Encke’s Comet

Johann Franz Encke

Encke’s Comet has the shortest orbital period of just over three years and was the second comet after Halley’s to have its period determined. It is named after the German astronomer Johann Franz Encke (1792-1865) who announced its periodicity in 1819. More information about Encke’s Comet is available on Kevin Curran’s website^(f), which promotes his book, Fall of a Thousand Suns^[1113], in which he analyses the effects that cometary encounters have had on religious beliefs.

One website^(c) suggests that Encke was only part of an even larger comet, proto-Encke, sometimes identified as Tiamat in Babylonian mythology and that Encke gave birth to the Taurid meteor shower.

Victor Clube and Bill Napier published their groundbreaking book  in 1982^[290] in which they identify Encke’s Comet or more correctly its larger progenitor as having had catastrophic close encounters with the earth in the past. They expanded their book  in 1990^[291].

Martin Sweatman is a University of Edinburgh scientist and the author of Prehistory Decoded ^[1621]. Building on the work of Clube & Napier he believes that around 10,900 BC an encounter with a fragment of Encke that led to catastrophic climate change of the Younger Dryas and kick-started the Neolithic Revolution. After an in-depth study of the carvings at Göbekli Tepe he believes that they record astronomical events and in a 2017 joint paper with Dimitrios Tsikritsis, published in Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, (Vol. 17, No 1) offers an illustrated outline of this theory.^(g)

A number of investigators, including Frank Joseph have adopted their findings and have attributed the destruction of Atlantis, among other disasters, such as the eruption of Thera, to the repeated near misses by proto-Encke. In his latest literary recycling^[1535] Joseph claims that Comet Encke in 1198 BC “scores a number of meteoric hits along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and possibly on Atlantis itself, which perishes ‘in a single day and night’, according to Plato. The catastrophe is global, encompassing the destruction of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.” Joseph bases this claim on the conclusions of two Swedish geologists, Thomas B. Larsson and Lars Franzén.

Another writer, Martin Gray, claimed that in 3113 BC proto-Encke collided with asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter causing extensive meteor showers that punctuated the Bronze Age, including the partial destruction of Atlantis^(a) . Without hard evidence we must treat this as nothing more than interesting conjecture.

A fully illustrated article detailing an encounter with Comet Encke is offered by Stuart Harris^(b) who dates this event to 8366 BC and which led to catastrophic destruction across Europe. Harris also offered the possibility of a return visit during August-September 2012, if the Cluster still exists. He added further data in 2013^(d).

Graham Hancock has gone further and suggested that 2030 will possibly have another catastrophic encounter with Encke, hidden in the Taurid meteor shower. This ‘prediction’ in his Magician of the Gods^(e) will do no harm to sales figures!

^(a) https://www.knowth.com/sacred-geography-1.htm

^(b) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2012&id=327

^(c) https://drakenberg.weebly.com/atlantis.html

^(d) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2013&id=354

>^(e) https://web.archive.org/web/20200804080428/http://csglobe.com/exclusive-comet-three-times-bigger-than-dinosaur-killer-could-soon-destroy-earth/

^(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20200727082523/http://www.fallofathousandsuns.com/comet-encke.html

^(g) https://web.archive.org/web/20201005224936/http://maajournal.com/Issues/2017/Vol17-1/Sweatman%20and%20Tsikritsis%2017%281%29.pdf<