SPACE/COSMOS
A New Explanation For ‘Snowball Earth
Artist's rendition of a fully-frozen Snowball Earth with no remaining liquid surface water. Credit: Oleg Kuznetsov, Wikipedia Commons
A new study by Earth scientists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) offers an explanation for one of Earth’s great climate puzzles: how the Sturtian glaciation, an ancient ice age when the planet was nearly entirely frozen, could have lasted 56 million years – far longer than standard climate models have predicted. This lengthy freeze took place during Earth’s Cryogenian period, roughly 717 to 660 million years ago, predating dinosaurs and complex plant life. The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by graduate student Charlotte Minsky, who is advised by co-author Robin Wordsworth, the Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Co-authors are David T. Johnston and Andrew H. Knoll.
Using a coupled model of the ancient climate and the global carbon cycle, the researchers make the case that Earth may not have been locked in a single, unbroken “Snowball Earth” state, or period when the entire planet was frozen. Instead, they find that the planet likely oscillated between fully ice-covered “snowball” conditions and ice-free “hothouse” intervals throughout the Sturtian period.
The team’s simulations suggest that intense weathering of basalt in the Franklin Large Igneous Province, a vast volcanic region located in northern Canada and believed to have erupted just before the onset of the Sturtian glaciation, drew down atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to trigger multiple global glaciations.
As volcanoes and other processes slowly rebuilt atmospheric carbon dioxide, the climate warmed, the ice retreated, and large areas of fresh basalt were again exposed to the atmosphere. Renewed breakdown from weathering then pulled carbon dioxide back down, pushing the climate into another Snowball phase. This repeating cycle of carbon dioxide-driven freezing and thawing, the authors argue, could naturally sustain glacial–interglacial swings over tens of millions of years.
The mechanisms revealed by the Harvard study resolve several longstanding paradoxes, most notably the previously inexplicable length of the Sturtian when compared with physical climate models. The study also matches observed sedimentary patterns from that time period and explains how atmospheric oxygen levels could have remained stable despite extreme climate upheavals.
Repeated returns to warmer, ice-free conditions may have helped prevent a complete collapse of atmospheric oxygen, the study further suggests. “This could help explain how aerobic life persisted through such an extreme interval,” Minsky said.
VELIKOVSKY WAS RIGHT
New Research Proposes Dante’s Inferno Modelled A Planetary Impact 500 Years Before Modern Science
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Artist's depiction of a collision between two planetary bodies, similar to the hypothesized collision between Theia and the proto-Earth. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_(hypothetical_planet)
New research reveals that Dante Alighieri’s Inferno wasn’t just a masterpiece of literature: it was a gedankenexperiment in impact physics. From multi-ring craters to shockwaves that reshaped the globe, discover how a 14th-century poet modelled a planetary impact 500 years before the birth of modern meteoritics
For seven centuries, the descent of Dante Alighieri’s Satan has been read as a spiritual tragedy: a silent, heavy fall from grace. However, groundbreaking new research from Timothy Burbery of Marshall University suggests that the Divine Comedy contains a far more explosive secret. By reappraising the 14th-century masterpiece through the lens of modern meteoritics, Burbery proposes that Dante envisioned Satan as a high-velocity impactor hitting the Southern Hemisphere and tunnelling to the Earth’s centre. This impact forces the Northern Hemisphere to retreat, which, consequently, forms the core of Hell as a bottom-up crater, while the earth displaced behind Satan creates the mountain of Purgatory as a central peak.
The scale of this event parallels the Chicxulub (K-Pg) impact that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Burbery suggests treating the Prince of Darkness as an oblong, asteroid-sized body, reminiscent of the interstellar object Oumuamua, whose arrival followed the harrowing logic of a global extinction event. Much like the K-Pg asteroid, this collision triggered a planetary chain reaction: it tunnelled to the core and generated the central peak of Mount Purgatory. Like the Hoba meteorite, which remains a 60-ton intact mass, Dante’s Satan is modelled as a physical, un-vaporized impactor that permanently restructured the Earth’s architecture.
In this light, the nine circles of Hell are no longer merely symbolic tiers of sin, but rather a remarkably accurate description of the concentric, terraced morphology found in multi-ring impact basins across the solar system, from the Moon to Venus. Anticipating the non-Euclidean geometry later found in the Paradiso, Dante intuitively mapped the physics of terminal velocity and crustal breach required for a massive object to reach maximum compression at the Earth’s core.
This research offers a significant tool for planetary defence, as it demonstrates how literary geomythology can raise awareness of physical threats long before their scientific formalization. Burbery argues that Dante effectively discovered the geological reality of meteors, and this challenges the Aristotelian dogmas that viewed the heavens as perfect and unchanging.
When depicting Satan’s fall as a tangible, high-velocity impact with devastating physical effects rather than a mere optical illusion or spiritual allegory, Dante helped shift the Western paradigm toward recognising celestial bodies as physical agents of change. This interdisciplinary bridge fosters a sense of Kuhnian humility and reminds us that ancient narratives may encode planetary truths that modern science is only beginning to model.
The Divine Comedy is a fascinating literary, and now, a geophysical gedankenexperiment, one that deepens our own understanding of meteoritics, both in terms of its anticipations of the modern science, and in terms of how it diverges from it.
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