A Search for Evidence of Interplanetary and Atmospheric Microbial Delivery Systems Robert S. Fritzius www.ShadeTreePhysics.com Presented at the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting 6-11 October 2002 in Birmingham, Alabama Installed as a web page on 16 October 2002. One figure was corrected on 08 Sep 2007. (Links to original webpages will be given at the beginnings of sections that have been extracted and tailored for this presentation.) Background From http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/vel/1918.htm. In her book on the 1918 influenza(1) Gina Kolata calls attention to the often repeated phenomenon of how influenza epidemics can move quickly through a country, "hopscotching over some towns while felling others." She reports that "After an influenza pandemic of 1789, a young American doctor named Robert Johnson puzzled over how the infection could spread so far and wide, and so quickly" Dr. Johnson had discussed the rapid outbreaks in Great Britain and on ships at sea. Kolata reports that the 1918 flu's mortality rates peaked in Boston and Bombay in the same week, but New York, just a few hours from Boston, had its peak three weeks later" Kolata reports that Johnson finally decided that "influenza must arise from some sort of changes in the atmosphere but that, once it got started, it could spread from person to person."(Ref. 1, pp. 62-64) In 1950, amongst his other breaches of scientific protocol, Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that ancient texts provided evidence that various life forms, including some insects, exist in the atmosphere of Venus, and that in about 1450 BC some of those life forms were transported alive to Earth in the (then) comet-like tail of Venus.(2) In 1953 Sir Fred Hoyle is reported to have informed Velikovsky that "his work was not properly scientific." Even so, Hoyle eventually came to champion the idea that pathogenic bacteria and viruses are brought to Earth by comet tails and meteor streams.(3) He and his colleague Chandra Wickrasminghe found evidence that the severity of influenza epidemics seems to be related to sunspot activity. In 2000 a research team lead by another long-time colleague of Hoyle, Jalent Narlikar, reported (to the SPIE) what they consider unambiguous evidence of the presence of clumps of living cells [from space] in air samples from as high as 41 kilometers above the Earth's surface.(4) But are the 2000 findings the "first evidence" of live drop-ins? There is an earlier report on what was speculated to have been a "dropping-in on Earth" of alien bacteria which occurred during the middle part of the twentieth century. The report was published in 1963 by Donald Barber, who had just retired as Director of the Norman Lockyer Observatory at Sidmouth England. His article(5) documents a series of nine "unidentifiable" rain-water borne bacterial invasions which occurred at the Lockyer observatory between 1936 and 1961. Based on the bacteria's phenomenally rapid liquefaction property (of astronomical photographic plate emulsions), its toleration to highly toxic silver halide salts, and the unique correlation of their arrival times with certain "space weather related" events, Barber came to speculate that the bacteria were of extraterrestrial origin. This presentation gives highlights of Barber's findings and uses them as a springboard to investigate another set of potentially exobiological visitors. From http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/vel/1918.htm. In Barber's article he stated, "An American suggestion that the virus responsible for endemic influenza emanated from the planet Venus, led to a fresh examination of the 1937/1948 Sidmouth data, and also to a search among the large collection of spectrograms obtained at Sidmouth prior to 1937 for earlier evidence of bacterial attack. As a result of the latter, two earlier outbreaks--one probable event in 1930, and a second well-determined occasion in 1932--were discovered." It was found that the onsets of six confirmed Lockyer major microbial invasions occurred, on average, 55 days following inferior conjunctions of Venus, when accompanied by strong geomagnetic storms. (The shortest interval between conjunction and outbreak was 35 days and the longest was 67 days.)

Barber came to speculate that the bacteria responsible for the repeated photographic damage events were transported from the upper atmosphere of Venus by solar wind to earth's auroral belts and, in Lockyer's case, from the Northern auroral region to Southwestern England by northerly winds, reaching the ground in rain-water.

The Sidmouth events were bacterial in nature but, getting back to the "American suggestion," it is of interest to note that in 1918 an inferior conjunction of Venus preceded by 28 days, the first known U.S. cases of what became the 1918-1919 "Spanish" flu. Top From http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/vel/1918ss.htm The following table shows: (I) the dates of Venus inferior conjunctions which preceded the 20th century influenza pandemics and pandemic scares, (II) onset dates for the disease outbreaks and (III) the intervals (in days) between conjunctions and onsets. These intervals have been converted to decimal fractions of the 584 day Earth-Venus synodic period and are displayed in a histogram in which the width of each bin is 1/20th of the synodic period.

Influenza Pandemics and Pandemic Scares 1918 H1N1 Spanish 1957 H2N2 Asian 1968 H3N2 Hong Kong 1976 H1N1 Swine 1977 H1N1 Russian 1997 H5N1 Avian

(I) Venus Inferior Conjunctions 09 FEB 1918 21 JUN 1956 29 AUG 1967 27 AUG 1975 06 APR 1977 11 JUN 1996

(II) Dates of Onsets 08 MAR 1918   15 JAN 1957* 30 OCT 1967   05 FEB 1976   15 MAY 1977   15 NOV 1996**

(III) Intervals (Days) 28 ~210 61 131 40 ~150

584 Day Synodic Period (The column location for the 1918 pandemic was corrected on 08 Sep 2007.) The # sign marks the end of the six month interval between the 1918 Earth-Venus conjunction and the beginning of the 1918 pandemic deadly phase.   * Some scholars think the 1957 Asian flu started in Vladivostok in 1956. **The bird-to-human phase of the 1997 Hong Kong flu started in March 1997. Testing the Venus Influenza Hypothesis From http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/1918rd.htm. Three of the four influenza pandemics in the twentieth century had onsets that followed Venus inferior conjunctions by 30 to 60 days. (Barber found that geomagnetic storms seemed to be a co-factor, in addition to the conjunctions, when the Lockyer bacterial events occurred.) "The Non-Prediction Prediction" 3 April 2001 At 1015 Universal Time (UT) on 29 March 2001 the sun produced an intense X-class Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) which gobbled up a lesser CME from the day before and reached Earth at 0100 UT on 31 March. At approximately 0400 UT 30 March (on the day in-between) Venus passed through inferior conjunction. It wouldn't, of course, be prudent to make predictions about what this combination of events might lead to, some 30 to 60 days from March 30. On the other hand, if really out-of-the-ordinary viral (not necessarily "influenza") and/or bacterial outbreaks do occur in pockets around the globe during that time frame, then we might opt to examine the Venus connection hypothesis more closely. *The not necessarily influenza phrase was added (as a long shot) because the author had come across news information about other diseases, including legionnaires disease, breaking out shortly (within one to two months) following Venus inferior conjunctions. Influenza Related News in the Northern Hemisphere April thru July 2001 The majority of the information in this section, (and in two other sections below) is anecdotal in nature, but it is hoped that readers can discern an underlying pattern. References to the on-line resource LEXIS-NEXIS®Academic Universe are indicated by the abbreviation LNAU. Friday 13 April 2001 Personal observation by author - Columbus Mississippi area - U.S.A.. For about two weeks, starting on April 13, 2001 many of the author's co-workers and members of their families (toddlers through adults) experienced rapidly spreading illnesses characterized by intense stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting, accompanied by extreme exhaustion. [These symptoms might be considered as evidence of some "not necessarily influenza" maladies suggested in the non-prediction prediction above, but they started two and a half weeks before 1 May.] Saturday 14 April 2001 Financial Times Information - Global News Wire Karachi, Pakistan Influenza from a new form of flu virus is spreading in the Pakistan seaport city of Karachi. Throat ailments and tonsils infections noted in particular. (LNAU - Medical. - Search Term: flu)