Catastrophic cosmic impact in the next 7 days?

I certainly hope not, but if Deep Impact in real life were to happen in our lifetimes, I’d bet on the next 7 days…

Every year between September 10th and November 20th, the Earth crosses the northern Taurid Meteor Stream in space. During this time, astronomers sleep fitfully as all seven billion of us are metaphorically dashing blindfolded across a 4-lane freeway.

Usually, the Taurid crossing is uneventful and merely a good time to have a nocturnal picnic and enjoy a meteor show. But — space is not a friendly place — out there, hurtling through the frigid void at tremendous velocities, are thousands of planet (or civilization) killers and we are most likely to encounter one during the Taurid crossing. So if nothing cosmically newsworthy happens in the next 7 days, you should breathe a sigh of existential relief (and maybe share a bottle of champagne with friends or family on Saturday to celebrate!)

I learned about the existential Taurid threat from Graham Hancock, author of America Before and Magicians of the Gods, who wrote…

The Taurid Meteor Stream. Remnant of a giant comet 100+ kilometers in diameter, before undergoing fragmentation. The stream includes three known comets or comet-like objects, namely: Enke, Oljiato, and Rudnicki, and nineteen of the brightest near-earth objects. (p. 531)

More bad news, not only do you have to go into September with glances of skyward trepidation, we also cross the southern Taurid Meteor Stream between June 5th and July 19th. And, like Neo in The Matrix, who still got shot once even though he was pretty good at dodging bullets, catastrophic collisions occur between the Earth and Taurid fragments even in recent history…

On most of these biannual encounters with the Taurids we just get the pretty fireworks, but occasionally we get more. On June 30, 1908, for example, an object thought to have fallen out of the Taurid meteor stream, and estimated to be somewhere between 60 and 190 meters in diameter, penetrated earth’s atmosphere. It exploded in the air — fortunately above an uninhabited region of Siberia — flattening 80 million trees across an area of 2,000 square kilometers. (pp. 531–532)
Professor Napier and his colleague Victor Clube, formerly dean of the Astrophysics Department at Oxford University, go so far as to describe the “unique complex of debris” within the Taurid stream as “the greatest collision hazard facing the earth at the present time.” (pp. 532–533)

It gets eerier…

Hancock’s books make the compelling case, with an abundance of evidence, that just such an encounter with the Taurid Meteor Stream took out the relatively advanced civilization extant about 12,000 years ago that that Plato called Atlantis — an extraordinary claim, I know, you’ll want to peruse my review of America Before, to get a snapshot of this evidence for this.

Spoiler alert: The conclusion reached in Hancock’s other book, Magicians of the Gods, is that our civilization is in grave danger of being destroyed by the same comet or asteroids that destroyed Atlantis. We live in an astronomically notable time where from our perspective the milky way galaxy has two “gates” on either side and our summer solstice points at the nuclear bulge in the center of the galaxy.

The really odd thing about the megaliths at Göbekli Tepe, Turkey is that they seem to be pointing at our time, specifically 1960–2040.

It is therefore strange, and indeed somewhat eerie, to find the solar and astronomical coordinates of the exact same 80 — year window between 1960 and 2040 prophesied by the Maya to mark a turning point in human history, carved in high relief on a 12,000 — year — old pillar in Göbekli Tepe in far — off Turkey. (p. 327)
some suspect that “ the return of the Phoenix ” will take place in our own time — indeed by or before the year 2040 — and there is a danger that one of the objects in its debris stream may be as much as 30 kilometers ( 18.6 miles ) in diameter. A collision with such a large cometary fragment would, at the very least, mean the end of civilization as we know it, and perhaps even the end of all human life on this planet. (p. 234)

So you’re starting to see how I arrived at my speculation about the next 7 days. We’re living in astronomically interesting times. In 2021 it really feels like our civilization is facing some sort of judgment for its folly and deserving of bad times that breed strong men. So I really would not be that surprised if this were the year that our astronomical human hubris got a much-deserved lesson from the cosmos. And if we get past 2040 without that happening I think we can finally regard things like the Mayan 2012 prophecy and Göbekli Tepe’s 12,000-year-old message as superstitious flights of fancy from long-dead civilizations that just didn’t have the right stuff to cut it in this entropic universe.

Perhaps you’re saying…

Jonathan, you’ve really “jumped the shark” now! Making date-specific apocalyptic predictions…

I’m not making any apocalyptic predictions, somebody smart said something like, “the apocalypse will be long, and boring” — and that’s what I suspect. But, if I had to place a bet on Deep Impact in real life happening, I’d bet on the next 7 days or within the next 20 years.

Also, the likelihood of a planet killer coming along in your lifetime is quite low, what’s a lot more likely is something like the Tunguska event in Siberia about a hundred years ago, if that happened now it would be an incredible and unprecedented shock to the system. The “doomsday” preppers who invested their money in long-term food supplies, precious metals, or even cryptocurrency would be doing A LOT better than those of us who always had to have the shiniest, fastest new smartphone!

You might say…

If “Deep Impact in Real Life” was going to happen, the government would WARN us…

Why would the government do that? Isn’t it more likely that in the event of an impending catastrophe the government would take (seemingly nonsensical) measures to ensure its grasp on power, constricting freedoms, instead of making a big announcement that would freak out billions of people? And what have governments across the globe been doing in response to an invisible threat that’s killed relatively few people…

Memento mori

I hope you appreciate that I refrained from sharing this with you back in September and am only holding you in suspense for only 7 days. You might say…

Why would I even worry about this sort of thing? It’s not like there’s anything I can do about a cosmic impact…

This week (and perhaps for a few days in June) I’ll suggest that you take a little time to meditate on your death — memento mori. Contemplating the inevitable puts things into perspective. All those things we stress and fret about retreat into the shadows when we look down the long tunnel of time that leads to a box in the ground.

• If you’re spiritual or religious, death is an exciting and suspenseful end of a chapter, but more importantly, a reason to be a decent human being — whatever immorality you got away with in this life, you’ll face judgment and consequences for in the next. I’m a theologically-adroit Christian so I believe in God’s forgiveness, but I also believe that I’ll have to answer for the wrong I’ve done.
• If you’re an atheist, you probably prefer not to deeply contemplate death, because few of us possess the fortitude to countenance the total and utter deletion of ourselves.
• If you’re a Transhumanist, you’ve got to be naively hopeful to believe that science can ultimately save you death, what was the last time that science (with its billions and billions of dollars in funding) even cured a common disease?

This great leap into the unknown is inevitable for all of us, memento mori.

When I memento mori, I think of Arminius who was portrayed in the excellent recent Netflix historical-drama series Barbarians. Facing the enslavement and eventually annihilation of his people and culture by Rome, he unified the proto-German barbarian tribes of Europe to rebel against the most powerful military on Earth. He gave up a life of relative comfort as a Roman officer and chose the one death on his feet instead of the thousand deaths on his knees. But unlike in Arminius’s time, our rulers don’t enslave us with shackles, now they enslave us with comfort. Now you don’t fight tyranny, oppression, and injustice with swords, pikes, or guns — you fight for freedom by resisting the siren song of comfort — the junk food, the junk entertainment, the junk people, the junk politics, the porn, the timewasting online dating apps, the credit card debt-fueled consumerism, the booze, the marijuana — in every domain of life.

Futurecast yourself to your last days, looking back on your life, will you say…?

“I wish I had watched more TV or played more video games. I wish I had spent more time on social media. I wish I had gone to more casual dining restaurants. I wish I had worked more hours so I could always afford the cool new smartphone.”

Of course not! You’ll say…

“I wish I would have been braver and pushed myself a little further outside my comfort zone. I wish I had gone skydiving. I wish I would have spent more time stopping and smelling the roses. I wish I would have worried a little less about the silly things. I wish I had made up with that family member I was estranged from for all those years. I wish I would have meditated at the beach more at sunrise. I wish I would have spent more time with my family. I wish I would have fought a little harder for a better world for my children and grandchildren!”

Unless some sort of nonsensical COVID restrictions would prevent you from doing so, I’d suggest you take 30 or 40 minutes this week to go meditate in a graveyard (don’t sit in the grass unless you want bugs to crawl up your delectable legs!) Memento mori becomes a lot more tangible in this setting and you’ll leave with a renewed sense of purpose and clarity.