The Sun has a mysterious heartbeat: scientists explain the phenomenon

Scientists say they have finally solved the mystery of the Sun's "heartbeat," a complex, multi-rhythmic phenomenon that occurs in different ways with varying periodicity.

New research shows that the 11-year cycle of the Sun's activity, known as the Schwabe cycle, can be partially explained by the gravitational interaction between the Sun and three planets: Venus, Earth, and Jupiter.

"You can think of it as a giant dynamo," explained Frank Stefani, a physicist at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf laboratory in Germany who led the study. "Although this solar dynamo generates an approximately 11-year cycle of activity by itself, we believe that the influence of the planets then interferes with this dynamo, repeatedly giving it a small boost and thus forcing an unusually stable 11.07-year rhythm on the sun."

Schwabe's cycle:

Every 11 years or so, the sun undergoes a dramatic series of transformations as its activity level fluctuates.At solar minimum, it exhibits the least activity. Then, over the next few years, it gradually increases. This manifests itself as an increase in the number of sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections until the peak known as solar maximum (we are now close to solar maximum).

At a solar maximum, the poles of the Sun reverse their polarity, and activity decreases for several years until the next solar minimum, and then increases again until the next maximum and another pole reversal.

Influence of the planets:

Every 11.07 years, around the time of solar minimum, Venus, Earth, and Jupiter form a line, briefly increasing the gravitational pull on the Sun in one direction. This weak effect may play a role in synchronizing the Sun's internal dynamo with regular cycles.

The researchers found that not only does the Venus-Earth-Jupiter alignment coincide with solar cycles, but the alignment of any two of the three planets has enough gravitational pull to activate Rossby waves, giant vortex waves in the Sun that are thought to synchronize the dynamo.

Rieger cycles - 150-160 day cycles of solar flare activity – are also thought to be synchronized by Rossby waves and coincide with the alignment of the planets. Mathematical modeling has confirmed that planetary alignments can reproduce the Schwabe and Rieger cycles.

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