Meteor stream key to earth's climate
Dr Victor Clube
I would now bet my bottom dollar that the core body of the Taurid-Arietid (meteor) stream (see previous item) is the ultimate key to everything that is going on in the atmosphere, affecting climate, ozone, etc. Yet the big guns of modern science are not trained in this direction at all.
'I would now bet my bottom dollar that the core body of the Taurid-Arietid (meteor) stream is the ultimate key to everything that is going on in the atmosphere, affecting climate, ozone, etc'
The Taurid-ARietid stream in history
Adapted extracts from 'Giant Comets and their Role in History' by Dr Clube (in 'The Universe and its Origins', edited by S. Fred Singer, published by ICUS, Paragon House, New York, 1990).
The largest if not the brightest meteor stream in the sky is the Taurid-Arietid stream. It approaches the earth by night from the asolar direction during the months of November/December and by day from the solar direction during May/June. Since the earth's crossing time for most other meteor streams is just a few hours, volume for volume and mass for mass, the source of this stream may not be far short of a million times larger than a typical one. And since a typical comet is a few kilometres in diameter, the ultimate source in this case may easily be a giant comet a few hundred kilometres in size.
There is a growing impression that giant comets progressively disintegrate into a variety of asteroidal debris. The Tunguska body of 100,000 tons is a case in point: it struck the earth on the morning of June 30, 1908, and was almost certainly a member of the Taurid-Arietid stream.
'The Taurid-Arietid stream may have produced the last ice age'
Whipple and Hamid accurately retrocalculated the orbits of a number of meteors to indicate that several major fragmentations have taken place during the last five thousand years. The most significant of these events took place around 3000 BC due to an encounter in the asteroid belt; another was deemed to have occurred around AD 500, with possibly yet another in the second half of the second millennium BC. The epochs around 3000 and 1300 BC in particular correspond to significant deteriorations in the global climate for two or three centuries or more. It is known from other studies that a correlation exists between global rainfall and the incidence of meteor dust on the earth; so the indications now are for a considerable degree of climatic control by the Taurid-Arietid stream. Indeed, its giant comet is likely to have produced the last ice age whilst modulating the climate during the subsequent interglacial through the intermediary of stratospheric dust veils.
Around 3000 BC a major fragmentation of the primary body would have produced a battery of comets; it would not be surprising if onlookers thought that they were witnessing a battle for mastery over the sky, and that this was in some way associated with the assaults on the earth that inevitably followed. Such global bombardments by Tunguska and super-Tunguska bodies would leave an indelible memory for the surviving humans and a lasting fear of the gods in the sky.
'We might even envisage destruction so great, and dark ages so effective, that only the dimmest memories will later exist of giants that once walked the earth'
Memories would be of local floods and widespread destruction by fire over areas the size of a nation. We might even envisage destruction so great, and dark ages so effective, that only the dimmest memories will later exist of giants that once walked the earth, of heavenly clouds that a creator once built in the sky, of prophets and messiahs who warned of doom and salvation, and of floods and cataracts of fire that were used to cleanse the earth. We might anticipate that the intellectual confusion would reach new heights when the comet-asteroid deities known to be responsible for all the mayhem finally disappear from sight - which they apparently did during the first millennium BC. We might anticipate the worship of new invisible gods or the diversion to new planetary gods. We might even learn to agree with an Aristotle, a Ptolemy or a Newton, as they seek to dismiss the thunderbolts of a previous generation and restore a sense of order in heaven and on earth. Each time, however, we ignore the Taurid-Arietid stream.
'A future confrontation with a barrage of Tunguskas is a very reasonable projection'
There is a swarm of boulders out there and a future confrontation with a barrage of Tunguskas is a very reasonable projection from the state of current knowledge. At least one form of star wars can be virtually guaranteed, and only time will tell whether we face a nuclear winter or a cometary winter.
Dr Victor Clube, Department of Astrophysics, Nuclear Physics Laboratory, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH (tel 0865 273303; fax 0865 273418).
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