I don't know if you are making any headway? There is no denial that a correlation between solar sun spots and the Jovian period exists. But like I said correlation does not mean causality.

You can probably find papers where there is a similar correlation between two things, but unless you can come up with a reasonable explanation as to WHY the correlation should exist. There is a very interesting WIKI page on spurious relationship / spurious correlation.

So, end of the line, you found a correlation, which has been shown to occur in published papers too. There is a (on average) 11 year cycle of solar activity, and there is the 11.86 years of Jupiter's orbit.

Then question:
- if there is causality between the two, i.e. Jupiter's location and solar activity, what is causing it:
-- Gravity?
-- Magnetic field?
-- Electric currents?

And note:
- unless you want the solar activity to determine Jupiter's orbital period, you need something that goes from Jupiter to the sun.

And like Homer Simpson used to say:
Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that.

__________________
************************************************** *************************
Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
************************************************** *************************
Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )

Good.

How are you so looking?

Specifically, do you have a plan concerning what to look for? If so, does that plan incorporate a pre-defined method of (statistical) analysis? a pre-defined method of objectively determining the accuracy and completeness of the datasets? and so on ...
What is the second step?Really?

Do you intend this thread to become a presentation on the nature of science, with you proposing ATM ideas and other BAUT members questioning and challenging the ATM assertions you make? Or is this just a gratuitous editorial comment? or ...?

In any case, how about the following assertion: few, if any, breakthroughs in science have come from those who made dogmatic assertions about "group thinking" (etc) before they had developed at least a potentially testable hypothesis?

Or this: fewer than 0.1% of ATM threads in BAUT have contained at least one ATM idea which has, to date, been shown to have legs (much less has been acknowledged as a 'breakthrough')?See above, re what ATM ideas you are intending to present ... and defend (in this thread).

Whoa… Now I’m getting concerned. On your first plot in your first post you are plotting the number of sunspots against Jupiter’s distance from the sun. Just out of curiosity where did you get Jupiter’s distance from the sun? Was it somehow measured or was it calculated? And if it was calculated, what formula was used?

What is concerning me is the only formulas I’m familiar with are Kepler’s and Newton’s and it is this physics that is “Mainstream”. Now if you are using this “Dogma” physics to calculate your .97 R^2 number; then I’m getting confused. Are you trying to prove something is true or are you trying to prove something is false?

Jim

I’m sorry the dogma was over the top. I retract the statement. I was wrong. As I have stated before, the distances were calculated using the Alcyone Ephemeris 3.2 software. The program is described as :

The principal source for Alcyone Ephemeris is Steve Moshier's analytical ephemeris based upon trigonometric expansions for the earth and planets and the lunar ephemeris ELP2000-85 of Chapront-Touzé and Chapront for the moon, both adjusted to Jet Propulsion Laboratory's DE404. Moshier's ephemeris is described and the files can be downloaded at www.moshier.net (see aa-56.zip and further details on aa-56.zip, which contains references to Moshier's sources, as does the Readme file in aa-56.zip). Alcyone Ephemeris is further adjusted to JPL's DE406 by a series of corrections, some optional, described below in Accuracy. Algorithms for reduction to geocentric coordinates, precession, and nutation are from Moshier, and additional algorithms are applied to compute velocities, accelerations, and transformations of coordinates, including topocentric coordinates with corrections for parallax and refraction. The ephemeris is quite fast; with an 1600mgh Athlon processor, 100 calculations of geocentric longitude, latitude, and distance for the sun, moon, and all planets take about 2 seconds, 100 calculations of differences for all of these about 4 seconds. Alcyone Ephemeris is also very compact, about 20 mgb, compared to nearly 200 mgb of data files for DE406. The following ephemeris types are independent of Moshier's ephemeris:
Apparent magnitudes of planets are computed in three ways: from formulas and coefficients of G. Müller, used in the Astronomical Almanac until 1984, from coefficients in the Astronomical Almanac since 1984, and from coefficients in tables 7.41.1 to 7.47.1 of the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac (1992).
Lunar libration, position angle of the lunar axis, and selenographic coordinates of the sun and position angle of the limb are from Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd ed., Wilmann-Bell, 1998.
Mean orbital elements are from Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms; these are not identical to the elements used for the ephemeris calculations although the differences, except perhaps at early epochs, are very small.
Osculating lunar orbital elements are from Michelle Chapront-Touzé and Jean Chapront, Lunar Tables and Programs from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 8000, Willmann-Bell, 1991.
Delta T. The formulas for computation of delta T and the table from the Astronomical Almanac used for interpolation, along with a discussion of methods of determining delta T, can be found at http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/astro/deltatime.htm. Definitions of systems of astronomical time, including ET, UT, and more recent systems, can be found at http://www.gb.nrao.edu/~rfisher/Ephemerides/times.html.
Accuracy

There are two ways of evaluating the accuracy of an ephemeris, the first by comparison with observation, the second by comparison with other ephemerides. Since the first is impractical, and requires observations reaching an accuracy of a very few seconds, which means only of the last three centuries while Alcyone Ephemeris extends from -2999 to +3000, we have evaluated AE by comparison with JPL's Horizons ephemeris generator. This ephemeris is based on Jet Propulsion Laboratory's DE406 ephemeris, what is now considered the most accurate available long-period ephemeris.

The comparisons with DE406 are for geocentric longitude, latitude, distance (from the earth) for the planets and Moon, geocentric longitude of Sun and have been computed at intervals of 2130 days forward and backward from AD 0 Jan 1 0h at Greenwich in Ephemeris Time (ET). The result is 1025 comparisons extending from -2998 Jan 1 (JD 626038.5) to +2973 Aug 21 (JD 2807158.5). The period of 2130 days was chosen to give the maximum range of dates with the maximum number of calculations forward and back, 1025 (= 512 + 1 + 512), possible in AE. Each calculation is of the difference: Difference (AE - DE406) = AE - DE406.
The differences in the graphs are scaled in seconds; the distance is compared in astronomical units to seven places (10-7 AU) and the graphs are scaled in 10-6 AU = 0.000001 AU.

Moshier's ephemeris, upon which AE is based, was calibrated to DE404 from -3000 to +3000 for the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and from -1349 to +3000 for the inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars. In order to bring AE into better agreement with DE406 for the entire period -2999 to +3000, we have applied further corrections to heliocentric coordinates, which in turn correct geocentric coordinates. The graphs show only the corrected geocentric coordinates except for the moon, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, for which uncorrected and corrected longitude is shown for reasons that will be explained below. The most notable corrections are for Mars for which the corrections extend from -2999 to +300, and Pluto for which the corrections extend the entire range from -3000 to 3000. The corrections for the earth, although much smaller, affect the geocentric coordinates of all the planets, the closer planets more, the distant planets less.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tusenfem There is a very interesting WIKI page on spurious relationship / spurious correlation.

Thank you. I’ll look at this further.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nereid Good.

I did not know what the second step was when I started into this. I have never pursued anything like this before. The high r^2 values made it worth while to look into further. So far the exercise has been worth while. I have and am learning a lot. And yes, I think at this point I need to start defining my analysis.

The Alcyone software and JPL data are highly accurate. I do not know how to quantify the accuracy of the sunspot data. I made the statement before that the sunspot data “is what it is” acknowledging the fact that the older data had a higher level of error in it. The older historical sunspot data is not good. Solanki has stated that there data has a 68 % uncertainty. I have not used this data up to this point and if I do it will be just for a trend line and nothing more. Is this wrong?

I thank you all for your constructive feedback. I came here knowing that I was going Against the Mainstream.

A paper ‘Rhodes Fairbridge and the idea that the solar system regulates the Earth’s climate’ by Richard Mackey has interesting information about the barycentre. It is from the Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 50, 2007 http://www.griffith.edu.au/conferenc...pdf/ICS176.pdf

Ideas which I found particularly interesting are
• the epitrochoid – the (spirograph-type) movement of the solar system barycenter of about 179 years’ duration, which is also the time taken for the planets to occupy approximately the same positions again relative to each other and the sun
• NEWTON (1687) showed that the sun is engaged in continual motion around the centre of mass of the solar system (i.e. the barycentre) as a result of the gravitational force exerted by the planets, especially Jupiter and Saturn. He came to this conclusion analytically (not by observation) by working through the consequences of his law of gravitation.
• the barycentre … might be negligible for the solar system but it is highly significant in relation to the size and nature of the sun. Amongst other things, the sun may be travelling through its own electromagnetic fields during various stages of its journey.
• since 1911, scientists had published research documenting periodicities in the motions of the planets in relation to the sun. These suggested that the barycentric motion of the sun in response to the planets might have a role in the sun’s activity cycles. This research also suggested that there could be links of scientific interest between these cycles, the planets and climate periodicities.
• JOSE (1965) published curves showing substantial agreement between the sunspot cycle numbers and the rate of change of the solar orbital angular momentum. Other researchers have published evidence supporting the hypothesis that some feature of the sun’s barycentric motion contributed to variable solar activity.
• the sun’s variable torque (measured by rate of change of angular momentum) exerted by the planets twisting and turning the sun on its epitrochoid-shaped cycle of barycentric orbits changed the sun’s activity levels
• DE JAGER and VERSTEEGH (2005) appear to have misunderstood solar inertial motion since SHIRLEY (2006) shows their inappropriate use of rotational equations for modelling particle motions due to orbital revolution.
• the sun is not homogenous; it is generally a fluid body, and whilst the solar nuclear fusion core is more like a solid than anything else, the viscosity, elasticity and density of the remainder of the sun varies from waterlike to diaphanous gas. The sun also has several distinct internal structures, which generally have the sun’s oblate spheroid shape (except the core, which is generally spherical). The structures and material of which the sun is made are in constant movement spatially and temporally. … the internal structure of the sun is characterised by a dynamic lumpiness that is variable throughout the sun, and over time.
• PALUS et al. (2007) found that there is a statistically significant measure of the influence on the solar cycle by the planets.
• TSUI (2000) has found there are non-inertial Coriolis forces acting on the sun as a result of its barycentric motion. He conjectured that these would be sufficient to significantly modulate the cyclical rhythm of the solar dynamo.
• BLIZARD (1987) reported that the horizontal tide may be significant because in a period of half a solar rotation, the horizontal displacement of planetary tide would be 560 km and its velocity 0.93 m/sec.
• BARKIN and FERRANDIZ (2004) derived an analytic expression for the elastic energy of planet tidal deformations induced by other bodies, including the central star, in a planetary system. BARKIN and FERRANDIZ (2004) found that the elastic energy is not simply a sum of the elastic energies of the separate pairs of bodies but contains additional terms that are non-linear functions of the superposition of the lunisolar tides. As a result, there are large and significant variations in conditionally periodic variations in the elastic energy of the lunisolar tides. … a similar result may be found for the effect of the superposition of the planetary tides on the sun. This expression would be a function of the tidal forces acting on the sun by each planet. The additional terms would be the nonlinear functions of the superposition of all of the planetary tidal forces. BLIZARD (1987) presented evidence that the precessional effect on the sun of the planets depends on the degree of oblateness of the sun and on the angle of inclination of the plane of a planet’s orbit in relation to the sun. Since the sun is a fluid, the precessional effect may induce a fluid flow towards the equator of the sun from both hemispheres. The flow of plasma on the sun directly affects solar activity.
• BLIZARD (1987) also noted that the sun’s axis of rotation is tilted with respect to the invariable plane and that the degree of tilt varies. She presented evidence suggesting that the sun’s variable axial tilt as it rotates in relation to the invariable plane whilst orbiting the barycentre appears to vary directly with solar orbital motion. The effect is, amongst other things, of a force to align the sun with the plane of the solar system, which the sun resists.
• BURROUGHS (2003) reported that the sun’s barycentric motion affects its oblateness, diameter and spin rate.
• In several papers, Rhodes Fairbridge (for example, FAIRBRIDGE 1984, FAIRBRIDGE 1997 and, FAIRBRIDGE and SANDERS 1987) described how the turning power of the planets is strengthened or weakened by resonant effects between the planets, the sun and the sun’s rotation about its axis. He further described how resonance between the orbits of the planets amplified the planets’ variable torque applied to the sun. He also pointed out that there was a measurable resonant effect between the sun’s orbit and spin and that this was amplified by the planets’ variable resonance. Fairbridge’s argument is that the resonating frequencies may amplify the relatively weak torque effects of the planets on the sun, if the resonance acts on both the sun’s rotation about its axis and the sun’s barycentric orbital motion. This may happen as the sun is undergoing retrograde motion in tight loops. Accordingly, orbital resonance of two, three or more planets may have a significant effect on the sun. Rhodes Fairbridge emphasised that the sun’s spin-orbital resonance can be further amplified by the planets’ own spin-orbital resonance.
• WINDELIUS and CARLBORG (1995) provide a convenient review of the relevant science about solar orbital angular momentum up to the mid-1990s.
• JUCKETT (2003) outlined the elements of a theory that shows how the sun’s barycentric orbit can modulate the intrinsic oscillations of the solar dynamo and generate all known cyclical solar phenomena. He hypothesised that this would happen as a result of the conservation of the solar system’s angular momentum achieved by the non-linear mixing of solar orbital momentum and a spin-orbit transfer function. It is as if some of the sun’s orbital angular momentum is transmitted to solar rotation so as to conserve the solar system’s angular momentum, which is necessarily constant as a result of the law of the conservation of angular momentum.viii JUCKETT (2003) hypothesised that the planetary-driven spin-orbit coupling is a continuous generator of the oscillatory behaviour of the sun. His theory also predicts several new phenomena. Spin-orbit coupling will occur if the mass distribution of a celestial body deviates from spherical symmetry. The degree of asymmetry is measured by the gravitational quadropole moments of the body.
• PIREAUX et al (2006) established that the mass of the sun shifts within it during the sunspot cycle and as a result the sun’s shape departs significantly from spherical symmetry. These departures seem to extend in variable ways throughout the sun. This changes the physical shape of the sun, but more importantly, has a measurable impact on the orbits of the planets. As a result, there is dynamic non-linear, stochastic and periodic interaction between the mass of the sun shifting internally within it and the planets.
• The gravitational interaction between the sun and the planets causes the barycentric motion of the sun, which is non-linear, stochastic and periodic. There is, therefore, a feedback process between two non-linear, stochastic and periodic processes: the internal shifting mass of the sun affecting planetary orbits and the planetary orbits affecting the internal mass of the sun by shifting it around, perhaps throughout the entire body of the sun. The solar inertial motion (sim) hypothesis states that sim modulates the solar dynamo, weakening or strengthening it (and thus solar activity levels) in accordance with which of the eight distinctive epitrochoid forms characterises the sun’s overall motion and whether the sun is in the ordered phase (i.e. along the smooth, near-circular path) or chaotic phase (i.e. along the retrograde loop-the-loop path) of that form. High solar activity occurs whilst the sun is in the ordered phase … Minimum or no activity occurs whilst the sun is in the chaotic phase

To JimP,

I have really enjoyed this thread. I’ve enjoyed it because it relates to some work I’ve been doing and enjoyed it also because it parallels problems I have had to deal with when working with statisticians for the past 25 years. Those problems were as tusenfem has pointed out, are the difference (or knowing the difference) between correlation and causation.

I worked for one of the US automakers as an engineer with a knack for solving problems. I was moved into a position where my job was solving problems others couldn’t solve. The problem I had was with each new problem came a pile of data and some statistician’s analysis of the data along with correlation/causation numbers. Never on any of these problems was the causal system suggested to me by the statistician ever correct. To be fair to the statistician, if they were correct I would have never been given the problem to work on. Statistics are an important tool, but by their self are pretty useless; but when combined with the knowledge of physics and other sciences and the understanding of systems can be very powerful.

I started several times to reply to this thread with encouragement and suggestions but was never able to put it into something short and simple. Nereid’s post was better than anything I could put together:

The hard yakka sounds bad but it is really the enjoyable part of the whole journey. Imagine how you felt when you saw the R^2 of .97, I know it must have been exciting. You are seeing something that just maybe no one has seen before. Can you imagine what it would feel like if you knew why the R^2 was .97; I mean the physics behind it all. It would mean that maybe; just maybe, you are on a road that nobody has ever travelled before. Worst case is it’s just another ATM theory that will get shot down in an instant. But it’s the feeling that makes it all worthwhile.

Jim

I did some more reading on the WIKI page and they give a very simple example for determining if two similar cycles are a correlation or a spurious relationship. So I looked at all of the sunspot minimum dates comparing them to the peaks in angular momentum. Nothing conclusive. Some amazingly high coincidences.

I used the overall maximum and minimum range of the torque cycle. 22 out of the 36 occurred within the 10% distance range and 12 out of the 36 fell within the 5% distance range.


There are exceptions and inconsistencies so I went back to look at the individual Jovian cycles. This time the numbers were run for each individual sunspot cycle and graphed. All most all of the cycles came up with very high r^2 numbers. I did come up with some glaring exceptions. What I concluded is that in the case of Jupiter influencing sunspots is that what we are most likely seeing is the transition of Jupiter’s 11.826 year cycle and the sunspots average 10.5 year cycle.

When looking at the Jovian cycle broken down into individual sunspot cycles, the hypothesis that Jupiter is influencing the sunspot cycle breaks down and does not pass the simple test for spurious relationships. There exit sunspot cycles with negative slopes when compared to Jupiter’s distance from the Sun. Therefore, when just the Jovian cycle and just the sunspot cycle are compared, then a spurious relationship is found to exist. “Correlation” and “spurious correlation” are statistical terms and the relationship between the two cycles needs to be tested statistically. I did not know how to do this at the beginning. Analogies do not cut it. I’ve learned a lot from this exercise.




One last chart. I compared the time between 17 sunspot cycle minimum dates vs. 23 angular momentum cycle peak dates. Some very interesting patterns.

I took the time to look at several pages of his blog and enjoyed reading them. I can see why you enjoy reading his Blog.

I did notice that my background in statistics is different than Briggs’. Statistics can be broken into two categories one is enumerative and the other analytic. Enumerative looks at some of the data and makes predictions about the data not looked at. Analytic statistics looks at data and attempts to make a rational prediction about future data. Briggs’ comes from the enumerative or classical stat’s world; I’m from the analytical world. Most college trained statisticians are enumerative and not analytical, although this is starting to change. If you look at the work of Walter Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming; two statisticians of the 1900’s you will see how and why the differentiation was made. Over the course of five years I had the opportunity to learn from Deming and other top statisticians of the time.

The only reason I mention it is because if you look at the Maunder Minimum using the enumerative approach you end up saying that it either didn’t happen or include it into your data set causing it to widen your confidence limits. The analytic approach that I’ve been taught says that something different happened, so look for what was different at that time.

Jim

I went to see Dr. Deming in 1985 in DC at one of his week long seminars. One of our Vice Presidents walked out as Deming railed against "exhortations for improved performance without providing the needed tools." It was sweet. Fortunately more senior managers disagreed with him and Deming's philosophies have become ingrained.
Bill

__________________
Bill Slugg
Albany, GA

I may have missed it, but have you stated, quantitatively, what the 'null hypothesis' is?

You may also consider creating some fictional input data, using some kind of simple simulation, to explore how the high correlations you found might arise ...

Interesting, when I read this message, I thought that you had summarized what was in the paper. Downloading the paper, I noticed that this message is basically one whole subsection of the paper.
This is, in my opinion, a very bad summary because nothing is really said,only keyword are mentioned. I guess one has to read all the papers that are mentioned, which would take a lot of time. I think this is just a write down of a speech Mackey gave at that symposium.
Unfortunately, I cannot at the moment download De Jager and Versteegh nor Shirley, so I cannot make any comments on what exactly has been done. Maybe later.

__________________
************************************************** *************************
Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
************************************************** *************************
Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )

The barycentre cycle links to the outer planets as follows:

Planetary conjunction cycles in each 178.9 year barycentre period
Jupiter Saturn: 9.03
Jupiter Uranus: 13.01
Jupiter Neptune: 13.96
Jupiter Pluto: 14.02
Saturn Neptune: 5.00

As I noted previously in this thread, there is strong apparent alignment between the Jupiter-Saturn cycle and sunspot data. JimP’s chart of this planetary relation could be augmented to include the other outer planetary alignments listed here.

Due to the correlations between these cycles, every 178.9 years Jupiter returns to the same position in relation to Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and Saturn returns to the same position relative to Neptune, with very small error. Over this period, which also provides the main barycentre cycle, for every nine Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions, there are close to exactly 13 Jupiter-Uranus, 14 Jupiter-Neptune, 14 Jupiter-Pluto and 5 Saturn-Neptune conjunctions. This rhythmic cycle of the outer planets was, I understand, discovered by Sir Isaac Newton. I mentioned it in my current ATM thread Astronomical History and hope it will also be of interest here.

I do not know if Newton or others have noticed the precise harmony of the barycentre cycle and the Great Year of lunisolar precession of the terrestrial equinox. This harmonic correlation looks to be a basic rhythm of the solar system. The 2147 year period of the age is a mathematical product of the precession and is in precise harmony with these cycles of the outer planets and the solar system barycentre. For example, if the Saturn-Neptune cycle is considered a unit, there are precisely 60 units in the 2147 year period of the age, and 720 units in the precessional period of 25764 years. It therefore appears the age imbeds the barycentric period in terrestrial cycles. These links demonstrate the organic unity of the solar system. If this has been observed before then I would welcome any references.

My interpretation of this finding is that the speed of wobble of the earth is like a spinning top regulated and entrained by interactions between Jupiter and the other outer planets. The planets look to function like a whip to maintain the exact tempo of the earth's wobble in harmony with the barycentric period. This is a testable falsifiable scientific claim, not a statement of belief. My figures in the above table are slightly imprecise as I could not readily find exact data. I would welcome if astronomers could check them against more precise ephemerides.

The post was not intended as a summary of the paper but a list of its statements about the barycentre and the outer planets. I am not quite sure why you would complain that an expanded reference list says nothing when you also say you do not have time to read the sources listed. I thought the discussion there of the epitrochoid looked very useful as a way of understanding the relation between the SSB and the outer planets, and potentially sunspots.