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Recovering the Lost World --Jno Cook
Venus and Epidemics.


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Content of this chapter: [Spanish Flu] [Lockyer Observatory] [Diseases from Space]

[Image: Venus at inferior conjunction]

Image: Venus inferior conjunction with the new Moon intervening.

Spanish Flu of 1918

Venus has been implicated in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 (the influenza pandemic). The suggestion is that the Sun, Venus, and Earth had been in line a month or two before the first, non-lethal, wave of the epidemic struck in the spring of the year. The second, very virulant, wave struck in late August and September, with a peak in late October.

[Image: Venus at Inferior Conjunction]
Image: Venus at Inferior Conjunction and the New Moon, February 11, 1918

The mechanism would be the Solar Wind's protons, which are focused by the very long tail of Venus' plasmasphere. NASA has identified the tail of Venus as "stringy" -- clearly identifying it as a twisted Birkeland plasma current. The protons are traveling in excess of 2 million miles per hour on reaching Earth. Although they do not penetrate materials at that speed, they could damage cell structures and could cause changes in simpler forms, like viruses. As likely is that the increased inflow of particles changes the electrical characteristics of the upper atmosphere and allows a wider dispersion of viruses or bacteria.

Venus passes between Earth and the Sun frequently (five times every 8 years), but since the orbits are tilted, the planets seldom are in a direct line with the Sun. Additionally, although the plasmasphere tail (coma tail) of Venus is very long, it does not quite extend to Earth. However, it is possible for the Moon to fall into place in such a conjunction, and provide a remaining path to the circuit. Such conjunctions are less frequent, generally happening two or three times in a row, followed by an equal time span where this does not happen.

The geometry is not as simple as suggested in the text above. Under normal conditions the Sun's protons which travel along the edge of the plasmasphere tail of Venus toward Earth would also be 'deflected' by the Earth's plasmasphere (popularly called the 'magnetosphere'). The Earth's plasmasphere probably extends 10 or 20 Earth diameters into the space toward the Sun, (80,000 to 160,000 miles). The Moon travels about 30 Earth diameters away from the Earth (250,000 miles), and is likely to also have a plasmasphere 'shadow' extending away from the Sun, toward Earth.

The conductive path to Earth for the solar protons not so much the combined plasmasphere surfaces of Venus and the Moon, as it is a distortion of the Earth's plasmasphere caused by the fact that the Moon exits from the Earth's plasmasphere in turning to the Sun side about the Earth. The Moon's monthly exiting and reentry of the Earth's plasmasphere is enough to cause the precession of the equinox. It also would seem to distort the shape of the Sun side plasmasphere enough to allow the penetration of charged particles.

John M. Barry, in "The Great Influenza" (2004), suggests an unusual mutation of the influenza virus for the virulant second wave which struck in September and October of 1918. Barry also suggests that the almost simultaneous appearance of the influenza in the United States can be accounted for by human contact, specifically by cross-country troop movements. There was no inferior conjunction of Venus associated with the second wave of influenza which first appeared in September and October of 1918.

The next inferior conjunction after February 11, 1918, was on September 14, 1919. At that time Venus passed the Sun at about 5 degrees off the ecliptic. A new Moon only shows up a week and a half later, on September 23, 1919, at which time Venus was about 14 degrees removed from the Sun. A third wave of the influenza appeared four months later, in early February, 1920. But neither the second wave or the third can be related to the movements of Venus.

After the Asian SARS virus epidemic of 2002 - 2003, I checked the Sun-Venus-Moon positions for the months before the outbreak was detected. An inferior conjunction of Venus directly in line with the Sun and our Moon had happened about three months earlier. That condition (a three month 'incubation') had also been noted for the Spanish Flu epidemic by other researchers.

A number of people have suggested a simpler process. They have suggested the existence of viral forms in the upper atmosphere of Venus. These would appear in Earth's upper atmosphere after being stripped away from the upper atmosphere of Venus by the Solar Wind, and their travel down the exterior of the plasmasphere tail. I will return to this further below.

Bob Fritzius has tracked the inferior conjunctions of Venus and pandemics for years, and comes to the same conclusion, and presented this evidence in a paper to the AAS in 2002. See [http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/] (or http://ShadeTreePhysics.com). Most of the information below is from Fritzius' site.

Lockyer Observatory

Earlier research of Donald Barber at Lockyer Observatory in England, reported in Perspective Volume 5 (1963), had shown unidentified bacterial contamination of photographic plates exposed (to the night sky) between 1936 and 1961 followed a pattern of appearing 30 days after the inferior conjunctions of Venus. The bacteria were picked up (apparently) during or after film processing, and were found in the local spring water supply (used in processing). Their appearance followed a wind from the north, and local rains.

The description by Barber suggest the well known condition known to photographers who process film -- the "flying saucers" which appear in the sky when a water droplet remains on the film during drying. Barber writes:

"At the height of each major 'invasion' irreparable damage to freshly processed spectrographic plates was caused by numerous quasi­circular crater­like defects (0.05 ­ 0.25 mm in diameter) from the centre of which the silver deposit had been eroded, and transferred to the perimeter. In a badly affected 1/4­plate negative some 5100 of these craters could be seen at low magnification (x15). In several instances the photographic film was completely liquefied and was seen to slide off the glass base intact."

The "transfer of silver to the perimeter" happens with water drops left on film also. The water drop swells the emulsion, causing the silver to move up, which is relocated to the edge when the emulsion dries and flattens again. But I have never seen "craters," nor have I ever seen film emulsion simply slide off its base.

Because the damaging bacteria appeared in each case an some average of 30 days after a inferior conjunction of Venus, and after northerly winds (actually winds from the northwest) and rain, Barber assumed that the bacteria entered the Earth's upper atmosphere (at the aurora borealis) with the Solar Wind after it passed by Venus. The 30 day delay is about equal to a terrestrial wind speed of 15 miles per hour from the auroral region.

Barber further notes that these events only occurred nine times in a period of 25 years. Each followed an inferior conjunction of Venus and a simultaneous "geomagnetic storm," that is, an auroral display. Venus reaches inferior conjunction every year and a half. Bob Fritzius has plotted both the Venus inferior conjunctions and sunspot activity against the bacterial invasions. See below.

[Image: Sunspots and Venus]
Image: Sunspots and Venus inferior conjunctions from 1910 through 1990. Credit Bob Fritzius.

In the chart above:

Sunspot activity -- an index of the electrical activity of the Sun -- is difficult to relate to the bacterial invasions. Some pandemics are also shown, but also do not seem to be closely related to sunspot activity. Notice also that in some years nothing happened.

Except in a few cases, the bacterial invasion all follow directly on the inferior conjunction of Venus -- shown as red lines -- and at times seem to "hold over" a period afterward.

Inferior Conjuctions of Venus, 1930 - 1961


 inferior conjuction  new	bacterial infestation
 dates for venus      moon      and additional notes

    22 NOV 1930       yes	yes
    29 JUN 1932       yes	yes
    05 FEB 1934       yes	yes
    08 SEP 1935       NO	NO
    18 APR 1937       yes	yes
    20 NOV 1938       yes	(June '38 and June '39)
    26 JUN 1940       yes	yes (mild or holdover)
    02 FEB 1942       NO	NO
    06 SEP 1943       NO	NO
    15 APR 1945       yes	NO
    17 NOV 1946       yes	NO
    24 JUN 1948       NO	yes; Mercury conjunct
    31 JAN 1950       NO	NO
    03 SEP 1951       yes	yes
    13 APR 1953       yes	yes
    15 NOV 1954       NO	NO
    21 JUN 1956       yes       yes (new moon in March) 
    28 JAN 1958       NO	(Jun '57; May '58)
    01 SEP 1959       yes	(June '59; Apr, Jun, Aug '60)
    10 APR 1961       yes	yes

In the chart above I have listed the inferior conjunction of Venus for the period of 1930 through 1961. For each of the inferior conjunctions I have listed if a new Moon appeared at the time of the conjunctions.

The date of the new Moon was often a few days removed from the 'official' date of the conjunctions, since the calculated date is taken as the moment Venus crosses the meridian of the location of the Sun in the sky. In one case, "21 JUN 1956," the new Moon appears a month and a half early, but there is no question that the Sun, Venus, Moon, and the Earth are in a direct line at that time. This is shown below.

[Image: Venus near inferior conjunctions in 1957]

Image: Venus near inferior conjunctions in 1957

My conclusion is that an intervening Moon is needed for the electrical contact to Earth via Venus. Because the phenomena at Lockyer Observatory is dependent on the weather (as well as, apparently, on the freezing temperatures of winter), the failure of the phenomena to appear in some years does not depend solely on the inferior conjunctions of Venus. But the opposite can be tested: if the inferior conjunction does not coincide with a new Moon, the invading bacteria will not show at all.

This is born out by the table above, where the absence of a new Moon is marked as "NO" and is also used to mark the absence of bacterial infections. There is one exception; in June of 1948 there is no new Moon, but on this date both Venus and Mercury are in inferior conjunction.

Diseases from Space

   

Images: Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasminghe

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasminghe in "Diseases from Space" (1979) claimed a correlation of the severety of influenza pandemics with sunspot activity, and suggested that viruses or bacterial spores could be transmitted to Earth from the tails of comets and with streams of meteors.

-=-=-=-
All four of these people are highly respected astronomers and their opinions are not to be neglected. Chandra Wickramasminghe and Jayant Narlikar followed up with another paper in 2001, claiming evidence of bacteria captured at altitudes of 41 km above the Earth. But a pandemic influenza is viral, not bacterial.

All four of these people also assume that the agents of epidemics, viruses or bacterial spores, come from Venus or at least are of extraterrestrial origin. Bob Fritzius writes..

"Compared to Earth, Venus, has a negligible magnetic field. That means that the Solar Wind can disturb its atmosphere directly, and can blow away fractions of its upper atmosphere (including airborne particulate matter) in comet-like fashion."

This suggests the existence of life forms in the upper layers of atmosphere of Venus, the only part of the planet which actually receives sunlight. At its surface, Venus is jet black. There is no light.

Followers of Velikovsky suggest that, if these lifeforms exist on Venus, they will have come from Earth during the near approaches in 2349 BC and other dates to 1440 BC.

If organisms, originally from Earth, could be deliver back to Earth, it seems likely that bacterial spores and virus would eventually be found on the Moon and Mars. This would cause considerable rethinking of our biological uniqueness in the Solar System.

Considering that the bacteria represent 80 percent of the biomass of Earth, and are found absolutely everywhere, it is quite possible that a bacterial transfer from Earth three or four thousand years ago could thrive in the Venusian upper athmospere. It is highly likely that these forms would have mutated into many diverse species by now. But it is highly doubtful if bacteria would survive transport across 30 million miles of space.

Virusses are the products of bacteria. They do not engage in energy transfers, reproducing instead entirely by intrusion into host bacteria (and other cells structures). Virusses could without a doubt survive a 30 million mile trip through space. Many forms seem to be almost totally indestructable.

John M. Barry, in "The Great Influenza" (2004), one of the best and absolutely engaging books on the epidemic, spends early chapters in the distinction between viral and bacterial action, and could be considered a primer on the subject, although inconclusive in the admission that we know almost nothing about virusses, where they come from, how they operate, or what their purpose seems to be.

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