A relationship between Random Event Generators and seismic activity (Rev. 1)

1. Introduction

In an interpretation of the Mayan calendar proposed by Carl Johan Calleman (2001, 2004), the calendar consists of nine embedded cycles or underworlds, all ending on October 28, 2011. A cycle is subdivided into 13 equal intervals, each ruled by a particular deity representing certain principles. Calleman sees opposing characteristics in the deities from successive pairs of intervals in a cycle. Accordingly, an underworld is described as a sequence of six Day/Night pairs plus a final Day. Each cycle after the first is embedded in the last Day of the previous cycle. He proposes on the basis of historical and pre-historical data, that a creative impulse from a universal consciousness field is delivered during the Days to produce bursts of change. During the Nights, the affected physical, biological and social systems work to accommodate the changes.

The current period that Calleman calls the Galactic Underworld extends from January 5, 1999 to October 28, 2011. It's Days and Nights have a duration of 360 solar days. Table 1 shows the dates corresponding to the start and end of each Day and Night.

Calleman proposes a physical model of the Mayan calendar in which the universal consciousness field is mediated by the iron core of the earth. This idea led to the prediction in Treurniet (2007a) that seismic activity should be affected as the field waxes and wanes during the alternating Days and Nights. This prediction was confirmed by the observed decrease and increase, respectively, in the count of lower mantle earthquake activity up to the fourth Night. The analysis period was expanded in Treurniet (2007b) to include more than 25 years leading up to the start of the Galactic Underworld in 1999. The oscillating behaviour of the earthquake count was low but detectable between 1992 and 1995, then began again in 1997 with an amplitude increasing to a maximum value at the end of the fourth Night in November, 2006. The lower mantle earthquake count for the fifth Day was measured in November, 2007, and correctly continued the oscillating pattern. An updated graph of the earthquake counts was published in Treurniet (2007c), and is reproduced in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Lower mantle earthquake frequency per Day and Night.

Calleman argues that history has tended to repeat itself in successively shorter cycles as described by the structure of the Mayan calendar. This, coupled with the numerical earthquake data, supports the idea that some influence has biased the way our world has evolved. Calleman calls this influence a universal consciousness field, implying that there is some intelligence involved. Although the field itself may or may not be intelligent, Calleman marshals arguments that it seems to promote intelligent or constructive behaviour. Such an effect could result from inhibition of processes that interfere with creative acts. Accordingly, Treurniet (2007c) offered a new hypothesis that the universal consciousness field is effective because it interferes with processes that increase uncertainty. This general hypothesis can be tested using appropriate statistics obtained from any physical process having a random element.

A database of information with suitable properties exists as part of the Global Consciousness Project (GCP). The GCP records and stores the behaviour of a network of globally distributed random event generators called EGGs (ElectroGaiaGrams). Each EGG creates a stream of random bits every second by sampling "quantum-indeterminate electronic noise". The bit stream is then sent to the centralized database. The project evaluates the likelihood that the EGGs respond to events that are meaningful to humans such as destructive earthquakes or terrorist attacks. The evidence shows that the EGGs do respond to such events with odds against chance of about a million to one. By using the existing database of EGG data, we should be able to examine whether or not the EGGs behave differently during the Days and Nights marked by the Mayan calendar. The hypothesis says that the universal consciousness field acts to inhibit processes that increase uncertainty. Therefore, EGG variance should be lower during the Days when the universal consciousness field is actively inhibiting increases in uncertainty, than during the Nights when such inhibition is absent.

A peek at the earthquake data at the end of the summer of 2008 suggested anomalous behaviour compared to the data before that point in time. In particular, there were no earthquakes recorded below a depth of 650 km since May of 2008. This depth was the chosen threshold for defining lower mantle earthquakes. The suitability of this definition now seemed questionable given the consistent decrease in the depths of the deepest earthquakes. Therefore, a new definition of lower mantle earthquakes was developed that does not depend on an arbitrary threshold.

The earthquake database corresponding to the Galactic Underworld period is re-analyzed using the revised definition. This is followed by analysis of the GCP EGG data over the same period. The results from the two data sets are compared and a significant relationship between them is discovered. Finally, an alternative hypothesis not related to the Mayan calendar is evaluated.

2. Earthquake Experiment

In this study, a set of lower mantle earthquakes is defined as the 10 deepest earthquakes with magnitude greater than 3.0 during the period of interest. The dependent variables in the analysis were the average depth and magnitude of this set of earthquakes.

According to the hypothesis, pulses of the universal consciousness field delivered during the Day periods should inhibit processes that increase uncertainty. Lesser uncertainty implies lower entropy which can be associated with less intense earthquakes. Thus, the earthquake magnitudes should be smaller during the Days than during the Nights. Further, the creative impulse emitted from the core during the Day periods should suppress seismic activity more nearer the core, so the deepest earthquakes should occur farther from the core. Therefore, the deepest earthquakes should occur at smaller depths during the Days than during the Nights.

2.1 Method

World-wide seismic data is available on-line from the USGS/NEIC database. Data from 1999 to the present were downloaded, and sets of lower mantle earthquakes were extracted according to the intervals specified in Table 1. Mean depths and magnitudes were calculated for each interval.

2.2 Results and Discussion

Table 2 shows the means and standard deviations of the depths and magnitudes of the 10 deepest earthquakes per interval.

Figure 2 shows the mean earthquake depth for each Day and Night. In the right panel, Days and Nights alternate on the abscissa to be consistent with the way the earthquake counts are shown in the earlier reports. Comparison with Figure 1 shows that the new measure of lower mantle earthquakes gives a similar pattern of results. That is, for the first four Days and Nights, the earthquakes were at smaller depths during the Day periods than they were during the Night periods. However, for the fifth Day and Night, this pattern was reversed.

Figure 2. Mean earthquake depth per Day and Night.

Figure 3 shows the mean magnitudes of the 10 earthquakes in each set. As before, the plot in the right panel shows alternating Days and Nights on the abscissa. For the first two Day/Night pairs, the deepest earthquake magnitudes were smaller during the Days than during the Nights. For the third and fourth Day/Night pairs, there was little difference. Thereafter, the pattern was reversed so that the earthquakes during the fifth Day were larger than during the following Night.

Figure 3. Mean earthquake magnitude per Day and Night.

3. EGG Experiment

3.1 Method

Measures of EGG variance during the Day and Night periods specified by the Mayan calendar were required to test the hypothesis outlined in the introduction. For practical reasons, analysis of the full 360 solar day period for each Day and Night was not possible, so a random sampling procedure was implemented. A starting point during a Day or Night interval was randomly selected, and the variance for each available EGG over a fixed interval was calculated. The dependent measure for each sampling period was the mean of these individual EGG variances. The experiment consisted of 200 samples per Day or Night.

Implementation of the methodology involved the following steps.

1. Choose a Day or Night period.
2. Randomly specify the start of a time interval to be sampled within the period.
3. Extract a 9-hour set of data for all available EGGs.
4. Measure the variance of each EGG over the 9-hour interval.
5. Calculate and output a mean variance across all EGGs.
6. Return to (2) until the desired number of samples for the period are collected.

3.2 Results and Discussion

Table 3 shows the average number of EGGs available during each Day or Night, the mean values, and the standard deviation for each mean. Each mean is based on 200 measured values, where each of those values was the mean of the variances of the EGGs available in a given sampling interval.

Figure 4 shows the mean EGG variances for each Day and Night. The right panel shows alternating Days and Nights on the abscissa. The figure shows that EGG variance was lower during the initial two Days than during the immediately following Nights. This observation is consistent with the effect predicted. However, the reverse was true during the remaining Days and Nights. It is interesting that this pattern of results is similar to that obtained with the earthquake data discussed above. The predicted effect was obtained for both data sets during the initial part of the underworld period, but the effect was reversed in the latter part.

Figure 4. Mean EGG variances per Day and Night.

4. Comparison of earthquake and EGG data

As noted, there was some consistency in the pattern of results from the two data sets sampled according to the Days and Nights of the Mayan calendar. This can be improved, however, by compensating for the effects of other unknown and unrelated processes affecting the data. Since we are particularly interested in the difference between successive Days and Nights, we can remove longer-term trends in the data due to any unrelated processes by simply subtracting the score for each Day from the score for the immediately following Night. Figure 5 plots the result for both the earthquake data and the EGG data. The graphs for the two data sets are now very similar.

Figure 5. Normalized earthquake magnitudes and EGG variances.

Figure 6 shows the correlation between the data presented in the left and right panels of Figure 5. Also shown is a linear regression line and the corresponding R-squared statistic of 0.8502. The correlation coefficient of 0.922 is statistically significant using a one-tailed test of significance (t= 4.126, df= 3, p < .025). The one-tailed test is appropriate since the earthquake magnitudes were predicted to be directly proportional to the EGG variances. The significant correlation means that either variable may be used to predict the other with confidence. Further, since the EGGs and the material in the earth's lower mantle cannot affect each other directly, the high correlation implies that there is an underlying mechanism that affects the behaviour of both EGGs and the lower mantle. Calleman's model provides such a mechanism in the form of the universal consciousness field.

Figure 6. Correlation between earthquake and EGG data.

5. Mars gravity as an alternative causal agent

The significant relationship between earthquake and EGG activity was obtained using sampling periods of 360 solar days corresponding to the lengths of Days and Nights of the Galactic Underworld. However, the Mayan calendar is not generally recognized as a model for explaining physical effects. Perhaps other more readily acceptable physical models exist that would specify a comparable cycle length. A spectral analysis of the smoothed frequency of lower mantle earthquakes (Figure 5 in Treurniet (2007b)) found a peak at 745 days/cycle. The 720 day duration of a Galactic Underworld Day and Night is 25 days shorter than this period. A physical cycle that is about 35 days longer than the measured periodicity is the movement of the planet Mars relative to Earth. Mars is in opposition to Earth (i.e., at its closest approach) approximately every 780 Earth days. However unlikely, it is possible that Mars has a small gravitational effect on Earth's seismic activity. It is even less likely that Mars' gravity could affect EGG behaviour. Nevertheless, the case for the universal consciousness field effect would be strengthened if a Mars effect could be ruled out. With this in mind, the earthquake and EGG data were re-analyzed as above in accordance with the maxima and minima of the Earth-Mars distance. A significant correlation should again be obtained if Mars' varying distance from Earth has the effect attributed above to the universal consciousness field.

5.1 Method

In this study, the earthquake and EGG data were obtained as before, but with different sampling intervals. A sampling interval was defined as 360 days centered on the time of a minimum or maximum Earth-Mars distance. Five minima and maxima occurred between 1999 and 2008. Table 4 Shows the dates corresponding to the Near (minimum distance) and Far (maximum distance) sampling intervals.

5.2 Results and Discussion

The 10 deepest earthquakes per sampling period were identified as before. Table 5 shows the means and standard deviations of the depths and magnitudes of each set.

Table 6 shows the average number of EGGs available during each Near or Far period, the mean values, and the standard deviation for each mean. As before, each mean is based on 200 measured values, where each of those values was the mean of the variances of the EGGs available in a given sampling interval.

Figure 7 shows plots of the tabulated results. The left panel shows the earthquake magnitudes and the right panel shows the EGG variances as a function of Mars' distance.

Figure 7. Earthquake magnitude and EGG variance per Earth-Mars distance.

Both the earthquake magnitude and EGG variance data were normalized as before by subtracting each Near value from the following Far value. Figure 8 plots the results.

Figure 8. Normalized earthquake magnitudes and EGG variances.

Figure 9 shows the correlation between the data presented in the left and right panels of Figure 8.

Figure 9. Correlation between earthquake magnitudes and EGG variances.

Also shown in the figure is the linear regression line and the corresponding R-squared statistic of 0.1488. The correlation coefficient of 0.38 is not statistically significant (t= 0.714, df= 3, p > 0.5). The low correlation means that the gravitational field of Mars did not affect the behaviour of both the EGGs and lower mantle earthquakes.

6. Discussion

The working hypothesis proposed that a time-varying universal consciousness field acts to inhibit processes that increase uncertainty. The pattern of results from both data sets sampled according to the Mayan calendar intervals conformed to predicted effects for at least the first two Days and Nights of the Galactic Underworld period. During the remaining Days and Nights, the pattern seemed to shift until it was opposite to that predicted. Although the results were not periodic over the entire cycle as expected, the earthquake results were very similar to the EGG results when the data was normalized by taking the difference between successive Days and Nights (see Figures 5 and 6). The significant correlation indicates that the normalization removed uncorrelated noise.

Because the normalized patterns from the disparate data sources shown in Figure 5 are so similar, they are likely due to a common cause such as the aforementioned universal consciousness field. However, the patterns are not periodic across all the Days and Nights as predicted by the model. The Day/Night differences became relatively small and even changed sign after the second Day/Night pair. For the earthquake depth variable (Figure 2), the change in sign was delayed until the fifth Day. That the change to relatively small Day/Night differences occurred simultaneously in both the earthquake magnitude and EGG variance data sets argues that it is real. Thus, the measurements indicate that the creative impulses emanating from the earth's core are no longer periodic. One might speculate that the impulses are unreliable because the field frequency in this underworld is approaching the bandwidth of the medium. Whatever the reason, there is now very little change from Day to Night in the hypothesized inhibition of processes that increase uncertainty. The small effect that can still be seen suggests that there may now be more inhibition during the Night than during the Day.

A possible alternative explanation for the significant correlation is Mars' gravitational influence, since Mars' closest approach to Earth has a periodicity similar to the Days and Nights of the Galactic Underworld (780 vs 720 solar days, respectively). Therefore, the analysis was repeated using sampling intervals synchronized with the minimum and maximum distances from Earth to Mars. The lack of a significant correlation between these normalized data sets (see Figures 8 and 9) is evidence that Mars' gravitational field did not cause the significant correlation shown in Figure 6.

7. Conclusions

The hypothesis that a time-varying universal consciousness field acts to inhibit processes that increase uncertainty was examined using long-term measurements of both seismic activity and GCP EGG activity. A high correlation was found between the two disparate data sets, which suggests that both were affected by a common causal agent. This agent is thought to be the universal consciousness field associated with the Mayan calendar. An alternative hypothesis, that the effect was due to a varying gravitational field arising from the cyclical Earth-Mars distance, was not supported.

8. Bibliography

Carl Johan Calleman, The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, Rochester: Bear and Co., 2004.

William L. Hays, Statistics for Psychologists, New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1963.

Index