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Originally Posted by Hornblower
It is a variation on the polar coordinate theme, illustrating one aspect of the pattern of motions of the Sun and the planets as a function of time. What is "core structure of time"? Please try to give us a definition that might make sense to a physicist.
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To answer this question it is necessary to conceptualise a wholistic framework for the solar system, looking at the system as an organic unity through time. The question then is what are the major regular periodic structures characterizing this system? The behaviour of the centre of mass is an excellent candidate for a measure that will exhibit an integrated unity of the system. Looking at the COM, the 179 year periodicity leaps out as the defining pulse.
Carl Smith’s diagram is very similar to an
electro cardiogram for the sun, showing pulses at 19.8 and, more precisely, 179 years. In describing this as a core structure of time, I am pushing against the mainstream in two ways, by suggesting our planetary perspective is privileged (ie that the temporal structure of our solar system is core) and by arguing for a wholistic vision of the solar system as a fundamental ontology.
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I never alleged errors in the orbital periods of the planets. Their momentum will keep them in this pattern for a very long time, subject only to relatively minor and predictable variations due to their mutual gravitational perturbations.You appear to be conceding that there is significant uncertainty in attempting to predict the precessional motion over an entire Great Year, not to mention many of them, with any accuracy.If I am not mistaken, these very long range predictions of trends in the precession rate are the result of computer simulations of the gravitational dynamics that change as the Moon is pushed away by tidal effects. These local changes will have no significant gravitational effect on the motions of the giant planets. By acknowledging them you must be conceding that the current roughly 1/144 ratio is a transient phenomenon. I find that particular number no more remarkable than the fact that the Sun and the Moon have nearly the same angular diameter as seen by our eyes during the present era.
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This raises the questions of how transient is the correlation, and how significant is the uncertainty. My prediction, which requires further research to corroborate or falsify, hopefully with readily available data, is that the 1/144 ratio is a long term average, at least for hundreds of thousands and possibly for millions of years. The errors I noted suggest this ratio has had short term variation of up to 0.6% over the last 500 years, but the trend in the 6000 year data has error of much less magnitude. In cosmic terms a thousand years may be the blink of an eye, but it is a long time in human terms, so the 1/12 relation between the SSB and the age has existed quite precisely for all human history.
Libration may well be a good model to understand the relation between these two long standing stable rhythmic structures.
Re your comparison with the sun-moon apparent size, any significance for this COM-precession link depends on the speculative claim that the age is a real historical cycle. This is a claim I have previously argued at some length, and which I would say has the scientific status of ‘possible’ rather than ‘persuasive’. Here is a further argument for it. We know that >80% of human DNA is so-called junk. Could it be, given that much of this junk DNA is billions of years old, that apparently useless genes are currently dormant and will become active according to cosmic cycles? Looking at the 25700 year precessional period as entrained to the solar pulse of the COM, could it be possible that genes are adapted to flourish just in one part of this cycle and remain dormant for the rest?
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The future resonances to which Ward refers may be long period gravitational pulses that are not apparent from empirical studies over a few centuries, but predictable by means of supercomputer analysis of the gravitational dynamics. My educated guess is that they involve long period variations in the shapes of the planets' orbits as a result of their mutual perturbations. If such a pulse coincides with the frequency of the precession, or a small multiple thereof, it could build up a sizeable disturbance even if its magnitude is slight. This may be analogous to what Jupiter would do to a spacecraft if we were to place it in one of the Kirkwood gaps in the main asteroid belt. .
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This is a really interesting comment. It gets back to the observation that small harmonic effects can build up strongly when repeated continually over long periods. My claim is that the main significant resonance of these harmonic systems is in the deep ecological cycles of the earth.
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Once again, just numbers, with no compelling evidence of a harmonic in any dynamic sense. Such rhetoric suggests the ancient Pythagorean school of thought, which presumed fundamental importance of numbers in ways which physicists conclude to be unrealistic. Such jargon suggests warmed-over astrology.
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I agree that much Pythagorean lore is obsolete, but themes such as the
Fibonacci number and the number
phi indicate areas in which number theory and harmonic cycles are more important, with numbers imbedded in chaotic systems. Regarding harmonic cycles, I see the SSB-precession relation as a possible example of entrainment, but the significant resonance as located in the chaotic systems which have evolved within both of them – the ecological cycles of the earth.