DOOMSDAY JUST AHEAD

This is an intriguing but challenging book to review as it draws on a number of disciplines - geology, astronomy, physics, archaeology and palaentology - to offer a radical reinterpretation of the Earth's history and immediate prospects. It calls into question the gradualist interpretation of world, proposing instead periodic and devastating pole shifts where the Earth changes its axis of rotation, an argument supported by evidence of massive land changes and the discovery of the remains of animals such as mammoths who have died suddenly in a violent manner. Some such catastrophes, the author argues, are not part of received history because their very magnitude has wiped out technological development. The catastrophe of 11,500BCE (see below) appears to have been overwhelming, while that of 3,700BCE was less widespread. Our own technological civilisation has emerged over a very short period when considered in terms of geological time.

The first part of the book is concerned with the pole shift resulting from a loss of the Earth's magnetic field. Sir Ian begins with the enigma of the remains of woolly mammoths in Siberia. Carbon dating shows that they did not all die at the same time and that some have died so suddenly that there is still vegetable food in their mouths (implying that it was then summer). Dating indicates specimens from 50,000 BCE, 44,000BCE, 20,000 BCE, 11,500 BCE and 3,700BCE. Other places in the Mediterranean contain remains of hippopotamus bones that seem to have been crushed by a sudden catastrophe; and marine remains of crabs, molluscs and fish have been found high in the Himalayas. In the case of the mammoths, Sir Ian proposes that they must have been grazing 1,500 - 2,000 miles nearer the equator at the time they died, implying that the Earth moved through an axis shift of around 140 degrees and that the other dates mark similar occurrences.

An interesting and controversial aspect of Sir Ian's theory is that the conventional understanding of ice ages is misguided and does not fit the evidence. He proposes that changes in the distribution of ice caps can be explained by shifts in the location of the magnetic pole: ice sheets spread from different centres. He argues that some recorded temperature changes - for instance 7 degrees in 50 years in one part of the Greenland ice sheet - can only be explained by pole shift.

The next part of Sir Ian's equation is the behaviour of the Earth's magnetic field. A French geophysicist, Bernard Brunhes, discovered that magnetic alignments in lava did not all point in the same direction, and that some flows even pointed in exactly the opposite direction to that required by the Earth's magnetic field, 90% of which is created by the magnetic dipolar component. It is this element that is reducing and may reach nil as soon as 2030. A significant aspect of this process is that the solar wind can come much closer to the earth that causes a general increase in world temperature. Sir Ian believes that current global warming is principally due to this factor rather than humanly-induced carbon emissions; this same solar radiation would also affect the ozone layer. Moreover, as indicated by the evidence from woolly mammoths, catastrophic pole shifts may occur in a rhythm closer to 5,000 years than the conventional view of 300,000 to 1 million years and even then over a 5,000 year period. A further line of evidence is historical chronicles referring to the sun either standing still for a period (the Earth stops before reversing its direction) and to sunrise coming from another direction. Sir Ian's scenario is a chilling one for humanity, as indicated in his title. Does the argument stand up to scrutiny? This is where the difficulty of an amateur reviewer arises, and even experts might not have sufficient knowledge across the disciplines over which Sir Ian ranges. One suspect link is his assertion (p.91) that the Earth's coverage of ice is in fact on the increase (the albedo factor is a critical variable in precipitating pole shift). Before moving on to his second part, Sir Ian presents intriguing evidence that the building technology required to construct certain edifices in South America was far beyond what is supposed to have been available. The second part provides a new theory to explain the rotation of planets and their periodic pole shifts. Sir Ian asks why the planets do not run out of energy. The discussion is fairly technical but the nub of the theory is that the Sun is not the magnetic centre of the solar system but itself rotates around the Magnetic Centre. The MC is postulated to 'attract bodies within the solar system, but at the same time those bodies are repelled by solar wind. So planetary movement becomes an interaction between these two forces.' Sir Ian concludes that the new theory explains three things: why all bodies in the solar system continue to orbit the sun, why planets rotate and why most solar bodies hold to the plane of the ecliptic. All this is presented in detail, but once again, even if logically compelling, it is hard for a non-astronomer to evaluate. So the book is challenging on a number of levels. It presents a strong case in both parts, and requires several pole shifts in the reader's understanding. However, readers cannot help becoming engaged, all the more so when the immediate future of the planet is at stake. And if natural disasters on a limited scale create a problem for theodicy, just think of the theology of pole-shifts where a massive wipe-out of life occurs. It is truly mind-boggling unless one takes a larger view of consciousness and its evolution in other dimensions, since the pole shift process is quite independent of human actions. None of this is comfortable, but we must nevertheless face the possibility outlined in Sir Ian's book.