We note that the Spedicato paper cited above proposes that the last glaciation began with a cometary collision or explosion over land. Perhaps we find here a clue to the sudden appearance of Cro-Magnon man?

I have here on my desk a paper by Rhawn Joseph and Chandra Wickramasinghe entitled Comets and Contagion: Evolution and Diseases From Space. They write in their conclusions:

"Correlation is not causation and thus no firm conclusions can be drawn despite the wealth of evidence suggesting a link between comets and diseases from space. Nevertheless, comets are an ideal vehicle for sustaining and transporting a variety of microbes, including viruses, from planet to planet and even from solar system to solar system. In consequence, when these organisms are deposited on a world already thriving with life, genes may be exchanged, the evolution of new species may ensue, or conversely contagion may be unleashed, and disease, death, and plague may spread throughout the land."

Let us speculate that the genes that produced Cro-Magnon man may have been brought to earth as the result of a cometary impact. The simplest version of this panspermia theory is that proposed by Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe who suggest that life forms continue to enter the earth's atmosphere, and may be responsible for epidemic outbreaks, new diseases, and the genetic novelty necessary for macroevolution. The mechanisms proposed for interstellar panspermia may include radiation pressure and lithopanspermia (microorganisms in rocks), deliberate directed panspermia from space to seed Earth. Interplanetary transfer of material is well documented, as evidenced by meteorites of Martian origin found on Earth. [...]

Now, 'panspermia', as the DNA-transported-by-comets-seeding-life-on-earth theory is called, may get us off the hook as far as human evolution on earth is concerned, but it does not get us off the hook when considering where that DNA came from originally and how the individuals who carried it evolved, if the arguments against evolution that the panspermia scientists employ apply everywhere. Obviously, they are under the same constraints. On the other hand, that may be a way out in a different direction: DNA could be a pure manifestation of consciousness, a sort of first-level physicality, the interface between the material and non-material worlds. Pure information might be able to geometrize itself in the form of DNA and, voilà! the building blocks of life that are complex and capable of inducting consciousness itself into matter come into being in an instant. Sort of a mini-Big Bang with consciousness present to guide the 'explosion'.

A second sun was seen on and around May 29, 1630, and 20 or 30 years later a lot of new comets showed up just as we would expect - the first wave to have been flung in by a companion star that briefly lit up to scare the bejeebies out of everyone at the time. And we do see that the effects of this event were exactly as we would have expected them to be, only it seems to have been covered up and/or forgotten, for the most part in its historical context. Also, there have been attempts to describe this second sun as a "comet." It's possible, of course, but it seems that, in such a case, it would have been described as a "flaming star," which was equally portentous. The observers of the time had no problem distinguishing between comets and other observational anomalies.

So why it was described as a "second sun" is an interesting question. Could it have been a supernova?

Checking the records of the various supernovae, nothing fits this period - either Cass A or Kepler's SN or Tycho's SN... How this relates to Flamsteed's star, when he actually observed it, and other details remain to be determined by collecting data.

Later on, John Dryden suggested that the comets of 1664 and 1665 were related to the Sun that was seen at the birth of Charles II. He described this apparition as "That bright companion of the sun...."

All kinds of comparisons were made suggesting that Charles' birth was similar to the birth of Jesus, and it was conjectured that just such a sun had appeared at that event also. So, even if we have very little to go on, we might take these interpretations as indicative that this "noon-day sun" was in view for a while.

What IS interesting is how, other than this sort of commentary, all other records of this phenomenon have sort of disappeared - unless, of course, the author of this book found them to be too crazy and just omitted a lot of them.

So, it seems that we have found some descriptive evidence that may "fit" with the hypothesis that the companion sun was at perihelion on May 29, 1630, or close enough for horseshoes. And that the comets that followed 20 or 30 years later were an initial group that was flung in or pushed in with this star. If we are correct and the disturbance in the Oort cloud was prolonged for hundreds of years as the star passed through, and that the disturbance resulted in masses of comets entering the solar system in a spiraling motion, it just may be that there are some really big ones out there on their way in to the "target" from ALL directions.