The Pacific Ring of Fire continues to be highly active as we go to press (Oct. 8), as are global weather change patterns. As I watched the CNN updates on Hurricane Georges, visions of the Mississippi River becomong an inland sea filled my mind. My Future Map of the U.S. now seems all too real. The storm narrowly missed New Orleans - a below-sea-level city of millions, protected only by levees and dams in its continual battle to stay above the waterline. I thought about how fortunate the people of New Orleans were as Georges changed course at the last minute, avoiding a direct hit on the city. Would they get another chance in the future I wondered? Perhaps, like the warning that was given to Noah, all the natural disasters now on the planet are giving us warnings. And like the people of New Orleans and other cities, each must reflect on what has just occurred before it becomes only a faint memory... until, like so many today's repeating disaster scenarios, it occurs again.
*** WEATHER - As you can see in this month's Dateline, damage from storm-related disasters has already reached billions of dollars. My sense is that we may be looking at triple-digit levels within the coming year, as Earth's core prepares once again to shift its position relative to the current Pole star, Polaris. (Caro's Note: The "Dateline" column can be read in each month's ECR.)
*** MAGNETIC ENERGY - The scenario in my "green mist" article, The Coming End of Technology As We Know It, (ECR 11/97), seems strikingly similar to this month's new article, Star Blast Knocks Out Satellites. The magnetic space wave that recently hit our solar system, knocking out satellites, closely mirrors my vision of a green mist shutting down satellites, power plants, and electronic devices worldwide. The vision, at the time, seemed even to me like pure fantasy, but I have learned to put out what I see, unedited, and allow time to be the judge of the material. More and more of my visions seem to be moving closer to reality, which, as part of the Quickening, makes total sense to me as we get closer to the major energy shift.
*** WORLDWIDE QUAKES - For the last two months of '98, I sense we will see a few quakes in the world reaching a magnitude in the 7 to 8 range, especially in the Indian Ocean region and the Middle East. The U.S. continues to be in my "high-potential" window for geophysical Earth changes. Continue to watch for mega-activity - volcanic and earthquakes - in South America, as a precursor to similar events in North America.
*** JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1999 - "Predictions for 1999" will be my focus in the next issue of ECR. We will be looking at ten specific areas of concern: geophysical Earth changes; the economy (though, as stated in ECR's "Predictions for 1998," the global markets and economy are already in decline); spirituality; global conflicts; health and healing; phenomena; archaeological discoveries; space; science; and technology.
On August 27, 1998, Earth was bombarded with puloses of the most intense form of radiation known to exist - gamma rays and X-rays - for five full minutes. This energy blast from beyond the solar system hit over the Pacific Ocean during the night, disrupting satellites and disturbing Earth's upper atmosphere. Radiation detectors on seven different research spacecraft - some in Earth-orbit, and others as far out as Jupiter - were sent off the scale, triggering defensive shutdowns in at least two spacecraft.
The magnetic blast did not penetrate closer than about 30 miles above the surface of the Earth, and did not present a health hazard to living things. But according to Kevin Hurley of the University of California, Berkeley, the energy of the pulse was strong enough - if harnessed - to "power all of human civilization for a billion-billion years." Apparently, the gamma/X-ray blast came from a neutron star some 20,000 light-years away.
Researchers at NASA said this is the first time that energy affecting Earth's environment has been traced definitively to a specific, distant source. Referring to the blast, Umrah Inan of Stanford University said, "We now know that Earth's physical environment if affected not only by our own sun, but by energy originating from distant parts of our universe."
The ease of electronic communications such as e-mail, interactive Web sites, and Internet chat rooms, while extending the geographic range of people's relationships, seems to be creating, for many, a backlash of social isolation, loneliness and depression. As people increase their use of these electronic means of communication, recent research indicates that they are spending far less time developing nearby relationships and communicating with friends and family members, thus becoming more lonely and depressed.
These finding are the result of a study directed by psychologist Robert Kraut of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. As part of the study, researchers installed computers with free Internet connections in 73 households, where previously there were none. Using software to track each of the 169 participants' online hours, researchers then conducted interviews with them over the next one to two years, asking people in the study about their interactions with family and friends. At the same time, using standard psychological tests, they measured the participants' emotional responses - particularly their feelings of loneliness and sadness.
The study concluded that as subjects increased their hours on the Internet, they spent less time talking with their families and friends, had a decreased circle of friends, and scored higher on depression tests. The study, published in the September issue of American Psychologist, noted that as the frequency of Internet use increased, "the isolation and unhappiness intensified, regardless of race, age, sex, household income, [or] initial levels of social interaction and depression." Researchers also discovered that teenagers who used the Internet and e-mail frequently become even more isolated and depressed than the adults in the study. This research suggests that the shallow social interactions developed through electronic means simply cannot replace the more satisfying, supportive relationships and sense of community we acquire through face-to-face contact with family and friends.
A structure thought to be the world's oldest building has been discovered off the coast of Japan. The Yonaguni Monument is 600 feet wide and 90 feet high, and is located off a small island southwest of Okinawa. It was first discovered by divers 13 years ago, and was originally thought to be a natural phenomenon. Another site near the city of Naha appears to be a wall with a coral-encrusted, right-angled block. There have been a total of eight underwater sites identified to date.
A professor at geology at Ryukyu University in Okinawa, Masaki Kimura, was the first scientist to examine the Yonaguni site, and his conclusion is that the structure is man-made and some 10,000 years old. "The object has not been manufactured by nature. If that had been the case, one would expect debris from erosion to have collected around the site, but there are no rock fragments there," he said. An encircling road, stone terraces and stone circles surrounding hexagonal columns add to the mystery of this anomalous site. Holes drilled into the rock may have supported wooden structures, and what appear to be cut steps are further evidence of human construction. Smaller underwater stone mounds discovered nearby are about 30 feet wide and 6 feet high, and made of similarly stepped slabs.
Kimura has said it's too soon to know who built the monument or what its purpose might have been. "The structure could be an ancient religious shrine, possibly celebrating an ancient deity resembling the god, Nirai-Kanai, whom locals say gave happiness to the people of Okinawa from beyond the sea. This could be evidence of a new culture, as there are no records of a people intelligent enough to have built such a monument 10,000 years ago," he said. "This could only have been done by a people with a high degree of technology, probably coming from the Asian continent, where the oldest civilizations originate. There would have to have been some sort of machinery involved to have created such a huge structure."
Jim Mower, an archaeologist at the University College, London, has stated, "If it is confirmed that the site is as old as 10,000 years and is man-made, then this is going to change an awful lot of the previous thinking on southeast Asian history. It would put the people who made the monument on a par with the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley."
Some theories on dating the site have been suggested. The monuments may have been submerged as sea levels rose during the melting at the end of the last Ice Age. Tectonic activity might have caused the land to sink, or a catastrophic event may have dropped it into the ocean.
Mike Arbuthnot, an amateur underwater archaeologist who explored two of these sites states, "The Yonaguni site might be ceremonial platforms, and the Okinawa site seems similar to a castle wall, a conjecture that is supported by nearby castles on the island with a similar architectural style."
The Yonaguni Monument is composed predominantly of medium to very fine sandstone and mudstone of the Lower Miocent Yaeyama Group. It has also been compared to pyramids and temple structures in the Americas, such as the Temple of the Sun, in northern Peru.
