The personification was nothing more than an explanatory device, in the same sense that Dawkins titled his book the "Selfish" gene. We understand that genes aren't selfish, but to express the idea in that way serves to explain it. I certainly didn't mean that organisms other than humans 'care' about the gravity of the gas giants.

By asking whether or not an organism would care, I was expressing the question of: what survival advantage is there to being receptive to various gravitational fluctuations that are exceptionally small? There wouldn't be any survival advantage that I can see, the 'organism wouldn't care' about such fluctuations. Without a selective advantage, any genes that may increase receptivity to gravitational fluctuations have no reason to be passed on down from generation to generation.



Do you have examples here? There is the obvious answer that gravity exerts variable pulls on an organism. Yet, this isn't an example that leads to an evolutionary survival advantage. Light from distant stars also affects life on Earth; the photons interact in an observable fashion. This affect is exceptionally minor, much smaller than even the effects of the gas giants gravity. However, even though there is some physical interplay, there is no reason to also postulate that the light from distant stars provides survival benefits to life on Earth. It is just as likely that life will evolve to be desensitized to the light and life cycles of distant stars rather than sensitized to them.



This is a good way to describe how gas giant gravity may affect life on Earth, but it does not provide support for whether or not it actually does. There are many initial conditions to which physical systems may be sensitive to, but there are also conditions which is it advantageous for an organism to be desensitized to. With the massive amount of physical, causal variables that may affect life on Earth, it is not useful to say that some might influence life. It's useful to say how such variables do influence life by providing examples. Unless you can provide examples of lifeforms that have been selected to be receptive to the gravitational fluctuations of the gas giants, I'd have to say the hypothesis is wishful thinking. You wish for the hypothesis to be valid since that would be a way in which you could tie religion into science.

There is still the much larger issue of why astronomy is included in the bible. Parsimoniously, our ancestors observed the heavens and documented their findings in story form. I don't see that there is anything more to this.

Robert, I suspect that physics doesn't have much to do with the zodiacal age. This is all very interesting, but I'm still stuck on some of your earlier claims which I think are attempts to find meanings in patterns. My comment here is that each step deeper into your theory requires greater and greater leaps of faith. The relation of 12,000 stadia to the 12,000 years of the Great Year, for example, is just a correlation. You'd have to convince me and others that there is something to this or I see no reason to put forth the effort in trying to decipher the rest of your theory which quickly devolves into astrology and numerology as far as I can see. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but saying "this is just physics" seems to me to be an attempt to lend scientific credo to what is—on its face—pseudoscience. The other claim you make that the planetary conjunctions of the gas giants can exert influence on evolving organisms is another leap. You need hard data to support such conjecture. I wouldn't deny the influence, but it's not worth taking seriously without actual evidence. It also seems to be putting the cart before the horse scientifcally. You've come up with very detailed mystical explanations for phenomenon—in this case, the very slight gravitational pull of a planetary conjunction—before determining that such a tiny force can affect organisms on earth. It seems much more likely that this force would be insignificant background noise and not affect organisms at all. This is another leap of faith we have to take to accept your theory.

This is just my take of course. Admittedly, I haven't delved far into your theory because I do trip over the instances where it seems that I must suspend disbelief.

I find it hard to believe that these planets can have much of an effect on us in comparison to the sun.

It's like standing in a pitch black room right next to a twenty foot tall blindingly bright strobe light that is blasting noise at you like a jet liner, and saying you are being influenced by a small teddy bear crammed in the far corner.

Geo, thank you very much for these comments, which are very pertinent. In fact, the argument is scientific, and not pseudoscientific. However, it is a new and wholistic paradigm, looking at the solar system as a unified spatio-temporal model, so needs to be built from first principles.

The question is how we describe the temporal structure of the earth. We know the cycles of the day and year, and as I note in my paper, the annual spin wobbles like a gyroscope with period 25765 years, a period defined as the Great Year.

Looking for a second temporal structure for the earth, after the spin of the earth itself, we can look to the solar system as a whole to identify its regular patterns, looking for a larger temporal structure of the system of which earth is a part. The principle temporal structure of the solar system, unifying all motion into a single temporal function, is the movement of the sun against the centre of mass. The centre of mass, or solar system barycentre (SSB) is the point about which the whole solar system orbits. The centre of mass moves in a perfect arc around the galaxy, with the spinning masses of the sun and planets moving around it. (Sorry for my Anglo spelling of centre and barycentre, please read center if you prefer).

To calculate the temporal function of the SSB, I have done a new study of the data from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which measures the distance of the sun to the centre of mass over 6000 years from 3000 BC to 3000 AD. The sun has 99.8% of the solar system mass, and as a result is always within one solar diameter of the centre of mass. As Isaac Newton discovered (without knowing about Uranus or Neptune), when Jupiter and Saturn are together they ‘pull’ the centre of mass outside the sun, while when Jupiter and Saturn are opposite the centre of mass is close to the centre of the sun.

What I have discovered through analysis of the JPL data is that the third biggest planet, Neptune, modulates the wave function of the Jupiter Saturn cycle to produce a 179 year pattern in the movement of the sun with respect to the centre of mass, because Neptune lines up with every ninth Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. This SSB wave function combines the whole solar system together. All smaller bodies, from Uranus down, are too small to provide easily perceptible effect. As I explain in my paper, the effect of Uranus can in fact be seen in a very slow change in the 179 year JSN wave form.

How does this relate to the Great Year? As I explained, the SSB wave has period 179 years, precisely 1/144th of the Great Year orbital spin wobble period of the earth. The earth is inside this system, in which the movement of the sun and the patterns of the gas giants are in direct mirror relation to each other. This ‘mirror relation’ is solely a physical description of how the path of the sun around the galaxy is perturbed by the gas giants according to the laws of motion.

The earth has evolved within two main long term physical-temporal structures, the Great Year, as the main temporal measure of the earth itself, and the SSB cycle, which is the main temporal measure of the whole solar system. When we look for a relationship between these two physical-temporal structures, we are looking for a period of time which is in inverse relation to both SSB and GY. Such a period obeys the equation A:B = B:C, where A and C are the two known periods (SSB and GY) and B is their relation.

Where A is the SSB (178.9 years) and C is the Great Year (25765 years), the period B is given by SSB/B = B/GY. We know GY/SSB = 25765/178.9 = 144. Setting SSB = 1 and GY = 144, we obtain 1/B = B/144 giving B = 12. Therefore the resonant relationship between the two major temporal structures of the earth, the Great Year and the Solar System Barycentre, has period SSB x 12 = GY/12 = 2147 years. This is the period known as the Zodiacal Age.

Without numerology, this relation between the GY and the SSB produces a resonant interaction between the earth and the solar system with period 2147 years, embedding the number twelve into the actual temporal cycle of the earth. As I have separately argued regarding the annual signs of the zodiac, this analysis of the solar system itself produces the Zodiacal Age as a pure mathematical product of actual structures in the system. There is no need to postulate the traditional astrological claim that the distant stars somehow influence us, because the actual rhythms are solely products of the solar system. These products may or may not be too weak to have any real effect.

This temporal structure is embedded in human thought in the Babylonian sexagesimal 60 based counting system of the clock and the Vedic theory of the Day of Brahma as 4.32 billion years. I argue that these old measurement systems, embedding this twelve-fold structure of time, have a natural basis. For example, with the Day of Brahma considered against a real day, 86,400 seconds, we can look at half a day, twelve hours or 43,200 seconds, as analogous to a Zodiacal Age, conventionally 2160 years rather than the more astronomically accurate 2147 years. If 12 hours = 2160 years, 24 hours = 4320 years = Day of Brahma/one million. There is an argument that this theory of time originally said the Day of Brahma is 4320 years but the extra zeros were later added to emphasise the long period. If 2160 years = 12 hours, 180 years = one hour. Adjusting for the physics of the solar system, we can say if 2147 years (an age) = 12 hours, then one hour = 179 years, the period of the SSB cycle. Looking now at the gas giants against this clock model of twelve hours per age, we find that on this time frame the Saturn-Neptune conjunction period of 35.8 years is 60/5 = 12 minutes = 720 seconds, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction period of 19.85 years is 60/9 minutes = 6 2/3 minutes = 400 seconds, and the Jupiter-Neptune period is 60/14 = 4 2/7 minutes = 257 seconds. Because they come together every 179 years (every hour in the model), the relation of the three biggest planets completely dominates the wave function of the SSB. If we change the order of magnitude of our clock model to 12 hours = the Great Year, we have one hour = one Age, five minutes = SSB cycle, and one minute = Saturn-Neptune cycle. The gas giants are congruent with the sexagesimal structure of terrestrial time as SN/Age = 1/60 = minute/hour. Earth has a resonant connection to the gas giants in these mathematical relationships.

Looking now to the problem of the Bible, my claim is that the Biblical vision of time exactly matches this actual temporal model of the solar system. We see the number twelve recurring in the tribes of Israel, the apostles of Christ, and the foundation stones of the holy city. An old tradition, noted in orthodox commentaries, says the foundation stones are the twelve signs of the zodiac in reverse from Pisces to Aries. The coded description of the holy city says it is 12,000 stadia across and 144 cubits around. Having determined from old sources that the twelve stones symbolise the signs in reverse, and noting that the Great Year, starting at the time of Christ, sees the equinox occupy the twelve signs in reverse from Pisces to Aries like the foundation stones, we can hypothesise that the holy city may be a description of the structure of terrestrial time seen in the Great Year. It is then necessary to ask if the numbers 12,000 and 144 have any such physical correlation with the Great Year. Indeed they do. In the Vedic tradition, the period of the Great Year was understood as 24,000 years. Hence, from one side to the other is 12,000 years, matching the 12,000 units from one side of the holy city to the other. Similarly, the 144 units divide each of the twelve Ages into twelve parts. My view is that there was no need for the ancients to know of Neptune to settle on this accurate model, as it is readily derived from the assumption that time divides in twelves, whether months or hours.

The discovery of Neptune, with the analysis I have provided here, enables us to see a physical basis for the structure of time in Neptune's modulation of the rhythms of the solar system. As we approach the first (Neptune 164 year orbit) anniversary of Neptune's discovery in 1846, the permanent model of time photographed and described in my paper provides a path to explore how the whole system is truly connected.

The point is that the sun itself is perturbed in its motion by the gas giants, producing a wave function of the solar system that has been stable for four billion years, since Neptune moved outside the Uranus orbit to its current location. So, in considering the influence of the sun on the earth, we can theorise that the wave function of the sun, which physically also matches the micro tides of the earth's ocean, is reflected in deep temporal rhythms of the earth. I think of this reflection by analogy to fractal geometry, with a small regular natural cause (the wave structure of the solar system) multiplied and fractalated in its effects in complex systems inside it (evolution of the earth).

Model for 1/144 resonance

Consider a clock face covered by sand and water. A central spindle and paddle turns at speed one revolution per hour (the hour hand of a clock) making a wave in the water over the sand. Around the rim of the clock, a paddle moves in the opposite direction at speed 144 revolutions per hour, or one revolution per 25 seconds. In this model, the sand would form into regular ripples, spiralling in from the edge and out from the centre. Where the ripples of sand meet is the zone of resonance between the two paddle waves. My theory suggests the meeting point between the two ripples should form into a regular pattern around the circle clearly divisible by twelve, at the radius where the expanding inner spiral ripple meets the converging outer spiral ripple. The two ripples would fractalate into each other through their meeting point.

The analogy to astrophysics is that if the earth has spin period 144 (the great Year) like the hour hand on the clock, and the solar system has spin period one (the solar system baycentre wave function), like the speeded up second hand moving around the clock every 25 seconds, then the meeting point between the two temporal structures is defined as the Zodiacal Age. This model is premised on the idea that time moves in wave form.

Thanks Robert. I'll digest this, but it might take awhile. I'm also on vacation, so my routine is out of whack.

Okay, a question from someone who is totally confused: the planets can thus be seen as a type of orbital sounding board? Thanks!

Hello Oblivion, thank you for this question and welcome to Booktalk.

Your metaphor of an orbital sounding board is good. The first challenge is to accept as a hypothesis that planetary motions over very long time periods form wave patterns which can interact. Your musical analogy of the sounding board, which expands the resonant volume and tone of a musical note, helps to explain how this may be possible.

The main long term cycle of movement for the earth is the Great Year, caused by the wobble of the axis. The main long term cycle of movement for the solar system is the position of the sun against the centre of mass, a cycle caused by the orbits of the gas giants. The solar system as a whole is therefore like a ‘sounding board’ for the earth, but in a sense this relation is mutual, in that we can see the Great Year as the mundane sounding board for the basic rhythm of the whole solar system.

Continuing the musical analogy, we have two wave functions, one with period 25765 years (the Great Year of the earth) and one with period 179 years (the solar system centre of mass). In music, each octave doubles the frequency. Therefore, if we consider the Great Year as analogous to a musical note of frequency one hertz, the centre of mass has frequency 144 hertz and the Zodiacal Age has frequency 12 hertz.

Modelling the Great Year frequency as the note C 64 Hz, the Zodiacal Age has frequency twelve times this, G 768 Hz, and the Centre of Mass has frequency twelve times higher again, D 9216 Hz. The multiple of twelve times the frequency produces a note that is three octaves and a perfect fifth higher. On a piano, these three notes are low C, middle G and high D, each 3.5 octaves apart.

The perfect fifth is the next strongest resonant frequency after the octave. So we can say the frequencies of the Great Year and the movement of the solar system resonate against each other like sounding boards through their common perfect fifth relation to the frequency of the Zodiacal Age.

Thank you for the words of welcome and for the answer. Explaining it musically has helped tremendously!

Solar System Planet Clock

The solar system planet clock, shown above, is a schematic empirical diagram of the solar system enabling ready calculation of the positions of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune over the 2148 years of the period known as the Age of Pisces. The diagram also shows how the 25765 year Great Year axial cycle of terrestrial lunisolar torque maps to a pattern of the solar system gas giants.

The twelve joined diamond wedges in the diagram, one for each hour of the clock, each consist of two isosceles triangles joined at the base, with head angle thirty degrees. Each of the twelve diamonds of the clock has one mark at the centre, then two, three and so on to twelve at its mirror axis half way to the star point. The mirror axes of the twelve diamonds form a circle with 144 points. The number of marks on each star point descends arithmetically from twelve at the joining circle to the single mark at each star point.

The diagram depicts a number of temporal cycles. The twelve points of the star are marked with the numbers one to twelve in the central spiral, indicating both a regular clock and longer term patterns of the earth and the gas giants. These longer patterns are the Great Year of 25765 years, the Zodiacal Age of Pisces, and the gas giant conjunction cycle. The twelve points of the clock mark the triple conjunction dates of the three heaviest gas giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, over the period of the earth’s Zodiacal Age. By coincidence these cycles of the gas giants and the earth align almost perfectly.

The Age of Pisces, one twelfth of the Great Year, is roughly equal to the period in which the position of the Sun at the March equinox has precessed through the constellation of Pisces over the last two thousand years. The average length of an Age, 2148 years, is the same as the period required for Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune to complete twelve conjunctions in a grouped cycle. Over a longer period the gas giants move into and out of alignment, forming families of conjunctions. One conjunction family has its centre in the year 769 and the next is centred in the year 1524. These overlapping cycles are separated by 755 years. The next such cycle appears to be centred in about 2636, but I have not yet obtained data this far in the future.

The stability of the component orbital periods of the gas giants and the earth means that the components of this clock diagram can describe any time in the earth’s future and past, for millions of years at least. Such stability appears to have been in evidence for billions of years, and is likely to persist into the far future.

The planet clock depicts the Age of Pisces against the regular cycle of the gas giants in each of the twelve ‘hours’ at the points of the clock. The years 53 to 2201 around the outer spiral are the dates when the gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune form a triple conjunction, once every 179 years. 179 years forms the ‘hour’ of the clock when the Zodiacal Age is considered as the twelve hour circle. Within each 179 year ‘hour’, more frequent planetary meetings are shown dividing the hour. Each hour is divided in three by Jupiter-Saturn, in five by Saturn-Neptune, and in seven by Jupiter-Neptune conjunctions. These divisions enable ready calculation of the approximate date and position of all gas giant conjunctions for the last two thousand years with the exception of Ouranos (Uranus) which is irregular.

The signs of the zodiac are shown in each hour to indicate a surprising empirical fact: that Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune begin and end each ‘hour’ of the Age in or close to that tropical sign. This match is exact for the fourth and fifth ‘hours’ of the clock, but drifts slightly out of alignment the further in time one gets from 17-20 July 769, when the triple conjunction was most exact. This three day period is the cusp of the ‘hours’ of Cancer and Leo and the planetary conjunction occurred at the cusp of these tropical signs.

I would welcome assistance in comparing this tropical depiction against a sidereal version of this diagram, as a way to help visualize the process and rate of precession of the equinox around the zodiac and to define the historic positions of the gas giants against the background stars.

The three Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions shown in each ‘hour’ at the third marker of each star point occur every 59.6 years. These conjunctions occur physically at the points shown. For example, between the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune triple conjunctions at 0° Leo in 769 and 30° Leo in 948, actual positions of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions are shown at 10° Leo in 829 and 20° Leo in 888. Jupiter and Saturn meet every 19.85 years. The other two Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions between each one shown occur at points equally spaced around the ecliptic, ie at 3° Sagittarius and 7° Aries etc. To calculate the position of these Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions, the time between two events spaced by 19.85 years is given as 37/108ths of the circle, or four hours of the clock plus one point at the ring of nine marks per hour.

The five Saturn-Neptune conjunctions in each ‘hour’ are of particular interest as a model of our sixty-base clock. Saturn-Neptune conjunctions occur every 35.8 years, dividing the Zodiacal Age by sixty (2148/60 = 35., and forming the minutes and seconds when the diagram is used as a normal clock. The actual locations of the planetary conjunctions for the four points shown between each ‘hour’ are each 13 ‘minutes’ (13/60) further around the clock, at the thirteenth Saturn-Neptune point, ie 2.6 signs further on along the ecliptic. Each fifth conjunction is exactly one ‘hour’ later, once Neptune has completed 13/12 orbits and Saturn has completed 73/12 orbits.

Jupiter-Neptune conjunction points are shown in each ‘hour’ by each row of six conjunctions between the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune points at the seventh line. These points indicate the fourteen Jupiter-Neptune conjunctions from each triple conjunction to the next, with each second event shown. The actual distance between each conjunction is 13/168 of the ecliptic, or 6.5 points along the circle of seven shown with Jupiter and Neptune, making fourteen meetings per ‘hour’, one per 179/14 = 12.8 years. The Jupiter-Neptune cycle embodies the number of hours in a week, 168, as the denominator of its fractional distance around the ecliptic.

The planet clock shows how our familiar twelve and sixty based time systems are embedded in the structure of the solar system through the ratio between earth’s spin wobble period and the orbital pattern of the three heaviest planets. This orbital pattern finds a unity in the effects of the planets on the position of the sun in relation to the centre of mass, the arc that the solar system follows around the galaxy. Planetary influence on the centre of mass is shown by the barycentric formula r = a/(1+m1/m2), where r is the radius of the sun, a is the distance from the sun to a planet, m1 is the mass of the sun and m2 is the mass of the planet. The relative effects of the planets on the barycenter given by this formula are Jupiter 49%, Saturn 27%, Neptune 15% and Ouranos 8%. The four inner planets in total have 0.1% of Jupiter’s effect on the barycenter. These relative planetary effects are readily seen by examining a graph of the barycenter-sun distance over time, in which the three biggest planets produce a wave function with period 179 years, or 1/144th of the Great Year of the earth.

Robert Tulip
January 2010

Very pretty picture, but so what? A few years back there was a fad to take the Bible and using computers examine words formed by taking letters equally distant within the text. The results showed an astounding number of prophecies hidden within the Bible waiting for technology to discover them. Turns out that those prophecies were really only an interesting result of being able to manipulate data in an infinite number of ways. When you can do that, you can find 'significant' results which in reality mean nothing. Your research has generated some very pretty graphics but aside from their beauty I don't see the point. The supposed numerical relations you cite with respect to Christianity exist only in your imagination as far as I can tell.

Thank you Stahrwe.

If you take the trouble to read what I say about the picture, you will discover that it is a completely empirical depiction of the cycles of the solar system.

The argument about the relation between astronomy and the Bible requires some understanding of astronomy. Many people find this rather challenging or even repugnant, although the basic concepts of precession are simple once you study them. This picture may look meaningless at first glance, but it contains a depth of information about the real structure of time. It is intended as a framework for discussion of the mythopoetic vision of time revealed in the Bible.

The correlations I describe are completely compatible with a modern scientific worldview, unlike the magical claims you mention.

Putting this 'solar system planet clock' into an even simpler format, the diagrams below add an hour and minute hand to successive diagrams of the solar system over 2500 years to show how closely the successive Jupiter Saturn Neptune conjunctions form a bigger cycle in which they return close to their original positions after twelve 'hours', or 2148 years.

This solar system planet clock is an empirical way to understand the solar system as a temporal whole. The cycle described here is a rhythm of the entire system, seen in the way these three gas giants shift the sun in a regular pattern against the center of mass, which is the point around which the whole system moves in its majestic arc around the galaxy. To note, Uranus does not visibly affect the main pattern of the barycenter to anywhere near the extent that Neptune does, because Neptune is so much further away. The main barycenter cycle is caused by Jupiter and Saturn, which as Newton discovered cause a twenty year wave pattern of the barycenter. The material I am presenting shows how this main JS pattern is modulated into families of similar wave patterns by Neptune.

The same twelve hour clock pattern which is the basis of our ordinary clock is embedded in the entire system at this level.

It opens the speculative possibility, although this is something that I cannot prove, that the earth is in harmonic resonance with the entire solar system, with the precession of the equinox nested within the twelve 'hour' period of the solar system gas giant planet clock. This idea of a terrestrial resonance is only speculative, but the fact is that the regular pattern of the earth-moon system has existed within this larger regular pattern of the whole solar system since the solar system stabilised nearly four billion years ago. I do not offer this speculation of a possible resonance as in any way against the mainstream, but rather just as a question, asking if it helps to explore how the whole solar system is a temporal unity with a definite structure. The period and dynamics of terrestrial wobble are fairly well understood, but this material does open the intriguing question of whether the lunisolar torque framework of precession has a larger systemic context in which it is nested.

In astronomy, cycles such as this one that involve multiple objects often drift in and out of phase. A good example is the eclipse cycle of the moon, known as the Saros cycle, whereby eclipses form overlapping families of eclipses separated by eighteen years, beginning with weak eclipses, growing to exact alignment, and then moving again out of alignment. There are exact resonances, such as between Jupiter's moons, but this one here between the gas giants is a bigger and more complex wholistic description of the temporal structure of the entire solar system.

The diagrams below illustrate how the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction cycle forms the 'hour hand' of the solar system planet clock, with Saturn drifting in and out of alignment in long cycle families. The two families of conjunctions that currently exist are centered respectively on near exact alignments in 591 AD, for cycle 1, and in 1523 AD for cycle 2. Looking at the diagrams, readers can see that the further in time from these central points, the further Saturn is from exact alignment, and how over time Saturn drifts across the JN conjunction point. Every 179 years there are 9 JS conjunctions, 5 SN conjunctions and 14 JN conjunctions. The diagrams here could have equally been presented using the Saturn-Neptune exact alignment as the hour hand, with Jupiter drifting in and out of alignment, or less exactly, with the Jupiter-Saturn alignment as the hour hand, with Neptune drifting across.

The minute hand of the clock, moving only about 25 minutes in 2500 years, illustrates how very close this cycle is to a precise marker of terrestrial precession, with the triple conjunction every 179 years occurring close to thirty degrees after the last one, such that 12 of these recurring twelve 'hour' stable patterns are very close to equal to the 25,765 year period of terrestrial spin wobble.


Cycle 1




Cycle 2