Roy Martin: How do the planets affect the Sun?

My thanks to Roy Martin for this guest post, which looks at possible dynamic relations between the planets and Sun:

How do the planets affect the Sun ?

By Roy Martin
Jan 5, 2013

“Knowledge is about as durable as green cheese.” anon.

The barycentric motion of the Sun and the tidal forces acting on the Sun are both caused by the motion of the orbiting planets. The first section of this note illustrates the differences between the combination of gravitational forces that cause the barycentric motion of the sun and the tidal forces acting principally on it’s surface layers. I originally intended to use the first part of this in the introduction to a report about further work done on the tidal influence of the planets on solar activity, however it led on to a few interesting, but quite unrelated observations about the synodic relationships between the planets and the José cycle, which would have been out of context, so I have put them into a stand-alone note. As far as I know there is nothing fundamentally new here, just a somewhat different perspective on some older knowledge.

There is an intricate overlapping of features in the two phenomena, and yet they create distinctly different landscapes. This note aims to describe the differences and similarities relevant to my own studies, and which are possibly relevant to other on-going investigations and discussions surrounding the mechanisms by which the planets may effect the solar cycle in particular.

There is significant scope for confusion between the potential effects of the two causes. At least since the publication of José’s 1965 paper: ”Sun’s Motion and Sunspots”, barycentric motion, or solar inertial motion (SIM), has been studied extensively. Many apparent correlations with events on earth and human activity have been identified, but most of those I have examined in any detail have failed to satisfy close scrutiny. The absence of any provable mechanism by which SIM caused by the planets can affect solar activity remains a major objection. SIM is fundamentally a whole-of-body effect, and as such none of the accelerations imposed on the Sun while orbiting the barycentre can differentially affect separate regions. Theories based on spin-orbit coupling appear to come up against the same objections.

During the same period, the possibility that tidal effects could affect solar activity was rejected and largely ignored, but in the last few years increased attention is being directed to this possibility. There is active reseach into suggested mechanisms, and in my own work I have identified close correlations between planetary induced tidal forces and the solar cycle. I now suspect that many of the correlations previously attributed to presumed SIM effects may be due to tidal effects occurring simultaneously.

We need to look at how each individual planet plays quite a different role in relation to SIM compared with tidal forces that may influence solar activity.

Figure 1. below is presented to show the relative effects of the major and minor planets, due to both the gravitational forces that cause barycentric motion, and the tidal effects which many are coming to believe are more likely to affect solar activity. The data plotted is from very simple physics, calculated using the basic formulae for gravitional and tidal forces. It is possible, even likely, that orbital eccentricity and inclination affect both to some extent, but are omitted from this analysis. I reason that if either gravitational or tidal effects are involved in modifying solar activity, it will first have to be shown and proved that the major primary forces due to one or the other are the principal cause. The individual bars represent the percentages of the total of the fully aligned planets.

Figure 1.

It can be seen from Fig.1 and Table 1. that the planets may be viewed as two overlapping groups:

Table 1.

The gravitational group includes Saturn but not Mercury. The tidal group includes Mercury but not Saturn.

The relative magnitudes show the basic differences between the two groups. Jupiter and Saturn dominate the gravitational group, and Jupiter alone accounts for 74% of the total, and the influences of Venus and Earth are also significant. How these combine to create SIM will be looked at a little closer further on. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Jupiter cause 97.8% of the tidal forces, but the component from Jupiter is only 34.7%, which is nearly matched by Venus at 33%. The relative role of Mercury changes from 2.3% to 14.6%, almost equal to that of Earth, and thus has the potential to be a significant influence on tidal effects. The tidal group will be studied in much more detail in another note.

We should note here that the planets do not exist in isolation. It is far too easy to become fixated on one of them as the sole or principal cause of an observed phenomena. Jupiter is a prime candidate for such attention because the orbital period is so close to that of the solar cycle, and it does play a big part in both sets, but in real life it is “…just a player in a rock and roll band.”

But we need to look at the basic forces in conjunction with the synodic periods between the various planets. Table 2. lists the relevant relationships, and we are immediately confronted by the problem that the network of interconnections between the gravitational and tidal planets is so complex that it can lead to the illusion that one is the cause of observed effects, when it is really the other.

Table 2.

In the gravitational group, the dominant synodic period is between Jupiter and Saturn, with a period of 19.8650 years. The 19.8650 x 9 = 178.7853 year multiple is of primary importance, because it appears to be the nominal period underlying the José cycle. I have therefore used it as a base period for comparisons. As shown in the table, the synodic periods of the major planets are all harmonically connected to the nominal 178.8 year period, the consequences of which can lead to endless discussion. Note the small differences between the 178.785 year nominal José cycle length and the nearest multiples for J-V, J-E and V-E.

The gravitational effects of Mercury, Mars, Uranus and Neptune are negligible, but are included to show that their orbits also appear to be harmonically linked to the José cycle.

I tend to scepticism when claims are made that because a value is ‘close to’ another it implies justification for causation, but here the José cycle correlations for all of the significant planets are within +/- 0.2%, and it seems to me this is too close to ignore.

Similarly, we need to be cautious about numbers like the multiples of the synodic periods, because a given number can often be factored in different ways. Should these numbers be accepted as meaningful at all? In this case the factors are all about primes and Fibonacci numbers. We have six of the early primes: 2;3;5;7;11;13, the sum of which is 41, and 2;3;5;13 are also Fibonacci numbers. The sum of the alternate primes 3;7;13 is 23. Within the solar system, such relationships are often observed, and support other observations of the exquisite mathematical balance between planetary orbitital periods. I believe they can be taken seriously.
(Note: The multiple for Mercury could also be taken as 452, with factors 113 x 22, giving the product 178.902 years. Take your pick, the difference matters little here.)

In this context the most important observation is one of the simplest, that nine J-S synodic periods are the dominant cause of the variation of the radius of the orbit of the Sun around the barycentre, as can be seen clearly in a plot of radius vs. time in Fig.2. This type of plot is a rather flat-earth way of presenting solar motion, but it is a much more explicit framework than multiple polar plots for showing the longer term temporal relationships.

Venus and Earth combine to modulate both the amplitude of the radius and the peak-to-peak timing of the nine waves within each José cycle, but the pattern is very close to an exact repeat within each cycle, suggesting a persistent synodic relationship. This repetition also continues for the previous three full cycles. The harmonics of the Venus and Earth synodics are found to form a cycle 22.38 years long, which is very close indeed to one eighth of the José cycle.

Figure 2.

Table 3.

The derivation of the 22.38 year cycle is shown in Table 3. which further extends the relationships between the synodic periods:-
With regard to Ref.1.), by reference back to the multiples in Table 2., we find that for Jupiter-Venus, 276/8 = 34.5; for Jupiter-Earth, 164/8 = 20.5, and the difference between them is 14, the multiple for Venus-Earth. And just for the fun of it, from the set of factors: (3×23)/2 = 34.5, 41/2 = 20.5, and 34.5x(2/3) = 21. The half cycle difference plus and minus from a Fibonnaci number emerges as relevant in the plots of tidal forces on the Sun – further work that I hope to write up in the not too distant future.
With regard to Ref.2.), the multiple differs very slightly from 11.0. The small correction was necessary to reconcile the 12.0037 year cycle period with the value derived from two separate studies on tidal effects. (The precise period is 0.648846 x (37/2) = 12.00365.)

Figure 3a. was drawn to illustrate the effect of combining two sine waves; the basic 19.865 year nine period cycle plus the 22.385 year eight period cycle, appropriately scaled and phased. This approximates the principal characteristics of the plot of actual solar radii for the 1722 to 1901 period in Figure 2., however beyond that it is impossible to reproduce the near chaotic characteristics of the actual orbits with any degree of accuracy.

During the three cycles centred on the start and end dates at 1722 and 1901 the Sun traces successive loops at a relatively large radius from the barycentre, then during the middle six periods the Sun moves through tight loops passing close to the barycentre, but only every second cycle. The effect of this is roughly simulated in Figure 3b. by adding a cycloid with a period of 38.2 years. This is really just a fudge-factor and can only be applied to the middle six cycles, because in reality the movement of the Sun during the start-end cycles and the middle six is somewhat different. In the former the Sun orbits the barycentre in larger loops with generally larger minimum radii, but still moving tangentially at the point of minimum radii, while in the latter the motion in the tight loops becomes almost radial to the centre of the Sun.

Figure 3a.

Figure 3b.

To summarize: the synodic periods between the planets are shared between their gravitational and tidal influneces on the Sun, but whereas the Jupiter-Saturn relationship dominates SIM, Venus-Earth-Jupiter relationships dominate the tidal effects. While some solar and terrestrial phenomena appear to correlate with SIM, the correlations are only partial and, to the best of my understanding, have no known physical connection.

I intend to cover the tidal influences more fully in later notes. They are proving to be a much more productive area of study. Suffice to say briefly in conclusion here; that tidal influences appear to correlate very closely with solar phenomena and with consequent effects on terrestrial phenomena.

As a footnote: In the work on the tidal theory there is a very significant cycle of 110.3 years. It is interesting to note that 110.3 x 1.61803(phi) = 178.48 years, within 0.31 years of the nominal José cycle period as derived above from the Jupiter – Saturn synodic.

Credit: Figure 2.) was plotted using the ephemeris derived from JPL data by Carl Smith, available at http://landscheidt.wordpress.com/