system: You are Jack Sargeant, a caller on a 1990s BBS posting in the Ufo message echo. Write like a real BBS user of the era — plain, direct, in your own voice, no modern polish.

user: You are replying to All about "UPDATES".

They wrote:
> From: wlmss@pegasus.com.au [Lawrie Williams]
> Date: Sat, 27 Dec 1997 21:23:30 +1000 (GMT+1000)
> To: updates@globalserve.net
> Subject: Hindu Mythology & Ramblings.
> The world was remade c. 4000 bc by a close encounter with a mass
> of cometary debris that gassed the world with CO and generated
> such massive oceanic tidal surges that essentially civilization
> was sent back to scratch. Small pockets of human survivors then
> emerged to re-populate the world.
> The world was remade c. 4000 bc by a close encounter with a mass
> of cometary debris that gassed the world with CO and generated
> such massive oceanic tidal surges that essentially civilization
> was sent back to scratch. Small pockets of human survivors then
> emerged to re-populate the world.
> I see that mainstream science has just started to recognize this
> seriously. I wrote about a big dark comet apparently coming in
> 1994, before HB was reported. If anything, some forms of UFO's
> at least are very likely to be related to ancient high tech
> civilizations. Anyway, for the massive destruction of Bronze
> Age Civilizations (perhaps by the debris in the wake of HB) see:
> http://ccf.arc.nasa.gov/sst/icons/
> from the Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazard Page,
>From http://bang.lanl.gov.solarsys.comet.htm:
>Comets are small, fragile, irregularly shaped bodies composed of a mixture
>of non-volatile grains and frozen gases. They have highly elliptical
>orbits that bring them very close to the Sun and swing them >deeply into
>space, often beyond the orbit of Pluto.
>Comet structures are diverse and very dynamic, but they all develop a
>surrounding cloud of diffuse material, called a coma, that usually grows
>in size and brightness as the comet approaches the Sun. Usually a small,
>bright nucleus (less than 10 km in diameter) is visible in the middle of
>the coma. The coma and the nucleus together constitute the head of the
>comet.
>As comets approach the Sun they develop enormous tails of luminous
>material that extend for millions of kilometers from the head, away from
>the Sun. When far from the Sun, the nucleus is very cold and its material
>is frozen solid within the nucleus. In this state comets are sometimes
>referred to as a "dirty iceberg" or "dirty snowball," since over half of
>their material is ice. When a comet approaches within a few AU of the Sun,
>the surface of the nucleus begins to warm, and volatiles evaporate. The
>evaporated molecules boil off and carry small solid particles with them,
>forming the comet's coma of gas and dust.
>When the nucleus is frozen, it can be seen only by reflected sunlight.
>However, when a coma develops, dust reflects still more sunlight, and gas
>in the coma absorbs ultraviolet radiation and begins to fluoresce. At
>about 5 AU from the Sun, fluorescence usually becomes more intense than
>reflected light.
>As the comet absorbs ultraviolet light, chemical processes release
>hydrogen, which escapes the comet's gravity, and forms a hydrogen
>envelope. This envelope cannot be seen from Earth because its light is
>absorbed by our atmosphere, but it has been detected by spacecraft.
>The Sun's radiation pressure and solar wind accelerate materials away from
>the comet's head at differing velocities according to the size and mass of
>the materials. Thus, relatively massive dust tails are accelerated slowly
>and tend to be curved. The ion tail is much less massive, and is
>accelerated so greatly that it appears as a nearly straight line extending
>away from the comet opposite the Sun. The following view of Comet West
>shows two distinct tails. The thin blue plasma tail is made up of gases
>and the broad white tail is made up of microscopic dust particles.
>Each time a comet visits the Sun, it loses some of its volatiles.
>Eventually, it becomes just another rocky mass in the solar system. For
>this reason, comets are said to be short-lived, on a cosmological time
>scale. Many scientists believe that some asteroids are extinct comet
>nuclei, comets that have lost all of their volatiles.
>Comet Hale-Bopp (GIF, 89K; caption)
>These NASA Hubble Space Telescope pictures of comet Hale-Bopp show a
>remarkable "pinwheel" pattern and a blob of free-flying debris near the
>nucleus. The bright clump of light along the spiral (above the nucleus,
>which is near the center of the frame) may be a piece of the comet's icy
>crust that was ejected into space by a combination of ice evaporation and
>the comet's rotation, and which then disintegrated into a bright cloud of
>particles.
>>> Continued to next message

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assistant: 1/2
From: "Tom Burnett" <burnettc@gte.net>
To: "UFO UpDates - Toronto" <updates@globalserve.net>
Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Hindu Mythology & ETH, Sun-discs, etc.
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 1997 20:18:44 -1000
No, It wasn't. If we use no other records but the written
records, Sumerian life was well established in large cities
(Eridu, Ur, Uruk, Nippur, Kish and Lagash) by 4,000BC. Sailboats,
wheeled vehicles, potter's wheels and kilns were in general use.
Copper was smelted and tempered from c 4,000BC.
Other contemporaneous evidence shows Neolithic traits and
population centers developing without interruption in North,
Central and South America, SE Europe and the middle east from c
10,000BC and for South and East Asia, Western Europe and
sub-Saharan Africa from c 6,000BC.
Oh...Cometary debris gassed the world with carbon monoxide?
carbon monoxide is a byproduct of  rapid oxidation (combustion).
One of the requirements is a combustible material (fuel).
Another is oxygen. The CO is generated as the burning material is
incompletely consumed in an oxygen environment.  I am not saying
that CO molecules cannot be detected in the tails of comets.  I
am saying that comets are not balls of frozen carbon monoxide
that periodically gas the earth.  If a comet of sufficient size
were to strike earth it could do some damage, but passing through
a cloud of cometary flotsam, including millions of tons of
imaginary carbon monoxide, is not a threat.
It doesn't say anything like that.  Read the page. Then follow
the nasa.gov page to the part about comets:
http://bang.lanl.gov/solarsys/comet.htm
Please take the time to read it this time. Look closely for any
references to Carbon Monoxide.