It was the worst day in the history of life on Earth. One moment, the Age of Dinosaurs lumbered on as it had for millions and millions of years. The next, a roughly six-mile-wide chunk of space rock slammed into the Earth, kicking off a mass extinction that would wipe out the non-avian dinosaurs and many other forms of life. And now, more than 66 million years later, researchers have begun to pinpoint where that cataclysm-sparking piece of rock came from.

The fact that a huge piece of extraterrestrial rock struck what is now the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago is not controversial. And, year by year, scientists working in different disciplines keep amassing more evidence that this unprecedented event caused our planet’s fifth mass extinction. The incredible heat of impact debris returning to the atmosphere, global wildfires and a dust cloud that blocked the sun for years all played a role. In the end, almost three quarters of known species went extinct during the cataclysm.

So far, however, most of what we know about the event has come from earthbound evidence. No one really knew where the dino-destroying rock came from or how it came to intersect our planet’s orbit.

Published in Scientific Reports today, the new study by astronomers Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, propose that a series of break-ups and chance events sent the huge chunk of space rock our way.

The new hypothesis was discovered by looking outward, then looking inward. “My work on the asteroid impact rates for Earth-like exoplanets prompted me to investigate the properties of cometary impact rates on such systems,” Siraj says. Naturally, what better way to understand Earth-like planets than studying our own solar system? By looking at our astronomical neck of the woods, Siraj noticed that some comets came very close to Earth after having close brushes with the sun.

The story likely started in the Oort Cloud. This is a cloud-like field of debris around the sun. But the debris don’t always stay there. The gravitational pull of the sun and Jupiter can pull comets and asteroids out of the cloud and inadvertently set them on a course for other parts of the solar system.

Some of the Oort Cloud comets are often big, between 10 and 37 miles across. And, Siraj noticed, when such large chunks of rock pass close enough to the sun, its massive gravitational forces can tear the rocks into smaller chunks. Those chunks might not be small in an absolute sense. Some can still be miles across, just like the one that struck the Earth 66 million years ago.

Both the sun and the planet Jupiter are so large that their gravity alters the orbits of comets that pass towards the middle of our solar system. Jupiter’s massive gravitational field sometimes disrupts their orbit and sends them closer to the sun. The overall effect, Siraj says, is “like a pinball machine.”

Some of these rocks passing close to the sun, Siraj says, “produce fields of cometary shrapnel.” The breakup of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is an example of just this sort of interstellar interaction. This comet was pulled apart by Jupiter’s gravity in 1992 before the pieces crashed into the planet in 1994.

Not that all experts agree with this new model. Asteroid expert Bill Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute says that events like Shoemaker-Levy 9 may have more stringent requirements than the new model suggests. Further, Bottke says, the model predicts that other planets in the solar system should show signs of these large impacts through time.

Siraj responds that time is a critical factor, with the new model focusing on objects that don’t immediately crash into Jupiter but make their way further into the solar system. And, Siraj says, “It is certainly possible that Mercury, Venus, or Mars had similar impact events,” but this was outside the scope of the present study.

The implications of the hypothesis go beyond the fate of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. Other impacts marked Earth both before and after the end-Cretaceous collision. These impacts didn’t trigger mass extinctions, but they still created massive craters like the Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan and the Vredefort crater in South Africa

If all of this has you a little nervous looking at the night sky, though, don’t worry. The new model predicts that a comet or asteroid the size of the one that struck at the end of the Cretaceous is only going to strike Earth every 250 to 730 million years or so. What happened 66 million years ago was a truly exceptional and rare event, underscored by the fact that it is the only mass extinction in the history of life on Earth to be caused by an impact rather than Earth-bound causes like intense volcanic activity.

Most of the daughter rocks created by the Jupiter “pinball machine” just go sailing right on by. In fact, Siraj notes: “The major, short-term risks to the Earth still come from near-Earth asteroids, which are the focus of most planetary defense efforts.” That’s small comfort in a big universe.


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If we are just offshoots (pieces) of God experiencing itself, what is the point of believing in reincarnation especially when we don't remember?

Same reason people go into the movie theater. We have something called the suspension of disbelief every time we sit in a theater seat. What we aren’t aware of is that we are both the people on the screen and the people in the audience. The people in the audience are aware of every lifetimes, of every screen role played or seen. The people on the screen are not aware of the audience, not aware of the previous roles they’ve played… and yet they are. They often run into people that they feel that they’ve known forever. They know instinctively about some people - about their feelings about them as they meet them for the first time.

Then there’s the added benefit of being someone who can “use hypnotherapy” while they are onscreen. And by bypassing the filters of that onscreen character, they can access the person in the theater seat and recall some or all of those lifetimes. Sometimes they bypass the filters through a near death event, out of body experience… or using hallucinogens.

Some people are born without those filters - children who see grandpa, or who recall previous lifetimes (“I was your father before”). Some people lose those filters when they get close to death - 70% of all the hospice care workers in the UK report that their dementia patients spontaneously “remember” their memories just prior to passing… As Dr. Greyson, psychiatrist and NDE researcher at UVA puts it “As if their filters have died along with their brains.”

Because the post mortem autopsies show the brains had atrophied, and shouldn’t have been able to access memories - but do.

So it’s not that everyone is unaware of their previous lifetimes. I’ve filmed 100 sessions (half without hypnosis) and all of those people are now aware of at least one of them - and in my case I’ve done 6 sessions, and have an awareness (historical records and the feeling of “home” when I visit those locations) of a number of lifetimes.

So theoretically people can argue about the reason or purpose - but in practical terms, people choose to come to the planet specifically because they know the human animal is incapable of recalling their past adventures there. Almost like an episode of “Westworld” (which was written by Michael Crichton after he had a hypnotherapy session when he recalled being a Gladiator.)


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 meditation is derived from the Old French term meditacioun, which was taken from the Latin root word meditatio, which means "to think, contemplate, devise, or ponder". And the term meditatio was first used by a 12th century monk Guigo II to describe a step-wise process of contemplation.



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SAHARA 

It’s name is the Arabic word for what it literally is. 

It’s the third largest of its kind, behind the Arctic and Antarctica.

The entire land area of the United States of America would fit inside of it.

It has over 20 lakes, but only one is fresh water.

It takes up 8% of the Earth’s total land mass and it expands and contracts with the seasons. 

It’s 10% larger today than it was a century ago.

It connects 11 countries.

It houses some of the largest underground water supplies in the entire world.

Its highest point is an extinct volcano called Mount Koussi at 11,200 ft.

It’s home to a variety of wildlife.

At night, temperatures can reach lows of -6°C (21 °F).

Around 2.5 million people call it home, and it has the largest population of nomads in the world.


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