PLEASE NOTE:
*
Date sent: Wed, 05 Feb 1997 13:39:12 -0500 (EST)
From: HUMBPEIS B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk
Subject: LORD BYRON ON COMET IMPACTS
To: cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Priority: NORMAL
If you have ever wondered who was the first scholar who
thought about protecting human civilisation from cometary
impacts, you are in for a real surprise:
The following quote from 1822(!) - which certainly
belongs to one of the most 'prophetic' visions ever
formulated - was discovered by Dr Duncan Steel, the
British-Australian astronomer and author of "Rogue
Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the
Million Megaton Menace that threatens Life on Earth" (New
York et al: John Wiley & Son, 1995).
>
> "Who knows whether, when a comet shall approach this
globe and destroy it, as
> it often has been and will be destroyed, men will not tear
rocks from their
> foundations by means of steam, and hurl mountains, as the
giants are said to
> have done, against the flaming mass? - and then we shall
have the traditions
> of the Titans again, and of wars with Heaven." [Year =
1822]
>
> Medwin's "Conversations of Lord Byron",
> Princeton Univ Press, 1966, p.188
>
*
Date sent: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 08:58:12 +0100
To: Cambridge-Conference@livjm.ac.uk
From: Bas van Geel vangeel@bio.uva.nl
Subject: Meteoroids and earth magnetic field?
Subject: a question to Prof Bailey after having seen the article
in THE
TIMES 4 February 1997:
> It is also possible that dead comets, technically known as
cometary
>asteroids, >may disintegrate far faster than the team
supposes. This would
>mean that many >may now be little more than PENCIL-THIN
STREAMS OF
>METEOROIDS which would be >hard to detect but which could
cause no harm to
>the Earth.
Thinking about some sharp temporary increases of the 14C content
of the
atmosphere during the Holocene, I would like to ask the following
question
to Prof. Bailey:
Would such PENCIL-THIN STREAMS OF METEOROIDS have any affect on
the earth
magnetic field, and - as such - on the incoming cosmic rays on
earth? (more
cosmic rays as a consequence of a weaker earth magnetic field
means higher
production of 14C and 10Be)
Bas van Geel
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| Dr Bas van Geel | Internet E-mail :vanGeel@bio.uva.nl |
| University of Amsterdam | Phone secr. :+31-20 525 7844 |
| Faculty of Biology | Direct phone :+31-20 525 7664 |
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