I stumbled on this web site after reading a commendation by a commenter on a forum at www.thunderbolts.info … but usually avoid repeating stuff from there over here. Not a lot of point as SIS members are frequent visitors to that site in any case. In this instance, it is the site itself that is recommended and not anything in particular. In fact, for mathematicians among our members, and physicists too, this is a wonderful site in which to dip. There are articles, sometimes quite lengthy and up to almost 20 pages of text, on a variety of subjects from the Tides and the Moon, the Magnetosphere, the Sun, the Tilt of the Earth (and tilt where it occurs on other planets), solar wind and the magnetic fields – and affects the planets may exert on the earth (see www.milesmathis.com/ice.html ). Now, I'm not sure if his surname is Mathis or this is a play on 'maths' but the latter is a feature of the site – and various equations. In this instance, it is the Ice Ages that caught my eye and he begins the lengthy article by saying he noticed something on Wikipedia. A lot of people will tell you not to use that web site as the articles are doctored. This is true when it comes to the Electric Universe and AGW – and no doubt other scientific theories that editors may have taken a dislike to. The relevant Wikipedia piece that he quotes is fairly mainstream and not in any way controversial, and this is that a new theory claims that there are magnetic instabilities in the core of the Sun and these cause fluctuations at periods of 41,000 and 100,000 years. The latter fluctuation is actually the perceived dividing line between the various Ice Ages, the point at which Inter Glacials occur, and therefore an interesting point of call for any catastrophist. In the consensus paleo-climate model these cycles are attributed to Milankovitch and small orbital changes as the earth moves around the Sun. Apparently, this is not enough, or too negligible as the new theory is in fact devised to prop up the Milankovitch model of climate change.
Miles Mathis is not impressed by Milankovitch. Personally, the fact that Milankovitch worked out his hypothesis and its mathematics while cooped up in a prison cell in WWI – minus all the trappings of a desk, a computer, a calculator and the various other things schoolchildren take for granted yet alone your average modern scientist, is something that has always impressed me – but that does not mean of course he was necessarily right. It all came out of his head and no doubt kept him fairly sane during his confinement. Mathis says the Milankovitch variables are garbage – just as easily as that. He then lashes into the new theory and its attempt to shore up the consensus. The strong pulse of a 100,000 year cycle is seen quite clearly in proxy data such as ocean sediment isotopes and ice cores. This is actually the weakest cycle of Milankovitch and orbital change, attributed to minor eccentricities – so why is it so prominent in the proxy data? The signal of the more dominant 41,000 year cycle should be much louder – but it is overshadowed. Mathis says that Robert Ehrlich, who has proposed magnetic instabilities in the Sun at 100,000 year intervals, fails to explain the cause of them. Ehrlich has produced a computer model, he says, not something grounded in the real world – it is not evidence. Okay, we can all buy into that – mention computers, cycles, and science, and a lot of people switch off. However, Mathis then tries to demonstrate that variations in the output of the Sun are caused by outside influences rather than anything actually happening inside the Sun. The problem, as he visualises it, is that physicists are allergic to the idea of charge fields (or any kind of electricity in space we might add). He then outlines his reasons why there is such a prominent pulse every 100,000 years as the solar system moves around the galactic core. It is an interesting idea but his calculations are to some extent upset by Jupiter – which he admits. This planet has apparently misbehaved at some stage in the past which he has yet to nail squarely – so he says he is going to be back with an update article but obviously thinks that the galactic core charge field is the answer to the 100,000 year anomaly. This is reminiscent in some respects to the ideas of Rhodes Fairbridge (see earlier posts on In the News) who predicted the planets had an orbit around a barycentre of the solar system that was sometimes within the Sun and sometimes outside the Sun, depending how the planets were lined up on either side of the Sun. This cycle was adjudged to be somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 years – a trifle below what the proxy data appears to show. It could be argued that ice cores and isotopes from foraminifera in oceanic bottom sediments were tuned into that signal, much closer to home, rather than a galactic charge field – but don't sniff at the work of Mathis as the galaxy as a plasma filled entity may indeed exert a powerful pulse on life on earth. If the cycle of Fairbridge was valid that would mean the Milankovitch orbital changes as far as cycles of 41,000 and 23,000 years are concerned, would remain in place as a noticeable background feature of global climate – but whether they drive climate or otherwise is something else besides.