Wobbly Universe

Almost since I got access to the Internet in 1994, there have been repeated reports about two things that are now increasingly being linked.

1. The Mayan Prophecies of 2012.

2. The increasing frequency of the earth's Schumann resonance.

These are both solidly in the area of cycles and I often get asked about them. I just received an email from a friend about INTERNATIONAL BRANCH Of LION Of JUDAH. This site in turn quotes Weinholds.org where we can read "Welcome to the home page of Barry and Janae Weinhold and the Carolina Institute for Conflict Resolution and Creative Leadership (CICRCL), which provides evolutionary resources for shifting consciousness."

The stuff that we seek is on several pages and indeed the site map shows that there are 15 pages about the shift of 2012. There we can find this paragraph which was also quoted on the other site:

The Schumann resonance, also known as Earth’s heartbeat, has increased from its normal 7.8 hz. and is hovering around the 9 – 11 hz. level. It is expected to move to 13 hz, the frequency of unconditonal love. Gregg Braden, a geologist who has been studying this, calls this place where the Schumann or magnetic frequency and the electric frequency intersect ZERO POINT.

So perhaps it would be of interest to find out what the Schumann frequency is actually doing. There is a site that makes available information about regular measurements of ELF / ULF (Extra Low Frequency / Ultra Low Frequency) and the Schumann Frequency of the Earth. They have graphs of Schumann frequency from 1990 up to almost the present so we can see what is really happening. Two different laboratories have made the measurements, Arrival Heights, Antarctica (upper graph from 1990 to 2000) and Parkfield, California (lower graph from 1996 to 2003).

Looking at these two graphs we can see that there is a slight variation in the Schumann resonance frequency. It goes up and down on some sort of annual cycle by about 0.1 to 0.2 Hz, and combining the two graphs together we can also see that there were peaks around 1991 and 2002 with a trough around 1996. It would appear that the 11 year sunspot cycle is also showing up in the frequency.

However there is no sign of an increase to the 9-11 Hz range as stated by Barry and Janae Weinhold and those that quote them. There are no dates on their web pages, so we do not know when they were written. They do say:

It is interesting that the largest increase ever recorded in the Schumann frequency occurred in 1987 and coincided with the eruption of Supernova 1987a and the Harmonic Convergence, when millions of people gathered at sacred sites around the world to pray and meditate together. If you remember, this is the time when Russell Boulding believes that the Shift might have really begun.

Well our graph doesn't go back as far as 1987, but certainly if anything unusual happened them (which would surprise me greatly) it had all returned to normal by 1990.

I also see that they in turn copied this information from someone else. Russell Boulding has a web site Preparing for the Great Shift. However I don't think that he is the origin either.

A google search for schumann frequency increasing 2012 says that there are 11,700 sites, but google usually overestimates by a large factor so that a thousand is more likely.

Why do so many people pick up and quote something that has no basis in fact? It appears that someone made this up (I am guessing about 1995) and since then it has been quoted and expanded by people who make a living by telling people all about the coming golden age and the frequency of love, when all around us there is war and destruction. I invite any of these people to produce evidence that the Schumann frequency is actually increasing, has reached 9-11 Hz or is heading towards 13 Hz.

For that matter, the idea that the frequency is moving from 8 to 13 Hz because these are Fibonacci frequencies is equally silly. You cannot say that 13 Hz is a Fibonacci number, because 13 Hz is the same thing as 13*60 cycles per minute or 780 RPM and 780 is not a Fibonacci number. Of course it is the 10th harmonic of the old 78 RPM records, so some is clearly going on here. (sarcasm! sarcasm!) Frequencies are not numbers - they have units. This whole thing of ignoring units and taking the numbers is totally meaningless and a sure sign that the writer does not know what they are doing. You can only look at things as numbers when they have no units which can also result from taking ratios of things that have the same units as then the units cancel.

The same meaninglessness applies to the supposed 2012 date of the Mayan calendar. This looks to me to be the equivalent of the Christian calendar turning over to 1000 or 2000 and nothing more. Of course humans made all sorts of fuss at these times too and nothing happened. I find no evidence of the end of the world. I find no combination of cycles coming together to make catastrophe at that time, and I have studied many hundreds of cycles.

I do find a time in the future when a combination of cycles come together to cause extreme catastrophe and a mass extinction event. I predict that this will happen in 42,000,000 AD. There will be a couple of lesser events in 4,000,000 AD and 16,000,000 AD but the really big one is still quite a long way off. For 2012 AD I don't find anything out of the ordinary.

When making predictions it is a good idea to give your past credentials. In 1986 I predicted that 1987 would be 1929 revisited, an accurate prediction. This prediction was based on my own cycles analysis of stock or share markets done in the 1980s and was verified with Edward R. Dewey's analysis which was done back in the 1960s. I have predicted no other such serious event in our time. I did repeatedly have a big laugh about the Y2K predictions. But just to be sure, I pressed the buttons on our washing machine with a long stick on 1st January 2000 (and again in 2001 in case that was really the millenium as some claimed).

In the early 1900s, Alexander Chizhevsky (sometimes spelled Tchijevsky or various other ways) made very comprehensive investigations in historical processes, especially wars, to try and determine the causes of the processes. He found that existing methods of analysis could not predict major events that were about to happen.

Unfortunately for us in the English speaking world, most of Chizhevsky's writing is in Russian or French and has never been translated into English. Some parts have been, and the investigation into war has been reported in English. Some of this material has also been reported by Raymond Wheeler in America, but I think that Chizhevsky was the originator. It would be good to know the full story on any links between these two.

Chizhevsky first began to observe that conflicts in Russia tended to be cyclic. After publishing several papers on this he expanded his study to world wide conflicts and made an index of battles for the last 2500 years. It showed clearly that there were 9 fairly regular peaks in conflicts each century, or averaging 11.1 years apart. There were other fluctuations, great sweeping rises and falls over longer periods, but this one cycle stood out.

It so happens that the sunspot cycle also has an average period of 11.1 years, so it was natural to begin to look at the connection. He found that the peak in human aggression fairly much coincided with the peak in sunspots. It is natural to wonder as to whether the Sun is somehow causing or contributing to human behaviour.

There are some additional facts available to us now that help to understand this process. I have never seen this fully laid out exactly like this before (excluding things that I have written), but here are a collection of facts that we can connect the dots on:

1. The quantity of different types of radiation vary over the sunspot cycle.

2. There is a continuous stream of radiation of various types, called the "Solar Wind" that arrives at the Earth.

3. Fluctuations in the stream of radiation at the Earth affects the earth's geomagnetic field.

4. There is an oscillation of the Earth's entire electromagnetic field, called the "Schumann Resonance" which oscillates about 7.5 times per second because that is how fast electromagnetic waves travel around the Earth.

5. Bursts of Solar radiation can get the Schumann resonance really ringing. Although the 7.5 Hz mode is the main one, there are also oscillations at near multiples of this: 15, 22.5, 30 Hz and sometimes at lower frequencies such as 3 Hz.

6. Human brain wave frequencies that are commonly studied cover the range from about 0.3 to 40 Hz, and the Schumann resonance is right in the middle of that range. The brain is a largely electrical organ in its functioning.

7. Outside electromagnetic fields can affect the brain by entrainment or in other ways. For example it is known that 10 Hz waves will make human reaction times faster while 3 Hz waves will slow it down.

8. Accidents are more frequent when there are strong ELF or ULF (Extra Low Frequency or Ultra Low Frequency) waves such as 3 Hz. This can be understood as resulting from a slowing down of human reaction times - people are less able to deal with tripping up or sudden events and so more likely to have an accident.

I do not know of evidence that moods are affected by ELF / ULF waves, but would expect that to be the case. Certainly we may say that the evidence is that when the Sun gets uppity, so do people, probably because of electromagnetic waves affecting our brain operation.

My guess is that we all have stored up resentments that we are bottling up, and that when a bit of extra electrical activity is brought to bear on our brains, these then overflow just as they would when the last straw was added by events in our lives. Then all sorts of stuff bursts forth. However when this comes from the whole Earth resonating, it means that many people get agitated at the same time. That is just the recipe for international conflict or social unrest.

For further reading please see:

Chizhevsky's paper (1.4 MB PDF file) as published by the Foundation for the Study of Cycles.

Edward Dewey's War cycle analysis (0.1 MB PDF file). Dewey found other cycles in Chizhevsky,s data also, of which the strongest were 53.5, 23.8, 17.4, 11.2 and 6.0 years.

This article will look at the cyclical aspects of Solar Cycles that affect the earth's Climate.

An article by Thomas J. Crowley, Published July 14, 2000 Science, 289: 270-277: Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years.

Abstract:

"Recent reconstructions of northern hemisphere temperatures and climate forcing over the last 1000 years allow the warming of the 20th century to be placed within a historical context and various mechanisms of climate change to be tested. Comparison of observations with simulations from an energy balance climate model indicate that as much as 41-64% of pre-anthropogenic (pre-1850) decadal-scale temperature variations were due to changes in solar irradiance and volcanism. Removal of the forced response from reconstructed temperature time series yields residuals that show similar variability to control runs of coupled models, thereby lending support to the models' value as estimates of low-frequency variability in the climate system. Removal of all forcing except greenhouse gases from the ~1000 year time series results in a residual with a very large late 20th century warming that closely agrees with the response predicted from greenhouse gas forcing. The combination of a unique level of temperature increase in the late 20th century and improved constraints on the role of natural variability provides further evidence that the greenhouse effect has already established itself above the level of natural variability in the climate system. A 21st century global warming projection far exceeds the natural variability of the last 1000 years and is greater than the best estimate of global temperature change for the last interglacial."

To Crowley's graph I have added a regular 123 year cycle and it can be seen to fit the minima in the graph rather well. On this basis another minimum should occur around 2060. There are clearly two other periods of solar variation happening in the graph. Firstly an 11 year period, showing only in the more recent years and being the sunspot cycle period. Secondly,. a longer cycle that occurs less than twice in the full 1,000 years plotted here, with a period of about 600 years.

This longer cycle had minima in around 1070 and 1700 and so we are close to a maximum right now with the next minimum not due for some 300 years.

A period of 600 years was noted by Edward R. Dewey in the formation of major religions. This strange fact may also be connected with the rise and fall of major civilisations, with new prophets appearing at around the peak in civilisations.

The major world religions started at the following times are noted:

~1200 BC  Moses     Judaism
 ~600 BC  Buddha    Buddhism
         (also Lao Tze, Confucius, Zoroaster)
   ~0     Christ    Christianity
 ~600 AD  Muhammad  Islam
~1200 AD  (none)
~1800s    (Bahai, Jehovah's Witness, Mormons, Theosophy, others)

The civilisations may be interpreted as Ancient Greece then Rome, Arab Empire, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution.

There is a tendency for scientists today to see everything as one-off events, something which I consider to go against the main principle of science which is to find patterns of behaviour. Of course the patterns must be solidly statistically based to be of any use. There is plenty of data to show that the 11 year and 123 year cycles are real. The 600 year cycle is on a little less certain footing, but should be considered as a reasonable candidate for existing.

We are at present right at the peak or just past it on both the 123 year and 600 year (if it is real) solar cycles. That gives some solace to those who are trying to make efforts to alter potentially damaging human behaviour.

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

Although I had been somewhat interested in cycles before 1978, that was the year when I began doing economic modelling on a computer and some cycles just jumped out at me uninvited, and a long time serious interest in cycles began. I did work at that time for a number of Corporations, both large ones and small ones that were about to become large. I developed my own techniques for doing this, and eventually became convinced that this method is better than the methods used by many economists.

This study was performed at a time when the NZ economy was not an open one and some corporations wanted to predict possible future changes in the exchange rate, changes in interest rates and in inflation. Data were gathered for the last 44 years and included anything related to the New Zealand economy:- import and export prices and volumes by various major categories; stocks of major NZ production items; terms of trade; share prices; several price and inflation indices; a variety of demographic data; births, deaths and marriages; mortgages and land and building prices and transfers; wages. The analysis used the base variables and also the annual rate of change of them because that is often what is desired to be predicted.

All these variable were processed by a method known as factor analysis. What this does is to take many variables and reduce them to a much smaller number that still contains the essence of the original, in that the original data is very largely explained as each item being affected by several of these factors, with the balance taken as being to some extent noise. In this study, 9 independent (that is uncorrelated) factors were extracted and this report shows graphs of these. When considering any of the original variables or its rate of exchange, nearly all of the variables can be well explained as the sum of a combination of the factors with various loadings.

The factors are displayed below:

Factors in the New Zealand Economy

It can be seen that the first two factors are rather slow moving ones that show the general state of the economy and it is suggested that these are related to the Kondratieff cycle which is recognised as being about 53 years. Factors 3 and 4 show a moderately regular cycle with a period varying between 3 and 4 years. These two variables are related in the same way that a sine and cosine wave are (or an electric and magnetic field for that matter) with factor 4 being a reasonable measure of the rate of change of factor 3 and factor 3 being a reasonable measure of the negative rate of change of factor 4. These two together are what is generally called the business cycle.

Factor 6 shows a quite regular cycle of close to 3 years although it shows two periods of heightened amplitude around 1957-60 and 1972-74. These two periods correspond to brief periods (3 years each) when the country had Labour governments in between longer periods of National government. However the timing allows the conclusion that the cause of the cycle was not the change in government but perhaps the other way around.

The other factors are not so clearly defined as cycles, although there is some presence of cyclical activity. They are less well defined, but have specific meanings in terms of which variables they correlate with.

In order to try and predict future economic conditions, multiple regression equations were found that use the 9 factors to predict each of the factors in turn from the previous years values for those factors. This works particularly well for factors 3 and 4 because, as mentioned, each variable is closely related to the rate of change of the other.

Before trying to predict the future, it is always best to try and predict the past to see if the method is reasonably sound.

So here are two test runs of the method compared to what actually happened. One test was started in 1960 and the other in 1973. The choice of 1973 was made because the so-called oil shock happened in 1974 and lead to major disruption in world prices and economies, and is considered to have been a random rather than a predictable event.

However the test shows that the regression equations predict the big swing in factor 3, actually slightly over-estimating it. Factor 3 is negatively correlated with many economic variables and so goes up when the economy crashes - the things related to it are terms of trade and export prices and volumes. NZ is harder hit by this factor than most countries.

Test Prediction of Factors in NZ economy

In most cases the predictions are moderately accurate for about 5 years ahead after which the forecasts become a bit sterile compared to the economic movements that actually happen.

The next step is to use the data to make real predictions about the future.

It has been said that prediction is a difficult business, especially about the future.

These forecasts were supplied to several corporations and also I gave a talk at the NZ Statistical Association Conference. It was well received, except that several economists had some criticisms. They told me that the long cycle that seemed to exist in factor 1 (and perhaps 2) was called the Kondratieff cycle and also named another cycle or two and then told me that these cycles did not exist. I was very puzzled as to why cycles that didn't exist appeared in my data and why that had been given names! However participants other than economists said that some of the other cycles were exactly what they experienced in their own areas of study.

Predictions of NZ economic factors

These predicted values for the factors are then used to work backwards to the original variables and give the clients what they wanted to know. My prediction of inflation continuing at a level of around 15% for at least 5 years was very markedly different from NZ Reserve Bank and other economists who were predicting a rapid decline towards 5% in 3 or 4 years time. My prediction was the one that was right.

In my report to my client, I was able to make quite an accurate prediction of the share market for the next few years and to state that there would be no more devaluations of the NZ$ as there had been several in the previous few years. There were no errors in my forecasts.

Conclusion

This method of reducing economic variables to a small number of factors that still contains the essence of the data is a valuable method that overcomes several serious problems in economic modelling. Firstly, there is usually insufficient historical data and models become over specified and mathematically are not sound. The use of factors also removes noise and the factors are much crisper and cleaner data.

There are other methods that are also better than traditional modelling methods, such as Box-Jenkins ARIMA models etc. These methods are mathematically based and assume no economic knowledge and they work. The economic understanding models are generally less accurate. I have not compared my method to Box-Jenkins, which uses only one variable to,predict any variable -- itself! I suspect that this method would allow an improvement on Box-Jenkins, because in the case of factors like 3 and 4, they do show that there is momentum in the economy that moves from one variable to another.