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Published online 28 March 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.690
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Solar flares set off sunquakes
Outbursts on the Sun set the whole star shaking.
Solar flares make the Sun ring like a bell, researchers in Denmark have found.
Christoffer Karoff and Hans Kjeldsen of the University of Aarhus say that these outbursts in the Sun’s outer layers drive oscillations throughout the Sun “in the same way that the entire Earth is set ringing for several weeks after a major earthquake.
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I have read your article with interest and I am of the opinion that there is an interchange of cause and consequence, i.e. the solar activity is a consequence rather then a source of the solar oscillations. Some years ago I devised a formula which tracks sunspot periodicity. The formula with its graphic presentation can be found on the website http://www.vukcevic.co.uk Governing parameters of the formula are astronomical properties found within solar system rather than properties of the Sun itself (i.e. gravitational and magnetic forces of two major planets Jupiter and Saturn). Y = A abs [Cos 2pi(t-T0)/P1 + Cos (2pi/3 + 2pi(t-T0)/P2] P2=2x11.862 years - Jupiter sidereal period; P1=19.86 years - Jupiter - Saturn synodic period; T0 = 1941; A = 100 - arbitrary constant used to normalise values in the diagram; ( 2pi/3) is angular shift of 120 degrees for subsequent Jupiter - Saturn conjunctions; Please note the formula tracks PERIODICITY and NOT the amplitude of the solar cycles. One or two most eminent solar scientists have pronounced above ‘just a coincidence’ , however in my view The nature is adverse to a coincidence, it is ruled by a cause and the consequence. M. Vukcevic
Other studies seem to agree with the views expressed by Milivoje Vukcevic: Sunspot periodicity seems to arise from interactions between the Sun and the planets that jerk the Sun, like a yo-yo on a string, in its orbit about the center-of-mass of the solar system. Sudden shifts in solar inertial motion apparently shift the depth of the Sun's energetic, high-density core relative to the solar surface. - Oliver K. Manuel http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2007/20071202_Manuel_and_Ratcliffe.pdf
In his more recent article on the matter (01/09/2007) Mr. Vukcevic proposes even more controversial hypothesis: beside the gravitational links between solar periodicity and major planets there is also an electro-magnetic feedback between solar activity and planetary (mainly the Jupiter’s) magnetospheres. He states: Large number of the solar events are electro-magnetic, part of the energy released is carried by magnetic flux into the heliosphere. The magnetic flux and the associated heliospheric current which is carried by the solar wind trough the heliosphere forms a closed circuit loop with the Sun as the generator (originating in mid and low latitudes and closing in the polar regions). If the propagating flux encounters a magnetosphere then reconnection will take place between fields of the opposite polarities resulting in an energy exchange. Due to the loss of its energy the carrier flux loop will subside sooner then otherwise with consequence that any change in the magnetic energy carried by the solar wind will be reflected back to the source, hence a feedback. S. Radun
Thanks, Simon, for the new information. If Al Gore and the IPCC want to stop climate change, it appears that they must first stop planets from moving around the Sun! Oliver K. Manuel
Simon - This is starting to sound a lot like that "Electric Universe" theory...perhaps there is at least something to it after all?
A very interesting result from another instrument by SOHO. Well done! Especially, relevant to the original discovery in 1998 of solar quakes from SOHO/MDI data by Kosovichev and Zharkova 'Seismic response to solar flares from SOHO/MDI observations' (1998, Nature, 393, 317-318). See also for more details http://quake.stanford.edu/~sasha/FLARE/. Valentina Zharkova (University of Bradford, UK) and Alexander Kosovichev (Stanford University, US)