“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
That is but one study and other studies reach a different conclusion. I never put much faith in one study especially when it come to solar or climate.
In addition those that do subscribe to the angular solar momentum theory correctly forecasted this prolonged solar minimum while many using so called conventional metholds were way way off.
This study does not convince or impress me in the least.
Thank YOU TALLBOKE, this study is akin to AGW theory which is a joke at best.
Salvatore: Claiming to prove a negative is always a risky business. It shows they are running scared of the rapid advances being made by the solar planetary theory in the literature.
Abreu et al have had another paper published since the one Comoron and Bluster tried to attack.
Those that subscribe to some other explanation for solar cycles have not shown they have the skill to use what they believe in to predict properly. Until that changes their theories are no better then the angular momentum theory, that does have a basis to fall back on if one looks at past history, and planet angular momentum configurations versus solar activity..
Past history may be hindsight but I VALUE it.
Exactly, they are scared and I might add clueless. Geoff Sharp’s work in this area has been sensational!
Many ,many have done extensive work in this area and have reached an entirely different conclusion.
This is so much like AGW theory ,both have nothing to back up their claims.
As I speak solar flux sub 100 and this is the predicted solar max. by the so called conventional solar scientist. Next prediction please.
tallbloke says:
September 8, 2013 at 10:59 am
Carla: If you don’t want to have to give awkward answers, keep ‘em asking the wrong questions.
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The solar helio current sheet is conjoined with the interstellar magnetic field which is turning out to be a rotating current sheet. And well so all the planetary bodies have currents, sheets and fields..
Just helping to build on the CMB in the local vicinity. You know that that background is partly due to “ITS” interaction with astrospheres.. ah like our sun..
Do the planets in their orbits disrupt and cause instabilities in the current sheet, sure, all kinds of humps bumps and holes .. spaghetti magnetic fields too..
Carla: I asked this question on my own blog yesterday:
“What if the planets and the Sun were both acting in concert to modulate the shape of the heliospheric current sheet and that affected the levels of Svensmarks Earthbound cosmic rays?”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/oldbrew-and-tallbloke-why-phi-part-2-the-gas-giant-planets/comment-page-1/#comment-59042
tallbloke said here on September 8, 2013 at 10:03 am:
tallbloke said there on July 29, 2013 at 12:19 pm (bold added):
*smirk*
Ah heck, Ian Wilson said there on July 29, 2013 at 3:29 am:
Calling Leif a pit bull is an upgrade, around here Vuk and company treat him like a yapping little terrier.
So Leif is now the Watts’ attack dog? Kenji will be so upset!
As to the “discussion” there, sounds like a big echo chamber. The believers just keep making similar noises until they get a resonance they like, then call it a consensus.
I may learn slow, but at least I learn here. If I wanted to see mutual brainwashing to a common set of delusions I’d watch MSNBC.
Think of it this way Tallbloke..
If the sun is in free fall analogous to a whirlpool or drain, how are the subsidiaries in the drain pool going to get enough momentum to go back up the whirlpool drain to make a difference?
Ian W says:
September 7, 2013 at 4:38 pm
“There are those that would contend that a quiet sun has been shown to cause climate change. The noted astronomer William Herschel first put this forward. “
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Yes, the contention is out there. Show me the data which supports the contention.
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” The discussion is not way off topic –”
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Tell me how the statement that ‘the sun is the energy source’ is really meaningful to the discussion…
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“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?”
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Didn’t make any difference then, either… afaics
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“Or is your mind made up already? Just think a simple check and you could shoot down all those tin foil hat theories – or not ;-)”
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Just so you know, my interest in solar influences on our climate is from an amateur’s (often sophomoric) perspective, but I’ve learned a thing or two. If I made an incorrect statement, then show me, as others here have.
If the sun does go relatively quiescent for a prolonged period, ala Dalton, then we shall see- maybe, but where’s the proof of influence so far?
Carla says:
September 8, 2013 at 11:33 am
Do the planets in their orbits disrupt and cause instabilities in the current sheet, sure, all kinds of humps bumps and holes .. spaghetti magnetic fields too..
_______________________
…and not a single residual effect from the
harmonica virginsharmonic convergence…Leif Svalgaard on September 8, 2013 at 1:39 am
phlogiston says:September 8, 2013 at 1:33 am
I can prove mathematically that its a nonlinear oscillator.
The sun is not even an oscillator as there is no restoring force.
I said I cant prove it. Not can. But I misspelt it.
Carla: The rate of axial rotation of both Venus and Saturn has dropped by six minutes or more over the last 15 years. Mainstream “scientists are baffled”.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/scientists-baffled-to-discover-that-venus-spin-is-slowing-down/
vukcevic says:
September 8, 2013 at 7:30 am
Doc, that is another nonsense, you know it well, and you said often enough that the polar fields are built by decaying sunspots semi-neutralised magnetic field towards the poles. Yet in 1960 we had by far strongest solar cycle ever, SC19 , the source of the 1964 polar field.
That would totally invalidate all the solar science from Babcock, Leyton and Parker to the present day.
If the polar field were just determined by the current cycle, then a large cycle would result in a large polar field which in the B-L mechanism in turn would predict a large next cycle. In this manner cycles would continue to grow or at best all have the same size. You would never get a small cycle after a large one, but we do often get that, e.g. cycle 20 and cycle 5 or even cycles 23 and 24 following the strong cycle 22. Or get a strong one following a small one, like SC21 following SC20.
The solution to the problem is that the formation of the polar fields has a large element of randomness in it, the magnetic field elements being jerked around by the convective solar granulation. Of the magnetic field erupted in sunspots, only a small part [between 1/100 and 1/1000] actually makes it to the poles. The resulting polar magnetic flux is as small as the flux of only about 5 of the ~3000 active regions erupting during a sunspot cycle and observations show that the flux arrives by the chance survival of a small number [5-8] of flux ‘surges’. So even as we would expect that the larger amount of flux from a large cycle would give the us more flux ‘to work with’ [and so explains why we often have several large cycles in a row] the random element is so large that sooner or later that progression would by chance break down and we get a small polar field with an attendant small following cycle, as observed.
vukcevic says:
September 8, 2013 at 7:03 am
You were then young and naïve man, being misled by your Russian ‘official’ host tovarisch Severniy, I looked at his data and they are full of holes.
Since when is the great Vuk so expert that he can declare that the data by one of the pioneers of solar magnetism are full of holes?
Do you really think that tovarisch Severniy would present you with good data at height of the cold war, at beginning of the space age, following the Cuban crisis and the President Kennedy’s assassination ? ? ?
Severny was a personal friend of mine and of my colleagues so you better wash your mouth out with soap. In any event, we have ample evidence that his instrument was capable enough, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/1970SoPh-15-3S.pdf and Bob Howard at Mount Wilson also reported weak fields, e.g. http://www.leif.org/EOS/1969BAAS-Howard.pdf and http://www.leif.org/EOS/1977ARA-Howard-Polar-Fields.pdf This whole matter was thoroughly discussed in the 1970s when I was there in the ‘thick of things’. There was even doubt that the polar fields reversed [as they were so weak and difficult to measure] until Wilcox and Scherrer using my sector polarities from the Earth’s polar regions going back to 1926 showed that the solar polar fields actually did reverse.
Well I did something anyway. It is a bit tricky. Here’s a YouTube video (sorry about the desktop mess in the beginning, please ignore it):
http://youtu.be/TJQTQOdGK-Y
I resurrected my gravity simulator and started a simulation Jan 1, 2013, except I gave Earth the mass of the Sun, so they became a kind of double star pair. Then it proceeds slowly in the beginning, showing how Mercury and Venus is thrown out, as Mars enters an orbit around the “double star”.
tallbloke says:
September 8, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Carla: The rate of axial rotation of both Venus and Saturn has dropped by six minutes or more over the last 15 years. Mainstream “scientists are baffled”.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/scientists-baffled-to-discover-that-venus-spin-is-slowing-down/
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Can only respond what I know.
They say since cycle 10 our suns rotation has been slowing also. (albeit tiny amount) But slowing also.
With respect to cycle 24, solar equatorial rotation is faster this cycle, with a slowing in polar rotation.
Earth follows cycle by speeding up of rotation.
And you said Venus and Saturn axial rotation dropped six minutes in 15 year.
conumdrum indeed
tallbloke says:
September 8, 2013 at 11:04 am
Abreu et al have had another paper published …
Abreu points out: “energy considerations clearly show that the planets can not be the direct cause of the solar activity (since this would lead to observable variations in the orbital parameters)” and as we have seen here, those are not observed.
“””””””…….Paul Westhaver says:
September 7, 2013 at 10:45 pm
Well I guess the science is settled now.
jeeese!
More like, the models and methods they tested against the outputs they measured, showed little cause and effect.
Fred Hoyle went to his grave denying the big bang…….”””””””
Well Carl Sagan went to his grave without collecting so much as one binary digit, of scientific evidence (peer reviewed of course) of ANY sort of life; intelligent or otherwise outside of a shell about +/-20 km or less about mean sea level on planet earth.
Of course anthropogenic insertion of earth life, into regions outside the shell of life, doesn’t count; might even be science fraud.
What would happen if you swapped Jupiter and Mercury?
Is the solar wind at that distance so aggressive it would disperse the gas giant, with the gas then accreting onto the Sun?
How fast would Jupiter have to orbit?
This is not the relativistic version, appropriate with the gravity fields involved, just an estimate, but…
Centrifugal: F = Mj * (v^2)/r
Newton Universal Gravitation: F = (G*Mj*Ms)/(r^2)
Mj = Mass Jupiter, 1.898*10^27 kg
Ms = Mass Sun, 1.989*10^30 kg
G = Gravitation Constant, ~6.674×10^−11 N m^2 kg^-2
r = Mercury orbital distance, 57,910,000 km
v = Orbital speed
Set forces equal, cancel out, match units:
v^2 = (G*Ms)/r
v^2 = (6.674*10^-11 N m^2 kg^-2) * (1/1000 km/m)^2 * 1.989*10^30 kg / (57,910,000 km)
v^2 = 2.292*10^6
v = 540.6 km/sec
2*pi*r = circumference (aka one orbit, revolution)
v / (2*pi*r) = frequency
540.6 km/sec / (2 * 3.14159 * 57,910,000 km)
= 1.486 * 10^-6 rev/sec
Invert for orbital period:
2.059 X 10^6 sec/rev * (1min/60sec) * (1hr/60min) * (1day/24/hr)
= 2.383 days
Wow, that’s fast!
With such a fast-moving influence, the Earth would get an added tiny ripple in the orbital distance, likely lost in the noise.
As to Jupiter itself, wouldn’t it become tidally locked, as solar emissions shape it into a teardrop?
If you swapped Mercury and Jupiter, wouldn’t we soon have the Jupiter Plasma Belt, which would not yield any gravity-based orbital perturbations?
Carla: Yes, there’s much we don’t know. On the bright side, I think I’ve worked out why Venus spins retrograde, and why it’s hot at the surface.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/scientists-baffled-to-discover-that-venus-spin-is-slowing-down/comment-page-1/#comment-59051
This previous comment now “awaiting moderation” for the first hour. *groan*
tallbloke says:
September 8, 2013 at 11:39 am
Carla: I asked this question on my own blog yesterday:
“What if the planets and the Sun were both acting in concert to modulate the shape of the heliospheric current sheet and that affected the levels of Svensmarks Earthbound cosmic rays?”
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/oldbrew-and-tallbloke-why-phi-part-2-the-gas-giant-planets/comment-page-1/#comment-59042
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First warp and second warp, start at the corona. Part of which is winding down into the solar southern hemisphere, lately deeper? Which makes a strange looking deeper wave boundary between the inward and outward magnetic field. Separated at the equator.
They call this,
The wide skirt of the bashful ballerina: Hemispheric asymmetry
of the heliospheric magnetic field in the inner and outer heliosphere and I say he’s not bashful at all take a look at the ahh b j coming under that skirt..
Have a look at figure 2. Although the diagram shows where the excesses and deficit of GCR are within the heliosphere. It also shows along the magnetic equator where, ” The regions with the largest gradient in the cosmic ray intensity (in white between the excess and deficit) are approxi-
mately located along the magnetic equator ”at infinity” (see text).
Also shown the celestial and ecliptic equators.””
ANISOTROPY OF TEV COSMIC RAYS AND THE OUTER HELIOSPHERIC BOUNDARIES
P. Desiati
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3144.pdf
Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC)
Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
A. Lazarian
Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Draft version October 30, 2012