Further, from 1745, the two parallel cycles are roughly
Jupiter-Saturn: 1745 1755 1765 1775 1785 1795 1805 1815 1825 1835 1845 1855 1865 1875 1885 1895 1905 1915 1925
Sunspots: 1745 1756 1766 1777 1787 1797 1809 1819 1830 1840 1851 1861 1872 1883 1893 1904 1914 1925 1936
The Jupiter-Saturn cycle causes most of the barycentric radius variance, which in turn closely aligns to sunspot dates. Over the 180 year period from 1745, from the chart it appears that there were 16 sunspot cycles, and of these, at least 11 were in the time quartiles when the barycenter was at a local maximum or minimum. The very rough statistics of this is that sample = 16, expected result is 8, probability of result 11 is <7%. With an astronomic cycle of such a clear pattern this is a significant result. And when sample size is doubled to cover two cycles, ie from 1630 to 1990, probability is ~1.5%. Refining this rough approximation against data would strengthen the finding.

You need an electromagnetic theory that can tie activity on the sun - very loosely - to Jupiter. Let's look at what else is happening:

1) The electromagnetic interaction between Io and Jupiter is absolutely phenomenal - the Galileo adventures near Io were loaded with safe-mode events.

2) Jupiter is, by far, the largest producer of microwaves in the solar system: More active than the sun, and no one really understands why.

3) Jupiter has this giant storm that has lasted for centuries. No one really understands why.

Jim's correlation may not be new, but it is silly to dismiss it as coincidental without stepping back and exploring possible relationships between solar electromagnetic activity and the electromagnetic environment of Jupiter. Clues are welcome. New theories should be, too.

Question to explore : Does the strength of Jupiter's microwave emissions vary as a function of solar activity/proximity (or visa versa)?

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

This thread has indicated a sunspot correlation with cyclic effects of Jupiter’s gravity. The thing I find most interesting is the tight correlations between sunspot minima dates and the gravitational effect of Jupiter and Saturn over two cycles of the barycenter radius. The effect described does not look electromagnetic. Gravity moves the barycenter – how would planetary microwaves have a comparable effect on the sun?

My question again: How would the gravitational action of the planets have any effect on the Sun's electrodynamics?

Gravity does not move the barycenter. It moves the Sun and the planets, while the barycenter's motion remains inertial, in accordance with the law of conservation of momentum. For the purpose of this analysis we can treat the barycenter as stationary.

The separation of the barycenter and the Sun's center is immaterial. The barycenter is not a perturbing object. As I have argued before, all the Sun ever "feels" is a very small amount of tidal stretching because of a slight gravity gradient that is smoothly distributed over its volume.

Suppose we have a simplified model consisting only of the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn, with the planets in circular orbits. The Sun would experience spring tides with the planets in conjunction and again with them on opposite sides, of virtually the same amplitude. The fact that the barycenter would be much closer to the Sun's center in the latter is immaterial. With the planets at quadrature we would have neap tides. The complete conjunction cycle, with two spring tides and two neap tides, is about 20 years.

The difference between the spring and neap amplitudes is proportionately much less than that of the Earth's tides, because Saturn's tidal effect is only about 5% of Jupiter's share. With the actual elliptical orbits Jupiter's share should be upwards of 30% stronger at perihelion than at aphelion, because it varies as the inverse cube of the distance.

Do these tides, whose tiny magnitude I mentioned in an earlier post, have any observable periodic effect on the electrodynamics of the Sun's innards? Do the vastly stronger tides on Earth, as reckoned in proportion to its mass, have any analogous effect? I have never heard of any suggestions of the latter, so I remain immensely skeptical about the former.

Once again the appearance of a statistical correlation is not necessarily evidence of causality. Two independent, roughly periodic cycles could fortuitously have nearly enough the same period to give a false positive over the period under study. For all we know, if we had accurate enough data to go back through the Maunder minimum and earlier, the correlation found here might fall apart.

I cannot evaluate the merits of the statistical findings in the last few posts any more than I would have been able to comprehend a printed copy of a Beethoven piano sonata after a few piano lessons as child. I simply do not have the training or skill in this field. I would have to yield to independent, unbiased statisticians to judge them, should any wish to take the trouble to do so.

The patterns are largely explicable by gravity. The tendency of sunspot minima to align with barycentric maxima and minima is very strong. To my lay imagination, it looks a bit like a bungee jump where the stress on the jumper is maximised at the turning point, except for the sun for some reason this point of stress coincides with lesser activity. The stress on the sun of the reversal of direction of movement of the barycenter looks to be a key factor in the timing of sunspot minima.
Except that there is a clear statistical correlation between the barycentric pattern and sunspot cycles. If the barycenter is a function of solar system gravity, it makes sense to say gravity moves it. It is wrong to treat the barycenter as stationary when its movement looks to be a determining correlate for sunspot activity.
The tidal stretching may be small in % terms but is immense in mass.
JimP’s response to my question on tides showed that the spring-neap quadrature cycle is not an apparent factor, but that the conjunction and opposition of Jupiter and Saturn look highly determinant for both the barycenter cycle and the sunspots
There is an astoundingly clear similarity in pattern between the two 180 year sunspot cycles for which we have data. The movement of the barycenter, caused mainly by the big planets, correlates precisely with sunspot timing. I am not sure that the example of terrestrial tides is very informative, given that earth is so much smaller and denser than the sun.
Yes, except that the tendency of sunspot minima to correlate with barycentric maxima and minima is very strong.
The statistics I presented previously were very simple. On the null hypothesis of no link between sunspot cycles and the barycenter, half the sunspot minima should be during the quartiles where barycenter is at a local maximum or minimum. The data shows that most sunspot minima are in these quartiles, with a result, from a rough initial look, that would occur in only 1.5% of cycles by chance. With more time I would like to test this in more detail against the data, but it looks persuasive for a clear observable link between sunspot minima and barycentric radius.


Wikipedia comments at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot#Sunspot_variation “It has been speculated that there may be a resonant gravitational link between a photospheric tidal force from the planets, the dominant component by summing gravitational tidal force (75%) being Jupiter's with an 11 year cycle”. Wainwright, G. (2004). Jupiter's influence. New Scientist 2439, 30. This article is as follows

Jupiter's influence, 20 March 2004 , From New Scientist Print Edition. Glyn Wainwright, Leeds, UK : While the work of Mausumi Dikpati suggests that meridional flows in the sun's convective layer may allow us to forecast sunspot activity (6 March, p 38), other forces may also be at work. In particular, the giant planets in the solar system may play a role through the gravitational pull they exert on the massive amount of fluid flowing in the outer layer of the sun. Curiously, this gravitational force can be expressed as a Fourier series whose most important terms have interesting periodicities: one of these coincides with the 11-year cycle of the sunspots. What we may be seeing, therefore, is the direct influence of planetary tidal forces and their effects on the stability of the magnetic loops created in the meridional flows in the sun's convective layer. These forces could be a major factor in the cycle of magnetic loops believed to create the sunspots. Jupiter is the largest contributor to the solar plasma tides. It may eventually transpire that its influence contributes to our climate.
From issue 2439 of New Scientist magazine, 20 March 2004, page 32

An interesting paper from NASA - Correlation between sunspot cycles and planets Jupiter and Saturn, published by Slovak Central Observatory at http://www.suh.sk/obs/slnsem/mikula.pdf - searched for a correlation between sunspot cycles and Jupiter’s orbital period using the Fast Fourier Transform method.

Their concluding question, having established clear correlations, is "What causes the correlations between these periods?" The options they give are
A) Gravity acceleration of the planets creates radial motion of plasma that becomes subject to the Coriolis force and creates a “Hurricane in the Solar plasma” = Sunspots.
B) Gravity acceleration of the planets creates Solar tides and deforms the Solar sphere. Deformed Solar sphere will intersect with the Solar spherical shape that is controlled by magnetic forces and perturb the magnetic layer by forming Sunspots.
C) Do you have an alternative idea?
D) Or the correlations are coincidental.

And their Prediction
We predict a correlation between the cycles of magnetic activity in binary stars and their orbital periods. We also predict a correlation between cycles of magnetic activity in stars and the orbital periods of their planets.


My comment:The conjunct/opposite cycle shown in the chart posted here by JimP http://www.bnhclub.org/JimP/jp/comp1.JPG looks to show the clearest pattern. B - gravity acceleration - implies the changing speed of the planets themselves is the causal factor, as raised in the aphelion correlation hypothesis. However, it looks to me from study of this chart that gravity as such is the determining factor, given its influence on the position of the barycenter.

http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/tilmari/tilmari6.htm An Influence by Jupiter on the Sunspot cycle? Analysis by Timo Niroma, says "during the Jovian perihelion the sunspot number is always low. This means that if the sunspot cycle maximum coincides with Jupiter's perihelion, the maximum is either delayed, making that cycle long, or it is very low"

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...s/980127d.html comments "The sunspot cycle is caused by the flip of the solar magnetic field approximately every 11 years (close to the 11.86 year period of Jupiter's orbit). The exact reasons why the Sun's field flips are not known, but it has it's basis in irregularities in the plasma dynamo at the core of the Sun that generates the magnetic field. It seems plausible that tidal effects from Jupiter are one of the perturbations that cause these irregularities, but not the only one."

http://www.civilized.com/mlabexamples/sunspots.htmld/ plots annual average sunspot numbers and Sun-Jupiter distance from 1750 to 1995, saying "The two curves are similar in that both show about twenty three regularly spaced maxima and minima over the roughly 250 year interval."

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/jpdesm/s....html#past_res lists past relevant scientific research (including mention of Ray Tomes!)

First, it is not a paper from NASA, but just something written down my Mikula, Kletetschka and Adachi. It might sound nice, saying it comes from NASA, but only the second affiliation seems to be from NASA.

Secondly, this has never been published as a real paper. V. Mikula has zero 1st author papers, but co-authored several papers on e.g. Frequency Dependent Susceptibility Analysis of Magnetic Carriers: Application to Fe-Oxides on Mars surface. Mainly, he seems to be in the solid state magnetization stuff.

Thirdly, there seems to be a nice mess, which is almost not visible in Fig. 2 and 3 for the separate intervals. Now, I do not know how they handled their FFT, so I cannot comment on that.

Fourth, why should there be a 4.19% shifting of the results? What is the scientific basis that this is allowed?

Then they say:
So they have the average sunspot number per year, and then have to average again. Now, this could be okay, but I have my doubt about the procedure. Also, why they expect the shift not to be needed then is alluded to, but not explained.

Basically, this "paper" gets a rejection from this referee, if I would get it on my desk, first of all it is too short, secondly the FFT that is used is not explained (do they average over spectral estimates and if so, over how many), thirdly the discussion is totally laughable.

It looks like they tried to find something (for some reason) found a correlation between Jupiters period and sun spot number, but for the rest ... As the solar cycle is on average almost the same length as Jupiter's orbit it is but natural to find a correlation, but a correlation does not mean a causal relationship.

It looks more like a short discussion paper, that in the end went nowhere and they discarded it.

__________________

Any comments in glorious red are to be considered in ModeratorMode.


善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

Interestingly, in the reviewed literature there are some papers discussing sunspot numbers and planets

Here is a paper in Nature 1972, discussing Venus, Earth and Jupiter
Here a paper in Nature 1977, looking at the Maunder minimum and the influence of planets at tides on the sun
This paper seems to dismiss the general idea that the location of the barycenter w.r.t. the sun's centre has anything to do with sunspot numbers (interesting detail at the end of the abstract Calculations are presented that indicate that Jupiter's gravity would cause a tidal bulge on the sun of a half-millimeter at most.).
Here a paper in Solar Physics on Zuricher sunspot number and spatial distribution of the planets
Here is a paper in Adv. Space Sci on an elaborate spectral analysis of the sunspot number.

I have not read any of these papers, but from the abstracts I get the idea that it is mostly correlation finding and significance finding. I am hard pressed to say if there are any physical explanations as to the how and why.

ADS is your friend, use it!

__________________

Any comments in glorious red are to be considered in ModeratorMode.


善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

The graphs of barycentric distances, etc. are nice, but there is one important thing missing -- the Maunder Minimum, when the 11-year cycle all but shut down and hardly any sunspots were seen at all. All these attempts to shoehorn sunspot numbers into planetary cycles come to grief when confronted with the observational fact of the Maunder Minimum.

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

That issue is raised in the second Nature paper I linked to in the message above. To quote the abstract:

__________________

Any comments in glorious red are to be considered in ModeratorMode.


善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

I’ve been out of town and away from my computer. Thank you all for your comments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip This is a superb (I think new?) scientific finding. Congratulations!

Thank you, I think I’ve done it. And thank you for all of your input.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celestial Mechanic The graphs of barycentric distances, etc. are nice, but there is one important thing missing -- the Maunder Minimum, when the 11-year cycle all but shut down and hardly any sunspots were seen at all. All these attempts to shoehorn sunspot numbers into planetary cycles come to grief when confronted with the observational fact of the Maunder Minimum.

I disagree. The Sun has been shown to have several longer cycles ranging from 1050 to 2289 years. There is no evidence that shows that the Maunder Minimum could not have been riding on the backs of one of these longer cycles.

I’ve taken a closer look at the sunspot minimums at cycle -8 (1655), cycle 8 (1833.11) and cycle 24 (2012.8). As I noted before, cycle -8 and cycle 8 are 178.11 years apart. If I predict cycle 24 to be 2012.8, then cycle 8 and cycle 24 will be 178.9 years apart.

In order to arrive at an estimated minimum date for cycle 24 I compared the time between the angular momentum peaks to the time between the sunspot minimums.



I also compared the solar minimum dates to the minimum radius and angular momentum peaks.

The following graphs compare cycle -8, cycle 8 and the estimated cycle 24 in the context of the different barycenter parameters over a 34 year period. Saying that Jupiter and the sunspot cycles have similar lengths and so the two cannot be compared is simply wrong. Jupiter and the barycenter cycle definitely influence the sunspot cycles. How? I don’t know. But I believe I have showed that they do.

JimP
Some more thoughts on this barycentric approach. The barycenter is the point around which our solar system rotates. You may know better than me how is it measured, but I would assume that gravitational cycles of the planets – as demonstrated by your Jupiter-Saturn data – are primary variables for its radius. Do you believe this is so?

It is intriguing that the ~178.5 year barycentric cycle is so exact, as illustrated by the close alignment of chart data over three cycles in your most recent post. Why do you think the period shifts from 178.1 to 178.9 years?

I can’t imagine what influences the barycenter except the planets, but the planets don’t follow a 179 year pattern. Do you think this cycle could be a small sub-wave of a very big temporal wave pattern in the barycenter, with the sun responding to regular harmonic gyroscopic periods of its detrita – remembering the sun is 99.8% of the mass of the solar system?

Your Jupiter-Saturn barycenter chart can be augmented to show the Jupiter perihelion and aphelion. One by one, you could add all planetary relations – eg Jupiter Uranus, etc, to see if they have a regular pattern influencing dates of stationary points and sunspots in the way Jupiter-Saturn does. Maybe the 20 year Jupiter-Saturn cycle is just an exact 1/9 fraction of the 180 year barycentric period? Even so this still looks more like causation than correlation. You could build quite a jeweled necklace for the solar system! Maybe the Jupiter-Saturn period is shepherding the barycenter and sunspots? (ie on the same model as how Saturn’s shepherd moons Prometheus and Pandora keep the F ring in place - http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/l...urn/moons.html .)

I assume in these latest charts the dates are for convenience, so where it says ‘1632’ it should really say ‘1632/1811/1990’?

Could you explain the meaning of the variables – torque, radius, angular momentum, longitude? How do you interpret each of these findings?

Your OP term R^2 is explained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeffic..._determination . It is worth trying to explain statistical terms in a simple way to engage more readers. How does statistics interpret the R^2 figure you derived from the perihelion correlation, and do you see regression as the best/only statistical approach for this data?

RT

The barycenter data came from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I do not know how accurate it is. The data was created using 8 hour time segments. When selecting my dates I visually picked them off of graphs. Then I made graphs of the angular momentum 2 years on either side of the point. Added a regression line and distorted the graph so that the regression line came to a point and double checked my date.

The accuracy of the sunspot data is what it is.


I don’t know. About a year ago I came across an article “Solar Resonant Diffusion Waves as a Driver of Terrestrial Climate Change”. At the time I thought that this might also influence sunspot cycles. Unfortunately, astrophysics goes over my head very quickly and I didn’t know where to go for explanations. This website is a great resource of knowledge. I see all of these things as pieces of a puzzle that have to fit together. I believe everything I have presented so far fits. Now if I can just get a data set for Solar Resonant Diffusion Waves.

I did each one of the graphs with a different date range to show the ranges. Excel does not give an option of multiple dates—maybe I can do that.

Probably not. I’m just looking for correlations and patterns. My biggest hope for all of this work is that someone with the knowledge will see something significant and do a professional analysis.

I’m still trying to find a professional statistician to weigh in on this.

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.

Not really. There is enough noise in the data Jim has posted to conclude than even if there is causality between sunspots and the rotation of the barycenter, there must be other cues as well. It would be like El Nino: when one crops up, statistically weather patterns change, but you cannot bet the farm on the number of hurricanes we will see.

Nice work, Jim. Everyone is correct, when they say there is no reason to suspect a correlation between sun spots and planet rotations...if the convention theories of gravity are correct. In their geometric solutions, Einstein and Newton did not leave any room for tieriary effects. So if we observe them, something must be wrong with our observations...eh right?

Edited to add:

It is not impossible to imagine that the sunspot cycle perturbs the orbit of Jupiter, inducing an elliptical wobble.

__________________
jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

Robert, the Solar System Barycentre (SSB) is the centre of mass (CM) of the solar system.

While Jupiter provides the biggest perturbation and the Jupiter-Saturn cycle features stongly, positions calculated by the NASA JPL Horizons Online Ephemeris use orbital solutions that take into account the perturbing gravitational effects of all the major planets plus the most perturbing minor planets.

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons

Accuracy is not an issue within a few centuries of now for this kind of work, but could start to become an issue over millenia as numerical errors which could effect timing begin to build up.

I can answer this, as I supplied JimP with the SSB ephemeris data he is using, and appreciate his efforts in this investigation, which was something had I wanted to look into myself, but I've been a bit too ill a bit too often recently to focus on getting much done.

Longtitude is ecliptic longitude of the SSB from the solar centre as output by the Horizon's ephemeris.

Radius has been converted from km as output by Horizons to solar radii (i.e. km / 696000), so a radius of 1.0 means the SSB is on the Sun's surface, values <1 are inside and >1 outside the Sun - notice how from a heliocentric perspective the SSB moves both inside and outside the body of the Sun over time in this image:



Angular Momentum as used here is (mass Sun) times (the part of ecliptic orbital velocity perpendicular to the radius vector) times (radius), in units of (grams cm2 / secs).

Torque as used here is (change in angular momentum between ephemeris time steps) / (time between steps in seconds).

The ~179 year cycle may be described as a retrograde event cycle, best defined as points where the core of the Sun passes through the SSB in a path that means it spends some time in retrograde longitudinal motion while also having -ve angular momentum.

It is evident throughout the full 6000 year span of the JPL Horizons ephemeris, and while any adjacent pair of ~189 yr segments look similar in a graph at first sight, there are subtle phase shifts so no pair of ~179 yr segments are truly identical. The pattern breaks from time to time into two shorter cycles of ~140 yr and ~39 yr respectively, and after a few of these two part cycles resumes a ~179 yr pattern again from the last ~139 yr position.

Here is a graph of the SSB angular momentum from 1620 to 2180 presented as three overlapping periods:



In particular, note the red arrows that mark the -ve angular momentum (retrograde) points at 1632, 1811, 1990, and 2169.

Note also the deeper troughs about 39 yrs each side of the arrows - the troughs to the right are the break points which defined an earlier 179 yr retrograde event series, and the troughs to the left are the break points of a future 179 yr retrograde event series.

It is interesting to see the full 6000 year range of the data:





Note the cyclic patterns evident in the envelopes.

__________________
Carl Smith
The land of Oz

Thanks Carl, your post is very substantive and informative. I can be rushed and sloppy in my comments and my scientific knowledge is patchy, so your correction on point of fact is welcome. I am learning so much from this thread.
Does this suggest JPL has neglected analysis of the data it has collected, given that the sunspot cycle correlation with the barycenter should be reasonably simple to work through?

Wow, that is pretty! This picture is just fifty years of data, so I imagine a long data run would produce a nice flower pattern. It would be really interesting to plot sunspot minima on this chart.

178.9 years is precisely 1/12 x 1/12 of the earth’s precessional cycle of 25756 years. I think that looks slightly spooky, suggesting an entrainment between the overall solar pattern and the period of the earth’s wobble. Maybe everything actually is connected?

Just a question here, before any of you guys try to re-invent the wheel.
Did any look at the papers I quoted, which deal with this problem?
Or do you just think you can figure it all out for yourself?
So, the answer, RT, is: Research has been done on this and published. I quoted the papers, if you are too lazy to look at them, so be it.

__________________

Any comments in glorious red are to be considered in ModeratorMode.


善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

JimP, NASA JPL Horizons only covers the 6000 year span from 3000 BC to 3000 AD.

To cover longer periods of time you would need to chase up the necessary source code and run an integration that would take a very long time on very fast computer, and of course the caveat applies that the further you get from now either past or future the greater the exponentially increasing errors are in your results.

This increasing error problem is why JPL Horizons has the 6000 year limit - the past 5000 years is constrained by ever more sparse observational records as one goes back which can be used to train the model until it gives a best fit, however the future has no constraints so model error becomes more important sooner, hence 1000 years forwards is as far as they go.

BTW, tusenfem, I can access only one of those papers:
http://esoads.eso.org/abs/1984SoPh...93..403S

Which is worth the read, so thanks.

For many of us, there is not much point in posting papers that require one to pay to read them - IMO that is not science, it is profiteering - and being on a small fixed income I simply do not have funds available to purchase papers.

__________________
Carl Smith
The land of Oz

Well, some of the papers are in Nature, that any respectable large (university) library will have, so you might have to walk a little, and/or ask the regulars here on BAUT if they can help you obtain some of these papers.

__________________

Any comments in glorious red are to be considered in ModeratorMode.


善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

You (and Hornblower) should take the time to read one link you provided. These guys summed up what I was trying to say in one simple paragraph.


This is the paragraph from: “A Possible Relationship Between Spectral Bands In Sunspot Number and the Space-Time Organization of Our Planetary System”; written by H. Schwentek and W. Elling. See: http://esoads.eso.org/abs/1984SoPh...93..403STo be fair, all of the links you provided except the last one were written before the joint ESA/NASA Ulysses and SOHO missions. These two missions along with other missions have mapped out the magnetospheres of the sun and planets (that have them) along with the heliosphere and are defining the shape of the heliospheric current sheet. Scientists today are trying to figure out how these are connected and the
physics behind them.



The list of links you provided reminds me of one of my favorite quotations:

"When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you don't know. He knows now that he doesn't know. Last year, he didn't know that."

--Bill Parcells

Schwentek and Elling are saying “they know they don’t know” the others on the list don’t know that yet; they simply write it off as it can’t be caused by gravity therefore the correlation is just accidental.

Thanks for the links!

Jim

__________________

I am assuming that one in boldface is the one you meant.

I cannot comment on the merits of their number-crunching. I do not have any background in that kind of work, and I do not understand some of their vocabulary. I would need help from an independent, unbiased statistician to get me up to speed on what their terminology and numerical results really mean.

What they made clear toward the end of the paper was that they do not have any theory in which the planets cause variations in the sunspot activity, and that it would be necessary to observe and analyze the occurrence of sunspots over the coming centuries to see whether or not their analysis holds up. That will not happen in our lifetimes. The fact that they acknowledged the need to test an extrapolation against future observations suggests that they are honest statistical analysts who recognize the limitations of their work.

Hey Jim

Yeah, maybe I should read the papers, when I find the time, but basically I wanted to point out that the correlations that are being discussed here, have already extensively been looked at. A correlation does not make a cause-and-effect, is what I want to say, and especially the Maunder minimum argues very much against a cause-and-effect.

I wanted to link to newer papers, but I did not find any on ADS.

Looking anew I find the following paper where it is clearly stated that:

Rest assured that I know all about planetary magnetospheres, that is my job. But up until now I have not come across any theory that links Jupiter to solar activity, apart from the papers that show that there is a correlation between the two.

__________________

Any comments in glorious red are to be considered in ModeratorMode.


善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

The beats explain the envelope. That looks a fairly simple logical statement when the frame of reference is the solar system as a dynamic whole with planets like organs. This frame of reference enables us to expect such correlations as a likely harmonic pattern. Is Tusenfem’s problem that this harmonic approach lacks a mathematical framework in physics?

I have no trouble at all with any beat frequencies, harmonics, motion of barycenters, etc. etc. etc.

I am willing to acknowledge that there seems to be a correlation between sunspot number and the Jovian period.

But a correlation does not mean that there is a physical mechanism there. Example, last week I stood in front of my closet to see what shirt to wear. I suddenly chose the shirt that I bought at a Jupiter magnetosphere meeting. When I arrived at work that morning, I found an email in my box telling me that there is going to be a Laplace meeting (Laplace is the upcoming ESA mission to Jupiter). So, here we have a 1 to 1 correlation between choosing shirts and receiving email. Had I chosen to wear my Venus Express shirt, would that have led to an email for a Venus meeting?

What is the influence of Jupiter on the sun? The interplay between the sun and the planets leads to great wanderings of the barycenter, as we can see in the figure above. However, does this mean anything? It just means that the center of mass of the solar system is at a certain location, however, the influence of Jupiter on the sun is at most a few millimeter in amplitude. Are you going to tell us that these few millimeters drive the differences in the dynamo and the solar cycle? And if you really think so, please explain how this would work. I know something about plasma physics, but I cannot imagine any process that will have such drastic results.

So, correlation does not mean causal relation.

__________________

Any comments in glorious red are to be considered in ModeratorMode.


善數, 不用籌策 (shàn shù, bù yòng chóu cè)
He who is good at counting, uses no counting tools
“A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is”
道德經, 二十七 (dào dé jīng, 27)

Better yet: without something we might call a model - of the physical connection/relationship/mechanism/whatever - there is no way to test the (observed) correlation!

And that's how you do science (well, one way); make a hypothesis, develop it to the point where it is quantitative and testable, ... and go test it!

But wait! There's a whole lot of nose-to-the-grindstone stuff buried here, like logic, clarity, numbers, equations, .... and, if you want your hypothesis to (one day) be taken seriously, consistency with well-established theories (of physics), ...

If you don't do this hard yakka, you might as well say it's all down to invisible elves (or their metaphysical equivalents); of course, that's soooooo much easier!

Does this mean I am making a little headway?
This is a ridiculous example. I’m heading to the library this weekend to try and get the papers that you have listed. If you know of any that have studied similar systems with high correlations I would like to look at them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nereid Better yet: without …

I am just looking at the correlations. This is just the first step. Breakthroughs in science do not normally happen by adhering to existing dogmas.

In science there are things such as “group thinking”. The issue of global warming being a prime example. Global warming got totally blown out of proportion partly because of the politics behind the peer review process. In this case “correlation does not mean causation” has become an excuse to not look at the data. Tusenfern’s ridiculous example has been used before. The comparable in the global warming issue is if there is a hurricane, flood, hot year, iceberg caving off the answer is the same “ITS GLOBAL WARMING! QED”.