Scientists have examined the heartbeat of the sun and found something extraordinary

Scientists have investigated the heartbeat of the sunchuchart duangdaw – Getty Images

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  • Alternating groups of planets could be on the sun, creating an energy cycle.

  • It seems that alternating groups of researchers are doing the same thing regarding the solar theories.

  • When planets align, the effects of their gravity on the sun can combine to form a greater force.


In newly published research, scientists from Germany’s largest research group have tried to pin down something astonishing: the sun’s “heartbeat,” a tidal cycle that ebbs and flows over a period of eleven years. In the article they combine three known phenomena that affect the sun and combine them under one overarching theory. The explanation could be as simple as the planets orbiting Earth – the way the moon affects our tides on Earth. The research took place at the Helmholtz Center in Dresden-Rossendorf and is now published in Solar physics.

The sun is enormous and can seem omnipotent to us here on the puny Earth. But inside it has some things in common with Jupiter and even Earth. The sun has no solid mass, but consists of white-hot gas and plasma, the vast majority of which consists of hydrogen. But the enormous magnetic field is created by a spinning effect known as the solar dynamo, which is associated with both Earth’s spinning and molten core and Jupiter’s mysterious interior.



It may also be surprising that the planets, with their measly small gravity, can influence the sun at all. But the planets are kept in careful balance. The sun attracts them, and they spin at a constant distance without being pulled in… thankfully.

The gravity of the planets pulls the sun back at least a little. Jupiter is the biggest culprit, and that makes sense: after all, it is 11 times the diameter and 318 times the mass of Earth. But in this study, scientists discovered that Earth and Venus are also involved.

“Starting on the high frequency side, we show that the spring tides of Venus, Earth and Jupiter on two planets are capable of generating magneto-Rossby waves,” which is one of the types of cyclic changes that experience the sun. researchers explained. In other words, these planets occasionally align with each other from the Sun’s perspective, and that combines their individual gravitational influences. This could explain the sun’s shortest cycle, which lasts eleven years.

There are similar multiplicative overlaps in the Sun’s longer cycles. Jupiter and Saturn join forces about every 20 years, and the sun’s own motion pushes the sun closer or further away from the exact center of the solar system in a less regular shape, so there is a new cycle every 193 years that may be related holds. And the granddaddy of them all is a cycle of over 2,300 years, in which Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all act together.



These arguments – even though well supported – are causing some controversy within the solar science community. People have long studied how the planets affect the sun, and have even theorized about these cycles of varying lengths. “The biggest problem with this problem is that even its existence is not widely accepted,” the researchers wrote. “Au contraire, a few recent papers have vehemently refuted any claim for phase stability.”

Each renowned scientific article contains dozens of references and serves as a springboard from which other scientists can continue to iterate. The sun is extremely difficult to study, and researchers must carefully construct their cases based on observations from millions of miles away and through heavily filtered (but non-glare) viewers. They also use indirect observation to uncover missing pieces of the sun’s mysteries.

“[W]We consider the phase stability of the Schwabe cycle as a serious working hypothesis, for which it seems worthwhile to find a reasonable physical explanation,” the researchers concluded. “If new data emerges that provide unequivocal evidence to the contrary, we will be the first to consider this article misleading and unhelpful.”

Who knew studying the sun was so salty?

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