Wobbly Universe

Originally posted by email September 1997. This will no doubt become topical again some time.

In recent times there have been many news reports concerning the problems of rabbits for farmers in the south island and the release of rabbits contaminated with the RCD rabbit virus. I am writing because I have some information which might be of relevance to the problem, and without which some mistaken conclusions might be reached.

There is a cycle of 9.6 years in snowshoe rabbit populations in the northern hemisphere. Many other animals show this same variation, including canadian lynx, hawk, owl, partridge, tent caterpillars, chinch bug, ticks, coyote, fisher, martin, mink, muskrat, four varieties of fox, timber wolf, goshawk, skunk and salmon. In most cases the variations in animal populations and reproduction rates vary by enormous factors over the 9.6 year cycle. For example the canadian lynx population increases by about 1000% in 5 years and just as rapidly declines to its original level. A graph of the canadian lynx population, as measured by the number trapped for fur, and covering a 200 year period is enclosed. Humans too are slightly affected by the 9.6 year cycle with a variation in heart attacks.

These matters have all been reported extensively by Edward Dewey and others at the cycles foundation over a long period. Other variations over a cycle of 9.6 years include wheat production, tree ring widths, financial crises, storm track shifts, magnetic measurements, lake varve thicknesses, atmospheric ozone content, atmospheric pressure and the runoffs of certain rivers.

I recently came across an old book with some further interesting material related to the matter. Ellsworth Huntington reported in the 1940s that ozone concentration in the lower atmosphere also varies over the same cycle and that some solar variations are suspected to be responsible. It is also known that litter sizes and breeding frequency increase considerably as the growth phase of the cycle gets under way.

Huntington makes it clear that we do not fully understand these things but offers clues for further research.

Some research on the various creatures affected by the cycle has been carried out because several others are pests as well as rabbits.

Although there is no certainty on the cause, the suspected culprits of weather variations and such factors are not the primary cause of variations.

The question of relevance to farmers is whether epidemics of rabbits can be predicted and, that being so, whether anything can be done about it.

The other important question is what would the natural cycle be doing at the moment without the RCD rabbit virus. All of the animals whose populations vary on a 9.6 year cycle reach peaks at nearly the same time. This is called cycle synchrony by Edward Dewey and is common to other cycles also. There are other cycles of different periods in other animal populations and in many other variables.

Extending forward the dates of the peaks of the various animal populations from the historical records of the 9.6 year cycle leads me to conclude that they would mostly reach a peak around early 1996. On that basis, assuming that our southern hemisphere animals follow the same cycle then it is quite understandable that there has been a serious problem for farmers over the last several years. However, even without the release of RCD rabbit virus we could expect a reduction in rabbit populations to already have begun and for rabbit populations to decline significantly through 1997 to 1999 and reach a low around the end of the year 2000.

It concerns me that even if the rabbit population just follows its normal decline this may be interpreted as being a result of using RCD and so RCD may acquire a reputation whether or not it deserves it. For that reason I wanted to make the facts about animal population cycles known so that when MAF and others are reaching their conclusions at some time in the future they will put this information into the equation also.

For studying cycles, or repeating phenomena, in every branch of human knowledge. Continuing the work of Edward R Dewey, who discovered that there are related cycles in many seemingly unrelated things - see graph at left as an example. Useful for scientific study, investments and understanding the universe.

"..., insofar as cycles are meaningful, all science that has been developed in the absence of cycle knowledge is inadequate and partial. Thus, if cyclic forces are real, any theory of economics, or sociology, or history, or medicine, or climatology that ignores non-chance rhythms is manifestly incomplete, as medicine was before the discovery of germs."

- Edward R. Dewey (Cycles Magazine July 1967)

9.6 year cycle

My friend Gabriel has made some excellent animated GIF files that show the possibilities for explaining the wave structure of matter (WSM) in a clear way. These show the meaning of de Broglie waves and other known physics in a way that has not been fully understood in the past.

Doppler motion of de Broglie waves

One of the most important questions facing mankind in the twenty-first century is to what degree is human activity responsible for climate change, particularly temperature change, and is there anything that we can or should do about that?

This issue can be focussed on narrowly or broadly and entirely different answers arrived at. Some of the relevant aspects are the long term ice-age or Milankovitch cycles, medium term solar fluctuations, the effect of humans burning fossil fuels, the possible bias in sampling locations, and ecological and political propaganda.

... more at the link

See Also:
Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years
Humans vs Sun as cause for climate change
Astronomer Sallie Baliunas on sunspots, global warming, ...
Global Warming - Humans and/or the Sun? ... and more!
Sun more active than for a millennium
Sally Baliunas inteviewed on Solar Fluctuations and Global Warming
Interview: James Lovelock on Climate Change
Humans, Cycles, Sun or Ice-ages - What affects our climate most?
Sun's fickle heart may leave us cold

Wave Particles: Oscillons, Cymatics

Experiments with vibrations and water generate fascinating patterns which hint at the composition of matter as really being similar types of waves. To understand the secrets of matter I suggest that cymatics is a necessary subject to study. Click the title for much more.

Cymatics in Coffee cup

"This cup of coffee was on a surface vibrated at approximately 20Hz by a an electric motor driving an unbalanced flywheel."

Cymatics is the study of forms, often changing, caused by the vibration of liquids or partcle dusts.

There are 24 cymatics videos on youtube and another 31 on google video.

For those who have never seen a cymatics video, then you are in for a big surprise. Simple sound waves acting on fluids or powders can cause amazing structures to form, including ones that look like life forms and others which strange convolutions and flows.

Cymatics 2

This site has information on all the following economists and cycles researchers. Click the title to go to active links for all the following:

Business Cycle Empiricists
* Joseph Kitchin
o "Cycles and Trends in Economic Factors", 1923, REStat.
o Identified the three-to-five year inventory cycle.
* Nikolai D. Kondratiev, 1892-1931?- (1), (2), (3)
o The World Economy and its Condition During and After the War, 1922
o "The Long Waves in Economic Life", 1926, Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (transl. 1935, REStat)
o The Long Wave Cycle, 1928.
o Russian economist, founder of the Moscow Institute for Business Conditions, Kondratieff identified the half-century "long wave" in his famous 1922 tract and 1926 article. One of the architechts of the first Soviet Five Year Plan, he was rewarded by Stalin with imprisonment in one of his Siberian camps, in which he died sometime in the 1930s.
* Wesley Clair Mitchell and the American Institutionalists
* The Harvard Barometer Group (Bullock, Persons, Crum)
* Moses Abramovitz, 1912-

Climate Theories of Cycles
* William Stanley Jevons, 1835-1882.
* Henry Ludwell Moore, 1869-1958.
* Johan Henryk Åkerman, 1896-1982

Continental Tradition: Overinvestment Theorists
* Clèment Juglar, 1819-1905.
* Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky, 1865-1919.
* Arthur Spiethoff, 1873-1957.
* Gustav Cassel, 1866-1946.
* Dennis H. Robertson, 1890-1963.
* Joseph A. Schumpeter, 1883-1950.
* Jean Lescure, 1882-1947.
* Marco Fanno, 1878-1965
* Adolph Lowe and the Kiel School

Monetary Overinvestment Theorists
* Ralph G. Hawtrey, 1879-1971.
* Friedrich A. Hayek, 1889-1992.
* Gottfried von Haberler, 1900-

Anglo-American Tradition: Expectational and Lead/Lag Theorists
* Alfred Marshall, 1842-1924.
* Irving Fisher, 1867-1947.
* William H. Beveridge, 1879-1963.
* Wesley C. Mitchell, 1874-1948.
* Albert Aftalion, 1874-1956.
* Arthur C. Pigou, 1877-1959.
* John Maurice Clark, 1884-1963.
* George L.S. Shackle, 1903-1992.

Underconsumption Theorists
* John A.Hobson, 1858-1940.
* William T. Foster, 1879-1950.
* Waddill Catchings, 1879-1969
* John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946.

Keynesian Multiplier-Accelerator Theories
* Roy F. Harrod, 1900-78.
* Paul A. Samuelson, 1915-
* Lloyd A. Metzler,
* Sir John R.Hicks, 1904-1989.
* James S. Duesenberry, 1918-
* Luigi Pasinetti, 1930-
* Dale W. Jorgensen, 1933-
* Arthur Smithies

Keynesian Endogenous Cycle Theory
* Erik F.Lundberg, 1907-1987.
* Michal Kalecki, 1899-1970.
* Nicholas Kaldor, 1908-1986.
* Richard M. Goodwin, 1913-1996.
* Hyman P. Minsky, 1919-1997.
* Hugh Rose, 1920-
* Jean-Michel Grandmont, 1939-

Shock-Dependent Theories
* Ragnar A.K. Frisch, 1895-1973.
* Eugene Slutsky, 1880-1948.
* Robert E. Lucas, Jr., 1937-
* Real Business Cycle Theory

Resources on Business Cycle Theory
* HET Pages: Old Business Cycle Theory, Keynesian Business Cycle Theory.
* The National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER)
* NBER business cycle dates table
* The Quantitative Macroeconomics and Real Business Cycle Home Page
* "The Development of Business-Cycle Theory in the German Language Area, 1900-1930" by Harald Hagemann, 1999, SdPE

25 January 2007, From New Scientist

"There's a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years - exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth. So says a physicist who has created a computer model of our star's core.

Robert Ehrlich of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, modelled the effect of temperature fluctuations in the sun's interior. According to the standard view, the temperature of the sun's core is held constant by the opposing pressures of gravity and nuclear fusion. However, Ehrlich believed that slight variations should be possible.

He took as his starting point the work of Attila Grandpierre of the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2005, Grandpierre and a collaborator, Gábor Ágoston, calculated that magnetic fields in the sun's core could produce small instabilities in the solar plasma. These instabilities would induce localised oscillations in temperature.

Ehrlich's model shows that whilst most of these oscillations cancel each other out, some reinforce one another and become long-lived temperature variations. The favoured frequencies allow the sun's core temperature to oscillate around its average temperature of 13.6 million kelvin in cycles lasting either 100,000 or 41,000 years. Ehrlich says that random interactions within the sun's magnetic field could flip the fluctuations from one cycle length to the other."

-end quote- see article for more

Solar Resonant Diffusion Waves as a Driver of Terrestrial Climate Change is the original article in the astrophysics archive. It is clear from this article that Ehrlich's model produces a series of periods of the form 360,000 years / n^2 where n is 1, 2, 3, 4, although the figure 360,000 years seems just a little low. This gives periods corresponding to the 4 main Milankovitch cycles of 400,000, 100,000, 41,000 and 23,000 years. Previously these periods were considered to appear in the climate record because they related to earth orbital and axial dynamics, so the new proposal is a surprise.

For many years I had an interest in cycles in many things - economics, sunspots, weather, climate, biology, astronomy, physics etc. Starting from trying to predict economic and business cycles for businesses my interest expanded until I gradually learned that there are cycles in everything and that many seemingly unrelated areas have exactly the same length cycles in them. Furthermore, the most common cycle periods reported are related by simple whole number ratios. Eventually I developed a theory based on non-linear physics that explained this and a lot of other stuff besides. I have spent about 15 years full time on this pursuit.

For those interested in this subject, I would recommend first reading the paper by Edward R Dewey The Case for Cycles which gives an overview of the most significant discoveries concerning cycles in many disciplines. More can be found at Cycles Research Institute.

My own work involved rediscovering much of what Dewey had (unknown to me at the time) already found. I found a reason for the patterns of cycle periods observed by him, based on non-linear systems. The basic laws of the universe must be non-linear, and GR is a non-linear theory. The Harmonics theory states that in such a non-linear system, any standing wave structure (any lasting energetic form) must develop harmonics of the wave and that each of these harmonics must do the same. This last clause is my contribution, because the formation of harmonics of waves was already well known. The maths of this and the consequences for the structure of the Universe are developed in my Harmonics Theory Maths pages.

The theory is consistent with GR but not with big bang bung cosmology. I would go further and say that it follows logically from GR and that the Universe is vastly older than the deeply flawed big bang cosmology suggests.

I welcome any questions and comments.

I am a philosopher in the style of the old natural philosophers; a generalist in an age of specialists. Before and after retiring from a career in computers at the age of 42 (that is the meaning of life if you read Douglas Adams*) I spent many years of full time studying what makes the universe tick.

My interests centred around the study of cycles and this ranges over cycles in astronomy, economics, geology, history and physics. It began by my attempts to predict economic cycles using computers and resulted in the development of the Harmonics theory which turned out to be a theory that explained the structure of the universe.

"The universe, believe it or not, is nothing other than a giant musical instrument with a very special but predictable pattern of harmonically related oscillations which determine the structure of everything from galactic clusters to subatomic particles".

Although this theory is properly called the Harmonics theory it may be alternatively known as the Big Bong theory!

My main website about me, Cycles and Harmonics Theory
Harmonics Theory main discussion
My StumbleUpon blog a useful way to find lots of interesting stuff
Cycles Research Institute where I am an active participant
Cycles discussion group on Yahoo! for email or web discussion of anything to do with cycles
Wobbly Universe (blog) now inactive as I will blog here
Myanmar Gold (blog) now inactive - about Meditation trip to Myanmar