Jupiter influencing sunspots - Page 2

Neverfly · #31 (**permalink**) 06-March-2008, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimP

I’m confused. If the Sun has a wobble and we identify other suns with planets by looking for a wobble, then why is it such a big stretch of the imagination that the planets in our solar system are some how influencing sunspots? Planets can cause there stars to wobble but not influence their sunspots?

Never base an assumption by comparison.

I can cause you to wobble too, but that doesn't mean I cause your pimples.

JimP · #32 (**permalink**) 06-March-2008, 11:45 PM

What causes our sun to wobble then?

Neverfly · #33 (**permalink**) 06-March-2008, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimP

What causes our sun to wobble then?

The gravitational tug from the planets.

What causes SunSpots?

JimP · #34 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 01:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverfly

The gravitational tug from the planets.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverfly

What causes SunSpots?

I don't know.

Neverfly · #35 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 02:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimP

I don't know.

Ahh see...
We need to know that.

I looked at your work, charts and graphs.
My point is not that I am saying you are wrong- I am saying that we need a lot more information before basing conclusions.

You seem to be asking "Could this be it?"
And that is GREAT

But don't feel persecuted or like people are "closed to the idea."

That is not the case. Maybe there is a correlation. Maybe there is not.
By asking you to prove your claim- You are given the opportunity to make a discovery- or learn that you went down the wrong path.

It isn't that people just don't want to believe it. It's that we want proof. You Could be right there is a correlation- that's no problem. You just need to convince us so.

Hornblower · #36 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 02:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimP

I’m confused. If the Sun has a wobble and we identify other suns with planets by looking for a wobble, then why is it such a big stretch of the imagination that the planets in our solar system are some how influencing sunspots? Planets can cause there stars to wobble but not influence their sunspots?

In my opinion "wobble" is a poor choice of a word. It is orbital motion, nothing more and nothing less.

The gravitational action of the planets causes the Sun to move in a complex looping path that sometimes carries it upwards of half a million miles from the barycenter, but as I pointed out earlier, the Sun "feels" nothing but a vanishingly small amount of tidal action. It is the nature of the rather gentle gravitational beast. I would be flabbergasted if this is enough to affect the electrodynamics of its innards significantly, and so far no one has offered a plausible effect from anything else related to the planets.

JimP · #37 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 04:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverfly

My point is not that I am saying you are wrong- I am saying that we need a lot more information before basing conclusions.

I agree

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverfly

It isn't that people just don't want to believe it. It's that we want proof. You Could be right there is a correlation- that's no problem. You just need to convince us so.

I’m working on that. I’ll never be able to provide a proof—but maybe some good circumstantial evidence. I came here looking for constructive criticism. I just could not believe the high r^2 values I was getting.

Neverfly · #38 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 05:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimP

I agree

I’m working on that. I’ll never be able to provide a proof—but maybe some good circumstantial evidence. I came here looking for constructive criticism. I just could not believe the high r^2 values I was getting.

That's fine, It was your posts asking "Is it so far fetched that....?!" that inspired my response

orionjim · #39 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimP

What causes our sun to wobble then?

I think saying the sun wobbles is a correct term; NASA can look at a star and see how much it wobbles and calculate the mass of the planet causing the wobble and by measuring the time of one complete wobble using Kepler’s Laws you can tell how far the planet is from the star.

Hornblower’s gravitational action is probably a better definition of what is happening; but the term wobble is what is used a lot.

Your view of the sunspot data (in my opinion) is not measuring wobble, it is measuring the correlation of Jupiter’s distance from the sun against the number of sunspots “we see” on earth. In that last sentence the difference between your view and my view is what I have in quotes “we see”. The difference is I’m allowing two paths to follow: 1) Jupiter is part of the causal system of sunspots and 2) Jupiter is not part of the causal system but affects our ability to count sunspots. In your OP and other posts you would look only at 1) Jupiter is part of the causal system.

As I explained to Hornblower the high r^2 value you are seeing is coming from the data being averaged twice and the pieces of data being averaged are quite large; this has the effect of really smoothing the data out and again in my opinion tends to rule Jupiter out as part of the causal system. If you were to take only one solar cycle and do your correlation again using a smaller time frame my guess would be the correlation wouldn’t be all that great. If your correlation was high then looking for a cause system would be the thing to do.

Does that mean that your high r^2 number doesn’t mean anything? Not at all; it means that when you remove a lot of noise from the data Jupiter stands out as having some type of effect on how many sunspots we see.
I don’t know if you a familiar with the Maunder Minimum that happened back about 1645, but there was a 70 year period where we had no sunspots (or very few). I am fairly certain Jupiter was still orbiting the sun; but no sunspots. If you study sunspots this is one of the greatest mysteries that really has never been solved. How could it happen?

Using your Alcyone Ephemeris 3.2 software look at where the planets were in the 1640 to 1650 timeframe. If you take the time to do this I think you will begin to see the value of your work.

Now using your Alcyone software look at the planet alignment for 2018 to 2022. Does it look familiar?

NASA’s sunspot expert is Dr. David Hathaway; try Googling:
“nasa hathaway cycle 25” (no quotes)

He is predicting cycle 25 to be one of the weakest in history (history meaning from cycle 1 to cycle 24). Also note he is predicting cycle 24 to be strong; there has been much discussion on this site about cycle 24 being weak, but Hathaway and other solar experts don’t see it that way.

The real question is what is the mechanism behind the weak and strong solar cycles? In my opinion (this is where your data helps) it is the conservation of angular momentum of the planets causing one of the sun’s poles to tilt towards the earth; this affects the number of sunspots we see.
For this to happen the sun and planets have to be a system in the strictest sense and the sun has to work like a gyroscope (the outer spins much faster than the interior).

If you’re not that familiar with actions and reactions of a gyroscope here is a youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCcfKBfmyP4
This movie is about 5 minutes long and the first 3 minutes are pretty boring but at about 3 minutes and 50 seconds in he starts to show how the gyroscope reacts when you apply pressure to the aft gimbal (the outer gimbal). Notice that applying very little pressure causes the spinning pole of the gyroscope to drop. Picture this as the sun and the pole of the sun drops from the top to where the equator was; the sunspots from earth’s view wouldn’t be visible. But even worse since the pole of the sun is facing the earth the sun’s main flow of heat and radiation will not be flowing towards the earth; it’s going to get colder. (Read about the Maunder Minimum).

This can’t happen to the sun can it? Well, the way I read your chart is: yes it can and does! And the thing to remember is Jupiter is only providing 60 percent of our solar systems angular momentum, throw in Saturn and it goes up to 85 percent.

Jim

JimP · #40 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orionjim

As I explained to Hornblower the high r^2 value you are seeing is coming from the data being averaged twice and the pieces of data being averaged are quite large; this has the effect of really smoothing the data out and again in my opinion tends to rule Jupiter out as part of the causal system.

Jim

I don’t believe that I have averaged any data twice. Which graph are you referring to?

Thank you for your input. It gives me a lot to think about. My comment about the Suns wobble came from your web site.

JimP · #41 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 07:34 PM

I looked at the top 4 ½ % of the months with the highest sunspots.

But after looking at the range of the months I realized that 56% of them were in the last 70 years out of a range of 259 years. So I am sure that this is affecting my data some if not a lot.

JimP · #42 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 07:56 PM

I took the 140 records and sorted them by year. Then I deleted out the duplicate years. This gave me unique years where the monthly sunspot number was in the top 4 ½ %.
This is my list.

Then I marked the location of the peak years on my “The Solar Systems Torque” graph. If there were consecutive years with high sunspot numbers I only used one arrow. All of the arrows were close enough to the aphelion and perihelion that this bears further analysis.

The six points on the positive side of the graph only vary by 14 % of the total range. And I guess that would mean that if you took there average, none of the 6 points would vary more than 7% from the average. That’s not a bad coincidence is it? I will double check my work.

orionjim · #43 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 08:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimP

I don’t believe that I have averaged any data twice. Which graph are you referring to?

I was referring to your first post.
On your chart you have 18 pieces of data plotted for 1 orbit of Jupiter.
I think this is 36 points equally spaced around Jupiter’s orbit and each point contains two pieces of data, one going away from the sun and one coming back. Each of these points contain approximately 4 months of data averaged together.
But this would be only for one orbit of Jupiter; but you have 21 or 22 orbits of Jupiter worth of data that I think you used. To get this data into the plot it must have somehow been combined. It could have been averaged or totaled (but the numbers aren’t big enough for totaling) so I assumed you averaged them.

All and all I liked the chart, I found it very interesting.

Jim

JimP · #44 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 09:24 PM

I exported the data to a database and did my totals and averaging. Then I brought it back into Excel and graphed it. I should have defined the ave_ss with a decimal. The r^2 would have gone up slightly. My process doesn’t distinguish between Jupiter coming or going. I just looked at distances.

Below is my spreadsheet data for the 8 month period.

Hornblower · #45 (**permalink**) 07-March-2008, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orionjim

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCcfKBfmyP4
This movie is about 5 minutes long and the first 3 minutes are pretty boring but at about 3 minutes and 50 seconds in he starts to show how the gyroscope reacts when you apply pressure to the aft gimbal (the outer gimbal). Notice that applying very little pressure causes the spinning pole of the gyroscope to drop. Picture this as the sun and the pole of the sun drops from the top to where the equator was; the sunspots from earth’s view wouldn’t be visible. But even worse since the pole of the sun is facing the earth the sun’s main flow of heat and radiation will not be flowing towards the earth; it’s going to get colder. (Read about the Maunder Minimum).

This can’t happen to the sun can it? Well, the way I read your chart is: yes it can and does! And the thing to remember is Jupiter is only providing 60 percent of our solar systems angular momentum, throw in Saturn and it goes up to 85 percent.

Jim

That motion that he induced with his finger did not simulate the torque which the planets exert on the presumably slightly oblate Sun. The way to simulate the latter would be to set the axis a few degrees off vertical and hang a small weight on the gymbal under the lower gyro bearing. That would attempt to move the axis tilt toward the vertical, and as a result the gyro would precess slowly and steadily in a conical pattern around the vertical coordinate.

The fact that Jupiter and Saturn have about 85% of the total angular momentum of the solar system, and the Sun's spin accounts for only about 2%, is beside the point. That tells us nothing about the magnitude and direction of the gravitational torque the planets exert on the Sun.

Please show us geometrically and dynamically, in a few simple steps, what it is you think I am missing.

orionjim · #46 (**permalink**) 08-March-2008, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hornblower

That motion that he induced with his finger did not simulate the torque which the planets exert on the presumably slightly oblate Sun. The way to simulate the latter would be to set the axis a few degrees off vertical and hang a small weight on the gymbal under the lower gyro bearing. That would attempt to move the axis tilt toward the vertical, and as a result the gyro would precess slowly and steadily in a conical pattern around the vertical coordinate.

Hanging a weight off the near gimbal would be using gravity and there is one thing you and I agree on and that is in no way can a planet’s gravity exert enough force on the sun to really cause any sizable effect. As I said before what I believe is moving it is the process of the conservation of angular momentum.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hornblower

The fact that Jupiter and Saturn have about 85% of the total angular momentum of the solar system, and the Sun's spin accounts for only about 2%, is beside the point. That tells us nothing about the magnitude and direction of the gravitational torque the planets exert on the Sun.

If Jupiter and Saturn were connected directly to the sun like the arms extended of an ice-skater starting a spin then when that skater brings their arms in to their side their spinning speed increases. This is the effect of the conservation of angular momentum. There are (at least) two problems with this analogy compared to the sun. The first is the planets aren’t connected to sun like the arms on a skater, but in the model on my website I show how they are connected. The second problem is the sun is so massive that the planets (even if they were connected) wouldn’t be able to speed it up like the skater moving their arms in. The question is what happens to the surplus of angular momentum? The planets are moving close to the equator of the sun and excess angular momentum will push in the direction like the guy pushing on the gyroscope and this pushing force could cause a shift in the poles of the sun.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hornblower

Please show us geometrically and dynamically, in a few simple steps, what it is you think I am missing.

If you looked at the model I presented it shows what you are asking for and more. The problem is this model is different than your gravity based model and provides a structure that combines the planets into a more connected system than any model that is gravity based only (that I’ve seen). The model I presented is capable of modeling all of the strangeness of the solar dynamo, but on its own does not help with the explanation of the Maunder Minimum. This model needs to separate into two causal systems one for the normal sunspot cycle and the other for special events like the Maunder Minimum. And the physics is there to do this if the model has enough structure to convert excess angular momentum and convert it into tilt. It is the structure and how much more the planets are connected than just being held in place by gravity.

I doubt that the above paragraph is going to satisfy you and I would love to discuss it further but I don’t think doing it on JimP’s thread is the appropriate place to do it. If you want to discuss it further let me know and I will start a thread.

Jim

JimP · #47 (**permalink**) 08-March-2008, 03:33 PM

Actually I do think it relates. Please continue and I will elaborate later.

Hornblower · #48 (**permalink**) 08-March-2008, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by orionjim

Hanging a weight off the near gimbal would be using gravity and there is one thing you and I agree on and that is in no way can a planet’s gravity exert enough force on the sun to really cause any sizable effect. As I said before what I believe is moving it is the process of the conservation of angular momentum.

If Jupiter and Saturn were connected directly to the sun like the arms extended of an ice-skater starting a spin then when that skater brings their arms in to their side their spinning speed increases. This is the effect of the conservation of angular momentum. There are (at least) two problems with this analogy compared to the sun. The first is the planets aren’t connected to sun like the arms on a skater, but in the model on my website I show how they are connected. The second problem is the sun is so massive that the planets (even if they were connected) wouldn’t be able to speed it up like the skater moving their arms in. The question is what happens to the surplus of angular momentum? The planets are moving close to the equator of the sun and excess angular momentum will push in the direction like the guy pushing on the gyroscope and this pushing force could cause a shift in the poles of the sun.

If you looked at the model I presented it shows what you are asking for and more. The problem is this model is different than your gravity based model and provides a structure that combines the planets into a more connected system than any model that is gravity based only (that I’ve seen). The model I presented is capable of modeling all of the strangeness of the solar dynamo, but on its own does not help with the explanation of the Maunder Minimum. This model needs to separate into two causal systems one for the normal sunspot cycle and the other for special events like the Maunder Minimum. And the physics is there to do this if the model has enough structure to convert excess angular momentum and convert it into tilt. It is the structure and how much more the planets are connected than just being held in place by gravity.

I doubt that the above paragraph is going to satisfy you and I would love to discuss it further but I don’t think doing it on JimP’s thread is the appropriate place to do it. If you want to discuss it further let me know and I will start a thread.

Jim

You chose to introduce your arguments into this thread. As long as JimP and the mods do not object, I will keep it right here.

The sudden change of the gyro's orientation was not caused by conservation of angular momentum. It was caused by a push from the guy's finger, which you clearly acknowledged. That force caused a redistribution of the gyro's angular momentum and that of Planet Earth, and in accordance with the law of conservation the vector sum of these components remained unchanged.

The Sun and the planets have two angular momentum components each, specifically an orbital and a spin component. If an interaction among these bodies causes a change in the orientation of the Sun's spin axis, that same interaction will cause a net opposite change among the other components and the resultant will be unchanged. That is what conservation of angular momentum is all about. It is part of a description of the properties of the reaction to a force, not the source of that force.

You appear to be arguing that some sort of interactive force could suddenly tip the Sun's spin axis about 90 degrees, cause it to remain pointed at the Earth for about 70 years, and then return it to its familiar position. If that force is not gravitational, then what is it, and how can it be intense enough to cause this action?

Please do not merely refer me back to your site. I looked and it was no help at all. I would prefer to see you try again to show us right here a concise statement of what it is that you think I am missing.

As for the Maunder minimum, I do not in principle see a temporary absence of sunspot activity as being any more strange than the irregularities of our weather cycles, such as the severe drought that has afflicted the southeastern USA for the past few months.