POSSIBLE OUTCOMES OF THE ENCOUNTER WITH

THE COMET HALE BOPP

(updated 1/1/99)see influence below

This quote is from a recent article by the Associated Press:

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP)

-- A meteorite slammed into a sparsely populated area of Honduras last month, terrifying residents and leaving a 165-foot-wide crater, scientists confirmed Sunday.

Villagers reported seeing a fireball crash and break into small red and yellow pieces on November 22 near San Luis, in the western province of Santa Barbara. But Sunday's statement was the first official word that the object was a meteorite.

 

Residents of San Luis, 125 miles west of the capital, were terrified by the meteorite's crash, which sparked a fire that destroyed several acres of coffee plants and damaged a main highway.

"I arrived almost immediately to the site of the explosion," said peasant Francisco Aguilar Sabillon. "There were enormous flames, and everything was destroyed. Because of that I fled from the place, frightened."

Authorities have asked those living nearby to stay away from the crash site. The meteorite did not appear to have any properties that would pose a threat to humans, they said.

This quote tells of a meteorite that hit Honduras only last November. We are very fortunate that this small impact occurred in a relatively remote area. Even a hit this size, if in a populated area would have surely taken many lives.

The Earth is two thirds ocean and much of the land area is sparsely populated, making a disaster less likely.

An impact the size of the one above (and indeed much larger) would go totally undetected if at sea. But impacts are not unknown to the Earth. More and more craters are being discovered every day, due to technological advances in our ability to survey the Earth. Many meteorites do not make it to the surface due to our protective atmosphere.

These objects are composed of many different types of materials, depending upon their origin and there are literally billions of these objects in our local orbit. Most are too small to create much concern, but there are many many more with enough mass to cause very very serious problems.

I begin with this example, NOT to suggest at all that Hale Bopp will hit the Earth. Although this may just be within the realm of possibilities. Rather this example is utilized to warn people that the threat from Hale Bopp IS REAL, and that other forms of disaster could well be caused by its passing.

It is truly my deepest desire that this comet will pass without serious incident, just a beautiful sight in the morning sky. But unfortunately, Hale Bopp has already caused some serious problems, as have been presented in other pages.

Estimated Kinetic Energy Of Hale Bopp

Fig. 8a

These figures (converted into several different formats) represent very conservative, however large, estimates based upon the following hypothesis; when Hale Bopp came within the influence of Jupiter, there was a violent explosion. At least five bodies were ejected from the primary body and have since maintained a dynamic pattern with Hale Bopp. One of these bodies is of course the Companion.

We do not know how many other smaller pieces, than those visible here, may exist. As a comparison, the Earth's field has been estimated at 7.94x10e25 gauss; the Sun's field estimated at 2.38x10e³² gauss. These numbers are of course quite concerning. These estimates are the basis for the following possibilities.

The following theories are presented merely as possibilities. Let me emphasize that these possibilities are based upon information that I have to date, and this, as I have said, is very limited due to the information and data releases by NASA/JPL. Therefore the constructing of these theories, concerning possibilities, pose a complicated and difficult task at best.

As always your input is welcome and requested. I have modified the Mercalli Scale to apply to a variety of destructive forces rather than just earthquake strength. This will give you an idea of the degree of threat that I am considering. This of course is only an estimate and is most definitely open to change and variance from the value.

Electromagnetic effects are more likely to occur as hits on the Earth are less likely to occur. Although hits may indeed have a more destructive effect upon the Earth.

Fig. 8b

CURRENT LEVEL OF INFLUENCE= X   DATE=JANUARY 1999

see Modified Mercalli Scale below

(updated 5-1-98)

ELECTROMAGNETIC EFFECTS:

Many of these effects have already taken place. In the preceding pages I have noted an increase in airline navigation problems, weather increases and earthquake increases. But the prediction of future events as stated earlier is extremely difficult with the limited model I am able to develop. The other real possibility is that with its encounter with Jupiter its field was damaged or reduced. This would definitely be in our favor.

The possibilities in this considered area of ElectroMagnetic influence may include a stripping of the ozone layer. This has also already started, but to what extent it will continue no one knows. In an AP story released on December 17th, it was reported that NASA's POLAR satellite discovered that FIFTY tons of plasma a day is being spewed into space from the north and south poles.

This effect has been seen in the past from time to time (now according to this report very common and increasing) and has been known as auroral effects. These electrified gases cause "storms" in space and have caused power outages across the globe.

These events will increase, as will the depletion of the ozone causing massive blackouts for days and perhaps even months. An extreme case would be a total loss of power systems for years. Along with the ozone depletion would come an increase risk of radiation from ultraviolet light.

It would cause increased skin cancers and other diseases, forcing people to stay indoors and only going outside with heavy protective clothing on. As long as the solar wind remains intact, we would be safe from cosmic rays. But an extreme model may even predict strong influence of the Sun's ability to perform as in the past.

The likelihood of an increase in seismic activity will be greatly enhanced due to an increased EMF. Great faults like the San Andreas and the New Madrid could open up causing quakes on the magnitude of 9 or 10 on the Modified Mercalli Scale below. Even a polar shift has been suggested by some. I would not rule this possibility out.

The mechanics of such an event are not yet known, although in our history it has clearly been proven to have happened. The collapse of the Earth's magnetic field may be imminent, forced by the possibly much more powerful EMF of Hale Bopp. This could cause a pole shift or reversal, and thus, as stated above, a complete annihilation of any form of electrical power.

The implications of this to our everyday life would be devastating. Think of the many things that we use electricity for; medical purposes, the internet, refrigeration and heating, communication, etc..

Weather Increases could include deluges with electrical storms as never seen by contemporary society. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons would know no season and would be constantly present in every corner of the world. Electrical storms could exist without clouds in the sky. And although weather has increased severely this past year, it has less of a psychological effect on those that are fortunate enough to escape them.

Therefore it may seem to those that are fortunate enough to miss them that these increases are not real at first glance. But to those in the middle of one of these great and fearsome storms as of recent, there can be no doubt as to their suffering.

GRAVITY EFFECTS:

Gravity effects may be more predictable. The primary variable here is the question as to whether or not the comet has broken into pieces and if the mass present remains constant. If the mass is constant then great problems will continue to increase dependent upon the comet's position in relationship to the bodies of our system and whether or not the entirety of the mass remains together, relatively tightly organized and intact.

As we have seen when other comets have entered our system, they may be perturbed through EMF or gravity. Therefore we must consider the possibility that Hale Bopp could come into an even more threatening closeness. When Shoemaker-Levy 9 was captured by Jupiter it posed a threat not only to Jupiter but also to Jupiter's moons. If we take this model and compare it to the Sun and the inner Solar System, we can see that the possibility exists for greater influence.

But predictability is limited to a certain level far above our ability to assess real damage. There are literally thousands upon thousands of NEA's that even without the perturbing force of Hale Bopp are dangerously close. This will be discussed in the following sections.

If the mass remains constant, as at the time prior to the passing of Jupiter, likely one to two or more Earth masses, the rise in earthquakes can be expected to rise to an effect equivalent to or larger than the great earthquakes of the 1811-12 era on the New Madrid Fault and in the following quake in South Africa.

Although this may again be quite an underestimation, especially in our day of highly populated cities and suburbia. In such a scenario, hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost and most structures pulled down. And due to our lack of understanding in what exactly causes a polar shift (although gravity in concert with EMF may cause this to occur), we are left again to our blind ability to predict such an event.

The other variable that must be considered is the position of bodies during the passing. Models to determine such events are much greater than my capabilities, never the less exist in reality as possibilities. The odds for destructive force are therefore increased by yet another variable.

Every volcano and some yet to come forth could be activated. A review of Mt. Saint Helen's shows the destructive force of only one of these titans. If there were 8-10 of these monsters spewing out ash and gases at once, all life on the Earth would be in danger of failing.

Protecting one's self would be a matter of location and preparation. With seismic events comes the threat of tsunami and deluge. In such a scenario all continents could be in danger below approximately 2000 feet. An inland safe place may exist, but with that comes other dangers.

A shift in global orientation does not necessarily mean total deluge or even total planet shift. It is possible for spin and orientation to be adjusted slightly, or to any degree. There are recorded events where a momentary burst in the Sun's corona has caused the Earth's spin to slow down, however slight.

Things we must watch for are changes in the celestial mapping and the length of the day. It may be very likely that we may never know that these events occur without concentrated amateur observations. The message here is that again we are dealing with a very wide degree of variables.

NEW PLANETS:

With Hale Bopp breaking into chunks and pieces, it is quite possible that these may become captured in orbit around the Sun. Considering the possibility of the size of some of these, negative effects on the Earth would surely ensue. It has been hypothesized by Immanuel Velikovsky that Venus was once not a part of the inner Solar System.

There are other theories that state that the so-called Asteroid Belt was once a planet and was torn to pieces by what ever force. The implications of such beliefs have severe impact upon our current situation. Any of the above disasters could be considered to occur, as extremes, if this were to come about.

Tidal increases would definitely be a problem. Weather could be indefinitely changed. Temperatures could be forever lower or higher, or could be extremely variable. Delicate life that depends upon certain amounts of sunlight in the right spectrum could be forced out of existence.

Certain types of plant life that we depend upon for food could be forever lost. The Earth could be turned into a barren globe like our neighbor Mars. Consider the surface of these two relatively close neighbors. Neither hospitable to our form of life. Existence of life on Earth is truly hanging in the fine balance between success and failure. 

HITS:

As previously stated, there are already thousands of NEA's that cross our path nearly every day. If Hale Bopp has broken up, as I believe it may likely have, we are facing a shotgun of effects not only from Hale Bopp but from the NEA's in our area of the Solar System.

In the recent book by John S. Lewis, entitled "Rain of Iron And Ice", which I highly recommend, he recounts the events of December 6, 1917 in Halifax, Nova Scotia where a ship full of explosives blew up. The explosion has been estimated to be equal to a three kiloton blast in that populated area.

1,963 bodies were found, over 9000 injured and countless numbers of citizens among the missing. Twenty kilotons of explosive power killed seventy thousand at Hiroshima. Man has digressed/progressed far since that time over four decades ago. Accuracy and increases in power are far beyond obscene.

The worst effect as seen on Earth to date, in Japan, was exploded far above the surface to increase destructive capacity. In 1908 a comet exploded over the Tunguska region of the Soviet Union, flattening trees and destroying landscape for miles around and below the blast. In some ways we are protected from many threats that the other planets in our system face.

Our atmosphere affords some limited protection, but there is a trade off. The trade off is that many smaller intruders do not make it to the surface, and we are fortunate to have a planet where two thirds of the surface is covered by water.

The down side is that we have been fooled into believing that the Earth has not suffered as much damage as the other bodies have. As you were taught in elementary school, erosion of rain, wind and time is extremely powerful. Aerial bursts of larger impactors, can result in greater seismic disturbances, debris projectiles, shock wave blasts, instantaneous fireballs, and momentary x-ray irradiation.

I quote from Mr. Lewis' book:

"...The fireball drives a powerful shock wave outward in all directions. The fireball continues to expand until it reaches pressure balance with the surrounding atmosphere. By then the surface of the fireball has cooled to a few thousand degrees, but the fireball is so much hotter than the surrounding atmosphere that it is very buoyant.

 

All the surrounding countryside, scorched by the intense heat, is now in flames. Cooler air from the surrounding countryside flows rapidly inward toward ground zero to replace the rising column of hot gases, blowing at hurricane speeds and whipping the flames into a firestorm. Temperatures high enough to melt silicates and make droplets of glass are commonly found near surface bursts."

On the other hand a typical impact on the Earth will excavate a mass of material about one hundred times the mass of the impactor. The meteorite that was mentioned in the beginning of this page in Honduras, was no doubt quite small.

Of course if you are at ground zero it doesn't really matter! An impactor of 100 meters can produce an explosive equivalent of more than 100 megatons. That's five thousand times the power of the explosion that occurred over Hiroshima!

Another quote from "Rain Of Iron And Ice":

"Spacewatch (part of NASA's NEAT project) has found, and will continue to find large numbers of bodies smaller than 10 meters in diameter, too small and faint for spectral studies. The number of such bodies in near by space is so large that developing a complete catalog of their orbits is a gigantic, almost impossible, task.

 

We presently track and maintain accurate orbital data for over two hundred NEA's and several hundred cometary nuclei larger than one kilometer in diameter... It [will] take us another seventy years to develop a reasonably complete catalog."

This as you can see is not an easy task. There are other variables that must be mentioned, primarily the fact that all possible impactors are not composed of the same density or mass. This bears weight as to the effect of each impactor. In the case of Hale Bopp we can only surmise that its makeup is more planetoid than ice.

This could be a density difference of less than .9 to a density well over that of the Earth. The other factor would be the angle of attack. Again at this early date and with the lack of feasible data, an appropriate model is impossible. The other factor is the site of impact.

If the site is in the ocean, there will not be a problem with a dust cloud that could cover the face of the Earth for months. On the other hand the threat of tsunami would be great. The successive waves are like a rock in a pond, but the force is linear as the blast is two dimensional instead of three dimensional as in the air.

Therefore the energy falls off at a slower rate than an air blast.

"As the wave approaches landfall, it will sharpen its profile due to the friction from the ocean floor. The height of the wave will grow by a factor of thirty, so a wave thirty kilometers long by thirty meters tall will crest at a height of about one thousand meters as it runs up the shoreline."

Therefore, there are several concerns considering a hit that is possible. First is Hale Bopp one piece or several, as I have proposed. Will it be perturbed to come close enough to actually cause an impact. Or will one of its many traveling companions come for a visit? But perhaps a more likely question, will it perturb one of the thousands of objects already here into an inbound trajectory?

The fact of the matter is, that we may not know for a few years. Hale Bopp, if perturbed with its interaction with the Sun, could slingshot out and return at anytime in the future. Not necessarily 2000 or so years, as its current ephemeris suggests.

NEW:

(update 1-10-97)

This is a report that came out just this year on a "swarm" of asteroids that have been discovered. My question is:

• Is this a remnant of Hale Bopp following the explosion that took place past Jupiter, rather than the Trojan Swarm?

• And if by chance it is actually the Trojan Swarm, what will Hale Bopp's effect be upon these dangerous objects?

 

ROGUE ASTEROIDS ROAM SOLAR SYSTEM

By Tim Friend

GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

 

"More than 200 asteroids half a mile in diameter have broken free of their orbits around the sun and are roaming the solar system like loose cannons, new research shows.

The findings in Thursday's "Nature" are the first to examine the orbits of a cluster of asteroids around the sun called the Trojan Swarm. The asteroids are in the same orbit as Jupiter and probably number as many as in the better-known main asteroid belt.

Scientists had assumed their orbits were stable, but they were "surprised to learn the asteroids are leaking out of their orbits at the outer edge and then go rattling around the solar system," Levison says.

The study was conducted with Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker of the Lowell Observatory and Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. The Shoemakers co-discovered the comet that slammed into Jupiter in 1995.

The scientists say the Trojan Swarm findings add to the notion that objects in the solar system are much less stable than previously believed.

"This whole field has undergone a revolution in last five to 10 years," Levison says. "The old picture of the solar system is that everything moves like clockwork. But the entire system is chaotic, and it is impossible to predict where things are going to be.""

Note that the swarm is located in Jupiter's orbit, another suggestion that it may be related to Hale Bopp, as this was the area where the violence took place. Or perhaps the other possibility is likely, that these were asteroids and were perturbed by the comet. Either way the outcome is dangerous.

CONCLUSION:

The bottom line?

Take your pick! I truly hope and believe that it is likely that Hale Bopp will pass without further serious incident. But how do you say that to the hundreds of people that have lost loved ones in the serious weather, earthquakes, plane crashes, and other related incidents of recent.

Many may not believe that my purpose has been to educate, claiming that my sole intention is to sensationalize.

• But if Hale Bopp is not our destiny, then when will the next one come?

• Which one of the thousands of NEA's out there will fulfill Hale Bopp's threat?

• Will you prepare or will you ignore the implications that exist?

A little preparation might just save you or your loved ones' lives in a pinch.

Please give it a thought.

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