purplepete:
've been reading Electric Currents in Geospace and Beyond by Keiling et al. As the name suggests this contains a lot of work by authors who freely acknowledge the existence of electric currents around Earth, on Sol, et al, but despite this the only mention of Birkeland's name is in a brief "history of" section, plus a few mentions by authors from Scandinavia. Alfven doesn't fare much better. Everywhere else it's FAC-this and FAC-that. It is also disappointing that many of the authors continue to ignore Alfven's comments later in life about how "frozen in" magnetic fields exist (if at all) in only very limited situations, certainly not in the breadth of situations where they assume them to. There is also absolutely NO discussion of double-layers or how key they are to solar weather, CMEs or the like. It's amazing how many experts on plasma lack even basic understanding of some of the properties that separate a plasma from a gas and their importance.
Yes. exactly..... It is willful ignorance or worse.
In discussion of the solar cycle I would remind us that the basic structure, nature, etc. of the sun is the quiet sun.
The solar sun spots are interruptions in the quiet sun.
These interruptions have their own cycle which is basically a sine wave.
The sine wave , in geometry, is a point on a circle as it (the circle) rolls through time, so to speak.
The solar cycle (with all its variability) AVERAGES about 11 years, or 22 for a full cycle.
The planet orbits are circle like. The largest one, with a very strong magnetic field, is Jupiter. It orbits every 11.86 years
The second largest planet ,Saturn, is in conjunction with Jupiter every 20 years.
Why look at the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn ?
The sun spots are electrical events. Planets in conjunctions( and other relationships)
should effect the electrical environment surrounding the sun.
I'm going with the local (to the sun) and the "what's in plain sight"........the planets.
Miles has a very detailed (and complicated ) explanation of how it all works.
He may be correct.
He plots all the planets on the same plane.
We know they are not on one plane.
Their orbits have different inclinations to each other and to the solar equatorial plane.
So, when two planets are in conjunction a second time their north/south positions can be quite different.
They also, move under, into, and above the Heliospheric current sheet at different times as they orbit the sun.
This all probably effects the electrical relationships with the sun.
IT's All VERY COMPLICATED.
The complexity itself is a clue I think.
The solar magnetic field is not all neat and uniform.
For half the cycle there is a predominate polarity, then a lot of mixing, then the opposite polarity dominates for awhile.
It's ALL VERY ORGANIC and sort of chaotic.
Miles:
The Sun is recycling a greater charge field coming in from the galactic core and
the surrounding galactic field. It is taking that field in at its poles and re-emitting it nearer the equator.
From there, it travels out on the Solar plane to all the planets, where it is recycled by them in turn. A
sort of circuit is then created, and the charge returns from the planets back to the Sun.
In other words, they are seeing clear evidence here of a charge or magnetic feedback loop from the
large planets (or all the planets, but mainly the big four)
I think the solar wind in general is a feedback from the quiet sun to the interstellar medium
and Miles has the planets feeding that back to the sun.
It seems like the right amount of chaotic electrical mix up on a repeating orbital scale pattern to give us the sun spot cycle.