Research: 11 year solar cycle may be tied to planetary motion

IMHO, as a lifelong amateur astronomer, this paper is pretty speculative.

Some astronomer once said " the solar system consists of Jupiter plus debris."

Jupiter is 317.8 earth masses. Venus is about 1 earth mass. So when the earth, Venus and Jupiter are in alignment, the Earth and Venus add about 2 Earth masses to the total or about 0.6293% (a little more because the gravitational attraction varies with the square of the distance from the Sun), but the difference between the gravitational pull of Jupiter or the gravitational pull of Jupiter plus Earth and Venus is very small.

Frank WS1MH

 

Frank (WS1MH) That is what I tried to say, you had eloquently put it far better!

Your Quote

"Jupiter is 317.8 earth masses. Venus is about 1 earth mass. So when the earth, Venus and Jupiter are in alignment, the Earth and Venus add about 2 Earth masses to the total or about 0.6293% (a little more because the gravitational attraction varies with the square of the distance from the Sun), but the difference between the gravitational pull of Jupiter or the gravitational pull of Jupiter plus Earth and Venus is very small"

 

I think they're trying to say that this "Tayler Effect" thingy is way more sensitive to weak grav fields. Maybe somebody can explain just what that is in layman's terms?

 

Yes. It is significant that the researchers do not have a physical model from which to predict a correlation. I'm not hampered by any real facts but it seems to me that the relative masses of the planets vs the mass of the sun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size) make it unlikely that the planets will have a measurable effect.

With all the data and all the computers we have, coming up with correlations is pretty easy. Ice cream sales, for example, correlate well with murder rates. https://science.howstuffworks.com/i.../10-correlations-that-are-not-causations5.htm

 

Don't need causality to make reliable predictions.

 

Ok Dr Science, do you have a credible, testable hypothesis? Been peer reviewed and published in a major respected journal? How many citations?

Yeah.

 

While it's true causality can be "assumed" or otherwise predicted utilizing bivariate linear regression, it requires reliable sample data, both independent and dependent variables and a host of other specific data (which is probably absent) to establish the foundation for the unknown parameters when estimating such a prediction.

Perhaps in this case, prediction reliability actually does comes into question because this is simply a best guess, statistical estimation tool which doesn't necessarily imply causality. Since causality can only be assumed, it's likely desirable to utilize a more fundamentally solid approach to investigate this helicity oscillation correlation in order to establish concordance.

 

Wow, thank goodness for Google Translate. ( >{ elbow in the ribs emoji )

Um, it is a lot simpler than that: cum hoc ergo propter hoc

But it is also a lot deeper question, for information theoretics. And at quantum levels, causality and time may be reversed!

 

They claim to be able to model solar activity going back 90 cycles. We don't have direct observations going back that far, but we have indirect evidence to reconstruct from.

And again... Whoopie, they can model a very regular, cyclical phenomenon. You don't need any elaborate, obscure physics for that. (I predict that on June 22, 2029, at 8:22 Eastern time, the Sun will be above the horizon here in NH)

What they need to do now is make some predictions of other things that their hypothetical mechanism might cause, and look for them.

 

Rayleigh Taylor instabilities are non linear enhancements of material at interfaces, usually between two fluids, that take the form of fractal-periodic structures in time and or space. Basically it is a form of turbulence. On the Sun we see (a naive explanation here) the breakout of these enhancements as sunspots. Sunspots are basically puncture-thru structures on the solar 'surface' from convective plasma activity below.

Here's an R-T instability at the interface of Saturn's rings...

Here's R-T where two rivers meet...("conflux")

 

That's really obnoxious.

Yeah.

 

Based on this I don't understand how a weak field from the alignment of three planetary specks could be attributed to the 11 year cycle.

Maybe a PART of it, but I still think there are other much more powerful forces at work.

 

Watch the effect on the pattern of a thin oil film as a gentle breeze brushes the surface of a pool (or ocean) of water.

Regarding turbulence, as it occurs upon and within the MHD Sun, from the wiki ...

Richard Feynman has described turbulence as the most important unsolved problem in classical physics ...

According to an apocryphal story, Werner Heisenberg was asked what he would ask God, given the opportunity. His reply was: "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first."A similar witticism has been attributed to Horace Lamb (who had published a noted text book on Hydrodynamics) — his choice being quantum electrodynamics (instead of relativity) and turbulence. Lamb was quoted as saying in a speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, "I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic."

 

Is the tail wagging the dog?

Consider the huge changes in topological surface gravity and magnetic differentials that boil out in the plasma of the sun.

For scale:

Just one average coronal mass ejection has a mass of about 1.6×10^12 kg.
There are about 1 or 2 coronal mass ejections every day, on average.
Sun's mass is about 2.0 x 10^30 kg.
Jupiter's mass is 1.9 x 10^27 kg.
Venus's mass is 4.9 x 10^24 kg.
Earth's mass is 5.9 x 10^24 kg.
Moon's mass is 7.3 x 10^22 kg.


The solar dynamo's mass is churning with 3-dimensional standing waves, the primary one is at a dominant wavelength of 22 years.
So, we have a 22 year long (half-wave 11 year) 3D gravity standing wave emanating from the sun.
This same gravity and magnetic standing wave could have been oscillating for billions of years.
A few billion years ago, perhaps the solar cycle could have been even more intense than it is now, during orbital planetary formative times.

Could it be that planetary orbits are tidally locked to the sun's standing wave cycle, rather than the other way around?