Revisiting the 586.24-Million-Year Cycle: An Important Correction

Ray Tomes, FSC Board Member and Science Director

Revisiting the 586.24-Million-Year Cycle: An Important Correction

Previously I have interpreted a frequently mentioned figure of 586.24 million years in Afanasiev’s book Nanocycles Method (in Russian) as a geological cycle period and used it extensively in my analysis of cycles. Recently, the whole book was scanned using Optical Character Recognition, and translated into English. We intend to publish the book in English soon. It is now understood that this figure is actually a date (i.e. 586.24 million years ago) of a particular formation rather than a cycle period. I mention this now as it has introduced the possibility of multiple errors into my work. The extent of the errors is being examined at this time. Some background:

1. Western geologists mention in “Megacycles” a collection of papers edited by George Williams in Australia that there are cycles of 600, 300, 150, 74, and 37 million years. Clearly with ratios of 2. The last two figures can be used to estimate the longest cycle as 592 million years, which I took to be 586 million years from Afanasiev’s figure when he gave me a copy of his book.
2. From Wikipedia it can be seen that there are cycles of similar periods to the above in known data such as temperature and CO2 levels:

The black curve shows a clear cycle of a little under 150 million years. There is also a hint of a 36.7-million-year cycle in the blue curve, but it is not very regular.

3. Mass extinctions have been reported to follow a 27-million-year cycle and here is a graph of some mass extinction data.

It can be seen that the two periods of 26.65 and 36.64 million years fit well to the peaks of the mass extinctions. Also, when the two coincide there are higher peaks. These two periods are 293.12 million years (half of 586.24 million years) divided by 11 and 8. This supports there being strong cycles of periods close to 586.24, 293.12, 146.56, 73.28, 36.64, and also 26.65 million years.

The beats between the two cycles are very clear and indicate that the 8:11 ratio is very accurate, while the accuracy of the two periods is probably less that 1% which would make the 586-million-year period uncertain by up to 5 million years.

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide shows two cycles over the last 600 million years for a cycle period of approximately 300 million years, consistent with the geological cycles periods. Over that period, CO2 levels have risen from about 300 ppm to 6000 ppm, back to 300 ppm and then up to 2000 ppm before falling to 300 ppm again and rising recently to 430 ppm. The period is rather uncertain but looks to be a little less than 300 million years.

When considering all the periods estimated for the longer cycles there is no reason to change the values used but every reason to consider the uncertainties as much higher but still less than 1%.

These periods in years remain as my best estimates of the cycles between hundreds of millions of years and about a week.

Ray Tomes
FSC Science Director and Board Member

While working in systems software development and economic modeling for prediction, Ray Tomes discovered the importance of cycles. After joining the FSC in the 1980s, he spoke at numerous FSC conferences and ran a unit trust operating in futures markets. While studying cycles full time, he developed Harmonics Theory to explain observed patterns of cycles and the entire structure of the universe. He founded Cycles Research Institute, developed CATS cycles analysis software, and speaks internationally. He now acts as the Science Director on the FSC Board. Tomes is based in New Zealand.