How far away is Banard's Loop?

[Hank Kroll]

How far away is Banard’s Loop---really? Need help from the Brainiacs.

I believe that the event that created Banard’s Loop is the same
stellar explosion that caused Earth to loose its tractor beam with
Sirius B putting us in the Ice Age cycle. We (our sun) was in a nice
comfortable 1/10 LY circular orbit around Sirius A for 700-million
years. This violent explosion pushed all the stars in our neighborhood
out toward Hercules at a faster clip. Because our Sun is half as
massive as Sirius A we (our sun) moved out further and we went into an
ellipse. The first Ice Ages only lasted 20 to 30-thousand light years
but as our ellipse steadily increased we now go out to nine light
years and ice Ages last 105,000 years.

When you look at the many pictures of Banard’s Loop on the Internet it
appears to be between us and Orion. It is huge covering an ark in the
sky of 10 degrees by 14 degrees. The distances listed are between 1500
and 1600 light years but I don’t know how this is possible when it
covers such a large area in the sky. Due to the fact that its dust
partially obscures some of the Stars in Orion it has to be between us
and Orion which is 1330 light years distant. Something isn’t quite
right here. It appears to me that because Banard’s Loop covers such a
large area in the sky it has to be between 150 to 300 light years away
not 1600.

My Catalog of The Universe says, “….Among the normal slow-moving
population of bright massive stars in our Galaxy, there are some with
high speeds up to 200 km per second. Three of these are Mu Columbae,
AE Aurigae and 53 Arietis. From their speeds and direction of travel
Dutch Astronomer Adriaan Blaauw calculated that all three left the
constellation Orion possibly in a single event which occurred some
three million years ago….”

The three runaway stars are now 800 light years from their point of
origin traveling at a speed of 200 kilometers per second. We (our sun)
is traveling at 19.5 km per second toward Hercules but at the same
time we are traveling in the opposite direction toward Sirius at 7.5
km per second because we are orbiting it so our average speed over a
period of three million years or so would be over 20 km per second
away from Orion toward Hercules. I use this low average figure because
it is 10% of 200 km per second and easy to figure in your head. If we
are traveling 10% of the speed of the runaway stars then we (our sun)
would have traveled 80 to 100 light years away from the location of
the stellar explosion in the last three million years.

“Following a suggestion by Cal Tech astronomer Fritz Zwicky, Blaauw
proposed that these stars were originally in a quadruple star system
like the TRAPEZIUM, but that the heaviest member of the four exploded
as a supernovae. Having nothing left to orbit, the remaining three
stars flew away, like shots from a sling, expelled far from their
birthplace.”

The average temperature on Earth has been around 32 degrees Fahrenheit
for the last three million years. Prior to this stellar explosion when
all the coal, oil and limestone were grown using light from Sirius B
and CO2, the average temperature on Earth was between 60 to 80 degrees
Fahrenheit. The intense UV light from Sirius B putting out a 100-times
more than our Sun is the only possible thing that could break through
early Earth’s 1000 PSI atmosphere to get life started. Our Sun doesn’t
have enough power to keep us out of Ice Ages let alone pierce a 1000+
PSI atmosphere.

If Banard’s Loop is less than 300 light years away then it could have
been the stellar explosion that put Earth (us) into the Ice Age cycle.
There is a much more detailed description of all this covering the
birth of our Sun in Orion and much more in my book, COSMOLOGICAL ICE
AGES. If all goes well it might be available in February 2009 at all
major book sellers and on my web sites: www.GuardDogBooks.com
www.AlaskaPublishing.com