Push and shove

Schwabe's eleven-year solar cycle is explained: it's the alignment of Earth / Venus / Jupiter, which recurs in 4043 Earth days, or 11.07 years. That means Sidereal, so sorta-Julian if we're marking time on our calendars. Although as Dr Frank Stefani's and his team's paper notes, Newtonian mechanics get chaotic over long spans, so the great calendar debate might not matter much.

I did like Stefani's title. Bond... Gerard Bond! In that spirit, I've run a title to fit Stefani's own name . . .

I perked up at the word "alignment" and wondered it I might fit 4043 days into an even number of Earth / Venus synods. No such luck. Nicola Scafetta had posted an article 2011-12, doi 10.1016/j.jastp.2012.04.002, which defined that trio's "alignment". The alignments, Scafetta warned, are not perfect. IRG Wilson explained this a bit more the following year (warning, Stefani's link is bad, use mine). Even an imperfect Jovian alignment with a Venus/Earth synod might add torque to such tides as our inner planets raise upon the Sun.

This further implies that not all eleven[-plus]-year sunspot cycles be equal.