Paul LaViolette (P L) attempts to address some questions below.

From an email he received 1/16/06:

<< Dr. LaViolette and/or Staff at Starburst Foundation:  Could it be that the solar sunspot activity that peaks every 11 years in our solar system is a reaction to a mini galactic superwave/ripple that hits our solar system at the same time? and if so, could a review of the 11 year sunspot cycles for increases in intensity (over however many sunspot cycles data has been collected) show a trend toward increased likelihood of a big event?  It would seem that if the sun spot activity and output of energy from two or more consecutive 11 year cycle solar events showed an exponential upward curve trend in intensity that the third or fourth following 11 year cycle might be the big one, no? >>

P L:    In the past, I had wondered whether the 11 and 22 year solar cycle may be related to long-period gravity potential fluctuations emanating from the Galactic core.  The subquantum kinetics physics theory links gravity potential to genic energy production rate, and hence to solar output.  That is, about 10 to 15 percent of the solar output is predicted to be of non-nuclear origin arising from photon energy blueshifting.  The energy spontaneously generated through photon blueshifting is what I term genic energy.  The rate of photon blueshifting and hence of genic energy production is predicted to correlate with the ambient value of the G potential.  More negative gravity potential is predicted to create more supercritical conditions in the reactive ether which in turn increase the rate of photon blueshifting.  So in theory cyclic changes in the G potential generated at the Galactic center could produce a cyclic effect on solar luminosity and possibly the level of sunspot activity.  But there are no detectors I know of that will measure the ambient value of the gravity potential, particularly levels varying as slowly as 11 years peak to peak.  Gravity wave detectors are of no help since they are designed to measure force, not potential, and forces that vary over short time scales (e.g., minutes). So it is difficult to test this hypothesis.  Also the mother star Sgr A* at the center of the Galaxy has a mass of about 4 million solar masses as compared with 10 billion solar masses for the Galaxy's central bulge.  So even a large 50% variation in the mass of Sgr A* would produce only a 0.01% change in the local G potential or a change of one part per million in the Sun's G potential (the Sun's G potential being 50 times larger in magnitude than the Galaxy ambient).  Since genic energy luminosity is about one tenth of the total solar luminosity, one would expect to see a change of only a tenth of a part per million in the Sun's overall luminosity.  The Sun's luminosity instead changes by about 0.1% over one solar cycle.  So it seems more likely that this solar cycle variation is due to processes intrinsic to the Sun and not to the Galactic center.  If there were such a Galactic center effect, one would expect to see subtle cyclic variations in other stars that have a similar 11 and 22 year cycle period.  But I don't know that there is any evidence of this.

    I don't deny that there are ongoing gravity potential fluctuations coming from the center of the Galaxy that may affect the Earth.  As I mention in Earth Under Fire, in the 1970's Dr. Joseph Weber at the University of Maryland claimed to have detected gravity waves with his gravity wave antenna and claimed that they emanated from the direction of the Galactic center.  But his results were not believed by the scientific community.  Also Townsend Brown reported changes in electro-gravitic force that had a correlation with the orientation of the zenith to the Galactic center.