The journey of the universe is cyclic. Everything begins with a pinpoint-an idea or concept- then spirals up and out. On this path, periodic upgrades occur to push things along so that stagnation doesn’t set in and other opportunities can be experienced. All this happens at the micro to the macro level and has always been. Some scientists ascribe to the Big Bang Theory of the universe’s birth. This isn’t totally off the mark, but the actuality is we have had a “big bang,” if you will, multiple times in the universal journey.
There are cycles within cycles that the universe goes through, but I wish to talk about a particular period that we are finishing up at this time. Every 12,000 years or so, our solar system goes through a magnetic event1. To be sure, the entire universe goes through this as well, but that area is vast, and we do not have modern equipment that has tracked that data as efficiently as we have in our own solar neighborhood.
The Previous cycle here on Earth was the Gothenburg event so named due to discovering five closely dated and correlated ice cores in Sweden showing the temporary magnetic field change on the planet 1,3. During this and each other magnetic excursion, there were extreme volcanic activity and extinction consequences. There was also an accompanying extended cold period during a solar minimum2. The dying out of various life forms made way for new designs to begin.
Not all species die out during these cyclical events. Horseshoe crabs have been around for 445 million years, while the coelacanth (a fish) has been on Earth for 410 million years. Alligators have lasted over 84 million years in one form or another, and Basilosaurus, ancestors to modern whales, lived 35 million years ago4. Darwin’s “Survival of the fittest” means those that live long enough to reproduce, but his other observation, what we call “Adaptive Radiation,” is the survival of those that can adapt5. The species that survive each magnetic event are the ones that adapt to the changing environment and live long enough to pass on those adaptive genes.
Climate change is not new. Each of these magnetic events has smaller cycles within them. For example, our sun goes through an 11-year cycle in which there are almost no sunspots and very little activity on the sun that affects Earth. Then the sun “wakes up,” where the sunspots produce ejecta in the form of solar flares, or the disc itself produces coronal mass ejections where portions of the sun spew out into space. Solar wind from the coronal “holes” sends out cosmic particles as the sun turns. Whenever these events happen, and they face Earth, we can have many effects ranging from minimal such as aurora like the Northern Lights, to maximum damage with a micro-nova. Changing weather patterns is part of this transformation.
With all these radioactive particles blitzing us and increasingly less magnetic shielding to keep us unaffected, our DNA and everything around us begins to change. It seems ironic that all the recent superhero movies have given us clues as to what is in store for humanity. Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and became Spiderman with all of the that arachnid\’s attributes. Bruce Banner was bombarded with gamma rays and became the Hulk. Steve Rogers was exposed to increasingly energetic rays so he could transform into super-soldier Captain America. We may not be a superhero in the Hollywood fashion, but we will upgrade and adapt. Those that can’t or won’t will die out.
This is a broad overview of cycles that affect Earth and its inhabitants. The changes these cycles make are over a long period, though relatively speaking, a few “quicker” events are implemented over just a few years. We are in one of those quicker time-frames where we have a leap in the trajectory of humankind. In the following two parts of this topic, we explore the collective and the individual in light of these cycles. We also learn how to navigate and adapt to pass on the wisdom the next few generations will need until we live fully in the next era.
Resources:
1- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/003358947790031X
2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2decDcEJqo
(THE NEXT DISASTER | Part 1 – Ice, Fire, Magnetism)
3- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_excursion
4- https://www.thoughtco.com/50-million-years-of-whale-evolution-1093309
5-https://mapmygenome.in/blog/charles-darwins-survival-of-the-fittest/
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay