Friday, November 28, 2014

Are the Strongest Lunar Perigean Spring Tides Commensurate with the Transit Cycle of Venus?


New peer-reviewed paper available for (free) download at:

http://www.pattern-recognition-in-physics.com/pub/prp-2-75-2014.pdf

Abstract

This study identifies the strongest Perigean spring tides that reoccur at roughly the same time in the seasonal calendar and shows how their repetition pattern, with respect to the tropical year, is closely synchronized with the 243 year transit cycle of Venus. It finds that whenever the pentagonal pattern for the inferior conjunctions of Venus and the Earth drifts through one of the nodes of Venus’ orbit, the 31/62 year Perigean spring tidal cycle simultaneously drifts through almost exactly the same days of the Gregorian year, over a period from 1 to 3000 A.D. Indeed, the drift of the 31/62 year tidal cycle with respect to the Gregorian calendar  almost perfectly matches the expected long-term drift between the Gregorian calendar and the tropical year. If the mean drift of the 31/62 Perigean spring tidal cycle is corrected for the expected long-term drift between the Gregorian calendar and the tropical year, then the long-term residual drift between: a) the 243 year drift-cycle of the pentagonal pattern for the inferior conjunctions of Venus and the Earth with respect to the nodes of Venus’s orbit and b) the 243 year drift-cycle of the strongest seasonal peak tides on the Earth (i.e. the 31/62 Perigean spring tidal cycle) with respect to the tropical year is approximately equal to -7 ± 11 hours, over the 3000 year period. The large relative error of the final value for the residual drift means that this study cannot rule out the possibility that there is no long-term residual drift between the two cycles i.e. the two cycles are in perfect synchronization over the 3000 year period. However, the most likely result is a long-term residual drift of -7 hours, over the time frame considered.

Figure 13a


Figure 13b

Figure 13. The red curve in [a] shows the difference (in hours) between the tropical year and the Gregorian calendar year (measured from J2000), as calculated from equation (2) versus the year. This difference is subtracted from the measured mean drift displayed [a] to determine the long-term residual drift (in hours) versus the year, which is re-plotted in [b]. The ± 95 % confidence intervals for the measured mean drift [a] and the long-term residual drift [b] are displayed – see text for details.

Conclusion


This study identifies the strongest Perigean spring tides that reoccur at roughly the same time in the seasonal calendar and shows how their repetition pattern, with respect to the tropical year, is in near-resonance with the 243 year transit cycle of Venus.

A single representative time is determined for each of the transits (or transit pairs) of Venus, over the period from 1 to 3000 A.D., in order to delineate the 243 year transit cycle. The representative time chosen  for the transit cycle is the precise time of passage of  the drifting pattern for the inferior conjunctions of Venus and the Earth (i.e. the pentagram pattern seen in figure 1), through a given node of Venus’ orbit.


Two methods are used to determine the dates of these particular events, over the 3000 year period of the study:

1. The first involves finding the date on which the percent age fraction of the circular disk of Venus that is illuminated by the Sun (as seen by a geocentric observer) is a minimum.

2. The second method involves using the transits (or near transits) on either side of a given node of Venus’ orbit to determine the temporal drift rate (in solar latitude) for the pattern of inferior conjunctions of Venus and the Earth. This is then used to calculate the date on which the pattern crosses the solar equator.

A selection process is set up to identify all new/full moons that occur within ± 20 hours of perigee, between the (Gregorian) calendar dates of the 14th of December and the 11th of January, spanning the years from 1 A.D. to 3000 A.D. This process successfully identifies all of the spring tidal events with equilibrium ocean tidal heights greater than approximately 62.0 cm, over the time interval chosen. These events are designated as the sample tidal events or the sample tides. Four distinct peak tidal cycles with periodicities less than 100 years are identified amongst the sample tides.

Investigations of these peak tidal cycles reveal that the 31/62 year tidal cycle is best synchronized to the seasonal calendar, over centennial time scales. Sequential events in this tidal cycle move forward through the seasonal calendar by only 2 – 3 days every 31 years, and the number of hours between new/full moon and perigee (a measure of their peak tidal strength) only changes by ~ 0.6 hours every 31 years.

An analysis of the 31/62 lunar peak tidal cycle shows that the sample tidal events reoccur on almost the same day of Gregorian (seasonal) calendar after 106 years, and then they reoccur on almost the same day after another 137 years. This produces a two-stage long-term repetition cycle with a total length of (106 + 137 years =) 243 years.

Remarkably, this means that, whenever the pentagonal pattern for the inferior conjunctions of Venus and the Earth drifts through one of the nodes of Venus’ orbit, the 31/62 year Perigean spring tidal cycle simultaneously drifts through almost exactly the same days of the Gregorian year, over a period of almost three thousand years. Indeed, the drift of the 31/62 year tidal cycle with respect to the Gregorian calendar almost perfectly matches the expected long-term drift between the Gregorian calendar and the tropical year. If the mean drift of the 31/62 Perigean spring tidal cycle is corrected for the expected long-term drift between the Gregorian calendar and the tropical year, then the long-term residual drift between:

1. the 243 year drift-cycle of the pentagonal pattern for the inferior conjunctions of Venus
and the Earth with respect to the nodes of Venus’s orbit

and

2. the 243 year drift-cycle of the strongest seasonal peak tides on the Earth (i.e. the 31/62 Perigean spring tidal cycle) with respect to the tropical year

is approximately equal to -7 ± 11 hours, over a 3000 years period. The large relative error of the final value for the residual drift means that this study cannot rule out the possibility that there is no long-term residual drift between the two cycles i.e. the two cycles are in perfect synchronization over the 3000year period from 1 to 3000 A.D. However, the most likely result is a long-term residual drift of -7 hours, over the time frame considered. Finally, there is one speculative extrapolation that could encourage others to further investigate this close synchronization on much longer time scales. If these future investigations show that the long-term residual drift rate of -7 hours over 3000 years is valid over much longer time scales then this close synchronization may highlight a mechanism that might be responsible for the Earth’s 100,000 year Ice-Age cycle. This comes from the fact that the strongest Perigean spring tides would be in close synchronization with (i.e. ± half a day either side of) the date of the Earth’s Solstice (on or about December 21st) for a period (24/7) × 3000 years =10,300 years. In addition, this close synchronization would be re-established itself after the 31/62 peak tidal pattern drifted backward through the Tropical calendar by ~ 9.7 days (i.e. the average vertical spacing between sequences in figs 12a & b) such that after ((9.7 × 24) / 7) × 3000 years = 99,800 years.

Hence, the close synchronization discovered in this study lasts for ~10,000 years, with each period of close synchronization being separated from its predecessor by ~100,000 years. This is very reminiscent of the inter-glacial/glacial period that is characteristic of the Earth’s recent Ice-Age cycles.

1 comment:

  1. It is very likely that the lunar orbit partakes in the ~ 26,000 year precession of the Earth’s rotation axis with respect to the stars. When this ~ 26,000 year precession is couple with the ~ 71,000 year wobble of the Earth’s orbit (with respect to the plane of the ecliptic), it produces the well known ~ 41,000 year nodding of the Earth’s obliquity (i.e. tilt of the rotation axis with respect to the plane of the ecliptic). Hence, it is very possible that what I have really found in my paper is that the ~ 26,000 year precession of the Earth’s axis of rotation with respect to the stars is synchronized with the slow drift of the 395:243 year Venus/Earth commensurability pattern with respect to the nodes of Venus' orbit. Support for this proposal is provided by the fact that it takes ~ 41,000 years for the calender dates for the transit of Venus to cycle once through the seasonal (tropical) year.

    Of course, even if the above is true, it does not distract from the point that the peak tides experienced here on the Earth appear to be linked to commensurable ratios of the orbital periods of the Earth and Venus.

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