“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
rgbatduke says:
September 9, 2013 at 10:48 pm
There exist frames where there is a pure electrostatic field and no magnetic field at all
The crucial point is that in cosmic plasma there is always a magnetic field. One of the endearing puzzles is where that magnetic field came from initially: http://www.leif.org/research/The-Origin-of-Magnetic-Fields.pdf
David Thomson says:
September 8, 2013 at 8:37 am
if our Sun is the child of a supernova, and the inner planets of our solar system have iron cores, then there is no way in hell the Sun could form out of pure hydrogen.
==========
agreed. either the core is made of heavier elements, or neutrons, or there is a mechanism by which stars eject the heavy elements from their cores.
the notion that neutron cores are more common than thought would help explain why the universe doesn’t run out of hydrogen as it ages. the collapse of the heavier elements in the core into neutrons recycles the heavy elements into hydrogen as the neutrons decay.
ferd berple says:
September 9, 2013 at 11:33 pm
>i>or there is a mechanism by which stars eject the heavy elements from their cores.
The Universe were born with 75% Hydrogen and 25% Helium, but no heavy elements [like iron]. Heavy stars fuses Hydrogen into Helium and later in their lives into heavier elements like Oxygen, Carbon, and Iron. These stars explode [supernovae] and spread their heavier elements into space which becomes steadily enriched with such [to the tune of about 1% for the gas from which the Sun condensed]. All this is very well-understood in quantitative detail.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 9, 2013 at 10:02 am
Salvatore Del Prete says:
September 9, 2013 at 9:54 am
Leif, I am going to use solarham.com, and solen ap index web-sites.
They say the correct number is 113.0 that is the number I am going by.
Well, you should use the number put out by the people actually measuring the flux. But if you insist on solarham, you may be dismayed that they from now on will put out numbers that are increasingly larger than what the sun puts out.
Whether you use the observed or the 1 AU adjusted flux depends on what your application is. For comparisons of solar output Leif is right, the 1 AU adjusted values must be used. Both solarham and solen.info reports the measured value because that’s what’s relevant to radio amateurs. Of course, those that measure the flux reports both the measured flux and adjusted to 1 AU. Salvatore, as a user of the data it is your responsibility to know when to use one or the other.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 9, 2013 at 11:40 pm (replying to)
ferd berple says:
September 9, 2013 at 11:33 pm
There are some 10^55 atoms heavier than helium and hydrogen in this solar system alone.
We know that the solar system has been “isolated” with almost no heavy atoms “drifting in” from interstellar space for the past 4.5 billion years, and the continents and land masses have been stable certainly since the stromatolites on my shelf were first growing some 3.5 billion years ago. . If the universe began 13.5 billions years ago (13.5 x 10^9 years ago), and very one of these 10^54 individual atoms came from a string of successive supernovas spewing dust and gas from supernova to supernova to their final rendezvous with the future solar system’s position in the galaxy 5 x 10^9 years ago ….
By this theory, how many successive supenovas were needed to be in exactly the right place to throw their new material into this particular orbit at exactly the right time?
See, any dust or plasma or ion headed the wrong direction from any one of those predesssor supernovas would go elsewhere. It could not under any circumstance head towards the solar system’s future position. ANY dust or gas or plasma or ion headed towards a “normal” sun or dark sun or other planet any time in the intervening 8 billiopn years would be lost to this solar system, because it would “stay there” and NOT ever go back into a supernova to get thrown out again.
We know now that one “ordinary”: supernova happened in about 1053 (when its light reached here from the Crab Nebula. But the gasses from that supernova are still only 5-10 light years away from the source. Dust speeds are non-relativistic, they are not faster than the speed of light. Based on real world “data” from this explosion, the dust from one supernova must itself travel for millions of years just to “perhaps” fall into the next gravity cloud.
Perhaps it is time some one did a “thought experiment” and figured out – not the probability of life occuring on some other planet around some other star, but the probablility of all 10^54 atoms we know are here in this solar system getting here in only 8 billion years.
That’s what? How many supernova’s – that are now invisible! – were used up creating the 10^54 atoms in our solar system in only 8 x 10^8 years?
Where did their black hole remnants go? If we only see one or two supernova’s a year now out of billions of stars, why were there 10^30 supernova per year for billions of years just a while ago in just our little place in the universe?
Hint: If a supernova throws out atoms and ions and dust in a full 4 pi steradians direction, how many atoms are thrown out in exactly the right direction to hit the next supernova in time to go through its explosion and get thrown into exactly the right direction to get thrown into exactly the right direction to get pulled into our solar system’s proto-dust cloud? Now, remember, a single supernova goes through Helium burning, Carbon burning, oxygen burning, neon burning, etc etc etc up until it is creating iron and the heavier metals. All that takes time – or different universe with different physics than we have operating right now.
But any single supernova that throws out a carbon atom that we have now, did NOT get to fuze that carbon atom into higher and heavier elements. Any carbon or oxygen or neon atom we see today means that the iron and nickel and manganese and uranium atom we DO see needs their own predecessor atoms of carbon and helium and oxygen and etc etc. Its not that any given supernova did not throw out many different atoms – obviously they do! But how many are needed to get as many of all of the elements as we actually have in place in the solar system?
RACookPE1978 says:
September 10, 2013 at 12:07 am
But how many are needed to get as many of all of the elements as we actually have in place in the solar system?
One supernova actually produces about 10^56 atoms, enough for a hundred solar systems. The current rate is 3 supernova per century which for an age of the Galaxy of 10 billion years would produce 300 million supernova, each with enough for 100 solar systems, so for 30 billion stars. Now, the supernova rate was higher when the Galaxy was young and stars older than the sun have less heavy elements than the sun, so there is enough to go around for all 200 billion stars in our Galaxy.
Everything interesting in a plasma happens because of electric currents which are generated by moving the neutral, conducting plasma across magnetic fields.
That’s an improvement over your saying no electric fields in plasma. But you are still stuck on this idea that magnetic fields are definitely precursory and causal to all electric currents in space. The reality is they cause each other and are inseparable. No electric current = no magnetic field, and vice versa. If you find a frame which sets J to zero, then curl B will be zero too, and so there’s no magnetic field. Any ‘background’ magnetic field is due to an electric current somewhere else.
and I can’t let your mention of ‘magnetic reconnection’ slip by. Magnetic reconnection is a fudge\myth invented by astronomers who never took a module in electromagnetism and who refused to consider electric currents in space science. All sudden rapid change of magnetic field arrangements are due to electric discharge.
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.
Arrgh, not the “iron sun” nonsense! No, no, noooo! I mean Je-hoosis, you’d think that observations of solar neutrino flux, a small mountain of astronomical data (including the entire Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and theory and observations of stellar types), the thermonuclear bomb, a medium sized mountain of nuclear physics theory and data from collider experiments, cosmic abundance of isotopes, observations of the age/distance to/of type I, II and III stars and their abundance of metals (where I do not mean iron) would suffice but I guess not.
Naturally, there are any number of “invisible fairy” explanations for stars that work perfectly well until you get down to the “and then a miracle happened” source of the free energy being dissipated by them. At that point, using our knowledge of the four forces empirically well-supported thus far, the only real players are gravity (for e.g. brown dwarfs and stellar remnants) and fusion. Hell, even the cutoff between brown dwarf and an actual star is pretty much the advent of the mass that enables fusion in the core, IIRC from my relatively few passes teaching astronomy (not astrophysics, although I did love the one astrophysics course I took way back as an undergrad:-).
Besides, if there was an actual electrostatic field running around in the solar system, one would think that it would be observable and long since observed. It’s not like detecting even weak electric fields is particularly difficult.
But sure, in the rest frame of free (as opposed to confined in e.g. a tube) plasma, bare charges are immediately screened and strongly repel, making it very difficult to imagine creating a macroscopic electric field. But magnetohydrodynamics is not my strong suit (partly because it is even more fiendishly difficult than plain old hydrodynamics, which is ALREADY fiendishly difficult in the general case).
rgb
I was just going to say to RACookPE1978 that innumeracy is no excuse in this day and age for incredulousness to the point where you will begin talking like one of those thunderbolts cats.
Had you never seen a computer, read an encyclopedia, attended school, or so forth then perhaps it would make sense to be baffled and possibly even fail to grasp how ridiculous all the electric universe nonsense self evidently is.
If you grasp enough to follow an article with even a little technical complexity, then you should be able to unravel the thunderbolt crap within the night if you try.
If you are lured in by the nonsense and the whole “we’re just modern day Galileo-types” they spew, a simple check of how much actual math and science they use compared to vague and broad statements, unsupported conjectures, or flat out nonsensical bunk disguised with long words that look vaguely scientific and impressive to a layman… well, that should be enough.
As Leif said, you’re off by over an order of magnitude on the material ejected by a single supernova, you don’t seem to grasp the mechanism of fusion shells, nor do you seem to have investigated supernova nucleosynthesis beyond a cursory glance and evident dismissal.
If you’re curious about how a star could produce the various metals (anything heavier than Helium is a metal in astronomy) you’re in luck, there is an actual scientist with specific understanding of stellar functioning right here to ask for insight.
I’m sure he wouldn’t mind condensing a bit of what he knows to help clear up some of the issues you have, and you might even find it is enjoyable to admit when you were wrong as long as you work to rectify that situation.
meemoe_uk says:
September 10, 2013 at 4:59 am
Any ‘background’ magnetic field is due to an electric current somewhere else.
any electric current is due to a change in the magnetic field or to a conductor [neutral plasma] moving across a magnetic field. I gave you link http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8454.pdf stufy it carefully and learn.
Magnetic reconnection is a fudge\myth invented by astronomers
MR is observed by spacecraft and in the laboratory. E.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/Yamada10rmp.pdf or http://www.leif.org/EOS/Yamada-Reconnection-2007.pdf
All sudden rapid change of magnetic field arrangements are due to electric discharge.
All electric discharges are due to a rapid change of the magnetic field.
rgbatduke says:
September 10, 2013 at 6:44 am
you’d think that observations of solar neutrino flux, a small mountain of astronomical data (including the entire Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and theory and observations of stellar types), the thermonuclear bomb, a medium sized mountain of nuclear physics theory and data from collider experiments, cosmic abundance of isotopes, observations of the age/distance to/of type I, II and III stars and their abundance of metals (where I do not mean iron) would suffice but I guess not.
As meemoe illustrates, your ‘guess not’ is correct.
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.
Wrong. I for one have told you before what is driving the currents. Plasmoid fusion reactions. They have been studied in the lab for decades. They are hot enough to fuse matter and propel ion and electrons in opposite directions to great distances. Their unmistakable signature is a high energy bipolar beam, as studied in the lab and as observed in space ; so called astrophysical jets.
The evidence has been sat on your desk for decades, but you can’t ever admit such an amazing phenomena because you’d have to burn half of your books and papers and admit you woz wrong and the electric universe community were right.
Yeah, see, this is what I was saying… meemoe, that whole thing you’ve got going there… stop it, ‘kay?
meemoe_uk says:
September 10, 2013 at 9:27 am
Wrong. I for one have told you before what is driving the currents. Plasmoid fusion reactions. They have been studied in the lab for decades.
By supplying continuous external electric currents to them. Those reaction do not arise spontaneously. Here you can learn more about astrophysical jets: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast825/ch13.pdf
The basic mechanism is “Stars form in molecular clouds, where the temperature is T ≈ 10K, and the sound speed is a ≈ 0.3 kms−1. The molecular clouds contain dense cores that are supported by magnetic pressure. As the magnetic field slowly diffuses outward, the core collapses to form a rotating protostar, which accretes matter both from an accretion disk and from a roughly spherical infall of gas and dust. When the protostar becomes sufficiently massive, deuterium burning ignites, and a stellar wind starts to push its way outward. At first, the stellar wind is contained by the infalling matter, which has been compared to the lid of a pressure cooker. Eventually, the ram pressure of the stellar wind breaks through the ‘lid’ at its weakest points, the rotational poles of the protostar (where the column depth of accreting matter is smallest). The next stage is a young stellar object, with jets flowing outward along the two rotational poles, and an accretion disk lying in the equator.”
Solar cycle 24 lookng weaker and weaker and more an more like solar cycle 5.
While mainstream predictions continue to be off.
Sunspot area coverage why it should be used.
If there is one large sunspot equaling say 3 earth’s your sunspot count is 10.
Area coverage large.
If there are three specks counted as sunspots, sunspot count is 30.
Area coverage small.
The above shows how misleading a sunspot count can be.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
September 10, 2013 at 9:49 am
Solar cycle 24 lookng weaker and weaker and more an more like solar cycle 5.
As you all can see from http://www.leif.org/Research/Wolf-SSN-for-SC5.png, our knowledge of what SC5 looked like is not very good, so a detailed comparison does not make much sense. Note that the blue curve shows what Rudolf Wolf thought the cycle looked like. The Layman’s Sunspot Number is [avowedly] trying to duplicate Wolf’s method and data.
You are still polluting WUWT without bringing anything to the table. Expect the SSN to drop to zero several times over the maximum just as it did during SC14.
Solar cycle 14 is not like solar cycle 24. Completly different circumstances.
[Graphical comparison of cycles 10, 12, 13, 14, 16 and 24 (last update September 1, 2013)]
The above comes from the solen ap index web-site which shows solar cycle 24 clearly weaker then solar cycles 10,12,13,14, and 16.
Leif is going to say it it matching solar cycle 14 only for a period of 1 year or so out of the whole time frame. Other then that weaker.
The 22-year cycle of geomagnetic and solar Wind activity
http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/public/…/Cliver_22YearCycle_96JA02037.pdf
Your links are kinda failing to work there dude.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 9, 2013 at 2:43 pm
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.
Kadaka, the link above was for the The HMI Intensitygram from the SDO, the PROBA2 doesn’t show sunspots, but I do use both to make composites which gives a good view of the suns features magnetic loops etc.. along with Sunspots http://thetempestspark.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/swap-hmi-intensitygram-composite-25-july-2013.jpg
As for any of the official suppliers of Sunspot Numbers, I read awhile back that if you divide the number by 15 you’ll get the approximate number of individual sunspots visible on the solar disk,
So for-example; if we took the WUWT widget Number of 75 and divided it by 15 it will give us 5 individual spots, in this case we can check it with the hmii which today shows 4 tiny specks. These 4 specks as Lief pointed out above “The Air Force does not record spots which are less than 10 micro-hemispheres [counts them as 0.0]. “ which is why these specks do not show up in the sunspot area record, So, if the sunspot area record shows a count of 0.0 and the WUWT shows a count of 75 and the hmii shows less than 5 specks I would define the solar disk as ‘effectively blank’, but that doesn’t mean there are no spots at all on the surface of the sun but only on the solar disk the we record.
Personally I like to use the daily sunspot area record for checking spot numbers. but the sunspot number record is very useful too.
As you all can see from http://www.leif.org/research/Wolf-SSN-for-SC5.png, our knowledge of what SC5 looked like is not very good, so a detailed comparison does not make much sense. Note that the blue curve shows what Rudolf Wolf thought the cycle looked like. The Layman’s Sunspot Number is [avowedly] trying to duplicate Wolf’s method and data.
Salvatore Del Prete says:
September 10, 2013 at 9:55 am
Sunspot area coverage why it should be used.
As I have shown you repeatedly, on a monthly or yearly basis [which is what matters for climate if the Sun has anything to do it] the area and the count match extremely well.