I may not get time to study this ATM thread for a little while as my own ones are busy enough. :-)

However if you do a FFT of the sunspot numbers you will find a number of peaks, with the three main ones being around 11.9, 11.1 and 9.9 years, with the 11.1 year one being strongest. The periods appear to be associated with the following planetary configurations :- Jupiter perihelion 11.86 years, J-S conjunctions 9.93 years and J-V-E syzygy configurations 11.07 years. Actually there is a J-N effect (sum of frequencies that also gets 11.07 years). The beats between these three periods goes a long way to explaining the envelope of the sunspots numbers with cycles of the order of 90 and 170 years.