On 6 May 02, Anthony Nelson-Smith wrote: > Thanks, Christy, for the notes on Wes Jackson's talk. On a minor > point, I picked up on the '1 nuclear accident every 10 years' > estimate. As a coastal marine ecologist, I figured out that (around > the NW European coastline) we have averaged one severe winter and one > serious oil-spill every ten years. Is there something special about > this period ? I seem to remember that the sunspot cycle runs over 11 > years (near enough ?).
Try http://homepages.kcbbs.gen.nz/rtomes/ed100.htm for a brief description of Dewey et al's work on cycles including the sunspot one. Ray Tomes' index page explores cycles much further: http://homepages.kcbbs.gen.nz/rtomes/index.htm. To quote Ray: "There are cycles in everything. There are cycles in the weather, the economy, the sun, wars, geological formations, atomic vibrations, climate, human moods, the motions of the planets, populations of animals, the occurrence of diseases, the prices of commodities and shares and the large scale structure of the universe. None of these are independent of each other. Research shows that very different disciplines often find the same cycle periods in their data. The inter-relatedness of all things is an idea who's time has come. The study of cycles is an excellent way to understand this because the periods of cycles are as easy to recognise as fingerprints or DNA sequences." Cheerio... Rex
