the forces exerted. Forces are greatest when the ball is behind the rotation, less when in perpindicular, and less still in the moments that you slow down and the ball actually leads the force, as the mass of energy switches from the force to the object, … in this case, from the sun to Jupiter. Thus, there is a moment, and I can’t say what that’d be in terms of the orbits, where Jupiter is actually pulling the sun, as opposed to the sun pulling Jupiter.
Leif says:
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 5:33 am
the Wolff-Patrone mechanism for the general curve
The W&P effect [as I have said before] does not operate in a real star [read the comment].
More argument by assertion.
The comment by Gough is worthless because he didn’t read the full paper. Now, you claim that he can legitimately dismiss it from the first three pages, but you haven’t backed up the claim with any falsifiable argument.
Ulric Lyons says:April 16, 2012 at 7:30 am
What is in question here is tidal forces, it`s not the only possible mechanism.
And yet the tidal position is the basis for your JEV theory on solar cycle length copied from Desmoulins and Hung. More snake oil I am thinking.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:01 am
“The W&P effect [as I have said before] does not operate in a real star [read the comment].
More argument by assertion.
The comment by Gough is worthless because he didn’t read the full paper. Now, you claim that he can legitimately dismiss it from the first three pages, but you haven’t backed up the claim with any falsifiable argument.
Your argument is by the same token worthless as you didn’t bother to try to understand the whole comment. But I agree with Gough that the first few pages are enough, because all the rest hangs on the premises set up in the beginning [in particular equation (2)]. As these are false, the rest is not valid and doesn’t have to be rebutted in detail.
“…planets do not cause solar cycles.” I not sure in all the reading that anyone has ever claimed the planets “cause” solar cycles, but that there could be some influence of planetary orbits and the center of total solar mass on how the solar cycles behave. The problem is the comparitable affect of distance mass relationships. Obviously, rocky objects moving about the sun are orbitally affected by other mass bodies, however it is different with orbiting gas and liquid bodies that are affected in both orbit and shape. The sun being at the center of the total solar system mass in logical terms is affected; to what degree is debatable. Mathmatically the total mass can be calculated, however, there are other functions that cannot be predicted through such calculations.
LazyTeenager says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:23 am
ffect”
cuibono1969 on April 15, 2012 at 11:17 am said:
Ah, yes, The Jupiter Effect, 1982. Yet another catastrophe that didn’t quite work out.
———–
Never fell for the Jupiter Effect.
The book “The Jupiter Effect” was a piece of tripe sold to the gullible to make the authors a fast buck. It has nothing to do with the ongoing research of orbital relationships and solar activity undertaken by astrophysics Phd’s and interested engineers, scholars and laymen.
REPLY: but it does share one characteristic, lack of posited gravitational effects – Anthony
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:10 am
Still waiting for the formal rebuttal. Anything else is just pissing into the wind.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:28 am
We are not talking your common garden solar wind, we are talking close circuit ‘electro-magnetic tube’ known as magnetic cloud or magnetic rope, starting and closing at the sun.
http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/pictures/Sept09/Fig8_7.MagCloud.gif
What occurs inside, at whatever velocity, is not dependent on the solar wind outside.
Please every one notice: not few electrons bobbing around but let’s have it straight and to remember for the future reference:
…AND CARRY A TOTAL AXIAL CURRENT (IT ) OF ABOUT A BILLION AMPS.
http://www.ann-geophys.net/24/215/2006/angeo-24-215-2006.pdf page 239, column 2, row 14.
tallbloke
This is an ‘electric super-turkey’.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:59 am
Exoplanets orbiting other stars are identified by the fact that the make the stars they are in orbit around wobble. It is the wobbling that is observed, not the planets. The existence, number, and mass, and approximate orbital distances are inferred from the wobble. .
In order to study gravitational effects, you need your point of reference to have mass. If mass=0, the dynamic effect of that point is 0.
The barycenter point has a meaning outside the solar system, where the total mass of the solar system can be assigned to the barycenter and the total solar system can interact with another system galactic or whatever. It is useless for studying internal dynamics because there is no meaning to assign to it the mass of the total solar system ( which is the only physically correct interpretation) and try to see what it does to the sun!!!
I am talking about the planets taken altogether, then the center of mass of the planets goes around the sun like a satellite . That center of mass can be assigned the mass of all the planets to first order ( because the system has structure corrections may be necessary.), like the moon around the earth. There is dynamics there, but nothing to do with the total barycenter except a mathematical correlation.( As there is correlation with the epicycles in the geocentric system but the epicycles have no meaning as gravitational components).
What is observed as wobble in a star , is the unbalanced system from which wobble the total center of mass can be estimated. If the planets were invisible, our sun would wobble against the stars and we would be able to find the barycenter of the solar system by the wobble. That is dynamics, the wobble against fixed stars, due to the masses of the planets . To assign dynamics to the barycenter is funny.