Annals of Disasters, Periodicity & Predictions

In geological history over several billion years the Earth went through tens of ecological disasters accompanied by processes of a varied nature and intensity leading to global rearrangements in its atmosphere, lithosphere and biosphere. Carefully study of these time intervals allows one not only to understand better the patterns of different natural processes, but to evaluate more precisely the danger and stages of the development of that ecological crisis to which uncontrolled technogenic agents may lead us. This makes obvious the practical significance and importance of fundamental research into such long geological periods.

Analysis of the known time boundaries of the megacycles (with the reference to the accuracy of their measurement by isotope methods) associated with the periods of revolution of the Sun about the centre of the Galaxy which are gradually increasing from 180 tio250 million years reveals extremely rare random events due to the flights of stars through jet streams close to the Sun. On Earth these moments are marked by epochs of diastrophism most powerful in the last 3.6 billion years of its development: The Kenoran (2.6 billion years), Karelian (1,65 billion years) and Grenvillian (1.1 billion years). This reason may explain the time of formation and the features of the disposition on the Earth of of pre-Cambrian ferruginous quartzites. Their origin is most probably associated with mass fall out onto the surface on the planet of bodies of the asteroids belt as a result of loss by them of stability during the flight of stars. The frequency of star flights provides a source of information allowing the stellar density to be evaluated in the jet streams: with the stars of the jet streams the Galaxy annually loses from 4 to 40 solar masses of matter.

Our Galaxy has four electromagnetic spiral branches of the logarithmic type and two jet streams of matter emerging from its gas-dust nuclear disk twisted into Archimedean spirals. The Sun revolves about the centre of the system along an elliptic orbit and periodically enters the jet streams and logarithmic branches. The steams of matter intersected by the Sun are together with dust and gas represented by their condensation product - dense gas-dust clouds, young stars and comets.

The model of the movement on reasonable assumptions shows that each occasion in the period of stay of the Sun in such stream (~ 1 million years) 10 - 10 galactic comets fall onto the Earth and about once in a billion years a star passes close to the Sun. Barenbaum’s calculations show (Table 1) that the main geological events of the last 700 million years such as, for example, the epochs of orogeny and riftogeny, planetary transgressions and regressions of the ocean, periods of sharp climatic changes and major biological catastrophes and also times of mass fall-out onto the Earth of cosmic bodies and the formation in the sedimentary rock masses of strong geochemical anomalies correspond to the moments of entry of the solar system into streams of galactic matter.

Table 1. Comparison of model (M) dates (D_M) with geochronological scale (D_G) of the Phanerozoic and Wend

M	D_M, mill. years BP	T_G = D_M+1 - D_M	D_G, mill. years BP	Period
1	2		1.8	Quaternary
2	22	20	23+/-1	Neogene
3	43	21
4	66	23	65+/-3	Paleogene
5	90	24
6	118	28
7	150	32	135+/-10	Cretaceous
8	187	37	190+/-5	Jurassic
9	214	27
10	234	20	230+/-10	Triassic
11	253	19
12	272	19
13	293	21	285+/-15	Permian
14	315	22
15	340	25	350+/-10	Carboniferous
16	368	28
17	400	32	405+/-10	Devonian
18	437	37	435+/-15	Silurian
19	464	27
20	484	20	480+/-15	Ordovician
21	503	19
22	522	19
23	543	21
24	565	22	570+/-20	Cambrian
25	590	25	590+/-10
26	618	28	620+/-10
27	650	32	650+/-10	Wend
28	687	37	690+/-10	Upper Riphean

The last time the Sun entered the jet stream (arm of Orion - Cygnus) was approximately 3 million years ago and it emerged from it 0.7 million years ago. Therefore, the raised geological activity of the Earth and other planets of the solar system noted today, the excited state of the bodies of the asteroid belt and also the strong “dustiness” of the interplanetary cosmic space and the presence in it of a large number of meteorites, secondary comets and asteroids with extremely short lifetimes offer a complex of mutually linked phenomena of a residual character due to recent emergence of the solar system from the stream. In this manner the probability of the dangerous events linked with space bodies will gradually decrease until the next intersection of the jet stream.

The time interval between the moments of entry of the Sun into the jet streams of the Galaxy during the Phanerozoic and the Wend periodically changed, from 19 million years in the Permian and Cambrian, to 37 million years in the Jurassic, Silurian and Upper Riphean (Table 1, Table 2). The periodicity of these changes corresponds to the length of the galactic year equal to 250 million years. In turn, the solar system will be exposed to the action of the objects of the galactic jet stream in 18 million years. It will be the end of the Holocene Epoch and, we will hope, the continuation of the Anthropogenic Period.

Table 2 shows that the system of modeled solar periods (T_K) can describe galactic (T_G) periods as well. Such coincidence of the two physical-empirical models that are based on astronomical data in very different time and space scales, is possible only if the Galaxy has a common system of discrete frequencies.

N	K	T_K (Ma)	T_G(Ma)	DT(%)	Geological periods
1	448	20.1	20	-0.50	Neogene, Triassic, Ordovician
2	449	21.0	21	0.00	Paleogene, Permian, Cambrian
3	450	21.9	22	0.46	Carboniferous. Cambrian
4	451	22.9	23	0.44	Paleocene
5	452	23.9	24	0.42	Cretaceous
6	453	24.9	25	0.40	Carboniferous, Wend
7	454	26.0	---	-----	---------
8	455	27.2	27	0.74	Triassic, Ordovician
9	456	28.4	28	-1.41	Cretaceous, Devonian, Wend
10	457	29.6	---	----	--------
11	506	247.8	250	0.88	Galactic Year
12	459	32.3	32	-0.93	Cretaceous, Devonian, Wend
13	460	33.8	---	----	--------
14	461	35.3	---	----	--------
15	462	36.8	37	0.54	Jurassic, Silurian, Upper Riphean
16	447	19.2	19	-1.04	Permian, Cambrian

Berry, B.L. 1992. Basic systems of geosphere - biospheric cycles and the prediction of natural conditions. Biophysics, Vol.37, N3, 414-428, (in Russian), Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain, 1993, 328-341 (in English).

Berry, B.L., 1998. Regularities of natural cycles, prediction of climate and surface conditions. Hydrol. Process. 12, 2267-2278.