On April 15, we should take time to reflect on the sinking of Titanic

As April 15 arrives, it is fitting to consider the maritime tragedy that took place on this day in 1912, when the ship known as the Titanic (or was it really the Olympic, as some have alleged here and here?) struck an iceberg and sank to the depth of 12,415 feet below the surface of the ocean, with terrible loss of life: 1,502 souls.

As I write, it is almost 2:20 am on April 15 on the east coast of the United States, the time that the ship finally plunged beneath the sea, after striking an iceberg around 11:40 pm on the night of April 14, 1912.

The ship's final resting place, in a deep abyss at the foot of the steep continental slope of North America, was discovered in 1985.  The map below shows the continental shelf in lighter blue, and the distinct line between the lighter blue and the darker blue indicates the precipitous plunge where the continental shelf drops down to the deep abyssal ocean bottom.  The precipice that marks the edge of the continental shelf is called the continental slope.

The characteristic shape of the continental shelf and continental slope along the edge of all the continents around the world is a strong argument in favor of the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown.  Dr. Brown points out that the edges of the continents as we see them today do not really fit together, but that the edges of the continental shelves do fit together much more closely.  According to his theory, this is because the eruption of trapped water during the catastrophic flood event actually blasted away the sediments to create the steep continental slopes we see today.

Below is a series of images from Google Maps, showing the region where the wreck of the ship lies not far south of the steep cliff of the continental slope south of Newfoundland:

In the image below, which is a "zoomed-in" image of the map above, the submarine canyons plunging down the sides of the steep continental shelf are clearly visible.  These are found carved into the precipice slopes of the continental shelf at locations around the world, and have been discussed extensively in previous posts as a powerful argument in favor of the hydroplate theory:

Imagine being in a ship sailing across the ocean's surface, knowing that below your feet is water with a depth of over 12, 400 feet.  That is quite a thought.  It is horrible to contemplate the idea that the ship's architectural integrity would fail, sending the it into the deep to plunge through miles of frigid waters to the canyons below.

The human tragedy of the event that night in 1912 is vividly conveyed in the words of the late Eva Hart, a survivor of the sinking of the Titanic.  She was seven years old when she and her parents were offered a passage on the Titanic instead of the Philadelphia, which was delayed due to a coal-miners' strike which left many ships unable to obtain the fuel they needed for the Atlantic crossing.  In the video below, Ms Hart describes the premonition of disaster her mother felt upon learning of the change in vessels.  Eva Hart and her mother were rescued, as described in the interview, but she lost her father and her mother lost her husband in the disaster, as did many other survivors:

Note that in the interview, Ms Hart says that the Californian was clearly in view from the lifeboats, and was not nineteen miles away as shown in the first map above (in that map, miles are labeled as "mil" for some reason, and the distance to the Californian is listed as "19 mil" but with a question mark, to indicate that this figure is disputed).

On this fateful day, it is fitting to pause to reflect upon the tragedy that took place on that cold night in 1912, and to pay our respects to those who lost their lives or who lost loved ones in that awful disaster.

Note: for my most recent thoughts on the Titanic tragedy, see "Titanic conspiracy, due diligence, natural law and mind control," 04/13/2014.  

Nabta Playa, Karnak, George Dodwell, and Antarctica

In the previous post, we saw a video in which archaeoastronomer and physicist Dr. Thomas G. Brophy analyzed the layout of stones at the ancient stone circle located in the Nabta Playa in a desolate corner of southwestern Egypt.  

Among other conclusions (some of them quite startling and all of them completely devastating to the conventional timeline of mankind's ancient past -- as well as to the assertions of conventional plate tectonic theory, as I argued), Dr. Brophy argues that the six stones inside the circle indicate the positions of the three stars of Orion's belt as it appears during the epoch in which Orion is most upright in the sky as he transits the meridian, as well as the three stars of Orion's head and shoulders during the epoch in which Orion is most tilted to the meridian.

One of the startling aspects of Dr. Brophy's analysis is the fact that calculations of the rate of tilt in Orion, caused by precession, means that the stones representing the belt stars are correct for the period from about 6500 BC up until about 4900 BC, while the stones representing the head and shoulders of the constellation are correct for a much older period, centered on 16,500 BC!

While it is certainly possible that the site's ancient designers were able to calculate the precessional tilt for a period around 16,500 BC, and encode that in the site (especially given the other very advanced skills and knowledge of astronomy that the other aspects of Nabta Playa's monuments appear to demonstrate), it is also possible that archaeoastronomers are mistaken in their calculation of the number of years we would have to go back in order to get Orion to tilt as much as is depicted by the head-and-shoulders stones at Nabta Playa.

The reason their calculation may be off is the assumption inherent in their calculation, that the rate of change of tilt has been fairly constant throughout the vast procession of millennia stretching back to 4900 BC and (even further) to 16,500 BC.  If the rate of change was more rapid during some portion of the time between today and those ancient epochs, then calculations based on a fairly steady rate of change would yield an artificially earlier date than calculations that started with assumptions of (for example) an increasing rate of tilt the farther back in history one goes.

There is independent evidence, however, that the tilt of earth's axis relative to the plane of the ecliptic was once violently disturbed, after which its tilt recovered, and that the rate of recovery was faster immediately after the violent ancient disturbance, and has slowed down since then.  If this scenario is correct, then Nabta Playa, while still of extreme antiquity, might represent time periods slightly more recent than those calculated using formulas that do not take into account the more-extreme axial tilt of the earth in ancient times.

In his book presenting the hydroplate theory (the 9th edition of which is now available in its entirety for viewing online here), Dr. Walt Brown discusses the evidence compiled by professional astronomer George F. Dodwell over the course of his career.  In the chapter of his book entitled "The Hydroplate Theory: An Overview," Dr. Brown has a subsection entitled "Changing Axis Tilt" (located near the bottom of this page on his website) which explains:

George F. Dodwell served as the Government Astronomer for South Australia from 1909 to 1952. In the mid-1930s, he became interested in past changes in the tilt of the earth’s axis. He collected almost 100 astronomical measurements made over a 4,000-year period. Those measurements show that the tilt of the earth’s axis smoothly decayed from 25°10' to its present value of 23°27'. Based on the shape of the decay curve, Dodwell estimated that this axis shift began in about 2345 B.C.²⁸ 

George Dodwell's own manuscript discussing the extensive evidence he collected from history documenting this conclusion can be found online here, on the website of  Barry and Helen Setterfield.  It is fascinating reading, full of details from ancient records of the obliquity of earth's tilt with respect to the ecliptic plane, including records and monuments from ancient China, ancient Egypt, and from classical astronomers from ancient Greece up through the Middle Ages and into the modern period.  

One example given by Mr. Dodwell is the famous Temple at Karnak in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes (a portion of which is pictured in the image above), where the rays of the rising sun would enter the long Hypostele Hall of the Temple of Amun-Ra once per year at the summer solstice.  The sun does not go far enough north in its annual migration between the solstice rising points to shine along the original axis of this hall today, and calculations based on a constant rate of change due to precession yield a date of initial design and construction that appears to be earlier than the epoch in which archaeologists believe the temple was designed and built.  Mr. Dodwell explains, however, that calculations which take into account the more extreme tilt and the rate of decay he found from ancient records and monument around the globe would yield a more consistent date.

The upshot of all his careful examination is the irresistible conclusion that the earth's tilt was much greater the further back in time one looks, such that the line of the tropics (the Tropic of Cancer and of Capricorn) came further north and further south of the equator in ancient times, and the northernmost and southernmost risings of the sun on the summer and winter solstices were further north and south along the eastern horizon than they are today.  A curve drawn through a graphing of the obliquity measurements throughout the centuries shows a decay curve indicating a massive force imparted an unusual and excessive tilt to earth's axis, which has been correcting since that time, with the rate of correction much faster in the centuries immediately after the catastrophe (whatever it was) and the rate of correction slowly and asymptotically approaching the current angle of tilt.  

In other words, if we project back in time without taking this curve into account, we will be unaware of the much more rapid rates of change that took place in ancient times, and our calculations will be in error.  This possibility is something that analysts of Nabta Playa should consider.  Nevertheless, Dr. Brophy is certainly to be commended for his incredible analysis of this relatively recently-discovered archaeological site, and the possibility that the site encodes knowledge of axial tilt that may have been made more severe and may have changed more rapidly due to an ancient catastrophe does nothing to take away from the amazing implications of the monuments in the desert at Nabta Playa.  In fact, the possibility only adds to its significance, in my opinion.

While George Dodwell believes that an ancient asteroid impact with earth might have been the violent force that knocked earth's axis out of kilter and from which the axis has been recovering ever since, Dr. Brown provides cogent arguments to reach a different conclusion.  Among Dr. Brown's arguments are problems with the asteroid theory, and the argument that if the hydroplate theory is correct, then the events surrounding the flood would have rapidly altered the balance of the earth (principally through the rapid pushing up of the earth's major mountain ranges, and especially the Himalayas).  

The rapid formation of the Himalayas, according to the principles of physics, would have led to "Earth's Big Roll," an event for which there appears to be extensive evidence around the world, including in the continent of Antarctica, in certain features under the Indian Ocean, and in areas of the far north in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (among other places on earth).  To review some of this amazing evidence please visit some of the previous posts on that topic, including:

• "Earth's Big Roll"
• "Antarctica"
• "Palm trees discovered in Antarctica!"
• "90° East Ridge"
• "Lake Vostok and the deep liquid lakes on Antarctica"
• "What was this large ancient river fish doing in Ellesmere Island?"
• "Mammoths and the Flood"
• "Titanosaurs? In Antarctica? (Moooo)"

The Nabta Playa circle demolishes conventional theories

The ancient monument at Nabta Playa, in the desolate Sahara desert of southwestern Egypt, has been called one of the earliest aligned structures of mankind's ancient past.  Consensus opinion currently indicates that usage of the site may have begun around 4500 BC (based on carbon dating analysis described in this 2007 article), although some analysts have provided arguments which suggest that the site may have been designed even earlier than that.

Nabta Playa is an extremely arid basin just south of the Tropic of Cancer (see map below).  In 1973, a team of archaeologists led by Fred Wendorf discovered pottery fragments in the remote region and began excavation of what they learned was a site of incredible antiquity.  In 1990, they discovered a stone circle monument, publishing an article about this site for the first time in 1998.  Thus, the site is still somewhat recently revealed to the wider public, and discussion and analysis of its implications are ongoing.

Some of the most intriguing analysis of the site has come from physicist and archaeoastronomer Dr. Thomas G. Brophy, who in 2002 published The Origin Map: Discovery of a Prehistoric, Megalithic, Astrophysical Map and Sculpture of the Universe.  In the video segment above, he discusses his analysis of the site, analysis which if correct has stunning implications which completely upend the conventional timeline of mankind's ancient past.

Dr. Brophy begins by noting that the structure consists of an outer ring which contains clear "gate" features forming two pathways or alignments through the circle, one along a line running northeast to southwest and indicating the summer solstice sunrise, and one running north-south through the circle (the "meridian sightline").  Inside the circle are six stones, which Dr. Brophy believes should be seen as two sets of three.  On pages 9 and 10 of his 2002 book, Dr. Brophy explains his insight into the northern set of three of these inner stones in the Nabta Playa Calendar Circle:

A user of the calendar circle diagram, standing at the north end of the meridian sightline window, would look down on the stone diagram and see a representation of the stars of Orion's Belt just as they appear on the meridian in the sky when the user looked up.

More than just matching the appearance of the stars of Orion's Belt at that time, the ground stones indicate the sky stars at the special time of summer solstice as identified by the solstice sightline window in the calendar circle.

As Dr. Brophy explains in the book, and in the video above, the motion of precession not only "delays the sky" through the ages such that a different zodiac sign is in the position above the rising sun before sunrise on the March equinox (creating the different precessional ages such as the Age of Pisces or the Age of Aquarius), but it also changes the angle that the constellations such as Orion will appear to a viewer at the same location on our planet throughout the different ages.

The angle of the stones representing the belt stars appears to be correct for the period between 6400 BC and 4900 BC -- an archaeoastronomical dating of incredible antiquity.  This was the period of least tilt of the constellation Orion with respect to the meridian (when the constellation is most vertical and the belt stars are the most horizontal).

Dr. Brophy then goes on to an even more significant hypothesis, which is that the southern three stones represent the head and shoulders of Orion, but that they are at an angle when Orion is at his greatest tilt from the motion of precession.  The implications of this proposal, however, are revolutionary.  Due to the very slow motion of precession, the time period indicated by the stones representing the head and shoulders of the constellation would center around 16,500 BC!

Even if these stones were not erected at such an unbelievably early date, it is not inconceivable that they were erected around the first set of dates (those indicated by the tilt of the belt-star stones), and indeed conventional archaeologists currently date the site to a time quite close to Dr. Brophy's astronomically-derived date.

If so, and if Dr. Brophy is also correct about the southern set of stones indicating the head and shoulders of Orion at the period of greatest tilt of the constellation (caused by precession), then this would mean that the ancient designers of the Nabta Playa circle were aware of precession (something conventional historians believe was unknown until about 125 BC), and further that they understood precession to an astonishing level of sophistication, such that they could calculate and diagram the maximum tilt that precession would cause to the familiar stars of Orion!

Either that, or the designers of Nabta Playa were in touch with someone who could (or that the information was handed down from someone who knew these things, pushing the antiquity of this sophisticated understanding even further back in time).  

This proposition clearly has enormous implications.  The evidence that the ancients understood precession to a degree far more precise than that achieved by Hipparchus or Ptolemy (the first astronomers that conventional scholars say were able to detect and understand the phenomenon) is quite extensive, and fills a good portion of the discussion in Hamlet's Mill, by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend (as John Anthony West points out in the video above).

The entire Maya Long Count / 2012 phenomenon is based upon clear evidence that the Maya had sophisticated understanding of the effects of precession and could predict with a high degree of accuracy its effect upon the angle and rising times of celestial bodies -- in their case, a special part of the Milky Way galaxy, as discussed in several previous posts, such as this one.  The extreme antiquity of the dating of the  Nabta Playa site, however, pulls back the curtain on a whole new corridor of time stretching into a distant past during which mankind apparently knew far more than modern academics will acknowledge.

However, this revelation is only the beginning of the incredible aspects of the Nabta Playa site which physicist Dr. Brophy finds evidence for.  The circle discussed above is actually part of a three-dimensional structure that continues below the level of the surface of the earth, and includes bedrock many feet below which has apparently been worked by tools into some sort of art form -- but where conventional archaeologists see a "cow" that might have been a stand-in to represent the sacrifice of an actual cow, Dr. Brophy sees a representation of the Galactic Center encoding more precise knowledge that ancient people simply should not have possessed, according to the conventional timeline of history.  Dr. Joseph Farrell explores these aspects of Dr. Brophy's analysis of Nabta Playa in his book Grid of the Gods, a text discussed in this previous post.

Further, the Calendar Circle site is also located within a larger context of other stone monuments in the Nabta Playa basin, and Dr. Brophy believes that the distance and direction relationships among these sites also encodes extremely precise astronomical information (see the continuation of the above-linked video here).

As Dr. Robert Schoch explains on pages xxii - xxiii of his foreword to Dr. Brophy's book:

The megaliths are arranged at various distances from a central point, known as "Complex Structure A."  As you can read in detail below, Brophy interprets these distances from the central point as recording a) the actual distances of the stars in question from our solar system, and b) the speeds that the stars are moving away from us.  The information and interpretations that Brophy extracts from the Nabta megaliths correspond to a high degree with modern knowledge of these parameters for these specific stars.  Further, analyzing smaller companion stones associated with the primary "star" megaliths, Brophy suggests that the builders of the Nabta site may have had information about planetary systems or companion stars associated with the six stars in question -- information that we do not have today!  And then there is the "Cosmological cow stone."  Does this stone encode information about the origin of the universe, the age of the solar system or universe, the structure of the galaxy and universe, and / or the fundamental constants of nature?  Read Brophy's analysis and see what you think.

These possibilities are even more staggering, clearly, than the possibility that the designers of Nabta Playa knew about precession to a degree far beyond that attained by Hipparchus or Ptolemy thousands of years later.  We are accustomed to thinking of Planck's constant, for example, as a discovery of quantum physicists working in AD 1900 and after -- not 1900 BC and certainly not 4900 BC!  And yet this constant is one of those "fundamental constants of nature" that Dr. Schoch refers to above that Dr. Brophy sees in evidence among the dimensions of the monuments in Nabta Playa in Egypt.

Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, it would be prudent to examine Dr. Brophy's discussion and analysis of the evidence and to keep an open mind while doing so.

Moving back a bit from possibilities such as awareness of quantum physics, it is fairly clear that the designers of the Nabta Playa circle created a summer solstice alignment, as well as a meridian alignment which may well line up with the belt stars of Orion (which Dr. Brophy's analysis shows were along that meridian around the summer solstice during that epoch).  Setting aside even the evidence that these ancients might have understood precession, one huge question still remains for proponents of the conventional theories, and that is: how are archaeologists and archaeoastronomers even able to make calculations about the location of Orion in reference to this site, if the site is over 6000 years old and if continental drift has been going on for all these years the way proponents of plate tectonics believe?

At the very least, Nabta Playa should blow the theory of plate tectonics wide open.  Unless, of course, we want to argue that Nabta Playa is a big hoax, and that the stones were actually set out there in the 1970s by clever archaeologists and physicists who threw in references to the Planck constant and precession just to fool people (but who forgot about the motion of plate tectonics, or didn't take it into account, since plate tectonics was still something of a novel theory even in the 1970s).

There are many other sites whose ongoing alignments also argue strongly against plate tectonics, among them the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Sphinx, and the ancient megalithic temples on the islands of Malta.  No one can argue that those sites were secretly constructed in the 1970s. However, the extreme antiquity of Nabta Playa (if it is an authentic ancient site, that is) should set a new record in sites unaffected by tectonic motion.  (Of course, it is quite possible that the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid are much older than conventional academics think that they are -- perhaps even older than Nabta Playa).

Add to that the possibility that Nabta Playa encodes the knowledge that Dr. Brophy demonstrates that it does, and the site completely demolishes most of the foundations of the history departments and the geology departments of most modern universities.  None of this should be surprising to readers of this blog or those who are familiar with the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown.

Rock Lake, Wisconsin and The Code of Carl P. Munck

Above is a link to some of the incredible work of Carl P. Munck, whose analysis of the locations of ancient monuments around the world led him to the astonishing discovery of a system whereby aspects of each monument act as a language to tell those who can understand it where that monument is, as well as where to look for other monuments in an inter-connected grid of monuments spanning the entire globe.

One of the reasons that Mr. Munck was able to "hear" what the monuments were telling him was his paradigm-shifting realization, demonstrated in the above video, that the monuments often tell us their precise longitude, but in longitude measured from the apex of the Great Pyramid at Giza, rather than from the current  convention which uses the prime meridian running through Greenwich as a starting reference.

In The Grid of the Gods, by Joseph P. Farrell and Scott D. de Hart, the authors examine some of the reasons that someone might have gone to the trouble of building so many massive projects with such intricate and precise encoded detail in the specific locations on the planet that they chose to build them, and the conclusions they reach are extremely important.  Their book should be the next one you read, if you haven't read it yet.

The authors of that book cite Mr. Munck, who wrote:

Nobody sets out to build 50,000-plus pyramids and mounds around a planet just for the hell of it, or want of something to do.  History teaches that these primitive people were hunter-gatherers who spent their waking hours running down their next meals.  If that's true, then who built these monuments?  These people didn't have the time [. . .].  There was enormous global planning behind it all.  Munck, Whispers from Time: the Pyramid Bible, vol. 1, page 26; cited in Farrell and de Hart, 106.

Previous posts on this site have examined the overwhelming evidence that the designers of this world-wide system of locations did so according to a deliberate overarching plan and with an extremely sophisticated understanding of the size and shape of our planet earth.  See for example this post from June of 2012.

As you will see in the video above, Mr. Munck demonstrates the way various aspects of monuments in one part of the globe use "the Code" or language of numbers to refer to the longitude of other monuments in totally different parts of the globe.  In Dr. Farrell's book, he notes that Munck demonstrates that each monument tells longitude, latitude, longitude and latitude, or some significant mathematical or geometrical formula (often incorporating or embodying pi).  He has found connections between the largest North American mound at Grave Creek, WV and Silbury Hill in England, and between Teotihuacan in Mexico and Giza in Egypt.

Another site that Mr. Munck's analysis indicated is in the middle of a lake in Wisconsin: Rock Lake, where locals and visitors through the years (going back, in fact, to the first accounts from early settlers and to the sacred traditions of the Native Americans in the area) have described seeing structures submerged beneath the waters.

Here is a link to a video from the 1997 television series Beyond Bizarre, hosted by Jay Robinson, which describes the structures.  In the clip, a researcher describes how the analysis of Hugh Harleston (another researcher who has spent years decoding the ancient sites in Central America and whose work is briefly mentioned in this previous post and explored in greater depth in the Mathisen Corollary book itself) pointed to the precise location of the structures.  The video also shows footage of standing stone sites in the area which are extremely similar in appearance to those in the New England region further east, especially those found at Mystery Hill, New Hampshire (see here, here and here for discussion and links to other sites about Mystery Hill).

In their book, Dr. Farrell and Dr. de Hart explain that Rock Lake, like many other megalithic sites around the world, has accumulated a body of lore recounting unusual phenomena centered around the site:

For example, local residents report seeing huge rocks floating on the surface of the lake, or outboard motors on boats that will not work at certain times, or how divers attempting to approach and film the submerged pyramid with their underwater cameras suddenly find they have malfunctioned.  Munck even notes that some divers report a strange sense of dread as they prepared to dive to photograph the pyramid.  100.

The analysis in The Grid of the Gods explores many reasons to be very cautious about dismissing such reports out of hand.

Regardless of one's opinion on that subject, the implications of the research of Carl Munck and the discovery that the ancient monuments around our planet are part of a deliberate, sophisticated, and self-referential grid system has profound implications for our understanding of human history.  As Jay Robinson says at the beginning of the Rock Lake video, the evidence should "compel archaeologists to completely rework their understanding of the entire ancient world."  

Deep Sea IMAX, astrology, and the cycles of the cosmos

Above is the trailer for a gorgeous film called Deep Sea IMAX, released in 2007. Filmed by the award-winning ocean filmmaker Howard Hall and narrated in turns by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, the stunning footage highlights many incredible denizens of the ocean, many of which are so unfamiliar to those who spend their lives on land that they might as well be from another planet.

Some of the more memorable creatures include the sunstar, pulling itself across the ocean floor with surprising speed in search of food and scaring up clouds of feather stars and scallops which flee from its blind hunger; the wolf eel crushing sea urchins to bits between its powerful jaws, apparently heedless of their long venomous spines; the aggressive Humboldt squid, which flash like strobe lights in the night as they attack everything in sight including one another and even the camera a few times; the Giant Pacific octopus, curling its tentacles into tight coils as it glides ominously over the sea bottom in search of crabs; the energetic Mantis shrimp, tenaciously fighting off a much larger octopus; the strange and graceful nudibranchs; and translucent jellyfish of all descriptions.  As memorable as the colorful images are the sounds the creatures make as they move about and engage in their activities (often violent).

After watching some of these exotic animals in their natural habitat, it is intriguing to think that even now giant sunstars are creeping across the ocean floor looking for prey, as are many of the other stars of the deep sea.

One of the most astonishing parts of the film comes towards the end, when the cameras capture a coral spawn in the Flower Garden Banks, located in the Gulf of Mexico.  We are told that this takes place every year, eight days after the full moon in August, beginning one hour after sunset.  The imagery is spectacular, as millions of coral polyps release tiny gametes into the water, like clouds of baby spiders floating into the sky -- and the otherworldly music of Danny Elfman enhances the effect.  The narration asks:

How is it that millions of tiny polyps from all these corals choose this single moment on this single night to spawn?  How do animals that have no eyes to see, or brains to think, coordinate this event with such precision?

Apparently, scientists only discovered this stunning aspect of coral's life cycle fairly recently, in the early 1980s, and they are still trying to learn more about it.  This article from the Smithsonian Magazine from 2009 describes the work marine biologists are doing to study the coral and their reproduction habits, as they try to determine ways to protect coral against the serious threats they face from unchecked seaweed and algae growth (running wild due to overfishing of the species that would normally keep them in balance), and from increased acid levels in the water due to pollution (acid acts to dissolve the calcium carbonate that the coral secrete to form reefs).

This article, from an Australian website entitled Deep Sea Divers Den gives even more insight into the mysterious ability of the coral to coordinate their spawning with the full moon.  Citing coral researcher Associate Professor Bette Willis from James Cook University, the article explains that scientists now think that the reason coral wait to spawn for a certain number of days after a full moon is that this period produces a neap tide, in which the swings between tidal levels are much more mild than during a spring tide, giving the coral spawn a better chance to succeed.  Some of the intricacies of the tidal mechanisms caused by the motion of the sun and the moon are discussed in this previous post.

We should certainly be in awe of the ability of these tiny creatures to coordinate their spawn without, as Johnny Depp says, "eyes to see, or brains to think."  It is yet another example of the influence of the moon and the other celestial bodies upon beings here on this planet.  

Is it too difficult to believe that the phases of the moon and the angles of the other planets in our solar system might have an impact on our own bodies and minds as well?   We have discussed this possibility in previous posts such as this one.  It is a concept which was accepted by most ancient cultures, but which is often dismissed as "superstition" or worse by many today.

Perhaps if we were more attuned to the cycles of the world around us and the greater cosmos, we would not have drifted so far out of harmony from the oceans and the rest of nature, and the coral reefs and other vital and incredibly beautiful aspects of our planet would not be in such peril.

Where do Saturn's rings come from?

In the previous post, we looked at evidence that the Maori of Aotearoa / New Zealand were aware of the rings of Saturn and had stories and traditions describing Saturn as a beautiful and wayward woman who wears a circlet in her hair -- truly amazing in light of the fact that the rings of Saturn are not visible to the human eye, or even with telescopes of the type that Galileo built in 1610.  This evidence is very difficult to explain.

Equally mysterious is the question of where Saturn's rings came from in the first place.  In this article from February, 2012 published on the NASA website entitled "The Real Lord of the Rings,"  planetary scientist Jeff Cuzzi of NASA's Ames Research Center explains:  "After all this time we're still not sure about the origin of Saturn's rings. But lately there's a growing awareness that Saturn's rings can't be so old."

The reasons given for concluding that the rings are not the ancient remnants left over from the formation of Saturn or the solar system -- billions of years ago according to conventionally-accepted theories -- include 

• the fact that they are still shiny and bright, undarkened by accumulated dust,
• the fact that small moons orbiting through the outermost regions of the ring system are gaining angular momentum at the expense of the rings, and thus . . .
• the fact that the rings will probably collapse into the giant planet within a period of time measured in millions of years.

"This is a young dynamical system," Dr. Cuzzi says.  Dr. Cuzzi won the prestigious Kuiper Prize in 2010 for his lifetime contributions to planetary sciences. 

Another reason for believing that Saturn's rings must be young was given by Dr. Cuzzi in an article published in January, 1985 in Sky & Telescope entitled "Ringed Planets -- Still Mysterious II."  In that article, he explained that expectations of "erosion" of the rings would suggest that they might be completely destroyed only 10,000 years after forming -- and that even if that figure is too low, the rate of loss poses a huge problem for explaining the existence of these rings for long periods of time.  Dr. Cuzzi writes:

Yet nonstop erosion poses a difficult problem for the very existence of Saturn's opaque rings -- the expected bombardment rate would pulverize the entire system in only 10,000 years!  Most of this material is merely redeposited elsewhere in the rings, but even if only a tiny fraction is truly lost (as ionized vapor, for example), it becomes a real trick to maintain the rings since the formation of the solar system.

The above passage was cited in a footnote by Dr. Walt Brown, the creator of the hydroplate theory, in a footnote to his discussion of planetary rings and their possible relationship to his theory.  According to Dr. Brown, "Planetary rings form when material is expelled from a moon or asteroid passing near a giant planet."  

His theory proposes that most of the asteroids and asteroid-like bodies in our solar system (including many of the irregularly-shaped moons orbiting various planets, including Saturn, which are likely captured asteroids) originated as material violently expelled from earth during the events surrounding a cataclysmic flood, and that asteroids and comets generally contain quantities of ice, originating from earth as water that was jetted out of the earth at tremendous velocities during the same cataclysm.  His discussion of the origin of asteroids and meteoroids begins on this page in his book and continues on for an entire chapter.

This previous post discusses some of the aspects of asteroids according to Dr. Brown's theory, and explains that:

Because larger asteroids are held together with a "weak glue" of ice (which originated in the water blasted into space along with the rocks during the violent explosion that initiated the global flood event), impacts from other space rocks sometimes cause this water to melt and to begin to vent into the vacuum of space. When this happens, asteroids resemble comets: in fact, comets and asteroids are pretty much the same animal, except that asteroids have spent most of their existence in closer orbits to the sun and most of them have lost all of their ice -- with some of the larger ones retaining icy mantles below the surface which are still subject to being released later on by impacts. Most comets, on the other hand, have wider orbits and still retain ice, which is still venting. 

In fact, as Dr. Brown points out, material venting from Saturn's moon Enceladus has now been confirmed as contributing to the material in that ring.  Here is a link to an article discussing evidence which suggests that the material coming from Enceladus does not originate from an "underground ocean" on that moon, as was proposed by some theorists.  In that article, one scientist says of the material jetting out of Enceladus: "It could still be warm ice vaporizing away into space. It could even be places where the crust rubs against itself from tidal motions and the friction creates liquid water that would then evaporate into space."  Such an explanation would certainly appear to fit in with the predictions of Dr. Brown's theory.

There is another proposal for the existence of Saturn's rings which, like Dr. Brown's hydroplate theory, stands outside of the pale of presently-accepted scientific orthodoxy (and remember that, in the words of the distinguished Dr. Cuzzi, orthodox theorists still have no settled explanation for the origin of Saturn's rings), and that is the idea that intelligent beings are creating them!

The above video shows some strange images of streaking objects cutting across Saturn's rings (in fact, the F-ring), including some objects whose path appears to turn back and forth a few times, taken by NASA spacecraft including Cassini.  Here is an article on the internet by someone caustically "debunking" the UFO theory, calling it "BS," and "crap," and "transparent nonsense," and asking why alien spacecraft would want to fly around in Saturn's rings.  The writer asks sarcastically: "So, aliens traveled across light-years to … circle Saturn for eons playing in the ring system. No doubt that would be fun, but it’s hard to imagine any other incentive."

However, those who propose the theory that some intelligence is actively creating the rings do offer an incentive.  In the video below, David Icke discusses some of the same footage and argues that a reason that malevolent intelligences might want to construct such rings could be to transmit or amplify frequencies with inimical effects upon men and women on earth:

There are other reasons to be cautious before simply eliminating any theory which proposes the activity of extraterrestrials (see this previous post for a discussion, among others).  While such a theory may strike some as absurd, remember that orthodox science still has no clear explanation for the existence of Saturn's rings at all.  This fact alone argues that we should be open to alternative explanations, and carefully consider those that have been offered to explain the evidence that we find in the existence of Saturn's rings.

How did the Maori know Saturn has rings?

(mobile readers please scroll down to read the post)
image: Wikimedia commons.

Saturn is now rising each evening in the constellation Libra, a little before 10:30 pm and four minutes earlier each night.  This week's Sky & Telescope "planet roundup" advises observers to look for Saturn "rising well to the lower left of Spica and farther to the lower right of brighter Arcturus. Saturn shines highest in the south in the early morning hours — more or less between Spica to its right and Antares farther to its lower left."

Can you see the rings of Saturn with your naked eye, or even with binoculars?  It seems impossible (I certainly cannot, nor do I know of anyone who claims to be able to do so).  Modern awareness of Saturn's rings did not come about until well after Galileo (Galileo did observe Saturn and the rings in 1610 with his telescope, but not well enough to know what they were -- the world would have to wait another forty-five years before Christiaan Huygens described the rings as a disk around the planet in 1655).  

However, there is evidence that the Maori of Aotearoa (New Zealand) were aware of the rings around Saturn.  In The Astronomical Knowledge of the Maori, Genuine and Empirical, published by Elsdon Best in Wellington, NZ in 1922, there is preserved a host of accounts from the Maori themselves of their star-lore and planet-lore.  

The entire book is available online for your edification here through The Knowledge Basket, founded in 1994 by two former librarians to provide access to archival content from New Zealand, and although Mr. Best indulges in some unfortunate condescending and paternalistic sentiments (such as his reference to "uncultured races" and "puerile superstitions"), the book itself contains a wonderful treasury of Maori astronomical lore, including Maori names for many of the stars and planets, as well as discussions of celestial navigation.  

Among the many fascinating revelations contained in the book is the fact that the Maori name for the sun, found in many of the hakas which are reproduced in the book, is Ra.

Another amazing discussion concerns the celestial body known to the Maori as Parearau.  Mr. Best explains that this name was given to an important bright planet, either Jupiter or Saturn, said to be the leader or "puller" of the Milky Way, and described as having a ring!  

Mr. Best explains:

Parearau, say the Tuhoe people, is a wahine tiweka (wayward female), hence she is often termed Hine-i-tiweka. One version makes her the wife of Kopu (Venus), who said to her, "Remain here until daylight; we will then depart." But Parearau heeded not the word of her husband, and set forth in the evening. When midnight arrived she was clinging to another cheek, hence she was named Hine-i-tiweka. Parearau is often spoken of as a companion of Kopu. Of the origin of this name one says, "Her band quite surrounds her, hence she is called Parearau."

This planetary knowledge is certainly remarkable, in that even with a telescope, Galileo could not perceive that Saturn has a ring or rings! 

Of this amazing perception, Mr. Best writes that it "looks as if our Maori friends can see either the rings of Saturn or the bands of Jupiter with the naked eye."  Back in 1922, when he wrote his book, Mr. Best could not know that astronomers would later determine that Jupiter has rings as well, and so he speculated that if Parearau represented Jupiter, then the "ring" must refer to the bands of clouds across the face of that planet (which are also not visible to the naked eye, or even to the eye aided by binoculars).  While the bands of Jupiter can be seen with a telescope, only the most powerful modern earth-bound telescopes can detect the rings of Jupiter, which were not discovered until unmanned spacecraft passed by the planet in the 1970s.

Another quotation from the Maori about Parearau found in the discussion in Mr. Best's book is cited: "That green-eyed star is Parearau; that is the reason why she wears her circlet."  It certainly seems to have been part of Maori lore that Parearau wears a ring!

Could the Maori really see the rings of Saturn or the bands or rings of Jupiter with the naked eye?  Or, did they have some other way of knowing that Saturn or Jupiter are ringed planets?

If you go out tonight and have a look at Saturn rising in the starry sky, it is certainly something to think on and wonder at.