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Doomsday December 12, 2012 and the Last Doomsday
Although "doomsday" is frequently linked with the Mayan calendar, this is just coincidental. December 12, 2012 is a significant day in astronomy because of a number of important events that will impact our Sun. It would be a "doomsday" even if we never knew about the Mayan calendar. Yet, the more we understand this ancient civilization and appreciate their knowledge of astronomy, we must assume they knew this date to be auspicious. So let's just talk about astronomy here. There's a lot of information. I'll try to make it easy to understand.
Glazed donuts on the Moon
Let's begin back in the 1960s with the Apollo 11 manned landing on the moon. On one of their EVA's (extra-vehicular aqtivities), the astronauts photographed and took samples from some small craters, about 20cm to 1.5 meters across. When they examined the floors of these craters they noticed what looked like glazed donuts. These were actually chunks of moon dirt that were coated by glass.
The glazed areas are clearly concentrated toward the top surfaces of protuberances, although they exist also on some sides. Points and edges appear to be strongly favored for the glazing process. In some cases, droplets appear to have run down an inclined surface for a few millimeters and congealed there. [1]
Hardly anyone in the general public was made aware of this discovery and, even if they were, thay could hardly have realized the significance.
But in 1969, an article in Science by T. Gold [1] proposed a theory of how they were made. Glass, as we know, is made from melting sand. It occurs natually near sources of high temperature, such as volcanos and meteor impacts. The atom bomb tests in New Mexico's White Sands area produced a small "lake" of glass at ground zero. So it was never a question about the lunar glass also having been created by something very hot.
The fact that the glaze was confined to small patches, 0.5 to 10mm, suggested to scientists that the surface had been zapped rather than slow-cooked. And the likely source of this zap was our Sun. Gold estimated that the solar luminosity would have had to increase by 100 times what it is normally, for a duration of from 10 to 100 seconds.
Also, because of the lack of debris or dirt covering this glass, it must have occurred within the last 30,000 years. This made Gold propose that the Sun -- our Sun -- does this every 10,000 years or more. He suggested that future research should look for a "trigger" event -- possibly a large comet or asteroid impacting the surface of the Sun. He estimated this would only have to be 100 km and weigh 3 x 1021 grams.
Decades passed and this theory didn't receive much attention. Then, as it often does, the theory got a fresh look by a genius, Dr. Paul LaViolette. He was not satisfied with the source of the glass being caused by a solar blast, mainly because the output would have had to be on the scale of a nova, not just a flare. He envisioned another possibility.
LaViolette envisioned a large solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME) that would become magnetically entrapped in the Earth's magnetosphere [2]. The magnetosphere would then hold on to this fireball of radiation like a magnetic thermos bottle, allowing the Moon and Earth to be exposed for a duration of time long enough to really "flash bake" their surfaces.
Critics quickly denounced LaViolette's theory citing evidence of "cosmic dust" and rare elements in the lunar glass and concluding that the heat source was from a meteor impact. [3]
But LaViolette proposed that this cosmic dust was likely present on the surface of the Moon during the time it was melted into the glass. In fact, he proposed that the entire solar system was full of this cosmic dust at the time of this solar eruption. He was vindicated when polar ice cores showed unusual cosmic dust deposits at srata marking the end of the last ice age [4]. This time period, about 12,950 BCE, approximates the current age of the Moon glass. So where did all this cosmic dust come from?
Like Earth, our entire solar system has its own atmosphere, called the heliopause. This "bubble" surrounds the Sun and planets as it travels through galactic space. Like our earth's magnetosphere, the movement of the heliopause creates a rounded "head" and a narrowing "tail." Actually, it's more egg shaped (see above). Until recently, astronomers believed that our solar system was a region relatively free from cosmic dust. The cosmic dust and frozen material of space were kept outside this protective bubble.
This was confirmed when the IRAS and Ulysses spacecrafts showed infrared images of the solar system, surrounded by whispy clouds of cosmic dust that increase in density just beyond Saturn.
So if the cosmic dust is surrounding the heliopause, what would make it suddenly enter the heliopause and how would this coincide with huge solar flares? LaViolette envisioned something disrupting the heliopause from the outside, impacting it and drawing cosmic dust inside with it and energizing the Sun. The energy of such an impact would be immense. The most logical place to look for such enormous energy was the Milky Way Galaxy.
The smoking gun
Examining the shape of the cosmic dust clouds, the IRAS satellite team reported that the cloud was tilted relative to the solar system's ecliptic -- the narrow plane containing our planets. LaViolette realized that this odd alignment tracked back to the Galactic center. This was quickly verified by NASA's Ulysses spacecraft and New Zealand's AMOR space radar observatory. Whatever caused the last ice age to end, the Sun to flare up and caused the glass to form on the Moon, came from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The plot was getting more interesting.
Glazed donuts on the Moon
Let's begin back in the 1960s with the Apollo 11 manned landing on the moon. On one of their EVA's (extra-vehicular aqtivities), the astronauts photographed and took samples from some small craters, about 20cm to 1.5 meters across. When they examined the floors of these craters they noticed what looked like glazed donuts. These were actually chunks of moon dirt that were coated by glass.
The glazed areas are clearly concentrated toward the top surfaces of protuberances, although they exist also on some sides. Points and edges appear to be strongly favored for the glazing process. In some cases, droplets appear to have run down an inclined surface for a few millimeters and congealed there. [1]
Hardly anyone in the general public was made aware of this discovery and, even if they were, thay could hardly have realized the significance.
But in 1969, an article in Science by T. Gold [1] proposed a theory of how they were made. Glass, as we know, is made from melting sand. It occurs natually near sources of high temperature, such as volcanos and meteor impacts. The atom bomb tests in New Mexico's White Sands area produced a small "lake" of glass at ground zero. So it was never a question about the lunar glass also having been created by something very hot.
The fact that the glaze was confined to small patches, 0.5 to 10mm, suggested to scientists that the surface had been zapped rather than slow-cooked. And the likely source of this zap was our Sun. Gold estimated that the solar luminosity would have had to increase by 100 times what it is normally, for a duration of from 10 to 100 seconds.
Also, because of the lack of debris or dirt covering this glass, it must have occurred within the last 30,000 years. This made Gold propose that the Sun -- our Sun -- does this every 10,000 years or more. He suggested that future research should look for a "trigger" event -- possibly a large comet or asteroid impacting the surface of the Sun. He estimated this would only have to be 100 km and weigh 3 x 1021 grams.
Decades passed and this theory didn't receive much attention. Then, as it often does, the theory got a fresh look by a genius, Dr. Paul LaViolette. He was not satisfied with the source of the glass being caused by a solar blast, mainly because the output would have had to be on the scale of a nova, not just a flare. He envisioned another possibility.
LaViolette envisioned a large solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME) that would become magnetically entrapped in the Earth's magnetosphere [2]. The magnetosphere would then hold on to this fireball of radiation like a magnetic thermos bottle, allowing the Moon and Earth to be exposed for a duration of time long enough to really "flash bake" their surfaces.
Critics quickly denounced LaViolette's theory citing evidence of "cosmic dust" and rare elements in the lunar glass and concluding that the heat source was from a meteor impact. [3]
But LaViolette proposed that this cosmic dust was likely present on the surface of the Moon during the time it was melted into the glass. In fact, he proposed that the entire solar system was full of this cosmic dust at the time of this solar eruption. He was vindicated when polar ice cores showed unusual cosmic dust deposits at srata marking the end of the last ice age [4]. This time period, about 12,950 BCE, approximates the current age of the Moon glass. So where did all this cosmic dust come from?
Like Earth, our entire solar system has its own atmosphere, called the heliopause. This "bubble" surrounds the Sun and planets as it travels through galactic space. Like our earth's magnetosphere, the movement of the heliopause creates a rounded "head" and a narrowing "tail." Actually, it's more egg shaped (see above). Until recently, astronomers believed that our solar system was a region relatively free from cosmic dust. The cosmic dust and frozen material of space were kept outside this protective bubble.
This was confirmed when the IRAS and Ulysses spacecrafts showed infrared images of the solar system, surrounded by whispy clouds of cosmic dust that increase in density just beyond Saturn.
So if the cosmic dust is surrounding the heliopause, what would make it suddenly enter the heliopause and how would this coincide with huge solar flares? LaViolette envisioned something disrupting the heliopause from the outside, impacting it and drawing cosmic dust inside with it and energizing the Sun. The energy of such an impact would be immense. The most logical place to look for such enormous energy was the Milky Way Galaxy.
The smoking gun
Examining the shape of the cosmic dust clouds, the IRAS satellite team reported that the cloud was tilted relative to the solar system's ecliptic -- the narrow plane containing our planets. LaViolette realized that this odd alignment tracked back to the Galactic center. This was quickly verified by NASA's Ulysses spacecraft and New Zealand's AMOR space radar observatory. Whatever caused the last ice age to end, the Sun to flare up and caused the glass to form on the Moon, came from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The plot was getting more interesting.
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