Bolides, Comets, Asteroids, Meteors And Falling Skies

[Hervé]

NASA space data supports citizens' observations: Meteor fireballs are increasing exponentially (http://www.sott.net/article/309988-NASA-space-data-supports-citizens-observations-Meteor-fireballs-are-increasing-exponentially#)

Dr. M.A. Rose
Sott.net (http://www.sott.net/article/309988-NASA-space-data-supports-citizens-observations-Meteor-fireballs-are-increasing-exponentially) Sat, 09 Jan 2016 20:05 UTC

SOTT.net last looked in detail at the frequency of meteor fireballs in 2013, using the data garnered by the American Meteor Society (AMS). SOTT.net pointed out the increasing frequency of fireballs1, and asked the question: "What does 2014 have in store?"

Well, the results are in, and the answer is simple: comparing 2014 to 2013, the frequency of fireballs increased by 120%. Comparing 2015 to 2014, fireballs increased by 20%. That is a significant increase, and it should be generating a lot of attention. If it is, then it's being done very quietly behind closed doors.

Since October 2013, the web site spaceweather.com (http://www.spaceweather.com/) has published daily data from NASA's All-Sky Fireball Network, which observes, and daily reports, fireball activity over the US.2

I have collated both sets of data - from NASA and the AMS - to produce the following graphs, taking into account that each dataset relies on different definitions of 'meteor fireball'. Click on the graphs to view them at full size.


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/292855/large/Total_fireballs.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/292855/full/Total_fireballs.jpg)
© Dr M.A. Rose - Overall increase in meteor fireballs over the US in the last decade


Because we are using two datasets, there can be some incongruity for the 2013-2014 data. Nevertheless, the pattern is congruent: from 2010 onwards, the frequency of fireballs has been increasing each year in an exponential fashion. Such a change is significant and should be generating a lot of media attention and a lot of activity in near space observation.

The most significant way to plot the data is via a 12-month rolling average, which smooths out 'noise' and demonstrates any significant changes that have occurred. From mid-2010, the average number of fireballs significantly increased, until late 2015 when the rolling average stabilised.

Collating the data into a 6-month rolling average reveals the asymmetric distribution across the year. Fireballs are occurring at higher numbers in the latter part of the year. This difference in distribution significantly increased after 2013. That is, one part of space is becoming dense with dust and rocks, and Earth (and other planets in the inner solar system) are moving through this area of space every year.


[see original article (http://www.sott.net/article/309988-NASA-space-data-supports-citizens-observations-Meteor-fireballs-are-increasing-exponentially) for more diagrams]


Looking at NASA's data month by month, we see that the fireball frequency is most concentrated in the months August to December. However, the numbers for June and July are also increasing significantly, suggesting that the area of space from which asteroid and comet debris is reaching Earth (or, alternatively, into which the solar system is moving), is increasing in size:


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294188/large/Fireballs_per_month_since_2013.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294188/full/Fireballs_per_month_since_2013.jpg)
© Dr. M.A. Rose - NASA-observed fireballs increasing over the last three years



Where there is meteor smoke, there are asteroids

NASA has also published data for near-Earth asteroid (NEA) discoveries since 1995.3 Their data shows a consistent increase in asteroid numbers from 1998-2013, and significant increases for 2014 and 2015, which shadows the big increases in fireballs observed over those two years.


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294067/large/NEAs_NASA.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294067/full/NEAs_NASA.jpg)
© Dr M.A. Rose - Increase in Near Earth Asteroids in last two decades


Another remarkable change is the increase, since 2000, in the outer planets' new moons/satellites.4 Jupiter and Saturn appear to have effectively shielded the planets in the inner solar system by trapping the larger 'rocks' in their gravitational fields, in the process gaining new moons:


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294086/large/New_Moons.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294086/full/New_Moons.jpg)
© Dr. M.A. Rose - Increase in the number of satellites acquired by the outer planets of the solar system


This might be related to the decline, since 2000, in new discoveries of large NEAs (rocks greater than 1km in diameter):


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294160/large/NEAS_NASA_2.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294160/full/NEAS_NASA_2.jpg)
© Dr. M.A. Rose



To summarize, here's what we can deduce from these datasets:



The number of fireballs being observed has slowly increased over the years 2000-2011. Thereafter, their numbers increased rapidly, and moreover, the very rapid increase came from a specific area of space. Most occurred during the period August to December. 2014 and 2015 saw major increases in fireball numbers
NEA numbers have been observed since 1995. From 1998-2013 the number of new NEAs discovered has relentlessly increased, with major increases in 2014 and 2015. The pattern matches that of the recorded fireballs
The number of discoveries of large NEAs peaked in 2000, then declined to 2010, and plateaued out thereafter
Saturn and Jupiter began increasing their number of moons circa 2000/2001, and the numbers stabilized around 2010

It would be interesting to plot the positions of the large outer planets relative to Earth over this time period, and determine whether the decrease in large NEAs in 2000 is connected to the increase of moons around the outer planets - that is, whether the outer planets, when in the right part of space, capture the larger rocks/asteroids.


More intense meteor showers and more sporadics

We have a limited database from NASA, but the following meteor showers revealed significantly increased fireball numbers for 2015 as compared with 2014:

Perseids - from Comet 109P Swift-Tuttle



Northern Taurids - Debris from Comet Encke. The Taurids and Encke are thought to be part of a much larger comet that disintegrated over the past 20,000-30,000 years. Planetary perturbations have split the debris stream into two observable showers (Northern & Southern).

The 2013 data only covers the latter part of the year. The following meteor showers showed significant increasing fireball numbers for 2014 as compared with 2013, but showed no significant increase for 2015 vs 2014:

Geminids - Unlike most meteor showers, the Geminids are not associated with a comet but with Asteroid 3200 Phaethon



Perseids - Comet 109P Swift Tuttle



Orionids - Debris from Comet 1P Halley



Sigma Hydrids - Showed increasing Fireball numbers across each year



Sigma Hydrids - Faint shower. The meteors are said to have a "Perseid-type velocity." It is assumed that the source was a long-period comet and these are the last remnants of its tail

Keep in mind, however, that the vast majority of fireballs are classed as 'sporadics', i.e. they are not identified with any known meteor shower. They may occur during the same time period as a named meteor shower, but travel in different directions and occur in different parts of the sky.


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294087/large/Fireball_IDs.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294087/full/Fireball_IDs.jpg)
© Dr. M.A. Rose - NASA's identification of fireballs since October 2013. Note that the vast majority of them could not be associated with known meteor streams...


[see original article (http://www.sott.net/article/309988-NASA-space-data-supports-citizens-observations-Meteor-fireballs-are-increasing-exponentially) for more diagrams]


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294110/large/Taurids.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294110/full/Taurids.jpg)
© Dr. M.A. Rose - From 2013 to 2014 NASA registered a 2-fold increase in fireballs identified as Taurids. From 2014 to 2015 there was a more then 3-fold increase


2015 finished with about 20% more fireballs compared to 2014:


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294152/large/Cumulative_fireballs.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294152/full/Cumulative_fireballs.jpg)
© Dr. M.A. Rose



What's up (in space)?



So it appears that one of a couple of things is happening:

The solar system is moving into an area of space where it is encountering a higher density of rocks/asteroids, along with the debris trails of some comets, e.g. Encke



Or something a la 'Nemesis'5 is approaching the inner solar system and perturbing comets/asteroids from the Kuiper Belt and/or the Oort Cloud.



The two scenarios are not mutually exclusive: the first scenario could also trigger the second.

The 'Nemesis' hypothesis6,7 proposes that the Sun has a companion star - a brown or red dwarf - in a highly elliptical orbit that periodically disturbs comets/asteroids in the Oort Cloud, causing a large increase in the number of comets visiting the inner solar system, and a consequential increase in impact events on Earth.

No 'Nemesis' twin sun has yet been detected by NASA's WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) telescope - or so we're told - but WISE has discovered several brown dwarfs in neighboring star systems.8

More recently, Napier et.al.9 published a paper highlighting the significance of Centaurs in the Oort Cloud. Centaurs are giant comets in the trans-Neptunian region, which if displaced into the main solar system, could disintegrate and lead to intermittent but prolonged bombardment of inner solar system planets, for up to 100,000 years. Their opening paragraph is worth reproducing here:

Do we live in dangerous times? The risks to civilization from impacts by asteroids and comets have been appreciated only in the past few decades. Programmes such as NASA's Spaceguard observations seek to map near-Earth objects (NEOs) as a way to quantify the risk to Earth. But does the current count of NEOs reflect the population over time? We argue that the population is variable and that assessments of the extraterrestrial impact risk based solely on near-Earth asteroid counts underestimate its nature and magnitude for timescales of order 10,000 years, i.e. the interval of interest and concern to our civilization.

A more variable but significant threat comes from Centaurs, giant comets derived from the trans-Neptunian region that reach the inner solar system generally via short-term, dynamically unstable residence periods in the outer planetary region. The disintegration of such giant comets would produce intermittent but prolonged periods of bombardment lasting up to 100,000 years. Mass extinction/geological boundary events on Earth show such a pattern, as do levels of dust and meteoroids in the upper atmosphere. Over the past 10,000 years, Earth has been experiencing the intermittent arrival of dust, meteoroids and comet fragments from the disintegration of comet 2P/Encke, trapped within the orbit of Jupiter. Napier et al further noted that, "All three major 20th-century impacts (Tunguska, British Guiana, Curuca River) coincided with our passage through major meteoroid streams (respectively, the Beta Taurids, Geminids and Perseids)." We currently have significant increases in fireballs among the Perseids and Northern Taurids.

I guess we shall just have to see what 2016 has in store, but so far, in early January, the pattern already appears to be... continued increase in fireballs:


http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294187/large/Fireballs_Jan_2016.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s14/294187/full/Fireballs_Jan_2016.jpg)
© Dr. M.A. Rose


References:

'2013 saw a dramatic increase in meteor fireballs - What does 2014 have in store?', Philipos Moustaki, SOTT.net (http://www.sott.net/article/271892-2013-saw-a-dramatic-increase-in-meteor-fireballs-What-does-2014-have-in-store), 12 January 2014
NASA's All Sky Fireball Network (http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/)
NASA's Near Earth Object Program (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/)
'Planetary Satellite Discovery Circumstances' at NASA's JPL (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?sat_discovery)
'Nemesis: Does the Sun Have a 'Companion'?' Space.com (http://www.sott.net/article/205513-Nemesis-Does-the-Sun-Have-a-Companion), 25 March 2010
Whitmire, D.P. & Jackson, A.A. (1984), 'Are periodic mass extinctions driven by a distant solar companion?'. Nature 308 (5961): 713 - 715
Davis M., Hut P., Muller R.A. (1984), 'Extinction of species by periodic comet showers'. Nature 308 (5961): 715 - 717
'NASA Discovers Coldest Brown Dwarf Neighbor of the Sun', space.com (http://www.space.com/25659-coldest-brown-dwarf-near-sun-discovery.html), 28 April 2014
Bill Napier, David Asher, Mark Bailey & Duncan Steel, 'Centaurs as a hazard to civilisation', Astronomy & Geophysics 56.6 (2015), 18-23

[Sunny-side-up]

Things looking pretty but rough!

Minds to the Heart intentions for Earth:sun:

[Lefty Dave]

Greetings Avalonians

http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/browse_reports

here is another source of information...that's not NASA... fyi....

Blessings...end of line.

[Hervé]

One dies as ‘meteorite’ falls in Vellore (http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/one-dies-as-meteorite-falls-in-vellore/article8204671.ece)

By A.D. Balasubramaniyan (http://www.thehindu.com/profile/author/a.d.-balasubramaniyan/) and S. Vijay Kumar (http://www.thehindu.com/profile/author/s.-vijay-kumar/)

Updated: February 7, 2016 05:32 IST


http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/02727/th07_Suspected-_Fu_2727329f.jpg
The crater formed after the object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on the campus of Bharathidasan Engineering College, near Natrampalli, in Vellore on Saturday.


One person was killed and three others were injured when an object believed to a meteorite fell on the campus of a private engineering college near Natrampalli in Vellore district in northern Tamil Nadu early on Saturday.

According to police sources, a loud blast was heard near a water tank shortly after midnight on the Bharathidasan Engineering College premises in K.Bandarappalli village. Kamaraj, a college employee, who had gone to drink water suffered serious injuries and was declared dead when taken to the Vaniyambadi Government Hospital. Three others suffered minor injuries. Window panes and wind screens of buses parked nearby and the water tank were broken in the impact of the blast. A crater was formed at the site of blast.

Though there was suspicion that it was a bomb blast, preliminary investigation by forensic and bomb experts showed no sign of any explosive substance at the scene. Pieces of a rare kind of stone were found and samples taken for analysis by scientists.

“We can rule out the possibility of any terror angle or sabotage. Not a single ingredient pertaining to any kind of explosive was found at the site. We suspect it to be a meteorite fall,” a top police official told The Hindu on Saturday. After a similar blast was reported in a paddy field at Alangayam in the same district on January 26, a senior Astrophysicist of the National Physical Laboratory, Ahmedabad, came to the district for a study. “The scientist was camping nearby and rushed to the college soon after hearing the news of the blast. We are convinced that it is a meteorite that fell with high velocity. In the earlier incident, local people remember having seen an object falling from the sky in the field,” the official said.

A special team of the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Asir Vijay Kumar, inspected the scene and ruled out the use of grenades. Vellore Superintendent of Police Senthilkumari also visited the spot. Investigators were trying to check if the college had any CCTV camera covering the disturbed area.


HaqAeYgJRvcPublished on Feb 6, 2016
The path of that unknown particle which fell on Vellore, Natrampalli as seen from Chennai sky.

[Hervé]

Meteor explodes over Denmark with meteorite found (http://da.sott.net/article/943-Meteor-bragede-over-Danmark-Lordag-aften-et-stykke-meteorit-angiveligtvis-fundet-i-Ejby)

Sott.net (http://www.sott.net/article/311809-Meteor-explodes-over-Denmark-with-meteorite-found) Mon, 08 Feb 2016 11:42 UTC



http://www.sott.net/image/s15/300769/large/balleruplysglimt.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s15/300769/full/balleruplysglimt.jpg)
© Frank Weinberger privat. Night sky illuminated in Ballerup, Denmark


Hundreds of Danes reported the sky was suddenly lit up and a loud bang followed shortly after what most likely was a meteor streaking the sky over Copenhagen at around 10:08 pm Saturday 6. of February, 2016. The meteor was also spotted from Poland and Sweden.

Bo Michael Hansen from Roskilde wrote on TV 2 News' Facebook-profile (https://www.facebook.com/tv2news/posts/10154045022064714?comment_id=10154045211539714&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D):

" Bright flash, very loud boom followed by a long lasting rumble for 20-30 seconds, at Roskilde. Birds awoke and started chirping in the gardens and nearby wetlands. As a part time fire fighter I was on my way out of the door, as I thought it was a powerful explosion." Anette Glentvor in Vesterbro wrote:

"The sky was gradually lit fully up. After that the sky turned green and ended with a short purple flash. About five minuttes after a long rumbling was heard. It sounded like thunder, except that the sound continued for a very long time." Mikkel Pedersen from Roskilde told DR:

"We were driving home from Hillerød to Roskilde, when at 10 pm we were just outside Slangerup and a strong light suddenly lit up the sky and a huge fireball with a long tail flew right above our car,". A meteorite at about 50 g was found by a woman who was out for a smoke in Ejby, on the outskirts of Copenhagen. It will be on display at The Geological Museum between 4-6 PM, today Monday 8. February, before it is sent to Italy for tests.


-------------------------------------

Update:

Meteorites by the kilos have been found on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Some will be on display at the Geological Museum between 4-6 PM, today, Monday 8th February, before being sent to Italy for tests.


http://www.sott.net/image/s15/300850/large/meteorit1.jpg (http://www.sott.net/image/s15/300850/full/meteorit1.jpg)
© Statens Naturhistoriske Museum, Some of the meteorites found outside Copenhagen, being weighed at the Natural History Museum.

--------------------------------------------------------------




Unfortunately no recordings of the actual meteor have been published (as far as we know), but several surveillance cameras caught the flash on tape:

In Gentofte:

WwYZcQ4wCDE


In Skovlunde:

72qir7J2WtQ

[Hervé]

New dating technique shows multiple meteors struck the Earth 790,000 years ago (http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113412749/new-dating-technique-shows-multiple-meteors-struck-the-earth-790000-years-ago/)

by Chuck Bednar, Red Orbit (http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113412749/new-dating-technique-shows-multiple-meteors-struck-the-earth-790000-years-ago/), February 23, 2016


http://www.sott.net/image/s15/304188/large/meteor.jpg

A new analysis of tektites, gravel-sized objects made of natural glass and formed from terrestrial debris ejected when meteorites collide with the Earth’s surface, has revealed that multiple cosmic impacts took place in various parts of the world approximately 790,000 years ago.

Dr. Mario Trieloff, a geoscientist at Heidelberg University (http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/index_e.html) in Germany, and his colleagues used a new, more accurate dating technique based on naturally-occurring isotopes to investigate rock glasses retrieved from various locations in Asia, Australia, Canada, and Central America.

As they report in a paper to be appear in the April 2016 edition of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703716300059), the samples are all virtually identical in age, despite the fact that, in some cases, they have significantly different chemistry. This indicates that a series of separate impact events must have occurred at roughly the same time, the study authors explained in a statement (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160222111420.htm).


http://www.redorbit.com/media/uploads/2016/02/tektites-446x297.jpg
Some of the tektites used in the study. Credit: Heidelberg University


Tektites are formed when terrestrial material melts following a meteorite impact, is launched into the air and then hardens into glass, and Dr. Trieloff’s team said that they can determine when and where projectiles struck the planet’s surface, how often, and how large those objects were.

Natural disasters, lower surface temperatures would have followed
The researchers explained that scientists had long known about the existence of tektites in the Australasian region, from Indochina to southern Australia. Smaller rock glass samples called microtektites were also collected in deep-sea drill cores off the coast of Madagascar and in the Antarctic, and samples from Central America and Canada were analyzed as well.

Dr. Trieloff, lead author Dr. Winfried Schwarz and their fellow geoscientists used the 40Ar-39Ar dating method to analyze the decay of naturally occurring 40K isotope, and found that there must have been a cosmic impact approximately 793,000 years ago, plus or minus 8,000 years.

Tektites from Canada were similar in terms of chemical composition to those from Australia or the Antarctic, the authors said, suggesting that they may have traveled the same “flight routes,” provided the recovery sites were actually where the rock glass samples landed. The composition of the tektites recovered from Central America differed from the others, however.

“These tektites are clearly different in their chemical composition, and their geographical distribution also shows that they come from separate impacts,” said Dr. Schwarz. “Surprisingly our age estimates prove that they originated 777,000 years ago with a deviation of 16,000 years. Within the error margin, this matches the age of the Australasian tektites.”

“The distribution of the tektites and the size of the strewn field indicate that Earth-striking body was at least a kilometer in size and released an impressive one million megatons of TNT energy within seconds of impact,” the doctor added. Such an impact would have had dire consequences, as it would have caused widespread fires, earthquakes and/or tsunamis, and the amount of dust ejected into the atmosphere would have blocked sunlight and lowered surface temperatures.
-----
Image credit: Thinkstock

[Hervé]

Comet (Siding Spring's) Punch Threw Mars' Magnetism into Chaos (http://news.discovery.com/space/comet-punch-threw-mars-magnetism-into-chaos-160310.htm)

By Ian O'Neill (http://news.discovery.com/ian-oneill.htm) Mar 10, 2016 01:35 PM ET


http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/blogs/dnews-files-2014-10-siding-spring-mars-670x440-141017-jpg.jpg
This artist's impression depicts Comet Siding Spring narrowly miss Mars in 2014. NASA/JPL-Caltech


When Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) swung past the Red Planet in October 2014 (http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/mars-and-comet-unite-in-stunning-close-approach-photo-141019.htm), it was an unprecedented opportunity for an armada of Mars robots (http://news.discovery.com/space/ready-for-prime-time-comet-to-buzz-mars-on-sunday-141017.htm) to have a ringside seat of the interplanetary spectacle. But as dazzling as the flyby was, the real drama wasn’t seen by the cameras of Mars orbiters or rovers; it was detected by a magnetometer. And that magnetometer, located 100 miles above the Martian surface, detected chaos.

“Comet Siding Spring plunged the magnetic field around Mars into chaos,” said Jared Espley, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and science team member of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, in a NASA press release (http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/close-comet-flyby-threw-mars-magnetic-field-into-chaos). “We think the encounter blew away part of Mars’ upper atmosphere, much like a strong solar storm would.”

Although Mars’ magnetic field is weak and patchy (unlike Earth’s strong, global magnetosphere), MAVEN’s sensitive magnetometer detected a huge upheaval in orbit as Siding Spring’s own magnetism rattled the planet’s magnetic field.

The comet’s nucleus may only be a third of a mile wide, but the atmosphere surrounding the nucleus (known as the coma) was as wide as 600,000 miles when it encountered Mars. (The coma is formed through solar heating — the ices contained within a comet’s nucleus sublimate into space, pumping the coma with gas.) Through interactions with the solar wind, comets also generate their own magnetic fields that loop their way through the coma. So when Siding Spring buzzed Mars, coming as close as 87,000 miles, the cometary magnetism punched Mars’ weak magnetic field, sending it into violent turmoil for several hours.

MAVEN scientists likened the effect as a magnetic curtain flapping in the wind.

“The main action took place during the comet’s closest approach,” said Espley, “but the planet’s magnetosphere began to feel some effects as soon as it entered the outer edge of the comet’s coma.”

These magnetic observations were very lucky as MAVEN had only just arrived in Mars orbit weeks before the close encounter. Although most of the spacecraft’s instruments were powered down at that time (to protect them from possible damage by comet dust), the magnetometer remained on for the duration, carrying out unique observations of two magnetic fields slamming into one another.

“With MAVEN, we’re trying to understand how the sun and solar wind interact with Mars,” added Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s principal investigator from the University of Colorado in Boulder. “By looking at how the magnetospheres of the comet and of Mars interact with each other, we’re getting a better understanding of the detailed processes that control each one.”

We now know that Mars’ atmosphere is slowly leaking into space as its magnetic field isn’t strong enough to completely protect it from solar wind erosion. And, from these MAVEN measurement, it looks like this magnetic “hit and run” by Siding Spring also ripped a chunk out of the Red Planet’s atmosphere, giving us a profound look at what happens when comets and planets (almost) collide.


http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/blogs/dnews-files-2016-03-siding-spring-670x440-160310-jpg.jpg

The close encounter between comet Siding Spring and Mars flooded the planet with an invisible tide of charged particles from the comet’s coma. The dense inner coma reached the surface of the planet, or nearly so. The comet’s powerful magnetic field temporarily merged with, and overwhelmed, the planet’s weak field, as shown in this artist’s depiction.
NASA/Goddard

ANALYSIS: Comet Siding Spring Showered Mars with Meteors (http://news.discovery.com/space/asteroids-meteors-meteorites/comet-siding-spring-showered-mars-with-meteors-141107.htm)

PHOTO: Mars and Comet Unite in Stunning Close Approach Photo (http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/mars-and-comet-unite-in-stunning-close-approach-photo-141019.htm)


==================================


Now, what kind of magnetic and electric universe chaos a binary solar system would get itself into? I wonder...

[Calz]

I have long held to Laura's work now posted on SOTT.

Many people dismiss her due to channeling and her detractors.

Much of her work is spot on imho.

[Hervé]

Space rock relic: Scientists say new type of meteorite is remnant of ancient asteroid collision (https://www.rt.com/viral/347282-space-asteroid-collision-meteorite/)

Published time: 18 Jun, 2016 14:58
Get short URL (http://on.rt.com/7fyq)


https://img.rt.com/files/2016.06/original/576501e8c4618853088b4587.jpg
The black, grainy meteorite embedded in rock from a Swedish quarry fell to Earth 470 million years ago. © Qing-zhu Yin / UC Davis



A meteorite discovered in a Swedish quarry appears to be the only remnant of one part of a massive asteroid collision more than 470 million years ago, according to new research.

Scientists at the University of California, Davis (https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/new-type-meteorite-linked-ancient-asteroid-collision) have published their findings on the unique space rock discovered in 2011 in the journal Nature Communications (http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160614/ncomms11851/full/ncomms11851.html).

The meteorite is the first of its kind found on Earth. "In our entire civilization, we have collected over 50,000 meteorites, and no one has seen anything like this one before," said study co-author Qing-zhu Yin. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160615135230.htm)

"Discovering a new type of meteorite is very, very exciting," he added.

The fossilized remains of the meteorite, named Österplana 065 (Öst 65) after a church close to its discovery, was found in in Sweden’s Thorsberg quarry five years ago. The quarry has so far been the source of more than 100 common fossil meteorites called “L type chondrites.”

However, scientists noted that this meteor, just 4 inches wide and with an appearance described as “gray cow patty plopped into a pristine layer of fossil-rich pink limestone,” was unique.


https://img.rt.com/files/2016.06/original/5765029ec3618898088b459b.jpg
The meteorite is 8 × 6.5 × 2 cm large. It is surrounded by a grey reduction halo, in the otherwise red limestone. Oxygen was consumed when the meteorite weathered on the sea floor. The coin in the image has a diameter of 2.5 cm. © Nature Communications


The researchers found it was chemically distinct from not only the other meteorites found in the quarry, but also from the thousands of meteorites previously analyzed.
Researchers now believe the rock resulted from an ancient asteroid collision during the Ordovician Period, leading to the fall of many L type chondrites from one of the asteroids – but mostly obliterating the other asteroid.

The Öst 65 appears to be the only trace of the mystery object on Earth, but scientists say it’s possible that its remains are still out in space.

They measured the cosmic ray exposure of Öst 65 and found it had traveled in space for about a million years before striking Earth some 470 million years ago. This indicates it may be a fragment of the impact asteroid that broke up the L-chondrite parent body, scientists concluded, noting the timeline matches up with L-chondrite meteorites found in the quarry.

The study supports previous research (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X14003367) linking the meteorite to a “major collisional event” and strengthens suspicions that more recent meteorites which have fallen on Earth do not represent the full range of rocks out there in our solar system.

“The meteorites found on Earth today apparently do not give a full representation of the kind of bodies in the asteroid belt 500 million years ago,” the study says.

Yin said it is possible to gain a better understanding of our solar system by analyzing meteorite fragments preserved in Earth’s ancient rocks: “If we can go back even further in time, we may eventually be able to find some of the true building blocks of Earth.”

Researchers say this may be the first documented example of an “extinct” meteorite – no other meteorite from that asteroid will fall on Earth again as its parent body has been “consumed by collisions.”


Related: Extraterrestrial blade: King Tutankhamun’s dagger came from outer space (https://www.rt.com/viral/345101-tutankhamun-egypt-dagger-space/)

[DNA]

If we were to take Mark Richards, Charles Forte, Robert Morningsky and Ed Grimsly into account, then we may very well be seeing some kind of hot war going on. The increase in falling debris may very well be the product of space faring vehicle blasted into our atmosphere. Could this be various agencies of the secret space programs at odds with one another? Or could there be some type of alien vs secret space program scenario or alien vs alien? I do not know, but regardless, this may be more than space rock or space debris being responsible for the uptick in meteors blazing across our sky.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBcVlZgioFc
fBcVlZgioFc


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A0HIMuuZxg
2A0HIMuuZxg

[Hervé]

'Meteorite' crashes through Phitsanulok house roof (http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1022213/meteorite-crashes-through-phitsanulok-house-roof)

WRITER: CHINNAWAT SINGHA (http://search.bangkokpost.com/search/result_advanced?category=news&columnistName=Chinnawat+Singha)
28 Jun 2016 at 20:49


http://www.bangkokpost.com/media/content/20160628/c1_1022213_620x413.jpg
A suspected meteorite is pictured after it went through the roof of a house in the central province of Phitsanulok on Tuesday morning. (Photo by Chinnawat Singha)



PHITSANULOK - A mysterious rock, believed to be a meteorite, crashed through the roof of a house in Phitsanulok's Muang district on Tuesday.

The suspected meteorite fell through the roof of a home in Plai Chumphon sub-district at 7.26am, hit a wall and then bounced to the floor, breaking into five pieces.

“I was having breakfast when there was a loud bang, like a gunshot sound. I looked around and found a rock about the size of an egg and some fragments nearby. I picked up the largest chunk and let go quickly as it was very hot,” 65-year-old home-owner Bualom Chalomprai said.

Mrs Bualom believes the rock is from outer space and will bring her good luck.

Mrs Bualom’s husband, Kittisak, 75, said he heard a sound of explosion in the sky at about 7am before the 300g rock fell through his roof.

Media reports said residents in adjacent districts of Nakhon Thai and Chat Trakan also heard the "explosion".

Scientists at Naresuan University’s department of physics later carried out an initial examination on a small fragment taken from the Chalomprai family home and concluded the object could very likely be a meteorite given its features and the circumstance under which it had been found.

Department head Sarawut Tuantam said the rock’s crust was charcoal black, indicating it had been burned entering Earth's atmosphere at very high speeds. The test also found the chunk contained large amount of iron and was attracted by a magnet.

Prof Sarawut added that the Chalomprais could keep the suspected space rock as it had safe radioactivity levels.


http://www.bangkokpost.com/media/content/20160628/1847701.jpg
Bualom Chalomprai shows the rock believed to be a meteorite. (Photo by Chinnawat Singha)

[Hervé]

Justinian’s Raging Bulls (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/justinians-raging-bulls/)

By malagabay (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/author/malagabay/) Posted on May 1, 2016 (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/justinians-raging-bulls/)


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/justinians-raging-bulls.jpg?w=640&h=480 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/justinians-raging-bulls.jpg)


The Plague of Justinian has been associated with the extreme weather events of 535–536 AD which has been associated with “debris from space impacting the Earth”.

The extreme weather events of 535–536 were the most severe and protracted short-term episodes of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2,000 years.

The event is thought to have been caused by an extensive atmospheric dust veil, possibly resulting from a large volcanic eruption in the tropics, and/or debris from space impacting the Earth.

Its effects were widespread, causing unseasonal weather, crop failures, and famines worldwide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536

The Plague of Justinian (541–542) was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, especially its capital Constantinople, the Sassanid Empire, and port cities around the entire Mediterranean Sea.

One of the greatest plagues in history, this devastating pandemic resulted in the deaths of an estimated 25 million (initial outbreak) to 50 million (two centuries of recurrence) people.

Recent investigations relate this severe plague epidemic to extreme weather events of 535–536 considered as an example of volcanic winter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian In a wonderful YouTube video Ruth Dwyer examines the Ravenna Mosaics and discovers the mosaics clearly depict “debris from space impacting the Earth”.


t4WBALFPmw4



Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476.

It then served as the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths until it was re-conquered in 540 by the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
Afterwards, the city formed the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Franks in 751, after which it became the seat of the Kingdom of the Lombards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenna
https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna.jpg?w=640 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna.jpg)

Ruth Dwyer finds [amongst other things] that the Ravenna Mosaics depict: fiery clouds, shock waves, raining fire and a blue Sun.
Fiery Clouds

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna-fiery-clouds.jpg?w=640 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna-fiery-clouds.jpg)


Shock Waves

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna-shock-waves.jpg?w=640 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna-shock-waves.jpg)


Raining Fire

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/revenna-raining-fire.jpg?w=640 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/revenna-raining-fire.jpg)


Blue Sun

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna-blue-sun.jpg?w=640 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna-blue-sun.jpg)


Ruth Dwyer also finds that many of these phenomena were documented by contemporary authors.

25. Senator, Praetorian Praefect, to his Deputy Ambrosius, an Illustris.

[This letter appears to have been written in the early autumn of 538, about a year after the three last letters, and also after Letters 27 and 28, which precede it in order of date, though they follow it in this collection. For an account of the terrible famine in Italy, the beginning of which is here described, see Procopius, De Bello Gotthico ii. 20.]

[I]Famine in Italy
‘Since the world is not governed by chance, but by a Divine Ruler who does not change His purposes at random, men are alarmed, and naturally alarmed, at the extraordinary signs in the heavens, and ask with anxious hearts what events these may portend.

The Sun, first of stars, seems to have lost his wonted light, and appears of a bluish colour.

We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigour of his heat wasted into feebleness, and the phenomena which accompany a transitory eclipse prolonged through a whole year.
‘ The Moon too, even when her orb is full, is empty of her natural splendour.

Strange has been the course of the year thus far.

We have had a winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer without heat.

Whence can we look for harvest, since the months which should have been maturing the corn have been chilled by Boreas ?

How can the blade open if rain, the mother of all fertility, is denied to it ?

These two influences, prolonged frost and unseasonable drought, must be adverse to all things that grow.

The seasons seem to be all jumbled up together, and the fruits, which were wont to be formed by gentle showers, cannot be looked for from the parched earth.

But as last year was one that boasted of an exceptionally abundant harvest, you are to collect all of its fruits that you can, and store them up for the coming months of scarcity, for which it is well able to provide.

And that you may not be too much distressed by the signs in the heavens of which I have spoken, return to the consideration of Nature, and apprehend the reason of that which makes the vulgar gape with wonder.

‘ The middle air is thickened by the rigour of snow and rarefied by the beams of the Sun.

This is the great Inane, roaming between the heavens and the earth.

When it happens to be pure and lighted up by the rays of the sun it opens out its true aspect ; but when alien elements are blended with it, it is stretched like a hide across the sky, and suffers neither the true colours of the heavenly bodies to appear nor their proper warmth to penetrate.

This often happens in cloudy weather for a time ; it is only its extraordinary prolongation which has produced these disastrous effects, causing the reaper to fear a new frost in harvest, making the apples to harden when they should grow ripe, souring the old age of the grape-cluster.

‘All this, however, though it would be wrong to construe it as an omen of Divine wrath, cannot but have an injurious effect on the fruits of the earth.

Let it be your care to see that the scarcity of this one year does not bring ruin on us all.

Even thus was it ordained by the first occupant of our present dignity, that the preceding plenty should avail to mitigate the present penury.’

The letters of Cassiodorus – Translated by Thomas Hodgkin – 1886 – Page 518
https://archive.org/details/letterscassiodo00hodggoog However, after a nudge from CW, I took a closer look and noticed the Ravenna Mosaics also contain a very clear indication that the “debris from space” was “coming on us from the stars” in the Taurus constellation.

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna-taurus.jpg?w=640 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/ravenna-taurus.jpg)



Taurus is one of the constellations of the zodiac, which means it is crossed by the plane of the ecliptic.

Taurus is a large and prominent constellation in the northern hemisphere’s winter sky.

It is one of the oldest constellations, dating back to at least the Early Bronze Age when it marked the location of the Sun during the spring equinox.

Its importance to the agricultural calendar influenced various bull figures in the mythologies of Ancient Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_%28constellation%29 Unsurprisingly, the Taurus constellation is associated with the annual Taurids Meteor Shower which is linked to Comet Encke [orbital period: 3.3 years] that is believed to be remnants of a much larger comet which has disintegrated.


A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky.

These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_shower

The Taurids are an annual meteor shower associated with the comet Encke.

They are named after their radiant point in the constellation Taurus, where they are seen to come from in the sky.

Because of their occurrence in late October and early November, they are also called Halloween fireballs.

Encke and the Taurids are believed to be remnants of a much larger comet, which has disintegrated over the past 20,000 to 30,000 years, breaking into several pieces and releasing material by normal cometary activity or perhaps occasionally by close encounters with the tidal force of Earth or other planets (Whipple, 1940; Klačka, 1999).

In total, this stream of matter is the largest in the inner solar system.
Since the meteor stream is rather spread out in space, Earth takes several weeks to pass through it, causing an extended period of meteor activity, compared with the much smaller periods of activity in other showers.

The Taurids are also made up of weightier material, pebbles instead of dust grains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurids

Comet Encke or Encke’s Comet (official designation: 2P/Encke) is a periodic comet that completes an orbit of the Sun once every 3.3 years.
…
Comet Encke is believed to be the originator of several related meteor showers known as the Taurids (which are encountered as the Northern and Southern Taurids across November, and the Beta Taurids in late June and early July).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Encke

But given the orbit of Comet Encke its origins are far more likely associated with a planetary explosion that occurred in the Titius–Bode Gap between Mars and Jupiter.

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/comet-encke-orbit.gif?w=640 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/comet-encke-orbit.gif)


However, an examination of the Jupiter-family trajectories clearly indicates a convergence point [just beyond the current orbit of Mars] which strongly suggests these comets had an explosive origin in the very recent astronomical past.

See: The Other Big Bang Theory
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/the-other-big-bang-theory/ Either way, its worth taking another look at the temperature record used by Ruth Dwyer in her The Comet of 536 and the Ravenna Mosaics video [at 12:07] to see if there is any evidence of a very short period comet or the disintegration of a short period comet.

[...]

Full article: https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/justinians-raging-bulls/

[Hervé]

The reality of an Extinction Level Event... stranger than fiction...


Framingham man believes meteorite pinged pear tree (http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/20160906/framingham-man-believes-meteorite-pinged-pear-tree)

By Rob Haneisen (rhaneisen@wickedlocal.com) Daily News Staff
Posted Sep 6, 2016 at 3:27 PM
Updated Sep 6, 2016 at 5:22 PM


https://www.sott.net/image/s17/342939/full/Meteorite_pear.jpg

FRAMINGHAM - First a late hard freeze robbed Steven Lovewell's Asian pear tree of most of its blossoms. Then the summer drought wiped out all but one lonely pear ripening on his tree. The final blow came swiftly and loudly - from a meteorite.

Lovewell, who lives on Grant Street, said he was awakened by a loud whooshing noise about 3 a.m. Tuesday. Later that morning he found his one Asian pear fruit on the ground with what he believes is a meteorite embedded in its flesh. The dark rocky object, about the size of a peach pit, protruded about halfway from the fruit.

Lovewell said he has been interested in astronomy and rocket science since he was a kid. He plans to reach out to the McAuliffe Center at Framingham State University to try and confirm his belief that his last Asian pear was knocked from the tree by an extraterrestrial object. In the meantime, the pear and meteorite are chilling in his freezer for safe keeping.

[Hervé]

30 Tons Meteorite Found In Gancedo, Argentina
(http://www.i4u.com/2016/09/115327/30-tonne-meteorite-found-gancedo-argentina)
Posted: Sep 13 2016, 12:06am CDT | by IANS (http://www.i4u.com/latest_stories/all/all/59),
Updated: Sep 13 2016, 9:05am CDT,


http://static1.i4u.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/main_image_large/images/2016/09/gancedo.jpg
Credit: Compacto Nea


The Gancedo meteorite is the world's second largest meteorite ever discovered.

Scientists have discovered a meteorite weighing over 30 tons in northern Argentina on September 10.

The meteorite was found in the town of Gancedo, 1,085km north of capital Buenos Aires, Mario Vesconi, President of the Astronomy Association of Chaco, said on Monday.


q7OGZpVbI6I

"While we hoped for weights above what had been registered, we did not expect it to exceed 30 tons," Vesconi said, adding that "the size and weight surprised us", Xinhua news agency reported.

"It was in Campo del Cielo, where a shower of metallic meteorites fell around 4,000 years ago," Vesconi added.

The meteorite will be weighed again to ensure an accurate measurement.

The largest meteorite ever found is called Hoba, weighing 66 tons in Namibia, Africa.

Update with additional details on the Gancedo Meteorite
The Gancedo Meteorite is believed to be the second largest meteorite ever discovered. A previously discovered meteorite in the El Chaco area weight 28.84 tons. The researchers had to be very careful in recovering the metallic meteorite because of the ground water coming into the crater according to Argentina newspaper La Nacion (http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1937015-hallan-en-chaco-un-meteorito-de-mas-de-30-toneladas).

Now Argentina has two of the world's largest meteorites. Only the Hoba meteorite discovered is larger with 66 tons. There are possibly more meteorites to be discovered in the El Chaco area.

[Hervé]

Huge meteor fireball illuminates night skies over Algeria (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU2eALCs09g)

zakiufo dz YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU2eALCs09g)
Sun, 02 Oct 2016 07:15 UTC



https://www.sott.net/image/s17/348354/large/Algeria_meteor_fireball.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s17/348354/full/Algeria_meteor_fireball.jpg)
© YouTube/zakiufo dz (screen capture)


A huge meteor passed over the north east of Algeria,at 21:22 pm yesterday , Saturday 01/10/2016.

Here is a mobile recorded video shows the fireball over Constantine.


tU2eALCs09g

A second video is from cctv cam in Ain MELILA region.


ETJe08rxE7M

Rumours indicate that it fell in the surroundings whereas nearby cities have witnessed an impact shock .

[TargeT]

IMO this is what the DUMBS are for, there's no way you can logically look at history & not see that impacts from space are the very highest of threats that we face.

[Hervé]

Meteorites pummel the Moon far more than expected (http://www.nature.com/news/meteorites-pummel-the-moon-far-more-than-expected-1.20777)

Hundreds of fresh impact craters hint at possible dangers for future lunar bases.



Alexandra Witze (http://www.nature.com/news/meteorites-pummel-the-moon-far-more-than-expected-1.20777#auth-1) 12 October 2016


http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.39802.1476264286%21/image/Speyerer_Nature_TemporalRatioImage-%281%29_WEB.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/Speyerer_Nature_TemporalRatioImage-%281%29_WEB.jpg



NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University: A new lunar crater, formed about three years ago.


Meteorites have punched at least 222 impact craters into the Moon's surface in the past 7 years. That’s 33% more than researchers expected, and suggests that future lunar astronauts may need to hunker down against incoming space rocks.

“It's just something that's happening all the time,” says Emerson Speyerer, an engineer at Arizona State University in Tempe and author of a 12 October paper in Nature1 (http://www.nature.com/news/meteorites-pummel-the-moon-far-more-than-expected-1.20777#b1).

Planetary geologists will also need to rethink their understanding of the age of the lunar surface, which depends on counting craters and estimating how long the terrain has been pummeled by impacts.

Although most of the craters dotting the Moon's surface formed millions of years ago, space rocks and debris continue to create fresh pockmarks. In 2011, a team led by Ingrid Daubar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, compared some of the first pictures taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090610/full/459758a.html) (LRO), which launched in 2009, with decades-old images taken by the Apollo astronauts. The scientists spotted five fresh impact craters (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/2232.pdf) in the LRO images. Then, on two separate occasions in 2013, other astronomers using telescopes on Earth spotted bright flashes on the Moon; LRO later flew over those locations and photographed the freshly formed craters2 (http://www.nature.com/news/meteorites-pummel-the-moon-far-more-than-expected-1.20777#b2), 3 (http://www.nature.com/news/meteorites-pummel-the-moon-far-more-than-expected-1.20777#b3).

Forever young
LRO has taken about a million high-resolution images of the lunar surface, but only a fraction cover the same portion of terrain under the same lighting conditions at two different times. Speyerer’s team used a computer program to automatically analyse 14,092 of these paired images, looking for changes between the two. The 222 newfound craters are distributed randomly across the lunar surface, and range between 2 and 43 metres in diameter.

There are more fresh craters measuring at least 10 metres across than standard cratering calculations would suggest. This could mean that some young lunar surfaces may be even younger than thought, says Daubar. She calls the work “a significant advance in the field of crater chronology”, noting that it can even be used to compare cratering rates on the Moon and Mars.

Meteorites can churn up the lunar surface in several ways. Along with the fresh craters, Speyerer's team found more than 47,000 ‘splotches’, formed when material gets kicked up by the main impact and rains down — sometimes tens of kilometres away.

And that means a bigger risk for any future lunar habitats, says Stephanie Werner, a planetary geologist at the University of Oslo. The chances of a lunar base being nailed by a direct meteorite hit are relatively small, but the splattered material could pose a hazard. Werner is part of a team that has proposed a combined orbiter–lander mission (http://www.ipgp.fr/%7Ewieczor/MyPapers/Farside-M4-FINAL.pdf) to the European Space Agency, which would study impact flashes at the Moon and quantify the risk.

Naturedoi:10.1038/nature.2016.20777


References:


Speyerer, E. J., Povilaitis, R. Z., Robinson, M. S., Thomas, P. C. & Wagner, R. V. Nature 538, 215–218 (2016). Article (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature19829)



Robinson, M. S. et al. Icarus 252, 229–235 (2015). Article (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2015.01.019)



Madiedo, J. M., Ortiz, J. L., Morales, N., & Cabrera-Caño, J. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 439, 2364–2369 (2014). Article (http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu083)

[TargeT]

http://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/giant-meteor.jpg?w=750
(http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2016/06/30/giant-meteor-hitting-earth-polling-well-presidential-election/86572136/)
The meteor is picking up traction!! 13%, that's higher than Gary Johnson!




This is BY FAR the biggest threat to humanity, I think all military spending should be globally combined to "astroid hunters" or some sort of "us v them" that puts all humans on the same side.

[Hervé]

Meteor fireball filmed over Cordova, Spain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryhUd9krCqg#action=share)

Meteors You Tube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryhUd9krCqg#action=share) Thu, 27 Oct 2016 20:33 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s17/353681/large/meteoro_espas%C3%B1a.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s17/353681/full/meteoro_espas%C3%B1a.jpg)


Slow cometary fireball on Oct. 26 (at 23:57 UT) (https://www.sott.net/article/332586-Meteor-fireball-filmed-over-Cordova-Spain)



This fireball was observed over the South of Spain on Oct. 26, at 23:57 UT (1:57 local time on Oct. 27).

The event was produced by a sporadic cometary meteoroid that hit the atmosphere at about 94000 km/h.

The fireball began at a height of 90 km over the province of Cordoba and ended at a height of 40 km over the Mediterranean Sea.


ryhUd9krCqg

http://www.meteoroides.net/

[Star Tsar]

Near Earth Asteroid 2016 VA - A Very Close Encounter With Eclipse

Published 2nd November 2016

The Near Earth Asteroid VA 2016 was discovered by the Mt Lemmon Sky Survey in Arizona, USA on 1st November 2016 & announced later that day by the Minor Planet Center.
The object was going to have a very close encounter with Earth @ 0.2 lunar distances (about 75.000km).
The Virtual Telescope Project was able to grab some images & a unique video show it being eclipsed by Earth...
One can check them out by clicking link below image.

http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2016va_01nov2016.jpg

http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2016/11/02/near-earth-asteroid-2016-va-very-close-encounter-eclipse-01-nov-2016/

[Hervé]

To clarify some of the terminology:
A meteoroid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid)/asteroid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid) is some piece of rock/matter orbiting in space which turns into a meteor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(disambiguation))/fire ball (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#Fireball)/bolide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolide) when heated while going through some atmosphere and can, from there, either:


completely burn,
explode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor),
turn into a meteorite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite) when - hitting the ground - some remains can be found
or else escape back to space as a hot meteoroid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid)/asteroid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid)...

[Hervé]

...

Well... Mars does have some atmosphere...


Bizarre smooth metallic meteorite spotted by Mars rover (PHOTOS)

Published time: 2 Nov, 2016 13:05
Get short URL (http://on.rt.com/7tp7)


https://img.rt.com/files/2016.11/original/5819c85bc46188246c8b45c9.jpg
© JPL-Caltech / MSSS / NASA - NASA’S Mars Curiosity rover has found a miniscule metallic meteorite, dubbed the ‘Egg Rock’, on the surface of the red planet. The white dots are laser-zap points.

The snap of the peculiar space rock was captured by Curiosity on October 31 and shared by scientists at Arizona State University (http://redplanet.asu.edu/?p=20977), who are working with NASA.

It’s believed the meteorite consists of nickel iron, according to the researchers who analyzed the images taken via the ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=#/?slide=1505) device.


https://img.rt.com/files/2016.11/original/5819cc0cc3618802578b45ab.jpg
© JPL-Caltech / LANL / NASA


The smoothness of its surface and its deep grooves suggest (http://www.sciencealert.com/curiosity-has-spotted-a-weird-metallic-meteorite-on-mars) the meteorite became molten as it entered Mars’ atmosphere before then hardening again on hitting the planet’s surface.

Mars’ close vicinity to the asteroid belt coupled with a thin atmosphere which provides less friction for incoming space rocks means it’s not uncommon to find meteorites on the planet.

Curiosity’s predecessor the Spirit Rover found a number of meteorites during its Mars mission, while Curiosity found its first iron meteorite (http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/pia18387), named Lebanon, two years ago.

Lebanon measured about 2 meters (6.5ft) wide, significantly larger than the ‘Egg Rock’.

NASA said in a statement (http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/pia18387) at the time that iron meteorites dominated the type of space rocks found on Mars.

“Part of the explanation could come from the resistance of iron meteorites to erosion processes on Mars,” the space agency explained.

Curiosity landed on the red planet in 2012 on a mission to determine whether Mars was ever capable of supporting microbial life. The rover is currently (http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/whereistherovernow/) on route to the base of the planet’s Mount Sharp peak.


2lMFPwNPF0w

======================================


The smoothness of its surface and its deep grooves suggest (http://www.sciencealert.com/curiosity-has-spotted-a-weird-metallic-meteorite-on-mars) the meteorite became molten as it entered Mars’ atmosphere before then hardening again on hitting the planet’s surface.I am not sure how they do that? Because if it's already molten upon impact it would splash around in droplets... add to that some additional heat from impact... and the result should be similar to tektite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektite) shapes...

Hopefully the article's author meant "atmospheric ablation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektite#Classification)" and should read as something like:


The smoothness of its surface and its deep grooves suggest (http://www.sciencealert.com/curiosity-has-spotted-a-weird-metallic-meteorite-on-mars) the meteorite [surface] became molten as it entered Mars’ atmosphere before then hardening again on hitting the planet’s surface.

[Star Tsar]

American Meteor Society

Event 4239 - 2016 | Fireball Over Pennsylvania | 1st November 2016 @ 8:15pm EDT

Published 2nd November 2016 by Vincent Perlerin

http://api.ning.com/files/VQvbBACfG9pjjQXLPPUzgQhsXImJTa0rNMtEFWyK785dnoMqxCR6du0Pi91ujXdCbnKVHQjsCjJxago8tg8Gs-LI1vt6ZNWK/fb2nov1us.jpg

The AMS has received over 270 reports so far from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Michigan, Massachusetts, Delaware & Ontario (Canada).

More information here:http://www.amsmeteors.org/2016/11/fireball-over-pennsylvania/

[Star Tsar]

NASA & FEMA Hold Asteroid Emergency Exercise

Published 4th November 2016

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/asteroid/20150126/asteroid20161103-16.jpg

What would we do if we discovered that a large asteroid was on a course to impact Earth? While highly unlikely, that was the high-consequence scenario discussed by attendees @ an 25th October NASA-FEMA tabletop exercise held in El-Segundo, California.

Read about it here if you wish:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6669&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NASAJPL&utm_content=asteroid20161104

[TargeT]

While highly unlikely,

Uh, except it's already happened, like a lot.... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth) This is the one thing the "fear porn" media SHOULD be ALL OVER... but, there's no company to profit i guess? I"m sure someone could squeeze some money out of this... haha, greed is about the only way anything seems to get done anymore.

[Star Tsar]

Huge Southern Taurid Fireball Over Portugal

Iberian Peninsula | 5th November 2016 21:54 CET

Published 6th November 2016 By Carlos Saraiva

Futher data here:http://meteornews.org/huge-southern-taurid-fireball-portugal/

[Star Tsar]

Sott.net

Fireball Spotted In The Sky Over Nova Scotia | Dominion Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada | 9th November 2016 @ 16:40

https://www.sott.net/image/s17/356508/full/fireball.jpg

Published 10th November 2016

Yesterday, at precisely 4:40pm, flames raced towards earth over Dominion Cape Breton. Luckily for us, Corinne Reid had a camera handy and snapped some amazing photos.

Read about it here: https://www.sott.net/article/333493-Fireball-spotted-in-the-sky-over-Nova-Scotia

[Star Tsar]

Den Of Lore

Episode 7 | Charles P. O'Dale - Younger Dryas Extinction Impact Event

Published 10th November 2016

We have live in studio meteor impact researcher, Charles P. O'Dale, live in studio to discuss his work researching The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, and to discuss his research on meteor/comet impacts in North America.

If you're a fan of Randall Carlson, Charles would be considered his Canadian equivalent in his search for knowledge on how meteor impacts have affected the North American continent.

Charles P. O'Dale
---------------------------
Charle's scientific study of impact structures began only about 50 years ago. Like any kid, he spent hours looking at the craters on the Moon through his old telescope. Would he ever get a chance to explore a crater? Well since retirement, he has combined his hobbies of astronomy, geology and flying to explore impact craters and structures in North America from the air and ground.

While studying the physics of impact sites, Charles has found that circular geological features can be produced by a number of geological processes, including igneous activity (diatremes, maars, calderas, volcanoes, or syenite/plutons), dissolution and collapse of salt or carbonate rocks by groundwater (dolines), salt or shale diapirism, regional tectonism (circular fold-interference patterns or stratified circular features), glaciation (kettle holes), carbonate mounds, and by meteorite impacts.

His science background plus the experience gleaned from his past profession of semiconductor failure analysis has given him the incentive to document his analysis of these craters and structures.

XgVcWP6MmVY

[Star Tsar]

The Largest Chondrite Ever Found In Clarendon, Texas - 760 lb Meteorite

Published 11th November 2016

http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Ruben-meteorite-A-couple_Crop.jpg

DeeDee and Frank Hommel pose with the 760 pound (345 kilogram) Clarendon meteorite discovered on their land. The stony meteorite may be the second largest single chondrite ever found in the United States.

Read All About It Here: http://www.universetoday.com/131702/monster-meteorite-found-texas/

9u_dzAizSjM

[Hervé]

NASA and FEMA rehearse for an asteroid strike on Los Angeles in 2020 (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/science/nasa-and-fema-rehearse-for-the-unthinkable-an-asteroid-strike-on-los-angeles.html?_r=0)

Christopher Melenov The New york Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/science/nasa-and-fema-rehearse-for-the-unthinkable-an-asteroid-strike-on-los-angeles.html?_r=0) Mon, 14 Nov 2016 00:00 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s17/357378/large/00xp_asteroid_web1_master768.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s17/357378/full/00xp_asteroid_web1_master768.jpg)
© JPL-Caltech/NASA An artist’s concept of a near-Earth object.


Imagine if scientists discovered that an asteroid was hurtling toward Los Angeles.

The possibility has existed on the pages of Hollywood scripts. But in what may be a case of life imitating art, NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies engaged last month in a planetary protection exercise to consider the potentially devastating consequences of a 330-foot asteroid hitting the Earth.

The simulation projected a worst-case blast wave by an asteroid strike in 2020 that could level structures across 30 miles, require a mass evacuation of the Los Angeles area and cause tens of thousands of casualties.

In 1998, the movie "Armageddon" dramatized an even greater fictional threat. In that blockbuster, a ragtag crew was sent on a mission to drill into an asteroid and set off a nuclear bomb to avert a global catastrophe. As the character Harry Stamper, portrayed by Bruce Willis, summed up to his crewmates: "The United States government just asked us to save the world."

Don't expect the need for such Hollywood heroics in real life, however. An asteroid that could cause such damage has no significant chance of striking Earth within the next century, Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in an email.

The center relies on several telescopes, such as the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona, to track potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. These objects, which are leftover matter from the formation of planets, can come dangerously close to Earth or cross its trajectory.

The center lists 659 asteroids that have some probability of striking the planet, "but none pose a significant threat over the next century, either because the probabilities are extraordinarily small, or the asteroids themselves are extremely small," Mr. Chodas said.


https://www.sott.net/image/s17/357385/large/nea_vs_time_chart.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s17/357385/full/nea_vs_time_chart.jpg)
© NASA


"Nevertheless, we must continue searching for asteroids in case there is one that is heading our way," he added.


https://www.sott.net/image/s17/357379/large/00xp_asteroid_web2_master675.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s17/357379/full/00xp_asteroid_web2_master675.jpg)
© The Aerospace Corporation, via NASA Officials participated last month in an exercise that simulated an asteroid strike over Los Angeles.


That's where the planetary protection exercise, conducted on Oct. 25 in El Segundo, Calif., comes in. The simulation that projected a strike in 2020 involved representatives from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Department of Energy's National Laboratories, the Air Force and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

While a warning of four years may seem like a lot of time, it would probably not be enough to deflect an asteroid of the size and orbit outlined in the simulation, Mr. Chodas said.

"Engineers think the simplest way to deflect an asteroid is to build a large spacecraft and simply ram it into the asteroid" years before it is predicted to hit Earth, he said.

It could take up to two years to build such a "kinetic impactor" spacecraft and another year or more to reach the asteroid, so in the case of this simulation, an evacuation, not a "deflection mission," was necessary.

For the organizers of Asteroid Day, a global movement that seeks to protect the world from dangerous asteroids, such planning is not out of this world.

The group, which maintains that one million asteroids have the potential to strike Earth but that only 1 percent of them have been discovered, was set on Monday to release a letter signed by planetary scientists supporting missions to increase knowledge of asteroids. The group promotes the "100x Declaration," which calls for increasing the rate of asteroid discoveries to 100,000 per year in the next 10 years.

"The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it became that the human race has been living on borrowed time," Brian May, an astrophysicist and a founder and lead guitarist for the rock group Queen, said on the group's website.

Asteroid Day is observed each year on June 30, the anniversary of what is believed to be the largest space-related explosion in human history: an asteroid strike in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908.

An asteroid, believed to be less than 100 feet in diameter, exploded at the altitude of an airliner and flattened tens of millions of trees across 800 square miles. Researchers estimated the explosion was as powerful as a medium-size hydrogen bomb and several hundred times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

While there were no official reports of human casualties, hundreds of reindeer were reduced to charred carcasses in the explosion, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported.

In more recent times, an asteroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013, shattering windows for miles and injuring more than 1,000 people.

Scientists have suggested that the Earth is vulnerable to many more Chelyabinsk-size space rocks. In research published in 2013 by the journal Nature, they estimated that such strikes could occur as often as every decade or two instead of an average of once every 100 to 200 years as previously thought.

Predictions of a catastrophic crash by a celestial object surface with some regularity. In September 2015, the last eclipse of the year fueled imaginative speculation on the internet that a giant asteroid would hit Earth.

In a statement debunking the idea, NASA noted that similar forecasts were made in January and March of that year that two asteroids were on dangerous paths toward Earth.

The agency noted that the asteroids flew by Earth "without incident — just as NASA said they would."

[Star Tsar]

Sott.net

Published 24th November 2016

https://www.sott.net/image/s17/359538/full/hitbymeteor.jpg

Read all about it here: https://www.sott.net/article/334742-House-in-Indonesia-hit-by-meteorite

&

Fireball Observed Over Northern UK & Ireland

Galway, Ireland | 23rd November 2016 @ 17:15

Published 24th November 2016

Read all about it here: https://www.sott.net/article/334731-Meteor-fireball-observed-over-Ireland-and-northern-UK

BRT6bo0opEM

[Star Tsar]

Bright Meteor Reported Over Gulf Of Mexico Near Florida

Gulf Of Mexico | Monday 22nd November 2016 @ 23:18 EST

Published 22nd November 2016

@ 23:18 Monday there was a bright light that lit up the night over the Suncoast.

Read all about it here: http://www.mysuncoast.com/staff/fireball-lights-night-sky-video-captures-moment/article_3540def6-b0da-11e6-99b9-efd538e565a3.html

[Star Tsar]

Bright Meteor Reported Over Gulf Of Mexico Near Florida

Gulf Of Mexico | Monday 21st November 2016 @ 23:18 EST

Published 22nd November 2016

@ 23:18 Monday there was a bright light that lit up the night over the Suncoast.

Read all about it here: http://www.mysuncoast.com/staff/fireball-lights-night-sky-video-captures-moment/article_3540def6-b0da-11e6-99b9-efd538e565a3.html


More Footage Emerges

American Meteor Society

Event #4635-2016 | Gulf Of Mexico/Florida | 21st November 2016 @ 23:18 EST

Published 23rd November 2016

Supporting Link:http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/event/2016/4635

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[Star Tsar]

Smithsonian Channel

Arizona's Jaw Dropping Mile Long Meteor Crater

Published 24th November 2016

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[Star Tsar]

Sott.net

Published 24th November 2016

https://www.sott.net/image/s17/359538/full/hitbymeteor.jpg

Read all about it here: https://www.sott.net/article/334742-House-in-Indonesia-hit-by-meteorite

&

Fireball Observed Over Northern UK & Ireland

Galway, Ireland | 23rd November 2016 @ 17:15

Published 24th November 2016

Read all about it here: https://www.sott.net/article/334731-Meteor-fireball-observed-over-Ireland-and-northern-UK

BRT6bo0opEM

[Star Tsar]

Thunderbolts Project

Space News | Water On Pure Metal Asteroid Baffles Scientists

Published 29th November 2016

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[Star Tsar]

Meteor? | Slupsk, Poland, 28th November 2016 @ 19:36 UTC

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&

Meteor | Denmark, 28th November 2016 @ 18:25 UTC

Related to above event

-WEim8px3oM

[Star Tsar]

Astronomy Magazine

The Real Reality Show | Stones From The Sky : Collecting Meteorites

Published 23rd November 2016

Collecting meteorites lets you hold a space rock in your very own hands. Join Astronomy editor Dave Eicher to explore types of stone from space including rare pieces from the Moon & Mars.

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[Star Tsar]

Meteor | Sayanogorsk, Siberia, Russia | 6th December 2016 @ 18:35 GMT +7

-H7_-ITd1GM

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[Star Tsar]

NASA Goddard

OSIRIS-REx Tech | Taking Pictures Of An Asteroid

Published 7th December 2016

NASA is sending the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to explore near-Earth asteroid Bennu, a carbon-rich body that may contain clues to the origins of life. When OSIRIS-REx arrives at Bennu in 2018, it will spend over a year orbiting the asteroid and studying it with a set of remote sensing instruments. The OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite, or OCAMS, will provide high-resolution images of Bennu, allowing OSIRIS-REx to map the asteroid, determine its mineralogy, and even take close-up pictures of the surface at less than a centimeter per pixel. After OCAMS and its fellow instruments have thoroughly surveyed Bennu, OSIRIS-REx will carry out its most important task: collecting a sample of the asteroid for return to Earth in 2023.

Read all about it here: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-scientists-see-asteroid-through-the-eyes-of-a-robot/

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[Star Tsar]

Astronomy Magazine

An Old Meteor Yields A New Suprise

Published 8th December 2016

Its a suprise okay? I won't tell you about it, to find out what it is read here: http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/12/an-old-meteor-yields-a-new-surprise

[Mod-edit: see this thread: Quasicrystal: "There Can Be No Such Creature" (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?94933-Quasicrystal-There-Can-Be-No-Such-Creature), Hervé]

[Star Tsar]

Meteorite

Spain | Sunday 11th December 2016 @ 21:25 UT

Published 11th December 2016

This impressive fireball was recorded on 11 Dec. 2016 at 21:25 UT (22:25 local time) over Spain. The event was much brighter than the Moon. According to the preliminary calculations, it would have produced a meteorite.

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[Hervé]

...

https://www.sott.net/image/s17/359037/large/statistiques_meteorites.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s17/359037/full/statistiques_meteorites.jpg)
© AMS (http://www.amsmeteors.org/)



For the readers interested in the latest/current sightings, see this page: Fire in the Sky (https://www.sott.net/category/17-Fire-in-the-Sky)

[KiwiElf]

They do seem to be on the increase?

[Hervé]

Comet Research Group replies to Robert Schoch's theory on the end of the last ice age (http://cosmictusk.com/comet-research-group-responds-to-robert-schoch/)

Robert Schoch The Comet Tusk (http://cosmictusk.com/comet-research-group-responds-to-robert-schoch/)
Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:25 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s6/121213/medium/comet_impact.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s6/121213/full/comet_impact.jpg)
Dr. Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., of Boston University, is a thought provoking scientist with an open-minded approach to new ideas. Unfortunately his interest in disruptive theories has never extended itself to the Younger Dryas Boundary hypothesis, as he details on his webpage in a critique titled "Controversies Concerning the End of the Last Ice Age (http://www.robertschoch.com/youngerdryas.html)."

His objection to the published science and data of the Comet Research Group is curious, since our work validates much of his unpublished speculation concerning catastrophe at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. This dynamic is disappointing because those working to reveal the true record should find some common cause. Unfortunately, Schoch has never reached out to our researchers in order to work through and address his criticisms.

So, the CRG is taking the opportunity here on the Tusk and elsewhere to rebut Dr. Schoch's critique in the hope that he will carefully re-consider his position, which seems entirely based on the on the faulty work of our critics — which are his too.
Comet Research Group: Rebuttal to "Controversies Concerning the End of the Last Ice Age (http://www.robertschoch.com/youngerdryas.html)"

The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis proposes that a massive swarm of fragments from a giant comet hit Earth approximately 12,800 years ago, triggering bitterly cold ice-age conditions, while contributing to the extinction of millions of animals and to a human population decline across the Northern Hemisphere. The debris from the multiple comet impacts created the Younger Dryas boundary layer (abbreviated as "YDB"), which contains more than a dozen items, called "proxies," all of which have been found in previously known impact events. These proxies include melted iron spherules, melted glass spherules, high-temperature chunks of melted glass, nanodiamonds, carbon spherules (some containing nanodiamonds), iridium, osmium, platinum, charcoal, and aciniform carbon, a form of soot. Although many of those individual proxies, such as charcoal and soot, can be produced by normal terrestrial processes other than impacts, the entire suite of proxies listed above is only known to occur in cosmic impact events, and cannot be produced in any other natural way. That is an important distinction to remember. To repeat, individual proxies may have other sources than impacts, but there is no evidence of any kind that all of those proxies together are produced at one time by anything other than a cosmic impact. For more information on the impact hypothesis and these proxies, see our website (http://www.cometresearchgroup.org/).
In comments on the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, Dr. Robert Schoch stated that "evidence collectively points away from an extraterrestrial impact for the start of the Younger Dryas." We respect Dr. Schoch's groundbreaking work in Egyptian geology and anthropology, but in reaching his conclusions about the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, Dr. Schoch relied on critics, whose reports contain serious flaws and unsupported speculation. In addition, new evidence has been published since Dr. Schoch wrote those comments, refuting the conclusions of those critics.


https://www.sott.net/image/s18/363760/medium/_Micronaut_Nano_Diamonds_00152.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s18/363760/full/_Micronaut_Nano_Diamonds_00152.jpg)
© Micronaut

Miniscule diamond fragments found in a sediment layer dating from thousands of years ago support the theory that a catastrophic comet impact wiped out many forms of life in North America 12’900 years ago.


In his commentary, Dr. Schoch mentions Tian et al. (2012, PNAS), who confirmed our group's discovery of nanodiamonds in Europe in the YDB impact layer in Belgium, exactly where we said they were. That group also reported that no such particles are found in the overlying silt and clay or in the underlying fine sands. This is an important point; the nanodiamonds are rare and found only in the YDB layer, making them highly unusual. Furthermore, the nanodiamonds are found exclusively in the same layer that contains melted iron spherules, high-temperature meltglass, and the platinum-group elements, iridium and osmium, none of which are found above and below the YDB layer, also making them rare. Tian et al. admitted that they could not explain how the nanodiamonds got there, stating "that their exact origin remains unclear," but, it is important to note, they did not specifically exclude the possibility of an impact - they just said the origin is unclear. Critics of the YDB impact event have used that paper as evidence that YDB nanodiamonds were not caused by an impact, even though the paper makes no such claim and presents no such evidence. For details, see here (https://www.sott.net/article/www.cometresearchgroup.org/comets-diamonds-mammoths/).

It is easy for critics to make dismissive claims that YDB nanodiamonds were caused by something else besides an impact, such as forest fires, but those critics have yet to provide a single bit of evidence that forest fires, or any natural mechanism other than an impact event, are capable of producing nanodiamonds. In fact, the opposite is true - there is ample evidence that forest fires cannot produce nanodiamonds. In various industries, nanodiamonds are a highly valuable commodity and are used in many products, including lubricants and polishing compounds. Research costing many millions of dollars has been conducted in hundreds of laboratories to find ways to make nanodiamonds, and not one of those ways includes setting a tree on fire - it simply is impossible under normal conditions. However, it is possible to make nanodiamonds in the laboratory under very unusual conditions that mimic a cosmic impact event. In summary, it makes no scientific sense to claim that YDB nanodiamonds formed in forest fires, when there is no evidence for that, and to claim that they did not form by a cosmic impact event, when there is ample evidence that nanodiamonds can form that way and have done so frequently in the past.

Furthermore, we and other scientists have searched through many layers of rock and sediment, spanning millions of years, but have found similar nanodiamonds only in those layers deposited by cosmic impact events (Kennett et al., 2009, PNAS; Kinzie et al. 2014, Journal of Geology). The most famous discovery of similar nanodiamonds is in the layer deposited by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, called the KPg boundary layer. Those KPg nanodiamonds were found only in the thin layer produced by the impact event and were not found in layers above and below it, even though there was ample evidence for normal wildfires in those layers. In other words, they were extraordinarily rare. The KPg nanodiamonds are structurally and chemically identical to those in the 12,800-year-old YDB layer.


https://www.sott.net/image/s18/363766/medium/canyon_diablo_grains.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s18/363766/full/canyon_diablo_grains.jpg)
© Arizona State University

The presences of nanograins of lonsdaleite has been widely used by scientists as an indicator of ancient asteroidal impacts on Earth, including those linked to mass extinctions.


Kennett et al. (2009, PNAS) published a paper on a type of nanodiamonds called lonsdaleite. Dr. Schoch cited Boslough et al. (2012, Geophysical Monograph Series), who claimed that all of the supposed "lonsdaleite" is not lonsdaleite at all, but rather a misidentification of another material. After Dr. Schoch published his comments, that statement by Boslough et al. was thoroughly refuted in a paper published by Kinzie et al. (2014, Journal of Geology), who reported the following: "Potential YDB lonsdaleite crystals have been identified and analyzed with HRTEM, FFT, SAD, and EDS [analytical techniques involving an electron microscope]....All the lonsdaleite-like crystals observed contain only carbon [as expected for diamonds]....All measured lattice planes are consistent with lonsdaleite."

Regarding another proxy, microspherules, Dr. Schoch cites Pigati et al. (2012, PNAS), who claimed that elevated concentrations of such spherules"arise from processes common to wetland systems, and not a catastrophic extraterrestrial impact event." The problem is that the Pigati study contains major mistakes. They collected most of their microspherules from sediment near South American volcanoes, which are well known to produce millions of non-impact glassy spherules. An electron microscope (SEM) can quickly and easily reveal the difference between impact spherules, volcanic spherules, and other types of non-impact spherules. And yet, the Pigati group simply neglected to perform those analyses, even though the Comet Research Group has repeatedly specified in our papers that SEM work is crucial, and without it, any study of spherules, including theirs, is meaningless. The Pigati group simply found normal volcanic spherules and claimed that they are identical to the impact spherules produced by the YDB event. That makes no more sense than claiming a golf ball is identical to a baseball.

Dr. Schoch further discusses the impact spherules reported by Wittke et al. (2013, PNAS), who found 10 million tonnes of them scattered across four continents. In his online article, Dr. Schoch cited research by Thy et al. (2015, Jour. Archaeological Science) and claimed that "these supposed 'impact spherules' were of ancient human origin (for instance, produced when buildings were destroyed in fires)." It is clear from Dr. Schoch's comments that he simply accepted some of the results from Thy et al. uncritically, but also that he over-interpreted them. Thy et al. clearly state that their results "do not necessarily discredit the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis." Any time that a new hypothesis is presented, it is necessary, of course, to ask whether the new evidence is accurate or flawed. However, it is also necessary to critically ask whether or not critics of the hypothesis present contradictory evidence and conclusions that are accurate and unbiased. Unfortunately, Dr. Schoch, as well as others, simply accepted the negative conclusions from some of these critics without adequately questioning them.


https://www.sott.net/image/s18/363767/medium/Fig_1_Stereomicroscopic_images.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s18/363767/full/Fig_1_Stereomicroscopic_images.jpg)
Stereomicroscopic images of various classes of micrometeorites.


Some of the conclusions by Thy et al. are simply incorrect. The biggest mistake they made is to ignore previously published information about abnormally high melting temperatures of spherules and meltglass from Syria and the United States. Both Wittke et al. and Bunch et al. (2012, PNAS) presented abundant evidence of meltglass and spherules that had been subjected to temperatures of as high as 2000°C, close to the melting point of quartz grains and chromite grains. There is simply no evidence of any kind that house fires can reach these temperatures, a point agreed to by Thy et al., who stated that the maximum temperatures of the house fire spherules they analyzed was only 1200°C, well below the temperature of 1750-2000°C found by our group. Furthermore, Thy et al. acknowledge that their house-fire hypothesis does not apply to meltglass found at two other YDB sites, where they acknowledge that temperatures ranged up to 1750°C and they acknowledge that they cannot explain these high temperatures. In summary, the difference between house fire spherules and impact spherules can easily and quickly be determined by adequate analyses with an electron microscope. The house fire spherules that Thy et al. found cannot be used to prove that impact spherules do not exist, and in fact, house fires are predicted to have occurred in association with the impact event in Syria. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that both types of spherules would exist together.

Dr. Schoch also discussed the results of Meltzer et al. (2014, PNAS) who concluded: "Only 3 of the 29 [YDB] sites fall within the temporal window of the YD onset as defined by YDIH [Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis] proponents." Dr. Schoch uncritically accepted those results without asking whether that conclusion might be incorrect, and once again, there is ample evidence that those authors were wrong. A subsequent paper by Kennett et al. (2015, PNAS) revealed numerous, fatal errors in the calculations presented by Meltzer at al., meaning that their conclusions are simply invalid. Kennett et al. reported the following: "Bayesian chronological modeling [a highly sophisticated statistical technique] was applied to 354 dates from 23 stratigraphic sections in 12 countries on four continents to establish a modeled YDB age range for this event of 12,835 - 12,735 Cal B.P. at 95% probability. This range overlaps that of a peak in extraterrestrial platinum in the Greenland Ice Sheet and of the earliest age of the Younger Dryas climate episode in six proxy records, suggesting a causal connection between the YDB impact event and the Younger Dryas." These results directly contradict the results of Meltzer et al.

Even though Bayesian analysis has become the new standard and is widely used by many scientists, Dr. Schoch argues against this conclusion, writing that "one can take issue with the appropriateness of applying Bayesian analyses," although he offers no evidence to support his position. Refuting that claim, Kennett et al. also used non-Bayesian analysis for the YDB sites and reported that "19 of 23 dates (83%) overlap from 12,840 to 12,805 Cal B.P.... This indicates that the results from simply calibrating a group of YDB dates are not substantially different from using Bayesian-modeling for YDB dates." In summary, criticisms of the timing of the YDB event simply do not stand up to scrutiny.

Dr. Schoch also discussed a YDB-age platinum anomaly found in a Greenland ice core by Petaev et al. (2013, PNAS), who concluded that a major cosmic impact event occurred over the Greenland ice sheet at the onset of the Younger Dryas. Dr. Schoch speculated that the platinum anomaly could have resulted from the eruption of the Laacher See volcano (Germany) around 12,900 years ago, but this suggestion has been refuted by Kinzie et al. (2014, Journal of Geology), who found no YDB spherules or nanodiamonds in the Laacher See ash layer, which lies below the YDB layer at some of the sites our group tested. In addition, our group recently tested the Laacher See ash layer and found no detectable platinum, meaning that the Laacher See eruption could not be the source of the platinum found in Greenland. Instead, the best explanation is an extraterrestrial impact event, as proposed by Petaev et al.

Dr. Schoch also speculated that the source of the platinum may be a relatively small, non-cataclysmic meteorite impact, but this is refuted by the original research group, Petaev et al., who discovered that the platinum deposition spanned about 21 years, meaning that the platinum must have been injected high into the atmosphere, after which it slowly rained down onto the Greenland ice sheet during the following two decades. Such long-term fallout could not result from a small impact, but rather requires a major impact event with widespread effects.


https://www.sott.net/image/s18/363759/large/ydbfield.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s18/363759/full/ydbfield.jpg)


In support of the idea that YDB platinum is widespread and resulted from a major impact, Andronikov et al. (2016, Geografiska Annaler) found very high concentrations of platinum and iridium in melted YDB spherules from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico, more than 5000 km away from the platinum site in Greenland. In addition, Andronikov et al (2014, Doklady Earth Sciences; 2015, Quaternary International) investigated sediments from several lakes in NW Russia near Finland and Lithuania, and found sharp-peaked platinum anomalies in the YDB layer, along with other meteoritic elements such as nickel, chromium, and iridium. These sites are more than 9000 km away from the YDB platinum site in New Mexico, indicating that the platinum was deposited by a very large YDB impact event, not a small one.

Also in his online statement, Dr. Schoch cites Boslough et al. (2012) as claiming that "another argument against the impact hypothesis is that no crater (or craters) has yet been definitively identified as dating to circa 12,900 years ago." However, that claim by Boslough et al. is simply incorrect. Some of the largest known impacts on Earth have left no crater, including the Australasian Tektite Field, which spread molten pieces of glass across 10% of the planet from China to India, as well as the Libyan Desert Glass field, which spread molten pieces of glass across wide areas of the Egyptian desert without leaving a crater. The lack of a crater simply cannot be used to prove that an impact event did not occur.

On the positive side, Dr. Schoch is impartial in discussing the possibility that the impactor exploded in the atmosphere, breaking up into numerous fragments that cratered into the glacial ice sheets, which subsequently melted, thus destroying the ice-walled craters. However, he again cites Boslough et al. (2012), who analyzed this possibility and concluded that "consideration of basic laws of physics indicate that such a fragmentation or high-altitude airburst event ... would lie outside any realistic range of probability, and therefore did not occur during the YD as described by Firestone et al." This argument by Boslough et al. is completely spurious, because those authors are arguing against a scenario that they made up, namely that the initial fragmentation of the comet took place in the atmosphere. Instead, we have consistently and very clearly stated the hypothesis that fragmentation of the giant comet took place in deep space long before hitting Earth.

Far from being "outside any realistic range of probability," comets break up into multiple pieces in deep space exceedingly often. For example, meteor showers are the remnants of broken-up comets, and Earth regularly is hit by 109 meteor showers every year, averaging 2 collisions with those streams each week. We know them by such names as the Taurids, beta-Taurids, Geminids, and Perseids. Furthermore, 50 new, broken-up comets have been discovered in the last 150 years, for an average of a new one every three years. One of those, Comet Shoemaker-Levy, broke up into as many as 21 pieces and crashed into Jupiter in 1994, leaving a dark scar that was wider than the Earth. If Comet Shoemaker-Levy had hit Earth, it would have created catastrophic destruction on a hemispheric scale. So, in summary, far from being unlikely, it is exceedingly common for broken-up comets to hit Earth - they do so at least 109 times a year.

Shifting our attention from the beginning of the Younger Dryas 12,800 years ago to the end of the Younger Dryas 11,700 years ago, Dr. Schoch wrote that "in my assessment the evidence points to a major solar outburst (or series of closely spaced solar outbursts) at that time." In our proposed scenario, if a giant broken-up comet impacted Earth, parts of it could also have crashed into the sun, potentially triggering massive solar flares. Although there is no strong evidence either for or against, we feel that the hypothesis implicating solar flares in the abrupt ending of the Younger Dryas is plausible enough to warrant further investigation, although it also is possible that oceanic impacts by the same group of comet fragments may have occurred 11,700 years ago.

To be clear, Dr. Schoch does not propose a solar outburst at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, only the end of it. However, we wish to point out that even if a major solar outburst occurred 12,800 years ago, such an event could not have melted rocks on Earth's surface to 2000°C or formed nanodiamonds and other high-temperature proxies. This is because solar outbursts produce huge quantities of high-energy protons, electrons, and ions that bombard Earth's magnetic field and ozone layer, but those particles are not energetic enough to start forest fires, let alone melt rocks. Thus, the evidence from 12,800 years ago still requires a major cosmic impact event.

In closing, it is crucial to re-emphasize that the YDB layer, dated to approximately 12,800 years ago, contains a unique assemblage of exotic proxies that has never been reported to result from solar flares, wildfires, human activities, volcanism, or any other known natural terrestrial process. Instead, the only process known to produce that full range of proxies is a cosmic impact event. Thus, unless some new evidence comes to light that has never been seen before, the best current explanation for the proxies in the YDB layer is a cosmic impact event. For detailed information on the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, see the Comet Research Group (http://www.cometresearchgroup.org/).

— From the Comet Research Group

[Star Tsar]

Meteor | Churchill, Manitoba, Canada | 12th December 2016 @ ??? AM

8krMuRkP7Jo

[Cara]

Comet Research Group replies to Robert Schoch's theory on the end of the last ice age (http://cosmictusk.com/comet-research-group-responds-to-robert-schoch/)

Dr. Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., of Boston University, is a thought provoking scientist with an open-minded approach to new ideas....

His objection to the published science and data of the Comet Research Group is curious, since our work validates much of his unpublished speculation... Unfortunately, Schoch has never reached out to our researchers in order to work through and address his criticisms.
...
It is clear from Dr. Schoch's comments that he simply accepted some of the results from Thy et al. uncritically, but also that he over-interpreted them...

Unfortunately, Dr. Schoch, as well as others, simply accepted the negative conclusions from some of these critics without adequately questioning them.
...


This is off topic for bolides, meteors and comets but concerns Dr Robert Schoch.

Several months ago, on his now seemingly off-air radio show (The Other Side of Midnight) Richard Hoagland interviewed Dr Sam Osmanagich about the Bosnian pyramids. Richard said something to the effect of:


My friend Dr Robert Schoch told me the Bosnian pyramids were a hoax/not there and I (Richard) knew he was lying to me.

Maybe Dr Robert Schoch is controlled opposition and/or a "captured academic"?

See thread here about captured academics: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?94523-Captured-Academics-Thinkers-Working-for-social-engineering-and-manipulation

[Hervé]

[...]

My friend Dr Robert Schoch told me the Bosnian pyramids were a hoax/not there and I (Richard) knew he was lying to me.

In the case of the - so-called - Bosnian pyramids, I would side with Schoch and consider Hoaxland the controlled opposition... see this post (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?69141-How-was-the-Bosnian-Pyramid-thought-to-have-been-built&p=949946&viewfull=1#post949946) (<---) and follow to the other one it links to (# 10 (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?69141-How-was-the-Bosnian-Pyramid-thought-to-have-been-built&p=824489&viewfull=1#post824489)) and my conclusion (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?69141-How-was-the-Bosnian-Pyramid-thought-to-have-been-built&p=824504&viewfull=1#post824504)

:focus:

[skogvokter]

Green Meteor near Skyislands, India

http://i.imgur.com/NCpaEgF.jpg

http://www.younews.in/pictures/green-meteor-near-skyislands-india-/

[Hervé]

'Very quickly, very nearby': Jumbo asteroid has close shave with Earth (https://www.rt.com/news/373171-asteroid-flashes-earth-quickly/)

Published time: 10 Jan, 2017 09:46
Edited time: 10 Jan, 2017 12:06
Get short URL (https://on.rt.com/7zxv)


https://cdn.rt.com/files/2017.01/original/5874992ac36188eb3b8b45c0.jpg
© Erik Simonsen / Getty Images


An asteroid between 11 to 34 meters across (36 to 111ft), roughly the size of 10 jumbo African elephants, made a remarkably close approach to Earth on Monday morning, passing by at a distance only half that of the Moon.

According to the Slooh Observatory, the space rock, dubbed 2017 AG13, was moving at about 10 miles per second, making it hard to spot with a telescope.

“This is moving very quickly, very nearby to us,” Eric Edelman, an astronomer with Slooh, said during a live broadcast of the surprise flyby at 7:47am ET on January 9.




https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/796056184427905024/iwPmWcC7_bigger.jpg Slooh Verified account ‏@Slooh (https://twitter.com/Slooh)

While you were hitting snooze, we nearly hit an asteroid! At 7:47 AM EST an asteroid we only first spotted Saturday gave us a wake up call.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1vcyzcUAAA2xaq.jpg



The near-Earth object, or NEO, has “a particularly elliptical orbit,” he noted, adding that “it actually crosses the orbits of two planets, Venus and Earth.”

The asteroid was initially spotted by the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey as recently as Saturday.




https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/796056184427905024/iwPmWcC7_bigger.jpg Slooh Verified account ‏@Slooh (https://twitter.com/Slooh)

We caught newly discovered asteroid 2017 AG13 as it made an extremely close approach to Earth this morning. It was closer than the Moon!


https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video_thumb/C1vH1OtXUAAgiPd.jpg
If a “good size chunk of it made it through Earth’s upper atmosphere near a populated area, there might have been damage like we saw in 2013,” technology website CNET (https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-steve-jobs-10-ways-everything-changed/) reported.

Earth appears to be utterly defenseless in the face of comets and asteroids that bring little warning, a NASA scientist warned in December. The researcher believes building an interceptor rocket and an observer spacecraft could avert catastrophe.

“The biggest problem, basically, is there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment,” Dr. Joseph Nuth, a researcher with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, as quoted by the Guardian.

In February 2013, Russia’s southern Urals Region was rocked by a meteorite explosion in the stratosphere. NASA said the shockwave force was equivalent to a 500-kiloton explosion. The 20-meter-wide (65 feet) meteor exploded over the town of Chelyabinsk. As windowpanes shattered throughout the city, around 1,500 people were injured, but luckily no one was killed. The impact wave damaged a number of buildings, blowing out thousands of windows amid the extremely cold weather.


UlLduHcHWgE
The US space agency has spotted over 90 percent (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/) of near-Earth objects that are larger than a kilometer. This is thought to be the required size for causing devastation on Earth.

As of January, a total of 15,451 Near-Earth Objects have been discovered, according to NASA (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/faq/). An estimated 875 of these NEOs are asteroids with a diameter of approximately one kilometer or larger. Around 1,766 of these NEOs have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).


https://www.sott.net/image/s18/369675/full/5873d146dd08951e208b47e0_1433.jpg


Related:
‘Shock and frustration’: Locals report on meteorite crash in Russian Urals (VIDEO) (https://www.rt.com/news/chelyabinsk-meteorite-witness-report-285/)

[Star Tsar]

SETI Institute

SETI Talks 2017 | Barry Welsh - Exocomets: Now You See Them, Now You Don't

Published 27th January 2017

Present technology does not enable us to view images of these kilometer-sized infalling bodies, but the evaporation of gaseous products liberated from exocomets that occurs close to a star can potentially cause small disruptions in the ambient circumstellar disk plasma. For circumstellar disks that are viewed “edge-on” this evaporating material may be directly observed through transient (night-to-night and hour-to-hour) gas absorption features seen at rapidly changing velocities. Using high resolution spectrographs mounted to large aperture ground-based telescopes, we have discovered 15 young stars that harbor swarms of exocomets. In this lecture we briefly describe the physical attributes of comets in our own solar system and the instrumental observing techniques to detect the presence of evaporating exocomets present around stars with ages in the 10 – 100 Myr range. We note that this work has particular relevance to the dramatic fluctuations in the flux recorded towards “Tabby’s star” by the NASA Kepler Mission, that may be explained through the piling up of swarms of exocomets in front of the central star.

FsCRNq0lGts

[Star Tsar]

Thunderbolts Project

EU 2016 | Eugene Bagashov - Elec-centricities Of Cometary Orbits

Published 28th December 2016

The electric comet is one of the key areas of the scope of the Electric Universe ideas that may have a significant impact on science. In order to develop the theory futher, There is a need to study the cometary population of our Solar Sytem. What is the difference between comets & asteroids? What is the nature of active asteroids? What is the probability of a small body with given orbital parameters to be a comet?
The basic idea is that the high eccentricity of the orbit makes the interaction of the electric field of the solar wind easier as the body passes through areas with different electromagnetic enviroment along its orbital path,
Thus with growing eccentricity the number of comets should increase. Indeed that is the case, Yet not so simple, And the dependence is non-linear. In this talk Eugene Bagashov will report one recent finding concerning the eccentricity of cometary orbits that might be an indication of the validity of the electric comet hypothesis & provide a basis for futher research in this area.

rUVLGzKvYrw

[Hervé]

Asteroid attack? Yet another asteroid to give Earth a close shave (https://www.cnet.com/news/asteroid-bs32-astronomers-fourth-close-pass-of-2017-paul-cox/)

Eric Mack
CNET (https://www.cnet.com/news/asteroid-bs32-astronomers-fourth-close-pass-of-2017-paul-cox/)
Wed, 01 Feb 2017 13:46 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s18/374708/large/Asteroids_passing_Earth_node_f.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s18/374708/full/Asteroids_passing_Earth_node_f.jpg)
© ESA Space rock block party!


For the fourth time since the start of 2017, a small celestial body will pass closer to Earth than the distance between us and the moon. Recently discovered asteroid 2017 BS32 zips by around midday Thursday.

This latest narrow shave comes just a few days after the closest such flyby in months (https://www.cnet.com/news/asteroid-2017-bh30-whizzing-by-earth-at-six-times-closer-than-the-moon/), prompting observers and some astronomers to wonder if the apparent blitz of tiny planetoids could be more than mere coincidence.

According to astronomer Paul Cox at the Slooh observatory (http://main.slooh.com/event/asteroid-2017-bs32-flies-by-earth-days-after-discovery/), the apparent bursts of small, close-approaching asteroids were first spotted just before buzzing us initially sparked discussion in 2016.

"One possibility sprang to mind -- that these clusters of smaller asteroids making close approaches to Earth over relatively short periods of time were in fact the fragments from larger asteroids that had broken up," Cox said via email. "However, when we reviewed the orbits of each of the asteroids, we found no correlation between them -- showing clearly they weren't associated in any way."

Cox said the scientists also looked for a connection to seasonal changes or to weather at observatories that might reduce discoveries of nearby asteroids, but there was no conclusive data to be found.

"So we were certainly left with the opinion that these small clusters are purely coincidental," he said. "Having said that, they still surprise us when we see them."

An asteroid apocalypse isn't upon us, it would appear. As far as we know, all these last-minute discoveries from the past year or so have flown by us safely without incident.

So all there really is to do is sit back and enjoy the show. 2017 BS32, which measures between 36 and 82 feet (11 and 24 meters) will come closest to us at 12:23 p.m. PT Thursday. At that point, it will be 100,214 miles (161,279 kilometers) overhead, according to Slooh, 60 percent closer than the moon.

Slooh will be live-streaming the pass of 2017 BS32, which you can watch below or at Slooh.com (http://main.slooh.com/event/asteroid-2017-bs32-flies-by-earth-days-after-discovery/), where you can also chat with astronomers and control some of the telescopes yourself.


-EOonkPU8go

[Hervé]

Comet Halley - Close encounters of the cometary kind (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/close-encounters-of-the-cometary-kind/)

Malaga Bay (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/close-encounters-of-the-cometary-kind/)
Sun, 19 Mar 2017 18:32 UTC


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/close-encounters-of-the-cometary-kind.jpg
© Malaga Bay


Researchers trawling through the dusty corners of the Academic Archives primarily have to rely upon serendipity to provide them with break-through information.

However, when serendipity strikes the results can be startling.

Such was the case a few weeks ago when the Glen Turret Fan chronology neatly slid into place between the Arabian Horizon and the Heinsohn Horizon in the Old Japanese Cedar Tree chronology.
The Glen Turret Fan in upper Glen Roy contains 276 annual sedimentary layers that are coincidentally close to the 277 years between the Arabian Horizon of 637 CE and the Heinsohn Horizon of 914 CE i.e. the Heinsohn Sandwich.
...
The unexplained arrival of the Sand Bed in the Glen Turret Fan [upper Glen Roy] in 759 CE coincidentally echoes:

a) the unexplained Smothering of Samarra in sand
b) the unexplained Covering of Cologne in sand
c) the unexplained Clear Black Horizons in sand across Southern England and Scotland
d) the unexplained Sandy Sludge Layers in the Greenland Ice Cores...

See: The Fold Up Beds of Glen Roy (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/the-fold-up-beds-of-glen-roy/)


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/the-glen-turret-alignment.gif

© Malaga Bay


And then serendipity struck again in form of Comet Halley.

Comet Halley has several remarkable aspects.

Firstly, Comet Halley has a variable orbital period of [around] 76.5 ± 2.5 years.
Halley's orbital period over the last 3 centuries has been between 75 - 76 years, although it has varied between 74 - 79 years since 240 BC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%E2%80%99s_Comet)


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/384762/full/long_term_motion_of_comet_hall.gif
© Royal Astronomical Society


The Long-Term Motion of Comet Halley - Donald K. Yeomans and Tao Kiang Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society - Vol 197 - Nov 1981 (http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1981MNRAS.197..633Y) Secondly, Earthly encounters with Comet Halley are especially dangerous because it's relative velocity is in the region of 254,016 kilometres per hour.
Due to the retrograde orbit, it has one of the highest velocities relative to the Earth of any object in the Solar System.

The 1910 passage was at a relative velocity of 70.56 km/s (157,838 mph or 254,016 km/h).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%E2%80%99s_Comet)


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/384763/large/comet_halley_8_march_1986.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/384763/full/comet_halley_8_march_1986.jpg)
© NASA

Thirdly, the orbit of Comet Halley "comes close to Earth's in two places".
The perihelion, the point in the comet's orbit when it is nearest the Sun, is just 0.6 AU.

This is between the orbits of Mercury and Venus.

Its aphelion, or farthest distance from the Sun, is 35 AU (roughly the distance of Pluto)
....
Because its orbit comes close to Earth's in two places, Halley is associated with two meteor showers: the Eta Aquarids in early May, and the Orionids in late October.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%E2%80%99s_Comet) Tracking the orbital history of Comet Halley back in time is not a precise science.

This is partly because "scientific investigation" only began in the 16th century.
Halley's periodic returns have been subject to scientific investigation since the 16th century.

The three apparitions from 1531 to 1682 were noted by Edmond Halley, enabling him to predict its 1759 return.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%E2%80%99s_Comet) And partly because the historical records become increasingly subject to interpretation because the observational data may not specifically relate to Comet Halley and/or the observational dates may be incorrectly identified/aligned with the current era.


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/obliquity-curve-inflection-point1.gif

See: Heinsohn and The Eclipse Record (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/11/14/heinsohn-and-the-eclipse-record/)

However, hind-casting Comet Halley back to 607 CE appears very possible and very catastrophic.


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/history-of-comet-halley1.gif

The History of Comet Halley - D K Yeomans, J Rahe and R S Freitag Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - Vol 80 - April 1986 (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1986JRASC..80...62Y)



https://www.sott.net/image/s19/384767/large/comet_tails.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/384767/full/comet_tails.gif)
© NASA Space Place


In this wonderful example of the Mainstream Mindset it appears that for 4,000 years there was "a widespread and long-lasting tradition" of deliberately burning down entire settlements every 75-80 years in Southeastern and Eastern Europe.

Apparently, this rare psychological affliction Burned House Syndrome was invented when archaeologists encountered the Burned House Horizon.

See: Burned House Syndrome (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/04/03/burned-house-syndrome/)

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/libby-cedar-isotope-comet-halley.gif
© Malaga Bay

The 607 CE Earthly encounter with Comet Halley appears to have triggered the catastrophic plunge in temperatures that only began to recover after the Arabian Horizon in 637 CE.

The 760 CE Earthly encounter with Comet Halley appears to be associated with the catastrophic deposition of sand and gravel.

And the 912 CE Earthly encounter with Comet Halley appears to be closely associated with the catastrophic Heinsohn Horizon in 914 CE.

Therefore, the Earthly encounters with Comet Halley provides another historical perspective upon the alignment of the Roman Time Line...

[Hervé]

Following this link in the above article, there are these very interesting facts which can explain why Göbekli Tepe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe) got buried: Cometary activity:

The Fold Up Beds of Glen Roy (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/the-fold-up-beds-of-glen-roy/)
Posted on March 1, 2017 (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/the-fold-up-beds-of-glen-roy/)

[...]

6th. The unexplained arrival of the Sand Bed in the Glen Turret Fan [upper Glen Roy] in 759 CE coincidentally echoes:
a) the unexplained Smothering of Samarra in sand

b) the unexplained Covering of Cologne in sand

c) the unexplained Clear Black Horizons in sand across Southern England and Scotland

d) the unexplained Sandy Sludge Layers in the Greenland Ice Cores…

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/samarra-under-sand.jpg?w=640 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/samarra-under-sand.jpg)


See: https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/the-roman-time-line-and-the-heinsohn-horizon/



https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/roman-aqueduct-under-sand-reported-by-horn.jpg?w=640&h=403 (https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/roman-aqueduct-under-sand-reported-by-horn.jpg)


See: https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/friends-romans-countrymen/

=============================================

If one can imagine some sand storms occurring in Iraq, that's a bit more difficult for Cologne during historical times... yet, something happened there that's not mentioned in the known chronicles of that time (excepted, may be, in The Book Of Miracles (https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/05/the-book-of-miracles-taschen/)).

[Hervé]

So... not THAT long ago... something happened:

Heinsohn and The Eclipse Record (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/11/14/heinsohn-and-the-eclipse-record/)

By malagabay (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/author/malagabay/) Posted on November 14, 2015 (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/11/14/heinsohn-and-the-eclipse-record/)


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/heinsohn-and-the-eclipse-record.jpg?w=640&h=480
R. R. Newton [amongst other things] analysed historic eclipse records to develop an understanding of the Earth’s rotation over the last two thousand years.

Robert Russell Newton, also R. R. Newton (July 7, 1918 – June 2, 1991) was an American physicist, astronomer, and historian of science.

Newton was Supervisor of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.

He was known for his book The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (1977).

In Newton’s view, Ptolemy was “the most successful fraud in the history of science”.
…
Newton was also known for his work on change of the rotation rate of the earth, and historical observations of eclipses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._R._Newton
The challenge associated with the historic records of solar and lunar eclipses is to determine the accuracy of the observations and the reliability of their dating.

Dating is especially problematical when disparate sources are combined.
Unfortunately, Newton’s investigations suffered from two fundamental defects.

The two parameters he sought to determine were highly correlated; and he also adopted a somewhat arbitrary weighting scheme in analysing suspected observations of total solar eclipses.

Many of the observations he investigated were of doubtful reliability.
However, based upon his assembled data R. R. Newton observed that it “shows strongly” that the Earth-Moon system experienced “a ‘square wave’ in the accelerations that lasted from about 700–1300”.
The most conspicuous effects of non-gravitational forces in the Earth-Moon system are the accelerations of the Earth’s spin and of the Moon’s mean angular velocity.

Evidence indicates that the present acceleration of the Moon is between −20 and −52 s of arc per century per century and that the present average acceleration of the Earth is between −5 and −23 parts in 109 per century.

Over the past 2000 yr, the average for the Moon has been about −42 s per century per century and for the Earth has been about −28 parts in 10^9 per century; these values are probably correct within 10%.

Evidence that does not involve any assumptions about the present values shows strongly that there was a ‘square wave’ in the accelerations that lasted from about 700–1300, and that the accelerations were different by a factor of perhaps 5 during the time of this wave from what they were at neighboring times.

Astronomical evidence concerning non-gravitational forces in the Earth-Moon system
R. R. Newton, Astrophysics and Space Science – May 1972, Volume 16, Issue 2, pp 179-200
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00642733


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/r-r-newtons-square-wave.gif?w=640


Empirico-Statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and its Applications to Historical Dating – Volume 1 – The Development of the Statistical Tools
A T Fomenko – Translated by O Efimov; Kluwer Academic Publishers – 1994 – The Netherlands
http://www.chronologia.org/en/es_analysis1/index.html


A square wave is a non-sinusoidal periodic waveform (which can be represented as an infinite summation of sinusoidal waves), in which the amplitude alternates at a steady frequency between fixed minimum and maximum values, with the same duration at minimum and maximum.

The transition between minimum to maximum is instantaneous for an ideal square wave; this is not realizable in physical systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_wave
The “about 700–1300” period identified by R. R. Newton centres around the end of the First Millennium and aligns approximately with the Heinsohn Horizon in the 930s where the mainstream narrative falls into The Academic Abyss.
Working backwards through the mainstream historical narrative we arrive at the Heinsohn Horizon in the 930s where the mainstream narrative falls into The Academic Abyss and degenerates into fiction, fantasy and fabrication for a period of 700 [phantom] years.


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/the-heinsohn-horizon.gif?w=640
The Heinsohn Horizon: The Academic Abyss


https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/the-heinsohn-horizon-the-academic-abyss/

A re-analysis of the historic eclipse data [as shown above] suggests the eclipse data is contiguous when 700 years is removed from the First Millennium time-line.

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/compressed-eclipse-timeline.gif?w=640

Similar results were obtained when George Dodwell’s Obliquity of the Ecliptic data was re-analysed by removing 700 years from the First Millennium time-line.

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/obliquity-curve-two-data-gaps.gif?w=640
Rock Around the Clock


https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/rock-around-the-clock/

Peter James has provided some interesting support for this re-analysis by estimating that today’s parallel of latitude have deviated by about 4° since the time of Hipparchus [circa 190-120 BC].
Born in Marseille, Hipparchus placed its latitude on the same latitude as Byzantium (Istanbul, today).

A parallel of latitude through both locations is shown in Figure 4.

The one by Hipparchus deviates from today’s parallel of latitude by an angle of about 4° and it would put the North Pole near the northern tip of Russia (Bol’shevik Is), outside the limits of the modern permanent pack ice and some 1000-1500 km from its present location.


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/massive-changes-in-climate-sea-level.gif?w=640



Massive Changes In Climate & Sea Level
Peter M. James; NCGT Journal – Volume 3, Number 1, March 2015 Editor: Dong R. CHOI
http://www.ncgt.org/nws/a878f45235e150d8450a54d5ee925fdb.pdf


Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190 – c. 120 BC), was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus

Istanbul Coordinates: 41°00′49″N 28°57′18″E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul

Marseille Coordinates: 43°17′47″N 5°22′12″E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marseille
Therefore, an Axial Tilt of 19.4° before the Heinsohn Horizon explains:
1) Why the Roman Warm Period [250 BC to 400 AD] was “2° C warmer” than now.

2) Why the Roman Warm Period peaked [150 AD] close to the Heinsohn Horizon.
The Roman Warm Period https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/the-roman-warm-period/Conversely, an Axial Tilt of 23.4° after the Heinsohn Horizon explains:
3) Why the Camp Century Ice Sheet in Greenland only started to grow after 930 CE.

4) Why Trepidation data shows Axial Tilt starting to reverse about 885 CE.

https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/camp-century-d18o-chronology-1977.gif?w=640&h=340


The Great Greenland Snow Job – 08 – The Delta 18O Dating Debacle


https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/the-great-greenland-snow-job-08-the-delta-18o-dating-debacle/



https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/greenland-heinsohns-phantom-years.jpg?w=640
Greenland: Heinsohn’s Phantom Years


https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/greenland-heinsohns-phantom-years/


At this juncture, the curiosity of the reader may have been roused by a Trepidation cycle that “reverses direction every 640 years” because this roughly aligns with the [calculated] 675 year half-rotation period of the Solar System and the 700 year cycle of catastrophic Lawler Events.
…
The data also supports the view that a Trepidation reversal occurred towards the end of the first millennium A.D. and Trepidation has been gently oscillating since that event.

The data suggests the 1st millennium reversal occurred between 880 and 890 A.D.


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/trembling-ecliptic.gif?w=640
Trembling Stargazers


https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/trembling-stargazers/

However, its important to remember that the Heinsohn Horizon was a catastrophic event which R. R. Newton coyly described as a “square wave” in the record of solar and lunar eclipses.


-------------------------------


From the The Heinsohn Horizon: The Academic Abyss (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/the-heinsohn-horizon-the-academic-abyss/) article:

[...]

Working backwards through the mainstream historical narrative we arrive at the Heinsohn Horizon in the 930s where the mainstream narrative falls into The Academic Abyss and degenerates into fiction, fantasy and fabrication for a period of 700 [phantom] years.

Mainstream historians [and tributary catastrophists] clearly have their eyes wired shut and their index fingers firmly wedged into their ears as they chant: “I can’t hear you Heinsohn”.
Therefore, some 700 years of the 1st millennium (230 to 930s) have neither strata nor tree samples for C14 or dendro-chronological dating.
Archaeological Strata Versus Baillie’s Tree-Rings: Proposal for an Experiment - Gunnar Heinsohn – 8 September 2014
http://www.q-mag.org/_media/gunnar-strata-vsbaillie08-09-2014.pdf
http://www.q-mag.org/the-1st-millennium-a-d-chronology-controversy.html
The problem for many mainstream and tributary historians is that their professional lives are dedicated to filling The Academic Abyss with fiction, fantasy and fabrication.

The Academic Abyss [formerly known as The Dark Ages] has morphed into The Middle Ages as the mainstream has filled the void with debris and detritus.
The Dark Ages is a historical periodization used originally for the Middle Ages, which emphasizes the cultural and economic deterioration that supposedly occurred in Western Europe following the conversion of the Roman Republic to an Empire Julius Caesar, resulting in the Empire’s decay and final denouement in the decline of the Roman Empire leading to the Dark Ages.

The label employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the “darkness” of the period with earlier and later periods of “light”.

The period is characterized by a relative scarcity of historical and other written records at least for some areas of Europe, rendering it obscure to historians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_%28historiography%29
Once upon a time the mainstream attributed The Academic Abyss to “ruthless barbarians” who destroyed the “old libraries”.
The ancient Roman civilization began to decline soon after the reign of the Antonines, and was overthrown at last by the Northern barbarians.

The treasures of literature and art were buried, and a dark night settled over Europe.
…
One of the chief causes of the prevailing ignorance was the scarcity of books.

The old libraries were destroyed by ruthless barbarians and the ravages of war.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.xiii.v.html#fnf_i.xiii.v-p5.1
Nowadays, as is fully befitting The Academic Abyss, the mainstream manfully struggles with its ignorance as it tries to identify when the Library of Alexandria was destroyed and which set of “ruthless barbarians” actually burnt the books.
Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria:
Julius Caesar’s fire during his civil war in 48 BC;

the attack of Aurelian in AD 270 – 275;

the decree of Coptic Pope Theophilus in 391 AD; and

the Muslim conquest of Egypt in (or after) AD 642.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Library_of_Alexandria
As the mainstream peer through this 690 years of fog searching for “ruthless barbarians” their myopic gaze fails to recognise any signs of natural disaster.
In reality, the destruction of the aqueducts happened swiftly, and with a power no humans had at their disposal.

[B]This happened, in 234 CE, only eight years after the last system had been completed under Alexander Severus in 226 CE.
…
At the same time, Rome’s population was reduced from nearly one million to no more than 50,000.
…
The cataclysm had struck with such force that more than half a millennium passed before Europeans could begin to slowly regain the technological competence of imperial Rome.

[I]Toppling of Rome’s Obelisks and Aqueducts – Ewald Ernst – August 2014
http://www.q-mag.org/_media/ewald-ernst-on-trevor-obelisks-aqueaducts-01-08-2014.pdf
However, where there are neither strata nor tree samples the myopic mainstream has managed to unearth an estimated 269,636 European manuscripts in The Academic Abyss.

These mainstream manuscripts were mainly manufactured in monasteries.

During a large part of the Middle Ages, a close link existed between the monastic movement and book production: monasteries were not only the most important sources of supply, but also of demand.
…
We may therefore hypothesize that during the early Middle Ages book production was to a large extent driven by the number and size of monasteries, which was in turn determined by the share of the agricultural surplus that regions and countries directed to this part of the economy.

[...]

Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine when the Machiavellian Monasteries stopped manufacturing manuscripts to manipulate the historical narrative of the 1st millennium.

Similarly, it is impossible to determine when an anaemic academia stopped colluding with the Machiavellian Monasteries to construct the historical narrative of the 1st millennium.

This is [primarily] because radiocarbon dating cannot be effectively used to date the writing on the parchments produced by the Machiavellian Monasteries.

[...]

The Heinsohn Horizon is defined by the materials used to create manuscripts.
Manuscripts were written on “Egyptian papyrus” before the Heinsohn Horizon and then switched to parchment [and vellum] immediately after the Heinsohn Horizon in Europe until locally produced alternatives [cotton paper (circa 1049) and linen paper (circa 1177)] became readily available.

[...]

Clearly, the anaemic academics have been working overtime to fill the The Academic Abyss with debris, detritus and disinformation.

However, the Heinsohn Horizon clearly defines a 700 year period where [B]any manuscript:
a) Originated [i.e. specifically dated] during this 700 year period is a forgery.

b) Retrospectively attributed [e.g. by anaemic academics] to this 700 year period is misdated

c) Describing the history of this 700 year period is documenting a fabricated narrative.
Accordingly, a manuscript such as the Notitia Dignitatum that is “usually considered” to document the “Western Roman Empire in the 420s” and the “Eastern or Byzantine Empire in the 390s” is relating a fabricated narrative and has a fabricated provenance.

[...]

========================================

Voilà... how Troglodyte dwellings and cities as well as DUMBs start to make some sense...

[Kristin]

Really interesting thread here Herve, I'm enjoying it!

[Hervé]

The Book Of Miracles (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1408&bih=772&q=the+book+of+miracles+the+dew+breaker&oq=the+book+of+mir&gs_l=img.1.9.0l9j0i24k1.3333.13675.0.25620.16.13.0.3.3.0.171.1276.7j5.12.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..1.15 .1289.0.1GAACcyoYRY#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=the+book+of+miracles+taschen&*&imgrc=_):


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/63/79/78/6379783cb6d94315474c2f12f7710e33.jpg
The Culprit Barbarian Invader

https://www.sott.net/image/s8/171334/full/Fol26.jpg
Splitting/Exploding/Fragmenting...

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/b1/a2/24/b1a224a90130ee987afada53684aa83c.jpg
Incoming stone storm...



http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I0KoI1914Bk/U7h0JHH-cKI/AAAAAAAALpY/sxoSM-3-ORI/s1600/page_va_book_of_miracles_2400_343a_1311061536_id_750203.jpg
Raining stones...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8h4Up2oEF50/UmwGcf45R7I/AAAAAAAAKoU/OaR--2siQrM/s1600/page_ce_book_of_miracles_13_1211061348_id_631091.jpg
Burning Stone bunker... AKA Dolmen

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c4/9c/fc/c49cfccfd1e5e1c3c655858b758c853b.jpg
Pestilence... trumpet sounds (https://www.sott.net/article/296659-Whats-causing-those-weird-trumpet-noises-in-the-sky) coming from the clouds...

Get the picture?!

[Hervé]

The above extracts from The Book of Miracles may depict another catastrophic event (in concert with the new earth tilt) which, again, targeted Europe:

From here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?p=1090221#post1090221):

From the early decades of the fifteenth century until 1650, continental Europeans executed between two and five hundred thousand witches (according to conservative estimates), more than 85 percent of them being women. (Ben-Yehuda, 1985)
Why?
The sanctioned, organized pursuit and persecution of witches, which peaked from 1560 to 1630 and was almost entirely a western European phenomenon, began during a time of grave concern in the Roman Catholic church. The European world in the early 1400s was a wreck. The preceding century has been labeled by historian Barbara Tuchman as "calamitous," and she does not overstate. Starting around 1315, a great famine ravaged much of western Europe. From 1347 to 1352, the Black Death killed more than a third of the continent's population. Other diseases and additional outbreaks of the plague scourged the weakened survivors. As if natural catastrophe weren't enough, England and France chose to fight the Hundred Years' War from 1337 to 1453, the longest war in history. The Church itself fractured, riven by massive organized heresies, and by a schism that led to as many as three men simultaneously laying claim to be the true pope. How could a world created by a watchful, benevolent, and engaged God be such a mess?

[...]
In 1450, 100 years after the Black Death had destroyed about half of Europe's population, the Hundred Years' War was coming to an end and someone had to be blamed, (definitely NOT cometary explosions!), and the so-called Renaissance was kicking off, Jean Vineti, Inquisitor at Carcassone, identified witchcraft with heresy. In 1458, Nicholas Jacquier, Inquisitor in France and Bohemia, identified it as a NEW form of heresy.

[...]

In 1484-86, Sprenger and Kramer published the Malleus which explicated a crystallized theory of witchcraft which held sway for three hundred years. Johannes Gutenberg's printing press - a product of the Renaissance - allowed the work to spread rapidly throughout Europe. This crystallization is what resulted in the beginning of the witch craze itself.

[...]

One evening 10 years ago, Walter Stephens was reading Malleus malificarum. The Malleus, as scholars refer to it, would not be everyone's choice for a late-night book. Usually translated as The Hammer of Witches, it was first published in Germany in 1487 as a handbook for witch hunters during the Inquisition. It's a chilling text - - used for 300 years, well into the Age of Reason -- that justifies and details the identification, apprehension, interrogation, and execution of people accused of consorting with demons, signing pacts with the devil, and performing maleficia, or harmful magic.

[...]

For the next eight years Stephens read every treatise he could find on witchcraft, as well as accounts of interrogations, theological tracts, and other works (his bibliography lists 154 primary and more than 200 secondary sources). Most of the 86 witchcraft treatises he cites had been written in western Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, and one after another (including the Malleus) contain accounts of sexual intercourse with satanic spirits.

Why?

Were the authors remorseless misogynists hellbent on portraying women in the worst possible light? Were they lurid, repressed celibates who got off by writing accounts of demon sex?

Stephens didn't think so; the texts, in his view, didn't support that reading. Elsewhere in the Malleus he had found a key reference to accused witches under torture as being "expert witnesses to the reality of carnal interaction between humans and demons."

These guys are trying to construct proofs that demons exist, he thought.

They're trying to convince skeptics.

And then he thought, They're trying to convince themselves.

Stephens' thesis profoundly revises the conventional wisdom about centuries of cruelty and injustice. The great European witch hunts, he says, were the outgrowth of a severe crisis of faith. The men who wrote books like the Malleus, men who endorsed the torture and burning of tens of thousands of innocent people, desperately needed to believe in witches, because if witches were real, then demons were real, and if demons were real, then God was real. Not just real but present and attentive. Carefully read the works composed by the witchcraft authors, Stephens says, and you will see how profoundly disturbed these educated, literate men were by their accumulating suspicions that if God existed at all, He wasn't paying much attention to the descendants of Adam.

[...]

Above excerpts from: Wars, Pestilence and Witches (https://www.sott.net/article/147339-Wars-Pestilence-and-Witches)
==========================================

So, there you have it: How Plato's invention (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?86384-Here-The-So-called-Word-Of-God&p=1120106&viewfull=1#post1120106) survived a very deep crisis triggered by catastrophic heavenly phenomena...

[Hervé]

For those interested in the various space dust, sand, gravel and pebble storms we (i.e. earth) run into from time to time:

Stunning interactive graphic reveals the path of every major meteor shower (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4365362/Stunning-interactive-graphic-shows-meteor-shower.html)

Cheyenne MacDonald
Daily Mail, UK (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4365362/Stunning-interactive-graphic-shows-meteor-shower.html) Thu, 30 Mar 2017 14:39 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/387767/large/3EC85DB100000578_0_image_a_44_.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/387767/full/3EC85DB100000578_0_image_a_44_.jpg)
© www.ianww.com (http://www.ianww.com)


Every year, thousands of meteoroids crash into Earth's atmosphere, creating stunning displays of 'shooting stars' that can be seen from the surface below.

In a remarkable interactive website (http://www.ianww.com/meteor-showers/), researchers have plotted all the major meteor streams that orbit the sun, revealing the paths of those which give rise to meteor showers on Earth.

The visualization, created by engineer Ian Webster, allows users to view each stream in relation to our entire solar system or even watch from the perspective of Earth, showing the breathtaking magnitude of the space pebbles that bombard our planet.

The interactive site shows 12 different meteor showers that occur throughout the year, from the upcoming Lyrids in April to the Ursids in December. Or, you can choose to view every meteor shower at once.

The data comes from measurements by NASA's CAMS video camera surveillance network and calculations by meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center.

Complied into one stunning visualization, the interactive site displays these meteor streams as bright specks moving through the solar system. 'This visualization shows these meteoroid streams orbiting the Sun, some stretching to the outer regions of the solar system,' the website explains.

'Select the meteor shower in the menu to see the corresponding meteoroid stream in space.' The website also shows the Milky Way and the orbits of other planets in the solar system.

And, it shows how these streams move along their orbits as the years pass, giving viewers a glimpse far into the future.

While meteor showers create streaks in the sky that can be seen on Earth from miles away, the meteoroids that cause them are actually quite small. 'Meteor showers on Earth are caused by streams of meteoroids hitting our atmosphere,' the site explains.

'These meteoroids are sand- and pebble-sized bits of rock that were once released from their parent comet. 'Some comets are no longer active and are now called asteroids.'

The next meteor shower, the Lyrids, is set to take place in April. The Lyrids typically peak around April 22, bring up to 20 meteors per hour.


Interactive site: http://www.ianww.com/meteor-showers/

[Hervé]

"Speaking" of Göbekli Tepe (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?88088-Bolides-Comets-Asteroids-Meteors-And-Falling-Skies&p=1141452&viewfull=1#post1141452):

Stone carvings at G (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/21/ancient-stone-carvings-confirm-comet-struck-earth-10950bc-wiping/)öbekli Tepe in Turkey confirm how comet struck Earth in 10,950BC (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/21/ancient-stone-carvings-confirm-comet-struck-earth-10950bc-wiping/)

Sarah Knapton The Telegraph, UK (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/21/ancient-stone-carvings-confirm-comet-struck-earth-10950bc-wiping/)
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 11:25 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/391249/large/ss_composite_image_2017_4_21_1.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/391249/full/ss_composite_image_2017_4_21_1.png)
The Vulture Stone from Göbekli Tepe (left) which recorded a devastating comet strike (right). © Alistair Coombs


Ancient stone carvings confirm that a comet struck the Earth around 11,000BC, a devastating event which wiped out woolly mammoths and sparked the rise of civilisations.

Experts at the University of Edinburgh analysed mysterious symbols carved onto stone pillars at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, to find out if they could be linked to constellations.

The markings suggest that a swarm of comet fragments hit Earth at the exact same time that a mini-ice age struck, changing the entire course of human history.

Scientists have speculated for decades that a comet could be behind the sudden fall in temperature during a period known as the Younger Dryas. But recently the theory appeared to have been debunked (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/7981798/Comet-impact-did-not-cause-mammoths-to-die-out-say-scientists.html) by new dating of meteor craters in North America where the comet is thought to have struck.

However, when engineers studied animal carvings made on a pillar - known as the vulture stone - at Göbekli Tepe they discovered that the creatures were actually astronomical symbols which represented constellations and the comet.

The idea had been originally put forward by author Graham Hancock in his book Magicians of the Gods (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/graham-hancock-interview/).

Using a computer programme to show where the constellations would have appeared above Turkey thousands of years ago, they were able to pinpoint the comet strike to 10,950BC, the exact time the Younger Dryas begins according to ice core data from Greenland.

The Younger Dryas is viewed as a crucial period for humanity, as it roughly coincides with the emergence of agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations.

Before the strike, vast areas of wild wheat and barley had allowed nomadic hunters in the Middle East to establish permanent base camps. But the difficult climate conditions following the impact forced communities to come together and work out new ways of maintaining the crops, through watering and selective breeding. Thus farming began, allowing the rise of the first towns.

Edinburgh researchers said the carvings appear to have remained important to the people of Göbekli Tepe for millennia, suggesting that the event and cold climate that followed likely had a very serious impact.


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/391254/large/Position_of_the_sun_and_stars_.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/391254/full/Position_of_the_sun_and_stars_.jpg)
© Martin Sweatman and Stellarium


Dr Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering, who led the research, said:
"I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent virtually seal the case in favour of (a Younger Dryas comet impact).

"Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change.

"It appears Göbekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky.

"One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event - probably the worst day in history since the end of the ice age."
Göbekli Tepe, is thought to be the world's oldest temple site, which dates from around 9,000BC, predating Stonehenge by around 6,000 years.


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/391252/medium/Replica_of_pillar_43_the_Vultu.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/391252/full/Replica_of_pillar_43_the_Vultu.jpg)
The Vulture Stone, at Göbekli Tepe. © Alistair Coombs
(click on picture to emlarge)

[norman]

I've always wanted to see someone put toothpaste back in the tube. :caked:

Nice try.

[Atlas]

How the Moon Was Formed
mQAdYWcA7ig

[Bill Ryan]

Stone carvings at G (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/21/ancient-stone-carvings-confirm-comet-struck-earth-10950bc-wiping/)öbekli Tepe in Turkey confirm how comet struck Earth in 10,950BC (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/21/ancient-stone-carvings-confirm-comet-struck-earth-10950bc-wiping/)

:bump:

This mainstream science announcement might be of huge importance.

:star:

[norman]

Yea, but they are still trying to tack the new data onto the 'savages to civilised' in a flash theory.

[Hervé]

New study suggests large meteorite impacts sparked volcanic eruptions (http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2017/05/03/Meteor-showers-prompted-volcano-eruptions-study-suggests/4171493822617/)

Ed Adamczyk UPI (http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2017/05/03/Meteor-showers-prompted-volcano-eruptions-study-suggests/4171493822617/)
Wed, 03 May 2017 11:22 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/393940/large/Meteor_showers_prompted_volcan.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/393940/full/Meteor_showers_prompted_volcan.jpg)
An example of a shard formed by the impact of a meteorite near Sudbury, Ontario. A new study connects meteorites to the rise of volcanic eruptions. © Paul Guyett/Trinity College Dublin


The impact of ancient meteorites sparked volcanic eruptions, a team led by Trinity College Dublin geochemists says in a report.

The team studied rocks (https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/ancient-meteorite-impact-sparked-long-lived-volcanic-eruptions-on-earth/7803) in a massive crater in Sudbury (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin), Ontario, where a deep basin was formed 1.85 billion years ago by a bolide, a meteor which exploded in the atmosphere.

Small volcanic fragments of the crash remain, each shaped like a crab claw. Their shape indicates they were formed when gas bubbles expanded in molten rock and then suddenly exploded.

The researchers findings indicate that the composition of the volcanic fragments changed over time. Immediately after the impact, volcanism, or the phenomenon of eruption of molten rock, is directly related to melting of the earth's crust. Over time, though, it was fed by magma, underground molten rock, coming from deeper levels within the earth.

"This is an important finding, because it means that the magma sourcing the volcanoes was changing with time," Balz Kamber, a professor of geology and mineralogy at Trinity, said in a press release. "The reason for the excitement is that the effect of large impacts on the early earth could be more serious than previously considered. The intense bombardment of the early earth had destructive effects on the planet's surface but it may also have brought up material from the planet's interior, which shaped the overall structure of the planet."

The findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016JE005085/abstract;jsessionid=27EB305A5523D389217061F7D2965810.f04t01), suggest similar events may have occurred on the moon and other planets. The lack of plate tectonics or erosion there keeps the surface features intact, though.

[Hervé]

Huge impact crater discovered near the Falklands Islands (http://www.newsweek.com/asteroid-impact-crater-mass-extinction-great-dying-595229)

Hannah Osborne Newsweek (http://www.newsweek.com/asteroid-impact-crater-mass-extinction-great-dying-595229)
Fri, 05 May 2017 11:50 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/394321/large/asteroid_impact.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/394321/full/asteroid_impact.jpg)
Artist impression of an asteroid impacting Earth. © NASA/Don Davis



Scientists have discovered what they believe is one of the biggest impact craters in the world near the Falklands Islands. They say the crater appears to date to between 270 and 250 million years ago, which, if confirmed, would link it to the world's biggest mass extinction event, where 96 percent of life on Earth was wiped out.

The presence of a massive crater in the Falklands was first proposed by Michael Rampino, a professor in New York University, in 1992 after he noticed similarities with the Chicxulub crater in Mexico—the asteroid that created this crater is thought to have played a major role in the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

But after a brief report at the Falklands site, very little research was carried out. Now, a team of scientists—including Rampino—have returned to the area to perform an "exhaustive search for additional new geophysical information" that would indicate the presence of an impact crater.

Their findings, published in the journal Terra Nova (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/ter.12269/abstract), suggest the huge circular depression just northwest of the islands is indeed the result of the massive impact of an asteroid or meteorite. The basin, which is now buried under sediments, measures over 150 miles in diameter.


https://www.sott.net/image/s19/394322/large/falklands_impact_crater.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s19/394322/full/falklands_impact_crater.jpg)
The proposed impact crater in the Falkland Islands. The islands are shown in yellow, while the regions of red show a notable increase in Earth's magnetism, characteristic of an impact. © National Centers for Environmental Information



To analyze the site, the team, from the U.S., Argentina and Paraguay, looked at various aspects of the crater, including gravity anomalies and seismic reflection, which allows them to estimate sub-surface properties, along with differences in the chemistry of the rocks.

Their findings were consistent with other impact craters, with certain features being "very similar to that of the Chicxulub multi-ring impact structure." They found there was a large magnetic anomaly, suggesting significant variation in rocks at the site, as well as gravitational variations "typical of very large impact structures."

Researchers say the crater appears to date to the Late Paleozoic Era—around the same time as the Permian mass extinction event also known as the Great Dying. They believe the crater dates to between 270 and 250 million years ago, but say further investigations are needed to confirm this.

"Future drilling in this basin is a must" they wrote. "If confirmed as a site of impact, then this structure would be one of the largest known impact structures on Earth." In a statement, Rampino added: "If the proposed crater turns out to be 250 million years old, it could correlate with the largest mass extinction ever _ the Permian extinctions, which wiped out more than 90 percent of all species."

But not everyone is convinced of the link. Michael Benton, a paleontologist from the University of Bristol, told Newsweek in an email interview that while the discovery of an impact basin is interesting, it is not necessarily related to the Great Dying.

'There have been several suggestions that the end-Permian mass extinction was linked to impact, including possible craters off Australia, and this one in the South Atlantic," he says. "The link of the current crater to the extinction is hugely tenuous—it could be the cause, but evidence is not presented for that idea.

"It is only tentatively identified as a crater, and its age is estimated as Late Paleozoic—so it could be millions of years older than the critical boundary. Further, there is no evidence elsewhere in the world of the fallout for impact—as we know from the later impact at the end of the Cretaceous [period], you expect to find a shopping list of ten or more indicators of impact scattered worldwide, such as shocked quartz and iridium enrichment, but these have not been found. The study of a new crater is massively important, but it's unlikely it had anything to do with the end-Permian mass extinction."

[Hervé]

Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes (http://www.sott.net/article_previews/tipe/182704-Title?new_art=true)

Pierre Lescaudron
Sott.net (http://www.sott.net/article_previews/tipe/182704-Title?new_art=true)
Fri, 28 Jul 2017 20:40 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409094/medium/The_cave_of_Rouffignac_2.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409094/full/The_cave_of_Rouffignac_2.jpg)
Mammoth painting in Rouffignac cave, France


For years I've been fascinated by what could be considered as one of the greatest mysteries of our planet: the demise of the woolly mammoths. Try to imagine the barely imaginable: millions of giant mammoths inexplicably flash-frozen overnight.

This is a fascinating event for several reasons. First, flash freezing is a very peculiar process that does not really occur on our planet. Also, given the death circumstances, the magnitude and power involved to virtually wipe out the whole mammoth genus is truly astounding.

But maybe the most fascinating aspect of this event is that it occurred just 13,000 years ago when the human race was already widely established on planet Earth. For comparison, the upper paleolithic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalenian) cave paintings found in Southern France (Lascaux, Chauvet, Rouffignac,...) were made 17,000 to 13,000 years ago.

This event challenges our uniformitarian vision of history where the progress of life on our planet is a linear process, increasing day after day, undisturbed by any major external setback. Therefore such an event casts a different light on our human condition and the pervasive delusion that human beings are some kind of all-mighty creatures that are above natural laws, including those that govern major catastrophes.

It is a fascinating and puzzling topic because the numerous theories that have been proposed over the last two centuries to explain the demise of the woolly mammoths such as them being caught in frozen rivers, victims of over-hunting, covered by hail storms, buried in mudslides, fallen in ice crevasses, caught be the ice age,... are not sufficient to fully explain this mass extinction.

So, in the following article, I will try to provide explanations about how and why millions of woolly mammoths ended up flash frozen overnight.

The woolly Mammoths
The woolly mammoth is a close cousin of the modern elephant. Its size (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth) was similar to the African elephant, males reaching shoulder heights about 3 m (10 ft) and weighing up to 6 tonnes.

The mammoths had a plant based diet and a fully grown male would need to eat about 180 kg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth) (400 lb) of food daily.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409096/medium/image_3167e_Woolly_Mammoth.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409096/full/image_3167e_Woolly_Mammoth.jpg)
Maximum extension of the woolly mammoth during the Late Pleistocene


At the time, woolly mammoths were very abundant on our planet. To illustrate this point, between 1750 and 1917, trade in mammoth ivory prospered over a wide geographical region, yielding an estimated 96,000 mammoth tusks (https://books.google.fr/books?id=2uV8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=96000+mammoth+tusks&source=bl&ots=TjRE3b3Dka&sig=ijzf0rvHDJ8f8-liWFr644Dqook&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKs63B26vVAhUGWRoKHX5ODSMQ6AEINDAC). It is estimated that about 5 million mammoths lived in just a small portion of northern Siberia.

Before their extinction, woolly mammoths inhabited wide portions of our planet. Remains have been found all over Northern Europe, Northern Asia and Northern America.

Woolly mammoths were not the new kid on the block either, they had been roaming the planet for six million years (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1220_051220_mammoth.html) before modern elephants and woolly mammoths split into separate species.

A prejudiced interpretation of the hairy and fatty nature of the creature and a belief in unchanging climatic conditions led scientists to deem the woolly mammoth a creature of cold areas of our planet. But furry animals don't necessarily live in a cold climate, see for example desert animals like camels, kangaroos and fennecs. They are furry and they live in hot or temperate climates. In fact, most furry animals could not survive the arctic weather.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409100/medium/mammoth_wool.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409100/full/mammoth_wool.jpg)
Woolly mammoth "wool", Naturhistorisches Museum Wien


What makes for successful cold adaptation is not fur per se but its erectile nature (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjypOuPiqLVAhUImBoKHRqIAjkQFgg-MAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedaily.com%2Freleases%2F2015%2F11%2F151123103838.htm&usg=AFQjCNE9YJPnp8rNGQ1HTboEdZ-FYnTwhw) which traps a layer of air for thermal insulation against the cold. Unlike the fur seal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_fur_seal) for example, mammoths were devoid of erectile fur (https://books.google.fr/books?id=ZxolBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA285&lpg=PA285&dq=mammoth+fur+hair&source=bl&ots=d6DFHIL17w&sig=vsFSk9ptVvzzUZQHzFS5ea8LmjU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl3byCi6LVAhXDWRoKHTs0A0cQ6AEIrQEwGQ#v=onepage&q=mammoth%20fur%20hair&f=false).

Another factor in the protection of animals against damp and cold is the presence of sebaceous glands, which secrete oil on the skin and in the fur, offering protection against dampness.

The woolly mammoth had no sebaceous glands (https://books.google.fr/books?id=ZxolBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA285&lpg=PA285&dq=mammoth+fur+hair&source=bl&ots=d6DFHIL17w&sig=vsFSk9ptVvzzUZQHzFS5ea8LmjU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl3byCi6LVAhXDWRoKHTs0A0cQ6AEIrQEwGQ#v=onepage&q=mammoth%20fur%20hair&f=false) and its dry hair would have allowed much snow to touch the skin, melt, and dramatically increase the heat loss (the thermal conductivity of water is about twelve times higher (http://www.inscc.utah.edu/%7Ecampbell/snowdynamics/reading/Pomeroy.pdf) than the conductivity of snow).

As suggested by the picture on the right, the fur of the mammoth was not very dense. For comparison, the fur of the yak (a cold adapted Himalayan mammal) is about 10 times thicker (https://kneyda.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/woolly-mammoth-wool/).

In addition, the mammoths had hair hanging down to their toes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AMammoth), yet every arctic animal has fur, not hair on their toes. Hair would have caused snow to cake on its ankles and hinder walking.

The above clearly shows that fur is not a proof of cold adaptation and neither is fat. Fat only proves that food is plentiful. A fat, overfed dog could not withstand an arctic blizzard and its -80F (-60° Celsius) temperatures. On the contrary, creatures like arctic rabbits or caribous can, despite their relative low fat to body mass ratio.

Mammoths remains are usually found piled up with other animals (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjbg-6OkaLVAhVHrRoKHR_QCw4QFggoMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wesleygrovechapel.com%2Fupload%2FFrozen%2520Mammoths%25204.ppt&usg=AFQjCNHE1MiTpXdCIxZ0nSrqA4aM2Ra_AQ) like: tiger, antelope, camel, horse, reindeer, giant beaver, giant ox, musk sheep, musk ox, donkey, badger, ibex, woolly rhinoceros, fox, giant bison, lynx, leopard, wolverine, hare, lion, elk, giant wolf, ground squirrel, cave hyena, bear, and many types of birds. Most of those animals could not survive the arctic climate. This is an extra indication that woolly mammoths were not polar creatures.

French prehistorian Henry Neuville conducted the most detailed study of mammoth skin and hair. At the end of his thorough analysis, he wrote the following:
"It appears to me impossible to find, in the anatomical examination of the skin and [hair], any argument in favor of adaptation to the cold."

- H. Neuville, On the Extinction of the Mammoth, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1919, p. 332. Last, and not least, in the argument against the mammoth existing in a polar climate is food and water. How could the woolly mammoth sustain its vegetarian diet made of hundreds of pounds of daily intake in an arctic regions devoid of vegetation during most of the year? How could woolly mammoths find the gallons of water that it had to drink everyday?

To make things worse, the woolly mammoth lived during the ice age, when temperatures were colder than today. Mammoths could not have survived the harsh northern Siberia climate of today, even less so 13,000 years ago when the Siberian climate was significantly colder.

The evidence above strongly suggests that the woolly mammoth was not a polar creature but a temperate one. Consequently, at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, 13000 years ago, Siberia was not an arctic region but a temperate one.

The Younger Dryas
The Younger Dryas is named after a flower (Dryas octopetala (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryas_octopetala)) that grows in cold conditions and became common in Europe during this period that started around 10.900 BC (i.e. 12900 years ago) and lasted for about 1000 years. The Younger Dryas marks the transition between the last epoch known as the Pleistocene and our current epoch known as the Holocene.

https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409114/medium/Younger_Dryas_Flowers.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409114/full/Younger_Dryas_Flowers.jpg)
Younger Dryas flowers


The Younger Dryas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas) saw a sharp decline in temperature over most of the Northern Hemisphere, it was the most recent and longest interruption to the gradual warming of the Earth's climate. To give an idea of the magnitude of the cooling, the Greenland ice core GISP2 indicates that, at its height, it was approximately 15 °C (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas#cite_note-Alley-12) (27 °F) colder during the Younger Dryas than it is today.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409979/medium/Greenlandtemp.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409979/full/Greenlandtemp.png)
Mean annual temperature (22000 to 8000 BP)


Notice however that the overall cooling that occurred during the Younger Dryas was not homogeneous (https://phys.org/news/2013-08-evidence-cosmic-impact-younger-dryas.html) and while some regions experienced a marked cooling (Siberia, Europe, Greenland, Alaska) other regions experienced a relative warming (Northern America apart from Alaska, the 'Asian' side of Antarctica). This is an important point that we'll explore soon.

Along with the drastic temperature drop, one of the major features of the Younger Dryas is a massive die-off: where 35 mammals (mastodons, giant beaver, saber-tooth cats, giant sloths, woolly rhinoceroses,...) and 19 genus of birds became extinct (http://www.audubon.org/news/scientists-find-smoking-gun-california-comet-theory) in a very short time period.

Human populations were already quite widespread at the time (Yurok, Hopies, Kato, Arawaks, Toltecs, Incas...) and at least one of them, the Clovis (https://rgdn.info/en/gibel_kultury_klovis_i_zagadka_pozdnego_driasa) people who inhabited Northern America, was erased from the face of Earth during this period of turmoil.

https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409138/pod/fluted.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409138/full/fluted.jpg)
Discovery sites of Clovis fluted points


The Clovis people were not a small localized tribe, their implantation sites cover most of Northern America as indicated by the geographic range of their artifacts, particularly fluted points (see map on the right).

The woolly mammoths were one of the 35 mammals genus that were wiped out during the event that started the Younger Dryas. Hibben (https://books.google.fr/books?id=pJCet3hEGrwC&pg=PA250&lpg=PA250&dq=Hibben+estimated+that+as+many+as+40,000,000+animals+died+in+North+America&source=bl&ots=WEMH43AP-J&sig=drns2qbZj5rJXIoLJn1mIkzojHA&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Hibben%20estimated%20that%20as%20many%20as%2040%2C000%2C000%20animals%20died%20in%20North%20Americ a&f=false) estimated that as many as 40,000,000 animals died in North America alone. In total, hundreds of millions of mammoths were killed.

Remains were found all across Northern Russia (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj1u8ff3avVAhXBCBoKHXQ8CSAQFghkMAk&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FVictor_Meyer-Rochow%2Fpublication%2F262686099_Mammoth%2Flinks%2F53e4e5ff0cf25d674e950235.pdf%3Forigin%3Dpublicati on_list&usg=AFQjCNG_IfTgvLDYqG9nMJulLHUncUOD5w) from the Urals to the Bering Strait and even on the American continent (Alaska and Yukon).

Only two small pockets of mammoths remained: St. Paul Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul_Island_%28Alaska%29) until 5,600 years ago and Wrangel Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island) until 4,000 years ago.

The crime scene
The broad geographic scale of the extinction and its relatively recent occurrence provide a lot of scientific material. In the numerous excavations conducted over most parts of the Northern hemisphere, the burial sites of the woolly mammoths reveal the very same features again and again:


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409311/medium/glass_carbon.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409311/full/glass_carbon.png)
Carbon glass found in three different Clovis sites


- Soot : a concentration peak in charcoal and soot (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618212026109) was found in several Clovis sites and in the Younger Dryas strata.

- Fullerenes : a pure form of carbon like graphite and diamond. It is a large spheroidal molecule consisting of a hollow cage of sixty or more atoms of carbons. High concentrations of fullerenes (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009AGUFMPP31D1393B) were found in the 12900 BP strata.

- Potassium 40: Potassium-40 is a naturally radioactive isotope with a 1.3-billion-year half-life that represents a tiny fraction of all potassium on Earth. This amount is very uniform throughout the solar system, except for meteorites, comets, or when a supernova is involved. Peak concentration of this isotope (https://www.sott.net/article/207777-Younger-Dryas-Glacial-Rebound-and-Cosmic-Showers-Climate-shifted-suddenly-from-present-day-warmth-to-Ice-Age-cold) was found in the Clovis strata.

- Helium-3: A typical extraterrestrial impact marker. Helium-3 is rare on Earth but common in extraterrestrial material. The connection between asteroid impacts and helium-3 was demonstrated by Becker et al (http://migall.fastmail.fm.user.fm/astronomy/solar_system/small_bodies/bedout/paper_3.html). who located a 25-mile-wide impact site called the Bedout (https://books.google.fr/books?id=oVWyAZVNqxIC&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=younger+dryas+helium-3&source=bl&ots=dBeDE2ps2Z&sig=9Ce9N_lEyAxIKCsk1u4h6EY0z6Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwih2obvsqTVAhXIlxoKHRWCD0IQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=younger%20dryas%20helium-3&f=false) crater, that dates to the Permian extinction, 250 million years ago, and revealed high levels of helium-3. Similarly the Younger Dryas boundary contains peak concentrations of helium-3

- thorium, titanium, cobalt, nickel, uranium and other rare earth elements: High concentration of these elements (https://books.google.fr/books?id=6zDdamQYtlMC&pg=PA263&lpg=PA263&dq=thorium+uranium+younger+dryas&source=bl&ots=8EbBUAJ8HX&sig=v2fJQy6xqhzVfWhQ6kSJLkowflw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic592ulqTVAhXMuhoKHTKWB0MQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=thorium%20uranium%20younger%20dryas&f=false) were found in the Younger Dryas strata, Clovis sites and several meteorite craters. These rare elements are seldom found on Earth but they are very common in meteorites.

- Carbon glass: the 12900 BP strata is characterized by a high concentration of this form of black glass (http://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016.long) that is rich in carbon. Testing showed that the carbon glass samples included numerous internal gas bubbles (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj4zdbOmqTVAhXEmBoKHRV_BQQQFghJMAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.natur.cuni.cz%2Fuhigug%2Fkletetschka%2FBunch2012full.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHQ-mARv3h1MhRmvNyA_8MlhPjdog).

This is an indication of extraordinarily high temperatures followed by very sudden cooling. If carbon is pure, it melts at 6,400 degrees Fahrenheit, only extraordinary events can create such temperatures. Carbon glass is only found in the Clovis-era layer.

- Iridium: an extremely rare element in the earth's crust but an element that is typically found in meteorites and cometary material (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=35&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi0pq_tmaTVAhUH5xoKHeL7CFgQFgjZATAi&url=http%3A%2F%2Fprancer.physics.louisville.edu%2Fastrowiki%2Findex.php%2FComets%2C_Asteriods%2C_Met eors%2C_and_Meteorites&usg=AFQjCNF2kgrI9oRSdMPoF0RTDqr5nGRVpQ). The geological strata relating to notable cometary bombardments (Dinosaur Extinction, dated at 65 million years BP, commonly referred to as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) Extinction (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen1b.html), as well as the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3511106/) which occurred approximately 200 million years BP, exhibit abnormally high concentrations in iridium.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409308/medium/4_newresearchf.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409308/full/4_newresearchf.jpg)
Magnetic microspherule found in the Younger Dryas boundary


- Nano diamonds: Millions of microscopic diamonds were found in Clovis sites. Hexagonal nano diamonds (http://www.pnas.org/content/106/31/12623.full) require pressures of 2 million psi (170000 bars) and temperatures between 1,000-1,700 °C followed by rapid quenching.

- Spherules: hollow magnetic floating balls (https://phys.org/news/2012-09-theory-impact-event-years.html) exhibiting a high concentration in carbon were found in most Clovis-era sites. This form of carbon requires very high temperature and pressure to form.

These spheres are tiny, measuring from 10 to 50 micrometers in diameter (https://phys.org/news/2012-09-theory-impact-event-years.html) but very frequent in the Younger Dryas boundary where thousands of microspherules were found in each kilogram of dirt.

This long list of material: atypical isotopes like Helium-3, potassium-40, rare elements like iridium, thorium, uranium, reveal again and again the same pattern. They're almost absent from our natural environment but they are common in comets and they were found in high concentration in Clovis era strata and along impact craters.

Exotic materials like carbon glass, spherules, microscopic diamonds and fullerenes tell a similar story. They indicate exceptionally high temperatures and pressures that don't occur on Earth except during extreme events like asteroid impacts. All this material was found in high concentration in impact sites and in the Clovis strata.

Below, Firestone summarized (https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/comment-reply/pdf/i1052-5173-18-6-e13.pdf) the results of years of research conducted in numerous geological sites across Europe and America.
"In stratified sections at each of 10 [Younger Dryas] sites, from California to Belgium and Manitoba to Arizona, we found a <5-cm-thick sediment layer dated ca. 12.9 ka that contained a majority of 14 markers, forming distinct stratigraphic peaks at above-background concentrations.

These markers include magnetic microspherules (up to 2144/kg), magnetic grains (16g/kg) enriched in iridium (117 ppb, 6000× ter-restrial values), vesicular carbon spherules (1458/kg), glass-like carbon (16 g/kg), nanodiamonds, fullerenes containing extraterrestrial concentrations of 3He (84× air), and soot and charcoal (2 g/kg).

Except for small quantities of magnetic grains and charcoal, the markers were undetectable in the sediment either above or below the impact layer, representing stratigraphic sequences spanning >55 k.y. This is inconsistent with Pinter and Ishman's assertion of a "constant" rain of meteoritic debris and demonstrates that a layer of concentrated extraterrestrial (ET) markers was deposited ca. 12.9 ka." Along with the Younger Dryas boundary, there is a second boundary that contains similar high concentrations of extraterrestrial impact material: the K-T boundary, also known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene transition, which is associated to the notoriously known Chicxulub Impact (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen1b.html) which marked a mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

The numerous discoveries of cometary material and impact material in the Clovis strata, in the KT strata and in cometary/meteoric craters strongly suggests that a massive cometary bombardment occurred about 13000 years ago.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409316/medium/hudson_impact_secondary_crater.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409316/full/hudson_impact_secondary_crater.png)
Orientation of the secondary impacts related to the body that hit Lake Michigan © Firestone


The 'Event'
If the Younger Dryas and its accompanying mass extinction was caused by cometary bombardment, the next step is to identify the characteristics of the offending extraterrestrial bodies. Their nature, size, angle of impact, and of course, location of impact.

In his book 'Cycle of cosmic catastrophes (https://www.amazon.com/Cycle-Cosmic-Catastrophes-History-Civilization/dp/B008AU4Y18)', Firestone did a tremendous job gathering evidence about the asteroid impacts that triggered the beginning of the Younger Dryas. This book is a must-read if you want to know more details about this topic than what a mere article can convey.

The first task was to identify where the cometary fragments hit Earth. To do so Firestone investigated 'secondary craters', i.e. the craters created by ejecta coming from the primary impacts. Interestingly the orientation of the secondary craters pointed towards the same location.

By triangulating (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B%3AJMIV.0000026555.79056.b8) the trajectories followed by the ejecta (see pictures on the right for an illustration of the method applied to the Hudson impact), Firestone identified five potential primary impacts and their diameter:
Hudson Bay, Canada: 300 miles (480 km) diameter
Amundsen Bay, Canada 150 miles (241 km) diameter
Baffin Island, Canada 75 miles (120 km) diameter
Lake Michigan, United States 65 miles (105 km) diameter
Lake Saimaa, Finland: 180 miles (290 km) diameter
The next step was to check if there was any trace of primary craters in those five locations. And, indeed there were.

The primary craters were, however, noticeably shallower than expected. The shallowness (https://books.google.fr/books?id=d1ooDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT227&lpg=PT227&dq=crater+depth+meteorite+comet+shallow+firestone&source=bl&ots=9PIgQivuF8&sig=-Ug7lfE0mBXyLC0jwTXV3ySOcjc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNhsey36vVAhXEuRoKHb6OC7MQ6AEIKDAA) of the craters relative to their width and length suggests that the impactors were not solid rock (meteorites) but more likely 'dirty snowballs' (cometary material) and that their impact angle was low.

Indeed, the angle and the nature of the bolide have a direct influence on the shape of the crater (https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/maps/article/viewFile/15757/15745). A rock solid meteorite following a vertical trajectory would create a round and deep crater while a 'fluffy' cometary fragment hitting Earth at a low angle would create a shallow elongated (elliptical) crater.

Firestone's hypothesis was confirmed by geological surveys. For example, in Lake Michigan it was revealed that the Chippewa basin looked like a typical crater sub-basin, with its 'terrace faulting (https://books.google.fr/books?id=d1ooDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT328&lpg=PT328&dq=terrace+faulting+chippewa&source=bl&ots=9PIfXnrnDb&sig=Ihk4csUQDrMRe7bhFgFW8pn7CgM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfnNe_qqTVAhWDtRoKHWXwCzkQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=terrace%20faulting%20chippewa&f=false)', a stair-step pattern formed when large slabs of rock crack and slide downward after impact (see picture on the right)

[...]

Full article: https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes

[Hervé]

When one's got the smell of gun-powder smoke, the smoking gun AND the bullets...

The mystery of mammoth tusks with iron fillings (http://alaskareport.com/news28/ned71119_mammoth_tusks.htm)
By Ned Rozell March 5, 2008

A giant meteor may have exploded over Alaska thousands of years ago, shooting out metal fragments like buckshot, some of which embedded in the tusks of woolly mammoths and the horns of bison.

Simultaneously, a large chunk of the meteor hit Alaska south of Allakaket, sending up a dust cloud that blacked out the sun over the entire state and surrounding areas, killing most of the life in the area.


http://alaskareport.com/images31/mammoth_tusks.jpg

Embedded iron particles surrounded by carbonized rings in the outer layer of a mammoth tusk from Alaska. Inset photo shows how an object ripped through the tusk. Image courtesy Richard Firestone.

Such is the scenario envisioned by Rick Firestone, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Firestone and his colleagues have found mammoth tusks and a bison skull with nickel-rich iron particles in them on one side, suggesting the metal fragments all came from the same direction.

Firestone's theory emerged when his colleague, Alan West of Dewey, Arizona, saw at a Phoenix gem and mineral show a mammoth tusk peppered with tiny bits of metal. Intrigued, West and Firestone looked at tusks owned by the same dealer in Calgary. By passing a magnet over mammoth tusks in Calgary, Firestone and West found seven mammoth tusks collected somewhere near the Yukon River and a bison skull from Siberia that had tiny iron fragments burned into them. The fragments also contained nickel.

"One in 1,000 tusks had this material in it," Firestone said.

Full article: http://alaskareport.com/news28/ned71...moth_tusks.htm (http://alaskareport.com/news28/ned71119_mammoth_tusks.htm)

See this post for further discusiion: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post500017 (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?45635-Excavating-The-Empty-Tomb-The-Gospels-based-on-Homer-s-Odyssey&p=500017&viewfull=1#post500017)

Related:
Carolina Bays: Solved (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?95616-Carolina-Bays-Solved&p=1129486)

=======================================

The only [apparent?] discrepancy is a dating mismatch since the shot-gunned mammoths time of death is estimated at around 35.000 years ago... or, if the dating is proven accurate, then, said mammoths experienced two distinct extinction level events.

[Hervé]

Now, to continue with Lescaudron's article, here is his explanation regarding this major stumbling block for the annihilation of mammoths with flash freezing in a similar way as depicted in the "The Day After Tomorrow" movie :


-----------------------------------------------------


Now we know that the woolly mammoths were killed by cometary bombardments. But, the main question remains unanswered: how did the mammoths get flash-frozen? First, let's define more precisely what flash freezing is.


What is flash freezing?

Flash freezing is the sudden exposure of an item (food, biological sample) to cold temperatures in order to preserve it. American inventor Clarence Birdseye (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Birdseye) developed the quick-freezing process of food preservation in the 20th century.

This rapid freezing is usually done by submerging the sample in liquid nitrogen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_nitrogen) or a mixture of dry ice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_ice) and ethanol. Liquids are usually used because their thermal conductivity is about 40 times greater (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjQ-Zj05anVAhUJXRoKHYfJBNYQFghFMAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.springer.com%2Fcda%2Fcontent%2Fdocument%2Fcda_downloaddocument%2F9781493905560-c1.pdf%3FSGWID%3D0-0-45-1451902-p176558457&usg=AFQjCNGMJUOL0GGVSH2JHKCEwu8OHHqIuA) than air.

There are many forms of flash freezing from the mildest to the most sudden ones. So, what kind of flash freezing was experienced by the woolly mammoths?
"At normal body temperatures, stomach acids and enzymes break down vegetable material within an hour. - What inhibited this process? - The only plausible explanation is for the stomach to cool to about 40°F in ten hours or less. - But because the stomach is protected inside a warm body (96.6°F for elephants), how cold must the outside air become to drop the stomach's temperature to 40°F? - Experiments have shown that the outer layers of skin would have had to drop suddenly to at least -175°F!"

- Mark A. Krzos, Frozen Mammoths The undigested food (grasses, mosses, shrubs and tree leaves according to Russian scientist V.N. Sukachev (https://www.discoveryworld.us/the-wonders-of-creation/jungles-under-arctic-ice/)) found in the stomachs and digestive tracts of the mammoths is not the only evidence of flash freezing.

According to several accounts, (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiVj5SYzJLVAhUBChoKHevfCekQFghDMAY&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wesleygrovechapel.com%2Fupload%2FFrozen%2520Mammoths%25204.ppt&usg=AFQjCNHE1MiTpXdCIxZ0nSrqA4aM2Ra_AQ) food was also found in the mouths of the frozen mammoths. This food, consisting mainly of buttercups (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiD1OitpafVAhWCyhoKHWV9ArcQFgg9MAY&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.icr.org%2Farticle%2Fdid-frozen-mammoths-die-flood-or-ice-age%2F&usg=AFQjCNE9nLnFU-4ALQHiLuLVfSexz8UvQQ), had been cropped but not chewed or swallowed. The buttercup froze so rapidly that it still had the imprints of the mammoths molars. Despite its elasticity, the buttercup did not have time to revert back to its initial shape after the mammoth died.

For biology (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiqvKrJ4KvVAhWDlxoKHZdrDTQQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFlash_freezing&usg=AFQjCNG3TydaE9Z4yVC7TWVcQpMVoSIM_w) applications, the key idea of flash freezing is to drop temperature fast enough so large ice crystals can not form and damage the cells that would otherwise burst or be punctured by the sharp-edge ice crystals that form.

This is exactly what was revealed as the result of a detailed analysis of the cellular samples extracted from the woolly mammoths
"The flesh of many of the animals found in the muck must have been very [B]rapidly and deeply frozen, for its cells [had] not burst. Frozen-food experts have pointed out that to do this, starting with a healthy, live specimen, you would have to drop the temperature of the air surrounding it to a point well below minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit."

Ivan T. Sanderson, Riddle of the Frozen Giants, Saturday Evening Post, 16 January 1960, p. 82.
https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409570/medium/standard_20mammoths_20blood.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409570/full/standard_20mammoths_20blood.jpg)
The frozen mammoth found in Lyakhovsky


In 2013, a female mammoth in pristine condition was found (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-just-found-a-woolly-mammoth-that-still-had-liquid-blood-85103183/#uwSLXp2ShCtMOCFx.99) in the Lyakhovsky Islands in Siberia. Interestingly, when scientists poked at the mammoth's frozen remains with an ice pick, blood started to flow.

Given that blood starts to coagulate (http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=5999) only a few minutes after death, this suggests that the woolly mammoths froze so quickly that their blood didn't have time to coagulate.

According to experts, for this sudden freezing to occur inside the warm body (96.6°F (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi2p__-pqfVAhUJ6xQKHR2VBiUQFghJMAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwildpro.twycrosszoo.org%2FS%2F0MProboscidae%2FElephantidae%2Felephas%2FElephas_maxi mus%2F10EleMaxDetPhy.htm&usg=AFQjCNHTC6pdbwH05ycjsJ2RMEjbELZISA) for elephants) of woolly mammoths who had a thick layer of fat and hair, they would have to be subjected to extremely low temperatures: -175F (-100°C).

If we posit that temperature in Siberia , which was under a temperate climate at the time, was about 60F, it means that the temperature dropped from +60F to -175, that is a 235F (130°C) temperature drop within a few hours.

Has such a severe drop in temperature ever occurred in recorded history?

Recorded cases of sudden cooling on our planet.

First, let's check historical records to see if recent history ever witnessed such a severe cooling.

On 11/11/11 an exceptional thunderstorm (http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2011/11/11/a-record-setting-temperature-shift-100-years-ago-today/) located over the U.S. MidWest caused a drop of 69F (from 80 to 11) in 14 hours. This is the steepest recorded temperature drop. Yet this record drop in temperature pales in comparison to what happened to the mammoths both in terms of scope and temperature magnitude.

The current record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowest_temperature_recorded_on_Earth) low temperature is -89C (-128F) measured in Vostok station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_Station). In addition, Vostok is located close to the center of Antartica (South Pole) that experiences 6 month-long winter nights and subsequent freezing temperatures. This is not a temperate region like the one the mammoths inhabited.


https://www.sott.net/image/s15/310871/medium/dda4515c_6e1b_4bc0_a51c_43651d.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s15/310871/full/dda4515c_6e1b_4bc0_a51c_43651d.jpg)
Wind chill table


Notice that while -150F is required to flash freeze a mammoth, a higher temperature could achieve the same result if sufficient wind was generated.

This phenomenon is called 'wind chill'. For example, an air temperature of -60C combined with 110 km/h (55mph) winds leads to a heat loss equivalent to -100C, i.e. the temperature required to flash freeze mammoths and other animals (see wind chill table on the right).

While -100C or even -60C cannot be found on Earth's surface especially in temperate regions, this is a fairly common occurrence just a few miles above our heads.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409986/medium/troposphere_temperature_graph_.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409986/full/troposphere_temperature_graph_.gif)
The tropopause and the atmospheric temperature depending on elevation


At 7 miles altitude (roughly the elevation of Mount Everest) average temperatures vary between -50C and -80C. The 7 miles altitude marks the where the upper limit of the troposphere and the lower limit of the stratosphere meet. This boundary is called the 'tropopause'.

The problem is that the tropopause forms an almost unbreachable boundary. A very small number of documented events triggered a breach of the tropopause:
superderecho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho) (super-storm), giant smoke clouds triggered by massive fires (pyrocumulo nimbus (https://www.sott.net/article/pyrocumulonimbus)) and major volcanic eruptions (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj_k7zP_qnVAhUCQJoKHa4GBqMQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.earth.ox.ac.uk%2F%7Etamsinm%2FVEA.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEetl64jOuNSas3eBbv3QW3QuVxVQ).
However, such events are local and can't account for the flash freezing of the whole Siberian region along with part of Alaska and the Yukon.

So what could have carried the freezing upper atmosphere air down onto a vast region of the planet?
Comets and asteroids.
While it seems counter-intuitive that the impact of an asteroid could cause massive cooling on the surface of our planet, after all, when entering the atmosphere rocks heat up and on reaching the surface of the planet will spread fire and heat. That is true, but is it the whole story?


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409560/medium/Shuvalov_impact_asteroid_angle.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409560/full/Shuvalov_impact_asteroid_angle.jpg)
Analysis of an oblique asteroid impact. Density distributions are shown. The plume expands outside the wake in an oblique impact.


Atmospheric ablation induced by a cometary impact
Until recently, asteroids were solely considered as the harbingers of fire and scorching heat. However, in 1983, researcher Cameron (https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/maps/article/viewFile/15757/15745) came up with the concept of asteroid-induced atmospheric erosion.

When large and fast enough, an asteroid can obliterate part of the Earth's atmosphere. At impact, the asteroid vaporizes (heat and pressure transform the asteroid into gases), as does a similar mass of the Earth's surface where the impact occurs.

The ensuing hot gas plume can expand faster than escape velocity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity) which is about 11.2 km/s on Earth. For comparison the typical speed (http://www.brighthub.com/science/space/articles/64710.aspx) of asteroids in space is about 30 km/s. The escaping plume drives off the overlying air into space.

Specifically the part of the atmosphere that will be carried up into space along with the hot gas plume is shaped like a cone. It is known as the 'cone' of atmospheric erosion.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409559/large/Cone_atmospheric_erosion.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409559/full/Cone_atmospheric_erosion.jpg)
Impact erosion of the Earth's atmosphere


The shape of this cone will depend the size of the asteroid, its density, its speed and its angle relative to the Earth's surface.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409852/pod/water_drop_8947.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409852/full/water_drop_8947.jpg)
Water backdrop on top of a water plume


To understand better atmospheric erosion, let's look at an analogous phenomenon that we are familiar with, it is called 'water backdrop'.

When you drop an object in water, you'll sometimes witness water moving upwards from the location were the object impacted the water. The water acts like a spring and recoils upwards, this recoil can take the form of a water plume and/or water drops.

In a similar way after the impact of an asteroid, matter and gases will move upwards because of the recoil effect boosted by the rising ambient heat.

But, unlike the water drop, it won't fall back down because the speed of the rising material exceeds escape velocity (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj8qpb8gKrVAhUFfhoKHVBeBRoQFggwMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FEscape_velocity&usg=AFQjCNFL9_taXRAJQ24H4sNeZLC7seOB2g), that is the velocity required to escape the gravity of the planet, like a space rocket for example.

The drawing below is inspired from the work of Russian volcanologist V. Shuvalov (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/V_Shuvalov), who calculated the effects of cometary/asteroid bombardments in terms of atmospheric erosion.

However, the cases Shuvalov studied are limited to bodies that are smaller and exhibit a greater impact angle than the cometary fragments that hit Hudson Bay 12900 years ago. I've tried to apply Shuvalov's analysis to the Hudson object posited by Firestone:


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409557/large/SCAN_impact.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409557/full/SCAN_impact.jpg)
Impact of a 50-mile diameter cometary fragment at 15° angle


The cometary fragment (orange ball) is estimated to be 50 miles (80 km) in diameter and entered the atmosphere from the North at a low angle (about 15°) as depicted by the orange line.

At impact, the cometary fragment created a substantial but shallow primary crater about 300 miles in diameter (black crater) and a massive plume (red in the drawing) that will, in turn, create debris-induced secondary craters (the Carolina Bays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_bay) for example).

Notice the cone of atmospheric ablation, which is the turquoise area, below the blue dotted line (upper boundary of the atmosphere before ablation). The diameter of the cone at ground level is about 700 miles (1000 km) in diameter. The non-ablated part of the atmosphere is the dark blue area visible on the left and on the right of the drawing.

Of course, one single drawing doesn't convey the magnitude of the forces and dynamics that are likely present during such an impact, so allow me to explain further:
- At first the atmosphere around the cometary body is accelerated through friction (see blue arrow along the orange wake), it is similar to the wind you feel when standing by a car that passes nearby.

- At impact, the powerful wind created along the wake combines with the massive stream of super-hot gases and vaporized material, part of it reaches escape velocity and flies out into space in a massive updraft (see red arrow in the drawing) [B]carrying with it a large chunk of Earth's atmosphere (red ejecta). Meanwhile, the slowest ejecta falls back on Earth's surface (black and red ejecta)

- For a short period after the impact the ablation zone is a void of space emptiness (turquoise area). For reference, the temperature (http://sciencing.com/temperatures-outer-space-around-earth-20254.html) of outer space is -270.5°C or -455F while the temperature of space near the Earth (http://sciencing.com/temperatures-outer-space-around-earth-20254.html) is 10.17°C or 50.3F.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409574/medium/new_presentation_16_638.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409574/full/new_presentation_16_638.jpg)
Temperature of the atmospheric layers


- The vacuum is followed by a downdraft equally powerful to the updraft that preceded it. Super-cooled air violently refills the void.
This downdraft consists of air mostly located in the various layers of the upper atmosphere. Because higher atmosphere is less dense, its molecules move faster.

In the high atmosphere, the temperature is about -50C (-58F) average (see vertical blue line in the diagram on the right) but can be as low as -90C (-130F) just above the mesopause.

The whole refilling process involves super-cooled air because the surrounding air when filling the vacuum will encounter a pressure drop.

In addition, with part of the atmosphere having been ablated, the atmosphere as a whole loses volume and ends up being thinner which leads to an overall atmospheric pressure drop (decrease in the height of the atmospheric column).

Depression does cool gases: you have an example when you use an air spray to clean your keyboard: while the pressure in the can drops, the air gets colder and colder..

When combined together, the three atmospheric features listed above: tornado speed winds, cold air inflow from the upper atmosphere and super-cooling due to decompression may have led to truly unfathomable chill factors that could have easily flash frozen the woolly mammoths and numerous other animals.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409578/medium/permafrost_distribution_in_the.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409578/full/permafrost_distribution_in_the.jpg)
Permafrost distribution (Northern hemisphere)


Now that we have an idea of how the woolly mammoths and friends got flash-frozen, the next question is, how did they remain frozen.

To remain frozen, they would have had to remain in an environment where temperatures stayed below 0°C (-32F). Aside from the ice sheets, such conditions on earth occur only in the permafrost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost) which is found in mountains at high altitude or at high latitude (60° or more).

But Northern Siberia doesn't feature any high mountains and its latitude, at the time, was about 40° North. This means that Siberia experienced well above freezing temperatures most of the year.

To explain how the mammoths remained frozen for about 13,000 years, we must introduce the notion of wandering geographic poles (not the human kind).

[...]

Full article: https://www.sott.net/article/357709-...c-Catastrophes (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes)


Related:
Meteorite storm 'smashed the Earth 12,000 years ago and killed off a prehistoric people' (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?45635-Excavating-The-Empty-Tomb-The-Gospels-based-on-Homer-s-Odyssey&p=506302&viewfull=1#post506302)

[Hervé]

Now for the keystone that holds together the whole structure/explanation/theory very firmly in place.

To avoid confusion, a word about "geographic poles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_pole)": these are the locations of Earth's meridians' intersections which are made to coincide with the earth's rotational axis poles and determine the current longitude and latitude of the earth's grid and, usually, are located at the center of the ice caps.

Accordingly, documented paleo-ice-caps define former location of paleogeographical poles and, reciprocally, the drift of the continental crust with respect to current earth's rotational axis taken as a fixed reference due to earth's enormous gyroscopic momentum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope).


---------------------------------------------


Wandering Geographic Poles

It is commonly believed that the geographical pole has always been in the same present location. However, data prove that this is not the case. The location of the geographic pole has changed a lot even in recent times.

Some of the best evidence that the geographic poles have changed location is coral. Reef coral require a minimum water temperature of 68°F. However geologic analysis reveal the presence of coral in some of today's coldest areas:
"In the Carboniferous formation we again meet with plant remains and beds of true coal in the Arctic regions. Lepidodendrons and calamites, together with large spreading ferns, are found at Spitzbergen, and at Bear Island in the extreme north of Eastern Siberia; while marine deposits of the same age contain an abundance of large stony corals" (435:202).

- C. Hapgood, The path to the poles, p.159 For decades, Chinese oceanographer Ting Ying Ma (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwigoYmTrafVAhUGPhQKHWAkB7kQFggtMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.taipeitimes.com%2FNews%2Ffeat%2Farchives%2F2011%2F11%2F17%2F2003518491&usg=AFQjCNH5grhhWZZtlwIyA5G8lYjdVDZA4g) studied coral and managed to establish the positions of the ancient corral-lines which more or less coincide with the equator line. Ma's coral-lines/equator lines run in all directions, one even crosses the Arctic Ocean.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409582/medium/coral_siluiran.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409582/full/coral_siluiran.png)
The coral line during the Silurian epoch (about 430 million years ago)


Some old coral is found very far from the current equatorial region. Ancient coral colonies have also been found in Ellesmere Island, within the Arctic Circle (https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_magneticpoles_changes04.htm)

Another way to know the past location of the geographic poles is called paleomagnetism. It is based on the analysis of the direction of iron particles in rocks like magnetite or hematite.

When these rocks form while solidifying from a liquid phase (volcanic eruption for example), the magnetized iron in the molten rocks act as compasses and solidify in a position that lines up with the earth's magnetic field.

Not only do these iron particles indicate the direction of north at some time in the past, but because of their vertical dip they also indicate how far away the pole is (i.e. the latitude). The closer to the pole the iron particle is, the less vertically tilted it will be.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409592/medium/pole_location_hapgood.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409592/full/pole_location_hapgood.png)
Locations of the geographic pole since the Precambrian


One problem with this method is the fact that the magnetic pole also wanders. However, over a period of a few thousand years the magnetic pole returns to its original position, and the average position of the magnetic pole over the whole period coincides with the earth's axis of rotation. Therefore for paleomagnetism to reliably reveal the position of the geographic pole, samples over a long enough period of time have to be collected. That's the reason why lava flows are so valuable, eruption after eruption they stack over each other while each lava flow indicates the location of the pole at the time on an eruption.

Charles Hapgood compiled the locations of the geographic poles over the ages and his results were unexpected. For example, during the pleistocene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene) - the epoch that lasted from about 2,588,000 years ago and ended with the Younger Dryas - the geographic pole occupied 15 different locations.

From the Precambrian epoch until now, (about 100 millions years), Hapgood identified (https://books.google.fr/books?id=pJCet3hEGrwC&pg=PA410&lpg=PA410&dq=hapgood+229+location+pole&source=bl&ots=WEMH28CO1J&sig=E3ukH-gpw9HWtvl3cv8azLTXXg0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFmPjptafVAhWE0xQKHaJUCq8Q6AEISDAK#v=onepage&q=hapgood%20229%20location%20pole&f=false) a grand total of 229 different locations for the geographic poles.

Now that we know that the location of the geographic poles is not as fixed as we might have thought, let's try to determine where the geographic poles were located before the impacts in question.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409595/pod/MapPreClovisSites.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409595/full/MapPreClovisSites.jpg)
The Northern ice sheet (c. 13000 BP)


Location of the Geographic North Pole Before Impact.
Geology provides a robust method to determine the past location of ice caps and as a result, the past location of the geographic poles (the pole being roughly at the center of the ice cap).

Indeed, the edges of the ice cap are set in motion by the pressure of the ice behind them and start their scouring action, striating the bed rock of the continent over which the ice cap expanded.

Geological studies indicate that during the last phase of the pleistocene (17000 to 13000 BP), the Laurentide ice sheet (https://www.google.fr/search?q=laurentide+ice+sheet&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&ei=Q814WfHqN8mAVI7HoLgK) was centered around Hudson Bay (see map on the right).

The Laurentide ice sheet represented most of the Northern ice cap which covered almost all of Canada, Greenland (except its coast) and a small fraction of Northern Europe. All the rest of the Northern hemisphere including the Arctic ocean, Alaska, Siberia and part of the Yukon were ice free.

As noticed by Hapgood, the Laurentine ice sheet was similar both in size and shape to the present arctic ice sheet:
"The first line of evidence that the last North American ice cap was a polar ice cap is based on the shape, size, and peculiar geographical location of the ice sheet. Two geologists, Kelly and Dachille, have pointed out that the area occupied by the ice was similar both in shape and size to the present Arctic Circle. Many others have remarked on its unnatural location. It seems to have occupied the northeastern rather than the northern half of the continent. No one has explained why the ice cap, which extended southward as far as Ohio, did not cover some of the northern islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, islands lying between Hudson Bay and the pole or why it failed to cover the Yukon District of Canada or the northern part of Greenland. Later we shall examine a considerable amount of evidence indicating that the Arctic Ocean itself was warm during the ice age."

C. Hapgood, The path to the Poles, P. 216
https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409609/pod/488px_Antarctica_Location_of_t.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409609/full/488px_Antarctica_Location_of_t.jpg)
Location of the Ross sea. The green dot indicates the antipodes of Hudson Bay.


The above strongly suggests that before the Younger Dryas, the North geographic pole was located around Hudson Bay which is about 60° North, that is 30 degrees in longitude away from the current North pole.

But the peculiar Laurentide ice sheet is not the only evidence we have. The study of fossils provides a very good idea of what kind of plants and animals lived in different locations of the planet right before the Younger Dryas. This research tends to confirm that, at the end of the Pleistocene, the North pole was located in Hudson Bay.

Indeed, before the Younger Dryas, the Arctic ocean was a temperate ocean (as indicated by the presence of Foramainifera in sea cores (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjA6NjkuqfVAhXGzRQKHdE1BBAQFggwMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fearthobservatory.nasa.gov%2FFeatures%2FPaleoclimatology_SedimentCores%2Fpaleoclima tology_sediment_cores_2.php&usg=AFQjCNG6F1DbZ7DftbAIxVLGIFyXYQ5beA)), Siberia was a temperate regions as indicated by human remains, entire forests and temperate flora. Japan was warmer than today as indicated by flora that grows in temperate climate and by the corals of Okinawa (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=12&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwisk5uVu6fVAhVMvRQKHV6fARwQFghZMAs&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonlinelibrary.wiley.com%2Fdoi%2F10.1029%2F2004PA001061%2Ffull&usg=AFQjCNEvLlus6lbZB-YMvNThzVVVzSzBCw).

Another piece of evidence comes from Antarctica. A geographic North pole located around Hudson Bay would place the geographic South Pole about seven times farther away from the Ross Sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Sea) in Antarctica than it is now. Therefore, the Ross Sea should not have been glaciated at the end of the Pleistocene (c. 13000BP).

This is exactly what sea cores revealed with layers of fine sediment (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjaivz_u6fVAhWF6RQKHT-8DoMQFggtMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsp.lyellcollection.org%2Fcontent%2F381%2F1%2F167&usg=AFQjCNHqrsEOpN2lA2tU4sZ09u0nWuU9KA) typical of temperate climates. This fine sediment is carried by rivers from ice-free continents. Interestingly, if the North pole was located in Hudson prior to the Younger Dryas, it would explain two mysteries that have puzzled many experts.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409611/pod/newpole_avenue.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409611/full/newpole_avenue.jpg)
Alignment of the Avenue of the Dead in Teotihuacan with Hudson Bay


First, the awkward orientation of Stonehenge and Teotihuacan (http://viewzone2.com/changingnorth22.html). The main axis of these two sites points roughly towards the North, but not exactly (Teotihuacan is 15° off while Stonehenge is about 40° off).

However both point directly towards Hudson Bay. One might wonder if Stonehenge and Teotihuacan were built prior to the Younger Dryas and aligned with the North-South axis of the time.

Second, the ancient maps which represent an ice-free Antartica. A group of ancient maps, called "maps of the ancient sea kings" was published in 1531 by the French geographer Oronce Fine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oronce_Fin%C3%A9), but the maps were far more ancient than 1531. Apparently they were drawn by some very ancient people then preserved by some past civilizations (Greeks, Phoenicians...), and finally discovered by Fine.

The truly astounding features of these maps is that they depict a completely un-glaciated Antarctic continent. Remember that at the time of the discovery (1531) Antarctica was not even known.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409613/medium/finaeus.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409613/full/finaeus.jpg)
One of the Oronce Fine's maps showing an ice-free Antarctica


At first the maps were dismissed, but when scientists started to map the Antarctic continent they found that the ancient maps were too accurate to be the result of random chance:
"In several years of research, the projection of this ancient map was worked out. It was found to have been drawn on a sophisticated map projection, with the use of spherical trigonometry, and to be so scientific that over fifty locations on the Antarctic continent have been found to be located on it with an accuracy that was not attained by modern cartographic science until the nineteenth century."

C. Hapgood, The path to the poles, p. 258 The above evidence strongly suggests that, about 13000 years ago, the geographic North pole was located around Hudson Bay, which is about 60° N, or 30° away from the current North pole.

This would have placed Northern Siberia at 40° degrees of latitude North (the current longitude of Northern Siberia is 70° to which we subtract 30° leads to 40° N).

40°N (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_parallel_north) is the current latitude of Spain, Greece, Italy, California and Nevada. It is a latitude typical of temperate climate. It is under this temperate latitude that the woolly mammoths lived, but it's not under this latitude that their corpses were preserved frozen.

The cometary bombardment had dramatic effects for our planet including the location of its geographic poles. Now let's look at how it happened.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409744/medium/2176.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409744/full/2176.jpg)
Earth's internal structure


Crustal slippage
We consider our planet as a solid piece of rock because all we see is its surface made of solid rock (mountains, deserts, ocean floors, etc). However solid rock is only a tiny part of planet Earth, a thin layer (called 'crust' or ' lithosphere' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithosphere)) that is less than 100 km (60 miles) thick.

Beyond the crust is the mantle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_%28geology%29), a thick layer of magma with an average thickness of 2,886 kilometres (1,793 miles). While the lower part of the mantle behaves like a solid because of the tremendous pressures that bind the the molten material together, the upper mantle, also known as the asthenosphere, which is both hot and under relatively little pressure, exhibits a low viscosity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscosity) and has the mechanical properties of a semi- fluid.

Those fluid properties are particularly present in a specific layer of the asthenosphere:
"It seems that such a layer has been discovered in the asthenosphere at a depth of about 100 miles. According to the Soviet geophysicist V. V. Beloussov, chemical processes at this depth, made possible by change of phase, are changing heavier into lighter rock, thus causing gravitational instability as the lighter rock tries to rise to the surface. Beloussov has named this the "wave-guide layer." Observations by the American geophysicist Frank Press are in general agreement. Press finds (from satellite observations) that this layer is a very liquid one. It seems that if the earth's outer shell does slide as a unit over the interior, this is the most likely level at which the movement can occur."

Charles Hapgood, The path to the poles, p.119 So, from a mechanical perspective the crust is relatively similar to an iceberg floating on the ocean (the low viscosity asthenosphere). The low viscosity of the mantle explains why continents keep on drifting. It also suggests that it takes far less mechanical force to shift the crust relative to the mantle than to shift the whole planet.

Shifting the whole planet (crust, mantle and core) would require enormous forces. When one enters the data relative to the asteroids posited by Firestone (about 50 miles in diameter) in an asteroid impact simulator (http://simulator.down2earth.eu/input.html?lang=en&planet=Earth), the energy of Firestone's cometary fragment is way too low to have induced a change in the orbit, the spin rate or the tilt of the whole planet. Such an object could not budge our planet which, comparatively, carries way too much momentum.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409747/medium/mdof.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409747/full/mdof.jpg)
Mechanical simulation of an asteroid induced crustal slippage


For comparison, the estimated mass of Earth (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=25&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiX4IvmgqrVAhUF2xoKHbGcDB8QmhMIyAEwGA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FEarth&usg=AFQjCNHvpWSFuVxU27U-QWf9SiRGiJ_Piw) is about 6X1024 kg while the mass of an 100-mile diameter asteroid is about 1.2X1018 kg. The Earth is therefore about 5 million times heavier than the cometary fragment.

However, the low viscosity of the upper mantle, might have allowed such impacts to slip the crust relative to the mantle, particularly if the incoming asteroids exhibited a low angle (i.e. close to being tangential relative to Earth's surface) which seems to be the case for the cometary fragments posited by Firestone. The picture on the right shows the physics around an asteroid induced crustal slippage. The whole reasoning can be found here (https://noahsage.com/a-planet-most-miraculous/).

According to Charles Hapgood, the cometary bombardment slipped the crust by about 30° and the geographic poles moved to their current location. For Italian engineer Flavio Barbiero (http://www.qconference-athens-2011.grazian-archive.com/flaviobarbiero/confer-kandersteg-poles-ingl.pdf), the crust slipped by about 20° degrees.

Hapgood and Barbiero might be close to the truth. In any case, the slippage must have been greater than 20° in order to shift Siberia into the permafrost region (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/227662891_fig1_Figure-1-Drainage-basins-of-the-six-largest-arctic-rivers-and-the-extent-of-permafrost) (latitude greater than 60°N) and allow the mammoths to remain frozen.

At this point we have a good idea of how the mammoths may have been flash-frozen and how they remained frozen (crustal slippage moving the North pole closer to Siberia). However the corpses of the mammoths revealed several other puzzling pieces of evidence.

[...]

Full article: https://www.sott.net/article/357709-...c-Catastrophes (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes)

=========================================

Accordingly, the earth's crust suffered a N-S 30° shift in a blink of an eye by decoupling from the mantle in a similar way as hydraulic clutch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_coupling) and gear shifting occurs in motor vehicles... I have a hard time envisioning the size of the tsunami waves such generated and sloshing over any E-W orientated coast lines...

As an aside, the above handed me a closure to something I have had in the back of my mind for over 30 years due to an encounter, way up North, beyond the Arctic Circle, on Axel Heiberg Island (next to Ellesmere Island). That's as close to the North Pole one can get on solid ground and where I exclaimed:


"What the F**k are these doing here!?!"


"these" = coal/charcoal seams of recent geological time... where all that one can see around is tundra.

[Hervé]

I might as well continue to the end of Pierre Lescaudron's article.

I must say that Pierre Lescaudron did a hell of an excellent homework job that manages to tie most - if not all - of the loose ends that could have been thrown at the theory.


-----------------------------------------------


The Coroner's Verdict


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409749/medium/mammoths_berezovka_mammoth.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409749/full/mammoths_berezovka_mammoth.jpg)
The Berezovka mammoth


Since 1800, at least 11 scientific expeditions have excavated frozen mammoths. Most of them were found in Northern Siberia along with other mammals: ox, wolverine, voles, squirrels, bison, rabbit and lynx.

The Berezovka Mammoth (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjG9YqCg6rVAhVJBBoKHVh2C3QQFgg9MAY&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhanskrause.de%2FHKHPE%2Fhkhpe_12_01.htm&usg=AFQjCNFdEPJtuWpEhccd7mF1OLi4yp8rBw) is probably the most famous one. It was found frozen along the Berezovka river (hence its name) in a near perfect state of preservation.

Only part of his trunk and his head had to be reconstructed because they were not embedded in ice and were consequently eaten by predators.

It is displayed in the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the struggling position in which he was found near the Berezovka River, just inside the Arctic Circle.

The pristine state of the frozen mammoths allowed scientists to extract a lot of information about the mammoths per se and about their cause of death.

Actually, the mammoths are so well preserved that some scientists are attempting to use mammoth DNA in order splice it with Asian elephants to reintroduce (http://www.history.com/news/scientists-say-they-could-bring-back-woolly-mammoths-within-two-years) the extinct woolly mammoth.

Coroners who examined many mammoths found the same features in a number of them:

- fractures: the Berezovka mammoth had numerous broken bones including several ribs, shoulder blade and pelvis.



- dirt: found in the lungs and digestive tracks of the frozen mammoths.



It should be noted that the only cause of death that could be definitely established was suffocation. At least three mammoths and two rhinoceroses suffocated. No other cause of death has been established for the remaining woolly mammoths. Vollosovitch concluded that his second buried mammoth, found with a penile erection on Bolshoi Lyakhov Island, had suffocated. One mammoth named Dima was found to have pulmonary alveoli suggesting death by asphyxia after great exertion just before death. The Pallas rhinoceros also showed symptoms of asphyxiation.
-Yedomas: these are mounts (30 to 260 feet tall) made of soil mixed with thick veins of ice. Yedoma is widespread (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251493737_Cryostratigraphy_of_late_Pleistocene_syngenetic_permafrost_Yedoma_in_northern_Alaska_Itkil lik_River_exposure) in Siberia (Fig. 1), where the total area of its occurrence is about 1 million km2. Yedomas (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0093331) are very rich in carbon and they are literally filled with dead trees and dead animals. For example the 'mammoth cemetery' is a yedoma contained the corpses of not less than 156 mammoths. The soil constituting the yedomas is called 'loess (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess)', which is basically wind blown silt (i.e. eolian sediment).


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409762/medium/IMG_7696.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409762/full/IMG_7696.jpg)
Cross section of a yedoma exposed by river erosion

- Upright position: 112 mammoths, including the Berevoska one, were found in an upright position.
Now that we know the features of the cometary bombardment and the evidence found by the mammoths' coroners, we can attempt to combine them and reconstruct the catastrophic timeline that sealed the tragic fate of these creatures.

Each location experienced its own variation on the disaster theme. Describing each combination of effects experienced in each part of the globe would be too tedious and, after all, our main topic is the woolly mammoths. So, in the following, we will focus on the sequence of events that occurred in Siberia and led to the demise of the woolly mammoths.

The Tragic Fate of the Woolly Mammoths
As indicated by the discovery (http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/hapgood_charles/path_10.html) of the ripe fruits of sedge, grasses, and other plants in the stomach of mammoths, the action takes place in the middle of summer, in a temperate and lush Northern Siberia forest, about 12900 years ago.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409782/medium/images.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409782/full/images.jpg)
Chelyabinsk meteor flash


First, a new star appeared in the night sky, then it grew in magnitude. It became visible in daytime and eventually it outshone the sun, both in brightness and size.

A few minutes before impact, the 'second Sun' separated into at least 5 majors parts and many minor ones which crossed the sky above Siberia and followed their trajectory towards the North before disappearing beyond the horizon (traveling at about 35 km/s).

The sky was streaked with the fiery wakes of thousands of small fragments that disintegrated in the atmosphere. A sudden wind triggered by the wake of the major cometary fragments started to blow up dirt from the ground and shake the surrounding trees.

Powered by the air depressions (https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/maps/article/viewFile/15757/15745) created by the wakes, the wind grew in force, the air became filled with dust, the mammoths braced themselves against the wind as they raised their heads and opened their mouth, gasping for some dust-free air.

The impact itself lit up the Northern horizon, the prolonged flash of light was blinding. The updraft plume threw a massive chunk of heated atmosphere into space. The pressure dropped suddenly, bringing down the atmospheric temperature and for a few seconds the mammoths were exposed to the glacial void of space, and the flash freezing began. Some mammoths died at this point from suffocation.

This freezing in a vacuum might explain a very peculiar 'oxygen free' ice that was found underneath the frozen mammoths:
"Deeper down in the cliff the ice becomes more solid and transparent, in some places entirely white and brittle. After remaining exposed to the air even for a short time this ice again assumes a yellowish-brown color and then looks like the old ice."

Obviously, something in the air (probably oxygen) reacted chemically with something in the ice. - Why was air (primarily oxygen and nitrogen) not already dissolved in the ice? - Just as liquid water dissolves table salt, sugar, and many other solids, water also dissolves gases in contact with it. - For example, virtually all water and ice on earth are nearly saturated with air. - Had air been dissolved in Herz's rock ice before it suddenly turned yellowish-brown, the chemical reaction would have already occurred.

Mark A. Krzos, Frozen Mammoths Then hurricane force winds started blowing super-cooled air toward the impact zone to refill the vacuum. This supernatural freezing wind lasted for hours. If the cone of ablation was 400 km in radius, hurricane force winds (200 km/h) would blow for two hours to refill the void. It froze the mammoths and many other creatures to the core.

While some mammoths remained frozen to the ground in their upright position, others were blown away and/or bombarded with flying/drifting debris (trees, boulders), this might explain the numerous broken bones found during the autopsies.

Along with this freezing wave, Siberia was inundated with unprecedented rainfall. The two main ingredients for precipitation are cooling and dust. The cooling leads to condensation (atmospheric water vapor transforming into liquid water) and the atmospheric dust acts as nucleation agents around which rain droplets form.

The magnitude of the cooling and the quantity of atmospheric dirt-saturated air led to torrential rainfall. In Siberia, where the cooling was the most severe, it was an even more severe deluge made of hail and snow.

Because of the quantity of dust, soot, dirt and sediments in the atmosphere, the falling hail and snow were very dirty and dumped on Siberia exceptional quantities of frozen water soot and sediment.

https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409779/medium/albedo_applied_to_mammoths_cro.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409779/full/albedo_applied_to_mammoths_cro.jpg)
Albedo loop and volcanic activity


The sheets of dirty rain, hail and snow would have stopped after a few days once atmospheric dust and water vapor were removed from the atmosphere by precipitation, but it continued because atmospheric dust and water kept being supplied by the ongoing ground and underwater volcanic eruptions triggered by the impact and the crustal slippage.

On top of this, the cooling was sustained and even worsened by an "albedo loop" where an increasing part of the planet surface was covered with snow and ice which reflected more and more of the little sunlight that managed to penetrate the dusty atmosphere, which led to further cooling that created more ice and snow.

The diagram on the right describes the albedo loop and how sustained volcanic activity powered and worsened the whole dynamic.

In the above we have used mainstream concepts (dust, rain condensation, cooling) to explain the weather effects of the bombardment. However electricity also plays a major role, particularly when atmospheric dust is involved.

The role played by electricity in weather phenomena has been thoroughly covered in our book Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection (https://www.sott.net/article/298798-Review-Earth-Changes-and-the-Human-Cosmic-Connection). Below is a very quick summary of the influence of electric charges and atmospheric dust on precipitation.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/410098/medium/droplets.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/410098/full/droplets.jpg)
Influence of electric field on the size of water drops © Bounds



In fair weather conditions, electrons on the surface of Earth are attracted by the positively charged ionosphere. If there is dust in the atmosphere the free circulation of electrons is hindered and electrons are captured by the atmospheric dust creating negatively charged areas in the atmosphere.

Those local atmospheric electric charges are what ultimately power hurricanes with their associated precipitation and lightning which are charge-balancing phenomena that bring electrons back to the Earth's surface. In addition, electric charges catalyze (https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi6xLGsyazVAhWBWxoKHeP8AlkQFggtMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpuhep1.princeton.edu%2F%7Emcdonald%2FJEMcDonald%2Fmcdonald_jm_17_442_60.pdf&usg=AFQjCNE38qWmJ--ZL60Pg1UTUwTFi3KGkw) the accretion of water droplets.

The event generated numerous and massive sources of atmospheric dust (impacts, volcanic eruptions, giant forest fires triggered by the plume and the ejecta and tornado speed winds). In addition, the atmospheric dust coming from the cometary fragments was very positively charged.

The positively charged cometary fragments themselves disrupted the atmospheric electrical field (between the Earth surface and the ionosphere) which is the driver of chaotic weather.

Under relatively normal conditions, precipitation can be more than 70 inches (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/greatest-rainfall-24-hours) (almost 2 meters) over 24 hours, so we can start to imagine the kind of precipitation induced by the unique combination of factors listed above (dust saturated atmosphere, electrically charged dust and disrupted atmospheric electrical field)


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/410099/medium/Figure_1_General_distribution_.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/410099/full/Figure_1_General_distribution_.png)
Yedoma geographic distribution


Precipitation carried tons of atmospheric dust down to earth and might well be the cause for the yedoma, which are basically an accumulation of wind blown sediment and frozen water.

This layer of wind blown sediment must have covered many parts of the Northern hemisphere. But it is only found today in parts of Siberia and Alaska because those regions are covered by permafrost that held the ice complex/yedoma together and prevented water erosion (rain and rivers) from washing it away into the oceans.

It was a truly apocalyptic scenario that is difficult to fathom. Perhaps the closest comparison would be a months-long glacial giant hurricane generating incredible winds, mountains of dirty hail and snow, flying trees and animals, rolling boulders with never ending volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in the background.

Tsunamis were, of course, also part of the picture. At the time however, the sea level was 80 meters lower than it is today. So evidence for tsunamis is scarce.

The Hudson impactor must have been a major cause for tsunamis. It directly hit the 2-mile thick ice cap and projected thousands of cubic miles of ice onto the Atlantic oceani. This massive amount of ice released into the ocean is accounted for by the 6 meter rise in ocean level. (https://books.google.fr/books?id=oVWyAZVNqxIC&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=younger+dryas+helium-3&source=bl&ots=dBeDE2ps2Z&sig=9Ce9N_lEyAxIKCsk1u4h6EY0z6Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwih2obvsqTVAhXIlxoKHRWCD0IQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=younger%20dryas%20helium-3&f=false)
"Reconstruction of the glacial melt history finds major northward melt-water discharge 13,100-12,500 years ago, at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. The outflow entered the Arctic Ocean, via the Mackenzie River, Fram Strait, and ultimately reached the eastern North Atlantic.'

Geomorphological data, on the other hand, suggest that still blocked routes to the north and east toward the St. Lawrence Seaway until the end of the Younger Dryas. Sea level curves from Tahiti, New Guinea, and Barbados show a small step (under 6 meters) around 13,000 years ago near the Younger Dryas onset, which may have come from this deluge."

Vivien Gornitz, Rising Seas: Past, Present, Future, p.127 When contemplating the catastrophe described above, one can't help being reminded of the 'mythical' Great Deluge, the 40 days of rain that faced Noah and which wiped out most of humanity, according to the Bible.

Actually, the Bible is far from being the only tradition that tells of a great deluge. In 500 cultures spanning all continents, researcher Douglas Eddinger (http://www.ettingerjournals.com/papers/dbe_Great_Deluge.pdf?view=Fit&scrollbar=1&toolbar=1&navpanes=1&pagemode=bookmarks) found that about 90% of them included the account of a great deluge.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409788/medium/dbe_Great_Deluge_tradition.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409788/full/dbe_Great_Deluge_tradition.jpg)
Excerpt from the table listing the features of traditional accounts © Eddinger



Conclusion:

While researching the topic of the frozen mammoths, I discovered an unexpected anomaly. The Younger Dryas was a 1400-year global cooling period (see red curve on the right) which led to an increase in the size of ice sheets.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409741/medium/sea_level_temp_YD.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409741/full/sea_level_temp_YD.jpg)
Sea level VS global temperature (20000BP-Now)


However during the same time (13000BP-11500BP) sea levels rose by about 20 meters (RisingSeas:Past,Present,FutureByVivienGornitz) (from -70 to -50m).

Cooling usually means an increase in ice sheet size that leads to a drop in sea level (the sea water being transformed into ice). Yet during the Younger Dryas, the exact opposite happened.

Where did all this extra water come from?

One possibility is an extraterrestrial inflow: planet Mars might have been closer than usual to planet Earth at the time, and through electrogravitation, Earth might have 'stolen' water that is today said to be 'missing' from Mars (https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2014/sep/22/nasa-maven-spacecraft-mars-missing-water).

That would explain the sudden rise of sea levels on Earth (despite the Younger Dryas cooling) and the fact that nowadays Mars is a dry planet despite plenty of evidence showing that in the past it had vast water systems. But there are enough outlandish claims in this article already (cometary bombardments, atmosphere ablation, flash freezing, crustal slippage) without delving into another rather controversial topic.

Whether Earth interacted with Mars or not, it is clear that the Younger Dryas period was marked by serious catastrophes. The woolly mammoths and the Clovis people were the tragic witnesses to a major cosmic event that deeply transformed our planet about 13,000 years ago.

This event is a serious thorn in the side of uniformitarians who, despite copious evidence, still deny the facts before them. The insistence on clinging to a uniformitarian dogma that has proven to be false can be found in the very foundation of politics and power, as mentioned in ECHCC:
"The legitimacy of the ruling class - in whatever political form it may take - is based on the illusion that they can protect the people, whether from war, famine, economic hardship, or any other kind of disaster that disrupts the everyday routine of their lives and livelihood. ...

By attributing the cause of these cosmically-induced events to humans, the elites maintain the illusion that they are, at least to some degree, in control; if they are causing it, then theoretically, at least, they could stop it."

P. Lescaudron & L. Knight Jadczyk, Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection, p. If even a smaller version of the Younger Dryas cometary bombardment happens during our time, I would be curious to see how the elites react, if indeed they survive to react at all. Will they acknowledge the fragile human condition and their total powerlessness in the face of cosmic forces? Or will they try to parlay the cosmically induced event into a human made catastrophe as they are currently doing with global warming and climate change?

The 'Russia did it' meme has been working so well for Western power brokers lately that the temptation to use it in such a critical context might prove too much for them. I can almost see the CNN headline: 'Mad, Bad Vlad, already the source of all trouble on the globe, pressed the button and made it explode'.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409742/large/00_vitaly_podvitsky_putin_did_.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409742/full/00_vitaly_podvitsky_putin_did_.jpg)
Putin did it! He pressed the button!

[ThePythonicCow]

I might as well continue to the end of Pierre Lescaudron's article.

I must say that Pierre Lescaudron did a hell of an excellent homework job that manages to tie most - if not all - of the loose ends that could have been thrown at the theory.

Yes - most excellent - thanks for posting all this!

[Nick Matkin]

Expectation management...

35828

[Spiral]

Prepare to have your mind blown....

ITtvK1wyptU

mPcF40vBqzs

Earth geology is primarily a study of incremental processes over eons of time. Volcanoes, earthquakes, weathering and erosion are the forces that geologists theorize as having shaped our planet’s land forms and surfaces. But the Electric Universe is opening new theoretical pathways for understanding our Earth, and all planets and moons. In the Electric Universe theory as proposed by the chief principals of The Thunderbolts Project, in a relatively recent period of chaos in the inner solar system, interplanetary electrical discharges shaped the surfaces of the planets, including the Earth. What evidence do see we of these events on our planet? In this Space News, Thunderblog author and colleague Andrew Hall begins the first of a three-part presentation on revolutionary concepts of Electric Universe geology.

https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2016/05/11/arc-blast-part-1/



More..

MDbDMlEWIIY

[Foxie Loxie]

Mission accomplished....mind blown!! :boom:

[Hervé]

Thunderbolts Space News: Electric Comets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDa0Ax4TZlU)

Thunderbolts Project YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDa0Ax4TZlU)
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:16 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/415964/large/electric_comets.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/415964/full/electric_comets.jpg)
© YouTube/Thunderbolts Project (screen capture)


In our previous episode, we began a commemoration of the 5-year anniversary of Space News from the EU with a comprehensive summary of the most significant findings to date from comet missions. Today, we continue our commemoration with a review of the some of the most dramatic and "surprising" comet displays, all of which point to the electrical nature of cometary phenomena.


KDa0Ax4TZlU
Previous episode: Space News Anniversary: Comet Missions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ZX6... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ZX6LReaMw)

[Hervé]

Evidence suggest a collision and several close encounters with comets in the last 2000 years (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/the-atomic-comet-the-thorium-connection/)

Malaga Bay (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/the-atomic-comet-the-thorium-connection/)
Fri, 15 Sep 2017 01:06 UTC

If you have long suspected the mainstream is being less than honest [or simply delusional] when they describe Comets as "dirty snowballs" or [more recently] "icy dirtballs" then you might be interested to discover Close Cometary Encounters are associated with sudden spikes in the level of Thorium 232.
Cometary nuclei are composed of an amalgamation of rock, dust, water ice, and frozen gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia.

As such, they are popularly described as "dirty snowballs" after Fred Whipple's model.

However, some comets may have a higher dust content, leading them to be called "icy dirtballs".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet Dangerous Close Cometary Encounters occur when:

a) Comets collide with the Earth.
b) Comets pass directly between the Earth and the Sun.

In the second case the alignment exposes the Earth to a potential Cometary Double-Tap whereby:

1) The "gas tail" of the Comet is delivered directly into the Earth's upper atmosphere.
2) The "dust tail" of the Comet side-swipes the Earth with a debris train.
Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 74-79 years... a coma, or atmosphere, up to 100,000 km across... a long tail, which may extend more than 100 million kilometers... Halley's nucleus is relatively small: barely 15 kilometers long, 8 kilometers wide and perhaps 8 kilometers thick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%27s_Comet#Structure_and_composition

The evidence suggests a collision and several close encounters have occurred in the last 2,000 years.
The Evidence
The evidence for Atomic Comets originates in the Thorium 230 and [strangely spiky] Thorium 232 values found in a coral reef lagoon sediment core from the South China Sea.

https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419560/large/coral_reef_thorium_230_south_c.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419560/full/coral_reef_thorium_230_south_c.gif)
© Quaternary Science Reviews



https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419561/large/chinese_coral_data_example.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419561/full/chinese_coral_data_example.gif)
High-precision TIMS U-series and AMS 14 C Dating of a Coral Reef Lagoon Sediment Core from southern South China Sea K.-F. Yu et al. / Quaternary Science Reviews 25 (2006) 2420-2430 © Quaternary Science Reviews


See: Thorium 230: Chinese Corals (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/thorium-230-chinese-corals/) Overlaying the Thorium traces from the coral reef lagoon sediment core enables the Thorium 232 peaks to be dated from the top of the core [2004 CE] down to the Heinsohn Horizon [914 AD] because the sediment deposition rate is fairly steady.

Overall, given the simplicity of the approach it's surprising to discover so many of the Thorium 232 spikes align with "known" Close Cometary Encounters.


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419562/large/coral_reef_thorium_overlay_sou.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419562/full/coral_reef_thorium_overlay_sou.gif)
© Quaternary Science Reviews


607 AD - Comet Halley Closest Approach: 13,463,808 km
The precursor event to the Arabian Horizon appears to be have been a very close encounter with Comet Halley in 607 AD.

See: Close Encounters of the Cometary Kind (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/close-encounters-of-the-cometary-kind/)


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/history-of-comet-halley1.gif

637 AD - Caesar's Comet
The largest Thorium 232 peak aligns with the Arabian Horizon and this has been associated with the "seven-day visitation" of possibly the "brightest daylight comet in recorded history".

It is thought Caesar's Comet "may have disintegrated" and this view is clearly supported by the evidence indicating debris from Caesar's Comet collided with Earth.

https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419563/large/comet_of_eight_rays_with_tail_.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419563/full/comet_of_eight_rays_with_tail_.gif)
© Classical Numismatic Group



https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419564/large/libby_cedar_isotope_comet_hall.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419564/full/libby_cedar_isotope_comet_hall.gif)
© Malaga Bay


See Comet Halley and the Roman Time Line (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/comet-halley-and-the-roman-time-line/)

[B]Caesar's Comet (numerical designation C/-43 K1) - also known as Comet Caesar and the Great Comet of 44 BC - was perhaps the most famous comet of antiquity.

Its seven-day visitation was interpreted by Romans as a sign of the deification of recently assassinated dictator, Julius Caesar (100-44 BC).

Caesar's Comet is one of only five comets known to have had a negative absolute magnitude and may have been the brightest daylight comet in recorded history.

It was not periodic and may have disintegrated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_Comet 912 AD - Comet Halley Closest Approach: 73,302,957 km
The Heinsohn Horizon is associated a close encounter with Comet Halley near it's perihelion position in 912 AD when the comet's "gas tail" was directed towards Earth after which it's "dust tail" side-swiped the Earth.
The Transit of Venus in 912 CE also suggests 912 CE was a very powerful alignment and that a Halley-Venus-Earth alignment could have emulated the conditions associated with Immanuel Velikovsky's "Comet Venus"....

See: Close Encounters of the Cometary Kind (https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/close-encounters-of-the-cometary-kind/)


https://malagabay.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/comet-halley-912-ad.gif?w=640
1145 AD - Comet Halley Closest Approach: 41,887,404 km
The Thorium 232 peak dated to 1140 AD is possibly associated with the return of Comet Halley in 1145 AD - see diagram above.

1577 CE - Great Comet Closest Approach: 1,465,330 km
The Great Comet of 1577 was another close encounter for the Earth with the comet passing within "230 semidiameters of the earth from the earth".
The Great Comet of 1577 (official designation: C/1577 V1) was a comet that passed close to Earth during the year 1577 AD.

It was viewed by people all over Europe, including the famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and Turkish astronomer Taqi ad-Din. From his observations of the comet, Brahe was able to discover that comets and similar objects travel above the Earth's atmosphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Comet_of_1577


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419566/large/the_great_comet_of_1577.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419566/full/the_great_comet_of_1577.gif)
© Tycho Brahe


Tycho's reason for having taken great pains to investigate the parallax was that therein lay the entire knowledge of the place and characteristics of the comet.

He saw from many observations with appropriate instruments, and thereafter found through the scientific demonstration of spherical triangles, that this comet was so far from us that its greatest horizontal parallax could not exceed 15′ and was more likely to be less.

This he thought he had thoroughly shown from observations in his Latin work on this comet which he considered understandable by the masters.

From this it followed, according to Tycho, by "geometrical distribution" that this comet was at least 230 semidiameters of the earth from the earth.

The Comet of 1577 - C Doris Hellman - 1944
https://archive.org/stream/TheCometOf1577/Hellman-TheCometOf1577#page/n129/mode/1up 1861 CE - Great Comet Closest Approach: 19,840,000 km
The uppermost spike in the Thorium 232 trace is associated with the Great Comet of 1861 which "interacted with the Earth in an almost unprecedented way".
The Great Comet of 1861 formally designated C/1861 J1 and 1861 II, is a long-period comet that was visible to the naked eye for approximately 3 months.
...
The comet may have interacted with the Earth in an almost unprecedented way.

For two days, when the comet was at its closest, the Earth was actually within the comet's tail, and streams of cometary material converging towards the distant nucleus could be seen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/1861_J1


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419568/large/great_comet_of_1861_30_june_18.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/419568/full/great_comet_of_1861_30_june_18.gif)
© T W Webb

Clearly, the evidence suggests the Atomic Comet is worthy of further investigation...

[Hervé]

The comet that sparked a global flood 'Myth' (http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/comet-sparked-worldwide-flood-myth-009168)

Dennis Brooks Ancient Origins (http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/comet-sparked-worldwide-flood-myth-009168)
Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:29 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433810/large/Worldwide_Flood_Myth.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433810/full/Worldwide_Flood_Myth.jpg)


It seems that Noah's Great Biblical Flood was caused by comet fragments striking the earth. Isaac Newton was the first one to come up with a theory connecting the flood to a comet strike, in 1680. According to an article at National Georgraphic.com (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/comet-new-years-eve-newton-flood-bible-gravity-science/), Newton declared that a comet had passed close to Earth thousands of years ago and came so close that it doused our world with water from its tail and exerted enough gravitational force to pull forth oceans from beneath our planet's crust.

Now, a new theory provides evidence that backs up Newton's idea that a comet was involved. According to this theory, between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, a comet entered the earth's atmosphere and broke up into thousands of pieces. Those fragments rained down fire and brimstone on the earth. Some of the fragments landed all over the world, including Europe and the Far East. It is estimated that over 500,000 fragments landed in north America alone.


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433811/large/C2014.jpg
C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) is a long-period comet discovered on 17 August 2014 by Terry Lovejoy. This photograph was taken from Tucson, Arizona, using a Sky-Watcher 100mm APO telescope and SBIG STL-11000M camera. © John Vermette/ CC BY SA 4.0



Carolina Bays
The craters and impressions left behind by the bombardments are now called Carolina Bays . They are found in North America along the Eastern Seaboard. Most of them are within the coastal states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and Nebraska. The people in Maryland refer to them as Maryland Basins.

Fragments also landed in the Gulf of Mexico and in the country of Mexico. This comet strike, which can be called the Carolina Event, left behind evidence that scientists can use to determine when the event took place. This area still needs research! Researchers will have to excavate more of the craters and examine the different layers of sediment. This would be similar to the way we examine the rings of a tree to determine its age.


https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8d/09/71/8d0971dd3282c6b92ef60cb82a96d2f9--state-parks-depression.jpg
Jones Lake State Park - this aerial clearly shows the mysterious shallow depressions called Carolina Bays


Explaining a worldwide 'Myth'
The comet fragments that landed in the oceans caused worldwide flooding. This included all the shores and islands of both oceans. Tsunami waves backed up all the rivers, leading to the oceans including those in the Americas, Africa, and Europe, destroying everyone in the area. This would explain why all cultures all over the world have a flood (myth) story to tell.


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433815/large/deadly_and_disruptive_floods.jpg
The most deadly and disruptive floods would be talked about for years to come. Here Aztecs perform a ritual to appease the angry gods who had flooded their capital.


Tsunami waves would have destroyed everything in the low-lying areas. This includes people on shorelines, in marshes, around bays, and in near shore valleys. The fragments that hit the Atlantic Ocean would have created a continuous wall of water going across the ocean. All the islands in the Atlantic Ocean would have been covered with water. Both The Canary Islands and Great Britain would have been under water, except for their mountains.


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433816/large/Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa.jpg
‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’ (c.1830-1833) by Hokusai.


Tsunami waves forced their way through the Strait of Gibraltar and flooded the Mediterranean Basin. The water going in filled up the basin because no water had time to come back out through the strait. As the basin overflowed, the water flooded towns, villages, and seaports. Sea-levels in the Mediterranean Basin got higher and higher until the runoff went out into the desert.

The flood covered everything; including Alexandria, Beirut, Cairo, Egypt, Italy, and Jerusalem. When the floodwaters began to recede from the land, tons of trees, boats, ships, lumber, buildings, and bridges were carried back into the sea. This floating debris converged at the strait and clogged the opening with floating ships, boats, lumber, and trees. Floodwaters would have carried dead bodies, grass, mud, and silt to the dam and sealed it to prevent the flow of water back into the ocean. According to an article by ABC News, floodwater overfilled the Basin of the Black Sea. You can also read this in the research of Robert Ballard: "Evidence Noah's Biblical Flood Happened."


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433817/large/Great_Flood_0.jpg
The Great Flood (circa 1450)


Marking the Giza Plateau
When the flood water drained back into the Mediterranean Basin (https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7308677,-5.572595,247506m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en) from the desert, it left behind fourteen feet (4.27 meters) of organic sediment around the pyramids on the Giza Plateau. This silt contains seashells and fossils that have been analyzed by scientists. While analyzing the silt, researchers found evidence that helped to determine the age of the event. Radiocarbon-dating found that the silt was 11,600 years old.

Ballard was able to establish a timeline by carbon dating shells found along the shoreline, while looking for evidence of a catastrophic event. His finding shows that the Biblical Flood happened between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago.


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433818/large/The_Flood.jpg
The Flood (Die Sintflut, Suendflut) by Lesser Ury.


The water from the sea left a unique high water mark on the pyramid that stands the highest above sea level. Take a look at the walls of the three pyramids on the Plateau . (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/archaeology/giza-pyramids/) The outside covering has been washed away from all of the pyramids except for the top part of the highest one above sea-level. That outside covering was washed away by floating flood debris, leaving only a cap. The cap now acts as the only high water mark showing the height of Noah's Flood. Judging from the cap on the pyramid, the water may have risen as high as 65 feet (19.81 meters) above sea level in the desert.


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433819/large/The_Giza_pyramids.jpg
The Giza-pyramids and Giza Necropolis, Egypt, seen from above


Also, when one of the pyramids was first opened, incrustations of salt one inch (2.54 cm) thick were found inside it. When a chemical analysis was conducted on the salt, researchers found that it had a mineral content the same as salt from the ocean. This evidence indicates that the pyramids were swamped by water that came from the ocean. You may find a reference to this information on the website provided by Martin Gray . (http://sacredsites.com/africa/egypt/the_great_pyramid_of_giza.html)

Also, according to Dr. Robert M. Schoch, erosion on the Sphinx could have only been caused by water. His research shows that the erosion took place about 11,700 years ago. This puts the timeframe of the Great flood in the same timeframe as the Carolina Event and the sediment around the pyramids. Find this reference at www.robertschoch. (http://www.robertschoch/)


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/433820/large/Great_Sphinx.jpg
Giza Plateau - Great Sphinx - front view. © Daniel Mayer



References
Brooks, D. "Atlantis Pyramids Floods." www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KCZOWQ (http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KCZOWQ)

Strauss, M. "Why Newton Believed a Comet Caused Noah's Flood." https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/comet-new-years-eve-newton-flood-bible-gravity-science/

Ballard, R. "Evidence Noah's Biblical Flood Happened, Says Robert Ballard" http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/evidence-suggests-biblical-great-flood-noahs-time-happened/story?id=17884533

Gray, M. "The Great Pyramid of Giza." https://sacredsites.com/africa/egypt/the_great_pyramid_of_giza.html

Schoch, R. M. "The Official Website of Robert M. Schoch." www.robertschoch (http://www.robertschoch)

Zamora, A. "Origin of the Carolina Bays." http://www.scientificpsychic.com/etc/carolina-bays/origin-of-carolina-bays.html


Related:
Carolina Bays: Solved (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?95616-Carolina-Bays-Solved)
Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?88088-Bolides-Comets-Asteroids-Meteors-And-Falling-Skies&p=1169728&viewfull=1#post1169728)
Younger Dryas Sea Level Anomaly (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?97192-It-s-So-Obvious-Most-Everyone-Misses-It...&p=1172823&viewfull=1#post1172823)

[Hervé]

Scotland: Geologists discover 60-million-year-old meteorite strike and new mineral forms (https://phys.org/news/2017-12-geologists-scotland-million-year-old-meteorite.html)

Phys.org (https://phys.org/news/2017-12-geologists-scotland-million-year-old-meteorite.html)
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/439133/large/1Simon_Drake_Loch_Slapin_Isle_.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s21/439133/full/1Simon_Drake_Loch_Slapin_Isle_.jpg)
Site 1 is above the tree line in the mid-ground far side of Loch Slapin, Isle of Skye, Scotland © Simon Drake


Geologists exploring volcanic rocks on Scotland's Isle of Skye found something out-of-this-world instead: ejecta from a previously unknown, 60 million-year-old meteorite impact. The discovery, the first meteorite impact described within the British Paleogene Igneous Province (BPIP), opens questions about the impact and its possible connection to Paleogene volcanic activity across the North Atlantic.

Lead author Simon Drake, an associate lecturer in geology at Birkbeck University of London, zeroed in on a meter-thick layer at the base of a 60.0 million-year-old lava flow. "We thought it was an ignimbrite (a volcanic flow deposit)," says Drake. But when he and colleagues analyzed the rock using an electron microprobe, they discovered that it contained rare minerals straight from outer space: vanadium-rich and niobium-rich osbornite.


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/439137/large/2_quartz_Simon_Drake.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s21/439137/full/2_quartz_Simon_Drake.jpg)
Thin section view of meteoritic ejecta deposit site 1. Note fractured quartz and pervasive fabric. Field of view 4 mm XPolars. © Simon Drake


These mineral forms have never been reported on Earth. They have, however, been collected by NASA's Stardust Comet Sample Return Mission as space dust in the wake of the Wild 2 comet. What's more, the osbornite is unmelted, suggesting that it was an original piece of the meteorite. The team also identified reidite, an extremely high pressure form of zircon which is only ever associated in nature with impacts, along with native iron and other exotic mineralogy linked to impacts such as barringerite.

A second site, seven kilometers away, proved to be a two-meter-thick ejecta layer with the same strange mineralogy. The researchers pin the impact (https://phys.org/tags/impact/) to sometime between 60 million and 61.4 million years ago (Ma), constrained by a 60 Ma radiometric age for the overlying lava flow, and 61.4 Ma for a basalt clast embedded within the ejecta layer. The team published their discovery in Geology this week.


https://www.sott.net/image/s21/439136/large/1_geologistsin.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s21/439136/full/1_geologistsin.jpg)
Recessed meteoritic ejecta layer site 1.1-m-thick deposit beneath thick sequence of basaltic lava flows. © Simon Drake


The discovery opens many questions. Is the same ejecta layer found elsewhere in the BPIP? Where exactly did the meteorite hit? Could the impact have triggered the outpouring of lava that began at the same time, or be related to volcanism in the larger North Atlantic Igneous Province? So far, Drake has collected samples from another site on Skye that also yield strange mineralogy, including another mineral strikingly similar to one found in comet dust.

Drake says he was surprised that the ejecta layer had not been identified before. After all, the Isle of Skye is famously well-trampled by geologists. The second site had not been sampled in years. As for the first site, Drake suspects the steep, rough, and very boggy terrain probably discouraged previous workers from sampling the layer (https://phys.org/tags/layer/). "We were sinking in up to our thighs. I distinctly recall saying to (co-author) Andy Beard, 'this had better be worth it.'" Now, says Drake, "It was worth it."

[Hervé]

Large ancient impact event discovered in Southeast Asia (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/glassy-debris-points-relatively-recent-asteroid-impact-southeast-asia)

Katherine Kornei Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/glassy-debris-points-relatively-recent-asteroid-impact-southeast-asia)
Wed, 03 Jan 2018 18:40 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s22/442644/large/impact_16x9.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s22/442644/full/impact_16x9.jpg)
An artist’s representation of a large impact on Earth. © John R. Foster/Science Source


A kilometer-size asteroid slammed into Earth about 800,000 years ago with so much force that it scattered debris across a 10th of our planet's surface. Yet its impact crater remains undiscovered. Now, glassy remains believed to have come from the strike suggest the asteroid hit southeast Asia as our close ancestors walked the Earth.

"This impact event is the youngest of this size during human evolution with likely worldwide effects," says Mario Trieloff, a geochemist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany not involved in the research. Large impacts can disrupt Earth's climate by spewing dirt and soot high into the atmosphere, where it can block sunlight for months or even years.

Putative remains from this impact have been found before. Researchers have recovered chunks of glassy debris known as tektites across Asia, Australia, and Antarctica, and their distribution pattern suggests the asteroid struck Southeast Asia: The largest tektites-weighing more than 20 kilograms and presumably ejected the shortest distances from the impact-have been found there.

To try to confirm this hypothesis, Aaron Cavosie, an astrobiologist and geochemist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and his colleagues examined the chemical composition of three tektites from Thailand. They searched for evidence of reidite, a rare mineral formed only by extreme pressures and temperatures, like those of an asteroid impact. But the team had to infer that reidite had existed: It disappears just seconds after it forms and transforms into zircon, a mineral common in Earth's crust.


http://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline__450w__no_aspect/public/tektite_16x9.jpg?itok=Fat8a5GJ
A tektite, a piece of glassy debris created during a large impact. © PjrStudio/Alamy Stock Photo


The scientists studied tiny crystals of zircon in the tektites and looked at their geometrical orientation. They found that the crystals, each about half the width of a human hair, exhibited three different orientations intersecting at roughly right angles, consistent with laboratory and theoretical results that show how zircon transforms into reidite and then back into zircon. On the other hand, zircon crystals that have never converted to reidite tend to all be oriented in one direction.

The former presence of reidite in these tektites means that they were exposed to crushing pressures and searing temperatures, Cavosie and his team concluded. This discovery, paired with the generally large masses of tektites found in Thailand, is consistent with the impact occurring somewhere in Southeast Asia (https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/525531/new-clues-from-earth-s-most-elusive-impact-crater?redirectedFrom=fulltext), the team reports in Geology. Other researchers have found evidence of a high-pressure version of quartz in some tektites, but reidite is a better tracer of a nearby impact, Cavosie and his team argue. "Reidite requires substantially higher shock pressures to form," Cavosie says.

The mystery of the missing crater isn't solved yet, however, says Billy Glass, an emeritus professor of geology at the University of Delaware in Newark not involved in the research. "[The researchers] can't narrow down the source crater based only on samples from one location," he said. "They need to study samples from over all of Southeast Asia."

Cavosie and his team plan to examine more tektites from the strewn field in the future. They're puzzled why a crater that's both presumably large and geologically young-meaning it hasn't been exposed to much erosion due to rain and wind-hasn't been found. The crater, if discovered, could also shed light on how the impact affected life nearby. "Our not-too-distant ancestors witnessed this impact," Cavosie says. "They might have been dragging their knuckles, but an event like the formation of a 50- to 100-kilometer-diameter impact is sure to have gotten their attention."

[Hervé]

Now, this sounds like a valid candidate for the Sun's twin companion:

Scholz's star disturbed prehistory's solar system's comets (https://phys.org/news/2018-03-evidence-star-disturbed-prehistory-solar.html)

Phys Org (https://phys.org/news/2018-03-evidence-star-disturbed-prehistory-solar.html)
Wed, 21 Mar 2018 18:43 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s22/457702/large/astardisturb.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s22/457702/full/astardisturb.jpg)
At a time when modern humans were beginning to leave Africa and the Neanderthals were living on our planet, Scholz's star approached less than a light-year. © José A. Peñas/SINC


About 70,000 years ago, during human occupation of the planet, a small, reddish star approached our solar system and gravitationally disturbed comets and asteroids. Astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge have verified that the movement of some of these objects is still marked by that stellar encounter.

At a time when modern humans were beginning to leave Africa and the Neanderthals still thrived, Scholz's star-named after the German astronomer who discovered it-approached less than a light-year from the sun. Today, it is almost 20 light-years away, but 70,000 years ago, it entered the Oort cloud, a reservoir of trans-Neptunian objects located at the confines of the solar system.

This discovery was made public in 2015 by a team of astronomers led by Professor Eric Mamajek of the University of Rochester (USA). The details of that stellar flyby, the closest documented so far, were presented in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Now, two astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid, the brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, together with the researcher Sverre J. Aarseth of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), have analyzed for the first time nearly 340 solar system objects with hyperbolic orbits (very open V-shaped, rather than elliptical) They have concluded that the trajectories of some of these were influenced by the passage of Scholz's star.

"Using numerical simulations, we have calculated the radiants or positions in the sky from which all these hyperbolic objects seem to come," explains Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, a co-author of the study now published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"In principle," he adds, "one would expect those positions to be evenly distributed in the sky, particularly if these objects come from the Oort cloud. However, what we find is very different-a statistically significant accumulation of radiants. The pronounced over-density appears projected in the direction of the constellation of Gemini, which fits the close encounter with Scholz's star."
The period in which this star passed through the Oort Cloud and its position during prehistory coincide with the data of the new investigation and in those of Mamajek and his team. "It could be a coincidence, but it is unlikely that both location and time are compatible," says De la Fuente Marcos, who points out that their simulations suggest that Scholz's star approached even more than the 0.6 light-years pointed out in the 2015 study as the lower limit.

The close fly-by of this star 70,000 years ago did not disturb all the hyperbolic objects of the solar system, only those that were closest to it at that time.
"For example, the radiant of the famous interstellar asteroid 'Oumuamua is in the constellation of Lyra (the Harp), very far from Gemini, therefore it is not part of the detected over-density," says De la Fuente Marcos.
He is confident that new studies and observations will confirm the idea that a star passed close to us in a relatively recent period.

Scholz's star is actually a binary system formed by a small red dwarf with about 9 percent of the mass of the sun, around which a much less bright and smaller brown dwarf orbits. It is likely that human ancestors saw its faint reddish light during prehistorical nights.

More information: Carlos de la Fuente Marcos et al. Where the Solar system meets the solar neighbourhood: patterns in the distribution of radiants of observed hyperbolic minor bodies, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters (2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/sly019 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/sly019)

[Hervé]

Did cometary catastrophes cause the Justinian Plague and end the Roman Empire? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8TdTUFf0JE)

Thunderbolts Project (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8TdTUFf0JE)
Mon, 09 Apr 2018 10:30 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s23/461417/large/ateenan_rutto_iso_promo.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s23/461417/full/ateenan_rutto_iso_promo.jpg)


For nearly half-a-century, the chief principles of The Thunderbolts Project have been presenting a scientific case for relatively recent celestial catastrophes in the inner solar system, within human memory. These events were recorded in the myths and storytelling of ancient man in pre-history, the dramas reverberating through generations and shaping the earliest civilizations.

The catastrophes were electromagnetic in nature -- planets seen in the Earthly sky discharging electrically, the thunderbolts of the gods. But what about more recent disasters, in the A.D. time periods, disasters that also may have been triggered by fundamentally electromagnetic phenomena in the solar system?

In this episode, Thunderbolts colleague Peter Mungo Jupp offers the provocative conjecture that an encounter between our own planet and a cometary intruder may have caused an AD catastrophe, leading to the deaths of tens millions of human beings - the so-called Plague of Justinian.


U8TdTUFf0JE

[Hervé]

Volcanic eruptions during Roman times blocked out the sun plunging Eurasia into hunger and disease (https://phys.org/news/2018-04-unusual-climate-roman-plunged-eurasia.html)

University of Helsinki Phys.org (https://phys.org/news/2018-04-unusual-climate-roman-plunged-eurasia.html)
Fri, 13 Apr 2018 05:48 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s23/461741/large/unusualclima.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s23/461741/full/unusualclima.jpg)
A subfossil tree trunk being lifted out of a lake. © Samuli Helama / Natural Resources Institute Finland


A recent study published in an esteemed academic journal indicates that volcanic eruptions in the mid-500s resulted in an unusually gloomy and cold period. A joint research project of the Chronology Laboratory of the Finnish Museum of Natural History and Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) suggests that the years 536 and 541-544 CE were very difficult for many people.

An extended period of low light makes survival difficult. Food production, including farming and animal husbandry, rely on solar energy. Humans, meanwhile, become more prone to disease if they are not exposed to enough sunlight to produce vitamin D.

"Our research shows that the climate anomaly, which covered all of the northern hemisphere, was the compound result of several volcanic eruptions," says Markku Oinonen, director of the Chronology Laboratory. The aerosols that were released into the atmosphere with the eruptions covered the sun for a long time.

The exceptionally poor climate conditions were significantly detrimental to farming and reduced the production of vitamin D among the populace. This means that the people who were already weakened by hunger also had to grapple with compromised immune systems.

Trees are a record of the past
The study is based on dendrochronology or tree-ring dating. The series of annual growth (https://phys.org/tags/growth/) rings from subfossil-or intact-tree deposits covers the past 7,600 years. The trees are often found on the bottoms of small lakes, and Luke has been taking samples and recording the findings since the 1990s.

"Researchers have put together an annual growth ring calendar of treeline pine spanning more than 7,600 years. Various historical events can be contrasted with the calendar. The growth ring calendar is an important indicator of global climate change (https://phys.org/tags/global+climate+change/)," says researcher Samuli Helama from Luke.

The samples in the recent study were dated with the help of the growth ring calendar at Luke, and the researchers carved sample shavings out of them for each calendar year. The Chronology Laboratory then conducted isotope analyses on the samples.

The results of the study are based on the analysis of the variation of carbon isotopes in the annual growth rings of trees. The variety in carbon isotopes reflects the photosynthesis of the trees, which in turn is largely dependent on the amount of solar radiation available during the summer.

The new study tracks the correlation of carbon isotope variation and volcanic eruptions (https://phys.org/tags/volcanic+eruptions/) from the 19th century until recent years, and shows the dramatic reduction in available sunlight in 536 as well as between 541 and 544 CE. The variation of summer temperatures was similarly reconstructed on the basis of the density of the trees' annual growth rings.

Hard times brought the plague
The unusually poor years coincide with the bubonic plague epidemic that devastated the Roman Empire. The epidemic caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium began in 542 CE and killed approximately half or more of the inhabitants of what was then considered the Eastern Roman Empire. The plague spread through Europe from the Mediterranean to possibly as far north as Finland, and had killed tens of millions of people by the 8th century.
Explore further: Tree rings provide vital information for improved climate predictions (https://phys.org/news/2018-04-tree-vital-climate.html)

More information: Samuli Helama et al, Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health, Scientific Reports (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-19760-w (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-19760-w)

Journal reference: Scientific Reports (https://phys.org/journals/scientific-reports/)

Provided by: University of Helsinki (https://phys.org/partners/university-of-helsinki/)

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-unusual-climate-roman-plunged-eurasia.html#jCp


Related:
New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection (https://www.sott.net/article/145683-New-Light-on-the-Black-Death-The-Cosmic-Connection#)

Comets and meteorites on ancient coins (https://www.sott.net/article/280836-Comets-and-meteorites-on-ancient-coins)

Comets and the early Christian mosaics of Ravenna (https://www.sott.net/article/321366-Comets-and-the-early-Christian-mosaics-of-Ravenna)

Did cometary catastrophes cause the Justinian Plague and end the Roman Empire? (https://www.sott.net/article/382500-Did-cometary-catastrophes-cause-the-Justinian-Plague-and-end-the-Roman-Empire)

Apocalypse then: How a comet ended the Roman Empire (https://www.sott.net/article/221414-Apocalypse-then-How-a-comet-ended-the-Roman-Empire)

The destruction of ancient Rome - The barbarians were not responsible (https://www.sott.net/article/381761-The-destruction-of-ancient-Rome-The-barbarians-were-not-responsible)

Swedish study finds that earth was warmer in ancient Roman times and the Middle Ages than today (https://www.sott.net/article/270166-Swedish-study-finds-that-earth-was-warmer-in-ancient-Roman-times-and-the-Middle-Ages-than-today)

Tree-rings prove climate was warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is now - and world has been cooling for 2,000 years (https://www.sott.net/article/247976-Tree-rings-prove-climate-was-warmer-in-Roman-and-Medieval-times-than-it-is-now-and-world-has-been-cooling-for-2000-years)

Early humans witnessed global cooling, warming, and massive fires from comet debris impacts says major study (https://www.sott.net/article/376194-Early-humans-witnessed-global-cooling-warming-and-massive-fires-from-comet-debris-impacts-says-major-study)

Britain's peasant houses and the Black Death building boom (https://www.sott.net/article/378734-Britains-peasant-houses-and-the-Black-Death-building-boom)

================================================

The article's assumption is that it's volcanic dust which caused the dimming of the sun light, but nothing rules out that it might have been cometary dust or even a combination of both.

[Hervé]

Space diamonds found in meteorite came from an ancient destroyed planet (https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/18291-diamonds-meteorite-lost-planet)

Chris Mahon Outer Places (https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/18291-diamonds-meteorite-lost-planet)
Tue, 17 Apr 2018 11:51 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s23/462625/large/3ec9343e2b152bfb43cbaa71d64e73.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s23/462625/full/3ec9343e2b152bfb43cbaa71d64e73.jpg)
© YouTube


What's cooler than finding a meteorite? Finding diamonds in that meteorite. And what's even cooler than finding space diamonds? Discovering that those diamonds may be from an ancient lost protoplanet that was destroyed in the early days of our solar system.

According to a new study (https://phys.org/news/2018-04-diamond-sky-lost-planet.html) published in Nature Communications, that's exactly what we have on our hands-one of the study's co-authors, Philippe Gillet, claims that the large diamonds his team found in the Almahata Sitta meteorite "cannot be the result of a shock but rather of growth that has taken place within a planet."

The Almahata Sitta meteorite (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?code=48915) crashed into the Nubian Desert of Sudan in 2008 and has been a subject of study ever since.

The team of scientists studying its interior found both graphite and diamonds and discovered that the latter contained crystals that are only formed under extreme pressure conditions-scientists estimated it would take around 200,000 bars, or 2.9 million pounds per square inch (psi) to create them.

For comparison, the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench) is around 1,086 bars, or 15,750 psi. One of the few places where that pressure can be found is inside of a planet, and based on the pressure, scientists estimated the unknown planet would have to be the size of Mars or Mercury.

Our solar system wasn't always made of nine eight planets-early in its development, there may have been several more nascent worlds developing around the sun.

These diamonds may be all that's left of one of them, says Gillet:
"What we're claiming here is that we have in our hands a remnant of this first generation of planets that are missing today because they were destroyed or incorporated in a bigger planet."
For scientists, the early solar system is still shrouded in mystery-we're still not sure exactly how our (https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/17912-origin-moon-explained-new-synestia-theory)Moon (https://www.outerplaces.com/tag?tag=Moon) was created, for starters. This chunk of space diamond may be one of the few windows we have into what our stellar neighborhood used to look like.

[Hervé]

Czech Mate - Confirmation of the Younger Dryas impact event (https://cosmictusk.com/czech-mate/)

The Cosmic Tusk (https://cosmictusk.com/czech-mate/)
Thu, 04 Oct 2018 01:17 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s24/495644/large/Gunther_Kletetschka.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/495644/full/Gunther_Kletetschka.jpg)
© The Cosmic Tusk


See another blockbuster confirmation of the Younger Dryas cosmic impact below. I keep a pretty close eye on our subject but had no idea such intricate, original and thorough work was underway in the Czech Republic. Gunther Kleteschka (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cSOlP38AAAAJ&hl=en) has appeared on several YDB papers, but has clearly been busy in his own laboratory collecting entirely new, informative and well dated expressions of the YDB boundary in lake sediments. His work and that of his local colleagues is clearly exciting and in keeping with the predictions made by the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.

Cosmic-Impact Event in Lake Sediments from Central Europe Postdates the Laacher See Eruption and Marks Onset of the Younger Dryas

Gunther Kletetschka,1,2,3,* Daniel Vondrák,4 Jolana Hruba,2 Vaclav Prochazka,2 Ladislav Nabelek,1,2 Helena Svitavská-Svobodová,5 Premysl Bobek,5 Zuzana Horicka,6,7 Jaroslav Kadlec,8 Marian Takac,2 and Evzen Stuchlik7

Institute of Geology, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ-252 43 Průhonice 770, Czech Republic; 2. Institute of Hydrogeology, Engineering Geology and Applied Geophysics, Charles University, Albertov 6, CZ-128 43 Prague 2, Czech Republic; 3. Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 North Koyukuk Drive, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7320, USA; 4. Institute for Environmental Studies, Charles University, Benátská 2, CZ-128 01 Prague 2, Czech Republic; 5. Institute of Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences, Zámek 1, CZ-252 43 Průhonice, Czech Republic; 6. Branch of Applied Ecology, T. G. Masaryk Water Research Institute, Podbabská 30, CZ-160 00 Prague 6, Czech Republic; 7. Institute of Hydrobiology, Biology Centre, Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Sádkách 7, CZ-370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic; 8. Institute of Geophysics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Boční II 1401, CZ-141 31 Prague 4, Czech Republic

ABSTRACT
The Younger Dryas (YD) climate episode (∼12,850-11,650 calendar years before present [cal BP (https://www.thoughtco.com/archaeological-dating-cal-bp-meaning-3971061)]) is an event recorded widely across the Northern Hemisphere. We conducted multiple analyses at high resolution of a YD-age sedimentary sequence from Stara Jimka, a paleolake in the Bohemian Forest, Czech Republic. Age-depth modeling indicates that a cen- tral European warming trend was interrupted at ∼13,020 5 110 cal BP by the sudden onset of cooling (!20 y) known as the Gerzensee climate oscillation and marked by the deposition of fine-grained sediment at this location. That cooling episode ended at ∼13,001 5 66 cal BP and was followed by a ∼121-y-long warming trend. After that, the Laacher See tephra depo- sitional event, dating to ∼12,820 5 20 cal BP, continued an overall warming trend. The composition of Laacher See volcanic tephra in this section likely corresponds to the middle eruption sequence. Finally, the deposition of glassy microspherules marked the onset of the YD climate change at 12,755 5 92 cal BP. The sequence across the YD onset is marked by (1) a peak in glassy microspherules (117,000/kg), (2) a peak in framboidal spherules (14,000/kg), (3) significant changes in the lake's weathering proxies, and (4) major changes in fauna and flora, showing a shift to unfavorable environmental conditions (decrease in temperature and lake trophy status). Collectively, this evidence is consistent with the YD impact hypothesis and evidence of one or more cosmic airburst events occurring at this time.

Download (PDF, 1.04MB) (https://cosmictusk.com/wp-content/uploads/Kletetschka-et-al_online_2018.pdf)

Appendix below
Download (PDF, 19.92MB) (https://cosmictusk.com/wp-content/uploads/Kletetschka-et-al_online_2018_appendix.pdf)


PS: check this post to get on idea on how such an event affected earth's population: Re: Here: The So-called "Word Of God" (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?86384-Here-The-So-called-Word-Of-God&p=1257624&viewfull=1#post1257624)

[Bill Ryan]

Czech Mate - Confirmation of the Younger Dryas impact event (https://cosmictusk.com/czech-mate/)



Wow. Important.

[Hervé]

Huge asteroid crater found under the ice in Greenland (https://news.sky.com/story/huge-asteroid-crater-found-under-the-ice-in-greenland-11552347)

Sky News UK,
Wednesday 14 November 2018, 23:57


https://e3.365dm.com/18/11/1096x616/skynews-greenland-glacier-ice_4485212.jpg?bypass-service-worker&20181112100946
A CGI image of the crater, which is a whopping 19 miles wide


An enormous crater believed to have been caused by an asteroid that slammed into Earth 12,000 years ago has been found beneath the ice in Greenland.

The 19-mile-wide impact had remained hidden under a half-mile-thick sheet of ice until it was exposed by a state-of-the-art radar system at the University of Kansas.

Located under the Hiawatha Glacier in remote northwest Greenland, the crater is thought to be the result of an iron asteroid about one kilometre in size that struck the island at the end of the Pleistocene.

The Pleistocene period - beginning about 2.6 million years ago and lasting until about 11,700 years ago - included the final ice age, during which huge glaciers covered the surface of the planet.


https://e3.365dm.com/18/11/750x563/skynews-greenland-glacier-ice_4485211.jpg?bypass-service-worker&20181112100914
The asteroid impact had remained hidden under a half-mile-thick sheet of ice


It took almost two decades to identify the crater, with most of the data needed collected between 1997 and 2014, and the findings have now been detailed in a new paper for the latest edition of Science Advance.

Co-author John Paden, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Kansas, said:
"We've collected lots of radar-sounding data over the last couple of decades, and glaciologists put these radar-sounding data sets together to produce maps of what Greenland is like underneath the ice.

"Danish researchers were looking at the map and saw this big, crater-like depression under the ice sheet and looked at satellite imagery and - because the crater is on edge of the ice sheet - you can see a circular pattern there as well.
"The two combined made a really strong case for this being an impact-crater site."
Based on the discovery, the catchily-named Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCORDS) - built for the university by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany - began its survey in May 2016.

Once the radar system had done its bit, a research team carried out its own surveys on the ground.

Work still needs to be done to determine the precise timing of the asteroid impact, and the discovery of possible debris southwest of the site could help to narrow the date range.

Professor Paden explained:
"There would have been debris projected into the atmosphere that would affect the climate and the potential for melting a lot of ice.

"So there could have been a sudden freshwater influx into the Nares Strait between Canada and Greenland that would have affected the ocean flow in that whole region.

"The evidence indicates that the impact probably happened after the Greenland ice sheet formed, but the research team is still working on the precise dating."

https://e3.365dm.com/18/11/750x563/skynews-crater-meteor-greenland_4485216.jpg?bypass-service-worker&20181112101247
The crater is thought to be the result of an iron asteroid of about one kilometre in size

Professor Paden was just one of a large but exclusive team of researchers who worked to reveal the impact crater, with colleagues from the University of Copenhagen among those to assist the project.

He admitted that he was excited to finally publish the findings.
"It was really cool - it was the kind of thing where I went home and told my kids about it," Professor Paden said.

"It's one of those fun moments. They were impressed. A lot of times, my research isn't that interesting to them, but this impact crater was something they could connect to."
PS: Thanks to Did You See Them who posted a thread here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?105080-Huge-asteroid-crater-found-under-the-ice-in-Greenland) (<---)

[Bill Ryan]

Czech Mate - Confirmation of the Younger Dryas impact event (https://cosmictusk.com/czech-mate/)



Wow. Important.



An enormous crater believed to have been caused by an asteroid that slammed into Earth 12,000 years ago has been found beneath the ice in Greenland.

Even MORE important. This is a huge discovery. It changes and re-frames every [mainstream] understanding of what happened to Planet Earth (and everyone who was alive) at that time.

[Nick Matkin]

Czech Mate - Confirmation of the Younger Dryas impact event (https://cosmictusk.com/czech-mate/)



Wow. Important.



An enormous crater believed to have been caused by an asteroid that slammed into Earth 12,000 years ago has been found beneath the ice in Greenland.

Even MORE important. This is a huge discovery. It changes and re-frames every [mainstream] understanding of what happened to Planet Earth (and everyone who was alive) at that time.

I think it depends upon how accurately the dating is. If the impact was in the past 20,000 years it may well have had a profound effect on human evolution. I've not yet seen any suggested estimations on local or global effects. Maybe even if it was a comparatively recent event, it didn't have the wide climatic effects of other larger impacts.

[Hervé]

An exploding meteor may have wiped out ancient Dead Sea communities (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/exploding-meteor-may-have-wiped-out-ancient-dead-sea-communities)

Bruce Bower Science News (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/exploding-meteor-may-have-wiped-out-ancient-dead-sea-communities)
Tue, 20 Nov 2018 10:00 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s24/498217/large/jordan_meteor_strike.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/498217/full/jordan_meteor_strike.jpg)
ANCIENT WIPEOUT Preliminary evidence indicates that a low-altitude meteor explosion around 3,700 years ago destroyed cities, villages and farmland north of the Dead Sea (shown in the background above) rendering the region uninhabitable for 600 to 700 years. © FIGHTBEGIN/ISTOCK.COM


Archaeologists at a site in what's now Jordan have found evidence of a cosmic calamity

A superheated blast from the skies obliterated cities and farming settlements north of the Dead Sea around 3,700 years ago, preliminary findings suggest.

Radiocarbon dating and unearthed minerals that instantly crystallized at high temperatures indicate that a massive airburst (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_meteor_air_bursts) caused by a meteor that exploded in the atmosphere instantaneously destroyed civilization in a 25-kilometer-wide circular plain called Middle Ghor, said archaeologist Phillip Silvia. The event also pushed a bubbling brine of Dead Sea salts over once-fertile farm land, Silvia and his colleagues suspect.

People did not return to the region for 600 to 700 years, said Silvia, of Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque. He reported these findings at the annual meeting (http://www.asor.org/am/) of the American Schools of Oriental Research on November 17.

Excavations at five large Middle Ghor sites, in what's now Jordan, indicate that all were continuously occupied for at least 2,500 years until a sudden, collective collapse toward the end of the Bronze Age. Ground surveys have located 120 additional, smaller settlements in the region that the researchers suspect were also exposed to extreme, collapse-inducing heat and wind. An estimated 40,000 to 65,000 people inhabited Middle Ghor when the cosmic calamity hit, Silvia said.

The most comprehensive evidence of destruction caused by a low-altitude meteor explosion comes from the Bronze Age city of Tall el-Hammam, where a team that includes Silvia has been excavating (https://tallelhammam.com/) for the last 13 years. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the mud-brick walls of nearly all structures suddenly disappeared around 3,700 years ago, leaving only stone foundations.

What's more, the outer layers of many pieces of pottery from same time period show signs of having melted into glass. Zircon crystals in those glassy coats formed within one second at extremely high temperatures, perhaps as hot as the surface of the sun, Silvia said.

High-force winds created tiny, spherical mineral grains that apparently rained down on Tall el-Hammam, he said. The research team has identified these minuscule bits of rock on pottery fragments at the site.

Examples exist of exploding space rocks that have wreaked havoc (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/heres-how-asteroid-impact-would-kill-you) on Earth (SN: 5/13/17, p. 12). An apparent meteor blast over a sparsely populated Siberian region in 1908, known as the Tunguska event, killed no one but flattened 2,000 square kilometers of forest. And a meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 injured more than 1,600 people, mainly due to broken glass from windows that were blown out.

=================================================

In short, no need for impacts to generate a catastrophic chain reaction that can extinguish a civilization.

[Hervé]

Prehistoric cave art study reveals ancient people had complex knowledge of astronomy and were tracking catastrophic meteor showers (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181127111025.htm)

University of Edinburgh Science Daily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181127111025.htm)
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 12:00 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s24/499350/large/xw_1606544.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/499350/full/xw_1606544.jpg)
© Martin Sweatman


As far back as 40,000 years ago, humans kept track of time using relatively sophisticated knowledge of the stars,

Some of the world's oldest cave paintings have revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy.

The artworks, at sites across Europe, are not simply depictions of wild animals, as was previously thought. Instead, the animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to represent dates and mark events such as comet strikes, analysis suggests.

They reveal that, perhaps as far back as 40,000 years ago, humans kept track of time using knowledge of how the position of the stars slowly changes over thousands of years.

The findings suggest that ancient people understood an effect caused by the gradual shift of Earth's rotational axis. Discovery of this phenomenon, called precession of the equinoxes, was previously credited to the ancient Greeks.

Around the time that Neanderthals became extinct, and perhaps before humankind settled in Western Europe, people could define dates to within 250 years, the study shows.


https://www.sott.net/image/s24/499349/large/181127111025_1_540x360.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/499349/full/181127111025_1_540x360.jpg)
© Alistair Coombs


The findings indicate that the astronomical insights of ancient people were far greater than previously believed. Their knowledge may have aided navigation of the open seas, with implications for our understanding of prehistoric human migration.

Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Kent studied details of Palaeolithic and Neolithic art featuring animal symbols at sites in Turkey, Spain, France and Germany.

They found all the sites used the same method of date-keeping based on sophisticated astronomy, even though the art was separated in time by tens of thousands of years.

Researchers clarified earlier findings from a study of stone carvings at one of these sites -- Gobekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey -- which is interpreted as a memorial to a devastating comet strike around 11,000 BC. This strike was thought to have initiated a mini ice-age known as the Younger Dryas period.

They also decoded what is probably the best known ancient artwork -- the Lascaux Shaft Scene in France. The work, which features a dying man and several animals, may commemorate another comet strike around 15,200 BC, researchers suggest.

The team confirmed their findings by comparing the age of many examples of cave art -- known from chemically dating the paints used -- with the positions of stars in ancient times as predicted by sophisticated software.

The world's oldest sculpture, the Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave, from 38,000 BC, was also found to conform to this ancient time-keeping system.

This study was published in Athens Journal of History.

Dr Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering, who led the study, said: "Early cave art shows that people had advanced knowledge of the night sky within the last ice age. Intellectually, they were hardly any different to us today.

"These findings support a theory of multiple comet impacts over the course of human development, and will probably revolutionise how prehistoric populations are seen."
Story Source: Materials (https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2018/cave-paintings-reveal-use-of-complex-astronomy) provided by University of Edinburgh (http://www.ed.ac.uk). Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Martin B. Sweatman, Alistair Coombs. Decoding European Palaeolithic art: Extremely ancient knowledge of precession of the equinoxes. Athens Journal of History, 2018 [link (https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.00046)]

Related:

Decoding European Palaeolithic art: Extremely (https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1806/1806.00046.pdf)ancient knowledge of precession of the equinoxes (https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1806/1806.00046.pdf) - Martin B. Sweatman*1 and Alistair Coombs 2 (PDF)



Have humans been sailing the seas for a million years? (https://www.sott.net/article/388503-Have-humans-been-sailing-the-seas-for-a-million-years)



The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction (https://www.sott.net/article/227222-The-Golden-Age-Psychopathy-and-the-Sixth-Extinction)



Witches, Comets and Planetary Cataclysms (https://www.sott.net/article/217194-Witches-Comets-and-Planetary-Cataclysms)



Planet-X, Comets and Earth Changes by J.M. McCanney (https://www.sott.net/article/226166-Planet-X-Comets-and-Earth-Changes-by-J-M-McCanney)



New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection (https://www.sott.net/article/228189-New-Light-on-the-Black-Death-The-Viral-and-Cosmic-Connection#)



536 AD: Plague, famine, drought, cold, and a mysterious fog that lasted 18 months (https://www.sott.net/article/400805-536-AD-Plague-famine-drought-cold-and-a-mysterious-fog-that-lasted-18-months)



Interview with astronomer Bill Napier: Cyclical catastrophes and cometary bombardments (https://www.sott.net/article/305017-Interview-with-astronomer-Bill-Napier-Cyclical-catastrophes-and-cometary-bombardments)



Stone carvings at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey confirm how comet struck Earth in 10,950BC (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/21/ancient-stone-carvings-confirm-comet-struck-earth-10950bc-wiping/)



Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes#)

[Hervé]

...



TWzSXy53xkg
https://yt3.ggpht.com/a-/AN66SAwAIS8c1JzMK5_bhB1z848TgV_KUkHImZci7w=s48-mo-c-c0xffffffff-rj-k-no (https://www.youtube.com/user/folklegend894m)folklegend894m (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCox34eCDCMKkZcqCIChFRMQ)
Published on Jan 5, 2013

The painters of Lascaux were astronomers! Cro-Magnon men painted a zodiac on the walls of the cave, which showed the formation of the sky in the Magdalenian era, 17,000 years ago.

[Did You See Them]

Here's an odd one !

Scientists puzzled by mysterious earthquake that rumbled around the world

"Scientists have been stumped by the 20-minute rumble of a mysterious seismic wave which was detected earlier this month.

The tremor occurred on the morning of 11 November near the archipelago of Mayotte, a collection of French islands in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique.

It is unclear whether it was caused by volcanic activity or a meteor strike, but it was felt by seismometers across the world, from New Zealand to Canada - and even in Hawaii."

Odd that they speculate it could have been caused by a meteorite.

https://news.sky.com/story/scientists-puzzled-by-mysterious-earthquake-that-rumbled-around-the-world-11566617

[Hervé]

Scientists Find the Source of Strange Seismic Rumbling in Indian Ocean - Report (https://sputniknews.com/science/201812021070328858-strange-seismic-signal-origin/)

Sputnik Tech (https://sputniknews.com/science/)
20:35 02.12.2018G

The seismic signal which initially puzzled scientists was apparently a product of undersea volcanic activity, such as the inflation or deflation of calderas or simply the movement of magma below the sea floor.


https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DD-COMPOSITE-seismic-waves.jpg?strip=all&w=750

A dedicated seismologist has apparently managed to uncover the nature of strange seismic event that recently occurred in the vicinity of Mayotte, a French island situated between mainland Africa and Madagascar in the Mozambique Channel.

Earlier in November, scientists were left baffled by the discovery of low-frequency tremor which sent “seismic rumblings around the surface of much of the planet.”





https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/667355587794083840/DWMjoBFq_bigger.jpg Stephen Hicks‏Verified account @seismo_steve (https://twitter.com/seismo_steve)

Stephen Hicks Retweeted Stephen Hicks
Yep folks, something biggggg, yet strangely slow, sent seismic rumblings around the surface of much of the planet yesterday. The event seems to have happened west of Madagascar. Best analogue so far is a prolonged roof collapse of a volcano magma chamber. Thread #twitterscience (https://twitter.com/hashtag/twitterscience?src=hash)

Stephen Hicks added,

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dr0B-hXXgAAfNOa.jpg
Stephen HicksVerified account @seismo_steve
Replying to @seismo_steve @ALomaxNet and 4 others

So I wondered if GCMT has detected this event since it has lots of energy at long periods. And what do you know, here it is! It's given a magnitude of 5.0, which presumably is Mw or Ms. …

8:29 AM - 12 Nov 2018
13 replies 179 retweets 286 likes ​And now, an independent seismology consultant named Anthony Lomax told The Daily Mail that the rumblings was "almost certainly" caused by a "low-level underwater volcanic eruption off the northeast of Mayotte."
"Inflation/deflation and collapse of volcano calderas, and movement of magma under a volcano can produce a wide variety of seismic signals, including long period and repetitive waves like those observed November 11," Lomax explained.
The enigmatic rumblings were first detected on November 11, with low-frequency waves triggering sensors miles away from their point of origin but at the same time apparently remaining undetected by the locals.


https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/mayo05.jpg?strip=all&w=632

Between May and November this year, the island of Mayotte was struck by a series of low-grade earthquakes, with the strongest clocking in at a magnitude of 5.8 on May 15.

==========================================

Well, that's a pretty big, slow sloshing around of magma inside a huge chamber...

[ThePythonicCow]

A dedicated seismologist has apparently managed to uncover the nature of strange seismic event that recently occurred in the vicinity of Mayotte, a French island situated between mainland Africa and Madagascar in the Mozambique Channel.
Thanks to this post (https://8ch.net/qresearch/res/4139125.html#4139746) by an anon on Q's 8 chan sub-forum, that included a link to this April 2001 post on the all.net/iwar/archive (http://all.net/iwar/archive/2001Q2/0098.html), I learned that Mayotte is (or was?) the home of a major satellite communications intercept station.

Perhaps this has something to do with the worldwide ([WW]) waves and satellite (SAT) knockout, mentioned by Q in this drop (https://8ch.net/qresearch/res/4116876.html#4117452), a couple of days ago.

This Voat Q Research thread entitled: Q "think WAVES" post. Procedure. (https://voat.co/v/QRV/2887533) describes the waves as "monochromatic", and as lacking the P and S waves and more chaotic structure of ordinary earthquake waves.

A couple of days ago, I recall seeing a post on https://8ch.net/qresearch that analyzed the wave shape, using Fourier transforms, a bit more. But I don't recall now how to find that post, and very little discussion ensued from it, as not many 8chan Q anon's are Fourier fags. My recollection was that the waves looked like a simple base frequency with a modest bit of ringing at higher octaves.

===

P.S. -- I posted a link to this present post over on the Q thread, Post #7848 (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?100318-The-Qanon-posts-and-a-Very-Bad-Day-Scenario-for-some-elite-swamp-critters&p=1262400&viewfull=1#post1262400).

[Bill Ryan]

Perhaps this has something to do with the worldwide ([WW]) waves and satellite (SAT) knockout, mentioned by Q in this drop (https://8ch.net/qresearch/res/4116876.html#4117452), a couple of days ago.

Forgive me if this question doesn't belong on this thread, but I didn't want to seem to be questioning too much (or, at all!) on the main 'Q' thread.

What 'satellite knockout'? Is there an article anywhere reporting that satellites have recently been disabled somehow? I couldn't find anything, though it was only a quick search. (Do please note: Anonymous posts on 8chan don't count for a thing.)

There's a video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrF97nZxtwY), under which the text says:




Q followers are claiming many of our spy satellites were blacked out
... but that's dated 31 August.

[ThePythonicCow]

What 'satellite knockout'? Is there an article anywhere reporting that satellites have recently been disabled somehow? I couldn't find anything, though it was only a quick search. [I](Do please note: Anonymous posts on 8chan don't count for a thing.)
I have no further information on any such knockout either. If Q's drops count for nothing, then I know of no evidence for any such knockout.

There is however, as I linked, evidence that the French island of Mayotte is (or was?) the home of a major satellite communications intercept station.

===

P.S. -- And it was thanks to those researching Q's drops that I learned of that evidence, which provides an example of a key value of Q's drops. In and amongst the trash talking and deception that anons post in response to Q's drops, there is some (in my estimation at least) worthwhile research and analysis. I mentioned Q in my previous post as part of my usual effort to properly reference where and how I learned material.

===

P.P.S. -- For those interested, this 8 chan post of a half a day ago lists more research into COMOROS, MAYOTTE & “WAVES”: https://8ch.net/qresearch/res/4137506.html#4137929

[mountain_jim]

P.S. -- And it was thanks to those researching Q's drops that I learned of that evidence, which provides an example of a key value of Q's drops. In and amongst the trash talking and deception that anons post in response to Q's drops, there is some (in my estimation at least) worthwhile research and analysis. I mentioned Q in my previous post as part of my usual effort to properly reference where and how I learned material.

Strongly agree, and thanks Paul for saving me the effort of going to 8chan often until something really grabs my interest.

[Delight]

I did not see this posted and am really excited as it is already visible with binoculars


A COMET AS BIG AS THE FULL MOON: Hyperactive comet 46P/Wirtanen is approaching Earth for one of the closest Earth-comet encounters of the Space Age. Observers report that the comet's gaseous green atmosphere now covers a patch of sky as large as the full Moon--and it is growing larger. Sky maps and expert observing tips are featured on today's edition of Spaceweather.com

https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/sHPvy4jxTJGNFmu6X824GHEbVYzgIEVgN8E5N__-5ziMOy3lvzg9lctiswtMG2Cft53DtqqkfbVzuUJb4Oa-ZGhn-LpIfcxh6zbPmuSl676kpnQYOFRz9gIm5SvFtQNi1Q-dUKw4-qQxgrKt7Jj9iOO3MsGpYEYvF-0=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/0c5fce34d5ca05f64a13d085d/images/efa03902-f2a1-4761-b6ee-973503a541c1.jpg


Comet 46P/Wirtanen, photographed on Dec. 2nd by Mike Broussard of Perry, Louisiana. A picture of the Moon has been inserted for scale. More images may be found in Spaceweather.com's Realtime Comet Gallery.

No chance of hitting earth according to it's known orbit

http://wirtanen.astro.umd.edu/46P/Orbits/46P_closeup_plot.png

[Hervé]

Video simulations show what would happen if asteroids crashed into Earth's oceans (https://mashable.com/article/asteroid-crashes-into-ocean-simulation-video/#gOKUny9MJkq2)

Shannon Connellan Mashable Australia (https://mashable.com/article/asteroid-crashes-into-ocean-simulation-video/#gOKUny9MJkq2)
Tue, 04 Dec 2018 04:01 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s25/500251/large/537bd4c18c495a0842808704df6a48.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s25/500251/full/537bd4c18c495a0842808704df6a48.jpg)
© YouTube/NCAR VisLab


In films like Armageddon, Hollywood has tried (and failed) (https://mashable.com/article/armageddon-asteroid-threat/) to take on the question of what would happen if a comet or asteroid plunged into the oceans on Earth, but what has scientific research actually determined it may look like?

America's National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has posted a new video illustrating what could happen if an asteroid crashed into one of our oceans, and it's fascinating.

Based on data collected by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists Galen R. Gisler and John M. Patchett, referred to as the Deep Water Impact Ensemble Data Set (https://sciviscontest2018.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2017/09/DeepWaterImpactEnsembleDataSet_Revision1.pdf), these simulations show asteroids of various sizes entering the water from different angles. It's the scale and size of the aftermath that's the truly stunning part.




https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/971067955307073537/zIZVt7uI_bigger.jpg NCAR Science‏ @NCAR_Science (https://twitter.com/NCAR_Science)

What would happen if an asteroid crashed into Earth's oceans?

This.

Check out the full visualization (https://youtu.be/o1gSByQVJ2s (https://t.co/1pOoBLX1Zf)) based on the Deep Water Impact Ensemble data set. #sciencevizzy (https://twitter.com/hashtag/sciencevizzy?src=hash) #vizzies (https://twitter.com/hashtag/vizzies?src=hash) #asteroid (https://twitter.com/hashtag/asteroid?src=hash) #NSFfunded (https://twitter.com/hashtag/NSFfunded?src=hash)


gif at: https://twitter.com/NCAR_Science/status/1068179958944518144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1068179958944518144&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sott.net%2Fembed%2FvtgoN4HPFdVgzBBhCYEdzFNFZHX

8:28 AM - 29 Nov 2018
3 replies 25 retweets 39 likes
In the full video, you can see a comparison between two variables: one shows impact with no airburst (when a 250-meter, or 820-foot, asteroid hits the ocean intact), and one with an airburst (when the same size asteroid breaks up into pieces before it hits). The dataset outlines more asteroid sizes.

The video simulation also compares different angles at which the asteroid could hit the body of water. A more oblique angle, the data shows, would be more likely to generate a tsunami.

Here's the visualization in all its mesmerizing glory:


o1gSByQVJ2s

The video was submitted by the NCAR to the 2018 IEEE VIS SciVis Contest (https://sciviscontest2018.org/), a particularly niche and prestigious event dedicated to the visualization of deep water asteroid impacts held in Berlin in October. It was awarded third place with an honourable mention.

There's very little chance of an asteroid striking Earth anytime soon - a roughly 5,000-foot (1.5 km) asteroid is only estimated to crash into the Earth approximately once every 1 million years (https://mashable.com/2016/12/04/what-happens-killer-asteroid-strike/). Researchers have spotted a roughly 3,600-foot asteroid (1.1 km) in space that could hit Earth in 860 years (https://mashable.com/article/armageddon-asteroid-threat/), but it has a 0.3 percent chance of doing so.

So, why do this at all? It's all about being prepared.

According to the data set report (https://sciviscontest2018.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2017/09/DeepWaterImpactEnsembleDataSet_Revision1.pdf) by Gisler and Patchett, NASA is keeping a close eye on asteroids potentially dangerous to Earth. Asteroids that could potentially hit Earth would most likely fall in the ocean, the report adds, which could have serious ramifications for populated coastal areas.

"NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/overview) is keenly interested to know the lower size limit of dangerous asteroids, so as to focus resources on finding all larger objects that potentially threaten the earth," reads the data set report.

"Since most of the planet's surface is water, that is where asteroids will most likely impact," it continues. "This observation has generated a serious debate over the last two decades on just how dangerous impact-induced waves or tsunamis are to populated shorelines."

Essentially, the more we know about what an asteroid-generated tsunami looks like, the better prepared we can be - even if the chances of this happening anytime soon are very, very small.

[Hervé]

Fireball that exploded over Greenland shook Earth, triggering seismic sensors (https://www.livescience.com/64291-greenland-fireball-seismic-recordings.html)

Mindy Weisberger Live Science (https://www.livescience.com/64291-greenland-fireball-seismic-recordings.html)
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 05:53 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s24/496410/medium/Nasa_asteroid_warning_three_as.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s24/496410/full/Nasa_asteroid_warning_three_as.jpg)
© Getty


When a blazing fireball from space exploded over Earth on July 25, scientists captured the first-ever seismic recordings of a meteor impact on ice in Greenland.

At approximately 8 p.m. local time on that day, residents of the town of Qaanaaq on Greenland's northwestern coast reported seeing a bright light in the sky and feeling the ground shake as a meteor combusted over (https://www.livescience.com/63288-meteor-fireball-greenland-air-base.html) the nearby Thule Air Base (https://www.livescience.com/63288-meteor-fireball-greenland-air-base.html).

But the fleeting event was detected by more than just human observers, according to unpublished research presented Dec. 12 here at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Seismographic equipment, which had been installed near Qaanaaq just a few months earlier to monitor how ground shaking affected the ice, also recorded the fiery meteor blast. The Qaanaaq fireball provided scientists with the first evidence of how an icy environment - and, possibly, a distant ice-covered world - could respond to a meteor impact.

The first sign of the meteor was a brilliant flash in the sky over Greenland (https://www.livescience.com/61602-greenland-facts.html); the meteor was at its brightest at an altitude of approximately 27 miles (43 kilometers) above the ground, and it was traveling at nearly 54,000 mph (87,000 km/h), according to the International Meteor Organization (IMO).

When the meteor exploded over Thule Air Base, the U.S. Air Force's northernmost base, it was like a bomb going off. With a calculated impact energy of 2.1 kilotons of TNT, this blast was the second-most-energetic fireball of the year, Live Science previously reported (https://www.livescience.com/63288-meteor-fireball-greenland-air-base.html). A map of the impact site was shared on Twitter on July 31 by Ron Baalke of the Solar System Dynamics group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (and a "space explorer," as he describes himself in his Twitter bio).






https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/667075585542262785/hSUC2e0U_bigger.jpg Rocket Ron (https://twitter.com/RonBaalke)🚀‏ @RonBaalke (https://twitter.com/RonBaalke)

A fireball was detected over Greenland on July 25, 2018 by US Government sensors at an altitude of 43.3 km. The energy from the explosion is estimated to be 2.1 kilotons.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjdMmP9V4AACutf.jpg

12:10 PM - 31 Jul 2018
27 replies 414 retweets 429 likes Researchers with the Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS) at the University of Arizona had installed an array of seismometers about 43 miles (70 km) north of Qaanaaq. Recordings captured by the seismic sensors were interpreted by two Danish Seismological Network broadband stations in Greenland: TULEG (Station Thule) and NEEM (Station Eemian). The scientists were then able to identify a seismic event that matched the arc of the traveling ground waves and estimate the impact point of the fireball, the researchers reported at AGU.

They pinpointed the epicenter of the event near Humboldt glacier on the Greenland ice sheet (https://www.livescience.com/64243-greenland-is-melting-fast.html), and seismic equipment picked up tremors from the impact location as far as 218 miles (350 km) away.

But their findings also have implications that extend beyond Earth. This seismic event was the first-ever recorded analog for impact events on ice-covered worlds - such as frozen Europa, which is a moon orbiting Jupiter, and frigid Enceladus (https://www.space.com/20543-enceladus-saturn-s-tiny-shiny-moon.html), an icy moon of Saturn - and these findings "will inform impact science across objects throughout the solar system," the researchers said.

Related:
Fireball above US base in Greenland puzzles NASA scientist - jokes about 'Russian strike' (https://www.sott.net/article/392640-Fireball-above-US-base-in-Greenland-puzzles-NASA-scientist-jokes-about-Russian-strike)

[Hervé]

Apocalyptic Sounds In The Sky: No Explanation For "Mysterious Booms And Flashes Of Light" All Across America (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-09/apocalyptic-sounds-sky-no-explanation-mysterious-booms-and-flashes-light-all-across)

https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/styles/thumbnail/public/pictures/picture-5.jpg?itok=LY4e264- (https://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden) by Tyler Durden (https://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden)
Sat, 02/09/2019 - 20:30

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog, (http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/apocalyptic-sounds-in-the-sky-no-explanation-for-mystery-booms-accompanied-by-mysterious-flashes-of-light-over-major-cities-across-america)

For weeks, Americans all over the country have been rattled by extremely loud booming sounds that seem to have no explanation, and they are often accompanied by “mysterious flashes of light”.


https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/Skyline-At-Twilight-Public-Domain.jpg


These strange booms are shaking homes and rattling windows, and some witnesses say that they sound like cannons being fired. And even though the “mystery booms” and accompanying flashes of light have been captured on camera all across the nation, so far the authorities do not have a reasonable explanation for why they are happening. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this strange phenomenon is going to go away any time soon. In fact, the Sun is reporting (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8378268/booming-sounds-shake-houses-america-experts-baffled/) that the frequency of these “mystery booms” appears “to have gathered pace over the past week”…
MYSTERY booming sounds have been shaking houses and terrifying residents after “flashes of light” were spotted across America.

Experts have been left baffled by a spate of seismic booms from Arizona to New York that appear to have gathered pace over the past week.
Over this last weekend, this mystery started to get much more national attention after an incident in Rhode Island on Saturday was followed by one in New York City on Sunday (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8378268/booming-sounds-shake-houses-america-experts-baffled/)…
On Saturday, loud bangs were reported in Rhode Island, where Jeremy Braza’s doorbell captured a video and audio of a loud noise over a three minute period.

“The whole house shook,” he told TurnTo10.com. “It woke my wife up, woke up all my children.”

The following night an explosion was heard in New York, accompanied by a mysterious flash in the sky.

“What the heck was that boom or explosion in park slope Brooklyn?”, asked Matt Wasowski on Twitter.
But of course this is not just an east coast phenomenon. For example, a “loud boom” that was reported in Tennessee on January 31st was heard across three separate counties (https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/02/officials-are-silent-as-unexplained-mystery-booms-on-the-rise-around-the-us/)…
It began on January 31 when residents of three separate counties in Tennessee reported hearing a loud boom (https://newschannel9.com/news/local/mysterious-booming-sound-mystifies-residents-of-bradley-mcminn-polk-counties) around 11:30 a.m. Local chemical plants were contacted but reported nothing anomalous. Authorities in Bradley, McInn, and Polk counties are still investigating what could have caused such a powerful noise.
And during that same time frame, numerous North Carolina residents called authorities to report “unexplained loud blasts and booms” (https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/02/officials-are-silent-as-unexplained-mystery-booms-on-the-rise-around-the-us/)…
That same day, local news in North Carolina reported that people in Wake and Franklin counties have been calling law enforcement agencies to report unexplained loud blasts and booms (https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/wake-county-residents-left-wondering-about-source-of-mysterious-booming-noises/1744286667) that keep them awake at night. Two homeowners even reported that the booms are so powerful that they have briefly lost power as a result of the tremors. So far, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office has been unable to pinpoint the source of the booms.
A few days later, “strange explosion-like sounds” were being reported by numerous residents in New Orleans (https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/surveillance-video-captures-mysterious-boom-in-lakeview/289-f3e4fc21-c3fd-4994-a5d9-c2290be7b628)…
The mystery surrounding the strange explosion-like sounds heard by residents in the metro area continues to grow. Late Monday night, several were heard in Lakeview, one of which was caught on camera by Eyewitness News.

A story that began in Mid-City, has taken crews to Harahan, River Ridge and Wagaman. Now we go to Lakeview, where late Monday night, the mysterious ‘booms’ were heard again.
Are you starting to see a pattern?

Large booming sounds are being reported all over the nation, and often those large booming sounds are being accompanied by massive flashes of light. But in every case, the authorities have absolutely no idea what is causing this to happen.

And in case you were wondering if this was just happening in the eastern half of the country, here is a little taste of what has been going on in Tucson, Arizona (http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/2019/02/06/reports-mysterious-booms-tucson-area/)…
Faye DeHoff wrote, “first it was a major rattle…like a huge truck about to plow into my home…then the boom..that shook my windows…I was sure some of them were broken but they didn’t…my dog jumped up! I’m at River & Campbell.”

Ray C. Merrill wrote, “Oracle and Roger, it was shaking pretty good, and long enough for me to watch the blinds dance around, then get up and walk to the doorway, and it was still shaking.”

There was a similar sensation last week on Thursday, Jan 31 at 8:51 a.m. The same phenomenon; a rumble causing homes to shake and windows to rattle. I felt this one too on the northwest side and once again, so did so many others on Facebook all across Tucson and surrounding areas.
Some news reports are referring to these strange sounds as “seismic booms”, but there are no corresponding seismic events to back up that claim.

At this point we have a complete and total mystery on our hands. On YouTube, Jason A has done a great job of compiling news reports about these “mystery booms” from all over America, and you can watch his video right here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0nSOSXQF8M&t=189s).


q0nSOSXQF8M

We have entered a period of time when we should expect the unexpected. Things are strange and they are going to get a whole lot stranger (https://amzn.to/2TAJiI4). We aren’t always going to be able to explain what is happening, but without a doubt our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and that growing instability is going to cause great chaos in the months and years ahead.

I wish that I knew what was causing all of these “mystery booms”, but I don’t. Thankfully they don’t appear to be causing any serious damage, and hopefully that won’t change.

Let’s just hope that all of this “shaking” is not leading up to something much bigger, because it isn’t going to take much to push America into a state of utter chaos right now.

==========================================

Sonic booms and bright flashes... and no-one mentions meteors nor bolides (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/bolides)...

[Hervé]

Reposted from (here) (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?p=1275135#post1275135)

NASA finds possible second impact crater under Greenland ice (https://phys.org/news/2019-02-nasa-impact-crater-greenland-ice.html)

Maria-José Viñas Phys.org (https://phys.org/news/2019-02-nasa-impact-crater-greenland-ice.html)
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 10:26 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s25/509821/large/nasafindspos.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s25/509821/full/nasafindspos.jpg)
A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible second impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland.m © NASA Goddard


A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible second impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland.

This follows the finding, announced in November 2018, of a 19-mile-wide crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier - the first meteorite impact crater (https://phys.org/tags/impact+crater/) ever discovered under Earth's ice sheets. Though the newly found impact sites in northwest Greenland are only 114 miles apart, at present they do not appear to have formed at the same time.

If the second crater, which has a width of over 22 miles, is ultimately confirmed as the result of a meteorite impact, it will be the 22nd largest impact crater found on Earth.

"We've surveyed the Earth in many different ways, from land, air and space-it's exciting that discoveries like these are still possible," said Joe MacGregor, a glaciologist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who participated in both findings.

Before the discovery of the Hiawatha impact crater, scientists generally assumed that most evidence of past impacts in Greenland and Antarctica would have been wiped away by unrelenting erosion by the overlying ice. Following the finding of that first crater, MacGregor checked topographic maps of the rock beneath Greenland's ice for signs of other craters. Using imagery of the ice surface from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instruments aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, he soon noticed a circular pattern (https://phys.org/tags/circular+pattern/) some 114 miles to the southeast of Hiawatha Glacier. The same circular pattern also showed up in ArcticDEM, a high-resolution digital elevation model of the entire Arctic derived from commercial satellite imagery.
"I began asking myself 'Is this another impact crater? Do the underlying data support that idea?'," MacGregor said.

"Helping identify one large impact crater beneath the ice was already very exciting, but now it looked like there could be two of them."
MacGregor reported the discovery of this second possible crater in Geophysical Research Letters on Feb.11.

To confirm his suspicion about the possible presence of a second impact crater, MacGregor studied the raw radar images that are used to map the topography of the bedrock beneath the ice, including those collected by NASA's Operation IceBridge. What he saw under the ice were several distinctive features of a complex impact crater: a flat, bowl-shaped depression in the bedrock that was surrounded by an elevated rim and centrally located peaks, which form when the crater floor equilibrates post-impact. Though the structure isn't as clearly circular as the Hiawatha crater, MacGregor estimated the second crater's diameter at 22.7 miles. Measurements from Operation IceBridge also revealed a negative gravity anomaly over the area, which is characteristic of impact craters.


2AFq2rti3-4


Just 114 miles from the newly-found Hiawatha impact crater under the ice of northwest Greenland, lies a possible second impact crater. The 22-mile wide feature would be the second crater found under an ice sheet, and if confirmed, would be the second crater found under an ice sheet, and if confirmed, would be the 22nd-largest crater on Earth. A NASA-led team discovered the feature using satellite data of the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet as well as radar measurements from NASA's airborne campaign Operation IceBridge. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/ Jefferson Beck
"The only other circular structure that might approach this size would be a collapsed volcanic caldera," MacGregor said.

"But the areas of known volcanic activity in Greenland are several hundred miles away. Also, a volcano should have a clear positive magnetic anomaly, and we don't see that at all."
Although the newly found impact craters in northwest Greenland are only 114 miles apart, they do not appear to have been formed at the same time. From the same radar data and ice cores that had been collected nearby, MacGregor and his colleagues determined that the ice in the area was at least 79,000 years old. The layers of ice were smooth, suggesting the ice hadn't been strongly disturbed during that time. This meant that either the impact happened more than 79,000 years ago or-if it took place more recently-any impact-disturbed ice had long ago flowed out of the area and been replaced by ice from farther inland.

The researchers then looked at rates of erosion: they calculated that a crater of that size would have initially been more half a mile deep between its rim and floor, which is an order of magnitude greater than its present depth. Taking into account a range of plausible erosion rates, they calculated that it would have taken anywhere between roughly a hundred thousand years and a hundred million years for the ice to erode the crater to its current shape-the faster the erosion rate, the younger the crater would be within the plausible range, and vice versa.
"The ice layers above this second crater are unambiguously older than those above Hiawatha, and the second crater is about twice as eroded," MacGregor said.

"If the two did form at the same time, then likely thicker ice above the second crater would have equilibrated with the crater much faster than for Hiawatha."
To calculate the statistical likelihood that the two craters were created by unrelated impact events, MacGregor's team used recently published estimates that leverage lunar impact rates to better understand Earth's harder-to-detect impact record. By employing computer models that can track the production of large craters on Earth, they found that the abundance of said craters that should naturally form close to one another, without the need for a twin impact, was consistent with Earth's cratering record.
"This does not rule out the possibility that the two new Greenland craters were made in a single event, such as the impact of a well separated binary asteroid, but we cannot make a case for it either," said William Bottke, a planetary scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and co-author of both MacGregor's paper and the new lunar impact record study.
Indeed, two pairs of unrelated but geographically close craters have already been found in Ukraine and Canada, but the ages of the craters in the pairs are different from one another.
"The existence of a third pair of unrelated craters is modestly surprising but we don't consider it unlikely," MacGregor said.

"On the whole, the evidence we've assembled indicates that this new structure is very likely an impact (https://phys.org/tags/impact/) crater (https://phys.org/tags/crater/), but presently it looks unlikely to be a twin with Hiawatha."More information: Joseph A. MacGregor et al. A Possible Second Large Subglacial Impact Crater in Northwest Greenland, Geophysical Research Letters (2019). DOI: 10.1029/2018GL078126 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078126)

Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters (https://phys.org/journals/geophysical-research-letters/)

Provided by: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (https://phys.org/partners/nasa-s-goddard-space-flight-center/)


Related:


Huge crater discovered in Greenland from impact that rocked Northern Hemisphere (https://phys.org/news/2018-11-huge-crater-greenland-impact-northern.html)
Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes#)
The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction (https://www.sott.net/article/227222-The-Golden-Age-Psychopathy-and-the-Sixth-Extinction#)
Tunguska, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction (https://www.sott.net/article/160925-Tunguska-Psychopathy-and-the-Sixth-Extinction#)
Celestial Intentions: Comets and the Horns of Moses (https://www.sott.net/article/258463-Celestial-Intentions-Comets-and-the-Horns-of-Moses#)
Witches, Comets and Planetary Cataclysms (https://www.sott.net/article/217194-Witches-Comets-and-Planetary-Cataclysms#)
Giant impact crater found under Greenland ice, possibly 12,000 years old - UPDATE (https://www.sott.net/article/400606-Giant-impact-crater-found-under-Greenland-ice-possibly-12000-years-old-UPDATE)

[Hervé]

Two previously unknown massive impact craters discovered (https://cosmosmagazine.com/geoscience/meteorite-impact-craters-found-in-australia-central-america)

Andrew Masterson Cosmos Magazine (https://cosmosmagazine.com/geoscience/meteorite-impact-craters-found-in-australia-central-america)
Tue, 05 Mar 2019 18:59 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s25/512765/large/190305_craters_full.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s25/512765/full/190305_craters_full.jpg)
Hiding in plain sight: Morgan Cox (right) collecting breccia samples at the Yallalie impact site. © A. CAVOSIE


Researchers have discovered two previously unknown massive craters on Earth, the most recent estimated to have been produced by an impact only 800,000 years ago.

The craters - one in Western Australia and the other in Nicaragua - are revealed in a pair of papers published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

In one sense, the Australian crater, in a location known as Yallalie, about 200 kilometres north of the state capital, Perth, has long been hiding in plain sight.

Buried deep beneath the surface, it was first tentatively identified (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1992Metic..27R.214D) as an impact site in 1992, after its discovery two years earlier during oil drilling exploration.

Subsequent studies (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/geological-magazine/article/yallalie-a-buried-structure-of-possible-impact-origin-in-the-perth-basin-western-australia/0875C11713DCCD24BB7CA3135C060BB4) of the 12-kilometre-wide circular formation, which also features a raised central structure three kilometres wide, identified it as the result of several meteorite impacts.

Now, however, a team headed by Morgan Cox from the Space Science and Technology Centre at Australia's Curtin University has definitively identified the Yallalie crater as the result of single collision.

The researchers analysed a type of composite rock called breccia, which is created as the result of immense heat and pressure.

"Breccia formed by impact is a funny-looking rock, kind of like Christmas fruit cake, and that's exactly what the rocks at this site look like," Cox says.

Previous studies suggested the breccia had formed as a result of meteorite strikes in the near vicinity. It was classified thus as "secondary ejecta".

Cox and her colleagues looked closely at quartz grains found in the conglomerate, and found evidence that they had been "shocked", strongly indicating that the breccia was the primary result of a single, huge impact.
"As soon as we identified the telltale microscopic evidence of impact in quartz from the breccia we had evidence of 'shocked minerals' and knew this was the real deal," says Cox.
In their paper (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.13238), the researchers present geophysical evidence that constrains the date of the impact to between 89 and 83 million years ago.

The second crater (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.13244), however, is much more recent. Its identification also involves researchers from Curtin University.

A team led by Pierre Rochette from Aix-Marseille University in France was the first to study a circular structure in the jungle of Nicaragua, known locally as Pantasma.

Initially the researchers were unable to identify the formation, which has a 14-kilometre diameter, as an impact crater, because they were unable to find evidence of shocked minerals.

A small sample sent to Curtain geochemist Aaron Cavosie, however, provided a key finding.
"I received a sample of black impact glass, about the size of a marble and I had my doubts," Cavosie recalls.

"However, when I examined the glass, it contained shocked zircon, with features [found] only in structures formed by impact. It was amazing to find solid evidence of a meteorite impact in such a tiny sample."
His colleague, Fred Jourdan, also examined the sample. By using argon-dating he was able to determine that the crater was the result of a single meteorite impact that occurred roughly 800,000 years ago.

[onawah]

New Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact Paper - reviewed in detail! UnchartedX Podcast #2
UnchartedX
Published on Mar 28, 2019
"I review the recently released peer-reviewed scientific paper that investigates the Younger Dryas cosmic impact effect in South America.
This is UnchartedX Podcast #2 - set to imagery and video here on youtube, or you can find the mp3 on my website.

*please note that I had to alter some of the music in the video after the fact. I had thought that the intro/exit song was CC by, I was mistaken. Apologies for the abrupt audio transitions, but I didn't want the claim to affect the video, as the music is purely background, I don't think it has anything to do with the content of the video itself.

Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-38089-y
My marked up copy of the paper is here: http://www.unchartedx.com/2019/03/28/...

Full transcript is also available on my website."

nPOlomFhehQ




Edit: PDF of the highlighted version of the paper: http://www.unchartedx.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/s41598-018-38089-y-marked-up.pdf

[Hervé]

...

The skies did fall on our ancestors' heads... :(

[Hervé]

Oldest meteorite collection on Earth found in the Atacama Desert (http://www.geosociety.org/GSA/News/pr/2019/19-21.aspx)

The Geological Society of America, Inc. (http://www.geosociety.org/GSA/News/pr/2019/19-21.aspx)
Thu, 23 May 2019 19:22 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/523703/large/1921_GeoAtacamaWS.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/523703/full/1921_GeoAtacamaWS.jpg)
Meteorite recovery campaign in the Atacama Desert (Nov. 2017).© Photo by Katherine Joy (University of Manchester)


Boulder, Colo., USA: Earth is bombarded every year by rocky debris, but the rate of incoming meteorites can change over time. Finding enough meteorites scattered on the planet's surface can be challenging, especially if you are interested in reconstructing how frequently they land. Now, researchers have uncovered a wealth of well-preserved meteorites that allowed them to reconstruct the rate of falling meteorites over the past two million years.

"Our purpose in this work was to see how the meteorite flux to Earth changed over large timescales-millions of years, consistent with astronomical phenomena," says Alexis Drouard, Aix-Marseille Université, lead author of the new paper in Geology.

To recover a meteorite record for millions of years, the researchers headed to the Atacama Desert. Drouard says they needed a study site that would preserve a wide range of terrestrial ages where the meteorites could persist over long time scales.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/523706/large/1921_GeoMeteorite_avec_croute.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/523706/full/1921_GeoMeteorite_avec_croute.jpg)
Meteorite with thin, dark, fusion crust in the Atacama Desert. © Photo by Jérôme Gattacceca (CEREGE)


While Antarctica and hot deserts both host a large percentage of meteorites on Earth (about 64% and 30%, respectively), Drouard says, "Meteorites found in hot deserts or Antarctica are rarely older than half a million years." He adds that meteorites naturally disappear because of weathering processes (e.g., erosion by wind), but because these locations themselves are young, the meteorites found on the surface are also young.

"The Atacama Desert in Chile, is very old ([over] 10 million years)," says Drouard. "It also hosts the densest collection of meteorites in the world."


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/523704/large/1921_GeoChondrite556gr.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/523704/full/1921_GeoChondrite556gr.jpg)
The L6 ordinary chondrite El Médano 128, a 556 g meteorite recovered in the Atacama Desert. © Photo courtesy CCJ-CNRS, P. Groscaux.


The team collected 388 meteorites and focused on 54 stony samples from the El Médano area in the Atacama Desert. Using cosmogenic age dating, they found that the mean age was 710,000 years old. In addition, 30% of the samples were older than one million years, and two samples were older than two million. All 54 meteorites were ordinary chondrites, or stony meteorites that contain grainy minerals, but spanned three different types.

"We were expecting more 'young' meteorites than 'old' ones (as the old ones are lost to weathering)," says Drouard. "But it turned out that the age distribution is perfectly explained by a constant accumulation of meteorites for millions years." The authors note that this is the oldest meteorite collection on Earth's surface.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/523705/large/1921_GeoGrosse_meteorite.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/523705/full/1921_GeoGrosse_meteorite.jpg)
Large meteorite found in the Atacama Desert. © Photo by Jérôme Gattacceca (CEREGE)


Drouard says this terrestrial crop of meteorites in the Atacama can foster more research on studying meteorite fluxes over large time scales. "We found that the meteorite flux seems to have remained constant over this [two-million-year] period in numbers (222 meteorites larger than 10 g per squared kilometer per million year), but not in composition," he says. Drouard adds that the team plans to expand their work, measuring more samples and narrowing in on how much time the meteorites spent in space. "This will tell us about the journey of these meteorites from their parent body to Earth's surface."


FEATURED ARTICLE
The meteorite flux of the past 2 m.y. recorded in the Atacama Desert

Alexis Drouard; J. Gattacceca; A. Hutzler; P. Rochette; R. Braucher; D. Bourlès; ASTER Team; M. Gounelle; A. Morbidelli; V. Debaille; M. Van Ginneken; M. Valenzuela; Y. Quesnel; R. Martinez. CONTACT: alexis.drouard@lam.fr.

Paper URL: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/570818/the-meteorite-flux-of-the-past-2-m-y-recorded-in.

[Hervé]

Lascaux Shaft Scene and cometary impacts (https://martinsweatman.blogspot.com/2019/08/does-lascaux-shaft-scene-document.html)

Dr. Martin Sweatman Prehistory Decoded (https://martinsweatman.blogspot.com/2019/08/does-lascaux-shaft-scene-document.html)
Sat, 17 Aug 2019 19:12 UTC

The Lascaux shaft scene is perhaps the most iconic of all European Palaeolithic cave artworks (see below). It shows a bison and human, apparently both dying and normally interpreted as a hunting scene. But we now know, beyond any reasonable doubt, the animal symbols represent constellations, and the Shaft Scene in particular very likely represents a date using precession of the equinoxes.

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/534514/full/DSCN2527.jpg
© Copy of the Lascaux Shaft Scene, courtesy of Alistair Coombs


Using the zodiacal method and our ancient zodiac, the date 'written' in the scene is between 15,300 and 15,000 BC (see Prehistory Decoded). The similarity of this scene to Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe suggests it documents another asteroid or comet strike, this time from the direction of Capricornus (represented by the aurochs). It so happens that the Taurid meteor stream would have radiated from this direction at this time, suggesting this artwork memorialises another strike from the Taurid system. Given the presence of a giant comet in the inner solar system at this time, such frequent impacts are entirely expected.

Very interestingly, this time span also corresponds to a sudden temperature fluctuation in the North Atlantic region (see Prehistory Decoded), documented by a Greenland ice core, and to a major cultural transition: the Magdalenian to Azillian.

The Magdalenian culture occupied Spain and France for around 6,000 years, until around 15,000 BC (note, this time-span equals one entire cycle of apsidal precession of the Taurid meteor stream). It is generally accepted to be divided into three sub-phases; Lower, Middle and Upper. The archaeological record documents these cultural transitions; there are changes in populations and cultural artefacts, indicating significant migrations. However, the transition from Magdalenian to Azillian is an even more pronounced transition (hence the change in name), and the focus of many studies.

The best radiocarbon data available has been used to model these transitions. The figure below shows the main result. It is the LUM - EAZ transition that concerns us - this is the End of the Upper Magdalenian, and therefore the beginning of the Early Azillian. Converting the calibrated radiocarbon date corresponding to the Shaft Scene to an uncalibrated radiocarbon date (used in this plot), we get 14,050 BP, to within around 150 years. The agreement is perfect - 14,050 BP corresponds exactly to the major Magdalenian - Azillian transition shown here.

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/534515/large/UM_AZ_transition.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/534515/full/UM_AZ_transition.jpg)

Uncalibrated radiocarbon chronology for multiple Magdalenian sub-phases and the Magdalenian - Azillian transition in Spain and France. © Barshay-Szmidt et al., Quaternary International (2016)

[Hervé]

...

Then there was all that water that came down with the falling skies:

Did Earth Steal Martian Water? (https://www.sott.net/article/420386-Did-Earth-Steal-Martian-Water#)

Pierre Lescaudron Sott.net (https://www.sott.net/article/420386-Did-Earth-Steal-Martian-Water#)
Sat, 14 Sep 2019 18:31 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/538124/large/Mars1.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/538124/full/Mars1.jpg)

While finalizing the writing of the article titled "Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes#)", I encountered an unexpected anomaly.

The time of the demise of the mammoths is also known as the Younger Dryas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas), a period of global cooling that lasted from 12,900 to 11,700 years ago (10,900 B.C. to 9,700 B.C.) during which surface temperatures (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571086604800952) dropped by approximately 7°.

In theory, such a severe cooling should increase the volume of polar ice and, as a result, reduce the sea level. However, during the Younger Dryas, the sea levels rose 17 meters over more than a millennium, as illustrated by the graph below.



https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409741/large/sea_level_temp_YD.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409741/full/sea_level_temp_YD.jpg)
Sea level VS global temperature (20000BP-Now)


If the sea level rose while ice caps were building up, it's possible that the source of the water was external. But where could this water have come from?

Coincidentally or not, most of Mars' Northern hemisphere was once covered with water, and this ocean has mysteriously disappeared. So where did the Martian water go?

Sea Levels on Earth
The Younger Dryas was triggered by major meteorite impacts (c. 12900 BP) on the Laurentian ice sheet as described in the frozen mammoth article (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes). These impacts very likely melted massive quantities of ice and led to a sea level rise. However the 1,200 years of cold temperatures that followed should have frozen at least some water and reduced sea levels, yet sea levels rose dramatically throughout those 1,200 years.

In any case, the meteorite impacts on the Laurentian ice sheet can only explain a small part of the 17 meter rise observed during the Younger Dryas.
"Reconstruction of the glacial melt history finds major northward melt-water discharge 13,100-12,500 years ago, at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. The outflow entered the Arctic Ocean, via the Mackenzie River, Fram Strait, and ultimately reached the eastern North Atlantic.'

Geomorphological data, on the other hand, suggest that still blocked routes to the north and east toward the St. Lawrence Seaway until the end of the Younger Dryas. Sea level curves from Tahiti, New Guinea, and Barbados show a small step (under 6 meters) around 13,000 years ago near the Younger Dryas onset, which may have come from this deluge."

~ Vivien Gornitz, Rising Seas: Past, Present, Future, p.127 According to Leverman et al (http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~anders/publications/levermann_clark13.pdf)., a 7°C drop in temperature should lead to a sea level drop of about 28 meters (~4 m/°C). As shown in the diagram above however, the sea level rose about 17 meters during the Younger Dryas, while the melting of the Laurentian ice sheet should have increased the sea level by 6 meters.

It means that about 39 meters of extra water (17+28-6) was added on the surface of the Earth. Keep in mind that those three figures are just approximations, estimates based on a number hypothesis. They provide us nonetheless with an order of magnitude.

Water on Mars?


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537705/pod/giovanni_domenico_cassini_1.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537705/full/giovanni_domenico_cassini_1.jpg)
Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712)


In 1666, famous astronomer Cassini, through simple telescope observations, observed ice-like polar caps and clouds on Mars and concluded that there was obviously water on Mars (https://books.google.fr/books?id=SfE-AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=cassini+water+Mars&source=bl&ots=JQNQyUJuSd&sig=ACfU3U0ZF0zIL9_h8Lr7GtzDh9TGUeQOvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj01L-4z8jkAhVC_SoKHQkFBBYQ6AEwF3oECB8QAQ#v=onepage&q=cassini%20water%20Mars&f=false).

Cassini's view prevailed for a few centuries, but modern science rejected Cassini's claim and the new doctrine became that there was no water whatsoever on Mars. It's only recently, with the massive flow of data coming from Martian probes and rovers, that the evidence became overwhelming that Mars did indeed have water at some point in the past.

According to a paper (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150305140447.htm) published in Science in 2015, Mars used to hold enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 140 meters deep. About 85% of this water has, however, "disappeared" (the remaining 15% is stored under ice at the poles).

Apparently, Martian water was not uniformly spread over the surface of the planet. According to a recent topographic study, most of the Martian water was stored on the North of the planet, in one single ocean, with a similar volume to Earth's arctic ocean.

If this water was somehow transferred to Earth, it would result in an approximate sea level rise of 34 meters. This figure is comparable, in terms of magnitude, to the 39 meters estimate mentioned above.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537696/large/6d9a4e646905d2891a3da0b640058c.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537696/full/6d9a4e646905d2891a3da0b640058c.jpg)
Topographic map of Mars with it ocean


How Could Mars Lose its Water?
As noted, most water on Mars has "disappeared". Modern science offers two explanations for this: underground leakage and space leakage.

Underground leakage is highly unlikely because Mars has no known tectonic plates and therefore no subduction, which is the main phenomenon through which surface water is brought underground.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537709/medium/Screenshot_11_09_2019_13_15_14.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537709/full/Screenshot_11_09_2019_13_15_14.jpg)
Mars crater ditribution


Space leakage is the second hypothesis which posits that 4.2 billion years ago, Mars lost its magnetic field and, devoid of this protection, solar winds would have stripped the planet of its atmosphere and most of its water within a few hundred million years.

However, this is probably not true for one simple reason, the top half of the Martian Northern hemisphere (where was once the Martian ocean stood) exhibits far less and far smaller craters than the rest of the planet.

In 2011, Robbins et al. (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2011JE003967) published a database listing close to 400,000 craters. The picture on the right is excerpted from this paper and shows the geographic distribution of Martian craters (diameters between 30 and 50 km). Obviously, most of Mars' Northern hemisphere exhibits a far lower concentration of craters than the rest of the planet.

If Mars' ocean disappeared about 4 billion years ago, how can we explain that Mars ocean bed is almost devoid of asteroid impact evidence while the rest of the planet is covered with craters?

One potential explanation would be that most impacts on Mars happened more than 4 billions years ago, when the ocean was still there and acted as a damper, preventing the formation of craters on Mars surface.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537710/medium/Screenshot_11_09_2019_13_23_15.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537710/full/Screenshot_11_09_2019_13_23_15.jpg)
Geographic concentration of recent craters on Mars


However, this explanation doesn't seem to hold up. Despite an almost non-existent atmosphere, violent dust storms occur on Mars that erode craters. Given that Robbins et al., identified "well preserved" craters on Mars, these craters must be relatively recent.

The geographic distribution of this type of crater reveals the same pattern: there are less recent craters where the Martian ocean was in comparison to the rest of the planet.

The above strongly suggests that Mars lost its water much more recently than mainstream science claims.

Interplanetary Electric Discharge
The electric Universe theory, as described in our book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection (https://www.sott.net/article/298798-Review-Earth-Changes-and-the-Human-Cosmic-Connection), shows how celestial bodies (planets, starts, moons, comets,...) are electrically charged. In addition, such bodies are surrounded by a sort of "insulation bubble" (Double Layer).

When two astronomical bodies, like two planets, get close enough, an electric discharge forms from the most negative planet to the most positive one, in order to re-balance the electric charge of the two planets. Electric discharges between celestial bodies have been observed several times. Here are a few examples:

- fragment G of Comet Shoemaker-Levy and Jupiter:
The Hubble Space Telescope detected a flare-up of fragment "G" of Shoemaker-Levy long before impact at a distance of 2.3 million miles from Jupiter. For the electrical theorists this flash would occur as the fragment crossed Jupiter's plasma sheath, or magnetosphere boundary.

Thunderbolts, Deep Impact and Shoemaker-Levy 9 (https://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060529deepimpact.htm)
https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537711/medium/5501ba1d_468f_44fc_9987_22c181.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537711/full/5501ba1d_468f_44fc_9987_22c181.jpg)
Electric discharge between Jupiter and comet Shoemaker-Levy


- Io, one of the moons of Jupiter and Jupiter:
In November 1979, the noted astrophysicist Thomas Gold proposed that the gigantic plumes on Io are not volcanic but evidence of electrical discharging.Years later, a paper by Peratt and Alex Dessler followed up Gold's suggestion, showing that the discharges took the form of a 'plasma gun effect,' which produces a parabolic plume profile, filamentation of the matter within the plume, and the termination of the plume onto a thin annular ring.

W. Thornhill, The Electric Universe, p.112 (https://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/archives/special_edition/100425_se_teu6.htm)
https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537712/medium/io_volcano.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537712/full/io_volcano.jpg)
Io exhibiting a massive electrical discharge


- Herbig Haro object 34. Here, electric discharges, in the form of interstellar Birkeland currents, occur between proto stars and proto planets :


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537713/medium/Protostar_HH_34.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537713/full/Protostar_HH_34.jpg)
Electric discharge along HH34 celestial objects


Electric discharges between celestial bodies are very similar to arc welding. When the negatively charged electrode is brought close enough to the positively charged part, an electric arc, ionized air (plasma), appears and electrons travel in the plasma (along what is called "Birkeland currents") from the electrode (stick) to the welded part in order to re-balance the electric charges.

Notice that during arc welding, electrons are not the only material transferred from the electrode to the welded part, (negatively charged) molten metal from the tip of the electrode is carried towards the positively charged welded part.

Another typical feature of such electric discharges is "electric scarring". These fractal patterns are known as 'Lichtenberg figures'. Lichtenberg is the physicist that discovered this phenomenon in 1777. Notice that the polarity of the scarred material has marked influence on the form of the Lichtenberg figure:
[...] there is also a marked difference in the form of the figure, according to the polarity of the electrical charge that was applied to the plate. If the charge areas were positive, a widely extending patch is seen on the plate, consisting of a dense nucleus, from which branches radiate in all directions.

Negatively charged areas are considerably smaller and have a sharp circular or fan-like boundary entirely devoid of branches. Heinrich Rudolf Hertz employed Lichtenberg dust figures in his seminal work proving Maxwell's electromagnetic wave theories
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[Hervé]

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Relative Polarity of Mars and Earth
As described in chapter 8 of Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection, (https://www.sott.net/article/298798-Review-Earth-Changes-and-the-Human-Cosmic-Connection) in the Solar system, the Sun is the most positive body. Therefore, the further away from the Sun a planet is, the more negative its electric potential is. Being further away from the Sun than Earth, Mars' electric potential is lower than that of Earth.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537847/large/heliosphere.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537847/full/heliosphere.jpg)
Sun, Earth, heliopshere: relative electric charges


As a consequence, if an electric discharge happened between Mars and Earth, it started from the most negatively charged body (Mars) and spread towards the most positively charged body (Earth).

Mars was the cathode (negatively charged) and was stripped from material (gazes, rocks, water) and the electric scarring should exhibit craters, striking at a high point, forming craters and steep side trenches
If the surface is a cathode (negatively charged), the arc will tend to move across the surface. After striking, usually at a high point, and eroding a crater, the arc may jump to a new high point — the rim of the new crater is a most likely target.

The abundance of small craters centered on the rims of larger ones testifies to this predictable behavior. As the arc travels, it may erode a series of craters in a line, appearing as a chain of craters.

If the craters in these chains overlap, the effect is a steep-sided trench with scalloped edges. The arc may erode a trench for a distance and then jump some distance away before eroding another trench. These "dashed line" trenches will usually have circular ends and constant widths. All of these patterns occur in great abundance on the surface of Mars.

W.Thornhill, The Electric Universe: Part II Discharges and Scars (https://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050504eu-1.htm) Signs of electric discharge on Mars


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537720/large/Valles_Marineris_topographic_m.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537720/full/Valles_Marineris_topographic_m.png)
Topographic map of Valles Marineris


If a massive electric discharge occurred between Mars and Earth, is there any trace of a major (negative) Lichtenberg figure as described above to be found on Mars?

One of the main geological features of Mars is Valles Marineris. At more than 4,000 km (2,500 mi) long, 200 km (120 mi) wide and up to 7 km (4.5 mi) deep, it is the second largest canyon in the entire Solar system, and stretches for nearly a quarter of the planet's circumference.

Mainstream science theorizes that Valles Marineris formed as a result of water erosion billions of years ago. However, this explanation doesn't seem to match some of the characteristics of Valles Marineris:


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537722/large/SS21323407_cropped.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537722/full/SS21323407_cropped.jpg)
Probe photograph of Valles Marineris


- In Valles Marineris, the "outflow" is as narrow as the "inflow" and the middle of the course constitutes the broadest part. Overall the width is quite constant, which is unlike rivers that tend to broaden over their course.

- The "course" of Valles Marineris doesn't follow the downslope. It sometimes "runs" uphill although there is no sign of the damage, rifts for example, that might be expected if the topographical changes were due to later vertical movement of the terrain.

- Valles Marineris doesn't reveal signs of tribuary "rivers". The two major "rivers" that can be imagined run parallel to each other. The secondary "river" joins the main one at a near right angle, unlike the converging path usually exhibited by tributaries that join a main river

- The floor of Valles Marineris reveals transverse markings, unlike river beds that tend to have longitudinal markings shaped by the river flow.

- The "tributaries" exhibit a V-shaped cross-section while water erosion typically forms U-shaped river beds.

- Valles Marineris banks are very deep (7 km) and very steep. The banks show no sign of water erosion and its typical horizontal marking. On the contrary, the markings reveal a vertical chevron pattern.

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537723/large/Marineris_rim.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537723/full/Marineris_rim.jpg)
Bank of Valles Marineris


While the features of Valles Marineris seem to contradict the water erosion theory, they are very consistent with the distinctive features of (negative) electric scarring:
When planets come close, gargantuan interplanetary lightning results. It is perfectly capable of stripping rock and gases from a planet against the puny force of gravity. It does so leaving characteristic scars. [...]

The parallelism of the canyons is due to the long-range magnetic attraction of current filaments and their short-range strong electrostatic repulsion.

Particularly significant are the small parallel rilles composed essentially of chains of craters. A traveling underground explosion follows the lightning streamer and cleanly forms the V-shaped tributary canyons.

There is no collapse debris associated with undercutting water flow.Similarly, the "V" cross-section is usual for craters formed by underground nuclear explosions. The circular ends of the tributaries, where the explosion began, are precisely of that shape.

In comparison, headward erosion by ground water sapping gives a U-shaped cross-section and does not necessarily end in a circular alcove.

Note that some of the tributary canyons on the south rim of Valles Marineris cut across one another at near right angles. This might be due to repeated discharges from the same area chasing the main stroke as it travelled along Ius Chasma. No form of water erosion can produce crosscutting channels like that.

The fluted appearance of the main canyon walls is probably due to the same travelling explosive action.

W. Thornhill, Mars and the Grand Canyon (https://www.holoscience.com/wp/mars-and-the-grand-canyon/) Interestingly, Valles Marineris is contiguous to the ocean that once covered most of Mars' ocean. If Vallles Marineris was the place of an electric discharge between Mars and Earth, the adjacent Martian ocean would have certainly been affected, and possibly transferred.

Evidence of Material Transfer From Mars to Earth
As mentioned in the above quote, a massive electric discharge from Mars to Earth could have stripped significant quantities of rocks from Valles Marineris. So, before looking for signs of a major (positive) electric discharge on Earth, let's see if there is any evidence of Martian rocks on Earth.

As of 2019, 237 Martian meteorites have been found on Earth according to the Meteoritical Society (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php). So, transfer of material from Mars has occurred.

One might assume that this phenomenon is very ancient and occurred billions of years ago when planets were forming, asteroids were rampant and orbits were unstable. But data suggests that this is not exactly the case.

While the landing time for most of Martian meteorites is unknown, a few have been dated, in particular the Martian meteorite commonly abbreviated ALH84001 that was found in 1984. Its ETA on Earth has been estimated at 13,000 years ago (11,000 B.C.).

According to Hamilton et al (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8004-birthplace-of-famous-mars-meteorite-pinpointed/)., the origin of ALH84001 is Valles Marineris because of its geological nature (orthopyroxenite), which is the only place where orthopyroxenite has been found (spectral analysis). In fact, ALH84001 is the only orthopyroxenite Martian meteorites. No other meteorite of this kind has been found on Earth.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537738/large/652612main_pia00289_946.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537738/full/652612main_pia00289_946.jpg)
Martian meteorite ALH84001


Interestingly, because of its carbonates content (https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-08-06-mars-life_x.htm), ALH84001 is the only meteorite originating from a time period during which Mars is suspected to have supported liquid water. ALH84001 is an abbreviation which stands for ALlan Hills 84001. Allan Hills is located along the Southern coast of Antarctica.

Now, let's recapitulate some key characteristics of ALH84001:
- It comes from Valles Marineris
- At the time of its arrival on earth, Mars was a wet planet
- It landed on Earth 13,000 years ago
- It was found in Antarctica
It would be interesting to know if some Martian meteorites come from its oceanic bedrock. Unfortunately, the geological composition of the oceanic bedrock of Mars is unknown because it is covered with a thick layer of sediment. However the mineralogical composition of the coast of Mars' dry ocean is known and directly related to some Martian meteorites found on Earth.

Indeed, there is a rare type of Martian meteorite called "nakhlite". Only 21 specimens (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=Martian%20(nakhlite)&sfor=types&stype=exact) have been found on Earth so far. Nakhlites are rich in augite (a silicium based mineral) and they formed from basaltic magma about 1.3 billion years ago.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537739/large/mars_alba_mons.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537739/full/mars_alba_mons.jpg)
Theorized geographical origin of nakhlites


Because of the composition and age of the nakhlites, they are believed to originate (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/treiman/nakhlite_rev.pdf) from one of these three Martian volcanic areas: Tharsis, Elysium, or Syrtis Major Planum.

Interestingly, as shown of the map on the right, each of those three volcanic constructs is situated near the coast of what was once the Martian ocean.

Of the 21 nakhlite meteorites that reached Earth, 7 of them were found in Antartica, That is 33%. This is a high percentage knowing that only about 12% of all meteorites that reached Earth were found in Antartica. Mass wise, 16.9 kg of nakhlite meteorites were found in Antarctica, that is 54% of the total mass of nakhlite meteorites.

Lastly, the nakhlite meteorites are believed to have fallen to Earth up to 10,000 years ago. This figure is quite close to the arrival date of ALH84001 (13,000 years ago).

Any Sign of Electric Discharge on Earth?
If a massive electric discharge initiated from Valles Marineris and hit Earth, where did the hit occur?

There are several canyons on Earth, including the Great Canyon, that hold features of electric scarring. However, the data about Martian meteors provided in the previous chapter, reveals a strong affinity of Martian meteorites for Antarctica.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537860/large/MODIS.png (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537860/full/MODIS.png)
Spectroradiometry of Princess Elizabeth land


Does the bed rock of Antarctica show any sign of positive electric scarring, i.e. a massive canyon-like geological feature? Indeed it does. As shown in the satellite picture above, Antarctica is considered to host the largest canyon on Earth, according to a 2016 geological survey (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-s-grandest-canyon-may-be-hidden-beneath-antarctica/):
[...] the largest unsurveyed region on the icy continent is a region called Princess Elizabeth Land. Now a team of geologists has scoured that area to reveal a massive subglacial lake and a series of canyons, one of which — more than twice as long as the Grand Canyon — could rank as Earth's largest. At this point, Martian meteorites and traces of electric scarring point to Antartica for a potential location for the Mars-Earth transfer. But what about the main constituent of the whole process, water?

If Mars lost most of its water to Earth, there should be some evidence of this massive transfer, on our planet in general and in antarctica in particular.

Could part of the Antarctica ice sheet be of Martian origin? To answer this question, let's first observe the Antarctican ice-sheet and then compare it to its Arctic counterpart.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537742/large/present_day_big.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537742/full/present_day_big.jpg)
Topographic map of Antarctica


The Antartica ice sheet (https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html) is massive. It contains about 30 million km3 (7.2 million cubic miles) of ice. This represents more than 70% of Earth's freshwater. In comparison, the artic ice sheet (https://web.viu.ca/earle/geol305/The%20Greenland%20Ice%20Sheet.pdf), located over Greenland, is only 2.9 million km3, (0.68 million cublic miles).

In terms of volume, the Northern ice sheet is less than 10% of Antarctica ice sheet. Notice also that Antartica does not form one single solid continent. It's more like an archipelago constituted of a few massive islands separated by deep marine areas as depicted in the map above.

Between the islands covered by the antarctic ice-sheet, the bedrock can be as low as 2500 meters below sea level. This means that in some places the ice sheet is more than 4 km (2.7mi) thick: 1.5 km (1mi) above sea level and 2.5 km (1.7mi) below sea level (see cross section of Antarctica below)


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537744/large/DA_diags_D_a_1_4_continent_cro.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537744/full/DA_diags_D_a_1_4_continent_cro.jpg)
Antarctic cross section


For comparison, the arctic sea ice reaches a maximum thickness of 4 meters with ridges up to 20 meters, although the average depth of the Arctic ocean is 1038 meters, which is comparable to the depth of the Antarctic "ocean".

The question then arises: why is there so much more ice in Antartica compared to the arctic? Why does Antartica ice extend 2,500 meters below sea level and reach the bedrock while Arctic ice is a mere 4 meter thick layer floating on the ocean?

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According to mainstream science the antarctic and Greenland ice sheet were formed because of the incremental accumulation of snow, year after year. This suggests that Antarctica experienced a lot more snowfall. But, data shows the opposite. Indeed, Antarctica is one of the driest place on Earth with only 18 cm/year of percipitation, while the Arctic region experiences almost double this figure with 32 cm/year.

If Antartica receives less snow than the Arctic region, the only explanation for its tenfold higher quantity of ice is that it experiences less melting. Maybe Antarctica is experiencing much colder temperatures relative to the Arctic region? Again the data suggests the opposite.

As shown in the graph below, for eons the Arctic region has been much colder than Antartica. For the last 11,000 years, the Antarctic has been marginally colder than the Arctic.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537745/large/gisp2vostok.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537745/full/gisp2vostok.jpg)

Artic VS Antarctica temperatures


Also, notice in this same graph the close correlation between Greenland (GISP2) and Vostok (Antarctica) ice core-based temperature reconstruction from today back to the Younger Dryas. What we see is that, around 11,000 years BP, a sudden and marked de-correlation occurred. Between 11,000 BP and now, the two temperature curves are very similar in shape and very close in terms of value. Before this time (50kY BP to 11 kY BP) the two curves are totally divergent.

Are these two curves a testimony to the environmental conditions of two different planets?

In any case, no endogenous cause (snowfall difference, temperature difference) can explain the marked difference in depth and volume between the antarctic ice sheet and the arctic one. A massive and sudden inflow of exogenous water (in ice form) in Antarctica would explain these discrepencies.

How Could Mars Get so Close to Earth?
Mars exhibits the second largest eccentricity of all planets in the Solar system. Large eccentricities usually suggest orbits that were disrupted in the recent past. Because of this marked eccentricity, Mars can get as close as 56 million kilometers from Earth, as shown in the diagram below.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537758/large/earth_mars.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537758/full/earth_mars.jpg)
Mars and Earth orbits


For comparison Earth's magnetotail extends more than 6 million km (blue and purple ellipse in the image above).

So, electrically speaking, Mars is only one order of magnitude away from of Earth. However, the normal distance between Earth and Mars is too large for any electric discharge between the two planets. But could some kind of cosmic disruption have brought the two planets abnormally close?

The obvious agent for such a massive orbital disruption would be comet, but one large enough to move Mars, which is ten times heavier (http://www.digipac.ca/chemical/mtom/contents/chapter1/marsfacts.htm) than the Moon, away from its initial orbit.

This scenario is actually the main theory developed by Emanuel Velikovsky in his best-selling book: "World in collision (https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Collision-Immanuel-Velikovsky/dp/B001620NBC)" published in 1950.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537869/pod/Immanuel_Velikovsky.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537869/full/Immanuel_Velikovsky.jpg)
Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979)


Using mostly comparative mythology, Velikovsky proposed that Venus was initially a comet and disrupted the orbit of Mars, that subsequently made a close approach to Earth.

Scientific leaders ruthlessly lambasted Velikovsky's catastrophist theory, because it directly threatened their fundamental paradigm, uniformitarianism, without which the church of materialist progress and its darwinian atheist creed would inevitably collapse. Adding insult to injury, Velikovsky based his work on religious texts and showed that they might carry more truth than expected.

Velikovsky realized that if his scenario was true, several predictions could be made about the astronomical bodies involved. After all, the merit of a theory is based on its predictive abilities. The predictions Velikovsky made were in total contradiction with the prevailing views of the time.

Decade after decade, space programs provided extra data that made it possible to test Velikovsky's claims. Unexpectedly, most of them turned up to be true.Some of the most noticeable predictions were the Jupiter radio signal (https://www.velikovsky.info/on-the-recent-discoveries-concerning-jupiter-and-venus/), the Sun net electric charge (https://www.velikovsky.info/electric-sun-model/) and Earth's magnetosphere extending behind the moon (https://www.velikovsky.info/worlds-in-collision/).

Analyzing all the true predictions made by Velikosvky is beyond the scope of this article, however.

Since we have already gathered information about a potential encounter between Mars and Earth, we will now focus on the last piece of puzzle: Is Venus a comet? And, in particular Velikovsky's predictions relative to the cometary nature of Venus.

The nature of Venus was the pivotal point of the controversy surrounding Worlds in Collision. If Venus was not a comet, the whole chain of events was impossible. Conversely, if Venus was indeed a comet, Velikovsky's Earth-Mars close encounter scenario becomes much more plausible.

Was Venus a Comet?
According to mainstream science, Venus is a sister planet of Earth and Mars. They formed the same way (accretion), from the same material, in the same region, over the same time span.Contrary to this model that prevailed at the time, Velikovsky's predictions about Venus and its cometary nature were as follows:
- Venus is a hot planet because until recently it was a comet.

https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537870/large/dzxtQ2dXH9SVKztJTbAXSA_320_80.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537870/full/dzxtQ2dXH9SVKztJTbAXSA_320_80.jpg)
Planet Venus © NASA


In the 1950's, the scientific consensus was that Venus was an old planet similar to Earth and Mars, and given that its orbit is similar to Earth and Mars, its temperature should be similar too. At the time, Venus' temperature was "known (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17816564)" to be -25°C (-13°F) and some scientists even believed that Venus might be habitable.

But when space probe Mariner 2 sent back its data in 1963, the scientific community was flabbergasted. Venus' average surface temperature (http://mentallandscape.com/V_Lavochkin2.htm) was a whopping 462°C (864°F). The "habitable" planet had the temperature of molten lead!

The hot nature of Venus was confirmed in 1991, when Kiefer et al (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/91JE02221). measured gravitational variations over Venus, from which they deduced that Venus crust was very thin (10-20 km) compared to the crust of "sister" planets like Earth or Mars (50-100 km).

This thin lithosphere indicates that Venus has a hot, active interior that prevents the crust from cooling down and hardening over a substantial thickness..

In conclusion, as predicted by Velikovsky, Venus is indeed a hot planet, on the surface as well as inside. This strongly suggests that not long ago Venus was still a blazing hot comet and that it has not yet fully cooled down from its previous cometary state.
- Venus is a young planet because until recently it was a comet.
In 1950's, the prevailing theory was that Venus was an old planet that formed through accretion billions of years ago. As a consequence, because of its exposure to asteroids for billions of years, it was believed to be crater-laden.

But these were only assumptions because, at the time, the surface of Venus could not be directly observed due to its very dense atmosphere. In the 1970's, the first Venusian probes (http://mentallandscape.com/V_Lavochkin2.htm) allowed direct observations of Venus surface and revealed that Venus had a surprisingly low number of craters.

These repeated observations strongly suggest that, as predicted by Velikovsky, Venus is a young planet. Until recently it was still a comet, therefore not enough time in its "planet life" has elapsed for it to be impacted a large number of times.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537871/large/PIA13001_1280x800.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537871/full/PIA13001_1280x800.jpg)
The relatively pristine surface of Venus © NASA/JPL


- Venus should have an anomalous rotation
According to Velikovsky, because of its recent cometary nature and its chaotic interaction with Mars and Earth, Venus should display a anomalous rotation compared to other planets in the Solar system.

This prediction was, like the others, considered as heresy. But in 1962 (https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4218/ch2.htm), the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington announced that Venus had a slow retrograde rotation. It is the only planet in the Solar system to display a retrograde rotation.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537874/large/qe8TRUP.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537874/full/qe8TRUP.jpg)
Resonance pattern of Venus relative to Earth © Imgur

Confirming Venus' peculiar celestial movements, Goldreich et al (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1966AJ.....71..425G). demonstrated in a paper published in 1966 that Venus' spin was in resonance with Earth's orbit - each time Venus passes between the Sun and Earth, it shows the same side to Earth.

Such a resonance strongly suggests a relatively recent close approach between Earth and Venus, which "locked" the spin of the smaller planet with the orbit of the larger one. In addition, one of the main arguments that sought to refute Velikovsky's theory was that Keplerian orbits can not cross each other - so that collisions or near-collisions can't occur.

In a paper titled "Velikovsky and the sequence of planetary orbit (http://www.mikamar.biz/Pensee%20VIII/0806-vel-sequence-planet.htm)", L.E. Rose et al demonstrated that not only can Keplerian orbits cross each other, but Venus could have had a highly elliptical (cometary) orbit in the recent past, that the Solar system could have exhibited stable planetary orbits before the arrival of Venus, and that Venus could have acquired a circular orbit soon after its integration to the Solar system.

Venus electrical activity
Because of Venus' cometary nature and its past interactions with Mars, Velikovsky predicted that Venus should display some electrical activity. In the 1950's, this prediction was contrary to the scientific consensus which considered Venus as an electrically inert planet. This view prevailed for decades. But in 2006, the electric activity of Venus was proven when the 'Venus Express' satellite observed lightning (https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Venus_Express/Acid_clouds_and_lightning) in the Venusian atmosphere.

This was just the beginning of the revelations about Venus' electric nature. In a paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06239) published in Nature in 2007, Pätzold et al. showed that Venus was also surrounded by an extensive ionosphere (the positively charged layer of the atmosphere).

A few years later, in 2013, the ESA announced that Venus did not have a normal spherical ionopshere but a teardrop-shaped (https://www.space.com/19537-venus-comet-atmosphere.html) ionosphere, i.e. a comet tail, as illustrated by the image below.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537872/large/Comet_like_ionosphere_at_Venus.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537872/full/Comet_like_ionosphere_at_Venus.jpg)
Venus tear-shaped ionosphere © ESA


Venus' comet tail is very long: 45 million km (29 million miles), so long in fact that its ion tail reaches Earth (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15420842-900-science-planets-tail-of-the-unexpected/) when the Sun, Venus and Earth are aligned.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537974/large/20842901.gif (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537974/full/20842901.gif)
Venus ion tail


Notice that Venus, originally a comet that finally settled along a stable orbit in the Solar system, is not an isolated case. In chapter 21 (https://www.sott.net/article/298798-Review-Earth-Changes-and-the-Human-Cosmic-Connection) of our book "Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection" we described in detail how several planets of our Solar system have acquired a number of new moons that were previously cometary bodies.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537972/medium/image77.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537972/full/image77.jpg)
Number of moon (1975 VS. 2013)


[...]

Article continues below...

[Hervé]

[...]

Continued from above...


When Did The Water Transfer Occur?
We started this article with an "anomaly": during the Younger Dryas, a period of dramatic cooling, the sea level rose markedly instead of dropping (because of the increasing volume of ice). Since the hypothesis is that a massive dump of Martian ice can explain this anomaly, the close encounter with Mars should have happened soon after the beginning of the YD, which is dated to 12,900 B.P.

But are there other pieces of evidence that confirm this sequence of events and clarify the time that elapsed between the beginning of the YD (cometary bombardments) and the Mars encounter (ice and water dump)? As we will see below, several sources of information - among them ancient maps, reconstruction of past sea level and past temperatures and moraine analysis - can give us a pretty clear idea of when the water transfer from Mars to Earth likely occured.

Ancient Maps
Several maps dating back to the rennaisance show an ice-free Antarctica. Here we will focus on the Piri Reis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map) map (dated to 1513), the Oronteus Finaeus (https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/mapas_antiguos/mapasantiguos06.htm) map (1532) and the Buache (http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/142antarctica.php) map (1737).

The authenticity of these maps has been thoroughly tested. The book "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (https://archive.org/details/HapgoodCharlesHutchinsMapsOfTheAncientSeaKings/page/n19)" by Charles Hapgood demonstrates that not only are the maps genuine, but also that the people who drew them had an excellent knowledge of longitudes, latitudes and spherical trigonometry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_trigonometry), a branch of geometry that reached its complete form only at the end of the 19th Century. It is clear also that the original designers of these maps had explored and surveyed the whole world and knew the exact size circumference of our planet.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537976/large/Buache_Map.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537976/full/Buache_Map.jpg)
The Buache map (1737)


While these maps date back to the 16th Century, Antartica was only discovered three centuries later in 1820 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Antarctica). This suggests that these three maps are medieval copies of ancient original maps drawn at a time when Antarctica was indeed an ice-free continent. Also notice the Buache map (above) shows an ice-free Antractica made of two main islands.

20th Century radar mapping of the Antartican rockbed has confirmed (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/is-antarctica-a-continent-or-an-archipelago/F58F32467CAB0450A8F882AEF650E4A1/core-reader) that Antarctica is not one solid single island, but rather an archipelago comprising two main islands.

A close examination of the Orontius Finaues map (below) reveals a number of river inlets and islands along the coast of Antarctica. These features are now under water. This suggests that at the time when the original Oronteus Finaues map was drawn, the sea level was noticeably lower than it is today.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537975/large/mapasantiguos06_00_small.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537975/full/mapasantiguos06_00_small.jpg)
The Oronteus Finaeus map and an ice-free Antarctica


In some cases, the features are now more than 120 meters under water. As shown in the image below, the only time over the last 125,000 years when water level was that low was about 15,000 years ago.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537978/large/Sea_Level_History_NOAA.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537978/full/Sea_Level_History_NOAA.jpg)
Sea level over the past 140 kY


Were these maps drawn 15,000 years ago, when the water level was low enough for the now submerged land features to be exposed? If these ancients maps representing an ice-free Antarctica were drawn about 15,000 years ago, then the close encounter with Mars and the accompanying ice dump must have happened later.

Sediment analysis from Antarctica confirms that the original maps have to date to at least 6,000 years ago since the analysis of sediment cores of the Ross Sea reveal fine river sediments, i.e. non frozen/active rivers connecting to the Ross sea at that time.

So we have a date range for the Mars encounter somewhere between 6,000 and 15,000 years ago. Can we narrow this range?

Sea Level And Temperatures
The sea level drop (about 30 meters) that should have been induced by the YD cooling (12,900 to 11,700 years ago) didn't happen, and we can hypothetise that it was offset by the intake of Martian water. To know more precisely when this intake might have occured however, we need to take a closer look at coral-based sea level analysis. The sea level graph found at the beginning of this article displays a very smooth curve because it is the average sea levels based on the analysis of the several coral reefs.

If we examine this coral reef data individually, it appears that it shows some variability. As shown by the chart below, each reef has its own history:


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537326/large/YD_temperature_coral.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537326/full/YD_temperature_coral.jpg)
Sea level from coral reefs data


In the graph above, the Barbados coral records (blue line following the diamond symbols) show a steep increase (blue arrow) followed by a sudden trough (green arrow) quickly followed by a second steep increase (yellow arrow). There are only about 500 years between the two steep increases.

The reconstructed temperature history (based on the analysis of oxygen18 isotope) during the Younger Dryas reveals a very similar picture:


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537328/medium/YD_temp_O18_arrows.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537328/full/YD_temp_O18_arrows.jpg)
Temperatures during the Younger Dryas


The graph above shows that the beginning of the Younger Dryas is marked first by a drastic cooling (blue arrow) followed, about four centuries later, by a second abrupt cooling (green arrow). Do the two consecutive spikes in temperature drops and sea level rise suggest two consecutive major cooling events? Like the cometary bombardment described in our previous article (c. 12900 BP) and, a few centuries later, the Mars-Earth interaction (c.12500 BP) described in this article?

Moraine Analysis
The quick succession of two major cooling events at the beginning of the YD seems to be confirmed by moraine analysis as described by Anthony Watts in the following excerpt (moraines are geological formations that mark the limit of the ice extent):
The Younger Dryas was not just a single climatic event. Late Pleistocene climatic warming and cooling not only occurred before and after the YD, but also within it. All three major Pleistocene ice sheets, the Scandinavian, Laurentide, and Cordilleran, experienced double moraine-building episodes, as did a large number of alpine glaciers. Multiple YD moraines of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet have long been documented and a vast literature exists. The Scandinavian Ice Sheet readvanced during the YD and built two extensive end moraines across southern Finland, the central Swedish moraines, and the Ra moraines of southwestern Norway(Fig. 4). 14C dates indicate they were separated by about 500 years.

Anthony Watts, The intriguing problem of the Younger Dryas (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/19/the-intriguing-problem-of-the-younger-dryaswhat-does-it-mean-and-what-caused-it/)
https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537410/large/clip_image008_thumb.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/537410/full/clip_image008_thumb.jpg)
Double Younger Dryas moraines of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet.


Beyond the case of the Scandinavian ice sheet, Loch Lomond in Scotland provides very similar evidence:
Among the first multiple YD moraines to be recognized were the Loch Lomond moraines of the Scottish Highlands.[...]. The Loch Lomond moraines consist of multiple moraines. Radiocarbon dates constrain the age of the Loch Lomond moraines between 12.9k and 11.5k calendar years ago Ancient maps, temperature and sea level reconstruction and moraines analysis all provide a consistant picture. The beginning of the YD seems to have been marked by two distinct catastrophic cooling events that happened in close succession:
1/ c.12,900 BP - A major cometary bombardment as described in the previously mentioned article and generally accepted by modern science

2/ c.12,500 BP - A few centuries later, a close encounter between Earth and Mars and the accompanying water/ice dump (not generally accepted by mainstream science).
Conclusion
The information gathered above enables us to hypothesize a scenario for the second event (c.12,500 BP) that involves the following steps:
1/ Venus, a cometary body, enters the Solar system and follows a typical eccentric cometary orbit around the Sun and Jupiter

2/ Comet Venus passes by Mars and disrupts its orbit

3/ Mars' disrupted orbit brings it very close to Earth

4/ The close proximity between Mars and Earth triggers a massive electric discharge transferring Martian material, including most of its ocean, to Earth.
The very little time that elapsed between the two events (about 4 centuries which is a blink of an eyes on the celestial time scale), makes us wonder if they are not somehow related. Maybe the comet Venus was part of a cometary swarm of which it constituted the main object. After entering the Solar system, the Venus cometary swarm followed a typical Jupiter-Sun orbit with a period of about 52 years (https://www.scientiapress.com/venus-skeleton-key-to-stonehenge) (this is the orbit duration for comet Venus as suggested by Velikovsky).

This eccentric orbit passed close to the Earth orbit and during the first crossing, some of the bodies included in the swarm were attracted by Earth gravity and provoked a substantial cometary bombardment with no less than 5 major meteorites with diameters in excess of 10 km reaching Earth. This could be the catastrophic event (c.12,900 B.P.) that initiated the Younger Dryas.

Because of its higher momentum, Venus then pursued its orbit around the Sun and Jupiter. After 7-10 revolutions (350-500 years), Venus came very close to Mars, knocked it out of its orbit and pushed it dangerously close to Earth, leading to the electric discharge described above.

This scenario is close to the one proposed by Veliskovsky 70 years ago. The only substantial differences are the water transfer and, of course, the dating. In fact, the dating was the main argument brought against Velikovsky (c. 3500-2800 B.P.). It is still the main bone of contention today, as illustrated by this excerpt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision#Controversy) of the Wikipedia article about Velikovsky's book:
So far, the only piece of the geologic evidence which has shown to have a catastrophic origin is a "raised beach" containing coral-bearing conglomerates found at an elevation of 1,200 feet above sea level within the Hawaiian Islands.

The sediments, which were misidentified as a "raise beach", are now attributed to megatsunamis generated by massive landslides created by the periodic collapse of the sides of the islands. In addition, these conglomerates, as many of the items cited as evidence for his ideas in Earth in Upheaval, are far too old to be used as valid evidence supporting the hypothesis presented in Worlds in Collision.
https://www.sott.net/image/s20/409788/full/dbe_Great_Deluge_tradition.jpg
Deluge accounts (blue column) in world mythologies © Eddinger


The more recent dating suggested by Velikovsky isn't backed up by much evidence in the form of major catastrophes affecting the whole planet (although there is a good case for a catastrophe localized in the Middle Age that marked the end of the Bronze Age).

On the other hand, the onset of the Younger Dryas (c.12,900-12,500 BP) offers plenty of evidence (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes) of sudden and major changes over the entire planet.

Velikovsky considered that the second event, a close encounter between Mars and Earth and its accompanying water/ice dump, was referenced in mythology as the great flood. He based his dating mostly on the chronology offered by the Old Testament (c.2800 BP). But the Hebrew mythology as recorded in the Old Testament is only one of numerous mythologies mentioning the Great Flood. In 500 cultures spanning all continents, researcher Douglas Eddinger (http://www.ettingerjournals.com/papers/dbe_Great_Deluge.pdf?view=Fit&scrollbar=1&toolbar=1&navpanes=1&pagemode=bookmarks) found that about 90% of them included an account of a great deluge. The prevalence of this myth in most cultures all across the planet suggests that the Deluge was truly a worldwide catastrophe.

The Old Testament is not the oldest account of the Great Flood. It is predated by the ancient Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic (Utanapishtim's tale, tablet XI), which is about 5,000 (http://www.clt.astate.edu/wnarey/Religious%20Studies%20Program/Religion%20Studies%20Program/Religious%20Studies%20Program%20Files/the_epic_of_gilgamesh.htm) years old.

According to University of Chicago professor A. Heidel, author of The Gilgamesh Epic and the Old Testament Parallels (https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/shared/docs/misc_gilgamesh.pdf), Mesopotamian and Hebrew myths could descend from an even older common original. In any case, the written version of the Epic was preceded by oral versions (http://www.clt.astate.edu/wnarey/Religious%20Studies%20Program/Religion%20Studies%20Program/Religious%20Studies%20Program%20Files/the_epic_of_gilgamesh.htm). Beyond the age of written history, traces of accounts of the catastrophic events that set the Younger Dryas can be still found, even in the oldest archeological neolithic site.

Gobelki Tepe is an archeological site located in Southern Turkey. Its deepest layer (https://www.academia.edu/4386577/Establishing_a_Radiocarbon_Sequence_for_G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe._State_of_Research_and_New_Data) dates back to c. 10,000 BP. Its major archeological feature is the vulture stone, a massive carved pillar also known as pillar 43 (image below).


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/538015/large/The_Vulture_Stone.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/538015/full/The_Vulture_Stone.jpg)
The Vulture Stone


According to University of Edinburgh lead researcher Martin Sweatman (https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-carvings-in-turkey-show-a-comet-hitting-earth-changing-civilisation-forever), the vulture stone is a astronomic representation where, like today, animals represent constellations and the whole scene displays a cosmic catastrophe. Computer model analysis carried out to match the patterns of the stars detailed on the Vulture Stone points to one specific date: 12.950 BP, which is exactly the date of the onset of the Younger Dryas.


https://www.sott.net/image/s26/538014/large/17winter.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s26/538014/full/17winter.jpg)
Nicolas Poussin, The Universal Deluge



Pierre Lescaudron (https://www.sott.net/article/420386-Did-Earth-Steal-Martian-Water#searching)
Pierre Lescaudron (M.Sc., MBA) pursued a career in executive management, consulting and post-graduate teaching in high tech fields.
He then became an editor and writer for SOTT.net, fulfilling his dream of researching science, technology and history.
==============================================

The above article should give one a pretty good idea of what these Red and Blue Kachinas were all about...

---

Related: 'Behaving like a comet': Astronomers discover enormous exoplanet with wild, slingshot-like orbit (https://www.rt.com/news/467753-exoplanet-strange-orbit-hr5183b/)

[Hervé]

New evidence sheds light on Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (https://theconversation.com/did-a-large-meteorite-hit-the-earth-12-800-years-ago-heres-new-evidence-122426)

Francis Thackeray The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/did-a-large-meteorite-hit-the-earth-12-800-years-ago-heres-new-evidence-122426)
Wed, 02 Oct 2019 21:58 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540255/large/didalargemet.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540255/full/didalargemet.jpg)
© Shutterstock


Just less than 13,000 years ago, the climate cooled for a short while in many parts of the world, especially in the northern hemisphere. We know this because of what has been found in ice cores drilled in Greenland, as well as from oceans around the world.

Grains of pollen from various plants can also tell us about this cooler period, which people who study climate prehistory call the Younger Dryas (https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-was-the-younger-dryas.html) and which interrupted a warming trend after the last Ice Age. The term gets its name from a wildflower, Dryas octopetala. It can tolerate cold conditions and was common in parts of Europe 12,800 years ago. At about this time a number of animals became extinct. These included mammoths in Europe, large bison in North America, and giant sloths in South America.

The cause of this cooling event has been debated a great deal. One possibility, for instance, is that it relates to changes in oceanic circulation systems. In 2007 Richard Firestone and other American scientists presented a new hypothesis (https://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016/tab-figures-data): that the cause was a cosmic impact like an asteroid or comet. The impact could have injected a lot of dust into the air, which might have reduced the amount of sunlight getting through the earth's atmosphere. This might have affected plant growth and animals in the food chain.

Research we have just had published sheds new light (http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/28129) on this Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. We focus on what platinum can tell us about it.

How platinum fits into the picture
Platinum is known to be concentrated in meteorites, so when a lot of it is found in one place at one time, it could be a sign of a cosmic impact. Platinum spikes have been discovered in an ice core in Greenland (https://www.pnas.org/content/110/32/12917) as well as in areas (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-38089-y) as far apart as Europe, Western Asia, North America and even Patagonia in South America. These spikes all date to the same period of time (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1520411112).

Until now, there has been no such evidence from Africa. But working with two colleagues, Professor Louis Scott (University of the Free State) and Philip Pieterse (University of Johannesburg), I believe there is evidence (http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/28129) from South Africa's Limpopo province that partly supports the controversial Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.

The new information has been obtained from Wonderkrater (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.06.017), an archaeological site with peat deposits at a spring situated outside a small town to the north of Pretoria. In a sample of peat we have identified a platinum spike that could at least potentially be related to dust associated with a meteorite impact somewhere on earth 12,800 years ago.

The platinum spike at Wonderkrater is in marked contrast to almost constantly low (near-zero) concentrations of this element in adjacent levels. Subsequent to that platinum spike, pollen grains indicate a drop in temperature. These discoveries are entirely consistent with the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.

https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540256/large/1_didalargemet.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540256/full/1_didalargemet.jpg)
Platinum spike and temperature graph. © Francis Thackeray


Wonderkrater is the first site in Africa where a Younger Dryas platinum spike has been detected, supplementing evidence from southern Chile, in addition to platinum spikes at 28 sites in the northern hemisphere.

We are now asking a question which needs to be taken seriously: surely platinum-rich dust associated with the impact of a very large meteorite may have contributed to some extent to major climatic change and extinctions?

A meteorite crater in Greenland
Very recently a large meteorite crater with a diameter of 31km was discovered (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/11/eaar8173/tab-pdf) in northern Greenland, beneath the ice of the Hiawatha glacier. It is not certain that it dates to the time of the Younger Dryas, but the crater rim is fresh, and ice older than 12,800 years is missing.

It seems possible (but is not yet certain) that this particular crater relates to the hypothesised meteorite that struck the earth at the time of the Younger Dryas, with global consequences.

The effects of a meteorite impact may potentially have contributed to extinctions in many regions of the world. There is no doubt that platinum spikes in North America coincide closely with the extinction of animals on a big scale about 12,800 years ago.

Extinctions in Africa
In a South African context, my team is suggesting that platinum-rich cosmic dust and its associated environmental effects may have contributed to the extinction of large animals that ate grass. These have been documented (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018211002276) at places such as Boomplaas near the Cango Caves in South Africa's southern Cape, where important excavations have been undertaken.

At least three species went extinct in the African subcontinent. These included a giant buffalo (Syncerus antiquus), a large zebra (Equus capensis) and a large wildebeest (Megalotragus priscus). Each weighed about 500kg more than its modern counterpart.

There may have been more than one cause of these extinctions. Hunting by humans could have been a factor. And the large buffalo, zebra and wildebeest had already been affected by habitat changes at the end of the last Ice Age, which was at its coldest about 18,000 years ago.

What about human populations? A cosmic impact could have indirectly affected people as a result of local changes in environment and the availability of food resources, associated with sudden climate change. Stone tools relate to the cultural identity of people who lived in the past. Around 12,800 years ago in at least some parts of South Africa there is evidence (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00438243.1979.9979735) of an apparently abrupt termination of the "Robberg" technology represented by stone tools found for example at Boomplaas Cave.

Coincidentally, North American archaeological sites indicate the sudden end of a stone tool technology called Clovis.

But it is too early to say whether these cultural changes relate to a common causal factor.

https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540254/large/file_20191001_173387_hjwi6d.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540254/full/file_20191001_173387_hjwi6d.jpg)
Map showing platinum spikes. © Francis Thackeray


Reality check
The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, and the evidence to support it, is a reminder of how much can change when a rocky object hits the earth. Many asteroids are situated between Mars and Jupiter, and on occasion some come very close to our planet (https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/). The probability of a large one striking earth may seem to be low. But it's not impossible.

Take Apophis 99942. It is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid (https://earthsky.org/space/preparing-asteroid-apophis-april-13-2029-passage). It is 340 metres wide and will come exceptionally close to the earth (in relation to an Astronomical Unit, the distance between us and the sun) on Friday April 13 2029. The probability of its hitting us in ten years' time is only one in 100,000. But the probability of an impact may be even higher at some time in the remote future.

What's more, comets associated with the Taurid Complex approach the earth relatively closely at intervals of centuries. So a large asteroid or comet could fall to earth in the foreseeable future.

The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis is highly controversial. But the evidence suggests it is not improbable that a large meteorite struck the earth as recently as 12,800 years ago, with widespread consequences.

[Hervé]

Ancient Assyrian tablets seem to reference a massive solar storm (https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/10/ancient-assyrian-tablets-seem-to-contain-references-to-a-massive-solar-storm/)

Ryan F. Mandelbaum Gizmodo Australia (https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/10/ancient-assyrian-tablets-seem-to-contain-references-to-a-massive-solar-storm/)
Thu, 17 Oct 2019 04:27 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s27/541831/full/eofzxgcuytlmtbq3htmd.jpg
The aurora in Alberta, Canada. © Keith E. Doucet, Wikimedia Commons


Scientists report that they may have found the earliest written record of a solar storm in ancient Assyrian tablets.

Recent analyses have found evidence of an extreme solar storm that left energetic particles in tree rings (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/relationship-between-solar-activity-and-14c-peaks-in-ad-775-ad-994-and-660-bc/EFBDD78DEFAAA02B1CB9C3A24933B912) and ice cores (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/03/traces-of-giant-2700-year-old-solar-storm-detected-in-greenland-ice) across the world sometime around 660 BCE.

With this in mind, a research team in Japan and the United Kingdom wondered if they'd be able to find evidence of this storm in ancient astrological records — and they may have found something in Assyrian tablets.

Back in the 19th century, archaeologists uncovered thousands of tablets dating back to the Assyrian empire in Mesopotamia, which documented treaties, stories, including the now-famous epic of Gilgamesh, and astrological reports. These reports included observations of the planets, phenomena like comets and meteorites, and of course, predictions of omens.

The researchers (today's researchers) scanned through a collection of these astrological reports (http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/saa-08.html) in search of auroral-type events, which they define as "reddish luminous phenomena in the sky" and are caused by the Sun's particles interacting with the atmosphere. Many of the reports weren't dated, but the researchers could at least produce date ranges based on the astrologer who wrote the report.

They found three reports that seemed to mention auroral phenomena: one reporting a "red glow," another a "red cloud," and a third reporting that "red cover[ed] the sky," according to the paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.05498.pdf) published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The records correlate with date ranges of 679 BCE to 655 BCE, 677 BCE to 666 BCE, and 679 BCE to 670 BCE, respectively. Assyria might seem too far south to view the aurora, being at approximately the same latitude as North Carolina, but past research shows that the North magnetic pole was much closer to the Middle East in the 7th century BCE (and especially strong solar storms can cause the aurora to move south).

These records seem to correspond to tree ring data and ice core data showing quick increases in radioactive elements associated with solar activity during this time. Obviously they're just correlations — but perhaps these tablets are the earliest-yet records of intense auroral activity.

The ice core and tree ring data suggest that the 660 BCE storm would have been quite powerful. A blast of particles following a solar flare could have even punched a hole in the ozone layer. It's one of the strongest candidate solar proton events on record, alongside similar-looking events from 775 CE and a weaker event around 993 CE.

Scientists hope to better understand and eventually be able to predict these storms, since they'd wreak havoc on our electrical infrastructure. And if you're an ancient Assyrian, surely a red cloud would be a bad, bad omen.

[Hervé]

For those interested, here is the beginning of a very comprehensive, detailed article by Pierre Lescaudron on the subject of a 14,400 BP catastrophe and a subsequent 3,600 cycle.


Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle (https://www.sott.net/previews/tipe/301796)

Pierre Lescaudron Sott.net (https://www.sott.net/previews/tipe/301796)
Sun, 01 Dec 2019 19:53 UTC

In two previous articles, I proposed explanations for the events that triggered the Younger Dryas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas).

In the article titled Did Earth Steal Martian Waters (https://www.sott.net/article/420386-Did-Earth-Steal-Martian-Water), I described how, ca.12,500 BP, an electric discharge may have transferred part of the Martian water and atmosphere to Earth (see pink arrow on the diagram below).

In the article titled Of Flash-frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes), I explained how, about 4 centuries earlier, ca. 12,900 BP, several cometary fragments hit the Earth's Northern hemisphere (see turquoise arrow) causing the subsequent global cooling.


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540191/large/temp_greenland_14400.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540191/full/temp_greenland_14400.jpg)
Greenland temperature 18000 BP - now


While writing those articles it appeared more and more clear that these were only two of three catastrophic events that preceded the Younger Dryas. In the diagram above, we can see that a third event occurred ca. 14,400 BP (see green vertical line).

This event had an even greater magnitude than the two events that followed it since it induced a 10°C drop as compared to the two following events which 'only' induced a 7°C drop.

In the present article, we will explore the specifics of the 14400 BP event and explain how it might be part of a larger 3,600 year cometary cycle.

The 14,400 BP (12,400 BC) event
The temperature reconstructions (based on oxygen 18 isotope) for Greenland as shown in the diagram above only display one atmospheric parameter (temperature) in one location (Greenland).

So, let's first see if the 14,400 BP event is only a temperature "anomaly" limited to Greenland. The sediment cores from the Cariaco basin (Venezuela) reveal a similar pattern with a marked drop in temperature as shown in the diagram below.



https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540195/large/cariaco_14400.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540195/full/cariaco_14400.jpg)
Cariaco and GISP2 temperatures 20kA BP - Now


Ice cores from Vostok (located in Antarctica) reveal also a temperature drop (see diagram below). However, this temperature decrease is less marked than in Greenland and Venezuela, which suggests that the 14400 event affected the Northern Hemisphere and equatorial regions more than it affected the Southern hemisphere.


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540197/large/vostok_gisp2_temp_14400_.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540197/full/vostok_gisp2_temp_14400_.jpg)
Temperatures in Greenland and Vostok © Moffitt et al. - 2015


The 14,400 BP event induced a sudden cooling over most of the planet. It marks the beginning of the Older Dryas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Older_Dryashttp://), a stadial (cooling) period that lasted about two centuries.

Besides oxygen 18 isotope, a proxy for temperatures, ice core analysis reveals numerous other atmospheric parameters. Two of them being methane (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/biomass-burning) (CH4) and carbon dioxide (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1757-1707.2011.01102.x) (CO2). These are indicators of biomass burning (forest fires for example). Methane and carbon dioxide are also two of the main gaseous components (https://www.mps.mpg.de/phd/theses/the-composition-of-cometary-ices-as-inferred-from-measured-production-rates-of-volatiles) of cometary tails.


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540203/large/cha_and_co2_23_kA.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540203/full/cha_and_co2_23_kA.jpg)
CH4 and CO2 concentration in Antarctica WAIS ice core (23 kA - 9 kA) © Marcott et al., 2014


The diagram above shows a dramatic increase in methane ( green arrow) and carbon dioxide (purple arrow) at the time of the 14,400 BP event.

In addition, ice cores relative to the 14,400 BP event reveal sudden spikes in calcium and sulfur concentrations. The picture below contains two diagrams. The diagrams on the left shows a concentration spike in calcium ( in the Ca2+ ionic form) at 14,400 BP (brown arrow, red vertical line), while the diagram on the right shows a concentration spike, albeit moderate, in sulfur (in the SO2 - sulfur dioxide form) at 14,400 BP:


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540310/large/ca_so2_14400.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540310/full/ca_so2_14400.jpg)
Calcium (Ca) and Sulfur (SO2) concentration in ice cores © Sott.net

Spikes in sulfur and calcium concentrations are two important ice core markers because they can be caused by cometary impact ejecta:
Sulfur in the impactor or in sulfur-containing target rocks can be injected into the atmosphere in a vapor-rich impact plume. In some impact events, such as Chicxulub, the rocks hit by the impactor contain sulfur. Sedimentary rocks hit by an impactor sometimes include large amounts of evaporites. Evaporites are rocks that are formed with minerals that precipitated from evaporating water, such as halite (rock salt) and calcite (calcium carbonate). Two other very common evaporite minerals are gypsum (CaSO4 + H20) and anhydrite (CaSO4), both of which contain sulfur (S).
Source (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/epo_web/impact_cratering/enviropages/atmossulphur/sulphurweb.html) So, the 14,400 BP event reveals sudden spikes in carbon dioxide, methane, calcium and sulfur, which led to a drastic global temperature drop. Unsurprisingly, these dramatic atmospheric changes had a major impact on life on Earth. Most archeological sites (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6402857/) with unquestionable extinct mega-fauna have Late Pleistocene dates from c. 14,400 to 13,000 BP.

It appears that the 14,400 BP event was the starting point of a megafauna extinction which was exceptional in magnitude:
The late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene, resulting in the loss of between 35 and 90% of large-bodied animal species on ice-free continents (excluding Africa), represented the most profound faunal transition that Earth's ecosystems experienced during the Cenozoic
Source (https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaau4546) For reference the Cenozoic age (meaning "new life") spans from 65 million years ago (the chitxulb cometary impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs) to now. Never during those 65 million years had an extinction been this dramatic.

It would be interesting to see if there is any impact crater that exhibits the following characteristics:
- time match (c. 14,400 BP)

- Northern location (since the impact seems to have been more pronounced in the Northern hemisphere as suggested by the Vostok and Greenland temperature diagrams shown above)

- large impactor (given the magnitude of the effects).
Searching for impact craters on Earth is not an easy task because wind, rain, earthquakes, sea-level changes, vegetation growth and urbanization tend to erase the geological features. Plus, the search for impact craters doesn't seem to be a priority for modern science, maybe due to the strong ideological resistance (uniformitarianism) against the very idea of cometary impacts and their obvious catastrophic consequences.

Nonetheless, three databases (EDEIS (http://tsun.sscc.ru/nh/impact.php?search&field=AGE&order=DESC), Somerriko (http://www.somerikko.net/impacts/database.php) and EID (http://www.passc.net/EarthImpactDatabase/New%20website_05-2018/Index.html)) list some of the impact craters found on Earth. As of 2019, there are approximately 200 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229050633_Suspected_Earth_Impact_Sites_database) confirmed craters and 600 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229050633_Suspected_Earth_Impact_Sites_database) probable/possible ones.

The lack of investigation in this domain also affects the dating of the craters. Up to now, most craters are not dated and the ones that are dated usually come with a broad impact time range.

As a result, there are a number of large craters located in the Northern hemisphere whose impact time range encompasses the 14,400 BP date. One of them was recently discovered by Kjaer et al. (https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/11/eaar8173) and is located beneath Hiawatha glacier in Northwest Greenland. This is a 31-kilometer (20 mi) wide, circular bedrock depression created by an iron rich meteorite that was about 1.5 km (1 mi) in diameter.


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540434/large/Hiawatha_crater.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540434/full/Hiawatha_crater.jpg)
Topography of the Hiawatha crater © Kjaer et al., 2018


The circular shape of the crater suggests that the meteorite was not part of the 12900 BP swarm that flash froze the mammoths, because the trajectory of this swarm was almost tangential with the North Pole, hence the elliptical craters (for more details about this point see Of Flash Frozen Mammoth and Cosmic Catastrophes (https://www.sott.net/article/357709-Of-Flash-Frozen-Mammoths-and-Cosmic-Catastrophes)).

Another reason for considering an ice sheet impact, including Greenland ca. 14,4000 BP, is that it would explain a scientific "anomaly" known as Meltwater Pulse 1A (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A) (MWP1A).


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540455/large/mwp1a_14400.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540455/full/mwp1a_14400.jpg)
Sea-level history (22 kA BP - 6 kA BP) © Liu et al., 2004


The diagram above was made from coral analysis by Liu et al. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11802-004-0033-8). It shows that MWP-1A started right at the 14,400 BP mark. MWP-1A was a massive water release leading to a 20 meter rise in sea-level over a few centuries. The oddity is due to the fact the melting occurred during the above mentioned Older Dryas (from 14,400 to 14,200 BP) which was a pronounced cooling period, which is usually accompanied by a sea level drop (more ice and snow/less liquid water)

So, how can we reconcile cooling and melting? One solution would be, of course, a substantial cometary body impacting an ice sheet. It would lead to the melting of the ice sheet, and also to global cooling due to the large quantity of ejecta (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14199-x) (dust, ice crystals) released in the atmosphere and reducing penetration of sun rays.

In any case, while it is highly probable that the observed disturbances ca. 14,4000 BP (atmosphere, extinction, meltwater) were related to a cometary event, it is still highly speculative at this point to designate the Hiawatha crater as the culprit. More data is needed about this crater that was only discovered in 2016 and is buried under 2 km of ice.

Cometary Cycle?
The above shows that a catastrophic event, probably of a cometary nature, occurred ca. 14,400 BP. This number piqued my interest because it is a multiple of 3,600 (4 X 3,600 = 14,400).

Now, Zechariah Sitchin got a lot of media and popular attention with his book titled the "Twelvth Planet" where, based on his interpretation of Sumerian iconography, he postulated that a planet called Nibiru, the 12th planet of our Solar system, followed a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system every 3,600 years.

This hypothesis didn't make much sense to me, because, a astronomic body exhibiting a very elongated orbit and crossing our Solar system can not be a planet. But it might very well match a cometary orbit:


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/543118/large/image61.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/543118/full/image61.jpg)
Solar electric field and cometary orbit © sott.net


In the drawing above, we can see a cometary trajectory (dotted red curve) which passes through different electric field lines (illustrated by the concentric circles numbered +1, +2, +3, ...) .

An electric field line defines locations where the electric potential is the same. It's similar to the altitude lines on a geographic map where every point of the line is at the same altitude.

These changes in electric potential difference between the comet and its surrounding space triggers intense current including electric discharges between the comet and its surrounding space, leading to a overheated and glowing cometary body. That's why an astronomical body following a very elliptical orbit around the Sun with a 3,600 year period can not be a planet but has to be a comet.

Conversely, the electric potential at a given distance from the Sun being roughly the same, the astronomic bodies following a circular or slightly elliptic orbit, will go through space exhibiting a constant electric potential. Therefore there is a balance between the electric potential of the body and the surrounding space. In this case, no discharge occurs and the astronomical body doesn't glow.

In this sense, the fundamental difference between a comet and planet is not a matter of composition but a matter of electrical activity (which is related, among other factors to the eccentricity of the orbit).

Thus, a comet is simply a glowing planet and a planet is a non-glowing comet. Thus the very same body can, successively, be a comet, then a planet, then a comet, etc., depending on variation in the ambient electric field it is subjected to.

The unlikeliness of a planet exhibiting a very eccentric orbit aside, Sitchin's work was a good incentive to look further into Sumerian astronomy. Two features are particularly noteworthy:

First, the Sumerians had an excellent knowledge of astronomy in general and comets in particular. Sumerian tablet K 8538 (https://www.knowledgeminer.eu/climate/pdf/Sumerian_K8538_Paper.pdf) describes with great accuracy the comet that struck Um-Al-Binni c. 4200 BP. K8538 is the world's first scientific documentation on the approach and terrestrial impact of a large comet on Earth


https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540561/large/K8538_tablet.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s27/540561/full/K8538_tablet.jpg)
Section of the K8538 tablet. Top: original cuneiform numbers. Bottom: translation into Roman numbers. © SEifert et al., 2014


Second, the Sumerians had an elaborate sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system, which 5 millennia later is still used in the whole world for measuring angles, time and geographic coordinates. Within this numeral system, one of the main units was the Sar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Mesopotamian_units_of_measurement) (shar, saros) which is equal to 3,600 years.

So, when combining the great Sumerian knowledge about comets and their 3,600 year time unit, one obvious question appears: "is the Shar unit just a coincidence or is it actually based on an astronomic constant, like a cometary cycle?"

The idea of a 3,600 year periodic comet visiting our planet is usually dismissed because of the pull that would be exerted by stars other than the Sun on the comet. The reasoning usually goes as follows:
Based on the only two bits of information we have about such an hypothetical comet which 1/ has an orbital period of 3,600 years and 2/ must pass within 1 AU of the Sun (because, if it doesn't, it can't fly by Earth), we can determine that this hypothetical comet must have an aphelion (the point in the orbit which is furthest from the Sun) of 469 AU (469 times the Earth-Sun distance).

For comparison, this is 10X the distance between Pluto and the Sun. The Sun's gravity is very weak at 469 AU (that is about 2.7 light years), it would be easy for a passing object or another planet in our solar system to destabilize the comet's orbit and have it thrown into interstellar space. So is a 3,600 year stable orbit really impossible? Keep in mind the closest star to us is promixa centauri, about 4.25 light years away, so a massive comet with a 3,600 year orbit would remain within 2,7 light years from the Sun and at a far greater distance from other stars (especially if the comet orbit is opposite the location of the stars that are the closest to the Sun). This way the comet would remain under the gravitational control of the Sun during its whole orbit.

Observation confirms that comets with a very long orbital period can follow a stable periodic orbit. This is for example the case of the great comet of 1811 (C/1811 F1) which exhibits an orbital period (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Comet_of_1811) of approximately 3096 years.

So it seems that a 3,600 year periodical comet is theoretically possible and we have discovered that the 14,400 BP (3,600 X 4) event is probably related to a cometary event. So, let's pursue our investigation and focus on the hypothetical manifestation of the cometary cycle that is the closest to us (the closer the date, the more data available).

In other terms, did a cometary event occur c. 3600 (3,600 X 1) years ago?

The 3600 BP (1600 BC) Event

Similarly to 14,400 BP, 3,600 BP was marked by a sudden drop in temperature...

[...]

Full article at: https://www.sott.net/article/424968-Volcanoes-Earthquakes-And-The-3600-Year-Comet-Cycle

[Gwin Ru]

Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis receives support in new book by eminent geologist - Graham Hancock (https://grahamhancock.com/deadly-voyager/)

Graham Hancock
GrahamHancock.com (https://grahamhancock.com/deadly-voyager/)
Wed, 24 Jun 2020 11:00 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s20/410239/medium/4_newresearchf.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s20/410239/full/4_newresearchf.jpg)
Magnetic microspherule found in the Younger Dryas boundary © Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Did impacts and airbursts from multiple fragments of a disintegrating comet cause the onset of the Younger Dryas global cataclysm 12,800 years ago? After more than a decade of acrimonious scientific controversy around the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH), an important new book by eminent geologist Dr James L. Powell answers this question in great depth and sets the record straight with a resounding YES.

Titled "Deadly Voyager: The Ancient Comet Strike That Changed Earth and Human History" (http://deadlyvoyager.net/), this thoroughly researched and eminently readable study systematically demolishes all the criticisms of the YDIH that have been made over the years by scientific opponents.

Of particular note is Powell's careful dismembering of several studies which claimed that the evidence on which the YDIH is built is "irreproducible" - a damning criticism in science and one that opponents of the YDIH often gleefully repeat as though the claim is an established and unquestionable fact that "debunks" the hypothesis.


https://www.sott.net/image/s28/574268/medium/41eQ6QEEMUL_SL500_.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s28/574268/full/41eQ6QEEMUL_SL500_.jpg)


As Powell demonstrates masterfully, however, it is not the work of the more than 60 scientists behind the YDIH that is "irreproducible", or that requires "debunking", but the work and claims of the critics themselves. "Clearly something went wrong" with the critics' analysis, comments Powell:

"What, we do not know and probably never will. But something did and all the articles that cited it as evidence that the YDIH was irreproducible were based on a false foundation."
Powell is no supporter of my argument (in my recent books "Magicians of the Gods" and "America Before") that the Younger Dryas cataclysm descended not only upon Stone Age hunter-gatherers, disrupting their former lifeways, but also upon an advanced civilization - now lost to history - that it almost completely destroyed.

What makes Powell's book so significant, however — and a must-read for anyone interested in the mysterious end of the Ice Age — is its thorough documentation of how solidly-based on compelling geological evidence the YDIH really is, and the rational and balanced way in which it reveals the flaws of the scientific process - the personal grudges, the vested interests in the orthodox paradigm, and the axes to grind - that for so long were allowed to mislead the public about the truth of the matter.

It is sadly the case, as Powell does not hesitate to remind us, that some scientists are willing to use

"sleight-of-hand... to ward off a theory that they have long denied. But evidence always wins out, and all such scientists accomplish is first, to delay scientific progress and second, to besmirch their reputation in history."
Meanwhile in an early endorsement, and as an indication of how I hope "Deadly Voyager" will be received by the wider research community, Earth Sciences Professor Edward Keller of the University of California at Santa Barbara writes as follows: "If the hypothesis of the impact is correct (and I am very impressed with the data) it is perhaps the most important hypothesis in the Earth Sciences, with ramifications in other fields, since plate tectonics. This is particularly so for its consequences on the history of peoples over the last 12,800 years."

You can find links on how to buy the book here (https://grahamhancock.com/deadly-voyager/).

Related:

The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus (https://www.sott.net/article/432498-The-Seven-Destructive-Earth-Passes-of-Comet-Venus#)



The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction (https://www.sott.net/article/227222-The-Golden-Age-Psychopathy-and-the-Sixth-Extinction#)



America Before by Graham Hancock - Book review (https://www.sott.net/article/423391-America-Before-by-Graham-Hancock-Book-review)

[Gwin Ru]

Overview of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis debate (https://cosmictusk.com/earth-science-reviews-younger-dryas-martin-sweatman/)

George Howard
Cosmic Tusk (https://cosmictusk.com/earth-science-reviews-younger-dryas-martin-sweatman/)
Fri, 14 May 2021 19:16 UTC

https://www.sott.net/image/s30/608540/large/image.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s30/608540/full/image.jpg)
© Earth-Science journal, Earth-Science Reviews
Location map showing 53 YD boundary (black mat) sites (reproduced from Pino et al. (2019) under the terms of the CCA 4.0 International License). Orange dots represent 28 sites with peaks in both platinum and other impact proxies such as high-temperature iron-rich microspherules. Red dots represent 24 sites with impact proxies but lacking platinum measurements. The yellow dot indicates the Pilauco site, Chile, described in detail in Pino et al. (2019). A new site in South Africa, Wonderkrater, has been identified since this map was first published (Thackeray et al., 2019).


Indefatigable genius and digital friend of the Tusk, Dr. Martin Sweatman, authored a surprise blockbuster this week. Below is a peer-reviewed and fully accepted pre-online synthesis overview of the Younger Dryas Impact controversy since the very first paper in 2007 (https://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016). 'The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: review of the impact evidence' concludes — in perhaps the world's most appropriate and respected scientific journal — that based on the published evidence, our modern world is indeed birthed of a horrendous global catastrophe ~12,881 years ago. It is a lengthy, detailed, fair and lucid tour-de-force in support of The Event based on Martin's reading of the entire debate (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLftb0lOpSe9PvJhFKSueZV9Wrz4g1qRkr).

Martin is an example to the Tusk of how many, many people there are on earth. You have to have 8+ billion humans in order to have enough brain matter and determination on the end of the bell curve to find a just one single, well-qualified, unbiased, poly-curious scientist, so determined to find the truth that they will to read every last word (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLftb0lOpSe9PvJhFKSueZV9Wrz4g1qRkr) — and then write every last word (https://www.amazon.com/Prehistory-Decoded-Martin-Sweatman/dp/178901638X) — well.

3SNs68ic7CY
Younger Dryas Impact fans will spend many nights soaking in Martin's piece. Its long and complex, but it's well-written and far more readable for a larger audience than the literature it discusses. I'm going camping this weekend and look forward to furtively consuming his work by the fire.

Available for now only at Martin's website. (https://martinsweatman.blogspot.com/2021/05/younger-dryas-impact-review-paper.html)

[Inversion]

The object that they believe was a meteor or possilby a satillite generated an N-wave which shook the ground over Gran Canaria (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gran+Canaria/@27.9672044,-15.6164049,74718m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0xc40855504bf07c1:0x2ec916c8a5acdb16!8m2!3d27.9202202!4d-15.5474373) on 11/30/22 just after 15:00.

strangesounds (https://strangesounds.org/2022/12/strong-shockwave-huge-roar-reported-in-gran-canaria-was-meteorite-impacting-ocean-water.html)

First, it ripped the sky over La Palma, La Gomera and Tenerife at great speed, like lightning that emitted colours with shades of green and red, to then cause such a roar over Gran Canaria that it was heard from many areas of the island before, finally, crashing in the sea, causing astonishment among the islanders who, at first, didn’t know what it was.

Scientists have confirmed that it was a meteorite which, although it is not the first to fall in the Archipelago, there are no precedents for what happened yesterday, as it was accompanied by tremors. Fortunately, the Emergency Services announced that there is no record that it caused injuries or material damage.

The incident occurred on November 30, 2022 just after 3pm, although the exact time of the impact recorded by the measurement systems installed by Involcan and the National Geographic Institute (IGN) recorded various readings between 3:16pm and 4:35pm.

The first alert the Emergency Services received came from the province of Tenerife, due to reports of a very fast green and red object in the sky.

link (https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104540/sonic-boom/)

There are two types of booms: N-waves and U-waves. The N-wave is generated from steady flight conditions, and its pressure wave is shaped like the letter "N." N-waves have a front shock to a positive peak overpressure which is followed by a linear decrease in the pressure until the rear shock returns to ambient pressure. The U-wave, or focused boom, is generated from maneuvering flights, and its pressure wave is shaped like the letter "U." U-waves have positive shocks at the front and rear of the boom in which the peak overpressures are increased compared to the N-wave.

12/01/22 (1:44)
DAHBOO77 (https://www.youtube.com/@DAHBOO77)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHf6S4fa11Y

[Inversion]

The asteroid 2023 BU was found last Saturday by an ameteur astronomer. It'll pass over the south tip of South America today at 3,600km (2,200 miles) above the Earth.

bbc (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64411469)

This one was only picked up last weekend by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, who operates from Nauchnyi in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Follow up observations have refined what we know about 2023 BU's size and, crucially, its orbit.

That's how astronomers can be so confident it will miss the planet, even though it will come inside the arc occupied by the world's telecommunications satellites, which sit 36,000km (22,000 miles) above us.

The chances of hitting a satellite are very, very small.

The time of lowest altitude is calculated to be 19.27 EST on Thursday; 00:27 GMT on Friday.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMNYesdB4rc

[Inversion]

The green Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2022_E3_(ZTF)) hasn't been seen since the time of the Neanderthals 50,000 years ago. In about four hours it'll be closest to earth.

Dailymail (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11700141/How-rare-green-comet-zip-past-Earth-tonight-UK.html)

Comet C/2022 E3 will fling past our planet at a distance of about 26.4 million miles (42.5 million km).

Stargazers will be able to tell the difference between the comet and surrounding stars as it will have a streaking trail of dust following it.

live feed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrrsxW5jlEE

[ExomatrixTV]

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Meets Mars! Green Comet 2023 Live Stream:

Xf-HcvMtzu8


space.com/green-comet-c2022-e3-ztf-capella-goat-star-feb-5-2023 (https://www.space.com/green-comet-c2022-e3-ztf-capella-goat-star-feb-5-2023)



Mars Meets the Green Comet | Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF & Mars LIVE | Kopernik Observatory Night Sky LIVE:

6uSsO37N4-s

[Gwin Ru]

...

... The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy, Part One (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy.html)

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Open System (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy.html)
Wed, 19 Jul 2023 19:31 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684107/large/hom2.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684107/full/hom2.jpg)

Most of what is included in this post is directly from the book, Comet and the Horns of Moses (https://www.amazon.com/Comets-Horns-Moses-Laura-Knight-Jadczyk/dp/1897244835/), though selected and edited for brevity. I intend my main focus to be on the philosophers but I find that what I have written on that topic would be incomprehensible without the background and context. It seems to me that none of what the various early philosophers were saying, doing, or writing can be easily comprehended if one does not have a good grasp of the history of the time. And that history is not just social and political, it is also environmental. Even with such knowledge, you are handicapped because the Christian scribes who took charge of literature for centuries made sure that their story was as consistent as they could make it. One has to pay attention to everything in order to adduce anything sensible about historical matters.

The general theme of Horns of Moses is that cyclical, cosmic catastrophes have played a major role in the shaping of the history of our planet and its civilizations. A lot of scientific research is covered in the first half of this book. I will review that as briefly as possible. It can't be avoided because the facts on the ground mattered and had considerable influence on the thinking of the Greek philosophers.

Though there has been a lot of resistance to the idea of catastrophism (probably mostly by the authoritarian-follower-type scientists), a few years ago the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science published a study by an international team of scientists who reached general agreement that a meteorite or comet fragment storm hit the earth a little more than 12,000 years ago and is likely to have been responsible for the extinction of megafauna and many prehistoric peoples that occurred at that time. It is also now being said that evidence for the extreme heat produced by the equivalent of thousands of overhead nuclear explosions has been found on at least two continents.

The resistance to the very idea of Catastrophism is a bizarre phenomenon. It seems that many so-called scientists react to this subject with as much foaming at the mouth as they exhibit when confronted with evidence for the so-called Paranormal. The experiences of Immanuel Velikovsky are a case in point. (And I won't be promoting his ideas here, so relax.) Even though he made a number of predictions that later proved to be correct, Velikovsky spent four years trying to be heard in established scientific circles, meeting with total failure. Those who supported him suffered ostracism and academic blackballing. The editor who had handled the publication of his book was dismissed and, under pressure from the scientific establishment, the publication rights were transferred to another publisher. The scientific community worked long and hard to discredit Velikovsky and the Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook for 1950 does not even mention that Worlds In Collision was a best-seller for that year.

What in the world did Velikovsky say to engender such censorious reactions? Surely if they simply disagreed with him they could write their refutations and allow all to be heard in open forum? Why did they work so hard to silence this book? In the morass of differing scientific opinions, why did this one engender such a near-unanimous outcry of "Foul?"

In his own role as psychiatrist, Dr. Velikovsky analyzed the reactions of the scientific community as being similar to the response of a psychotic who has been told that his problems stem from the repression of desires to rape his mother and kill his father; the patient has erected elaborate defenses against this unbearable truth, and it manifests in disorder which all operate to conceal from him his true desires. And, while he may know that it is the truth, he lashes out in violent fury against the one that has deprived him of his elaborately constructed defenses.

Rephrasing that in the context of our topic here, catastrophism assaults our deepest feelings of security, our prejudices against change. Psychologists have constructed charts, which itemize events leading to stress, giving each a point value. Apparently, Cosmic bombardment of our planet is off the scale. A thought such as this affects us deeply even if we are speaking of things, which may have been experienced in ages past. "We want to feel that our homes rest on solid foundations and that the blue sky above us is a benevolent firmament." What good is a house," said Thoreau, "if we haven't a respectable planet to put it on?" (Note that this fear is being politicized by the Green Movement and their Catastrophic Global Warming/Climate Change program. Climate Change activists are as rabid and terrified as those who attacked Velikovsky.)

Modern theories of geology, paleontology, archaeology, biology, cosmology, and so forth, are all expressed in Darwinian terms which state that change takes place slowly over eons, aided by gradual processes of natural selection, erosion, etc. James Hutton, founder of the modern view, expressed it: "No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted of except those of which we know the principle." It is a doctrine that was long taken for granted within the scientific community. "If nature were not uniform, then one could not use the results of one experiment to predict the outcome of the next; neither could one assume that laws founded on a thousand varied observations would remain true. Without uniformity in nature, doing physics, chemistry, and biology would be like traveling in Alice's Wonderland. Logic, science, and life itself would fall to pieces."

To suggest that this idea of slow and orderly process is, in its basic assumption, totally wrong, is a threat of the most disruptive event in the history of science. The dismissal of this as "truth" would eclipse the furor, which surrounded the denial of the earth as the center of the universe. As long as it was accepted that the sun traveled around the earth, all other ancient errors held up as truth. In the same way, as long as the steady state of the solar system is the asserted dogma, all current scientific assumptions will hang together on this point.

Thanks to authoritarian personalities seeking to please wealthy elite authorities who need to retain their control over society, science changes its mind very, very slowly and the truly gifted and original researchers are either worn out from being attacked and defending themselves, or dead, by the time the consensus changes. This is very bad for science and very bad for humanity.

So, getting on with things: First let me mention the work of dendrochronologist/ paleoecologist, Mike Baillie (now retired) of Queens university, Belfast, Ireland. (Baillie is a leading expert in dendrochronology, or dating by means of tree-rings. In the 1980s, he was instrumental in building a year-by-year chronology of tree-ring growth reaching 7,400 years into the past. ) Examining tree rings, Baillie found climate stress periods in 2354 BCE, 1628 BCE, 1159 BCE, 208 BCE, and CE 540. The evidence suggested that these were probably global events to one extent or the other.

The CE 540 event coincides with the second-largest ammonium signal in the Greenland ice in the past two millennia, the largest signal showing in 1014 CE. Baillie explains the lack of historical references being due to the fact that the peoples of the time described what they saw in Biblical terms. Indeed, there were artistic representations of astonishing atmospheric events, but it was almost always explained as being a metaphor for a Biblical concept! There was also the problem that the Aristotelian view of the 'perfect heavens' held sway, and even if events were witnessed and reported, they were explained away or ignored in historical accounts.

Dr. Baillie began to search through historical records and myth. He found that the environmental downturns coincided with the collapse of civilizations, such as the roman empire and the beginning of the dark ages in Europe. He wrote Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets (Batsford (1999)), which relates his tree-ring/ice-core data to a series of global traumas over the past 4,400 years, events that may relate to the Biblical Exodus and dark ages in Egypt, China and Europe.

A later book by Baillie, The Celtic Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology (Baillie & McCafferty (2005)). focused on the CE 540 event which was recorded in the historical records and myths of Ireland. Baillie argues that the mythical imagery and the periodicity of the events are consistent with an Earth-crossing comet that has fragmented such as 2P/Enke, as described by astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier (who we will get to shortly). Baillie's latest book, New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection (Baillie (2006)), marshals the considerable evidence that the Black death (1346-1350) was due to a series of comet related disasters.


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Next, along came the work of physicist, Richard Firestone and geologists, Alan West and Simon Warwick-smith, presented in a series of academic papers and a book for the general public: The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture (https://www.amazon.com/Cycle-Cosmic-Catastrophes-Stone-Age-Changed/dp/1591430615).(2006) They dealt with the - until then - inexplicable mass extinctions of mega-fauna that occurred simultaneously with the onset of the Younger Dryas mini-ice age (c. 13,000 years ago).
[However, long before Baillie and Firestone et al,] in 1990, Victor Clube, an astrophysicist, and Bill Napier, an astronomer, published The Cosmic Winter, a book in which they describe performing orbital analyses of several of the meteor showers that hit earth every year. using sophisticated computer software, They carefully looked backward for thousands of years, tracing the orbits of comets, asteroids, and meteor showers until they uncovered something astounding. Many meteor showers are related to one another, such as the Taurids, Perseids, Piscids, and Orionids. In addition, some very large cosmic objects are related: the comets Encke and Rudnicki, the asteroids Oljato, Hephaistos, and about 100 others. Every one of those 100- plus cosmic bodies is at least a half-mile in diameter and some are miles wide. And what do they have in common? According to those scientists, every one is the offspring of the same massive comet that first entered our system less than 20,000 years ago! Clube and Napier calculated that, to account for all the debris they found strewn throughout our solar system, the original comet had to have been enormous. ...

Clube and Napier also calculated that, because of subtle changes in the orbits of Earth and the remaining cosmic debris, Earth crosses through the densest part of the giant comet clouds about every 2,000 to 4,000 years. When we look at climate and ice-core records, we can see that pattern. For example, the iridium, helium-3, nitrate, ammonium, and other key measurements seem to rise and fall in tandem, producing noticeable peaks around 18,000, 16,000, 13,000, 9,000, 5,000, and 2,000 years ago. In that pattern of peaks every 2,000 to 4,000 years, we may be seeing the "calling cards" of the returning megacomet.

Fortunately, the oldest peaks were the heaviest bombardments, and things have been getting quieter since then, as the remains of the comet break up into even smaller pieces. The danger is not past, however. Some of the remaining miles-wide pieces are big enough to do serious damage to our cities, climate, and global economy. Clube and Napier (1984) predicted that, in the year 2000 and continuing for 400 years, Earth would enter another dangerous time in which the planet's changing orbit would bring us into a potential collision course with the densest parts of the clouds containing some very large debris. Twenty years after their prediction, we have just now moved into the danger zone. it is a widely accepted fact that some of those large objects are in Earth-crossing orbits at this very moment, and the only uncertainty is whether they will miss us, as is most likely, or whether they will crash into some part of our planet.(Firestone et al. (2006), pp. 354-355.) [emphases, mine]
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According to Baillie, Clube and Napier, et al., in the same way that Jupiter was struck repeatedly in 1994 by the million-megaton impacts of the comet shoemaker-Levy, so Earth was bombarded 13,000 years ago by the fragments of a giant comet that broke up in the sky before the terrified eyes of humanity. The multiple impacts on the rotating planet caused tidal waves, raging fires, atomic bomb-like blasts, the mass extinction of many prehistoric species such as the mammoth and sabre-toothed tiger, most of humanity, and left the world in darkness for months if not years,

It was this event that left the hundreds of thousands of Carolina Bays, the millions of dead creatures - most of them megafauna - piled up in jumbled masses around the globe, and would also have wiped the earth almost clean of any existing human civilization. (This bottleneck is evident in genetic studies.) What Baillie, Clube and Napier propose, in addition to the scenario proposed by Firestone et al., is that our planet has been struck numerous times since then (and maybe even before that major event), and it isn't over.


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This 'new' type of natural disaster is beginning to be regarded by many scholars as the most probable single explanation for widespread and simultaneous cultural collapses at various times in our history. These ideas have been advanced largely by practitioners of hard science - astronomers and geologists, dendrochronologists, etc. - and remain almost completely unknown (or completely misunderstood) among practitioners of the soft sciences: archaeologists and historians. This fact significantly hampers the efforts of practitioners of the soft sciences to explain what they may be seeing in the historical record.

A recent example, known as the Tunguska event, occurred over Siberia in 1908 when a bolide exploded about 5 km above ground and completely devastated an area of some 2,000 km² through fireball blasts. While it is still a matter of controversy among researchers, this cosmic body is thought to have measured some 60 m across (some say 190 m across) and had the impact energy of about 20 to 40 megatons (some say 3-5 megatons), equivalent to the explosion of about 2,000 (or at least several hundred) Hiroshima size nuclear bombs, even though there was no actual physical impact on the Earth. In other words, if there were ancient, advanced civilizations destroyed by multiple Tunguska-like events (remember the hundreds of thousands of Carolina Bays?), it would be no wonder there is no trace, or very little, and what evidence does exist, such as the bays, are usually ascribed to 'anomaly' or ignored altogether.

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Baillie, Clube and Napier identified the progenitor of the Taurid complex as a giant comet that was thrown into a short-period (about 3.3 year) orbit, some time in the last twenty to thirty thousand years. The Taurid complex currently includes the Taurid meteor stream, Comet Encke, 'asteroids' such as Comet 2101 Adonis and 2201 Oljato, and enormous amounts of space dust sorted along the orbit in clumps that may include rather larger bodies. Asteroids in the Taurid complex appear to have associated meteor showers, which means that many asteroids are likely to be extinct comets. In other words, there can be more than just some dust and snow in a comet - there can be a significant rocky core and lots of poisonous gasses and chemicals as well. But, of course, having a 3.3 year orbit does not necessarily mean that every 3.3 years there will be disasters; there is rather more involved in bringing the Earth into the right position when the Earth-crossing bodies are present. This view of the solar system gave me a whole different view of the ancient myths that I had been trying to sort out as possibly historical actions of human beings that had been mythicized by the Greeks and then re-historicized by the Hebrews.

For years, the astronomical mainstream was highly critical of Baillie, Clube and Napier and their giant comet hypothesis. however, the impacts of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in 1994 led to a rather rapid turnaround in attitude, at least among curious and open-minded scientists.

Plasma Cosmology
My discussion in Horns of Moses includes a simplified explication of Plasma Cosmology that, though short, is still too long to include here since I am only trying to give enough background for the reader to understand my discussion of the Greek philosophers. So this is the seriously abbreviated version.

Plasmas are the most common phase of matter in the universe, both in terms of mass and volume. All the stars are made of plasma, and even interstellar space is filled with plasma. This is widely acknowledged by astronomers and physicists. However, when anyone attempts to go further than that, the authoritarians come out in force and invoke the god Einstein. (That's a topic for another day.)


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In Plasma Cosmology, the central idea is that the dynamics of ionized gases (or plasmas) play the main role in the physics of the universe at the scale of planets, solar systems, galaxies and further. Many of the ideas of plasma cosmology came from 1970 nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén. Alfvén proposed the use of plasma scaling to extrapolate the results of laboratory experiments and space plasma physics observations to scales orders-of-magnitude greater. The Einstein cultists certainly acknowledge that plasma physics plays a major role in many, if not most (they will admit), astrophysical phenomena, but they protest that many of the conclusions of plasma physics experiments performed in laboratories just can't be the explanation for the heavenly phenomena because they would 'contradict Einstein'! For mainstream science, gravity is the main force controlling celestial bodies' behavior, despite the fact that electromagnetic forces are stronger than gravitational forces by a magnitude of 1039, making electromagnetism the de facto driving force in our universe.

Alfvén wrote a paper in 1939 supporting the theory of Kristian Birkeland, who had written in 1913 that what is now called the solar wind generated currents in space that caused the aurora. Birkeland's theory was disputed at the time and Alfvén's work in turn was disputed for many years by the British geophysicist and mathematician Sydney Chapman, a senior figure in space physics, who argued the mainstream view that currents could not cross the vacuum of space and therefore the currents had to be generated by the earth. However, in 1967, Birkeland's theory, referred to previously as 'fringe', was proved to be correct after a probe was sent into space (i.e. observation hypothesis, experiment). These magnetic field-aligned currents are now named Birkeland currents in his honor.

A Birkeland current is simply an electron flow within plasma in the same way that an electric wire carries electrons. Birkeland currents have a filament shape because they are pinched by the magnetic force generated by the current itself. Like in a classic wire, Birkeland currents occur when an electric potential difference occurs between two regions of space. then currents will form and tend to balance the potential of the two regions through electronic migration.

To understand the electric interaction between the sun and its planets, we must remember that one fundamental law of plasma theory is that in space, any electrically charged object generates an insulating bubble around it. This insulating sheath is called a 'Langmuir sheath' named for Irving Langmuir (1881-1957), American chemist and physicist. Winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in chemistry.


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Like most celestial bodies, the Sun has its own Langmuir sheath, which extends almost 100 au (100 times the Sun-Earth distance) outwards. It's also called the 'heliosphere'. Electrically, the Sun-heliosphere couple acts like a giant condenser; the Sun being the positive electrode (anode) and the internal surface of the heliosphere being the negative electrode (cathode). Objects (comets, planets etc.) in the heliosphere can trigger electrical discharges from the sun (solar flares, sunspots, CMEs, etc.

Winston H. Bostick, ((1916-1991), American physicist who discovered plasmoids (https://becomingborealis.com/bostick-plasmoids/), plasma focus, and plasma vortex phenomena, carried out laboratory experiments in the 1950s by vaporizing titanium wires with a 10,000 A current, which turned them into plasma. his experiments were "the first to record the formation of spiral structures in the laboratory from interacting plasmoids and to note the striking similarity to their galactic analogs." Bostick was another who pointed out quite reasonably that plasma scaling applied to these laboratory experiments and demonstrated that galaxies had initially formed from plasma under the influence of a magnetic field. (See Nebular Plasmoids below.)


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Computer simulations of colliding plasma clouds by Anthony Peratt, (American physicist specialized in plasma who has been working for the Los Alamos National Laboratory since 1981), in the 1980s also mimicked the shape of galaxies.


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See simulation: https://www.plasma-universe.com/Galaxy-formation/

The simulation in the image above shows the cross-section of two plasma filaments joining in what is called a z-pinch; The filaments start out at the equivalent of 300,000 light years apart and carry Birkeland currents of 1018 amps. The simulations also showed emerging jets of material from the central buffer region, which resembles that observed from quasars and active galactic nuclei, which are attributed to 'black holes' according to Einsteinian physics. What was fascinating was that, letting the simulation continue to run revealed "the transition of double radio galaxies to radioquasars to radioquiet QSOs to peculiar and Seyfert galaxies, finally ending in spiral galaxies." (Peratt & Green (1983), 'On the Evolution of Interacting, Magnetized, Galactic Plasmas'. Peratt (1986), 'Evolution of the Plasma universe: ii. the Formation of systems of galaxies')


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For the “Ladder of Heaven” images above, see: https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2016/04/10/anthony-peratt-part-2-backbone-of-the-sky/

In short, many of the truly odd phenomena of the universe that are inexplicable - or explainable only with the most bizarre and contradictory ideas in an effort to support Einstein's relativity - turn out to be a natural evolution of electromagnetic phenomena.

The simulation accounted for flat galaxy rotation curves without having to introduce exotic elements such as dark matter in order to make the equations work. This is blasphemy since the discrepancy between observed galaxy rotation curves and those simulated based on Einsteinian gravity has had to be explained exactly that way: sheer invention of something to make the square peg fit the round hole. However, as Peratt's experiments demonstrated, a flat rotation curve emerges quite naturally in a galaxy governed by electromagnetic fields, the spiral arms of galaxies are like rolling springs that have the same rotational velocity along their length. In other words, a galaxy is the physical and visible part of gigantic currents flowing through space.

In an electric universe, spinning galaxies, orbiting celestial bodies, spinning planets and stars, not to mention more mundane things like tornadoes and cyclones, are the logical consequences of Birkeland currents and the rotating electromagnetic fields they induce.

Plasma cosmology proposes that cometary comas and tails are produced by an electrical exchange between the sun and a comet. The coma is the Langmuir sheath of the comet. The intense electric field around the comet triggers massive discharges (hence the intense glow). These discharges also appear as jets which erode the surface of, and eject matter away from, the comet. The tail is made of this ionized ejecta which remains cohesive because it forms electromagnetically guided Birkeland currents. Mainstream scientists are getting rather close to acknowledging this by calling the unexplained brightening of comet Linear in 2000, a "charge exchange reaction." That is approaching heresy in the Einstein cult. The facts are that, before Einstein came along and ruined science, there were already speculations leading to an understanding of the electrical nature of the universe.

For example, in the late 19th century, Scientific American (27 July 1872, p. 57). published an article stating that Professor Zollner of Leipzig ascribes the "self-luminosity" of comets to "electrical excitement." Zollner proposed that "the nuclei of comets, as masses, are subject to gravitation, while the vapors developed from them, which consist of very small particles, yield to the action of the free electricity of the sun..." Then the 11th august 1882 issue of English Mechanic and World of Science (pp. 516-7) wrote regarding comet tails: "...there seems to be a rapidly growing feeling amongst physicists that both the self-light of comets and the phenomena of their tails belong to the order of electrical phenomena." In 1896, Nature ( No. 1370, vol. 53, Jan 30, 1896, p. 306) published an article stating that "it has long been imagined that the phenomenon of comet's tails are in some way due to a solar electrical repulsion, and additional light is thrown on this subject by recent physical researches."

But then, along came Einstein and science fell into a genuine black hole!

In the 1960s, an engineer named Ralph Juergens, who had worked as a technical editor at the McGraw-Hill publishing house, proposed that the Sun was a positively charged body at the center of an electrical system and that the Sun was itself the focus of a cosmic electric discharge which was the source of its energy - not the old E = MC2 routine. Horror of horrors! Blasphemy!

In the Juergens hypothesis, a comet spends most of its time in the outermost regions of the solar system, where the electric field will be most negative. The comet nucleus, Juergens said, naturally acquires the negative charge of its environment. This leads to electrical stresses on the comet as it falls towards the Sun. Juergens writes, "a space-charge sheath will begin to form to shield the interplanetary plasma from the comet's alien field. as the comet races toward the sun, its sheath takes the form of a long tail stretching away from the sun..."

Juergens' model of the electric sun and of electrically discharging comets was immediately taken up by Earl Milton, professor of physics at Lethbridge University in Canada. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Society of Interdisciplinary Studies in April 1980, Milton offered a ringing endorsement of Juergens' hypothesis: "The cometary body takes on the [electric charge] of the space in which it has spent most of its time. On those infrequent apparitions when it comes into the space of the inner solar system, the body of the comet gets out of equilibrium because it now moving in an electrically different environment than the one it is adjusted to. An electrical flow then occurs to rectify the situation. The sheath which builds around the cometary body glows brightly and assumes the characteristic shape of the comet's head and tail." (Goodspeed (2011), 'The Electric Comet: the Elephant in NASA's Living room? (http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/goodspeed.htm)'

As comet experts know, the head and tail can take on dramatically different appearances, something that is inexplicable in terms of mainstream comet theories, but perfectly normal in electric comet dynamics. Also, these differences were recorded by the Chinese:


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In short, the Sun is not a closed system that may run out of fuel one day. It appears that the Sun gets its energy from an electrical current that runs through the galaxy. As long as the current keeps flowing, the Sun will keep going. However, when the Sun goes quiet, that may mean that, somehow, it is discharging more efficiently. We're not talking here about a usual intra heliosphere discharge like the ones that are triggered by comets and which increase solar activity. Cometary activity seems to have increased over the last few years, which, according to electric comet dynamics, should increase the sun's activity. however, this is not the case. One scenario is that the sun is being 'grounded', possibly by a massive oppositely charged object such as a companion star that could even be dark, i.e. a Brown Dwarf. If a companion star is approaching our solar system it could be responsible for both the increased meteor activity (because it propelled asteroid bodies from the Oort cloud towards our solar system) and also for the decreased solar activity ('grounding'). Keep in mind that solar activity is one of the main phenomena that allows the destruction of incoming asteroid bodies by exerting intense electric fields upon them. In this way, such a companion star could pose a major threat to life on earth by both sending comets towards the earth and deactivating the 'protection system' (increased solar activity in response to interlopers) against the threat of cometary impact.

As already noted, Anthony L. Peratt and his colleagues at Los Alamos Research Laboratories conducted plasma experiments and discovered that powerful plasma discharges take on some amazing shapes, including humanoid figures, humans with bird heads, rings, donuts, writhing snakes and so forth. It just so happens that these kinds of shapes have been recorded by ancestral humans the world over, most particularly in rock carvings known as petroglyphs. He writes:

The discovery that objects from the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age carry patterns associated with high-current z-pinches provides a possible insight into the origin and meaning of these ancient symbols produced by man. ...

A discovery that the basic petroglyph morphologies are the same as those recorded in extremely high-energy-density discharges has opened up a means to unravel the origin of these apparently crude, misdrawn, and jumbled figures found in uncounted numbers around the earth. Drawn in heteromac style, these ancient patterns could mimic and replicate high-energy phenomena that would be recorded on a nonerasable plasma display screen. Many petroglyphs, apparently recorded several millennia ago, have a plasma discharge or instability counterpart, some on a one-to-one or overlay basis. More striking is that the images recorded on rock are the only images found in extreme energy density experiments; no other morphology types or patterns are observed.(Peratt (2003), 'Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch aurora) as Recorded in Antiquity'.)


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Plasma events can heat and fuse rock, incinerate things that would otherwise not burn, melt ice caps, induce earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, vaporize shallow bodies of water and create massive deluges of rain. Additionally, the radiation coming off the plasma can very likely affect genes in living creatures, including humans. In short, plasma interactions between the earth and comets can create chaos. In the presence of such phenomena, humans would be terrorized and certainly think that they are in the presence of powerful and destructive living beings, i.e. 'gods'. During such periods, they might seek out caves, build underground shelters and cities, build shelters of massive stone, and so forth. Evidence for all of this is present in the archaeological record.

Robert Schoch, the geophysicist at Boston University who created a controversy by pointing out that the sphinx must be thousands of years older than mainstream archaeologists claim, due to the presence of extreme water-weathering on its surface, thinks that the plasma events recorded by the ancients in their rock art are due to extreme activity of the sun. But, as we are going to see from some of the actual written evidence further on, understanding comets as electrically charged bodies, and taking Clube's and Napier's giant comet hypothesis into account, makes a better fit. I'm not excluding the possibility that the sun may certainly have produced some frightening plasma phenomena at different points in history, but I think the most concise explanation that includes all of the data is that of the giant comet with a full electrical charge interacting with the electromagnetic field of the earth, including particularly terrifying displays from fragments entering the earth's atmosphere. A giant comet could also interact with the other planets in the solar system, doing such things as stripping the water and life off of Mars, exchanging electrical potentials and leaving horrific scars on that planet, interacting with Venus in such a way that Venus might strip charge from the giant comet, thus altering its own electro-chemical make-up, and so on.


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As noted above, Clube and Napier have back-calculated orbits of comet streams and found that 9,500 years ago, two major streams were in identical orbits, i.e. they must have been a single body. that means that this was a time of major break-up. Comet Oljato, one of the bodies in question, is in an orbit which would have brought it into the earth's orbital plane for several hundred years around 3000-3500 BCE, which means that there would have been quite a few close encounters of the disastrous kind at that period. At the same time, Comet Encke would have been a dramatic presence in the heavens as well. The present day northern Taurid meteors are calculated to have broken away from comet Encke about a thousand years ago, consistent with Mike Baillie's tree ring and ice core evidence and recorded in the Chinese records. In short, backtracking orbits of meteor streams and asteroids reveals astronomically and scientifically what must have been going on in the skies at various periods within the history of our current civilization as well as previous civilizations. Adding up the volume of the comets and asteroids in question, along with the estimates of the various connected dust clouds and streams, indicates that our most recent giant visitor, which the ancients knew as Saturn (not the planet), was indeed a monster. It gave birth to a whole family of monsters, and some of the products of its initial splits went on to become monsters in their own rights, each with their own family of godlets.

Despite the fact that things going on in the skies have calmed down a great deal, the likelihood is that there are still hundreds of thousands of bodies capable of generating multi-megaton Tunguska-like explosions on the earth, orbiting in the earth-crossing streams left by the giant comet progenitor. Clube and Napier write:
Astronomers, indeed scientists generally, like to think of themselves as tolerant judges and very adaptable to fresh discoveries. the evidence in this instance is however mostly the other way. One may therefore expect that in some circles the data now emerging from the Taurid meteor stream will be ignored in the hope that something reassuring will turn up. While this is a time-honoured scholarly ploy for the handling of discordant new facts, there is a moral dimension in this instance: the swarm has teeth. (Clube and Napier (1990), p. 154.)
The ancient religions of prehistoric man were unmistakable polytheistic and astronomical in character. This raises questions concerning the basic nature of the gods that were worshipped. If comets were included among the principal deities, their erratic motion and changing appearance could well have inspired a ready acceptance of the fickle character of ancient gods. ... Many Greek and Roman philosophers were, amongst other things, greatly concerned to explain comets in materialistic terms and rid them of any supernatural qualities. Inasmuch as the heads and tails of comets appeared often to take on a human form or that of animals, the aim seems to have been to prove that these were illusions created by perfectly natural causes. ... In practice, however, belief in the gods was so entrenched that the arguments seem merely to have served to convince that the gods were invisible [in the sky]... The rise of materialism in classical times came with the passing away of some very important prehistoric gods which were comets in the sky. Many of the legends of mythology can thus be interpreted as highly embellished accounts of the evolution of one, or perhaps a few, very large comets during the last 2,000 years of prehistory. (Clube and Napier (1982), p. 157) In Neolithic and early historical times, there must have been a string of naked eye comets moving along the zodiac much like the planets do. At any given time, there were probably only a few really large and dominant bodies, 'children' of the monstrous progenitor. Some of the 'children' came to earth and wreaked havoc or engaged in 'wars with one another', producing endless terrifying spectacles. The comet nuclei would have been far brighter than Venus, even at a 'safe' distance. Fierce meteor storms must have been commonplace, with many fireballs exploding in the atmosphere during them: the veritable thunderbolts of the gods. and certainly the electrical displays must have been awesome, whether between the comets, or between them and the earth, or between them and other planets in the solar system. As I noted already, the giant progenitor is probably responsible for the destruction and scarring of Mars and the loading of the atmosphere of Venus, though that was very early in its career.

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In the figure above, we see various nodes of important intersections between the orbit of comet Encke and the plane of the earth's orbit. These approximate dates match the scientific data obtained from the earth itself. The ancient traditions of the 'end of the World', (yes, many 'worlds' have ended throughout history), the Egyptian intermediate periods, the collapse of the Bronze age, the end of the Roman Empire, and more, all have to be re-examined with the inclusion of the scientific data based on astronomical observations and back-engineering of the data thus obtained.

As time passed, of course, the comets would begin to lose their charge and their gasses and their tails would have diminished and faded from view, leaving only the predictable, annual, meteor showers. The gods that once hurled celestial thunderbolts and periodically got angry at human beings and "destroyed the whole world" experienced their own immolation, the Gotterdammerung, though we suspect that their 'dead bodies' are still out there, blackened by the fire - invisible, so to say - but still lethal.

In the earliest times, the celestial catastrophes came from the constellation Aries, but due to the evolution of the orbits, they gradually shifted to Taurus. In the Pyramid Texts, the earlier celestial religion, even older than the pharaohs, was the worship of a god who was the giver of life, rain and 'celestial fire'. Worship of the sky god dominates both the northern Indo-Europeans and the southern Semitic peoples from the very earliest times. And even in the earliest times, the sky god did not exist alone: he gave birth and propagated a whole pantheon of lesser gods and demi-gods.

Quite a number of alternative researchers have gotten on the bandwagon of claiming that the actual planets of our solar system move out of their orbits and interact with one another in close and terrifying ways, including exchanging 'thunderbolts' and so forth. It seems that the reason for this interpretation is due to the confusion over the names of the gods later being given to the planets that were previously associated with a particular cometary event. I don't think that these people are really considering the mechanics of what they are proposing, which are actually improbable, if not impossible. We need to look for deeper understanding and that is where we find that the Clube and Napier theory of a giant comet - or more than one - and the research they have done into the ancient orbits and texts, completes the picture.

As we will discuss further on, it was in the 4th century BCE that cosmological thinking shifted in significant ways with the rise of the new, Greek rationalism. This could only have happened if the 'gods' that had been terrorizing the Earth for millennia were beginning to decline in size, number and frequency of appearance; to spread out and disperse in longer orbits. It is at this point that we discover that a study of planetary movement arose as an 'explanation' of what the former, ignorant, irrational peoples were actually talking about when they spoke of 'gods in the sky'. It was only after this time that the planets were given the names of well-known gods, names that had previously belonged to the giant comets and their offspring. At the same time, the planets were assigned some cometary characteristics, which makes no sense at all unless the names were originally attached to comets. As late as the 9th century, the Baghdad astrologer Kitab al-Mughni described Jupiter as 'bearded' and Mars as a 'lamp', Mercury as a 'spear' and Venus as a 'horseman'. These are terms that have always before, then and since, been used to describe comets! (We are also reminded of the 'lamp' that passed between the covenant offering of Abraham, not to mention burning bushes, pillars of fire and cloud, etc.)

The idea that the planets in their distant, placid orbits, were important in any way at all was due to the work of Plato and Eudoxus. An explanation of orbits that were steady, circular, geometric and simple was elaborated by them, though Plato took some account of the ancient world-view and its events in the Timaeus. Then Plato's pupil, Aristotle, came along with his radical cosmology that banished anything that was not 'here and now' evident. Shades of Einstein and the modern scientific dogma, for sure! The cometary gods were reduced to distant folk memories of earthly heroes and the sense that 'there and then' things were very different was completely suppressed; there was undoubtedly a political motive behind this.

Aristotelian cosmology, with its focus on the perfect, planetary 'spheres', ascended and dominated religion and academia and this condition exists, more or less, right up to the present - Tunguska and all other evidence notwithstanding.

As the sky-gods faded, the myths about them became less and less comprehensible. The tales were obviously about celestial beings, but there was a problem with identifying them. The only apparent moving bodies in the solar system were the planets and the odd comet now and then, and it was clear that the planets were too few in number and too simple in movement to support the wild tales told in the celestial myths. Thus, along with the transfer of the names of some of the major comets to the planets, the names of many of the other gods came to be assigned to ancient heroes, founders of cities, and so forth.

The evidence seems to point to the idea that Aristotle (among others as we will see further on) was concerned with quieting the fears and stamping out the superstitions of the average man. He did the job well and we have suffered the consequences for a very long time, and may yet suffer even more.


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Notice in the chart above that at the time of Plato, the name 'star of _____' was still being used. This 'star of...' designation was a direct reference to the brilliant nature of the comets that had evoked these names. But by 200 BCE, the term 'star of ' had been dropped, and by 100 BCE, probably no one even remembered that the names had once belonged to comets.

(Here, I am skipping the next few chapters of the book where I present the evidence that the names of these Babylonian 'gods' were originally names of comets/comet fragments.)

The bottom line is this: the 'hard' sciences must have the last word on what exactly transpired in astronomical terms and that is what Clube, Napier,Baille, Hoyle and a few others have provided.

Now, I will try to get to the discussion of the Greek philosophers as expeditiously as possible. Stay tuned!

To Part 2 (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy_21.html)

[Gwin Ru]

...

... The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy, Part Two (https://www.sott.net/article/482979-The-Cosmic-Context-of-Greek-Philosophy-Part-Two#)

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net (https://www.sott.net/article/482979-The-Cosmic-Context-of-Greek-Philosophy-Part-Two#)
Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:43 UTC


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I know I said in the previous post that I would get right to the discussion of philosophers and philosophy in this post, but as I review my 400 page text (https://www.amazon.com/Comets-Horns-Moses-Secret-History-ebook/dp/B00B1RF91Q?ref_=ast_author_dp), I realize that a few other things should be covered first. It will become clear why it is essential to know what was going on to fully understand what the Greek philosophers were and what they were about.

Cúchulainn: The Comet of a Thousand Faces


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Was the Irish Hero Cú Chulainn Actually a Comet?
It was the Egyptians who first used the description ‘hairy star’ which then became, in Greek, kometes or ‘hairy one’. An unidentified hieroglyph which, for many years, was interpreted as ‘woman with disheveled hair’ may, in fact, directly refer to a comet since this hieroglyph is almost identical to that of the sky goddess Nut, except for the addition of the flowing hair. (Clube and Napier (1982), p. 167.)


In Mesopotamian, Greek, Egyptian, Celtic and Native American mythology (and others), we are able to see the characteristics of comets, their celestial 'Olympus', and come to some reasonable understanding of their adventures. The representations of gods taking the form of animals and animal-headed gods can be seen in the many forms and configurations taken by comet heads and tails, not to mention their electrical activities. And obviously, there were some of the comets in the ancient sky that were regular, recognizable visitors that became the principal gods.

Fragmenting comets acquired partners, children and extended families. Comets could have 'virgin births' or parents could devour their children or vice versa. The name of the principal comet can be traced in the various cultures and the time described when the founder of the dynasty of the gods was single and alone in the sky: the giant comet that entered the solar system perhaps 70,000 years ago. As years passed, the stories mixed and mingled in confusing ways. But still, the primary features remain clear as long as the 'supernatural' elements are not stripped out, (which is what I was doing myself in the early days of research). Mike Baillie gives an example using the Celtic god, Cúchulainn:
Cúchulainn became ... a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins and knees switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front. The balled sinews of his calves switched to the front of his shins, each big knot the size of a warrior's bunched fist. On his head, the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child. His face and features became a red bowl: he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His jaw weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow. His heart boomed loud in his breast like the baying of a watch-dog at its feed or the sound of a lion among bears. Malignant mists and spurts of fire - the torches of the goddess Badb - flickered red in the vaporous clouds that rose boiling above his head, so fierce was his fury. The hair of his head twisted like the tangle of a red thorn bush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage. The hero-halo rose out of his brow, long and broad as a warrior's whetstone, long as a snout, and he went mad rattling his shield, urging on his charioteer and harassing the hosts. Then, tall and thick, steady and strong, high as the mast of a noble ship, rose up from the dead center of his skull a straight spout of black blood darkly and magically smoking... (Kenny (1986), 'A Celtic Destruction Myth: Togail Bruidne Da Derga', quoted by Baillie in his introduction to The Celtic Gods (2005). This description of Cúchulainn is not what most people read in their edited children's versions of the myths. This one describes Cúchulainn's 'riastradh' or frenzy, which Baillie calls a "warp-spasm." The point is that Cúchulainn is being described shaking violently, covered with lumps and bumps, making terrifying sounds, his hair twisted and standing up with "vaporous clouds boiling above his head" and with "a spout of dark blood jetting from his skull". That pretty much describes a very, very close comet interacting electrically with the atmosphere and magnetic field of the earth.


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Cúchulainn next climbs into his "thunder chariot" that was bristling with all kinds of spikes and bits of metal that are there to rip the enemy to shreds, then the chariot is "speedy as the wind ... over the level plain" pulled by two horses with flowing manes. Cúchulainn starts killing people first a hundred at a blow, then two-hundred, then three-hundred, and so on. His chariot wheels sink so deeply into the earth that they tear up boulders, rocks, flagstones, gravel, creating a dyke high enough to be a fortress wall. He mowed more people down, leaving the bodies six deep. He made this "circuit of Ireland" seven times according to this particular story and "this slaughter ... is one of the three uncountable slaughters on the Táin (One of Ireland's great legendary epics.) ... only the chiefs have been counted. ... in this great carnage on Muirtheimne Plain, Cúchulainn slew one hundred and thirty kings. not one man in three escaped" without some injury.

Most people don't know about this aspect of Cúchulainn since the woman who translated the tales from Irish into English (Lady Augusta Gregory), thought that "the grotesque accounts of Cúchulainn's "distortion" only meant that in time of great strain or danger he had more than human strength, so she changed all that to "the appearance of a god." Baillie reacts to this:
Reading these comments carefully, the idea that the full description of Cúchulainn's frenzy reduces to 'more than human strength' does seem like an understatement. That he 'took on the appearance of a god' likewise does not do full justice to the awfulness. ... But it appears that, in studying and trying to make sense of the myths, it is the supernatural elements - that seem to make no sense - that are regarded as gilding. They are seen as exaggerations, or padding, or the product of over-fertile imaginations. thus they are often the bits that are ignored, or left out of the tales ... the result of this is that the tales tend to be left with only the natural elements. King Arthur, a Celtic god, ends up described only as a king; Cúchulainn becomes a heroic Irish youth. thus readers are pressurized towards regarding these heroes as real flesh and blood people, when in reality they were always supernatural or, if you like, gods. (Baillie & mccafferty (2005), The Celtic Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology, p. 15.) Legends of the Fall and Genetic Mutations


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The Deluge by Nicolas Poussin (c. 1664).


Our civilization has known about the flood legends of the Bible for about two thousand years; it was only in the 19th century that we became aware that this story was derived from a more ancient source; the Sumerians. It was then, in the late 19th and early 20th century, that ethnologists and other experts began to collect the flood legends of the north Eurasian peoples and to compare them with similar stories of other peoples.

What they found was that the north Eurasian peoples spoke not only of a water-flood, but also bombardments of fire and numerous evil suns in the sky, described as 'burning mountains'. There were also fire-breathing serpents in the sky and earthquakes that lasted for days, violent storms, torrents of water falling for days and boiling waves as 'high as a tent' or mixed with stones. There were descriptions of roaring from the skies and other horrifying noises, followed by grey darkness in the day and nights as black as pitch. Snow storms that lasted for months rounded off the scenarios. Obviously, these stories did not exactly match the relatively benign - even if world-covering - Flood of Noah that resulted from a rain lasting 40 days and nights and the opening up of the "fountains of the deep."

The appalling cosmic catastrophe had long-term consequences for all life on our planet, and was, obviously, a world-wide event in one respect or another.

Spirals and Cosmic Divers
A selection of the stories of the northern Eurasians - mainly those living between the Black sea and the Caspian sea (today's Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia) - have been collected together, along with some of the geological and archaeological evidence, by Heinrich Koch in a book entitled The Diluvian Impact. (2000) It is highly recommended, with a small caveat: he seems to have conflated a number of events.

Nevertheless, I found there the origin of certain stories that are said by Yuri Stoyanov (The Other God (2000)) to be the oldest forms of dualism. Here, I'm going to skip the lengthy extract of the primeval myth of the three suns that pervades the Palaeo-Siberian peoples myth cycles. It's a terrifying story and worth reading, but it doesn't move us to our main topic, so I will omit it.

Clearly, it is in these cometary experiences described as struggles between various evil and noble forces that we find the origin of the Aryan dualistic principle that was at the foundation of gnostic religious formations such as that of Mani, the Bogomils and Cathars. Koch suggests that dualism is an infallible sign of the cataclysmic experience. Apparently, after such, no one in their right mind continues to believe only in a good and loving god who is master of the universe.

Werewolves, Vampires and Cannibals, Oh My!
In addition to the tales collected by Koch, a related book is a collection of the accounts from Native Americans: Man and Impact in the Americas by E. P. Grondine. One very interesting thing about both of the volumes mentioned is that the issue of genetic mutation is described in the myths.

In both the Americas and Eurasia, the stories of the impacts and floods include related legends of giants, dwarves and cannibals which are not the instigators of the cataclysms as one might infer when recalling the Nephilim in the Bible, but rather the consequence of it.

Generally, these stories are about very aggressive, warlike, humanoid monsters. The ancient Native American myths of the Windigo can be traced back to comet catastrophes. Nowadays, of course, the Windigo is thought of as a malevolent, cannabilistic spirit that can possess the bodies of humans and cause them to transform into a monster, rather like the legends of werewolves; but what if it is not possession but rather a reference to mutation?

These monsters were strongly associated with protracted periods of cold and famine which can be the results of comet events and it is known from medical research that a ketogenic diet and cold adaptation can induce genetic upregulation or downregulation. Generally, these effects are beneficial and neuroprotective, but perhaps it depends on the individual genetic make-up? Windigos and their Eurasian counterparts were also described as greedy and never satisfied with killing; they were always on the march looking for new victims.

The Electrophonic Cosmic Logos
In respect of the idea of genetic mutations accompanying cometary cataclysms, I read an interesting paper discussing the possibility that the Tunguska event caused genetic changes. The abstract says:
One of the great mysteries of the Tunguska event is its genetic impact. Some genetic anomalies were reported in the plants, insects and people of the Tunguska region. Remarkably, the increased rate of biological mutations was found not only within the epicenter area, but also along the trajectory of the Tunguska Space Body (TSB). At that no traces of radioactivity were found, which could be reliably associated with the Tunguska event. The main hypotheses about the nature of the TSB, a stony asteroid, a comet nucleus or a carbonaceous chondrite, readily explain the absence of radioactivity but give no clues how to deal with the genetic anomaly. A choice between these hypotheses, as far as the genetic anomaly is concerned, is like to the choice between "blue devil, green devil and speckled devil", to quote late academician N. V. Vasilyev. However, if another mysterious phenomenon, electrophonic meteors, is evoked, the origin of the Tunguska genetic anomaly becomes less obscure. (Silagadze (2003), 'Tunguska Genetic Anomaly andElectrophonicMeteors (https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0311337)'. The author proposes the idea that electrophonic effects produced by comets/meteors can induce genetic changes in biological organisms. The paper also mentions a genetic mutation of a human being involving the Rh0D gene. The conclusion is that there was some "unknown stress factor" and that it might be electromagnetic radiation which is said to accompany electrophonic meteors.

Reports of noisy meteors date back to at least the year 817, when a Chinese observer documented a meteor with a sound "like a flock of cranes in flight." In 1676, Italian astronomer Geminiano Montanari observed one that sounded like "the rattling of a great cart running over stones." Montanari's calculations put the meteor thirty-eight miles up in the sky, which was - as he well knew - too far away for its sound to reach him instantly so he doubted that he had actually heard it, though - thankfully - he recorded the data anyway. Later, in 1833, an intense Leonid meteor storm resulted in more reports of meteors that swished, whooshed, or "resembled the noise of a child's popgun." Once again, it was deemed impossible for the sound to have traveled that fast, so the reports were discounted.

These odd reports were unexplained until Colin Keay of the University of Newcastle in Australia suggested in 1980 that as meteors fall through the Earth's magnetic field, they generate radio signals audible to the human ear. Keay postulated that falling meteors generate very low-frequency radio signals that travel at the speed of light to the ground, where they cause any number of things in the environment to vibrate, from your eyeglasses to your hair!

That means that, at the exact time that you see the meteor, you may also hear crackling, whistling or swishing sounds; sounds like a jet airplane or whatever. That is to say, you are not actually hearing sound from the fireball but rather hearing sound from local objects vibrating in response to the intense VLF emission of the fireball. That is also why the phenomenon may be heard by one person and not another. ELF and VLF electromagnetic fields can be generated by comet or meteor explosions the same way an EMP can be generated by a nuclear explosion. (Colin Keay's list of publications on the topic of electrophonic meteors can be found here (https://web.archive.org/web/20180418033731/http://home.pacific.net.au/~ddcsk1/bibliog.htm).

And yes, there were reports of witnesses hearing the Tunguska object before its appearance. They said it sounded like low thunder, a cavernous roar.

As to genetic mutations, I'm going to omit here the long discussion of ELF/VLF radiation effects on genes except to report the conclusion which said that, after such exposure gene HSP70 can no longer buffer variation:
Therefore some mutations will become unmasked and individuals with abnormal phenotype will appear in the population. If a mutation proves to be beneficial in the new environmental conditions, the related traits will be preserved even after the HSP70 resumes its normal function. (Silagadze (2008), op. cit.) (italics, mine) My guess is that the ancient reports of what must have been genetic mutations following Earth's encounters with celestial objects were probably true and quite remarkable. Tunguska was a modest event, so to say. Who knows what a serious bombardment might produce.

Celestial Intentions
In a paper addressed to the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development, dated June 4th, 1996 and entitled, 'The Hazard to Civilization From Fireballs and Comets', Victor Clube wrote:
Asteroids which pass close to the Earth have been fully recognized by mankind for only about 20 years. Previously, the idea that substantial unobserved objects might be close enough to be a potential hazard to the earth was treated with as much derision as the unobserved aether. Scientists of course are in business to establish broad principles (e.g. relativity) and the Earth's supposedly uneventful, uniformitarian environment was already very much in place. The result was that scientists who paid more than lip service to objects close enough to encounter the Earth did so in an atmosphere of barely disguised contempt. Even now, it is difficult for laymen to appreciate the enormity of the intellectual blow with which most of the Body scientific has recently been struck and from which it is now seeking to recover. [The Comet Shoemaker-Levy impacts on Jupiter.]

The present report, then, is concerned with those other celestial bodies recorded by mankind since the dawn of civilization which either miss or impinge upon the Earth and which have also been despised. Now known respectively as comets (>1 kilometre in size) and meteoroids (<10m).

Confronted on many occasions in the past by the prospect of world-end, national elites have often found themselves having to suppress public panic - only to discover, too late, that the usual means of control commonly fail. Thus an institutionalized science is expected to withhold knowledge of the threat; a self-regulated press is expected to make light of any disaster; while an institutionalized religion is expected to oppose predestination and to secure such general belief in a fundamentally benevolent deity as can be mustered. [...]

There are fundamental paradoxes to be assimilated as a result of this unexpected situation. Thus the perceived culture of enterprise and enlightenment which underpins the two centuries culminating with the space age and which led mankind to spurn comets and fireballs may now be seen as the prelude to a profound paradigm shift: the restoration of an environmental outlook more in keeping with that which preceded American independence and which paid serious heed to comets and fireballs.

...the Christian, Islamic and Judaic cultures have all moved since the European Renaissance to adopt an unreasoning anti-apocalyptic stance, apparently unaware of the burgeoning science of catastrophes. History, it now seems, is repeating itself: it has taken the space age to revive the Platonist voice of reason but it emerges this time within a modern anti-fundamentalist, anti-apocalyptic tradition over which governments may, as before, be unable to exercise control. ... Cynics (or modern sophists), in other words, would say that we do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions! [emphasis in the original] Köfels' Impact Event
Here, I will skip over the fascinating discussion of the Köfels' Impact Event which was recorded in cuneiform on a tablet found in the remains of the Royal Palace at Nineveh. It is now in the British museum as catalogue No. K8538. It was a copy of a contemporary Sumerian observation of an Aten asteroid over a kilometre in diameter that impacted Köfels in Austria on the 29th of June 3123 BCE.


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I am also going to skip the discussion of the history of astronomy and astrology recounted in the book Comets by astronomers Bailey, Clube and Napier.

End of the Early Bronze Age
For almost 500 years the Hittites were the dominant power in Anatolia, the area that is mostly modern day Turkey, though they were completely forgotten for a very long time, remembered only in completely inaccurate renderings in the Bible. Modern studies reveal that the Hittites themselves were not a highly creative or innovative people, but that they drew most of the inspiration for their social, religious, literary and artistic renderings from the cultural traditions of both earlier and contemporary Near Eastern civilizations.

Their greatest legacy is that, by absorbing the elements of their neighbors, they preserved them. This is typical of a regime that is 'new' or different within a given population: to seek to validate their legitimacy by connecting themselves in some way to the traditions of the native population.

We should note here that the arrival and rise of the Hittites in Anatolia follows a period of historical discontinuity, i.e. probably as a result of cometary destruction considering all that we have learned was going on in the skies in those times.
Scientists have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the middle east might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago. Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs. Today's crater lies on what would have been shallow sea 4,000 years ago, and any impact would have caused devastating fires and flooding. The catastrophic effect of these could explain the mystery of why so many early cultures went into sudden decline around 2300 BCE. ...

The crater's faint outline was found by Dr Sharad Master, a geologist at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, on satellite images of the Al 'Amarah region, about 10 miles north-west of the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates and home of the Marsh Arabs. ... Dr Benny Peiser, who lectures on the effects of meteor impacts at John Moores University, Liverpool, said [if confirmed, it would be] one of the most significant discoveries in recent years and would corroborate research he and others have done. He said that craters recently found in Argentina date from around the same period - suggesting that the earth may have been hit by a shower of large meteors at about the same time. (Matthews, 'Meteor Clue to End of Middle East Civilisations', The Sunday Telegraph,4 November 2001. retrieved here (https://web.archive.org/web/20110622053028/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1361474/Meteor-clue-to-end-of-Middle-East-civilisations.html).)
Hundreds of years after the event, a cuneiform collection of 'prodigies', omen predictions of the collapse of Akkad, preserved the record that "many stars were falling from the sky" (Bjorkman 1973:106). Closer to the event, perhaps as early as 2100 BCE, the author of the [I]Curse of Akkad alluded to "flaming potsherds raining from the sky" (Attinger 1984). Davis (1996) has reminded us of Clube and Napier's impact theory, and asked "Where is the archaeological and geological evidence for the role of their 'Taurid demons' in human history?" The abrupt climate change at 2200 BCE, regardless of an improbable impact explanation, situates hemispheric and social collapse in a global, but ultimately cosmic, context. (Weiss (1997), Late Third Millennium Abrupt Climate Change and Social Collapse in West Asia and Egypt, p. 720.) It is not a surprise that, of all the various factors and data examined for clues that could explain the environmental and social upheavals at the end of the early Bronze age, catastrophe is the subject matter most avoided by archaeologists and historians. Yet most archaeologists are certainly aware of Claude Schaeffer's enormous work, Stratigraphie Comparée et Chronologie de l'Asie Occidentale, which is an incredible collection of archaeological evidence demonstrating extensive earthquake and other catastrophic damage detected in Bronze Age settlements throughout the near and middle east. (Schaeffer (1898-1982) was a French archaeologist. His work led to the uncovering of the Ugaritic religious texts. Ugarit was a port city in northern Syria.)
Claude Schaeffer, the 20th century's most eminent French archaeologist, was the first researcher to present evidence for widespread seismic catastrophes in large parts of Asia Minor and the Levant at around 2300 BCE. Based on a comparative study of destruction layers in more than 40 sites, he ordered and classified earthquake horizons as synchronous and interrelated benchmarks in archaeological stratigraphy and chronology. Evidence for major earthquake damage in early Bronze Age strata had been detected in many Anatolian and Near Eastern settlements, such as Troy, Alaca Hüyük, Boghazköy, Alishar, Tarsos, Ugarit, Byblos, Qalaat, Hama, Megiddo, Tell Hesi, Beit Mirsim, Beth Shan, Tell Brak and Chagar Bazar (Gammon 1980; 1982).

Most scholars, however, have refrained from taking Schaeffer's main research- findings into consideration. The recent and most comprehensive textbook on 3rd millennium BCE civilisation collapse fails to mention his research altogether (Dalfes et al. 1997). One looks in vain for any reference to his theory of early Bronze Age collapse. This reticence is even more remarkable in view of the fact that Schaeffer was also, to my knowledge, the first archaeologist to claim that a distinct shift in climate was synchronous with civilisation collapse... «au Caucase et dans certains régions de l'Europe protohistorique, des changements de climat semblent, à cette période, avoir amené des transformations dans l'occupation et l'économie du pays». (translation: "in the Caucasus and in some parts of protohistoric Europe, climate changes seem, at this time, to have brought changes in the occupation and economy of the country." (Schaeffer (1948: 555/556), quoted by Peiser (1998), 'Comparative Analysis of Late Holocene Environmental and Social Upheaval: Evidence for a Global Disaster around 4000 BP', in Natural Catastrophes During Bronze Age Civilizations: Archaeological, Geological, Astronomical, and Cultural Perspectives, Peiser et al. (eds.), pp. 117-139.) The HITTITES


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684472/large/Lion_Gate_Hattusas_Bogazkoy_Tu.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684472/full/Lion_Gate_Hattusas_Bogazkoy_Tu.jpg)

What was going on between the end of the Early Bronze Age and the end of the Late Bronze Age?

Hittite and Luwian texts have been found in large numbers; they are the earliest complete texts in any Indo-European language. The Hittites played an important role in transmitting the customs, traditions and institutions first attested in the earliest societies of Mesopotamia. The Hittite religion was a composite of rituals and beliefs of the native Hattians, the Indo-Europeans, Hurrian and other early Mesopotamian elements. Hittite literature was also composite, consisting of stories that were Hattian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Hurrian.

According to the standard view, civilization began in Mesopotamia with the advent of agriculture, the wheel, cities, writing (to keep accounts), and so on. It is taken as a given that control over vast numbers of people, the ability to mobilize them into armies to kill vast numbers of other people, and to thus have the means of establishing vast empires, is 'civilization'. David W. Anthony writes:
[A]rchaeologists generally do not understand migration very well, and migration is an important vector of language change ... Migration disappeared entirely from the explanatory toolkit of Western archaeologists in the 1970s and 1980s. But migration is a hugely important human behavior...

Scholars noticed more than a hundred years ago that [I]the oldest well-documented Indo-European languages - imperial Hittite, Mycenaean Greek, and the most ancient form of Sanskrit, or Old Indic - were spoken by militaristic societies that seemed to erupt into the ancient world driving chariots pulled by swift horses. ...

If Indo-European speakers were the first to have chariots, this could explain their early expansion; If they were the first to domesticate horses, then this could explain the central role horses played as symbols of strength and power in the rituals of the old Indic Aryans, Greeks, Hittites, and other Iindo-European speakers.

...Inscriptions place Hittite speakers in Anatolia as early as 1900 BCE. ... The Hittite capital city, Hattusas, was burned in a general calamity that brought down the Hittite kings, their army, and their cities about 1180 BCE. The Hittite language then quickly disappeared; apparently only the ruling elite ever spoke it. ... (Anthony (2010), The Horse, The Wheel and Language)
https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684473/large/Hittites.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684473/full/Hittites.jpg)

The Mycenaean civilization also appeared rather suddenly at about the same time as the rise of the Hittite empire. What is clear is that they didn't come from the same place because the languages were so different. Greek - as recorded in the Linear B tablets - was the language of the warrior kings who ruled at Mycenaea and - surprise, surprise - were destroyed during the same period as the Hittite empire. There are numerous indications that Mycenaean Greek was an intrusive language in a land where non-Greek languages had been spoken. The Greek speakers who showed up in Greece, which wasn't Greece until they got there, obviously came from somewhere else.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684474/large/Mycenae.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684474/full/Mycenae.jpg)
Mycenaean Lion Gate. Note the similar architecture to that of the Hittites above.


Ancient Mesopotamian Myths
I am skipping here a lengthy series of expositions of ancient myths included in my text and will only include the following:

There are other myths, apparently not native to the Hittites, that were preserved in the Hittite archives. These texts were literary because they were written down for their own sake and were not part of the ritual performance tradition (as was the myth of the disappearing god). The most important of these imported myths was the Hurrian cycle which starred Kumarbi, the 'father of the gods'.

This Theogony is about the struggle between successive generations of gods: Alalu is overcome by Anu; Anu is overcome by Alalu's son, Kumarbi, who bites off and swallows Anu's genitals, thereby becoming impregnated with the Storm God Teshub, the Tigris river and Tasmisu. The text is fragmentary, so not much more is known about the outcome, but we can guess because it is strikingly similar to the Greek poet Hesiod's Theogony.

The gods of three successive generations in the Kumarbi myth correspond exactly to Ouranos, Kronos and Zeus. And, in each case, this marks the beginning of a new era. The main difference between the Near Eastern and the Greek traditions is that the former begin one generation earlier in respect of the male gods: Alalu has no counterpart in Hesiod's Theogony, which begins with Ouranos. Hesiod's version says that all the gods belong to one family: Gaea, the mother and wife of Ouranos.

In the near eastern version, the warring gods come from two different families and appear in alternate generations. To me, this suggests that the Greek version is the older since it actually does include the 'first generation', only it is Gaea, the mother of Ouranos, who later becomes his wife as well. If we consider the theory of the giant comet breaking up into many pieces, or gods, then it makes perfect sense for them to have been conceived of as being all of one family.

Moreover, the element of Gaea - Earth - and Ouranos - Heaven - being engaged together in the production of the elements of the conflict would reflect the dynamic interactions between a comet and the Earth. This is exactly what is reflected in Hesiod's poem, which has nothing to do with ritual; It tells a story and establishes a genealogical frame for the comet-gods. Herodotus tells us about Hesiod:
[2:53] ... It was only yesterday or the day before, so to speak, that the Greeks came to know the provenance of each of the gods, and whether they have all existed for ever, and what they each look like. After all, I think that Hesiod and Homer lived no more than four hundred years before my time, and they were the ones who created the gods' family trees for the Greek world, gave them their names, assigned them their honours and areas of expertise, and told us what they looked like. Any poets who are supposed to have lived before Homer and Hesiod actually came after them, in my opinion. [4:32] ... Hesiod, however, has mentioned the Hyperboreans, and so has Homer in the Epigoni. (Waterfield (1998), The Histories, translation) This last remark is quite interesting because it suggests an ancient Homeric connection to Northern peoples and the possible origins of the Myceneans and Hittites.

Trevor Bryce, in Life and Society in the Hittite World (2002), notes that a common feature of these ancient myth cycles of the Hittites is that no matter how decisively the evil is defeated, even to the point of being totally fragmented and scattered all over the place, like in Terminator II, he manages to reassemble himself and come back. That is to say, the Storm God's triumph is only temporary. In one story, the enemy Kumarbi mates with a mountain peak to produce a diorite monster to be a champion.
Henceforth let Ullikummi be his name. Let him go up to heaven to kingship. Let him suppress the fine city of Kummiya (storm god's home town). Let him strike Teshub. Let him chop him up fine like chaff. Let him grind him under foot like an ant. Let him snap off Tasmisu like a brittle reed. Let him scatter all the gods down from the sky like flour. Let him smash them like empty pottery bowls. Let him grow higher each month, each day. (Hoffner (1990), op. cit., quoted by Bryce (2002).) The cometary imagery in the above extract is quite clear. Bryce writes:
When he has grown so large that the sea comes only to his middle, the sun god sees him and is greatly alarmed. He reports the news to Teshub, who resolves to do battle with the monster. But when he sees him he is filled with dismay: 'Who can any longer behold the struggle of such a one? Who go on fighting? Who can behold the terrors of such a one any longer?' Teshub is powerless against such an opponent. His sister Shaushka volunteers to approach Ullikummi and attempt to win him over by her songs and her charms. to no avail. 'For whose benefit are you singing?' a great sea-wave asks of her. 'For whose benefit are you filling your mouth with wind? Ullikummi is deaf; he cannot hear. he is blind in his eyes; he cannot see. he has no compassion. So go away, Shaushka, and find your brother before Ullikummi becomes really valiant, before the skull of his head becomes really terrifying. (Bryce (2002), op. cit., pp. 226-227.) Again, we observe the cometary nature of the god, a god whose head can become terrifying in the same way Cúchulainn was described in the midst of his "warp Spasm."


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684475/large/comet_in_space.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684475/full/comet_in_space.jpg)

The obvious question asked by scholars about these myths is: Why were they preserved at all? They certainly do not provide any sort of spiritual or moral teachings. And the answer is, of course, that they were recording things that actually happened and everyone knew it: a giant comet entered the solar system, broke up into numerous still-large pieces, as comets are wont to do, and, being on an earth-crossing orbit, periodically interacted with our planet with cataclysmic results.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684476/large/Comet_swarm_2048x1536.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684476/full/Comet_swarm_2048x1536.jpg)
Comet Encke in the process of fragmenting.


As noted, the Near Eastern gods, and the gods of Greece, as well, offered nothing to their supplicants in terms that were morally or spiritually uplifting; they were just human beings on a grand scale. The gods experienced love, anger, jealousy, fear, and could be liars and cheaters. They enjoyed sex, dancing, music and horse races; they were pacified by comedy, plays and athletic contests. However, unlike human beings, they were endowed with immortality and great powers. They could represent either natural forces or social institutions. Moreover, because of their natures, they could not possibly be ordered into a rigid hierarchy because you never knew when one or the other would break out of the mold and wreak havoc on the rest!

The gods' interests in justice, morality and right conduct were not for the sake of those virtues, but because it was in their own best interests that human society should order their conduct. A human being who lived his life in obedience to certain values was better able to serve the gods. Oaths and contracts were the basis of social order, and thus the gods were interested that they should be upheld. It was understood that the god's wrath would fall on everyone in contact with the 'sinner', too. In king Mursili II's prayer, we read:
It is indeed true that man is sinful. My father sinned and offended against the word of the Storm God, My Lord. Though I myself have in no way sinned, it is indeed true that the father's sin falls upon his son, and my father's sin has fallen upon me. ...

When someone arouses a god's anger, is it only on him that the god takes revenge? Does he not also take vengeance on his wife, his children, his descendants, his family, his male and female slaves, his cattle and sheep together with his crop? Will he not destroy him utterly? Be sure to show special reverence for the word of a God! (King of the Hittite Empire (New Kingdom), c. 1321 - 1295 BCE. From the Instructions to Temple Officials, KUB XIII 4 and CTH 264) Again we discern the sweepingly destructive cometary nature of the gods. The recorded Hittite prayers exhibit the character of a legal defense presented in a court of law. In the first lines of the Hittite Appu myth, we read of a deity "who always vindicates just men but chops down evil men like trees." Bryce states that the unnamed deity is undoubtedly the Sun God, the supreme lord of justice whose counterpart in Babylon was Shamash. He invariably appeared first in the lists of deities who witnessed treaties.

Of all the surviving Hittite royal prayers, more than half are addressed to the solar deities. There are two possible reasons for this: 1) blazing comets and earth-impacting fireballs perceived to be sun-like, or possibly sons of the sun; 2) the absence of sunlight due to cometary dust loading and consequent crop failure. Another point to be noted is that it appears that a supreme lord of justice, an all-seeing sun god, was a deity acknowledged everywhere in the ancient world as omnipresent in some sense. Despite this, the notion of an spiritually omnipresent god, or one that is absolutely supreme over all throughout time, simply does not appear in the religious tradition which, again, suggests that this was not a 'god' in any sense of the word that we understand today.

As the Hittites expanded their political influence, they also expanded their pantheon of gods. When they would capture a city, they would physically remove the statues of the local gods to their own temples, thereby declaring their adoption of the new deity and, hopefully, the new deity would adopt them as well. It could be said that the Hittites went far beyond the relatively systematic godly pantheons of their neighbors, and boasted that Hatti was 'the land of a thousand gods'.

The end result was that their divine assemblies were a majority of foreign gods. This was not without its advantages, of course. It was a dimension of the tolerance that the Hittite kings worked to cultivate among their subjected peoples; it was "conscious politically conditioned religious tolerance". (Akurgal (1962), The Art of the Hittites, p.76.) The absence of any official religion or dogma may have been one of the reasons that the Hittites survived as long as they did and achieved the power they did. It was during the final period of the empire that attempts were made, at the highest levels, to impose political order on the religious beliefs of the populace. Perhaps that was one of the things that contributed to the downfall of the empire?

The Storm God


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684477/large/taru.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684477/full/taru.jpg)
Image Source: plate .550, The Art of the Ancient Near East by Pierre Amiet)
[http://www.daimonas.com/pages/trident-briefly.html]
Note the plasma fork 'thunderbolt' in his hand.


As might be expected, the Storm God, depicted in art with an axe and a lightning bolt, was preeminent all over the ancient near east. It was his wrath that devastated the lands, destroyed empires, cities, crops and human beings. He was Taru, Tarhung, Teshub, Adad/Hadad, Ba'lu, and certainly, the much later Yahweh of the Jews had much in common with him; his chief powers and functions were those of the Greek Zeus. What is curious about this storm god is that he was never thought of as a universal god of all peoples; in each individual region, he was a god specific to the people of that region alone, their god, and they were his people that he would 'pass over' in his raging furies and certainly would inflict his anger on anybody they asked him to destroy if they could just get the right prayers, do the right rituals and behave in the right way to invoke his protection. Again, we see the reaction to arbitrary cosmic destruction.

In conclusion, the Hittite religion - and religions of the near east in general- were not very much concerned with theology or contemplation, they were purely and simply attempts to understand an environment that was plagued with repeated brutal and arbitrary destruction from the sky.

Here, I would like to say something about the problem of transmission of information. We are talking here about a main event 13,000 or more years ago, and then numerous subsequent events that either included actual physical bombardment of the planet, or events that consisted of dust loading and related climate stress with probable frequent meteor storms. Obviously, the transmission of information over a period of 13,000 years is problematical. It is only for the past 3-4 thousand years that we have had written accounts and, for the most part, what has survived has been badly mangled by modern interpretations. This means that for about two thirds of that time, as far as we know, oral systems played the major part in the transmission of legends of destruction.

Gilgamesh


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684478/large/gilgameshcylinderseal_400x322.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684478/full/gilgameshcylinderseal_400x322.jpg)
Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu fight the monster Humbaba, on an Assyrian cylinder seal from the 600s BC


I have discussed the Hittites in particular because of the problem of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The question that interests us here is: why is the Hittite version of the Epic of Gilgamesh so similar to The Odyssey? The similarities cannot be explained by suggesting the creation of similar stories at widely separated times and locations. In some cases, the similarities are almost word for word.

The name was originally Bilgamesh, but that was changed early on, so 'Gilgamesh' it is. Exactly as Baillie has described, the experts studying the epic and myths have come to the conclusion that Gilgamesh is likely to have been a real person, a king who ruled the Sumerian city of Uruk in the era from 2700 BCE to 2500 BCE. However, there are no known inscriptions that establish this. There is only one person he is associated with in a story that is actually attested by inscriptional evidence, a King Enmebaragessi. But that's as close as it gets. Gilgamesh was associated with the expansion of the Ziggurat at Uruk, but the inscription that claims this dates only to 1800 BCE.

It is assumed that the stories about Gilgamesh were circulating in his own time and were later written down. The earliest written stories about him date to the reign of King Shulgi around 2000 BCE, i.e. at least 500 years later. These stories were written in Sumerian and King Shulgi made the claim that the gods and ancient kings of Uruk (including Gilgamesh) were his ancestors and thus legitimized his kingship. One hymn produced at the time is a back-and-forth paean to each other, put in the mouths of Gilgamesh and Shulgi. In short, we can think that the stories produced at this time were little more than political propaganda based on some already existing myth about a very powerful being such as Cúchulainn, i.e. a comet. So, at that time, offerings were made to Gilgamesh as a divinized ancestor, But after the end of Shulgi's dynasty, official support for the cult of Gilgamesh faded.

It is likely that it was Shulgi who commissioned the writing of the earliest Gilgamesh stories (though the epic as we now know it did not exist at that time) and authentic traditions were thereby consciously composed with a view to furthering the agenda of this ambitious king. No tablets dating back to this period actually exist, only later copies, some of which are more elaborate than others, and some have contradictory details. Obviously, we can't be sure of having all the stories, but thus far, the separate epics consist of the following:

Gilgamesh and Agga - This short story describes a strange confrontation between Agga of Kish (son of the aforementioned Enmebaragessi) and King Gilgamesh of Uruk, After a meeting of elders and young men. Gilgamesh has a "terrifying aura" that basically smites the army of King Agga, though Gilgamesh spares Agga. The "terrifying aura" that smites an army natrally inclines one to think of a cometary event à la Cúchulainn, not to mention Moses. The echoes of this story that are retained in the later epic are the consultations with the elders and the young men, and Gilgamesh sparing Humbaba instead of Agga.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684479/large/6_humb.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684479/full/6_humb.jpg)
Humbaba


Gilgamesh and Huwawa (Humbaba) - This story is known in two versions, a long one and a short one, with variations from city to city where it is found. Gilgamesh sees a dead body floating in the river and this excites his fear of death. He proposes to his servant, Enkidu, to embark on a heroic quest to ensure his fame, thus achieving a kind of immortality. The task chosen is to go to the Cedar Forest and kill its monstrous guardian, Huwawa.

The Sun God provides some helpful demons, and a crew of fifty men is selected for the voyage. (This is already starting to sound like Perseus against Medusa meets the Argonauts.) This story, too, includes some strange auras, only this time they belong to Huwawa. The effect of the auras on Gilgamesh is that he is overcome, stunned, and experiences terrifying visions. (Shades of the Old Testament prophets!) In one version, he describes the visions and Enkidu encourages him to go on and complete the quest. In another, it is Enkidu who has the visions and then tries to dissuade Gilgamesh from continuing. Gilgamesh tricks Huwawa (variations exist on the types of trickery), and Huwawa gives up his auras and Gilgamesh shackles him.

Then Gilgamesh feels sorry for Huwawa and wants to release him, but Enkidu doesn't like that idea; he kills Huwawa and puts his head in a sack to give to the god Enlil (shades of Perseus and Medusa and David and Goliath). However, Enlil curses both of the adventurers for killing the divinely appointed guardian of the Cedar Forest and distributes the seven auras to Nature. Most of this makes it into the later complete epic of Gilgamesh. Nevertheless, for our purposes here, Humbaba/Huwawa is an interesting comparison to Cúchulainn. His face was "as that of a lion. When he looks at someone, it is the look of death." His roar was as that of a flood, his "mouth is death and his breath is fire!" His face is described as like coiled entrails, which harkens back to the 'warp-spasm' of Cúchulainn. (See image above.)

Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven - this story is not well preserved in any version, missing the beginning, most of the middle, and the very end. The text begins with the Goddess Inanna refusing to allow Gilgamesh to administer justice in her sanctuary. She demands the Bull of Heaven from her father, Anu. At first he refuses, but she threatens to cry out to all the other gods which scares Anu into complying. He gives her the Bull and Inana sends it to Uruk. Probably Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the bull. This story is included in the later epic by the middle Babylonian period, though it was probably not part of the earliest version of the whole epic. Obviously, the Bull of Heaven is a comet story. The Bull of Heaven is also familiar from Egyptian mythology. The irish saga where Cúchulainn goes into his 'warp-spasm' is called the 'Táin Bó Cúailnge' (the Cattle Raid of Cooley) and involves great battles (including Cúchulainn's 'warp-spasm') over a magnificent brown bull.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684480/large/The_king_hero_Gilgamesh.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684480/full/The_king_hero_Gilgamesh.jpg)
Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven


Gilgamesh in the Netherworld - Early texts are fragmentary and what comes across is that it is a death lament. One passage states: "The great mountain Enlil, the father of the gods, ... decreed kingship as Gilgamesh's destiny, but did not decree for him eternal life." Then, later: "He lay on the bed of destined fate, unable to get up." It's hard to make much of this because it is so fragmentary. But, we do note Enlil described as a "great mountain". Perhaps the cometary Gilgamesh fragmented as his "destined fate" and disappeared.

In addition to this small selection of specific Gilgamesh stories, the later formulated Gilgamesh Epic incorporated other traditional Sumerian literary productions that were not originally connected to Gilgamesh. The early life of Enkidu, as it is told in the Gilgamesh epic, seems to be based on a portrayal of primitive man as described in a text entitled 'Lahar and Asnan', where we read: "Mankind of that time knew not the eating of bread, knew not the wearing of garments. The people went around with skins on their bodies, drank water from ditches." The creation of Enkidu by the Mother Goddess, as described in the first tablet of the Gilgamesh epic, may be another tale that has not yet been discovered elsewhere.


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The Flood of Utanapishtim - In the standard version of the Epic, Gilgamesh asks Utanapishtim how he attained eternal life like the gods even though he was obviously a mere mortal. Utanapishtim then tells him "a hidden thing, a secret of the god", which is how he survived the Great Flood. This account of Utanapishtim is taken from the Akkadian 'Myth of Atrahasis' which was composed about 1600 BCE.

The story talks about the creation of mankind, how mankind became noisy, corrupt, too numerous, etc., so the gods plot to exterminate all humanity. There is a great Flood which only Atrahasis and his family survive. What Utanapishtim tells Gilgamesh is just a short version of the Atrahasis Myth because the longer version, unrelated to Gilgamesh, includes a lengthy justification for the destruction of mankind while Utanapishtim presents the events as just a whim of the gods.

What is curious is that the Flood Myth in no way advances the action of the Gilgamesh story and is, in fact, just a lengthy digression. The original old Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic only had an allusion to the Flood myth. However, we are fortunate that the myth of Atrahasis was included in the Epic of Gilgamesh since it is not well-preserved in texts on its own.

It is clear that the Gilgamesh Epic was created by assembling parts from basic stories about Gilgamesh, similar to the many stories about Cúchulainn, and other parts from unrelated myths and stories. This took place, it seems, over a period of a thousand years! The standard version was based on an earlier Epic of Gilgamesh that was first composed in the Old Babylonian period - 1800-1600 BCE - which came in several variants. There are other fragments from later periods that were found in Anatolia, Syria and Canaan. In Anatolia, the epic was also adapted or translated into Hurrian and Hittite during the Middle Babylonian period (c. 1595 - c. 1155 BCE. Began after the Hittites sacked the city of Babylon.)

In conclusion, it seems that the original epic was a creative assembling of already existing mythic literature about earlier comet interactions, none of which was focused on the theme that apparently occupied the thoughts of the author/editor of the final epic.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is full of adventures and encounters with creatures, interesting people, and even gods and goddesses, with the unifying topic being human relationships and emotions. There is loneliness contrasted with friendship, love contrasted with loss, revenge and regret, and, most of all, the fear of oblivion in death.

It appears that the philosophical slant of the complete epic confined it to mainly literary circles for much, if not all, of its existence. It was obviously known in Mesopotamian scribal circles for some 1,500 years, and in Anatolia and Syria-Palestine during the 2nd millennium BCE. However, the epic does not seem to have been something that was widely known to the masses of people; it was never a byword nor did it generate any colloquial expressions.

No king ever claimed to be as strong or as wise as Gilgamesh. No writings invoke Gilgamesh and Enkidu as paragons of friendship as they do David and Jonathan from the Bible. In all the productions of writings from the culture of Mesopotamia, the few allusions to Gilgamesh occur only in scholarly writings. There are almost no artistic depictions of any element of the story except for the killing of Humbaba. This act appears on a few dozen cylinder seals and a few decorative objects and reliefs from the 15th to 5th centuries BCE. The killing of the Bull of Heaven also appears on a few cylinder seals from the mid-second millennium to the 7th century BCE.

The latest fragment of the epic dates to the first century BCE. It seems that, with the decline and ultimate disappearance of cuneiform writing, the Epic of Gilgamesh was doomed to oblivion, even in literary circles. With the exception of the translations into Hittite, virtually none of the Mesopotamian literature was translated into other languages. There is a complete lack of references to Gilgamesh in the Syro-Phoenician cultures of the first millennium, which is puzzling since cuneiform literature was otherwise widely known in this area during the second millennium BCE (because Akkadian was the language of international diplomacy). The Hebrew Bible has allusions to other persons or themes derived from Mesopotamian sources, including the flood story, but nary a mention of Gilgamesh or anybody like him.

However, in one of the oldest stories that talks about the Greek 'gods' - The Odyssey - we find an epic that is, in many ways, extraordinarily similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh yet cast in an entirely different culture with Odysseus taking the role of Gilgamesh.

The Hellenistic Greeks were interested in the ancient history of Mesopotamia, but not in the native Mesopotamian form. Berossus wrote in Greek of "the histories of heaven and earth and sea and the first birth and the kings and their deeds" between 280-261 BCE. He extracted his information from cuneiform documents and Gilgamesh probably only received a citation for being on a king list: name and length of reign.

In recent years, some scholars have been applying themselves to this problem, coming to the idea that the Near East had a pervasive influence on early Greek literature, particularly Homer and Hesiod. The story of the vanishing god is a case in point. This is one of a group of old Anatolian myths, not a Sumerian or Hurrian story (as far as is known to date). The basic story is similar to that of Persephone. The story is about the disappearance of fertility deities and the resulting withering of the land and loss of fertility.

End of the Late Bronze Age
Let's skip now to around 1200 BCE, the end of the Bronze age. Claude Schaeffer, found that Bronze age sites over a huge area of the near and middle east showed evidence of four destructive episodes, the three most prominent being at 2300 BCE, 1650 BCE and 1200 BCE.

It was the 1200 BCE event that finished off the Bronze Age. the Shang Dynasty in China, and the Mycenaean civilization in Greece disappeared at the same time. (1190 BCE, but who is counting?)

The problem is that even the biggest earthquakes have only local effects, which is one of the reasons Schaeffer's analysis was put aside and is ignored, for the most part, today. The alternative explanation, that during the Bronze Age the Earth was hit not once but several times by debris from space, most likely from a comet broken into pieces, fits the evidence exactly. As we have noted, comets, meteors or asteroids do not have to hit the earth to destroy large areas; remember Tunguska.

The archaeology reveals widespread collapse of the eastern Mediterranean world at the beginning of this period, with cities being abandoned and/or destroyed. Many explanations attribute the fall of the Mycenaean civilization and the Bronze Age collapse to climatic or environmental catastrophe, combined with an invasion by Dorians or by the Sea Peoples or the widespread availability of new iron weapons.

In the period immediately prior to the full-bore onset of the disasters, there is evidence of large-scale revolts and attempts to overthrow existing kingdoms. This suggests economic and political instability. This appears to have been exacerbated due to the influx of surrounding peoples who were experiencing famine and hardship due to climate changes that appear to be associated with increased comet flux.
SOTT Comment: Another example of the Human-Cosmic Connection (https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Changes-Human-Cosmic-Connection/dp/1897244975)?
In respect of the Greek dark age, with the collapse of the palatial centers of Mycenaea, no more monumental stone buildings were built and the practice of wall painting ceased; writing in the Linear B script ceased; pottery became simple in style and minimal in quantity; vital trade links were lost, and towns and villages were abandoned.

The population of Greece was massively reduced, and the world of organized state armies, kings, officials and redistributive systems disappeared. Some areas recovered more quickly than others; there was still farming, weaving, metalworking and pottery-making during these centuries, but it was on a staggeringly reduced level in both volume and technique. It appears that necessity was the mother of invention and hard times led to the survival of pockets of smarter, more creative and more socially engaged individuals. At the same time, such periods also encourage the survival of Machiavellian cheater types - authoritarian leaders looking for followers. It could be said that disaster purifies both the best and the worst of humanity.

The earliest evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük and dated to 2200-2000 BCE. Iron implements were made in Central Anatolia in very limited quantities by 1800 BCE and were in general use by elites, though not by commoners, during the New Hittite Empire (∼1400-1200 BCE). It was during the Greek Dark Age that the smelting of iron was re-learned, exploited and improved, ultimately to replace weapons and armor previously cast and hammered from weaker bronze. It seems that the Greeks must have acquired this knowledge from the Hittites.

Ancient Greece is supposed to be the seminal culture of modern Western civilization. this is because Classical Greek culture was adopted, to some extent, by the Roman Empire, which then spread its hegemony over the ancient world, including the philosophical ideology of Greece, which morphed into Christianity with a bit of Orientalizing influence from Judaism. But we must remember that all of these were heavily influenced by Mesopotamia filtered through the Hittites, who were decidedly not natives to Mesopotamia.

Classical Greece is generally said to have begun about the 8th century BCE when an 'Oriental influence' was imported, including writing, which enabled the beginning of Greek literature, i.e. Homer and Hesiod and, later, Herodotus and others. These beginnings of Greek Civilization began after a 'dark age' that we may justifiably think was a period following global stress and disruption due to cometary bombardment. Supposedly, this dark age followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization (which had its own script), and which came with the general, overall collapse - more or less in its entirety - of the Bronze age civilization.

Homer was supposed to be Greek and the Homeric stories were supposed to be the bedrock of Greek culture and civilization. yet the Greeks and Trojans depicted by Homer were nothing at all like the Greeks that later accepted these stories as part of their heritage. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer calls the various groups Achaeans, Argives, and Danaans; they did not refer to themselves as Greeks.

Homeric Greece (though it obviously wasn't Greece as we know Greece) was more like a tribal society linked by language; it was far more like Central Asian nomadic society, or even Norse society, than what we know of today as the Orientalized Greek society with its city-states. In Homer's world, there was a ruling class called Basileis, and their responsibilities included providing the individual who would be king, war leader, judge, (and with religious duties included), with advice and counsel.

The king's power was based on the principle of 'first among equals' and was restricted by the Aristoi, or nobility, who comprised an advisory council. There was also the agora, an assembly of the warrior class who had the power of voting on issues. Women enjoyed high status, despite the fact that the society was patriarchal and acknowledged a common ancestor and a common king. The main pursuits of life seem to have been fighting, hunting, herding, rudimentary agriculture and the pursuit and enjoyment of 'manly activities'. Hospitality was the chief virtue, and Bards were highly valued. In short, there was a significant lack of any formal government or any kind of economic system. Most transactions of goods appear to have been based on reciprocity. It was definitely not the 'city-states' of Greece nor did it bear any resemblance to the city states of Mesopotamia.

The events depicted in the Iliad and Odyssey are supposed to date to around 1190 BCE, which would put it right in the middle of a serious cosmic onslaught and climate downturn; the composition by Homer dates to around 800 BCE (though some date him to the time of the Trojan War). The war supposedly originated in a quarrel between goddesses: Athena, Hera and Aphrodite. Right away, we detect the comet element and wonder if the Trojan War was a real war between human beings at all.

Of course, the mythologists, historians and archaeologists are sure that something like the Trojan War happened and they spend a lot of time trying to figure it out and make square pegs fit round holes. In any event, the dating of the Iliad and Odyssey to 1190 BCE is due to this being the estimated time of said 'war', which we now strongly suspect to have been a battle in the heavens. I will note here that Baillie's tree rings show the time of greatest stress to be in 1159 BCE just 30 years after 1190 BCE.
The tree-ring record points to global environmental traumas between 2354 and 2345 BCE, 1628 and 1623 BCE, 1159 and 1141 BCE, 208 and 204 BCE and CE 536 and 545. Baillie argues that the tree rings are recording first the Biblical Flood, then the disasters that befell Egypt at the Exodus, famines at the end of King David's reign, a famine in China that ended the Ch'in (sic) dynasty, and finally, the death of King Arthur and Merlin and the onset of the Dark Ages across the whole of what is now Britain.
His conclusion comes as a shock. not only did the five episodes coincide with the onset of 'dark ages' for society, but they were triggered by cometary impacts. If Baillie is right, history has overlooked probably the single most important explanation for the intermittent progress of civilisation. Worse, our modern confidence in benign skies is foolhardy, and our failure to appreciate the constant danger of comet 'swarms' is the result of a myopic trust in a mere 200 years of 'scientific' records. Our excuse is that Christianity probably suppressed the dire warnings of earlier sages in an effort to downplay their influence, as Baillie points out. The Biblical account of the Exodus and contemporary annals from China speak of cometary activity preceding calamity. Previous writers have wondered if the hail or red-hot stones that befell the Egyptians were due to the eruption of Santorini, the Aegean volcano that destroyed Minoan civilisation. The pillar of smoke that guided the Israelites may have been the plume. But a single volcano is an unlikely cause of a global downturn. So Baillie goes a step further, arguing that a series of cometary impacts around the size of the 20-megaton explosion at Tunguska in Siberia might be enough to trigger earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions and ocean floor outgassing. This would explain why comets are seen as portents, along with the occurrence of flooding and poisonous fogs - all reported at the time of Exodus and during others of Baillie's five catastrophes. (Rudder (1999), 'Fire, Flood and comet', New Scientist Book Review, p. 42.) Homer's world does not describe the world of the Greek City States. It also does not describe the world of the Hittite Empire nor the other Mesopotamian empires that shared the story of Gilgamesh the ostensible model for Homer according to Mary R. Bachvarova as argued in her book From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic, (2016. Cambridge University Press).

The earliest versions are Sumerian, dating to at least 2150 to 2000 BCE and were a collection of stories rather than one long epic. It was only around the 17th or 18th centuries BCE when it was fashioned into a single tale of many adventures; this was the time of the arising of the Hittite empire which lasted about 500 years as a great power. After about 1180 BCE, the empire disintegrated, though several independent 'Neo-Hittite' city-states survived until the 8th century BCE. Could it be from there that Homer got his inspiration? The difference in time between the earliest complete epic version of the combined, originally separate, stories of Gilgamesh and the Homeric version that became the Odyssey, is around a thousand years.

Nevertheless, noting the extraordinary comparisons between the compositions, as Trevor Bryce does in Life and Society in the Hittite World, (2002) highlights exceptional faithfulness to, at the very least, particular mythic topos. The experts think that this is remarkable considering the fact that the empires of Mesopotamia had been in the dust for some time before Homer wrote the story down and it wasn't until Berossus, writing in the 3rd century BCE, that texts from Babylon were translated, possibly commissioned by Antiochus I, so they are certain that Homer couldn't have copied anything from the later composite Gilgamesh epic. It is certainly a puzzle that deserves research.

The process by which the Gilgamesh Epic was assembled is mostly understood as described above. Even the various parts are recognized. But it was the Hittites who preserved it for us in translation. Whatever happened, Homer took these stories, and even sometimes exact sequences of events and words, and used them as the skeleton for his Odyssey.

The closest similarity of what he did that I can think of is the way the Old Testament was written using the works of Berossus, Manetho and Plato, as described by Biblical scholar, Russell Gmirkin (http://russellgmirkin.com/). (Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch (Copenhagen International Series 15), New York, 2006 and Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (Routledge) New York, 2016.) Gmirkin proposes that the biblical collection was ultimately composed in two phases: the first, the work of the Seventy under royal sponsorship in Alexandria; the second in later stages in Palestine in order to constitute not only a national literature, but also to be an educational program to train obedient citizens.)
"The Hebrew Bible as a whole can best be understood as a literature intended for the education of the soul, utilizing all the tools in the Platonic psychogogic arsenal: poetry, myth and song, theology and prayers, pageant and spectacle, theater, drink and dance and persuasive rhetoric that appealed to the patriotic, praised the noble and exalted and condemned the wicked and disobedient, who were threatened with punishments in this life and terrors in the next" (p. 267). To give an example of my own: imagine the story of Perseus and the Gorgon being transformed into the story of David and Goliath. More than that, was there a relationship between the terrible face of Moses, in comparison to the terrible visage of Huwawa, the guardian of the Cedar Forest. Huwawa was described as a giant protected by seven layers of terrifying radiance. He was killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu in a story that is quite similar to the slaying of Goliath by David and Medusa by Perseus. Which way does the influence flow?

In any event, what ultimately emerged from this dark age was the early Greek civilization: city states similar to the city-states of the ancient Sumerians a few thousand years earlier.

At the time the Greeks emerged as a power in the ancient world, the natural world was perceived as a purpose-driven, overwhelming and overpowering system of larger-than-life forces which could, in the blink of an eye, act negatively toward human beings. This is the view of the world that comes through loud and clear in the works of Homer. The people of the time did not question this view of reality, and thus issues of morality were not debatable: you behaved according to the precepts outlined in the Odyssey and exemplified by Odysseus, or you suffered the fate of the suitors.
Then with an angry glance from beneath his brows Odysseus of many wiles answered him: "Eurymachus, not even if you should give me in requital all that your fathers left you, even all that you now have, and should add other wealth thereto from whence ye might, not even so would I henceforth stay my hands from slaying until the wooers had paid the full price of all their transgression. Now it lies before you to fight in open fight, or to flee, if any man may avoid death and the fates; but many a one, methinks, shall not escape from utter destruction." (Homer, Odyssey 22.60)
https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684482/large/The_Suitors_by_Gustave_Moreau_.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/684482/full/The_Suitors_by_Gustave_Moreau_.jpg)
Gustave Moreau: The Suitors (unfinished) 1852-1896


These ideas and the related myths had apparently taken shape during the Dark Age.

Notice above, in the quote from Rudder, he says: "[I]Christianity probably suppressed the dire warnings of earlier sages in an effort to downplay their influence".

That seems to be exactly what the Greek Philosophers were about as we will see next.

Continue to Part 3 (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy_24.html)

P.S.1. 23-07-23 13:22 From Quantamagazine: How Quantum Physicists Explained Earth's Oscillating Weather Patterns (https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-quantum-physics-describes-earths-weather-patterns-20230718/)
"Last December, David Tong (https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/), a quantum theorist at the University of Cambridge, looked at the same fluid equations that Thomson had used. But this time, he considered them from a topological perspective. Tong ended up connecting the fluids on Earth to the quantum Hall effect again, but through a different approach, using the language of quantum field theory. When he tweaked the variables in the fluid flow equations, he found that those equations were equivalent to Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory, which describes how electrons move in a magnetic field. In this new view of Earth's flow, a wave's height corresponds to a magnetic field and its speed corresponds to an electric field. From his work, Tong was able to explain the existence of the coastal Kelvin waves that Thomson originally discovered."

[Gwin Ru]

...

... The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy, Part Three (https://www.sott.net/article/483145-The-Cosmic-Context-of-Greek-Philosophy-Part-Three)

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net (https://www.sott.net/article/483145-The-Cosmic-Context-of-Greek-Philosophy-Part-Three#)
Sat, 05 Aug 2023 00:18 UTC


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Terracotta sculpture found on the site of Lefkandi (Euboea), dated to c. 950 BCE (Archaeological Museum of Eretria). Reminds one of the many tales of monsters after cosmic catastrophes.


Following the previous post (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy_21.html), I am going to include here a little table that lists the dates of the various cosmic catastrophes on Earth based on the four main sources discussed. There are other scientists who research and write on this topic that I discuss elsewhere, but I'm trying very hard (it's difficult) to keep this review as condensed as possible.

Below the table is a short list of comet sightings mostly from the Chinese records. These sightings could, possibly, be associated with a destructive event somewhere on the planet. This list is derived from Yeomans, Donald K. (1991), Comets: A Chronological History of Observation, Science, Myth, and Folklore, Wiley Science Edition.

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633 BC, China: A broom star comet appeared in Auriga with its tail pointing toward Shhu State. (Ho, 4)
613 BC, Autumn, China: A broom star comet entered the constellation of the Great Bear. (Ho, 5)
532 BC, Spring, China: A new star was seen in Aquarius. (Ho, 6)
525 BC, Winter, China: A bushy star comet appeared in the winter near Antares. (Ho, 7)
516 BC, China: A broom star comet appeared. (Ho, 8)
532 BC, Spring, China: A new star was seen in Aquarius. (Ho, 6)
525 BC, Winter, China: A bushy star comet appeared in the winter near Antares. (Ho, 7)
516 BC, China: A broom star comet appeared. (Ho, 8)
500 BC, China: A broom star comet was seen. (Ho, 9)
482 BC, Winter, China: A bushy star comet appeared in the east. (Ho, 10)
481 BC, Winter, China: A bushy star comet was seen. (Ho, 11)
480 BC, Greece: At the time of the Greek battle of Salamis, Pliny noted that a comet, shaped like a horn (ceratias type), was seen. (Barrett, 1)
470 BC, China: A broom star comet was seen. (Ho, 12)
467 BC, China, Greece: A broom star comet was seen. This event is often but incorrectly, attributed to comet Halley. This is the comet that Plutarch noted appearing prior to the falling of the meteorite at Aegospotami, Greece. (Ho, 13), (Barrett, 4)
433 BC, China: a broom star comet was observed. (Ho, 14)
426 BC, Winter, Greece: a comet appeared in the north around the time of the winter solstice. (Barrett, 4)
373-372 BC, Winter, Greece: A comet was seen in the west at the time of the great earthquake and tidal wave at Achaea, Greece. From the Greek descriptions of the comet's motion, Pingre infers that its perihelion was located in Virgo or Libra and that its perihelion distance was quite small. Pingre considers this comet to be the one the Greek Ephorus reported to have split into two pieces. The accounts given by Aristotle and Seneca suggest the comet was seen in the winter of 373-372 BC while the account of Diodorus Siculus, an historian of the second half of the first century BC, suggests the comet was seen in the following year. (Barrett, 5)

The General Environment of Greek Philosophy
We ended the previous post with a discussion of the works of Homer and their curious affinity to the Epic of Gilgamesh. We noted that, even though there is this connection, the world of Homer does not describe the reality of the Hittite Empire nor the other Mesopotamian empires; neither does it describe the realities of the Greek City states which emerged from the Greek Dark Age. Rather, it describes a world much like that of the Eurasian Steppes.

The Greek Dark Ages are described as the period of Greek history from the end of the Mycenaean palatial civilization, around 1100 BCE, to the beginning of the Archaic age, around 750 BCE. It was long thought that all contact was lost between mainland Hellenes and foreign powers, and classical scholars saw the development of Greek civilization as an independent, isolated phenomenon. But, as we have noted throughout the previous text, the similarities between Greek myths and Mesopotamian myths are manifold. Important as well was the influence of Babylonian science on the development of Greek thought, especially mathematics. The "Pythagorean Theorem" was known by the Babylonians a thousand years before Pythagoras, it seems.


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Babylonians used Pythagorean theorem 1,000 years before it was 'invented' in ancient Greece


After the widespread upheavals and devastation at the end of the Bronze Age, some modest urban centers appear to have survived in pockets, notably, Cilicia and Syria. The strong traditions of the Indo-European Hittite and Southern Babylonian Empires continued to dominate them both. The Hittite style was most notable for its monumental sculpture and the Hittite hieroglyphic script which continued to be used at Karatepe until almost the end of the 8th century BC; it was used for a language of the Hittite family called Luwian.


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The cities of what we now know as southern Syria such as Sidon, Tyre and Byblos, and a group of western Semites called Phoinikes by the Greeks, emerged more strongly during this time and expanded their sea-trade which included Cyprus and Crete. The driving force of this activity appears to have been the search for metals but the side effect was the spreading of the Phoenician alphabet. It was after the collapse and disappearance of the other writing forms that the Greeks adopted the Phoenician script and adapted it to Greek phonetics. The earliest evidence for this dates to the first half of the 8th century BC. Notable also is the fact that this new Greek writing system followed the older model of the ancient linear A and B scripts of the early Greeks (dating back to the 11th century BCE) which wrote from left to right, or even alternated direction from line to line, called bustrophedon (as the ox plows). This is also common in late Hittite hieroglyphics and in some Phoenician documents, while Semitic writing in Aramaic, Arabic and Hebrew, is persistently from right to left.

The fist examples of this new Greek script appear in Euboea, Naxos, Pithekoussai, and Athens. Certain place names reflect this activity, such as Soloi, which means "metal ingots", and Chalkis which means "bronze-home" and Tarshish which means "foundry". A verse in the Odyssey has a fellow named Mentes traveling from the Taphos island in the Ionian Sea, to trade a cargo of iron for bronze. (Odyssey 1.184.) One naturally wonders if the development of the Iron Age was triggered by the easy availability of iron meteorites that may have been falling liberally prior to this time?

So, things were stirring and it is clear that, for some, they were stirring in the direction of more and better munitions.

It appears that Assyria was one of the few ancient powers that stumbled along following the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization. Oh, certainly, it was affected and was in something of a decline for the next 250 years or so, but somehow it seems to have managed to survive and, in comparison to surrounding areas, it maintained its monarchy and defended its borders successfully during those terrible times. They adopted the policy of staying small and concentrating their energies on a well-trained and equipped military force to defend themselves against marauders.

Assyrian efforts were also put into revitalizing the trade routes in eastern Syria, southeastern Asia Minor, central Mesopotamia and northwestern Iran. Meanwhile, the Phrygians of northern Anatolia began to take over the area of their fellow Indo-European Hittites, while Urartians (Armenians), began to emerge in the Caucasus; Cimmerians, Colchians, and Scythians thrived around the Black Sea.

In Assyria, after the death of Ashur-Dan, Adad Nirari II ascended the throne with imperialistic ambitions. He conquered and deported the problematic Arameans, Neo-Hittites and Hurrians to far off places which could have included Greece and even Italy. His successor, Tukulti-Ninurta II (891-884 BCE) continued the expansion. Same for Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE). He pushed the boundaries of the growing empire to the Mediterranean.

Shalmaneser III (858-823 BCE) was next and he continued the empire building process. He had to fight the Battle of Qarqar against an alliance of 12 nations including Egypt, Israel, Hamath, Phoenicia, the Arabs, Arameans, and neo Hittites among others (obviously, people were not happy with the Assyrians). His armies mastered regions as distant as the Caucasus, Lake Van and the Taurus Mountains; the Hittites of Carchemish were compelled to pay tribute, and the kingdoms of Hamath and Aram Damascus were subdued. In 831 BCE the Georgian kingdom of Tabal submitted to him. In addition to his imperial expansions, he consolidated Assyrian control over the regions already conquered by his predecessors, and by the end of his 27 year reign Assyria was master of Mesopotamia, the Levant, western Iran, Israel, Jordan and much of Asia Minor.

After the death of Shalmaneser III, the story becomes a tedious one of greed and civil wars and rebellions of subdued people - the same story that is told of any empire at any time. Cities and nations that had been "pacified" erupted regularly in rebellion. Multiple heirs fought amongst themselves for power. Skipping a few rulers (including the short reigning Queen Semiramis), Ashur-Dan III ascended the throne in 772 BCE but turned out to be weak and ineffectual. The result was internal rebellions and, interestingly, an outbreak of Plague and a report of a frightening Solar Eclipse both of which are often associated in ancient reports with cosmic disasters. (See Mike Baillie's "New Light on the Black Death," 2006) Ashur-Nirari V succeeded him in 754 BCE, at which point rebellion and revolution had become an almost permanent feature of the empire. At this point, in 745 BCE, the Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser III, formerly a general and a governor, seized the Assyrian throne, killed the whole royal family, and initiated a new period of imperial expansion. T-P III reorganized the Assyrian army into a professional fighting force, and improved the civil administration of his empire, creating the basic template for all future ancient empires. It was at about this time that a report first mentions Ionians. One of the Assyrian officers wrote a dispatch saying: "The Ionians came. They attacked ... the cities ... in his ships ... in the middle of the sea." (Gaps due to fragmentary nature of the text.) [H. W. Saggs, Iraq 25 (1963) 76-78. Burkert (1992) p. 12.]


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Tiglath-Pileser III as depicted on a stele from the walls of his royal palace.


Assyria reached the height of its power in the reign of Sargon II (722-705) and the small, previously Hittite, states of Carchemish, Zincirli and Cilicia, became provinces of Assyria. In 708 BCE, the kings of Cyprus and Greek cities were paying homage and tribute to Sargon. The Assyrian empire was now stretched from the Caucasus Mountains to Arabia and from the Caspian Sea to Cyprus.


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Sargon II



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Giant relief from Dur-Sharrukin thought to depict Gilgamesh subduing a lion.


In addition to admiring Sargon of Akkad, Sargon II modeled his kingship after the legendary Gilgamesh. In several surviving texts, Sargon II's feats were implicitly compared to the legend known in his time from the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Sargon's inscriptions, the campaign against Urartu includes portions where it seems that Sargon is fighting not only the Urartians but also the landscape itself. A section where the mountains are described as if they are rising up as swords and spears to oppose Sargon's advance would probably have reminded Assyrian readers of a similar section in the Epic of Gilgamesh, implying that Sargon faced dangers equal to those of the ancient hero. A giant relief at Dur-Sharrukin depicts a muscular man holding a lion to his chest. Though the relief bears no inscription that proves its identity, scholars generally identify it as a depiction of Gilgamesh.

In 705 BC, Sargon, probably in his sixties, led the Assyrian army on a campaign against King Gurdî of Tabal in central Anatolia. The campaign was disastrous, resulting in the defeat of the Assyrian army and the death of Sargon, whose corpse the Anatolians carried off. Sargon's death made the defeat significantly worse because the Assyrians believed the gods had punished him for some major past misdeed. In Mesopotamian mythology, the afterlife fate suffered by those who died in battle and were not buried was terrible, being doomed to wander and suffer like beggars for eternity.


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Citadel of Sargon II at Khorsabad.



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The excavation of Sargon II's citadel.


Sennacherib's (705-681 BCE) reaction to his father's fate was to distance himself from Sargon. He immediately abandoned Sargon's great new capital city, Dur-Sharrukin, and moved the capital to Nineveh instead. One of Sennacherib's first actions as king was to rebuild a temple dedicated to the god Nergal, associated with death, disaster and war, at the city of Tarbisu. Sennacherib was superstitious and spent a great deal of time asking his diviners what kind of sin Sargon could have committed to suffer the fate that he had. Sennacherib spent much time and effort to rid the empire of Sargon's imagery. Sargon is never mentioned in Sennacherib's inscriptions. Sargon II's death in the battle and the disappearance of his body inspired rebellions across the Assyrian Empire. Sennacherib suppressed a rebellion in Tarsos in 696 BCE and, according to Berossos, the Greeks engaged in a sea battle with the Assyrians and were defeated at this time.

Sennacherib is most famous for the role he plays in the Hebrew Bible which describes his campaign in Judah and regions surrounding. The Bible says that an angel destroyed the Assyrian army but that was apparently not true since Hezekiah submitted to Sennacherib at the end of the campaign. Sennacherib's account of what happened at Jerusalem begins with "As for Hezekiah ... like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem his royal city. I barricaded him with outposts, and exit from the gate of his city I made taboo for him." Thus, Jerusalem was blockaded in some capacity, though the lack of massive military activities and appropriate equipment meant that it was probably not a full siege. According to the Biblical narrative, a senior Assyrian official with the title Rabshakeh stood in front of the city's walls and demanded its surrender, threatening that the Judeans would 'eat feces and drink urine' during the siege.The account of the blockade erected around Jerusalem is different from the sieges described in Sennacherib's annals and the massive reliefs in Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh, which depict the successful siege of Lachish rather than events at Jerusalem. It seems clear, however, from available sources, that a massive Assyrian army was encamped in the vicinity of Jerusalem. The blockade ended without significant fighting though what stopped Sennacherib's massive army from overwhelming the city is uncertain. The Bible says that an entity referred to as the destroying angel, sent by Yahweh, annihilated Sennacherib's army, killing 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in front of Jerusalem's gates. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus describes the operation as an Assyrian failure due to a "multitude of field-mice" descending upon the Assyrian camp, devouring crucial material such as quivers and bowstrings, leaving the Assyrians unarmed and causing them to flee. Some experts think that the story of the field mice is an allusion to some kind of plague striking the Assyrian camp. The battle is considered unlikely to have been an outright Assyrian defeat, especially because contemporary Babylonian chronicles, otherwise eager to mention Assyrian failures, are silent on the matter. Otherwise, the Assyrian campaign in the Levant was largely successful. Hezekiah paid an even heavier tribute and Sennacherib granted substantial portions of Judah's land to the neighboring kingdoms of Gaza, Ashdod, and Ekron.

Essarhaddon (681-669 BCE) got tired of the Egyptians' continual rabble rousing so he marched across the Sinai desert and conquered Egypt, and destroyed the Ku****e empire. He completely rebuilt Babylon and, more-or-less, via threat and intimidation, achieved a sort of peace.

His successor, Ashurbanipal (669 — 629 BCE), the "most splendid king of Ninevah", like his fathers before him, was also called "king of the universe" and was remembered by the Greeks as Sardanapallos. He built vast libraries and initiated a surge in the building of temples and palaces. In a unique autobiographical statement, Ashurbanipal specified his youthful scholarly pursuits as having included oil divination, mathematics, and reading and writing. According to legend, Ashurbanipal was the only Assyrian king who learned how to read and write. "I Assurbanipal within [the palace], took care of the wisdom of Nebo, the whole of the inscribed tablets, of all the clay tablets, the whole of their mysteries and difficulties, I solved." ["Cylinder A, Column I, Lines 31-33," in Smith, George. History of Assurbanipal, Translated from the Cuneiform Inscriptions. London: Harrison and Sons, 1871: p. 6] He was one of the few kings who could read the cuneiform script in both Akkadian and Sumerian, and claimed that he even read texts from before the great flood.


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Ashurbanipal


During his reign, Ashurbanipal collected cuneiform texts from all over Mesopotamia, and especially Babylonia, to place in the library of Nineveh. There have been over 30,000 clay tablets uncovered giving archaeologists a wealth of Mesopotamian literary, religious and administrative material. A large selection of "omen texts" have been excavated and deciphered. Marc Van de Mieroop points out the Enuma Anu Enlil was a popular text among them: "It contained omens dealing with the moon, its visibility, eclipses, and conjunction with planets and fixed stars, the sun, its corona, spots, and eclipses, the weather, namely lightning, thunder, and clouds, and the planets and their visibility, appearance, and stations." [Van De Mieroop, Marc (2007). A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p. 263.] Other genres found during excavations included standard lists used by scribes and scholars, word lists, bilingual vocabularies, lists of signs and synonyms, lists of medical diagnoses, astronomic/astrological texts. The scribal texts proved to be very helpful in deciphering cuneiform. [Roaf, M. (2004). Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. p. 191.] The library was, apparently, a manifestation of the value Ashurbanipal put on the preservation of Mesopotamian literature and culture.

The very fact that Ashurbanipal engaged in the enormous project of building his library and furnishing it with texts that needed reading, copying, filing, and more, suggests that a call went out for scholars and scribes who could do this work. Aramaic "scroll scribes" were brought in to serve under the venerable "tablet scribes. Both classes enjoyed privileges and high rank. The administration of the Assyrian empire was run on two languages utilizing two scripts. There must have been a growing and spreading awareness of the literature of the past as more and more scholars and librarians were trained throughout Ashurbanipal's long reign. There was also, obviously, a growing awareness of the value of reading and writing in general which must have spread everywhere.


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I would like to suggest that this was more likely to have been the time when Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were written; possibly the works of Hesiod as well. I know this is later than the "experts" say, but then, the experts don't agree. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Scholars remain divided as to whether the two works (The Iliad and The Odyssey) are the product of a single author. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Recall that it was during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III (745 BCE) that we first hear of the Ionians and Homer was claimed to be a "blind bard from Ionia" which is on the coast of Anatolia/Turkey and definitely not in Greece proper, and thus likely to have come under the influence of the Assyrians. Most experts today say that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not even written by the same author though they do agree that they are each unified poems, likely each composed mostly by a single author who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. The only problem with that is the sometimes word-for-word similarity to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Thus, I think my proposal has merit: the poems were written by someone with language skills who had, at some point in time, access to the library of Ashurbanipal who reigned 669 — 629 BCE. This is even more likely when we consider what happened next.

Peoples in areas out of reach of this imperial domination were growing and thriving and getting ever more hostile toward Assyria. When Ashurbanipal died in 629 BCE, after a reign of 38 to 42 years, civil wars erupted within Assyria amongst claimants to the throne. These civil wars drained Assyria of its wealth and manpower. Very likely many of the most highly trained craftsmen and scholars fled the country, taking refuge elsewhere. At the same time, the devastated lands and lower classes could no longer supply the agricultural and tax needs of the empire. There weren't enough people left to farm and provide troops. Then, the Medes, the Persians, Babylonians, Scythians and Cimmerians, all came against Assyria over a period of the next few years and finally it was all over by about 605 BCE..

The importance of this brief run-down of the emergence of the Assyrians as the first empire arising after the Dark Ages is the effect it had on Greece and Rome. This effect was that of a bridge between the ancient Hittite and Babylonian Empires and the Greek Empire that was soon to emerge. During the time the Assyrians were stomping around and imperializing, there were many, many individuals and groups from the various places that were conquered by the Assyrians that became refugees to other lands taking their skills and culture with them. Many of them went to Greece and other areas of the Aegean, and still others may have traveled to Italy and the coasts of the Adriatic. Some of these, after mixing and mingling with indigenous peoples, may have become known as the Etruscans whom Herodotus thought came from Asia Minor. Recent DNA work on cattle linkages suggest he may have been right.

Of course, Herodotus said that they emigrated to Italy from Lydia about 1200 BC because of the famine that was raging at the time. My thought is that they certainly could have arrived in Italy by stages throughout that dark period. Finally, when the Assyrian Empire descended into civil war and began to break apart, it is altogether likely that the scribes and craftsmen, and professionals of all kinds, fled, so there would have been an influx of these foreigners to various places at that time, including Greece, especially, due to its location.


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Phoenician style crater with Egyptian style decoration. Believed to have been found in the Etruscan Barberini tomb dated to around 630 BCE. Note that the date is right for this to have been made by a craftsman who fled the collapse of the Assyrian Empire.


The Sleeper Awakens
The earliest signs of the re-emergence of life in Greece after the death and destruction that brought on the Dark Age, is the presence of imported trade goods that show up in the archaeological record as early as the 10th and 9th centuries BC. The numbers of foreign goods from eastern sources found in Greek areas increase during the 8th and 7th centuries. Jewelry, Cilician seals, amulets, tombs containing grave goods in Assyrian and Egyptian styles, and more, have been found at Olympia, Samos and Delos. Metal work was also widely traded and Phoenician metal craters have been found in Athens, Olympia, Delpi, the Greek colonies of southern Italy, and in Etruria, Italy. All of the great sacred sites of Delos and Delphi and Olympia, have revealed substantial archaeological finds of oriental objects. These artifacts could represent more than just trade; they could represent transfer of persons and skilled workers who made such things who had fled the rampaging Assyrians. One thing that happens again and again when empires go metastatic and start depriving people of their rights and seeking to control every aspect of their lives: the best and brightest leave if they can, and those who can't suddenly forget what they knew because they do not wish to contribute to an ideologically hateful regime.

Religious iconography that was once purely Greek, changed under the Orientalizing influence. Babylonian-Hittite bronze statuettes of the warrior god waving his weapon in his right hand (remember the plasmoid thunderbolt) were found as early as the late Mycenaean period and after the emergence from the silence of the Dark Age, more of them were found and copied in the 8th century.

There seems to be no doubt that the typically "Greek" representations of Zeus and Poseidon with their representative thunderbolts and tridents, are based on the Hittite-Babylonian models. The representation of the thunderbolt, in particular, is dependent on this eastern model. The Syrian naked goddesses holding their breasts aloft as though aiming lethal weapons, however, were rather quickly dressed and made decent by the Greek transformations. The many masks that have been found dedicated in Greek sanctuaries, in particular at Ortheia's in Sparta, apparently derive from the Humbaba/Huwawa masks.

Above all, the construction of large altars for the sacrifice of victims, and the construction of large temples as the homes of the gods, was an oriental influence. Prior to the 8th century, there do not seem to have been any Greek temples to provide homes for their gods. [Walter Burkert (1992) The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Harvard University.]

In ancient times, craftsmen were notable for their mobility thanks to their needed skills. There are several accounts of one king or another sending a message to another ruler asking for teams of architects, builders and metal-artisans to be lent and/or sent. This is recorded in the Bible in the story of Solomon and the King of Tyre though it is likely that the historical event belonged to a different people since Solomon was not historical. What is interesting is that Tyre was a Phoenician city and they do appear to have been the acknowledged extraordinary craftsmen of their day.


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Tyre - Lebanon


Solon, according to Plutarch, encouraged the immigration of craftsmen to Athens and offered them benefits. In some cities, they were offered immunity from taxes. Certain loan words relating to building made their way from the East to Greece. The Greeks apparently learned the art of building with blocks, bricks, lime, and plaster from the eastern craftsmen who either relocated by choice, or fled during the many Assyrian wars. This highlights the fact that the ability to erect the monumental buildings common to the Mycenaeans had been lost at the onset of the Dark Age.

The word solos for metal ingots can be traced directly to the late Hittites of Cilicia and the word cheironax meaning "lord of hands," is apparently transliterated from Hittite which gives some idea of the esteem with which skilled builders and artificers were regarded. [Burkert (1992) op. cit. p. 39.] The characterization of builders as "sons of craftsmen" was also a concept that came from Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Such skills were passed down in families though non-family apprentices were also taken on who then became "sons of" the particular craft. Usually, the techniques and skills were kept secret and guild-type organizations formed around such individuals.

By the 8th century BCE, there was Akkadian cuneiform writing, Phoenician, Aramaic and Greek alphabetic scripts, all able to produce a continuum of writings from the Euphrates to Italy. We know it existed, so what happened to it? It seems that, as contacts with Egypt became more frequent, the change to cheaper and lighter papyrus was made. This may have been as early as 660 BC. Still, cuneiform tablets are found from Syria to Cyprus and Tarsos though Aramaic and Greek script on papyrus began to be more frequently used. And this is the reason given for the catastrophic fact that the whole of ancient Aramaic and Phoenician literature has been lost thanks to the fact that it was written on a cheaper material.

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Phoenician alphabet


The recovery of Greece was percolating along then, and communities had developed that were ruled by an elite group of aristocrats rather than by a single god-like king as had been the case in earlier periods. The Greek language combined with the Phoenician alphabet spread throughout the region and the Greeks began to colonize the Mediterranean.

Who the Greeks were, and where they came from, is an interesting question. [Drews, Robert (1988). The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East. Princeton University Press.] Certainly there must have been a few survivors in the areas of Greece itself but there was also a sudden upsurge of population and material goods that occurred c. 950 BCE, so somebody came from somewhere at that point in time!

The so-called "Dorian Invasion of Greece" [Hall, J.M. (2007). A History of the Archaic Greek World ca. 1200-479 BCE. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.] was an event also known as the "Return of the Heracleidae". In addition to taking over the Peloponnesus, the Dorians colonized parts of Crete. The Greek words referring to the influx of the Dorians are katienai and katerchesthai, literally "to descend", "come down" or "go down" or, less commonly, "be brought down." It means a descent from north to south, uplands to lowlands, or from earth to grave, or rushing down as a flood, or sweeping down as a wind, or those who have returned from exile by ship. This sweeping down upon the Peloponnesus invited the English translation "invasion" though there is no evidence for an invasion as such. It was more likely a migration. The claim to be descendants of Hercules sounds a lot like King Shulgi claiming descent from Gilgamesh - just a political maneuver. Obviously, the mass destruction that ended the Bronze Age has contributed to the idea of an "invasion". Taking into account the events that can occur during and following a cosmic catastrophe, many things can be explained.

It is often cited as support for the "invasion theory", that the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean kingdom of Pylos described the dispatch of rowers and watchers to the coast; this can be explained by the need to watch the SKY, not the advance of human invaders. [Drews, Robert (1993). The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton University Press.] The Egyptian pharaoh was also expecting the arrival of foes that were never identified. The invasion theory falls flat when it is considered that there was the destruction about 1200 BCE, the whole area was then nearly deserted, and then only about 950 BCE does there begin to be noted changes: increase in population, simple pottery decoration, introduction of iron weapons, and changed in burial practices. [Mallory, J.P. (1991). In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. New York: Thames and Hudson. Blegen, Carl (1967), "The Mycenaean Age: The Trojan War, the Dorian Invasion and Other Problems", Lectures in Memory of Louise Taft Semple: First Series, 1961-1965, Princeton: Princeton University Press] Michael Wood suggests relying on tradition, especially that of Thucydides:
[L]et us not forget the legends, at least as models for what might have happened. They tell us of constant rivalries with the royal clans of the Heroic Age - Atreus and Thyestes, Agamemnon and Aigisthes, and so on .... [Wood, Michael (1987). In Search of the Trojan War. New York: New American Library.]
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Linear B tablet


That might be a good idea since, if the story of the Trojan war was really an account of cosmic battles, and Atreus, Thyestes, Agamenon and Aigisthes were just new names for comets, that is, names of real individuals who lived during those times who were conflated with the cometary activity, it would fit exactly. And maybe, following the destruction, there was only a gradual influx of refugees from other places, augmented now and then with a larger influx from areas in turmoil as later happened when Assyria fell.

When considering the early Greek philosophers, we notice the most peculiar fact that civilization, as such, needed to be re-created, re-thought, re-organized, which bears witness to the incredible destruction that must have brought on the Dark Age. All the ideas and discussions that went on amongst these groups are about creating laws, constitutions, social norms, and so on, when those things had been completely settled and well-known hundreds of years previously. But the Greek philosophers talk as though human society was just arising out of the slime of the primordial ocean and the memories of what existed and prevailed before was dim and partial, or at least, only based on the rather primitive life described in the Odyssey and Iliad.

My pop-culture imbued offspring have read Diogenes Laërtius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers with a great deal of amusement, often breaking out into uproarious laughter. They have pointed out that it's like reading Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and they imagine Keanu Reaves and George Carlin speaking the lines. I'll be quoting or paraphrasing a bit here and there from Diogenes, but not so much on the philosophical ideas as the scientific ones, mostly assembling the facts and data following the ideas of Bailey, Baillie, Clube and Napier. I may also include a longer section in respect of the Stoic philosophers, who I suspect preserved some of the ancient knowledge of the reality of cometary bombardment and periodic destruction.


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Lives of Eminent Philosophers



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Orphism

[Gwin Ru]

...

... The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy, Part Four (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy_26.html)

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy_26.html)
Fri, 11 Aug 2023 21:28 UTC


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Roman sarcophagus depicting the Triumph of Dionysus and the Seasons © http://nnmportfolio.com


Before getting onto Homer and Hesiod and then to the philosophers, I'm going to include a couple of interesting individuals, similar to Orpheus, who can't be dated because of the legendary accretions surrounding them. There really isn't much to go on so the short entries on Wikipedia will suffice.

Melampus[1]
A legendary soothsayer and healer, originally of Pylos, who ruled at Argos. He introduced the worship of Dionysus, according to Herodotus, who asserted that his powers as a seer were derived from the Egyptians[2] and that he could understand the language of animals. A number of pseudepigraphal works of divination were circulated in Classical and Hellenistic times under the name Melampus. According to Herodotus and Pausanias (vi.17.6), on the authority of Hesiod, his father was Amythaon, whose name implies the "ineffable" or "unspeakably great";[3] thus Melampus and his heirs were Amythaides of the "House of Amythaon".

In Homer's Odyssey,[4] a digression concerning the lineage of Theoclymenus, "a prophet, sprung from Melampus' line of seers",[5] sketches the epic narrative concerning Melampus with such brevity that its details must have been familiar to Homer's audience. With brief hints, a sequence of episodes is alluded to, in which we discern strife in Pylos between Melampus and Neleus, who usurps Melampus's "great high house", forcing him into heroic exile. Melampus spends a year as bondsman in the house of Phylacus, "all for Neleus' daughter Pero". At his extremity, Melampus is visited by "the mad spell a Fury, murderous spirit, cast upon his mind. But the seer worked free of death" and succeeded at last in rustling Phylacus's cattle back to Pylos, where he avenged himself on Neleus and gave Pero in marriage to his brother Bias. But Melampus's own destiny lay in Argos, where he lived and ruled, married and sired a long line, also briefly sketched in Homer's excursus.

A work attributed in antiquity to Hesiod exists (Melampodia) in such fragmentary quotations and chance remarks that its reconstruction, according to Walter Burkert,[6] is "most uncertain." (Wikipedia) Again, there isn't much of a factual nature about Orpheus though there is a lot of speculation about Orphism. So, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_and_Eurydice) again:

Orpheus


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Orpheus and Eurydice


It was believed by Aristotle that Orpheus never existed. But to all other ancient writers, he was a real person, though living in remote antiquity. Most of them believed that he lived several generations before Homer. He is not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod.

Orpheus in Greek mythology was a Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned poet and, according to the legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and even descended into the underworld of Hades, to recover his lost wife Eurydice.

For the Greeks, Orpheus was a founder and prophet of the so-called "Orphic" mysteries. He was credited with the composition of the Orphic Hymns and the Orphic Argonautica. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles. (Wikipedia)
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Calliope is taught by Orpheus. Alexander August Hirsch, 1865


See Radcliffe G. Edmonds II, Redefining Ancient Orphism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, (2013) for a better idea of what Orphism was about, though you still won't get any real historical data about any life of Orpheus.

If he lived before Homer and Hesiod, you would think that he would have been mentioned by them considering how otherwise well-known he was. Of course, the authors of the works of Homer and Hesiod may simply not have been aware of what was being talked about and shared among the Greeks in Greece proper; that is, they may have been writing elsewhere. But, since Homer does mention Melampus who was said to have introduced the worship of Dionysus, perhaps Orpheus is simply Melampus by another name?

Here is another Orpheus type:

Musaeus of Athens
A legendary polymath, philosopher, historian, prophet, seer, priest, poet, and musician, said to have been the founder of priestly poetry in Attica. The mystic and oracular verses and customs of Attica, especially of Eleusis, are connected with his name. A Titanomachia and Theogonia are also attributed to him by Gottfried Kinkel. He composed dedicatory and purificatory hymns and prose treatises, and oracular responses.

In 450 BCE, the playwright Euripides in his play Rhesus describes him thus: "Musaeus, too, thy holy citizen, of all men most advanced in lore." In 380 BCE, Plato says in his Ion that poets are inspired by Orpheus and Musaeus but the greater are inspired by Homer. In the Protagoras, Plato says that Musaeus was a hierophant and a prophet. In the Apology, Socrates says: "What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again." According to Diodorus Siculus, Musaeus was the son of Orpheus, according to Tatian he was the disciple of Orpheus, but according to Diogenes Laërtius he was the son of Eumolpus. (Eumolpus was a legendary king of Thrace, allegedly the son of Poseidon and Chione. Alternately, he was the son of Apollo and the nymph Astycome. He was one of the first priests of Demeter and one of the founders of the Eleusinian Mysteries. According to Philochorus, Eumolpus was the father of Musaeus by the lunar goddess Selene.

Alexander Polyhistor, Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius say Musaeus was the teacher of Orpheus. Aristotle quotes him in Book VIII of his Politics: "Song is to mortals of all things the sweetest." According to Diogenes Laërtius he died and was buried at Phalerum, with the epitaph: "Musaeus, to his sire Eumolpus dear, in Phalerean soil lies buried here." According to Pausanias, he was buried on the Mouseion Hill, south-west of the Acropolis, where there was a statue dedicated to a Syrian. For this and other reasons, Artapanus of Alexandria, Alexander Polyhistor, Numenius of Apamea, and Eusebius identify Musaeus with Moses the Jewish lawbringer. Musaeus is singled out in Book 6 of The Aeneid, as someone particularly admired by the souls of Elysium. (Wikipedia) So, Musaeus was "the son of Orpheus", or the "disciple of Orpheus" or the "teacher of Orpheus". His alleged father, Eumolpus, seems a lot like Melampus - even the names would be easily mixed, I think.

In any event, I have listed Melampus, Orpheus, and Musaeus, because they were definitely part of the intellectual environment in which Greek philosophy arose. The three of them appear to be remarkably similar in type making one wonder if they were all the same person known by different names in different regions?

Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show
If you think that itinerant revival preachers, tent evangelists, or faith-healing meetings are a Christian phenomenon, think again: such activities have their roots in the ancient Orientalizing influences on Greece according to Walter Burkert. They were, it seems, a very special kind of traveling skilled artisans whose importance and influence suggests to us the seriousness of the environment in which such could develop and prosper. Seers and doctors were mentioned by Homer as "migrant craftsmen", individuals which communities were anxious to attract and keep, as the two activities appear to have been closely connected. The fact that these individuals were seen as specialists of a particular craft - partly hereditary, partly acquired by learning and initiation, reveals the important place that religious therapies for individuals, groups, cities and nations held.

The Derveni papyrus, written in about 340 BCE by the circle of philosophers that included the ill-fated Anaxagoras who we will soon meet, describes individuals who specialize in initiations as "He who make the sacred his craft". Strabo, too, refers to the "Dionsiac and Orphic crafts". Even Hippocrates, who was at pains to differentiate between medicine as a science, and psychological catharsis, admitted that migrant seers and healers presented themselves as bearers of special knowledge.

It seems that in those times, as today, charismatic technicians of other-worldly interactions could become widely sought-after personalities. In fact, it appears that they represented the intellectual elite of that time. We get a hint of this in the regard that even Heraclitus had for Pythagoras who was certainly just such a technician. Their special status gave them the ability to freely cross borders and thereby transfer cultural knowledge from one place to another. In the Amarna correspondence from the time of Akhenaten, the kings of Ugarit and Hatti requested physicians and seers from the Egyptians. (Obviously, they were not yet aware of the fact that Egypt, itself, was falling into dire straits and none of its psychic specialists seem to have been able to counter the deleterious effects of the regime of the last members of the 18th dynasty.)

In 670 BC, it is said that Thaletas of Gortyn (Crete), a charismatic musician, delivered Sparta from a plague.[7] Apparently, the presence of an epidemic could attract migrant seers as well as physicians. Before him, there was the legendary Karmanor, the priest who purified Apollo after the god had slain the Delphic dragon. Karmanor himself was later killed by Zeus with a thunderbolt. Walter Burkert notes that the name does not appear to be Greek.[8]

Keep all of the above in mind when we finally get to Epimenides a little further on.

Now, I will turn to Homer and Hesiod who describe and define what ideas the philosophers would soon be dealing with. Keep in mind what I have written before, that the world Homer and Hesiod describe is not the world of the Greeks as we know and understand them.

Homer and Hesiod
The 19th century discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by the amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, and then the discovery of the Minoan civilization by Sir Arthur Evans in the early 20th century, provided hard evidence for many of the mythological details about the gods and heroes of Homer and Hesiod. Unfortunately, the evidence is primarily monumental, not written, since the Linear B script form of ancient Greek found there was used mainly to record practical concerns of daily life such as inventories of goods. Additionally, there are visual representations that are not known in any literary source, so obviously a great deal was lost between the collapse and the re-emergence of human societies.

Archaeology reveals that the earlier inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula were agricultural settlers that appear to have practiced a form of Animism that assigned a spirit to every aspect of nature. At the time of the collapse, with the later appearance of new people, probably driven by widespread unrest or political instability, a new pantheon of gods appeared, probably reflecting the experiences of the northern peoples. These were gods of violence, conquest, force and destruction, obvious evidence of the trials and tribulations endured by the northern peoples of Europe and central Asia at the time of the collapse and destruction of the Bronze Age.

The earliest literary survivals we have of the foundations of Western civilization are Homer's two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey ( dated usually to the 8th century BCE at least in oral form).. Hesiod is a possible near-contemporary of Homer (750-650 BCE) and gives us the Origin of the Gods in his Theogony. Hesiod's Works and Days is a teaching poem about farming life and offers advice on how to survive in a world made dangerous by the gods. In this latter work, Hesiod makes use of a scheme of Four Ages of Man: Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron, a clear exposition of repeating cataclysmic destructions. These ages are separate 'creations', or time periods of the reign of the gods, signifying the gradual break-up of the Giant Comet and the disasters brought by the various 'offspring'. The Golden Age belonged to the reign of Cronos; the subsequent ages were dominated by Zeus. Hesiod regarded this last period as the worst since it was overrun with evil. He explained the presence of evil by the myth of Pandora, when all of the best of human capabilities, save hope, had been spilled out of her overturned jar. He also writes in such a way as to remind us of the possibility of genetic mutation due to comets, as we covered earlier, and periods of utter horror where cannibalism and human sacrifice were rampant practices devised by pathological deviants who had taken control, supported by terrified authoritarian followers.
All who came forth from Gaia and Ouranos, the most dire of children, from the beginning were hated by their own begetter; and just as soon as any of them came into being he hid them all away and did not let them into the light, in the inward places of Gaia; and Ouranos rejoiced over the evil deed. And she, prodigious Gaia, groaned within for she was crowded out; and she contrived a crafty, evil device... she sent him [Kronos] into a hidden place of ambush, placed in his hands a jagged-toothed sickle, and enjoined on him the whole deceit. Great Ouranos came bringing Night with him, and over Gaia, desiring love, he stretched himself, and spread all over her; and he, his son, from his place of ambush stretched out with his left hand, and with his right he grasped the monstrous sickle, long and jagged-toothed, and swiftly sheared off the genitals of his dear father, and flung them behind him to be carried away...[9] Interesting imagery: darkness on the earth shattered by a "monstrous sickle" that shears off the "genitals" which are "flung behind" and carried away. Sounds a lot like the breaking up of a comet possibly after impact with another cometary body, and fragments drifting away in the tail.

Parts of Hesiod's account reveal parallelisms with the Hurrian account of the succession of the oldest gods preserved in the Hittite Kumarbi-tablet dating, in its extant form, to around the beginning of the Greek Dark Age. In the Hittite version, the first king in heaven is Alalu, who is driven out by Anu and then Anu is deposed by the father of Kumarbi. As Anu tries to escape into the sky, Kumarbi bites off and swallows his genitals. After being told that he has become impregnated with the Storm God and two other 'terrible gods', he spits it out but it is too late: he's pregnant! He eventually gives birth to the equivalent of Zeus, who deposes Kumarbi and becomes king of heaven. However, the Greek version incorporates non-Mesopotamian elements. Another possibility is that we see in the cutting off of the genitals, a physical interaction with plasma components, discharging a comet and thereby dissolving its tail. What is evident in the above account is that much of this activity occurred in daylight and brought deep darkness to the Earth.

Hesiod's Theogony is not only the fullest surviving account of the gods, but also the fullest surviving account of the archaic bardic function, with its long preliminary invocation to the Muses. Theogony became the subject of many poems, including those attributed to Orpheus, Musaeus, Epimenides, Abaris, and other legendary seers, which are now lost to us. It seems that these were written accompaniments to ritual purifications and mystery-rites designed to appease the gods, some of which must have included sacrifice, but not necessarily all. Obviously, many groups in many places were trying desperately to find the right formula that would bring the chaos and destruction to an end. In fact, it can be said that Hesiod's work not only deals with the 'genealogical' relationships between the gods (the parent comet and its ongoing disintegration), but also serves to demonstrate how, finally, something seems to have worked and Zeus became the ultimate authority and established order by 'defeating' (destruction via impact?) the Titans. Zeus hurls thunderbolts at them and...
The whole earth boiled, and the streams of Okeanos, and the unharvested sea; and them, the earth-born Titans, did a warm blast surround, and flame unquenchable reached the holy aither, and the darting gleam of thunderbolt and lightning blinded the eyes even of strong men. A marvelous burning took hold of Chaos; and it was the same to behold with the eyes or to hear the noise with the ears as if earth and broad heaven above drew together; for just such a great din would have risen up...[10] The heroic age presented in the Iliad and Odyssey was more entertaining than the divine-focus of the Theogony and therefore is better known. Homer's tales were clearly set in a world that was under the constant threat of bombardment and the relations between gods and humans were rather clearly defined, though later interpreters have completely misread and misinterpreted these things. Homer appears to be presenting a clear formula of how to be in right relations with the gods, and the main focus was Theoxeny[11] and hospitality. One needed to behave decently, even to strangers and foreigners, because they might be gods in disguise, and bad hospitality could bring the fires of heaven down on one's head, literally. One of the attributes of Zeus was 'Xenios', or the stranger. This relates back to the evils of mankind decried by Hesiod. Theoxeny could demonstrate the character of a man and thus determine whether or not he would be spared from destruction. A good man will treat the aged and humble well; a bad man will abuse the helpless and down-trodden. In the Odyssey, this point is made abundantly clear with Odysseus taking the role of the god and the story being mainly about the different forms of hospitality that are shown to Odysseus and then, finally, how Odysseus, in the role of the god, brought absolute and total destruction on the suitors who abused his hospitality. This view is rather more interesting than one might suppose as it appears that, increasing economic disparity, abandonment and abuse of the poor, etc., are among the primary characteristics of a society on the verge of collapse; and such collapse can ultimately include cosmic disaster.

As time passed, and things began to quiet down in the skies, these tales gave rise to cults of heroes who were strictly human, though associated with the gods as either offspring or close affiliation. After a bit more time had passed, it appears that these works were considered to be impossibly wild tales born from primitive imaginings, and subsequent works on these themes became less narrative and more allusive visions, leading to the vision of the world presented by the later emerging philosophers. Certainly, there may have been heroic individuals during those times; as I've already mentioned, such times refine both the best and the worst in human beings. But reducing real, cosmic activity to the level of exaggerated human doings amounted to a cover-up, whether it was intentional or not.

And so, we find a group of people - obviously a minority - in the area of the furthest extent of the ancient Hittite Empire, emerging from the darkness, building societies and trying to bring order out of chaos. They read the myths and knew the stories of their immediate forebears, but they did not see anything going on in the skies, or the world at large, that would explain these things, so they assumed that the language describing the doings of gods was really about forces of nature that had been misunderstood. They didn't have precise scientific terminology as we do today, and they weren't precisely scientific in the beginning, so they utilized the only language they had to do this with: the language of myth. They were concerned with the early history of the Earth, with its creation, its structure, how it worked, and, of course, man's place within it.

The sky was seen as a solid hemisphere, similar to a bowl. It was solid and bright, even metallic. It covered the flat earth and the lower part of the space between earth and sky, up to and including clouds, contained mist (aer); beyond that, from clouds up to the starry sky, was aither, the 'shining upper air' which, interestingly enough, was often conceived of as fiery. In the Iliad, Homer writes, in obvious comet imagery, "the fir-tree reached through the aer to the aither."[12] Below the surface of the earth, its mass continued far down, with roots in Tartaros.[13]
Or seizing him I will hurl him into misty Tartaros, very far, where is the deepest gulf below earth; there are iron gates and brazen threshold, as far beneath Hades as sky is from earth.[14]

Around it [Tartaros] a brazen fence is drawn; and all about it Night in three rows is poured, around the throat; and above are the roots of earth and unharvested sea.[15] So we see something like a big globe surrounding the Earth, though the part that surrounds the world underneath the flat surface, embraces a big mass of Earth's foundations, as well as the underworld, and is either brass or iron. Some conceived of the Earth's foundations as continuing on indefinitely, but that was a later idea of Xenophanes.

Around the edges of the flat Earth ran the vast river, Okeanos. However, in the Odyssey, a broad outer sea was described. So the idea of Okeanos being a river of fresh water may be Mesopotamian. The encircling river meant that the Sun, after finishing his transit of the sky, sailed in a golden boat around the Earth in the stream of Okeanos and returned to the place of arising the next morning. This may be derived from Egypt where the Sun was depicted as traveling from West to East across subterranean waters.

Okeanos - along with Tethys or the earth itself - was perceived as the 'begetter of gods' and the place where the gods went to sleep. That is, it was over the horizon that the comets arose and then subsequently set. Obviously, they could also go below the horizon to Tartaros or could even be born from Tartaros.
There of murky earth and misty Tartaros and unharvested sea and starry sky, of all of them, are the springs in a row and the grievous, dank limits which even the gods detest; a great gulf, nor would one reach the floor for the whole length of a fulfilling year, if one were once within the gates. But hither and thither storm on grievous storm would carry one on; dreadful is this portent even for immortal gods; and the dreadful halls of gloomy Night stand covered with blue-black clouds.[16]

There are gleaming gates, and brazen threshold unshaken, fixed with continuous roots, self-grown; and in front, far from all the gods, dwell the Titans, across murky Chaos.[17] We see that this may be an attempt to describe the regions beyond and below the horizon, which are said to be surrounded by night, and above it are the roots of the Earth and the sea.

Epimenides of Cnossos
At this point in our more or less chronological account, we encounter Epimenides who was a semi-mythical 7th or 6th century BC Greek seer and philosopher-poet. Diogenes Laertius tells us that he was summoned to Athens in the 46th Olympiad (595-592 BCE) to purify their city and thereby stop a pestilence. That puts him as a contemporary of Solon (c. 630 - c. 560 BCE), both being contemporaries of Cyrus II of Persia and Croesus of Lydia. It also reminds us of Thaletas of Gortyn (Crete) who was called to Sparta in 670 BC, for the same reason, 75 years earlier.

Epimenides was a Cretan diviner and the following excerpts from Diogenes tell the story in brief:
He [Epimenides] was a native of Cnossos in Crete, though from wearing his hair long he did not look like a Cretan. One day he was sent into the country by his father to look for a stray sheep, and at noon he turned aside out of the way, and went to sleep in a cave, where he slept for fifty-seven years. After this he got up and went in search of the sheep, thinking he had been asleep only a short time. And when he could not find it, he came to the farm, and found everything changed and another owner in possession. ... At length he found his younger brother, now an old man, and learnt the truth from him. So he became famous throughout Greece, and was believed to be a special favourite of heaven.

Hence, when the Athenians were attacked by pestilence, and the Pythian priestess bade them purify the city, they sent a ship ... to Crete to ask the help of Epimenides. And he came in the 46th Olympiad, (595 - 592 BCE), purified their city, and stopped the pestilence...

According to some writers he declared the plague to have been caused by the pollution which Cylon brought on the city and showed them how to remove it. In consequence two young men, Cratinus and Ctesibius, were put to death and the city was delivered from the scourge.

The Athenians voted him a talent in money and a ship to convey him back to Crete. The money he declined, but he concluded a treaty of friendship and alliance between Cnossos and Athens.

So he returned home and soon afterwards died. According to Phlegon in his work On Longevity, he lived one hundred and fifty-seven years; according to the Cretans two hundred and ninety-nine years. Xenophanes of Colophon gives his age as 154, according to hearsay. ...

Demetrius reports a story that he received from the Nymphs food of a special sort and kept it in a cow's hoof; that he took small doses of this food, which was entirely absorbed into his system, and he was never seen to eat. ... they say he had superhuman foresight... It is also stated that he... claimed that his soul had passed through many incarnations... The Lacedaemonians guard his body in their own keeping in obedience to a certain oracle; this is stated by Sosibius the Laconian.[18] (Plutarch also tells a more elaborated version of the story in the parallel Lives.) It is noteworthy that Epimenides (along with Melampus), was alleged to have been one of the founders of Orphism which apparently taught reincarnation. Curiously, Epimenides is quoted twice in the New Testament. The alleged poem of Epimenides goes as follows:
They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,

Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.

But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,

For in you we live and move and have our being.[19] The fourth line is quoted in Acts 17:28:
For in Him we live and move and have our being; as even some of your poets have said, For we are also His offspring. Then, in Titus 1:12:
One of their number, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, hurtful beasts, idle and lazy gluttons. The "lie" of the Cretans is that Zeus was mortal; Epimenides considered Zeus immortal.

We note from the brief biography, that Epimenides apparently blamed this plague on "the pollution which Cylon brought on the city and showed them how to remove it."

Cylon was an Athenian noble and a previous winner in the Olympics. Apparently, he plotted with his father-in-law, Theagenes, the tyrant of Megara, to seize Athens in a coup in either 636 B.C.E. or 632 BCE (which was quite a bit before the 46th Olympiad (595-592 BCE) when Epimenides was called in!). Not much is known about Theagenes except that he became a tyrant by way of his own coup and Aristotle wrote in his Rhetoric that Theagenes had first asked for a bodyguard: "he who is plotting tyranny asks for a body guard." He is compared with Pisistratus,[20] "who when granted it [a body guard] became a tyrant."[21] What is curious about the episode of Theagenes is that Aristotle mentions that he slaughtered the flocks of the rich. "They would do this because they had the confidence of the people, a confidence based upon hostility to the rich."[22] This is paralleled again by Aristotle with Pisistratus' leading a revolt of dwellers on the plain. Aristotle comes out clearly in support of the rule of the wealthy elite.

Anyway, back to Cylon: he married Theagenes' daughter and consulted the Delphic oracle who told him to seize Athens during a festival of Zeus, which Cylon understood to mean the Olympics of 640 BCE. However, the coup did not succeed and Cylon and his supporters took refuge in Athena's temple on the Acropolis. Cylon and his brother escaped, but his followers were cornered by Athens's nine archons. According to Plutarch and Thucydides[23], they were persuaded by the archons to leave the temple and stand trial after being assured that their lives would be spared. The Athenian archons, led by Megacles, proceeded to stone them to death which was the "great sin" that Cylon brought on Athens, not his attempted coup!

So, it seems, based on the dates, that Athens was suffering a great deal for a considerable period of time before they called in Epimenides. The seer made it clear that Megacles and his whole wealthy and powerful family, the Alcmaeonidae, had to be exiled from the city which is what happened to elites when things went bad for the society. Not only did they exile the entire family from the city, they even dug up their buried ancestors and moved them outside the city limits! (The later Pericles and Alcibiades also belonged to the Alcmaeonidae.)

Alcman
Around 600 BCE there was a Spartan choral/lyric poet named Alcman who apparently wrote a theogonical cosmogony. We only have a 2nd century AD papyrus commentary with limited extracts of the work. It obviously puzzled the commentator.[24] What is important about it is that the fragment preserves a couple of unusual terms: poros, as 'paths in the primeval sea', and tekmor, as 'signs of direction through it', or through the stars. This appears to us to be a description of a physical path or passage through the heavens, described in terms of the background stars though, as yet, there were no constellations named by the Greeks. The new terms are neither oriental nor Hesiodic, so where did they come from? Alcman's compositional dialect (Homeric mixed with Doric Laconian vernacular) and many references to Lydian and Asian culture suggests his origins. Aristotle said that that Alcman came to Sparta as a slave to the family of Agesidas by whom he was eventually emancipated because of his great skill.[25] The choral lyrics of Alcman were meant to be performed within the social, political, and religious context of Sparta. Swiss scholar Claude Calame suggests they are a type of drama connected with initiation rites.[26]

Pherecydes
Pherecydes was, according to one ancient authority, a contemporary of the Lydian king Alyattes, i.e. 605-560 BC. He was born on the Greek island of Syros[27], and is said by many scholars to have been the bridge between the ancient myths and pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. According to Diogenes, Pherecydes' work survived into his own time, the 3rd century CE. Diogenes recites miracle stories about Pherecydes, such as prediction of an earthquake, a shipwreck, the outcome of a battle, and so forth. What is problematical is that the same miracles were also attributed to Pythagoras. Associations between the two were assumed only after the 5th century BCE, probably due to a passing comment made by Ion of Chios[28] and recorded by Diogenes:
Thus did [Pherecydes] excel in manhood and honor, and now that he is dead he has a delightful existence for his soul - if Pythagoras was truly wise, who above all others knew and learned thoroughly the opinions of men.[29] The confused association between Pherecydes and Pythagoras suggests that there were few reliable details about either and people could just make stuff up at will. Thus, it is probably best to be skeptical of a connection.

In addition to Diogenes, there is a reference to Pherecydes in the Suda[30], which says:
There is a story that Pythagoras was taught by him [Pherecydes]; but that he himself had no instructor, but trained himself after obtaining the secret books of the Phoenicians.[31] There is another thing that is most interesting that Diogenes has reported about Pherecydes:
There is preserved of the man of Syros the book ... and there is preserved also a solstice-marker in the island of Syros. This may possibly be related to a line from the Odyssey:
There is an island called Syrie - perhaps you have heard of it - above Ortygie, where are the turnings of the sun. The "turnings of the sun" would refer to the summer and winter solstices when the Sun reaches its highest and lowest points and appears to 'turn back' due to the angle of the Earth's axis vis- à-vis the Sun through the annual orbit. Kirk, Raven and Schofield add in a footnote:
...the only other place in Homer where Ortygie is mentioned is Odyssey V, 123, where Orion, having been carried off by Eos, is slain in Ortygie by Artemis. The implication is that Ortygie was the dwelling-place of Eos, the dawn, and therefore that it lies in the east. ... since solstices would normally be observed at sunrise and in summer, and so in the north-east-by-east direction, that is what the phrase might suggest. Thus the intention may be to indicate the general direction of this probably mythical Ortygie. In fact the dwelling-place of Eos was often conceived as being Aia, commonly identified with Colchis; and Colchis does lie roughly north-east-by-east from the centre of the Ionian coastline.[32] Kirk et al. also include comments, aka scholia, on the couplet from Homer written by later scholars:
Aristarchus comment: They say there is a cave of the sun there, through which they mark the sun's turnings.

Herodian: As it were toward the turnings of the sun, which is in the westward direction, above Delos.[33] The comments show that two interpretations (at least) of this couplet from Homer were being discussed in Alexandria. One of them suggests that it was thought there was a solstice-marker that had been used by Pherecydes; that is, that he was making astronomical observations. But what is more interesting is that it appears that the existence of this marker was known by Homer. One wonders if Pherecydes discovered it by following clues in Homer which leads to the question: how did Homer know about it? But of course, this whole thing needs to be taken with a grain of salt or two since, according to the scholars, there is no other evidence that Pherecydes was a practical scientist, although, to me, the evidence suggests he was making astronomical observations. Further, the fact that many megalithic structures of northern Europe have been shown to be designed to mark the solstices and/or equinoxes is very intriguing. Did Pherecydes have a northern source for his information?

Pherecydes is said to have been the first to write about the gods in prose as opposed to poetry. That is, poetic works appear to have had ritual purposes, while Pherecydes broke with this tradition; perhaps he was attempting to write about these things in a pragmatic way. His major work was entitled Heptamychos, or 'the seven sanctuaries' or recesses. Some sources say it was Pentemychos, which is translated as meaning 'five recesses' and the later Pythagoreans were said to have developed their pentagram and 'spiritual purification' system based on the 'five recesses'. It is assumed by some that Pherecydes was teaching esoteric things via the medium of mythic representation, i.e. allegorically. One ancient commentator wrote:
Also, Pherecydes, the man of Syros, talks of recesses and pits and caves and doors and gates, and through these speaks in riddles of becomings and deceases of souls.[34] Well, sure, we could interpret this in view of the many astronomically oriented megalithic structures and conclude that there was some metaphysical or spiritual purpose to them, as well as a connection between them and Pherecydes' 'recesses'. However, as we have seen from our brief review above starting with Homer and Hesiod, particularly discussions of gates and doors and so forth, this is undoubtedly incorrect; It seems that Pherecydes was talking about regions of the sky exactly as did Homer and Hesiod.

Pherecydes described a cosmogony based on three 'principles': Zas (Zeus), Cthonie (earth) and Chronos. Pentemychos was about a cosmic battle taking place, with Chronos as the head of one side and Ophioneus - the serpent - as the leader of the other. As we know, the same story is elsewhere enacted with Zeus and Typhon/Typhoeus, Marduk vs. Tiamat, and other parallels. The semen (seeds) of Chronos was placed in the 'recesses' and numerous other gods and their offspring were the result. This is described in a fragment preserved in Damascius' On First Principles[35] and we've read almost exactly the same thing in Hesiod, quoted above in the story of the castration of Chronos.

With the understanding of giant comets, and that they were perceived to arrive from certain areas of the sky with regularity, as explained by the science we have reviewed, we can better interpret the 'recesses' as being particular areas of the sky that were later defined as constellations, created and named in accordance with the cometary activity. This point can be understood by reviewing the development of the history of astrological signs. John H. Rogers, in Origins of the ancient constellations[36], (in 2 parts), explains that the division of the zodiac into 12 equal parts was not done by even the Babylonians until between 600 and 475 BC, around the time that zodiacal horoscopes were introduced. The 48 constellations of the classical world were first described by Eudoxus and Aratus, and the definitive list was not made until the time of Ptolemy (90-c.168 CE). Only a subset of the classical constellations came from Babylonia - the zodiac and four associated animals: serpent, crow, eagle and fish.

An idea of how the sky was divided for the purpose of recording astronomical events can be gained by a review of Stanislaus Lubienietzki's (1623-1675) Theatrum Cometicum[37], published in 1668 in Amsterdam, which contains 80 fabulous illustrations that accompany over 400 comet sightings. The book records the observations of such scholars as Athanasius Kircher, Christian Huygens and Johannes Hevelius (plus others), and each of them provided their own constellation charts which reflect different sky-mapping traditions.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685574/large/Theatrum_cometicum_0083.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685574/full/Theatrum_cometicum_0083.jpg)
Plate 1 from Stanislaus Lubienietzki's Theatrum Cometicum


This first image is a comet observation by R. P. A. Curtio. Notice how particular stars are designated in the grid he has drawn so as to accurately place his comet in relation to those stars. Notice the triangulation from Cygnus and Polaris to the head of the comet. In this chart, we also see the oblique line of the zodiac crossed by the horizontal line of the celestial equator. (Keep all this in mind; it is going to solve a great, ancient mystery further on!) The next image is another way of mapping a comet sighting.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685576/large/Theatrum_cometicum_0412_horosc.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685576/full/Theatrum_cometicum_0412_horosc.jpg)
Theatrum Cometicum


This is a more horoscopic type of map which shows the symbols of the zodiac and designates which sign the Sun is in. The little circle at the bottom probably designates the Earth from where the comet is viewed and notice how the tail of the comet changed over the duration of the observation (this is like time-lapse engraving!) in relation to the Sun. One can easily imagine how the segments of the zodiac, before they were named constellations, could have been thought of as 'caves' or 'recesses', especially if the sky was alive with comet activity!

That's just a couple of selections from the Theatrum Cometicum that I have selected to make my point that I think Pherecydes was either making direct comet observations, or was studying the myths and legends and knew what they were and was endeavoring to standardize locations in the sky where those terrifying events took place. It is worth noting that a significant number of the comet maps in the Theatrum Cometicum depict comets in the area of the sky between Taurus and Scorpio, though along the celestial equator rather than the zodiac. It isn't difficult to imagine Pherecydes including just such charts as illustrations to his idea about the 'recesses', 'pits', 'gates', 'caves', and so on.

A relationship appears to exist between these recesses and Chthonie, which is another of the three first-existing things. Chthonie has to do with the origin of the word 'chthonic'; her name means 'underlying the earth'. That can be explained by the fact that the comets either appear from, or pass below, the horizon, seeming to be either born from the Earth, or to go 'inside the earth' or into the ocean from the constellation 'recesses' as in the following land oriented image.

Ophioneus and its brood of serpents are depicted as ruling the birthing cosmos for some time, before finally falling from power thanks to the arrival of the cavalry in the form of Zeus who 'orders and distributes' things, i.e. kicks most of the comets out of play like a massive bowling strike. The story describing this has Zas making a cloth which he decorates with earth and sea and presents as a wedding gift to Chthonie, wrapping it around her as a wedding garment. In another fragment it is not Chthonie, but a winged oak that is wrapped in the cloth. The winged oak in this cosmology has no precedent in Greek tradition but, thanks to Ballie, Clube and Napier, we certainly know of trees of life as comets, with their attendant ion tails and other electrical activity, and the World Tree is typical of northern cosmogonies. Nevertheless, we perceived something of the decorated cloth wrapped around the earth in the quote above from Hesiod: "Great Ouranos came bringing Night with him, and over Gaia, desiring love, he stretched himself, and spread all over her..." And, since the topic is on the table at the moment, I should mention here that many of these sexual images that were used to describe the activities of the comet gods, were later used to justify such things as incest and pederasty. After all, if the gods do it, why can't we? That's due, of course, to the 'astralizing' influence taken to an extreme.

Back to Pherecydes story; apparently, the chaotic forces - or comets, as we know them - are eternal and cannot be destroyed, so Zeus takes possession of the sky, space and time, and throws Ophioneus and the gang out from the ordered world and locks them away in Tartaros. As noted, Hesiod described Tartaros as being "in a recess (mychos) of broad-wayed earth", i.e. they disappeared below the horizon.

The locks to Tartaros are fashioned in iron by Zeus, and in bronze by Poseidon, which could mean that some of the comet fragments came to Earth and others plunged into the ocean. Judging from some ancient fragments, Ophioneus is thrown into Okeanos, but not into Tartaros. In one version, it is Kronos who orders the offspring - the comet fragments - out from the cosmos to Tartaros. In short, they were flung off into space, i.e. were probably moved into different orbits, passing from view below the horizon or, more intriguingly, passing out of the plane of the ecliptic into other regions of the sky. The question is: do they still exist in these orbits?

We are told about chaotic beings put into the Pentemychos, and we are told that the Darkness has an offspring that is cast into the recesses of Tartaros. No surviving fragment makes the connection, but it is possible that the prison-house in Tartaros and the Pentemychos are ways of referring to essentially the same thing.[38] Was Pherecydes dividing the sky into 10 segments with five of them always being below the horizon? Notice that the image drawn by Hevelius below does exactly that, though with six 'recesses' based on the 12-sign zodiac and the sexagesimal circle later obtained via the Babylonians.

A comparatively large number of sources say Pherecydes was the first to teach the eternity and transmigration of human souls, i.e. reincarnation.[39] Both Cicero and Augustine thought of him as having given the first teaching of the 'immortality of the soul'[40] and Hellenic scholar Hermann S. Schibli writes that Pherecydes "included in his book [Pentemychos] at least a rudimentary treatment of the immortality of the soul, its wanderings in the underworld, and the reasons for the soul's incarnations."[41] One gets the impression that this 'astralizing' of the behavior of perfectly astronomical comets was the origin of the idea of reincarnation itself, derived from the reappearance, at regular intervals, of the Comet Gods from their 'wanderings in the underworld' beyond the horizon of the Earth! And that isn't to say that reincarnation isn't an idea worth exploring; I'm just pointing out that there is a far more rational explanation for what Pherecydes was talking about than reincarnation.

Finally, the material that comes to us from Pherecydes is dotted with original terms and imagery that strikes me as 1) possibly derived from northern sources, and 2) a quasi-scientific attempt to depict real events, not myth. The flying oak with the marriage cloth that covers Earth is just fascinating!

Pherecydes was said by Diogenes to have been the student of Pittacus (640-568 BC) who was a Mytilenaean[42] general who defeated the Athenians and was named as one of the 'Seven Sages'.

According to the story, when the Athenians were preparing to attack, Pittacus challenged their General to single combat to decide the war and avoid senseless bloodshed. He won and was chosen ruler of his city.

In Protagoras, Plato has his character, Prodicus, refer to Pittacus as a barbarian because he spoke Aeolic Greek derived from Boeotia, one of the earliest inhabited regions of Greece, the home of Oedipus, Kadmus, Ogyges, the legend of the Deluge, etc. So, that may be one of the sources of information available to Pherecydes. Hesiod was also born in Boeotia.

Notes:
[1] The name, if it is significant, signifies "black foot".

[2] Herodotus, Histories 2.49.

[3] Robert Graves, The Greek Myths 1955, s.v. "Amythaon".

[4] Odyssey, XV.223-42.

[5] Robert Fagles's translation, 1996:326-27.

[6] Walter Burkert, Homo Necans, tr. by Peter Bing, 1983:170 note 12

[7] Plutarch, Mus. 42.1146 b-c.

[8] Burkert (1992) p. 63.

[9] Hesiod, Theogony ­154.

[10] Hesiod, Theogony 695.

[11] 'Theoxeny, the belief that strangers had magical powers or were deities themselves. From 'theo' meaning 'god' and 'xeno' meaning 'alien', 'strange', 'guest'.

[12] Iliad, XIV 288.

[13] In Greek mythology, Tartarus is both a deity and a place in the underworld. Hesiod asserts that a bronze anvil falling from heaven would fall nine days before it reached the earth. The anvil would take nine more days to fall from earth to Tartarus.

[14] Iliad VIII, 13, Zeus speaking.

[15] Hesiod, Theogony 726.

[16] Hesiod, Theogony 736.

[17] Hesiod, Theogony 811.

[18] Diogenes Laertius I, 109-120.

[19] Epimenides' Cretica found in the 9th century Syriac commentary by Isho'dad of Merv on the Acts of the Apostles, discovered, edited and translated (into Greek) by Prof. J. Rendel Harris in a series of articles in the Expositor, Oct. 1906, 305-17; Apr. 1907, 332-37; Apr. 1912, 348-353.

[20] Herodotus reports that Onomacritus, a compiler of oracles who lived at the court of Pisistratus, was hired by Pisistratus to compile the oracles of Musaeus, but that Onomacritus inserted forgeries of his own that were detected. As a result, Onomacritus was banished from Athens by Pisistratus' son Hipparchus. After the flight of the Pisistratids to Persia, Onomacritus was reconciled with them. According to Herodotus, Onomacritus induced Xerxes I, the King of Persia, by his oracular responses, to decide upon his war with Greece.

[21] Aristotle. Rhetoric, 1357b.

[22] Aristotle. Politics, 1305a 22-4.

[24] Kirk, Raven & Schofield (1983) The Presocratic Philosophers, pp. 46-49.

[25] Huxley, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 15 (1974) 210-1 n. 19

[26] Calame, Les Chœurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque, 2 vols. (Rome:L'Ateneo and Bizzarri), 1977; translated as Choruses of Ancient Women in Greece: their morphology, religious roles and social functions (Lanham, MD:Rowman and Littlefield), 1996.

[27] Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea, located about 144 km south-east of Athens.

[28] Ion of Chios (c. 490/480 - c. 420 BCE) was a Greek writer, dramatist, lyric poet and philosopher.

[29] Diogenes, I, 120.

[30] A massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas.

[31] Suda, s.v. Pherecydes.

[32] Kirk et al., p. 55.

[33] Kirk et al., p. 54.

[35] Ahbel-Rappe (2010) Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles. Damascius was head of the Neoplatonist academy in Athens when the Emperor Justinian shut its doors forever in 529. His work, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, is the last surviving independent philosophical treatise from the Late Academy.

[36] Rogers (1998) Origins of the ancient constellations, Part I: The Mesopotamian Tradition and Part II: The Mediterranean Tradition.

[37] Theatrum Cometicum, Stanislaus Lubienietzki (1668), Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/theatrum-cometicum_202108/)

[38] Kirk et al. (1983).

[39] Schibli (1990) Pherekydes of Syros.

[40] Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th edition, Volume 18: Pherecydes of Syros.

[41] Schibli, ibid., p. 108.

[42] Mytilene is a town on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Next: Part 5 (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy_28.html)

[Gwin Ru]

...

... The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy. Part Five (https://www.sott.net/article/483577-The-Cosmic-Context-of-Greek-Philosophy-Part-Five#)

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net (https://www.sott.net/article/483577-The-Cosmic-Context-of-Greek-Philosophy-Part-Five#)
Wed, 16 Aug 2023 19:19 UTC


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685919/large/zeus_poseidon.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685919/full/zeus_poseidon.jpg)
The Mighty Gods Zeus & Poseidon


Source (https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/mighty-gods-zeus-poseidon-00351)

The Agenda of the Milesian School
In 1997, William Mullen, Professor of Classical Studies at Bard College, gave a conference talk entitled: Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisation in which he outlined what he saw as the Agenda of the Milesian School.
Topics held in common by the first three pre-Socratic philosophers from Miletos in the Sixth Century B.C.E., Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, and by Xenophanes[1] from neighbouring Colophon, taken together may be viewed as constituting the agenda of a "Milesian School".

The agenda included a survey of the known kosmos (the orderly arrangement of the inhabited world surrounded by regularly moving heavenly bodies); redefinitions of divinity; and theories of the natural processes, constantly in operation, by which both kosmos and divinity are to be understood. It also included explanations of phenomena most men deemed terrifying: thunder, lightning, earthquakes, eclipses, and periodic destruction of the kosmos itself. It set about to explain these phenomena in terms of the same elemental processes (transformations of water, rarefaction and condensation of air, separating out of fire, air, water and earth, periodic reabsorption of these elements into a state of dynamic equilibrium) as it invoked to explain the orderly arrangement of the earth and the heavenly bodies. In so doing, it implied the baselessness of the traditional Olympian religion which attributed lightning and earthquakes to whims of Zeus and Poseidon and world-destructions to battles of the sky-gods.

The ultimate Milesian agenda may therefore have been to liberate people from paralysing fear of the immediate recurrence of celestial disturbances in the recent past. By insisting that world-destructions occurred only in vast cycles of time (such as a "great year" whose winter solstice was Deluge and summer solstice Conflagration) the Milesian School was schematically distorting memories of recent disturbances, and its activity may be seen as part of a general pattern of oblivion and psychological distancing common to all cultures after the end of the Bronze Age catastrophes. But by insisting that these world-destructions occurred only as the result of unalterable elemental processes, it was also erecting a proto-scientific bulwark against apocalyptic thinking and behavior.[2] So, indeed, it may have been a conscious program to quell the disorder that inevitably arose when comets appeared, which suggests that comets were, indeed, appearing with some regularity, though they were no longer as threatening as they had been in the previous era of mass destruction. Nevertheless, the philosophers of the Milesian school lived in very interesting times. The period of time during which they philosophized dated (roughly) from 630-475 BC. Recall our catalogue of historical comet sightings[3] from above which I'll repeat here:
633 BC, China: A broom star comet appeared in Auriga with its tail pointing toward Shhu State. (Ho, 4)

613 BC, Autumn, China: A broom star comet entered the constellation of the Great Bear. (Ho, 5)

532 BC, Spring, China: A new star was seen in Aquarius. (Ho, 6)

525 BC, Winter, China: A bushy star comet appeared in the winter near Antares. (Ho, 7)

516 BC, China: A broom star comet appeared. (Ho, 8)

500 BC, China: A broom star comet was seen. (Ho, 9)

482 BC, Winter, China: A bushy star comet appeared in the east. (Ho, 10)

481 BC, Winter, China: A bushy star comet was seen. (Ho, 11)

480 BC, Greece: At the time of the Greek battle of Salamis, Pliny noted that a comet, shaped like a horn (ceratias type), was seen. (Barrett, 1) So keep that in mind as you consider the details of these philosophers' lives.

Thales 624 - 548 BC
The earliest blossoming of Greek science following the Dark Age that prevailed after the collapse of the Bronze Age is associated with the Ionian or Milesian school located at Miletus, on the Western coast of Anatolia, in what is modern day Turkey. During the 6th century BC, it was considered to be the greatest and wealthiest Greek city even though it was not in Greece proper. This city, formerly occupied by speakers of an Indo-European language, Luwian (closely related to Hittite), who disappeared in the collapse of the Bronze Age, was said to have been resettled by Ionian Greeks around 1000 BC. Please notice that Ionia really isn't Greece. So it looks like 'Greek Civilization' as we know it actually belongs to Anatolia, and only later did they colonize Greece, proper. That, of course, doesn't mean that there weren't connections between the Mycenaean Greeks and the Ionians; perhaps some of them fled Greece to Anatolia during the disruptions. It might even be thought that the Thracians were the remnant of the Mycenaean Greeks. We do know that there was intellectual discourse taking place in Greece, proper, i.e. Homer, Hesiod, Alcman and Pherecydes, and that it was somewhat different from what was going on in Anatolia.

In any event, Thales founded a school at Miletus (Diogenes tells us that his parents were Phoenician, so even he was not Greek) around 600 BCE, that was destined to be the root of 'Greek art and philosophy'. Thales taught that the Earth was a flat disc or short cylinder floating on a vast primordial ocean of sorts. His main agenda seemed to be to explain natural phenomena without involving mythology. As we will see, almost all of the pre-Socratic philosophers followed this trend.

Thales is hailed as the first true mathematician because he used geometry to calculate such things as the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. According to Herodotus, Thales predicted a solar eclipse which has been determined to have occurred on May 28th, 595 BCE. (The same time Epimenides was heading to Athens to save them from a plague.) He supposedly wrote works concerning the solstices and equinoxes, but nothing has survived. Diogenes apparently had some texts to hand because he quotes letters of Thales to Pherecydes and Solon. In these letters, he states that the Milesians were actually Athenians, which suggests that they were refugees from Greece.

Thales was apparently into making weather predictions based on his studies and utilizing his accuracy in this respect to make the point that philosophy wasn't a waste of time. He also engaged in political life. It was in the context of the military defense of the region against the Persians that he made his solar eclipse prediction. Apparently, it was so impressive that the two peoples laid down their arms and made peace sworn with a blood oath!

Thales was counted among the 'Seven Sages of Greece', a list made up (obviously) sometime after all of them were dead. According to Demetrius Phalereus, the list of honorees was made up about 582/1 BC. Dicaearchus of Messina[4] (350-285 BC) commented that none of them were either sages or philosophers, but merely shrewd men with a turn for legislation. That suggests even more strongly that their ideas were driven by a need for political stability and to change the way the public perceived the relationship between the leaders and the cosmos. A parallel (and complementary) perspective is that Thales and his colleagues represented a new kind of community: one that inquires into the nature of things without recourse to the 'old ways and explanations'. They were possessed by the ideal of Truth, so to say.


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Thales profoundly influenced later philosophy, and we are told that his student was Anaximander, who was alleged to be one of the teachers of Pythagoras. As we will see, not all of these philosophers thought the same things. This age is often referred to as the 'Axial Age' and it is notable for the fact that revolutionary thinking arose in widely separated places at the same time: China, India, Iran, the Near East, and so on. One really gets the idea that something about the environment had changed dramatically since the cosmic and environmental cataclysms at the end of the Bronze Age.


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Ancient Anatolia


Anaximander 610 - 545 BC
Thales was followed by Anaximander, who is thought to have introduced the sundial to the Greeks, which he got from the Babylonians. He also drew a map of the inhabited world. He claimed that nature, like human societies, is ruled by laws and anything that breaks natural laws suffers repercussions. Right there we have a hint of his interest in power politics and social control.

Anaximander thought that everything was derived from some undifferentiated living mass (as opposed to the primordial ocean). Things just grew out of this 'cosmic egg', the first four things being fire, air, water and earth. This cosmology partly resembles modern cosmological theories such as the Big Bang.

Anaximander proposed that air or denser vapors would have burst out of fiery surrounding membranes, and then enveloped the remaining flames, producing wheels of fire enclosed in mist. These enveloped wheels of fire then encircled the Earth. Planets and stars were circular wheels of fire which became visible due to holes in the enclosing hoops (globes?) that permitted the fire to 'leak out'. That is, Anaximander's cosmic bodies were rather like lighted jets of gas shooting through a punctured sheet of metal.

Anaximander taught that the world was transitory and would eventually dissolve back into infinite space (the 'Big Crunch'). He also said that there were many worlds, which he identified with the gods who were also transitory and renewable. He associated this dissolution and renewal with definite cycles and this strongly suggests influence from Iranian/Persian cosmology and, possibly, study of comets.

An important point about Anaximander's cosmology was his insistence that the hoops-with-holes, that were supposed to be 'stars', all lay beneath the Sun and Moon. This idea has puzzled many commentators, but it might be understood if Anaximander was actually talking about comets or even fireballs in the Earth's atmosphere. Intense meteor showers associated with a bright comet would easily give the impression that the stars lay below the Sun and Moon.

We can, of course, ask the question: was the Greek word for 'star' used to describe a single class of objects? The fact that some stars were described as disappearing due to their increasing distance from the viewer on Earth suggests that some of these 'stars' were actually comets.

Important to our study is the fact that the 3rd century Roman rhetorician Aelian claims that Anaximander was the leader of the Milesian colony to Apollonia on the Black Sea coast. Aelian's Various History[5] tells us that philosophers often dealt with political matters. Most scholars suppose that leaders of Miletus sent him there as a legislator to create a constitution or simply to maintain the colony's allegiance. But we are reminded of the comment of Dicaearchus cited above: that these really weren't philosophers, but shrewd men with political agendas and I will make note (as I have already) of those who appear to have had political connections.

If they were, truly, philosophers and, by some miracle, the powers of the time saw wise men as useful in government, one is still compelled by the idea that there was a political agenda to giving philosophers of this orientation such roles so as to establish and maintain certain ideas in respect of the cosmos for political reasons, as Ballie, Clube and Napier suggest. Is it even possible that leaders of those times could sit down and consciously decide that 'this business about comets being gods needs to be dealt with since it threatens the control of the rulers'? It would probably have been clear that it did, in fact, threaten them because the 'old way' had been to sacrifice the leaders if it was perceived that the gods were angry or hungry.


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Pythagoras - The Italian School


Pythagoras of Samos (570-495 BC) was the founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Let me first tell you the briefest outline of the story about him before we get to the actual facts, as far as we can find them out.

Pythagoras was born on the Greek island Samos and traveled widely seeking knowledge. He had himself initiated into all of the mystery schools in Greece and foreign countries. He learned the Egyptian language and journeyed to the lands of the Chaldeans and Magi. Then, in Crete, he went into the cave of Ida with Epimenides where the baby Zeus was said to have been hidden from his father, Chronos. After all that, he returned to Samos and found his country under the rule of a tyrant, Polycrates, so he sailed to Croton[6] (about 530 BCE) and there, became a leader who created a constitution for the Italian Greeks. He and his 300 followers thereby instituted a 'true aristocracy' or government by the best qualified (as Diogenes puts it). According to other sources, when Polycrates effected his coup at Samos, members of the old aristocracy were either sent into exile or voluntarily left. Otherwise, Polycrates was said to have been a very popular ruler who worked hard to improve the quality of life of the people of Samos. He was an ally of the Egyptian king Amasis who paid the Samians well to maintain naval defense in the region.

Diogenes quotes Heraclitus in refutation of the idea that Pythagoras left no writings:
Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practiced inquiry beyond all other men, and in this selection of his writings made himself a wisdom of his own, showing much learning but poor workmanship.[7] He then goes on to say that Pythagoras wrote three books: On Education, On Statesmanship, and On Nature. Then he mentions that Aristoxenus said that Pythagoras derived his moral doctrines from the Delphic priestess, Themistoclea. In short, at least one of his teachers was a woman. Diogenes then enumerates the teachings of Pythagoras from the three books as follows:
He forbids us to pray for ourselves, because we do not know what will help us. Drinking he calls, in a word, a snare, and he discountenances all excess, saying that no one should go beyond due proportion either in drinking or in eating. Of sexual indulgence, too, he says, "Keep to the winter for sexual pleasures, in summer abstain; they are less harmful in autumn and spring, but they are always harmful and not conducive to health." Asked once when a man should consort with a woman, he replied, "when you want to lose what strength you have ..."
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The following are excerpts from Diogenes' Life of Pythagoras.
According to Timaeus[8], he was first to say "Friends have all things in common"... indeed, his disciples did put all their possessions into one common stock ...

Indeed, and his disciples held the opinion about him that he was Apollo come down from the far north ... This is interesting considering other clues that Pythagoras' (and Pherecydes) ideas had a more northern origin.
We are told by Apollodorus the calculator that he offered a sacrifice of oxen on finding that in a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle. ... Apollodorus, surnamed Logisticus (the Calculator), may have been Apollodorus of Seleucis, a Stoic philosopher and pupil of Diogenes of Babylon. He wrote on ethics and physics and is otherwise frequently cited by Diogenes Laërtius. Cicero comments on this statement, saying that he does not question the discovery, but doubts the story of the sacrifice of the ox.
He is also said to have been the first to diet athletes on meat, trying first with Eurymenes - so we learn from Favorinus[9] in the third book of his Memorabilia - whereas in former times they had trained on dried figs, on butter (cheese), and even on wheat-meal... some say it was a certain trainer named Pythagoras who instituted this diet, and not our Pythagoras, who forbade even the killing, let alone the eating, of animals... as we are told by Aristotle... Here we have a little difference of opinion on the dietary matter. I would suggest that, if it is true that Pythagoras was strongly influenced by northern teachings, he most certainly advocated the eating of meat strongly and it was only later mythmakers who created the vegetarian fraud. In fact, it is most likely that the life and doings of Empedocles, a philosopher cum religious prophet born in Sicily about 490 BCE, was conflated with Pythagoras.

Like Epimenides, Empedocles was reputed to have miraculous powers such as the ability to cure disease, avert epidemics, control storms, etc. He wrote in verse and one of his poems is entitled Purifications and seems to have promised miraculous powers, rejuvenation, destruction of evil, etc. He was associated with various Pythagoreans, and his abstinence from meat was widely known. He also claimed to be a god incarnate. His doctrine of the four elements remained fundamental for the theory of matter for more than twenty centuries. In this we see that the dual role of a religious prophet and a mathematical philosopher that the tradition assigns to Pythagoras is certainly possible - even a common topos of the time - but not necessarily historical.
Down to the time of Philolaus it was not possible to acquire knowledge of any Pythagorean doctrine and Philolaus alone brought out those three celebrated books which Plato sent a hundred minas to purchase. Not less than six hundred persons went to his evening lectures; and those who were privileged to see him wrote to their friends congratulating themselves on a great piece of good fortune ... Here we discover something crucially interesting: that the alleged books of Pythagoras were placed into the hands of none other than Plato! And, we can't be certain that Philolaus didn't write them himself!
The rest of the Pythagoreans used to say that not all his doctrines were for all men to hear, our authority for this being Aristoxenus in the tenth book of his Rules of Pedagogy... This next excerpt is particularly interesting in light of the diet issue:
Above all, he forbade as food red mullet and blacktail, and he enjoined abstinence from the hearts of animals and from beans and sometimes, according to Aristotle, even from paunch and gurnard (two types of fish) ... Obviously, if his students are warned not to eat the hearts of animals, that is an explicit acknowledgement that they were eating the rest of the animal as is confirmed by the following:
He used to practice divination by sounds or voices and by auguries, never by burnt-offerings, beyond frankincense ... some say that he would offer cocks, sucking goats and porkers... but lambs, never. However, Aristoxenus has it that he consented to the eating of all other animals, and only abstained from ploughing oxen and rams ... Diogenes cites Aristotle:
Aristotle says, in his work On the Pythagoreans, that Pythagoras enjoined abstention from beans either because they are like the privy parts, or because they are like the gates of Hades (for this is the only plant that has no joints), or because they are destructive, or because they are like the nature of the universe, or because they are oligarchical (being used in the choice of rulers by lot). Things that fall from the table they were told not to pick up - to accustom them to eating with moderation, or because such things marked the death of someone. And Aristophanes, too, says that the things that fall belong to the heroes, when in his Heroes he urges: 'Do not taste what falls inside the table.' They must not touch a white cock, because this animal is sacred to the Month and is a suppliant, and supplication is a good thing. The cock was sacred to the Month because it announces the hours; also, white is of the nature of the good, black of the nature of the bad. They were not to touch any fish that was sacred, since it was not right that the same dishes should be served to gods and to men, any more than they should to freemen and to slaves. They must not break the loaf (because in old times friends met over a single loaf, as barbarians do to this day), nor must they divide the loaf which brings them together. Others explain the rule by reference to the judgment in Hades; others say that dividing the loaf would produce cowardice in war; others explain that it is from the loaf that the universe starts.[10] The first thing to point out is that none of these rules enjoin vegetarianism. There is, in fact, no 5th century evidence whatsoever that the Pythagoreans renounced animal sacrifice and the subsequent eating of the sacrifice. In fact, since the focal point of the Greek polis, in which Pythagoras and his followers played such a leading role for several generations, was the regular public sacrifice and feasting, is a powerful implication that they were not, at all, in any way, vegetarians. The evidence for Pythagoras being a meat eater are more numerous, and older, than the evidence for vegetarianism which seems to be both a conflation with Empedocles and a consequence of the later Platonic myths.
Hieronymus ... says that, when he [Pythagoras] had descended into Hades, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound fast to a brazen pillar and gibbering, and the soul of Homer hung on a tree with serpents writhing about it, this being their punishment for what they had said about the gods; he also saw under torture those who would not remain faithful to their wives. According to Diogenes, this is what Aristotle said about Pythagoras at one point:
But Pythagoras' great dignity not even Timon[11] overlooked, who, although he digs at him in his Silloi, speaks of: Pythagoras, inclined to witching works and ways, Man-snarer, fond of noble periphrase. ...

Further, we are told that he was the first to call the heaven the universe and the earth spherical (according to Favorinus), though Theophrastus says it was Parmenides, and Zeno that it was Hesiod.[12] The spherical Earth was actually first asserted in the work of Parmenides and Empedocles while the Ionian school continued with their flat-earth theories for a rather long time.

Allegedly, Pythagoras followers practiced rites developed by him based on what he had learned and developed via his travels and studies. What is more, the Pythagoreans took an active role in the politics of Croton and this is what led to their downfall, apparently. The Pythagorean meeting places were burned and Pythagoras and his followers were forced to flee and he is said to have ended his days in Metapontum, not far from Tarentum, which will figure in our tale shortly.

As we see from this very quick review of a few of the things Diogenes collected together, Pythagoras is presented in a vast body of literature as the genius of marvels, the inventor of mathematics, music theory, heliocentric astronomy, and metaphysical philosophy. The 20th century philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead sang paeans of praise about Pythagoras. But the sources closest in time to the man (who certainly existed) are satirical, mildly insulting, or completely ambiguous. So why did the figure of Pythagoras accumulate so much baggage so that, even down to the time of the Renaissance, there were people claiming to be 'followers of Pythagoras'?

The Pythagoreans are said to have taught that a release from the wheel of reincarnation was possible but only via a process of purification of the soul including a vegetarian diet (which was probably not true). Aristoxenus said that they also used music to purify the soul just like medicine was used to purge the body, a likely Orphic connection. Pythagoras was said to have proclaimed that the highest purification of a life is in pure contemplation. It is the philosopher who contemplates about science and mathematics who is released from the 'cycle of birth'. The pure mathematician's life is, according to the tradition created for Pythagoras, the life at the highest plane of existence.[13] [14] Thus the root of mathematics and scientific pursuits in Pythagoreanism is also based on a spiritual desire to free oneself from the cycle of birth and death.

It's a great story, isn't it? I didn't even include all the miracle parts, including the one telling how Pythagoras had a golden thigh, could bi-locate, and so forth. So what is true? Well, let's look at the evidence, starting with a rather surprising remark made by Heraclitus and preserved by Diogenes:
The learning of many things does not teach understanding; if it did, it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.[15] Empedocles wrote, preserved in Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras, as follows:
And there was among them a man of surpassing knowledge, master especially of all kinds of wise works, who had acquired the utmost wealth of understanding: for whenever he reached out with all his understanding, easily he saw each of all the things that are, in ten and even twenty generations of men.[16] The impression that Empedocles gives is that Pythagoras' methods were most definitely not mathematical or scientific! But that he was widely perceived as a seeker and having a great range of knowledge and extraordinary influence over people appears to be a secure fact.

Diogenes Laërtius reports that Xenophanes had this to say about Pythagoras:
Now I will turn to another tale and show the way... Once they say that he [Pythagoras] was passing by when a puppy was being whipped, and he took pity and said: "Stop, do not beat it; for it is the soul of a friend that I recognized when I heard it giving tongue."[17] Obviously, this is a joke made by Xenophanes with Pythagoras as the butt of it. In any event, that the teaching of reincarnation by Pythagoras was widely enough known to be the topic of ordinary conversation - and even jokes - makes that something that we can securely attach to him.

Additional evidence provides a weak connection between Pythagoras and the Orphic Mysteries. Orphism appears to have been mainly a system of purification that was practiced privately at that time, while the Pythagoreans definitely formed a very secretive sect. The Orphics taught that the body was a prison, a tomb, in which the soul is buried until it finds or earns its way out. Their methods were designed to purify and release men and cities from their errors. They neither ate nor sacrificed animals and taught complete avoidance of bloodshed. The later Orphic poems seem to imply that certain behaviors could forestall, avoid, or end cosmic punishment. (I suspect that Orphism had very little to do with anyone named Orpheus.) But were Orphic practices and concepts part of the original Pythagorean ideas, or were they simply connected thanks to Plato?

Next we have a quote from Porphyry, the 3rd century CE Neoplatonic philosopher of Phoenician extraction:
What he said to his associates, nobody can say for certain, for silence with them was of no ordinary kind. Nonetheless the following became universally known: first, that he maintains that the soul is immortal; next, that it changes into other kinds of living things; also that events recur in certain cycles, and that nothing is ever absolutely new; and finally, that all living things should be regarded as akin. Pythagoras seems to have been the first to bring these beliefs into Greece.[18] It could be said that a lot of historically worthless literature about him began, mainly, with Plato. It seems that he, and his followers, radically altered not only accounts of the life of Pythagoras, but actually invented doctrines and assigned them to him. One expert suggests that "all the discoveries attributed to Pythagoras himself, or to his disciples by later writers were really the achievement of certain South Italian mathematicians of Plato's time."[19] What is more, it wasn't until after Plato spent time with Archytas at Tarentum that his formerly rather cool view of Pythagoras warmed up, and this can be definitely noted in his dialogues, as analyzed by Charles Kahn in Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans.[20] There are surviving fragments from the work of Archytas that strongly suggest that it was he, not Pythagoras, who formulated many of the scientific and mathematical ideas attributed to Pythagoras by Plato. Perhaps Plato was jealous of Archytas, stole his ideas, and attributed them to Pythagoras with the idea that, of course, everyone would know that it was all him, only he was so modest! Or he sought to attach his ideas to someone who everyone else held in awe which was rather common in ancient times.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685926/large/Archytas_Plato.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685926/full/Archytas_Plato.jpg)

The main players in the Phaedo are represented by Plato as a sort of link between the Pythagoreans and Socrates.[21] The implication is that Plato set a fashion of presenting his newest theories as age-old wisdom. While he may have done it more or less playfully, as some suggest, assuming that everyone would naturally understand that he was being modest, but that in reality he, of course, thought all this stuff up, it appears that his students and followers took him literally. Two of his students in particular, Speusippus and Xenocrates, took him very seriously and treated the cosmology of the Timaeus as the teaching of Pythagoras, which may have been partly true.[22] Walter Burkert, in a massive monograph on the subject published in 1962 (translated into English in 1972), says that the evidence shows only that Pythagoras was a shamanistic figure, a charismatic spiritual leader rather like Moses, who was very influential in the politics of his day but contributed nothing whatsoever to mathematics or philosophy.[23] All that we know of 'Pythagoreanism' was created later by Plato and others.

Thus it was right there, in Plato's Academy, that the twisting and distortion of the work of Pythagoras was formulated. Aristotle, Plato's student, vigorously resisted this development and spent some time carefully studying Philolaus and the pre-Plato Pythagorean system. Aristotle became the last author to draw a distinction between the two schools.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685927/large/Philolaus_1_shaded_relief.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685927/full/Philolaus_1_shaded_relief.jpg)
© Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC)


At the beginning of the 4th century there was another refugee from the conflict in Southern Italy who came to Thebes: Lysis of Tarentum. He became the teacher of the general Epaminondas. So there were respectable Pythagorean communities from which Plato could both extract ideas as well as influence with his possession of the inside scoop on what Pythagoras actually said, since he allegedly had possession of the three books.

There is another type of Pythagorean represented by Diodorus of Aspendus in Asia Minor, a 4th century BCE ascetic vegetarian who was described as having long hair, long beard, worn cloak, a beggar's wallet and staff.[24] Also, in Athens at the same time, there were barefoot vegetarians who were mocked in comedy skits as 'Pythagorists'. In other words, the barefoot vegetarian Pythagorean is a post-Plato appearance of half-crazed mendicant philosophers that were little more than comic figures of the time and were used to attack Pythagoras. This lifestyle was actually taken over later by the Cynics, and after their appearance there are no further references to Pythagoreans in this light; the Cynics are the comic relief! It appears to be a fairly typical response of social and political power structures to ridicule and defame their critics. Thus, we should pay attention to whether a particular philosopher was on the side of the power elite, or a critic thereof. Such an observation won't necessarily say anything about their philosophies or cosmologies, but it could, especially when we notice whose work has been 'lost' and whose has been preserved.

As mentioned, after Plato got hold of a few ideas, and stole many others from wherever he could get them, the two central ideas of Pythagoreanism become 1) the destiny of the immortal soul as expounded by Plato; and 2) mathematics as the key to unlock the secrets of the universe. This last was, I believe, his own spin and a red herring put out there to keep generations of seekers spinning in circles trying to work out the right formula. It was in Plato's imagination that mathematics enabled a soul to become free and only in his mind do these ideas reach their culmination.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685928/medium/Francisco_Jose_de_Goya_y_Lucie.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685928/full/Francisco_Jose_de_Goya_y_Lucie.jpg)
Goya, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" (1799).


The full epigraph for the etching reads "imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, it is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.”

Source (https://junkyardofthemind.com/blog/2020/5/17/plato-and-hobbes-on-imagination-and-political-instability)

Of this massive mess, only three sources seem to have anything to offer us: Diogenes Laërtius, Porphyry and Iamblichus, in that order, with each one giving an account that is more fantastic than the previous one. Eduard Zeller, in his 19th century history of Greek philosophy, noted that the further a document is from Pythagoras' own time, the fuller the account becomes![25] These histories amount mainly to cut and paste compilations from the Christianizing era which followed Plato, and contain a lot of nonsense, but they also include summaries of fairly early traditions about Pythagoras to which they still had access.

The invented tradition of Plato tells us that the school of Pythagoras split at some point and one group followed the more mathematical line, extending the scientific work of Pythagoras. The other group focused on the more religious aspects, declaring that the 'scientific' breakaway group was not really following Pythagoras, but rather the renegade Hippasus,[26] about whom very little is known. Iamblichus says about Hippasus:
It is related to Hippasus that he was a Pythagorean, and that, owing to his being the first to publish and describe the sphere from the twelve pentagons, he perished at sea for his impiety, but he received credit for the discovery, though really it all belonged to HIM (for in this way they refer to Pythagoras, and they do not call him by his name).[27]
https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685929/large/images_.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685929/full/images_.jpg)
Hippasus is credited in history as the first person to prove the existence of ‘irrational’ numbers.


The more scientific ideas appear to be those of Philolaus, who developed the work of Anaximander of the Milesian school who - along with Pherecydes - was also said to be one of the teachers of Pythagoras. Why are we not surprised? Philolaus argued that at the foundation of everything is the part played by the limiting and limitless, which combine in a harmony. He said that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and thus he is credited with the earliest known discussion of heliocentrism. Philolaus described a Central Fire as the center of the universe and that spheres (including the Sun) revolved around it. According to Plato's Phaedo, he was the instructor of Simmias and Cebes at Thebes, around the time the Phaedo takes place, in 399 BC. That would make him a contemporary of Socrates, and would agree with the statement that Philolaus and Democritus were contemporaries.[28]

The idea most central to Pythagorean mystical teachings was the transmigration of souls which was an idea that was actually native to India and to the Celts and related Germanic tribes (all three of which had their origins in the steppes of central Asia). Much of the Pythagorean mysticism concerning the soul seems similar to the Orphic tradition. The Orphics included various purification rites and practices as well as incubatory rites of descent into the underworld, which bring to mind Central Asian Shamanism. Orphism was said to have originated in Thrace which brings us to the following story from Herodotus:
As I have heard from the Greeks who live on the Hellespont and the Black Sea, this Salmoxis was a man, who was a slave in Samos, the slave in fact of Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus... The Thracians lived a miserable life and were not very intelligent, whereas this Salmoxis knew the Ionian way of life and minds deeper than the Thracians', since he had associated with Greeks and among Greeks with Pythagoras, not the weakest of their wise men. So he [Salmoxis] built a hall in which he received and entertained the leading citizens, and taught them that neither he nor his guests nor any of their descendants would die, but that they would go to a place where they would survive forever and possess every good thing.[29]
https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685930/large/thrace.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685930/full/thrace.jpg)
Thracian ritual of initiation through sanctification of bread, water and wine


Source (https://hotelstarazagora.bg/en/thracians/fresco-thracian-ritual-of-initiation-through-sanctification-of-bread-water-and-wine/)

This story of Herodotus' is quite intriguing since Salmoxis, or Zalmoxis, is a divinity of the Getae[30] mentioned by Jordanes.[31] He is saying that he heard from Greeks in Western Anatolia that a certain Salmoxis, who was a former slave of Pythagoras, was hoodwinking the poor, ignorant Thracians. I'm wondering if this is a hint of the source of Pythagoras' ideas about reincarnation: that he gathered them from Gothic/Alanic tribes to the north or even along the Black Sea coast?

The archaism of the Salmoxis doctrine (which I omit here) points to an Indo-European heritage.[32] Diogenes reports in an epitome of Aristotle's Magicus that Aristotle compared Zalmoxis with the Phoenician Okhon and the Libyan Atlas. Anthropologist Andrei Anamenski suggests that Zalmoxis was another name of Sabazius, the Thracian Dionysus, or Zeus. Sabazius appears in Jordanes as Gebelezis. Without the suffixes -zius/-zis, the root Saba- is equivalent to Gebele-, suggesting a relationship to the name of the goddess Cybele, as in 'Cybele's Zeus'. Mnaseas of Patrae identified him with Chronos. Plato mentions Zalmoxis as skilled in the arts of incantation. Zalmoxis also gave his name to a particular type of singing and dancing, i.e. 'Hesych', which is a word meaning 'to be still or quiet' and is used to describe a mystical sect of the Greek Orthodox Church of the 14th century. (One naturally wonders how a person can sing and dance being still and quiet?!) A curious connection indeed. Salmoxis' realm as a god is not very clear, as some considered him to be a sky-god, a god of the dead or a god of the Mysteries.[33] All of this merely suggests a northern version of the same old cosmic catastrophe stories and myths but possibly with a cleaner transmission.

Lactantius (240-320 CE), referring to the beliefs of the Getae, quoted the emperor Julian the Apostate, who was quoting the emperor Trajan (in other words, three removes in the chain of evidence):
We have conquered even these Getai (Dacians), the most warlike of all people that have ever existed, not only because of the strength in their bodies, but, also due to the teachings of Zalmoxis who is among their most hailed. He has told them that in their hearts they do not die, but change their location and, due to this, they go to their deaths happier than on any other journey. Another related item from Herodotus:
Moreover, the Egyptians are the first to have maintained the doctrine that the soul of man is immortal, and that, when the body perishes, it enters into another animal that is being born at the time, and when it has been the complete round of the creatures of the dry land and of the sea and of the air it enters again into the body of a man at birth; and its cycle is completed in 3,000 years. There are some Greeks who have adopted this doctrine, some in former times, and some in later, as if it were their own invention; their names I know but refrain from writing down.[34] Herodotus erroneously gives the Egyptians credit for the idea of reincarnation. Nothing of the kind is attested in anything Egyptian. In fact, they believed that the body had to be preserved in order for the dead person to have any afterlife at all; when the body was destroyed, so was the afterlife 'life', which could only be experienced through a well-preserved physical body. Curiously, Herodotus often ascribes Greek ideas and practices to Egyptian origins. One wonders if he was even talking about the Egypt we know as Egypt? (It wasn't named 'Egypt' until after Alexander the Great.)

Ion of Chios, who we met earlier in the account of Pherecydes, seems to have expressed doubt about Pythagoras' ideas of reincarnation, though he didn't seem to doubt that he was a learned man. He was writing in the middle of the 5th century, as was Herodotus, who presented the former slave of Pythagoras as a rogue selling salvation. These stories strike me as pejorative but interesting nonetheless for what they convey in an offhand way.

Nevertheless, Pythagoras was said to have had full recall of all his past lives, the list being given in Diogenes Laërtius as follows: First Aethalides, the presumed son of Hermes, who awarded him the gift of remembering his lives after death. Then he incarnated as Euphorbus, and after that Hermotimis, who visited the Branchidae, and in whose temple he recognized the shield that Menelaus had dedicated to Apollo. After Hermotimus he was Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and after that he was finally reincarnated as Pythagoras.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685931/large/Pythagoras_advocating_vegetari.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685931/full/Pythagoras_advocating_vegetari.jpg)
Pythagoras advocating vegeterianism?


Source (https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/pythagoras-and-his-life-beyond-pythagorean-theorem-004879)

The Branchidae were expelled by Darius' Persians, who burned the temple in 493 BCE, but Alexander the Great undertook to restore the temple and the oracle. Apparently, this project was never completed. Pausanias visited Didyma in the later 2nd century AD.[35] Pliny reported[36] the worship of Apollo Didymiae - Apollo of Didymus - in Central Asia, transported to Sogdiana by a general of Seleucus and Antiochus whose inscribed altars there were still to be seen by Pliny's correspondents. Corroborating inscriptions on amphoras were found by I.R. Pichikyan at Dilbergin.[37] [38]

Back to Pythagoras: I've read some rather silly explanations here and there saying that the ancient Pythagorean pentagram, with two legs up, represented the Pentemychos or 'five sanctuaries', derived from the cosmogony of Pherecydes, who is said to have been Pythagoras' teacher and friend. However, that is rather doubtful. Wikipedia tells us that the Pentemychos was 'the island or cave' where the first pre-cosmic offspring had to be put in order for the cosmos to appear... the divine products of Chronos' seed, when disposed in the five recesses, were called Pentemuxos. The source citations the Wikipedia author gives for this silly claim are Kirk, Raven and Schofield. Believe me, they say nothing that could be construed in that way. Go back to Pherecydes and read about Ortygie. If you see anything there that suggests such a thing (and I quoted the reference pretty much in full, whereas it was selectively edited on Wikipedia!), I must be blind or nuts. Using Wikipedia is sometimes an iffy proposition.

Nevertheless, I've already suggested that the five hidden recesses might represent an early attempt to map the sky, and what we now know as constellations were designated by Pherecydes as 'recesses' or 'caves' that went below the horizon, and that they were related to the appearance, and disappearance, of comets from below the horizon or off in space. If that is the case, then it deprives the Pentemychos of any occult significance, whether it came from Pherecydes or not, so I'm sure the folks who are into magick and all that nonsense will not be happy about that.

I've skipped over the material from the sources that talk about Pythagoras' political activities in Croton. As already mentioned, he and members of his society attained positions of political power throughout southern Italy. Polybius reports that, in the middle of the 5th century, when the Pythagorean meeting places were torched, "the leading men from each city lost their lives." [39] That means that pretty much everybody who was anybody around there was involved with Pythagoras. Considering the overall history of the time, it appears to me that Pythagoras' organization may have been one designed to dominate the political scene but we don't know if that was to achieve power for the good of all, not for personal gain. It really sounds as though the common people were the ones who burned out the Pythagoreans. It also raises questions about what, exactly, the Pythagoreans were really doing. They probably were NOT sitting around, listening to music and contemplating mathematics!

In any event, Pythagoras himself is said to have died a refugee after a 'popular revolt' against him and his companions. This could have been masterminded by the wealthy seeking power and increase of their wealth, utilizing propaganda and rabble-rousing techniques that were highly developed at that time; we just don't know. After this disaster, we find Pythagoreans in Greece, including Philolaus in Thebes. And then, the stories began to spread.

It is also entirely possible that Plato's famous tale of Atlantis in Timaeus and Critias was one of the main things stolen from the alleged books of Pythagoras. I'll expound on this when we come to our discussion of Plato.


https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685932/large/Tale_of_Plato.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685932/full/Tale_of_Plato.jpg)
In his dialogues of Timaeus and Critias, the Greek philosopher Plato introduced an incredible story, a tale of an enigmatic island civilization, Atlantis.


Source (https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/atlantis-examining-legendary-tale-plato-005750)

All of this is much more interesting than the fanciful tales told about the man. One even wonders if the stories were made up to distract attention away from the truth. And, when that is the case, it is usually a decent person or a group with high ideals that have been overthrown by ravening seekers of power for its own sake, and following such acts, they erect a smoke-screen such as the one created by Plato.
We are oft to blame in this, tis too much proved - that with devotion's visage and pious action, we do sugar o'er the devil himself.[40]
https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685933/large/quote_we_are_oft_to_blame_in_t.jpg (https://www.sott.net/image/s34/685933/full/quote_we_are_oft_to_blame_in_t.jpg)



Notes:

[1] (c.570-c.475 BC), Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. He satirized traditional religious views of his time as human projections. Xenophanes wrote about two extremes predominating the world: wet and dry (water and earth).These two extreme states would alternate between one another and with the alteration human life would become extinct, then regenerate. He was one of the first philosophers to distinguish between true belief and knowledge.

[2] From a talk given by William Mullen, Professor of Classical Studies at Bard College, SIS Conference: Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisations, 11th - 13th July, 1997.

[3] Most comet references from Yeomans (1991) Comets: A Chronological History of Observation, Science, Myth, and Folklore.

[4] Greek philosopher, cartographer, geographer, mathematician and author. Also Aristotle's student. Very little of his work remains extant. He wrote on the history and geography of Greece, of which his most important work was his Life of Greece. He was among the first to use geographical coordinates in cartography.

[5] Aelian: Varia Historia (III, 17).

[6] Crotone is a city and comune in Calabria, Italy. Founded c. 710 BCE as the Achaean colony of Croton. Pythagoras founded his school, the Pythagoreans, at Croton c. 530 BCE. Among his pupils were the early medical theorist Alcmaeon of Croton and the philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer Philolaus. The Pythagoreans acquired considerable influence with the supreme council of one thousand by which the city was ruled. See Wikipedia for a fuller discussion of the interesting history of the city.

[7] Diogenes Laertius, VIII, 4-6.

[8] Greek historian (345 -250 BC), born at Tauromenium in Sicily. He was a student of Isocrates and wrote some 40 books of history.

[9] A Gaulish Roman sophist and philosopher (80-160 AD) during the reign of Hadrian. He was described as a congenital hermaphrodite (Philostratus) or "a eunuch born without testicles" (Polemon of Laodicea). He was beardless and had a high pitched voice. He was once silenced in an argument with the emperor when he could easily have won, but later explained that it was foolish to criticize the logic of the master of 30 legions. See: Holford-Strevens (1997) Favorinos: the Man of Paradoxes, in J. Barnes et M. Griffin (eds.), Philosophia togata, vol. II.

[10] Diogenes Laertius VIII, 34-5, trans. W. D. Ross, cited by Kirk, op. cit.

[11] Timon of Phlius (c. 320 BC - c. 235 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher from the Hellenistic period, who was the student of Pyrrho. Timon wrote satirical philosophical poetry called Silloi. The subject was a sarcastic account of the tenets of all philosophers, living and dead; an unbounded field for scepticism and satire.

[12] Diogenes Laertius, VIII, excerpts in order.

[13] Burnet (1892) Early Greek Philosophy.

[14] Russell (1967) History of Western Philosophy.

[15] Diogenes Laertius, IX, 1.

[16] Porphyrius: Life of Pythagoras, 30.

[17] Diogenes Laertius, VIII, 36.

[18] Porphyrius: Life of Pythagoras p.19.

[19] Frank (1923) Plato und die sogenannten Pythagoreer, vi.

[20] Kahn (2001).

[21] Phaedo, 61 d.

[22] Kahn (2001) ibid.

[23] Burkert (1972) Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism.

[24] Kahn, op. cit. p. 49.

[25] Zeller (1892) Die Philosophie der Greichen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung.

[26] Hippasus of Metapontum was a Greek philosopher and follower of Pythagoras, though about a century after the latter. He is sometimes credited with the discovery of irrational numbers. Iamblichus says that Hippasus was the founder of a sect of the Pythagoreans called the Mathematici in opposition to the Acusmatici but elsewhere he makes him the founder of the Acusmatici in opposition to the Mathematici.

[27] Iamblichus, Vita Pythagorica, 18 (81)

[28] Plato, Phaedo, 61DE

[29] Herodotus IV, 95.

[30] A Thracian-related tribe that once inhabited the regions on either side of the Lower Danube, in what is today northern Bulgaria and southern Romania. The area had a few Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast, bringing the Getae into contact with the ancient Greeks from an early date. Strabo wrote that the Dacians and Getae spoke the same language, after stating the same about Getae and Thracians. Strabo, VII 3,14.

[31] 6th-century CE Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Gothic descent. Late in life he wrote two works, one on Roman history (Romana) and the other on the Goths (Getica). Jordanes was asked by a friend to write Getica as a summary of a multi-volume history of the Goths by Cassiodorus that existed then but has since been lost. Jordanes himself states that his paternal grandfather was secretary to a leader of the Alans which modern historians have connected with Central Asian Yancai of Chinese sources and with the Aorsi of Roman sources.

[32] Paliga (1997) 'La divinité suprême des Thraco-Daces'.

[33] Znamenski (2007) The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination.

[34] Herodotus II, 123.

[35] Pausanias, Description of Greece, 7.2.6.

[36] Pliny's Natural History, 6.18.

[37] Parke (1986) 'The Temple of Apollo at Didyma: The Building and Its Function'.

[38] Haselberger (1983), 'Die Bauzeichnungen des Apollontempels von Didyma'; (1985) 'Antike Planzeichnungen am Apollontempel von Didyma'; (1991)'Aspekte der Bauzeichnungen von Didyma'.

[39] Polybius II, 39. 1-2.

[40] Shakespeare, Hamlet, Polonius to Opheila, Act III, Scene 1.

To Part 6 (https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-cosmic-context-of-greek-philosophy_31.html)

[Vicus]

The 'Devil Comet' is now a naked eye object

Spaceweather.com https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=04&month=04&year=2024
Thu, 04 Apr 2024

Suddenly, amateur astronomers are seeing a naked-eye comet in the evening sky. It's Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, also known as the 'devil comet'. Waiting for next Monday's solar eclipse in Mexico, Petr Horálek photographed the comet last night and found it much brighter than the last time he saw it:

https://www.sott.net/image/s35/703717/super/Petr_HoralekInstitute_of_Physi.jpg
Petr Horálek/Institute of Physics in Opava

Taken by Petr Horálek/Institute of Physics in Opava on April 4, 2024

"I assume an outburst is in progress," says Horálek. "My estimate of the comet's magnitude is +3.5. Definitely worth taking a look in the next hours and days."

Indeed, now is a good time to look. After sunset, the comet emerges in the western sky not far from the planet Jupiter. Naked-eye observers will see a dim fuzzball. Cameras and small telescopes reveal the comet's magnificent tail.

Comet 12P is approaching the sun for a close encounter later this month. Its increasing brightness and proximity to the sun means it might be visible from the path of totality during the April 8th solar eclipse. Photos of a comet inside the Moon's shadow are very rare! A tip for eclipse photographers: Take two cameras--one for the sun, and another for Comet 12P. You might be glad you did. [https://spaceweather.com/images2024/21feb24/skymap2.png]

more images:https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=205205 of Payson, Arizona

from https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=205206 of Martinsberg Austria

from https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=205213 of San Costantino di Briatico, Calabria, Italy

[Inversion]

Asteroid 2024 JZ that's traveling at 56,000 mph missed hitting the earth. The English gematria (https://www.gematrix.org/?word=jz) value for JZ is 216 (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?118881-The-Entertainment-Industry&p=1526932&viewfull=1#post1526932) or 6x6x6.

X aka Twitter (https://twitter.com/AsteroidMisses/status/1788482055736566120)

dailymail (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13399053/asteroid-skim-past-Earth-today-NASA.html)

A huge asteroid almost the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza will skim past Earth today, NASA has warned.

The 120m (394ft) asteroid, scientifically named 2024 JZ, will pass the planet at a staggering speed of 56,000 mph (90,123) - 65 times faster than a bullet.

But there is no need to head for the doomsday bunker just yet since this asteroid will safely past Earth at a distance of 2.6 million miles (4.2 million km).

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/05/09/11/84656043-13399053-image-a-1_1715252159375.jpg

[Vicus]

https://www.sott.net/image/s35/707827/large/Michael_Jaeger_12P20240601_sun.jpg

Comet 2P/Pons-Brooks develops a 'sunward spike', photographed 1st June 2024

[Did You See Them]

European Space Agency

UPDATE: We expect the ~1 m asteroid discovered this morning to strike Earth's atmosphere over the Philippines near Luzon Island at 16:46 UTC today.

However the nearby tropical storm Yagi/Enteng will make fireball observations difficult.

Stay safe everyone!
https://x.com/esa/status/1831307613205615044?t=eOVw9J87doST_UOmsdlWPw&s=19

[Did You See Them]

European Space Agency

UPDATE 2: We expect the ~1 m asteroid discovered this morning to strike Earth's atmosphere over the Philippines near Luzon Island at 16:39 UTC today. ( 17.39 UK time )

Thanks to new observations, we now have a very good idea of where it will impact.

And the object has a name! Welcome to Earth asteroid 2024 RW1

https://x.com/esa/status/1831337534950924348?t=3SjZXUsKpjjYlSOF8w3W0g&s=19

[Ravenlocke]

Text:
The comet is getting brighter !! 😱 September, 29. I just captured an image of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) from the Atacama Desert, Chile 🇨🇱✨. The tail is so long that it barely fits in the field of view of a 135 mm lens. It’s so impressive !! The view was absolutely stunning ! It seems the comet has also started developing anti-tail.

#Comet #Astronomy #Atacama #chile #TsuchinshanATLAS #cometa #CometC2023A3 #Tsuchinshan #C2023A3 #FollowTheComet

https://x.com/YBeletsky/status/1840383741287333995

1840383741287333995

https://x.com/BuzzA34293/status/1839964668195918129

1839964668195918129

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/parcastroprades/status/1840990303865483502

1840990303865483502

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/maiz_julio/status/1841279099047923934

1841279099047923934

[ExomatrixTV]

Major Updates About Asteroid That Might Collide With Earth in 2032 (2024 YR4):

s0wOgYFYmh8


0:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOgYFYmh8&t=0s) Updates about 2024 YR4 and the new risks

1:50 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOgYFYmh8&t=110s) How scientists are studying this and the lack of data right now

2:40 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOgYFYmh8&t=160s) New images and what we know

4:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOgYFYmh8&t=240s) Properties discovered so far

5:05 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOgYFYmh8&t=305s) What if it collides

6:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOgYFYmh8&t=360s) Moon collision?

6:45 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOgYFYmh8&t=405s) What is it made out of and what does it mean?

7:50 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0wOgYFYmh8&t=470s) Conclusions and what's next?

[ExomatrixTV]

Will An Asteroid Hit Earth in 2032?:

_-ZB2Z7VtmE
What’s up with the asteroid that is headed towards Earth? Neil DeGrasse Tyson breaks down 2024-YR4, its likelihood of impact, where it would hit, and whether we can deflect it. Plus, astronomer Rick Binzel helps us break down the Torino scale and how worried people should be. Is this going to be like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs?


00:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ZB2Z7VtmE&t=0s) - What’s Up With the Asteroid?

01:12 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ZB2Z7VtmE&t=72s) - How Much Damage Would It Do?

03:12 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ZB2Z7VtmE&t=192s) - The Uncertainty Cone

04:36 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ZB2Z7VtmE&t=276s) - Where Would It Land?

06:58 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ZB2Z7VtmE&t=418s) - The Torino Scale

09:29 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-ZB2Z7VtmE&t=569s) - Should We Panic?

[ExomatrixTV]

Last Major Update About Dangerous Asteroid Predicted to Collide With Earth in 2032:

IbRAvLAGPWY


0:00 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRAvLAGPWY&t=0s) Updates about 2024 YR4
0:40 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRAvLAGPWY&t=40s) So what is this asteroid?
3:30 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRAvLAGPWY&t=210s) Problem with previous observations
5:30 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRAvLAGPWY&t=330s) Tracking dangerous asteroids
7:35 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRAvLAGPWY&t=455s) Previous examples from 67p
8:10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRAvLAGPWY&t=490s) Moon collision!
9:30 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRAvLAGPWY&t=570s) Conclusions