Rings of Ice

Afterword by Donald L. Cyr

The Annular Theory has been presented in this novel as fiction. It is not. Isaac N. Vail was an obscure Quaker scientist who lived from 1840 to 1912; he originated and publicized this theory that there were once icy rings about the Earth, similar to those now about the planet Saturn. He suggested that these rings lost momentum, dropped closer to our planet, and dissolved into a tremendous vapor canopy perhaps a hundred miles above the Earth’s surface. This vapor canopy could have been similar to those of Jupiter and the other gas giants.

When sufficient material had been injected into this canopy, Vail suggests, it became unstable. As it spread out to shroud all the planet, the portion near the north and south poles had to fall. Vail believed that the lack of centrifugal force toward the poles caused the downfall, but modern interpretation considers that the interaction with Van Allen zones, whose impinging particles were discovered by space probes and earth satellites, could have been the controlling factor. Possibly future space probes that explore distant Jupiter may settle the issue of how such canopies operate. That the earth once had such a canopy that did fall in the poleward regions is at present still a viable scientific theory; all that remains is to settle the details.

Those details seem elusive. If we consider for the purposes of discussion that the Earth did have such a formation, similar to the cloud-banded formations on Jupiter and Saturn, we are faced with the question “Where do such canopies come from?” Various writers have taken different tacks at this point. Most astronomers consider that Jupiter’s canopy is simply a surface phenomenon on that planet and, of course, they may be right about that. But until the mid 1940s, very few astronomers thought that Saturn’s rings contained ice, and they were surprised when infrared evidence showed the presence of ice or frost-covered ring particles. To that extent, Vail’s theories were vindicated—but a nagging question remains: Where does a ring system get its ice, and how can it remain stable? Again a set of alternatives is available to us. For Saturn, the answer is easy: ice rings are stable at that distance from the sun. For the Earth, the stability of a ring of ice leads to problems. Some scientists simply state that it would melt and disappear and so could not exist at all. Horbiger, an Austrian scientist, dealt with the problem in another way. He considered that either a lost Earth moon of ice had broken up, or perhaps an icy comet was captured by the Earth. Skipping over the stability problem for a moment, we may ask, “How much material is necessary to produce a canopy?” Again we have some alternatives or limits. If the ice from such a canopy produced all the ice of the last glacial epoch, for example, the amount would equal a layer of water over a hundred feet in depth over the entire earth. Since a cubic meter of water produces something like two million cubic meters of “fog,” we would be calling for impossible dimensions for our hypothetical canopy. Fortunately, a very easy (and reasonable) alternative remains.

If we consider that a canopy had relatively little material, then we can invoke the phenomenon of “cloud seeding” to produce precipitation that would then provide glacial snows, thus piling up glaciation on the continents as is indicated in the records of geology. Incidentally, one theory under consideration by modern scientists considers that rainfall is sometimes initiated by meteoritic dust particles swept up from space by the Earth. A canopy that would collect particles for a time, and then collapse, might provide the kind of flooding and catastrophe that Piers Anthony has described in this novel.

Will a canopy formation ever return? Vail concluded that since the Earth now obviously has no ring system, there can never be another canopy. His very close friend, one Captain R. Kelso Carter, felt otherwise. Although Carter’s reasoning is perhaps more mystical than scientific, he did feel that the Earth was destined to experience another canopy formation. For years, the writer of this summary agreed with Vail, that there simply was no source of material in space and no source of energy that would be capable of putting tons of water into orbit at the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere. However, with the perfection of atomic energy, there is now a reasonable energy source. With new-found scientific skills, space scientists could provide a “little” canopy without much trouble at all. In fact, it appears more than ever that Captain R. Kelso Carter was correct. Indeed the canopy can return; the only ingredient missing now is the will to make it happen.

So whether the reinstatement of the canopy occurs by design, by space-scientist error, (or by Machiavellian plot), there may well be a return of the canopy. What then can you and I as ordinary citizens do about it? This novel suggests one response.

Man has experienced the fall of canopies in the past and has survived them, according to Vail’s interpretation of the records. Before ice epochs, man produced some of the most glorious works of art now found on cave walls, to tantalize and mystify us. Similarly, we can stand in awe before such monuments as Stonehenge, speculating that such structures might have been built during the peaceful days when a greenhouse-like canopy covered Britain and other parts of the world as well. This claim takes on new meaning inasmuch as halos appear to have influenced the design and arrangement of the Sarsen Stones of Stonehenge.

The arguments that show this latter conclusion are a little lengthy, and the reader is referred to a paper entitled “Stonehenge Evidence for Halo Phenomena,” that was presented in June 1973 before the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. An abstract of this paper appears in the October, 1973, issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. The article itself may be obtained by writing “Stonehenge Viewpoint,” 25 W. Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93101. There can be little doubt that much of the climatic analysis of the past would be well explained by a modest sized Vailian Canopy. To that extent, Piers Anthony’s novel is less fiction than articulated fact. Perhaps his basic point is that whatever the environmental challenges, the interrelationships between humans will continue to be important. That idea too may be interpreted in fiction but is, inevitably, factual.

Donald L. Cyr