This was a term I came across on a documentary in Discovery Channel about comets. It seems interesting, even a little romantic, to think that intelligent life on earth began with a bang. A bang caused by a comet crashing into the planet dominated by reptiles and generally not so intelligent creatures. Understandably the crater had been located (somewhere in Arizona I think) and reams of research and material about how the oxygen molecules were formed yak yak etc were written, stored, archived even documented as a story. Now suddenly a group of astronomers/ archeologists pop up to say that guys this has been known for years and what’s more we are on course to get struck again. So now all the science fraternity has really been hit, the theory even gets a name, The Shiva Hypothesis.
Technically speaking, Shiva is the God of destruction in Hindu mythology. Philosophy calls him by various names Kala,Mahadeva, Omakaranatha etc. So what’s the connection between this multifaceted God of Aryan origin to a comet crashing into earth 30 million years ago. As it happens Shiva Mahapurana one of the 18 Puranas or great epics of Indian literature quite surreptiously predicts the change over from life to Death in the pralaya or great Dissolution and a restart of life Scientists now predict that there will be a comet hit on Earth every 30 million years, and it will result in the large scale destruction of life reminiscent of the one that blew up Dino and gang. Paradoxically it would also result in the birth of a new generation of species whose genes will immutably modified by the explosion
Why this would happen, is not very clearly explained. One explanation is as the galaxy spirals and revolves around itself, the Solar system itself wobbles and darts in and out of the spiral arms thereby constantly changing its position in the milky way (don’t ask me how they arrived at this brilliant theory, I have no clue). So it constantly puts itself in the path of some stellar traveler, who happens to find earth a very likely crash site and happily collides with the planet.