Adventures With Cassiopaea

Chapter 30

Until recently, impacts by extraterrestrial bodies were regarded as, perhaps, an interesting but certainly not an important phenomenon in the spectrum of geological process affecting the Earth. As we have seen, this has only been the case since Lyell, Laplace and Newton put a period to such speculations. What seems to have happened is that, through repeated cataclysms, man has been brought low, relegated to darkness regarding his history, and at the very point when he began to study and analyze his environment objectively, religion stepped in and put a period to such ideas. Velikovsky's work was vilified by the scientific community, and shortly after, there came an onslaught of ideas promoting extraterrestrials as the source of civilizational anomalies and then, of course, the famous 10^th Planet hypothesis to explain away planetary disruptions that could not be adequately concealed.

The question is, why? What, in the name of all things reasonable, would prompt anyone to wish to hide these matters? What kind of sick mind would divert the attention of humanity away from what is evident all over the planet to those with open eyes, and promote so assiduously ideas that mislead, misguide, and generally placate the populace with an assurance that either nothing is going to happen, or if it does, it will be preceded by a long period of approach by a body that is well organized and clearly seen, and that the government can probably "fix it?"

Well, the clue is right there: "placate the populace." Control.

But, Heavenly days! What kind of lunatics would want to keep everything under control in that sense if they have some idea that they, themselves, might be destroyed by the very processes they are concealing?

Obviously, they don't think so. Obviously, they think they have a plan. And that suggests that, obviously, they know a lot more about what's going on, what the possibilities and probabilities are than the rest of us. One of the "official views" of the subject that is available to the public tells us:

Our concept of the importance of impact processes, however, has been changed radically through planetary exploration, which has shown that virtually all planetary surfaces are cratered from the impact of interplanetary bodies. […] The Earth, as part of the solar system, experienced the same bombardment as the other planetary bodies.

Most of the terrestrial impact craters that ever formed, however, have been obliterated by other terrestrial geological processes. Some examples, however remain. To-date, approximately 150 impact craters have been identified on Earth. Almost all known craters have been recognized since 1950 and several new structures are found each year.

Meteorite fragments are found only at the smallest craters and they are quickly destroyed in the terrestrial environment. […]

Although the number of known impact craters on Earth is relatively small, the preserved sample is an extremely important resource for understanding impact phenomena. They provide the only ground-truth data currently available and are amenable to extensive geological, geophysical and geochemical study. […] In some cases, the large size of terrestrial impact craters, up to approximately 300 km in diameter, requires orbital imagery and observation to provide an overall view of their structure and large-scale context. [...]

The tendency to discount impact processes as a factor in the Earth's more recent geologic history was severely challenged by the interpretation in 1980 that Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary sediments worldwide were due to a major impact event and that impact was the causal agent for a mass extinction event. The acceptance of the K-T impact hypothesis by the more general terrestrial geoscience community was not instantaneous and considerable controversy and debate was generated. Today, there are few workers who would deny that there is abundant diagnostic evidence that a major impact event occurred at the K-T boundary. It is fair to say, however, there is less consensus on the role of impact in the associated mass extinction event, with some workers still having difficulty in accepting impact-related processes as the cause.

The impact signal of the K-T event is recognizable globally, because large impact events have the capacity to blow out a hole in the atmosphere above the impact site, permitting some impact materials to be dispersed globally by the impact fireball, which rises above the atmosphere. These materials do not require atmospheric winds for dispersal and have the capacity to encircle the globe in relatively short-time periods, before eventually returning to the surface. Model calculations indicate that it does not require a K-T-sized event, which produced the buried 180 km diameter Chicxulub impact structure in the Yucatan, Mexico, to result in atmospheric blowout. Relatively small impact events, resulting in impact structures in the 20 km size-range can produce atmospheric blowout. […]

From estimates of the terrestrial cratering rate, the frequency of K-T-sized events on Earth is of the order of one every 50-100 million years. Smaller, but still significant impact events, occur on shorter time scales and will affect the terrestrial climate and biosphere to varying degrees. The formation of impact craters as small as 20 km could produce light reductions and temperature disruptions similar to a nuclear winter. […]

The most fragile component of the present environment, however, is modern human civilization, which is highly dependent on an organized and technologically complex infrastructure for its survival. […] There is little doubt that if civilization lasts long enough, it will suffer severely or may even be destroyed by an impact event. […]

[A]n impact anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean by a body 400 m in diameter would devastate the coasts on both sides of the ocean with wave runups of over 60 m. The 1960 tsunami, generated by a magnitude 8.6 Chilean earthquake, is thought to have been the largest this century. An impact-generated tsunami 10 times more powerful will occur with a typical recurrence time of a few 1000 years.

Small impacting bodies release their energy in the atmosphere, as an air burst. The threshold size at which this is exceeded depends on the strength of the impacting body. For example, iron impacting bodies up to 20 m will deposit their energy in the atmosphere and not reach the surface; whereas, comets as large as 200 m will deposit their energy in the atmosphere. Such air burst explosions, fortunately, are not efficient at delivering their energy to the ground, because some of initial energy is blown into space. The Tunguska event in 1908 was due to the atmospheric explosion of a relatively small, approximately few tens of metres, body at an altitude of 10 km. The energy released, has been estimated to be 10-100 megatons TNT equivalent. Although the air blast resulted in the devastation of 2000 sq. km of Siberian forest, there was no loss of human life due to the very sparse population. Events such as Tunguska occur on a time-scale of 100's of years. […]

The next large impact with the Earth could be an "impact-winter"-producing event or even a K-T-sized event. To emphasize this point, in March 1989 an asteroidal body named 1989 FC passed within 700,000 km of the Earth. This Earth-crossing body was not discovered until it had passed the Earth. It is estimated to be in the 0.5 km size-range, capable of producing a Zhamanshin-sized crater or a devastating tsunami. Although 700,000 km is a considerable distance, it translates to a miss of the Earth by only a few hours, when orbital velocities are considered. At present, no systems or procedures are in place, specifically for mitigating the effects of an impact. [C.R. Chapman and D. Morrison, 1989, Cosmic Catastrophes, Plenum Press, New York, 302 p. T. Gehrels (ed.), 1994, Hazards due to Comets and Asteroids. Univ. Arizon Press, Tucson, 1300 p. R.A.F. Grieve, 1990, Impact cratering on the Earth, Scientific American, v. 262, 66-73. A.R. Hildebrand, 1993, The Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary impact (or the dinosaurs didn't have a chance): Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, v. 87, p. 77-118.]

The conclusion that the astute reader will have drawn from the previous chapters will be that the inner solar system experiences swarms of comets/asteroids on a fairly regular schedule. One major swarm comes at 3600 year intervals, and there are minor swarms at other intervals, and these cycles are sub-cycles of even larger swarms at hundreds of thousands of year intervals, and even million year intervals. The massive bombardment of the East Coast of the U.S. around 12,000 to 12,500 years ago resulting in the Carolina Bays is evidence of the great number and relatively small sizes of many of these bodies, indicating that they released their energy into the air above the ground, similar to the Tunguska event. Keep in mind, of course, that the air blast of a single small body over Tunguska resulted in the devastation of 2000 sq. km of Siberian forest. This pretty much confirms the C's remark about this, made on 08-22-98:

Q: (L) Okay, we would like to know what was this famous explosion in Tunguska?
A: Comet fragment.

This would also explain many other discontinuities in history that have destroyed centers of civilization without necessarily leaving any impact craters. Such events would also be viewed by uneducated peoples as "the wars of the gods." Of course, larger asteroid type bodies are also well represented in the geological record with impact craters being discovered every day.

At present, the Carolina Bays are numbered at somewhere around 500,000. I want the reader to just stop and think about that for a minute. Think about 500,000 Tunguska like events. Forget movies like "Armageddon" or "Deep Impact" where there is a single "big one" and the government can save us. Instead, go rent the movie "Asteroid," and watch the rain of rocks on New York City for a much better idea of what we are talking about. The effect will be similar, only it may occur over the entire globe. Then just think about the fact that the Carolina Bay phenomenon covers several states. Put that together with the evidence of "nuclear" explosions in the great lakes regions, as well as other areas, dated to about the same time, and consider that most interesting fact, reported in the news quite recently, that one of the largest asteroids known to have approached the Earth zipped past about 450,000 kilometres away on March 8, 2002 - but nobody recorded it until four days later. Yes, a miss is as good as a mile, but these "near misses" have been occurring with greater and greater frequency in recent years. This could be seen as a result of increased observational ability, or it could be because we are already experiencing the first influx of a swarm of such bodies entering the inner solar system.

New Scientist magazine said that the object was "hard to spot because it was moving outward from the innermost point of its orbit, 87 million km from the Sun. When it passed closest to the Earth - just 1.2 times the distance to the Moon - it was too close to the Sun to be visible. Asteroids approaching from this blind spot cannot be seen by astronomers. If a previously unknown object passed through this zone on a collision course with Earth, it would not be identified until it was too late for any intervention."

How many other "blind spots" are there?

How many other "objects" are out there zipping this way? How many of them are in "swarms" where any single one of them would not produce a "global" event, but taken together, could destroy our civilization and leave almost no trace of their activity other than the widespread destruction?

With just the brief review we have presented, it seems obvious by now that human civilization very likely has had a very different history than the standard teachings will admit. In the previous chapters, we have presented only a tip of the iceberg of evidence. This evidence is available to the researcher who is diligent, thorough, and refuses to accept the material propagated in popular, mass market books written by authors who either have not searched widely and deeply enough, or who have an agenda. Yes, it may be a bit harder to get, because it seems that the numerous government sponsored scientific studies on the periodic rains of comets/asteroids are concealed behind obscure titles in technical journals, or on microfiche in university libraries. But with persistence, the material can be gathered together, examined, and extrapolated upon.

Continue to page 263

The owners and publishers of these pages wish to state that the material presented here is the product of our research and experimentation in Superluminal Communication. We invite the reader to share in our seeking of Truth by reading with an Open, but skeptical mind. We do not encourage "devotee-ism" nor "True Belief." We DO encourage the seeking of Knowledge and Awareness in all fields of endeavor as the best way to be able to discern lies from truth. The one thing we can tell the reader is this: we work very hard, many hours a day, and have done so for many years, to discover the "bottom line" of our existence on Earth. It is our vocation, our quest, our job. We constantly seek to validate and/or refine what we understand to be either possible or probable or both. We do this in the sincere hope that all of mankind will benefit, if not now, then at some point in one of our probable futures.

Contact Webmaster at cassiopaea.com
Copyright © 1997-2009 Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. All rights reserved. "Cassiopaea, Cassiopaean, Cassiopaeans," is a registered trademark of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.
Letters addressed to Cassiopaea, Quantum Future School, Ark or Laura, become the property of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Republication and re-dissemination of the contents of this screen or any portion of this website in any manner is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.

You are visitor number [an error occurred while processing this directive] .