Volcanism


Additionally, there has been an increase during the month of July in volcanic activity around the world, including:

  • Montserrat, West Indies

  • Ayushu, Japan

  • Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia

  • Island of Reunion

  • Java, Indonesia

  • Popcatepetl, Mexico

  • Colima, Mexico

  • Canlaon, Philippines

  • Fuego, Guatemala

  • Pacaya, Guatemala

  • Tunguarahua, Ecuador

On June 11, 2003, Larry Park wrote an article (which appeared on www.yowusa.com) titled Volcanoes In California, Idaho, and Pacific Northwest Building Towards Catastrophic Eruptions. His provocative article begins with the ominous warning:

[quoting]

As you read this, know that massive forces tens of miles beneath your feet are building towards what could be another catastrophic series of volcanic eruptions if present trends in the monitoring data remain. The consequence of a complacent attitude towards living within the destructive reach of an active volcano such as Mount Rainier outside of Seattle, Washington may soon come to haunt the millions of Americans living within a day’s drive of the Ring of Fire.

[quoting further on:]

A little over 150 years ago, in 1851, twenty-one eruptive events from ash or lava eruption to steam bursts occurred in the western United States from Northern California to Oregon and the state of Washington. Volcanoes involved Mt. Baker (WA), Mt. Rainier (WA), Mt. St. Helens (WA), Mt. Hood (OR), Three Sisters (OR), Mt. Shasta (CA), Cinder Cone (CA), and Chaos Crags (CA). Are events quickly shaping up to a much larger repeat to recent history? New research data indicates a definite—yes.

[end quoting]

Larry’s methods for studying and analyzing volcanic activity are quite advanced and "unusual" by normal geophysical standards. But he has dared to work "outside the box" that controls the thinking (via paychecks) of most geologists.
 

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Volcanism And Yellowstone National Park


On August 22, 2003 Larry was the subject of a lot of debate and late-night radio discussion after publishing (at www.yowusa.com) an article titled It Is Time To Cast A Worried Eye Towards Yellowstone. In that somewhat technical article he linked a day-before M4.4 shallow earthquake near the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park with the strong possibility that anyone living within a 600-mile radius of Yellowstone could soon be sitting in a modern-day Pompeii. If you’re within that radius, it would be prudent to include, with your other emergency supplies, some dust masks (or #4 coffee filters, like the more resourceful New Yorkers used after 9/11) to keep the ash out of your lungs.

Larry’s warnings, quoted earlier, got the conventional geologists scurrying to cover their backsides —just in case. The situation was best reported in an 8/9/03 article by Mitch Battros, titled Seismologists Indicate Serious Concern Over Yellowstone Volcano. Mitch is the author of the Earth Changes TV website:

[quoting]

Yellowstone plateau has been volcanically active for 2 million years. It has been the scene of some of the world’s largest eruptions. The Yellowstone caldera has one of the world’s hydrothermal systems. The last large eruptions was 70,000 years ago. There are some who believe Yellowstone has a 70,000- to 80,000-year cycle. Yes, that would mean, at any time, Yellowstone could come alive.

Yellowstone’s world-famous natural history is marked by such colossal volcanic events that their reflections in today’s landscape are difficult to grasp and impossible to take in at just a glance, even for those familiar with the signs of past volcanism.

The stunning features of Yellowstone National Park result from great explosive eruptions and profound collapse of the ground, enormously thick lava flows, uplift and extensive faulting, and the erosive power of flowing water and ice. For more than a century, geologists have discovered and analyzed evidence of the dramatic events that have shaped the land there. When combined with growing knowledge about how volcanoes work and the never-ending motion of Earth’s surface, the evidence tells a remarkable story of the Yellowstone landscape.

Saturday, 8/9/03, it has been disclosed today, scientists plan to set-up a temporary network of seismographs, Global Positioning System receivers, and thermometers to monitor increasing hydrothermal activity in the Norris Geyser Basin and gauge the risk of a hydrothermal explosion. The goal of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is to pinpoint underground sources of hydrothermal steam and learn more about how seismic activity affects the basin.

[end quoting]

Keep an eye open for more news about this hot-spot area.


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Earth Changes Galore


While there are small earthquakes around the world all the time, let me list the alarming number of earthquakes that have been above 6.0 in magnitude just in July of 2003:

•July 3:   Tonga, 6.0
•July 12: Queen Charlotte Islands region, 6.0
•July 15: New Ireland region, 6.5
•July 15: Carlsberg Ridge, 7.6
•July 17: off the coast of Jalisco, Mexico, 6.0
•July 21: New Britain region, Papua New Guinea, 6.4
•July 21: Yunnan, China, 6.0
•July 22: Vanuatu Islands, 6.0
•July 25: New Ireland region, Papua New Guinea, 6.4
•July 25: Eastern Honshu, Japan, 6.1
•July 27: Southern Bolivia, 6.1
•July 27: Fiji Islands region, 6.6 and 6.2

The important point here is that both the frequency and intensity of quakes is, on average, on the rise with each passing month. Is this a sign of things to come?

To our South, Northern Mexico had been parched by drought conditions, affecting some 10 states, which have been declared disaster areas. One the hardest hit is the Yaqui Valley, which had to cancel its summer planting season.

Closer to home, due to increased thermal activity and increased measured ground temperatures (up to more than 200º F), Yellowstone National Park has closed the Volcanic Basin.

Also, there has been a lot of information on the Internet about Planet X (Nibiru) and its "imminent" passage through our Solar System. When this may occur, no one knows for sure. There have also been a lot of articles about a possible magnetic (or actual) pole shift for Earth. And, of course, comets are an influencing factor into this scenario.

Back in the 1950s, Immanuel Velikovksy (1895-1979) wrote about comets and their impact on planets as they travel through the Solar System. Velikovsky got his information by studying the ancient records in various cultures, often in the language they were written, and also directly from "elders".

James McCanney has gone on record as supporting the work and conclusions of Immanuel Velikovsky. Let’s take a closer look at this often controversial figure.


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Velikovsky Reconsidered


In a book titled Velikovsky Reconsidered, by the editors of Penseé, comes the following statement from the book’s Preface, which the authors based on the work of Velikovsky:

[quoting]

Velikovsky Reconsidered
Global cataclysms fundamentally altered the face of our planet more than once in historical times. The terrestrial axis shifted. Earth fled from its established orbit. The magnetic poles reversed.

In great convulsions, the seas emptied onto continents, the planet’s crust folded, and volcanoes erupted into mountain chains. Lava flows, up to a mile thick, spilled out over vast areas of the Earth’s surface. Climates changed suddenly —ice settling over lush vegetation, while green meadows and forests were transformed into deserts.

In a few awful moments, civilizations collapsed. Species were exterminated in continental sweeps of mud, rock, and sea. Tidal waves crushed even the largest beasts, tossing their bodies into tangled heaps in the valleys and rock fissures, preserved beneath mountains of sediment. The mammoths of Siberia were instantly frozen and buried.

Surviving generations recorded these events by every means available: in myths and legends, temples and monuments to the planetary gods, precise charts of the heavens, sacrificial rites, astrological canons, detailed records of planetary movements, and tragic lamentations amid fallen cities and destroyed institutions.

[still quoting:]

"All Is Ruin"
Aware of a link between the circuit of heavenly bodies and the catastrophic ruin of previous generations, the ancients ceaselessly watched the planetary movements. Their traditions recalled that when old epochs dissolved, the new "Age" or "Sun" was marked by different celestial paths. Astronomers and seers diligently watched for any change which might augur approaching destruction and the end of an age.

[end quoting]

This is all by way of setting the stage for exploring the relationship between various celestial events and what they may have to do with calamities on planet Earth. Let’s explore more deeply what Immanuel Velikovsky had to say, from the www.halexandria.org website:

[quoting]

Immanuel Velikovsky
There’s nothing like a massive and profound reconstruction of ancient history to really upset Egyptologists, archeologists, and other members of the "old guard of this-is-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it-so-take-your-evidence-and-go-away". This was particularly the case when Immanuel Velikovsky, who, after years of study, informed the world that:

•Earth, Mars, and Venus had suffered catastrophic near-collisions in historic times.

•"Sun Stand Thou Still" in Joshua’s time was a reality.

•The history of ancient Egypt contains 580 imaginary years.

And, among other things:

•The Earth was without the Moon in historical times.

Immanuel Velikovsky is the author of Worlds In Collision, Ages In Chaos, Ramses II And His Time, Peoples Of The Sea, Earth In Upheaval, and Oedipus And Akhanaton. Today many scholars are calling Immanuel Velikovsky a scientific genius, maintaining an archive of his work at www.varchive.org, while others are acknowledging or vindicating his work on numerous critical points. But this has not always been the case.

Upon the publication of Worlds In Collision in 1950, Velikovsky was nearly laughed out of science, the publisher of his book was forced (because of its large number of academic textbooks) to sell the best-selling publishing rights to another non-academic publisher, and since then the Old Guard has done everything in its power to discredit the very idea of "near-Earth objects" (and thus the possibility of collisions) and even the remote possibility of any reconstruction of history.

In the latter vein, one history student, Kelly Kincaid, wrote her senior thesis on the idea that if new evidence was found which contradicted history, could the "official" history then be changed —only to find her history professor so incensed by her example (one from Velikovsky) that he, by example, proved her thesis that indeed history could not be changed from mere evidence.

In Velikovsky’s own words (www.varchive.org/itb/ecintro.htm):

"When the manuscript of Worlds In Collision was first offered to the publisher (Macmillan Company, New York) it contained a brief story of the Deluge and of the cataclysm that terminated the Old Kingdom in Egypt. But after one of the publisher’s readers suggested that the book should concentrate on one event, we compromised in presenting, in the published volume, two series of cataclysms—those that took place in the fifteenth century before the present era and were caused by the near-approaches of Venus, and those that occurred in the eighth century before this era and were caused by the near-approaches of Mars.

"The unused material was left for elaboration in a separate work on ’Saturn and the Flood’ and 'Jupiter of the Thunderbolt’.

"The reception of Worlds In Collision, however, made me understand that I had already offered more than was palatable. And so I did not hurry with what I consider to be the heritage of our common ancestors, an inheritance of which my contemporaries in the scientific circles preferred not to partake.

"Researching and writing this book, I would sit at the feet of the sages of many ancient civilizations —one day of the Egyptian learned scribes, another of the Hebrew ancient rabbis, the next of the Hindus, Chinese, or the Pythagoreans. But then, rising to my feet, I would confer with present-day scientific knowledge.

"At times I came to understand what perplexed the ancients, and at other times I found answers to what perplexes the moderns. This shuttle back and forth was a daily occupation for a decade or more, and it became a way to understand the phenomena: to listen to those who lived close to the events of the past, even to witnesses, and to try to understand them in the light of the theoretical and experimental knowledge of the last few centuries, in this manner confronting witnesses and experts.

"I realized very soon that the ancient sages lived in a frightened state of mind, justified by the events they or their close ancestors had witnessed. The ancients’ message was an anguished effort to communicate the awe engendered at seeing Nature with its elements unchained. The moderns, however, denied their ancestors’ wisdom, even their integrity, because of an all-embracing fear of facing the past, even the historically documented experiences of our progenitors, as recent as four score generations ago.

"I have deliberately described the catastrophes of the second and first millennia before this era before I describe the catastrophes of the previous ages. The reason is obvious: the history of catastrophes is extremely unsettling to the historians, evolutionists, geologists, astronomers, and physicists. Therefore it is preferable to start from the better known and then proceed to the less known.

"For the last catastrophe caused by the contact of Mars and the Earth, I could establish the year, the month, and even the day; not so for the catastrophes in which Venus and the Earth participated, when only the approximate time in the space of a definite century could be established. Still, I found it advisable to narrate the story of the second millennium first: it was possible to write the story of the contacts with Venus with a fair amount of detail.

"But each cataclysm is not only more remote in time from us, it is also obscured by the catastrophes that followed. As we seek to penetrate ever deeper into the past, we can see the foregoing periods through the veil of the catastrophes; dimmer and dimmer is the light behind every veil, till our eye can distinguish no more behind the veil that hangs over the period When The Earth Was Moonless, though already inhabited by human life [Lunatics?]. We do not know the beginning; we can only enter the theater at what may have been the third or fourth act."

[end quoting]

This connection between massive events within our Solar System and their effects on planet Earth spans the realms of science and history. Few are willing to pursue such information with an open mind because the contradictions with "established fact" can get such honest researchers into a lot of trouble.

The Kolbrin [Bible] will be discussed shortly during the interview with James McCanney. There is also some discussion of Planet X, also known as Nibiru. In my prior interview with Professor McCanney, he referred to a large comet as being responsible for the flood referred to in Genesis. He cited as his source a hard-to-find book called the Kolbrin Bible.

Let’s see what images this old reference work draws to mind. In Chapter Four, which is titled "The Deluge" from The Book of Gleanings, we read:

[quoting]

Then, with the dawning, men saw an awesome sight. There, riding on a black rolling cloud came the Destroyer, newly released from the confines of the sky vaults, and she raged about the heavens, for it was her day of judgment. The beast with her opened its mouth and belched forth fire and hot stones and a vile smoke. It covered the whole sky above, and the meeting place of Earth and heaven could no longer be seen. In the evening the places of the stars were changed, they rolled across the sky to new stations; then the floodwaters came.

The floodgates of Heaven were opened and the foundations of Earth were broken apart. The surrounding waters poured over the land and broke upon the mountains. The storehouses of the winds burst their bolts asunder, so storms and whirlwinds were loosed, to hurl themselves upon the Earth. In the seething waters and howling gales all buildings were destroyed, trees were uprooted, and mountains cast down. There was a time of great heat; then came a bitter cold. The waves over the waters did not rise and fall but seethed and swirled; there was an awful sound above.

[end quoting]

This is obviously a detailed description of a massive cataclysmic event. Was it produced by a comet coming our way? How does one prove such an assertion?


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Hubble Helps Confirm Oldest Known Planet


A number of weeks ago, there were articles posted all over the Internet about a "discovery" of the oldest known planet. While there are many articles to choose from, here is just one, issued by NASA on July 10, 2003:

[quoting]

Hubble Helps Confirm Oldest Known Planet
Long before our Sun and Earth ever existed, a Jupiter-sized planet formed around a Sun-like star. Now, almost 13 billion years later, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has precisely measured the mass of this farthest and oldest known planet.

The ancient planet has had a remarkable history, because it has wound-up in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a globular star cluster.

The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate as to the true nature of this ancient world, which takes a century to complete each orbit. The planet is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence the first planets were formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude planets may be very abundant in the universe.

The planet lies near the core of the ancient globular star cluster M4, (click on image right) located 5,600 light-years away in the summer constellation Scorpius. Globular clusters are deficient in heavier elements, because they formed so early in the universe that heavier elements had not been cooked-up in abundance in the nuclear furnaces of stars. Some astronomers have therefore argued globular clusters cannot contain planets. This conclusion was bolstered in 1999 when Hubble failed to find close-orbiting "hot Jupiter"-type planets around the stars of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. Now, it seems astronomers were just looking in the wrong place, and gas-giant worlds, orbiting at greater distances from their stars, could be common in globular clusters.

"Our Hubble measurement offers tantalizing evidence that planet formation processes are quite robust and efficient at making use of a small amount of heavier elements. This implies that planet formation happened very early in the universe" said Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University, State College.

"This is tremendously encouraging that planets are probably abundant in globular star clusters" says Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. He bases this conclusion on the fact a planet was uncovered in such an unlikely place: orbiting two captured stars, a helium white dwarf and a rapidly spinning neutron star, near the crowded core of a globular cluster. In such a place, fragile planetary systems tend to be ripped apart due to gravitational interactions with neighboring stars.

The story of this planet’s discovery began in 1988, when the pulsar, called PSR B1620-26, was discovered in M4. It is a neutral star spinning just under 100 times per second and emitting regular radio pulses like a lighthouse beam. The white dwarf was quickly found through its effect on the clock-like white dwarf, as the two stars orbited each other twice per year. Sometime later, astronomers noticed further irregularities in the pulsar that implied a third object was orbiting the others. This new object was suspected to be a planet, but it also could have been a brown dwarf or a low-mass star. Debate over its true identity continued through the 1990s.

Sigurdsson, Richer, and their co-investigators settled the debate by at last measuring the planet’s actual mass through some ingenious celestial detective work. They had exquisite Hubble data from the mid-1990s taken to study white dwarfs in M4. Sifting through these observations, they were able to detect the white dwarf orbiting the pulsar and measure its color and temperature. Using evolutionary models computed by Brad Hansen of the University of California, Los Angeles, the astronomers estimated the white dwarf’s mass.

This in turn was compared to the amount of wobble in the pulsar’s signal, allowing the team to calculate the tilt of the white dwarf’s orbit as seen from Earth. When combined with the radio studies of the wobbling pulsar, this critical piece of evidence told them the tilt of the planet’s orbit, too, and so the precise mass could at last be known. With a mass of only 2.5 Jupiters, the object is too small to be a star or brown dwarf and must instead be a planet. The planet is likely a gas giant without a solid surface like the Earth.

The full team involved in this discovery is composed of Hansen, Richer, Sigurdsson, Ingrid Stairs, UBC, and Stephen Thorsett, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Electronic images and additional information are available at the http://hubblesite.org/news/2003/19  Internet website.

[end quoting]

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Mars Watch

 

Another factor that has gotten a lot of attention is the "close" passage of Mars. Will the close proximity of Mars to Earth have any effects on our weather? Our magnetic poles? Anything? I took the opportunity of inquiring about that in my discussion with Professor McCanney, but before we get to the interview, here is some brief information about the Mars passage by June Ferguson, posted 7/30/03 at the Rense.com Internet website:

[quoting]

Mars Watch
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month (July 2003) and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter’s gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again. The encounter will culminate on August 27 when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the Moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That’s pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this with your children and grandchildren. No one alive today will ever see this again.

[end quoting]

Mars remains a prominent figure in the night sky for a time well after the date of closest approach, and the question remains as to what possible residual effects may be produced on Earth from this window of close proximity of the two planets.


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