If the earth’s electromagnetic field or ocean tide transmits a gravitational signal from planets to organisms, then the planets are indeed the time givers, to translate your German term zeitgeber. An organism does not need to ‘sense’ celestial gravity to be affected by it, as such effects are entirely subconscious. The oysters were away from the tide in Chicago, with no sensory input except gravity. What of Brown’s findings that rats are more active while the moon is down and that hamsters switch between a lunar day and a solar day when in laboratory conditions, with the oyster, rat and hamster experiments carefully designed to remove external stimuli? Are these scientific findings also electromagnetic? If so, it shows that earth’s electromagnetic field follows a pulse driven by systemic gravity of planetary cycles. Speaking of parsimony, it looks to me more simple to postulate a gravitational/tidal effect on the genetic phenotype, rather than one mediated by electromagnetism.Interbane wrote:Correct, via the tides. This means the gravity of the moon is not a zeitgeber. Water that spans the surface of the Earth is susceptible to the small amount of gravity from the moon, but organisms are unable to sense any celestial gravity.If this somehow involved an electromagnetic sense, it was one driven solely by the gravity of the moon.
Of course gravity has direction and constants! It pulls towards the source with constant force. The weaker the force, the more difficult to separate it from the background noise. Rotation is part of earth’s regularity. Immediate terrestrial variables lack permanent patterns. The collected picture of the cycles of constant planetary forces provides the wave function of terrestrial gravity, seen in the ocean tides. Gauquelin showed that your ‘random noise’ is not random but has predictable phenotypic effects.There are two problems stemming from you piggy backing on Dawkin's phrase [the slow wind]. The first is that, the gravity you're hoping has some influence doesn't have a direction. Exceptionally weak wind, if it were to blow a cork across the ocean, has direction. The gravity has no constants. The regularity of planetary motion is offset by the immediate variables and the fact that the Earth rotates. This is random background gravitational noise, not a directional 'wind'.
Again, this has nothing to do with stars, unless you are equating stars and planets as a form of insult. Planets are close, stars are distant. Planets affect the earth, stars have not been shown to have any effect here. If it is proven that planetary positions at birth can be inherited, this opens the path to a productive scientific research program. By analysing all the birth charts of a social group or family, planetary relationships in the group that depart from population average can be found. For example, in his book Cosmos and Psyche, Richard Tarnas finds Sun-Uranus aspects in birth charts of transformative innovators in history. Systematic study of such groups could reveal many factors that are more common in select groups than in the general population.The second problem is that just because there is a weak force does not mean life will be influenced by it. There are likely billions of weak 'forces' that could push the evolution of an organism in one direction or another, but are ignored since they have no bearing on the survivability of that organism. For what reason should creatures care about the cycles of the stars? I could see reasons certain plants could care about incredibly slow wind, but not incredibly weak gravitational fluctuations that aren't local or lunar.
When the planets all align, their 1% of tidal influence all pulls in one direction. Usually this total is distributed around the ecliptic, but adds to the same total. Your statement “that 1% would only manifest in full if all the planets aligned perfectly” is wrong, except in so far as when such an alignment occurs we could expect tides about 1% bigger. As it is, there are micron average bumps in the tide which follow each planet twice around the earth every day, as the planets spin around our sky once every day, as a result of the earth’s rotation.
Also, you say 'it' has happened every day for a trillion years. Do you mean the planets all aligning? Every planet in our solar system aligns every single day on our side of the sun? I won't investigate this unless you claim that's true, otherwise I'll think you simply made a mistake.
I have just re-checked the numbers on planetary gravity effect on earth which I earlier cited. Gravity follows the inverse square law, so the sun has the biggest effect, 123 times that of the moon. Combined planetary gravity effect on earth is 1.7% of the moon’s gravity. However, tidal gravity effect follows an inverse cube law, meaning the moon’s close distance makes it dominant, causing 2/3 of the tides, with the sun almost all the rest. My earlier claim that the planets cause 1% of tides was wrong – in fact they only cause 0.006% of our tides.
Measured in nanometers, on a base of lunar tide of 0.6 meters, gives the following average daily tidal effects in the oceans of the earth:
30364.2 Venus
3672 Jupiter
573.6 Mars
194.4 Mercury
124.8 Saturn
1.8 Uranus
0.6 Neptune
0.00002 Pluto
The regularity of the planets is purely mathematical and empirical. The issue is how to detect a signal in a noisy environment. If there is a signal, we need to ignore the noise to detect it. Like Gauquelin’s critics, you insist on swamping the signal with noise. You would have to measure local gravity for years to collect enough data to show how the slow orbits of the outer planets combine their gravitational affect. Remember, the time scale I have proposed starts with the 179 year regular conjunction period of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, and extends to the 25,765 year cycle of the earth’s Great Year. It is fairly easy to calculate the differential gravity over this time period, but measuring it physically can only be done over short periods.
Actually, you missed the point. These long term cycles are most certainly not regular here on Earth. They are haphazard and impossible to distinguish from the background noise. I challenge you to prove my point for me by finding an accurate instrument and measure local gravity. If you don't have access, contact your local university perhaps. Or search for other similar experiments that have done this.This all ignores the point I have made several times that the slow pulse of planetary gravity forms perfectly regular long term cycles, within which all the DNA of earth has evolved.
If you had 1000 years of data, regular blips could be detected for all the planets, theoretically enabling detection of their location. Obviously easier for Venus than Neptune, but in principle the same.The only time I used the word in that paragraph was in reference to us fellow humans. What I meant in that sentence is that if you personally were to undertake the experiment I mentioned, the only way you could guess the positions of the planets (not the moon and sun), is if you knew where they would be beforehand. You'd get nothing from the readings on gravity.You use the term ‘know’ as if the planetary effect was conscious.
I’ve checked this - http://genealogy.about.com/od/france/a/ ... stry_2.htm says “Births were usually registered within two or three days of a child's birth, usually by the father. These records will typically provide the place, date and time of registration; the date and place of birth; the child's surname and forenames, the parents' names (with mother's maiden name), and the names, ages, and professions of two witnesses. If the mother was single, her parents were often listed as well. Depending upon the time period and locality, the records may also provide additional details such as the age of the parents, the father's occupation, the birthplace of the parents, and the relationship of the witnesses to the child (if any).”
What kind of evidence do you think would surface? Parents admitting decades later that they smudged the birth hour of their children? Also, I already said that doctors and nurses most likely didn't lie about the times. The fact that C sections and inducements weren't above chance shows this is a practical conclusion. Only natural births, which in many cases would happen outside the hospital and away from doctors, had the statistical anamoly. What you're saying is that parents in such situations most certainly would not lie. Not even a small percentage of them would lie. They would accurately tell the hospital(after the fact) precisely what minute their child was born. Every single parent. C'mon Robert, you know people better than this. This is the parsimonious explanation, and if you can't see it you most certainly don't understand people as well as you should.There is no evidence for Dean’s birth time fraud theory, it is solely a matter of clutching at straws to respond to the scientific evidence Gauquelin provided of the Mars Effect.
You are saying that parents who hoped their son would become an eminent doctor were more likely to fraudulently alter the actual time of birth to the time when Saturn is rising in the east. My impression is that such druidic type custom would have been vanishingly rare in twentieth century France, especially among the professional class of doctors who are among the most scientific and rationalist group. Two witnesses would need to collude in the fraud, making the astrological secret harder to conceal.
Statistical measurement is about controlling for variables. If years of data can be measured with nanometer accuracy, and controlling for variance in pressure, there is no reason why the bigger planetary tides, from Venus and Jupiter, could not be measured.I don’t know, but in principle we could detect the micron tides of Mars in the ocean through extremely accurate long term measurement.
Actually, you couldn't. Atmospheric pressure differences change water levels in a far greater amount than the gravity of Mars. There is always atmospheric pressure, and it is always changing. In order to detect the influence of Mars on water levels, you'd have to also know the atmospheric pressure very accurately at every place within hundreds of square miles and compensate for it. You have to have the surrounding pressures by which to judge whether or not the pressure in your region is higher or lower than them. Less atmospheric pressure here, and greater pressure a few miles away, and the water level will rise ever so slightly in your area.
Ah well, the order of magnitude in this sun-moon gravity error is only 50%, but my rough guess on planetary tides was wider of the mark. I guessed from memory planet tides were about 1% of lunar tides and when I checked I had mixed up tides and gravity - my calculation said the planets produce about 0.006% of ocean tides compared to the moon, so my rough guess of 1% was out by about 17,000%. The tidal effect of planets is far weaker than my 1% rough figure, and can be measured in nanometers. 
