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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Leif Svalgaard says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:10 am
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)].
We’ve been here before, and you didn’t specify what it was about equation (2) that you thought was wrong. So until you do, and show how that falsifies the paper, your assertion that the Wolff and Patrone mechanism isn’t viable is just that, a bare assertion. As such it contains no falsifiable content, and would quite rightly be rejected by a reviewer.
Come on Leif, you’ve been through the mill and know the drill.
Dr. Deanster says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:53 am
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.
The gravitational force does not work like a ball on a rope. It works with F=M1*M2/r^2 .
Furthermore, galilean relativity holds in classical mechanics. If one goes to the system where the sun is at rest, it will be at one of the foci of an elipse, and the CM, or if only one planet, Jupiter, will be making an elipse around the sun following a solution of the equations. What you call “the sun’s orbit” is relative to the rest frame you assume.
vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:27 am
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.
Any twisted magnetic structure carries a current. And if you had been honest in your quote you should have noted that the ropes “have axial current densities of about 2µA/km2” that is 0.000002 amp per square kilometer, an exceedingly weak current density and a very minute turkey. Something to keep in mind for future reference. But in any event [and that is the point]: any change in the magnetic structure and hence the current must take place at the Alfven speed and so cannot propagate upstream as the structure is moving away from the sun ten times faster.
Geoff Sharp says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:04 am
“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.”
No, just more of your completely unnecessary snake venom as usual. Whether I copied it, or found it out for myself is totally irrelevent to the discussion at hand. And so what if it is the “tidal position”, I don`t think it has anything to do with tides IMO.
tallbloke has posted several times since I asked the question 2 times.
“Geoff wants to claim the glory to himself and in the memory of the late Carl Smith”
In a science blog there should be consequences for not answering a question. This seems to be a recurrent problem that is not addressed by tallbloke.
REPLY: but it does share one characteristic, lack of posited gravitational effects – Anthony
I envy your patience, not realised you read even some of it; in future I’ll be a bit less wasteful of your time.
anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:27 am
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.
Incorrect, you can choose any point you like. If you choose an inappropriate one, the calcs get more complicated, but are still transformable.
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!!!
It doesn’t do anything to the Sun. It represents a sum of forces from the planets, which is a useful shorthand for some purposes. The planets are what do things to the Sun, not the barycentre. They force it to gyrate in a complex motion between the continuously redistributing masses that are the orbiting planets. And if you sum the forces, you find that the Sun gyrates around the centre of mass of the entire system.
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).
No. Epicycles were heuristic approximations. The motion of the Sun relative to the centre of the mass of the entire system is real motion, and precisely calculable. Whether you want to calculate from the Sun as a fixed point or the barycentre is your choice. The same relative motion will be derived whichever way you do it. But the barycentre imparts no forces, the separate masses in motion impart the forces. The barycentre is just a convenient (and real as you see the solar system from outside) locus.
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.
Straw man. We are assigning the dynamics to the planets and Sun, and the barycentre is a useful reference point which derives from the sum of the force vectors.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:29 am
We’ve been here before, and you didn’t specify what it was about equation (2) that you thought was wrong. So until you do, and show how that falsifies the paper, your assertion that the Wolff and Patrone mechanism isn’t viable is just that, a bare assertion. As such it contains no falsifiable content, and would quite rightly be rejected by a reviewer.
Since you did not read the comment, I’ll summarize the situation here: The interchange considered by Wolff and Patrone leaves the fluid elements (apparently filling the spaces into which they have been displaced) yet moving with respect to them; therefore it is valid dynamically, for the purposes of energy computation, only for an interval of time of measure zero, which is insufficient to take the temporal derivatives required to determine subsequent evolution, essential, of course, for assessing stability. Therefore Wolff’s and Patrone’s static interchange is infinitely slow and does not operate in a real star. In a real star the gravitational potential energy difference is likely to be some 10^5 times greater in the (deep) convection zone than the term that Wolff and Patrone retain as being dominant. As Gough points out “W&P have fallen into the trap of many a naive modern physics student of misapplying an initially valid formula [equation (2)] to a situation in which it is not valid”. As simple as that. About appealing to authority: sometimes it is a good idea to consult with a recognized expert.
Ulric Lyons says:
April 16, 2012 at 8:45 am
And so what if it is the “tidal position”, I don`t think it has anything to do with tides IMO.
Ok…if it is nothing to do with tides…what is your mechanism?
@Peter Taylor
>So, where tidal forces are apparently too weak, and stochastic resonances under-studied, I would suspect another mechanism as yet unknown that correlates with the forces of torque.
Landscheidt said the effect was, he believed from the rates of acceleration, cause by a displacement of the central denser core of the sun relative to the outer less dense region. In other words, when the centre of mass of the sun is not in its geometric centre it is a ‘disturbance’ I guess you could say. As the solar system barycentre causes the sun to be tossed around (unlike a rigid planet) the heavier and denser core has a sort of sloshing atmosphere around it.
The high tide in Earth’s oceans on the opposite side of from the moon is directly from the centripetal acceleration of the oceans flinging away from the EM barycentre, and that is with the EMB 1000 km below the surface. If it was some point between the Earth and Moon the effect would be even more pronounced on the far side. With the sun, the rate of change of the position is what is capable of driving solar processes.
The quote from Landscheidt on the position of the barycentre at the surface of the sun for extended periods was excellent. The fact that the mechanism is still unclear is the hollowest of reasons for rejection a cause-effect relationship. As for the systematic manner in which, particularly, climate scientists dismissed him, I believe it was just part of a general plan to deny that the sun has anything to do with terrestrial climate cycles. If they admitted there was something worth checking out, it was tantamount to agreeing the sun might be important and that would put funds into the hands researchers looking at non-human causes of climate variability.
tallbloke :
April 16, 2012 at 8:48 am
It is futile arguing on this since you do not seem to understand the difference between dynamics and mathematical devices.
The usefulness of the barycenter comes only when one studies the solar system from outside, not internally. Internally it is just a useful mathematical point correlated with the real dynamics. It certainly does not make the sun woble. If a barycenter had any effect the earth, whose barycenter with the moon races 800 km inside the mantle 24 hours a day would be continually beaten up, like an egg beater. Instead the dynamics of the moon earth system just give tides which are well understood dynamically. The equivalent tides on the sun are of the order of milimeters or so.
Leif Svalgaard says:
……….
If I wasn’t honest I wouldn’t give you exact reference, page, column and line no, just like big round numbers, personal view of the world, you like to quote piddly values; a psychological image of the opponent?
Yep, but what is surface of Jupiter’s magnetosphere extending to 5AU?
Estimated at 280*10^15 ( 280 quadrillions ?) sq. km (?)
Or as you might put it gazillions.
I’m off to tackle some more ‘urgent’ problems of the global warming.
anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:14 am
Internally it is just a useful mathematical point correlated with the real dynamics. It certainly does not make the sun woble.
Time to go back to school anna.
vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:15 am
If I wasn’t honest I wouldn’t give you exact reference, page, column and line no, just like big round numbers, personal view of the world, you like to quote piddly values; a psychological image of the opponent?
If you were honest you would have quoted the 0.0000002 A/km2 in the exact same reference, page, column and line number.
Yep, but what is surface of Jupiter’s magnetosphere extending to 5AU?
Estimated at 280*10^15 ( 280 quadrillions ?) sq. km (?)
With a radius of 100 Jupiter radii [71500 km] the surface on which the solar wind impacts is pi*(100*71500)^2 = 1.6*10^15 square km. The surface of a sphere with a radius of 5.2 AU is 4pi*(5.2*149600000)^2 = 7.6*10^18 km2 or 47350 times larger. That is how tiny Jupiter’s magnetosphere is.
Crispin in Johannesburg says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:13 am
The quote from Landscheidt on the position of the barycentre at the surface of the sun for extended periods was excellent.
Can you elaborate on this quote? It can be taken out of context as tallbloke is about to appreciate.
Leif Svalgaard says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:27 am
vukcevic says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:15 am
If you were honest you would have quoted the 0.000002 A/km2 in the exact same reference, page, column and immediately preceding the line number you gave.
When it rains it pours [correcting the typo]: With a radius of 100 Jupiter radii [71500 km] the surface on which the solar wind impacts is pi*(100*71500)^2 = 1.6*10^14 square km.
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.
Well said, and argued.
To clarify the argument — negative proofs in science are always tricky, because Nature (not the journal;-) does sometimes surprise the hell out of us. I agree with Anthony that tidal forces on the Sun are weak, but even on the Earth tidal forces are enormously weak. Yet they lift a fast quantity of water up the Bay of Fundy every day, not because of actual “lift” but because of amplification and focussing of a long period travelling wave that never quite dies away, a driven sloshing motion.
With only two primary tidal drivers — the moon and the sun — the Earth’s tides are both complex and yet simple. We can understand them without necessarily being able to predict where and when they will occur a priori given a knowledge only of the orbits and masses and the shape and depth of the oceans and coastlines. If I looked at the magnitude of the tidal force — so small it can hardly be (directly) measured — and were asked “can this force lift water up ten or more meters every day” I would laugh hysterically — of course not. And yet it does — I’ve been there and ridden the bore and it is wild — whitewater rafting upstream in cocoa-colored ocean water surging ashore.
The Sun is not the Earth, of course. No oceans, no continents. But does this mean that tides are incapable of driving any sort of resonance or worse, modulating existing internal chaotic nonlinear oscillators so that there are quasi-periodicities between them but not true periodicities? I don’t think so. And the Sun does have structure (I suspect a lot of unknown structure at that), which means that even weak perturbations can be nonlinearly amplified in unexpected ways.
Hence the article makes me uncomfortable, because it seems to be claiming too much. A much better claim would be that tidal forces are indeed much weaker than many secular forces that already exist in the Sun and hence do not directly affect solar state. That’s perfectly reasonable, and I can do precisely the same sort of estimate for the tidal forces acting on the Earth and arrive at precisely the same conclusion. They do not suffice to keep me from having tired feet during spring tides. But I would say that you cannot even strongly argue that they do not cause (or not important factors in) any part of the various solar cycles. In order to make that claim (strongly!) one would have to be able to explain those cycles in other ways, without needing planetary tides as an input and with equations of motion that were insensitive to small long-period perturbations.
Has this been done? Note well that the time scales we are talking about are decadal on up — this has nothing whatsoever to do with the timescales of local motion in the sun. The effect of Jupiter on the Sun should be basically to create a very weak standing wave with the rough period of the solar day, a running bulge as it were, that lags the line between the solar center and Jupiter. Over time, this slight asymmetry exerts a gravitational on the sun, slowing its rotation and transferring some of its angular momentum out to Jupiter (and vice versa), just as the moon is very slowly slowing the Earth’s rotation due to the torque produced by its tidal bulge.
Here there are a number of puzzles. The Sun’s surface rotates more rapidly at the equator than at the poles, where the tidal countertorque is maximum at the equator and minimum at the poles. This suggests that yes, the internal dynamics that maintains this state of affairs is much stronger than the tidal forces that would if anything twist the sun’s layers the other way. However, it also suggests that the actual torque exerted by planetary tides is being strongly coupled into other motions within the Sun. Since those couplings are the very forces that establish the patterns over long time scales, it might well be the case that small modulations in the planetary torque(s) suffice to trigger secular changes in those patterns.
Before I am slapped down by Leif and Anthony acting like tag team wrestlers, this is far from a proof that it does. But note where the burden of proof lies. A paper has asserted that the tidal forces do not have any such effect because they are too weak, and it makes this assertion in full ignorance of the forces and nonlinear dynamics that are, in fact, responsible for clearly documented long term periodicities and quasiperiodicities. I would say they have proven no such thing. I’m not even sure that they’ve contributed to the argument. That the tidal forces are relatively weak has long been known, but weakness is not sufficient in a self-organized open nonlinear system, as such systems are notorious for amplifying selected noise, let alone weak periodic signals.
rgb
Myrrh says:
April 16, 2012 at 12:29 am
“Nope. It uses Sagnac…”
The Sagnac delay is a relativistic effect. In classical theory, the light pulse going in the direction of the rotation would be traveling at a speed c plus the velocity of the emitter, and vice versa for the opposing pulse. Both pulses would arrive at the detector at the same time. The theory of relativity, however, says both light pulses will travel at the same speed c. Thus, one has a longer path to travel, and one a shorter, at the same velocity, so there is a difference in time of arrival at the detector.
Moreover, it is just on of several terms which must be corrected in GPS signals according to relativistic theory. These include first order corrections for the GPS satellite velocity and the Earth’s gravitational field, as well as the receiver velocity and height above the geoid.
anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
“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.”
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Sun pulls on the planets, and the planets pull on the Sun. If you calculate the total angular momentum relative to the barycenter, it is constant.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:59 am
“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.”
It does not “heave” about the SSB. I think the conceptual problem here is elucidated by the post below, so let’s jump there.
Dr. Deanster says:
April 16, 2012 at 7:53 am
“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.”
But, gravity is special. It is not like heavng a ball at the end of a rope. When you do that, the rope pulls at a specific point, and stresses are created in the material because they are not attached to to rope, but only to the rest of the ball. Gravity acts like a bundle of ropes attached to every single particle of the ball. Insomuch as the gravitational field is uniform, every particle experiences the same tug. So, there is no stress induced except to the extent that the gravitational field is not uniform, i.e., the tidal forces.
Movement relative to the SSB from gravitational forces does not stress the Sun like a ball being twirled at the end of a rope – more like a ball being twirled encased in a finely woven net constraining every particle. Where there is no relative stress, there is no effect on the body.
anna v says:
April 16, 2012 at 6:01 am
“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.”
Oh and, as to millimeters, see my post here. The tides for these compressible gases will be a very complicated solution of the Navier-Stokes equations. I do not think you can reasonably assert that they will only be millimeters based on equi-potential surfaces. The diurnal bulge of the Earth’s atmosphere certainly does not hew to an equipotential surface.
rgbatduke says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:34 am
Since those couplings are the very forces that establish the patterns over long time scales, it might well be the case that small modulations in the planetary torque(s) suffice to trigger secular changes in those patterns.
Over millions or more years that may happen. The issue is if it happens on time scales of centuries and shorter.
Bart says:
April 16, 2012 at 9:44 am
The diurnal bulge of the Earth’s atmosphere certainly does not hew to an equipotential surface.
Because it is not gravitationally induced, but is due to heating [by the Sun] and resulting expansion of the air.
Geoff Sharp says: April 16, 2012 at 9:00 am
“Ok…if it is nothing to do with tides…what is your mechanism?”
The mechanism is linked to the tides as I already proved in my previous paper by showing that by considering their frequencies and phases + the dynamo cycle is is possible toreconstruct all known solar decadal, multidacadal, secular and millennial patterns.
N. Scafetta, “Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter-Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle.” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics in press (2012).
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta_JStides.pdf
About the energetic calculations, they just need to be done correctly by taking into account the right physics. That is all.
The argument that the influence of planetary attractions on the solar tachocline is small as claimed by Dirk K. Callebaut, Cornelis de Jager, Silvia Duhau, simply means that the proposed mechanism is not the right way to do the calculations.
And similar arguments were already known since the 19th century. The tides from the planets are small: so what? It is well known! If they were big, there would be no debate!
In science, when people try to understand a physical phenomenon in any field it is possible to do the calculations or the experiments in an infinity of wrong ways and do not find the right result!
Where is the great news!
Callebaut et al. can write 300,000 papers by using the same logic: possible titles are the following:
paper #2: the tides are small at 2 Km above the tachocline;
paper #3, the tides are small at 3 Km above the tachocline;
paper #4: the tides are small at 4 Km above the tachocline;
paper #5, the tides are small at 5 Km above the tachocline;
….
….
…..
paper #300,000, the tides are small at 300,000 Km above the tachocline, that is at the solar surface.
Never mind that in my paper about the auroras I calculated the tides at the Earth’s orbit and they were several hundred of kilometers wide!
In the 19th century people did not know about the physical mechanism (nuclear fusion) that was causing the sun to shine. People proposed the most extravagant theories that were found to be unsatisfactory. However, nobody concluded that because the luminosity mechanism was still unknown, the sun was not shining!
The issue is what is the right way to do the calculations because the empirical findings are clear!
Wait and see 🙂
Leif Svalgaard says: April 16, 2012 at 9:27 am
If you were honest you would have quoted the 0.0000002 A/km2 in the exact same reference, page, column and line number.
Nop. You know you are wrong.
The current density is meaningless since it is function of distance, so move one meter forward, it is no good any more, unless you suggesting:
a) flux rope cross section is constant along its length, which is not correct or
b) there is a miraculous rise in the current along the tube’s length which is not correct
Therefore correct quote is
…AND CARRY A TOTAL AXIAL CURRENT (IT ) OF ABOUT A BILLION AMPS. a proper way to describe the event. Tube expands, cross section increases and density falls, while total current remains more or less constant. until it hits a magnetosphere.
If it makes you happy, you win, but go and have a rest, you have been at it for hours.
tallbloke says:
April 16, 2012 at 3:06 am
I am still waiting for an answer for the question posed to tallbloke many hours ago and he has replied to other comments in the interim.
Skimming papers and picking comments out of context is not a good look. Theodore makes it very clear in all his papers that the PTC event (what you think is a solar downturn) is a mechanism for changing phase. ie phase reversal. Show me in one of his papers where the PTC event is linked with grand minima. I find it lame we are even discussing this issue, you have no idea. Do you understand what the PTC event is?
It seems as though tallbloke can wax on imposing his views, but when asked a solid question here he ignores, and if posed on his own website the question is “moderated” and does not appear.
WUWT?