Earth Under Fire

from Chapter 3

The Charge of the Bull

"Except this supernova does seem unusually bright," interjected Tom Cook.

"Has brightened up still more," announced Bill Gaynor, who had just come in. "Didn't go to bed. I stayed up till it rose--in the east, about an hour ago."

"What is it now?"

"I'd say about minus eight." [25 times brighter than Venus]

There was a whistle around the common room.

"More like a bloody quasar than a supernova," muttered someone.

A long silence followed this remark. It was broken by Almond. "Which would explain something that's been worrying the hell out of me."

"What's that, Dr. Almond?" Gaynor asked, his eyes red with lack of sleep.

"Why the position of the thing is so precisely the same as the Galactic center. It's obvious really, isn't it? The center of the Galaxy has blown up." Almond's deep voice was grave as he made this pronouncement.
--The Inferno, Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle

3.2. The Blue Star

According to a legend told by the Hopi Indians, the present world civilization is not the first to populate the Earth. Before this one, there were three other "worlds," each terminated by a global catastrophe. They call the present world cycle the "Fourth World," and claim that it too, like the others before it, will one day come to an end. They say that this ending will be heralded by the appearance of Saquasohuh, the Blue Star spirit.

Since the cores of distant exploding galaxies are observed to have a bright blue star-like appearance, it is reasonable to expect that the core of our own Galaxy would have a similar appearance during its explosive phase. So the legendary appearance of the Blue Star could be referring to an explosion of our Galaxy's core. Supernova explosions may be ruled out as frequently recurring causes of terrestrial cataclysms. Although nearby supernovae might appear as bright blue stars, those occurring close enough to seriously affect the Earth and solar system take place very rarely, only about once in several hundred million years. They certainly could not account for three Hopi world cycles occurring during the past several hundred thousand years or so.

Since optical radiation from the Galactic core is heavily obscured by the large amounts of intervening interstellar dust, most of the blue light that ancient viewers would have seen from a Galactic core explosion event would have come from the superwave cosmic ray electrons emitted from the core, rather than from the core itself. During their 23,000 light-year journey to us, this advancing army of torch bearers would have been continuously generating and beaming forward a bluish light, a color characteristic of their synchrotron electromagnetic emission. Most of the light reaching us would have come from electrons that had emerged from the Galaxy's dust-obscured inner regions.

Because the synchrotron radiation from such high velocity electrons shines forward in a very narrow cone, this light would have appeared to ancient observers like a bright blue-white star about a thousand times brighter than the brightest star in the night sky. About 80 percent of this light would have come from a region less than a third of an arc minute in diameter, in other words from a region smaller than the apparent diameter of the planet Mars. An additional 17 percent of the light would have come from a region three times larger, approximately equivalent in size to the apparent diameter of Venus. This Galactic center synchrotron source would have been visible even during the day, radiating from the vicinity of Sagittarius A. It would have appeared suddenly, without warning, and would have remained in the sky for several hundred to several thousand years, marking the duration of the superwave's passage.

During the time it ruled the heavens, its intensity would have varied from hour to hour, sometimes from minute to minute, due to variations in the concentration of cosmic rays along the depth of the advancing superwave shell. During this ancient superwave passage, the star-studded sky that we are used to seeing on a clear night would have been transformed into a ghostly scene of variously shaped amorphous nebulae and dust clouds overlying one another. Bluish light from the superwave's cosmic rays would have back-illuminated and silhouetted dark forms residing in the general direction of the galactic nucleus, with the back-illumination increasing in brightness toward the Blue Star. The entire Scorpio-Sagittarius-Lupus-Ophiucus region would have taken on an ominous appearance. The cloud of gas and dust that currently surrounds the solar system would become illuminated and grotesquely visible. Nearby clouds lying in the anticenter direction, that is on the Taurus-Orion-Capella side of the heavens, would instead have been front-illuminated, the beamed synchrotron radiation there being directed away from Earth. On this leeward side, viewers would have seen visual effects produced by superwave cosmic rays that were now receding from the Earth.

Other lighting effects would have been seen in the immediate vicinity of the solar system. Within minutes after the appearance of the Blue Star, superwave cosmic rays would have begun impacting the solar system's heliopause magnetic field sheath as well as the bow shaped shock front that surrounds and shields it on the upwind side facing the Galactic center. The approaching cosmic rays would have been captured by the turbulent magnetic fields residing behind the shock front as well as within the heliopause sheath. There, they would have formed a network of faintly luminous cobweb-like filaments stretching outward across the sky from the vicinity of the Blue Star.

Perhaps the most frightening phenomenon to occur in this early stage would be the prompt arrival of the electromagnetic pulse and, perhaps some days later, the onslaught of the gravity wave with its ensuing crustal torque, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. These terrifying aspects are discussed more fully in chapter 12.

Acknowledgments 

1. CIPHER IN THE SKY
       Message from the Past
       The Science of Cosmogenesis
       The Riddle of the Sphinx
       The Encryption of the Cosmic
          Microwave Temperature Gradient

2. THE GALACTIC CONNECTION
       The Galactic Center Indicators
       Was the Galactic Center Visible in
          Ancient Times? 
       Cosmic Procreation
       Activity in the Core of Our Galaxy 
       Cosmic Benchmarks

3. THE CHARGE OF THE BULL
       Galactic Superwaves
       The Blue Star
       The Eye of Re
       The Temple of Dendera
       Distant Thunder
       Ice Core Evidence of Prehistoric
          Cosmic Ray Volleys

4. COSMIC DUST INVASIONS
       Arrival
       The Age of Darkness
       The Battle of Horus and Set
       Horus’s Nearly Fatal Sting
       Validation
       Discovery of the 15,800-years-B.P.
          Cosmic Event 
       Dusty Aftermath 
       Venus: The Star That Smoked

5. THE AGE OF ICE
       Thermal Freeze
       Dark Clouds Up Ahead
       Ragnarok (the Twilight of the Gods)
       Fierce Winds

6. THE CONFLAGRATION
       The T Tauri Effect
       Lunar Evidence of an Active
          Ice Age Sun
       The Canyons of Mars
       The Myth of Phaethon and the
          Sun Chariot
       Other Myths about the Burning of
          the World 
       Terrestrial Evidence for a Prehistoric
          Global Warming and Solar Outburst
       Solar Storms and Geomagnetic Flips

7. THE GREAT EXTINCTION
       In Search of a Cause
       Glacier Waves
       The Mystery of the Frozen Mammoths

8. FLOOD LEGENDS AND CIPHERS
       Atlantis and the Flood
       Thus Spake Zeus
       Asgard and the Bifrost Bridge
       A Zodiacal Date for the Flood 
       Flood Legends from Asia, Oceania, and
          the Near East

9. FLOOD LEGENDS FROM THE AMERICAS
       American Indian Legends
       The Barasana Star Lore
       Archaeological Evidence for the Flood 

10. TESTIMONY IN THE SKY
       The Galactic Radio Background
          Emission
       Supernova Remnant Signposts
       Do Superwaves Trigger Supernovae?
       Extragalactic Evidence for Superwaves

11. CYCLES OF DESTRUCTION
       Geocosmic Cycles
       The Days of Brahma
       The Journey of the Hopi

12. PROPHECIES
       The Day of the Lord
       The Revelation of Saint John
       The Fátima Prophecy
       Future Vision

13. REQUIEM

APPENDIX A: Coordinates and Proper Motions for Key Constellation Stars

APPENDIX B: The Duration of Galactic Core Explosions

APPENDIX C: Attempts to Move the Scientific Investigation Forward
   Getting the Word Out
   Subsequent Investigation Attempts
   Glasnost
   Predictions and Their Later Verification:
      Chronology--1979 to Present

APPENDIX D: Chronologies

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Index of Myths and Legends

Paul LaViolette, Ph.D., (1947–2022) was president of the Starburst Foundation, an interdisciplinary research institute, and held degrees in both systems science and physics. He is the author of Genesis of the Cosmos and Subquantum Kinetics.

"This is an amazing book, and a little complicated, so plan to spend some time on this one. But, it's well written, well thought out and exceptionally researched."
Olav Phillips, The Anomalies Network, Mar 2008

NEW SCIENCE / EARTH CHANGES

Many ancient myths from around the world tell of catastrophic destruction by fire and flood. These ubiquitous legends are so extreme that they are ­often dismissed as imaginative exaggerations. In Earth Under Fire, Paul LaViolette connects these “myths” to recent scientific findings in astronomy, geology, and archaeology to reconstruct the details of prehistoric global ­disasters and to explain how similar tragedies could recur in the near future.

Compelled by his decryption of an ancient warning hidden in zodiac constellation lore, LaViolette worked with information from many scientific sources, including astronomical observations, polar ice core measurements, and other geological data, to confirm that our Galaxy’s core exploded near the end of the last ice age. This explosion unleashed a barrage of cosmic rays and enveloped the solar system in a dense nebula, which led to periods of persistent darkness, frigid cold, severe solar storms, searing heat, and mountainous floods that plagued mankind for many generations. Linking his scientific findings to details preserved in the myths and monuments of ancient civilizations, he demonstrates how past civilizations accurately recorded the causes of these cataclysmic events, knowledge of which may be crucial for the human race to survive the next catastrophic superwave cycle. This information reveals the intelligence and ingenuity of our ancestors who, when faced with extinction, found the means to warn us that the apocalypse that destroyed them could occur once again.

PAUL A. LAVIOLETTE, Ph.D., (1947–2022) was president of the Starburst Foundation, an interdisciplinary research institute, and held degrees in both systems science and physics. He is the author of Genesis of the Cosmos and Subquantum Kinetics.