360 days Ancient Calendar
Copyright 2013 A. Sokolowski
In our post Puzzles-of-the-moon we mentioned 360 days perfect calendar being possibly used in our distant past (before an asteroid impact).
Was a major asteroid impact (in our distant past) responsible for disruption of “perfect” cycles of the Earth and Moon system (such disruption would speed up rotation of our planet – so after the impact the Earth would take 365.25 days (instead of 360) to complete its full 360 deg orbit around the sun.)
In this article we are exploring arguments supporting such a hypothesis.
Although arguments presented here are not a proof of such theory, they show that it is not an impossible idea.
Nature’s Calendar Used to be Perfect…
Is it possible that “in the beginning” our Earth and the Moon had “perfect relationship” with each other and the sun?
All calendars (ancient and modern) were defined by astronomical cycles of the Earth and the Moon.
All calendars began with people recording time by using natural cycles: days, lunar cycles (months), and solar cycles (years). Ancient peoples have attempted to organize these cycles into calendars to keep track of time and to be able to predict future events of importance to them, such as seasons (e.g. the annual Nile flood in ancient Egypt), eclipses etc. The main problem was that (after the asteroid impact) these natural cycles did not divide evenly.
Today, the solar year is 365.242199 days long (or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds) and the time between full moons is 29.530589 days.
Therefore in 1 year there are 12.37 moon cycles (365.24 / 29.53 = 12.37).
Solar Day (divided by ancient astronomers into 24 hours = 1440 min = 86400 seconds ) is defined as the time between one noon and the next (the day is defined with respect to the position of the Sun in the sky.)
In our daily lives it is practical to use “solar day” as a unit of time. Solar time is measured by the apparent diurnal motion of the sun, and local noon in solar time is the moment when the sun is at its highest point in the sky (exactly due south or north depending on the observer’s latitude and the season). The average time for the sun to return to its highest point is 24 hours. The earth makes one complete rotation around its axis (360 deg) in relation to distant stars (not the Sun) and the time to complete this full rotation is called sidereal day.
The Earth’s Orbital Cycle is called 1 solar year (today it takes 365.24 solar days to complete its orbit in relation to the sun)
This orbital cycle combined with the tilt of the earth’s spin axis ( 23.44 degrees) is perceived as the cycle of seasons and it is also responsible for the variable length of the daytime (throughout the year); on the northern hemisphere summer daytime is much longer than in winter.
The Moon makes a complete orbit around the Earth with respect to the fixed stars about once every 27.3 days (its sidereal period). However, since the Earth is moving in its orbit about the Sun at the same time, it takes slightly longer for the Moon to show the same phase to Earth, which is about 29.5 days (its synodic period). We call it 1 lunar month.
Nature’s Nearly Perfect Calendar
The Moon could be “Nature’s perfect clock” if the solar cycle period were exactly divisible by the period of the lunar cycle.
For example, if solar year were exactly 360 days (instead 365.25) and lunar cycle were 30 days (instead of 29.53) we would have a “perfect calendar” based on 12 months of 30 days per month.
Such calendar would would have perfect sync of the 12 lunar cycles with the solar year of 360 days.
- The “perfect” Earth would take 360 days to complete 360 degree circular solar orbit (1 deg per day).
- The “perfect” Moon would take 30 days to complete 360 degree circular orbit around the Earth (12 deg per day).
- In such case, we could have a year based on 12 months of 30 days. Each month would have 5 weeks of 6 days each.
We can only wonder if these numbers were true for the Earth in the the early period of the solar system…
Today, the solar year is 365.242199 days long (or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds) and the time between full moons is 29.530589 days.
Therefore in 1 year there are 12.37 moon cycles (365.24 / 29.53 = 12.37). The main problem is that these natural cycles do not divide evenly.
Is it possible that these cycles were “perfect” in the early (before the asteroid impact) days?
Note: there is another perfect calendar recently proposed for our current cycles of the earth and the moon. If the solar year were exactly 364 days (instead of 365.24 ) and lunar cycle exactly 28 days (instead of 29.53), we would have another “perfect calendar” based on 13 months of 28 days per month, with each month having 4 weeks of 7 days. Such calendar was proposed as “13 Moon Calendar” (discussed in this article) with the 365th day called the “Day Out of Time”.
It is possible that “in the early days” of our planet (perhaps by design of the “Great Architect” of the Solar System – or by some unknown laws of physics?) the Earth would take exactly 360 days to complete its orbit around the Sun and the Moon would take exactly 30 days to complete its orbit around the Earth. There would be 12 lunar month of 30 days per year.
The Earth would have to spin slightly slower (than today) in order to complete its orbit around the sun in exactly 360 solar days.
During the same time the moon would complete 12 full orbits around the Earth.
At present the time for Earth to complete full orbit around the Sun in “Solar Days” is 365.242199 days long (365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds).
Earth orbits the Sun once every 366.242 times it rotates about its own axis in relation to stars but in relation to the sun it turns only 365.242 times to complete its orbit.
The time between full moons is 29.530589 solar days. If we count period between two consecutive moon phases using slower days (360 instead of 365.25) we get
Here is something to ponder…
Although “ideal” periods of the earth and the moon cycles are described by numbers very close to the current values, calendars must reflect the correct numbers in order to properly keep track of time and have seasons in sync. Today a month measured by the moon doesn’t equal an even number of days, and a solar year is not equal to a certain number of moon cycles (months or “moon”ths).
It is possible that before asteroid impact, axial rotation of Earth was such that 1 year (360 deg) had 360 “perfect” days while the moon would require 30 days to complete its orbit around the Earth (and have 12 complete orbits during one solar year)?
The Earth’s orbital period today is 365.256363004 days. That is how long it takes for the earth to complete its orbit around the sun (axial rotation is faster now since we have now extra 5.256 days squeezed into the 360 deg orbit).
Modern solar day (defined as the period of time from noon to noon) when compared to the pre-impact day is slightly faster than “old day” (if counted by absolute units of time e.g. by atomic clock – since the asteroid impact might have slightly accelerated spin of the earth):
1 modern day (today) = 1 old day x 365.256363004/360.
Moon Orbital period today is 29.530589 days.
If the Moon orbit was not affected by the asteroid impact (and stayed the same as today), the time from full moon to full moon before (the impact) would be 30 “old” days (measured in pre-impact days):
29.530589 x (365.256363004/360) old days = 29.9627 old days (nearly 30).
If the moon orbit were perfect – this number could have been exactly 30 “old” days. However even this small discrepancy would allow the early astronomers (before asteroid impact) use – 360 days calendar measured by 12 lunar months of 30 days per month. The solar and lunar calendar would stay in sync for a long time (going out of sync less than 1/2 day per year).
Speculations about Our Past
Great Flood Myth
The Global Flood myth motif is widespread among many cultures as seen in the Mesopotamian flood stories, the Puranas, Deucalion in Greek mythology, the Genesis flood narrative, and in the lore of the K’iche’ and Maya peoples of Central America, and the Muisca people in South America.
A flood myth or deluge myth is a symbolic narrative in which a great flood is sent by a deity, or deities, to destroy civilization in an act of divine retribution. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primeval waters found in certain creation myths, as the flood waters are described as a measure for the cleansing of humanity, in preparation for rebirth.
Such global catastrophe could be caused by major climate change (rapid global warming during or after an ice age) and/or major asteroid impact. For example, the Dinosaur extinction is attributed to an asteroid impact. It is important to stress that major asteroid impact could also be responsible for change of the speed of Earth’s rotation (and its tilt).
Flood and Atlantis
Is existence of ancient technological civilizations (Atlantis, Lemuria) a mere myth?
Atlantis was a legendary island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. In Critias, Plato claims that his accounts of ancient Athens and Atlantis stem from a visit to Egypt by the legendary Athenian law-giver Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met a priest of Sais, who translated the history of ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptian hieroglyphs, into Greek.
The means of destruction of Atlantis was a number of very large meteors/asteroids (chunks of matter from space) hitting the earth. Perhaps the closest one can come to a description of what happened and the physical consequences can be found in a meticulously researched book titled, When the Earth Nearly Died: Compelling Evidence of a World Cataclysm 11,500 Years Ago, by Derek S. Allan and J. Bernard Delair.
In their book, they say that several huge chunks of matter struck the earth. Accompanying these large chunks was a fall of red, icy water (probably red from iron oxides) and a fall of fine gravel that scattered over a fairly large portion of the earth. It is interesting—but not surprising— that, although the entire world felt the destructive effects of the meteors that struck it, Atlantis itself was the hardest hit.
By taking out the heart and control center of Atlantis, and by disrupting the earth so massively, the falling chunks of matter ensured that the Atlantean society could not possibly go forward. Humanity had to painfully reconstruct its societies. In Egypt, Atlantean technology and knowledge survived the best and the longest, but even there a hiatus occurred during which almost all the Atlantean technologies were lost. Much of what information remained about Atlantean technologies might have been destroyed in 212 BC at the decree of Qin Shih Huang, the Chinese emperor of the terra cotta soldiers fame, who had all the books in his kingdom burned that didn’t fit the official dogma. The various burnings of the library at Alexandria took care of any lingering official Atlantean information in the Western world. [ Source: http://thelighthouseonline.com/articles/atlantis5.html ]
Standards of Measurement in the Post-flood Civilizations
The oldest known civilizations (which left archaeological evidence of their existence) appeared suddenly in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The unexplained puzzle is that these civilizations already (with no evidence of long evolutionary development) had writing, laws and fairly advanced knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and science… One possible answer to this puzzle could be that they were built by survivors of the global catastrophe.
|Was 360 days calendar remnant of the pre-flood civilization?Why do we divide the circle into 360 degrees? Why the year is divided into 12 months? Why a week has 7 days? Considering we use decimal system wouldn’t be easier to divide circle into 10, 100 and 1000 equal parts?Sumer and Babylonia, located in present-day Iraq, were probably the first peoples to have a written language, beginning in Sumer in about 3100 BC. The language continued to be written until the time of Christ, but then it was completely forgotten, even the name Sumer became unknown until the nineteenth century.
By 2000 BC, there was a calendar with a year of 360 days, 12 months of 30 days each, with an extra month thrown in every six years or so to keep synchronized with astronomical observations. (According to Dampier, A History of Science, Cambridge, page 3, the day was divided into hours, minutes and seconds, and the sundial invented. Neugebauer (The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, Dover, page 86) claims the Egyptians were the first to come up with twenty-four.)
The circle was divided into 360 degrees.
Notice that all these standards of measurement include multiples of 60 frequently—obviously, 60 was the Babylonians’ favorite number.
The Babylonians, who were famous for their astronomical observations and calculations (aided by their invention of the abacus), used a sexagesimal (base-60) positional numeral system inherited from the Sumerian and also Akkadian civilizations.
The legacy of sexagesimal still survives to this day, in the form of degrees (360° in a circle or 60° in an angle of an equilateral triangle), minutes, and seconds in trigonometry and the measurement of time, although both of these systems are actually mixed radix (base).
A common theory is that 60, a superior highly composite number (the previous and next in the series being 12 and 120), was chosen due to its prime factorization: 2×2×3×5, which makes it divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. In fact, it is the smallest integer divisible by all integers from 1 to 6. Integers and fractions were represented identically — a radix (base) point was not written but rather made clear by context.
On the other hand, is it possible that global catastrophe survivors who started new “post-flood” civilization introduced 360 day calendar since that is what they used before the asteroid impact changed the speed of Earth’s rotation?
360 day calendar mentioned in “The Histories” by Herodotus
The limit of life for a man I lay down at seventy years: and these seventy years give twenty-five thousand and two hundred days, not reckoning for any intercalated month. Then if every other one of these years shall be made longer by one month, that the seasons may be caused to come round at the due time of the year, the intercalated months will be in number five-and-thirty besides the seventy years; and of these months the days will be one thousand and fifty. Of all these days, being in number twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, which go to the seventy years, one day produces nothing at all which resembles what another brings with it. [ — http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/hh1030.htm ]
According to Herodotus, 70 years are equal 25,200 days (this can only be true if the year he describes has only 360 days: 70 x 360 = 25,200 ). To synchronize time with seasons, he adds 35 months of 30 days each: 35 x 30 = 1,050 days. Therefore the total number of days to account for 70 years = 25,200 + 10,050 = 26,250 days.
In this short paragraph, Herodotus describes a calendar based on a year equal 360 days: 12 months of 30 days each. He also mentions “correction” required to synchronize this calendar with seasons (add to alternating years 30 days).
It seems Herodotus misunderstood the time adjustment “correction” since it would produce a 2 year period equal 360 + 360 + 30 = 750. 750/2 = 375 days per year (10 days too many).
What actually would be required to “synchronize seasons” would be annual replacement of one of the 30 day month with a 35 day month: 11×30 + 35 = 365.
Important Link: http://www.ancient-world-mysteries.com/360-days-earth-year.html
Blasts of the Past
In modern days, due to a relatively short life span of humans, asteroid impacts and catastrophic meteor showers seem to be very rare events. The 1908 Tunguska Event and the most recent Feb 15th meteor impact over Russia (captured on video) remind us that such events exist. Many reports of these catastrophic events can be found in ancient and more recent writings (and oral traditions).
People at the headwaters of the Murray River, presumably of Wiradjuri stock again, remembered an occasion well before 1925 when a conspicuous fireball provoked an earthquake and a rupture of the earth’s surface:
“Then came a wonderful and inexplicable thing. It was a great bright light, burning blue, and travelling at an enormous rate. It came down out of heaven and no one knew who had caused it, but all believed that it must have been some sorcerer greater than any ever known. The earth trembled because of its speed. The air was filled with a hissing sound. The glare dazzled everybody, and in a fraction of time it had struck. The ground heaved and was rent. Stones went up, masses of earth flew, and a terrific explosion roared. The noise of the burst was deafening, and it reverberated around and amongst the hills and through the bush until all the world was just a great, full noise. … During the ensuing night more heavenly fires darted hither and thither. The frightened people grew somewhat accustomed to them and they watched them.”
The neighbouring Wadi Wadi, a subgroup of the Dharawal nation (Burragorang Valley, southeastern New South Wales), relayed an experience dwarfing the recent Russian event. At the end of an extremely hot day in the distant past, the sky and all its denizens appeared to shake:
“Then the sky moved. In the darkness, with just a shred of the red of the burning west left, and with the stars showing brightly, and a rising moon putting an inquisitive edge over the haze of the east, the sky heaved and billowed and tumbled and tottered. The moon rocked. The stars tumbled and clattered and fell one against the other. The Milky Way … also billowed and it split, and in some places is never joined together again, leaving blank spaces that we call ‘Magellan’s Clouds’.”
Unless these celestial bodies were directly affected, the most economic interpretation of this account appears to be the passage of a dense meteor shower producing optical distortion in the atmosphere. Then came the fireball, bursting into fragments that left permanent scars on the landscape:
“The great star-groups were scattered, and many of them, loosened from their holds, came flashing to the earth. They were heralded by a huge mass, red and glowing, that added to the number of falling stars by bursting with a deafening roar and scattering in a million pieces which were molten. The people were too scared to move. The disturbance continued all night. When the smoke and the clamour had died away and morning had dawned it was seen that the holes had been burnt into the earth, and great mounds were formed by the molten pieces, and many caves were made. The burning was still going on, for molten masses and flame were being belched forth.”
A storm of impacting meteors responsible for all this havoc must have been rare indeed. Yet even worse calamities come down from Australian lore. Polly Brown was a Barkindji (western New South Wales) who, sometime before 1927, told the hoary tale of a ‘fallen star’:
“AND THEY COULD SEE THE SKY WAS LIT UP … AND THERE WASN’T ANY MOON, SO THEY TOOK NOTICE OF THIS, AND THEY GOT SCARED … THEN THEY HEARD THIS RUMBLING NOISE FROM THE SKY, LIKE THUNDER … AND AS IT CAME DOWN CLOSE, THERE WAS RED STREAKS, AND A GREAT BIG BALL OF FIRE COMING DOWN … AND THERE WAS SMOKE …” (capitals and bold typeface in the original)
A tragic loss of human life ensued:
“AND A LOT OF THEM GOT TRAPPED … THEY JUST COULDN’T MOVE BECAUSE IT CAME DOWN TOO QUICK … AND WHERE IT FELL, SOME OF THEM DIED THERE, AND SOME OF THEM GOT BURNT … THERE WAS FIRE IN IT. … THE OTHERS DIED THERE. … THEY HAD TO MOVE QUICK BECAUSE OF THE RAIN THAT WAS COMING BEHIND.”
The fireball appears to have left a crater where it fell, on the river east of Wilcannia, at the third bend before Mount Murchison:
“THIS BIG CIRCLE OF ROCK IS WHERE THE STAR FELL. YOU CAN ONLY SEE IT WHEN THE RIVER DRIES UP. THE OLD PEOPLE CALLED THIS BEND ‘PURLI NGRANGKALITJI’ … THAT’S ‘THE FALLEN STAR’ IN PARKANTJI LANGUAGE.”
In the wake of the impact, the landscape was flooded:
“THEN IT STARTED TO RAIN … AND IT RAINED FOR DAYS … AND DAYS … AND DAYS … AND THEY KEPT MOVING, THIS GROUP OF PEOPLE … THEY HAD TO GET TO THE HIGHER GROUND. … ALL THE SWAMPS WAS FULL, THERE WAS JUST A SEA OF WATER EVERYWHERE. THERE WAS NO WAY THEY COULD HAVE A REST EXCEPT IF THEY FOUND A LITTLE ISLAND SOMEWHERE. … AUNTIE POLLY BROWN SAID ‘THAT’S WHY YOU’LL SEE FINGERPRINTS AND FOOTPRINTS IN THE ROCKS THERE TODAY … BECAUSE THEY WERE THE PEOPLE GOING UP AND COMING DOWN THESE HILLS; AND THE ROCKS USED TO BE SOFT.”
Moreover, the Barkindji discovered curious stones at the site of the impact:
“YEARS AGO, WHEN WE CAME OUT HERE, THERE WAS SOME DIFFERENT COLOURED STONE AS WELL AS WHAT YOU SEE NOW. THERE WAS A LOT OF BLACK STONE HERE … THAT SORT OF DULL BLACK LIKE YOU SEE IN OUR PEOPLE’S OLD FIREPLACES. AND IT HAD SHINY BITS LIKE BLACK MARBLE, TOO, AND BITS OF GREEN, AND BITS THAT WERE WHITE-ISH LIKE THE FAT IN A SHEEP.”
As discussed earlier, the description seems to match Australites, yet to suggest that this class of tektites was any more recent than 800,000 years is anathema to scientific consensus.
Have geologists examined the location fingered by the Barkandji? Did the Barkindji and the Wadi Wadi people refer to the same event? Could this be related to the Henbury crater (central Australia), which is associated with a meteorite impact dated to 4,200 years BP? And is there any way the Australites could be much more recent than commonly thought? With the paucity of available evidence, such questions understandably meet with a sonorous silence.
More extreme still is the well-known myth of the Greek demigod Phaethon, the ‘son of the sun’ whose bold adventure incinerated a large part of the world, while he himself crashed into the river Eridanus. Valerius Flaccus was a Roman poet (1st century CE) who envisioned Phaethon as a meteor, his charred remains a ‘black ball’ or ‘dark globe’ (ater globus). The Greek chronicler John of Antioch (7th century CE) similarly portrayed Phaethon as a ‘fiery ball’ (sphaira pyròs) hurled onto the Celtic lands from the sky with devastating consequences. As with the Barkandji, the event was associated with curious objects on the ground, amber in this case. A trickle of modern scholars has followed the interpretation of Phaethon as a meteor, but a definitive explanation of the myth has not yet emerged.
Many aspects of meteoric activity remain beyond our ken. The assumed coincidence that the explosion over Chelyabinsk occurred hours before the uneventful flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14 only underscores this. If pre-scientific records of the sky are allowed to shed some light on the phenomenon, perhaps the material presented above will blaze a trail and contribute to a boom in atmospheric studies.
Rens Van Der Sluijs, Mythopedia.info
Subject Related Links
- Puzzles of the Moon
- Ancient Timekeepers- Part4-Calendars
- Close Encounter with Asteroid on Feb 15, 2013
D. S. Allan (Author), J. B. Delair (Author)
“Allan and Delair do a brilliant job in revealing that researchers have barely touched the tip of the iceberg of events that shook the Earth around 9,577 B.C. . . . This book is an essential handbook to our ancient past: a brave multi-disciplinary approach that should be applauded.” (Rand Flem-Ath, coauthor, When the Sky Fell ) –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From the Back Cover
ASTRONOMY / GEOLOGY
Cataclysm! presents a breakthrough of enormous proportions–a new understanding of cosmic events in Earth’s recent geological past.
Follow this multi-disciplinary, scientific study as it examines the evidence of a great global catastrophe that occurred only 11,500 years ago. Crustal shifting, the tilting of Earth’s axis, mass extinctions, upthrusted mountain ranges, rising and shrinking land masses, and gigantic volcanic eruptions and earthquakes–all indicate that a fateful confrontation with a destructive cosmic visitor must have occurred. The abundant geological, biological, and climatological evidence from this dire event calls into question many geological theories and will awaken our memories to our true–and not-so-distant–past.
“In not only the scholarship of paleontology but the paleontology of scholarship, this is the sort of book which someday we will realize to be–like the record of a great extinction–the marker at the end of one era and the threshold of another. It is monumental work, which no enlightened library of the coming paradigm shift will be without.”
–Douglas Kenyon, Atlantis Rising magazine
“Allan and Delair do a brilliant job in revealing that researchers have barely touched the tip of the iceberg of events that shook the Earth around 9,577 B.C. . . . This book is an essential handbook to our ancient past: a brave multi-disciplinary approach that should be applauded.”
–Rand Flem-Ath, coauthor, When the Sky Fell
D.S. ALLAN, a Cambridge M.A., is a science historian specializing in paleogeography, particularly in the Arctic regions. A science teacher for many years, he is a skilled cartographer and has made a special study of evidence for climatic and landform change in recent geological times. He lives in Basildon, Essex, England. J.B. DELAIR, B.Sc., is an Oxford-based geologist with wide international and commercial field experience. An anthropologist, he has a special interest in animal and plant distribution and in tribal traditions. He is the Museum Curator of Geology at University of Southampton, England. –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
About the Author
D.S. Allan, a Cambridge M.A., is a science historian specializing in paleogeography, particularly in the Arctic regions. A science teacher for many years, he is a skilled cartographer and has made a special study of evidence for climatic and landform change in recent geological times. He lives in Basildon, Essex, England. J.B. Delair, B.Sc., is an Oxford-based geologist with wide international and commercial field experience. An anthropologist, he has a special interest in animal and plant distribution and in tribal traditions. He is the Museum Curator of Geology at University of Southampton, England. –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
It’s astonishing that as recently as 1963 the preponderance of opinion was that Meteor Crater was not caused by an impact and many prominent scientists claimed that craters on the Moon were caused by volcanic activity…
National Geographic: Asteroids: Deadly Impact (DVD 2003)
Asteroids and comets: Every year, millions of these “stray bullets” streak through the skies, and tons of small meteorites strike our planet! Some 65 million years ago, dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the earth – in what many believe was the aftermath of a massive cosmic collision. Could something like this happen again? Scientists believe that the impact of an asteroid only a mile wide would be globally catastrophic. Join extraordinary geologist Eugene Shoemaker and his wife Carolyn who have remapped the heavens with their discoveries of more than 30 comets and hundreds of asteroids. Now that we know what’s out there, how can we defend ourselves?
Right now, massive meteors and asteroids are orbiting dangerously close to Earth. Some may even be poised to hit us in the foreseeable future! Where are they? What type of damage will they cause? What can we do stop a caroming asteroid thats headed toward us, or prevent future Near Earth Objects from lining us up in their sites.
Discovery Channel: Cosmic Collisions (2009)
EARTH: They have left deep scars all over the face of our planet and are responsible for one of the biggest extinctions in history. Scientists believe that its not a question of if theyll strike again, but when.Cosmic Collisions: Earth covers everything there is to know about meteor clashes with our planet and how scientists are preparing for the next deadly assault on Earth.
SOLAR SYSTEM: Our solar system is a cosmic pinball machine. Rock piles as big as cities plow into planets and leave destruction in their wake. Cosmic Collisions: Solar System travels through our cosmic neighborhood as we examine how collisions created our moon, left gashes on Jupiter, and how pieces of Mars ended up in our own backyard.
GALAXIES: Galaxies smash into each other, stars collide with the force of several nuclear bombs and black holes fuse in a deadly fireworks display. Even our own galaxy marches toward a clash with its closest neighbor, Andromeda. Cosmic Galaxies journeys through space as we examine the cosmic battles being waged between celestial bodies.
PREHISTORIC DISASTERS: Since the Earth’s creation 4.5 billion years ago, the planet has been struck by a series of catastrophes, each one pushing life to the edge of extinction. But from disaster comes new life – and while the dominant species on the planet were wiped out, hardier creatures survived and thrived, moving into the vacuum left by the extinction. These creatures in turn took over the planet until they themselves fell victim to yet another mass extinction. The Earth’s history is rife with prehistoric disasters that have molded the planet and changed the course of evolution. But with each disaster came another leap forward on the evolutionary trail from single celled bacteria to humankind itself. Without this series of events, neither mankind nor any of the life we see around us would be here today. Episodes: Birth of the Planet, Snowball Earth, Planet of Fire, Asteroid Strike.
PS NASA Concludes Asteroid Apophis Will Not Hit Earth in 2029 or 2036
According to Spacedaily.com, NASA scientists, using data from two ground-based telescopes as well as the Goldstone Solar System Radar, have concluded that the asteroid Apophis will not hit the Earth in either 2029 or 2036.
Doomsday postponed again
An examination of old observation data from the Magdalena Ridge at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and the Pan-STARRS at the Univ. of Hawaii optical observatories has already ruled out a strike by Apophis during the 2029 close approach. Now the same data, according to Spacedaily.com, has allowed scientists to rule out a collision occurring during the 2036 approach as well. Thus NASA, which spent much of 2012 debunking the Mayan Apocalypse, has now ruled out an end of the world more based on actual science.
2029 approach to be one of the closest in history
According to Spacedaily.com, Apophis will pass the Earth by at a distance of 19,400 miles, closer than the orbits of geosynchronous satellites. In 2036, Apophis will approach at a larger distance of between 14 million and 35 million miles, according to Sky and Telescope.
Apophis discovered in 2004
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Apophis was discovered by R. A. Tucker, D. J. Tholen and F. Bernardi at the Kitt Peak observatory. The name, given in 2005, is after an Egyptian god associated with destruction. Based on observations conducted by the European Space Agency’s Herschel telescope during Apophis’s most recent encounter with Earth on Wednesday, the asteroid is estimated to be 325 meters in diameter. NASA estimates that should a collision were to occur, the resulting explosion would be in the plus-500-megaton range.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-concludes-asteroid-apophis-not-hit-earth-2029-200600191.html