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FYI: Jupiter contains 70% of the non-solar mass of the solar system and would put the solar system barycenter just outside the surface of the sun by itself. The sun-Jupiter barycenter lies at 1.068 solar radii from the center of the sun.

If all the planets were aligned on the same side of the sun, the barycenter would be 500,000 km above the sun's surface ... 1.719 solar radii from the center of the sun. If all of the other planets were located on the opposite side of the sun from Jupiter, the barycenter would lie within the sun at about 0.417 solar radii.

The movement of the barycenter would most definitely alter the tidal forces affecting the sun.

I have no idea if this affects the Earth's climate.

Thanks for the information. I read a lot of books on astronomy when I was in grade school but never got very deeply into the math or astrophysics of it all. I didn't realize the mass of Jupiter was sufficient to put the barycenter outside the surface of the sun.

I don't think Dave Barry is currently writing columns...otherwise I'd say someone needs to tell him about barycenters...

The movement of the barycenter would most definitely alter the tidal forces affecting the sun.

Why would you say this? The tidal forces are due to the variation in the planets' gravitational forces in the body of the sun, compared to their average forces on the sun. The total tidal force is simply the sum of the tidal forces due to each planet.

The motion of the sun about the CM is its response to the average, or net, force, and is a free fall motion. The tidal forces are what's "left over", and can in no sense be understood as being altered or affected by this free fall motion.

Great information. So most of the time the center of gravity for the solar system is located a little bit above the surface of the sun and the sun basically orbits this point. Sometimes in a normal fashion sometimes in an erratic fashion. Then sometimes the center of gravity for the solar system is located within the radius of the sun itself. Thanks for that info.

Perhaps the only way one could visualize what is happening here is too take a big step back. One has to look at the solar system as a single unit first and quantify how it warps space time as it travels through space time. You could basically imagine a wide Einstein gravity hole of funnel with its center at the center of gravity for the solar system. That wide funnels center point does not move for this illustrations purposes. Now within that wide funnel there are other funnels that rotate around which represent the individual planets and suns gravity holes, funnels or space distortions. Obviously the suns center gravity funnel has by far the greatest magnitude when compared to the planets. Now as the sun moves around the solar system gravity well or funnel, its space time will be distorted due to its sometimes erratic orbit. The orbit of the planets are much further out and the movement of the solar systems center of gravity is less significant. Any erratic behavior in the planets orbits should also be less significant due to their distance from the center. What we are debating here is the magnitude of that distortion on the sun and if that distortion could affect the Plasma Belt Currents near the surface of the sun, which NASA states will affect the future activity rates on the surface of the sun. Someone will have to do the math on that one. Not gonna be easy. If the sun was a solid or a black hole, the affects would probably not be significant. Something however has to be causing or inducing the suns fairly consistent intervals of activity. This is perhaps one possibility.