Phaeton, The Lost Planet: Chapter Three, by J. Timothy Unruh

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Now when we examine the bits and pieces circulating between Mars and Jupiter we draw from sacred theology in our understanding of just what went wrong. First of all, we know that the Almighty Himself is extraordinary in all His perfections. The same created the heaven and the Earth complete and perfect in the day of creation, and declared it "very good." There were no fragments or byproducts of incomplete work and no effects of trauma or destruction. It is not within the nature of God to have created a universe, or solar system, or the Earth for that matter, that is incomplete or fragmented at the outset. In other words God is efficacious in His work. He did not make an incomplete or unfinished planet as the nebular hypothesis would lead us to believe. Nor would He have made something with only the mere appearances of completion when it is not.

The beginning chapters of the Bible declare that God had "finished" his work by the end of the creation week and beheld His work, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them," and "saw that it was good." (Genesis 1 and 2) The changes since creation are, again, to be linked to very the entrance of iniquity, the consequent curse, and subsequent wars, strivings, and so on, among Gods creatures. The manifest physical effects are therefore an inevitable byproduct. This is what we indeed see in the cosmos. The original solar system was created "clean," whereas now it is filled with dust (zodiacal light), dirt (meteoroids), flying mountains (planetoids), and drifting volatiles (comets). It makes little sense that God's purpose in a "very good" universe would include broken fragments which are representatives of discord and agents of planet-devastating impacts, as well as being a rubble field of jumbled waste circling the Sun. All of this is the result of a creation afflicted, not of a "creation in process." Since the cosmos was completed on the sixth day of creation ours is not a universe where "new stars are being born" at present. The well known Orion nebula, which is currently touted by scientists as a place where "stars are being born" is more likely a place of stars in demolition. The M-57 planetary nebula in the constellation Lyra is a famous example, well known to amateur observers, of a star that exploded and left its expanding shell of gas and dust visible as a stellar "smoke ring." The Bible declares unequivocally that the creation was "finished" by the end of the sixth day. What space age technology revealed to us is a pattern of disorder and destruction in a universe that was once unbroken. "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels..." (Revelation 12:7)

When the ancient planet exploded, effectively jettisoning itself from the Sun's field, it likely sent a resounding shutter throughout the solar system in a similitude not unlike that of a small raft drifting in the water with several people aboard which rebounds when one member falls off. The recoiling effect may very well have somewhat modified the orbital elements, hence balance, inclination, and orientation of the other planets, a situation further aggravated when the broken pieces began to arrive at and collide with these other solar system members. The record of these impactions is readily apparent on the faces of many planets and their moons. At "ground zero" the explosion signature dissipated into the strewn rubble of the asteroid belt, remaining at present, which represents a small portion of the original mass of metal and rock fragments.

The overwhelming bulk of the flying debris was evidently lost into deep space or lost within the solar system as missiles that impacted the surviving worlds. Most of the meteoritic impact features on the Earth, called astroblemes, were evidently completely covered or eroded during the Flood. It was during this time that most of the cosmic debris from out of the sky would have bombarded the Earth. The object that formed Arizona's famous Meteor Crater was obviously a late comer impacting still relatively fresh laid sediment, not long after the Deluge. There are no records of the event by the American Indians or any other inhabitants of the area, suggesting that the collision occurred before the advent of human habitation in the area but perhaps not long after the dispersion at Babel.

In spite of the fact that most modern scientists hold to the idea of a prolonged bombardment of the planets and the Moon by meteorites, to the contrary the evidence indicates a relatively brief period of rather intense activity. Of particular interest are the photographs of the planets, and of the far side of the Moon returned from space by the robotic probes. All of these celestial bodies show a particularly conspicuous fragments. The overwhelming bulk of the flying debris was evidently lost into deep space or lost within the solar system as missiles that impacted the surviving worlds. Most of the meteoritic impact features on the Earth, called astroblemes, were evidently completely covered or eroded during the Flood. It was during this time that most of the cosmic debris from out of the sky would have bombarded the Earth. The object that formed Arizona's famous Meteor Crater was obviously a late comer impacting still relatively fresh laid sediment, not long after the Deluge. There are no records of the event by the American Indians or any other inhabitants of the area, suggesting that the collision occurred before the advent of human habitation in the area but perhaps not long after the dispersion at Babel.

In spite of the fact that most modern scientists hold to the idea of a prolonged bombardment of the planets and the Moon by meteorites, to the contrary the evidence indicates a relatively brief period of rather intense activity. Of particular interest are the photographs of the planets, and of the far side of the Moon returned from space by the robotic probes. All of these celestial bodies show a particularly conspicuous hemispherical asymmetry in terms of their surface cratering, in other words the planets show considerably more craters on one side than on the other. This completely puzzled the scientists. This effect can, although, be explained in terms of a large cloud or wave of asteroid sized particles which swept by the planets in less time than it took for the individual planets to rotate, thus scarring one side more than the other. This not only explains the observed effect in the solar system but also gives us the added information of where the majority of these objects have gone. After passing the planets they just kept on going and are now very distant. This is likely the single brief interval of large scale impacts which tore apart the entire outer crust of the back side of the Moon which is far more heavily cratered than the near or Earth side of the satellite. Also of interest is the fact that when early man-made space probes were placed in orbit around the Moon, their orbits varied in an unexpected manner. This was found to be due to "mascons," or unexpected concentrations of mass beneath the maria. For some reason the rock under the maria is denser than the rock elsewhere. These density variations cause the gravitational forces to vary from place to place and hence cause the satellites' orbits to vary from the expected path. The mascons are most likely very large dense iron meteorites buried beneath the maria. The enigmatic terrestrial counterparts to these mascons are possibly the places on Earth where large magnetic meteorites are buried, and which effect odd influences on suspended plumb bobs, radio communications with airplanes that fly over these areas, and other anomalous phenomena. The Oregon Vortex and the Bermuda Triangle are perhaps the best known locations of these possible "terrestrial mascons.

Meteor Crater, Arizona, Cross Section: Based on test drillings made up to 1925, a very dense material was located under the south rim of the crater. This material, likely to be the main mass of the meteorite, is a very heavy dense iron-nickel substance. Much of this material was found scattered around the adjacent desert. Giant buried iron-nickel meteorites provide an explanation for the "mascons" on the Moon. Enormous chunks of this material buried at impact sites on Earth could also explain the anomalous gravity, magnetic, and electrical interferences associated with certain areas.

From the evidence in the aggregate we may attempt to reconstruct, through a model, a possible likeness of the original planet which once existed between Mars and Jupiter. I First of all, the name Olympus for our planet, which means "the home of the gods" seems to be quite fitting in keeping with the traditions of Greek mythology, and, just as well, quite likely the Biblical accounts of fallen angels. The alternate name "Phaeton" (pronounced FAY-ton, or "Fay" for short) chosen by the Russian scientist, E. L. Krinov, seems equally apt, for Phaeton tried to drive his father's chariot across the heavens, but, being unable to control the fiery steeds, he perished. Phaeton is specifically connected to the myths in a confusion in the management of the chariot of the Sun, by which Heaven and Earth were threatened with a universal conflagration, during which trouble the vain and obtrusive Phaeton was struck and killed by a thunderbolt and hurled headlong into Eridanus, "the River of the Judge," while such burning heat fell upon the world in great disasters that turned vast sections into sterility and emptiness.

This mythological account sounds strangely similar to some of the apocalyptic Biblical accounts of fallen angels, judgment and destruction. In the minor prophets, in the Book of Nahum, is further reference to the same sort of judgment coming forth from the throne of God: "Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him." (Nahum 1:6) The attempt to reconstruct the ancient planet is not new. In the last century an eminent British astronomer, Sir David Brewster, among others, described our lost planet as being intermediate in size between the Earth and Mars. Most likely it was a terrestrial planet rather than a gas giant, as would be ascertained by its debris. It had a rotation period of 57 1/2 hours, a near zero inclination of its rotational axis, and an orbit that was only slightly inclined to the ecliptic, and nearly circular. The planet revolved around the Sun once every 4 1/2 years. Phaeton's probable surface gravity would have been about two-thirds of the Earth's. The planet might have had a deep transparent nitrogen rich atmosphere, and a surface temperature of minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Evidence indicates that perhaps the surface was somewhat glassy and covered with carbon dioxide and water ices. Admittedly much of this is speculative at best but it does give us something to work with as a rational model to consider.

The nature of Phaetonic satellites, if there were any, is beyond reasonable speculation. Although there may have been one or more such moons, no clues as to their presence around the planet has been discernible amongst the planetary debris in the asteroid belt.

In terms of their "cosmic charisma," asteroids seem to rank behind black holes, supernovas, and the like. In the last few years, although, several of these humble lumps of interplanetary rock and metal briefly entered the scientific limelight, regaining some of the sensation associated with asteroids during their heyday in the last century. In October 1991 the Jupiter-bound Galileo space probe sped past asteroid Gaspra transmitting back to Earth a striking photographic image of the 12 mile long pockmarked and cracked irregular shaped body from less than 1,000 miles away. The image showed abundant evidence that Gaspra is merely a piece of something bigger that was broken apart by some great forceful event, an evidence that was not expected by the scientists in their current thinking. Not long afterwards another photograph showed a similar looking asteroid, named "Ida" with a small satellite companion. A satellite to an asteroid was a most unexpected discovery.

To a present day observer on Earth the only vestige of Phaeton still visible to the unaided eye is the fragment, or asteroid, named Vesta, and this only under the most favorable circumstances of sky conditions and visual acuity. Vesta is not the largest planetoid but it is the brightest. The largest is Ceres, although Ceres is very dark, reflecting only about six percent of the sunlight that reaches it. When it is brightest, at opposition, Vesta shines at about magnitude 6.0 which barely puts it within naked eye detection. For comparison Uranus shines at magnitude 5.8, while the threshold of naked eye visibility in a dark sky is taken to be 6.2. The latter is equal to the brightness of a candle flame set at six miles away from the eye, in total darkness. Even the largest asteroids appear in a telescope as mere stars, not showing a sensible disk. The average brightness of the first ten discovered was 8.5 as reckoned in star magnitude. The second ten was 9.5, the third 10.5 the fourth 11, and so on. Only a few of the first discovered were brighter than eighth magnitude, with only one being a possible naked eye object. In general, discoveries thereafter were progressively fainter. Subsequent hunts of these Lilliputian worlds since the mid to late nineteenth century have flushed out hundreds more to where today over 6,500 have been logged. It is estimated that there are a half million additional bodies out there that are greater than a half mile in diameter. Based on spectroscopic analysis these bodies appear to be made up of the same material found in meteorites - iron and stone.

To an earthbound observer the original planet would have rivaled Mars and Jupiter in brightness. If all the once supposed, once existent, and speculative major constituents of the solar system actually existed today the planetary line-up might read something like this: Sun, Vulcan, Mercury, Venus; and then to the other side of Earth; Mars, Phaeton, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Oreon, and Terminus, with the Pluto pair being satellites of one of the outer planets. (Technically the Earth is not a planet, as it was never seen by the ancients as a "wandering star." Also, the question of its own mobility has been raised more frequently in recent years in terms of a renewed geocentric cosmology.) To an observer with a telescope each planet displays its own unique visible characteristics. Mercury is an elusive twilight object. Although Venus appears featureless it does exhibit an interesting phase sequence. Mars, perhaps the most intriguing telescopic planet, reveals polar ice caps, dust storms, and its ochre deserts. To the earthbound telescopic observer the visual challenge of Phaeton, if it still existed, might have been the discernment of surface features through its atmosphere. Jupiter is a spectacle with its cloud bands and retinue of moons. Saturn, of course, is a showpiece with its magnificent rings. Uranus, the turned over planet, is an intriguing greenish disk with its wheeling satellite system, while the tiny disk of distant Neptune is another intriguing challenge to the telescopic planetary observer.

Maverick pieces of Phaeton provide an interesting spectacle for earthbound observers. Man continues to observe meteors and comets as monuments of mystique and beauty in a manner, or air, not unlike the "natural exhibits" on Earth which are celebrated as our outstanding national parks and monuments. Like their celestial counterparts these geographic monuments represent interesting relics of bygone catastrophe. "Shooting stars," or meteors, those evanescent streaks of light visible every few minutes on any clear dark night, are a material evidence of the fragments that are still raining down on the planets. Most of the pieces that continue to arrive are rather small. The typical meteor that matches the brightest star in brilliance is caused by a particle perhaps no larger than a small marble. These particles do although arrive at a terrific rate of speed, often tens of miles per second. The typical particle arriving from space, called a meteoroid, encounters the Earth's atmosphere and heats by friction to luminescence at perhaps 60 miles high and burns up by the time it reaches down to about 30 miles high. The light phenomenon is called a meteor. If the object does reach the ground it is called a meteorite, and if found might end up in the hands of a collector. A piece big enough to survive its passage through the atmosphere and leave a collectable specimen on the ground might initially be the size of a grapefruit. The word meteor has been derived from the Greek word meaning "something in the air." Meteors were once thought to be strictly an atmospheric phenomenon, similar to lightning, hence the word meteor comes from the same root word as meteorology, which we use today in reference to the study and observation of the weather. If it were not for the fact that the word meteorology was already "taken" by the atmospheric sciences discipline and weather forecasting industry the word would apply today to the study of meteorites. Instead, the word "meteoritics" was coined in reference to the science or study of meteorites. For many centuries peculiar stones, which we now call meteorites, have been found on the Earth. People thought these were formed when lightning struck rock and melted it or when lightning fused dust in the air. It was a long time before the connection between these odd rocks and meteors became known.

In 1803 a French scientist went further and proved that meteorites were the same as meteors, and that they did, in fact, come from outside the Earth, beyond the sky. This idea was slow to be accepted. A few years later the American President, Thomas Jefferson, himself quite a scientist, heard that two professors had found a meteorite in western Connecticut. His own skepticism is supposed to have prompted him to say "I could more easily believe that two Yankee professors were liars than that stones would fall from the sky." In more recent years scientists have proved that the streaks and flashes of light seen in the clear sky at night are caused by bits of iron and stone burning up as they hit the outer edge of the Earth's atmosphere. The brightest meteorites are called bolides or fireballs and can light up the sky and ground for hundreds of miles around. Some even make noise and leave smoke trails. A few have reached the Earth and struck buildings. In recent years one struck a person and another struck a car. Although one person was bruised and scarred, nobody on record has ever been killed by a meteorite. A government report issued some years ago stated that the random probability of any one individual on Earth being struck and killed by a meteorite was once every 320 years. Meanwhile, as the government spends countless millions of dollars in the search for extraterrestrial life, it has embraced another matter, it has taken on the concern of our protection from the possible collision of Earth by wandering asteroids. It is also possible that a knowledge of asteroids will illuminate a passage of Scripture. We read in Revelation 8:8, "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea." It may be fruitless to speculate on how God will bring this to pass for He could use any supernatural means He chooses to bring about such world-shaking events. This is precisely what most asteroids are - mountains hurtling through space.

A few thousand years ago when meteors were much more plentiful the Earth might have been a more dangerous place to live, but with fewer people back then the probability of a person being struck was perhaps statistically similar to that of the present. On a dark, clear moonless night one can see about ten meteors per hour in a small part of the sky. This rate for the whole sky during the course of 24 hours translates into literally millions of meteors daily. It is estimated that each day some 5,000 tons of meteoritic dust and debris reach the Earth. Another way of saying it is that five to ten pounds of meteoritic material comes to every square mile of the Earth's surface each year. Although countless meteorites arrive annually, fewer than 2,000 have been recovered that are large enough, and spectacular enough, to be put on permanent display in museums. The protective quality of the Earth's atmosphere is roughly equal to fourteen vertical feet of solid rock, so it is no wonder that few of these extraterrestrial bullets get through to pose a danger to people. Because of their great velocity even a small cosmic projectile packs a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. This was vividly demonstrated during the "string of pearls" comet collisions with Jupiter in 1994. Based on the study of ballistics, Meteor Crater in Arizona, which is nearly a mile wide overall, was caused by an object perhaps only 100 feet across. Given that all meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites are but fragments and effects fathered by a single original planetary body, it is through a technicality that they cannot truly be called a falling star or shooting star. When their particles light up in our atmosphere they are not a falling ''star'' at all but a falling or planet."

Meteorites have been classified into three main distinct types based upon the prevalence of nickel-iron in their specimens. The first group, called aerolites, are the stony meteorites which are made up entirely of rocky material. Aerolites may although occasionally contain trace amounts of nickel-iron. The second group of meteorites are called siderolites. These contain about an equal amount of metal and stone. They show about the same outward appearance as any nickel iron meteorite found in the field, but inside they are strikingly different. Some show a network of nickel-iron with the meshes filled with crystals of olivine, these are called Pallasites. Others show irregular grains of nickel-iron embedded in a stony matrix, called Mesosiderites. The third group of meteorites are called siderites. These are the meteorites that consist of raw bright metal when cleaned and polished. In the field they are usually found with a rusty colored or black oxide crust. The nickel-iron material is very dense and heavy, difficult to cut, and magnetically attractive.

The most famous meteorite impact site in the world is Meteor Crater near Flagstaff, Arizona. It is evident that the crater, which is a circular depression nearly a mile wide overall and nearly 600 feet deep, was formed a few thousand years ago, shortly after the Flood epoch. It is estimated that a mass of iron 100 feet across and weighing 300,000 tons, traveling from the northwest at ten miles per second, violently exploded on impact excavating the crater and scattering bits of iron across the adjacent desert. Other impact formations of decidedly meteoritic origin have since been discovered around the world but none are so "fresh," well formed, and unmistakable as Meteor Crater. It should be noted that as recent as our century significant anomalous Earth shaking impacts have occurred. Noteworthy is the anomalous event which occurred near Tunguska, in a remote area of central Siberia, in the early daylight hours of June 30, 1908. It is not understood exactly what occurred but it is evident that a celestial body of some kind appeared as a huge fireball and made its plunge to Earth barely leaving a trace of itself behind while devastating a enormous tract of evergreen forest. The account which had numerous eyewitnesses has many elements of good science fiction. When the object hit, "a tongue of flame" shot up from the horizon appearing to "cut the sky in two."

The fact that meteorites are similar to the asteroidal fragments circulating between Mars and Jupiter and because meteorites are made up of dense metal and lighter rock, it is believed that these materials are quite similar to what is inside the Earth. From the fact that meteorites are of three basic types, iron, stony-iron, and stony, many scientists believe that these are similar to the types of differentiated material existing at various depths within the Earth. The iron-nickel is the same type of material believed to represent the foundational material in the central core of the Earth, while the stony irons resemble material deep within the Earth but outside the Earth's iron core, and the stony material represents the characteristic lighter superficial and surface material. It is also thought that this sequence represents the original structure of Phaeton. It is a diagnostic fact that the very heavy dense nickel-iron material could not have formed out in the asteroid belt where there is a virtual absence of gravity and in an unfinished accretion process. When a siderite is sawed open and the inner surfaces are polished and etched with acid peculiar patterns develop called Widmanstatten patterns, after Count Alois von Widmanstatten of Vienna who discovered the octahedral figures while treating specimens in 1808. These patterns are edges of large crystals whose forms are dependent upon the proportion of nickel to iron. The patterns, which do not appear in surface terrestrial iron ores, are indicative of a once hot liquid iron-nickel mixture which cooled very slowly, under great pressure, for a long period of time. These pattern of lines show that meteorites, or their asteroid cousins, could not have formed singly. The crystals could form only as a part of a great mass of molten material integral to a body the size of a planet. Most meteorites show evidence of having been affected by the separation of heavy and light chemical elements, that would occur only in bodies attendant with significant gravity to produce the separation as heavier elements settled toward the center. The surface gravity on the largest asteroid, Ceres, is estimated to be only about 1/25 of that on Earth. The stony-iron siderolites would, accordingly, represent a transitional material found at intermediate depths of a parent planetary body. Tiny diamonds found in some meteorites are also indicative of an original high-pressure, high-temperature environment, again, as in the interior of a planet. Veins of magnesium sulfate in some meteorite specimens may even indicate that this material was deposited by water on the parent body.

The issue of life in outer space has been a long standing speculation as it relates to the question of meteorites. When the Apollo astronauts returned from the Moon they were quarantined as a safeguard to protect humanity from possible alien micro-biological infection. As it turned out it was certain that these men walked across a sterile lunar surface. The next place scientists looked for life was on Mars. Life on Mars was considered possible if not likely. In 1976 the failure of the Viking landers to detect any kind of life on Mars whatsoever dealt a crushing blow to exobiologists and cosmic evolutionists. Mars was found to be as sterile as the Moon. Interest in Mars among the general public subsided after NASA reluctantly published its conclusions from the Viking program. Failing to find life on Mars, scientists began to search outside the solar system, on planets surrounding distant stars (if they even exist). The nearest of these could never be reached in a lifetime. The quest for life did not stop there although. Scientists have found something else to excite their interests. Their attention was turned to meteorites. Some meteorites were found to contain "organic molecules." In meteorites which have landed on Earth, and even in a few lunar samples gathered by the Apollo astronauts, molecules have been discovered which on Earth are associated with life, including amino acids, the building blocks of life. A great deal of attention was focused on experiments in which such molecules were made in a laboratory by passing an electric current through ordinary gasses such as ammonia, methane, and water. This has long been touted as evidence that lifelike molecules appear spontaneously and that life thus must "evolve" everywhere. It is said that the organic molecules in meteorites must have formed in a similar way. In spite of all the experiments nothing really shows that the organic molecules found in meteorites formed from life at all, nor are they any true indicator of life. It need not concern us that such molecules form easily under certain circumstances. Is it not sensible that God would have made us from the simple molecules He had previously formed in the nature of things? if it were extremely difficult for such molecules to form naturally man would have a difficult time metabolizing food into the appropriate molecules within his body. As it says in Genesis 2:7, Adam was made from the dust of the ground. Even though the soil of the Earth is lifeless material, it is rich in organic compounds. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that some of the same "stuff" from which man is physically made is not only found in the dust of the Earth but also in the dust on the Moon. It still requires an act of God to create life.

Since the time of Phaeton's demolition, comets have fascinated mankind. Throughout most of history the appearance of comets have been interpreted as omens of disaster. Perhaps that is an instinctive response to an intuitive knowledge of their actual catastrophic origin. In reality, comets, like their cousin asteroids, are just small fragmented bodies of debris in orbit around the Sun. Like the asteroids, comets have highly inclined, and sometimes very elliptical, orbits. They may come as close to the Sun as a few million miles or go out further away than Pluto. It is only when they venture into the inner solar system, closer to the Sun than Earth, that they become visible with their spectacular tail. Nearly every generation sees a bright comet with a tail millions of miles long. The tail is formed when the heat of the Sun causes some of the more volatile components of the comet to vaporize and leave the body of the comet. The tail is "blown" away by the force of the solar wind and streams for millions of miles in a direction away from the Sun, and is illuminated by the Sun.

From ground based and space probe analysis comets appear to be made up of a loose conglomerate of rock and ice. Comets are very likely chunks of crustal material from the original planetary body where an abundance of subsurface water and surface ice was most likely present. That is probably why most comets are relatively light weight and small, and have extremely eccentric orbits. It is estimated that comets lose about 1/200 of their mass each time they pass near the Sun. This means that a comet like Halley's, which comes back often, would be exhausted in less than 10,000 years or so. By means of ground based spectroscopic analysis, and verified by later space probe reconnaissance, these celestial mavericks are found to be composed of a variety of materials, some of which include nitrogen, carbon monoxide, cyanogen, methane, ammonia, water ice, and other frozen volatiles. Also, such non-volatiles as sodium, iron, nickel, and chromium have been diagnosed to be present in comet dust. In short, comets have commonly been designated as "dirty snowballs."

Comets with short periods should not exist at all if the solar system is billions of years old. This has long been recognized as a problem by astronomers. Rather than admit that this is truly an evidence for a young solar system they have invented a mechanism to replace the comets as soon as they are burned out. They have made use of the fact that comets fall naturally into two categories - long period comets and short period comets. Short period comets are considered to be those with periods of a few years to a few hundred years. It is the comets from this group that are seen over and over again. The most famous of all, Halley's comet, belongs to this group and has a period of 76 years. The comet with the shortest period, only 3.3 years, is Eneke's. comet. Comet 1907 II, Grigg-Mellish, is just about the longest period comet which has made more than one apparition during the time in which accurate records have been kept. The period of this comet is 164.3 years, almost exactly the same as that of the planet Neptune, which is 164.8 years. Therefore its mean distance from the Sun is about the same, namely, 30 A.U. The long-period comets are seen only once and have periods in the thousands of years. It is now often thought that the long period comets are drawn in from the supposed Oort cloud "reservoir" as they are kicked into the solar system, toward the Sun, by passing stars. It is then thought that the immense gravitational pull of Jupiter further perturbs the comets making them short period comets, thus constantly replenishing the supply of short period comets in the solar system. It is truly amazing that such an elaborate, flimsy, and untenable mechanism is constructed in the minds of lettered scientists. Normally in the sciences such ad hoc assumptions are rejected out of hand. It is not proper to invent some principle or mechanism just to make a theory work. The profound foolishness of this becomes ever more clear when it is seen that a simple yet sensible and most profound solution can be worked out from the raw scientific data of the Bible. Thus the author endeavors to show in this writing.

The current popular idea among scientists that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a giant meteorite, or meteorites, striking the Earth may be partly true, although their millions and millions of years in time scale is way off. Meteoritic bombardment during the Flood was quite possibly rather intense, and it likely continued to a considerable degree after the Flood epoch. Since the Ark contained representatives of all land animals, that would necessarily include the dinosaurs and other types of extinct prehistoric land animals. All of these would have walked off the Ark after the Flood to replenish the Earth. Perhaps some of the dinosaurs were killed by anomalous meteorite falls some time later, as well. Immediately after the Flood the Earth stood denuded of its previous verdant tropical forests. It was a place left with enormous geographic change and new climatic conditions that were harsh compared to former times. Harmful radiation from the Sun and space came down through a changed atmosphere, in much greater doses. The Earth was no longer suitable for accommodating great numbers of such large exotic animals like the dinosaurs, as it was in former times before the Flood. Most of the dinosaurs probably died out after a few centuries. The most likely cause, although, of their ultimate extinction was not by natural agents, but by man himself who hunted them down for game or sport. The medieval "knight in shining armor" who slew his dragon to prove himself and gain recognition as a great hunter or warrior is a tradition that has a sound historical basis. Ancient peoples all over the world have told of unusual, reptile-like creatures that once roamed the Earth. There were many different types, both large and small, and many different names for them. People in Europe called them dragons, many descriptions of which sound like dinosaurs. As recent as the height of France as a great empire there were accounts of an animal that was killed near one of its towns which was bigger than an ox and had long sharp pointed horns on its head. It was an animal very similar in description, if not identical, to the Triceratops. The Triceratops supposedly died out over 65,000,000 years ago. In China, such stories are numerous.

In 1977 a relatively fresh carcass of a Plesiosaur like creature was raised in a net from a depth of 900 feet in the waters off the coast of New Zealand. The creature was 32 feet long and weighed 4,000 pounds. It had four fins, each approximately three feet long. Soon after a few initial reports were broadcast the media went silent about the incident. In current times there have been repeated rumors coming out of a remote and nearly inaccessible region of the African Congo describing a brontosaur-like creature.

The perennial question of just how the parent body of the meteorites, asteroids, and comets could have exploded remains obscure, although nuclear processes seem to be intimated by evidences in meteorites recovered on Earth. It has been objected that planets are not hot enough even in their cores for nuclear reactions. Yet natural fission reactors have been known to operate on the Earth's surface in the geologic past. It has been suggested that one natural way to produce the isotopic anomalies observed in meteorites, and supply the sufficient energy, is through a matter-antimatter explosion, possibly resulting from some kind of imbalance caused by a magnetic separation and storage of the potential destabilizing force over time before the explosion; or from some sort of chain reaction high-energy generating critical imbalance of another sort; or from the intervention of intelligent beings. The latter possibility should not be lightly dismissed.

Copyright © 1995, 1996. All Rights Reserved. Published by RUHE COMPANY, P.O. Box 1034, Rocklin, California 95677-1034. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the publisher. Internet edition, January 17, .1997

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