Ruth Dwyer: the comet of 536 AD and the Ravenna mosaics
"Something unusual seems to be coming at us from the stars..." (Cassiodorus)
Prof. Ruth Dwyer, professor of Art History and Film at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada (emerita) discovered in the famous mosaics of Ravenna a depiction of contemporanous phenomena attending the comet of 536 AD and the ensuing catastrophes of the reign of Justinian. She shows her findings in this video, drawing additonally on the sacred Hymns of the kontakion of Romanos Melodos (Romanus the Melodist), Earthquakes and Fires.
Prof. Ruth Dwyer at Haghia Sophia, Istanbul
See also: fragment of Halley's comet hit Earth in 536 AD, causing drought and famine
A piece of the famous Halley's comet likely slammed into Earth in A.D. 536, blasting so much dust into the atmosphere that the planet cooled considerably, a new study suggests. This dramatic climate shift is linked to drought and famine around the world, which may have made humanity more susceptible to "Justinian's plague" in A.D. 541-542 — the first recorded emergence of the Black Death in Europe.
The new results come from an analysis of Greenland ice that was laid down between A.D. 533 and 540. The ice cores record large amounts of atmospheric dust during this seven-year period, not all of it originating on Earth.
"I have all this extraterrestrial stuff in my ice core," study leader Dallas Abbott, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told LiveScience here last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The new results come from an analysis of Greenland ice that was laid down between A.D. 533 and 540. The ice cores record large amounts of atmospheric dust during this seven-year period, not all of it originating on Earth.
"I have all this extraterrestrial stuff in my ice core," study leader Dallas Abbott, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told LiveScience here last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.