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One of the big questions in solar physics is why the sun's activity follows a regular cycle of 11 years. Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), an independent German research institute, now present new findings, indicating that the tidal forces of Venus, Earth and Jupiter influence the solar magnetic field, thus governing the solar cycle.
[...] To accomplish this result, the scientists systematically compared historical observations of solar activity from the last thousand years with planetary constellations, statistically proving that the two phenomena are linked. "There is an astonishingly high level of concordance: what we see is complete parallelism with the planets over the course of 90 cycles," said Frank Stefani, lead author of the study. "Everything points to a clocked process."
[...] Besides influencing the 11-year cycle, planetary tidal forces may also have other effects on the sun. For example, it is also conceivable that they change the stratification of the plasma in the transition region between the interior radiative zone and the outer convection zone of the sun (the tachocline) in such a way that the magnetic flux can be conducted more easily. Under those conditions, the magnitude of activity cycles could also be changed, as was once the case with the Maunder Minimum, when there was a strong decline in solar activity for a longer phase.
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-corroborates-planetary-tidal-solar.html
(Score: 4, Funny) by legont on Saturday August 24 2019, @03:16AM (9 children)
Perhaps astrology is not that BS after all.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:11AM (2 children)
Isn't astrology based on star constellations, not planets?
(Score: 4, Informative) by legont on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:23AM (1 child)
My very limited understanding is that it is based on planets going into constellations which looks like a way to identify planet's positions to me.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:54AM
Oh yeah. I was never into that stuff, and it's late, and you'd think I might have Internet access and a search engine... But human interaction is better. :) Thanks. So yeah, there might be something to it after all.
This whole thing is interesting. As a minor astrophysics enthusiast, I'm surprised I'd never heard of this tidal effect on the sun before, and maybe that's because it's a new idea, which again, I'm surprised nobody figured it out before.
So now scientists should be able to do a better job of predicting long-term solar cycles, and due to the tides, where they will occur in relation to where Earth is in orbit, of course including the sun's rotation period of ~ 25 days.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:28AM (5 children)
My understanding was that astrology was originally used to predict climate. Essentially to tell kings what type of policies to implement. All the horoscope stuff came later. It was probably like we see today where physics used the scientific method to great success then psychologists/medical researchers, etc cargo culted them to get the prestige without the actual success, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @06:08AM (1 child)
My understanding was that if you burned the planet to the ground, things would be bad. I'm glad Astrology predicted this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @06:27AM
I heard a secession is coming so Trump won't get reelected. That guarantees more warming, with 100% success since records began: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/tempByPres.png [columbia.edu]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @07:00AM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astrology [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:07PM (1 child)
Well, even in Babylon it was used to predict other things. Like what a lucky day was for the king to change his clothes. (Considering how hot the middle east gets, the king must sometimes have gotten pretty ripe.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:09PM
1. You don't give a relative timeframe for that (or any source)
2. That was probably a symbolic act indicating a change of seasons.