“Barycentric” influence of the planets on the sun is just statistically insignificant, and a previous paper that claims to find a signal in isotopic records is proven to be nothing more than a statistical artifact.
In 2012, Astronomy & Astrophysics published a statistical study of the isotopic records of solar activity, in which Abreu et al. claimed that there is evidence of planetary influence on solar activity. A&A is publishing a new analysis of these isotopic data by Cameron and Schüssler. It corrects technical errors in the statistical tests performed by Abreu et al.
They find no evidence of any planetary effect on solar activity.
In a new paper published in A&A, R. Cameron and M. Schüssler, however, identify subtle technical errors in the statistical tests performed by Abreu et al. Correcting these errors reduces the statistical significance by many orders of magnitude to values consistent with a pure chance coincidence. The quasi-periods in the isotope data therefore provide no evidence that there is any planetary effect on solar activity.
Source: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-evidence-planetary-solar.html#nwlt
The paper (h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard)
No evidence for planetary influence on solar activity
R. H. Cameron and M. Schüssler
Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Max-Planck-Str. 2, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany e-mail: [cameron;schuessler]@mps.mpg.de
Received 16 April 2013 / Accepted 24 July 2013
ABSTRACT
Context. Recently, Abreu et al. (2012, A&A. 548, A88) proposed a long-term modulation of solar activity through tidal effects exerted by the planets. This claim is based upon a comparison of (pseudo-)periodicities derived from records of cosmogenic isotopes with those arising from planetary torques on an ellipsoidally deformed Sun.
Aims. We examined the statistical significance of the reported similarity of the periods.
Methods. The tests carried out by Abreu et al. were repeated with artificial records of solar activity in the form of white or red noise. The tests were corrected for errors in the noise definition as well as in the apodisation and filtering of the random series.
Results. The corrected tests provide probabilities for chance coincidence that are higher than those claimed by Abreu et al. by about 3 and 8 orders of magnitude for white and red noise, respectively. For an unbiased choice of the width of the frequency bins used for the test (a constant multiple of the frequency resolution) the probabilities increase by another two orders of magnitude to 7.5% for red noise and 22% for white noise.
Conclusions. The apparent agreement between the periodicities in records of cosmogenic isotopes as proxies for solar activity and planetary torques is statistically insignificant. There is no evidence for a planetary influence on solar activity.
…
Concluding remarks
The statistical test proposed by Abreu et al. (2012), a comparison of the coincidences of spectral peaks from time series of planetary torques and cosmogenic isotopes (taken as a proxy for solar activity in the past) with red and white noise, is logically unable to substantiate a causal relation between solar activity and planetary orbits. Furthermore, the execution of the test contains severe technical errors in the generation and in the treatment of the random series. Correction of these errors and removal of the bias introduced by the tayloring of the spectral windows a posteriori leads to probabilities for period coincidences by chance of 22% for red noise and 7.5% for white noise. The coincidences reported in Abreu et al. (2012) are therefore consistent with both white and red noise.
Owing to our lack of understanding of the solar dynamo mechanism, red or white noise are only one of many possible representations of its variability in the period range between 40 and 600 years in the absence of external effects. This is why the test of A2012 is logically incapable of providing statistical evidence in favour of a planetary influence. Alternatively one could consider the probability that a planetary system selected randomly from the set of all possible solar systems would have periods matching those in the cosmogenic records. In the absence of a quantitative understanding of the statistical properties of the set of possible solar systems to draw from, the comparison could again, at best, rule out a particular model of the probability distribution of planetary systems. Here we have shown that the test in A2012 does not exclude that the peaks in the range from 40 to 600 years in the planetary forcing are drawn from a distribution of red or white noise.
We conclude that the data considered by A2012 do not pro- vide statistically significant evidence for an effect of the planets on solar activity.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/aa21713-13-No-Planetary-Solar-Act.pdf
The quasi-astrologers are not going to like this.
From Sparks on September 9, 2013 at 1:17 pm:
Yet the WUWT World Climate Widget is showing a sunspot count of 75. So what are you missing?
Perhaps not looking at both sides or in the wrong wavelengths?
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/browse/
Poke around, there is a large clear chunk, but there are spots around still.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 9, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Yet the WUWT World Climate Widget is showing a sunspot count of 75. So what are you missing?
Yet the sun is blank. Should I not trust my own eyes!!
@Kadaka
Daily Sunspot area
YYYY MM DD Total North South
2013 9 5 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 6 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 7 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 8 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 9 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 10 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 11 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 12 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 13 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 14 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 15 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 16 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 17 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 18 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 19 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 20 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 21 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 22 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 23 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 24 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 25 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 26 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 27 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 28 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 29 0.0 0.0 0.0
2013 9 30 0.0 0.0 0.0
That aside, by the hammer of Thor the eyecandy from SDO is amazing, wonder if it’s as fun to watch for you folks in the solar sciences as it is for amateur solar-buffs like myself?
I took the large .mov file from here: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/main/item/451 and rotated it so I could spread it across my top monitor and man I need a set of awesome science fiction broad-spectrum eyes that could see this stuff themselves.
From Sparks on September 9, 2013 at 1:57 pm:
http://sidc.oma.be/LatestSWData/LatestSWData.php
Guess not. I may have had to look up what is PROBA2, but the latest SWAP image does have sunspots and groups noted on it.
Sparks says:
September 9, 2013 at 2:06 pm
Daily Sunspot area
YYYY MM DD Total North South
2013 9 9 0.0 0.0 0.0
The Air Force does not record spots with are less that 10 micro-hemispheres [counts them as 0.0]. This does not mean there are not spots, just that they are small. Today there is ONE tiny spot. Will probably be gone by tomorrow. Having days of zero spots at maximum happen in weak cycles, several times during SC14, and will also happen for this cycle.
– – – – – – – –
tallbloke,
Hey, good to get a comment interaction with you. It’s been (IIRC) over 2 years.
Viva!
John
From Max™ on September 9, 2013 at 2:11 pm:
From among those many high-activity image movies, select one that is false-colored red, and one that is green. Set one up on a left monitor, the other a right monitor, no middle monitor BTW.
Put on red/green 3D glasses. Start both playing from the same time simultaneously.
Enjoy.
The latest output from R.J. Salvador’s planetary-solar model looks very good.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/r-j-salvador-planetary-model-of-1000-yrs-solar-variation-plus-100yr-prediction/comment-page-1/#comment-59128
Up to a 0.91 correlation with SIDC Sunspot number from 1749 to now.
The clock ticks on .
Sparks says:
September 9, 2013 at 1:57 pm
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 9, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Yet the WUWT World Climate Widget is showing a sunspot count of 75. So what are you missing?
Yet the sun is blank. Should I not trust my own eyes!!
Do not adjust your mindset. Leif Svalgaard predicted a solar max of 75 five years ago, and by golly that’s what you’re getting…
tallbloke says:
September 9, 2013 at 2:59 pm
The latest output from R.J. Salvador’s planetary-solar model looks very good.
Up to a 0.91 correlation with SIDC Sunspot number from 1749 to now.
Is that with the slightly flawed International Sunspot Numbers?
John Whitman says:
September 9, 2013 at 2:54 pm
tallbloke on September 8, 2013 at 3:59 pm
– – – – – – –
Hey, good to get a comment interaction with you. It’s been (IIRC) over 2 years.
Viva!
Salve John, I don’t get much spare time for bantering on WUWT these days. Drop by the talkshop any time.
tallbloke says:
September 9, 2013 at 3:05 pm
Do not adjust your mindset. Leif Svalgaard predicted a solar max of 75 five years ago, and by golly that’s what you’re getting…
Not five years ago. Eight years ago.
tallbloke says:
September 9, 2013 at 3:05 pm
“Do not adjust your mindset. Leif Svalgaard predicted a solar max of 75 five years ago, and by golly that’s what you’re getting…”
Not five years ago. Eight years ago.
Actually nine years ago as my prediction was made in September 2004 and submitted in October.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 9, 2013 at 3:06 pm
tallbloke says:
September 9, 2013 at 2:59 pm
The latest output from R.J. Salvador’s planetary-solar model looks very good.
Up to a 0.91 correlation with SIDC Sunspot number from 1749 to now.
Is that with the slightly flawed International Sunspot Numbers?
I did alert him to the postwar overcount. I think he might have a small non-linear amplification factor in the model, so he could dial it out quite easily.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/sep/09/physicists-claim-further-evidence-of-link-between-cosmic-rays-and-cloud-formation
GlynnMhor says:
September 9, 2013 at 4:41 pm
physicists-claim-further-evidence-of-link-between-cosmic-rays-and-cloud-formation
Is Off-Topic on this thread. Go somewhere else.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 7, 2013 at 8:53 pm
“I presume someone has thought to follow Landscheidt and track what the barycenter path was in Dalton and Maunder and compare its motion then to its motion now?”
It doesn’t matter what it was or is. The barycenter has no influence on anything.
WOW a Closed mind if ever there was one, I quote…”doesn’t matter what it was…”
WOW sounds like evidence is not proof to me…
Lief you have snarkaly berated me before but time will out and (and though I hope not) time will tell.
ps for a supposedly very smart guy you come off like an [trimmed]
[Watch your language. Mod]
Ben Darren Hillicoss says:
September 9, 2013 at 7:16 pm
“The barycenter has no influence on anything.”
WOW a Closed mind if ever there was one
Yep, if there were any solar influence it would have to be through tides, torques, various non-gravitational effects tied to the planets. The barycenter has no mass or any other property, just follows the planets around. The paper under discussion shows that a previous claim of planetary periods found in cosmic ray data had overstated the statistical significance of the ‘finding’.
To a point only: You can always find a reference frame to make an electric field go away, but you cannot find a frame to make a magnetic field go away. In other words: an electric field depends on the observer’s reference frame, but a magnetic field does not.
(and where all E, B and \beta symbols are vectors). Similarly, one cannot transform a pure magnetostatic field away, same argument.
, the frame moving at the speed of light).
I would have said that rather differently. There exist frames where there is a pure electrostatic field and no magnetic field at all, for example the rest frame of any isolated charge. If one boosts to a frame where the charge is now moving, one ends up with both electric and magnetic fields. If one has a frame where there is a pure magnetostatic field — for example, an electrically neutral solenoid at rest — and boost it one ends up again with both electric and magnetic fields.
However, IIRC one cannot boost a pure electrostatic field completely OUT of existence, because (starting with E nonzero and B zero):
cannot go to zero, because
So — rarely, I have to admit — I think you re simply wrong on this one, Leif. Both electric and magnetic fields depend on the observer's reference frame and are mixed by boosts as components of the second rank field strength tensor, and one cannot find any boost that makes a pure electrostatic OR magnetostatic field go away (short of
rgb
rgbatduke says:
September 9, 2013 at 9:48 pm
I would have said that rather differently. There exist frames where there is a pure electrostatic field and no magnetic field at all, for example the rest frame of any isolated charge.
The subtle difference is that I was discussing [in the proper context] the situation in a plasma with infinity conductivity [which is a very good approximation for plasmas in space].The moving plasma generates an electric field E = -VxB that in E’ = E + VxB results in E’ = 0.
Gene Parker describes it much better than I can in the limited space of a blog:
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8454.pdf He notes “So one way or another, there is no significant persistent large-scale electric field in a plasma. One might say that a plasma abhors electric fields and invariably finds a means to avoid them.” There a no electric fields if you move with the plasma. If the plasma encounters an obstacle [e.g. the Earth] the obstacle will see an electric field -VxB.
The subtle difference is that I was discussing [in the proper context] the situation in a plasma with infinity conductivity [which is a very good approximation for plasmas in space].The moving plasma generates an electric field E = -VxB that in E’ = E + VxB results in E’ = 0.
My apologies, then. I missed that aspect of the context. Of course a plasma is a conductor, and conductors in general try to eliminate electric fields, and have dispersion and skin depths and all that. I don’t usually think of then in the context of relativistic frames, though and the way you stated it was very unclear, at least to me.
rgb
rgbatduke says:
September 9, 2013 at 10:48 pm
I don’t usually think of them in the context of relativistic frames, though and the way you stated it was very unclear, at least to me.
Yes, I could have been more precise. The context was the ‘Electric Universe’ nonsense that holds that the Universe is criss-crossed by humongous electric currents driving everything, including heating the Sun from the outside. They never specify what are driving those currents or huge electric fields. I was trying to say that in the rest frame of the plasma there can be no electric fields.