Mahabharata Quiz - 79

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Question – 79

It sounds odd that the broken comet or cometary pieces hit the moon and the earth simultaneously. Is there any precedence to this kind of hit? How did Karna and Vyasa know of the hit on the moon?

Answer:

As per current scientific knowledge, a cosmic collision simultaneously on the earth and the moon has a probability ratio of 23:1.  That means out of every 23 hits on the earth, there is at least one case of simultaneous hit on the moon as well. One such simultaneous hit occurred in the Mahabharata period on Pushya day in the Karthika month in the year 3136 BCE.

The fragments of a broken comet (Atlas Question - 76) seemed to have landed on the earth much like the comet Shoemaker-Levy that fell on Jupiter after getting trapped by the gravitational pull of Jupiter. In such events the fragments would be shattered into many pieces as they come closer and would crash land as a series of meteorites over a few days. The big chunks would cause heavy damage. One such big piece had fallen on Pushya day on the moon.

This object must have been huge enough to have caused a deep and wide penetration of the lunar surface sending plumes of lunar dust settling down on a wider region around the impact area. Since the object doesn’t burn in the atmosphere-less moon, the impact zone remains true to the size of the hitting object with the displaced lunar mud and dust settling down around. A very huge spill-over region on the moon could have been detected by a regular visual observer from the earth immediately after the collision.

More than half the moon was originally visible in Krishna Shashti /Saptami on Pushya day. It is possible for the observers on the earth (Karṇa and Vyasa) to have noticed a change in the marks on the moon on the very night of Pushya after the collision that disrupted the war ritual done by Duryodhana to make Bhishma as the Chief. The appearance of the waning moon on Krishna Shashti is shown in the picture below. 

Most regions are marked by dark patches. Only a small portion to our right appears plain. In that region a mark must have appeared which was reported by Karna and Vyasa.

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