Review: Jeff Kanipe, THE COSMIC CONNECTION: HOW ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS IMPACT LIFE ON EARTH
Ancients as well as many people today have believed that cosmic events -- the passage of comets, planets aspecting one another and/or the Sun and Moon, etc. -- influence our lives and affect the course of our lives. Whether or not there is anything to astrology, the premise that Earthly life, including humanity, has been significantly influenced and changed by cosmic phenomena is well-founded and has scientific knowledge behind it.
From the very beginning of Earth's existence, some 4.5 billion years ago, countless astronomical events have affected the Earth and its emerging life-forms. The chemistry of our bodies, from the iron in our blood to the calcium in our bones, comes from stars that lived and died hundreds of millions of years ago. Over all that incomprehensible span of time, comets have showered our oceans and land with organic chemicals, impacts of comets and asteroids have wiped our most of the biota that filled the Earth's land and seas during that time, and powerful beams of light produced by catastrophic deaths of stars have done terrible things to Earth's atmosphere, and caused problematical mutations in countless species of plants, animals, and fungi.
In this grand tour of the cosmos and Earth's place in it, the author discusses the many ways we are connected to our vast, possibly infinite universe. Tracing the long, long natural history of how events in the nearby and remote parts of the universe have affected life on Earth, and how they might influence life in the future, the author covers the who range of known and theorized events and phenomena, not only in historical context but in future contexts, as well. And as the tile of this book suggests, he shows how these events are all interconnected.
The Cosmic Connection is a fascinating and approachable look at the cosmos we're part of, and is attended for the general readerships, laymen and scientists alike. The narrative style is eloquent and, at times, amusing, but is always well-paced and fact-filled. The Cosmic Connection provides readers a broad view of how life on Earth, and likely life on other worlds, are related to the stars. (Readers familiar with my reviews and my Live Journal blog know that I am a professional astrologer, a Ceremonial Magickian, a Qabbalist, and a Tarot practitioner, and a student of Aleister Crowley [NOT a follower of him, or Thelemite, thank you], as well. Crowly himself said that it's all the same universe whether you approach it from the view of science or that of the so-called mystical Arts and Sciences. He's right. So the advice I'd give astrologers who have little or no understanding of the sciences, particularly astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, and physics, is to get as much knowledge about them and their subjects as possible, because it will truly significantly enhance their ability to interpret astrological charts. And this book is a grand introduction to those sciences, But I digress.)
Each chapter of this book explores a different type of astronomical phenomenon, focusing on such issues as:
-- Earth's orbit and inclination might have triggered past ice ages, including Snowball Earth events during the Proterozoic Eon, an ice age that dominated the early Permian Period of the Paleozoic, and the ice ages that have characterized the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs of the Quaternary Period of the Cenozoic Era, from 2.5 million years ago through the present
-- Ancient supernovae might have played a part in mass extinctions and the genetic makeup of survivors, profoundly influencing the evolution of life on Earth
-- A (geologically) recent event, the "Little Ice Age (1300-1850 AD), might have been caused or influenced in part by a slight but persistent dip in the Sun's output of energy
-- The dangers posed by intense geomagnetic storms
-- The widespread effects that our Sun's changing galactic environment has on life and climate
The author's elegant, jargon-free descriptions of these and related issues will delight and inform anyone who has an interest in astronomy, the evolution of the Earth and its life, and the future of that life, including human life.