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Hubble Telescope image of galaxy M82.

The galaxy M82 is located 12 million light years away in the nearby M81 galaxy group.  It is a spiral galaxy that has a diameter of about 40,000 light years and is being viewed nearly edge on, its plane being oriented at about 10° to our line of sight.  It is described as a “peculiar galaxy” or “starburst galaxy” because for its small size it is very energetic, being five times more luminous than the entire Milky Way or 100 times more luminous than the Milky Way’s central region which is of comparable size.  In my opinion, M82 is a galaxy whose supermassive core was active in the recent past and whose energetic activity is due to one or more superwaves that are in the process of propagating through its disc.  Currently, M82’s supermassive core has entered its quiescent phase and has shut off its energetic emission, which is why it is not visible to  either X-ray telescope or radio telescope investigations.  If we had such telescopes in operation 80 years ago, we likely would have detected M82’s core and seen that it was quite luminous.

The accepted explanation for M82’s energetic activity is that it is due to the galaxy’s interaction with its neighbor, M81, which lies 150,000 light years (four galaxy diameters) away.  However, the notion that M82 would be collisional interaction with M81 is preposterous, the two galaxies being so far apart that they are in no direct contact with one another.  Moreover this conventional explanation fails to account for the fact that  M81 appears as a perfectly normal spiral galaxy, certainly not what one would expect if the two were energetically interacting.

In 2009 a strange phenomenon was observed in M82.  In their April 15, 2010 news posting, the Royal Astronomical Society reported that radio astronomers at the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory had discovered a strange new energetic source in M82.  It appeared very suddenly in radio wavelengths and showed no signs of going away.  According to Dr. Muxlow: “The new object, which appeared in May 2009, has left us scratching our heads – we’ve never seen anything quite like this before, the object turned on very rapidly within a few days and shows no sign of decaying in brightness.”

In their Monthly Notices paper, Muxlow, et al. (2010) report the peculiar finding that during that year they observed the source to be progressively moving in an east-to west direction at 4.2c (4.2 times the speed of light).  They realized that this could not be radio emission from a supernova shell since supernova shells have not been observed to expand at speeds greater than ~7.5% c.  One alternative that the group has considered is that this superluminal radio source is a highly relativistic volley of cosmic rays approaching us and beaming their radiation in our direction.  They wanted to interpret it as being cosmic ray radio emission from a ‘micro-quasar’, but found this alternative inadequate because they could find no associated source of X-ray emission.

But, similar polarized radio sources have been seen to separate from active galactic cores at superluminal speeds, and astronomers have interpreted these as being synchrotron radiation emission generated by cosmic rays traveling towards us and beaming their radiation in our direction, a phenomenon termed relativistic beaming.  In my 1983 Ph.D. dissertation I interpreted such apparent superluminal motion as evidence of a superwave moving out from the active nucleus as a shell of cosmic ray radiation.  In places where this radiation shell interacts with magnetic fields or remnants in the galaxy it will generate synchrotron radiation and beam it outward in a narrow cone that we happen to see since the cone is oriented in our direction.  Due to the fact that the cosmic rays are coming towards us at close to the speed of light, the emission produced by the interactions that these cosmic rays undergo during their journey towards us will be time-compressed and will give the appearance that the emission source in the distant galaxy is moving transverse to our line of site at speeds faster than that of light.

So here in M82 we have one more example of cosmic rays traveling rectilinearly through the galaxy at a near light speed velocity.  This is precisely what the superwave theory has claimed for more than 30 years. In the case of M82, where the source has been observed to move in an east to west direction at 4.2 c, this implies that we are seeing radiation from cosmic ray electrons that have a Lorentz factor of γ = 4.2 that are traveling at 1/4.2 radians, or 13.6°, to our line of sight.  A superwave is predicted to travel outward isotropically from its point of origin as an expanding shell.  But because of this relativistic beaming effect, we are only able to see the radiation produced by a small part of this shell, the part that is moving in our direction and beaming radiation towards us.

This is basically a simple concept and yet astrophysicists persist in making the ad hoc positivist assumption that the cosmic rays are confined to a linear beam (like that coming from a subrelativistic particle-beam weapon).  They recognize the existence only of those cosmic rays that happen to be producing the radiation we are seeing.  Any other’s don’t really exist for them.  Unfortunately, their overly restrictive, frontal-lobotomy interpretation seriously distorts the real situation.  Secondly, in other cases where they might not see any superluminal motion, they immediately alter their model to assume that the radio emission comes from a narrow jet of incoherently radiating magnetized plasma which is oriented almost perpendicular to our line of sight.  Hence they assume the emission to be produced by cosmic rays that are traveling at subluminal velocities and for the most part are not even coming towards us but are chaotically scrambled in all directions within the beam!  Whether or not the radio sources exhibit superluminal or subliminal movement, it does not take too much savy to realize that both cases represent emission being radiated towards us from a superwave shell formed of relativistic cosmic rays following radial trajectories, and not from a low velocity cosmic ray plasma jet or bubble (e.g., as they have assumed for the Fermi bubbles in our own Galaxy).

The superluminal source in M82 is found just 20 light years (projected in the plane of the sky) from M82’s dynamical center.  So most likely these cosmic rays originated in M82’s unseen supermassive core.  Given that the emission we are seeing is coming from cosmic rays that are beaming their radiation at an angle of 1/4.2 radians to our line of sight, then these relativistic electrons have likely travelled 80 light years away from the core,  towards us, from the time their volley was first launched.  The counterintuitive finding that the superluminal motion is east-to-west, hence towards the core could be produced if these relativistic particles were encountering a magnetic plasma barrier that was transversely oriented and positioned closer to the core on its eastern side than its western side.  So it is possible that the superluminal radio source originated from M82’s supermassive core about 80 years ago and that thereafter the core went into its quiescent state.  In this case there is no reason to postulate the existence of a separate unseen ‘micro-quasar’.

Maxlow, et al. (2010) have discounted the active galactic nucleus explanation for these cosmic rays on the grounds that this radio source is displaced from the Galaxy’s dynamical center (e.g., by 20 light years in projection).  But this point of view fails to realize that cosmic rays can propagate significant distances from a core before producing significant radio emission, as well as the fact that their formerly active core could disappear into a quiescent state.

Another piece of evidence indicating that M82 is dominated by the effects of radially expanding superwaves is the finding that it emanates what astronomers call a “super wind” (note they picked a term very close to superwave).  Infrared observations have found a strong wind of dust and gas moving outward at speeds of ~200 km/s and extending outward hundreds of thousands of light years as it ejects material away from M82.  For example, see the reddish wispy material in the top image extending from the galaxy’s two poles.  Although the superwave cosmic rays travel outward isotropically, it is in the polar directions, above and below the galaxy’s plane, that the interstellar medium is sparsest and offers the least resistance to superwave cosmic rays and their generated wind.

Dr. Gandhi who has studied this super wind reports that it “is found to originate from multiple ejection sites spread over hundreds of light years rather than emanating from any single cluster of new stars.”  He says “We can now distinguish ‘pillars’ of fast gas , and even a structure resembling the surface of a ‘bubble’ about 450 light years wide” (DailyGalaxy news report).  This is an accurate description of what one would expect from a galactic superwave, one that had expanded hundreds of light years away from its formerly active supermassive core.

Another unusual feature about M82 is its unusually high rate of supernova explosions being seen there.  Four supernovae have been seen in M82 over the past three decades with three of these occurring just in the last 10 years.  By comparison, only one supernova has been seen over the past hundred years in its neighboring galaxy M81, which has a diameter twice that of M82.  So obviously something is happening in M82 that triggers supernovae at a very high rate. That something is the one or more galactic superwaves that are now propagating through its disc and triggering supernovae.  How a superwave triggers supernovae through its associated gravity wave and through cosmic dust injection onto a star is discussed in my Ph.D. dissertation.  There I also present evidence of how a superwave traveling through our own galactic disc has triggered an unusually large number of supernovae in the Milky Way.

Previously the radio galaxy Centaurus A was considered to be the closest exploding galaxy to the Milky Way (distance 10 – 16 million light years).  Now we find that M82 at 12 million light years rivals for this position.  Just because its core is not luminous does not mean that it is not undergoing significant core explosion activity.  The radio lobes which have recently appeared in the polar ring galaxy NGC 660 also appear to show evidence of superwave propagation.

New Developments on the G2 Cloud Journey
Paul LaViolette

There have been new developments in the story on the G2 Cloud.  Recent observations of the G2 cloud made in the near infrared at the Keck Observatory indicate that the cloud will reach its closest approach to the Galactic center around mid March of 2014 instead of June of this year.  Also the new findings indicate that G2’s orbit will take the cloud twice as close to the GC than previously thought.  The distance of closest approach is now predicted to be 130 AU rather than 266 AU, as previously thought.  If the star embedded in the G2 cloud is a binary system or contains a single star with orbiting planets, there is the danger that the Galactic core may tidally strip away the lower mass companion star or one or more companion planets at the time the stellar system is at orbital pericenter closest to the core.  In that case the consequences could be catastrophic.  For example, if an entire 100 jupiter mass brown dwarf were to plunge into the Galactic core in one sudden event, it is almost certain that it could jump-start the core into an active Seyfert state and generate a potentially lethal superwave.

For a detailed report on this story, see the May 11th news posting on the Sphinx Stargate website.

In a recent post on this forum we were concerned as to the remote viewing prediction made by the Farsight Institute in 2008 which suggested that there would be significant destruction to coastal areas by June 1st of this year.  I had warned that the Starburst Foundation did not necessarily endorse the prediction, that it was only reporting on it.  The concern was because its June 1st after-event remote viewing date came so close to the July 2013 date publicized in Nature magazine as the time when the G2 cloud would make its closest approach to the Galactic center.   However, this date has recently been revised to a later date of around March 2014.   In a few days I will describe this in a news posting on the etheric.com website and will provide a link to it on this forum.  In all, I think it unlikely that we will be seeing any dangerous activity from the core this summer.

Unfortunately, the Farsight Institute prediction has caused some degree of apprehension for many in recent weeks, especially since its June 1st remote viewed target date is just three weeks off.   So, as an update, I would like to state that I do not believe that the remote viewing experiment they conducted was forseeing a superwave-related event.  Looking at the last six months in retrospect, I believe that many of the sightings were strongly influenced by the Russian meteor event that occurred last February.  Even though none of the RV target locations were anywhere near Russia, this event was highly televised and present in the consciousnesses of millions of people around the world including those at the target locations.  If so, then perhaps this experiment has shown that remote viewing is not able to easily distinguish events happening at a specific location on the planet.  Because of the news communication network, anything happening anywhere on the planet becomes almost simultaneously experienced everywhere on the planet.

Below are examples of a few similarities between the Farsight Institute remote viewings and the Russian meteor event.  The images shown in Figures 1 and 2 were drawn by remote viewer Dick who in May 2008 was targeting Key West, Florida on the future date of June 1, 2013.

Figure 1

This very appropriately describes the effects of the February 15th meteor shown in Figures 3 and 4.

This same remote viewer reported the following for the Key West target; see Figures 5 and 6.  The Slavic sounding shouts of surprise would rather indicate a Russian location rather than the targeted Key West, Florida location.

Figure 5

Figure 6

The meteor illuminated the sky as it passed overhead, hence produced “unexpected energy that radiates”.  Also just as the remote viewer reported, some people were knocked down.  Compare this with the news posting presented in Figure 7 which states: “Forceful soundwaves arrived at the ground minutes later, knocking people over and breaking windows for hundreds of kilometers.”

Figure 7

Remote viewer Dick even accurately described a land area that was “barren, cratered, and colorless” “quiet and inhospitable” and drew the picture shown in Figure 8 to illustrate what he was seeing.  Compare this with Figure 9, a photo taken of one of the primary impact sites.  It impacted on an ice and snow covered lake, which quite appropriately might be described as an area that was “quiet, inhospitable, and colorless” and now as a result of the impact also “cratered”.

Figure 8

Figure 9 (courtesy of Andrey Orlov)

In overview, at least this one remote viewing in the Farsight Institute experiment seems to have focussed on an event that took place three and a half months prior to their target date and at a location on the other side of the Earth.  Currently, I do not see any connection between the Farsight Institute viewings and the possible occurrence of a Galactic core explosion event.

Recently we reported the story that scientists have been tracking a dense cloud of gas heading for the Galactic Center with its closest approach to the GC being expected to occur around the beginning of July 2013.  See the G2 cloud story below on this superwave forum.  But new information has come to light which may require a reevaluation of those conclusions.  Just last week my attention was called to a disturbing report put out by the Farsight Institute, an organization that conducts remote viewing experiments.  Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means, in particular, extra-sensory perception (ESP).

In May 2008 the institute conducted an RV experiment in which they used a team of 12 remote viewers to view 9 coastal geographic locations situated around the Earth as they would be seen on two future target dates: June 1st 2008 and June 1st 2013.  The viewings for June 2008 were mostly normal in that they reflected what life would normally have been like at those locations at that time.  But, what is somewhat disturbing, a majority of the reports for the June 2013 viewing described a radical departure from the norm as if the Earth had experienced some dire global event.  The results of the experiment and the viewing of these 2013 earth changes are posted on the Farsight Institute website and are also described by Courtney Brown, the director of the institute, in an April 2012 Whistle Blower Radio interview.

In particular, this remote-viewing data suggests that by mid 2013 these target coastal locations will have experienced: a) some form of impact that leads to tsunamis and possible vulcanism,  b) extensive and forceful flooding, c) excessive cosmic ray (or solar) radiation, and d) storms and other severe weather.  What is particular noteworthy is that (in my opinion) many of these reported physical effects resemble those that might be expected to occur in connection with the impact of a galactic superwave.

In regard to the first two viewed effects, it is possible to consider that this impact or “collision” may be due to the abrupt arrival of a gravity wave traveling outward from the Galactic center.  The steep gravity potential gradient that might propagate at the forefront of a superwave could abruptly push (or pull) the Earth together with the Moon, Sun, and planets.  The large tidal forces appearing with the wave’s arrival could cause a substantial torquing of the Earth’s spin axis which could trigger earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.  Gravity wave effects are the most little understood aspect of the superwave phenomenon because we have no way to verify their presence in distant active galaxies.  As one instance of prior experience, we can consider the December 26, 2004 Malaysian earthquake and tsunami which occurred two days prior to the arrival of the most intense gamma ray burst to be observed in modern times and which is the only one to have originated from a star in our Galaxy.  Again the second effect listed in the above summary, the forceful flooding, would be a consequence of a tsunami and could again arise from a superwave gravity wave impact.  Understand that these are not definite conclusions only observations of similarity to the RV reports.

Looking at the reports from the worst case scenario (Timeline A), we may consider viewer Daz for example, who focuses on Mombasa, Kenya.  For 2013 he reports the presence of “many man made structures” that are “interacted with by a speedy energy/motion.”  Daz writes “a large city with many structures.  These feel impacted by a fast moving energetic that causes damage, destruction to the structures.”  “This is surprised and causes chaos and damage.  The cause feels natural — part of a natural cycle.”  This sounds much like a tsunami.  But the reference to a natural cycle calls to mind a possible superwave cause.  Viewer Allgire, focusing on this same target, accurately draws a shoreline with a snow-capped, inland mountain in the background which he labels as “Kilamanjaro”.  Kilamanjaro is in fact about 250 km inland from Mombasa.  But in one picture he draws of the coastal area he shows arrows coming inland from the sea and writes “water moves inland, pushes; force hits shoreline; tsunami, hurricane.”

Another viewer, Maria, focusing on the Mumbasa target drew a picture depicting some sort of spiraling trajectory from the sky to the ground and in the next picture depicts an outward energetic motion that seems to flatten trees and structures in all directions.  She labels this spiral with the word “energy” and shows what appears to be an invisible protective dome over an area of houses being impacted and labels this dome “Israel.”  This calls to mind the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel that sprang up in the fall of 2012 and which at the time of writing has halted with a cease fire.  So this implies either a missile strike or something which is missile-strike-like, such as a comet impact.  In fact, the Farsight Institute analysis has interpreted these tsunami-producing impacts as being due to Earth’s future collision with large meteors.  One viewer, Dick, focussing on the coordinate for Key West, Florida in 2013 drew a diagram showing an arcing trajectory with an impact indicated and arrows radiating outward with the words “secondary waves of energy radiate, seems to ignite, kinetic energy transformed into thermal energy.”  In another diagram he drew arrows directed at people and writes: “There is unexpected energy here that radiates.  Energy surpasses humans.  They feel exposed, caught out in the open.  Urge to flee.”  Astronomers currently have not reported any approaching comet, especially one that might collide with the Earth prior to June 2013.  So the origin of this arcing impact is a bit of a mystery.  Could a superwave gravity wave create a disproportionately greater propulsion force on nearby small bodies, of size 10 meters or so, and forcefully propel them onto the Earth?  Perhaps this is something to consider as well.

The reports of the high cosmic ray intensities would also be expected from a superwave arrival.  For example, remote viewer Sita focussing on the coordinate for the U.S. Congress building in Washington wrote “power spot: electromagnetic strength above normal” “there is high electromagnetic activity taking place near target”.  Also viewer Allgire focussing on the coordinate for Sydney, Australia reported the presence of an ozone hole and drew a diagram showing the Earth and stratosphere with a note saying “radiation beats down”.  This too would be an expected consequence of a superwave since elevated cosmic ray radiation would produce elevated nitric oxides in the stratosphere which would photolytically destroy the polar ozone layer rendering high latitude regions such as Sydney susceptable to in increased flux of UV radiation.

The Timeline A remote-viewing data also suggested that by mid 2013 people at these target coastal locations would be experiencing the following hardships:

1. Massive self-organized relocation from coastal areas (refugees)
2. The breakdown of rescue or other notable governmental functioning
3. The breakdown of the food supply system
4. The breakdown of the vehicular transport system
5. Extensive loss of buildings near coasts

All of the above remote viewing data appears to suggest that a superwave-like event will strike prior to June 1st 2013, hence some time between the last month of 2012 and the first five months of 2013.  Although there is the consolation that a substantial fraction of the remote viewings did not see this outcome, a total of 18 out of 38 sessions, or about 47% of the viewings, reported events that could be interpreted as a normal extrapolation of present day events at those locations.  So, there is a substantial possibility that things will not turn out as bad as the other 53% of the viewings seem to indicate.  We will only know after June 1st 2013 who was correct.

Nevertheless the catastrophic predictions due raise some concern regarding the impending arrival of a superwave, particularly in view of the fact that in recent years astronomers have been tracking a large gas cloud with a possible hidden dwarf star positioned extremely close to the Galactic core and making its way toward Galactic center perigee (closest approach) by July 2013.  In my previous posting about this G2 cloud, I had concluded that the cloud would likely not trigger a superwave, but I was not 100 percent certain.  I noted that if there were a brown dwarf star or jovian planet embedded in this cloud, as this star or planet came in close to the Galactic core, its diameter would radically inflate through a kind of super Hot Jupiter effect.  Hot Jupiters are jupiter-like planets that are in close orbit to their parent star and seen to be unusually bloated by excess energy production in their interiors.  Whereas Hot Jupiters are seen to have diameters up to 80% larger than normal, a brown dwarf approaching the Galactic center, where the tidal forces and gravity potential are far far greater, may inflate to many times their normal size.  This excess energy production may be due in part to the tremendous increase in genic energy in the star’s interior arising from the embedded star’s entry into increasingly supercritical conditions as it approaches increasingly close to the Galactic center.  This genic energy effect is something astronomers are currently not taking into account in their assessment of this G2 cloud mainly because the idea is still rather new and isn’t yet part of mainstream astronomy.   But it could be a very important factor missing from their calculations.  As the star became increasingly bloated, the area it presented would intercept an increasingly large fraction of the cosmic ray flux being emitted from the galactic core.  This cosmic ray flux would further contribute to its heating.  So it is quite possible that all these factors together (tidal forces, genic energy, and the intercepted energy flux) might be sufficient to overcome the star’s self-gravity and rip it apart.  Once ripped apart this dispersed material would readily fall onto the Galactic core’s surface triggering highly energetic activity.  So now instead of talking about a 3 earth mass gas cloud we are talking about a possible 10 to 100 Jupiter mass planet or star being consumed, 3000 to 30,000 times more matter/energy.  This could be then sufficient to trigger a core explosion.

I have been in touch with Courtney Brown, director of the Farsight Institute, and asked him if any further remote viewing work has been done to further narrow down the time of this global event.  He responded that the event is too close in time to do more remote viewing on.  He said that the viewers would not be satisfactorily blind to the targets and the data would as a result be junk.  He said that their past 2008 data was “virgin” so to speak, so they are reliable.  But the new data would be contaminated since everyone would be thinking that they were viewing a post 2012 target.  In other words, although viewers are not told in advance what time period they are given for viewing, being now so close to the end of 2012 and given the previous data that they are now aware of and all the frightening scenarios that have been publicly circulated, including the movie 2012, their reports would likely be subconsciously influenced and biased.

Dr. Brown does not see a benefit to speculating in advance as to what might be the cause of the 2013 viewing results, whether caused by a superwave or some other phenomenon.  He says that although the data are really strange, they could be wrong.  He views this as an experiment that was conducted and whose outcome can only be known on June 1st, 2013 when we can see what the actual targets will look like and compare to the RV descriptions.

The Minority Report. I recently discussed the Farsight Institute findings with one remote viewer who has had an established successful viewing track record.  He has followed the work of the Farsight Institute but has personal doubts about the validity of the June 2013 viewings, at least the half that had a catastrophic outlook.  He also related that he heard about the superwave phenomenon 6 months ago and was asked to look into it.  From the materials he collected, his sense was that, here on our planet, we probably won’t even know that we passed through the wave.  He said that there will however be some effects but they will be subtle and not extreme to any point or issue.  He did not see the wave as hitting us, but rather sees us as “passing through the wave”.

So here we have two very different remote viewing scenarios.  One reports severe physical and social effects by June 2013 and the other sees that nothing very out of the ordinary will happen.  As to which might be the correct view, I leave that up to you to decide.  Consult your own intuition.  Or just wait and see what happens.

This leaves us with the question as to what is the significance of the 2037 date that is implied by the periods of the Crab and Vela pulsars.  These are two SETI beacons that are a key part of a message that warns us about the Galactic superwave phenomenon.  Then there is the July 8, 2008 Avebury Manor crop circle which encodes almost the same date (July 2035) in addition to the December 21, 2012 date (see the lecture video “Intelligent Communication from the Galaxy“).

It is worth mentioning one other remote viewing study of the future, one that was conducted by Stephen Schwartz, who is currently a senior fellow at the Samueli Institute.  He had directed a team of over 4000 subjects to remote view the date 2050 and found the following.  People at that future date were reported to no longer depend on utilities for their power or gasoline for their cars.  Some kind of energy revolution has decentralized power production, each house having its own energy source.  They saw most chronic genetic diseases as having been eliminated and that there was an increasing use of genetic engineering in affluent countries.  But, rather than there being a problem with overpopulation, in 2050 they predicted that there was an under population problem in a many places possibly due to a lower birthrate and multiple pandemics.  Or should we include a  2013-like event as another possible cause.  This calls to mind the Georgia Guidestones timecapsule.  Based on the 2050 Project report it appears that many of us may still be around to see that future day and this gives us hope that whatever might happen in the next half year may not be a final end, but maybe a new beginning.

Trying to predict when the next superwave will arrive or whether it will be a big or small magnitude event is like trying to walk forward while looking backward.  Even though a nearing superwave would have left the Galactic center 23,000 years ago, we are essentially blind to determine such future events through our normal senses.  When we feel earthquakes and see its signs in the sky, it will have already arrived and our time to prepare will have run out.  As it is said, “The Day of the Lord arrives like a Thief in the Night.”

In times of uncertainty like the present we turn to remote viewer reports.  But, here too we find differences of opinion.  In the words of the Jedi master, Yoda, “Always in motion, the future is.”  The Starburst Foundation which hosts this forum doesn’t necessarily endorse any of these future views.  But we feel that we should at least inform the public about them and their possible relevance to the next superwave arrival.

Meanwhile the scientific community is taking seriously this window of observation of events that will be seen to transpire in the vicinity of the Galactic center.  A committee of 10 scientists chaired by Geoffrey Bower of U.C. Berkeley had been asked to decide what will be the Galactic center observation policy for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and, as a result, on June 29, 2012 they issued a recommendation report.  They have agreed that during this critical period of the G2 cloud encounter that radio telescopes should monitor the Galactic center’s radio flux density on a weekly basis.  Twenty three years ago I was advocating observations on a daily basis, but this is a step in the right direction.

But they admit they don’t know what to expect will be the Galactic core’s response to this accretion event.  In one part of their report they state:

Within a few year timescale, an increase in the radio flux from the inner accretion flow is expected to occur, accompanied by a resolvable change in the size of the radio emitting region. We emphasize, however, that given the uniqueness of this event, there could be other effects and outcomes that have not been thought of and that the community should be prepared for.

They note that if the flux is seen to rise above a certain threshold, say 3 times its long-term average, they propose to initiate more intensive monitoring including very long baseline astrometric monitoring which will yield an extra high resolution of the Galactic core.  If something big does happen, will they let the public know without delay?  Or will they sit on the data for months as they did in the case of the intense December 28th 2004 gamma ray burst which they informed the public about two months later!

Paul LaViolette
November 29, 2012

Related links
Universe Today
http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.2272
Sgr A* vs. G2
Galactic Superwave: Science Meets Ancient Wisdom

Artist’s depiction of the G2 cloud being dispersed and swallowed during its close approach to Sagittarius A*

Universe Today story
Nature article

For a decade now astronomers have been tracking the progress of a dense gas cloud called G2 which now is rapidly approaching the Galactic center on a very eccentric elliptical orbit (eccentricity ~ 0.95) and is estimated to reach pericenter (the point of closest approach) around the beginning of July 2013.  Tidal forces have already been observed to stretch the cloud and these forces will become increasingly strong over the next 9 months as the cloud approaches orbit pericenter at which point it is thought that they will be strong enough to completely rip the cloud apart.  At this point the dispersed cloud is expected to be gravitationally drawn into the Galactic core with the consequent release of a large amount of energy in the form of cosmic rays and gamma ray emission.

I have been asked by several people whether the cloud’s consumption on this 2013 date might produce a Galactic superwave which would be reaching our solar system on that same date (due to the ability of the cosmic rays to travel straight toward us at close to the speed of light) and produce a major solar system cataclysm; e.g. see the forum comment by psychiceyes.  Indeed, due to the ending of the Mayan calendar cycle on December 21, 2012, there are many who expect an end of world scenario or consciousness transition event.  In fact, some groups have built shelters in the heart of Australia and South Africa with this expectation in mind.

I do not deny the possibility that a superwave could arrive in the next years.  I have long maintained that we are overdue for such an event and give a 95% probability that a superwave (large or small) should arrive sometime in the next 400 years.  However, it is difficult to make predictions before hand.  Now, with this cloud having been detected in advance, the question arises whether this near approach event could be what triggers the long overdue Galactic core outburst and accompanying superwave.  Indeed, studies and observations of the Galactic center similar to these reporting on the G2 cloud could give us advance warning about the potential arrival date of an impending superwave catastrophe.

I have looked at literature that has been published about this cloud, have considered all aspects carefully,  and have reached the conclusion that this encounter could very well initiate an energetic flare from the Galaxy’s core as astronomers predict, but that this will likely not be powerful enough to produce a superwave.  That is, it will not be sufficiently energetic to launch a cosmic ray volley that could locally overpower the interstellar magnetic field and allow long-range flight of the cosmic rays out of our Galaxy’s nuclear bulge.  Also, if it were able to release cosmic rays along rectilinear trajectories towards us and produce a superwave, I don’t believe that the consequences would pose any kind of health hazard.  Although there is a rather remote possibility (which I cannot presently rule out) that such a superwave may be a Magnitude 1 superwave that carries an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbance similar to a Carrington solar flare event, one that would be able to disrupt our electrical grid and satellite communication systems.  Also a magnitude 1 event could possibly cause significant seismic activity similar to the December 2004 tsunami event that struck two days before our satellites registered the largest Galactic gamma ray burst in modern history.  But these more serious EMP and gravity wave consequences should occur only if the G2 cloud break up and consumption occurred quickly, as we will discuss below.

One question that comes to mind is whether the G2 cloud has been orbiting the GC for some time.  Its orbit is observed to have a period of 138 ± 11  years and we see that no unusual cosmic or auroral effects took place on Earth back in 1875.  However, it seems that astronomers have come to conclude that it is making its first pass toward the Galactic center and that this cloud somehow originated for the first time around 1944 in the vicinity of the ring of blue giant stars that orbits the Galactic center.  So this may be the cloud’s first close encounter with the GC.  Whether there have been similar close encounters in the past centuries or millennia is left to speculation.  Our ability to track such objects in the vicinity of the GC came into play mainly in the past decade.  This G2 cloud was first discovered in 2006.

Murray-Clay and Loeb have theorized that a brown dwarf or low mass cool star is embedded in the G2 cloud, and that the cloud is regenerated from gasses boiling from the star’s surface.  At its pericenter G2 will pass within 266 astronomical units (AU) of the Galactic center and at this distance the tidal forces are not strong enough to rip apart a star.  They can disperse a cloud, but not disrupt a star.  So whatever happens during this pericenter encounter will necessarily arise due to the accretion of the G2 cloud mass which is estimated to amount to about 3 earth masses (2 X 10²⁸ grams).  What transpires will depend on how fast the Galactic core accretes this cloud.  Even our most sophisticated computer models cannot predict the kind of galactic roulette that will transpire during this encounter.  So let us consider three possibilities:

a) Let us first consider the more likely possibility that most astronomers are suggesting, namely, that the dispersing cloud will be gradually accreted in small gulps over a period of around 20 years.  The potential energy difference between the pericenter distance (~120 AU) and the core’s radius (~0.1 AU) will result in a total kinetic energy release of ~10⁴⁹ ergs for the infall of  a 3 earth mass cloud.  If this infall occurs gradually over 20 years energy would be released at the rate of 1.5 X 10⁴⁰ ergs/s.  This is quite small compared to the cosmic ray luminosity of Sgr A*, which I estimate amounts to about 10⁴³ ergs/s.  This added energy then would produce a net 0.1 percent elevation of the core’s energetic activity which may not be easily seen above the core’s normal activity fluctuations.

b)  Let us say as a second possibility that some time in this 20 year accretion interval that 10% of the cloud’s mass (i.e., 0.3 earth masses) were accreted in a discrete event lasting three days and energizing the side of Sgr A* that faces us.  Then the energy release would rise to about 4 X 10⁴² ergs/s, hence producing a 40% increase of the core’s activity level.  This would produce a noticeable increase in gamma ray emission, but certainly not generate a superwave or pose any kind of hazard to Earth.  The Galactic core had been observed to produce a much larger flare than this in 2001 when X-ray emission was observed to rise 3 fold within a period of one hour (http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2001/0204flare/).

c) Suppose as an extreme that all of the 3 earth masses of this dispersed cloud were to crash onto the surface of the Galactic core within a period of one day.  This would add a total of ~10⁴⁹ ergs, or about the energy of a type I supernova explosion.  If added to the core over a 1 day period this would amount to 10⁴⁴ ergs/s, or to a 10 fold increase in the overall energy output of Sgr A* assuming it normally emits cosmic ray protons and electrons at the rate of 10⁴³ ergs/s.  The type 1a Tycho supernova, which was observed by Tycho Brahe in 1572 AD, involved a comparable release of energy and occurred at a distance three times closer than the Galactic center.  While no harmful effects were observed to the Earth, the gamma ray burst from this explosion did cause an elevation in the ionization of the Earth’s atmosphere leaving a distinct nitrate ion peak in the Greenland ice record.  A 2013 GC burst of this magnitude, but 10 fold weaker due to the greater distance, may also cause a noticeable elevation of atmospheric ionization.  Whether this disturbance would be accompanied by an EMP that could adversely affect modern society is difficult to say —  possibly, but probably unlikely.

d) There is a wild card to consider.  That is, if the cloud contains an embedded brown dwarf, this star may be what is called a Hot Jupiter star.  This is the observation that when Jupiter-like planets are located very close to their parent stars, say within 0.02 to 0.09 AU, their radius is found to be greatly inflated, in some cases by as much as 80% of their expected radius.  This is believed to be partly due to the interception of the parent star’s energy flux and partly to frictional heating due to tidal forces, but the phenomenon is not well understood.  A Jupiter-like dwarf star that approached near the the Galaxy’s highly luminous supermassive core would also experience a hot Jupiter effect, but far more extreme from that seen in stellar systems.

Let us consider a 50 Jupiter mass star which normally has a radius 70% of that of the Sun.  Due to its close proximity to the Galactic core, its surface will be heated by the cosmic ray radiation being emitted from Sgr A*.  It would intercept an energy flux of about 4 X 10³² erg/s, or about 10% of the Sun’s luminosity.  Normally, a 50 Jupiter mass star should have a luminosity of around 3 X 10^-4 solar luminosities.  So this effect alone would boost the energy input into the star’s atmosphere by 330 fold.  This added energy input would cause the dwarf’s heated atmosphere to expand far more than the 80% observed in sun-like star systems.  If it were to expand say 4 fold to ~3 times the diameter of the Sun, its surface would intercept 16 times more energy, bringing the energy input to its atmosphere to 1.6 solar luminosities, or 5300 times greater than normal!  In addition to this we must add the heating due to tidal friction.  So, due to this added energy and expanded atmosphere, the dwarf would likely be expelling its atmosphere much more rapidly into space, thus contributing extra matter for accretion.  How much this might increase the G2 cloud’s mass during its two year near approach passage to the GC is difficult to say.

Other articles on the G2 cloud include: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.2272
and   http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.1414

One last comment, for many years I have been against the black hole concept.  My long research on this subject has led me to believe that black hole singularities are unable to form in nature and in fact that the evidence is contrary to their existence.  In particular we now know enough about our own galactic core that we can conclude that the core is not a black hole, but rather a supermassive dense star.  This evidence has been discussed in another posting (http://starburstfound.org/sqkblog/?p=115).  I share the opinion of MIT professor Phillip Morrison that black holes “only exist in the minds of physicists and astrophysicists”.   As a result, as you may note above I have used the theoretically neutral phrase “galactic core” in referring to Sgr A*.  Calculations which are presented in my book Subquantum Kinetics (4th ed.) estimate that the core has a radius of ~0.1 AU.  This happens to be very close to what standard physics proclaims is the black hole event horizon radius for Sgr A* which is 0.09 AU.  So, the energy release calculations I have made above jive quite closely with what physicists estimate would be the energy released by matter falling through the event horizon of a black hole.  The only difference is that in conventional black hole theory only a portion of this infalling matter would release energy that would be visible to the outside world.  The rest, perhaps 90% would be irretreivably lost into the supposed black hole.  But as I stated earlier, this whole black hole idea is an immense fiction.

Also those who have read Subquantum Kinetics will know that one of the arguments I cite against black holes being the power houses for active galactic cores is that the energy outpouring from such cores is so great that it pushes gas and dust far from the core.  In fact, in many cases such active cores are seen to have swept their immediate vicinity clean of gas and dust.  So this has left astronomers in the embarrassing position of not being able to easily explain how a black hole would be producing such prodigious energy outputs without any matter falling into them.  Even if a massive blue giant star were to approach such a core and become tidally ripped to pieces, the wind would be so strong that this matter would be blown far from the core.  None would reach its surface.  So one is left to conclude that active cores are powered  by their own source of energy generated spontaneously within them, what I call genic energy.

But what about a quiescent core such as that currently seen in our own Galaxy?  In this case the outward energy flux is very low and insufficient to adequately expel gas and dust.  That is why we have to worry about stars and close orbit passages to the Galactic center because a massive star passing close enough could produce an energy surge large enough to kick the core into its active state.  For example, a 50 jupiter mass brown dwarf coming in as close as 1 AU to the Galactic center, could impart an energy jolt of 1.5 X 10⁵³ ergs, equivalent to 150 of the most powerful type II supernovae.  If injected in the course of one day, this could send the core’s energy output soaring to 10⁴⁸ ergs/s, or 100,000 times its current output!  This would be enough to kick the core’s genic energy output into a semi permanent active state such as that seen in the cores of Seyfert galaxies.  It goes without mentioning, that this would launch a superwave that upon arrival at our solar system would have serious consequences, such as those that impacted us at the end of the last ice age.

Pray that this does not happen soon.

Paul LaViolette

X-ray map of the inner portion of the Crab Nebula showing emission rings.

On March 1, 2012, gmagee posted the following comment in connection with the following May 2011 Crab nebula posting http://starburstfound.org/superwaveblog/?p=157.  He notes:

“Researchers now acknowledge that the center of the high energy emission in the Crab nebula is offset slightly from the pulsar.  They formulate a energy displacement and wind theory to explain this phenomenon.”

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-high-energy-emissions-crab-nebula.html

I agree that indeed the astronomical community has finally caught on that the center of high-energy emission in the Crab nebula is offset from the pulsar, although I had already pointed this out 29 years ago.  The above referenced February 16, 2012 physorg press release posting relates:

“In this new research Aharonian and his team traced back the energy emissions from the nebula and found that it didn’t lead straight to the pulsar, but to a point somewhat near to it.  To explain this, they’ve come up with a theory that suggests that the energy from the pulsar moves away from the pulsar into the rest of the nebula, where it is captured by a wind that carries it out into space.”

Back in 1983, in Chapter 5 of my dissertation, I had made the following point, noting this offset as evidence that the pulsar is not energizing the Crab nebula remnant:

“The Crab pulsar is located conspicuously off center from the nebula’s X-ray emission peak; see Figure 5.9 (Harnden, 1983) and Figure 5-F.  The majority of the X-ray emission comes from a region about 25 X 65 arc seconds (0.8 X 2 l.y.) in extent which is centered northwest of the pulsar by about 20 arc seconds (0.6 l.y.) [in the plane of the sky].  As mentioned earlier, the X-ray and  gamma-ray region is the critical portion of the spectrum which demands that cosmic rays be continuously injected.   So, the proximity of the X-ray emission region to the pulsar should be of critical importance.  The fact that this emission is not centered on the pulsar strongly suggests that the pulsar is not the source of the inferred relativistic particles.”

I also made a similar point in an Earth, Moon, and Planets paper published in 1987.   Aharonian’s team apparently ignored what I had said, or else had not read my paper, and in the face of this contrary evidence maintains the standard incorrect conclusion that the Crab pulsar is energizing the nebula.  As I pointed out in these past references, the lifetime of cosmic rays producing the X-ray emission is as short as a few months whereas the time for energizing cosmic ray electrons to propagate from the pulsar to this central hot spot would be at least a year.  So cosmic ray emissions from the pulsar would be unable to make the journey.  In conclusion, I don’t find the theory suggested by the Aharonian team to be very convincing.

Paul LaViolette, March 4, 2012