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The Law of Cycles

Updated on June 30, 2010

Cycles are everywhere if we know how to look for them.

Since we have been keeping detailed records of sunspots, we have found an average 11 year cycle. If you look carefully, you can find a 179 year cycle too.
Since we have been keeping detailed records of sunspots, we have found an average 11 year cycle. If you look carefully, you can find a 179 year cycle too.
Ice cores going back 800,000 years tell us of 8 great glacial ages of 100,000 years each. This matches one of the Milankovitch cycles.
Ice cores going back 800,000 years tell us of 8 great glacial ages of 100,000 years each. This matches one of the Milankovitch cycles.
Tree rings also show us cycles and can give us surprising information on the past. In this sample, we can see distinct cycles marked by years in history.
Tree rings also show us cycles and can give us surprising information on the past. In this sample, we can see distinct cycles marked by years in history.
It takes a trained eye to read tree rings and analyze the climactic cycles.
It takes a trained eye to read tree rings and analyze the climactic cycles.
One of Saturn's shepherd moons is caught in the act of gathering ring material. There is another and they change orbits. This has been filmed in action and helps us to understand planet building,
One of Saturn's shepherd moons is caught in the act of gathering ring material. There is another and they change orbits. This has been filmed in action and helps us to understand planet building,

Cycles can be found everywhere and influence everthing.

There is much supporting evidence for the law of cycles described in non-scientific literature and circles. This evidence is seen in ice cores, tree rings, solar cycles, computation of comparative orbital periods, the tides, and the seasons and in biological rhythms. It is perhaps the existence of such realities, great and small, that are behind the ability of prophets, who have the right knowledge, to make accurate predictions. Certainly, science is interested in making predictions while at the same time, condemning non-scientific efforts at prophecy. Currently, there is an extreme interest and investment in predicting and dealing with potential asteroid and comet impacts. There are whole sections of the scientific community devoted to the prediction of the weather and the cycles of threatening minor planets, as well as in other areas. The main problem in understanding a specific cycle is the noise of the superposition of a multitude of many other cycles, large and small. Currently, we do not know of many cycles, simply because we have not been observing long enough. This complicates understanding of individual cycles. It is hard to isolate one of them from the collective noise of all the cycles unless it is obvious. On the other hand, some are very clear like the tides, sun spot cycles and the orbital periods of the major planets. There is also the fact that cycles and rhythms will influence each other, especially if they are nearly matched in periodicity or ratio periodicity.


Analysis of ice cores from Greenland, Antarctica, the Himalayas, Kilimanjaro and other regions, has shown a 100,000-year pattern in ice ages. These typically have four sub-cycles ended by a very cold dry spell and a warm wet spell of 10,000 years. This pattern has occurred four times as recorded in the ice cores dating back to 800,000 years. The last cold spell is called the Younger Dryas. We are now at the end of the current cycle and face the prospect of a long slow descent into the depths of a new ice age. This tends to follow four periods of cold and warmth with the average temperature gradually falling over the 90,000 year part of the 100,000-year cycle. During this time, wild climate swings taking mere decades or years, are the norm. Research indicates that global warming can be a curious trigger for the rapid onset and start of a great freeze and drying. Ice core dating is highly accurate, as one need only count the individual layers. There is some blurring, but the overall accuracy is about 99 percent. Thus, for a date of 12,000 years ago, the ice-core yields and uncertainty of only about 120 years. There are other ways to cross check the ice cores to a limited extent, such as through dendrochronology and ocean bottom mud cores.


Tree rings, though limited in extent, do provide a detailed record of the climate around the world, where a good unbroken record exists. It was primarily through tree ring analysis that proved that a super volcanic eruption in 535 AD was responsible for a world-wide catastrophe. This consisted of a 20 year famine, an outbreak of bubonic plague, darkening of the skies, a few year freeze and the fall of some mighty empires and the start of new ones. This is a miniature of a classic destruction-creation event. The ice cores support the evidence of the tree rings for the same period with deposits of sulfur dioxide and fine volcanic dust. In fact, they are a good cross-reference and a way to provide rigorous testing, so necessary in good science. Tree rings also show cyclic events for period covering hundreds of years as well as the 11 year average sunspot cycle..


We know that the solar system can exist in a state of conditional stability owing to the fact that orbital periods between planets are not discretely resonant. Further, certain resonances are permitted showing that here too, the law of cycles holds sway. The magic resonances as detailed in these pages are the 1:1 and the 3:2 orbital period resonances. There may be others, but this is a case for deeper analysis. What we do know is that small bodies in exact discrete resonance with large bodies are doomed to be:

  1. Ejected from the solar system,

  2. Absorbed by one of the planets,

  3. End up crashing into the sun.

No two of the major planetary bodies are in exact discrete resonance, even as are the moons orbiting the various planets in each case. They may approach precariously close to exact discrete resonance, inducing complex orbital phenomena, such as between Venus and Earth and the moons of Saturn. There are other factors in operation in the solar system that will widen orbits of minor planets, bringing them into a fatal resonance with a major planet. Further, perturbations caused by passing stars, rogue planets or yet undiscovered major planets, like the hypothesized 10th planet, can cause orbital changes in minor bodies. As for the stable resonances, we have the evidence of Pluto and Neptune, the Trojan Asteroids and the Hilda Asteroids. At the 3:2 orbital resonance positions in Saturn’s rings to the major moons, show an accumulation of material instead of the clearing associated with other orbital resonant locations.


The well-known average 11-year solar cycle has been charted through its effects in the Dusoupu glacier, Australian shales and through direct observation off and on over thousands of years. There is also a 179-year cycle that has been observed. Both have been tracked in the historical climatological record. When the sun spot part of the cycle is reduced for a long stretch, this seems to cool the Earth’s climate that has devastating results by way of famine and disease outbreak. The plagues of medieval and early Renaissance times occurred during climate cooling known as the mini ice age. The mini ice age is a case in point of sudden radical climate change and how the superposition of cycles influences each other. There were other plagues caused by other factors, but the solar connection is a very close match.


Everyone knows the seasonal cycle and it needs little comment except by way of the various regions of the world that experience different climates. Some areas are marginal and require a sophisticated degree of climate prediction to avert disaster by famine. Some societies worked out complex methods to calculate abundant and lean years. The Maya incorporated Venus into their calendar, which ended up being the most accurate calendar in the world, even by today’s standards.


Looking a little closer to our experience under civilization, we see the law of cycles operating in economic and political spheres. This is a subject of some controversy as we like to view ourselves as being some how above the laws of nature and its cycles. However, a casual observation will show that we’re still subject to the apparent caprice of nature. There is a distinct basic cycle in economics and politics that operates in a 30-year periodicity. There is even a distinct period for the lifetime of an average society. Civilization is a fragile thing and the more complex it is, the more fragile it becomes. We as everything else are completely dependent upon nature. When nature appears benign, we can develop civilization to a high degree of sophistication. When nature is in catastrophic upheaval, then civilizations collapse. This is detailed in myth and in the record of archeology. The Earth is littered with the remains of collapsed civilizations on every continent and even under the waters of every major ocean and sea.


Included in the idea of the law of cycles is the idea of the eternal return. But the eternal return does not mean that things repeat exactly. Though patterns will be self-similar, there will be differences. This is like saying that the spring equinox brings the transit of the sun’s position northward, but one spring day might be balmy, another cool and another cloudy and storming. Generally, the trend is toward warming and the sprouting of flowers and plants in the northern hemisphere.


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