The sunspot number record supports the existence of Planet 9 and the effect of planetary motion on solar activity

Abstract

This paper assesses if the Planet 9 hypothesis, the existence of a ninth planet, is consistent with the planetary hypothesis, the synchronization of sunspot emergence to solar inertial motion (SIM) induced by the planets. We show that SIM would be profoundly affected if Planet 9 exists and that the hypothesized effect of SIM on sunspot emergence would be radically different from the effect of SIM due to the existing eight planets. We compare the spectral and time variation of Sun to barycentre distance, RB, calculated for both the eight and nine planet systems, with variation of sunspot number (SSN). Including Planet 9 improves spectral correlation and time coherence between RB and SSN in the decadal, centennial and millennial time range. Additionally, as the variation of RB is sensitive to Planet 9 parameters, longitude and period, it is possible to tune both parameters to SSN variation and obtain new estimates of the Planet 9 parameters independent of astronomical observations. We develop a mechanism for the influence of SIM on SSN that provides an explanation of the consistency between SIM, calculated with Planet nine, and records of reconstructed SSN.