Most readers on this list are more concerned with anomalous energy on earth than astrophysics. We pay attention to solar energy as a clean alternative - and to solar sunspots as a general areas of interest - but hardly ever do we consider an interconnectivity of solar activity to LENR in hidden ways. Could solar activity (sunspots) have a noticeable effect on experiments on earth, unrelated to photon emission, especially where the probability of success of the experiment is low. Neutrino periodicity is an example of an unseen, non-photonic influence.
An LENR experiment that is positive 10% of the time may go relatively unnoticed, but if positive 60% of the time we get excited. That kind of thing could be relevant. We know that an approximate 11 year cycle of peak activity exists in sunspots. Even if there is no other influence from a star like eta Carina -it is worth noting that there is at least one cyclical coincidence at work. Did you know that Solar emission of RF at 127 MHz has being monitored at since 1958 and is found to follow the same 11 year cycle? This means nothing specific, but is suggestive of cyclical emissions that are completely unaccounted for. The P&F announcement in 1989 was never tied to solar activity nor was Rossi's first public experiment 22 years later. But the fact that these two were two solar cycles apart should not be completely overlooked.... It would be interesting to know if there was a surge of successful reports in 2000-2001. A quick scan of LENR-CANR shows 483 hits for year 2000 and only 321 for 1999. This is meaningless really, since other factors are not eliminated, but the point is that sun cycles could play a unappreciated role in LENR. ... or not ... From: Mauro Lacy Well, here are the graphs: http://maurol.com.ar/solar_cycle The data was obtained from http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/greenwch. I used the daily sunspot area as an indicator of solar activity. The method used is an estimate of power spectral density by the Welch (1967) periodogram/FFT method, which is readily available, by example in octave or Matlab. I had to do some manual preprocessing of the data, and after fiddling for a relatively long time with the scales, I finally began to obtain some meaningful values. As can be seen in http://maurol.com.ar/solar_cycle/daily_area-PSD3.png, there are two peaks near Eta Carinae's period (5.539 years) of dimming X-ray activity , at 5.51 and 5.3 years. They are both much less significant than the main period of the solar cycle (which by the way, seems to be actually near 10.6 years, not 11.04 years as usually stated), and there's is not a period of exactly 5.539 years, but they are close nevertheless. That is, there are (secondary) periods of the solar system not in, but closer, to 5.539. I obtained 5.539 years from the literature. This site in particular was very helpful: http://etacar.umn.edu/ Regarding these results, I suppose you take it or leave it. I mean, they really aren't that significant. But if you take it, there are some interesting things to try: 1) smooth/consolidate the periodograms, to try to obtain less noise, and higher peaks. 2) look for north hemisphere vs. south hemisphere cycles. As Eta Car is south, maybe the periods in the south hemisphere are closer to Eta Car's period. I'll do this next. 3) look for phase, not only frequency, correlations. I have yet to learn how to do statistical phase analysis. I hope you enjoy the pictures! If there are some people interested, I can publish the scripts and techniques I used to obtain the graphs. It really wasn't that difficult. Best regards, Mauro
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