Guest post by David Archibald
My papers and those of Jan-Erik Solheim et al predict a significant cooling over Solar Cycle 24 relative to Solar Cycle 23. Solheim’s model predicts that Solar Cycle 24, for the northern hemisphere, will be 0.9º C cooler than Solar Cycle 23. It hasn’t cooled yet and we are three and a half years into the current cycle. The longer the temperature stays where it is, the more cooling has to come over the rest of the cycle for the predicted average reduction to occur.
So when will it cool? As Nir Shaviv and others have noted, the biggest calorimeter on the plant is the oceans. My work on sea level response to solar activity (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/quantifying-sea-level-fall/) found that the breakover between sea level rise and sea level fall is a sunspot amplitude of 40:
As this graph from SIDC shows, the current solar amplitude is about 60 in the run-up to solar maximum, expected in May 2013:
The two remaining variables in our quest are the timing of the sunspot number fall below 40 and the length of Solar Cycle 24. So far, Solar Cycle 24 is shaping up almost exactly like Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum:
The heliospheric current sheet tilt angle has reached the level at which solar maximum occurs. It usually spends a year at this level before heading back down again:
Similarly, the solar polar field strength (from the Wilcox Solar Observatory) suggest that solar maximum may be up to a year away:
Notwithstanding that solar maximum, as predicted from heliocentric current sheet tilt angle and solar polar field strength, is still a little way off, if Solar Cycle 24 continues to shape up like Solar Cycle 5, sunspot amplitude will fall below 40 from mid-2013. Altrock’s green corona emissions diagramme (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/08/solar-cycle-24-length-and-its-consequences/) suggests that Solar Cycle 24 will be 17 years long, ending in 2026. That leaves twelve and a half years of cooling from mid-2013.
From all that, for Solheim’s predicted temperature decline of 0.9º C over the whole of Solar Cycle 24 to be achieved, the decline from mid-2013 will be 1.2º C on average over the then remaining twelve and a half years of the cycle. No doubt the cooling will be back-loaded, making the further decline predicted over Solar Cycle 25 relative to Solar Cycle 24 more readily achievable.
Jim G says:
August 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
Dark matter has not been “observed”, only inferred based upon what we do know about gravity, which may not be complete knowledge
One of the best demonstrations of Dark Matter is the determination of the Baryon/Cold Dark Matter ratio from the observed signature of sound waves during the early universe, see e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/CosmicSoundWaves.pdf This is simple freshman physics and has nothing to do with general relativity or gravity on large scales. There are now so many observations of DM at the issue is compelling, see e.g. http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_astro/dark_matter/
Also, relativity does not, I believe, call for an accellerating expansion, only an expanding universe
Observations show that the Universe is ‘flat’ which with the observed amounts of baryons and dark matter requires about 75% dark energy, which automatically means an accelerating universe.
Your position on this issue is a perfect example of the old saying that ‘It is not what people don’t know that gets them in so much trouble but all of the things they do know that just ain’t so.’
You get more in trouble by not knowing whereof you speak.
You make the unwarranted assumption that cosmology is dominated by dogmatism. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Workers in the field are their own devil’s advocates and leave no stone unturned trying to poke holes in modern precision cosmology by examining known and possible sources of errors and uncertainties. A good example is http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2434v1.pdf .
Dark Matter and Dark Energy are in a sense the least upsetting or revolutionary things. The implications of DM and DE being due to something else are MUCH more shattering. I prefer the simplest and most conservative explanations consistent with what our observations force us to go along with. You may want to assume much more radical departures from known physics than I could stomach, that is your choice, but in that you leave me behind.
Thank you tallbloke and HenryP. Dr. Spencer has already said there needs to be an adjustment downward. The only question is how much. Now I know this is not very scientific and could easily be wrong. But IF we make the assumption that RSS has been correct over the last 12 years, and if we then compare the relative positions of the 36 month mean for 2002 and 2012 for each set, my conclusion is that UAH was too high by 0.10 C over the last three years. Time will tell if this is in the ball park.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
Bad papers are soon and deservedly blissfully forgotten.
You have to get a proof that it is bad published, or you are just continuing to blow smoke. Wolff and Patrone’s paper stands until rebutted in the literature. You can blissfully ignore it remain in ignorance if you wish, the development of the theory will continue without your input.
“Dark Matter and Dark Energy are in a sense the least upsetting or revolutionary things. The implications of DM and DE being due to something else are MUCH more shattering”
That is a good point but does not justify saying with certitude that DM and DE exist.
DM and DE are currently just the least disruptive interpretation that could be put on the observations. And it isn’t that DM or DE is due to something else but rather that the observations that led to the concepts of DM and DE might be due to something else.
It could well be something else unless one can demonstrate the presnce of DM and DE empirically and those who wish to consider other interpretations should not be discouraged from doing so.
Fixing on DM and DE as the most likely explanation without any supporting observation or measurement of the actual physical properties of DM and DE is just the same type of leap of faith that led to it being assumed that our CO2 emissions can control the climate.
HenryP says:
August 15, 2012 at 12:06 pm
UAH is out. Not by a few hundredth. It is a little more, I am afraid.
Werner Brozek says:
August 15, 2012 at 12:51 pm
.my conclusion is that UAH was too high by 0.10 C over the last three years. Time will tell if this is in the ball park.
Well, we’ll see. What I’m saying is that lower troposphere warming relative to land surface as ocean surface cools is consistent with the hypothesis I’ve been testing since late 2008. The Recent el Nino’s have been depleting ocean heat content and heating lower troposphere. The Sun hasn’t been ‘recharging’ (as Bob Tisdale puts it) the Pacific Warm Pool so much. so we see the Hadley SST falling, and the land surface series falling behind the troposphere. It’s a temporary situation, as the run of big el Nino’s peters out, the lower troposphere will start to chill. My curent guess is we’ll see a marked downturn in LT by the end of next year whatever minor adjustments Roy and John need to make for orbital factors.
It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.
Cheers
TB .
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 1:26 pm
“Bad papers are soon and deservedly blissfully forgotten.”
You have to get a proof that it is bad published … the development of the theory will continue without your input
It will not be forgotten by me, but by the scientific community in general. There has been no further development of the ‘theory’ so far.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 15, 2012 at 1:30 pm
That is a good point but does not justify saying with certitude that DM and DE exist.
There is no ‘certitude’ in science [except in your theory 🙂 ].
DM and DE are currently just the least disruptive interpretation that could be put on the observations. And it isn’t that DM or DE is due to something else but rather that the observations that led to the concepts of DM and DE might be due to something else.
You have clearly not studied any of the links I gave you. Try again http://www.leif.org/EOS/CosmicSoundWaves.pdf
What you are saying is like “the Moon seems to be held in orbit by gravity, but it might be something else”
It could well be something else unless one can demonstrate the presnce of DM and DE empirically
See the above link
and those who wish to consider other interpretations should not be discouraged from doing so.
They most certainly are not. Many scientists are trying to poke holes in this. None have succeeded so far. As for the general public [like you], they should be educated if they are willing and [perhaps more to the point] able.
Fixing on DM and DE as the most likely explanation
You did not study the links. DM and DE are *forced* upon us by observations, unless we want to entertain even worse alternatives.
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 1:26 pm
“Bad papers are soon and deservedly blissfully forgotten.”
You have to get a proof that it is bad published
No need, a bad paper stinks to high heaven on its own and any scientist worth his salt can spot it.
Thx you all. I wouls agree/say that UAH Is out by at least 0.1 since 2000. I am interested to hear the reason? Best wishes. H
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 15, 2012 at 12:49 pm
“You make the unwarranted assumption that cosmology is dominated by dogmatism.”
You make the unwarraned assumption that I was speaking of cosmology in general, the dogmatism comment was the stone thrown and the one which howls is the one which was struck. there are, indeed, many in the field who are open minded and seeking more truth.
“Observations show that the Universe is ‘flat’ which with the observed amounts of baryons and dark matter requires about 75% dark energy, which automatically means an accelerating universe.”
More incestuous, circular logic.
“Dark Matter and Dark Energy are in a sense the least upsetting or revolutionary things. The implications of DM and DE being due to something else are MUCH more shattering.”
It is not that DM and DE might be due to something else, but that the observations which you feel confirm their existence might be due to something else. And why would such a discovery be “shattering” to you particularly if it progessed us toward integration of quantum physics with relativity?
Jim G says:
August 15, 2012 at 2:01 pm
You make the unwarranted assumption that I was speaking of cosmology in general
Cosmology without DM and DE simply does not exist. You too could benefit from studying the very accessible http://www.leif.org/EOS/CosmicSoundWaves.pdf which you clearly didn’t do.
And why would such a discovery be “shattering” to you particularly if it progessed us toward integration of quantum physics with relativity?
First, there is no ‘discovery’, second because DM has nothing to do with general relativity. As I said:
“You may want to assume much more radical departures from known physics than I could stomach, that is your choice, but in that you leave me behind.”
Your notion of ‘dogmatism’ is ill-placed. The dogmatic one is the one who refuses to accept the marvel of modern cosmology. Refuses to accept how far we have come and refuses to learn about the greatest story ever told.
[snip]
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 15, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Jim G says:
August 15, 2012 at 2:01 pm
You make the unwarranted assumption that I was speaking of cosmology in general
“Cosmology without DM and DE simply does not exist..”
An absurd statement.
“Your notion of ‘dogmatism’ is ill-placed. The dogmatic one is the one who refuses to accept the marvel of modern cosmology. Refuses to accept how far we have come and refuses to learn about the greatest story ever told.”
You either are not reading what I write or fail to understand what I, and several others, I might add, are saying. You also seem to always assume that others are not aware of, nor have read, nor understand subjects which only you (so you think) have the abilty to fully comprehend. A legend in your own mind.
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 1:26 pm
“Just exposing your errors and lies, e.g. that Jose was at Los Alamos and what W&P actually said in their email”
I note that you [correctly] did not dispute this. Perhaps you should bring that fact to the attention of the readers of your blog, as would be fitting for a gentleman.
Leif Svalgaard wrote:
“I carefully said ‘except for tidal forces’. The examples you mention are all due to tides. The magnitude of tides can be calculated, and the largest tidal bulge is that raised by Jupiter [the next one is by by Venus] and is less than one millimeter high.”
I’m sorry that I missed your previous mention. If I’d searched the thread for “tidal” instead of “tide” I might have saved us both five minutes. My reply was correct for your post that I was responding to, but your post did not represent your whole position. Such is life.
The result of < 1.0mm in the context of an enormous, multi-layered sphere of frothing high-energy plasma is so meaningless that it sounds like a figure derived from a model sun enjoying simple properties that are actually calculable. It also sounds like a vertical component only. Do you have a figure for the horizontal components? These are usually much larger. And the size of a tidal bulge is not necessarily an indication of the significance of subsequent effects.
"There are also the effect of Sirius-shine on the Sun. When Jupiter is between the Sun and the star Sirius, Sirius-shine is reduced."
I appreciate your analogy of insignificant effect, however Sirius lies so far from the orbital plane of the solar system that such a shadow from Jupiter is unlikely to occur before Sirius and the Sun both stop shining (or the end of this thread, whichever is the soonest).
"As your comment shows, that does not deter people from believing weird stuff."
I do not "believe" in the solar-planetary theory; indeed I hadn't heard of it as a specific notion before dropping into this thread. At this stage of exposure I think it is interesting that there are / may be some correlations between various and combined gravitational / positional aspects of the planets and various and combined solar activities. I am open to the possibilities of these correlations being non-existent; existent but meaninglessly coincidental; existent and meaningfully coincidental; existent and causal. I have no dog in this race nor horse in this fight, as people don't say.
On the Earth, volcanic phenomena are primarily (almost entirely entirely) the result of internal processes. Nevertheless, real actual Earth scientists have established that the gravitational / positional interaction of the Moon can trigger eruptions. To an imaginary outside observer (of long life), there would be a clear correlation between the positions of these co-orbiting bodies in freefall and a surface activity upon one of them.
*If* there is any correlation between the planets and solar activity, that's the sort of magnitude of influence I wouldn't be surprised about.
Further, in our own species (or half of it, anyway) there is a peculiar but clear and obvious correlation between the orbit of the Moon and menstruation. Now you might want to dispute the time of the month, but (to paraphrase Rick Blaine) there are certain areas of discussion, Leif, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.
Jim G says:
August 15, 2012 at 3:53 pm
“Cosmology without DM and DE simply does not exist..”
An absurd statement.
Those are the cornerstones of modern cosmology, so there is nothing absurd about this.
You either are not reading what I write or fail to understand what I, and several others, I might add, are saying.
Your comment here is like saying that smoking is healthy because many people do it.
And about not reading: I respond to everything, while you respond to nothing.
You also seem to always assume that others are not aware of, nor have read, nor understand subjects which only you (so you think) have the abilty to fully comprehend. A legend in your own mind.
Your comments give you away. No need for me to assume anything.
For your education, I quote here one of the links you didn’t seem to have understood if even read:
From http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_astro/dark_matter/ :
Ever since the phenomenal success of Isaac Newton in explaining the motion of the planets with his theory of gravity and laws of motion in 1687, unseen matter has been invoked to explain puzzling observations of cosmic bodies.
For example, the anomalous motion of Uranus led astronomers to suggest that an unseen planet existed, and a few years later, in 1846, Neptune was discovered. This procedure is still the primary method used to discover planets orbiting stars.
A similar line of reasoning led to the detection in 1862, of the faint white dwarf Sirius B in orbit around the bright star Sirius.
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Rotation speed of spiral galaxies:
Measuring the acceleration of matter orbiting an object is the basic method for determining the mass of that object. For example, by measuring the centripetal acceleration of a planet orbiting the sun at a known distance, the mass that the sun must have to produce that acceleration can be determined.
In a similar way, astronomers can calculate the mass of a galaxy by measuring the acceleration of clouds orbiting on the outer edges of a galaxy. Pioneering work by Vera Rubin and her colleagues showed that, much to their surprise, the required mass of many spiral galaxies is much larger than the observed mass of all the visible stars and gas. About 5 times larger.
Many subsequent studies confirmed this discovery, and the general picture that has emerged is that of a disk of stars and gas embedded in a large, spherical halo of dark matter.
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Hot Gas in Elliptical Galaxies:
Large elliptical galaxies have extended atmospheres of hot gas which appear to be in equilibrium. The pressure of the hot gas is balanced with the gravitational pull of all the mass in a galaxy. Chandra and other X-ray telescopes can be used to measure the hot gas pressure, and observations with optical telescopes can be used to determine the mass of the stars.
The conclusion: there is not enough mass in the stars and gas to provide the necessary gravity. Elliptical galaxies must contain about five times as much mass in dark matter as the amount present in stars and gas.
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Random Motions of Stars in Dwarf Galaxies:
Dwarf galaxies are faint, inconspicuous systems with only a few million stars, but they may ultimately play a key role in understanding dark matter. Measurements of the random motions of stars in nearby dwarf galaxies show that these galaxies may require a much larger fraction of dark matter than normal galaxies.
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Hot Gas in Clusters of Galaxies:
The first indication of the scope of the dark matter problem came from a 1933 study by Fritz Zwicky of the speed of the random motions of galaxies in the Coma cluster of galaxies. He found that 10 to 100 times more matter than could
One possibility was that the so-called “missing matter” was in the form of hot gas undetectable with optical telescopes. Indeed, in the last two decades, X-ray telescopes have discovered vast clouds of multimillion degree gas in clusters of galaxies. These hot gas clouds increase the mass of the cluster, but not enough to solve the mystery.
To the contrary, the hot gas in clusters of galaxies provides an independent confirmation of dark matter. As with giant elliptical galaxies, the measurement of the hot gas pressure in galaxy clusters shows that there must be about 5-6 times as much dark matter as all the stars and gas we observe, or the hot gas in the cluster would escape
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Gravitational Lensing by Clusters of Galaxies:
Yet another independent line of evidence points to the dominance of dark matter in galaxy clusters. According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, space is curved in the vicinity of strong gravitational fields.
One consequence of the warping of space by gravity is that the path of light from background galaxies is bent when it passes near a cluster, in much the same way that a glass lens will bend light. The images of the galaxies are distorted by this “gravitational lensing” effect, by an amount that depends on the mass of the cluster. This method gives estimates for the amount of dark matter in galaxy clusters that is in good agreement with X-ray observations.
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Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation:
The cosmic microwave background radiation reveals what the universe was like when it was only a few hundred thousand years old, long before galaxies and clusters of galaxies were formed. At this time the universe was an expanding gas composed primarily of protons, electrons, photons, neutrinos, and dark matter.
The intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation is very nearly the same in all directions, but not quite. Small variations of a fraction of a percent have been detected. These variations, or fluctuations, are due to clumps of matter that are either hotter or cooler than the average.
The rate at which clumps would grow in a hot, expanding gas can be calculated for different mixtures of photons, protons, neutrinos and dark matter. Comparison of such calculations with observations of the microwave background (especially with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP) and other data indicate that the universe contains about 6 times more dark matter than normal matter.
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Summary: Amount of Dark Matter:
Many different lines of evidence suggest that the mass of dark matter in galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the universe as a whole is about 5 or 6 times greater than the mass of ordinary baryonic matter such as the protons and neutrons [and electrons].
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Alternatives:
Although the evidence for dark matter is wide and deep, it is nevertheless indirect, and is based on the assumption that the laws of motion and gravity as formulated by Newton and expanded by Einstein apply. An alternative possibility is that a modification of gravity can explain the effects attributed to dark matter. The basic idea is that at very low accelerations, corresponding to large distances, the usual law of gravitation is modified.
The most studied of these modifications is called Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or MOND. According to this hypothesis, the force of gravity falls off more slowly at low accelerations (inversely as the distance rather than inversely as the square of the distance). With this prescription, less mass is required to explain the observed rotation of the outer edges of galaxies or the pressure of the hot gas in clusters of galaxies than in the Newton-Einstein theory. By adjusting the parameters of the theory, the need for dark matter can be eliminated.
Although MOND has had some success in explaining observations of galaxies, it and other theories that involve modifying the law of gravity have been severely challenged by observations of the galaxy cluster 1E0657-56, a.k.a. the Bullet Cluster. X-ray observations show that the Bullet Cluster is composed of two large clusters of galaxies that are colliding at high speeds.
Using the gravitational lensing technique, astronomers have deduced that the total mass concentration in the clusters is separate from that of the hot gas. This separation was presumably produced by the high-speed collision in which the gas particles collided with each other, while the stars and dark matter were unaffected. It cannot be explained by an altered law of gravity centered on the hot gas particles, and provided *direct* evidence that most of the matter in the Bullet Cluster is dark matter. Although such violent collisions between clusters are rare, another one (MACS J0025.4-122) shows the same effect.
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What is Dark Matter?
In view of the compelling evidence that most of the matter in the universe is dark matter, one of the most pressing questions in modern astrophysics is: What is dark matter?
The nature of dark matter is unknown. A substantial body of evidence indicates that it cannot be baryonic matter, i.e., protons and neutrons. The favored model is that dark matter is mostly composed of exotic particles formed when the universe was a fraction of a second old. Such particles, which would require an extension of the so-called Standard Model of elementary particle physics, could be WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), or axions, or sterile neutrinos. There is as yet no answer to this question, but it is becoming increasingly clear what it is not. Detailed observations of the cosmic microwave background with the WMAP satellite show that the dark matter cannot be in the form of normal, baryonic matter, that is, protons and neutrons that compose stars, planets, and interstellar matter. That rules out hot gas, cold gas, brown dwarfs, red dwarfs, white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes.
Black holes would seem to be the ideal dark matter candidate, and they are indeed very dark. However stellar mass black holes are produced by the collapse of massive stars which are much scarcer than normal stars, which contain at most one-fifth of the mass of dark matter. Also, the processes that would produce enough black holes to explain the dark matter would release a lot of energy and heavy elements; there is no evidence of such a release.
The non-baryonic candidates can be grouped into three broad categories: hot, warm and cold. Hot dark matter refers to particles, such as the known types of neutrinos, which are moving at near the speed of light when the clumps that would form galaxies and clusters of galaxies first began to grow. Cold dark matter refers to particles that were moving slowly when the pre-galactic clumps began to form, and warm dark matter refers to particles with speeds intermediate between hot and cold dark matter.
This classification has observational consequences for the size of clumps that can collapse in the expanding universe. Hot dark matter particles are moving so rapidly that clumps with the mass of a galaxy will quickly disperse. Only clouds with the mass of thousands of galaxies, that is, the size of galaxy clusters, can form. Individual galaxies would form later as the large cluster-sized clouds fragmented, in a top-down process.
In contrast, cold dark matter can form into clumps of galaxy-sized mass or less. Galaxies would form first, and clusters would form as galaxies merge into groups, and groups into clusters in a bottom-up process.
The observations with Chandra show many examples of clusters being constructed by the merger of groups and sub-clusters of galaxies. This and other lines of evidence that galaxies are older than groups and clusters of galaxies strongly support the cold dark matter alternative.
The leading candidates for cold dark matter are particles called WIMPs, for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. WIMPs are not predicted by the so-called Standard Model for elementary particles, but attempts to construct a unified theory of all elementary particles suggest that WIMPs might have been produced in great numbers when the universe was a fraction of a second old.
A typical WIMP is predicted to be at least 100 times as massive as a hydrogen atom. Possible creatures in the zoo of hypothetical WIMPs are neutralinos, gravitinos, and axinos. Other possibilities that have been discussed include sterile neutrinos and Kaluza-Klein excitations related to extra dimensions in the universe.
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Experimental Detection of Dark Matter:
Despite the compelling evidence for dark matter, the issue of whether dark matter exists or gravity needs to be modified [except that the Cosmic Sound Waves in the CMB does not depend on gravity] will likely not be resolved until dark matter particles are detected, or ruled out by lack of detection [although you can never prove a negative].
Two types of experimental searches for dark matter candidates are being pursued by a number of investigators. These involve the direct detection of dark matter particles by some type of detector, and the detection of X-rays or gamma-rays from the decay or annihilation of dark matter particles.
If WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) are the dark matter, then we must be swimming in a sea of dark matter and a billion or more of them would be passing through our bodies every second. The problem for their detection is the “weakly interacting” nature of WIMPs. Fortunately for us, almost all of them would pass through our bodies and through the entire Earth.
However, it is possible that once in a great while a WIMP could collide with an atom and knock its nucleus askew, creating a minuscule vibration in a supercooled crystal detector. So far, the most sensitive of such experiments, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search located half a mile underground in an old iron-ore mine in Minnesota, has failed to detect any WIMPs. More sensitive experiments are planned.
Axions may also be detected directly, though using very different techniques. These hypothetical particles are predicted to interact with a strong magnetic field, to produce radio waves. Experiments such as the Axion Dark Matter Experiment have so far yielded negative results. Experiments using different techniques are planned for the near future.
Another approach is to detect dark matter indirectly by observing a unique signature from their decay. Most theories for WIMPs predict that when they collide, they annihilate and produce a shower of high-energy particles and radiation. One of the most important programs of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope will be to search for gamma rays from the annihilation of WIMPs, or from the interaction of axions with strong magnetic fields in the nuclei of galaxies. It is also possible that the decay of sterile neutrinos into X-rays could be detected by Chandra, XMM, or a future, larger X-ray telescope.
Rather than taking a passive approach of observing dark matter directly in the lab, or indirectly through astronomical observations, some physicists propose making the stuff. Since the dark matter particles were presumably created in the first few nanoseconds or so of the Big Bang when temperatures were a quadrillion degrees, a particle accelerator that reproduces these conditions might create dark matter.
Extensive searches have been conducted for new particles of many kinds at and the Tevatron collider at Fermilab, so far without detection. Physicists are eagerly looking forward to the start of operations in late 2008 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. The LHC will be the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, smashing protons together at energies of 10 trillion electron volts, high enough to produce many predicted versions of dark matter.
The bottom line: one way or another, many physicists and astronomers are optimistic that hard evidence for dark matter particles will be found in the next few years. If not, they will be faced with an even deeper mystery than they now confront.
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It has taken us 80 years to arrive here. You seem to be stuck in the previous century.
PJF says:
August 15, 2012 at 6:08 pm
The result of < 1.0mm in the context of an enormous, multi-layered sphere of frothing high-energy plasma is so meaningless that it sounds like a figure derived from a model sun enjoying simple properties that are actually calculable.
Tides are eminently calculable. See the last page of http://www.leif.org/research/AGU%20Fall%202011%20SH34B-08.pdf
It also sounds like a vertical component only. Do you have a figure for the horizontal components? These are usually much larger.
What do you base that on? Even if they were 10 times larger or 100 times larger, that would not make any difference.
And the size of a tidal bulge is not necessarily an indication of the significance of subsequent effects.
To make such a statement you must have something specific in mind. If not, the statement is vacuous.
I appreciate your analogy of insignificant effect, however Sirius lies so far from the orbital plane of the solar system that such a shadow from Jupiter is unlikely to occur before Sirius and the Sun both stop shining (or the end of this thread, whichever is the soonest).
You should [perhaps I’m mistaken about your ability] be able to see that the analogy does not depend on Sirius in particular.
On the Earth, volcanic phenomena are primarily (almost entirely entirely) the result of internal processes. Nevertheless, real actual Earth scientists have established that the gravitational / positional interaction of the Moon can trigger eruptions.
The Moon is close enough for its effect on the earth to be hundred times larger than Jupiter’s on the Sun.
Further, in our own species (or half of it, anyway) there is a peculiar but clear and obvious correlation between the orbit of the Moon and menstruation.
I don’t think so [provide a link if you can]. That the periods are close is another matter, but the phase is random from one woman to the next.
Another ‘clear and obvious’ correlation: in 1976 I was the U.S. Special Envoy to the then Soviet Union with the mandate to visit all SSSR scientific institutions and promote cooperation. At one, I was confronted with the director of an insane asylum. She noted that her inmates were unusually agitated on certain days and those days coincided with the passage of the Heliospheric Current Sheet [ http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/HCS.html ]. At the time there were data gaps in the coverage by spacecraft and she graciously offered her [and her inmates’] services to fill the gaps in the spacecraft data.
Well, Leif, I’ve been watching this DM / DE discussion and to me at least it is clear that all you mean by ‘dark’ is that we currently cannot register it with our normal sensing equipment.
In other words you just use the term as a ‘catch all’ (as I suggested before) for whatever it is that causes the observations.
It could be particles (DM), or waves (DE) or a currently unknown feature of the universe that only becomes apparent at great distances or, in my opinion, most likely a mixture of all three.
On that basis your definition of DM and DE is so fluid that you cannot be wrong.
Leif Svalgaard says:
You should [perhaps I’m mistaken about your ability] be able to see that the analogy does not depend on Sirius in particular.
But the truth of your previous statement certainly does.
There are also the effect of Sirius-shine on the Sun. When Jupiter is between the Sun and the star Sirius, Sirius-shine is reduced. This is an indisputable fact, …”
Seems if there is precious little space between “indisputable fact” and “stuff Leif just made up, but asserted with condescending certainty”.
Not exactly consistent with the air of ad verecundiam you subsist on…
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 15, 2012 at 1:59 pm
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 1:26 pm
“Bad papers are soon and deservedly blissfully forgotten.”
You have to get a proof that it is bad published
No need, a bad paper stinks to high heaven on its own and any scientist worth his salt can spot it.
This is a content free appeal to ‘consensus’. Along with your bad behaviour in rejecting Scafetta ‘s paper on spurious grounds you are evidently behaving more and more like Phil Jones.
“Kevin and I will keep them out of the literature somehow – even if we have to redefine what peer review is”
Well, you’ve failed. The W&P paper stands, and Scafetta has built on it as well as formalising and publishing the work we’ve been doing together on the Talkshop in the excellent and impactful JASTP. He has also performed proper statistical tests on out of sample projections of the model which demonstrate its validity.
Note however, that we are not claiming the Leighton-Babcock dynamo doesn’t exist, but that its behaviour can be modulated by the interaction of cyclic tidal/magnetic/momentum effects caused by planetary motion. We believe this is the best current explanation for the obvious and irrefutable correlations which we have discovered between planetary motion, solar activity and proxy records of changes in Earth’s climate going back thousands of years as well as with the modern temperature record which the co2 driven theory can’t even successfully hindcast past 1960.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 15, 2012 at 5:31 am
“So, as the next step we need to agree that minimum TSI has not decreased. That there is no ‘deficit’.”
In an alternate reality where an increase in minimum TSI was shown in the revised PREMOS plot over that time period (it isn’t), you would arguably only have to prove the error was less than the depicted increase to show no deficit. However, as I noted before, if drawing a brown line on even the revised, adjusted version of the plot from even your prior publication link, the minimum at the end of cycle 23 still is below the minimum of cycle 22 in it, still a decrease: http://img185.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=17964_premos_122_174lo.JPG . That is not a combo of (1) a plot showing no decline (2) proof the plot has zero error (or, for an increasing plot, which the preceding is not, less error uncertainty than a depicted increase magnitude). As gone over before, you quoted from the authors saying no measurable trend during that time period, but the rest of the quote right afterwards includes “allow for an uncertainty of at least 0.2 W/m^2” (Elsewhere they remark: “uncertainty: +/- 280 ppm (+/- 0.4 W/m^2)“). It is not a measurable trend *because* their measurement uncertainty is so relatively major. (As a thought experiment example, if they had X times higher measurement uncertainty, then X times greater trend could exist in reality but not be a measurable trend). Dr. Abdussamatov only implied a bit more than 0.2 W/m^2 TSI difference between those particular minima anyway.
Moreover, if, for instance, PMOD data is graphed at a woodfortrees.org with convenient functionality, what happens when extending the graph up to the latest data can be seen:
First, graphing PMOD TSI from the September 1986 beginning of cycle 22 to the December 2008 end of cycle 23 including the site’s calculation of a trendline over that period:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:1986.75/to:2008.9/plot/pmod/from:1986.75/to:2008.9/trend
Secondly, extending the graph further up until the latest data, more towards now:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:1986.75/plot/pmod/from:1986.75/trend
What is really noticeable is how an increasingly big difference is starting to appear. Conclusions will be firmer once this cycle actually peaks and starts its post-peak decline, but already it is getting interesting even in TSI (let alone in better data than TSI).
Your second link, your own paper, argues for:
“Possible Degradation PMOD vs. SORCE
2010.25 since 2004.00 -0.080 W/m2 Total
2010.25 since 1996.75 -0.172 W/m2 Total”
While that could be mildly interesting in itself, even your own paper’s stated quantitative magnitude is not as great as the decline in the prior 1986.75 to 2008.9 PMOD graph, and it is not remotely as great as what decline appears evident when extending further up towards now in the last graph above (keeping in mind that even the near-future estimated peak of this cycle is not predicted to be enough vastly higher than it has obtained so far).
If you wanted to change your own TSI figures so much more as to instead entirely eliminate the decline in the prior graphs, if something gets much revised repeatedly (raising the question whether the first revision is right, the second revision, the hypothetical next future revision if applicable, or simply none of them), the simplest way to deal with matters from my perspective would be to look at metrics which are not clouded in measurement uncertainties and debatability on the scale needed. Of the metrics discussed in prior comments, TSI is the *only* one for which Dr. Abdussamatov’s expected cycle 22->23 change was so small as a fraction of the total (a fraction of a thousandth of the total flux) as to have much measurement uncertainty in context. For the others, the change between cycle 22 and cycle 23 is blatant, let alone that between cycle 23 and 24.
Tallbloke:
Thanks. And I see the sunspot numbers used can be reproduced by inputting http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1940/mean:96 . If trying without the mean 96 averaging, the shape is a bit different, but the location in time of the peaks is about as before.
MiCro says (on August 13, 2012 at 10:33 am</a) “You might enjoy this paper: http://sun.iwu.edu/~gpouch/Climate/RawData/WaterAlbedo001.pdf Basically, above 70-80 degrees Lat, a lot of the incoming solar energy gets reflected, not absorbed…”
Thanks for that!
MiCro, would you please send me an email? (My email address is on my web site, http://www.sealevel.info/ )
Thanks.
“The complex wobbling of a star around the barycenter of its solar
system is a well-known phenomenon of stellar motion (Perryman
and Schulze-Hartung, 2010). Indeed, Wolff and Patrone (2010)
have recently proposed that the rotation of the Sun around the
barycenter of the solar system could induce small mass exchanges
that release potential energy. The mass exchange would also carry
fresh fuel to deeper levels and increase solar activity. This
phenomenon would cause stars like the Sun with an appropriate
planetary system to burn somewhat more brightly and have
shorter lifetimes than identical stars without planets. However,
the solar barycentric motion should be understood just as an
approximate geometrical proxy of the forces acting on the Sun.
Tidal forces, torques and jerk shocks act on and inside the Sun,
which is not just a point-size body in free fall.”
Scafetta 2012b
http://www.duke.edu/~ns2002/pdf/ATP3610.pdf
Discussion here
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/nicola-scafetta-does-the-sun-work-as-a-nuclear-fusion-amplifier-of-planetary-tidal-forcing/
Also Relevant
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/another-argument-against-planetary-influence-on-solar-activity-bites-the-dust/
Henry Clark says:
August 16, 2012 at 2:07 am
Tallbloke:
Thanks. And I see the sunspot numbers used can be reproduced by inputting http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1940/mean:96 . If trying without the mean 96 averaging, the shape is a bit different, but the location in time of the peaks is about as before.
Henry, welcome. We had some discussion as to the relevant period for averaging the data. It also looks strong at around 82 months, half the length of the Jupiter-Uranus synodic period which coincides with flooding events.
Stephen Wilde says:
August 15, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Well, Leif, I’ve been watching this DM / DE discussion and to me at least it is clear that all you mean by ‘dark’ is that we currently cannot register it with our normal sensing equipment.
To be precise: we know there is something there that has mass, but is not baryonic and does not interact with the electromagentic force, hence cannot be seen. In our solar system there is 2*10^30 kg of baryons [mostly in the Sun] and 9*10^9 kg of DM, so DM is spread thinly. We know [from obervations] that the Universe is flat, i.e. has the critical energy density that balances between closed and open curvature. Of that total density, baryons [which we can see] and DM [which we cannot see] together make up 27%. the remaining 23% of the energy that we apparently cannot see we call DE. As simple as that.
tallbloke says:
August 15, 2012 at 11:20 pm
“No need, a bad paper stinks to high heaven on its own and any scientist worth his salt can spot it.”
This is a content free appeal to ‘consensus’.
No, just makes a distinvtion between scientists who are worth their salt and those who are not.
Along with your bad behaviour in rejecting Scafetta ‘s paper on spurious grounds
Scafetta’s papers were rejected [not just by me, but by the other referees as well] because of their lack of merit.
The W&P paper stands
More like: just lying there.
He has also performed proper statistical tests on out of sample projections of the model which demonstrate its validity.
We had a long discussion here on WUWT of his work and it didn’t survive the scrutiny
Note however, that we are not claiming the Leighton-Babcock dynamo doesn’t exist, but that its behaviour can be modulated by the interaction of cyclic tidal/magnetic/momentum effects caused by planetary motion.
Throwing in all possible effects having no clue as to which one might be correct [if any]. I too believe that there can be modulation but at such low level that it is undetectable.
We believe …
Some people believe weird things, so why not you.
Henry Clark says:
August 16, 2012 at 2:03 am
As gone over before, you quoted from the authors saying no measurable trend during that time period, but the rest of the quote right afterwards includes “allow for an uncertainty of at least 0.2 W/m^2”
You are confusing the absolute calibration which has that uncertainty and the relative accuracy [‘instrument precision’]that measures changes over time. The latter is about 30 times smaller at 0.007 W/m2.
The problem with PMOD is that they have not properly corrected for instrument degradation, as pointed out by Schmutz [and me].
Moreover, if, for instance, PMOD data is graphed at a woodfortrees.org with convenient functionality, what happens when extending the graph up to the latest data can be seen:
First, graphing PMOD TSI from the September 1986 beginning of cycle 22 to the December 2008 end of cycle 23 including the site’s calculation of a trendline over that period
As long as the degradation is not accounted for correctly, there will be such a downward trend which will get worse and worse, as your finally seem to recognize:
What is really noticeable is how an increasingly big difference is starting to appear.
Conclusions will be firmer once this cycle actually peaks and starts its post-peak decline, but already it is getting interesting even in TSI (let alone in better data than TSI).
As long as you use PMOD there is nothing interesting. The best instrument we have is TIM on SORCE http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm SORCE started in 2003 and the average for the last year [up to the present] is 1361.46 W/m2 which is already higher than the average of the first year of data [2003] which was 1361.32 w/m2.
For the others, the change between cycle 22 and cycle 23 is blatant, let alone that between cycle 23 and 24.
As I said, solar activity has been decreasing, but TSI at minimum has not. In his Figure 3 http://www.leif.org/research/Abdussa3.png he shows a plausible graph of sunspot numbers in the lower panel, but an implausible variation of TSI in the upper graph based on an invalid extrapolation of a decrease in TSI for which there is no evidence. The TSI curve should look just like the solar activity curve.
tallbloke says:
August 16, 2012 at 6:03 am
“The mass exchange would also carry fresh fuel to deeper levels and increase solar activity. This phenomenon would cause stars like the Sun with an appropriate planetary system to burn somewhat more brightly…”
Which is another one of Scafetta’s errors. The radiative core does not convect and mix. Even if it did, any change in energy production will have to work its way out by diffusion which takes hundreds of thousands of years thus completely washing out any cyclic changes on the order of decades or even millenniae.