The Unified Cycle Theory: How Cycles Dominate the Structure of the Universe and Influence Life on Earth [Paperback]

Stephen J Puetz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 11, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1432712160 | ISBN-13: 978-1432712167 | Edition: 1st

Documented cycles range widely in diversity. They include fluctuations in the stock market, commodity prices, economic activity, wars, civilizations, global climate, ice-ages, geological formations, and abundance of life on Earth. This book examines all of these cycles, plus more. In addition, the Unified Cycle Theory makes predictions about our universe. If you're interested in history, science, geology, physics, astronomy, climatology, biology, mathematics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, economics, or investment theory, then read on. The theory includes portions of all of these academics. Furthermore, this book covers cycles ranging as short as 27 days to ones spanning billions of years. The evidence comes from a variety of scientific, academic, and business sources - which this book methodically details. In spite of the great advances in identifying cycles, this increased knowledge yielded little in the way of providing a consensus about why they occur. This book attempts to correct that shortcoming. These chapters step back, dispose all preconceptions, reexamine the wealth of information available, and use deductive processes to formulate a new theory.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Without a doubt, The Unified Cycle Theory publication emerges as the most authoritative book ever written about cycles. The author gathered hundreds of data series' from a variety of academic areas. The areas include star formation rates, various geological data, global temperatures (from geology, ocean sediments, and ice cores), evolutionary data, extinction data, civilization chronologies, commodity prices, stock market prices, and economic data.

The book then shows how all of these seemingly unrelated areas actually link themselves quite closely to one or more of the following four primary classifications of cycles:

1) Milankovitch Cycles - Gravitational cycles related to eccentricity, obliquity, and precession.
2) Solar Cycles - Magnetic cycles primarily consisting of frequencies of 27 days, 11 years (Schwabe cycle), 88 years (Gleissberg cycle), and 208 years (Suess cycle).
3) Geomagnetic Cycles - Primarily modulated by solar cycles; however, a semi-annual cycle, a cycle related to eclipses, and a lunar cycle also play minor roles in geomagnetic oscillations.
4) A 4th set of mysterious cycles, linked precisely by a factor of 3, dominate all areas of the universe. These cycles affect Earth and the universe throughout all timescales.

The author calls this mysterious 4th set of cycles the Extra-Universal Wave Series (EUWS). These cycles correlate with oscillations already identified by researchers in most of the major sciences. While these other researchers have done an excellent job at indentifying individual oscillations and frequencies related to their own special investigations, the book steps back to look at the big picture - across all sciences and across all timescales. In doing so, it becomes apparent that these mysterious cycles link themselves by a factor of three.

It's incredibly hard to believe that all of these naturally occurring cycles could happen by chance in such a precise manner. The book identifies and discusses 25 EUWS cycles ranging from 28.7 days to 22.2 billion years. In the Unified Cycle Theory, it's fascinating to read and learn about these 25 harmonic cycles - with all 25 conforming to three rules strictly and precisely:

1) Each parent cycle determines the characteristics of its child cycle.
2) To calculate the frequency of a child cycle, simply divide the frequency of its parent cycle by 3.
3) Each child cycle inherits cyclical turning points (peaks and troughs) from its parent - with 3 child cycles squeezed in between theoretical peaks of each parent cycle.

The book reveals many important implications about the EUWS cycles. It appears that University of Chicago extinction-cycle pioneers Raup & Sepkoski were close to being correct when they wrote the following passage back in 1984 in their groundbreaking publication, Periodicity of Extinctions in the Geologic Past - by realizing the difference between Earth's environmental symptoms and the true origin of the extinction cycles:

"If periodicity of extinctions in the geologic past can be demonstrated, the implications are broad and fundamental. A first question is whether we are seeing the effects of a purely biological phenomenon or whether periodic extinction results from recurrent events or cycles in the physical environment. If the forcing agent is in the physical environment, does this reflect an earthbound process or something in space? If the latter, are the extraterrestrial influences solar, solar system, or galactic? Although none of these alternatives can be ruled out now, we favor extraterrestrial causes for the reason that purely biological or earthbound physical cycles seem incredible, where the cycles are of fixed length and measured on a time scale of tens of millions of years. By contrast, astronomical and astrophysical cycles of this order are plausible even though candidates for the particular cycle observed in the extinction data are few."

Now, 25 years later, with strong evidence of a harmonic sequence of 25-linked cycles regulating not only extinctions, but a number of other universal events, additional deductions can be made:

a) Because of their harmonic link, reason dictates that these cycles must all share a common source. This fact alone discredits all existing theories regarding their origin. For example, a minority of researchers believe a subset of these cycles propagate from galactic cosmic rays (GCRs). Up until about two years ago, the author believed the same. However, these cycles were in existence before the Milky Way formed, so GCRs cannot possibly act as their source.

b) Because of the size of 22.2-gyr cycle, unless the Big Bang touched off this set of cycles (and it seems unlikely that an explosion could modulate itself), these cycles almost certainly originate from outside our known universe.

c) If that's the case, for these cycles to appear uniformly throughout our universe, these cycles must propagate at super-fast speeds - much faster than the speed of light.

d) These cycles appear to constantly create expansions (coinciding with rising temperatures) and contractions (related to declining temperatures) throughout our universe. During contractions, matter tends to clump together more than normal (hence, instead of gases being uniformly dispersed throughout our universe, we see the "clumpiness of matter" effect). These cyclic contractions and expansions act as the triggers that cause moons, planets, stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, and universes to form (big crunch - big bang cycles).

e) These cycles may somehow be related to fluctuations in gravity - creating the illusions of dark matter and dark energy. (Dark matter and dark energy may really be the same thing, creating different distortions in unison with phases of these cycles.)

f) The long-term cycles suggest that our universe resides inside a much large multiverse. Our universe is simply one of many universes. A big crunch may act as a large-scale version of a supernova implosion - while also sharing some properties of a massive black hole. As a big crunch approaches singularity (probably without actually achieving singularity) near the time of a long-term cyclical trough, a big crunch reverses into a big bang.

g) These cycles also affect mankind in many ways - including modulating cycles in civilizations, economic activity, and stock market activity.

The discovery of the EUWS cycles suggests that we need to drastically rethink many basic assumptions in all of our sciences.

If you're interested in economics, sociology, psychology, markets, biology, climatology, geology, and/or astrophysics, the Unified Cycle Theory is a must-read. The 496-page publication details the properties of all four categories of cycles - including the 25 EUWS cycles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Outskirts Press; 1st edition (February 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1432712160
• ISBN-13: 978-1432712167
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #751,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unified Cycle Theory and Climate Change, February 5, 2010

By 

Glenn Borchardt "Glenn" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unified Cycle Theory: How Cycles Dominate the Structure of the Universe and Influence Life on Earth (Paperback)

This is an excellent, remarkable, and most outstanding book of sweeping breadth. This, or some version of it, is destined to become a classic. Puetz, a mathematician, statistician, and financial wizard, has compiled data concerning cycles with wave lengths that extend from days to billions of years. The known cycles that affect Earth, of course, are either geomagnetic or gravitational, appearing as the result of interactions between the Sun, Moon, Earth, and other planets. But, through detailed analysis of as much cyclic data as he apparently could get his hands on, Puetz has discovered a third set of all-encompassing cycles that he calls EUWS (Extra-Universal Wave Series) cycles.

For the "unification" whereof he speaks, Puetz simply takes the number 22.176 billion years and divides it by 3, getting 7.392 billion years, and then divides the result again by 3 to get 2.464 billion years, and so on. At first, I was quite skeptical, thinking that all this was mere numerology. That was until Puetz used the calculation to show that all of the geologic epochs fell right into this cyclic behavior. My favorite, because I have worked with Quaternary geology for decades, is the 41,728-year EUWS cycle. The data for the eastern equatorial Pacific sea temperature for the last million years shows remarkable agreement with that cycle (Chart 22C). The precision surpasses that of the 41,000-year cycle observed long ago by Milankovitch (1941) as well as the more recent correction to 42,000 years, attributed to cyclic variations in the axial tilt of the earth. Of course, in nearly all cycle theories, various subcycles can exhibit constructive and destructive interference. This results in extra peaks or diminished peaks that at first appear to be random variations within the major intercyclic periods. As in all of science, real data generally give skeptics plenty of chance for doubt. Puetz handles part of this intercyclic noise with something called the Turning Point Distribution Principle: "This principle describes how the EUWS cycles reverse direction at tops and bottoms. Variations from theoretical turning points distribute themselves in a non-random manner. ...If a EUWS cycle misses its theoretical turning point, alternatives include theoretical turning points of its sub-cycles. This tendency produces non-random, stair-step distributions" (p. 5). Being a neomechanist, I can appreciate this fully. The ideal cyclic motion of a simple pendulum, for instance, is either forward or back. To get subcycles, there would have to be additional causes (other bodies impacting the pendulum).

Puetz goes on to calculate 13,909-year, 4,636-year, 1,545-year, 515-year, 172-year, 57-year, 19-year, 6.36-year, and 2.12-year cycles. There even are 258.11-day, 86.04-day, and 26.68-day cycles, all of which he supports with data drawn from the literature, including the stock market. Given his focus, there probably is some cherry picking involved, but too many of the peaks and troughs are precisely as predicted by the calculation. I haven't checked all the charts for accuracy, but the references for the raw data are meticulously included, with many readily available on the Internet. You can judge for yourself. Reconstructed temperature variations for Greenland appear to be remarkably in agreement with the 1,545-year cycle (p. 281). He shows the correlation between sunspot and climate cycles with the rise and fall of various civilizations. And most pertinent to our present situation, he shows that the 57-year EUWS cycle coincides with the highly controversial Kondratieff Wave cycle in economics. The 57-year cycle postdicts four market crashes in a row: 1720, 1778, 1835, and 1892. He calculates that the possibility of this happening by chance is 1 in 10 million (1/57 X 1/57 X 1/57 X 1/57). The 1929 market crash came one 19-year panic cycle early. Most surprising: Both the 57-year and 172-year cycles predicted a major depression to begin in 2007. Sound familiar? He also points out that "Since 1934, the Dow Jones Industrial Average correlated with the 2.12-year EUWS frequency for 34 cycles." If you think there is profit potential in all this, you can get Puetz's financial newsletter [...], which at the moment, is more bearish than anything else I have seen.

The book goes into some interesting esoteric detail: Who knew that the price of rice in China pretty much followed the 172-year cycle ever since 976 AD? Who knew that the rise and fall of civilizations followed a 515-year EUWS cycle? One needs to appreciate a lot of data in chart form and bear with quite a bit of necessary repetition. Some of the conclusions will be a stretch for sociologists, historians, and others more knowledgeable about the details, but the shear extent of this first attempt is outstanding.

Puetz's data doesn't shrink from controversy. Not only does he see 2007 as the beginning of another Great Depression, he also points out it's coincidence with the sudden drop in global temperatures that occurred in January of that year (Chart 28K). Note that the figure shows a general rise in global temperatures at the beginning of the 20th century, similar to the 2-mm/yr rise in sea level that I pointed out previously (Borchardt, 2009). Next questions: Will sea level begin to drop along with global temperatures? Will the so-called "great recession" become the "Global Depression" that Puetz predicts? There is no doubt that Puetz is on to something really big here. But what is it?

Without a mechanism, all these data are still looking for a home. One disingenuous reviewer covers the indeterministic view: "This new concept shows that someone or something with extreme intelligence and wisdom is in control of us. ...someone out there, who has our best interest at heart, is in absolute control of everything" (Ott, 2009). Egads! That fellow must have slept through the part about cycles that might leave us freezing in the dark. It seems clear that the EUWS cycles are associated with changes in climate. Puetz shows, however, that the conventionally accepted 11-year sunspot cycle and the Milankovitch cycles are not sufficient to produce many of the effects he draws attention to. It certainly wouldn't account for "Snowball Earth," the time about 700 million years ago (p. 178) when most of the planet was covered with ice. One can see increases in crop yields, surpluses, and price declines as the effects of increases in global warmth, but two-year fluctuations in the stock market with special emphasis on the full moon? Nonetheless, that is just what the data show. This definitely is a "unified" theory, but it is missing a central character, perhaps some supermicrocosm that acts as an "Extra-Universal" cause.

Why the number 22.176 billion and the divisor 3? The whole book is just begging for a formal mathematical solution. That's the obvious next challenge for Puetz to complete the theory and silence the inevitable critics. To sum up, this book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the universe from a univironmental point of view. A magnificent compilation and a towering achievement!

References

Borchardt, Glenn, 2009, Global warming 2 millimeters at a time, [...]

CRU, 2008, Climate Research Unit, Data: Temperature[...]: University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Lawrence, K.T., 2006, Eastern equatorial Pacific 5 Myr Alkenone SST and paleoproductivity reconstruction: Boulder, CO, IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology. Data Contribution Series #2006-044. NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program.

Milankovitch, Milutin, 1941 [1969], Canon of insolation and the ice-age problem: Jerusalem, Israel Program for Scientific Translations, v. 132.

Ott, Donald, 2009, You will want to keep this book! [...]

Puetz, S.J., 2009, The unified cycle theory: How cycles dominate the structure of the universe and influence life on earth: Denver, [...], 489 p.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a must-read creativity, April 13, 2009

By 

Jerry Funakura - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Unified Cycle Theory: How Cycles Dominate the Structure of the Universe and Influence Life on Earth (Paperback)

Reading the Unified Cycle Theory shows that things aren't cut-and-dry. There's more to the universe than current experts say. The book is well organized, and it guided me through, step by step, in logical manner to reinforce my beliefs in many things I always suspected, but could never really prove. The author presents strong evidence to expose the fallacy that carbon emissions produce the much-feared greenhouse effect that causes global warming. Instead, the book shows how naturally occurring cycles have created constant change in global climate throughout Earth's history. The Unified Cycle Theory is an exciting, mind-opening experience. For me, it's almost as if years and years of déjà vu have finally come together in book form. Whether the topic involved politics, finance, global climate, geology, or astronomy, by revealing their cyclical nature, the book brought together a large number of things that I could never quite put my finger on. In spite struggling through the base-building content of the first seven or eight chapters, these necessary pre-requisites allowed me to fully understand the loaded content of the remaining chapters. The all-encompassing nature in which this book presents and explains cycles makes it a highly recommended must-read for anyone involved in science, business, or politics.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Stuff, November 15, 2009

By 

Joseph Crawford "Freestone" (south) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Unified Cycle Theory: How Cycles Dominate the Structure of the Universe and Influence Life on Earth (Paperback)

I bought this book for the sole purpose of trading. I wanted to see how well these theoretical cycles could hold up to actual stock market behavior; the result: surprisingly well. One of the best things about this book is that in the appendix, Puetz lists tables of theoretical turn-dates for all of his cycles, ranging from 28-day, 258-day cycles, to 57 year cycles and beyond. Some of these turn-dates were remarkably prescient, especially when multiple cycles fall on the same day. Perhaps most stunning was when the 258, 28, 86 day cycles all fell in the same day on March 9, 2009, which also marked a major bottom for global equities.

Much of the book is very dry and repetitive. Only towards the last half of the book does the reading get more interesting, this is where he gets into cycles less that 1000 years.

Overall a great piece to add to your analytical toolbox.