Astronomy and Climatology Superwave Theory Predictions and Their Subsequent Verification
Galactic Core Explosions - prevailing concept (1980): At the time of this prediction, astronomers believed that the cores of galaxies, including our own, become active ("explode") about every 10 to 100 million years and stay active for about a million years. Since our own Galactic core presently appears quiescent, they believed it would likely remain inactive for many tens of millions of years. Although, in 1977, astronomer Jan Oort cited evidence that our Galactic core has been active within the past 10,000 years.
Prediction No. 1 (1980 - 83): In his Ph.D. dissertation, LaViolette hypothesized that galactic core explosions recur about every 10,000 years and last for several hundred to a few thousand years. He was the first to suggest such a short recurrence time for galactic core explosions and that our own Galactic core undergoes Seyfert-like explosions with similar frequency.
Subsequent concurrence (1998): In 1988, when presented with Dr. LaViolette's Galactic explosion hypothesis, astronomer Mark Morris dismissed the idea as having no merit. However, in 1998 after ten years of observation, Morris was quoted as saying that the center of our Galaxy explodes about every 10,000 years with these events each lasting 100 years or so.
Cosmic Ray Propagation - prevailing concept (1980 - 83): At the time of this prediction, astronomers believed that interstellar magnetic fields entrap cosmic rays released from Galactic core outbursts and slow their outward progress so that they reach the Earth after millions of years in the form of a constant low intensity background radiation.
Prediction No. 2 (1980 - 83): Dr. LaViolette's studies concluded that Galactic center cosmic ray volleys interact minimally with interstellar magnetic fields and are able to propagate radially outward along rectilinear trajectories traveling through the Galaxy at near light speed in the form of a coherent, spherical, wave-like volley. He was the first to suggest this idea of a "Galactic superwave."
Verification (1985): Astrophysicists discovered that X-ray pulsars continuously shower the Earth with high-energy cosmic ray particles that have traveled over 25,000 light-years at nearly the speed of light, following straight-line trajectories unaffected by interstellar magnetic fields.
Verification (1997): Astrophysicists detected a strong gamma ray pulse arriving from a galaxy billions of light years away having a redshift of 3.4 (see Prediction No. 10 below). Mainstream media, such as Sky & Telescope magazine, suggested that this gamma ray pulse may be accompanied by a volley of high energy cosmic ray particles traveling at very close to the speed of light along a rectilinear trajectory and that the gamma ray pulse is produced by the radial outward movement of this volley. In effect, they were restating the same Galactic superwave idea that LaViolette had proposed 14 years earlier in the face of stiff resistance from mainstream astronomers.
Verification (2000): Radio astronomers announce at the January 2000 American Astronomical Society meeting that the synchrotron radio emission radiated from the Galactic center (Sgr A*) is circularly polarized. Scientists present at the meeting concurred with Dr. LaViolette's suggestion that the circular polarization indicated that cosmic ray electrons were traveling radially away from the Galactic center along straight-line trajectories.
Cosmic Ray Bombardment - prevailing concept (1980 - 83): At the time of this prediction, astronomers believed that the background cosmic ray flux has remained constant for millions of years, that intense cosmic ray bombardments occur very infrequently, perhaps every 30 million years, primarily as a result of nearby supernova explosions.
Prediction No. 3 (1980 - 83): LaViolette concluded that a volley of Galactic cosmic rays had bombarded the Earth and solar system toward the end of the last ice age (ca. 14,000 years BP). Also his findings suggested that other such superwaves had passed us at earlier times and were responsible for triggering the initiation and termination of the ice ages and mass extinctions. He was the first to suggest recurrent highly-frequent cosmic ray bombardment of the Earth.
Verification (1987): Glaciologists discovered beryllium-10 isotope peaks in ice age polar ice. These indicated that the cosmic ray flux on the Earth became very high on several occasions during the last ice age, confirming Dr. LaViolette's theory that Galactic superwaves have repeatedly passed through our solar system in geologically recent times.
Cosmic Debris Around Solar System - prevailing concept (1980 - 83): At the time of this prediction, astronomers believed that the solar system resided in a relatively dust free region of space.
Prediction No. 4 (1980 - 83): LaViolette hypothesized that large amounts of interstellar dust and frozen cometary debris lie outside the solar system just beyond the heliopause sheath and form a reservoir of material that would have supplied large amounts of cosmic dust during a prehistoric superwave event.
Verification (1984): The IRAS satellite team published infrared observations showing that the solar system is surrounded by nearby "cirrus" dust cloud wisps.
Verification (1988): Astronomer H. Aumann's observations suggested that the solar system is surrounded by a dust envelope 500 times denser than previously thought.
Verification (1992 - 95): Telescope observations revealed the presence of the Kuiper belt, a dense population of cometary bodies encircling the solar system, beginning just beyond the orbit of Neptune and extending outward past the heliopause sheath.
Cosmic Dust Influx - prevailing concept (1979): At the time of this prediction, astronomers believed that the rate at which cosmic dust particles have been entering the solar system and the Earth's atmosphere has remained constant for millions of years. They believed that the solar system lies in a relatively clean interstellar space environment and hence that there is no need to expect the occurrence of recent cosmic dust incursions.
Prediction No. 5 (Sept. 1979): LaViolette theorized that if a cosmic ray volley (superwave) had passed by at the end of the ice age, it would have pushed nearby interstellar dust into the solar system. To test this, he began a plan to analyze ice age polar ice for traces of cosmic dust.
Verification (1981 - 82): LaViolette was the first to measure the extraterrestrial material content of prehistoric polar ice. Using the neutron activation analysis technique, he found high levels of iridium and nickel in 6 out of the 8 polar ice dust samples (35k to 73k yrs BP), an indication that they contain high levels of cosmic dust. This showed that Galactic superwaves may have affected our solar system in the recent past. In addition, he discovered gold in one 50,000 year old sample, making this the first time gold had been discovered in polar ice.
Verification (1984): The IRAS satellite team reported observations that the zodiacal dust cloud is tilted 3 degrees relative to the ecliptic with ascending and descending ecliptic nodes at 87° and 267°, but failed to draw a conclusion from this finding. LaViolette realized that the nodes are aligned with the Galactic-center-anticenter direction in support of his earlier prediction that interstellar dust has recently entered the solar system from the Galactic center direction. 1987: He published a paper in Earth, Moon, and Planets journal explaining that the orientation of the zodiacal dust cloud nodes indicates that this zodiacal dust recently entered from the direction of the Galactic center.
Verification (April 1993): NASA's Ulysses spacecraft team published observations indicating that interstellar dust is currently entering the solar system from the Galactic center direction (from the direction the interstellar wind blows towards us) and hence that most of the dust outside the asteroid belt is of interstellar origin. Their findings were predicted by LaViolette's 1983 and 1987 publications. One Ulysses team member had received Dr. LaViolette's publications in 1985, but LaViolette's work was not cited.
Verification (1995): Cosmochemists publish observations showing that Helium-3 concentrations in ocean sediments, an indicator of extraterrestrial dust influx, changed by over 3 fold on a 100,000 year cycle between 250,000 and 450,000 years ago.
Verification (1996): The AMOR radar in New Zealand detected a strong flux of interstellar meteoroid particles, measuring 15 to 40 microns in size, entering the solar system from the Galactic center direction.
Tin Isotopic Anomaly - state of the art (1981): At the time of this prediction, astronomers speculated that tin found in extraterrestrial material could have isotope ratios different from those of terrestrial tin. But up until that time no tin isotopic anomalies had been reported.
Prediction No. 6 (1981): Having found very high concentrations of tin in a 50,000 year old ice core dust sample along with gold, silver, antimony, iridium, and nickel, LaViolette theorized that this tin-rich dust was of interstellar origin and that the tin might contain an isotopic anomaly.
Verification (Jan. 1984): Geochemists at Curtin University (Australia) in collaboration with LaViolette used a mass spectrometry technique to determine the isotopic ratios of an unirradiated portion of the tin-rich dust sample. They found significant isotopic anomalies in four isotopes thereby confirming LaViolette's prediction that the tin dust is of extraterrestrial origin. This marked the first time that tin isotopic anomalies had been discovered.
Indirect support (1989): Cosmochemist F. Rietmeijer published a paper describing the discovery of tin oxide grains inside interplanetary dust particles, with tin abundances much higher than typically found in chondritic meteorites. This helps to substantiate LaViolette's 1983 claim that the solar system is surrounded by dust enriched in tin and that this is the source of the tin-rich dust found in polar ice.
Prehistoric Global Warming - prevailing concept (1981): At the time of this prediction, climatologists believed that the Alleröd-Bölling warming and Younger Dryas cold period at the end of the ice age were confined primarily to Europe. They assumed that there was no global warming at the end of the ice age, that the northern continental ice sheets did not melt synchronously with the southern ice sheets, and that the warming in the north was due to heat being drawn from the Southern Hemisphere.
Prediction No. 7 (1983): In his dissertation, LaViolette demonstrated that the last ice age was ended by a 2000 year long global warming which he calls the Terminal Pleistocene Interstadial (TPI) identified with the Alleröd-Bölling interstadial in the north. He also proposed that this was followed by a global return to glacial conditions, identified with the Younger Dryas in the north. He showed that the melting of the ice sheets was synchronous in the northern and southern hemispheres and was brought about by cosmic causes.
Verification (1987 - 96): Climatologists published temperature profiles from various parts of the world showing the presence of this same climatic oscillation, but did not connect their data with the idea of global climatic shifts.
Verification (1998): Climatologists (Steig et al.) published findings in Science demonstrating the synchronous occurrence of the Alleröd-Bölling-Younger Dryas climatic oscillation in the Taylor Dome Antarctic ice core. They claimed this as evidence that the last ice age was ended by a global warming. Although they should have been aware of LaViolette's publications, their report did not cite his prior work.
Prehistoric Solar Conflagration - prevailing concept (1983): At the time of LaViolette's prediction, the general opinion was that the Sun has remained in its present quiescent solar cycle state for hundreds of millions of years. A small group of astronomers, however, dissented with this view. For example, in 1969, astrophysicist Thomas Gold published lunar rock evidence indicating that, within the last 30,000 years, the radiation intensity on the Moon had reached 100 suns for 10 to 100 seconds, possibly due to a solar nova. In 1975, astronomer A. Lovell suggested that sun-like stars occasionally produce flares of up to 10^37 ergs, 30,000 times more energetic than the largest solar flare of modern times. In 1977, astrophysicists Wdowczyk and Wolfendale suggested that the Sun might produce a flare a million times larger (3 X 10^38 ergs) about once every 100,000 years. Moreover in 1978, NASA astronomers Zook, Hartung, and Storzer had published lunar rock evidence indicating that 16,000 years ago solar flare background radiation intensity on the Moon's surface had peaked to 50 times the current intensity and that this may have been somehow associated with the retreat of the ice sheets. The idea that the Earth and Moon might have been affected in the past by the arrival of a giant solar coronal mass ejection had not yet been advanced.
Prediction No. 8 (1983): In his dissertation, LaViolette proposed that invading cosmic dust would have caused the Sun to become more luminous and engage in continual flaring activity. In chapter 4, he suggested that on one occasion the Earth and Moon may have been engulfed by a large prominence remnant "fireball" (coronal mass ejection) thrown out by the Sun during a period of particularly intense solar activity. He interpreted the findings of Zook and Gold as evidence that the Sun had been in a highly active T-Tauri like flaring state and that at times its flaring activity had been as much as 1000 times currently observed levels. He suggested that these may have scorched the surface of the Earth in ice age times, inducing high temperatures, rapid ice sheet melting, global flooding, and mass animal extinction.
Concordance (1997): Satellite observations showed solar flares ejecting expanding balls of plasma called "coronal mass ejections" and demonstrated that these were capable of traveling outward beyond the Earth's orbit. This lent credence to LaViolette's theory that a large coronal plasma "fireball" thrown off by an immense solar flare may have reached the Earth and Moon and scorched their surfaces.
Concordance (1999): Astronomers announced that they had observed large explosive outbursts from the surfaces of nearby normal sunlike stars. These "superflares" were observed to range from 100 to 10 million times the energy of the largest flare observed on the Sun in modern times and were estimated to occur about once every hundred years. This confirmed the Lovell hypothesis and increased the plausibility of LaViolette's suggestion that the Sun was producing mega solar flares and intense plasma fireballs at the end of the last ice age. Concordance (2000): LaViolette demonstrates that the acid layers found in 15,850 year old Antarctic polar ice were produced by a solar wind mass outflow that was about an order of magnitude greater than the present outflow. This corroborates suggestions made by LaViolette, Zook, and Gold that the Sun was very active toward the end of the ice age. The finding that this mass outflow event heralded a series of warming trends, implicates the Sun as the causal agent that ended the ice age, thus supporting Prediction No.7.
Geomagnetic Reversals - prevailing concept (1983): At the time of LaViolette's prediction, geophysicists believed that geomagnetic reversals and magnetic polarity flips were brought about by causes internal to the Earth, that they arose from instabilities in the inner rotation of the Earth's core magnetic dynamo. They believed that these field excursions took hundreds of years to occur due to the inherently slow movement of the core material.
Prediction No. 9 (1983): In chapter 3 of his dissertation, LaViolette proposed that geomagnetic reversals are induced by solar cosmic ray storms. He proposed that at times when invading cosmic dust causes the Sun to become very active and engage in continual flaring activity, major solar outbursts could occur that are a thousand times more intense than those currently observed. Further he proposed that solar cosmic rays from such a mega flare could impact the Earth's magnetosphere, become trapped there to form storm-time radiation belts, and generate an equatorial ring current producing a magnetic field opposed to the Earth's. If sufficiently intense, this ring current magnetic field could cancel out the Earth's own field and flip the residual magnetic field pole to an equatorial location. >From this position it could later either recover or adopt a reversed polarity. He proposed that this geomagnetic excursion would be very rapid, occurring in a matter of days.
Verification (1989 - 95): Geophysicists reported their analysis of a geomagnetic reversal recorded in the Steens Mountain lava formation, conclusively demonstrating that during this reversal the Earth's magnetic pole changed direction as fast as 8 degrees per day. This overthrew the conventional geocentric view which could not account for such rapid changes with internal motions of the Earth's core dynamo. It confirmed Dr. LaViolette's mechanism of rapid change.
Concordance (1995): Unaware of LaViolette's publications, two French geophysicists published a paper that sought to explain the Steens Mountain polarity reversal as being due to a solar cosmic ray cause. Their mechanism was the same as that which LaViolette had proposed 6 years before the Steens Mountain discovery. Their independent arrival at the same idea is evidence of parallel idea development and consensus with LaViolette's earlier theory.
Radiocarbon Date Anomalies - prevailing concept (1983): At the time of this proposal, the idea that anomalously young radiocarbon dates might be produced by intense solar cosmic ray bombardments had not been suggested. Such young dates were thought to be due to sample contamination with younger carbon having a higher C-14 content.
Prediction No. 10 (1983): Anomalously young radiocarbon dates are frequently found in fossil remains of Pleistocene megafauna that became extinct at the end of the last ice age. In chapter 10 of his dissertation, LaViolette proposed that a solar cosmic ray conflagration caused the demise of these mammals and their subsequent burial by the action of glacier meltwater waves. He suggested that the neutron shower produced by the intense solar cosmic ray storm (coronal mass ejection) that engulfed the Earth would have radiogenically changed nitrogen atoms in animal collagen into carbon-14 atoms. He proposed that this in situ radiocarbon generation could have made the radiocarbon dates on exposed organic matter anomalously young.
Verification (1998): After conducting seven years of research, archeologist William Topping proposed that the abnormally young radiocarbon dates of ice age Paleo-Indian sites (ca. 12,400 - 13,000 calendar yrs BP) could be explained if a major solar flare cosmic ray particle storm had caused in situ carbon-14 production from nitrogen in the organic remains of those strata. His conclusion of heavy particle bombardment in Paleo-Indian times was partly supported by his discovery of particle tracks and micrometeorite craters in artifacts. This in situ C-14 production mechanism is the same that LaViolette had earlier proposed to explain the young dates for Pleistocene mammal remains dating from a similar period. Like Topping, LaViolette had concluded that the demise of the large mammals at that time was due to a solar flare conflagration. Since Topping was probably not aware of LaViolette's dissertation, his work would constitute independent corroboration.
Concordance (1995 - 1998): Researchers report the discovery that there had been a sudden increase in atmospheric radiocarbon levels at the Allerød/Younger Dryas transition boundary. Over a 300 year period between the time of the IntraAllerod Cold Peak and the beginning of the Younger Dryas, atmospheric C-14 levels rose from 3 to 7 % and subsequently declined during the course of the Younger Dryas.
Gamma Ray Bursts - prevailing concept (1983): During the early 1970's, astronomers discovered the Earth is sporadically bombarded by gamma ray bursts. At the time of this prediction, they incorrectly assumed that gamma ray bursts were medium energy events originating from local sources within our Galaxy. They did not regard them as a significant social threat.
Prediction No. 11 (1983): In his dissertation, LaViolette proposed that a superwave produced by an explosion of our Galaxy's core could be immediately preceded by a very strong gamma ray pulse, 10,000 times stronger than what could come from a supernova explosion. He pointed out that upon impacting our upper atmosphere this burst could strip electrons and induce a powerful electromagnetic pulse which, like a high-altitude nuclear EMP, could have serious consequences for modern society. It could knock out satellites, interrupt radio, TV, and telephone communication, produce electrical surges on power lines causing widespread black outs, and possibly trigger the inadvertent launching of missiles. He was among the few to suggest that Galactic core explosions could produce high intensity gamma ray outbursts that could affect the Earth.
In 1989, under the sponsorship of the Starburst Foundation, LaViolette initiated an international outreach project, to warn about the dangers of such astronomical phenomena. He pointed out that our Galactic center could produce seriously disruptive low intensity outbursts as frequently as once every 500 years and that we are currently overdue for one. This was the first time a widespread gamma ray pulse warning of this sort had been made.
Verification (1997): In December 1997, astronomers for the first time pinpointed the source of a gamma ray burst and found that it originated from a galaxy lying billions of light years away. This led them to conclude that these are mostly extragalactic events having total energies millions of times greater than they had previously supposed, thereby confirming LaViolette's earlier proposal of the existence of high intensity gamma ray bursts. If this particular outburst had originated from our Galactic center, it would have delivered 100,000 times the lethal dose to all exposed Earth life forms.
Verification (1998): Some months later, in August 27, 1998, a 5 minute long gamma ray pulse arrived from a Galactic source located 20,000 light years away in the constellation of Aquila. The event was strong enough to ionize the upper atmosphere and seriously disrupt satellites and spacecraft. It triggered a defensive instrument shutdown on at least two spacecraft. Astronomers acknowledged that this marked the first time they became aware that energetic outbursts from distant astronomical sources could affect the Earth's physical environment. These events reaffirmed the validity of warnings LaViolette made 9 years earlier about the potential hazards of such gamma ray bursts.
Archeoastronomy - prevailing concept (1979): At the time of this prediction, ancient historians, cultural anthropologists and scholars of esoteric traditions did not suspect that ancient myth makers knew the location of the Galactic center or that they had associated this part of the sky with the cataclysmic cycles described in legend.
Prediction No. 12 (1979): LaViolette discovered that the ancient star lore connected with the Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations indicated the location of the Galactic center, conveyed the idea of an explosive outburst, and specified a significant past date of 13,865 ± 150 years B.C. which also is encoded in the ancient Egyptian Dendereh zodiac. Also LaViolette found that myths, customs and esoteric lore descendent from prehistoric times indicated that cosmic rays from a Galactic core explosion catastrophically affect the Earth and solar system in recurrent cycles with the most recent event occurring near the end of the last ice age. He wrote up this idea in an unpublished paper in 1979 and formally published these ideas in 1995 and 1997 in his books Beyond the Big Bang and Earth Under Fire. In Earth Under Fire he also connected Mayan cosmology and World Ages with the Galactic center and Galactic superwave events. He began discovering these associations around 1987.
Concordance (1994 - 1998): In a December 1994 magazine article and later in his book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 (1998), John Major Jenkins presented his findings that Mayan lore contains a Galactic center oriented cosmology. that specifically refers to the Galactic center vicinity (ecliptic-Galactic plane crossing point) in connection with the occurrence of the Mayan World Ages. One of his findings is that the Mayan calendar 2012 AD end date, which designates the end of the present World Age, also indicates the time when the Earth's precessing axis will be maximally tipped in the direction of this Galactic plane intersection point. Jenkins was not aware of LaViolette's work at the time he wrote, so his findings constitute an instance of independent discovery and corroboration. Jenkins went into much greater depth in exploring Mayan cosmological references to the Galactic center, but did not explore the Galactic explosion/Earth cataclysm theme discovered by LaViolette.
Concordance (1999): Jay Weidner and Vincent Bridges have deciphered a stone monument cipher that was erected in a French monastery at Hendaye during the 17th century. They find that its message attributes the biblical cataclysm to a celestial double catastrophe and that its encoded astrological chart specifies the year 2002 AD as the date of the next apocalyptic event. In 1997 they encountered Dr. LaViolette's work and realized that the Galactic center cataclysm he was describing explained the message on the stone cross at Hendaye. They have published their findings in a book entitled MONUMENT TO THE END OF TIME: Alchemy, Fulcanelli and the Great Cross, Vol. I The Cross at Hendaye
Concordance (2000): LaViolette discovered that the largest acidity spike in the entire Antarctic ice core record was produced by a major solar wind mass outflow that began about 13,880 B.C. and tailed off about 13,785 B.C., thereby corroborating the date encoded in zodiac star lore.
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