"An ‘Earth Day’ is 24 hours long, and that more precisely it is 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds long. But this hasn’t always been the case. Detailed studies of fossil shells, and the banded deposits in certain sandstones, reveal a much different length of day in past eras! These bands in sedimentation and shell-growth follow the lunar month and have individual bands representing the number of days in a lunar month. By counting the number of bands, geologists can work out the number of days in a year, and from this the number of hours in a day when the shell was grown, or the deposits put down." Credits: NASA
Apparently, something
hit Jupiter during the early hours of Sept. 10th
(11:35 UT), igniting a ferocious fireball in the
giant planet's cloudtops. Amateur astronomer Dan
Peterson Racine, Wisconsin, saw it first through
his Meade 12" LX200 telescope. "It was
a bright white flash that lasted only 1.5 - 2 seconds,"
he reports. Another amateur astronomer, George Hall
of Dallas, Texas, was video-recording Jupiter at
the time, and he confirmed the fireball with this
video screenshot (left).
The fireball was probably caused by a small asteroid
or comet hitting Jupiter. Similar impacts were observed in June and August 2010.
An analysis of those earlier events suggests that
Jupiter is frequently struck by 10 meter-class asteroids -one
of the hazards of orbiting near the asteroid belt
and having such a strong gravitational pull.
Astronomers around the world will
now begin monitoring the impact site for signs of
debris - either the cindery remains of the impactor
or material dredged up from beneath Jupiter's cloud
tops. Some impacts do produce such debris, while others don't. See also HERE & HERE
The object changed Earth's orbit and axis, causing innumerable catastrophes which were mentioned in early mythologies and religions around the world.
Fifty-two years later, it passed close by again, stopping the Earth's rotation for a while and causing more catastrophes. Then, in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, Mars (itself displaced by Venus) made close approaches to the Earth; this incident caused a new round of disturbances and disasters.
After that, the current "celestial order" was established. The courses of the planets stabilized over the centuries and Venus gradually became a "normal" planet. See also HERE
On
September 9th the San Cristobal volcano in Nicaragua has rumbled to
life with three explosions, forcing the evacuation of 3,000 residents.
San
Cristobal, located 135 km northwest of Managua, is one of the country’s
most active volcanoes. Since Thursday, when an earthquake of
7.6-magnitude rocked neighboring Costa Rica and was also felt in
Nicaragua. People
are now fearing the powerful quake would have an “impact on the
activation” on several other active volcanoes in the region. See also HERE
Solar Activity vs Earthquakes and Volcanoes: When solar activity increases, the corpuscular emission and solar magnetic field strength increase rapidly as well, inducing ring currents in various layers of Earth, particularly, in lithosphere and astheposphere. Currents in asthenosphere appeared as a result of solar activity increase cause mantle heating, its plasticity growth and as a result convection currents acceleration. Convection currents acceleration leads to spreading acceleration, and increase of mantle temperature – to its heat expansion while Earth extension is taken place due to spreading. In the periods of solar activity decrease the ring currents magnitude inducing in the mantle, decreases as well and as a result there decreases temperature and Earth compression, accompanying by the process of subduction. See also HERE
Researchers have noticed coincidence between sunspot minima and occurrences of major earthquakes or volcanoes.The Earth’s iron core (source of the Earth’s magnetic field, i.e. the Earth’s dynamo) does not rotate around the same axes as the Earth itself, hence dislocation of magnetic poles. Jupiter-Saturn gravitational forces pull the Sun around its barycentre. The same forces pull the Earth’s mass centre away from its orbital trajectory, the eccentricity of the Earth’s iron core to the rest of its bodily mass causing drift of its magnetic poles. It follows that a certain major planets configuration will cause disturbances within the Earth’s interior which may initiate major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. See also HERE & HERE