Pandemics from Space

Mike Baillie's book, 'New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection', Tempus:2006, drew on the Hoyle and Wickramasinghe theory of Panspermia to make the astonishing claim that the 14th century plague outbreak that struck the medieval world came from space. This idea had merit in so far as peoples, separated by long distances, fell victim at roughly the same time, even where the rat population was minimal. However, over the last couple of years a dampener has been put on this idea as archaeologists have dug up skeletons from plague pits in Europe and found that yersinia pestis was responsible and therefore bubonic plague almost certainly was the cause of their deaths. Bubonic plague is thought to have a terrestrial origin and there are good reasons to suppose that the 6th century AD 'Justinian Plague' was an earlier manifestation. The spread of plague at this time is outlined in detail by David Keys in his book, 'Catastrophe: An investigation into the origins of the  modern world' Random House: 1999 – but once again, it could be argued that there was a cosmic connection at this time as the outbreak followed shortly on a very narrow low growth tree ring event.