Friday, December 20, 2013

Halley Harbinger of Doom!



Can you wrap your head around it?  Halley's comet as the bringer of famine and death!? So it would seem.  

A recent LiveScience article suggests that the famine of 536A.D.  may have been brought about by a massive impact from a fragment of none other than the famous comet.    The climate changes brought on by the kicked up debris devastated crops and as such many people starved and sickened.  

In these weakened conditions, many people became susceptible to "Justinian's plague" in 541-542 A.D.  to go on later to be know as Europe's The Black Death!  

  • The new results come from an analysis of Greenland ice that was laid down between A.D. 533 and 540. The ice cores record large amounts of atmospheric dust during this seven-year period, not all of it originating on Earth.
 Of course there is only circumstantial evidence to suggest that a fragment was present to do this level of damage.  But to do the type of damage it is suggested that  the fragment measuring about 2000 feet wide disintegrated high up in the atmosphere spreading enough dust around the globe to cause the wide spread famines that history records.  

Check out the LiveScience blog entry HERE 

Thanks to Xnewsman for the heads up

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