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Gopakumar KG

Gopakumar KG

TheThe GreatGreat YearYear andand VirginVirgin CometsComets

Gopakumar K.G The Great and Virgin 2

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

-- NicolausNicolaus CopernicusCopernicus -- The Great Year and Virgin Comets 3

Table of Contents Preface...... 5 Acknowledgement...... 7 Chapter I...... 8 Our understanding of ...... 8 , Cosmology and Astrology...... 8 Optical Telescopes...... 8 Radio Telescopes...... 9 Very Large Array (VLA)...... 11 Infrared Telescopes...... 11 Binoculars...... 11 Galileo Galilei...... 12 Who discovered the of our Solar System?...... 13 Discovery of ...... 14 Discovery of ...... 16 Discovery of Pluto...... 18 Chapter II...... 20 Our knowledge expands...... 20 Kuiper Belt...... 20 Trans Neptunian objects (TNO)...... 20 ...... 20 Belt...... 22 Trojan ...... 23 The Pioneer Missions...... 23 The Pioneer 10...... 23 Pioneer 11...... 24 Pioneer plaque...... 25 ...... 26 Chapter III...... 28 Ancient Astronomy...... 28 Sumerians...... 28 Tiamat...... 30 Marduk...... 31 Impossible knowledge...... 31 ...... 31 Where did the constellations come from?...... 32 Zodiac ...... 33 Chapter IV...... 35 Ancient Observatories and Sites...... 35 Stonehenge...... 35 Newgrange...... 36 Gaocheng...... 37 Angkor Wat...... 37 Jantar Mantar...... 38 Maya Civilisation...... 41 Chichen Itza...... 42 Tikal...... 43 Chapter V...... 45 Lost Knowledge...... 45 Pyramid of Giza...... 45 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 4

The Great Sphinx...... 47 Colossi of Memnon...... 48 The Unfinished Obelisk...... 50 The Antikythera Mechanism ...... 51 Chapter VI...... 53 The Great Year...... 53 Back to school days!...... 53 Equinox...... 54 Solstice...... 55 Precision of the Equinox...... 56 The big challenge: What causes the precession of the Equinox?...... 58 Chapter VII...... 60 Binary of ...... 60 Chapter VIII...... 63 Central Sun...... 63 The Pleiades Star System...... 64 Why are the Pleiades Important?...... 66 Chapter IX...... 68 Effects of Great Year...... 68 Based on Binary Star...... 68 Based on Central Sun Alcyone...... 70 Chapter X...... 73 Cycles of destruction...... 73 Solar Flares...... 75 Coronal Ejections (CMEs)...... 76 Northern Lights...... 77 Remote Viewing...... 78 The Kill shot, approaching moment...... 79 Chapter XI...... 81 Conclusion...... 81 ...... 81 Milky Way...... 81 Andromeda...... 82 NASA prediction...... 82 Holmes...... 85 Comets and asteroids of 2013...... 86 Pale Blue Dot...... 88 References for images...... 92 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 5

Preface From my childhood, I had a fascination towards the sky and was particularly eager to observe and understand the and the planets. By profession, I am an independent software developer and, my other interests include Life after Life, UFO's, Astronomy, Telescopes, Mythology, History, Drawing, Archaeology, Electronics, and Photography Etc. At the age of ten, I made my first telescope and I entered the world of electronics and circuit boards at the age of sixteen; many ago, I have seen UFOs couple of times. I am convinced that they are real and they do exist. For a long time, I was on a spiritual journey and slowly my attention turned towards cosmology and metaphysics. My interest reached a peak when I came across the Mayan Long Calendar System some time ago. I read various writings on this topic, listened to numerous talks and viewed hundreds of documentaries on the subject. I waited for that magic date of December 21, 2012 to arrive.

For me, the ancient history of , the wisdom, the knowledge and the technologies of our forefathers were an eye opener. In the year 2013, I decided to compile every thing that I read and understood on these subjects in an organized way, and without any bias. What follows in this eBook are my personal notes. I hold no copyright on these notes as these are from various sources such as the Internet and from the books written and explained by many eminent men. For purposes other than commercial, readers are free to use these personal notes of mine if they are useful to them. The idea is to provide the reader with maximum insight at one go, without having them to undergo tons of reading and listening as I did. This might make sense to someone who is new to the topics that are being discussed here. Readers with the subject knowledge may also find these notes useful as a nice review.

Why are these notes now? It was with mixed feelings of anxiety, fear, excitement, anticipation, humour and disbelief that people at large faced the year 2012 - the so called “end time”. Now that we have”successfully” crossed over December 21, 2012, we are relieved. There seems to be not much interest left in the subject any longer. Today, many people laugh at the Mayan Calendar and the end time predictions. It looks like the significance of what the Mayans told has totally been lost on most of us.

Although we crossed over this date, I have reasons to believe that the real effects of it, or changes that it brings, are yet to emerge and experience by humanity. These notes will help the reader to know what was happening during the past thousands of years; also what was the real message conveyed by the Mayans and other ancient civilizations. My notes can also serve as a basic introduction to astronomy and cosmology in general, although it is beneficial for the reader to have a basic astronomical knowledge.

All along, we were taught in schools only of Solar years based on the time our Earth takes to circumnavigate the Sun – a measurement of time in twenty-four-hour days and three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day years. Little did we realize that there are more to it!

But the Mayans knew this. Our Sun together with its family of planets and , circumnavigate it's central sun Alcyone in 25,627 years, which is comprised of five exact Mayan Cycles of 5125.36 years, and the fifth cycle has just ended on 21 December 2012. It does not stop there! Alcyone, with its entire family including our own Solar system, circumnavigates the Sirius star in 225 million years! The Sirius star with its The Great Year and Virgin Comets 6 entourage, is in turn is orbiting our Milky Way, which itself is endlessly cruising forward extremely fast!

It is an enormous group dance set on the cosmic stage. You and me are part of this cosmic dance, whether we know it or not. Welcome to the cosmic dance!

Oriental astronomy as well as many modern day researchers have recognized a Binary companion star of our Sun. The Sun and the companion star around each other in about 24,000 years. The Greek mythology divided this period into Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age while the Vedic writers named them as Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga and Kali Yuga. All these ages have its own impact on humanity as they come and go in cycles.

Our contemporary astronomical knowledge does not recognize this. We have no knowledge about a Binary companion star nor do we know about a Central star “Alcyone”. Ancient believed the precision of the Equinox is due to a companion star of our Sun. Copernicus assumed the precision of Equinox is due to Earth's wobbling. Later Sir Isaac Newton applied his theory of gravity to the idea of a wobbling Earth, known as Luni Solar theory which is also debated. It is time that we realize that this subject is very serious and we need to look for the real reason behind the precession of the Equinox.

We do have ancient records of cycles of past destruction. Many religions and ancient prophecies talk about a final destruction with no specific dates. There are ancient and modern predictions. All predictions point to environmental problems for Earth and not the physical destruction of Earth. The Mayan prophecy clearly states that the last date of the calendar marks the end of time. They called it a “time of no time” and we will be entering into higher dimensions.

This small eBook is a journey to our distant past and to our possible future. Many of the information in this book will be a challenge to preconditioned modern minds that are totally disconnected from the Nature and the Universe. Such a mental state is not anyone’s mistake. We have been taught and trained to become like that. Time has now come to take our destiny on our hands and change our treads. This eBook might help you to embark in that direction. May be one day we all will realize that we are one family, and we all belong to a race called Humans, living and travelling on a cosmic mother ship called the Earth. This realization will galvanize our collective consciousness and we will then be able to resolve all our self-made problems.

I place this book at the feet of all those ancient civilizations from world over who had this great knowledge and universal vision and persevered it for us to inherit it today.

Gopa Kumar K.G Chennai India

March, 2013 [email protected] The Great Year and Virgin Comets 7

Acknowledgement

This book would never have been written

without the incredible support given to me

by my wife Veda The Great Year and Virgin Comets 8

Chapter I

Our understanding of Solar System

Is there anyone out there, who has not looked up at the night sky at least once in a lifetime?

From time immemorial, countless poems were written, admiring the night sky. The beauty of the night sky is incredible, especially when watched from a pollution free area, far away from city-lights. The sky seems to be causing some effect on human mind, which varies from person to person. Perhaps your reading these lines may be an indication of your fondness for the sky.

Perhaps, at the end of a tiresome day, we may never get an opportunity to look at the night sky. For an uninitiated man on the street, sky watching is only a seasonal matter. During rainy seasons he might look at the sky and pray for the Sun to appear; he may curse the same Sun during a severe summer!

Astronomy, Cosmology and Astrology It is not uncommon for humans to look up at heavens in the sky and invoking God the almighty from above. It seems that for eons of time our consciousness was tempting us to lookup at the sky for help, which might perhaps be the reason for us to learn Astronomy, Cosmology and Astrology. Astronomy is the study of the Sun, , Stars, Planets and Galaxies Etc. where as Cosmology is a branch of Astronomy which deals with birth and evolution of the Universe. Astrology is the study of the effect of stars and planets on our personal lives and experiences. In this book, we will not be discussing anything about Astrology.

Now let us understand some basics about telescopes.

Optical Telescopes That means in astronomy we are dealing with physical objects, which are extremely far away from us. Though planets like Mercury, Venus, , and Saturn are visible to the , the surface features of the Moon alone are visible to us. In 1608, Hans Lippershey invented an optical device namely telescope, using which one can see a distant object as though the object is nearer. He was a German Dutch business man involved in making spectacle lens . Lippershey's original device was consisted of either two convex lenses with an inverted image; or a convex objective and a concave eyepiece lens so that it would show an erect image. Regardless of the viewed image is inverted or erected, this type of telescopes are called the refractor telescope. In appearance they usually look like a long tube.

Figure 1 Hans Lippershey The Great Year and Virgin Comets 9

Though Lippershey was associated with the credit of inventing telescope, it was not sure if he genuinely invented it. Lippershey may have made this invention on his own although there are many stories to it. One story has Lippershey observing two children playing with lenses in his shop and commenting how they could make a far away weather vane look closer when looking at it through two lenses. Other stories have Lippershey's apprentice coming up with the idea or have Lippershey copying someone else's invention. 1

In 1668, British Scientist Sir Isaac Newton, came up with an alternate model of telescope. Instead using a convex lens as telescope’s objective lens (to collect incoming light rays), Newton used a concave mirror as the objective to collect light rays. The collected light rays are then reflected back to a small plane mirror. This small plane mirror further reflects the light rays into an eyepiece to be magnified and seen. This design is called Newtonian reflector, which overcame many difficulties faced in a refractor model and was easy to make and cost effective. Figure 2 Sir Isaac Newton

Basically, a telescope does two things. First job of a telescope is to collect more light than a human eye can. For this a large diameter objective lens (or concave mirror) with a very long focal length is used, so that dim objects become visible. The second job is to magnify the image using an eyepiece.

Figure 3 above: Image of Refracting Telescope from the Cincinnati Observatory in 1848

Our telescope technology has reached great heights and we have several powerful Earth based telescopes as well as orbiting telescopes in space around Earth, like the Hubble Telescope. Figure 4 Hubble Space Telescope

Radio Telescopes

We know light is a form of electromagnetic radiation. An Electromagnetic radiation is an energy of charged particles that travel in wave form.(Imagine throwing a pebble into a tranquil pond and watch the circular ripples moving outward.) This energy contains a combination of electrical and magnetic fields. The oscillations of these waves are perpendicular to the direction of energy transfer and travel. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 10

Each wave has a series of high points known as crests, where the electric field is highest, and a series of low points known as troughs, where the electric field is lowest. A wavelength is the distance between two wave crests, which is the same as the distance between two troughs. The number of wave crests that pass through a given point in one second is called the frequency, measured in units of cycles per second called Hertz. The electro magnetic waves are grouped as Radio waves, Microwaves, Infrared, Visible Light, Ultraviolet, X-Rays and Gama Rays.

Radio Telescope is a tool used in radio astronomy for detecting and recording radio waves coming from stars and other celestial objects. It is typically a radio receiver with an antenna fixed on a wide bowl shaped reflector that collects the waves. The fundamental principle of a radio telescope is similar to that of a reflecting telescope used at visible light wavelengths. The incoming waves are intercepted by a precise parabolic dish antenna and reflected to a common focal point.

Figure 5 Below: The 140 foot telescope in Green Bank, WV the largest telescope with a polar mount.

Once the radio waves are collected and brought together at the focal point of the dish antenna, they are in general still extremely weak. The incoming radio-frequency (RF) signals are first amplified at the focus 10 to 1000 times and then converted to a lower frequency that can be easily transmitted by cables from the focal point of the dish antenna to the radio telescope control building. There this frequency is further amplified, and the signal is detected and displayed in the manner the finds most suited for investigation. Since radio waves penetrate dust, scientists use radio astronomy techniques to study regions that cannot be seen in visible light, such as the dust-shrouded environments where stars and planets are born. Radio waves also allow astronomers to trace the location, density, and motion of the hydrogen gas that constitutes three fourths of the ordinary matter in the Universe.2 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 11

Very Large Array (VLA)

The Very Large Array is one of the world's premier astronomical radio observatories consisting of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin, fifty miles west of Socorro in New Mexico. Each antenna is 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. The data from the antennas is combined electronically to give the resolution of an antenna 36km (22 miles) across, with the sensitivity of a dish 130 meters (422 feet) in diameter.

Figure 6 VLA-Location: Socorro County, New Mexico, USA Org: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Infrared Telescopes An infrared telescope is a telescope that uses infrared light to detect celestial bodies. Infrared light is one of several types of radiation present in the electromagnetic spectrum as discussed earlier.3

Most infrared light from celestial sources is absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere. Only a narrow window of near infrared radiation reaches the Earth. Observations at these wavelengths require that the infrared camera to be cooled to hundreds of degrees below zero.

Figure 7 the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope Mauna Kea, Hawaii. at 14,000 feet from sea level

In theory, any ground based telescope located on a high mountain and in a very dry climate can observe the cosmos at near infrared wavelengths. Many of the large optical observatories located around the world are also able to conduct some near infrared measurements using special refrigerated science instruments.4 Much of the technological advances in mid infrared detectors are the result of military research and modifications by universities and NASA scientists for the use of astronomy.

Binoculars A Binocular is also known as a Field Glasses or a Binocular Telescope. Binoculars are a pair of identical or mirror symmetrical telescopes mounted side by side and aligned to point accurately in the same direction, allowing the viewer Figure 8 A typical Binocular The Great Year and Virgin Comets 12 to use both eyes unlike a typical telescope where only one eye is used. Since both the eyes can be used at the same time the name binocular. Most binoculars are sized to be held using both hands, although sizes vary widely from Opera Glasses to large pedestal mounted military models.

Unlike a monocular telescope, binoculars give users a three dimensional and upright image. Prisms are used to erect the image as well as folding the light path so that the physical length of binoculars can be shortened. There are two main binocular designs namely Galilean binoculars and Prism binoculars. In a Galilean model, a convex objective and a concave eyepiece lens are used. The Galilean design has the advantage of presenting an erect image but has a narrow field of view and is not capable of very high magnification.

Figure 9 Roof and Porro Prism Binoculars This type of construction is still used in very cheap models and in opera glasses. In prism binoculars, either a Porro prism or a roof prism is used to erect the image. Since the image seen is erected, binoculars are used for different purpose such as, exploring exotic destinations, in the opera house and theatre for close up view, music jamborees and outdoor theatre festivals, sky gazing, hunting, bird watching, coastguard, military Etc. Big binoculars are also manufactured for astronomical purpose.

This is a simple introduction to telescopes, though in today's astronomy, several versions of refractor and reflector telescopes are used.

Galileo Galilei Galileo Galilei (1564 to 1642) was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher. For thousands of years astronomers were simply sky gazing and developing astronomy until in 1609 when Galileo used a telescope for the purpose of astronomy. Galileo was not the inventor of telescope but the first person to use a telescope for astronomical purpose.

This first telescope used by Galileo was a refractor telescope with a Plano-convex objective lens to gather light rays from a distant object and a Plano-concave lens as the eyepiece which magnified objects 30 times. The images viewed were not inverted and were upright because an intermediary focus was absent in the Galilean design. Galileo played a major role in improvements to the telescope and subsequent astronomical observations. Galileo was also some times called "father of modern observational astronomy". Figure 10 Galileo Galilei

In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. He went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616 and of comets in 1619. He argued that the tides were evidence for the motion of The Great Year and Virgin Comets 13 the Earth, and promoted the heliocentric theory of Copernicus published in 1543. The Church at that time was very comfortable with the geocentric model (also known as geocentrism, or the Ptolemaic system), which is a description of the cosmos where the Earth is at the orbital center of all celestial bodies.

Poor Galileo had to pay the price for his discoveries. The whole Galileo affair was a sequence of events, beginning around 1610, during which Galileo Galilei came into conflict with the Catholic Church over his support of Copernican astronomy.

Galileo's part in the controversies over theology, astronomy, and philosophy culminated in his trial by the Roman Inquisition in 1633, which found him "gravely suspect of heresy" and sentenced him to indefinite imprisonment. This was subsequently commuted to house arrest, under which he remained for the rest of his life. Later in 1979 Pope John Paul II felt, it is necessary to reopen the case against Galileo and publicly pardon the scientist, not because his refined theory (a “fact not yet definitively proven”) was vindicated, but for the treatment he had received.

Figure 11 Pope John Paul II

'Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture...' —Pope John Paul II, November 4, 1992

In 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for all the mistakes committed by some Catholics in the last 2,000 years of the Catholic Church history, including the trial of Galileo among others. 5

Well, today almost every child knows it is the Earth that is orbiting Sun. We are also aware of our Solar System and the planets.

Who discovered the planets of our Solar System?

There is no single person who is credited with the discovery of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In fact, Mercury is one of the five planets that can be seen in the night sky without using a telescope or binoculars. These planets like Mercury have been The Great Year and Virgin Comets 14

Figure 12 The Solar System known since ancient times and were observed for thousands of years by the people of many different cultures. One of the earliest records of Mercury comes from the Sumerian period around 3,000 BC. Since Mercury never travels far from the Sun in the sky, it is more difficult to see and was probably discovered later than brighter planets like Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Who knows?

Discovery of Uranus

Uranus is the seventh planet from Sun, and it is the first planet to be discovered in modern times. Uranus had been observed on many occasions, but it was generally mistaken for a star. observed the planet at least six times in 1690 and cataloged it as 34 Tauri. Tauri is the prototype name for a class of very young stars, which are still in the process of gravitational contraction. That means they are yet to evolve to reach the of a typical star. The French astronomer Pierre Lemonier observed Uranus at least twelve times between 1750 and 1769, including on four consecutive nights. Figure 13 Sir

Sir William Herschel (1738 to 1822) was a German born British astronomer, technical expert, and a music composer. Herschel followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, before immigrating to Britain at age of 19. After he met an English Astronomer Royal , his interest in astronomy grew stronger. He started building his own reflecting telescopes and would spend up to 16 hours a day grinding and polishing the speculum metal primary mirrors. Speculum metal is an alloy of copper and lead mainly used to make telescope primary mirrors in those days. Herschel began looking at the planets and stars in 1773. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 15

In 1774, Herschel began an astronomical journal by noting his observations of Saturn's rings and the Great Orion . On March 13, 1781 while Herschel was systematically searching the sky with his telescope he observed Uranus. He initially reported it as a new comet. Based on his report other astronomers of that time were also following up the new object. These astronomers were of the opinion that the new object is not a comet. Russian astronomer Anders Johan Lexell was the first to compute the orbit of this new object and its nearly circular orbit led him to a conclusion that it was a planet. astronomer described Herschel's discovery as "a moving star that can be deemed a hitherto unknown planet like object circulating beyond the orbit of Saturn". Bode also concluded that its near circular orbit was more like a planet.

Figure 14 Replica of the telescope with which Herschel discovered Uranus

The object was soon universally accepted as a new planet. By 1783, Herschel himself acknowledged this fact to The Royal Society of . 'By the observation of the most eminent Astronomers in it appears that the new star, which I had the honor of pointing out to them in March 1781, is a Primary Planet of our Solar System'. In recognition of his achievement, King George III gave Herschel an annual stipend of £200 on the condition that he moves to Windsor so that the Royal Family could have a chance to look through his telescopes.

Herschel named this new seventh planet as "the Georgium Sidus" means the Georgian Planet to honor of his patron King George III while others called it "Herschel". The name "Uranus" was first proposed by Bode in conformity with the other planetary names from classical mythology and from 1850 onwards the name Uranus became popular.

Figure 15 William Herschel built this huge reflecting telescope in the late 1700s The Great Year and Virgin Comets 16

In 1786, Herschel's quest to make more discoveries motivated him to buy a larger house and grounds to accommodate several large telescopes. Here, he constructed an unprecedented huge reflector telescope with a forty eight inch primary mirror. This time Herschel discovered two major moons of Uranus namely Titania and Oberoand and two moons of Saturn. In addition, he was the first person to discover the existence of infrared radiation. He is also known for the twenty four symphonies that he composed.

His telescope that was used to discover Uranus was in the garden of his house at 19 New King Street in the town of Bath, Somerset, England. This house is now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy. Figure 16 Herschel Museum

Discovery of Neptune

After the discovery of Uranus, it was noticed that it's orbit was not as it should be in accordance with Newton's laws. Therefore, it was predicted that another unknown distant planet must be perturbing the orbit or Uranus. Neptune was first observed by astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, assisted by Heinrich Louis d'Arrest at the Berlin Observatory, on the night of 1846 Sept 23&24 very near to the locations independently predicted by John Couch Adams in Cambridge and in .

These locations were arrived from calculations based on the observed positions of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. When the discovery of Neptune happened in 1846, the planet Uranus had completed one full orbit since its discovery in 1781, by William Herschel!

Figure 17 Heinrich Louis d'Arrest

Figure 18 Johann Gottfried Galle. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 17

Figure 19 John Couch Adams

Figure 20 Urbain Le Verrier

An international dispute arose between the English and French (though apparently not between Le Verrier and Adams personally) over priority and the right to name the new planet; they are now jointly credited with Neptune's discovery. Subsequent observations have shown that the calculated by Adams and Le Verrier diverge from Neptune's actual orbit fairly quickly. Had the search for the planet taken place a few years earlier or later it would not have been found anywhere near the predicted location.

More than two centuries earlier, in 1613, Galileo observed Neptune when it happened to be very near Jupiter, but he thought it was just a star. On two successive nights, he actually noticed that it moved slightly with respect to another nearby star. But on the subsequent nights it was out of his field of view. Had he seen it on the previous few nights Neptune's motion would have been obvious to him. But, alas, cloudy skies prevented observations on those few critical days.

Figure 21 Berlin Observatory 1838 painting

Figure 22 Telescope that discovered Neptune The Great Year and Virgin Comets 18

The telescope at the New Berlin Observatory (1835–1913) that discovered Neptune, was an achromatic refractor of 9 inches aperture, which was made by the late Joseph Fraunhofer's firm, Merzund Mahler.

It was a high performance telescope of its era, with one of the largest achromatic doublets available and a finely made equatorial mount, with a clockwork drive to move the 4 m (13.4′) main tube in time with Earth's rotation. Eventually, the telescope was moved to Deutsches Museum in München, , where it can still be seen in the 21st century as an exhibit.

Discovery of Pluto As we already know by now, using Newtonian mechanics Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams predicted the position of the then undiscovered planet Neptune after analyzing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus in 1846. Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century directed astronomers to speculate that orbit of Uranus was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune!

At that time, an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer Percival Lawrence Lowell (1855 to 1916) was very interested in the reports that there were canals on Mars as drawn by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who was director of the Milan Observatory. In 1894, Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona at an altitude of over 7000 feet with a 24 inch telescope. What started in 1894 as an extensive project in search of a possible ninth planet was termed as "Planet X” by Lowell in 1909.

Figure 23 Percival Lawrence Lowell Although Lowell was better known for his observations of Mars, he also drew maps of the planet Venus. Lowell observed spoke like features and a central dark spot, yet it is now known that Venus atmosphere is opaque. (In an article published in Sky and Telescope in July 2003, it was suggested that, in fact, Lowell was observing an image of the blood vessels in his own eye) Lowell's greatest contribution to planetary studies came during the last decade of his life, which he devoted to the search for Planet X, a hypothetical planet beyond Neptune. Lowell believed that the planets Uranus and Neptune were displaced from their predicted positions by the gravity of the unseen Planet X. Lowell started a search program in 1906 using a 5 inches aperture camera. The small field of view of the rendered 42 inch reflecting telescope was impractical for searching. Figure 24 The telescope used to find Pluto The Great Year and Virgin Comets 19

From 1914 to 1916 Lowell used a 9-inch telescope on loan from Sproul Observatory to search for Planet X. Although Lowell did not discover Pluto, Lowell Observatory did photograph Pluto in March and April 1915!

Pluto was discovered 14 years after Lowell’s death. In 1930 Clyde W. Tombaugh, working at the Lowell Observatory, discovered Pluto near the location expected for Planet X. Partly in recognition of Lowell's efforts, a stylized P-L monogram – the first two letters of the new planet's name and also Lowell's initials – was chosen as Pluto's astronomical symbol.

Although Lowell's theories of the Martian canals, of surface features on Venus, and of Planet X are now discredited, his practice of building observatories at the position where they would best function has been adopted as a principle. He also established the program and setting which made the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh possible. Craters on the Moon and on Mars have been named after him. Lowell has been described by other planetary scientists as "the most influential populariser of planetary science in America before Carl Sagan". While eventually disproved, Lowell's vision of the Martian canals as an artefact of an ancient civilization making a desperate last effort to survive, significantly influences the development of science fiction – starting with H.G. Wells influential “The War of the Worlds”, which made the further logical inference that creatures from a dying planet might seek to invade Earth.

Figure 25 Clyde W. Tombaugh

The image of the dying Mars and its ancient culture was retained, in numerous versions and variations, in most Science Fiction works depicting Mars in the first half of the twentieth century. Even when proven to be factually mistaken, the vision of Mars derived from his theories remains enshrined in works that remain in print and widely read as classics of science fiction.

Figure 26 Young Clyde Tombaugh Lowell's influence on science fiction remains strong. The canals figure prominently in Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein (1949) and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1950). Lowell Observatory is still active with a 72-inch Perkins Telescope, 42-inch John S. Hall telescope, 31-inch robotic telescope, Navy Precision Optical Interferometer, Titan Monitoring Telescope, Discovery Channel Telescope open to researchers and young school children as educational programs

Figure 27 Young visitors at Lowell Observatory looking through the Clark Telescope. The same telescope was used by Lowell himself for close examining the surface of Mars. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 20

Chapter II

Our knowledge expands

Pluto's mass could not be determined until 1978, when its satellite Charon was discovered. This confirmed what had been increasingly suspected that Pluto's gravitational influence on Uranus and Neptune is negligible, certainly not nearly enough to account for the discrepancies in their orbits.6 The most accurate measurement currently gives the size of Pluto as 2,400 (km) while planet Mercury size is only 4,880 (km). Pluto turned out to be tiny though it was once considered larger than anything else past the orbit of Neptune.

Kuiper Belt

This is a disc shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune, billions of kilometres from our Sun and not very popular like the inner planets. This region extends from the orbit of Neptune out to 55 Astronomical Units (AU). The distance between Sun and Earth is called one AU. Over the last few decades, powerful new ground and space based observatories have completely changed previous understanding of the outer Solar System. Instead of being the only planet in its region, like the rest of the Solar System, Pluto and its moons are now known to be just a part of the objects in the Kuiper Belt.7 Figure 28 Kuiper Belt

Trans Neptunian objects (TNO)

Any object in the solar system that orbits the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune is called a trans-Neptunian object. The first trans-Neptunian object to be discovered was Pluto. Astronomers now estimate that there are at least 70,000 icy objects, with the same composition as Pluto, that measure 100 km across or more in the Kuiper Belt. The largest known trans Neptunian objects are Eris and Pluto. 8

The International Astronomical Union decided in 2006 that a new system of classification was needed to describe these new worlds, which are more developed than asteroids, but different than the known planets.9 Thus, Pluto became the first dwarf planet or a Kuiper Belt object and was removed from the main list of Planets.

Oort Cloud The Oort Cloud can be said as a massive spherical cloud which is enveloping the entire solar system, and size of this spherical cloud is disputed among astronomers and they The Great Year and Virgin Comets 21 believe Oort cloud begins at 2000 or 5000 (AU) and ends at 50,000 AU which is almost a light year. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. A light year is a unit for measuring great distances. Light year is the distance that light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometers per second. So in one year, it can travel about 10 trillion kms. More precisely, one light-year is equal to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers!

Figure 29 Artist's impression of the Oort Cloud

This sphere was named after the Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort (1900-1992) who in 1950 had suggested that comets came from a common region of the Solar System. Although its existence has not yet been proven through direct observation, the reality of the Oort cloud is widely accepted by the scientific community.

The Oort cloud is filled with icy objects composed of ammonia, water and methane. The Kuiper belt and the scattered disc, the other two reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects are less than one thousandth of the Oort cloud's distance. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographical boundary of the Solar System and the region of gravitational dominance of the Sun.10

Some of Jan Oort’s other contributions to astronomy were, it was he who discovered the galactic halo in 1924, calculated the center of the Milky in 1927, found evidence for dark matter in 1932 Etc. Figure 30 Jan Hendrik Oort The Great Year and Virgin Comets 22

Asteroid Belt

Asteroids are chunks of rocks that orbit around the Sun. Scientists think that they are loose material that never formed into planets. More than 7000 asteroids have been discovered. Several hundred more are being discovered each year. There are undoubtedly hundreds and thousands of asteroids that are too small to be seen from the Earth. The largest asteroid by far is Ceres. It is 914 km across and contains about 25% of the mass of all the asteroids combined! The next largest asteroids are Pallas, Vesta and Hygiea. Their size varies between 400 and 525 kilometers. All other known asteroids are less than 340 km. We probably know 99% of the asteroids that are larger than 100 km. We have catalogued about half of the asteroids in the 10 km to 100 km size range. Scientists still don't know much about the smaller ones. It is thought there may be as many as a million 1 km sized asteroids may exist. Though they are rarely visible with the naked eye, many asteroids are visible with binoculars or small telescopes if you know where to look for it.

Figure 31 Asteroid Belt

The Asteroid Belt is a region between the inner planets and outer planets of our Solar system where thousands of asteroids are found orbiting around the Sun. This Asteroid Belt location is between Mars and Jupiter. To avoid confusion with Kuiper Belt, Asteroid Belt is also called as Main Asteroid Belt. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 23

Trojan Asteroids Trojan asteroids are asteroids that are orbiting around the Sun in the same orbit as a planet, occupying stable positions known as Lagrangian points either about 60° ahead of the planet in the orbit or about 60° behind it. Lagrange points are locations in space where gravitational forces and the orbital motion of a body balance each other. There are five Lagrangian points. They were discovered by French mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange in 1772. In 1906 such asteroids were first discovered in Jupiter's orbit. In 1990, a similar asteroid, Eureka, was found in the orbit of Mars, and several others have since been discovered. Similar asteroids also have been found in Neptune's orbit since 2001, and a Trojan asteroid in Earth's orbit was confirmed in 2011. 11

The Pioneer Missions The United State’s Pioneer series of spacecrafts (Pioneer 0 to 13) performed first of their kind explorations of the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. These different missions had little in common except that they all paved the way for later in depth investigations, and were all spin stabilized. The twin Pioneer 10 and 11 vehicles were the first spacecrafts to visit Jupiter and Saturn. The craft performed a wide variety of scientific observations of the two planets and returned environmental data that was used during the design of the next more sophisticated Voyager probes.12

The Pioneer 10

Pioneer 10 was launched in March 2, 1972. This was the first time an Atlas /Centaur a three stage launch vehicle was used. A third stage was required to boost Pioneer 10 to a speed of 52,000 kilometres per hour, that is needed for the flight to Jupiter and Pioneer 10 became the fastest man made object to leave the Earth. The speed was fast enough to pass the Moon in 11 hours and to cross the Mars orbit, which is about 80 million kilometres away, in just 12 weeks.

On 15 July 1972, Pioneer 10 entered the Asteroid Belt, which measures some 280 million kilometres wide and 80 million kilometres thick. The objects in this belt travels at a speed of about 20 km/second and objects ranges in size from dust particles to rock chunks that are as big as Alaska. After safely traversing the Asteroid Belt, Pioneer 10 headed towards Jupiter. Accelerating by a terrific speed of 132,000 kms/ Hour, Pioneer 10 passed by Jupiter within 130,000 kms above the Jovian clouds on December 3, 1973. During this passage, Pioneer 10 obtained the first ever close up images of the planet, charted Jupiter's intense radiation belts, located the planet's magnetic field, and discovered that Jupiter is predominantly a liquid planet.

Figure 32 Pioneer 10 Following its encounter with Jupiter, Pioneer 10 explored the outer regions of the Solar system, studying energetic particles from the Sun known as Solar Wind, and cosmic rays entering from our portion of the Milky Way. This spacecraft continued to make valuable The Great Year and Virgin Comets 24 scientific investigations in the outer regions of the solar system until its science mission ended on March 31, 1997.

Since that time, Pioneer 10’s weak signal has been tracked by the DSN (Deep Space Network) - a world wide network of large antennas and communication facilities that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions) as part of an advanced concept study of communication technology in support of NASA's future interstellar probe mission. The power source of Pioneer 10 finally deteriorated to a point where the signal to Earth dropped below the threshold for detection, in its contact attempts, in 2003 and 2006. The previous three contacts had very faint signals with no telemetry received. The last time Pioneer 10 returned telemetry data was on 27 April 2002.

Pioneer 11 Pioneer 11 was launched on 5 April 1973 exactly the same way Pioneer 10 was launched on an Atlas /Centaur launch vehicle. On 19 April 1974, after safely passing through Asteroid belt, its 11 thrusters were fired to gain an additional 64 Km/sec speed. This speed adjusted the aiming point at Jupiter to 43,000 km above the cloud tops. This close approach also allowed the Pioneer 11 to be accelerated by Jupiter itself, to a speed 55 times more than that of a high speed rifle bullet speed- 175,000 km/Hour - so that it would be quickly carried across the Solar System some 2.4 billion kilometres to Saturn.

Figure 33 Pioneer 11

During its flyby of Jupiter on 2 December 1974, Pioneer 11 obtained dramatic images of the Great Red Spot, made the first observation of the immense Polar Regions, and determined the mass of Jupiter's moon, Callisto. Looping high above the ecliptic plane and across the Solar System, Pioneer 11 raced toward Saturn, to reach there on 1 September 1979. Pioneer 11 flew within 13,000 miles of Saturn and took the first close up pictures. Instruments located two previously undiscovered small moons and found its planet sized moon, Titan, is too cold to support life. Pioneer 11 sent back amazing pictures of Saturn's rings.

Following its encounter with Saturn, Pioneer 11 explored the outer regions of our Solar system, studying Solar Wind and cosmic rays entering our portion of the Milky Way. In September 1995, Pioneer 11 was at a distance of 6.5 billion km from Earth. At that great distance, it took over 6 hours for a radio signal to reach Earth and Pioneer 11 could no longer make any scientific observations and routine daily mission operations were stopped. However intermittent contact continued until November 1995, and there have been no communications with Pioneer 11 since then. Due to Earth's motion the antenna of the space craft went out of view. The spacecraft cannot be manoeuvred to point back at the Earth. It is not known whether the spacecraft is still transmitting a signal or not. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 25

Pioneer plaque The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board of the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space crafts. These plaques were featuring a pictorial message in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 is intercepted by extraterrestrial life out there. The plaques showed nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.13 The original idea to carry a message from mankind was first mentioned by Eric Burgess (1920 – March 2005) when he visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, during the Mariner 9 mission. Eric was an English freelance consultant, lecturer and journalist, who wrote about the Pioneer program of space missions since the first tests in 1957. Eric approached Carl Sagan, who had lectured about communication with extraterrestrial intelligences at a conference in Crimea.

Figure 34 The Pioneer plaque

Sagan was very enthusiastic about the idea of sending a message with the Pioneer spacecraft and NASA agreed to the plan and gave him three weeks to prepare a message. Together with Frank Drake he designed the plaque, and the artwork was prepared by Sagan's then wife Linda Salzman Sagan. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 26

Voyager Program

The Voyager program is an American scientific program that launched two unmanned space crafts namely and Voyager 2. These space crafts were launched in 1997, to take advantage of a favourable planetary alignment during the late 1970s. Although they were officially designated to study just the planetary systems of Jupiter and Saturn, these space probes were able to continue as an interstellar mission into the outer solar system.

As discussed earlier, Pioneer 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried a small metal plaque identifying their time and place of origin, for the benefit of any other space fares that might find them in a distant future. This time NASA placed a more ambitious message on board of the Voyager probes. This message was in the form of a 12 inch gold plated copper phonograph record disk that contains sounds and images selected to portray life and culture on Earth.

Figure 35 Artists concept of Voyager in space

The contents of this Golden disk were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan, and these were his words. 'Voyager spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.' 14

Besides the multilingual greetings, each record also has music, ranging from Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven to Melanesian panpipes and from a Navajo night chant to a Beethoven symphony. Other sounds of Earth on the record include both natural noises, such as a rainstorm and a chimpanzee, and human-created ones, such as a train and a kiss. Pictures can be encoded into information on a record. The has 116 pictures. One document stored as an image is a greeting from Jimmy Carter, who was the President of United States at the time of launch. 15 Figure 36 Carl Sagan

Part of President Carter's text says, 'We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings.

Figure 37 Jimmy Carter The Great Year and Virgin Comets 27

We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.'

Figure 38 Left-Voyager Golden Disk (left) Right-Golden Disk Cover

As these probes are extremely small compared to the vastness of interstellar space, the probability of a space faring civilization encountering them is very small, especially since the probes will eventually stop emitting any kind of electromagnetic radiation. As of 2013, the two Voyager spacecraft became the third and fourth human artefacts to reach the far edge of the solar system. The Voyager space crafts are not heading towards any particular star though Voyager 1 will pass within a distance of 1.6 light years of the star Gliese 445. This star Gliese 445 is 17.6 light years away from the Sun and currently in the of and close to Polaris. Voyager 1 is expected to pass by this region in about 40,000 years!

Our struggles and efforts in the pursuit of more cosmic knowledge and space exploration are increasing day by day. From the discovery of Uranus in 1700 AD, it can be seen that, humanity was really engaged in the study of Cosmos and we are now at the peak of it like, the orbiting Hubble Telescope, Robotic missions to Mars, Mars Global Surveyor satellite, Cassini space craft in Saturn Etc. Currently Voyager I & II are exploring the far edge of our Solar system. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 28

Chapter III

Ancient Astronomy

Zecharia Sitchin (1920 to 2010) was an Azerbaijani born American author of books and producer of several documentaries proposing an explanation for human origins. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 25 languages. 16

In one of his book, Genesis revisited, Sitchin writes: 'The last decades of the 20th century witnessed an upsurge of human knowledge that bugles the mind. Our advance of every field of science and technology are no longer measured in centuries or decades but in years, or even months. They seem to surpass an attainment and unscrew anything that the man has achieved in the past. Man came out of the dark ages and the middle ages reached the age of enlightenment. Experienced the industrial revolution entered the era of high tech the era of genetic engineering the era of space flight.

Figure 39 Zecharia Sitchin Ancients how much did they really know and how much do we know about them? Thanks to archaeology we now know that man’s first great civilisation blossomed out all most 6,000 thousand years ago. Older than the Greeks, older than the Mayas, older than the Anchors older than the Egyptians the oldest civilisation in our history is Sumer 3,800 BC which is today’s Iraq. We now know their historical records of real flourishing and incredibly advanced cultures.

Sumerians In ancient Mesopotamia, the secrets of celestial knowledge of astronomy were guarded, studied and carefully handed it down by astronomical priests. They always kept this secret knowledge in cylindrical seals.

Figure 40 – 4,500 years old Sumerian Tablet VA-243 Vorderasiatisches Museum, East Berlin The Great Year and Virgin Comets 29

The clay tablet shown here is a print of a seal about 4,500 years old. This is the scene of the God Eno granting the mankind the plough, which is the beginning of modern agriculture. But very interestingly we can see the top left side the complete solar system with the Sun in the centre and all the planets we now know in the correct order with their correct sizes. Additionally one more planet is shown in the tablet, which is still unknown to modern science, but it is been actively searched for because it does exists as astronomers now concur the ancient knowledge.

In August 1977, the American space craft Voyager II left Earth on a journey that will eventually take it several years later to the vicinity of our solar system’s outermost planets. What Voyager wanted to discover there, for it corroborates ancient knowledge and for the first time, man was seeing Uranus and it is exactly like what the Sumerians has described it 6000 years ago. Do they have telescopes in those days? We are tempted to answer: Yes no doubt, those days there were no telescopes.

The Sumerians did describe the Uranus as marsh saga meaning bright greenish. The Sumerians also explained why the Uranus is tilted 98 degrees. The Sumerians called Uranus planet which is the twin of Neptune. Now we can confirm the Sumerian description of Neptune as a blue being planet.

Figure 41 Uranus

Is it possible that mankind is just catching up with the ancient knowledge? The Sumerians were particularly at home with astronomy is evident by the fact that they had known named and listed all of the planets we know today, including those we have discovered only in the past couple of centuries. Following is a table showing modern and Sumerian planet names.

Sl. Modern Name Sumerian Name 1 Mercury Mummu 2 Venus Lahamu 3 Earth Kee- The 7th planet 4 Mars Lahmu-Gof of war 5 Asteroid Belt Rakish 6 Jupiter Kishar-Foremost of firm lands 7 Saturn Anshar-Foremost of the heavens 8 Uranus Anu – He of the heavens 9 Neptune Mukimud – The artful creator 10 Pluto Gaga

Sumerian cosmogony answers many puzzles that still duffle modern science. Central to it was tale of a celestial collision and knowledge of a solar system with 12 members. That ancient knowledge included the planets Uranus and Neptune supposedly unknown until discovered in 1781 and 1846 and even Pluto not discovered until 1930. But most surprising was the inclusion of one larger planet as the 12th member of our solar system. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 30

Tiamat According to the harmonic rule known as Bode's Law, a planet should exist between Mars and Jupiter, instead that place is now a filled with millions of asteroids known as The Asteroid Belt. A generally accepted theory suggests that the asteroids are the remains of an unknown planet that was destroyed in a massive collision. Nonetheless, it had earlier become evident that much of the material of this “missing planet” had been pulled into the orbits of Earth, Mars and Jupiter either as meteors or as orbiting satellites.17 Among catastrophists, there is substantial disagreement on the matter of the "missing" fifth Planet from the Sun. There are various opinions on what caused the Asteroid Belt; for instance, Tom van Flandern's exploded planet hypothesis, in his book “Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets”, he asserts that a former major planet between Mars and Jupiter exploded about 65 million years ago, and he believes this event is the origin of the great bombardment of comets and asteroids which ended the reign of the dinosaurs on Earth.

Figure 42 Babylonian Enuma Elish

However, Sumerians knew this “missing fifth Planet” as Tiamat. According to Zecharia Sitchin in his book “The Twelfth Planet”, written accounts left by the lost Sumerian civilization state that Tiamat isn't missing at all but, it just moved the shop. 18 Tiamat is the planet on which we are standing right now! Ancient Sumerian texts indicate that Tiamat was struck by a large planet, which moved it into its present orbit, and also created the Earth's moon and the Asteroid Belt. In his books, The Twelfth Planet and The Cosmic Code, Sitchin outlines this "celestial battle" as described in the Babylonian text Enuma Elish or the Babylonian 'Epic of Creation”. Babylonian Enuma Elish is written on seven tablets, and each tablet is between 115 and 170 lines long. It was supposedly written no later than the reign of Nebuchadnezzar who was the king of the Neo Babylonian Empire in the 12th century B.C. But there is also little doubt that this story was written much earlier, during the time of the Sumerians.19 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 31

Marduk A planet by name "Marduk" or better known as the Sumerian "Nibiru", as it came into the solar system on its 3,600-year clockwise (retrograde) elliptical course, struck Tiamat, which was moving in its ordained counter clockwise orbit.

According to Sitchin's well known translations, one of Marduk's satellites struck Tiamat first, followed by two more of Marduk's moons. Then Marduk itself, an enormous cosmic entity, struck Tiamat, smashing one half of the planet into pieces, which became what the Sumerians called the Great Band or modern Asteroid Belt. The remaining half of the planet, which was struck by a smaller moon of Marduk, was catapulted into a new orbit, along with a chunk of material which became its moon. According to the Enuma Elish, Tiamat's original moons were dispersed, many changing the direction of their orbits and rotations.

There is indeed evidence of this great cataclysm in our solar system today. Tom van Flandern, a specialist in at the US Naval Observatory, has suggested that the great rift on Mars may be the impact site of a former moon, the moons of Neptune show evidence of violent disruption, Mercury was originally a moon of Venus, Mars once had many more moons, and Pluto and Charon are escaped moons of Neptune. Van Flandern finds the retrograde rotation of Venus is peculiar, he believes that our moon is originated from the Pacific Basin of the Earth, and he agrees that there is probably an undiscovered planet beyond Pluto which belongs to our solar system. In addition, Hubble recently investigated one of the largest asteroids, Vesta, and found evidence of differentiated layers similar to the terrestrial planets, distinctive light and dark areas like the face of our moon, and a geology similar to the Earth, including evidence of ancient lava flows

Impossible knowledge

Sitchin believes that the "impossible knowledge" of the Sumerians was imparted to them by "Anunnaki", the space travellers in a series of texts, forming the basis of ancient science and religion, which were translated into many languages, including Greek and biblical Hebrew. All ancient mythologies stem from this original knowledge imparted to earthlings by space faring ETI hailing from this wayward bowling ball, Nibiru and the Anunnaki called our planet ERIDU, meaning "Home away from Home."

Constellations

The first thing we need to know is that, constellations are not real! Constellations are totally imaginary things that poets, farmers and astronomers have made up over the past 6,000 years or probably even more!20 The constellations are just patterns that our ancestors saw as they gazed skyward and tried to make sense of it all. Ancient astronomers simply connected different stars with imaginary lines, so that these connected lines get a certain shape. Constellations are not of equal size and shape. The stars that make up a constellation are not, for the most part, physically related. Today’s constellations are specific to ancient Greek culture. Most of them were introduced by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century who in turn borrowed them from ancient Babylonian texts. Different cultures have seen patterns in the sky unique to their history. Some constellations like Orion are shared by many cultures, but most are not.21 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 32

The real purpose for the constellation is to help us tell which stars are which, nothing more. On a really dark night, you can see about 1000 to 1500 stars. Trying to tell which is which is very hard. The constellations help by breaking up the sky into more manageable bits. They are used as mnemonics, or memory aids.

For example, if you spot three bright stars in a row in the winter evening, you might realize, "Oh! That's part of Orion!" Suddenly, the rest of the constellation falls into place and you can say: "There's Betelgeuse in Orion's left shoulder, and Regal is his foot." 22

Figure 43 Orion Constellation

And once you recognize Orion, you can remember that Orion's Hunting Dogs are always nearby. Then you might recognize the two bright stars in the upper and lower left of the photograph as Procyon in Canis Minor and Sirius in Canis Major, respectively.

Where did the constellations come from? So the constellations are helpful for remembering the stars, but besides astronomers why would people remember the stars? Did the farmers invent the constellations? Why did they do that? Was it for some religious purpose? Yes, and no. Around the world farmers know that for most of the crops, plant the seed in spring and harvest in the fall. But in some regions, there is not much differentiation between the seasons. Since different constellations are visible at different times of the year, you can use them to tell what month it is. For example, Scorpio is only visible in the northern hemisphere's evening sky in the summer. Some historians suspect that many of the myths associated with the constellations were invented to help the farmers remember them. When they saw certain constellations, they would know it was time to begin the planting or the reaping. This dependence on the sky became a strong part of many cultures. Perhaps there is something about the mystery of the night sky that makes people want to tell stories about the constellations.

The picture at the left is an ornate star chart printed in 1835. Like the others, it shows the great hunter Orion. Here, he is holding a lion's head instead of his traditional bow or shield. He has an eager look in his eye as he stalks Taurus, the Bull. Behind him, his faithful dog, Canis Major, is chasing Lepus, the Hare. Compare this picture to the photo near the top of the page.

Figure 44 The Ornate star chart They are at about the same scale, and they show the same stars. The constellations have changed over time. In our modern world, many of the constellations have been redefined so now every star in the sky is in exactly one constellation. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 33

The current list of 88 constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union since 1922 is based on the 48 listed by Ptolemy in his Almagest in the 2nd century. Ptolemy's catalogue is informed by Eudoxus of Cnidus, a Greek astronomer of the 4th century BC who introduced earlier Babylonian astronomy to the Hellenistic culture. Of the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy, thirty can be shown to have a much longer history, reaching back into at least the Late Bronze Age.23

Sitchin argues in his book “The Cosmic Code” that the Anunnaki used their detailed sky charts to group the stars into constellations, and then honoured their leaders by naming the constellations after them. Thus, the Sumerian god EA, ("Whose Home is Water") was honoured by the zodiacal signs of Aquarius and Pisces, and the "priests who oversaw his worship" were dressed as Fishmen. Enlil, the strong-headed one, was honoured by the sign of Taurus. Ninmah was Virgo. The warrior Ninurta was Sagittarius.

Zodiac Ancient astronomers noted that the Sun appears to pass in front of different constellations over a period. Much like the moon appears in a slightly different place in the sky each night, the location of Sun is relative to the distant background stars during sun rise. These stars drift in an easterly direction day by day. Ancient astronomers also realised that, this drifting is an illusion that is actually due to the Earth’s revolution around the Sun and not due to a moving Sun. They have also noticed that, after a fixed period, Sun is repeating this cycle.

The division of the ecliptic motion of the Sun into the zodiacal signs originates in Babylonian astronomy during the first half of the 1st millennium BC, likely during 7th century BC.24 They divided the ecliptic into twelve equal zones of celestial longitude to create the first known celestial . The Babylonian calendar assigned each month to a sign, beginning with the position of the Sun at the vernal equinox, which, at that time, was depicted as the Aries constellation, for which reason the first sign is even today called "Aries". These divisions were made into equal arcs of 30º each, and they constituted an ideal system of reference for making predictions about a planet's longitude and therefore the Babylonian zodiac was sidereal.

Figure 45 Wheel of the zodiac: This 6th century mosaic pavement in a synagogue incorporates Greek-Byzantine elements, Beit Alpha, Israel. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 34

Figure 46 The Zodiac

In Babylonian astronomical diaries, a planet’s position was generally given with respect to a zodiacal sign alone and rarely given in specific degrees within a sign. Knowledge of the Babylonian zodiac is also reflected in the Hebrew Bible. E. W. Bullinger interpreted the creatures appearing in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation as the middle signs of the four quarters of the Zodiac, with the Lion as Leo, the Bull is Taurus, the Man representing Aquarius and the Eagle representing Scorpio. 25

No Latin Name Sanskrit Name Image Average Duration 1 Aries Mesha Ram March 21 – April 21 2 Taurus Vrishabha Bull April 20 – May 20 3 Gemini Midhuna Twins May 20 – June 4 Cancer Karkataka Crab June 22 – July 22 5 Leo Simha Lion July 23 – August 23 6 Virgo Kanya Virgin August 23 – September 22 7 Libra Thula Balance September 23 – October 23 8 Scorpio Vrischika Scorpion October 23 – November 22 9 Sagittarius Dhanus Archer Nov. 23 – December 20 10 Capricorn Makara Sea Goat December 22 – January 20 11 Aquarius Kumbha Water Carrier January 21 – February 19 12 Pisces Meena Fish February 18 – March 20 In his book “The Cosmic Code” Sitchin explains, as second and third generation Anunnaki 'gods' joined the scene on Earth, "all the twelve zodiacal constellations were assigned to Anunnaki counterparts." He argues, "Not men, but the gods, devised the zodiac." The Great Year and Virgin Comets 35

Chapter IV

Ancient Observatories and Sites

Stonehenge

The megalithic ruin known as Stonehenge stands on the open down land of Salisbury Plain three kilometres west of the town of Amesbury, Wiltshire, in southern England, and this is one the worlds most famous sites. Stonehenge is the remains of a ring of standing stones which might have built anywhere from 3000 BC to 2000 BC.

At Stonehenge, astronomical alignments are hard to judge because stones were placed next to each other sometimes hundreds of years apart. However, it is commonly accepted that Stonehenge recorded the rising and setting positions of the Sun and Moon at the height of each season. In addition, the oldest stone at the site, called the Heel Stone, was placed at the entry of Stonehenge in such a position that sighting it from the center of the monument points directly to the summer solstice. It is also suggested that the outer series of holes could have acted as a computer, to predict lunar eclipses. This was constructed at a most advanced stage of Neolithic astronomy, and is still debated among archaeoastronomers. 26

Figure 47 Stonehenge The Great Year and Virgin Comets 36

Newgrange

Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland, was constructed around 3,200 B.C., making it older than Stonehenge in England and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Newgrange was built during the Neolithic or New Stone Age by a farming community that prospered on the rich lands of the Boyne Valley and have been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The kidney shaped mound covers an area of over one acre and is surrounded by 97 kerbstones, some of which are richly decorated with megalithic art. The 19 metre long inner passage leads to a cruciform chamber with a corbelled roof. Newgrange is best known for the illumination of its passage and chamber by the winter solstice Sun. Above the entrance to the passage at Newgrange, there is an opening called roof box. This baffling orifice held a great surprise for those who unearthed it. Its purpose is to allow sunlight to penetrate the chamber on the shortest days of the year, around December 21, the winter solstice.

Figure 48 Newgrange

At dawn, from December 19th to 23rd, a narrow beam of light penetrates the roof box and reaches the floor of the chamber, gradually extending to the rear of the chamber. As the Sun rises higher, the beam widens within the chamber so that the whole room becomes dramatically illuminated. This event lasts for 17 minutes, beginning around 9 am. The accuracy of Newgrange as a time telling device is remarkable when one considers that it was built 500 years before the Great Pyramids and more than 1,000 years before Stonehenge. The intent of its builders was undoubtedly to mark the beginning of the New Year. Each year, the winter solstice event, attracts much attention at Newgrange. Many gather at the ancient tomb, to wait for dawn, as people did 5,000 years ago. 27 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 37

Gaocheng Gaocheng observatory is established in 1279 AD by the famous astronomer Guo Shoujing which is about eight miles from Dengfeng in China. It was designed originally for use in predicting the time of the solstice each year. Astronomers at the site were able to calculate the actual length of the year to 365.2425 days some 300 years before Europeans managed to develop the Gregorian calendar.

It is the oldest of 27 ancient observatories in China. Built with bricks and stone, the building has two parts, the platform and the stone Chinese sundial. On the 28 foot high platform, there are two small cottages on each side. To the north of the platform is an entry and exit, which are symmetrically arranged. Linking the entry and exit to the platform are stairs and pathways. Between the two pathways is the 93 foot long stone Chinese sundial, which was paved by 36 slates. According to historical records, a total of 27 observatories were built in the Yuan Dynasty but only the one in Dengfeng is known to have survived. The observatory dates to the early portion of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 AD). 28

Figure 49 Gaocheng observatory

Angkor Wat

This massive temple at Angkor Wat in Cambodia was constructed in the first half of the twelfth century by King Suryavarman II (1113 AD to 1145-1150 AD ). Angkor Wat is surrounded by a 200 meter wide moat, crossed by a bridge on the west. It is the largest Hindu temple complex and the largest religious monument in the world.

The builders of Angkor Wat were not interested in creating a temple merely to honour their deities. They created in its very structure and orientation, a reminder of the greater cosmic order, reflected in both the passage of time, and in the changing rays of the Sun at propitious times of the year. In 1976, University of Michigan researchers suggested that the architect of ancient Cambodia's Angkor Wat had encoded calendrical, historical and cosmological themes into his architectural plan for the temple. Published in the journal Science, the study demonstrated how Angkor Wat's architect had established solar alignments between the temple and a nearby mountaintop shrine that took place during the summer solstice. For example, standing at Pre Rup 6 kilometres away at the winter solstice, one would see the setting Sun over Angkor Wat. Standing near the south western corner in Angkor Thom the rising Sun at summer equinox will be visible through, The Great Year and Virgin Comets 38 or over, the eastern gate. Six months late, the alignment has shifted to its northern point of sunrise at the winter solstice.29

Figure 50 Angkor Wat

Jantar Mantar The Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India is actually one of the five major observatories built by the King Jai Singh II at his new capital Jaipur between 1727 and 1734 AD. It is modelled after the one that he had built at the Mughal capital of Delhi.30 It has been inscribed on the World Heritage List as "an expression of the astronomical skills and cosmological concepts of the court of a scholarly prince at the end of the Mughal period.

Figure 51 Maharaja Jai Singh II

Literal meaning of Jantar is “calculation instrument”. The one in Jaipur not only follows the movements of the Sun and the Moon to help determine auspicious dates for events, but also it helps to map the position of the stars in the sky. Although no telescopic instruments were available at the time, the precise observation of the stars was greatly facilitated by observatories of Jantar Mantar. 31

The observatory consists of fourteen major geometrical devices for measuring time, predicting eclipses, tracking location of stars as the earth orbits around the Sun, ascertaining the of planets, and determining the celestial altitudes and related ephemerides. Each is a fixed and “focused” tool. The Samrat Yantra, the largest instrument at the site, is 27 meters high and its shadow is carefully plotted to tell the time of day. Its face is angled at 27 degrees, which is the latitude of Jaipur. The Hindu chhatri (small cupola) on top is used as a platform for announcing eclipses and the arrival of monsoons.32 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 39

Figure 52 Jantar Mantar The Samrat Yantra, which is a sundial, is used to tell the local Jaipur time to the accuracy of two seconds. This Samrat Yantra or the Giant Sundial is the world's largest sundial, standing 27 meters tall. It's shadow moves visibly at 1 mm per second, or roughly a handbreadth breadth (6 cm) every minute, which can be a profound experience.

Figure 53 Astrological devices for individual constellation, at Jantar Mantar Today the observatory is a popular tourist attraction. However, local astronomers still use it to predict the weather for farmers, although their authority is becoming increasingly questionable. Some section of the students of astronomy and Vedic astrology are The Great Year and Virgin Comets 40 required to take some of their lessons at the observatory, and it can be said that the observatory is the single most representative work of Vedic thoughts that still survives, apart from the texts.

Figure 54 view of the smaller of two Giant sun dials.

Ancient India's contributions in the field of astronomy are well known and are well documented. The earliest references to astronomy are found in the Rig Veda, which are dated 2000 BC. During next 2500 years, by 500 AD, ancient Indian astronomy has emerged as an important part of Indian studies. In some instances, astronomical principles were borrowed to explain matters, pertaining to astrology, like casting of a horoscope. Apart from this linkage of astronomy with astrology in ancient India, science of astronomy continued to develop independently, and culminated into original findings, like the calculation of occurrences of eclipses, determination of Earth's circumference, theorizing about the theory of gravitation, determining that Sun was a star and the determination of the number of planets in our solar system.

There are astronomical references of chronological significance in the Vedas. Some Vedic notices mark the beginning of the year and that of the vernal equinox in Orion. This was the case around 4500 BC. Fire altars, with astronomical basis, have been found in the third millennium cities of India. The texts that describe their designs are conservatively dated to the first millennium BC, but their contents appear to be much older.

Yajnavalkya, who lived around 1800 BC, advanced a 95 year cycle to synchronize the motions of the Sun and the Moon. A text on Vedic astronomy that has been dated to 1350 BC was written by Lagadha. In 500 AD, Aryabhata presented a mathematical system that took the Earth to spin on its axis and considered the motions of the planets with respect to the Sun. It was a heliocentric system for Aryabhata while for the Western world and for the Church it was a geocentric system. His book, the Aryabhatya, presented astronomical and mathematical theories in which the Earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and periods of the planets were given with respect to the Sun.

In his book, a day was reckoned from one sunrise to the next; whereas in his Aryabhata Siddhanta, he reckoned the day from one midnight to next. There was also difference in some astronomical parameters.

Aryabhata wrote that 1,582,237,500 rotations of the Earth is equal to 57,753,336 lunar orbits. This is an extremely accurate ratio of a fundamental astronomical ratio (1,582,237,500/57,753,336 = 27.3964693572), and is perhaps the oldest astronomical constant calculated to such accuracy. There was an astronomical observatory at Ujjain, (Malwa region, State of Madhya Pradesh in Central India). The Great Year and Virgin Comets 41

Brahmagupta (598 AD to 668 AD) was the head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain, and during his tenure there, he wrote a text on astronomy, the Brahmasphuta siddhanta in 628 AD.

Bhaskara (1114-1185) was the head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain continuing the mathematical tradition of Brahmagupta. He wrote the Siddhantasiromani which consists of two parts: Goladhyaya (sphere) and Grahaganita ( of the planets).

Figure 55 Aryabhata

On April 19, 1975, Government of India sent it's first satellite Aryabhatta into orbit followed by the second satellite Bhakara - I on June 7, 1979. These satellites were named after the above great ancient astronomers of India. 33

Maya Civilisation

The Maya is probably the best known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica. Mayan history starts in the Yucatan around 2600 B.C.; Mayan history rose to prominence around A.D. 250 in the present day southern Mexico, Guatemala, western Honduras, El Salvador, and northern Belize. Figure 56 The Maya Civilisation

Building on the inherited inventions and ideas of earlier civilizations such as the Olmec, Maya developed astronomy, calendar systems and hieroglyphic writing. The Maya was noted for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple pyramids, palaces and observatories, all built without metal tools. Mayan history shows that they were also skilled farmers, clearing large sections of tropical rain forest and, where groundwater was scarce, building sizeable underground reservoirs for the storage of rainwater. The Maya were equally skilled as weavers and potters, and cleared routes through jungles and swamps to foster extensive trade networks with distant people.

Many people believe that the ancestors of the Maya crossed the Bering Strait at least 20,000 years ago. They were nomadic hunter gatherers. Evidence of their settled habitation in Mexico is found dating back to the Archaic period 5000 to 1500 BC. 34 The first true civilization was established with the rise of the Olmecs in the Pre Classic period 1500 BC to 300 AD. The Olmecs settled on the Gulf Coast, and little is known about them.

The Mayans were quite accomplished astronomers and their primary interests, in contrast to western astronomers, were Zenial Passages over the Maya latitudes. Zenial Passage is the passing of the Sun directly overhead such that, no shadows are cast by a pole sticking straight up from the ground. These conditions occur only in locations The Great Year and Virgin Comets 42 between the Tropic of Cancer (parallel of latitude 23°30′ north of the equator) and the Tropic of Capricorn (The parallel of latitude 23°30′ south of the equator).35

Figure 57 Mayan Astronomers. On an annual basis, the Sun travels to its summer solstice point or the latitude of 23- 1/3 degrees north. Most of the Maya cities were located south of this latitude, meaning that they could observe the Sun directly overhead during the time that the Sun was passing over their latitude. This happened twice a year, evenly spaced around the day of the solstice. Thus, Maya could easily determine these dates, because at local noon, they cast no shadow. The Maya portrayed the Ecliptic in their artwork as a double headed Serpent. The ecliptic is the path of the Sun in the sky which is marked by the constellations of fixed stars.

Like other pre Columbian civilizations, the Maya had a profound knowledge of the sky. Their priests recorded astronomical observations and passed them down from generation to generation. The result was an extremely accurate calendar that predicted the coming of eclipses and the revolutions of Venus to an error of one day in 6,000 years.

Chichen Itza Chichen Itza means "at the mouth of the well of the Itza" is a large pre Columbian city built by the Maya civilization. This archaeological site is located in the municipality of Tinum, in the Mexican state of Yucatan. Chichen Itza was a very important and a major place in the northern Maya lowlands from AD 600 to 900. The site exhibits a multitude of architectural styles, reminiscent of styles seen in central Mexico and of the Puuc and Chenes styles of the northern Maya lowlands. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 43

The presence of central Mexican styles was once thought to have been representative of direct migration or even conquest from central Mexico, but most contemporary interpretations view the presence of these non Maya styles more as the result of cultural diffusion.36

Figure 58 The Carocol or Mayan Observatory at Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza was one of the largest Mayan cities and it was likely to have been one of the mythical great cities, or Tollans, referred to in later Mesoamerican literature. The city may have had the most diverse population in the Maya world, a factor that could have contributed to the variety of architectural styles at the site.

The ruins of Chichen Itza are now the federal property, and the site’s stewardship is maintained by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. The land under the monuments had been privately owned until 29 March 2010, when it was purchased by the state of Yucatan. Chichen Itza is one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico; an estimated 1.2 million tourists visit the ruins every year.37

Figure 59 Chichen Itza

Tikal Tikal is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centres of the pre Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the archaeological region of the Peten Basin which is now the northern Guatemala. Situated in the department of El Peten, the site is part of Guatemala's Tikal National Park and in 1979, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Tikal was the capital of a conquest state that became one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient Maya. Though monumental architecture at the site dates back as far as the 4th century BC, Tikal reached its apogee during the Classic Period, Circa 200 to 900 AD. During this time, the city dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica such as the great metropolis of Teotihuacan in the distant Valley of Mexico. There is evidence that Tikal was conquered by Teotihuacan in the 4th century AD. Following the end of the Late Classic Period, no new major monuments were built at Tikal, and there is evidence that elite palaces were burned. These events were coupled with a gradual population The Great Year and Virgin Comets 44 decline, culminating with the site’s abandonment by the end of the 10th century. Tikal is the best understood of any of the large lowland 38Mayan cities.

Figure 60 Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, Tikal

Figure 61 Temple II of Tikal The Great Year and Virgin Comets 45

Chapter V

Lost Knowledge It is a known fact that, humanity has lost vast troves of knowledge either naturally or purposefully destroyed as they were viewed heretical or went against the established teachings of early religions. Entire history of civilisations and places were wiped out from mankind’s memory. The ancient astronomical observatories and sites that we saw in the previous chapter have become a mere tourist attraction spots. But, those sites are only a few among the lost knowledge that we can speculate. May be today we all would have been making interstellar travels if these gaps in knowledge had never been created!

Pyramid of Giza

The great Pyramid of Giza is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The great pyramids of Egypt are one of the classic examples for ancient knowledge, technology and wisdom. Even with modern technology it is impossible for us to even dismantle the Giza pyramid, leave alone its perfect alignment to the heavens. This pyramid complex is filled with disturbing questions and unbelievable answers.

Figure 62 Great Pyramid of Giza There are eight feats of engineering involved in the construction of pyramid building. First, the builders levelled the ground and cut a 6,000 hectare bed rock to fit many strangely shaped slabs, each one as heavy as a car. Second, they carried a hundred and thirty granite blocks over five hundred miles. Each block weighed between 12 and 70 tons, and the blocks were held up 210 feet. An achievement even today would be a challenge. Third, great pyramid had three chambers inside with breath taking The Great Year and Virgin Comets 46 precessions. The builders cut a passage through the solid rock - 300 feet long by 3 feet wide to reach the lowest chamber. Fourth, the builders worked with more than two million pieces of stone, all of different shapes and sizes. This makes accurate buildings much harder. In spite of this, the upper chamber is perfectly horizontal and vertical. The builders got it right to within a 50th of an inch. This is a feet any modern structural engineer would envy. The great pyramid stayed in tact through earth quakes that flattened every thing around it. Fifth the position of the great pyramid is absolutely precise. It points to North within 500th of a degree. We have only learned to do this recently in the 17th century, thousands of years after the pyramids were built. But they couldn’t come close to the Pyramid’s degree of precession. Sixth, the great pyramid actually has eight sides. Building an eight sided pyramid is even more complicated than building a four sided one. Seventh, they worked at speed. Egyptologists think that Pyramid only took 20 years to build. There are over two million stone blocks in the pyramid. If they worked 12 hours shift, 365 days a year they have to quarry, carve, lift and fit one block every two and half minutes. And finally, since the ancient Egyptians didn’t have wheels, iron or steel the seventh wonder of the world was built with copper chisels!

So 4,700 years ago, when rest of the planet were still wandering about, in animal skins the ancient Egyptians flattened the lime stone hillock, paved an area that of a six football pitches, piled up two million stone to the height of a forty two storied building drove a narrow 300 foot passage utterly straight through the rocks, fitted the stone in the inner chamber with complete precision, built the outside of the pyramid with eight sides instead of four and made it earth quake proof, aligned it precisely to the magnetic north and got the whole job done in twenty years. The construction of the pyramid in such a Figure 63 Great Pyramid Plan The Great Year and Virgin Comets 47 short of time with such limited tools is so amazing, so astonishing, that we have to wonder, was it even possible? 39

The complexity, precision and size of the Great Pyramid is a contrast to the simplicity of Pharaoh's tombs. It is proposed that it is a plutonium mill. It's perfection of construction and choice of materials are compared against all other pyramids, and the current history of plutonium production is related. 40

The internal of the pyramid is given correspondence to the process steps of breeding plutonium, separating plutonium from other material, disposing of radioactive waste, using water and producing hydroelectric power. Rather amazing theories have surfaced over the debate of what the Giza pyramid really was made for and one of the most interesting theories is that it was a wireless electric transmitter.

The idea is strange but not too crazy considering that the main stream archaeologists want people to believe that the pyramid was made for King Khufu’s tomb while there are no inscriptions of his name inside or outside the pyramid.

The Great Sphinx

Figure 64 The Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt

The Great Sphinx is a statue with the face of a man and the body of a lion. It is located in Giza where it guards the front of Khafra's pyramid, which is the second largest of the Pyramids of Giza. Carved out of the surrounding limestone bedrock, it is 187 ft long, 20 ft wide, and has a height of 66 ft, making it the largest single stone statue in the world. The Great Sphinx is one of the world’s largest and oldest statues, yet basic facts about it such as the real life model for the face, when it was built, and by whom, are debated. These The Great Year and Virgin Comets 48 questions have collectively earned the title "Riddle of the Sphinx", a nod to its Greek namesake, although this phrase should not be confused with the original Greek legend.41

Colossi of Memnon

Figure 65 Colossi of Memnon in Egypt

The Colossi of Memnon is a two massive stone statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. For 3,400 years, they were sitting in the Theban necropolis, across the River Nile, Luxor, Egypt. The original purpose of the Colossi is thought to be as standing guards at the entrance of Amenhotep's memorial temple built during the pharaoh's lifetime. However, only very little remains of the temple can be seen today. Standing on the edge of the Nile floodplain, successive annual floods gnawed away at the foundations (a famous 1840s lithograph by David Roberts shows the Colossi surrounded by water), and it was not known for later rulers how to dismantle and reuse portions of their predecessor's monuments. These two huge statues weighing around 1300 tons and 500 tons are the heaviest statues on planet Earth. Is it possible that they were erected using ropes and wood? There are no records how these amazing structures were built. The Greek geographer Strabo, writing in the early years of the 1st century, tells of an earthquake in 27 BC that shattered the northern colossus, collapsing it from the waist up. Following its rupture, this statue was then reputed to "sing" every morning at dawn: a light moaning or whistling, probably caused by rising temperatures and the evaporation of dew inside the porous rock.

The legend of the "Vocal Memnon", the luck that hearing it was reputed to bring, and the reputation of the statue's oracular powers, travelled the length of the known world, and a constant stream of visitors, including several Roman Emperors came to marvel at the statues. The mysterious vocalisations of the broken colossus ceased in 199 AD, when Emperor Septimius Severus, in an attempt to curry favour with the oracle, reassembled the two shattered halves.42 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 49

There are several amazing temples in Egypt such as Temple of Karnak, Temple of Luxor, Temple of Hatshepsut, Temple of Abydos, Temple of Dandara, Temple of Madinat Habu, Temple of Ramesseum, Temple of Kom ombo, Temple of Edfu, Temple of Philae, Temple of Esna, Temple of Kalabsha, Temples of Abu Simbel, Temple of Derr, Temple of Wadi es- Sebua, Temple of Dakka, Temple of Amada, Temple of Moharka and Temple of Kiosk of Qertassi

Figure 66 Temples of Abu Simbel

King Ramesses II (1290 to1223 BC) was referred to as Ramesses the Great, was the third Egyptian pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty. He is often regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire.43 The Temples of Abu Simbel were constructed by him. The Temple is dedicated to the God Re-Hor-Akhty, Amon, Ptah, and King Ramses II as a deified King. Its facade is 35 meter long and 30 meter high. The facade has four seated colossi of the King; each one is 20 meter tall and represents the King seated on his throne wearing the double crown, accompanied by 3 meter small figures of his wives, daughters and sons flanking his legs. The most amazing part is the statue of Ramesses II and his face. It is completely symmetrical and has a complex geometry in that. Was it even possible to build such precise statue at that time?

Unfortunately, these unique Temples suffered from the raising water of Lake Nasser while the High Dam was being built. Other countries, with the help of UNESCO, assisted Egypt to help save them. The two Temples were cut in to many pieces, and then they were reconstructed again on a site 65 meter higher than the original location, and 200 meter back inland, to escape the rising water level. This great rescue operation began in June 1964 and finished in September 1968.44 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 50

The Unfinished Obelisk The unfinished obelisk is the largest known ancient obelisk and is located in the northern region of the stone quarries of ancient Egypt in Aswan, Egypt. Archaeologists claim the Pharaoh known as Hatshepsut sanctioned its construction. It is nearly one third larger than any ancient Egyptian obelisk ever erected. If finished it would have measured approximately 137 feet and would have weighed nearly 1,200 tons! 45

Figure 67 The Unfinished Obelisk, Aswan, Egypt

Archaeologists speculate that, it was intended to complement the so called Lateran Obelisk, which was 105 feet and originally at Karnak and is now outside the Palace of Thutmose III in Leteran, Rome. Some archaeologists suggest that the pharaoh Hatshepsut ordered it to be built to celebrate her sixteenth year in power.

The obelisk’s creators began to carve it directly out of bedrock, but it seems cracks appeared in the granite and the project was abandoned. Originally it was thought that the stone had an undetected flaw, but it is also possible that the quarrying process allowed the cracking to develop by releasing the stress. The bottom side of the obelisk is still attached to the bedrock. The unfinished obelisk offers unusual insights into ancient Egyptian stone working techniques, with marks from worker’s tools still clearly visible as well as ochre coloured lines markings where they were working.

Besides the unfinished obelisk, an unfinished partly worked obelisk base was discovered in 2005 at the quarries of Aswan. Also discovered were some rock carvings and remains that may correspond to the site where most of the famous obelisks were worked out. All these quarries in Aswan and the unfinished objects are an open air museum and are now officially protected by the Egyptian government as an archaeological site.46 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 51

The Antikythera Mechanism

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient analogue computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered by a group of Greek sponge divers in 1900 in a shipwreck, off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera and its significance and complexity were not understood until a century later.

Along with the mechanism, divers also retrieved numerous artefacts, including bronze and marble statues, pottery, glassware, jewellery, and coins. These were transferred to the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens for storage and analysis. The mechanism went unnoticed for 2 years. In 1902, archaeologist Valerios Stais was examining the findings and noticed that one of the pieces of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it. He initially believed it was an astronomical clock, but most scholars considered the device to be prochronistic and too complex to have been constructed during the same period as the other pieces that had been recovered.

Coins that were found at the site by Jacques Cousteau in the 1970s date the shipwreck to shortly after 85 BC. Inscriptions on the device itself indicate that it was in use for 15 to 20 years before that. The ship carrying the device also contained vases that were in the Rhodian style. Rhodes was a trading port at that time, where the great Greek astronomer Hipparchus was thought to have worked from about 140 BC to 120 BC. After his death, an astronomy school was set up to continue his tradition, and there is some speculation that this is where the mechanism originated. It is not known how it came to be on the cargo ship, but it has been suggested

that it was being taken to Rome, together with other treasure looted from the island, to support a triumphal parade being staged by Julius Caesar. It appears to be constructed upon theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers and is estimated to have been made around 100 BC.47

Figure 68 Above-The Antikythera mechanism (Fragment A - front)

Figure 69 Left - The Antikythera mechanism (Fragment A - back) The Great Year and Virgin Comets 52

Technological artefacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the 14th century AD, when mechanical astronomical clocks began to be built in Western Europe.

Investigations into the object were soon dropped until Derek J. de Solla Price became interested in it in 1951. In 1971, both Price and a Greek nuclear physicist named Charalampos Karakalos made X- ray and Gamma ray images of the 82 fragments.

Price published an extensive 70 page paper on their findings in 1974. Based on designs of Price the mechanism was recreated for the first time. The recreated mechanism is a box of full of gear wheels. The Antikythera mechanism was a machine predicting the movements of the heaven. When you turn the handle on the side, pointers move around the front dial showing the movements of the Sun, Moon and the five planets. Inside the mechanism was sophisticated set up of wheels riding on other wheels modelling the motions of varying planets according to the Greek astronomical theories.

Figure 70 Top - Reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism in the National Archaeological Museum,Athens

Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University, who led a 2006 study of the mechanism, said: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."—30 November 2006

Nature magazine published another study in November 2010, which suggests that the mechanism may be based on computation methods used in Babylonian astronomy, not ancient Greek astronomy, implying that Babylonian astronomy inspired the Greek counterpart; including the mechanical constructs. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 53

Chapter VI

The Great Year

Back to school days!

Before we proceed further, we need to understand some basic things about our planet and, its revolution around the Sun. What we learned back in our school days is becoming a serious subject now! The Earth rotates towards the east. When viewed from the North Star Polaris, the Earth rotates counter clockwise. The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. This is a different point than the Earth's North Magnetic Pole. The South Pole is the other point where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface, in Antarctica.

Figure 71 Axial tilt of the Earth

The Earth currently has an axial tilt of about 23.4° and rotates once in about 24 hours. Actually, there are two kinds of rotation to be considered. First, how long it takes for the Earth, to spin once on her axis and return to the same orientation, when compared with the stars? Second, how long it takes for the Earth to spin once on her axis so that the Sun returns to the same spot in the sky? The Great Year and Virgin Comets 54

The second question is easy to answer as we know our normal watches shows that Sun will be overhead in exactly 24 hours. It is a “Day” for us and a “Solar Day” for astronomers.

For the first question, the time taken is not 24 hours exactly, but it is 23 hours 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds, which is known as a “Sidereal Day”. This will be almost exactly 24 hours over a period of year or years in average. That means 24 hours is not the time taken to complete one rotation of Earth on her axis, but 24 hours is the time taken from noon to noon.

We can test this by a simple experiment. Point a telescope to a star, and position the star at the center in the field of view. As the Earth rotates on her axis, the star will move away from the center in the field, and finally will be out of the field of view. Now leave the telescope exactly at the same position, for 23 hours 56 minutes and you will see the same star again at the center in the field of view. This means Earth has completed one rotation with reference to the star in the field of view, which is 4 minutes short of 24 hours. Well having said that, if you leave the telescope as it is for the next day also the same star will appear in the field of view 8 minutes short of 24 hours, then 12 minutes short on the next day and 16 minutes short on the next day and so on.

So why is there a difference? The difference is due to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, completing one orbit in just over 365 days. If we divide 24 hours by 365 days, we can see that we have left with about 4 minutes per day. In other words, Earth rotates on her axis, but she is also orbiting the Sun, so the Sun’s position in the sky catches up by 4 minutes each day.

The Earth’s velocity of rotation at the equator is 1,674.4 (Kms/Hour). By simply standing on the equator, we will be travelling at 1,674.4 (Kms/Hour) in a circle. This rapid rotation flattens out the Earth into an oblate spheroid; sort of a squished ball meaning; points along the equator are actually further from the center of the Earth than at the poles.

Equinox

Every planet has a center line or equator, along with a celestial equator, an imaginary plane created by moving outwards from the equator. When the equinox occurs, the Sun is directly over the celestial equator, which means that someone standing at the equator would be able to see the Sun immediately overhead. It also means that half of the planet is fully illuminated, and that day and night are of roughly equal length.48The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because, around the equinox, night and day are about equal length.

On Earth, an equinox occurs twice a year (around 20 March and 22 September), when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from, nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. 49Another interesting event occurs during the equinox: the Sun rises due east and sets due west. Many cultures have associated specific meanings with the vernal or spring equinox and the fall equinox. These dates traditionally mark the changes of the seasons, just like the winter and summer solstice, which mark the shortest and longest days of the year respectively. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 55

Figure 72 Equinox

Solstice Solstices are short periods during the course of an year, when the equator of the Earth is at the maximum distance from the Sun. This phenomenon is formed when the axis of the Earth is tiled directly towards or away from the Sun, causing the exposure of the equator of the Earth to be further away from the rays of the Sun. The time of solstice also has a direct impact on the amount of daylight that is experienced in different parts of the world just before, during, and after the occurrence.

Figure 73 Solstice The name for this period when the equator is furthest from the Sun has its roots in two Latin words or terms. Sol is Latin for the Sun while Sistere means standing still. Thus, a solstice is a time when it appears that the Sun is standing still rather than moving around the Earth. The actual word dates back to a time in human history when the Earth was understood to be the center of the universe. In many cultures, the solstice marks the midway point of a given season. People around the world tend to be familiar with the summer and winter solstices.50 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 56

Figure 74 The sun is higher in the sky during the summer months

Precision of the Equinox

Ancient star watchers faithfully observed celestial movements and patterns in the sky. A key observation was that certain constellations follow the same path in the sky as the Sun. As we already know, these twelve constellations make the Zodiac and are considered as the most important. In fact, these are stars of the Milky Way, that are at a great distance and, these stars act as a background for the Sun.

Figure 75 Twelve Zodiac signs Twice each year, on the day of equinox ancient astronomers realised that, over time the constellations are not in the exact place in the sky where they were the year before. The The Great Year and Virgin Comets 57 stars seem to be moving backwards across the sky. This movement is known as the precession of the equinox.

This is the phenomena that we see the positions of these stars when we see from the Earth, and when we look up to them at a certain time of the year then they will not be in the same position in thousands of years to come or were that position thousands of years ago. As the equinox moves into the constellations of the Zodiac the North Pole points to different stars in the Northern sky.

If you look above the North Pole vertically, you will see the Polar star. 13,000 years from now, there would be no Polar star above you, but there is some star, which is very far away from current Polar star, which will have then the role of a Pole star. This means if you take a photograph of few hours of the night sky in the Northern hemisphere you will see the stars as circles. In the middle of these concentric circles, there is a fixed point, and that is where the Pole star is now and again in a few thousand years it will be completely a different star because the Earth’s axis is pointing to the different position in the sky. To the ancients this shifting of the polar star and the precession of the equinox to the constellation of the Zodiac acted as a giant clock of the Ages.

Figure 76 Star trails around the North Star:

This Great year is understood and revered by almost all ancient civilisations. The modern man does not even heard about this Great Year. At the birth of Christ, the constellation Aries was becoming less dominant in the night sky, and at that time of the spring equinox the constellation Pisces was moving into its place. We were still in Pisces until December 21, 2012. We are already into the spring equinox of Aquarius. This dawning of the Age of Aquarius, is the modern reference to the motion of the Great Year. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 58

The Zodiac is in the order of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The precession of the equinox is in the backward direction; Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio, Libra, Virgo, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus.

Although today the Ages are marked as the vernal equinox, the ancients used the autumnal equinox as the hour hand of the Ages. The term Great Year has a variety of related meanings. It is defined by NASA as a period of one complete cycle of the equinoxes around the ecliptic, which is about 25,800 years, also known as Platonic Year.51

The big challenge: What causes the precession of the Equinox?

The ancient Maithreya culture believed that their main God Mitra was responsible for creating the precession of the equinox. One of the ways to try to explain the famous bull killing scene is to see the bull as the constellation Taurus and to see Mitras as ending the age of Taurus; ending the remote period in which the constellation Taurus was dominant, somewhere between 4000 and 2000 BCE Figure 77 The Bull killing scene

When he wrote his paper explaining the solar system, Copernicus observed three motions of the Earth. The first motion is the daily spin of Earth on its axis. The second motion is the Earth’s annual track around the Sun. But he needed a third motion to explain precession. He used the term wobble or vibration, assuming that only a wobbling Earth causes to see a different part of the constellations each year. Over a hundred years later Sir Isaac Newton applied his theory of gravity to the idea of a wobbling Earth. Newton determined that the Sun and Moon were the only things big enough and near enough to cause the wobble. His explanation of the precision is known as the Luni Solar Theory.

Newton determined the rate of precession at 1 degree per 72 years, very close to the true value (72 X 30 degree per Zodiac Sign) X 12 Zodiac Signs = 25,920, thus demonstrating the of the error in the value of 1 degree per century. So, each constellation of the Zodiac takes up to 2,160 years to pass through the equinox and to complete the Great Cycle taking 25,920 or roughly 26000 years.

Figure 78 Earth Spinning Another fact that might be considered for wobbling is the shape of Earth. If Earth would be a perfect sphere, then precession may not have happened, because there is no weight to apply the torque on the Earth. But since the Figure 79 Bulges on the equator Earth spins, it makes itself oblate by that spinning, so it has bulges on the equator. So this net force, which would want to put the Earth upright, and that's what the Earth The Great Year and Virgin Comets 59 doesn’t allow to do. But the Earth can escape that pull from the Moon and instead of being positioned upright; it will shift the orientation of the axis. In other words, it will cause its precession. But astronomers later added torque and inertia to Luni Solar theory. Still today Luni Solar formula continues to be adjusted. But some say they won’t reflect physical reality.

According to the theory of Luni Solar precession, if the axis of the Earth would change relative to the Sun, then this would have an effect on the seasons on Earth. They would occur earlier or later, and we notice the variations. But this does not happen. The seasons are caused by the tilted Earth revolving around the Sun. Any change in the tilt of Earth, whether it is due to a massive meteorite impact, or due to the wobble of Luni Solar theory, it results in a change of the season, even though our calendar will stay the same. Many solar precision theorists recognise the regularity of our seasons.

Each answer merely creates a new question and, let us look at two other possible reasons for the precession of the equinox. These two reasons are presented as two different chapters. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 60

Chapter VII

Binary Star of Sun Ancient masters of astronomy, who observed precession of the equinox, provided a simple explanation than a wobbling Earth. They said the Sun curve through space moving in a great orbit of its own, pulling the Earth and all planets along with him. If the Earth didn’t move along with the Sun on a curved path through space, we might see the same constellation at the equinox, through the Zodiac and the same Pole star always!

Our Sun moves in space with the entire solar system, so that the axis of our Earth remains aligned to a point in space that is fixed in respect to the equinoxes and fixed in respect to the solstices. Basically, our entire system moves around a point in space, and this point in space is a Star, a partner Star to our own Sun, or the Binary companion Star of the Sun. 52

Some say the Binary model confirms all of the celestial observations without the need for excessive torque or epicycle type of explanations. While the concept of a second Sun challenges our personal understanding of Solar System, it is not a new idea. Some of the earlier astronomical records refer to the existence of dual .

In fact, Mithra’s beliefs were based on this concept. “Mithra had 12 disciples.” This is based on the carving on the right side image, which shows Mithra surrounded by 12 signs of the Zodiac. There is no reason to conclude that signs of the Zodiac are “disciples.”

"...There is a symbol of the two orbits of heaven, the one being that of the fixed stars and the other that assigned to the planets, and of the Sol’s passage through these. The symbol is this. There is a ladder with seven gates and at its top an eighth gate.”53 It was a symbol of the Soll’s passage to “an eighth gate”. Figure 80 Mithras and his 12 disciples

Mithraism taught a doctrine that seemed to explain the progression of the Sol (Sun) through various stages, in order to reach “the eighth gate”. Traditionally, the seven steps (often linked with a ladder) represented the planetary orbits, with the eight orbit representing mankind leaving this “reality” and enter another, divine realm, which was often seen as the reunification of the soul with God. The Yogis of ancient India accepted the Binary model and also mentioned that, it was the cause of precession. In 1894 Swami Yukteswar Giri (1855 to 1936) a great Hindu sage, (who was the guru of Parama Hansa Yogananda) wrote a book “The Holy Science”. He described our Solar system and the great cycle. ”We learned from our endless struggle that the Moons revolve around the Planets and Planets turning around on their axis to revolve with their Moon around the Sun. The Sun with the planets and their Moons takes some Star for its dual and revolves around it in about 24000 years of our Earth”, a celestial phenomenon, which The Great Year and Virgin Comets 61

causes the backward movement of the equinox around the Zodiac.

Figure 81 Yukteswar Giri

The theory of the Sun's binary companion expounded by Yukteswar in “The Holy Science” has attracted the attention of David Frawley, who has written about it in several of his books. According to Frawley, the theory offers a better estimate of the age of Rama and Krishna era and other important historical Indian figures than other dating methods, which estimate some of these figures to have lived millions of years ago — belying accepted human history.54 Figure 82 David Frawley There are numerous studies and volumes were written about the Binary companion star of our Sun. Many ancient civilizations were also aware of this Binary companion of our Sun. It was believed Sirius Star is the binary star of our Sun. Our Sun was called Sol by the ancients.

One of the noted book is “The Lost Star of Myth and Time” by Walter W. Cruttenden, who is the founder of the website http://www.binaryresearchinstitute.org/index.shtml. Evidence for the Binary star of our Sun and plenty other related information can be obtained from the above website. More on the book can be found here http://www.loststarbook.com/index.shtml

According to Cruttenden, 'this book has been in the making for over 5000 years. Bits and pieces of it have been pressed into cuneiform tablets or hidden in the myth and folklore of lost civilizations on nearly every continent. It has been hinted at by the ancient Babylonians, embedded in the star shafts of the Great Pyramid, and made into fable by Plato and the Greeks. World scriptures from East to West make veiled reference to it and even the captured Hebrew, Daniel, once foresaw it in Nebuchadnezzar's dream'55

Figure 83 The Book

Figure 84 The author The Great Year and Virgin Comets 62

Figure 85 Sun & Binary star

The above drawing from the book show relative positions of Sol and Sirius as they newly enter the Grand Center or Golden Age. They are both speeding up as they approach each other as if eager to meet again after their long stay in the Dark Ages. The year of 2005 is positioned as we come out of the Dark Ages. (The colours in the above drawing are added by me for clarity, and nothing to do with the reality.)

The copyright date of this book is listed as 2006 and also as Dwapara 306 according to Vedic tradition of India. Dwapara corresponds to the Bronze Age in other methods of reckoning. Swami Sri Yukteswar pointed to the motion of our Sun around another star back in 1894 as the cause of the Precession of the Equinox. We will be discussing more on Yugas and Ages in the coming chapters. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 63

Chapter VIII

Central Sun

'Once upon a time...a long, long, long time ago, in a galaxy that never was and always is so close. It is always with you a race of human beings much like ourselves indigenous to central America left a message for future generations they knew we would never believe, because neither did they.'

The above was the opening words of Benjamin Graham’s foundations documentary “2012 The Beginning of the End, Or the End of the Beginning”

The documentary continues; 'All things are cyclical and end of one thing is always beginning of another. I am not telling you anything you don’t already know may be something you have not remembered yet. Please don’t believe a word I am saying but I am also asking you don’t believe anything anyone else has ever told you either, including this. You see, even if not one word of this, is not true, it still may be the greatest science fiction tale ever written.

Our story begins 3114 BC before Christ in a little country then called Pacal Mexico now known as Guatemala, where some Mayans some fellow human beings indigenous to Central America, left a message which they felt important enough to carve in stone, for future generations. But at the same time, they had to know the greater propensity would be, they would never believe them. They knew what they were talking about.

Along with their messages for people 5000 years in the future, with their hall mark card they also included this calendar suitable for framing.

A small side note, -This is the Aztec Stone- A 24 ton adaptation of the Mayan calendar which was unearthed in Mexico in the seventeen hundreds and it is the worlds longest calendar since the beginning of the written history in 3000 BC for 5125.36 years. Figure 86 The Aztec Stone The Great Year and Virgin Comets 64

The second recorded event in the human history is the start date of the Mayan calendar which is August 11, 3114 BC. 5125.36 years after, you know that this longest calendar ended in December 21, 2012 winter solstice. What baffle scientist is that, it is not only the world’s longest calendar but also a map. This is a star map, which precisely chart the motion of every celestial body in the galaxy for 5125.36 years' and let us try to understand the Mayan message in a profound way.

The Pleiades Star System In astronomy, the Pleiades are also known as Seven Sisters or the Messier object 45 or M45 or Saptha Rishis in Sanskrit. Pleiades are an open containing middle aged stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and most noticeable to the naked eye in the night sky.

Figure 87 The Pleiades star system

Among the visible seven stars, Alcyone is the brightest star in the Pleiades. The main star Alcyone has brightness 1400 times that of the Sun and a surface temperature of 13,000 . Its speed is very fast around 215 Km/second at the equator. Around Alcyone, there is the presence of a disk of gas generated by the ejection of material. 56

Electra is a giant star and the third brightest star of the Pleiades.

Maia / Maya is a blue giant star, which emits 660 times more energy than the Sun with a surface temperature estimated at about 12,600 Kelvin. It is situated at a distance of 385 light years, is the fourth brightest star in the Pleiades, after Alcyone, Atlas, and Electra.

Merope is located about 440 light years from the Sun. Merope with a mean of 4.17 has a brightness of 630 times that of Sun. Its surface temperature is 14,000 degrees Kelvin.

Taygeta is a triple star system the Pleiades star cluster. It is located about 440 light years from Earth.

Asterope or Sterope is the name of two stars and are located about 440 light years from the Sun. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 65

Figure 88 Names of stars in the Pleiades

Celaeno is a star in the Pleiades open cluster, with an apparent visual magnitude of 5.44. It is distant about 562 light years.

This Pleiades Star System is located between 385 and 562 light years from our Sun. The name Pleiades comes from Greek mythology, and it has several meanings in different cultures and traditions of all times.

In the Bible, the Pleiades are mentioned as Khima (Amos 5:8), and also in Job 38:31 as the Lord speaks to Job. The Lord tells Job that he bound the Pleiades together. They are known as Kimah in Jewish cult. 57

In Arabic, the Pleiades are known as Al-Thuraya and mentioned in Islamic literature. During the time before telescopes, when most could only see 6 stars, Prophet Muhammad is noted to have counted 12 stars in the constellation as reported in Ibn Ishaq. The name was borrowed into Persian and Turkish as a female name and is in use throughout the Middle East (for example, Princess Soraya of Iran and Thoraya Obaid). It is also the name of the Thuraya satellite phone system based in the United Arab Emirates.

In the Persian language Pleiades is known as "Parvin". Parvin is also a very popular Given name in Iran and neighbouring countries (for example Parvin E'tesami).

In the Urdu language, they are known as "Parvin", and are a symbol of beauty. 'Parvin' is also a popular name for females in Pakistan until some decades ago.

In Europe, the word has acquired a meaning of "multitude", inspiring the name of the French literary movement La Pléiade and an earlier group of Alexandrian poets, the Alexandrian Pleiad.

In Greek mythology, the stars of Pleiades represented the Seven Sisters.

In western astrology, they represent coping with sorrow and were considered a single one of the medieval fixed stars. As such, they are associated with quartz and fennel. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 66

In Indian astrology, the Pleiades are known as the asterism (nakshatra) Kiṛthika. The Pleiades are called the star of fire, and their ruling deity is the Vedic god Agni, the god of the sacred fire. It is one of the most prominent of the Nakshatras and is associated with anger and stubbornness. The name of the Hindu God Kartikeya relates to the Pleiades. Karthigai in Tamil refers to 6 wives of 6 Rishis the seventh being Arunthadhi the wife of Vasistha the seventh Sage relates to star Alcyone in the Pleiades.

In Theosophy, it is believed the Seven Stars of the Pleiades focus the spiritual energy of the Seven Rays from the Galactic Logos to the Seven Stars of the Great Bear, then to Sirius, then to the Sun, then to the god of Earth (Sanat Kumara) and finally through the seven Masters of the Seven Rays to us.

Why are the Pleiades Important?

Famous English astronomer Sir Edmond Halley (1656 to 1742) discovered an anomaly in space around the stars of the Pleiades.58 Halley discovered that at least three of the stars in this star group were not in the same positions recorded by the Greeks. The difference was so great that it was impossible that either the Greeks or Halley were wrong. Halley concluded that the Pleiades moved within a prescribed system of motion.59

A hundred years later, this concept was proven by Fredrick Bessel with his discovery that the stars in the Pleiades had a of 5.5 seconds of arc per century. The Pleiades and a number of other stars formed a distinct system and that all apparently had their own planetary systems.60 It was discovered that this was at the absolute right angles to the movement of the stars, a Photon belt (also called Photo Band, Photon Ring, Manasic Ring) with a thickness of many light years. However, this is seen as a New Age spiritual belief by scientists and main stream astronomers.

According to the Mayans who were master astronomers and time keepers of the world, stars in the Pleiades are revolving around its Central star Alcyone, and our own Sun in toe with all its planets and moons are also revolving around the Central Sun Alcyone in its last orbit. The rotation of the solar system around the central sun Alcyone takes 26,000 Earth years and the Alcyone in turn orbits Sirius star in every 225 million Earth years and Sirius rotates around the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Amazing! This is something difficult for the modern science and for the modern readers to accept and digest. This was not taught in the schools. The idea of a Central Sun certainly did not originate recently. Joseph Smith was talking and writing about a Central Sun as early as 1835, and it was certainly well known among Mormons by his death in 1844. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 67

Figure 89: Orbital placement of seven sisters and the Photon belt The Great Year and Virgin Comets 68

Chapter IX

Effects of Great Year

Based on Binary Star

The Great Year of 24,000 was called by the Hindus as Yuga cycle and others called it the Grand cycle and the Perfect Year. But the most common name found in use from ancient Europe to ancient China, was simply the Great Year.61 Ancient Indian and Greek cultures divided this Great Year into two halves namely ascending and descending cycles comprising of 12000 years each.

Each half is comprised of four parts. The Greeks called these parts as Iron Age, Bronze, Age, Silver Age and Golden Age. The great sages of India called them Kali Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, Threta Yuga and Sathya Yuga. The Iron Age or Kali Yuga was a dark time for civilization. The Golden Age or Sathya Yuga was the age of enlightenment.

Breaking away from Hindu traditions, the Indian sage Yukteswar in his book “The Holy Science” (which was written at the request of Mahavatar Babaji) introduced much revolutionary information like the Earth is not in the age of Kali Yuga, but has advanced to Dwapara Yuga. His proof was based on a new perspective of the precession of the equinoxes62. The Indian astronomers went even further, giving a physical reason for how the dual star or binary motion might allow the rise and fall of human consciousness to occur.63 They said that the Sun (with the Earth path with its companion star) it would cyclically move close to, then away from, a point in space referred to as Vishnunabhi, a supposed magnetic center or "grand center". 64

Figure 90 Mahavatar Babaji They implied that being close to this region caused subtle changes in human consciousness that brought about the Golden Age, and conversely, a separation from it resulted in an age of great darkness, the Kali Yuga or Dark Age. "When the Sun in its revolution around its dual comes to the place nearest to this grand center, dharma, the mental virtue, becomes so much developed that man can easily comprehend all, even the mysteries of the Spirit."

The following diagram shows Swami Yukteswar's Yuga cylces in a detailed way. From the diagram, we can understand that the companion star of our Sun is in an elongated elliptical orbit so that there is a near point and a far point.

Kali Yuga is basically been an age of materialism. The normal individual in that age has no perception of the existing of things that he cannot perceive or connect with his senses and his mind. The last Kali Yuga or Iron Age coincided with the world wide dark age of the medieval era. Author and historian H.G Wells wrote in his book 'A Plain History of Life and Mankind”, 'Our histories of these times were very imperfect. There were few place where The Great Year and Virgin Comets 69 men could write and little encouragement to write at all. We know enough to tell that this age was not merely a war and robbery but famine and pestilence. To many in those dark days it seems all learning and all that made life seemly and desirable was perishing.' These lines are also appearing in the book “Astrological World Cycles” - Original First Edition, Copyright 1933 By Tara Mata.

As time progressed the Kali Yuga came to a close, and the effects of the higher ages began with the Dwapara Yuga. By looking at history one can discover that it was exactly the same time when we began to grasp electricity and things like that and the scientific process started off in a big way. In 1600 William Gilbert discovered magnetic forces. In 1609 Galileo produced a telescope and Kepler put the paper of his laws of motion. These events together with Newton’s gravitation and planetary motion in 1670 quickened the pace of scientific discoveries. Technological advancement is the hall mark of Dwapara Yuga, which will last another two thousand years.

Figure 91 Drawing based on the teachings of Swamy Yuktewar The Great Year and Virgin Comets 70

Many believe the rise and fall of civilisations was due to the Great Year for history to repeat itself!

Based on Central Sun Alcyone

Now the Mayan Long count calendar of 5125.36 years is based on precision of the equinoxes and solstices. This 26,000 year cycle, which the Mayans called a Galactic Day, can be divided into 13,000 years of day and 13,000 years of night.

The humanity is waking up now from 13,000 years of the night and darkness and entering the Photon belt towards the day period, which the Mayans called Time of No Time. It takes nearly 2000 years to cross over the Photon belt.

On December 23, 2009, NASA released the following through their website. The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that says should not exist. 65 In the December 24th issue of Nature magazine, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft solved the mystery. "Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all." Right: Voyager flies through the outer bounds of the en route to interstellar space. A strong magnetic field reported by Astrophysicist and Presidential Early Career Award winner, Opher et al, in the December 24, 2009 issue of Nature magazine is delineated in yellow. Image copyright 2009, The American Museum of Natural History. The discovery has implications for the future when the solar system will eventually bump into other, similar clouds in our arm of the Milky Way galaxy.66

Figure 92 Voyager flying. The Local Fluff magnetic field is highlighted by yellow lines (The American Museum of Natural History)

Voyager I & II were now in space for more than 25 years since 1987. They are taking the picture of what looks like in front of them as we are rotating through the Galaxy. They found this (left side) interstellar cloud. The Photon Belt which goes up and down compared to our elliptical orbit. It is perpendicular to our orbit. Figure 93 Voyager data analysis The Great Year and Virgin Comets 71

According to Discovery Magazine December 29,2009, as the solar system continues to orbit around the galactic disk, it will encounter more clouds, deforming the heliosphere to lesser or greater degrees, potentially influencing life on Earth.

Cosmic rays originating from outside the solar system continuously bombard our atmosphere, but the quantity of these high energy particles that rain down are influenced by the amount our heliosphere is deformed. The greater the pressure, the smaller the heliosphere becomes, and the more cosmic rays enter the inner solar system.67

Not only could this have influenced our atmospheric dynamics in the past, it could impact future human space flight within the solar system. Let’s face it, a deluge of highly energetic particles is bad news for any unprotected astronaut.

How on earth did the Mayans know about this? They said, 'in that time Kinich-Ahau (our Sun) receives a spark from his older brother in the center and shines very brightly'

Figure 94 Mayan Photon Belt

An astrophysicist Alexel Dmitriev says both Voyager I and Voyager II space probes reveal that our Sun, as well as the entire solar system, is now moving on into an interstellar energy cloud, thereby verifying what we know hundreds of thousands of years that every so often humanity goes to a couple of thousands of age. This of course clearly point to our Central Sun Alcyone or perhaps even Sirius the Great Sun of the Milky Way Galaxy or both! The Great Year and Virgin Comets 72

What NASA says is that, our solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud. Not about to pass through and not maybe we are going through – is currently travelling through an interstellar cloud which will take two thousand years to transverse. And the implications to this according to Dr. Dmitriev, are global catastrophe, not in tens of years from now, but in one year.

What does that mean? It can be something like an on board pilot announcement to fasten the seat belts before crossing over a low turbulence area. We do not know what this photon belt is made off. It may be like the rings of Saturn or may be some space debris or may be some form of energy. This interstellar cloud is exciting the atmosphere of all the planets in our Solar system as we enter the photon belt. The Earth’s spinning on her axis becomes slow and eventually the spinning will stop marking the End Of Time. Several religious prophecies are applied at this stage; “In those days, Sun shall be darkened and the Moon shall not give her light” - “the Sun shall not set for days on end” - “After the night of three nights, the following morning Sun will rise in the west”

Which is it? Darkness or light? If we look at the bottom picture, we can see both might be true.

Figure 95 One side of the Earth is Night and the other side is day

Thereafter, the Earth will start spinning once again, marking the beginning of another period of time, which is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. But this time the spinning will be clock wise, which makes the Sun to rise in the West! Mayans called this a Galactic day, consisting of morning, mid day, afternoon, night, and pre dawn, each of 5125 Earth years! The Great Year and Virgin Comets 73

Chapter X

Cycles of destruction

Our ancients were aware of the long periodical Earth catastrophes due to celestial events and bodies. We can see these catastrophes being reflected in the ancient sacred works like The Kolbrin, The Bible, The Pistis Sophia, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, and Plato’s Timaeus. Figure 96 The Kolbrin

Figure 97 Pistis Sophia

Figure 98 The Metamorphoses of Ovid

.

Figure 99 Plato’s Timaeus

It is in this book Timaeus Plato wrote about the city of Atlantis. However, these ancient works are normally seen as a religious or mythological works. But many times, our Earth’s geophysical recordings are classic evidence to match the ancient mythology. Such findings are written detailed in a recent book by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, called Uriel’s Machine. The very focus of this book is on the links between sacred texts and science. In this book Knight and Lomas discuss the work of Edith & Alexander Tollman; who were geologists at the Institute of Geology in Vienna University, who found The Great Year and Virgin Comets 74 evidence that the earth was hit by 7 major cemetery fragments circa 7640 BC. This was initially revealed by the study of tektites.

Tektites are gravel size bodies that are composed of black, green, brown or gray, natural glass. They are formed from terrestrial debris ejected during extraterrestrial impacts. Irregular, rounded shaped rocks, tektites are formed by molten rock being ejected into the atmosphere, and then freezing into flattened and rounded spheres. Scientists now recognise that they are remnants of high energy cemetery impacts and that such rocks tend to be very old.68

Figure 100 Uriel’s Machine Book

Figure 101 Tektites

In 1970, Tektites were found embedded in fossilised wood in, Australia, and they are carbon dated to 9520 B.P. Tektites were also found in Vietnam dating back to about the same age. When core samples from Indian Ocean were studied they also dated back to the same period.

Figure 102 Tollmans description of the 7 ancient major impacts

In 1908, there was a great blast at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres above the Earth's surface at Tunguska in . It is believed to have been caused by an incoming meteorite or a The Great Year and Virgin Comets 75 comet fragment. The devastation was so great, and the Tunguska explosion knocked down an estimated 80 million trees over an area covering 2,150 square kilometres. It is estimated that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area. Moreover, the Tunguska blast was so powerful that it destroyed at that time, about one third of the Ozone layer above the earth, thereby allowing more ultraviolet radiation to penetrate into our atmosphere.

Solar Flares

According to NASA a Solar flare is defined as a sudden, rapid, and intense variation in brightness of Sun. A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. Radiation is emitted across virtually the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves at the long wavelength end, through optical emission to x-rays and gamma rays at the short wavelength end. The amount of energy released is the equivalent of millions of 100 megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time! The first solar flare recorded in astronomical literature was on September 1, 1859. 69

Figure 103 Soft x-ray image of a solar flare on the Sun

What implications a solar flare, can have on humans on Earth? Solar flares produce high energy particles and radiation that are dangerous to living organisms. However, at the surface of the Earth we are well protected from the effects of solar flares and other solar activity by the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere. The most dangerous emissions from flares are energetic charged particles such as high energy protons and electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays.

The X-rays from flares are stopped by the Earth’s atmosphere high above. However, they disturb some radio communications. Along with energetic ultraviolet radiation, they also heat the Earth’s outer atmosphere, causing it to expand. This increases the drag on Earth orbiting satellites, reducing their lifetime in the orbit. The energetic particles produced at The Great Year and Virgin Comets 76 the Sun in flares seldom reach the Earth. When they do, the Earth's magnetic field prevents almost all of them from reaching the Earth's surface.

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs)

The most serious effects on human activity occur during major geomagnetic storms. Geomagnetic storms are a worldwide disturbance of the Earth's magnetic field, associated with solar activity. It is now understood that the major geomagnetic storms are induced by coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Coronal mass ejections are usually associated with flares, but sometimes no flare is observed when they occur. Like flares, CMEs are more frequent during the active phase of the Sun's approximately 11 year cycle. The last maximum solar activity was in the year 2000. The next maximum is expected to occur in 2013. 70

Figure 104 CME.

CMEs are more likely to have a significant effect on our activities than flares because they carry more material into a larger volume of interplanetary space, increasing the likelihood that they will interact with the Earth. While a flare alone produces high energy particles near the Sun, some of which escape into interplanetary space, a CME drives a shock wave which can continuously produce energetic particles as it propagates through interplanetary space. When a CME reaches the Earth, its impact disturbs the Earth's magnetosphere, setting off a geomagnetic storm. A CME typically takes 3 to 5 days to reach the Earth after it leaves the Sun. Observing the ejection of CMEs from the Sun provides an early warning of geomagnetic storms. Only recently with SOHO, it was possible to constantly observe the emission of CMEs from the Sun, and determine if they are aimed towards the Earth.

SOHO stands for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, and it is a satellite that studies the Sun 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without interruptions. This spacecraft has about 12 scientific instruments to collect information like the activities in the corona etc.

Another major problem that can occur during a geomagnetic storm is the temporary loss of electrical power over a large region. The best known case of this occurred in 1989 in Quebec. High currents in the magnetosphere induce high currents in power lines, blowing out electric transformers and power stations. This is most likely to happen at high latitudes, where the induced currents are greatest, and in regions having long power lines and where the ground is poorly conducting. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 77

Northern Lights

As the name suggests, they are related to the Polar Regions. They occur most frequently in a radius of 2500 Km cantered on the magnetic North Pole. There is a corresponding zone around the Southern magnetic pole, but these 'Southern Lights' are largely only seen from Antarctica and the surrounding ocean. Of the populated regions in the southern hemisphere, the Southern Lights, may only be glimpsed from Tasmania and southern New Zealand. The Northern and Southern Lights occur simultaneously and are almost mirror images of each other. 71

Northern Lights are formed when a CME is smashed into the Earth’s magnetic field at 24,000 (Mph). When these large numbers of electrically charged particles collide with the highest air particles in the magnetic field, the air then lights up; like what happens in a fluorescent light tube. The resulting colours reflect which gases are up there. Usually it is a yellow green colour which comes from oxygen. Red colouring is also due to oxygen with a contribution from nitrogen. The violet often seen at the lower edge of the aurora is due to nitrogen, as is most blue colouring. Particles can stream out from the Sun, and some are captured by the Earth's magnetic field and find their way into the Polar Regions. On the way, they travel out into the night side of the Earth and, gain extra energy and we are yet to fully understand what exactly is happening out there!

Figure 105 Northern Lights in Scotland

Scientists have discovered that our Earth’s magnetic field is weakening at a faster rate. It is also known that Earth’s magnetic North Pole is on the move. There is evidence for past past reversals of magnetic North and South poles, though it happens once in 200,000 years or so. More and more flares or CMEs from the Sun is gradually weakening the Earth’s magnetic field, which will lead us to situations like unpredictable weather and other anomalies. This can affect even with spinning of Earth on the axis. The 2004 Asian The Great Year and Virgin Comets 78

Tsunami had clipped the Earth's day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted its axis by about 3 inches. The Chilean quake of 2010 too shortened the day by 1.26 microseconds and changed the axis by 3 inches.72 The earthquake cum tsunami packed with such a fury, has moved Japan's main island, Honshu, by about 8 feet. It also caused the Earth's axis to wobble by about 4 inches – something that experts say will lead to the shortening of the day by 1.6 microseconds, or just over a millionth of a second. Overall our Earth is very fragile, and a major disturbance easily affects the spinning.

The Mayans were some how aware of such a difficult period for the Earth and said “in that time Kinich-Ahau (our Sun) receives a spark from his older brother in the center and shines very brightly” Will history repeat?

Remote Viewing

According to Wikipedia, Remote viewing or RV is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using subjective means, in particular, extra sensory perception (ESP) or "sensing with mind". Unlike traditional psychic practices, remote viewers use physical models to organize their alleged extra sensory perceptions and to stabilize the virtual Umwelt. The scientific community rejects remote viewing due to the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain remote viewing, and the lack of experimental techniques, which can provide reliably positive results. It is also considered a pseudo-science.73 Figure 106 Dr. Courtney Brown Dr. Courtney Brown, Ph.D., founded The Far sight Institute as a research and educational organization in 1995. He is the director of this unique, non profit educational organization. More information and video presentations can be accessed from their website http://www.farsight.org/. At The Far sight Institute, they were engaged in a fascinating study using remote viewing to study climate and planetary change between the years between 2008 and 2013. The initial results appear dramatic on a global scale, and their research did indeed suggest that major global change is a possibility between 2010 and 2013. This is the most carefully collected set of professional grade remote viewing data involving this time span that currently exists. This experiment is potentially one of the most significant experiments ever attempted using remote viewing as a data collection platform.

Following are the Initial Results taken from the farsight.org Website

This project describes a change between the years 2008 and 2013 across nine geographical locations with a global spread. The locations are

1. Vaitupu, Tuvalu 2. Fort Jesus, Mombasa Kenya 3. Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia 4. Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania 5. United States Congress Building, Washington D.C. 6. Malé International Airport, Malé, Maldives 7. KITV Building, Honolulu, Hawaii The Great Year and Virgin Comets 79

8.The Vehicle Assembly Building at Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Florida 9. Key West, Florida

In general, these remote viewing data suggest the following types of physical changes across many of the above geographical locations by mid 2013:

1. Impacts from what appear to be large meteors leading to tsunamis and possible volcanism 2. Extensive and forceful flooding of coastal areas 3. Excessive solar radiation 4. Storms and other severe weather In terms of the effects of these changes on humans, these data also suggest:

1. Massive self-organized relocation from coastal areas (refugees) 2. The breakdown of rescue or other notable governmental functioning 3. The breakdown of the food supply system 4. The breakdown of the vehicular transport system 5. Extensive loss of buildings near coasts

Oddly, these results largely parallel recent warnings being issued by NASA relating to the dangers of severe solar storms anticipated around the years 2012 and 2013 that would threaten the global long term use of electricity. NASA is not currently explaining exactly why these unprecedented and severe storms are anticipated, but the warnings themselves could not be clearer. Meteor impacts are not included in the current set of NASA warnings.

The Kill shot, approaching moment

The world's foremost remote viewing teacher, and the creator of Technical Remote Viewing, Major Edward A. Dames of United States Army (Ret.), is a thrice decorated military intelligence officer, and an original member of the U.S. Army prototype remote viewing training program. He served as both training and operations officer for the U.S. government's top secret psychic espionage unit.

Figure 107 Major Edward A. Dames

According to him, it took over 20 years of scientific research, real world testing, and millions of dollars of tax funding to create the protocol, and there are only a handful of people in the world that were involved with the official top secret military program.

During the top secret Remote Viewing (RV) CIA and U.S. Army research program, trained viewers that were normally tasked with foreseeing the outcome of war related events began picking up on a future occurrence that appeared to mark a dramatic shift in global life. At first, these viewers, along with Major Ed Dames, the program's senior operations and training officer, had feared their subconscious was foreseeing nuclear war. It turns out after years of Remote Viewing sessions, the event is in fact, a series of solar flares The Great Year and Virgin Comets 80 that are so devastating to the Earth, it may cause the death of billions and change life on Earth as we know it.

Normally, one might not take such a warning seriously, but what sets this prediction apart from others is that Remote Viewers have a track record of being amazingly accurate regarding globally recognized disasters and events. In fact, there are many predictions that were announced on national radio and TV programs that have already accurately come to pass with unprecedented accuracy including the tragic disaster in Japan, a mysterious crop fungus, the predicted Indonesian 9.0 earthquake and more!

The killshot is all about a solar flare, or series of solar flares, between 2011 and 2013, which is capable of killing millions of people on Earth, and the biggest catastrophe ever for the modern man.

This documentary is free, and here is one of the comments. 'I still find it hard to believe he chose not to sell this...I just watched this on Blu-ray and the production quality is amazing. This had to of cost a fortune to produce and Major Ed Dames is so famous that he could have easily sold this new documentary and made piles of money but he didn't! There's a lot to be said when you see a successful Remote Viewer uses his own funds to produce something like this and just gives it away. I still find it hard to believe he chose not to sell this but I thank him. The information on here really clears up the Killshot prediction and makes so much sense once you understand how RV really works. I've been putting off learning RV but I'm finally going to bite the bullet and do it.'-J. donson, Bellevue WA - More information is present in at the website http://www.thekillshot.com The Great Year and Virgin Comets 81

Chapter XI

Conclusion

Galaxies

The Cosmos or Universe is a whole collection of all the Planets, Stars, Galaxies, Space and all other observable and non observable matter. What are Galaxies? Galaxies are immense collection of Stars, dust and gas. All Galaxy contains several million to trillion stars and their size range from a few thousand to several hundred thousand light years. There are billions of such Galaxies in the Universe, and the exact number of them is not yet known. This is only an estimate based on counting how many Galaxies we can see in a small area of the sky. Then that number is used for guessing how many Galaxies are there in the Universe.

Galaxies are of different sizes, shapes and brightness, and like stars, they live alone, in pairs, or in larger groups called clusters. There are three types of Galaxies namely spiral, elliptical and irregular. A group of nearby Galaxies is called The Local Group. Local Group contains approximately 20 bright galaxies and more than 54 galaxies in total.

Milky Way

One of the biggest galaxies in the Local Group is the Milky Way. Milky Way is the Galaxy in which we all live. It is a spiral shaped Galaxy that contains about 200 billion Stars, including our Sun. It is about 100,000 light years across and about 10,000 light years thick. If you are at a place with a real dark night sky, you can sometimes see the Milky Way as a thick band of Stars in the sky. Our Sun is at the near edge of the Milky Way.

Figure 108 Milky Way viewed from Reunion Island The Great Year and Virgin Comets 82

Andromeda

Andromeda Galaxy is the largest member of the Local Group. Though it is around three million light years away from us, it is visible to the naked eye under ideal conditions as a faint fuzzy patch indicating its gigantic structure. It is in the Andromeda constellation and an easy binocular target. Local Group’s gravitational center is located somewhere between Milky Way and Andromeda. Both Milky Way and Andromeda have a network of its own satellite galaxies.

Figure 109

NASA prediction

Long time, it was suspected that Andromeda is heading for a collision with the Milky Way. Up to 2012, there was no way to know whether the possible collision was going to happen or not. In 2012, researchers came to the conclusion that the collision74 is inevitable, after using the Hubble Space Telescope between 2002 and 2010 to track the movement of Andromeda. Such collisions are quite common. Andromeda, for example, is believed to have collided with at least one other galaxy in the past, and some dwarf galaxies such as SagDEG are currently colliding with the Milky Way and being merged into it. The Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (SagDEG) is an elliptical loop-shaped satellite galaxy of Milky Way Galaxy discovered in 1994. Sag DEG is roughly 10,000 light- years in diameter and is currently about 70,000 light-years from Earth.

These studies also suggest that M33, (Triangulum Galaxy), the third largest and brightest galaxy of the Local Group will participate in this event. It may end up in orbiting the merger remnant of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. It may also merge with that remnant in a distant future. It may also collide with the Milky Way before our galaxy collides with M31, or may get ejected out from the Local Group itself, which cannot be ruled out. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 83

The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies both contain a central super massive black hole. These black holes will converge near the center of the newly formed galaxy, transferring orbital energy to stars that will be moved to higher orbits by gravitationally interacting with them, in a process that may take millions of years. When they fall within one light year of one another, they will emit gravity waves that will shed more orbital energy until they merge perfectly. Gas that had taken up by the combined black hole could make a glowing quasar or an active galactic nucleus. In the year 2006 simulations indicated that the future Earth might be brought near the center of the combined galaxy, potentially coming near one of the black holes before being ejected entirely out of the galaxy.

Figure 110 above illustration shows a stage in the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, as it will unfold over the next several billion years. In this image, representing Earth's night sky in 3.75 billion years, Andromeda (left) fills the field of view and begins to distort the Milky Way with tidal pull.

NASA astronomers declared in 2012 that, they can now predict with certainty the next major cosmic event to hit75 our Galaxy, Sun, and solar system; the titanic collision of our Milky Way galaxy with the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy.

The Milky Way is destined to undergo a major makeover during the encounter, which is predicted to occur four billion years from now. It is likely the Sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no chance of being destroyed.

"After nearly a century of speculation about the future destiny of Andromeda and our Milky Way, we at last have a clear picture of how events will unfold over the coming billions of years," says Sangmo Tony Sohn of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore. The Great Year and Virgin Comets 84

When we realize this collision is going to be only after billions of years, there is a sigh of relief. We are not bothered about future generations, though we cannot do anything to stop or divert such heavenly collisions. We do not have a specific date. It will take several hundreds of years, for a light ray from the extreme end of the Milky Way, to reach the Earth. That means the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy that we are seeing today are not in real time. If something happens there, we will see it only after thousands of years. But we do not know how fast or slow, the effect of it will reach us.

So in general, there are ancient predictions and modern predictions on celestial events. Mayan civilisation seems to be concerned about the future generation, and they left an alert message.

Maverick David Hatcher Childress (born 1957) is an American author and publisher of books on topics on alternative history and historical revisionism. His works cover such subjects as pre Columbian trans oceanic contact, Atlantis, Lemuria, Ancient Astronauts, UFOs, Nikola Tesla, the Knights Templar, lost cities and Vimana or aircrafts of ancient India.76

He has taken many incredible journeys to some of the oldest and most remote spots on Earth. Writing prolifically of lost cities and ancient civilizations, he has produced no less than six lengthy books (the Lost Cities series) chronicling the dimly remembered glories of obscure locales from the Gobi desert to Puma Punku in Bolivia, from Mohenjo Daro to Ba'albek. Figure 111 David Hatcher Childress

According to him, the Top 10 Ancient Civilizations with advanced Technologies were Ancient Mu or Lemuria, Ancient Atlantis, Rama Empire of India, Osirian Civilazation of the Mediterranean, Uiger Civilization of The Gobi Desert, Tiahuanaco, The Mayans, Ancient China, Ancient Ethiopia and Israel and The Aroi Sun Kingdom of the Pacific; more information available at http://www.esoterism.ro/english/lost-civilisations.php

All those civilisations disappeared. Sadly, their knowledge and technologies also lost with them. We are left with Prophecies, conspiracies and mysteries like the Egyptian Pyramids, Temples, Sphinx, Bimini Walls, Bermuda, Crop Circles, Hollow Earth, Adams Bridge, Underwater structures and many, many more.

In his book,” The Lost Star of Myth and Time” Walter Cruttenden explains about the orbit of comets which certainly is thought provoking. It appears that studies carried out on the distribution of a long period comet orbits show that these orbits are essentially non random. In other words, the suggestion is that some heavy body disturbs the Oort cloud (a cloud of comets or asteroid like bodies that surrounds the outer edge of the Solar System: Refer Chapter II) and kicks off comets into similar orbits. More information available at http://globalrumblings.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-did-ancients-believe- precession- This aspect has received a fair amount of press in the last couple years; some astronomers speculate that this hypothetical body (Jupiter size planet, , or otherwise) may be discovered "within two years.” Comets should be mostly coming from the location of the galactic plane due to galactic tidal forces and the data shows this is generally true. However, even after gravitational tides are taken into The Great Year and Virgin Comets 85 account, a slight bias remains in the orbital distribution of these long period comets. This may point to the existence of another source propelling long period comets other than gravitational tides.

A solar companion with a hypothetical 24,000 year period may fit the bill here, although astronomers now believe that, this object might be like a Jupiter size gas planet with a longer instead. It could be that both exist, or that some astronomers are biased in their assumption of a longer period body due to the million year long life spans between mega extinction events in the geological record.

Since the earliest proposals of the 'Nemesis Theory' back in the 80's, which attempted to explain the mass extinction cycle, the proponents of this theory hypothesized that a brown dwarf star orbits about the Sun with a considerable period (roughly 26 million years, to match the average mass destruction rate).

In fact, one of the objections raised against the original 'Nemesis Theory' by its opponents was that the period of time indicated by mass extinctions is much too long a time to suspect an orbiting body. Any orbit over such a long period of time just wouldn't be stable.77

But could a Solar companion with a shorter (meaning on the order of thousands, not millions of years) period solve this problem and describe the non random distribution of comet orbits too? Recent evidence compiled by Richard Firestone described in their book The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes suggests that encounters with comets happen far more often than originally supposed. Firestone points to a significant impact event around 13,000 BCE. The hypothetical companion tends to propel comets towards the inner Solar System was the basis for the original 'Nemesis Theory' that tried to explain the dinosaur extinctions and other mass die offs recorded in the fossil record. The thing is if this hypothetical 'Nemesis' body is actually ploughing through the Oort cloud every 26,000 years instead 26 million years, then this implies that the comet threat has been grossly underestimated.78

Comet Holmes

17P/Holmes, or Comet Holmes is a periodic comet of our Solar system with a 6.9 years of orbital period. It was discovered by the British amateur astronomer Edwin Holmes in 1892. Although usually a very faint object, Holmes became visible during its recent return in 2007. On October, the 24th 2007, Comet 17P/Holmes shocked astronomers with a spectacular eruption. In less than 24 hours, the 17th magnitude comet, brightened by a factor of nearly a million, becoming a naked eye object in the Figure 112 17P/Holmes in the infrared spectrum of NASA’s Spitzer Telescope evening sky79 By mid-November the expanding comet was the largest object in the solar system. Its diameter was even bigger than the Sun, although its mass remained minuscule. Since then, the comet has faded away to zero visibility. It is therefore quite understandable then, that a comet made a close pass by the earth in 774 AD and The Great Year and Virgin Comets 86 engaged in a sudden flare up similar to Comet 17P/Holmes, and that this disturbed the Carbon 14 balance leading to a sudden upswing, producing the apparent signature of a cosmic explosion.

This was perhaps the biggest news of our Solar System. Sadly this great news was not properly covered by the Earth’s news media and human at large did not even know about such an event!

Comets and asteroids of 2013 As of now, at the time of this writing there are three comets that are putting an amazing night sky show in February and March. In late February, photos of Comet Lemmon (C2012/F6) were taken by experienced space photographers in Chile and Australia. In March photos of Comet Pan-STARRS (C2011-L4) were taken, when it made its closest pass by Earth on March 5. At the time, both comets were visible from the Southern Hemisphere, though Comet Pan-STARRS is set to become visible from the Northern Hemisphere later this March. According to NASA Comet Pan-STARRS is a new comer from the Oort cloud.

Another new comer from the Oort cloud, Comet ISON (C/2012 S1), which was discovered late in 2012, is expected for a short time, to be as bright as a full moon by November 28, 2013. All of us around the globe should be able to see it. Comet ISON will arrive within 800,000 miles of our Sun’s surface on November 28 which is a distance that’s over 100 times closer to the Sun than Earth. This close pass to the Sun might cause Comet ISON to break into pieces. If it does not break up, Comet ISON may be as bright as a full moon. It might become bright enough to see it in daylight, near the Sun. If Comet ISON explode and splits, it might appear as a 'string of pearls' when viewed through a telescope, It might even resemble the famous Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 that hit Jupiter in 1994.

Recently, a 150 feet asteroid hurtled through Earth's backyard within an incredible 17,150 miles making the closest known flyby for a rock of its size. In a chilling coincidence, another meteor exploded above Russia's Ural Mountains just hours before the asteroid zoomed past our planet. Scientists the world over, along with NASA, insisted the meteor had nothing to do with the asteroid since they appeared to be travelling in opposite directions. The asteroid is a much more massive object and delighted astronomers in Australia and elsewhere who watched it zip harmlessly through a clear night sky.

Asteroid Apophis was discovered in June 2004, which is the size of three and a half football fields and gained notoriety after a preliminary study suggested it had a 2.7 percent chance of hitting the Earth during its 2029 flyby. Figure 113 Neil DeGrasseTyson

Subsequent observations ruled out an impact in 2029 and astronomers were closely studying Apophis’ return in 2036. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, science communicator and Director of Hayden Planetarium and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History states about a definite hit in the year April 13, 2029 or April 13, 2036 and the American coastlines will The Great Year and Virgin Comets 87 be destroyed. He also states that orbits are unpredictable. More information can be found at this website; http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/tags/subjects/asteroid

When the Oort cloud is disturbed by the photon belt or by the binary star of Sun or by some unknown huge celestial body, will there be swarm of virgin comets into the inner Solar system? How long it will take them to reach near Earth? Will it affect any other planets like Mars, Jupiter and Saturn? Can there be a date?

Solar flares, CMEs, Earth quakes, Tsunamis, Climate Changes, Magnetic Pole reversals, weakening of Earth’s magnetic field, The Great Year, Binary star, Central Sun Etc. may be new information to us. But when we look at the history of our planet, our great ancient forefathers knew all these and left messages and warnings for us, through Prophecies and other means of records.

The 24 hour cycle of our day and night on Earth involves the rising and setting of our Sun, and during this cycle, we continuously fall asleep and wake up the next morning. In a similar way, at Galactic level, there is a 24,000 to 26,000 year cycle that involves the rising and setting of a Central Sun Alcyone or the Binary companion Star.

Mayans called this a Galactic day. Everything is in motion. It’s the law of nature. Nothing is exempted. During this cycle humanity is undergoing a Dark Age and at the end of each of these cycles, there is a global awakening. When the Grand Central Sun or the Binary companion star of our Sun, sets at the midway point, we all fall into “sleep”.

Now, let us assume some destruction happens in our life time as per the prophecies or as per a destruction cycle. All our knowledge, achievements, our sky scraper buildings, computers, hard disks, CD’s, Mobile phones, Automobiles, Aircrafts, Ships, Televisions and what not, everything will be crushed to Earth or will sink into the oceans. All orbiting communication and weather satellites will eventually fall back to Earth after a period, due to non-monitoring. There won’t be any trace of our civilization left for future generations. May be after some ten thousand years later, then archaeology might see some pointers like the Antikythera mechanism we found. But most certainly, the megalithic buildings constructed by our ancient forefathers, like the Pyramids of Egypt will survive the catastrophe. Like us, the future generations will see the Great Pyramids at that time and might wonder how “we could have constructed such a building!”

How can we notify the future generations? Do we have a real concern for future generations? Currently we have a “Millennium Seed Bank Project”. According to Wikipedia, The Millennium Seed Bank Project is an international conservation project coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Launched in the year 2000 and housed in the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building situated in the grounds of Wakehurst Place, West Sussex, its purpose is to provide an "insurance policy" against the extinction of plants in the wild by storing seeds for future use. The storage facilities consist of large underground frozen vaults preserving the world's largest collection of seeds. The project had been started by Dr Peter Thompson and run by Paul Smith after the departure of Roger Smith. Smith was awarded the OBE in 2000 in the Queen's New Year Honours for services to the Project.80

How about millions of life forms on Earth? We have already lost millions of them from ancient times. Scientists are remaining stubbornly silent about a lost race of giants found in burial mounds near Lake Delavan, Wisconsin, in May 191281 and also many other The Great Year and Virgin Comets 88 places in the world. The enormous size of the skeletons and elongated skulls found in May 1912 was not of anyone's notion of a textbook standard. They were mighty. These were not normal human beings. They were giants. More information regarding elongated skulls can be found at the website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elongated_human_ skulls

Is this something to do with the lost continents of Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, Kumari Kandam, Terra Incognita? There are several underwater structures like the Yonaguni off Japan's cost. In May 2001, then India's Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Murli Manohar Joshi announced that the ruins of an ancient civilization had been discovered off the coast of Gujarat, in the Gulf of Khambhat. The site was discovered by the National Institute of Ocean Technology while they were conducting routine pollution studies using sonar, and was described as an area of regularly spaced geometric structures. It is located 20 km from the Gujarat coast, spans 9 km, and can be found at a depth of 30– 40 meters that pre dates the Indus Valley Civilization. Further descriptions of the site by Joshi describe it as containing regularly spaced dwellings, a granary, a bath, a citadel, and a drainage system. 82

Pale Blue Dot

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of our planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers from Earth, as part of the Solar system Family Portrait series of images. In the photograph, Earth is shown as a tiny dot (0.12 pixel in size) against the vastness of space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan.

Subsequently, the title of the photograph was used by Sagan as the main title of his 1994 book, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”.83 Pulitzer Prize- winning author Carl Sagan traces our exploration of space and suggests that our very survival may depend on the wise use of other worlds. This stirring book reveals how scientific discovery has altered our perception of who we are and where we stand and challenges us to weigh what we will do with that knowledge.84

He writes in the book: 'Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all The Great Year and Virgin Comets 89 those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Figure 114 The pale Blue dot

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image The Great Year and Virgin Comets 90 of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.'

British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction Olaf Stapledon, in his address to the British Interplanetary Society in 1948 said, science and power, will probably turn its attention to the other planets, not only for economic exploitation, but also as possible homes for man...The goal for the solar system would seem to be that it should become an interplanetary community of very diverse worlds . . . Through the pooling of this wealth of experience, through this “commonwealth of worlds”, new levels of mental and spiritual development should become possible, levels at present quite inconceivable to man.

Figure 115 Prof. Stephen Hawking

Prof. Stephen Hawking said on 1 December 2006, while accepting the Royal Society's Copley Medal; 'The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star. If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years. This is obviously far too long to be practical, so science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination. Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light. However, we can still within the law, by using matter/antimatter annihilation, at least reach just below the speed of light. With that, it would be possible to reach the next star in about six years, though it wouldn't seem so long for those on board.'85

Neil deGrasse Tyson writes in his book Death By Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries; 'If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, there would be no greater tragedy in the history of life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves but because we lacked the foresight. The dominant species that replaces us in post-apocalyptic Earth just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbially pea brained dinosaurs.'

Are we alone in the Universe? According to Arthur C. Clarke, two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. Will humanity receive help from another life form, somewhere in the Universe? If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as if there were no light in the universe and, therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning says C.S. Lewis in his book “Mere Christianity”86 The Great Year and Virgin Comets 91

At a United Nations meeting on September 21, 1987, President of United States of America, Ronald Reagan made a very clear reference to aliens from outer space invading Earth and causing all the nations of the world to unite and stop fighting each other. He actually said this and video of the statement can be found online. “In our obsession with antagonism of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”87

Could it be the ancient knowledge of this Binary Star of the Sun or The Central Sun was lost during our descendent of the dark ages of the Iron Age / Kali Yuga, just as we lost our understanding of the heliocentric system, which was revealed at last by Galileo? And as we now ascend to the Golden Age once more will ever science discover this companion star of our Sun? Are we right in declaring ourselves as the most advanced and the most knowledgeable civilisation ever on Earth?

* * * The Great Year and Virgin Comets 92

References for images Figure 1 – Page 8 Hans Lippershey : Source Internet

Figure 2 – Page 9 Sir Isaac Newton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GodfreyKneller-IsaacNewton-1689.jpg

Figure 3 – Page 9 Image of Refracting Telescope from the Cincinnati Observatory in 1848 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refracting_telescope

Figure 4 – Page 9 Hubble Space Telescope http://www.spacetelescope.org/about/

Figure 5 – Page 10 The 140 foot telescope in Green Bank, WV the largest telescope with a polar mount. http://www.cv.nrao.edu/course/astr534/RadioTelescopes.html

Figure 6 – Page 11 VLA-Location: Socorro County, New Mexico, USA Org: National Radio Astronomy Observatoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array

Figure 7 – Page 11 The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope Mauna Kea, Hawaii. at 14,000 feet from sea level http://outreach.jach.hawaii.edu/pressroom/2009_iya_dirlec/index.html?printable=1

Figure 8 – Page 11 A typical Binocular: Source Internet

Figure 9 – Page 12 Roof and Porro Prism Binoculars Source Internet

Figure 10 – Page 12 Galileo Galilei Source Internet

Figure 11 – Page 13 Pope John Paul II http://christtotheworld.blogspot.in/2011/05/pope-john-paul-ii-man-of- prayer.html

Figure 12 – Page 14 The Solar System http://earthsky.org/space/ten-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-solar- system

Figure 13 – Page 14 Sir William Herschel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel

Figure 14 – Page 15 Replica of the telescope with which Herschel discovered Uranus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel

Figure 15 – Page 15 William Herschel built this huge reflecting telescope in the late 1700s http://www.scienceclarified.com/scitech/Telescopes

Figure 16 – Page 16 Herschel Museum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_Museum_of_Astronomy

Figure 17 – Page 16 Heinrich Louis d'Arrest http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/persons/d-arrest.htm

Figure 18 – Page 16 Johann Gottfried Galle. Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_Galle

Figure 19 – Page 17 John Couch Adams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Couch_Adams

Figure 20 – Page 17 Urbain Le Verrier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Urbain_Le_Verrier.jpg

Figure 21 – Page 17 Berlin Observatory 1838 painting by Freyendanck http://www.german- architecture.info/BER-008.htm

Figure 22 – Page 17Telescope that discovered Neptune http://www.german-architecture.info/BER-008.htm

Figure 23 – Page 18 Percival Lawrence Lowell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Lowell

Figure 24 – Page 18 The telescope used to find Pluto http://anniversarybigtrip.blogspot.in/2012/03/getting- some-space.html The Great Year and Virgin Comets 93

Figure 25 – Page 19 Clyde W. Tombaugh http://www.oarval.org/tombaughen.htm

Figure 26 – Page 19 Young Clyde Tombaugh http://www.space.com/19824-clyde-tombaugh.html

Figure 27 – Page 19 Young visitors at Lowell Observatory looking through the Clark Telescope. The same telescope was used by Lowell himself for close examining the surface of Mars. http://dsc.discovery.com/ tv- shows/curiosity/topics/lowell-observatory-pictures.htm

Figure 28 – Page 20 Kuiper Belt http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7325/fig_tab/468775a_F1.html

Figure 29 – Page 21 Artist's impression of the Oort Cloud. (NASA / JPL) http://www.solarviews.com/ cap/index/kuiperbelt1.html

Figure 30 – Page 21 Jan Hendrik Oort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Oort

Figure 31 – Page 22 Asteroid Belt – Lunar and Planetary Institute

Figure 32 – Page 23 Pioneer 10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_10

Figure 33 – Page 24 Pioneer 11 http://www.ssplprints.com/image/87847/nasa-pioneer-11-jupiter-spacecraft- 1973

Figure 34 – Page 25 The Pioneer plaque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

Figure 35 – Page 26 Artists concept of Voyager in space Source Internet

Figure 36 – Page 26 Carl Sagan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

Figure 37 – Page 26 Jimmy Carter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

Figure 38 – Page 27 Left-Voyager Golden Disk (left) Right-Golden Disk Cover http://webodysseum.com/art/116-images-of-the-voyager-golden-record/

Figure 39 – Page 28 Zecharia Sitchin http://reghartt.ca/cineforum/?p=1238

Figure 40 – Page 28 – 4,500 years old Sumerian Tablet VA-243 Vorderasiatisches Museum, East Berlin http://www.myspace.com/the-twelfth-planet/photos/1558192#%7B%22ImageId%22%3A1558192%7D

Figure 41 – Page 29 Uranus http://www.space-pictures.com/view/pictures-of-planets/planet-uranus/

Figure 42 – Page 30 Babylonian Enuma Elish http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/es p_sumer_annunaki01.htm

Figure 43 – Page 32 Orion Constellation http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/orion%20constellation

Figure 44 – Page 32 The Ornate star chart http://www.4physics.com/phy_demo/constellation/constell2.htm

Figure 45 – Page 33 Wheel of the zodiac: This 6th century mosaic pavement in a synagogue incorporates Greek- Byzantine elements, Beit Alpha, Israel. : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac

Figure 46 – Page 34 The Zodiac : http://scijinks.nasa.gov/solstice

Figure 47 – Page 35 Stonehenge : http://witcombe.sbc.edu/sacredplaces/stonehenge.html

Figure 48 – Page 36 Newgrange : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange

Figure 49 – Page 37 Gaocheng observatory : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaocheng_Astronomical_Observatory The Great Year and Virgin Comets 94

Figure 50 – Page 38 Angkor Wat : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/cambodia/ 9638352/Canals-may-have-sped-up-building-of-wonder-of-the-world-Angkor-Wat.html

Figure 51 – Page 38 Maharaja Jai Singh II : http://www.pinkcity.com/about-jaipur/jaipur/

Figure 52 – Page 39 Jantar Mantar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jantar_Mantar_(Jaipur)

Figure 53 – Page 39 Astrological devices for individual constellation, at Jantar Mantar : http://benedante.blogspot.in/2012_05_01_archive.html

Figure 54 – Page 40 view of the smaller of two Giant sun dials.: http://benedante.blogspot.in/ 2012_05_01_archive.html

Figure 55 – Page 41 Aryabhata : http://indicethos.org/Astronomy/AryabhataI.html

Figure 56 – Page 41 The Maya Civilisation : http://utkarshspeak.blogspot.in/2012_01_01_archive.html

Figure 57 – Page 42 Mayan Astronomers. : http://archangelsanddemons.blogspot.in/2012/12/mayan-astronomy- 2012.html

Figure 58 – Page 43 The Carocol or Mayan Observatory at Chichen Itza : http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/ North_America/Mexico/Southeast/Yucatan/Chichen_Itza/photo504262.htm

Figure 59 – Page 43 Chichen Itza Source: Internet

Figure 60 – Page 44 Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, Tikal : http://www.southernmexico.com/chichenitza.html

Figure 61 – Page 44 Temple II of Tikal Source Internet

Figure 62 – Page 45 Great Pyramid of Giza : http://openbuildings.com/buildings/the-great-pyramid-of-giza- profile-1161

Figure 63 – Page 46 Great Pyramid Plan Source: Internet

Figure 64 – Page 47 The Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza

Figure 65 – Page 48 Colossi of Memnon in Egypt : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossi_of_Memnon

Figure 66 – Page 49 Temples of Abu Simbel : http://www.studyblue.com/notes/note/n/ars-101-exam-1- cards/deck/1832750

Figure 67 – Page 50 The Unfinished Obelisk, Aswan, Egypt : http://romaniamegalitica.blogspot.in/2013/01/comori-arheologice-inestimabile.html

Figure 68 – Page 51 Above-The Antikythera mechanism (Fragment A - front) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Antikythera_mechanism

Figure 69 – Page 51 Left - The Antikythera mechanism (Fragment A - back) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Antikythera_mechanism

Figure 70 – Page 52 Top - Reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens (made by Robert J. Deroski, based on Derek J. de Solla Price model) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Figure 71 – Page 53 Axial tilt of the Earth : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt

Figure 72 – Page 55 Equinox : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Equinox

Figure 73 – Page 55 Solstice Source Internet The Great Year and Virgin Comets 95

Figure 74 – Page 56 The sun is higher in the sky during the summer months Source Internet

Figure 75 – Page 56 Twelve Zodiac signs : http://www.chinesehoroscop-e.com/Western% 20Astrology%20Signs/Astrology%20Signs.html

Figure 76 – Page 57 Star trails around the North Star: : http://tomjmartinez.blogspot.in/2011/07/how-to- take-star-trails-around-north.html

Figure 77 – Page 58 The Bull killing scene Source Internet

Figure 78 – Page 58 Earth Spinning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPIAOrNnhhA

Figure 79 – Page 58 Bulges on the equator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPIAOrNnhhA

Figure 80 – Page 60 Mithras and his 12 disciples : http://www.philipcoppens.com/mithras.html

Figure 81 – Page 61 Yukteswar Giri : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukteswar_Giri

Figure 82 – Page 61 David Frawley : http://samvada.org/2012/news-digest/david-frawley-to-speak-on- hinduism-at-bangalore/

Figure 83 – Page 61 The Book Source Internet

Figure 84 – Page 61 The author Source Internet

Figure 85 – Page 62 Sun & Binary star : http://www.doyletics.com/arj/loststar.htm

Figure 86 – Page 63The Aztec Stone : http://www.flickr.com/photos/antonystanley/2088976462/

Figure 87 – Page 64 The Pleiades star system : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades

Figure 88 – Page 65 Names of stars in the Pleiades : http://www.naic.edu/~gibson/pleiades/

Figure 89 – Page 67 Orbital placement of seven sisters and the Photon belt http://veils-of- society.blogspot.in/2011/01/interesting-photo-about-pleiades.html

Figure 90 – Page 68 Mahavatar Babaji Source Internet

Figure 91 – Page 69 Drawing based on the teachings of Swamy Yuktewar drawing by Gopakumar K.G

Figure 92 – Page 70 Voyager flying. The Local Fluff magnetic field : http://science.nasa.gov/science- news/science-at-nasa/2009/23dec_voyager/

Figure 93 – Page 70 Voyager data analysis : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex

Figure 94 – Page 71 Mayan Photon Belt Source Internet

Figure 95 – Page 72 One side of the Earth is Night and the other side is day drawing by: Gopakumar K.G

Figure 96 – Page 73 The Kolbrin : thekolbrin.com

Figure 97 – Page 73 Pistis Sophia : http://www.steinerbooks.org/detail.html?id=9780893450458

Figure 98 – Page 73 The Metamorphoses of Ovid : http://www.bookworld.com.au/ebooks/literary- studies-general/4551897342/#stock_status=InStock%7CPreOrder

Figure 99 – Page 73 Plato’s Timaeus : http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Pendragon-Legend/ book-a0M3V-8qbEe4Lu_VAiYO-A/page1.html

Figure 100 – Page 74 Uriel’s Machine Book Source Internet The Great Year and Virgin Comets 96

Figure 101 – Page 74 Tektites : http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=29207.25

Figure 102 – Page 74 Tollmans description of the 7 ancient major impacts : Source Internet

Figure 103 – Page 75 Soft x-ray image of a solar flare on the Sun :http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/ sftheory/fulldisk.htm

Figure 104 – Page 76 CME. : http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/science/space-physics/space-plasma/

Figure 105 – Page 77 Northern Lights in Scotland Photo: CATERS : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ earth/earthnews/9596474/Perfect-magnetic-storm-brings-spectacular-Northern-Lights-show.html

Figure 106 – Page 78 Dr. Courtney Brown : http://www.farsight.org

Figure 107 – Page 79 Major Edward A. Dames : ttp://www.thekillshot.com/dames.cfm

Figure 108 – Page 81 Milky Way viewed from Reunion Island: Photo Copyright http://www.lucperrot.fr/

Figure 109 – Page 82 Andromeda Galaxy Credit: http://pt-br.planetas.wikia.com/wiki/Arquivo:800px- Andromeda_Galaxy_(with_h-alpha)

Figure 110 – Page 83 above illustration shows a stage in the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, as it will unfold over the next several billion years. In this image, representing Earth's night sky in 3.75 billion years, Andromeda (left) fills the field of view and begins to distort the Milky Way with tidal pull. (Credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger)

Figure 111 – Page 84 David Hatcher Childress Source Internet

Figure 112 – Page 85 17P/Holmes in the infrared spectrum of NASA’s Spitzer Telescope : http://www.ancient- world-mysteries.com/earth-changes.html

Figure 113 – Page 86 Neil DeGrasseTyson : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson

Figure 114 – Page 89 The pale Blue dot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pale_Blue_Dot.png

Figure 115 – Page 90 Prof. Stephen Hawking : http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stephen-hawking-warns- against-contacting-217084 References

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