http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== WAS PLATO'S PHAETHON A FIGMENT OF HIS IMAGINATION, A GEOPHYSICAL PHENOMENON OF THE 17TH CENTURY B.C. IN THE AEGEAN OR AN ASTROPHYSICAL PHAENOMENON OF THE 12TH CENTURY B.C. OF GLOBAL SIGNIFICANCE ? * St. P. Papamarinopoulos (Laboratory of Geophysics, Section of applied Geology and Geophysics, Department of Geology, University of Patras, 261 10 Patras, Greece) In a particular passage in the Critias text Plato describes a mythological scene of Phaethon the son of the sun loosing control of his father's chariot and therefore initially inducing fires and then floods on earth. It has been considered as Plato's fertile imagination by many analysts of his Critias dialoques. However, it was considered as an electric phaenomenon connected with prehistoric eruption of Santorini which amased the prehistoric people of the Aegean and of North Africa and East Mediterranean. On careful examination of the content of the myth and taking into account our knowledge of electric phaenomena and volcanic eruptions such possibility is ruled out. A different explanation is offe-red based on observation of the event not only by prehistoric Greeks but by other people round the globe. This explanation requires the passing of a comet very close with the atmosphere of the Earth in 1200 yr B.C. inducing all these phaenomena described in the myth. Dendrochonolical evidence dates the phaenomenon in the study of tree rings of oaks in Ireland and indicates rapid change of the climate with rains and cold weather. From this measure-ment we establish the date. The possibility of a volcanic eruption in the Atlantic of the islandic volcano Hijegla is examined but its eruption in ~1200 yr B.C. is found insignificant to count for the excessive rains recorded in Ireland. Chemical and geochemical studies in ice core material in Greenland and Antarctica and in late Bronze Age archaeological sites are necessary to be conducted in order to establish firm evidence of the astrophysical phaenome-non which together with a seismic storm which occurred in the same but larger period put an end in the Bronze Age epoch. It seems that Plato used information 800 years before his time in connection this phaenomenon. As reseach goes on we shall see further where Plato drives us in his other pas-sages of Timaeos and Critias.