Meteor-hit in Russia – some thoughts.

 

This is a belated post on the meteor –hit in Russia, but better late than never.

On 22^nd February, 2013, a meteor / asteroid of 17 metres in diameter and weighing 10,000 metric tons entered the atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 mph and broke apart about 12 to 15 miles above the Earth's surface and landed at Chelyabinsk in Russia as a fireball around 9:20 am local time.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/15/world/europe/russia-meteor-shower/index.html

 

This was an unexpected event from space at that time, while the world was actually waiting to watch another asteroid to pass across the earth from the near the sky off Sumatra on the same day 16 hours after this event. Fortunately both of them did not cause any grave havoc. Though the Russian meteor was found to be 30 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, the extent of damage was much less. Compared to this the asteroid-hit that struck Russia at Tunguska in 1908 was more serious as it was supposed to have been 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. Though that event continues to be a matter of scientific investigation, the fact remains that not much damage happened to the people and the world as a whole. In comparison the Fukushima earthquake was supposed to have disturbed the earth's tilt by some micro units.

Usually events like this used to fascinate me and I used to dabble something by picking out something from astrology or mythology. But this time I couldn't catch up anything other than thinking that the world is safe! The first thought was that my daily prayer paid well – "Loka samstha sukhino bhavanthu" (Let the whole world / everyone be happy). I never want to hear any suffering for anyone around me. Particularly if it pertains to Space I can never bear the thought of some bolt from the blue hitting someone on the earth. It is because Space and the objects in Space continue to give me an indescribable sense of calmness, compassion and happiness. Anyone who had gone to Space had experienced it. Michael Collins, the first ever man to have circled the earth all alone had expressed how alone and fragile that the earth is going in Space. Sitting here on earth I have experienced it many times just by looking at the sky and the stars. How alone we are in space, but still going safely with Brahman protecting us (the earth) like a cocoon! The image of the  magnetic field around the earth that deflects solar radiation gives me this thought of Brahman and the earth as a cocoon.

 As a lover of space and an avid sky-watcher, I cannot bear the thought of some object from space smashing on earth and causing havoc. The first ever such incident in my memory was the fall of the Skylab.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab#Re-entry

I was a teen then, much engrossed in space entities and didn't wish to hear anything bad to happen to space programmes or a space programme to fail and fall down as hell on someone's head. I was keenly following the broadcasts of how the falling skylab was handled so that it would not cause harm to life. Like how I am doing blogging nowadays, I was habituated to writing poetry in my teens on anything that affected me.  The hype created on the fall of the Skylab was such that I was worried that it would fall on someone and wrote an "Anthem for an unknown victim" before the skylab-fall. But nothing untoward happened which made me write a "Realisation" (after the skylab fell on the ocean near Australia) that God is near and He would never allow the rhythm of the world go astray because He is Duty-bound to protect this world.

This love of Space and Space objects was one of the things I transferred to my kids. On hearing about the meteor-fall in Russia, they kept asking me what I think about these events and why I didn't blog on these events.  I could not think of any astrological connection but what kept appearing in my mind was TIME! Everything has its root in Time. If something were to happen, Time must be conducive for it. So many meteors have gone past the earth or crashed on the earth, but for them to become menacing, Time must be supportive of such a menace. On that Friday, two asteroids had come closer to earth. One of them fell on earth while the other just whizzed past. But nothing grievous happened because it was not Time for a grievous happening to mankind.

Thinking of it, Mahabharata talks about Time as the cause for events at many places. The very first chapter of Mahabharata narrates the importance of TIME as the causative factor for whatever happened as Mahabharata! When Dhritharashtra was aggrieved at the death of his sons, his charioteer Sanjaya consoled him by pointing out that it is TIME that does everything. 

"No one can leave the way marked out for him by Providence. Existence and non-existence, pleasure and pain all have Time for their root. Time createth all things and Time destroyeth all creatures. It is Time that burneth creatures and it is Time that extinguisheth the fire. All states, the good and the evil, in the three worlds, are caused by Time.

Time cutteth short all things and createth them anew. Time alone is awake when all things are asleep: indeed, Time is incapable of being overcome. Time passeth over all things without being retarded. Knowing, as thou dost, that all things past and future and all that exist at the present moment, are the offspring of Time, it behoveth thee not to throw away thy reason."

A similar sentiment was narrated by Ved Vyasa when Arjuna reached him after the exit of Krishna. Exactly a week after Krishna ascended to his Abode, sea water entered Dwaraka. Arjuna was evacuating the remaining population mostly of women and children to safer places. But alas, on the way they were attacked by Mlecchas in the land of five rivers who abducted many women of Vrishni clan. They included married, unmarried and pregnant women. There is every reason to believe that the so-called Aryan presence in Iran or the claim of Darius, as the Aryan of the Aryans originated from these women of Royal and excellent calibre of Dwaraka of Krishna. It is Time that had pushed them into the hands of Mlecchas!

It's Time that didn't come to the help of Arjuna when they were abducted. Arjun's military prowess had no match until then. But he found himself thoroughly helpless and weak at that moment. He could not raise his Gandeepa to fight to stop the abduction of these women. It was as though he lost his power when Krishna was not with him. Already they were distressed at the exit of Krishna, at the loss of Vrishni men who killed one another and the loss of their land to the oceans. Life was indeed terrible at that moment. When he lamented this to Vyasa, Vyasa said as follows:

"All this has Time for its root. Time is, indeed, the seed of the universe, O Dhananjaya. It is Time again, that withdraws everything at its pleasure. One becomes mighty, and, again, losing that might, becomes weak. One becomes a master and rules others, and, again, losing that position, becomes a servant for obeying the behests of others. Thy weapons, having achieved success, have gone away to the place they came from. They will, again, come into thy hands when the Time for their coming approaches."

Thinking on these lines, our world is indeed sailing in space alone and against all odds. It is ramming through much of space debris many a times. But if nothing happens to it, it is because the TIME favours it to move safely. The two asteroids passing the earth on that Friday very much had the potential to create a global havoc, but nothing of that sort happened. It is because Time did not favour such havoc at that moment.

But Time had not been favourable at all times in the past. Thinking specifically of meteor or asteroid hits of the past, I can quote 2 instances, one just before the onset of Mahabharata war and another a week after Krishna's exit from this earth.

Just before the start of the Mahabharata war, Vyasa was narrating to Dhritharashtra the unusual events noted in the sky and on the terrestrial plane. It seemed as though the sky had tilted a little, because the planets seemed to have shifted back from their earlier positions. Even Arundhathi, the twin star of Vasishta in the Sapta rishi mandala (Ursa Major), seemed to have gone ahead of Vasishta, said Vyasa. This could not have happened in the celestial spheres, but could have been perceived so for the observer on earth if the earth's position had changed from the usual alignment. This is supported by another observation of Vyasa of the lunar cycle ending in 13 days. The only probable reason for this to happen is to have some asteroid or comet hitting the earth somewhere, thereby changing the tilt or speed of the earth to some extent.

The terrestrial happenings mentioned by Vyasa concur with the kind of after-effects of a meteor or asteroid hit. There were fierce winds, showers of dust, trembling of earth, roaring noises, high waves at the seas, strange behaviour of animals etc narrated by Vyasa as terrestrial happenings. All these portend the crashing of a meteor with high velocity in some place of the earth.

Interestingly, scientists have come up with a theory of a comet-hit in Austria around the time of Mahabharata war. Their theory has been supported by the Cuneiform tablet prepared in 700 BC but which explains a meteor-fall 5000 years ago.

 

http://phys.org/news126183668.html#jCp

This tablet has been deciphered as follows.

http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/chaldea1.gif

It shows a falling meteor or asteroid whose period (based on the sky map shown in that tablet)  is said to be 29^th June, 3123 BC! The location is said to be somewhere in Austria!

The date is fascinating as it is 21 years prior to the start of the Kali yuga (3102 BC)! Mahabharata war happened 36 years before the start of Kali yuga and there was a detailed description of a probable meteor or asteroid hit somewhere on the earth just before the war started. There is a 15 year gap between that hit and the year deciphered from the above shown tablet. But such a close date makes me wonder whether the asteroid –hit shown in the tablet was the same as the one deciphered from the Mahabharata. Or we may come across such a meteor hit on the exact year of Mahabharata some time in future. I for one would not fault the Mahabharata year, for, we in India have a continuing tradition of calendar that is based on 5 factors related to the position of the sun and the moon on everyday basis, which has its beginning on 3102 BC when Kali Yuga started. The 5 factors are like counter checking devices such that even if one of them is wrong, we would not be having the other factors correct. So it is impossible to say that we have erred in our calendar.

What I wish to point out by citing the cuneiform tablet is that the probability rate of an asteroid-hit was high around the start of Mahabharata war.  That hit had a fatal impact on the earth – a case of how TIME determines the events.

The next catastrophe happened 36 years after Mahabharata war. Krishna had left his mortal coils and 7 days after that, massive waves – resembling a tsunami – hit Dwaraka and  completely submerged it. This also seems to have been caused by an asteroid hit. There exists a scientific study that an asteroid of 3 mile width smashed on the sea floor off the coast of Madagascar. The date, interestingly was 5000 years BP – the time that Dwaraka was swallowed by Arabian sea.  The chevrons seen around Madagascar are said to have been formed by a massive tsunami of 600 feet-high waves when an asteroid landed in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar.

 

The Fenambosy chevrons at the tip of Madagascar.

 Image courtesy of Dallas Abbott

The article can be read here:

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/nov/did-a-comet-cause-the-great-flood#.UT23fVfsgZI

This hit was supposed to have thrown up debris and dust on the air for about a week. Any disturbance here can be expected to trigger tsunamis that travelled to Arabian Sea. The Dwaraka submergence could have been caused by this (or any) tsunami that originated south of the Arabian Sea and hit Gujarat where Dwaraka was a prominent habitat 5000 years ago.

Madagascar is also the location of early Tamil settlements of the 1^st Sangam period which ended 5550 BC (All Tamils must unite to save Ram-Setu.) This hit must have wiped off the1st Sangam settlements and pushed the people to Kumari range (extension of Western Ghats in the Arabian Sea) to closer to South Indian mainland.

In the illustration below, the Mascarene plateau is shown in a green ring near Madagascar. This was submerged about 7000 to 5000 years ago.

The white arrow marks are the route of tsunami waves if an asteroid had hit the sea near Madagascar, as found in the study. The red ring is the area available for settlement during the 2 sangam period of Tamils. This settlement lasted between 5550 BC to 1850 BC (with an approximation of 2 centuries before or after). By 1850 BC  (that is the time Indus civilisation came to an end due to earthquakes and the subduction of the Saraswathy river thereby indicating a violent disturbance in the Arabian sea corridor where 2^nd sangam Tamils were located)  the Kumari ranges were lost to the seas – an information that we get from Silappadhikaram.

The cause of this last catastrophe was tectonic disturbances but the loss of Dwaraka and even the 1^st  sangam Tamil regions can be attributed to an asteroid hit.

Coming to the theme of this article, we are crossing Space in a comparatively safer Time now than during the Mahabharata and Kaliyuga start-up times. In an amazing coincidence I am writing this article on the day after Mahashivaratri! This day signifies the Cosmic Dance of Lord Shiva by which He offers protection to his devotees from death and destruction. Mayamatham says that worship of any of the dancing forms of Shiva (there are supposed to be 108 different forms of Shiva's dances!) brings in return the immediate death of an enemy. This reminds me of the small but intricately carved Shiva as Nataraja in the dancing form found at the entrance of Krishna's sannidhi in Dakur Dwaraka. Was it consecrated there to stall any future fury of the ocean at Dwaraka? TIME only knows!

 

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Related article:-

"அடி முடி காணா அதிசயம்: பிரபஞ்சத்தின் ஒரு பரிமாணம்"

http://www.tamilhindu.com/2010/01/adimudi-kaanaa-athisayam-a-dimension-of-the-universe/