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Solar physics

The planetary hypothesis revived

Nature volume 493, pages 613–614 (2013)Cite this article

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The Sun's magnetic activity varies cyclically over a period of about 11 years. An analysis of a new, temporally extended proxy record of this activity hints at a possible planetary influence on the amplitude of the cycle.

Right to the end of his life, the Swiss astronomer Rudolf Wolf (1816–93) sought to establish a causal link between the 11-year cycle of the number of dark patches on the Sun (sunspots) and planetary motions. Through his relentless historical detective work, he reconstructed the time series of sunspot number all the way back to the seventeenth century. Taken quite seriously and quantitatively elaborated upon until the end of the nineteenth century, the idea rapidly fell into disfavour following George Ellery Hale's discovery of the magnetic nature of sunspots1. Since then, the origin of the sunspot cycle, or solar magnetic cycle, has been sought in the Sun's interior, where the flow of magnetized fluid can lead to self-sustained dynamo action. Rediscovered periodically ever since (pun intended), nowadays the 'planetary hypothesis' for the solar cycle is usually branded as astrology and summarily dismissed. But writing in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Abreu et al.2 once again revive this hypothesis.

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Figure 1: The sunspot cycle.

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  1. Paul Charbonneau is in the Department of Physics, University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec H3C3J7, Canada.,

    Paul Charbonneau

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Correspondence to Paul Charbonneau.

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Charbonneau, P. The planetary hypothesis revived. Nature 493, 613–614 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/493613a

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