Stonehenge Solved Its Three Observatories, Who built them, How and Why

We now return to the point reached in chapters 8 and 9. There it was asserted the orbit of Earth about the Sun, and the angle, or attitude of Earth (one which we associate with its present day axis of spin being angled at 23.5 degrees) relative to the fixed stars, were as they are today. But Earth's axis of spin was temporarily located at St Petersburg, not the North Pole as now. That is to say, the axis is thought to have slowly moved from the Pole to St Petersburg and back again, with a significant pause at its reverse. The stability of the climate, and Sun and Moon movements during the pause, persisted long enough to convince people it was worthwhile constructing the Stone henge. (In reality, today the axis of spin does not stay exactly on the same spot near the Pole, it wanders about a little; and before the phenomenon under consideration, may not have been exactly in the locations it occupies today.) What could have caused this movement of the axis of spin? (i)

In seeking to solve this conundrum, obviously we are searching for a natural cause. That the axis moved very slowly is an assumption consistent with very large bodies not being given to changing their movements suddenly. On the other hand large bodies can be greatly influenced by a relatively small change. The principle is evidenced, for example, by the small mass of a balance weight required to eliminate vibration in a car's wheel. This example falls within a large area of study mathematicians call Chaos Theory. To start with we need evidence of the axis's movement, and in the event we have it close to Stonehenge at Silbury Hill, in the form of climate change. (We also have this elsewhere, for example in Denmark (ii).) Additionally, we need evidence of how and why the movement commenced, paused, and then reversed. While such evidence is adduced it remains speculative, although in the next chapter facts in support of it will be presented.

It seems certain the cause must have been beyond the system comprised of Earth and the Moon revolving round it because, although there are many repetitive, very small variations within this system, there is no potential cause of instability. However beyond this in the solar system are asteroids, meteors and comets: 'rogues' which can pass through our Earth/Moon system seemingly randomly and at great speeds. At the time of writing NASA, the United States space agency, is considering a plan for intercepting and destroying a particular one of these if it threatens to impact and destroy Earth. It is foreshadowed there are two inter-related aspects to explaining the movement of Earth's axis, one being external to Earth, the other within it. Firstly consider the external aspect.

On the Moon's surface there is unmistakable evidence of a binary asteroid (one consisting of two pieces very close together) ricocheting off it, and in the process creating two craters (known as Messier A, and Messier), by removing large quantities of its regolith and lava, Fig 63, (iii). Regolith is the thick, blanket of loose material which covers the Moon's underlying lava. Weak though the Moon's gravity is relative to that of Earth, it was adequate for overcoming the asteroid's lost momentum following the ricochet. The consequence was the asteroid's fractured but large pieces, and accompanying regolith and lava, going into orbit around the Moon. At various times as they degraded, these left their orbits, and on one occasion fell as a swathe of incendiaries down the western parts of the British Isles and the Atlantic coast of France, causing mayhem. (The author believes Dolmens are the vestiges of rock shelters constructed in anticipation of a repetition of this event, but which never materialised in northwest Europe. Originally, save for a small entrance, their stones were beneath a large mound of soil, Fig 64.) These skyward events at the Moon were recorded by Rock Art at Newgrange, Ireland, and elsewhere, although the former is much the most informative. The carvers were able readily to observe what happened because the Moon's regolith is composed of much glassy material which powerfully reflects sunlight: the orbiting debris resulted in this being more brilliant than we see today.

The Moon orbits Earth every 28 days (actually 27.32166 days: the 'sidereal' month when measured against the fixed stars), and does this almost in the same plane (called the elliptic) as Earth orbits the Sun in a year. It is speculated the fractured pieces of the asteroid and regolith/lava debris orbiting the Moon, reacted with unknown cosmic forces in such a way as to disturb the Moon's orbit plane (MOP) about Earth. The MOP left the elliptic and very slowly turned through 180 degrees round the Earth to rejoin it, Fig 65. The outcome of this was the direction of Moon's rotation around Earth reversing. This would not have been obvious to an observer on Earth (had he lived long enough) because we move from west to east as a consequence of Earth's spin. For us the Moon rises in the east whatever the Moon's movements. However, around the mid point of the MOP movement, for example when it intersected Earth's axis of spin, mankind in the British Isles witnessed spiral paths of the Moon, Fig 66. Rock art confirms this, Fig 67.

For mankind in the British Isles, a consequence was spells of consecutive days and nights when the Moon never left the sky. A further outcome was of a full Moon appearing consecutively in all four quarters round the horizon each year. This was because the direction of Earth's angle of incidence, or obliquity (its figure in terms of land and sea, not its axis of spin), always points in the same direction relative to the fixed stars, as it completes annual rotation about the Sun. The evidence for this is clear at Avebury, Figs 34, 35, where the notional best lines of symmetry of the arcs form a right angled cross, Fig 68. In the direction of each of these lines, the most brilliant reflected sunlight, required for the sharpest shadows on the flank of the ditch, came from a full Moon, obviously in the night hours. The extremities of an arc reflect the phases of the Moon when its luminosity became inadequate: from around its contemporary Gibbous phase as it 'waxed', to Full, followed by 'waning'.

Chronologically, the observations at Avebury were made between the intersection of the Moon's orbit plane and Earth's axis of spin, Fig 65, prior to the construction of the structure at Newgrange c3210BC, and the dwell of Earth's axis of spin at St Petersburg, marked by commencement of construction of the Stone henge c2100BC. The absence of the axis's location at today's North Pole accounts for why the lines of symmetry do not conform to today's cardinal points.

Additionally it is thought by the author that throughout the turn of the MOP about Earth, the Moon's cratered surface, which had always faced away from Earth, slowly moved to become inward facing, as we see it today. (The man in the Moon has not always been with us!) There are also other features of the Moon, for example the varied thickness of its so-called Crusta, which are also the 'wrong' way round. This means the Moon has turned since it solidified from being a molten mass, and it may well have done so at this time, difficult though it is to rationalise the necessary forces and movements,(as it would be had it occurred at any other time), Fig 69.

There remains outstanding the question "What of the unknown cosmic force with which the orbiting pieces of asteroid and Moon debris are asserted to have reacted? What was it, or rather what is it?" The author does not know, an answer which becomes somewhat less disconcerting when we contemplate the fact of the Earth's tilt of 23.5 degrees always points in the same direction relative to the fixed stars. This happens regardless of where Earth is on its orbit round the Sun. Nobody understands the force for this either, immensely powerful though it must be.

The key point in all of this is the assertion of the MOP turning about Earth 180 degrees to finish up as we know it today. The second aspect of explaining how and why Earth's axis moved, and concerned with inside Earth, is now considered.

The structure of Earth, in other words how the inside of it is arranged, is somewhat akin to the layers of an onion. However, the analogy breaks down in so far as where the layers of an onion tend to be tightly locked together (although they can come apart, obviously), those of Earth are not sharply defined and are fused together. Additionally, not only are there fewer layers in Earth but their composition differs, ranging from solid to liquid, and hot to cold. We live on a rigid crust under which there are mantles, or layers, until reaching the core. The very centre of the core is thought by scientists to be solid iron and nickel. This is surrounded by liquid iron and nickel under high pressure, and at a high temperature, as one might expect. The solid core, the surrounding liquid core, and all the layers around them, revolve in unison once every 24 hours, Fig 70.

However, Earth is not a perfectly circular ball but is very, very slightly ovoid, which is to say its diameter at the poles is very slightly less than that at the equator; the difference becoming progressively less towards the centre. Thus the solid core is slightly ovoid, but a lot less so. This crude description reflects scientific thinking and it is now followed by the author's further speculation.

It is envisaged that the plane of rotation of all the layers is determined by the plane of the solid iron and nickel core which 'floats' in its liquid surround. Therefore if and when the plane of the core moves, so do all the others, including the crust on which we live. However, although the central core and layers all revolve together, they are not all rigidly locked to one another. Some of the intervening layers, especially the liquid iron and nickel, act like a clutch, which implies potential slippage, or lag, of rotation of the core relative to the crust.

At this point in the theory, an interaction between the Moon and the solid core is conjectured. The core is seen to have been sensitive to the gravitational pull of the Moon because of its slightly ovoid shape. As the MOP turned, the directions of its gravitational pull changed relative to the core's ovoid shape, thus inducing the latter's rotation. It is important to note that at a stage somewhat more than half-way through the MOP's turn, the effect of the pull changed from generating the turn, to one of helping to arrest and reverse the core's movement, again because of the ovoid shape. Thus it then helped to restore the core to its original stable position.

The core's responses would have been very sluggish with long time lags, for two reasons. The Moon's gravity is weak, but in addition the ovoid shape of the solid core would result in added resistance to be overcome in the liquid iron/nickel viscous boundary between them. Additionally, it seems possible that whereas during the 'outward', movement the solid core's plane would have advanced intermittently, in other words in 'snatches', the return could have been smoother because initial obstructions in the boundary would have been removed.

These movements and events on the crust can now be linked. The adverse climate changes in the British Isles steadily worsened during the early stages of the MOP rotation because Earth's axis of spin, or rotation, tilted further over towards the plane of the elliptic. This caused the Sun to pass higher and higher in our summer skies to almost overhead, causing high temperatures with long periods of continuous daylight. The seasonal changes were short. Winters saw continuous darkness and were very cold, but not withstanding this, our average temperature was much higher than that of today. Then the long dwell in mankind's perceived changes of the Moon's movements (and those of the Sun), saw construction of the Stone henge and this was at the time of the core's reversal of movement. With the axis of spin's return towards the Pole the climate improved. But when the MOP first resettled back in the elliptic, the axis was still to complete its return journey, because of the core's time lag in its responses. (This is particularly relevant to chapter 23, following.)

This whole episode, marked by the first and last movements of the MOP, took place over so many generations that mankind in any one of them, would have remained totally unaware of change. Inspired by the earliest known dates for henges and stone circles, the events at the Moon are thought to have commenced in the 5^th millennium BC. The rock art at Newgrange was executed prior to c3210 BC. Construction of the Stone henge commenced c2100BC. The resettlement of the MOP in the elliptic is thought to have followed dates assigned to the last built henges and stone circles, say the 2nd millennium BC. A notional overall duration of c3000 years for the entire phenomenon is indicated.