Adventures in Shortwave Radio Research
The work of John H. Nelson is the second big dot to connect in understanding this process of how planetary alignments relate to solar activity and thus geomagnetic activity on Earth. Nelson was a shortwave radio researcher who worked for RCA (Radio Corporation of America) during the 1950s and 60s. He was tasked with finding a way to predict days when shortwave signals would be disrupted. (Remember this was before satellite communication, so there was a certain interest in maintaining these radio connections between the continents.) Even at this point, scientists had noticed the link between sunspot activity and the geomagnetic activity that affected shortwave radio transmissions, but they had no accurate means to predict when solar activity was likely to break out. Nelson studied the sunspot patterns for a number of years until he grew frustrated by his lack of progress in making long-range predictions.
Nelson then began to look at past solar storms where radio transmissions were wiped out for several days, hoping to find some sort of reoccurring pattern that might explain why these days, and not others, were special. On a whim, he decided to test an idea about the position of the planets, and used the date March 23rd 1940, the date of a significant geomagnetic storm, for his initial test date. He looked up the positions of the planets for this particular day and to his surprise noticed something very interesting.
What he found was that on this day several planets lined up with each other. He discovered that Mercury was at opposition with Jupiter on March 22nd, and then in conjunction with Saturn on March 26th. On March 24, one of the worst days in terms of radio transmission, Venus was square to Saturn. Nelson described this radio outage on March 23rd 1940 as being the "Rosetta Stone" of forecasting solar activity. This was just the start. He later discovered many more idiosyncrasies with the way the planets teased solar activity out of the Sun.
Nelson discovered that solar activity was more likely to occur during some conjunction, opposition or square between an inner and outer planet which he referred to as 'hard' angles. This was usually the initiating factor in the solar storms he observed and predicted. He also noted that other harmonics of these 'hard' angles served to increase solar activity as well. By 'harmonic' I mean taking 180 degrees and dividing it by integers. So angles like 180/2 = 90, 180/3 = 60, 180/4 = 45, 180/5 = 36 and so on... Even multiples of these harmonics such as 75 degrees (15 x 5) or 135 (45 x 3) and others could play a role too. Why harmonics were important to this process is unclear and probably something Nelson was hoping future research would shed light on, but nonetheless these were the observations he made.
He noticed that in the absence of any 'hard' angles, the trine angles (120 and 240 degrees) tended to stabilize solar activity, making good days for shortwave transmissions. The trine configuration of Saturn and Jupiter was especially significant in this regard. But he also noted that if a trine angle corresponded with a 'hard' angle between an inner and outer planet on the same day, it would usually magnify solar activity.
Nelson discovered that when multiple planets fell into harmonic relations this seemed to add to the solar activity initiated by a 'hard' angle. But these harmonics by themselves, without a 'hard' angle, usually did nothing. Likewise, a hard angle by itself without any added harmonics usually did nothing as well. Nelson also discovered that a planet's ascending and descending nodes played a role in setting up solar storms too. From his book
Cosmic Patterns he writes:
The major storms analyzed in the following discussions will often contain more than one hard angle and numerous harmonics. Sometimes several hard angles with their associated harmonics follow one another in quite rapid succession, resulting in major storms, some of which can be prolonged for this reason.
The planet Mercury is of major importance. One would expect this since it is the closest planet to the sun and has the greatest orbital velocity. (It also has considerable gravitational effects when at perihelion, however I do not wish to get into the area of gravitation since my prime interest is in angles.) I think it is safe to say that in at least 90 percent of the cases Mercury is the trigger planet. The planets slower than Mercury can be all set up on a major pattern but a storm usually does not begin until Mercury moves into a hard angle with one of them, or as a harmonic to two that are already associated in a hard angle.
Simple, uncontaminated conjunctions, squares, and oppositions involving only two planets can usually be ignored. Simultaneous multiple harmonics are the key. There are so many hard angles made by Mercury and Venus because of their velocity that, if every hard angle presaged a storm, shortwave radio would have a very difficult time surviving.
Another rule is that the intensity of a storm will be greater if a planet making a hard angle is at, or close to, either its nodal point or perihelion point in space.
[...]
At perihelion a planet is at that point in its orbit which brings it closest to the sun. Nodes are the places in a planet's orbit at which it crosses the plane of the Earth's orbit which means, of course, that the planet is crossing the ecliptic. There are two nodes, known as the ascending node, the point at which the planet crosses from below the ecliptic to above the ecliptic, and the descending node (180 degrees away), at which point the planet crosses from above to below the ecliptic. My research throughout the years has shown that these points in space are very important in this work.
The research relating to the nodes has revealed that the point halfway between the nodes is also a very sensitive area in space - apparently as important as the nodes themselves. At this point in space the planet pauses for an instant in the motion that is taking it away from the ecliptic, and then starts back again towards the ecliptic. Perhaps in doing this it creates a torque in the magnetic field of the sun. This can be demonstrated by dragging a canoe paddle through still water, then suddenly reversing the paddle; an eddy is created in the water. Could the same thing take place in the sun's outer atmosphere?
[...]
The nice thing about Nelson's findings is that all of these factors are predictable and can be calculated far into the future. This suggests that it may be possible to predict solar storms via computer algorithms. In fact, I discovered one ham radio enthusiast who attempted to use part of Nelson's Theory in his own
computer program to calculate a 'Nelson index' for each day. It's a crude attempt, and it doesn't take into account all of the factors the Nelson discovered, but it seems that he did have some preliminary success at accounting for past solar activity. Nelson believed his method brought about a 85% success rate in predicting future solar storms.
Despite Nelson's many successes at predicting solar storms, which he mentions in his book, there do seem to be some factors missing from his work. I think it would be worthwhile to consider some of James McCanney's ideas in light of Nelson's discoveries. The first missing factor is the influence of the Moon and how it interacts with the Earth-Sun connection. According to McCanney, when the Moon passes in front of the Earth (during a New Moon), there's a build-up of charge which then gets dumped into the ionosphere after the Moon passes. McCanney points out that the chance for hurricanes and cyclones greatly increases just after the passing of a New Moon. (Yes, cyclone-type storms like tornadoes and hurricanes are likely
electric phenomena.) The Moon by itself may have little influence over solar activity compared to the planets, but it seems to have quite an effect on Earth.
Red Ice Radio - Maurice Cotterell - FutureScience, The Cycles of the Sun & 2012
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