The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture

Book Description

Newly discovered scientific proof validating the legends and myths of ancient floods, fires, and weather extremes

• Presents new scientific evidence revealing the cause of the end of the last ice age and the cycles of geological events and species extinctions that followed

• Connects physical data to the dramatic earth changes recounted in oral traditions around the world

• Describes the impending danger from a continuing cycle of catastrophes and extinctions

There are a number of puzzling mysteries in the history of Earth that have yet to be satisfactorily explained by mainstream science: the extinction of the dinosaurs, the vanishing of ancient Indian tribes, the formation of the mysterious Carolina Bays, the disappearance of the mammoths, the sudden ending of the last Ice Age, and the cause of huge underwater landslides that sent massive tsunamis racing across the oceans millennia ago. Eyewitness accounts of these events are chronicled in rich oral traditions handed down through generations of native peoples. The authors’ recent scientific discoveries link all these events to a single cause.

In The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith present new scientific evidence about a series of prehistoric cosmic events that explains why the last Ice Age ended so abruptly. Their findings validate the ubiquitous legends and myths of floods, fires, and weather extremes passed down by our ancestors and show how these legendary events relate to each other. Their findings also support the idea that we are entering a thousand-year cycle of increasing danger and possibly a new cycle of extinctions.

Customer Reviews:

Have we passed our "Extinct By" Date?.......2007-04-17

This book is about the "Event" that took place about 12,000 years ago that is recorded in myth and legend variously as the Fall of Atlantis and Noah's Flood. Plato describes a destruction that occurred in a day and a night, and the Bible recounts the story of torrential rains and an immense flood in which most of the life on earth perished. There is also a rich body of Native American literature about a worldwide cataclysm of fires, followed by floods and death raining down from the skies. As many as fifty different cultures around the globe record versions of this story, and physicist Firestone, along with his geologist co-authors, have put together a book, based on hard scientific evidence, describing a cosmic chain of events that they believe culminated in the global catastrophe of circa 12,000 years ago. They believe that the Event was triggered by a nearby supernova that occurred 41,000 years ago.

Firestone et al propose that we are still traversing an "extinction cycle" related to that event and that may very well be so, but it may also be true that there is more to the matter.

On March 13, 2005, the UK Observer published an article entitled "Bad news - we are way past our 'extinct by' date" which tells us:

"After analysing the eradication of millions of ancient species, scientists have found that a mass extinction is due any moment now.

"Their research has shown that every 62 million years - plus or minus 3m years - creatures are wiped from the planet's surface in massive numbers. Even worse, scientists have no idea about its source.

"'There is no doubting the existence of this cycle of mass extinctions every 62m years. It is very, very clear from analysis of fossil records,' said Professor James Kirchner, of the University of California, Berkeley. 'Unfortunately, we are all completely baffled about the cause.'"

This part of the article is actually quite disingenuous. It is well known that there are other major extinctions and the cycle is not ONLY every 62 million years! There is also a very strong signal for a 26 million year extinction cycle. The different estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years are due mainly to what the individual researcher chooses as the threshold for naming an extinction event as "major" as well as what set of data he selects as the determinant measure of past diversity. As it happens, the 62 million event data stems mainly from marine fossil evidence. The article goes on to say:

"But what is responsible? Here, researchers ran into problems. They considered the passage of the solar system through gas clouds that permeate the galaxy. These clouds could trigger climatic mayhem. However, there is no known mechanism to explain why the passage might occur only every 62m years.

"Alternatively, the Sun may possess an undiscovered companion star. It could approach the Sun every 62m years, dislodging comets from the outer solar system and propelling them towards Earth. Such a companion star has never been observed, however, and in any case such a lengthy orbit would be unstable, Muller says.

"Or perhaps some internal geophysical cycle triggers massive volcanic activity every 62m years, Muller and Rohde wondered. Plumes from these would surround the planet and lead to a devastating drop in temperature that would freeze most creatures to death.

"Unfortunately, scientists know of no such geological cycle.

"'We have tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction,' Muller said. 'So far we have failed."

The fact is, the above article doesn't even mention the Pleistocene extinction which is the subject of "The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes," yet a mountain of evidence points to the fact that this extinction was global and catastrophic.

Back in the 1940s Dr. Frank C. Hibben, Prof. of Archeology at the University of New Mexico led an expedition to Alaska to look for human remains. He didn't find human remains; he found miles and miles of icy muck just packed with mammoths, mastodons, and several kinds of bison, horses, wolves, bears and lions. Just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, the members of the expedition watched in horror as bulldozers pushed the half-melted muck into sluice boxes for the extraction of gold. Animal tusks and bones rolled up in front of the blades "like shavings before a giant plane". The carcasses were found in all attitudes of death, most of them "pulled apart by some unexplainable prehistoric catastrophic disturbance."[Hibben, Frank, The Lost Americans (New York: Thomas & Crowell Co. 1946)]

The killing fields stretched for literally hundreds of miles in every direction.[ibid.] There were trees and animals, layers of peat and moss, twisted and tangled and mangled together as though some Cosmic mixmaster sucked them all in circa 12000 years ago, and then froze them instantly into a solid mass. [Sanderson, Ivan T., "Riddle of the Frozen Giants", Saturday Evening Post, No. 39, January 16, 1960.]

Just north of Siberia entire islands are formed of the bones of Pleistocene animals swept northward from the continent into the freezing Arctic Ocean. One estimate suggests that some ten million animals may be buried along the rivers of northern Siberia. Thousands upon thousands of tusks created a massive ivory trade for the master carvers of China, all from the frozen mammoths and mastodons of Siberia. The famous Beresovka mammoth first drew attention to the preserving properties of being quick-frozen when buttercups were found in its mouth.

What kind of terrible event overtook these millions of creatures in a single day? Well, the evidence suggests an enormous tsunami raging across the land, tumbling animals and vegetation together, to be finally quick-frozen for the next 12000 years. But the extinction was not limited to the Arctic, even if the freezing at colder locations preserved the evidence of Nature's rage.

Paleontologist George G. Simpson considers the extinction of the Pleistocene horse in North America to be one of the most mysterious episodes in zoological history, confessing, "no one knows the answer." He is also honest enough to admit that there is the larger problem of the extinction of many other species in America at the same time. [Simpson, George G., Horses, New York: Oxford University Press) 1961] The horse, giant tortoises living in the Caribbean, the giant sloth, the saber-toothed tiger, the glyptodont and toxodon. These were all tropical animals. These creatures didn't die because of the "gradual onset" of an ice age, "unless one is willing to postulate freezing temperatures across the equator, such an explanation clearly begs the question." [Martin, P. S. & Guilday, J. E., "Bestiary for Pleistocene Biologists", Pleistocene Extinction, Yale University, 1967]

Massive piles of mastodon and saber-toothed tiger bones were discovered in Florida. [Valentine, quoted by Berlitz, Charles, The Mystery of Atlantis (New York, 1969)] Mastodons, toxodons, giant sloths and other animals were found in Venezuela quick-frozen in mountain glaciers. Woolly rhinoceros, giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant jaguars, ground sloths, antelopes and scores of other entire species were all totally wiped out at the same time, at the end of the Pleistocene, approximately 12000 years ago.

This event was global. The mammoths of Siberia became extinct at the same time as the giant rhinoceros of Europe; the mastodons of Alaska, the bison of Siberia, the Asian elephants and the American camels. It is obvious that the cause of these extinctions must be common to both hemispheres, and that it was not gradual. A "uniformitarian glaciation" would not have caused extinctions because the various animals would have simply migrated to better pasture. What is seen is a surprising event of uncontrolled violence. [Leonard, R. Cedric, Appendix A in "A Geological Study of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge", Special Paper No. 1 ( Bethany: Cowen Publishing 1979)] In other words, 12000 years ago, something terrible happened - so terrible that life on earth was nearly wiped out in a single day.

Harold P. Lippman admits that the magnitude of fossils and tusks encased in the Siberian permafrost present an "insuperable difficulty" to the theory of uniformitarianism, since no gradual process can result in the preservation of tens of thousands of tusks and whole individuals, "even if they died in winter." [Lippman, Harold E., "Frozen Mammoths", Physical Geology, (New York 1969)] Especially when many of these individuals have undigested grasses and leaves in their belly. Pleistocene geologist William R. Farrand of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, who is opposed to catastrophism in any form, states: "Sudden death is indicated by the robust condition of the animals and their full stomachs ... the animals were robust and healthy when they died." [Farrand, William R., "Frozen Mammoths and Modern Geology", Science, Vol.133, No. 3455, March 17, 1961] Unfortunately, in spite of this admission, this poor guy seems to have been incapable of facing the reality of worldwide catastrophe represented by the millions of bones deposited all over this planet right at the end of the Pleistocene. Hibben sums up the situation in a single statement: "The Pleistocene period ended in death. This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period, which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all inclusive." [Hibben, op. cit.]

This is the event that Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith discuss in their book, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization. They suggest that, as a result of the above mentioned supernova, Planet Earth encountered a massive "swarm" of cometary bodies that nearly destroyed every living thing on Earth about 12000 years ago. They write:

"Until recently, the astronomical mainstream was highly critical of Clube and Napier's giant comet hypothesis. However, the crash of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in 1994 has led to a change in attitudes. The comet, watched by the world's observatories, was seen split into 20 pieces and slam into different parts of the planet over a period of several days. A similar impact on Earth, it hardly needs saying, would have been devastating."

Readers of my Cassiopaea website and the experiment in superluminal communication that I began in 1992 are aware that this experiment finally bore fruit in 1994 on the very day that the fragments of Comet Shoemaker Levy began impacting the planet Jupiter. We find it amusingly synchronous that one of the themes of the Cassiopaean experiment is planetary destruction via a Comet Cluster that cycles through the solar system every 3,600 years as a consequence of the orbit of our Sun's solar Companion, a smaller, dark, Twin Sun. I discuss this and the Carolina Bays in "The Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive".

With the idea that there is a Cometary Bombardment Cycle, we have naturally been alert to the fact that the last few years have brought increasing evidence that this theory is the correct one. This evidence includes the fantastic increase in the number of "moons" attached to Jupiter that have so recently been "discovered", as well as the increase in frequency of comets over the past few years, along with the astonishing increase in meteorites and fireballs entering Earth's atmosphere and falling to earth. In some cases, these events have resulted in damage to human beings and property, and one recent case even resulted in death.

The third edition of the university textbook Exploration of the Universe, by George O. Abell, published in 1975, informs us that Jupiter has 9 moons as of 1974. It says:

"The outer seven, however, have rather eccentric orbits, some of which have a large inclination to Jupiter's equator. The four most distant satellites revolve from east to west, contrary to the motions of most of the other objects in the solar system. They may be former minor planets captured by Jupier. [p. 324]"

Please note that Abell is suggesting that some of Jupiter's moons have been captured by Jupiter's gravity.

Now let's time travel back to the future, and see what the latest information tells us about Jupiter's moons:

"Jupiter is now given 63 satellites." Forty-seven of those satellites have been discovered since 1999. What if they weren't there before?

What about Saturn. Our 1975 text tells us that Saturn has 10 satellites. In 2007? Well, there are so many that one source declines to give a precise number!

However, counting the named satellites on the Timeline of discovery of solar system planets and their natural satellites gives us a count of 62, with 41 being discovered since 2000 and another ten in the 80's and 90's.

Moving outward, we come to Uranus, given five satellites in 1975, it now has 28, with ten being discovered in the 1980's, six in the 90's, and 7 since 2000.

Neptune had two satellies in 1975, now it has 13.

The explanation given most often to explain this surge in the numbers of satellites for these planets is that telescopes have gotten better. That is, we can see further, with greater detail, and can therefore find things that we couldn't see before. It is an explanation that makes sense. One small problem with this theory is that the "new" moons of Neptune and Uranus showed up before the new moons of Jupiter and Saturn. One would think that powerful telescopes capable of finding moons as far away as the seventh and eighth planets would have found the hard to see moons of the fifth and sixth first.

Another possible explanation, and one which fits with new moons appearing around Nepture and Uranus prior to appearing around Jupiter and Saturn, is that these new moons, or some of them, are objects that have been trapped into orbits around these planets only recently, that they were captured by the gravity of these planets and removed from the incoming comet cloud. Passing the orbits of the outer planets first, they would arrive at the inner planets afterwards.

We also note that the much derided Immanuel Velikovsky, in his book Worlds in Collision, gives a time frame of nine years as the time it would take for a comet to cover the distance between Jupiter and Earth. The new Jovian moons were discovered beginning in the late nineties.

Do the math.

Anybody with eyes and ears and a bit of scientific knowledge can look around and see that something is going on "out there". The problem is, of course, that the masses of humanity are so distracted by all the concerns of everyday life - many of which are quite serious nowadays, especially the threat of nuclear war brought to us by George W. Bush and the Ziocons - that most of them haven't got a clue that they probably don't have to worry about Global Warming. (And just because I say that people don't have to worry about Global Warming doesn't mean they don't have to worry!)The evidence that is all around us nowadays even helps us to realize that there was nothing really magical or mysterious about the story of Noah.

When I read Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" that I realized that the "plagues of the Exodus" was very likely a description of a bombardment of the Earth by rocks and bolides from space. Velikovsky, of course, attributed it to an errant planet Venus that came careening into the solar system just as Firestone et al attribute it to a supernova 41,000 years ago. The Cyclic Comet Cluster related to a Companion Sun explanation is a better fit to all the data, though a supernova could also be involved as well as a "Newcomer" to the Solar System.

In any event, what is perfectly clear is that the story of the Exodus and Noah and the story of Atlantis are apocryphal: many groups of people survived the event of 12,000 years ago here and there, and very likely many of them survived because they realized what was coming. As Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith write:

"It begins with meteors failing like raindrops, a few here and there. Perhaps a few hit the sun, provoking large solar flares. The solar flares provoke colourful auroras even in the daytime sky. Then the day of the comets arrive. From horizon to horizon, growing larger every second, they streaked into the atmosphere, lighting up brighter than the sun."

In the final pages of the final pages of The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization, Firestone et al write:

"If you want more evidence for what happened to the mammoths, you need only to look up at the clear night sky. In almost any month, you can see shooting stars from one of many meteor showers. Nearly every fiery streak you see is the tiny remnant of some giant comet that broke up into smaller pieces. Of course, most of those pieces are microscopic, but their parent comet was not - it was enormous. Astronomers know that, even today, hidden in those cosmic clouds of tiny remnants, there are some huge chunks of comet pieces. We pass through their clouds every year like clockwork, so eventually we will collide with some of bigger pieces.

"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.

"So was this our megafauna killer? All the known facts fit. The comet may have ridden in on the supernova wave, [or was knocked into the solar system by the Companion Sun - LKJ] then gone into orbit around the sun less than 20,000 years ago; or, if it was already here, the supernova debris wave may have knocked it into an Earth-crossing orbit. Either way, any time we look up into the night sky at a beautiful, dazzling display of shooting stars, there is an ominous side to that beauty. We are very likely seeing the leftover debris from a monster comet that finished off 40 million animals 12 to 13,000 years ago.

"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 [or 3,600 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. [...]

"We are years away from being able to control our own destiny as it relates to supernovae and giant comets and asteroids, but scientists are working on solutions. This is not a high priority with the world's governments, however, which typically prefer to confront terrestrial threats rather than cosmic ones. To prevent one of those giant objects from smashing into us, collectively, we spend about $10 to $20 million annually, an amount less than the cost of one or two sophisticated fighter jets. Almost no money is spent trying to detect imminent supernovae [or comets or asteroids].

"Our politicians are seriously underestimating these severe threats, which are capable of ending our species, just as they snuffed out the mammoths a mere 13,000 years ago, only an eyeblink in cosmic terms. There are few threats of that magnitude facing us today. The survival of the human race is not seriously threatened by the avian flu, Al Qaeda attacks, the end of the Age of Oil, monster hurricanes, giant earthquakes, or enormous tsunamis; if any of those occur, most of us will continue with our lives. Furthermore, nothing on that list is broadly accepted as having caused worldwide extinctions in the past. The same cannot be said about supernovae and massive [cometary] impacts. Those two cosmic events are implicated in many of the largest extinctions on our planet over the last millions of years. Fortunately, we survived them, but many of our fellow species did not. Humankind might not survive the next one. It seems reasonable to forgo several of our military fighter jets each year to decrease our chances of being" nuked" from space by a supernova or a comet."

So, indeed, perhaps humanity has passed its "extinct by" date and, just as it was in the days of Noah...

"They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

"Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all."

More like 3.9 stars--generally liked 2/3 of it.......2007-03-17

Gad I love/hate books like this. I think these guys are 75% clearly onto something but the book is not the best-written (my guess as to one reason why it ended up with a dinky New-Age-ish publisher), some of the linking ideas are a bit muddy, and I'm not thrilled with the logic of supernova radiation bath (OK), followed by supernova debris wave (OK), followed by (a stretch to me) comet impacts.

Much better linkage needed to be established between the supernova and the comet appearances other than "they were knocked out of orbit" by the supernova--that's kitchen table physics; the kind of thinking about how the "out there" physical world works based on small scale home observation. If that was in fact the case, then the comet(s) could have come from nearly any direction, but the authors make minor hay of the idea that the comet(s) came from the same direction in the sky as the alleged supernova. The physics of orbital dynamics is not the same thing as the physics of making shots in a game of pool (meaning if you get your pool cue, the moon, and the Earth all in a line, and tap the orbiting moon with your cue, it's not going to sail straight at the Earth).

Oddly, the book by a certified expert in orbital dynamics, astronomer Tom Van Flandern ("Dark Matter, Missing Planets, and New Comets" from another metaphysical rinky-dink press) maintains that the comets are debris produced by the explosion of a gas-giant planet within our solar system. All comet orbits, he claims, roughly trace back to a single point of origin. His is yet another frustrating book full of stupendous insights and appalling credibility-blowing observations (he doesn't rule out the possibility that aliens blew up the planet!). Do some of these writers intentionally sabotage their own work?

Otherwise, the authors of this book make note of a lot of in-the-face oddities that other scientists should have been all over ages ago, like the Carolina bay "craters" (the accepted theories for their formation almost sound like pseudo-science) and the "Black Mat"--a layer of organic material that, beneath a certain level in the soil, seems to blanket nearly everything in North America, and dates to the extinction of the mega-fauna 13,000 years ago. We all know mainstream scientists are conservative, but to ignore this "Mat" and its potential implications one would have to be fossilized.

So you should probably pick this up and add it to the stack of variable-quality outsider Ancient Catastrophe books. It's better and more straight-up than nearly all of them. The authors need to push the supernova of 40,000 years ago theory; it's well-argued and palatable for stone-sober science types. They're over their heads on the comet impact idea for 13,000 years ago, though. Something big happened back then (at least that's what all the natives tell us), and it may have been a comet, but other ideas need to be examined and worked out more comprehensively.

To conclude on a sour note, few legit scientists seem to read these things (most won't jeopardize their reputations by even being seen with copies), and they'll instead get read and critiqued generally by people looking for Atlantis, or ley lines, or ancient astronauts. In other words the biggest fans will probably contribute to keeping the material at the margins of acceptance or consideration. The atrocious cover and title alone will keep this forever out of the hands of academics--it's up there with Chris Dunn's "The Giza Power Station," an amazing and thought-provoking book with cover art so insufferably knuckleheaded that I'm ashamed to show it to people.

Marketing.

You can tell a "soft science"..........2007-03-16

You can tell a "soft science" when it's central dogmas can be permanently disrupted by a physicist messing around in his spare time. The best example is how you can still detect the "post-traumatic-stress" in the voices of paleontologists even decades after "Comet Alvarez" crashed their party. Hey, they had a century head-start and like Ted Turner says, they should be prepared to "Lead, follow, or get out of the way..."

Firestone and his colleagues may be initiating a repeat along the same lines as Walter Alvarez and his stalwarts did with the K/T extinction back in the 1980's. While this book has it's minor flaws, there seems to be enough evidence here to foresee the demise of the overkill theory of megafaunal extinction. And not a minute too soon. As a big fan of Vine Deloria's Red Earth, White Lies, I found this both predictable and highly entertaining. So, just as Dr. Alvarez found pieces of the "smoking bullet" spread around the planet, so also Firestone and his colleagues have found impressive evidence sprayed out onto vast areas of North America at the exact end of the so-called Clovis era. Mark your calender and start counting how many decades it takes the overkill advocates to die off...

Yet, evidence, and interpretation-of-evidence are two different things. The evidence convinces that the Clovis era and it's embattled beasties came to a sudden demise by an extraterrestrial cause. But what was that cause? Firestone and crew interpret the evidence in ways that suggest a nearby supernovae set the whole deadly chain of events in motion. Even if the evidence is solid for a group of related cataclysms, is a supernove, per se, the best or only explanation? I have only gotten 3/4's of the way through the book and I am not yet wholly sold on that. One can take a leisurely look at pictures of the Crab nebula and ponder the 6 light year diameter remnant, 6300 light years distant, as it expands at 600 miles per second. Would such an event deliver enough mass in particles to fill the entire expanding spherical shell so densely that, after traveling hundreds of light years.... it could still plausibly deliver swarms of impactors to earth to form the Carolina Bays? It seems that the surface area of the spherical shell would be too great. Could smaller particles enter the atmosphere fast enough to embed themselves in Mammoth tusks, without also having had enough velocity to burn up much higher above ground before they could reach the surface? It seems there is something wrong here, but perhaps the explanation is that the particles found embedded in the tusks were like secondary cosmic rays: just fragments of much larger chunks of hypervelocity bodies that did detonate at high altitudes. Who knows? Maybe the particles found embedded in the tree trunks at the Tunguska ground zero will be instructive here.

If a supernovae did the dirty deed, we should be able to find the remnant, or at very least a huge cavity in the interstellar gases within our neighborhood of the Milky Way. If, on the other hand, it is implausible that a supernovae could deliver such mass and disruption to our solar system at Firestone's proposed distance of hundreds of light years, than perhaps a more modest cataclysm at closer range might better explain the evidence. Is there anything in the solar sytem that suggests such an explosive event? Perhaps, but the time scales do not jive. Pardon the digression but I refer to Thom VanFlandern's theory on the origin of comets. If Thom VanFlandern is correct, something very interesting happened in the solar system about 3.2 million years ago. Whatever could have caused that event, could also have deposited alot of hell on earth, but again, the time scales do not jive.

So, the book is an A+ for the evidence it presents, and a solid "A" for the theory of causation. This is a must-read book. It is another wonderful proof of the notion that the difference between dinosaurs and men might turn out to be due to the work of physicists. Not to suggest that "soft" scientists are like dinosaurs...but you know, it might just turn out that way....once again.

A "must-read" book on a massive cosmic event.......2006-12-16

"The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes" is a must-read for any thinking and aware person. First, the evidence amassed is overwhelming that an ET/ELE (extraterrestrial/extinction level event) took place at some point in the past, culminating in a massive event at about 12,500 yrs BP. The authors of the book, most specifically Allen West and Richard Firestone, and I all totally agree something happened that was cosmic, catastrophic, and sudden. Firestone and I do not disagree, but rather are dealing with different levels of causality. For instance, whatever happened started with the Big Bang. Much later in time, there is no question but that supernovae did take place relatively near our solar system and those supernovae, or even one, must have had some effect on our sun ranging from ~ 0.1% to X%. I am focused on the immediate causation for what happened at about 12,500 yrs BP, and personally I see no way out of concluding that that event involved a massive and lethal neutron event, as you can read on a paper entitled, "Response to Comments" on Bob Kobres website, which makes the evidence clear.

Considering all of the available evidence that involves a massive neutron event, inverse radiocarbon resets from 14C being produced in situ, and the worldwide pattern as noted in the piece above, my own conviction is that only a giant solar flare could have done or caused all that happened, and it was over in one very, very bad day. If readers take some time to investigate giant solar flares, they will find the necessary conditions: antimatter to obliterate much of the atmosphere, entrapped neutrons in the flare's magnetic field, and a relatively short time span of less than one earth day which fits the evidence completely.

There also is a tantalizing clue in the book that indicates "they saw it coming" and got out. I believe my own view, which is that Paleo-Indians travelled by boat (probably skin), now is the prevailing view which would explain the lack of any human remains at all, particularly teeth. About the only thing they could have seen coming was a giant flare manifested by greatly increased solar activity. Flares arrive at varying speeds.

Radiocarbon dating does work, but the evidence at hand strongly suggests (if not proves) that before ~ 12,500 yrs BP nobody can say much of anything at all about "real dates" because of the production of 14C in a younger direction. This raises the interesting possibility, suggested as far back as the 1960's, that Paleo-Indian actually is a Mousterian (European) tradition. Mousterian toolkits remained virtually unchanged for about 200,000 years (depending on which sources indicate what dates) while later prehistoric toolkits persisted (in terms of style) for perhaps ~ 500 yrs. Most importantly, again as noted in the web-published piece, if the dates for Lewisville are as old as the most recent radiocarbon dates suggest, and lignite was NOT in the firepits), then as two world-class scholars have concluded that the only difference between European Solutrean and American Paleo-Indian are identical with the once exception of "fluting" not present in Solutrean, then the most logical conclusion is that European Solutrean derived from a longstanding American Mousterian tradition when those American Mousterians (and I am NOT saying Neanderthals) crossed back across the North Atlantic. In that event, which I believe to be the case, we (or I) are/am ruffling feathers but so be it.

One thing is certain about this book. The evidence at hand did not come from dedicated work and enormous salaries and expenditures at laboratories and universities, but rather from a dedicated and somewhat obsessive small group of people both professional and avocational who spent many years and very much of their own monies at this project. In and of itself, this is a "must read" for anyone in the world who wants to know how much, if not most scientific discovery, actually comes about.

William H. Topping, Ph.D.

This well-written book reads like a captivating detective story and, in my view, is the best available popular account of the gr.......2006-10-15

Availing themselves of various sciences and mythology, the authors of this volume postulate a cosmic event--a supernova--that occurred 41,000 years ago and culminated some 13,000 years ago in sudden warming and the fifth mass extinction. Like other investigators, they believe that humanity remembers this catastrophe in its legends.

They present the available evidence in a systematic fashion, which makes it easy to follow their argument. This well-written book reads like a captivating detective story and, in my view, is the best available popular account of the great ice-age calamity that significantly shaped humanity's cultural evolution.

Copyright ©2006 by Georg Feuerstein. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in any form requires prior permission from Traditional Yoga Studies at www.traditionalyogastudies.com

Cosmic Catastrophes: Exploding Stars, Black Holes, and Mapping the Universe

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Excellent book
Cosmic catastrophies by J. Craig Wheeler
How stars work
The biggest explosions

Cosmic Catastrophes: Exploding Stars, Black Holes, and Mapping the Universe
J. Craig Wheeler
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521857147

Book Description

From supernovae and gamma-ray bursts to the accelerating Universe, this is an exploration of the intellectual threads that lead to some of the most exciting ideas in modern astrophysics and cosmology. This fully updated second edition incorporates new material on binary stars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, worm-holes, quantum gravity and string theory. It covers the origins of stars and their evolution, the mechanisms responsible for supernovae, and their progeny, neutron stars and black holes. It examines the theoretical ideas behind black holes and their manifestation in observational astronomy and presents neutron stars in all their variety known today. This book also covers the physics of the twentieth century, discussing quantum theory and Einstein's gravity, how these two theories collide, and the prospects for their reconciliation in the twenty-first century. This will be essential reading for undergraduate students in astronomy and astrophysics, and an excellent, accessible introduction for a wider audience.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book.......2007-07-22

This book probably has some of the best descriptions for novae and supernovae, that I have seen, for non-scientists.

Cosmic catastrophies by J. Craig Wheeler.......2005-08-28

Highly recommended for the cosmically curious who does not have the mathmatical background. It is easy to understand and well written.

How stars work.......2001-02-26

I found this book a complete surprise. From the title, I expected only a story about explosions and collisions but this book is much, much more. It provides really brilliant descriptions of how all kinds of stars evolve and how they regulate their energy production. After reading this book I fully understood why aging stars produce more energy but are cooler than they were in their youth. A minor complaint might be that the content is not well organized. A type 1A supernova is explained here and a type 2 there and later some more about 1A etc. But, I shouldn't dwell on a quibble. This is a terrific book. After reading it I'll never think of iron or nickel in quite the same way again.

The biggest explosions.......2000-10-06

There seems to be an aspect of human nature that wants to search out and discover things that are the most extreme in their class. People just seem to love record setters. This is a book about cosmic record setters. Within its pages Wheeler describes the biggest, most energetic, oldest, densest, things in the universe. If cosmic record holders hold any interest for you, then I think you'll find this book as enjoyable as I did.

Wheeler begins his book by describing how stars form, how they evolve in response to gravity, how they ignite, how they burn, and eventually how they die. This is a logical introduction, since virtually all the examples of cosmic catastrophes involve stars in one form or another. Like people, though, the life of each star is unique - and the end times are very different. Wheeler does an excellent job of describing the negative feedback process that stabilizes solar activity. If the star generates too much heat it expands. This expansion reduces the temperature, and throttles back on the rate of nuclear fusion. If the star cools down it contracts, and the contraction heats it up again, keeping the rate of fusion at a remarkably constant level for long periods of time during the stars life.

Much of Wheeler's text is actually about how stars evolve. This is important because to understand their deaths, you need to understand how they are born and how they evolve over their lifetimes. Their deaths are frequently the most interesting parts of the story because they are often involved with the catastrophes that are the book's principal thesis. While I bought the book because of its discussion about cosmic catastrophes, I found it valuable for its descriptions of stellar evolution alone. This includes a nice description of the "solar-neutrino" problem as well as a nice explanation of the red-giant phase, and especially the last stages during the life of a massive star that explodes in a super nova.

The foundational understanding of the basics of stellar evolution makes it easier to follower Wheeler as he takes the reader on a tour of the major players in cosmic catastrophes: white dwarfs, super novae (of many different types), neutron stars, black holes, and gamma-ray bursts. Wheeler's descriptions of these phenomena (to the extent that modern science understands them) are among the best I've seen in a popular science textbook. There is also a smattering of discussion about the origin of the universe in the Big Bang, and some interesting speculation about time (and space) travel using black holes.

In any book dealing with modern cosmology and astronomy there are inevitable discussions about the nature of space and time and how they fit together with Einstein's theory of general relativity. Most such books have at least one figure showing a funnel-shaped construct with grid lines converging as they swoop into the tapering end where the black hole resides. Wheeler uses lots of such diagrams. However, I think he does a better job than most at helping the reader understand what the diagrams illustrate. More importantly, he helps the reader understand what the diagrams do not illustrate, and their limitations (he dispels some common misperceptions about these sorts of figures). I especially enjoyed Wheeler's explanations about how one might (with the application of the appropriate mental acrobatics) use the diagrams to actually envision what is really going on in our multi-dimensional world.

Another thing I liked about Wheeler's book is the clear and frequent illustrations. For the most part the author has anticipated those places where prose just cannot quite complete the mental picture. When this happens there is inevitably a well-constructed diagram that finishes the concept and makes things clear. There was one exception, however. Figure 7.3 really needs to have an arrow or circle marking the location of SN 1987A. [I'm pretty sure I found it, but the exposure changes between the photographs, and so I'm not quite sure. It would have been nice to have the author's help in preventing a false identification.]

Reading this book one gets the sense that even though it is a qualitative description of astronomy (there are no equations) Wheeler is not over simplifying. His discussion of super novae, for example, lists many classes and describes theoretical uncertainties that other authors gloss over or ignore all together. Of course there is much more detail to super novae than what is in Wheeler's book. But at the qualitative level Wheeler leaves the reader understanding that there are many classifications of super novae, that some of the boundaries between classifications are not always so clear cut, and that we still don't know a lot about how some types form, and how other types explode. These are concepts that other popular science textbooks don't always convey. I think the only thing missing from the chapters on super novae is a table that summarizes all the different types and some of their descriptive identifiers.

Unlike some popular science texts, Wheeler devotes quite a bit of time describing the evolution of binary stars, which play an important role in some of the greatest cosmic catastrophes. I think he does an especially good job of qualitatively describing accretion disks, and how they fit in the context of mass transfer in binary systems. It's this mass transfer that is ultimately involved in some of the most spectacular catastrophes in the sky.

Book Description

A breakthrough of enormous proportions, this multidisciplinary study examines evidence of a great catastrophe that occurred 11,500 years ago.

Customer Reviews:

CATACTYSM: COMPELLING EVIDENCE OF A COSMIC CATASTROPHE IN 9500 B.C........2007-09-09

This is an amazing book of scientific fact. I have read, over the years, various accounts of advanced civilizations, from Egypt to the Americas, and other accounts of the so-called "Noa's Ark" that all resulted from unknown calamities that went unexplained. This book pulls it all together and offers a clear explanation as to what probably took place 11,500 years ago!

John McCauley

He who laughs last, laughs best!.......2007-06-24

Some comments about this book:

1.) A book with an odd or even incorrect theory can be of enormous utility if it illustrates, documents and footnotes a large number of scientific anomalies. Aside from the many books of William Corliss, this book must be near the top of the heap in that category. You can enjoy this book and even cherish it without accepting the specific theory that the book proposes as an explanation of all the anomalies it reports.

2.) The book proposes a cosmic cataclysm about 11,500 BC. In order to get a wonderful primer on how these authors may indeed have the "best and last laugh" even regarding the essential correctness of their theory..., use Google to find a set of videos on YouTube with these search terms: Comet Catastrophe 12,500 BP (before present). There are seven video segments with almost an hour of material from a recent, (May 2007) meeting of professional geologists (the American Geophysical Union meeting). Watch these video segments, and then buy a copy of Cataclysm! Then also buy the Book by Richard Firestone. If you buy and read both of these books, I think you will agree that some of the reviewers who have slammed Cataclysm may find themselves changing their minds. Yes there were ice ages, but there were also sudden extreme events - such as the one that brought on the so-called Younger Dryas, a 1200 year cold spell before the end of the last ice age.

3.) In the 4th segment of YouTube video: Comet Catastrophe, note that one of the scientists answers a question from the audience about whether there were any North American Indian legends that might contain recollections of the event. His answer is yes. And if you buy Cataclysm!, you will be able to read alot of excerpts of such stories. And if those excerpts intrigue you (as they did me), the copious footnotes will help you find the original source materials.

What other books should you buy if you find that you like this one? Buy all the books by Irish Dendrochronologist Mike Baillie and his co-authors. These books will introduce you to how long tree-ring chronologies are telling us about several abrupt, global climate disasters in the past 5000 years that may have been caused by impacts or interactions with comets. Buy a used, hardcover copy of Ragnarok by Ignatius Donnelly, wherein you can read a wonderful summary of evidences from human mythologies that led Donnelly to opine (in 1880 !!!) that Earth has been hit by a comet at least once during the tenure and written memory of mankind. (Donnelly was so far ahead of his time, that he is still ahead of ours...) And then familiarize yourself with the wonderful body of work on the K/T boundary through a tome like GSA Special Publication 356 or something like it. The reason for the latter is because Firestone and his colleagues are going to precipitate the same type of revolution in paleontology that Alvarez and his co-workers wrought in the 1980's by hypothesizing and then proving that Earth was struck by a speeding asteroid. Alot of the evidence for the Younger Dryas event is similar, and some of the same investigators who found critical chemical clues in the K/T boundary layers are doing so again in the end-Clovis "black mat." Also, I recommend all the books by Clube, Napier and Bailey - most especially Cosmic Winter, Cosmic Serpent and the Origin of Comets.

Lastly, keep your eyes open for a Discovery Channel special with a similar title: Comet Catastrophe. This special, which has apparently already aired in Canada, will feature Dr. Dallas Abbott and a colleague Dee Breger in program that will discuss powerful evidence of an Indian Ocean impact about 5000 years ago that left an 18 mile crater under 2.5 miles of water, and a 1/4 mile thick tsunami deposit 45 kilometers across on the southern shores of Madagascar.

So what does all this mean? It means that the surface of the Earth is a more dangerous place than most astronomers (especially on this side of the Atlantic) think. It means that there have been significant impact events at least once and perhaps dozens of times during the written memory of men on the Earth. It means that it would be really smart for us to pay attention to all these scientific developments and to respond in thoughtful ways to the warning being delivered by living voices, and also the warnings delivered to us in many myths and legends.

A fascinating read.......2007-01-09

The authors make a most compelling presentation of this very unorthodox interpretation of recent geology. The story is so good that it makes you wish it were literally true, perhaps it is. I can only hope that other scientists will take it seriously and subject it to the ultimate scientific test, falsifiability.

Exposing establishment lies.......2006-05-07

The establishment must pan a work of this nature. It threatens their very being, their status, their intelligence, even their ability to procreate with high quality members of the opposite sex.
It's easy for the establishment to find problems in this kind of work as it covers in a few pages what could be done in a million.
Almost everything that is today written about pre-history must go through the biases of the establishment. That means that disorder is ordered (the facts are bent) to satisfy these biases. A quick look at the book, "Forbidden Archaeology," reveals the wholesale bending of the truth by the establishment and its destruction of anything and anyone that disagrees with the current paradigm.
I for one am tired of these establishment lies and thrilled at a chance to see what human pre-history may really have been like.

An Important Book.......2005-10-30

The publisher and authors of Cataclysm are to be congratulated for not dumbing down the prodigious amount of scientific material indicating a cataclysm occurring aobut 11,000 years ago. Finally, we now have all the references and sources that are just passingly referred to in other catastrophe books. This is an important book; one that bases surprising conclusions on the scientific evidence and not speculation or wishful thinking.

APOCALYPSE WHEN?: COSMIC CATASTROPHE AND THE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE

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APOCALYPSE WHEN?: COSMIC CATASTROPHE AND THE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE
Frank Close
Manufacturer: William Morrow and Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J3LOGC

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Apocalypse When?: Cosmic Catastrophe and the Fate of the Universe
Frank Close
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The blackout of civilization and beyond: A searching Scriptural analysis of the cosmic catastrophe into which the world is plunging, the essential causes ... and the program of the coming world ruler

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The blackout of civilization and beyond: A searching Scriptural analysis of the cosmic catastrophe into which the world is plunging, the essential causes ... and the program of the coming world ruler
Carlyle Boynton Haynes
Manufacturer: Southern Pub. Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Things That Go Bump In The Night

Cosmic Catastrophes
Clark R. Chapman , and David Morrison
Manufacturer: Plenum Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Customer Reviews:

Things That Go Bump In The Night.......2000-05-08

The scientist authors of this interesting book discuss a variety of topics dealing with sudden, often destructive, cosmic events. Since the 1800s geologists felt that the earth and the cosmos followed a concept of uniformitarianism, i.e. that cosmic and geologic evolution had proceeded at a gradual, steady state. The main catastrophists were religious people who viewed Noah's flood as an absolute reality. In recent years scientists have come to accept the significant effect that meteorite impacts have had on the earth, moons, and our other terrestrial planets. This is not to say that the authors accept any of the theories of creationists or writers like Velikovsky. They do not (some time is spent debunking these theories). Instead they explore how various heavenly bodies - asteroids, comets, and meteors - have caused abrupt changes on earth and elsewhere.

Interesting tales are also told of several of the moons in our solar system. Uranus's moon Miranda looks like it was once torn to pieces by an impact, and then reformed as a patchwork quilt of rock formations going in all different directions. There is a chapter on chaos in which we explore Saturn's fascinating little moon Hyperion. This moon seems to have a mind of its own, ignoring all the laws by changing its rotation speed and spin axis for no apparent reason. And, it never repeats an orbital performance twice!

The most recent theory of the origin of the earth's moon is presented. There is a section on supernovae, - don't worry our sun will never become one- and there is a discussion of the atmospheres of Venus and Mars, and what they teach us about the greenhouse effect. Will global warming be our downfall? What are the chances of another large meteor striking the earth and causing another mass extinction? The authors' conclusions seem well reasoned.

Customer Reviews:

A Great Scientific American Focus Book.......2002-11-13

This an excellent short textbook of what has happened to life on earth after small and grand extra-terrestrial collisions from comets and/or asteroids. Scientists now believe that cosmic collision shaped our solar system. The book starts off with the planet Jupiter being pounded by fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy in the summer of 1994. This book also talks about the evolution of the universe, life on our planet, the origin of our moon, the fate of the dinosaurs, etc. Did the dinosaurs become extinct because of a huge cosmic collision 65 million years ago? Scientist seems to think so because of the evidence of the huge Chicxulub crater located at the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. A gem of a book explaining ancient earth history and life on planet Earth.

"Cosmic Collisions" hits the mark.......1998-03-17

The folks at Scientific American produced a true gem with "Cosmic Collisions." Although clearly written for a younger group of readers, this book provides very imformative background information on cosmic impacts past, present and future.

"Cosmic Collisions" hits the mark.......1998-03-17

The smooth, steady pace of the writing, as well as liberal use of photographs and illustrations, complement the depth of the text. For such a small book, it is indeed a wonderful primer for adults and youngsters who are interested in this timely topic.

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Cosmic Heretics: A Personal History of Attempts to Establish and Resist Theories of Quantavolution and Catastrophe in the Natural and Human Sciences (The Quantavolution series)
Alfred De Grazia
Manufacturer: Metron Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0940268086

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