Battlestar E.L.E.: Extinction or Elevation Event?

Human 'cosmophobia' given expression in disaster movies

SciFi epics are all the rage these days. Television and the internet regularly screen such marvels of CGI (computer-generated imaging) as the amazing 1950s classic, ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ rereleased 2008, and Dennis Quaid’s (2004) ‘Day After Tomorrow’. What they have in common are scenes of human extinction, the battle for Earth against cosmic forces; an unprepared planet at the mercy of the Final Frontier. Even more heroic — human ingenuity in the face of impending disaster — were earlier blockbusters like the classic (1972) Bruce Dern ‘Silent Running’, Roland Emmerich’s (director of Day After Tomorrow) Independence Day (1996) and the Bruce Willis spacetale, Armageddon, 1998, the latter depicting incoming deep space objects of massive proportions. Independence Day served to insert the acronym ELE (extinction-level event) into popular idiom. Conflated by huge world interest in the zero hour of cultural calendar systems in December 2012, the human imagination soars.

Comet Elenin: incoming at the edge of Mars orbit, but still invisible to backyard Earth telescopes

So it is into this fertile ground that the UFOlogist media and internet doom-blogs plant scary stories about incoming celestial objects: for instance, the current preoccupation with:
comet C/2010 X1 Elenin (discovered 10-12-10)
comet C/2011 L3 McNaught (his 68th discovery)
and stray wanderers from the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. There is even an acronym for them: PHAs: potentially-hazardous asteroids.

It is true, comet Elenin, discovered December 10 2010 by Russian astrometrist Leonid Elenin, appeared to take American space-sweeping probes by surprise; the Russian announcement prompted the backdated release of a document detailing NASA’s preparations for (potentially) destructive deep-space objects in near-earth orbit (NEO), seen in the Letter from the White House last October, supposedly before Elenin was discovered by the Russian astronomer. However the Obama Administration’s budget request for NASA for 2011 called for near-quadrupling of the 2010 budget for NEO-surveillance from $5.8million to $20.3million. So it is likely there was already knowledge ‘within the system’ of an impending threat.

Cosmophobia
Not all the Elenin-hype is ballistic. Some respected names gathered in Honolulu mid-June, to discuss the significance of Elenin’s earth-grazing orbit later this year on September 11 (10th anniversary of 9/11) and October 28 — coinciding with the end-date of the Mayan calendar (Carl Calleman version). The Camelot Roundtable Elenin video Conference, June 24th, was hosted by Kerry Cassidy, featuring Richard Hoagland, Dr Joseph Farrell, Keith Hunter, Dr Carl Johan Calleman, and Andy Lloyd.

Earth alone against the Cosmos

“We live in nervous times, and conspiracy theories and predictions of disaster are more popular than ever. I like to use the word cosmophobia for this growing fear of astronomical objects and phenomena, which periodically runs amok on the Internet. Ironically, in pre-scientific times, comets were often thought to be harbingers of disaster, mostly because they seemed to arrive unpredictably -– unlike the movements of the planets and stars, which could be tracked on a daily and yearly basis.”
David Morrison, planetary astronomer and senior scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center

End-Times Scenario
There are several versions of the Elenin story on the internet, not least that of the believers in its causing a pole reversal or blackout of the sun. However, astronomical observation has thus far estimated Elenin’s mass to be not larger than recent historical comets.

Elenin emergency window: preparing for underground living in the Ozarks

“The bottom line is this: Comet C/2010 X1 Elenin is coming, and it will pass by Earth at an extremely safe distance -– 100 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. It will not be changing direction between now and then, it will not exert any gravitational effect on Earth, its magnetic field is nonexistent and there are no Star Destroyers cruising in its wake. The biggest effect it will have on Earth is what we are able to learn about it as it passes –- after all, it is a visitor from the far reaches of our solar system and we won’t be seeing it again for a very, very long time.”
Jason Major, The UniverseToday

It is curious, therefore, that NASA’s WISE telescope, the Wide-field Infrared survey Explorer (launched December 2009) had its NEO-scanning/sky mapping telescope ‘shut down’ in February 2011, after only a year in orbit. NASA/JPL announced it would be in ‘hibernation until needed’.

Might one suggest that NASA is not giving the full story? After all even we, hoi polloi, the uninitiated masses, know that solar eruptions and increasingly frequent coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have a trigger effect on communications, both on the electromagnetic field of terrestrial networks and satellites in orbit.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch…where were all the crop circles? Why weren’t they signaling their annual messages in code?

The Late Crop Circle season of 2011

Dry English landscape at Westwoods Lockeridge, Wiltshire; solstice crop circle centre foreground,
photo courtesy John Montgomery

Britain — in particular, Wessex and the southwest — had a remarkably dry spring; April was the hottest on record; grain in wheatfields was not swelling for lack of rain, the ground was cracking: a phenomenon usually restricted to northern European farming communities in France and Spain. May turned wet and cool: a little late to quench parched soil or fill shrunken seedheads. English field crops were looking a little like north African desert-paddies. There were more inspiring crop circles in Italy than in Oxfordshire.

The farming community in England was on the point of raising a cheer because so very few (11 total) circles of intricate design had appeared in Wiltshire and Hampshire during April and May. Perhaps they might survive a whole season from planting until harvest, without their crops being trampled upon by sightseers…

Telescopic crop circle in Worlaby amphitheatre, Louth near Humber, Lincolnshire, June 18, 2011, photo David Jones

And then, just as the longest day – solstice/June 21st – approached, things started hotting up. Two meaningful designs –seen to be astronomically connected– showed up on June 18th: one at Louth in Lincolnshire near the Humber estuary (rather far away from the usual Wiltshire hub), sporting a telescopic lens with three crescent moons; and the other at Kings Somborne, Hampshire — avidly pounced on and analyzed by the croppie community for its clear depiction of the inner solar system — but showing a couple of ‘intruders’. Two nights later, four more materialized out of the corn overnight on solstice itself. These were, as expected, back in the Wiltshire heartland. Croppies breathed a sigh of relief.

The great trilithons of Stonehenge are renowned for being inaccessibile most of the year, but the bronze age astronomical stone clock is famously opened to the public and special interest groups for their celebration of the rising sun over the heel stone at dawn on summer solstice. So it was fortuitous that two of the four crop circles appearing on June 20/21 (at Winterbourne Stoke, near Stonehenge) –seemed to arrive just in time for that human solstitial ritual.

Inner solar system crop circle with 'intruders' at Kings Somborne, Hampshire June 18, 2011, photo Steve Alexander

While the Stonehenge formations at Winterbourne Stoke were interesting, it was the earlier motifs of the inner solar system and lunar symbolism which caught the attention of the analysts. Some interpeters have suggested increasing earth tremors in a longterm timeframe (including dates extending through 2012-13-14).There has been a rash of speculation on Facebook. In the scientific domain, veteran crop circle detective-mathwiz-numerologist Red Collie –Dr. Horace R. Drew– was quick to come up with an astro scenario for the ‘inner solar system’ Cow Drove Hill formation at Kings Somborne, using NASA/JPL’s near-earth object imaging program, reproduced as a single image here for June 26th, 2011; courtesy CropCircleConnector and NASA/JPL. Collie feels something is imminent this weekend: in the solstitial period between June 24-27, 2011.

NASA/JPL NEO imaging for Elenin approach with orbital positions of the inner planets at June 26, 2011, courtesy JPL

He likens the diagram to the 2009 astrolabe crop circle formed in three phases at Milk Hill below the White Horse at Alton Barnes…

‘…an astronomical event predicted at Milk Hill in June 2009, where some “mystery object” was supposed to suddenly brighten not far from the orbit and location of Mars in June of 2011, after a five-planet alignment in early June’
Dr Horace Drew — ‘Red Collie’

There was indeed a five-planet alignment in our dawn skies in the month of May and early June. And comets Elenin and McNaught are headed our way. Elenin is presently clearing the outer perimeter of Mars’ orbit. Intruder number one.

By his reckoning, [with the help of NASA’s NEO generation], the solar system orbits and the inner planets’ positions indicated in the crop circle plot to planetary positions ranging between the dates of June 21-27, 2011. Collie also suggested that the contemporary crop appearance in Lincolnshire with its three crescent moons “and a spiral symbol, suggesting perhaps three days later on June 21”.

I tend rather to believe that, as earth-wisdom and ancient belief systems were accustomed to likening ‘moons’ to months, the Humber estuary formation at Louth is more likely to be directing our attention (through the ‘scope) to three months’ hence: to a time in late September 2011 when, according to the JPL graphic prediction, above, comet Elenin will be nearing its closest approach to Earth orbit i.e. on its outward journey to deep space, it will graze our planetary path within 0.2AU of Earth, at just under 2million miles away (or 1,860,000 miles) along our path round the sun, just before we fly through the debris of its retreating tail. While, according to NASA scientists, quoted, the comet’s tail may not produce fireworks, it might very well affect our weather systems. So far Spaceweather has had very little to say about that. Again, we shall have to wait and see.

April 2011 Map of inner solar-system: asteroids in yellow; comets marked by incoming white arrows,
graphic courtesy JPL

Others have seen yesterday’s earthquake in Japan as a sign of confirmation. [The June 23rd tremor was a Richter 6.7 and no loss of life was reported]. In realtime, sunspot 1236 erupted on June 21st, ejecting a CME earthwards, expected June 24th. Both NOAA and SpaceWeather predict geomagnetic storms. The BBC is forecasting a heatwave for England and Wales!

Part of the ‘intruder’ conundrum may be resolved in a last-minute ‘surprise discovery’ by NASA for Monday next week:

ASTEROID FLYBY: Newly-discovered asteroid 2011MD will pass only 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) above Earth’s surface on Monday, June 27th.

NASA analysts say there is no chance the space rock will strike Earth. Nevertheless, the encounter is so close that Earth’s gravity will sharply perturb the asteroid’s trajectory Spaceweather

Intruder number two.

2008 asteroid TC-3 broke up over the Sudan, photo NASA

We may indeed be in for a rough spell of spaceweather, and given that ‘Earth’s gravity will sharply perturb the asteroid’s trajectory’ — that’s another way of saying it might very well come closer than they think. Besides, our Moon coasts round us at a mean distance of 239,000 miles. Asteroid ‘Doc'[2011MD] will graze us inside moon orbit 32 times closer than the moon herself. Even without earth’s gravitational pull, it means the asteroid will pass within two earth atmospheres of Earth (the thermosphere, highest of earth’s atmospheric layers, reaches to a depth of 6,000km from earth. The asteroid will ‘fly-by’ at 12,000km). That’s pretty close. Spaceweather forecasters must have thought that, too, as their announcement describes its passage as ‘above’ us, rather than the usual astronomical (impersonal) ‘passage by’ us.

Westwoods Maltese Cross with deer-heads/vesica piscis: June 21st crop motif, suggesting peaceful intent and awareness of the sacred, will see us through

We on the surface are, however, becoming more aware as a planetary community and throughout the last few months of terrestrial storms and seismic upheaval, have gained experience as a human family to pull together both physically (with world aid agencies helping the stricken) and psychically (through a process of planetary unification, meditation, or Unity Consciousness) and we have seen how the consciousness of belief/oneness can mediate some of the worse-case scenarios. Consciousness-raising networks are even suggesting using crop circle motifs as a meditation focus. So, amidst human turmoil, there is yet hope.

Several interpretations have appeared on the internet and YouTube, but this video by Joan Wheaton gives an excellent insight into this solstitial message from the Light/orbs.
Thank you, Joan-ShumNYabai.

The battle for Earth is not precisely the best metaphor: a metaphorical concept of peace is better than one of war. And we are learning to appreciate and care for our fragile eco-world in the nick of time, because –unless we want to live underground on the Moon or in Silent Running-like bubbles on Mars — it’s the only one we’ve got. Let us pray that our Collective Consciousness — Humanity’s Oversoul — epitomized by our wonderful crop circle shorthand, is still aiming for our Highest Good.
©2011 Marian Youngblood

Volcanic Surprise: Take your Toys and Go Home

Eyjafjallajökull erupts during the strongest geomagnetic storm to hit Earth in 3 years; photo Albert Jakobsson

Tomorrow morning, April 19th, 2010, at around 5a.m. PST the Space Shuttle Discovery is due to reenter Earth’s atmosphere on a trajectory that takes her over the Pacific Northwest, and then on a southeasterly heading towards Cape Canaveral, Florida. She undocked from the International Space Station at the weekend in preparation for reentry.

Early birds in the states of Montana, South Dakota, Missouri and Mississippi and those driving to work in the cities of St. Louis, MO, Memphis, TN and Columbus, GA may catch a glimpse of the descending craft as it prepares for landing at the Kennedy Space Center, ETA 8:48a.m.

Trajectory of space shuttle Discovery on her way home tomorrow

Viewers in continental U.S. will be able to see Discovery as a blazing fireball in the dawn sky on first reentry over Northern California, Oregon, Washington and BC, and then, when daylight progresses, as a bright high-altitude object, as the craft heads east. Those who may not be sure of what they are seeing will hear a double sonic boom about a minute after the shuttle passes overhead.

Discovery’s appearance in the skies over continental USA is unusual, to say the least.

NASA is normally super-cautious, not only to schedule reentry on a trajectory over ocean (south Pacific or Atlantic) – to avoid potential conflict with commercial air traffic or the complication of an accident over such an important landmass – but also does not issue a specific schedule beforehand – for ‘security reasons’.

In the case of tomorrow’s landing, another issue has complicated NASA’s plans: the volcanic cloud emanating from Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. Because the eastern hemisphere is affected by dust and volcanic ash in the atmosphere resulting in the grounding of all European airlines, the shuttle’s choices were drastically reduced.

It is perhaps our present crazy world’s greatest irony that tomorrow, when the whole continent of Europe has not a single aircraft in the skies, except for patrolling military Tornadoes or light prop craft which can fly below radar, United States air traffic controllers will be overworked as they reroute planes so as not to provoke a chance encounter with the spacegoing shuttle on her way home.

Air travel all over northern Europe has been disrupted, with flights grounded or diverted due to the risk of engine damage from sucking in particles of ash from the volcanic cloud.  Even the usually noisy skies of helicopter traffic to and from North Sea Oil fields are silent.

Eyjafjallajökull sub-glacial eruption

And what of Eyjafjallajökull?

What series of convoluted circumstances caused her to erupt just when airlines the world over were pulling in their horns in response to global recession, cutting frills and flying fripperies to an absolute minimum?

Eyjafjallajökull is merely responding to a ripple in the mid-Atlantic ridge.

Iceland can’t help it: her island kingdom sits astride a large tectonic anomaly, where two plates meet, and – rather like Hawaii – has confounded scientists for centuries in their ability to ride the volcanic storms and still maintain buoyancy as islands. Icelanders have benefited in cleverly channeling underground heat from natural hot springs to provide comfort – even luxury – to every home, but, like Hawaiians, their tiny population (300,000, about the same as a medium-size British city) is not unaware of the fragility of their situation.

Eyjafjallajökull has erupted five times since human settlement in the ninth century and its most recent eruption has been going since March 20th this year, but it is only in the last week that ash from this eruption has reached the stratosphere of its continental neighbour.

And Europe is freaking out.

In terms of aviation, when almost all transport is presently airborne – people, freight, goods and services – it is understandable that Eyjafjallajökull’s blasting through its surface glacier and spewing dust and ash into the airlanes should cause concern. Health and safety have become buzzwords in industry: the natural reaction for air traffic regulators was to close everything down. So soon after Easter, when many were starting to enjoy the prospect of spring following a very hard winter, holiday travel numbers were high and planes fully booked.

Those airplanes are now dead in the water.

And, with no change in the foreseeable future, Europeans are stranded in remote locations worldwide, unable to get back home; British-based airlines may not take off and US-based airline traffic may not land in Europe.

Europe – the northern portion of it, certainly – is like a plague zone.

They’ve always said character comes to the rescue when crisis descends or hard times rule. And the other thing they say: Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

During the hard snows and frosts of winter – that in northern Scotland and pockets of Europe lasted until spring equinox – Britain went through a series of threats from companies in conflict with employment unions – with aviation and transportation strikes imminent – until intervention by a well-meaning Icelandic volcano moved the goalposts.

Suddenly, within the last week, other means of transportation – bus, taxi, train, ferry, tube, metro, hot air balloon, microlite, bicycle – have reared their heads again and a dumbed-down population re-creates, starts to think outside the box, begins to invent.

In early ‘seventies ‘3-day-week’ Great Britain, share-a-ride became an everyday occurrence, nobody drove a car without at least two other passengers, public transport was in full use and the struggling population again became aware of their parents’ post-war attitude of ‘conserving’ energy. It is possible that the present crisis may bring about a similar respect for alternative means to get from A to B, and consequently even more respect for the entity which caused the hiccup in the first place: Mother Earth.

Many of us have blogged over last winter about impending changes the Earth may put us through: for most of us those earth-changes were remote: reports from Haiti, Chile, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Turkey. But changes are starting to happen closer to home (Home being the First World).

large swathes of Amazon rainforest under threat

The First World has not traditionally reacted well to being threatened by Nature. It has acted (particularly over the last two generations – fifty years) as if nature were subservient to Man. It has turned a blind eye to decimated rain forests, depleted habitat for endangered species, global poverty, substandard housing and polluted drinking water in those ‘other’ worlds. It’s not accustomed to having its toys taken away and told to go home.

With the grounding of aircraft run by some of the world’s most elite flying operations, those ‘toys’ are getting a shakedown. And Big Business doesn’t like it.

Already on shaky ground over fears of recession, many airlines are already in debt or about to seek bail from world governments. Now governments themselves are questioning whether there are funds in the coffers to cover planetary transportation meldown. Big Business has traditionally used London, Paris, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Amsterdam as staging posts in its hops between hemispheres. Suddenly their wind-up toys aren’t working. No immediate replacement in sight, they’re having to think of ways around the situation.

Pressure/precipitation 4-day forecast, courtesy Unisys

Fortunately, continental Europe has remarkably efficient waterways, rail links, passenger liners, trains and autobahns. Every one of them has suddenly become remarkably important as an artery of communication in an atmospherically-deprived world. But if Icelandic ash continues to spew forth it will take some really revolutionary thinking for Big Business to survive. Seven million passenger-journeys have been cancelled in a few days. There’s talk right now of losses in the millions – Emirates Airlines calculating 25 million dollars per day in lost revenue, British Airways losing one million pounds every hour. Pretty soon those losses will be billions and thereafter . . . if Eyjafjallajökull doesn’t let up – or worse, if her neighboring volcanoes on the Ridge join in – figures will be incalculable. ‘Business’ as a concept will have no meaning.

None of us wants the approach to ‘End Times‘ to come suddenly. But there have been warnings; we have had clues; our history is littered with references to ‘preparing’ for when those ‘decline and fall’ times will come. So should we be surprised when the Earth herself is the instigator?

It is a well-known phenomenon that spacecraft engineers, pilots and scientists, on their return to Earth after a space mission, express feeling ‘transformed, changed, uplifted’ and ‘born-again’ by their experience outside Earth’s atmosphere. From liftoff as hardened scientists, electrical engineers, they return as philosophers, enlightened spirits.

It might be seen by some that Discovery’s reentry to Earth coinciding with the Earth’s growling northern latitudes indicate a sign of impending doom; for others it may signal the onset of liberation from earthly institutions which were beginning to cripple creativity; a top-heavy bureaucratic mechanism that smothers the budding creative spark.

Heaven knows, now is the time for creativity to surface and be recognized: time for the toys to come alive and play for real: our future and our future home – the planet Earth – depend on it.

©2010 Marian Youngblood
Marian Youngblood is the author of a prescient novel (in the light of this week’s events) ‘SHASTA: Critical Mass‘ which relates volcanic earth changes to Man’s ability to rise above his own beginnings and become superconscious human. Her book is entered in James Twyman’s contest to find the ‘next spiritual author’. Press this LINK if you would like to read an excerpt and vote for her entry. Round One (voting round) of the competition ends on May 3rd.