Interbane wrote:Damn cyber goblins stealing my posts!!!

The gist of my post was that light is a good zeitgeber because it is either on or off(night or day). The same with tides. With gravity, you still feel the pulls even when they are perpendicular to us. Changes in elevation alone cause variations in gravity that my cancel out celestial bodies which are directly above. Not the moon or sun, of course, but maybe the more distant planets.

The test with the oysters does not show that they are attuned to gravity. Our internal clock is still a clock, and if our environment experiences a radical change outside certain parameters, the zeitgeber takes a while to reset it, if it does at all. Human run on a 25 hour per day internal clock, recalibrated daily by sunlight to 24 hours via some nerve that goes directly to the hypothalamus. It's the optohypothalamic tract or something like that. I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment. The point is, we experience jet lag, and that experience does not mean that sunlight isn't a zeitgeber for us. It merely means the zeitgeber is not the sole factor in our biochronological processes. It's merely a calibration tool for a clock that's already running. If we try to calibrate ourselves 180 degrees from the ordinary, it doesn't work(right away, anyways.) The same goes for oysters.

Also, the galaxy does have a measurable pull in the direction of it's center. We aren't floating off into deep space, are we?

Interbane, I think in your missing post you also argued that a sense of gravity is unlikely. With the oysters, the laboratory in Evanston was cut off from the diurnal cycle of daily light and dark, and they travelled in a sealed dark container, giving the oysters no clue as to the external actual time. Therefore, the resetting of the 'zeitgeber' (German for time giver) had no stimuli except gravity. With gravity alone, the oysters soon recalibrated their opening time to match, not high moon in Long Island Sound, but high moon in Evanston Illinois. The oysters detected the shift of longitude across a full time zone by gravity alone.

The difference between changes in elevation etc as varying gravity compared to the tiny variations caused by the planets, is that terrestrial events do cause much more gravitational effect because they are close, and gravity recedes by the square of the distance, but the far planets are very regular, providing exact repetitive cycles. My paper analyses these regularities with a view to finding adaptive factors, arising from the exact repetition of these cycles over the four billion years of life on earth.

An example is long cycles of the ocean, what I have called micron tides. Against the billion km^3 of water in the ocean, if Neptune does move a cubic kilometre of water each tide, Jupiter and Saturn move even more, 6120 cubic kilometres of ocean per tide for Jupiter and 208 cubic kilometres for Saturn.

These tidal movements on earth follow a slow wave pattern that exactly matches the slow movement of the sun against the solar system centre of mass. Both are caused by the same factors, namely the position and mass of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. As noted earlier, the position of Uranus, the fourth biggest planet, acts as a weak spoiler for this main structure of time.

On your other question, the pull of the galactic core is obviously massive enough to keep the whole galaxy together. However, because gravity recedes by the square of the distance, the quantum of gravity on earth provided by the galactic core is miniscule compared to the effect of the gas giants. If no one beats me to it I will tell you the order of magnitude difference in gravity effect on earth of Neptune and the Galactic Core.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question2321.htm says

Gravitational force = (G * m1 * m2) / (d2) where G is the gravitational constant, m1 and m2 are the masses of the two objects for which you are calculating the force, and d is the distance between the centers of gravity of the two masses.

The difference between changes in elevation etc as varying gravity compared to the tiny variations caused by the planets, is that terrestrial events do cause much more gravitational effect because they are close, and gravity recedes by the square of the distance, but the far planets are very regular, providing exact repetitive cycles.

It doesn't matter how much of a constant the far planets provide. What organism could tell in a landscape of varying altitude? More to the point, why would they care? As with the oysters, I see no reason for an organism to care about gravity. If an organism attunes itself to it, it only does so to take advantage of a phenomenon created by the gravitational shift, such as a tide. However, I still do not see how an organism would attune itself to gravity alone. There are simply too many variables. Doesn't the Earth's magnetic field fluctuate with the tides? I would think it far more likely that an organism would attune itself to this, as it has a much higher degree of fidelity. Did the oyster experimentation rule out the influence of Earth's magnetic field? That would be worth looking into.

Against the billion km^3 of water in the ocean, if Neptune does move a cubic kilometre of water each tide, Jupiter and Saturn move even more, 6120 cubic kilometres of ocean per tide for Jupiter and 208 cubic kilometres for Saturn.

Why would any organism care about such a miniscule change? One micron is not enough. Any organism that relied on such a small change would find itself falling victim to numerous false variables. Rainfall, increased evaporation, tectonic shifts, erosion, etc. Even if some organism was in a rare position to take advantage of such a miniscule shift, that certainly doesn't mean other organisms would also take advantage of it. I think you're stretching your hopes far beyond practicality to find a way in which the orbits of the gas giants affects life on Earth.

Hi, Interbane!

Sorry, but I decided to drift on by and check out your comments. Call me interested.

Anyway, I’m a bit confused by one of your arguments.

“What organism could tell in a landscape of varying altitude? More to the point, why would they care?”

That’s a lot of meta-thinking for something you call an ‘organism.’ Mind you, you are an organism. Point is – how would a simple organism ‘care’? Or are you affording such an organism with the same personification as many people do their dogs. Just asking.

My feeling is that organisms don’t have the wherewithal to care, which I think is part of your point. To state such an argument is to illicit an emotional response. Emotional responses seldom lead to logical conclusions.

Early organisms on Earth likely (a supposition) were affected by quite a few miniscule changes. Microorganisms took advantage of any environmental conditions that worked. There was no thinking (as far as I can imagine) about it. It’s like meeting the woman you most desire having sex with. You could hardly be expected to think about it. If you did, that would be higher brain function and so hardly indicative of micro-organism ‘thought’.

Coincidently, the orbits of gas giants in the solar system CAN affect life on earth in practical ways. When it comes to gravitational forces and bodies in space, there are a ridiculous number of variables. False variables certainly do arise in the mind, but reality just IS and we adjust some parts of the model to fit it. That is, if we have any wisdom at all.

I realize that this is an ongoing discussion with groovy gravitational equations and all that. But, even so, I’d like for you to clarify your point on organisms having higher brain functions and why this seemed like a good course of debate.

Or were you just being argumentative?

Odd Greg wrote:Hi, Interbane! Sorry, but I decided to drift on by and check out your comments. Call me interested. Anyway, I’m a bit confused by one of your arguments. “What organism could tell in a landscape of varying altitude? More to the point, why would they care?” That’s a lot of meta-thinking for something you call an ‘organism.’ Mind you, you are an organism. Point is – how would a simple organism ‘care’? Or are you affording such an organism with the same personification as many people do their dogs. Just asking. My feeling is that organisms don’t have the wherewithal to care, which I think is part of your point. To state such an argument is to illicit an emotional response. Emotional responses seldom lead to logical conclusions. Early organisms on Earth likely (a supposition) were affected by quite a few miniscule changes. Microorganisms took advantage of any environmental conditions that worked. There was no thinking (as far as I can imagine) about it. It’s like meeting the woman you most desire having sex with. You could hardly be expected to think about it. If you did, that would be higher brain function and so hardly indicative of micro-organism ‘thought’. Coincidently, the orbits of gas giants in the solar system CAN affect life on earth in practical ways. When it comes to gravitational forces and bodies in space, there are a ridiculous number of variables. False variables certainly do arise in the mind, but reality just IS and we adjust some parts of the model to fit it. That is, if we have any wisdom at all. I realize that this is an ongoing discussion with groovy gravitational equations and all that. But, even so, I’d like for you to clarify your point on organisms having higher brain functions and why this seemed like a good course of debate. Or were you just being argumentative?

Hello Odd Greg, thank you very much for joining this thread. The answer to Interbane’s question ‘why should they care?’ is that caring is only tangential. Selective pressures are largely unconscious, acting to shape the direction of evolution at a larger scale than the intentions of individual organisms. Your question about care shows good understanding of the nature of causation and evolution, and how evolution is a function of the possibilities offered by the environment as well as deliberate agency by organisms. Dawkins addresses this problem of agency, namely that it is unclear to what extent we should see conscious intention in nature. Of course he started a big debate over agency in nature with his phrase ‘the selfish gene’, with all the problems of analogy between gene and organism.

Caring is a good example of free conscious intention and agency. Most evolution proceeds without care. However, care is central to human identity, so is obviously at the core of human evolution. As we go down the order of complexity, bees also seem to care for each other, whereas microbes seem robotic and uncaring. Most of the evolution I am describing is over the 3.3 billion years when microbes ruled the earth and laid down the core of our DNA.

What does this say about the gas giants? As I have mentioned before, in chaos theory there is a well known principle of sensitivity to initial conditions, with minor changes accumulating rapidly, for example in weather. Our initial natural conditions include the stable rhythm of the planets, operating as a unitary causal factor surrounding all terrestrial conditions. This possible sensitivity is like a response to the gentle regular dripping of water on to a tray of wet sand, with each individual drip having no discernible effect but over a long period of time the sand will form into patterns which mirror the rhythm of the drips. I have used this image to explore the idea that the solstices and equinoxes reverberate through the year to produce the zodiacal signs by a sort of fractal harmonic resonance.

Neptune is the main outer boundary of the main solar system of the sun and gas giants. Hence Neptune’s action to modulate the centre of mass through its cycles with Jupiter and Saturn is of high interest for the 'initial conditions' of causality in the solar system, especially given the exact harmony between this cycle and the spin wobble of the earth forming the Zodiacal Ages and Great Year. My paper linked in the OP shows this temporal measure of the solar system produces the wave function of the centre of mass, with a clear 179 year pulse directly correlated to the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune cycle. I obtained and analysed 6000 years of data from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and found that the 179 year pulse is extremely clear throughout. The only blip is at the BC/AD switch where the absence of a year zero due to bad Christian mathematics gives the period as 180 years for the JPL data on the barycentre from that time. Uranus is too small to have a big effect on the centre of mass compared to the united wave produced by the big three.

I’m just reading Timaeus by Plato, and he gives some excellent ideas to understand this intellectual framework. He defines the stars as the ‘eternal same’ and the solar system as ‘different’, with perceptible difference occurring inside and by reference to the eternal same. This context for thought remains entirely valid, even though we now know that everything is in motion including the stars. At human scale, the galaxy is unchanging while the solar system changes in a precise measurable way.

If you can cope with a small piece of mathematics, Plato says harmonic resonance obtains when A/B = B/C. This ratio applies to my observation that House/Age = Age/Great Year = 1/12. On this model the zodiacal age is the harmonic interaction between the Great Year and the JSN House cycle. This is just physics.

I really enjoyed your paper! I have discovered, however, that there are no smilies for bowing low or stretching oneself prostrate on the ground in awe and praise.

That’s a lot of meta-thinking for something you call an ‘organism.’ Mind you, you are an organism. Point is – how would a simple organism ‘care’? Or are you affording such an organism with the same personification as many people do their dogs. Just asking.

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.

Coincidently, the orbits of gas giants in the solar system CAN affect life on earth in practical ways.

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.

As I have mentioned before, in chaos theory there is a well known principle of sensitivity to initial conditions, with minor changes accumulating rapidly, for example in weather.

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 Tulip wrote:
If you can cope with a small piece of mathematics, Plato says harmonic resonance obtains when A/B = B/C. This ratio applies to my observation that House/Age = Age/Great Year = 1/12. On this model the zodiacal age is the harmonic interaction between the Great Year and the JSN House cycle. This is just physics.

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 wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote: If you can cope with a small piece of mathematics, Plato says harmonic resonance obtains when A/B = B/C. This ratio applies to my observation that House/Age = Age/Great Year = 1/12. On this model the zodiacal age is the harmonic interaction between the Great Year and the JSN House cycle. This is just physics.

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 scientifically. 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.

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.

johnson1010 wrote: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.

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).