The Dark Star: The Planet X Evidence (36 page)

The Milankovitch Model

The link to Earth's movement through the solar system was made by
a Serb engineer and mathematician named Milutin Milankovitch. He looked at how
variables in the Earth's tilt, precession and orbital eccentricity might fit in
with climate change over periods of many thousands of years. He created a
theoretical model for establishing a link between climate and astronomical
influences, but the detail of this model could only be put to the test when
dating techniques were developed to provide a detailed picture of climate
change over the millennia.

This took many, many years and, in the meantime, the Milankovitch
Model was widely dismissed by scientists. In the 1970's, experimental
techniques were developed which were able to provide sufficiently detailed
quantitative data to properly test the Milankovitch hypothesis. As a result,
the dating of climate change was found to fit with the complexity of his
proposed astronomical cycles.
5

The major 100,000 year cycle, connected as it is with changes in
the Earth's eccentricity, is peppered with periods of dramatic change. These
can be sudden and extreme. The Earth's geological record has helped us to
realize that the world's climate changes dramatically, often without warning.

For example, ice cores examined in Greenland show that, when the
last Ice Age was coming to a close some 15,000 years ago, there was one
occasion when continent-sized ice sheets melted and fell apart within just one
decade. Then the climate cooled again, going through a fluctuating pattern of
change before the Ice Age finally completely receded.
6

Work carried out in the Antarctic has shown that the weight of the
continental Ice Cap changed dramatically about 14,000 years ago, leading to
Tectonic deformation in the western Marie Byrd Land and the Ross Embayment
area. This may have been brought about by separation and crustal uplift, caused
by isostatic rebound following the last glacial maximum.
7
As we can
see, massive climate changes took place in both hemispheres over a similar
time-frame, and scientists now accept that the coming and going of Ice Ages
occurs on a global level.
8

The Ice Age/Interglacial cycle fluctuates with a complex rhythm
dependent upon the Earth's variable eccentricity in its orbit, as well as its
tilt and precession. There is even a relatively minor effect attributable to
variations in the gravitational pull of the other planets felt by the Earth
over time! One can see how fragile the world is, if such seemingly
inconsequential variables can have such dramatic effects on the global climate.
It should now be clear why I can argue that orbital changes of the Dark Star
could cause such a system to unbalance even more dramatically.

I need to make it clear that the Dark Star does not influence this
Milankovitch Cycle. I am not proposing that it is another causal variable in an
already well-established pattern of climate change connected with the Earth's
movement in the solar system.

What I am attempting to establish is whether the Dark Star might
be the causal factor behind why these Ice Ages occur at all.

Ice Epochs

For the vast majority of geological time, the Earth has had no ice
caps. In effect, the whole planet was an ice-free zone during immensely long
periods of time, spanning hundreds of millions of years.

During those ice-free eons of time, the Earth was presumably still
undergoing the same rotational and orbital changes. Its orbit's eccentricity
was presumably just as variable. Its angle of tilt still changed over time. Its
precession, the wobble about its own axis, still took place, presumably. Even
the gravitational influence of the other planets must have still played a part.
In other words, the multiple factors governing the Milankovitch Cycle were
still very much at work.

Yet, for some reason no one can fathom, the Earth saw no ice for
hundreds of millions of years at a time. However, the global warmth experienced
by this planet during those extended periods would occasionally be exchanged
for periods of intense cold known as Ice Epochs.

The most recent Ice Epoch, which lasted for about four million
years up until about 10,000 years ago, was fragmented into a number of periods
of glaciation with intermittent warmer periods, associated with the
Milankovitch Cycle. When we casually talk about the last Ice Age, we are simply
referring to the last in a series of Ice Ages that made up the Ice Epoch.

It's possible that the Ice Epoch has not actually ended at all,
but that our world could yet be dramatically plunged back into a new Ice Age,
as part of the Ice Epoch's internal cycle. We may simply be living through a
warm interglacial period at the moment, which may be an unsettling thought.

 

Scientists are still unable to offer a definitive solution to the
reason why long-period Ice Epochs occur at all, bearing in mind that during
most of the last billion years this planet had no permanent ice. In fact, it
appears that the Ice Age that occurred 600 million years ago was so extensive
that the whole globe may have been affected, leading to what some scientists
have termed “Snowball Earth”. On either side of this extreme period of almost
total global glaciation, there was no ice whatsoever. Yet, the reasons behind
these massive fluctuations in the terrestrial climate remain elusive.
9

We are currently four million years into one of these periods of
cooling, which sometimes lasts a hundred million years or more. Our current era
appears to be a period of glacial retreat, a process which we are accelerating
due to our own environmental destruction. The reasons for the advance and
retreat of the glaciers during an ice age is quite well understood, dependent
as they are upon various orbital factors. But why these extremely long, cool
periods occur at all is just not understood.

In the last billion years, long periods of glaciation have
occurred during these geological periods:

1.
During the late Protozoic
(800-600 million years ago).

2.
During parts of the
Ordovician and Silurian (between about

460 and 430 million years ago).

3.
During the Pennsylvanian
and Permian (between about 350 and 250 million years ago).

4.
During the late Neogene to
Quaternary (the last four million years).
10

When trying to understand why these long periods of glaciation
should be occurring, scientists look at a number of contributory factors,
including changing continental positions, uplift of continental blocks,
reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere and changes in the Earth's orbit. The
mechanisms of plate tectonics contribute to the formation of extensive ice caps
by intermittently providing large land masses at high latitudes for the ice to
build upon. The subsequent formation of large ice-sheets appears to be
catalyzed by positive feedback mechanisms due to reflection of sunlight away
from the Earth, and thus general cooling of the planet. Changes in the orbit of
the Earth around the sun are also alluded to, particularly with respect to the
Earth's eccentricity, tilt and the direction the North Pole points towards.
10

But these explanations are simply the same ones that are used to
explain the Milankovitch Cycle. They simply become overextended when being
brought to bear on the problem of Ice Epochs. The problem of this particular
variation takes us to a new level, calling for an external influence that is
simply missing.

There does not appear to be any known mechanism that could explain
why the Earth is wrapped in ice for hundreds of millions of years, then
completely free of ice for similar periods of time: It's almost as though the
Earth has moved into a new orbit.

Thinking the Unthinkable

Towards the beginning of this chapter, we looked at the orbital
binding energies and noted that both astronomers and physicists are well
acquainted with the idea that planetary orbits are reliant upon inter-dependent
energetic relationships, rather than simply gravitational interactions. In this
way, a large rogue body shifting its orbital path would necessarily cause
orbital shifts in the other planets in the same system.

The fact that theory called for the Earth's orbit to actually
migrate seems to have created artificial limits on the starting point of the
binary companion's orbit, at least in the minds of the scientific advocates of
the Nemesis theory. Yet, what we are seeing in the evidence presented in this
book is that the migration of the Earth is not impossible at all; in fact, it
is absolutely pivotal for a proper understanding of our planet's history.

The fact that there is way too much water on this planet compared
with the theoretical situation implied by its current location is a major clue.
Then there are the mysterious comings and goings of these Ice Epochs. I am
quite sure that scientists looking at these problems must have at least
considered the possibility that the Earth's orbit has shifted at times during
the lifetime of the solar system.

But because there is currently no rational mechanism to allow this
to occur, this common sense solution is shelved in favour of more elaborate
ones. Yet, the existence of the Dark Star creates a viable and dramatic causal
factor. It should allow us to think outside the box.

I suspect that more evidence to support this hypothesis will
emerge, as our knowledge of planetary science increases over the coming years.
Future study of the other terrestrial planets' geology will provide further
evidence for other cataclysms on other worlds, and my bet is that the same
boundary chronologies will be discovered. After all, if the planetary binding
energies change as a result of a 'phase change' in the Dark Star's orbit, then
all of the planets will be affected. Local planetary conditions might alter the
physical manifestation of the effect, but the timing would necessarily be the
same.

In this I can make a scientific prediction based upon my
hypothesis. Epochal boundary changes on Mars and Venus will be synchronistic
with the P-Tr boundary event, the Precambrian-Cambrian explosion and the late,
great bombardment, or 'lunar cataclysm'. Other huge changes in the geology and
climate of these worlds will be found to be synchronistic with changes on this
planet too, including extraterrestrial geological markers commensurate with
the sudden onset of long-period terrestrial Ice Epochs.

Will the patterns of glacial advance and retreat over Epochs be
the same on Mars as it is on Earth, for example? Was Mars similarly warm over 4
million years ago, only succumbing to a long period of severe glaciation, as
the Earth became similarly gripped by the 4 million year long Ice Epoch? As the
Earth steadily warms will we see a similar pattern emerge on Mars, leading
slowly towards a more habitable climate on the red planet?

Changing Poles

Other researchers have considered other radical ideas to explain
anomalous patterns of Ice Age fluctuation.

For instance, in Graham Hancock's book “The Fingerprints of the
Gods”, he discusses the theories of Charles Hapgood regarding “Earth-crust
displacement”. Evidence of sudden global climate change in our prehistory is
not new, but some people may not be aware of the many anomalies that have been
found, indicating extremely sudden change. For instance, “flash-frozen mammoths
in Northern Siberia and Alaska, and the 90ft tall fruit trees locked in the
permafrost deep inside the Arctic Circle at a latitude where nothing grows”.1
1

Further evidence for cataclysms occurring during periods of
dramatic climate change is attested to elsewhere.
12
Essentially,
Earth-crust displacement encapsulates a theoretical spinning of the thin crust
around the Earth, known as the lithosphere, around the rest of the body of the
planet. It's sudden occurrence would be cataclysmic, and the Canadian
researchers Rand and Rose Flem-Ath have cited geological and mythological
evidence to support their proposition that the last Ice Age finished, suddenly,
in the 11th Millennium BC.
12,13,14
The idea that the entire crust of
the Earth slips catastrophically is, of course, a radical one. Now, it may be
that the Milankovitch Cycle offers a more robust solution to the problems
addressed by Hancock and others, because the Milankovitch model fits with the
patterns of cyclical change between Ice Ages and Interglacials within the last
Ice Epoch. However, do all of these changes involve such apocalyptic changes as
those recorded about 11,000 years ago? Does this date mark a quite different
transition into a new permanently warmer period, or was it simply one of many
incremental adjustments to the world's climate, as the Earth's wobble and
eccentricity predictably shifted into a different phase of the Milankovitch
Cycle?

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