The Sun's Tidal Rhythms express
The Sun is not a calm sphere but a boiling cauldron that follows its own rhythms. Roughly every 11 years, its activity peaks: more dark spots appear on its surface, and streams of charged particles fly into space. But hidden within this grand cycle is a shorter one — about 1.7 years. Known as the quasi-biennial oscillation, it governs the frequency of strong flares.
Scientists studied 72 events when particles from the Sun reached Earth in particularly powerful streams, and 37 strong X-ray flares. They found that these events recur with a period of 1.723 years. This number is no coincidence: it almost exactly matches the rhythm of tidal forces created by three planets — Venus, Earth, and Jupiter. When they align in a certain configuration, their combined gravitational pull slightly stretches and compresses the Sun, much as the Moon stretches Earth's oceans.
This tidal rhythm acts like a conductor, setting the tempo for internal waves in the zone where solar material begins to mix. These waves rise to the surface and trigger flares. Recent events — the powerful solar storm on May 10, 2024, and the strong flare on February 1, 2026—coincided with peaks in this tidal influence.
If this rhythm holds up, we'll have a simple calendar for predicting dangerous solar storms. Just knowing the positions of the three planets could tell us when the Sun is more likely to sneeze in Earth's direction.
Original abstract
as written by the authors arXiv:2602.11227
Magneto-Rossby waves in the solar tachocline are currently considered to be one of the main determinants of solar activity. In particular, they can give rise to the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). The latter was recently shown to be dominated by a phase-stable period of around 1.7 years. By analyzing 72 ground-level enhancement (GLE) events and 37 S-flares, we determine that this period is close to 1.723 years. This, in turn, is the dominant beat between the periods of the spring tides of the tidally dominant planets Venus, Earth, and Jupiter, which are suspected to synchronize not only the QBO, but also the 11.07-year Schwabe cycle. We demonstrate that recent events, such as the solar storm of 2024 May 10 and the strong X-flare of 2026 February 1, align well with maxima of the combined tidal forcing.
The tidal influence of Venus, Earth, and Jupiter on the Sun is billions of times weaker than the Moon's pull on Earth's oceans, yet because of the Sun's enormous mass, even that tiny effect influences its magnetic rhythms.
In Arthur C. Clarke's novel "Solar Storm," humanity grapples with the aftermath of a powerful flare — now science has a hint at how to predict such events in advance.