“Carbon Rain.” That’s the title of chapter 12 in Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps, wherein I propose that carbon rains from the sky at extinctions. That’s why we find dinosaurs buried in coal.

And that’s why we find oil on Saturn’s moon Titan.

Close up toward south polar region of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, showing a depression within the moon's orange and blue haze layers near the south pole. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft snapped the image on 11 Sep 2011.

Now comes this controversial study published in the journal Nature on 27 Oct 2011.

“An analysis of the spectral emissions from distant stars suggests that compounds of unexpected complexity – some resembling coal and petroleum – exist throughout the universe and are being made by stars,” says writer Kate Melville.

By analyzing the emissions of star dust formed in exploding stars, scientists have found that “stars are making these complex organic compounds in time frames of only weeks.”

Not through some long, drawn-out process taking thousands of years, mind you, but in a mere matter of weeks!

According to Professors Sun Kwok and Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong, not only are stars producing this complex organic matter, they are also ejecting it into interstellar space. “Theoretically, this is impossible, but observationally we can see it happening,” said Kwok.

The compound’s chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum, says Kwok.

Although coal and oil are thought to arise only from living organisms, the tell-tale spectra show complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space even when no life forms are present, says Kwok.

See entire article:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20110926200551data_trunc_sys.shtml

Thanks to Ronald Baker for this link

“This reminded me of your book,” says Ronald.

See also “Lakes of oil on Saturn’s Moon Titan”
http://iceagenow.info/2011/10/lakes-oil-saturns-moon-titan/

And “Raining Methane on Titan”
http://iceagenow.info/2012/01/raining-methane-titan/

The footage, claimed to have been caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia, has lead a paranormal investigator to suggest that the woolly mammoth is not extinct after all.

Some viewers dismiss the video as a hoax, some think it’s an elephant lost in the Siberian wilderness, yet others think it’s a bear eating a huge fish.

I’ll go with number three. I think it’s a bear carrying a just-caught salmon to the river bank.

See entire article:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4116326/Woolly-mammoth-spotted-in-Siberia.html

Thanks to Del A. Hilber for this link

So says this paper by Jay A. Yoder, Ph.D.
Dept of Biology, The Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL 62650.

Here are a few excerpts:

Geomagnetic polarity reversal – A theoretical modus operandi of evolution

“Discontinuities in the fossil record provide the basis for the evolutionary theory of punctuated-equilibrium proposed by Eldredge and Gould,” says Yoder.

“Their theory suggests that the production of new species (as evidence of evolution) occurs by rapid bursts that are delineated by long periods (50,000 – 100,000 years in most cases) of stasis where no apparent changes take place.

“Clearly, to produce a significant evolutionary burst of this magnitude would require a most striking event leading to an abrupt change in gene frequency. Of the forces that are touted to alter gene frequency and drive evolution, none appear capable of generating such a dramatic alteration so quickly.

“One possibility could involve magnetic (polarity) reversal, a relatively rapid change in the polarity of Earth’s geomagnetic field where the North Pole becomes the south magnetic pole and vice versa.

“This theoretical force of evolution operates on Ecke et al.’s newly-discovered relationship between chiral symmetry (= handedness) and the orientation of the magnetic field.

“With regard to DNA, a change in the orientation of the magnetic field would therefore translate into a left-handed (counterclockwise spiral) to right-hand (clockwise spiral) switch (Z-DNA to B-DNA that can now be transcribed) or the reverse (B-DNA to Z-DNA whose role may be involved with regulating expression of certain genes or in genetic recombination).

“Such changes in handedness of DNA would lead to gene activation or deactivation… differential gene expression, and a change in gene frequency that drives evolution.

Most strikingly, as is well known to geologists, reversals in the orientation of the Earth’s magnetic field occur every 10,000 – 100,000 years (Jacobs 1984) and thus, the pronounced bursts of speciation associated with punctuated-equilibrium evolution are reflected by abrupt changes in gene frequency as a result thereof.”

See entire article, including citations:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/460844

Thanks to Jan Roger Oomkins for this link

Yoder’s paper was published in 1997. If I had known about it, I certainly would have referred to it in “Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps.”

This video from the National Geographic, first posted on 24 Feb 09,  says the next magnetic reversal is “imminent.”

To gain more understanding of our magnetic field, in 2010 the European Space Agency will launch three SWARM satellites. These satellites – successors to the Ørsted satellite – will be equipped with magnetometers to map the earth’s magnetic field. One of the satellites will orbit at about 530 km above the earth, the other two will fly side by side at about 430 km, providing a sort of ‘stereo-vision’ of the magnetic field.

The earth’s magnetic field protects us from deadly cosmic radiation. As our magnetic field strength decays – which it is now doing – and cosmic radiation will – as the above video says – “get increasingly close to Earth’s surface.”

As I maintain in “Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps,” this radiation will lead to mutations and evolutionary leaps.

You can also view the above video, entitled “Magnetic Reversal of Fortune,” here:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/national-geographic-channel/specials-1/science-technology/ngc-magnetic-reversal-of-fortune.html

Thanks to Richard Lacaba for this link

If you Google SWARM, you will primarily get info on earthquake swarms. However, if you Google SWARM and Nils Olsen (a geophysicist working on SWARM), you will get many references to the SWARM satellites.

The Burgess Shale, in the Canadian Rockies some 50 miles west of Banff, is riddled a rich variety of organisms that thrived some 520 to 540 million years ago during the Cambrian Explosion.

Though the Burgess Shale stands almost 7,500 feet above sea level, during the Cambrian Period it lay beneath the sea near the Equator.

Underwater avalanches of fine mud periodically engulfed the area, instantly killing all sorts of organisms and preserving exceptionally fine details of their structures.

Artist's conception of Opabinia on the ocean floor

Some of those details show organisms that had never before existed on the face of the earth. “Weird wonders,” the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould called them.

Opabinia had five eyes – count ‘em, five! – How’s that for weird?

Some of the weird wonders “look more like plumbing devices, plastic hairbrushes or floor polishers than familiar creatures.” One, the three-foot-long Anomalocaris, boasted a mouth resembling a square, sharp-toothed nutcracker.

See drawings of Burgess Shale fossil specimens.

Think of the Cambrian “as biology’s Big Bang,” says this article by Jeanne Maglaty.

Here’s how I describe the Cambrian explosion in Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps:

For all intents and purposes…life on earth began about 580 million years ago at the beginning of the Cambrian Period, when new life suddenly exploded across the earth. A dizzying array of new organisms appeared in the geologic record as if from nowhere. An astonishing burst of shelled forms took place, and virtually all major forms of animal life, including the ubiquitous trilobite, suddenly appeared. (Trilobites were distant cousins of today’s horseshoe crab.)  

Called the Cambrian explosion, the abrupt change from simple life-forms to more advanced was a critical turning point in the history of life. No one knows how or why it happened. What we do know is that the pattern has always been the same—sudden—always sudden. (p.24)

Nature does take leaps

“Most new species appear with a bang, not a protracted crescen­do,” said (Stephen Jay) Gould. “Gradualism is not a fact of nature. A species seems to remain unchanged in the fossil record for millions of years, before abruptly disappearing, only to be replaced just as rapidly with a species that is, though clearly related, substantially different. Nature does take leaps.” (p.21)

Their fossils show that “a lot of evolution’s early experiments failed to survive in the long term,” says Maglaty.

See entire Smithsonian article:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/evotourism/Evotourism-World-Tour-Burgess-Shale-British-Columbia-Canada.html

Thanks to George Mona for this link

Lakes on Titan bigger than Lake Superior - Credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC

Cassini radar image (on left) of the largest body of liquid ever found on Titan’s north pole, compared to Lake Superior (on right). Scientists believe that this lake, and others like it, are most likely liquid methane and ethane.

The new study may help explain the rivers, lakes and clouds of methane on Titan.

The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 5 issue of the journal Nature.

http://www.space.com/14133-saturn-moon-titan-methane-rain-forecast.html

Hydrocarbon lakes on Titan - Credit: NASA/JPL

The Cassini spacecraft has discovered very strong evidence for hydrocarbon lakes on Titan. Dark lake-like patches are scattered all over the high latitudes surrounding Titan’s north pole.

As I ask in “Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps” (p. 136),
Why not here?

If carbon can form in Titan’s hazy skies, if crude oil can rain out of Jupiter’s skies, then why not here?

Mercury - Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

The Messenger space probe of Mercury has confirmed that the innermost planet – the smallest of the eight planets and the closest to the Sun – has a magnetic field 150 times weaker than that of the Earth.

Mercury looks more like the Moon than the Earth, says this article on Physics.org. It’s the only rocky planet that has a global magnetic field like Earth.

But why is its magnetic field so much weaker than Earth’s?

It’s because the solar wind – the electric current constantly flowing from the Sun – counteracts Mercury’s internal dynamo and thus weakens its magnetic field, say scientists at the Technische Universität Braunschweig and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

“Mercury strongly interacts with the surrounding solar wind,” says Daniel Heyner, lead author of a new article published in Science magazine and doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute. This interaction drives strong electrical currents in the magnetosphere of the planet, whose magnetic fields counteract the internal dynamo effect.

“The dynamo process in Mercury’s interior is almost nipped in the bud by the interaction,” explains Karl-Heinz Glassmeier at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, head of the research group.

At an average distance from the Sun of only 58 million kilometres – around one third of the distance of the Earth – Mercury is much more exposed to the solar wind than is Earth.

So let me ask you. If the solar wind can affect Mercury’s magnetic field so drastically, then why, given the right circumstances, couldn’t it affect the earth’s magnetic field? And why, given the right alignment, couldn’t it lead to a magnetic reversal?

See entire article, originally titled “Mercury’s magnetic  field — nipped in the bud”:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-mercury-magnetic-field-nipped.html

Thanks to Wanda for this link

The solar wind is a stream of energized, charged particles, primarily electrons and protons, flowing outward from the Sun in all directions at very high speeds — an average of almost a million mph.

Curiosity Mars Rover

When Paris scientists Franck Lefevre and Francois Forget used a computer model of the Martian climate to reconstruct observations made on Earth, their model showed that the gas is unevenly distributed in the Martian atmosphere and changes with the seasons.

“The current chemistry as we know it is not consistent with the measurements of methane on Mars,” says Dr Lefevre, of the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. “There is something else going on, something that lowers the methane lifetime by a factor of 600.”

If there is a much faster loss for methane on Mars, says Dr LeFevre, there must also be a much stronger production of methane.

In 2003, an American team used three different ground-based telescopes to monitor about 90% of Mar’s surface. The team identified “plumes” of methane. At one point, the primary plume contained an estimated 19,000 tonnes of the gas.

It is vital to understand how so much methane is produced and destroyed so quickly on the Red Planet, says Dr Michael Mumma, director of Nasa’s Goddard Center for Astrobiology.

Dr Mumma does not rule out a biological explanation for the phenomenon but says it is possible that geology alone could be responsible.

See entire article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8186314.stm
Thanks to Siligy for this link

So where does that methane come from? Not from humans, that’s for sure. And not rotting vegetation.

To paraphrase the late Dr. Thomas Gold of Cornell, I am sure that there are no big stagnant swamps on Mars.

Woolly mammoth

If they can find nuclei with undamaged mammoth genes they’ll try to create embryos with mammoth DNA, and then plant those embryos into elephant wombs for delivery.

See entire article, including photos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2069541/Woolly-mammoth-brought-life-cloned-bone-marrow-years.html

Thanks to Mike McEvoy for this link

The earth’s magnetic field has flipped many times over the millennia, says the article. Magnetic reversals happen all the (geologic) time.

“Many doomsday theorists suggest that a magnetic reversal could lead to Earth’s destruction,”  the article continues. “But would there be any dramatic effects?”

“The answer, from the geologic and fossil records we have from hundreds of past magnetic polarity reversals, seems to be ‘no,’” the article asserts. During the last major reversal about 780,000 years ago, the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal, “the fossil record shows no drastic changes in plant or animal life. Deep ocean sediment cores from this period also indicate no changes in glacial activity.”

“A weaker field would certainly lead to a small increase in solar radiation on Earth,” the article continues, “but nothing deadly.”

Nor would it happen fast. “The science shows that magnetic pole reversal is – in terms of geologic time scales – a common occurrence that happens gradually over millennia.”

I beg to differ on almost all counts.

Here’s how I put it in Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps (citations are included in the book):

You’ll often hear that the most recent magnetic reversal occurred about 780,000 years ago at the Brunhes/ Matuyama boundary. But that date is way off the mark. At least ten magnetic reversals and excursions, probably many more, have ravaged our planet during the past 780,000 years.

Laschamp magnetic reversal

In 1967, Norbert Bonhommet and J. Babkine discovered a geomagnetic reversal in lava flows at Laschamp and Olby, at Chaîne des Puys (chain of volcanoes) in central France. Our magnetic field reversed about twenty to thirty thousand years ago, they announced, and then remained reversed for about ten thousand years. They called it the Laschamp magnetic reversal. Is it just a coincidence, Bonhommet asked, that the return to normal polarity corresponded with the end of an ice age?

Though later research placed the Laschamp event at around 44,000 years ago, its discovery made us aware that other magnetic reversals or excursions might have occurred.

Gothenburg magnetic excursion

The most recent excursion, the Gothenburg magnetic excursion, occurred about 12,350 years ago. During that excursion, magnetic intensity fell dramatically, to about twenty percent of the Holocene average. At the same time, magnetic inclination moved 180o. It also fluctuated, making wild swings of up 80°.

Mono Lake magnetic excursion

Another magnetic excursion, the Mono Lake excursion, occurred about 23,000 years ago. During the Mono Lake event, magnetic intensity fell ten times faster than normal.

Lake Mungo magnetic excursion

Before that came the Lake Mungo excursion of 33,500 years ago. And prior to that came the “real” Laschamp event of about 47,000 years ago, when magnetic intensity fell to less than 15% of today’s (All magnetic reversals and excursions show major decreases in intensity.)

See the cycle?

Those excursions struck like clockwork every 11,500 years, and they’ve been doing it for millions of years.

Geomagnetic reversals about 10,000 years apart have been found in the 65-million-year-old Deccan Traps, said geophysicist Vincent Courtillot. Indeed, 10,000-year hiatuses between lavas of opposite polarities are observed “frequently.”

Other scientists agree. Magnetic intensity fluctuations of from two to 30,000 years’ duration appear in the marine record as “tiny wiggles” and are therefore easy to overlook, said Steven  Cande and Dennis Kent of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. We believe that this type of  behavior of  tiny  wiggles,  they  said, “may have characterized the geomagnetic dynamo throughout the Cenozoic [the last 65 million years].”

I think we’ll eventually find millions of such “tiny wiggles” in the geologic record.

Geomagnetic reversals and ice ages

But here’s the topper: Catastrophic cooling and rapid ice build-up accompanied many of those magnetic reversals and excursions. At least twelve ice ages can be correlated with magnetic reversals and excursions in the past two million years alone.

The Gothenburg magnetic excursion coincided with a period of short-term ice and snow, said Michael R. Rampino of NASA, as did the Lake Mungo excursion, when rapid cooling immediately followed a period of warmth.

The Mono Lake magnetic excursion coincided with glaciation; the Blake magnetic reversal at the end-Eemian coincided with glaciation, as did Biwa I, Biwa II, and  Biwa III.

Each of those catastrophic cooling episodes, said Rampino, “may have been triggered by a magnetic excursion. The Earth’s magnetic field may be directly modulated by precession.”

So there you have it.

Polarity reversals, equinoctial precession, and ice ages, all march to the same drummer. As do extinctions and new species appearance. Toss in the specter of massive amounts of radioactivity falling on your head, and you’ve got the picture.

Look at the number of catastrophes that have befallen our planet in sync with magnetic reversals during the last 115,000 years alone:

Catastrophes in sync with equinoctial precession
(kya = thousands of years)

115 kya – Blake magnetic reversal. Spikes in radioactive carbon-14 and strontium.  Ice age begins abruptly following a period of warmth similar to today’s. Sea levels surge 20 feet, then plunge at least 50 feet, in less than a century.

43 kya – Laschamps magnetic excursion. Beryllium spike (three times normal). Carbon-14 spike (two times normal). Ice age begins abruptly. Rising reefs.

34 kya – Lake Mungo magnetic excursion. Beryllium spike. Carbon-14 spike (almost twice normal). Short-term ice build-up, then ice age ends abruptly. Lake Missoula flood. Lake Bonneville flood. Intensive volcanism. Neanderthal disappears.

23 kya – Mono Lake magnetic excursion. Ice age begins abruptly. Major volcanism. Spikes in radioactive beryllium and carbon-14 (four to five times normal). Mass extinction. European forest elephant disappears. Mammoths clobbered.

11 kya – Gothenburg magnetic excursion. Mass extinction; 72% of large mammal species go extinct, whereas only 10% of small mammal species disappear. Spikes in radioactive carbon-14 (three to four times normal), beryllium-10 (two to three times normal), iridium (two to three times normal). Spikes in CO2 and many other elements. Rapid and severe ice build-up, then ice age ends in less than 20 years and today’s warm period begins. Worldwide volcanism. Nile River flood.  Connecticut River flood. Lake Missoula flood. Lake Bonneville flood. Gulf of Mexico flood. St. Lawrence River flood. Worldwide tectonic uplift. Creation of the Carolina Bays.

And that brings us to today, frighteningly unprepared for the next beat of the magnetic-reversal cycle.

(By the way, I think those spikes in radioactive beryllium, strontium, iridium and carbon-14 lead to mutations and evolutionary leaps. And they say there would be “no dramatic effects”?)

See entire SOTT article:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/238405-2012-Magnetic-Pole-Reversal-Happens-All-The-Geologic-Time

Thanks to Peter Lamb for this link