Could the position of Mars have an effect on stock market?

In the group Unifying Physics, Anthony Moore (see this) sent an extremely interesting link to his article published in Academia.edu (see this).

I glue below his own summary of his claimed findings.

"Before reading the content, it is important to take into account a recent study published in Nature Communications in March of 2024, roughly 5 years after this idea was first introduced to the public. In that study published in March of 2024, researchers discovered that Mars is exerting a gravitational pull on earth's tilt, exposing earth to warmer temperatures and more sunlight, all within a 2.4 million year cycle. I assert that this allows us to surmise that, even within smaller timeframes, Mars is still exerting a gravitational pull on earth's axial tilt, enough to raise temperatures and affect human behavior, even investor sentiment. Citing the fact of numerous studies that link irritability and negative mood states to warmer temperatures, I can establish an axiom. This perspective should help the reader move beyond the preconceived notion of absurdity and realize that this has scientific merit. This paper lays out the 25 major stock market crashes and downturns in US history.

The data shows a 100 percent correlation between such events and Mars position in relation to earth. Every stock market crash and major stock downturn in US history has happened when Mars was orbiting behind the sun from earth s point of view. When Mars is going further out from earth, it is also when Mars's gravity is pulling Earth s axial tilt towards the sun, possibly bringing warmer temperatures, which should affect investor sentiment most negatively, presuming that warmer temperatures relative to the mean affect cognitive function and trigger some variant of irritability or pessimism. There are studies that corroborate this dynamic between warmer temperatures and negative mood states. As Mars gets closer to earth, Mars s gravity is pulling earth s axial tilt away from the sun, bringing presumably cooler temperatures, and less negative mood outcomes, which may explain why major stock market crashes never happen during that phase of Mars s orbit."

Let us first look at the data.

1. The article discusses 25 stock crashes including also short 1 day long events in the financial history of the US. The article gives the year, month and day of month for the events and also links to the tables containing the basic data about crashes. Besides this the data about the relative position of Mars and Earth are given for each case.

   In one case (March 12, 13, and 16, 2020) the are 3 mini crashes within few days and in another case 2 crashes within 2 months (October 9 and December 1, 2008) so that from the perspective of the hypothesis one must to them as a single event so that there are 22 rather than 25 crashes.

2. If the crashes occur randomly, half of them would occur when the planar angle φ for positions of Mars and Earth is larger than π2: this means that the distance between Mars and Earth is above a critical value whose geometric interpretation is rather obvious. This criterion is applied in the examples discussed in the article and can be formulated as a condition for the distance of the Mars and Earth (1/4:th of the orbit length). The claim is that all the studied 25 crashes in the economic history of the US satisfy the claim. Professional statisticians should check the claimed correlations between the position of Mars relative to Earth and stock market crashes to find whether they are genuine.
3. The data used seems to cover the history rather well. Indeed, in the web one can find is a list of 12 contemporary stock market crashes in the US beginning from year 1929 (see this). The events have occurred 1929, 1937, 1962, 1987, 1989 (mini crash), 1990, 2999, 20008, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2020 (corona). The number of events studied in the article is 22 and roughly twice the number of events listed in the table.

   This page contains also a list of global events that also affected the US. This list contains 6 cases (1772, 1796-1797, 1873 and 2001, 2002, 2018) of which 3 have occurred after millenia.

4. In Wikipedia there is a list of 55 stock market crashes, which are fast events and bear markets, which are slow and long lasting (see this) starting from year 1637: this list contains also the events that have occurred outside US.

The reason for why I take these claims seriously is that there is a lot of earlier data about unexpected correlations between planetary physics and human collective behavior. For instance, Russian physicist Shnoll carried his entire life's work by charting this kind of correlations at molecular and even nuclear physics level (see this, this, this, this, this, and this). I have discussed the Shnoll effect in the TGD framework in (see this): quantum gravitation in planetary scale is predicted to be crucial for understanding life and consciousness and could explain the claimed correlations.

Anyone can check whether the claims are indeed true and also check whether the claim holds true for a more extensive global data including 55 events. It is enough to consider the time evolution of the azimuthal angle difference defining the angular distance φ of Mars and Earth using a simple model assuming circular orbits in the same plane. φ corresponds to the actual distance of Mars and Earth. From this model one can check whether the claim holds true for the events listed in the above mentioned tables.

1. One must first make clear the difference between sidereal and synodic periods. Sidereal period is defined in a system for which the rest system is defined by distant stars. In what follows, the Sun is approximated as a system at rest so that an approximation to the sidereal period would be in question. I will use the term orbital period and keep in mind that an approximation is in question.

   Synodic period is the time required for a body within the solar system, such as a planet, the Moon, or an artificial Earth satellite, to return to the same or approximately the same position relative to the Sun as seen by an observer on the Earth. Therefore the rest system is defined with respect to Earth-Mars system. For Earth-Mars system the synodic period is 780 days and 50 days longer than 2 years. For instance, the closest approach configuration repeats with the synodic period (Earth, Mars and Sun are at the same line). The synodic period is what matters in the recent case.

2. The orbital period of Mars is T_M=1.882 years (687 days) and roughly twice the period T_E=1 year of Earth (365 days): one has T_E/T_M= .5313. The eccentricities of the orbits of Mars resp. Earth are .093 resp. 0.017. If the crashes occur completely randomly and if the condition for the critical distance between Mars and Earth is φ≥ π2 is larger than π/2 then the number roughly 1/2 of all crashes should have φ≥ π/2. Also the orbital planes fail to be quite identical.

   Mars comes closest to Earth every other year, around the time of its opposition, when Earth is sweeping between the Sun and Mars. The eccentricity of the orbit of Mars implies exceptionally close oppositions of Mars happen every 15 to 17 years, when we pass between Mars and the Sun around the time of its perihelion (closest point to the Sun in orbit). Also the situation in which the distance of Mars and Sun are largest from the Sun are especially interesting from the perspective of the hypothesis. Intriguingly, the time t=17τ corresponds to 17+14.994 ≈ 32 years and defines in a good approximation a period for the system. This periodicity might be visible in the time series for the crashes.

3. One can test the hypothesis by using an approximation in which Mars and Earth have circular orbits in the same plane. The azimuthal angles φ_M and φ_E for the positions of Mars in the plane with respect to Sun are in this approximation given by

   φ_M= ω_Mt = 2π t/T_M ,
   φ_E= ω_Et = 2πt/T_E .

   Note that these angles are defined modulo 2π.

4. The condition that the difference φ of these angles is larger than π/2 reads as

   φ= |φ_M-φ_E|= 2π |t/T_E-t/T_M| ≥ π/2 .

   This translates to the condition

   t/T_E |1-T_E/T_M| ≥ 1/4 .

5. It is useful to study the approximate situation in which one has T_E=T_M/2. In this case the situation is strictly periodic and synodic and sidereal periods are identical. In this case, the dynamics is periodic with period T_M= 2T_E and one has

   t/T_E≥ 1/2.

   If Mars and the Earth are closest to each other in the initial situation (φ=0), the critical period for which the condition φ≥ π2 corresponds to the range [1/2,3/2] year. These critical periods repeat with 2-year periodicity. T_M is slightly smaller than 2T_E so that the growth of the angular distance between Mars and Earth is slower and the synodic period is larger than 2T_E.

6. In the more general case the situation is not quite periodic and the points at which Mars and Earth are nearest to each other repeat with period τ= T_E/(1-T_E/T_M) ≤ 2T_E. Earth catches Mars before it has rotated a full period. For a given value t=nτ the critical period is

   1/4(1-x) ≤ t_R/t_E ≤ 3/4(1-x) ,
   x= T_E/T_M ≈ .5313 .

   Here t_R= t-nτ refers to the reduced time coordinate having values in the interval [0,τ]= [0, T_E/(1-T_E/T_M)]. One can use τ as a unit of time and check whether the crashes tend to occur in the intervals [τ/4,3τ/4] for t= nτ, n=1,2....

7. Assuming that orbital rather than synodic period matters and in the approximation considered, the period τ has length about τ=780 days and indeed corresponds to the synodic period.

   The duration of the critical period is t_cr=τ/2 ≈ 1 year 25 days. The critical period starts at τ_cr/4= 6 months 12.5 days. The distance of Mars and Earth is largest for t_R=τ_cr/2≈ 1 year 25 days. The closest approach of Mars and Earth will be January 12 2025. In the simple approximation used, one finds that the critical period starts 24 June, the distance between Mars and Earth will be maximal February 7 2026, the critical period ends at July 20 2026, and the next closest approach would be on March 2 2027.

   The synodic view of the apparent closest approaches of Mars and Sun \href{https://www.nao.ac.jp/en/astro/sky/2016/05-topics03.html}{this}) between April 14 2014 and February 20 2027. From the table one finds that the time intervals between the closest approaches correspond to the synodic period and are indeed longer than 2 years.

How could one understand the observations in the TGD framework?

1. In the, the notion of field body (FB), which can be magnetic (MB) or electric (EB), changes the situation completely. Number theoretic view of TGD predicts that FB carries phases of the ordinary matter with very large values of effective Planck constant implying quantum coherence in astrophysical scales. Gravitational and electric fields in long scales are accompanied by a long length scale quantum coherence. There is evidence that the FBs of the Sun, planets and even the FB of the galaxy have effects on the behavior of biological systems and humans as conscious entities (see for instance this, this and this).
2. A long list of numerical miracles involving the masses of astrophysical objects appear in fundamental biology, supporting this view. For instance, EEG would be responsible for the communications to and control by the magnetic body of Earth. It is indeed difficult to understand why the organisms as master energy savers would spend a very large amount of metabolic energy to send information to outer space without any receiver. Furthermore, resonant EEG frequencies correspond to cyclotron frequencies for the associated "endogenous" magnetic field.

If really true, the findings of Moore would provide a further support for findings of Shnoll and other researchers. They would fit very nicely with the TGD view of quantum biology, which predicts that the magnetic bodies of the Sun and planets, in particular Mars, can affect biology and consciousness.

1. Although Mars has no large-scale magnetic field, the monopole tubes of the gravitational magnetic body of Mars could connect Earth and Mars.
2. The gravitational magnetic bodies of the Sun and planets carrying h_eff phases of ordinary particles behaving like dark matter, would control biomatter and receive information from it. The large distance of Mars when behind the Sun relative to Earth might reduce this control action.
3. The reconnection of U-shaped flux tubes is the fundamental interaction mechanism in all scales and plays a key role for instance in bio-catalysis. Also now this mechanism would be naturally involved and it would become less probable when the distance of Mars from the Earth increases (it is roughly 5AU at the backside of the Sun and 1 AU at the front side). Therefore the quantum coherence scale for the Mars-Earth system would be reduced and could affect even collective behavior of humans and of biology in general.
4. This explanation conforms with the intuition of Moore that the gravitational field of Mars is involved if gravitation is mediated by the radial U-shaped monopole flux tubes, for which the average density decreases as 1/r², i.e. like gravitational flux. Now however the effect would be based on astrophysical quantum coherence of the gravitational field making possible effects on biology and consciousness.

See the article Some new aspects of the TGD inspired model of the nerve pulse or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.