Justinian Comet Impact

[uniface]

Abstract

A global climatic downturn has previously been observed in tree-ring data associated with the years AD 536-545. We review the evidence for the explanation of this event which involves a comet fragment impacting the Earth and exploding in the upper atmosphere. The explosion would create a plume, such as was seen during the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter. The resulting debris deposited by the plume on to the top of the atmosphere would increase the opacity and lower the temperature. We calculate the size of the comet required, and find that a relatively small fragment of only about half a kilometre in diameter could be consistent with the data. We conclude that plume formation is a by-product of small comet impacts that must be added to the list of significant global hazards posed by near-Earth objects.

http://www.sott.net/article/276055-Just ... -in-536-AD

[Cognito]

While there was a significant climactic cooling globally, associating a comet impact with a resulting plague is risky business. Granted that grain failures and food shortages will result in some amount of immunosuppression, but the Justinian Plague was highly virulent:

http://www.armstrong.edu/Initiatives/hi ... effects_on

Mike Baillie also attempted to connect the Black Death of 1347-51 to a comet impact, but there was none at the time as far as I know; maybe EP knows of a candidate. More likely, Yersinia pestis simply killed off people at a high mortality rate. Something downturned the climate during the years 545-6, but the coincidence of the two events could be just that, an unfortunate coincidence.

Regardless, Justinian's attempts at conquering and reforming the Western Roman Empire were squashed.

[kbs2244]

I understand the possible “leap to conclusions.”
But the line between healthy people and unhealthy was much thinner in Justin’s day.
It would not take much to tip the advantage in favor of the fleas.

[uniface]

Not to mention that, even within my lifetime, the supposedly "settled long ago" matter of what the plagues such as the Black Death were have been revised. Sometimes repeatedly. And some of them without closure even yet.

People can go so far with data. Then they just make stuff up to complete the picture in a way that satisfies them. People in physics are doing it today the same way that Copernicus & company were doing it back then. Seriously. Positrons, quarks and neutrinos might as well be hobbits, elves and dwarves. They aren't "real" by any stretch of the imagination. But they "work" to paint a more or less coherent picture that can be manipulated.

"We know about 'bubonic plague,' and it might have been what killed so many people, so it must have been what was responsible. So that's settled now."

[circumspice]

Your conspiracy slip is showing. Nobody really wants to fool you, that's just your cherished notion.

The debate about what organism caused which plague is no longer a raging debate. Most of the questions have been answered through DNA testing.

[circumspice]

Who's your daddy?

[Cognito]

The debate about what organism caused which plague is no longer a raging debate. Most of the questions have been answered through DNA testing.

Answer: Yersinia pestis. See: http://archaeology.about.com/od/Ancient ... pestis.htm

I could go deeper, but see no reason in doing so. Victims of the Black Death (1347-1351) have been exhumed and the bacterium characterized.

[uniface]

even within my lifetime, the supposedly "settled long ago" matter of what the plagues such as the Black Death were have been revised. Sometimes repeatedly. And some of them without closure even yet.

Lets try this again.

One

little

bit

at

a

time

for the benefit of the cognitively challenged with reading comprehension issues among us.

Nobody said anything about Black Plague being still up in the air. That's the straw man you set up so you could demolish it in an impressive show of clueless fervor.

There have been quite a number of plagues in human history. Like the one that took out most of the Native Americans previous to the Europeans like DeSoto showing up. The identifications of these have been revised over the years. And repeatedly. Some of them are still not settled (although you would not guess this from reading what the grand poohbahs write).

I'm not going to bother looking these up, chapter and verse. What I said was factually accurate. Where you ran with it was the problem.

[uniface]

And yes, I am old and cranky.

But you're not helping any either . . .

[uniface]

KBS nailed it.

http://www.sott.net/article/276517-Rese ... -pathogens

Archaeologists and forensic scientists who have examined 25 skeletons unearthed in the Clerkenwell area of London a year ago believe they have uncovered the truth about the nature of the Black Death that ravaged Britain and Europe in the mid-14th century. Analysis of the bodies and of wills registered in London at the time has cast doubt on "facts" that every schoolchild has learned for decades: that the epidemic was caused by a highly contagious strain spread by the fleas on rats.

Now evidence taken from the human remains found in Charterhouse Square, to the north of the City of London, during excavations carried out as part of the construction of the Crossrail train line, have suggested a different cause: only an airborne infection could have spread so fast and killed so quickly.

The Black Death arrived in Britain from central Asia in the autumn of 1348 and by late spring the following year it had killed six out of every 10 people in London. Such a rate of destruction would kill five million now. By extracting the DNA of the disease bacterium, Yersinia pestis, from the largest teeth in some of the skulls retrieved from the square, the scientists were able to compare the strain of bubonic plague preserved there with that which was recently responsible for killing 60 people in Madagascar. To their surprise, the 14th-century strain, the cause of the most lethal catastrophe in recorded history, was no more virulent than today's disease. The DNA codes were an almost perfect match.

According to scientists working at Public Health England in Porton Down, for any plague to spread at such a pace it must have got into the lungs of victims who were malnourished and then been spread by coughs and sneezes. It was therefore a pneumonic plague rather than a bubonic plague. Infection was spread human to human, rather than by rat fleas that bit a sick person and then bit another victim. "As an explanation [rat fleas] for the Black Death in its own right, it simply isn't good enough. It cannot spread fast enough from one household to the next to cause the huge number of cases that we saw during the Black Death epidemics," said Dr Tim Brooks from Porton Down, who will put his theory in a Channel 4 documentary, Secret History: The Return of the Black Death, next Sunday.

To support his argument, Brooks has looked at what happened in Suffolk in 1906 when plague killed a family and then spread to a neighbour who had come to help. The culprit was pneumonic plague, which had settled in the lungs of the victims and was spread through infected breath.

The skeletons at Charterhouse Square reveal that the population of London was also in generally poor health when the disease struck. Crossrail's archaeology contractor, Don Walker, and Jelena Bekvalacs of the Museum of London found evidence of rickets, anaemia, bad teeth and childhood malnutrition.

In support of the case that this was a fast-acting, direct contagion, archaeologist Dr Barney Sloane found that in the medieval City of London all wills had to be registered at the Court of Hustings. These led him to believe that 60% of Londoners were wiped out.

Antibiotics can today prevent the disease from becoming pneumonic. In the spring of 1349, the death rate did not ease until Pentecost on 31 May.

Comment: What is not being considered is that outbreaks were recorded almost simultaneously in many parts of Europe. "Air-borne" spread of the plague may have come from cosmic events.

http://www.sott.net/article/272057-The- ... Negra-1347

http://www.sott.net/article/145683-New- ... Connection

[Cognito]

Comment: What is not being considered is that outbreaks were recorded almost simultaneously in many parts of Europe. "Air-borne" spread of the plague may have come from cosmic events.

OK, what is your definition of "simultaneously"? Minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

And what cosmic vector of infection is employed that kills 60% while leaving the other 40% unaffected?

[uniface]

I seem to remember Velikovsky covering that pretty thoroughly.

[Minimalist]

Yes...figured you would.

[Cognito]

I seem to remember Velikovsky covering that pretty thoroughly.

Can you cite anything in support of your statement?

[uniface]

Da Fuq, Cog. I read the series when I was in College & remember that he covered that aspect of it impressively well, pulling all kinds of data out of astronomical records in ancient historical accounts.

45 years later you want chapter & verse -- to save your lazy S the bother of looking it up -- after I've told you where you can find it ?

I'm not your grad assistant.