Please see attached schematic diagram of some main features of the 179 year cycle of the solar system barycentre. Noting that the 179 year period contains nine Jupiter-Saturn cycles and five Saturn-Neptune cycles, I have presented these as a nine point star and a five point star respectively.

The point of this diagram is to illustrate a major structural framework for the temporality of the solar system. In relation to earth, it is noteworthy that this pattern repeats every 178.9 years with strong regularity, so this picture is in a sense eternal. As previously noted, twelve of these patterns produce a cosmic age. The Saturn-Neptune cycle is like the 'cosmic second', considering the 2147 year long age as a minute.

The whole diagram is not fixed against the stars, but follows the SSB wavelength which moves 1/12 of the zodiac per cycle. To illustrate this movement, Neptune orbit is 164.8 years; 178.9/164.8=1.086; 0.086~=1/12 (>0.0833), so Neptune advances by just over one zodiacal sign between its periodic 179 year conjunctions with Jupiter and Saturn, starting each period in a new sign and covering all signs each age.

On the fortieth anniversary of the Paris Uprising of May 1968, it is interesting to pick a cherry regarding the SSB. Starting a 178.9 year cycle at 0, there are ten such cycles in 1789 years. Looking at the storming of the Bastille as a turning point, it is interesting that the Sorbonne events happened 178.9 years later. 1610, 179 years before, happens to be when Galileo found the moons of Jupiter. This cycle shows these times happened when Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and nearly Uranus were in the same relative positions.

Attached Thumbnails

 

This entire dataset seems to be cherry picking... Why not something that includes a revolt instead of Galileo finding moons around Jupiter? How about tying in the rise and fall of the Roman Empire or the Greeks or even Galileo's first use of a telescope? Also, hasn't it been 40 years not 20 years since 1968?

Edit: I guess what I'm saying is the Paris uprising, storming of the Bastille and the Sorbonne events are all type of physical upheavals but the finding of the moons by Galileo is not. It just appears to tie the Jupiter/Saturn/Neptune (maybe Uranus) cycles into the hodge-podge of data.

__________________
Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Asimov's addition - "Or ignorance."

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage

Yes, as I said, these historic events are just cherry-picked because they are 179 years apart. However, they illustrate how we can use the SSB as a timeline. Setting out detailed events on a timeline would illustrate those which occurred at the same relative point, and enable analysis of order within the hodge-podge. The SSB structure illustrated on my attached picture presents a major solar system cycle, permanently valid with ongoing slow phase change. It is interesting to consider how this periodic rhythm may relate to events on earth, and in relation to the longer age cycle I discussed at Astronomical History . The picture I presented occurs precisely twelve times in each age and 144 times in each great year.
Regarding Galileo and the French Revolution, the connection I would draw is that both were the signal for massive upheaval in cultural directions. Galileo exploded the idea of perfect heavenly spheres and the Jacobins exploded the idea of divine right of kings. Similarly, May 68 envisaged an equivalent scale of change in human consciousness. I am just hanging these events as pegs which may be considered as initial events in successive defined geocosmic periods, as a starting point for a cosmic theory of history, using the 179 year SSB cycle as a framework.

A pretty picture such as yours does nothing to resolve my misgivings about your line of thought. All you are showing is a pattern of motion of the Sun and planets whose period is approximately 1/144 of our best estimate of the precession period. I would wish to see an analysis of many such precessional cycles to see whether or not that ratio might converge on exactly 1/144, or at least librate around it. Since we have no useful observations over more than a small fraction of one precession cycle, we are stuck. In a nutshell, still no compelling reason to suspect any sort of resonant dynamic causality.

The diagram is not just a pretty picture; it is an empirical model of a core structure of time for the solar system. My understanding is that there is unlikely to be significant error in these numbers, as they are based on scientific measurement of the stable periodic orbits of the gas giants. This diagram helps to explain the SSB pulse rate diagram over 1100 years from 2100BC to 1000BC, as over this period the 178.9 year period depicted in the Sun Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune model recurs six times sequentially and about 50 times in overlap. The JSN cycle, the main component of the temporal structure, shifts by about 0.2 years per cycle, or 0.4 degrees.

You suggest the uncertain variability of the precessional speed means this finding of a permanent stable SSB cycle gives no reason to suspect resonant dynamic causality. After looking further into this it appears you are right. To investigate this I have been researching reference material on precessional speed, starting with the Wikipedia page of calculated precession values . This also links to an article on variability of the precessional period with a graph of 13 models of the precession period over 65,000 years. Although the site is astrological, the science of this article looks accurate. This graph shows that by all models the rate of precession is speeding up and the length of the great year is shortening by about 11 years per century. The general precession value was about 4980 arcseconds per century at the time of Christ, compared to the current value of 5029.3 arc seconds. In Great Years, these figures indicate a speeding up over 2000 years from 26024 years in year 0 to 25769 years in 2008.

Translated to the SSB equivalent 179 year period through division by 144, this data shows the precession has speeded up from 179.35 years in year 1500 to 178.95 years 2000. Unfortunately for my theory, this trend is in the opposite direction of the SSB data which showed slowing down from 178.83 to 179.2 years over the same period. However, this absence of immediate resonant dynamic causality does not rule out a resonant relationship entirely. The Wikipedia source above states that “Over longer time periods, that is, millions of years, it appears that precession is quasiperiodic at around 25,700 years; however, it will not remain so. According to Ward, when, in about 1,500 million years, the distance of the Moon, which is continuously increasing from tidal effects, has increased from the current 60.3 to approximately 66.5 Earth radii, resonances from planetary effects will push precession to 49,000 years at first, and then, when the Moon reaches 68 Earth radii in about 2,000 million years, to 69,000 years.”

Given the stability of planetary orbits, it seems the SSB is also periodic around 25,700/144. This relation with precession may be coincidental rather than causal, but the fact remains that two constant weak factors in our environment are in close harmonic relation to each other. There seems to be less science here than I had hoped, but it remains valid to describe the SSB cycle as the house of the age, presenting an empirical cycle dividing the great year.

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.
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.

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.My bold. 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.

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.
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?
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.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.

You know Robert, you might actually be on to something here, if you can think of a causal story somehow. How is the 179 day "orbit" of the Solar System's barycenter (SSB) causally tied the precession of the Earth's axis. In other words, something has to be able to exert a torque that can cause the precession to speed up or slow down, and hence control, within limits, the overall rate of precession.

The only planet with that kind of power is Venus. Remember, the Earth might control the rate of rotation of Venus, and so Venus might have a reciprocal effect on the Earth. But the Earth spins much too fast for Earth to turn it's heavier side to Venus every inferior conjunction, as Venus does to the Earth. But still, because of the tilt of the Earth, if the conjunction occurs in when it's summer in the northern hemisphere, Venus will exert a larger force on the northern hemisphere than on southern hemisphere, and vice versa when it's summer down under.

But the hemispheres are not the same: the northern hemisphere is dominated by the Eurasian continental land mass, whereas its antipode, the vast basaltic expanse of the South Pacific. That is, one hemisphere or the other must be "heavier" with respect to Venus (this could probably be cashed out in terms of one of those J_n gravitational moments). Which one I can't say. You'd think maybe the mountainous side would be heavier, but then again, continents float on the basaltic mantle stuff, but there's probably a correct answer.

So somehow the 179 cycle would have to tie into the pentagrammatic resonance between Earth and Venus.

BTW since you read the Bible, you must know what happened to Nimrod, the astrologer.

It isn't. 99 percent of it is due to the Moon and the Sun, roughly 60 percent of that due to the Moon, 40 percent to the Sun.
Since Venus orbits the Sun, its average inverse distance cubed is comparable to the Sun's, but its mass is about 3 millionths of the Sun's, so the effect is too small to detect.
I can. It is the J₃ moment, which has a value of 0.254x10^-6, compared with 1.1x10^-3 for J₂.

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

OK, so there's at least 1% you can't account for; 1% might be enough if the balance of forces happens to be about right.

Venus is only relevant during inferior conjunctions, when it is only 0.3 AU from the Earth. Also there's the rotational resonance between Earth and Venus; but I take it you are probably skeptical in that regard; if so, check out the paper by Zhang & Shen (1987, 328) who say that the retrograde trade winds on Venus exert enough torque on Venus to allow libration around the ideal resonance. Therefore, since Earth can cause effects on Venus, it's not unreasonable to suppose that Venus might cause some effects on Earth.

Could we persuade you to explain to us in laymen's terms terms the significance of J₃ versus J₂ and how they relate to the north versus the south hemispheres?

What is "organic" about this collection of moving objects?
What do you mean by "integrated unity of the system"? Why is this particular quasiperiodic component fundamentally important?

It appears to me that you used "core structure of time" when you meant the structure of a pattern of motion as a function of time, in which time is an independent one-dimensional variable with nothing that I would call "structure". A contrived phrase such as that may look impressive to someone without much of a background in mathematics and science, but it really does not say much of anything.
What does "privileged" mean? What does "temporal structure is core" mean? What does "fundamental ontology" mean?

I see nothing significant about the slight resemblance of Carl's graph to an electrocardiogram. The mention of the latter is just one more piece of clutter, in my opinion.
You can say "quite precisely" until the cows come home, and it will not change my opinion, which is that we have only an approximation.

Anyone can cherry-pick a period of time during which the cycles appears to be almost exactly synchronized, but we still have no means of observing it over even a whole processional cycle, not to mention many of them. We do know that over the very long term the precession rate will change as the Moon is forced outward by tidal interaction, while the motions of the planets will be unaffected by that action. Thus my opinion that any 1/144 ratio is transient in the long run.
That is a digression to the topic of a prior ATM thread that has timed out. Let's stay on the topic of the planetary motions at hand.
Again, please quit digressing to ecology on Planet Earth. The topic at hand is analysis of the motions of the planets, and possible relations among them.

Your mention of Fibonacci numbers and phi may look impressive to a casual reader, but you did not show any application to the topic at hand. Once more, a distracting digression.

Nimrod is the great hunter, Israeli hero, grandson of Noah, great^7 grandpa of Abraham and legendary builder of the tower of Babel. Nimrod fell into the bad books because of the view he was idolatrous, earning the ire of the Hebrew prophets and judges who disliked fatalism and divination because they believed they distracted from the grandeur of creation. Please rest assured, I am in no way seeking to distract from the astronomical grandeur of creation, nor am I suggesting any form of idolatry. The planets are just part of the same isolated physical system as us, so it is scientifically legitimate to investigate ways we may possibly be connected with them, with the SSB cycle a very interesting candidate.

I like your comment on torque, but this is a topic where my scientific understanding is sketchy. Is it possible that the combined torque of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, the planets forming the 179 year (not day!) SSB cycle, are responsible for entraining the period of the precession within defined limits? Could this operate in the same way the shepherd moons entrain rings of Saturn? The F ring is basically held in place by the gravity of Saturn, but is sculpted by the shepherds Prometheus and Pandora. Perhaps the JSN cycle has a similar shepherd sculpting function for the lunisolar precession of the earth? I don’t see the possible relevance of Venus here.

Earth-Venus: 112 cycles = 179.045 years: (179.045-(GY/144))/(GY/144) = 0.0697%

These are great questions and I will do my best to answer them. By ‘organic’ I mean that the solar system can be studied as a single chaotic whole, and that the complexity of the system has sufficient similarity to a biological order that the term organic from biology is useful to describe it. I am not saying the solar system is alive, but that it has some life-like features. The barycentre graph integrates all gravitational forces of the solar system into the single motion of the sun in terms of its distance to the centre of mass. Hence all mass in the system is integrated into this unifying measure.Part of my point is that there is nothing ‘quasi’ about this period, but that it is a stable structure of the solar system, with the 179 year period imbedded in long term observable cycles. Given that the orbits of the planets are so stable, the hypothesis that the 179 year cycles in the 6000 years of available data will appear in much longer time series appears highly probable. The fact that every 179 years the SSB graph has the same shape can rightfully be called a structure of time. A function of a structure can validly be used to characterise the structure. Time obeys this function for our solar system so has this structure for our solar system. Apologies, this is a semantic comment. The mainstream view is that no location is privileged in the obsolete geocentric sense; I was simply using the term to argue that for us our solar system is privileged because we live here. Once the argument is accepted that the SSB integrates the cyclic structure of all solar system mass, it becomes possible to explore this temporal structure as a scientific topic. This term is from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who saw interpreting the meaning of being as the fundamental problem of philosophy. Ontology is the study of being. I argue that because the universe exists, study of the universe is a necessary basis for ontology. I am arguing that the 179 year SSB cycle is a pulse of the solar system, with the sun at its heart, hence the analogy with the measurement of a human heart. The precision of the SSB 179 year wavelength is easily established over the 6000 years of available JPL data, giving good grounds to expect that the ratio with precession also exhibits equally high level of stability and constancy. This means the 144/1 ratio may only exist for, say, a million years, rather than four billion. I would like to study this question further, but given the stability in the 6000 available years, I would expect change in the ratio to be very slow. This ratio is apparent within observable data, and the rate of change should be very slow. My claim is that the outer planets shepherd the gyroscopic wobble of the earth, forming a cosmic relationship that could conceivably fall apart in the distant future. I raised ecology in response to a question because a major element of my claim is that the structure of terrestrial history is entrained by this cosmic rhythm. My reason for mentioning phi was that the 179 year period has comparable, if accidental, status as a cosmic constant number, in the sense of being a major structural feature of our local cosmos but not in the sense of being necessarily eternal like phi, pi, e and Planck’s constant. I am not saying Fibonacci numbers can be seen in the SSB cycle, although Warren Platt, the orbital periods of Earth and Venus have a ratio close to phi and many planetary distance relations embody phi.

As previously noted, the 179 year period is precisely five times the Saturn-Neptune cycle, the period I call the cosmic minute, viewing the age as an hour and the Great Year as half a day. Saturn and Neptune come together every 35.8 years, exactly one fifth of the SSB period. The last four times these planets have been conjunct are 1989, 1953, 1917 and 1881. Looking at these dates, it is possible to ask if they correspond to any specific cycles on earth. Part of my interest is to look at such dates in a cherry-picking style, to see if they have any similarities. What we have here is a natural cycle which corresponds precisely to Russian history – the four turning points are the assassination of Tsar Alexander bringing on the final phase of Tsarist reaction, the communist revolution, the death of Stalin and the fall of communism. Each event marks the beginning of a defined historical period for Russia, in an intriguing correlation with the Saturn Neptune cycle. It is not that the planets caused the events, but that they are markers for them. To me this is a form of historical research with considerable meaning. It is an example of how we can examine planetary cycles synthesised in the SSB.

A further highly interesting result of this approach arises from looking at the Jupiter Saturn Neptune cycle. Because Neptune's orbital period of 164.79 years is very close to 12/13 of the SSB period, the cycle of the triple conjunction advances by one zodiac sign per SSB cycle. However, it gradually moves out of alignment, replaced by a cycle starting at the next zodiacal sign. Hence we have the following dates and signs for the houses of the age marked by the triple JSN conjunction:

Where's Ophiuchus?

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

You mustn't have read my refutation of Phil Plait's comments on astrology. The signs in this table are the tropical zodiac, a physical product of the earth's equinoctial cycle. Ophiuchus is a distant collection of stars which happens to cross the ecliptic near Scorpio. It has no conceivable possible relevance here.

The interesting thing about this table is its empirical modelling of the twelve 'houses' of the age of Pisces, each marked by the 179 year JSN cycle. The first house (cycle a) is marked by the JSN conjunction in Pisces in 53-4, the second house by their conjunction in Aries in 233, through to the twelfth house marked by the conjunctions in 2020 and 2026.

I read what you wrote and it was far from a "refutation". Just the opposite. Phil's points stand, despite your imagining they don't.

The signs are a "physical product"? "Ophiuchus is a distant collection of stars which happens to cross the ecliptic" and Scorpius is not? You've got to be putting us on.As with your other threads, the farther along you get, the more astrological (and therefore less scientific) your "arguments" become.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, enjoy your own self-deceptions. But please don't waste your time, and more importantly, that of others, trying to foist them on the science of astronomy.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

I fear that the use of the word "house" tips my reaction to this theory from - "it's possible that these numbers do correspond to the dynamics of the Solar system, but I don't see how they have any relevance to events in human history" - to - "this looks far too much like astrology".

This is physics, not astrology. I explained the physics of the tropical signs at this post. The signs are a physical product of the relation between the earth and the sun, and have nothing to do with the stars. Ophiuchus is entirely irrelevant to the actual claims at hand. The sign Scorpio is the region of the ecliptic from 210 to 240 degrees east of the vernal equinox. Due to precession this segment of the ecliptic is now in the constellation Libra. Your confusion arises from the invalid assumption that I am proposing or relying on some causal relation between this tropical definition of the sign and the observed constellation.

I totally understand where you are coming from. My use of the term ‘house’ is admittedly drawn from astrology, but I can’t see a better term to explain the observations. In referring to the Age of Pisces, I am simply talking about the period when the vernal equinox is in that constellation, rather than discussing speculative ideas.

I am now attaching graphs of the JSN conjunctions in years 53-4, 232, 411, 590 and 769 to explain my use of the term ‘house of the age’. These graphs show points separated by precisely 179 years, the period I call the house. They illustrate several interesting features of this cycle, and improve on the accuracy of the dates in my recently posted table.

- After each SSB 179 year cycle, Jupiter and Saturn form a conjunction at a position that is a precise multiple of 30 degrees from the vernal equinox, ie exactly on a sign cusp. This conjunction moves forward along the zodiac by exactly one sign per 179 years. In 54 the conjunction is precisely between Pisces and Aries, in 232 between Aries and Taurus, etc.
- The JS conjunction moves backward against the conjunctions with Neptune by 0.2 years per cycle, illustrating the 178.7/178.9 year ratio between these cycles.
- Neptune’s position also advances by one sign in each 179 year cycle (=1.086 orbits)
- This conjunction gradually moves out of alignment, so for example it is exact in 769 but by 1306 the gap is 1.2 years.
- A new ‘family of conjunctions’ (perhaps analogous to the Saros eclipse cycle?) can be seen moving into exact alignment in 1524 in Pisces, once again showing the highly unusual feature (from 1881) that the JS conjunction is exactly on the sign cusp.

I apologise that this material is off the mainstream for ordinary astronomers. That does not make it any less scientific, although admittedly it does lend itself to use for more speculative purposes.

Attached Thumbnails

         

I have no confusion about what you're doing here. I've seen it before. But all the charts and numbers that you may create, post and interpret still won't mitigate the fact that it's an attempt to justify a predetermined conclusion, i.e., that astrology is valid.

That's just the opposite of how science works. But then such an approach is to be expected since science repudiates astrology and numerology, no matter what they are disguised as.

The confusion, as illustrated in your posts here and your other astrology threads, appears to be yours concerning how science actually works.

Coincidence ≠ causality.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Once again, please quit digressing. The OP of this thread is not about the choice of a point of origin and popular names for 30-degree segments of ecliptic longitude or the physical significance thereof, if any. It is about your apparent quest for a proof that the Great Year and your pulse of the giant planets are in a 144:1 resonance of some sort. The numbers you give for the past few centuries yield only an approximation, and that interval simply is too short to give us any conclusions by means of an empirical extrapolation. I can find no dynamic reason for any shepherding of the precessional period by the gravitational pulse.

Please answer this direct question, Robert Tulip:

What is it that you think I am missing about your presentation of the numbers in your OP, and your subsequent number crunching of their source?

With great respect, Maksutov, I am not attempting to justify any predetermined conclusions here. All the conclusions I make proceed from observation and inference. Your apparent argument that signs do not exist is just dogmatic. I freely admit that the effect of the signs may well be minimal, but that does not affect their mathematical reality as functions of the relation between the earth and sun. The stars are just an ancient red herring here – with nothing to do with the actual mathematics I am presenting. In my opinion this area of cosmic mathematics has much greater potential application than some abstruse parts of mainstream science such as string theory, so deserves to be addressed seriously in the hope of finding further scientific results. The pictures attached to my last post illustrate the turning points of the sign houses of the age. They are generated from a computer program using JPL data. There is nothing in these that is not empirical. There is a cultural clash on whether the sidereal (astronomical) or tropical (astrological) signs are preferred, but both are equally valid measurement systems. My point here has been to investigate new empirical observations, focusing on apparently separate observations (SSB=Precession/144) that have high correlation. You are right that correlation is not equal to causality, but when correlation is high we have an indication that a causal mechanism is probably in operation.

Warren – I just don’t think that Venus is a big factor in the SSB cycle. I have not done the calculations, but understand that the gas giants are by far the biggest gravitational factors. I would be interested to see a table of the relative effects of all planets on the position of the centre of mass to see how significant earth and Venus are compared to the outer planets. Also, the calculation I did on this gave a slightly different figure, so please provide the Venus and earth cycle figures you are using.

You are asking me to justify my hypothesis by gravitational dynamics. The 30 degree segments are relevant to this question, and to the OP.

The COM/GY ratio 144/1 gives the COM/Age ratio 12/1, where the Age is the portion of the ecliptic occupied by the equinox over thirty degrees of arc. Another way of saying this is that Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune have common cycles over the SSB period in which the equinox precesses by 2.5 = 30/12 degrees.

You have observed that this phasing is temporary. The lunar variation cited by Ward produces a rate of change in the precessional period of only 0.00016% per millennium. To look at the dynamics of this ’temporary’ event, I would like to compare it to musical harmonics. If we consider the current 1:144 wavelength relations as ‘in tune’, then, as you suggest, it is probable that millions of years in the past they were out of tune, and will go out of tune again millions of years in the future. We know that when musical frequencies move into harmonic relation they create resonance. My argument is that earth, over the last few million years at least, has existed within this stable resonance, simply because it is physically located between the sun and the outer planets which cause the 179 year cycle. I further hypothesise that this harmonic resonance may have a self-reinforcing shepherding effect, whereby the gyroscopic period of the earth is entrained to the major gravitational cycle of the solar system.

In the harmonics of these gravitational factors of the solar system, over the GY/12 period of 2148 years, there are twelve phases marked by a family of Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunctions, the three planets which produce the dominant SSB cycle. These twelve 179 year phases have the interesting characteristic that each JSN conjunction occurs thirty degrees of arc after the last one. Jupiter creates a small erratic movement of the order 178.8/179 = 0.11%, sufficient to push this family of conjunctions out of orb after 12 repeats, with other families of conjunctions overlapping. The Saturn Neptune conjunctions at this 179 year point are highly stable against the GY period.

In looking at the dynamics of this system, you are probably right that existing Newtonian mechanics gives little basis to expect any SSB GY relation. However, my claim is that the resonance of harmonic cycles provides a mathematical model which indicates a possible basis for connection. Musically, the harmonic GY:SSB ratio 144:1 = high D (frequency 4752 cycles per second):low C (33 cycles per second). Frequencies of ratio 12:1 have a harmonic ratio producing the notes G:C. The wavelength of the Great Year is therefore a lower octave of the note two combined perfect fifths below the SSB note. Looking at the Great Year as the fundament of the system, the frequency of the age is a perfect fifth three octaves above the frequency of the great year, and the frequency of the SSB cycle is a perfect fifth three octaves above the frequency of the age.

The data I have looked at covers 6000 years for the SSB. For the GY, only data since 0 is available, but models suggest libration over millions of years around 25,700 years = 178.9 x 143.66. The current value, according to sources I cited above, is 25765 = 178.9 x 144.01. Taken together, I consider it likely these ratios have a resonant relation, even if they are slightly out of tune.

I thought you were interested on possible effects of the SSB on the Earth's precession. The biggest factors are the Sun and the Moon. But the planets are also important. http://www.iers.org/MainDisp.csl?pid=98-112

Just use Newton's law of gravity and a spreadsheet and make one.

583.91 days between inferior conjunctions.

Thanks, I will have a look at the link.Sorry, I was hoping for a cake rather than the recipe.Thanks. This is a close supportive alignment, with error of 0.045 years = 16 days against the 179 year period. Given Venus is between the earth and sun I take your point that it could make a strong contribution to overall entrainment of the Great Year. As you have mentioned there is strong resonant relation between Venus and Earth. Going back to earlier discussion on phi, it is noteworthy that phi features strongly in the Earth Venus relation, as for example discussed at http://solargeometry.com/

Here is an experiment. Set up a gyroscope spinning at 144 Hz. Place it within a sound field of frequency 1Hz. Analyse for resonant entrainment by varying frequencies, and look for harmonic resonance at 12Hz.

The 30-degree shift that comes with successive cycles is an artifact of the relative orbital periods of these particular planets. Had their spacing ended up different because of a chance difference in the mass distribution of the primordial nebula, the pattern could have been very different. You have given no reason to conclude that there is something special or fundamentally important about this interval of ecliptic longitude. The problem with your line of thought about possible resonant coupling of the precession and the pulse of the planets is that a rapidly spinning gyroscope's response to a transient perturbation is very different from that of a harmonic oscillator such as a violin string. When a string is plucked and released, it rebounds and vibrates at its resonant frequency, or perhaps multiples of that frequency. A sustained pulsation at one of those frequencies will make it vibrate strongly, as is well known to musicians. In a thought experiment we could have a string vibrating at 144 times its fundamental frequency, in segments of 1/144 of the total length.

A spinning gyro does not rebound and oscillate that way when a momentary torque is started and stopped. It will precess and nutate a small amount and then stop in a new position when the applied torque stops. An ongoing series of such torque pulses will simply cause the axis to go around in steps instead of constant rate precession. These steps can be of any length, depending on the pulse frequency. I see no big deal if they do not synchronize in successive precessional revolutions.

The following site has a thorough treatment of gyro precession, including transient effects. Everything you wanted to know about gyros, and then some.

http://mb-soft.com/public/precess.html

My conclusion: If the Great Year is slightly over 144 times the planetary pulse period, there should be no tendency to forcibly shorten it to achieve a 144:1 resonance.

If you are attempting an analogy to Earth's precession, you have it backward. Try having the gyro precess at 1Hz (easy with a toy gyro) and introduce perturbing pulses at multiples such as 12Hz, 144Hz, or any other frequency for that matter. We could make the gyro out of iron and introduce the pulses with an electromagnet.

See my previous post. I would not expect to see resonances at these frequencies, or any others.

Warren, I have checked the Venus alignment, and found that against the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune cycle Venus precesses by a few days per 179 years, ie that it is definitely part of this mix. Attached JSNV graphs from 54 to 769 show the pattern, with Venus close to exactly conjunct Saturn and Neptune every 179 years.

Attached Thumbnails

         

Thanks, in my enthusiasm I wrote it up in reverse. I was thinking of using sound to introduce the pulse. If the SSB note was at A440 Hz and the GY gyroscope was spinning at 3.06 Hz, we would look for a linking harmonic resonance at 36.66 Hz. This frequency (12GY=SSB/12) is a perfect fifth from octaves of both observed cycles. Such an experiment would help show if the analogy to musical resonance is meaningful when we are talking about frequencies of one cycle per 25700 years, and if it even makes sense at all to suggest that planetary patterns display harmonic resonance.