solrey
Senior Member.
I do fully believe that all the religions of the world point to the same cataclysmic event recurring, as presented in the cornell paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.5078
would love to hear your thoughts on that..
My first thought is it's not a "Cornell paper", nor are any other papers on arXiv necessarily affiliated with Cornell. The Cornell University Library simply maintains and administers an archive/repository of pre-print and unpublished research papers. The authors of the abstract/paper you linked have a handful of papers covering the same hypothesis/speculation, about what caused an asymmetric arctic ice sheet during the last ice age, that would fall into the latter category of unpublished papers. Here's a disclaimer from arXiv:
Disclaimer: Papers will be entered in the listings in order of receipt on an impartial basis and appearance of a paper is not intended in any way to convey tacit approval of its assumptions, methods, or conclusions by any agent (electronic, mechanical, or other). We reserve the right to reject any inappropriate submissions.
Neither of the authors of the paper you linked are associated with Cornell. In fact their ice age hypothesis is not necessarily within their areas of expertise either. One is a retired professor of theoretical physics at the Institute for Particle Physics in Zurich, the other is a physicist with the Brazilian Center for Physics Research. I glanced at a couple of their other papers and I doubt they'll ever get published in a peer reviewed journal. They did sneak one into some obscure Brazilian physics journal. Their hypothesis of a close approach by another planet as the cause of an apparent asymmetry of the North Hemisphere ice sheets in the last ice age is more easily explained by Milankovich cycles with global hydrologic cycles being responsible for the asymmetry of ice sheets.
I don't find a compelling argument for a recurring cataclysmic event of singular cause. I do find throughout the historic record an accounting of regional and local cataclysmic events of various kinds recurring over the ages.
In the paper in question, some of the references the paper seems to heavily rely on are the authors own previously unpublished work on arXiv, Velikovsky who is known to have mis-interpreted stuff to fit his needs, and The Epic of Gilgamesh an ancient epic poem that may have influenced Homer's epics. No wonder the authors themselves state:
In previous publications we did not mention the traditions, since a mixture could be met with distrust.
Ya think?