Are we ready for the next volcanic catastrophe?

Watts Up With That?

Eric Worrall writes: The Guardian has published an unusually interesting article about the danger to our civilisation, of a new Tambora scale volcanic eruption.

According to Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL;

“In April 1815, the biggest known eruption of the historical period blew apart the Tambora volcano, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, 12,000km from the UK. What happened next testifies to the enormous reach of the biggest volcanic blasts.
The Tambora volcano had shown no signs of life for 1,000 years; a single eruption in the previous five millennia provided the only indication that magma was still churning far beneath. It is very likely that the residents of the island considered the volcano extinct, and possible even that they did not know the impressive 4,300m (14,107ft) mountain – at the time, probably the highest in the East Indies – was a volcano at all. This all changed, however, with the rumblings and earthquakes of 1812, a full three years before the climactic blast. Over time, the seismic shocks were superseded by steam blasts and small ash explosions, engendering increasing trepidation on the island and signalling that something bigger might be imminent. It was. On 5 April 1815, a titanic explosion hurled a cloud of ash to a height of more than 30km.”
…
The consequences for the developed societies of the northern hemisphere were dire. A dry, sulphurous, fog draped itself across the landscape of eastern North America, causing temperatures to plunge and bringing unprecedented summer cold. In New York State, snow fell in June, while the bitter cold and killing frosts wiped out crops and halved the length of the growing season across much of the region. On the other side of the Atlantic, Europe saw summer temperatures down by 2C compared to the average for the decade; the unseasonal cold accompanied by incessant rains and – into the following winter – by unusually powerful storms. Analysis of climate records reveals that 1816, the so-called “year without a summer”, was the second coldest in the northern hemisphere of the past six centuries.”
Read more http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/28/are-we-ready-for-the-next-big-volcanic-eruption-tambora-bill-mcguire

McGuire adds a minor obligatory genuflection towards climate change, this is after all The Guardian – but unusually for a Guardian story about the environment, the focus of the article is not on the alleged dangers of our industrial output of CO2. And what McGuire says is entirely pertinent – a Tambora style eruption could kill millions of people from starvation, as massive crop failures caused food prices to skyrocket. And Tambora is not the worst which could happen – The Toba eruption, which occurred 74,000 years ago, blackened the sky, causing massive die backs across the world – and may even have almost ended the human race. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_theory

McGuire then goes on to list a few of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes – though interestingly the Indonesian volcano Merapi, an unstable giant slumbering adjacent to a city of 3 million people, doesn’t make his list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Merapi

These colossal global catastrophes of the past, and the certainty that similar catastrophes will occur again in the future, maybe even in our lifetime, really puts the feeble temperature wobbles which are ascribed to humans into perspective.

New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection

Gabriela Segura, M.D.
The Dot Connector Magazine

This article was first published in issue 13, volume 1 / 2011 of The Dot Connector Magazine, official publication of Sott.net.

"Comets are vile stars. Every time they appear in the south, they wipe out the old and establish the new. Fish grow sick, crops fail, Emperors and common people die, and men go to war. The people hate life and don't even want to speak of it." -Li Ch'un Feng, Director, Chinese Imperial Astronomical Bureau, 648, A.D.

In 2007, a meteorite fell in Puno, Southeastern Perú. José Macharé - scientist of the Geologic, Mining and Metallurgic Institute in Perú - said that the space rock fell near a muddy area by Lake Titicaca, making the water boil for around ten minutes, and mixing with the soil and emanating a gray cloud, the components of which remain unknown. Having discarded radioactive poisons, this toxic cloud is said to have caused headaches and respiratory problems in at least 200 persons from a population of 1500 inhabitants. Other than this event, how often do we hear about people getting sick due to a rock coming from space? How about birds, fish or other animals? Ancient astrologers cite comets as ill omens of death and famine, but are there any other causes other than the ones due to physical/mechanical consequences of comet impact devastation in our fragile environment of which we should be aware?

As a physician, I usually concentrate strictly on medical and health-related issues, not history or catastrophism. However, like so many other people, I see signs of atmospheric changes on our planet which, according to many experts, may well be due to increasing comet dust loading. When I read about increasing reports of fireballs all around the world, and I know that these factors must have an effect on the health of individuals and societies, it motivates me to do the research to find the connections so that I am better prepared for what may lie in our future. If our planet is entering a new cometary bombardment cycle, and if these comets harbor new species of microbes unknown to mankind's collective immunological systems (as may well be the case), then being forewarned is being forearmed. 

Read more

Scientist Warns 'Solar Super-Storms' Are Inevitable and a Significant Threat

Activist Post 

In this month's issue of Physics World, Ashley Dale from the University of Bristol warns of the "catastrophic" and "long-lasting" impacts of "solar super-storms" and the dangers we face if the threat continues to go unnoticed.

Dale, who was a member of an international task force – dubbed SolarMAX – set up to identify the risks of a solar storm and how its impact could be minimized, explains how it is only a matter of time before an exceptionally violent solar storm is propelled towards Earth.

Such a storm would wreak havoc with our communication systems and power supplies, crippling vital services such as transport, sanitation and medicine.

"Without power, people would struggle to fuel their cars at petrol stations, get money from cash dispensers or pay online. Water and sewage systems would be affected too, meaning that health epidemics in urbanized areas would quickly take a grip, with diseases we thought we had left behind centuries ago soon returning," Dale writes.

Read more 

The Collapse Calendar reveals when failures likely to occur in banking, agriculture, nuclear power, pandemic disease and more

Natural Health News

In the movie Knowing, starring Nicholas Cage, the main character is faced with the burden of comprehending a written code revealing the exact dates and GPS coordinates of large-scale catastrophic events. The movie is outstanding and well worth watching, by the way, but could it ever be true?

Not at such precision, I would submit, but we can know when certain catastrophes are likely to occur based on an understanding of human behavior, historical patterns and modern-day trends. In fact, much of modern-day human behavior is pushing us directly into a long list of catastrophic, systemic failures which are mathematically inevitable. This article aims to help sort out the likely calendar years of likely emergence for such events, which include things like the irrigation aquifers running dry, the world's oil supply running dry, nuclear energy disasters, a global banking collapse and more.

Read more

Nasa-funded study warns of ‘collapse of civilisation’ in coming decades

 Comment: Decades?? I think they're in for a shock. I think we are looking at some partial catastrophic developments within the next five years...But hey, let's look on the bright side...

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The Independent

Modern civilisation is heading for collapse within a matter of decades because of growing economic instability and pressure on the planet’s resources, according to a scientific study funded by Nasa.

Using theoretical models to predict what will happen to the industrialised world over the course of the next century or so, mathematicians found that even with conservative estimates things started to go very badly, very quickly.

Referring to the past collapses of often very sophisticated civilisations – the Roman, Han and Gupta Empires for example – the study noted that the elite of society have often pushed for a “business as usual” approach to warnings of disaster until it is too late.

In the report based on his “Human And Nature Dynamical” (Handy) model, the applied mathematician Safa Motesharri wrote: “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history”.

His research, carried out with the help of a team of natural and social scientists and with funding from Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has been accepted for publication in the Ecological Economics journal, the Guardian reported.

Motesharri explored the factors which could lead to the collapse of civilisation, from population growth to climate change, and found that when these converge they can cause society to break down because of the “stretching of resources” and “the economic stratification of society into ‘Elites’ and ‘Masses’”.

Using his Handy model to assess a scenario closely resembling the current state of the world, Motesharri found that civilisation “appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among the Masses that eventually causes the collapse of society”.

The report stressed, however, that the worst-case scenario of collapse is not inevitable, and called on action now from the so-called real world “Elites” to restore economic balance.

“Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion,” the scientists said.

This is not the first time scientists have tried to warn us of potentially impending global disaster. Last year it emerged that Stephen Hawking and a team of Britain's finest minds are drawing up a “doomsday list” of the catastrophic low-risk (but high-impact) events that could devastate the world.

Asteroid that raced past Earth at 33,000mph last night came closer than the MOON

Daily Mail

• Asteroid's 2014 DX110 closest approach was at 21:07 GMT (16:07 EST)
• It is 98ft (30m) across and got within 217,000 miles (350,000km) of Earth
• Asteroid was travelling at 33,000 mph and was not expected to hit the planet 

An asteroid the size of three double decker buses and travelling at at 33,000 mph came closer to Earth than the Moon last night.

At 21:07 GMT (16:07 EST), the asteroid made its closest approach, reaching a distance of less than 217,000 miles (350,000 km), or nine-tenths of the distance between the moon and Earth.

Scientists predicted it would avoid a collision with Earth, but the 98ft (30 metre) asteroid nevertheless offered spectacular views for anyone with a good telescope in their back garden.

Read more

 

2014′s Doomsday Clock Remains at Five Minutes to Global Destruction

 

The Almagest
Kriss Moore

A graphical representation of how close we are to the end of the world has been produced every year, since when the clock debuted 67 years ago. Known as the Doomsday Clock, it was originally created by the wife of one of the researchers who worked on the atomic bomb, a lady named Martyl Langsdorf, who actually passed away in 2013. Her creation was originally set at 11.53, seven minutes away from doom, but in 2012 after the Fukushima incident in Japan, and in light of concerns about climate change, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who create the clock each year moved its hand forward to 11:55.

For 2014, the hand remains in place, as the Bulletin feel that there has been little let up in the threats to civilization that are currently at large in the world. Stilted relations between major nuclear powers the US and Russia as a result of Russia harbouring Edward Snowden (Obama consequently cancelled a summit with Vladimir Putin), along with environmental issues contributed to the decision to keep the clock in its current position.

The highlights and lowlights in the clock’s history fell in 1991, when it went all the way back to 17 minutes to midnight at the end of the cold war, and in 1953 when it was moved to 11:58 following the tests on the first hydrogen bomb. Since the end of the cold war, however, it has only moved in one direction – towards midnight.

Risk of 'cataclysmic' supervolcano eruption far greater than thought

 

 Pu'u O'o lava lake in 1998 by Brad Lewis

The Independent

The eruption of a “supervolcano” hundreds of times more powerful than conventional volcanoes – with the potential to wipe out civilisation as we know it – is more likely than previously thought, a study has found. 

An analysis of the molten rock within the dormant supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park in the United States has revealed that an eruption is possible without any external trigger, scientists said.

Scientists previously believed many supervolcanic eruptions needed earthquakes to break open the Earth’s crust so magma could escape. But new research suggests that this can happen as a result of the build-up of pressure.

Supervolcanoes represent the second most globally cataclysmic event – next to an asteroid strike – and they have been responsible in the past for mass extinctions, long-term changes to the climate and shorter-term “volcanic winters” caused  by volcanic ash cutting out the sunlight.

The last known supervolcanic eruption was believed to have occurred about 70,000 years ago at the site today of Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It caused a volcanic winter that blocked out the sun for between six to eight years, and resulted in a period of global cooling lasting a thousand years.

A supervolcano under Yellowstone Park in Wyoming last erupted about 600,000 years ago, sending more than 1,000 cubic kilometres of ash and lava into the atmosphere – about 100 times more than the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines in 1982, which caused a noticeable period of global cooling. 

Read more

Happy New Year 2014?

Sott.net
Laura Knight-Jadczyk

January 1st 2014

On December 31st of 2011, I wrote a short article predicting that the world was not going to end in 2012 as so many people wanted it to. I pointed out that there had been a lot of "Ends of the World" predicted throughout history and the 2012 brouhaha wasn't much different. In fact, you can almost take it to the bank that if somebody is predicting it, it isn't going to happen because once a prediction is made, people begin to act differently and that changes the outcome. Just think about Job prophesying destruction on the city of Nineveh and how upset he was when God supposedly changed his mind because the people got their act together and repented of their evil-doing, whatever it was.

On the other hand, there does seem to be something to this predicting business, but not many people get it right. Just think about the Fundie cult that was predicting the end of the world to happen in mid-March of 2011. The world, as a whole, didn't end, of course, but life as they knew it did end for a whole lot of people in Japan thanks to an impressive earthquake and tsunami.

So, we made it through 2012 and now, we've got another year notched on our belt in addition: we made it through 2013 and the world still hasn't ended. Or has it?

I would propose that the World As We Knew It ended on 11 September 2001, over 12 years ago. We don't live in the same reality anymore (in case you haven't noticed). And this was noted in that article written two years ago today:

...in an article dated 22 Dec: "This is Where the American Illusion Comes to an End - 2012 The End of the World As We Know It". That article, by SOTT editor Andrés Perezalonso, stated at the end:

"Now you see why I am in such a pessimistic mood lately. The US has reached yet another milestone - this one is a point of no return, I would say, after which events can easily escalate into a nightmare more rapidly than any of us ever dreamed possible. As tyranny is formalized out in the open, this is where all remaining illusions about its democratic principles or moral higher ground come to a definite end. Since we are talking about the global military superpower and a country that for good or for ill - mostly for ill - sets the example for the rest of the world, the implications will reach far beyond its borders.

It looks like 2012 will, indeed, be the End of the World; just not the way anyone ever imagined."

Based on my research in history, it seems that, barring an extinction-event asteroid strike, the "World As We Know It" has ended many times, it just happens in stages. And those stages do indeed include cataclysmic events such as the Indonesian earthquake and Tsunami, the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami, and things like 9-11 which appear to be involved somehow. It seems that whenever social and political situations go downhill, the environment adds insult to injury and the question that exercises me to no end is which comes first? Does the behavior of humanity attract environmental destruction, or do the stresses of the environment trigger the self-destructive behavior in human beings?

Here's an excerpt from my latest book, Comets and the Horns of Moses, that tries to tease out an answer:

Historically, when a people begin to perceive atmospheric, geological, climatic disruption and all the ills that these bring on a society, including famine, plague and pestilence, they individually and collectively look to their leaders to fix things. That is where the concept of the Divine King came from to begin with: the king was supposed to be able to intercede for his people with the gods. If the king was unsuccessful with his intercession, a solution had to be found. Sacrifices were made, rituals were performed, and of course, if that didn't work, if the gods remained angry, then the king had to die. This is possibly due to a similar brain switch that drives people to seek whatever relieves the stress on their brain: if the gods are angry, find a scape-goat. And when it is the nation that is threatened, the most obvious guilty person or persons are those in charge, the king and his elite. What's more, they know their vulnerability to this reaction instinctively.

Then again, given that human history appears to be defined by a succession of more or less corrupt ruling elites, and if we are to assume that such corruption (and its spread throughout society) is the mechanism by which a civilization attracts cosmic catastrophe, blaming and deposing the elite is a good solution. The problem, however, is that the underlying mechanism is not understood by the people, which means that they lack the knowledge that, if they are to prevent further destruction, they must, at all costs, prevent the establishment of any future corrupt elite.

In the end, the people and the elite both seek a paradigm that downplays cyclical catastrophes, but they do it for different reasons. The people want to relieve the enormous stress of a certain but unpredictable major catastrophe, while the elite want to remain in power. The compromise that serves both objectives is the illusion of an elite that is able to protect the people from any disaster. This illusion can take various forms: rituals to appease the gods, revision of history displaying a uniformitarian, uneventful evolution of humanity, and lots and lots of propaganda.

This lie works well during the periods of calm between two major catastrophes. However, history shows that when famines, earthquakes and plagues have struck and taken a heavy toll, when volcanoes erupt or comets blaze across the sky or meteor storms and weather anomalies increase, the illusion collapses, the raison d'être of the elites (i.e. protecting the people) collapses and the target has always and will ever be, ultimately, the ruling classes. And they know it. Thus, when such as Anaxagoras or Socrates or Critias mention these uncomfortable facts, they are silenced by ridicule and defamation, and even death.

The symptoms of an increased cometary activity are systematically covered up by the elites as man-made phenomena. The jet contrails due to higher concentrations of atmospheric cometary dust are depicted as 'chemtrails', sprayed by government agencies, the ever more frequent overhead cometary explosions are presented as missile tests, the weather changes due to a decreased solar activity triggered by the approaching Sun's companion and its accompanying cometary swarm is labeled 'anthropogenic global warming'.

The number one item on my list of probable events for 2012, Climate Change, which is not a "sudden end of the world" by any means, appears to be proceeding apace through 2013. And the number two event, Financial Meltdown, also seems to be perking along leading us into 2014. The financial system has been so artificially propped up and manipulated, I'm expecting a biggie in that department this coming year. Of course, I realize that I've just written above that as soon as you predict something, you change the terms and you may actually prevent it, but we'll see.

Social Upheavals took the number 3 spot on my 2012 predictions. I think that this, too, has been building. You only have to read the headlines in SOTT's "Society's Child" category to get a feeling for how hystericized and out of control social behavior has become. If the PTB don't like it, they have no one to blame but themselves because peoples, by and large, imitate the behaviors of their masters: monkey see, monkey do.

In respect of this probability, a couple of additional things have occurred to me recently. I heard that pigs that were fed GMO corn as part of their diet, went mad and turned cannibalistic. That, of course, made me wonder about the numerous examples of truly mad behavior in the public sphere, including zombies, the increase in reports of human cannibalism, and so forth. What is going to happen when climate change makes it impossible for carb addicts to get their supply of wonder bread, twinkies and bagels? Are we REALLY going to have to face a cannibalistic, zombie population driven mad by the demands of their guts for a gluten fix?

The number four spot on my 2012 list was pandemics. I think we can move that one a little higher in probability this coming year. The signs are all around viruses are mutating faster than science can keep up with them, plus government-controlled secret science itself is probably engineering pathogens beyond your worst nightmares. How long (or how soon) before that gets out of control? When you play with fire, you inevitably get burned. We also can't forget comet borne pathogens. With the Earth passing through the dust of numerous comets, the possibility of a repeat of the Black Death scenario is higher. Keep in mind that particulate matter deposited in the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere can take up to two years to filter down to the troposphere where humans can then be contaminated. But, this has been going on for awhile as we know from the increasing incidence of "Comet Smoke" AKA Noctilucent Clouds.

As many of you know, I've been yammering on for years now about the possibility of cometary/asteroidal fragment bombardment. We had a little foretaste of that back in February of 2013, Chelyabinsk, just 3 days after the release of my book on the topic: Comets and the Horns of Moses. If you want the scientific background on these types of events, that's the overview with sources that you'll want to be reading since the exploding fireball rate is increasing dramatically. We may see a LOT more of this sort of thing in 2014 and yes, it is definitely connected to Climate Change.

Back in 2012, I made a good call on the "Generalize War in the Middle East" that was being predicted by many pundits. As I pointed out then, and this has held true through 2013, generalized war-mongering is mostly an activity designed to keep the masses in a state of anxiety and to distract them and induce them to agree to even more draconian measures.

I put "staged religious alien contact event" at the end of my discussion about 2012 and beyond, and I still think this one is a red herring. As I pointed out then, I don't think such things will be necessary to justify the "One World Government": Climate Change and Pandemics will do quite nicely for their plans. After all, we already have a One World Government as anybody with their eyes open can see. Just notice what countries have instituted a smoking ban and you can be sure that they are members of the "Club."

Which brings me to one of my favorite topics: Smoking! I've been watching the anti-smoking craziness for years now and it really is the damnedest thing I've ever seen. In 2013, we've begun to see a few leaks of truth about this such as in James Delingpole's piece in The Telegraph: Passive smoking - another of the Nanny State's big lies and, more revealing yet, Jacob Sullum's insightful article in Forbes: The devious plan of anti-smoking campaigns to control people and stop them from using their brain. In that article, you will learn that the main goal of smoking bans was "to change societal behavior" by stigmatizing smoking, making it less convenient and less socially acceptable. What this means is that the anti-smoking campaign is designed to gain support for intrusive laws that violate privacy to an extreme degree. Once such laws are passed and become precedent, then there is nothing the power elite can't do to you in your own home. So, if you have been supporting the anti-smoking movement, you have been pulling the rug out from under your own feet. (Not to mention believing lies.)

In addition to depriving many of the benefits of smoking, the same government is itself killing you slowly with mercury in your teeth, gluten and carbs, GMO' franken-food, dangerous vaccines, X-rays and other radiation, WIFI radiation from various sources, depleted uranium, killer drones (in some places, coming soon to a venue near you!) and so on. It's gotten so bad in government controlled science that a few brave souls are speaking out in a big way.

What is crazy is the way all of this is going to come together at some point in the not-too-distant future. There is evidence that societies that suffered terrible plagues and epidemics found that tobacco was a preventative and that the poor who mainly ate bread (gluten and carbs) died first and fastest and in the greatest numbers. So what happens when you put a population at risk via their diet and deprive them of one of the possible protections, and the world is one in which pathogens are mutating to extraordinary levels of dangerousness, not even to mention the possibility of virii coming from the cosmos to which few, if anyone, has any immunity? What happens when all of this occurs during a time of climate stress which puts additional risk factors into the mix?

I think we're heading for a disaster. If I were you, I'd ditch the gluten and carbs, eat plenty of meat and fat, and start smoking asap. That might sound 'counter-intuitive', but look at the world around you, do you see anything that has been passed down from 'on high' as 'official truth' that isn't tainted by lies, corruption and vested interests?

Laura Knight-Jadczyk is a seventh generation Floridian, a historian/mystic and author of 14 books and many articles published in print and on the internet. She is the founder of SOTT.net and the inspiration behind the Cassiopaean Experiment. She lives in France with her husband, Polish mathematical physicist, Arkadiusz Jadczyk, four of her five children, extended family, eight dogs, five birds and a cat.

Earth's massive extinction: The story gets worse

Physorg

Scientists have uncovered a lot about the Earth's greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago when rapid climate change wiped out nearly all marine species and a majority of those on land. Now, they have discovered a new culprit likely involved in the annihilation: an influx of mercury into the eco-system.

"No one had ever looked to see if mercury was a potential culprit. This was a time of the greatest volcanic activity in Earth's history and we know today that the largest source of mercury comes from volcanic eruptions," says Dr. Steve Grasby, co-author of a paper published this month in the journal Geology. "We estimate that the mercury released then could have been up to 30 times greater than today's volcanic activity, making the event truly catastrophic." Grasby is a research scientist at Natural Resources Canada and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary.

Dr. Benoit Beauchamp, professor of geology at the University of Calgary, says this study is significant because it's the first time mercury has been linked to the cause of the massive extinction that took place during the end of the Permian.

"Geologists, including myself should be taking notes and taking another look at the other five big extinction events," says Beauchamp, also a co-author.

Read more

The end of the world not happening - for now says expert

Didn't everyone know that?  Well, I suppose it's nice to have it confirmed....

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Last week, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology said a second inscription 
mentioning the 2012date is on the carved or molded face of a brick found at the 
Comalcalco ruin (above), near the Tortuguero site Photo: ALAMY

Telegraph 

The end is not near. At least that's according to a German expert who says his decoding of a Mayan tablet with a reference to a 2012 date denotes a transition to a new era and not a possible end of the world as others have read it. 

The interpretation of the hieroglyphs by Sven Gronemeyer of La Trobe University in Australia was presented for the first time Wednesday at the archaeological site of Palenque in southern Mexico. 

His comments came less than a week after Mexico's archaeology institute acknowledged there was a second reference to the 2012 date in Mayan inscriptions, touching of another round of talk about whether it predicts the end of the world.

Gronemeyer has been studying the stone tablet found years ago at the archeological site of Tortuguero in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Tabasco.

He said the inscription describes the return of mysterious Mayan god Bolon Yokte at the end of a 13th period of 400 years, known as Baktuns, on the equivalent of Dec. 21, 2012. Mayans considered 13 a sacred number. There's nothing apocalyptic in the date, he said. 

The text was carved about 1,300 years ago. The stone has cracked, which has made the end of the passage almost illegible. 

Gronemeyer said the inscription refers to the end of a cycle of 5,125 years since the beginning of the Mayan Long Count calendar in 3113 B.C. 

The fragment was a prophecy of then ruler Bahlam Ajaw, who wanted to plan the passage of the god, Gronemeyer said.

"For the elite of Tortuguero, it was clear they had to prepare the land for the return of the god and for Bahlam Ajaw to be the host of this initiation," he said.

Bolon Yokte, god of creation and war, was to prevail that day in a sanctuary of Tortuguero. 

"The date acquired a symbolic value because it is seen as a reflection of the day of creation," Gronemeyer said. "It is the passage of a god and not necessarily a great leap for humanity." 

Last week, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology said a second inscription mentioning the 2012 date is on the carved or molded face of a brick found at the Comalcalco ruin, near the Tortuguero site. It is being kept at the institute and is not on display. 

Many experts doubt the second inscription is a definite reference to the date cited as the possible end of the world, saying there is no future tense marking like there is in the Tortuguero tablet. 

The institute has tried to dispel talk of a 2012 apocalypse, the subject of numerous postings and stories on the Internet. Its latest step was to arrange a special round table of Mayan experts this week at Palenque, which is where Gronemeyer made his comments.

Apophis - ‘Continent Killer’

redorbit

On the heels of the return to Earth of a pair of satellites — NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) and the German-built Röntgensatellit (ROSAT) — over the past two months comes a report of another object set to collide with our planet.

Only this one is a 20 million ton asteroid that is currently heading towards us at 23,000 miles per hour, and could collide with our planet in approximately 25 years, Alex Hannaford of the Telegraph wrote on Sunday. The asteroid in question, Apophis, is more than 800 feet wide, comprised of a mixture of rock, ice, and dust, and has been dubbed “the continent killer.”

“There are two scenarios,” Hannaford writes. “The first, and thankfully most likely, is that Apophis will fly by in April 2029, the year it is due to make its first ‘close approach’, and that’s the last we’ll see or hear of it. The second is that during that approach, it’ll pass through what scientists refer to as a ‘keyhole’ — a small area of space that can alter the asteroid’s course due to Earth’s gravity.”

“If this happens, it’ll be on a massive collision course with us seven years later, likely to be April 13, 2036 — Easter Sunday,” the Telegraph reported added, noting that experts with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California claim that it is “too far away” to predict which of the two possibilities is most likely, but that they should be able to know more in the near future.

“We don’t know precisely where Apophis is headed but we will soon, when it becomes observable again, probably in 2012 or 2013,” Paul Chodas of the U.S. space agency’s Near Earth Object (NEO) said. “Once we get radar on it we will be able to nail down its orbit and we will know the chances of it going through the keyhole and hitting in 2036. By that time, it could be a four in a million chance, and that could very well go down to zero.”

That might not be the end of it, though, as Chodas told Hannaford that the asteroid could find another one of those “keyholes” — small regions of space that can alter the course of a passing asteroid, due to a planet’s gravity — meaning that even if it misses the planet the first time, it could theoretically return and collide with the Earth’s surface later on.

Fossil from the 'last dinosaur' proves species WAS wiped out by killer asteroid, say scientists

dailymail

A horn from one of the last surviving dinosaurs could finally prove that a massive meteor strike ended the reptiles' reign on Earth. The 45cm-long fossilised browhorn belonged to a family of plant-eating dinosaurs that included the famous three-horned Triceratops. It was found at a geological site known as the Hell Creek Formation in the bleak badlands of south-east Montana, U.S., where many other dinosaur fossils have been unearthed.

What made this find so remarkable was its location, just 13cm below the rock layer that marks the Cretaceous-Tertiary or 'K-T' boundary - the point in the fossil record where the dinosaurs died. This suggests dinosaurs were around right up to the time all traces of their existence vanished.

Scientist believe they then disappeared suddenly after an abrupt global disaster rather than a slow extinction. [...]

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This is especially relevant in light of the science of cataclysm in that we may be well overdue for a similar event along with a New "Flash" Ice Age. See:

http://fireballs-meteorites.blogspot.com/

NASA: Asteroid to barely miss earth Monday

therawstory.com

Astronomers have just discovered an asteroid that is expected come close enough to Earth Monday that it will be visible with amateur telescopes.

The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research centre (LINEAR) spotted Asteroid 2011 MD on June 22. It has an orbit similar to Earth's.

The asteroid will be visible from parts of South Africa and Antarctica when it makes its closest approach at 1:14 p.m. EDT (1714 GMT), passing just 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) from the Earth's surface. The rock will be so close that its trajectory will be sharply altered by the Earth's gravity.

"There is no chance that 2011 MD will hit Earth but scientists will use the close pass as opportunity to study it w/ radar observations," NASA's @AsteroidWatch tweeted last week.

Scientists say there is no danger of the bus-sized object striking Earth this time, but an impact is possible when it makes the next pass in 2022.

"Asteroid 2011 MD measures about 10 meters. Stony asteroids less than 25 m would break up in Earth's atmosphere & not cause ground damage," NASA wrote on their Twitter page.

The record for near-miss asteroids was set in February when 2011 CQ1 came with 3,400 miles (5,471 kilometers) of the planet.


Related: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Asteroid zips close to Earth

MSNBC

An asteroid the size of a small motorhome zoomed near Earth on Wednesday night, coming closer to us than the moon ever does.

The 23-foot-long (7-meter) space rock, named 2009 BD, came within 215,000 miles (346,000 kilometers) of Earth at around 8:51 p.m. ET. The moon's average distance from us is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers).

2009 BD never threatened to hit Earth on this pass, researchers said. But even if the asteroid had slammed into us, it wouldn't have been a big deal.

"2009 BD is a small object, 7 meters, and poses no threat," scientists with NASA's Asteroid Watch program tweeted yesterday. "Rocky objects this size would break apart in our atmosphere and cause no damage." [ Photos of Asteroids in Deep Space ]

The asteroid's small size also made it a tough target for skywatchers. A large telescope was necessary to see it on Wednesday night, researchers said.

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