"Near-Earth space" is anything but safe. Clearly, in the light of contemporary knowledge, it is not outrageous to suppose that humanity learned to dread comets as a consequence of direct experience with destructive phenomena engendered by actual encounters with the immediate environment of these flamboyant cosmic interlopers. Indeed, early attempts to predict this infrequent but periodically recurring phenomenon were quite likely the impetus which led to the widespread and ultimately formalized belief that star positions could directly influence events on Earth.
Comets certainly can break up, and Napier interprets meteor streams of the Taurid Complex as traces of a large comet that entered the inner Solar System system 20,000-30,000 years ago. His idea is that the Earth later ran into a dense trail of its material over the course of an hour, with North America bearing the brunt and experiencing thousands of fireball explosions each comparable with a nuclear bomb. Shock waves from the impact might have triggered the flood-basalt event.
That would explain a layer of soot found at many sites in the USA, telling of continental-scale wildfires, together with microscopic diamonds of the type produced by meteoritic shocks. And 35 genera of North American mammals were wiped out.
Comet Storm; Fragmented Impact
Observed comet phenomena such as fragmentation, where a comet appears to produce one or more offspring, can explain the origin of odd notions like Tiamat, Athena being born fully formed from the head of Zeus, thunderbolts from heaven, and war in heaven. That these objects were feared and worshiped as omnipotent, judgmental gods of the sky is understandable.
What would happen should the Earth pass through the orbit of a disintegrating giant comet just before or after the comet passes that same point? Since larger fragments tend to cluster close to the nucleus of the comet, chances would increase that the Earth would be bombarded by these larger fragments. The severity of this comet fragment shower would far exceed any ordinary meteor shower. Not only would "shooting stars" and bright fireballs caused by small debris appear, but so too would large airbursts and possibly ground impacts. These would result in significant destruction should they occur over an inhabited area. If a large enough fragment struck in the ocean -- say, 200 meters or so in diameter -- it would raise tsunamis even at a great distance that would sweep away coastal habitations.
Duncan Steel, a colleague of Clube and Napier, refers to this process as coherent catastrophism. Widespread destruction derives from the coherent arrival of many impactors within a few days, as opposed to the sporadic arrival of objects spread randomly in space. The shower repeats for a period of years until the cometary orbit precesses so that the Earth no longer encounters the dense part of the debris field. (Of course, sporadic debris unrelated to the disintegrating comet may impact at any time as well.)
The ancients were not entirely ignorant in their beliefs of the appearance of comets as bad omens. Fragments hitting the ground would cause earthquakes and blast damage, as well as start forest fires (fire storms? and perhaps volcanoes - which in turn would amplify the environmental effects through the release of soot into the air. Fragments hitting the water generate tsunamis which flood coastal and inland regions. Would it surprise you to learn that, according to Baillie, the ancient Celtics had an oath which translates as :
"We will not move from this place until the stars fall from the sky, the earth quakes and the sea comes over the land."
In "Lessons from Jupiter", Clube and Asher wrote : "We do not of course deny a general background of [Earth-crossing asteroids] from the asteroid belt but it is these meteoroidal streams, harbouring swarms of super-Tunguska debris, which are now perceived as the source of high-level dust veils and low-level airbursts in the atmosphere, essentially controlling climate and extinction on Earth and punctuating the course of evolution."
It’s one thing to discuss the probabilities of an Atlantean and a Lemurian civilization, and it’s totally another thing to come up with the reasons both or either were destroyed. Frank Joseph, editor in chief of Ancient America magazine, has an interesting opinion of the destruction of Lemuria. The civilization was undone by a comet.
Let’s start with what we “currently” know about this comet known as Encke.
Comet Encke (officially designated 2P/Encke) is a periodic comet, named after Johann Franz Encke, who through laborious study of its orbit and many calculations was able to link multiple observations in 1786. The single most observed comet, Encke’s Comet has been viewed for approximately 50 passes. Already possessing one of the shortest orbital periods (only 3.3 years), its period is further decreasing by up to 2.7 hours per revolution.
Encke’s Comet is thought to be the parent body of the Taurid meteor stream, an annually recurring minor meteor shower which culminates on November 8. Because the orbit of Encke’s Comet is so very well known, it is considered a prime target for an exploratory space probe to investigate.
Let’s back up now a few thousand years, maybe ten of thousands of years.
Some consider the Bronze Age breakup of an originally larger comet (Tiamat) of which Comet Encke is a member to be responsible for ancient destruction in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps evidenced by a large (unconfirmed) meteorite crater in Iraq identified as Umm al Biinni lake. More on that at another time.
Specifically, Frank Joseph says, “Encke had a near miss with planet earth in 3100BCE raining down a barrage of debris in a in a firey swath around the world igniting widespread volcanism, earthquakes, and massive tsunamis that wiped out Lemuria.”
Encke may be part of a formerly larger comet, perhaps impacted by solar winds. On April 20, 2007, the comet had just dipped inside the orbit of Mercury, perilously close to the sun, when a solar eruption struck and literally tore the comet's tail off. This surely has happened to comets before, but for the first time in history a spacecraft was watching. NASA's STEREO-A probe recorded a fantastic movie of the collision.
