Interesting video showing the changing barycenter of the solar system.

[Rs2k]

[samstarman5]

Oh, what a delicate balance is our solar system. This does make a lot of sense.

[Rs2k]

A possible explanation for the sunspot cycle is what really makes this interesting for me. I also never realized the sun could be so far away from the solar system\'s barycenter. Since the sun contains somewhere around 99.8% of the solar system\'s mass, I always thought the barycenter would be very close to the center of the sun. I mean the earth is something around 98% of the earth / moon system and the barycenter is within the earth. I guess I never took the size and density of the sun into consideration.

[Ydoow]

Nifty!

I\'ve always heard that the Sun revolves very slightly because of the pull of planets, just like swinging an eraser on a string, your hand wobbles too, but I never imagined it being so irregular or so large.

I wonder how, if it is, connected to the sunspot cycle. It seems rather reasonable chronologically speaking, scientists always noticed that it was ~11 years. Sometimes it would be shorter or longer, which could be accounted for the rest of the planets lining up with Saturn and Jupiter ever X amount of cycles.

But how having them lined up affects a sunspot is beyond me.

[Rs2k]

I would guess that there are extra forces the sun can 'feel' depending on how far it is from the barycenter. The sun is large enough I\'d imagine the difference between he gravitational pull on one side of the sun may differ slightly from the other side depending on where it is in relation to the barycenter/other orbiting planets... Kind of like the tides the moon causes on earth, but more subtle.