PLEASE NOTE:
*
Date sent: Fri, 17 Oct
1997 13:30:17 -0400 (EDT)
From:
Benny J Peiser <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk
Subject:
NEO RESEARCH & ACTIVITIES IN FRANCE
To:
cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Priority: NORMAL
NEO RESEARCH & ACTIVITIES IN FRANCE
Should you have further information regarding to Neil
Forsyth's
quiry, please be so kind and get in touch with him directly
--------------------------------------------------------------------
from: Neil Forsyth <Neil.Forsyth@ANGL.unil.ch
Dear Benny
There was a good, basic programme on Swiss-French Television
last
night about the possibility of collision with NEOs and the
network in
France, partly in Lyon, organizing to take action. Talked about
past
collisions, the 94 Jupiter impact, Tunguska, etc. I think
it was
made for the local channel, but focused on activity in France.
Unfortunately I didn't copy it, but have asked a friend who
works for
the same team to come up with a tape and also to let me know what
the
terms are if other channels want to buy it.
Did you get any other info about it? Are you in touch with the
astronomers and people in France? There was nothing about
Spaceguard, by the way.
Best
Neil Forsyth
University of Lausanne
CH-1015 Lausanne
Switzerland
+41 21 692 29 88
e-mail: Neil.Forsyth@ANGL.unil.ch
Editor
The European English Messenger
*
Date sent: Fri, 17 Oct
1997 11:15:31 -0400 (EDT)
From:
Benny J Peiser <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk
Subject:
WILLIAM COMYNS BEAUMONT: BRITAIN'S MOST ECCENTRIC & LEAST
KNOWN
COSMIC HERETIC
To:
cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Priority: NORMAL
WILLIAM COMYNS BEAUMONT (1873 - 1956)
BRITAIN'S MOST ECCENTRIC AND LEAST KNOWN COSMIC HERETIC
By Benny J Peiser
Liverpool John Moores University
School of Human Sciences
It is generally believed that the American scholar and
founding
father of meteoritic studies, H.H. Ninninger, was the first
20th century scientist to have associated mass extinctions with
cosmic impact catastrophes. In his paper "Cataclysm and
Evolution"
(Popular Astronomy 50/1942, pp. 270-272), Ninninger reviewed the
new research on Apollo asteroids and the handful of the known
(and
relatively small) meteorite craters. He added one and one
together and
hypothesises that
"[...] it is not at all improbable that the Earth
bears many
scars of far greater dimensions than the largest known
meteorite craters. [...] If the dimensions of the lunar
craters are to be taken as any indication of the
sizes of
the bodies that the Earth has encountered, then there must
have occurred great changes in the shore-lines, the
elevation
and depression of extensive areas, .[...] Violent climatic
changes would have resulted, locally at least, from the
heat
of the impacts and from changes in the content of the
atmosphere. Many general changes might have resulted from a
possible shifting of the poles, in the cases of the largest
impacts. These changes would have necessitated faunal and
floral readjustments. Species would have disappeared and
new
ones would have developed to take their places. Changes in
geographical range would have brought about new
adaptations,
and we should expect, in general, just those breaks in the
series that are actually found in the rocks".
That was back in 1942. It took almost 40 years, when, in 1980,
Luis
Alvarez and his colleagues arrived on the stage of mankind's
global
debating club, before the scientific community was ready to
engage in
a general discussion about Ninninger's original suggestion.
Harvey
Ninninger, however, was not the first 20th century catastrophist
to
speculate about impact triggered mass extinctions. As early as
1925,
one of Britain's leading scientific publishing houses (Chapman
& Hall)
released a rather inconspicuous book ("The Riddle of the
Earth") by
William Comyns Beaumont, an English super-eccentric, in which he
anticipated most of the current neo-catastrophist paradigm:
"Geologists all agree that the termination of the
later
Tertiary Age witnessed one of these startling and
revolutionary changes on the face of the earth, and I
submit
that the occasion of such a change and of all the sudden
geological ages was due to the fall of enormous bodies of
meteors, or, perhaps, to the earth's appulsion with a great
solid body falling through space, and that such a body or
collection of bodies came from the direction of the present
north-east, fell mainly upon a certain position of the
Northern Hemisphere, occasioned vast earthquakes, and
deposited not only certain mountain ranges but also
volcanoes, causing among other matters the sinking of some
land and the uprising of others." (Beaumont/Way 1925,
90)
The book, which was, as far as I am aware, never reviewed in
any
scientific journal or newspaper, fell out of the press
still-born.
Without any feedback from the scientific community, Beaumont
turned to even more eccentric theories. In his next book,
"The
Mysterious Comet: Or the Origin, Building up, and Destruction of
Worlds, by means of Cometary Contacts" (Rider & Co),
published in
London in 1932, Beaumont - almost prophetically - summed up his
conclusions of more than 20 years of cometary research:
"The science of meteorism is of utmost importance
to the
world. It is in fact the only philosophical science of real
importance because modern astronomy largely reduces itself
to
mathematical calculations as to the relative distance of
celestial bodies, and these seem to have little practical
value to anyone. It uses geology where geology is useful
and
discovers its weak spots as it does vulcanism and
seismology.
It explains much of the past which archaeologists and
biologists cannot do, and reveals a great deal of the
future.
[...] Meteorism will teach us the origin and evolutions of
planets. Meteor impact explains the existence of mountain
ranges not internal 'crinklings,' the existence of
volcanoes,
earthquakes, the land surfaces, the seas, and the very air
we
breathe. Nothing else does. Meteorism explains the creation
of species, of great saurians, reptiles, mammals, fish,
birds,
and insects, as well as the origin of the human species. It
may astonish my reader if I assert that species are still
brought periodically by meteor agency into our world, and
that also plagues and pestilences come from a similar
source.
But I will produce the evidence to such effect./ In spite
of
the vast importance of the subject meteorism is scarcely
recognised as yet as a science. No encouragement is given
to
the student to prosecute a subject which if it did no more
for humanity would doubtless save many thousands of lives
by
the mere establishment of principles of meteorism."
70 years ago, nobody took such heretic ideas seriously.
Charles
Lyell and Charles Darwin's theory of gradualist uniformitarianism
was
still the scientific dogma of the day. Without any response,
Beaumont's interest turned to even more occult ideas such as
historical catastrophism and revised ancient history.
I have recently published a brief paper on Beaumont's ideas on
historical catastrophism and their influence on Immanuel
Velikovsky's
similar speculations (see attached text below). Some day, the
fantastic, bizarre and almost forgotten history of 19th and 20th
century catastrophism, in it scientific, religious and occult
forms,
will need to be written. It is quite a story.
Benny J Peiser
=======================================================================
from: Chronology & Catastrophism Review. Journal of the
Society for
Interdisciplinary Studies 1996:2
WILLIAM COMYNS BEAUMONT (1873 - 1956)
BRITAIN'S MOST ECCENTRIC AND LEAST KNOWN COSMIC HERETIC
By Benny J Peiser
Did Immanuel Velikovsky knowingly present ideas someone else
had
developed many years earlier? While this question seems
bizarre even to his most ardent opponents, it was recently raised
in a paper by Robert Stephanos (Stephanos 1994). Hardly anybody
has ever questioned the originality of Velikovsky’s flawed
ideas
of planetary catastrophes in historical times. While some critics
have underlined that Velikovsky was mean with his
acknowledgements of
earlier catastrophists (Michell 1984, 142), and others have
stressed
that the claims of Velikovsky’s originality were spurious
because
earlier authors had written about cometary catastrophes (Bauer
1984,
215ff.), many still believe that Velikovsky was the first
proponent
of planetary catastrophism in this century.
The reader of Alfred de Grazia’s book Cosmic Heritics (de
Grazia
1984) will therefore be surprised to learn that the first modern
catastrophist was inn fact a British super-eccentric, William
Comyns Beaumont, who is hardly known today but was a top-ranking
English editor. Some of his ideas seem quite quite mad - e.g. the
idea that the Egyptian dynasties up to the 13th century B.C.
ruled in
South Wales and that Jerusalem was originally located in
Edinburgh
(de Grazia 1984, 138). In view of this, readers may regard the
relative obscrurity of this bizarre catastrophist as rather
fitting.
Yet one’s surprise turns into sheer amazement when we read
that
William Beaumont - with the exception of his matchless biblical
exegesis - had developed almost identical ideas to those of
Velikovsky and some of his ideas were published 25 years before
Worlds in Collision appeared in print. In fact, Beaumont had
published no less than three lengthy books on colliding planets,
cometary catastrophes (which he associated with the Exodus
catastrophes), and revised chronologies - all of them published
before Velikovsky entered the cosmic arena (Beaumont 1925, 1932,
1946). De Grazia lists Beaumont’s main ideas as follows (de
Grazia
138/39):
1. The geology of the world's surface is largely catastrophic.
2. The catastrophe was caused by a cometary collision.
3. All geological formations were shifted as a result.
4. Cosmic lightning played a major role.
5. Hydrocarbons were present in cometary tails.
6. Ancient chronology was several hundred years too old.
7. The Ancient calendars had to be revised because of the
catastrophe.
8. Many species were extinguished catastrophically.
9. Religion was born in cometary worship and tied to phallic
forms because of the shape of comets.
10. Fear of cometary collisions is inherited by mankind.
11. Vermin were deposited by comets which also provoked
plagues.
12. Deities from Egypt, Greece, Meso-America, and elsewhere
were identified with planets.
13. Pyramids were both astronomical observatories and
"air-raid shelters" for nobility and kings.
14. Planet Saturn, as a comet caused ihe Noachian Deluge.
15. The Atlantis date (ca. 9500 B.C.) given by Plato had to be
shortened.
16. Extensive legendary evidence pictures the "hairy,"
"bearded,"
"blazing stars" that were comets.
17. Stonehenge, Avebury Circle and similar monuments were
astronomical instruments.
18. Central American legends (and cultures) were contemporaneous
with those of the Old World.
19. The intercalary "five evil days" were cursed
because they
coincided with a world disaster and the ending of an age.
20. The serpent, dragon, winged-globe, caduceus, and other
ancient symbols are traceable to cometary catastrophes.
21. Religious festival are dated by cometary catastrophes.
22. Cometary conflagrations are the origin of coal deposits.
23. The ancients had a true 360 day year.
24. The planet Venus underwent great changes in color, diameter,
figure, and orbit in the time of Ogyges.
25. Quetzalcoatl (Coculkan-Hurakan) commemorated the cometary
dragon for the Meso-Aniericans.
Beaumont’s theses are almost identical to those of
Velikovsky. Yet
Beaumont developed and published them as early as the 1920s and
1930s. Could this extraordinary similarity have been a freak
accident? If this correspondence was not a fluke, how could
it be
explained? "Could Velikovsky have read and forgotten
Beaumont’s
books?", de Grazia (1984, 139) asked. De Grazia tried to
reconciliate
the evidence with the fact that Beaumont’s style and method
were
entirely different from Velikovsky’s.
De Grazia pointed out that "too many of Beaumont's
conclusions are
the same to explain them as sheer coincidence". He therefore
speculated as to how this parallelism could possibly be accounted
for:
"I guess that either in the 1920s or 1930s, when Velikovsky
was in
Palestine, the books [by Beaumont], published in England and
dealing
with matters of interest to the Near East, made an appearance in
the
bookstores and were seen by Velikovsky" (De Grazia 1984,
140).
According to de Grazia, Beaumont’s early books were not
held by
Columbia University Libraries and only Beaumont’s third
book, "The
Riddle of Prehistoric Britain" (published in 1946), appeared
in the
Columbia University library catalogues, and "By that time
'Worlds in
Collision' had been written" (De Grazia 1984, 140).
However, according to de Grazia, "a note exists in his
[Velikovsky's]
archive, mentioning having read Beaumont’s 1932 book; the
note
dismisses the work. Yet Velikovsky expresses his wonder whether
Beaumont had gotten his (V’s) ideas by telepathy" (de
Grazia 1984,
140). But how could Beaumont have borrowed Velikovsky’s
ideas as
early as 1925 or 1932 (let alone by means of telepathy) when -
according to Velikovsky’s own account - Worlds in Collision
was only
conceived in 1940? De Grazia was suspicious: "Could there
have been a
‘Bridie Murphy Effect" which might explain Velikovsky’s
rather
irrational accusations against Beaumont?" (de Grazia 1984,
140). Had
Velikovsky simply ‘forgotten’ that he had already come
across
Beaumont’s books (or ideas) in the 1920s or 1930s?
In hindsight, de Grazia was much too quick to rule out direct
influence. He failed to check whether Beaumont’s books were
stored in
the Public Library on 42nd Street, the other big library which
Velikovsky had frequently used during the 1940s. It holds all of
Beaumont’s early books, so they were readily available to
Velikovsky
during his ten years of research.
References
Bauer, H.H. (1984), Beyond Velikovsky: The History of a Public
Controversy (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press)
Beaumont, W.C. [=Appian Way] (1925), The Riddle of the Earth
(London)
Beaumont, W.C. (1932), The Mysterious Comet (London: Rider &
Co)
Beaumont, W.C. (1946), The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain
(London/New York/Melbourne/Sydney: Rider & Co)
Beaumont, W.C. (1947) Britain the Key to World History
(London/New York/Melbourne/Sydney/Cape Town: Rider &
Co)
Beaumont, W.C. (1948) A Rebel in Fleet Street (London: Hutchinson
&
Co)
de Grazia, A. (1984), Cosmic Heretics (Princeton: Metron)
Michell, J. (1984), Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions (London:
Thames & Hudson)
Stephanos, R.C. (1994) Catastrophists in Collision: Did
Velikovsky
borrow from Beaumont’s original works? In: Fate [March
1994],
66-72
Velikovsky, I. (1950), Worlds in Collision (London: Victor
Gollantz)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------- MORE INFORMATION ABOUT WILLIAM COMYNS BEAUMONT
JERUSALEM IN SCOTLAND AND OTHER FINDINGS OF A REVISIONIST GEOGRAPHER
By John Michell
from John Michell: Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions
(London: Thames and Hudson 1984), pp. 136-143
In the winter of 1910 Dr Orville Owen of Detroit was engaged
in the
Great Baconian Treasure Hunt around Chepstow Castle. He was
hoping to
discover valuable relics concealed there by Sir Francis Bacon,
together with documents proving his authorship of the works of
Shakespeare. Owen's excavations in the bed of the river Wye
became a
rallying point for mystics and adventurers and soon attracted the
press. Keenest of the journalists was a leading
staff-writer on the
Daily Mail, William Comyns Beaumont. He agreed to contract with
Dr
Owen for the results of the treasure hunt to be reported
exclusively
in his paper and arranged to write a series of articles about the
discovery of Bacon's hoard. Beaumont had an advantage over other
journalists in being himself a confirmed Baconian. He fell
readily
under the spell of Dr Owen, developed complete faith in his
cipher
and, even after the search was abandoned with nothing to show for
it,
remained a true believer. Years later he wrote a book, The
Private
Life of the Virgin Queen, upholding the established belief among
Baconian decoders, that Francis Bacon was the natural son of
Queen
Elizabeth.
Baconianism, however, was the most conventional of Comyns
Beaumont's
heresies. None of the other unusual thinkers mentioned in this
book
can rival him in the number and strangeness of the unorthodox
theories he propagated. Like lgnatius Donnelly he believed in
Atlantis and in the past destruction of civilization on earth by
the
impact of a comet; but to these theories he gave peculiar twists
of
his own, and in the field of speculative geography his
imagination
outreached even that of the great Minnesotan.
Born in 1873, Beaumont went to public school but avoided
university
by accepting the post of private secretary to a rich American
diplomat. He travelled with his employer to India, America and
other
parts of the world, meeting many of the important people in
politics
and finance, and began his career in journalism as foreign
correspondent to the New York Herald. His next job was at
Newcastle,
writing for a local paper. There he met the daughter of an old
Catholic family from nearby County Durham, and proposed marriage.
Her
family objected, not because of religion - Beaumont had earlier
converted to Catholicism - but on account of his poverty. So the
couple married in secret, and immediately parted, the bridegroom
going off on a mission abroad while the bride returned innocently
to
her family. It was three years before they met again, by which
time
Beaumont had obtained a good position in London, on the Daily
Mail.
The marriage was successful, and so was his career.
He became an intimate aide to the newspaper's proprietor, Lord
Northcliffe, and made his name over many years in Fleet Street as
founder and editor of numerous journals concerned with politics
and the arts. As editor of The Bystander he was the first to
publish
a story by Daphne Du Maurier, who was his niece, his sister's
daughter.
To the public eye Comyns Beaumont was handsome, talented,
worldly,
well-connected and the last sort of person one would normally
suspect
of heresy. Yet in his mind strange ideas were brewing. Some are
hinted at in his autobiography, A Rebel in Fleet Street, which is
mostly an account of his professional career, but also includes
warnings about a Zionist plot to subvert the British Empire and a
brief outline of his unusual opinions on earthquakes and
volcanoes.
In 1909 he had been to the scene of a disastrous earthquake at
Messina in Sicily, which had killed 200,000 people the year
before,
and had come to believe that all such upheavals were caused by
‘meteoric impacts which in turn are closely related to
cometary
movements’. That belief was the cornerstone for Beaumont’s
revolutionary theories of history and geography.
Family reminiscences tell of Beaumont returning from work to
his
large, comfortable house and, after dinner, retiring to his study
for long spells of reading and writing. His main subjects were
mythology, early history, geology and ancient astronomical
records.
In all of them he found convincing evidence that the earth had
suffered many cataclysms in the course of its history, the most
recent having occurred in about 1322 BC. These were due to bits
of
dismembered planets striking the earth in the form of giant
comets
and altering its size and orbit. When his children asked about
his
writings, he terrified them with tales of collapsing worlds and
the
prediction that a monster comet would crash to earth in December
1919. The uneventful passing of that date only intensified his
belief
in the rest of his theories - as is invariably the case with
doomsday
prophets - and in middle age he published two books on world
catastrophes, directing them at geology professors who
unanimously
ignored them. It was not until he was retired and over seventy
that
he undertook the great work of his life, a massive trilogy in
which
every supposed fact about ancient history was overturned.
In the first of the series, The Riddle of Prehistotic Britain,
Beaumont identified the British Isles as Atlantis, the original
paradise and cradle of the Aryan race by which civilization was
spread to all other lands. Some of its members were giants,
responsible for building the great rock piles on the tors of
Devon
and Cornwall, and among them were skilled artificers who invented
bombs, firearms and flying machines. Their merchant navies traded
as
far afield as South America, and everywhere they planted
colonies.
Nationalistic writers of many different countries have made
sweeping
claims for their own people as the original culture-bearers; but,
in
the audacity of his pretensions on behalf of the British,
Beaumont
surpassed them all.
He stripped the entire ancient world of its history, myths,
culture
and sacred sites and transferred them wholesale to Britain. Egypt
and
its Pharaohs were not, as commonly believed, located in North
Africa
but in western Scotland. Also in that land were ancient Greece,
Israel and Babylonia with all their legendary heroes. Mount
Olympus,
throne of the gods, was really Ben Nevis, the first site of
Athens
was the town of Dumbarton, the battle of Thermopylae was fought
at
Glencoe, and Ur of the Chaldees flourished near the Stones of
Stenness in the Orkney Islands. From that former Atlantean centre
Abraham migrated to Wiltshire and settled near the stone circle
at
Ayebury, which Beaumont identified as Mizpah, Thebes, the dragon’s
teeth sown by Cadmus, an astronomical temple to Saturn and the
image
of a destructive comet. Having appropriated the whole of
antiquity
for Britain, Beaumont had the problem of finding enough British
sites
to accommodate the cities and landmarks of many different lands.
This
he solved by giving each of the prominent places in Britain
several
names from a variety of ancient cultures.
The conspiratorial cast of mind which caused him to perceive a
Zionist plot against Britain a so revealed to him the extent to
which
the Old Testament had been tampered with. The Holy Land was not
originally Palestine but in the British Isels and a part of
Scandinavia which, in antediluvian times, was separated from
Britain
by a narrow stretch of water known to antiquity as the
Hellespont.
The destruction of Atlantis, Noah’s flood and similar
catastrophe
legends all over the world referred to one and the same event,
the
fall of a huge double comet made up of fragments from a collapsed
planet. It landed in Scotland, not far from Edinburgh which in
those
days was called Jerusalem. The accident was considered a miracle
because Jerusalem was then under siege by a colonial army,
equipped
with superior firearms and led by a brilliant but sinister
character
whom Beaumont identified simultaneously as Moses, Zoroaster,
Silenus
and Odin. By the storms, floods and earthquakes which followed
the
invading host was destroyed, and so was much of Atlantis-Britain.
The
bulk of the comet increased the size of the earth and knocked it
further away from the sun, lengthening the period of its orbit
from
360 to 3651/4 days and altering its climate. The British Isles,
which
had previously enjoyed sub-tropical weather, became cold and
misty.
Many of the surviving population migrated south, founding
colonies
which they named after districts of their homeland, Egypt,
Israel,
Greece and so on. Yet the stricken lands of the North continued
to be
the centre of world culture. Jerusalem was rebuilt on its ancient
site in Edinburgh, York flourished as Babylon, Lincoln as
Antioch,
London as Damascus, Bristol as both Sodom and Tarshish, and Bath
as
the Philistine city of Gath. The Holy Family settled near
Glastonbury, where Jesus was born, and his entire mission took
place
in Somerset, then known as Galilee.
In the second and third parts of his trilogy (Britain the Key
to
World History and the still unpublished After Atlantis: the
Greatest
Story Never Told) Beaumont closely identified the geography of
Somerset with that of the Holy Land. Glastonbury was Bethel, the
fortress of Abraham, the birthplace of Christianity and the
original
site of the Garden of Eden. Its Tor hill was formerly known as
Mount
Tabor, and it was to this spot that Joseph of Arimathaea sailed
from
Jerusalem (Edinburgh), navigating the inland waters of Somerset,
then
called the Red Sea, after passing through the Bristol Channel or
Sea
of Galilee. On his route was the land of Gadara, situated at
Clifton
near Bristol, where the Gadarene swine had earlier plunged into
the
Avon Gorge near the present Suspension Bridge.
The Romans invaded Britain for the sake of its rich minerals,
and at
about the same time they are recorded as having besieged and
destroyed Jerusalem. The Emperor Hadrian, who built the famous
wall
against the Picts and Scots, was also active in the campaign
against
the Jews, and several of the Roman generals were said to have
served
both in Britain and at Jerusalem, even though the journey from
Britain to Palestine was long and arduous. In Beaumont’s
opinion they
did not have so far to travel, because Jerusalem in those days
was
still situated at Edinburgh. This became one of the main pillars
of
his thesis. Ancient descriptions of Jerusalem, he found, applied
far
more closely to Edinburgh than to the ‘squalid and
provincial’ city
in Palestine. Arthur’s Seat, for example, was more
worthy to be the
true Mount of Olives than the insignificant hill which now bears
that
name, and Beaumont was gratified to discover that a seaside
suburb of
Edinburgh, Joppa, had the same name as the traditional port for
Jerusalem. The London Daily News (13 November 1950) published
Beaumont’s offer to conduct any qualified archaeologist
round Britain
and prove to him ‘that this island and not Palestine is the
Holy Land
of the Bible’.
If Beaumont was right, the obvious question is why everyone
else
should believe that Jerusalem and the Holy Land were always where
they are today. Beaumont’s answer was that Britain was
systematically
robbed. Among those responsible was Hadrian, who moved Athens
away
from Dumbarton, not only in name but physically, transporting
some of
its finer buildings for re-erection in Mediterranean
Greece. But the
main culprit was Constantine the Great. According to Beaumont he
was
a Yorkshireman, by upbringing if not birth, and his mother,
Helena,
was the daughter of that popular British ruler, Old King Cole. He
was
thus well aware of the true location of Jerusalem, at Edinburgh,
but
he found that fact inconvenient. It was too far from his own
capital
in Asia Minor. He engaged therefore in one of those grand
conspiracies so dear to the heart of Comyns Beaumont, tricking
his
old mother into finding the supposed True Cross in Palestine and
announcing that on that barren spot was the Jerusalem of old. He
then
gathered together the writings of every ancient and contemporary
chronicler, destroyed every text that placed the Holy Land in
Britain and severely censored those documents he spared. Beaumont
compiled a long list of classical works known to have existed but
now lost, and suggested that they had fallen victim to
Constantine’s
literary purges because they did not fit in with his new pattern
of
sacred geography. All that has come down to us of the original
early
histories is a few doctored fragments.
Religion had no interest for Beaumont personally, since in his
opinion all legends of gods and their interventions on earth
could be
explained in meteorological terms. Successive cataclysms, caused
by
falls of comets, had traumatic effects on the minds of their
survivors and on the human memory over many generations. Stone
monuments were first constructed as places of refuge from an
elemental upheaval, and later to record the event and placate the
gods. Records of the most recent disaster, identified as such by
Beaumont, included the ancient Golspie Stone of Sutherland and
other
monuments of the same period and district, bearing mysterious
carved
symbols, notably a pair of linked circles which he took to be an
image of the double comet of 1322 BC. Cometary impacts were
preceded
by strange disorders in nature, such as earth tremors and
volcanic
eruptions, which were remembered in history as portents of
divine
wrath. Thus he interpreted the Old Testament stories of the
plagues
of Egypt and the destruction of Pharaoh’s host in the Red
Sea as
references to the great disaster, described in other myths as the
ruin of Atlantis and Noah's flood, caused by the fall of a comet
on
the northern part of Britain.
In deriving all religion, mythology and the history of our era
from
one single cataclysmic event, Beaumont produced a simplified,
materialistic theory of cosmology with the same type of appeal as
the
belief in extra-terrestrial origins of culture, pioneered by
Brinsley
le Poer Trench and popularized by Erich von Däniken. Yet
Beaumont’s
reputation and the sales of his books never approached those of
the
latter author. An evident reason is that he buttressed every item
in
his thesis with such a large body of evidence that much of his
writing, despite its stunning originality, was inclined to be
long-winded and tedious. No doubt also the times were against
him.
Among contemporaries, however, he was not entirely without
allies.
The psychic archaeologist, J. Forster Forbes, also wrote books
showing the British to have been culture-bearers to the world as
heirs to the wise Atlanteans, and Beaumont’s work found
favour among
some of the British Israelites, even though his notions on the
origins and destiny of the British people were diametrically
opposed
to their own. But in his lifetime he attracted no significant
following, and it is only recently that his works have found a
champion, a man prepared to devote his life to the restoration of
Jerusalem to Edinburgh.
In 1975 a Comyns Beaumont society was incorporated at
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Its founder and moving spirit was Mr Robert C.
Stephanos, an American psychologist of Albanian descent - which
may
be significant, in that the Albanians now claim to be the only
nation
practising pure atheism, having pulled down all their mosques and
churches; and because of their traditional associations with
Scotland
or Alban, evident in the name of their country and their liking
for
kilts and bagpipes. Stephanos had long been interested in
theories of
former terrestrial cataclysms and was an early supporter of the
most
recent catastrophist, Immanuel Velikovsky. When Velikovsky’s
fortunes
were at their lowest ebb, when his writings were boycotted by
academic publishers, and college professors refused to permit his
fantastic theories to be aired in front of their students,
Stephanos
came to his rescue. In 1973 he talked the authorities of
Philadelphia’s Temple University into inviting Velikovsky to
lecture.
The audience was large and enthusiastic, and Velikovskv followed
up
with a series of lectures at other colleges, also arranged
by
Stephanos. The novelty of his ideas, and the reputation he had
earned
as a martyr through the attempted suppression of his first book,
Worlds in Collision, were attractive to his young listeners. But
as
his cult grew, Velikovsky became nervous and suspicious. He
quarreled
with Stephanos who, thus deprived of a cause, looked round for
another. Velikovsky was mean with his acknowledgments, referring
only
once, in a disdainful footnote, to his great catastrophist
predecessor, lgnatius Donnelly, and not at all to Comyns
Beaumont.
Yet Beaumont’s theory of destructive comets was the same as
Velikovsky’s in all but some minor details. His books were
hard to
find, particularly in America, but Stephanos finally succeeded
and,
having read them, became a convert to Beaumont’s entire
thesis, his
eccentric geography included. After founding The Beaumont
Society:
Scientific Endeavours Inc., he set off for England to research
Beaumont’s life.
He interviewed members of the family, including Beaumont’s
niece,
Dame Daphne Du Maurier, and his daughter, Ursula Pike, who lived
in
Tipperary. Mrs Pike had exciting news, of a kind which all
literary
*
Date sent: Fri, 17 Oct
1997 09:00:30 -0400 (EDT)
From:
Benny J Peiser <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk
Subject:
MORE ON THE EL PASO FIREBALL
To:
cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Priority: NORMAL
from: David Morrison <dmorrison@mail.arc.nasa.gov
FURTHER INFORMATION ON EL PASO BOLIDE OF OCTOBER 9
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 09:00:42 -0600 (MDT)
From: Mark Boslough <mbboslo@sandia.gov
I just returned from El Paso where I spent the last 6 days
with Alan
Hildebrand, Peter Brown, Doug ReVelle, David Crawford, and a few
others gathering field observations, videotapes, seismic data,
etc.
to make a trajectory determination of the Oct. 9 event
("ground
truth" for CTBT infrasound network measurements). We
agree that this
was probably a kt-class event, and we are continuing to refine
the
entry angle, burst altitude, and azimuth of the
ground-track. We
have a preliminary fall area defined and believe that there are
meteorites.
There are at least 6 videotapes of the "puff" from
the terminal
explosion, from which we have gotten quantitative
information. A
security tape that we obtained yesterday from a business almost
directly beneath the terminal burst gives us the
"flash-to-boom"
interval, which will yield a precise burst altitude when we
correct
for atmospheric wind and temperature.
We think that the mean recurrence interval for events of this
magnitude is on the order of a month (not days). The
frequency of
occurrence over a major city like El Paso-Juarez is therefore
quite
low, and we hope to extract as much useful information as we can
from
this lucky circumstance. [Morrison comment: the standard
Shoemaker/Spaceguard model for average frequency of kiloton
events is
about 10 days, consistent with Mark's number, but more recent
estimates (Rabinowotz et al. in the 1994 Hazards book) increase
the
population by about an order of magnitude, making their kiloton
event
frequency just a day or two.]
The human reaction to this event should also concern us.
The
majority of witnesses that I interviewed along the border
believed
that they had seen a rocket or missile exploding. Some were
worried
about fallout, and many thought that Fort Bliss had had an
accident
that was now being covered up by the government. In one border
town,
many residents got sick afterwards, some with headaches, upper
respiratory and allergic symptoms. This was almost certainly due
to
dust (and probably asbestos) that was shaken out of the ceilings
of
old buildings by the sonic boom.
===================================================
MORE ON 19TH CENTURY CATASTROPHISM
From: Paolo Farinella <paolof@dm.unipi.it to Duncan Steel
on Byron's
comments on comet impacts:
I have just one comment. I doubt Byron was really influenced
by
Cuvier's catastrophist school, as you say, since at that time the
British and French communities of scholars didn't interact very
closely. More likely, Byron knew the work of William Whiston,
Newton's successor at Cambridge, whose writings were widely read
and
praised throughout the 18th century by British intellectuals
(including Newton himself and John Locke; Jonathan Swift didn't
like
Whiston and satirized his comet catastrophe theories in his
`Gulliver's Travels'). Whiston was also forecasting that the
apocalyptical prophecies of the Bible would become reality in the
near
future, under the form of a comet impact which would burn the
Earth's
surface and change its orbit. It's no wonder for me that,
given
Byron's heroic and romantic frame of mind, he would imagine that
humankind would struggle against the impending cometary
catastrophe.
I have read Whiston's story in the beautiful essay of S.J.
Gould
reprinted a few years ago in his book `Bully for Brontosaurus'
(pp.367-381). Here and in his other book `Time's Arrow, Time's
Cycle', Gould also mentions Lyell's harsh dismissal of Whiston
and of
all cometary impact hypotheses in 1830. A very interesting
episode,
which I think would deserve to be better known by today's
scientists.
*
Date sent: Fri, 17 Oct
1997 08:52:01 -0400 (EDT)
From:
Benny J Peiser <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk
Subject:
NEO Grant Press Release
To:
cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Copies to:
tps@mars.planetary.org
Priority: NORMAL
from: Linda Wong <tps@mars.planetary.org
NEWS RELEASE
The Planetary Society
65 N. Catalina Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91106-2301 (626)
793-5100 Fax
(626) 793-5528 E-mail tps@mars.planetary.org
Embargoed Release: October 11, 1997
Contact: Susan Lendroth
Planetary Society Grants Will Honor Shoemaker by Helping
Astronomers Continue the Search for Near Earth Objects
The Planetary Society will honor the late planetary geologist,
Eugene
Shoemaker, and his quest to better understand near earth objects
(NEOs) with a new program called the Gene Shoemaker Near Earth
Object
Grants. The first grant recipients will be announced by Apollo
Astronaut and former U.S. Senator Harrison Schmitt at the
Celebration
of Life service for Dr. Shoemaker at the U.S. Geological Survey
Flagstaff Field Center in Arizona on October 11, 1997.
The grants, totaling $35,000, will be given to four
researchers from
around the world with programs to search for NEOs -- asteroids
and
comets with orbits close enough to Earth to pose a potential
hazard
to our planet. Only about 5 to 10% of the estimated number of
one-kilometer or larger objects in Earth's orbit have been found
and
tracked so far.
The four recipients are Gordon Garradd, Australia; Kirill
Zamarashkin, Russia; Walter Wild, Chicago, Illinois; and
Bill
Holiday, Corpus Christi, Texas. Thirteen grant applications were
reviewed by a selection committee comprised of seven eminent
scientists.
NEOs have crashed into the Earth in the past with devastating
results. Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan was made by an object
some
10 km across colliding with Earth 65 million years ago.
That impact
probably contributed led to the extinction of the
dinosaurs. Even
far smaller objects can wreak widespread havoc. Dr. Shoemaker's
landmark studies, extending the early work of Daniel Moreau
Barringer, proved conclusively that the mile-wide crater in
Arizona,
now known as Barringer Meteorite Crater, was caused by an impact
of
an iron-nickel meteorite about 150 feet across with Earth nearly
50,000 years ago. Prior to Dr. Shoemaker's work, the crater
was
believed by many to be the remnant of an extinct volcano.
Discovering and tracking all NEOs will allow scientists to
better
understand these bodies and the role they play in the evolution
of
the solar system. Mapping their orbits will also give us early
warning if any of these bodies poses a future hazard to Earth.
Garradd currently operates the only NEO observing program in
the
southern hemisphere. Based in Loomberah, New South Wales in
Australia, Garradd will use his Gene Shoemaker NEO Grant to
complete
a 45-cm Newtonian telescope currently under construction and to
acquire a larger, higher-grade imaging sensor called a CCD.
Zamarashkin is the project coordinator for a joint
Russian-Ukrainian
search program at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.
This team
of scientists has been studying NEOs for 30 years and has
discovered
910 minor bodies, 12% of the currently numbered minor planets.
The
grant money will be used to help construct the first element of
an
automatic complex to search for NEOs.
Wild, an astronomer at the university of Chicago, leads a
group of
amateur astronomers who are conducting an NEO search from Yerkes
Observatory in Wisconsin. The grant money will be used to
refurbish
their 24" telescope and to bring their spectrograph to
operational
capacity for use with a 41" telescope used for follow-up
classification of NEOs.
Holiday is an amateur astronomer based in Texas.
Working from a
home-built rotating roof-observatory, Holiday will supply
additional
data to professional astronomers to help them make orbit
predictions
for NEOs. The grant will be used to upgrade his equipment.
Services celebrating the life of Dr. Shoemaker will be held in
Flagstaff on October 11. Dr. Shoemaker was killed in a traffic
accident last July in Australia, where he went to study ancient
impact craters.
The Gene Shoemaker Near Earth Object Grant selection committee
members are Richard Binzel, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology;
Andrea Carusi, Instituto di Astrofisica Spaziale; Clark Chapman,
Southwest Research Institute; Brian Marsden, Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics; Alain Maury, Telescope de Schmidt -
Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur; Syuichi Nakano, Japanese
astronomer;
and Jorge Sahade, La Plata Observatorio Astronomico, Argentina.
Observers interested in applying for future NEO grants in the
program
should contact the Planetary Society for an application by
writing
the Society at 65 North Catalina Avenue, Pasadena, California
91106
or sending an e-mail to tps@mars.planetary.org.
Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the
Society in
1980 to advance the exploration of the solar system and to
continue
the search for extraterrestrial life. With 100,000 members
in over
100 countries, the Society is the largest space interest group in
the
world.
---------------------------
Linda Wong
The Planetary Society
65 N. Catalina Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91106
(626) 793-5100
(626 793-5528 (Fax)
tps@mars.planetary.org
*
Date sent: Fri, 17 Oct
1997 08:47:34 -0400 (EDT)
From:
"b.j.peiser@livjm.ac.uk" <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk
Subject:
Los Alamos Array Detects Large, Bright Meteor
To:
cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Priority: NORMAL
from: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
Public Affairs Office (PAO)
Los Alamos National Laboratory
CONTACT: James E. Rickman, 505-665-9203 (97-155)
Los Alamos array detects large, bright meteor: Laboratory
researcher
joins the search
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Oct. 10, 1997 -- Researchers at Los Alamos
National
Laboratory were able to use an array developed to listen for
clandestine nuclear weapons tests to help locate a large meteor
that
flashed in the sky Thursday afternoon above Southern New Mexico.
The object -- presumably a large, bright meteor known as a
bolide --
was seen in the skies Thursday at about 12:47 p.m. Witnesses said
the
object was at least as bright as the full moon or as bright as
the
setting sun.
"The meteor made a huge sonic signal," said Doug
ReVelle, a
meteorologist in Los Alamos' Atmospheric and Climate Sciences
Group.
"They heard it like a freight train in El Paso."
Using data from Los Alamos listening stations originally set
up to
monitor nuclear explosions, ReVelle and other researchers in Los
Alamos' Atmospheric and Climate Sciences Group analyzed the
infrasonic signature created when the meteor entered the
atmosphere.
When a meteor enters the atmosphere -- or when a large
explosion is
detonated -- it creates a sound or pressure wave that is below
the
range of human hearing. This infrasonic wave travels through the
atmosphere and can be detected by special microphones that are
set up
in an array. By looking at the time of arrival of the sounds at
different stations and the frequency of the infrasonic boom,
researchers can pinpoint the location of the source and the
determine
the amount of energy that created it.
"The data from our array puts the meteor 441 kilometers
due south of
Los Alamos," said ReVelle. "We'll be looking for it in
a location
we've identified near El Paso."
ReVelle will join researchers from Canada, the University of
New
Mexico and Sandia National Laboratory on a search this weekend
for
any meteor fragments that may have reached the ground.
"The object's infrasonic signature was equivalent to the
explosive
yield of about 500 tons of TNT," ReVelle said. "That
means the object
was somewhere around one half to three-quarters of a meter in
diameter."
Thanks to the infrasound array at Los Alamos, researchers at
the
Laboratory were able to narrow down the location where it may
have
landed pretty well.
In addition to searching for remains of the meteor -- which
may have
exploded into tiny bits in the sky -- the researchers will
interview
witnesses about the object: how bright it was; what it sounded
like.
The object created a brilliant light as it streaked toward
Earth.
Witnesses in Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Albuquerque, El Paso and
points in
between saw the object in the sky.
ReVelle and the others will search all weekend for the object
and
collect other data as well.
"It could take weeks to find, but it could take a day or
less,
depending on how lucky we get," ReVelle said.
Infrasonic waves are very low frequency sounds that exist
somewhere
in the realm between hearing and meteorology, ReVelle said. The
sounds are well below the range of human hearing, which ends at
about
30 hertz, but actually can be detected as small changes in
atmospheric pressure. If someone had a barometer that was
sensitive
enough, that person would be able to see fluctuations of several
microbars when infrasonic waves arrive.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, before the rise of the
satellite
era, the United States Air Force operated a network of stations
to
listen for nuclear weapons tests. The listening stations were the
nation's first line of detection for nuclear explosions
worldwide.
The four arrays of listening stations operated by Los Alamos
are the
only infrasonic network left in full-time operation in the world.
They can detect meteors that are as small as a few centimeters in
diameter. The stations are useful because they can help validate
other non-proliferation and verification techniques, and they
cost
very little to operate and maintain.
The Los Alamos stations, around since 1983, still are enlisted
in the
nation's nuclear non-proliferation efforts, but have provided a
way
for scientists to detect bolides, larger-than-average space
debris
that slams into Earth's atmosphere and creates brilliant
fireballs in
the sky.
Each year a number of large meteors enter the atmosphere and
are
detected by the Los Alamos array. Some meteors are tens of meters
in
diameter. ReVelle said each year about 10 meteors that are two
meters
in diameter -- with an energy equivalent of a one-kiloton blast
--
enter the atmosphere. Most burn up or explode in brilliant
flashes.
Some hit the ground.
For this weekend's search, ReVelle will join Peter Brown of
the
University of Western Ontario; Alan Hildebrand from the National
Research Council in Ottawa, Ontario; a researcher from University
of
New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics; and Mark Boslough of
Sandia
National Laboratory.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University
of
California for the U.S. Department of Energy.