Replies

Power Spectra of Extinction in the Fossil Record
M. E. J. Newman and Gunther J. Eble
1998-12
Abstract: Recent Fourier analyses of fossil extinction data have indicated that the power spectrum of extinction during the Phanerozoic may take the form of 1/f noise, a result which, it has been suggested, could be indicative of the presence of "critical dynamics" in the processes giving rise to extinction. In this paper we examine extinction power spectra in some detail, using family-level data from a variety of different sources. We find that although the average form of the power spectrum roughly obeys the 1/f law, the spectrum can be represented more accurately by dividing it into two regimes: a low-frequency one which is well fit by an exponential, and a high-frequency one in which it follows a power law with a 1/f2 form. We give explanations for the occurrence of each of thse behaviours and for the position of the cross-over between them.

Thanks, more material on the "to read" pile (approx 500 websites and many books to boot). Over the last month I have read "Atlas Shrugged" (Ayn Rand), "The Quark and the Jaguar" (scientific popularization by Nobelist Murray Gell-Mann), "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (classic lit), "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" (grammar text), "Avalon" (Stephen Lawhead novel), "Patrick", (Stephen Lawhead novel), and "Fahrenheit 451" (Ray Bradbury).

I was on hiatus from FR but am now putting my head back underwater so to speak; but only for a short time.

Cheers!

Your posts take me back to high school biology, where the text gleefully trashed the stupidity of those who subscribed to catastrophism before Darwinian gradualism became the accepted model. I still remember it because I wondered at the time when will the next textbook be written trashing gradualism and making fun of those who believed that. We think we know everything, but there is so much we have yet to learn.