Although I was quoting my friend and don’t know how he would answer your question about the night sky, I ask, why do you assume that light has the ability to keep moving forever? Perhaps interstellar dust eventually stops the light from going beyond a certain distance. Perhaps light cannot travel beyond a certain distance period. We don’t know because we can’t measure how far light travels. Current popular theory notwithstanding, there is a lot we don’t know and not knowing is OK. We don’t have to propose a solution to everything just because we don’t know the answer.
Yes you are all different. But as long as you all remain silent about Sagan’s pathetic attempt at debunking, I will group 99% of you together. I don’t know why you got offended. I’ve been grouped as a Velikovskian, confused, bufoon, idiot, (later retracted), fringe, unscientific (in more patronizing language) and I didn’t get offended. 
I believe there are similarities, but no one said Atkins causes ketoacidosis. That’ll be my last word on it since you’re right there’s another thread for it.
I don’t have his exact words. They can be found as an addendum to Earth In Upheaval, October 14, 1953.
He claimed the existence of a magnetosphere above the ionosphere. He believed the magnetosphere could reach as ar as the Lunar orbit. If you want the exact wording you’d have to look up the forum address. Perhaps it’s in his archives.
Phaethon. I think Alan Alford used Phaethon as the basis of his latest, ahem, book. You may want to look at that too. Or I can save you some time. Some of his proposals, that Jesus Christ was a fall of Meteorites, that Pontius Pilate was a pilot buried in Switzerland. Can you believe he got a book self published best seller prior to this?
Thank you for your approach. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it doesn’t hearten me because I’m not in love with my own beliefs. I’m interested in V. because I think there’s something there. If it turns out that he’s wrong through and through, it won’t bother me. If it turns out that a thorough analysis of as you said, his book properly done turns out that Ragnarok and another book was the basis of much of his work, and more credit belongs to them, as Sagan has suggested, it won’t bother me either. I only care about a fair discussion of the work.
BTW, I bought Raganarok but didn’t have a chance to read it yet. From skimming it though, it seems the central theme is very similar but V. added a lot of touches. Especially if you add in Earth in Upheaval. Have you read it?
Interestingly, I was looking at one of the 2 books by Levy on the Jupiter - Comet impact, and they had a ref to Velikovsky. I thought it would be a bad swipe as usual but not really.
What is your take on Birkeland currents?
I’ve seen a web page to the contrary. I’ll try to dig up the exact web page, but basically it questions the “Volcanos” of IO and makes some alternative claims. NOT mainstream of course but if you’re interested, I’ll dig it up for you.
Here’s his words for what it’s worth:
"So I finished my book. Originally I had written another chapter and had let it be set. I foresaw the arguments of the astronomers, and I intended to meet them. The phenomena I described were deduced by me from ancient literature and folklore. I could, of course, remain in my domain, offer no physical solution at all, and allow astronomers to take over where I left off. This would probably have been the way that any other historian or folklorist would have chosen in a similar situation. Or I could try to reconcile my findings with the conventional tenets in astronomy. But there was a growing conviction on my part that it was justifiable to question the exclusive role in the celestial mechanics of a law established in 1687, a time when electromagnetic forces were not known and not reckoned with.
In January and February 1950 I consulted with a few physicists. I engaged several instructors in the Physics Department at Columbia University to calculate the rate of decrease with distance of the magnetic field created by a rotating charged body (the sun) in which field electrically charged bodies revolve. I received most divergent answers.
I’m skipping forward due to lazy…he was saying he consulted with Lloyd Motz, astronomer prof columbia, who went through the chapter carefully, to protect him from accusations of cooperating with a heretic he decided to take his help in the form of paid instruction. Then he talks about pulling out the planned celestial mechanics chapter and turning it into a few sentences, and then says that although Motz always adhered to accepted theory, and a few more paragraphs about protecting Motz he said and let me quote since this is the part that has been alleged that V did not check with pros on this:
“In Motz’s judgement, if the terrestrial globe were retarded in it’s rotation, or stopped, or even reversed, it would not necessarily be destroyed, depending on the time element involved, though civilizations would be destroyed. And this was what actually happened, according to the sources that served me in writing Worlds in Collision.”
WRONG. It’s not a matter of surviving the beating. I’m NOT interested in being part of mainstream science with my blinders on. Halton Arp who is a heretic because he is intellectually honest, WANTS to be part of the mainstream establishment. I have NO interest whatsoever. If I wanted to be it would be very for me. Politics in business I can live with, but politics in Science is shameful to me and I don’t want any part of it.
Although there are arguments FOR peer review, and it is very popular and widely accepted, it is also a very powerful vehicle for abuse. One example is Halton Arp. When his theories are accepted, I will be there to remind you of the arguments you will use to defend vehemently peer review.
BTW, for those of you who are still naive about politics in science, there’s a new book out about a couple of scientists who were horribly mistreated by Newton.
I forgot to mention that this is a mischaracterization.
might be of some use.
I don’t know if I’d come up with that particular combination. Did you have a reason to choose those in particular?
Not really.
It would be interesting to see if contradictory “accepted” views could be found.
If it’s not on the web I guess it’s not true
If the original source mentioned it, that doesn’t count? OK
You are right.
Says who? I just read today that part of the signing in of office in one of the ancient cultures (forget which one), they must swear not to change the calendar. Ever heard of inertia? The USA does not use the metric system. It will probably continue to not do so for a long time. The metric system is superior. Canada switched already. Last time I was in England, they didn’t. It will probably change at all different times. Doesn’t mean a damn thing.
You do a 2 minute search and now it’s dead in the water? How charitable of you.
I’m sure you did an extended search for hours and days
See my post on this.
Sure.
Nice twist but no substance in this statement.
Did you read the wired article on this?
It is the obligation of scientists to seek out alternative views, even AFTER a theory is ACCEPTED. Mainstream science is good at seeing the other side BEFORE a theory is accepted, but AFTER a theory is accepted, especially if it’s been around for awhile, people STOP looking at all sides.
On the Velikovsky issue, after reading his book, I developed my own opinions. Then to double check them, I didn’t read only the positive articles, I read all sides and formed both positive and negative opinions in addition to the opinions I already had.
In the Arp case, you won’t even look at the alternative theories because you are so sure the Big Bang is right and that Redshift = doppler effect. This is one sided.
It doesn’t dawn on any of you that Cold Fusion is a political charged issue. Money makes the world go around.
Why do you think we went to war with Iraq? Do you think it was because of Right or Wrong? If so, you’re sadly mistaken. We used the poor Kurds and then dumped them as soon as our number one concern was met. OIL was safe from Hussein. That’s all Bush, the oil man cared about.
The wired article showed the other side of the coin. You mainstreamers cannot imagine that money or power could influence which papers got through peer review. I’m not saying that Pons/Fleishman did create Cold Fusion, but before you come to any conclusions, read the other side of the story. There were allegations that other labs DID confirm the effects, and that it was squashed.
And I KNOW I’m stepping into a whole other controversy, but I don’t really care. I like to look at all sides of the story, you folks are satisfied with the stories you hear reported from the side in power.
OK
Sure. Science has nothing to do with truth. Fine. I’m interested in truth. You can stick with non truths.
Like the Big Bang?
Or like all you guys WISH that Sagan had debunked Velikovsky but since Sagan wrote a pseudoscientific babble, you try to justify it.
Good point you made, heh heh. Thanks.
As long as you folks don’t own up your errors, I can turn all your arguments against you. Surprised none of the smart people here figured that out yet
Quite an assertion. List the ideas that have been borne out by the evidence and those that have not. Then we can count them and “verify” if indeed “most have not”.
Sounds like YOU are engaging in wishful thinking.
Why? I’m happy, that makes me smile Does my happiness make you sad 
?
The more people use words like fringe science, crackpot, aliens sticking stuff up my bungehole and other such “mature” comments, the happier I am because it shows they are threatened by what I’m saying. And that makes me smile
This entire post is full of assertions. You say A, I say B. Not much value…
Most recently, that was me, but I’m hardly alone.
Hancock’s a loon. Why on earth would I or anyone else care about gaining credibility among his believers?
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Have you ever heard of logic? I was going to say that you need to look at your first paragraph to answer the question you posted in your second paragraph. But I doubt you’d understand so let me draw the lines closer together.
If you want to stamp out ignorance, you need to educate the ignorant. To educate the ignorant, you need to be convincing. To be convincing, you need credibility. So if you don’t care about stamping out ignorance, then you don’t need credibility among his believers. If you do care about it, then you should do things the right way.
But let’s go a step further, so you don’t care about credibility? You don’t care if your debunking methods are scientific? So long as ignorance is stamped out.
That is so funny. Are you actually aware what you are saying?? Heh heh.
You are so funny Im laughing out loud!!!
Since I am so staggeringly wrong, I invite you to prove me wrong.
Tomorrow.
This is too easy I won’t even bother
OK. So you back up Sagan’s critique? You feel that his math and methodology were correct? If not, then come out and be a man, attack him for the hatchet job. If you back him up, that’s be even better. But you probably don’t have the guts to do either.
Of course you can’t. It’s as useless as asking a mainstreamer to give Halton Arp the chance to publish his controversial work in a peer reviewed journal. The mainstreamer BELIEVES his view of redshift and the big bang is true and nothing will sway him.
I said from the outset that this debate was a waste of time. Mainstreamers will never give V a chance and so far, with VERY few exceptions I’ve seen no arguments that I haven’t read over 10 years ago. I’ve researched this topic pretty well, even though I’ve forgotten a lot of details over the last decade. There were a couple of exceptions but those observations against V. were things I agreed with to begin with…
I admit it when I don’t know something. I could bullshit but that wouldn’t be honest. What you don’t realize is that it doesn’t help my case when I admit it. It would be so easy for me to simply IGNORE the argument than to admit I don’t know the answer. If you’ll notice, when I make a point, people ignore it instead of admitting it. Makes them LOOK better but isn’t as honest as my approach. I could argue MUCH better than I am if I wanted to use the same tactics. Also, it would have been much easier for me to decline the entire discussion from the get go and come back to it when I have my books in front of me. These aren’t all easy arguments to have and backup is important…
I don’t mind, you want to be in this debate, stay in. It just helps me… I wanted to say that in a nicer way but I couldn’t think of one and the with the bungehole statement you made, why should I bother to be nice about it?
Semantics.
The definition of comet is "com·et (kmt)
n.
A celestial body, observed only in that part of its orbit that is relatively close to the sun, having a head consisting of a solid nucleus surrounded by a nebulous coma up to 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) in diameter and an elongated, curved vapor tail arising from the coma when sufficiently close to the sun. Comets are thought to consist chiefly of ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, and water."
I can rest my case but to be fair, if most comets are under 70 km, that does not help Velikovsky’s theory . But it doesn’t categorically disprove it either as perhaps one day a comet will be found that is way bigger and still fits the definition of a comet.
Obviously this is impossible. However, we can observe its present orbit, and calculate both when it passed near Earth in the past and when it will in the future. And although eyewitness accounts are not the most reliable things, there have been descriptions recorded of phenomena in the past that correspond with times when comets have been calculated to pass Earth.
If as a historian you discover this information, you should corroborate your work with an astronomer. Such a thing would be in an astromomer’s field of expertise. Besides, history is not a science.
You misunderstand both what people have said and what it means to make a prediction in science. The kind of prediction that is irrelevant is the kind where you make some statement without explaining why it should be so, or how it fits into your hypothesis. Since you seem fixated on the Jupiter/radio wave connection, would you care to explain how the fact that Jupiter emits radio waves relates to the hypothesis of planets careening around the solar system?
Again, a direct experiment is impossible. However, the mathematics that describe orbital mechanics have been confirmed by observation of bodies over the last several hundred years. Measuring the orbital motion of a body, predicting its new position with equations, and adjusting the equations to fit better with observation constitutes an experiment.
One can calulate how much force it would take to change Earth’s orbit by a given amount. Someone else talked about these forces, and the precise timing of forces required to make Velikovsky’s ideas square with our current observations. Where did these supposed forces come from? He doesn’t seem to address this issue.
Ah, but you asked me to prove mainstream science’s position. As I said, it is necssarily indirect. And since I am not an astronomer, it will not be very authoritative or complete, but I can at least give you an idea. The most compelling argument is the issue of the forces. You like to bash Carl Sagan, but even if he didn’t get the numbers exactly right (I don’t know if he did or not) he did get the general principles right. You have said that you don’t know anything about orbital mechanics, but you insist that Sagan doesn’t either because someone else said so. Maybe you should try to figure it out for yourself.
There is other evidence as well. It has also been pointed out that for the Earth’s year to be shorter, its orbit would have to be closer to the Sun than it is now. This would likely result in a somewhat warmer climate than we have today, yet evidence seems to indicate that the reverse is true. Climate changes could also change the characteristics of ice cores taken from glaiciers, or layers of sediment deposited by rivers at certain seasons. If the Earth’s orbit was different in the past, there would probably be some evidence in the geological record, but there is not.
You have been arguing that early calendars from various cultures somehow prove that the Earth once had a shorter year, which you say had 360 days. Others have said that these calendars have neither all had the same number of days in their year, nor have they all existed at the same time. Furthermore, they all had a (sometimes elaborate) system of corrections built in, to make them match with the observed solar year. If the year was really shorter, these calendars wouldn’t have had the corretions. What I want to know is, why do you expect that these early cultures would have had a fairly regular calendar like the one we have now? All knowledge takes time to refine. Most of these cultures didn’t have very good writing systems or advanced mathematics, either. (Before you respond with the feats of the Aztecs and Egyptians, let me point out to you that a pyramid is hardly a difficult shape to engineer. The question of how the blocks were shaped and moved is not one of mathematics, but of ingenuity.) Also, many calendars were used for religious purposes, to mark holidays and such, and had some religious significance in the way they were described.
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Unless Velikovsky gave solid reasons why he thought those phenomena should exist, his predictions don’t mean anything. Let’s say I predict that a car will crash into your house tomorrow, and leave it at that. Tomorrow a car does crash into your house. You would probably conclude that I either made a lucky guess or arranged for someone to crash into your house. Now let’s say instead that I make the same prediction, but I also tell you that I know your street has a high rate of speeding and DUI violations, and that the weather report shows a high chance of ice in your area tomorrow. This time when the car crashes into your house, you would probably conclude that I made a reasonable prediction based on assesment of available data. It seems to me that Velikovsky has made many predictions of car crashes, but has not said much about the conditions that would lead to this situation. This is why the scientific community has not taken him seriously.
AnotherHeretic, you claim to be interested in science, but from the evidence of your own words you are only interested in spewing forth your beliefs without listening to those of others. You make assertions, and when others counter those assertions you twist their words to mean something else, make irrelevant comments on their particular choice of words, or even attack them directly. You say that others are guilty of doing poor research and of not reading this or that, yet you admit that you do the very same thing. You have made 17 consecutive posts filled largely with rude comments and smiley faces. This behavior is not indicative of even an amateur scientist, but of a troll. Yes, I am calling you a troll. Please refrain from trolling.
I didn’t make any errors. We simply disagree
asserted
We’re going in circles and not really getting anywhere. Since that was already done in the other 360 thread which I’ve just read, I’ll make this my last post on the topic unless I have something to say that hasn’t been said.
I did a quick search on the net and found the usual mainstream explanations for the mayan calendar with some interesting comment on the bottom:
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-mayan.html#Anchor-What-65428
“In ancient times, the Mayans had a tradition of a 360-day year. But by the 4th century B.C.E. they took a different approach than either Europeans or Asians. They maintained three different calendars at the same time. In one of them, they divided a 365-day year into eighteen 20-day months followed by a five-day period that was part of no month. The five-day period was considered to be unlucky.”
Naturally. You have your world view and your interpretation. Mainstream CANNOT let in a 360 day year as a previous calendar used around the world because that would be a leak in a huge dam that would cause a lot of views to fall.
That is your interpretation. I understand that. I respect that. I don’t blame you. From your perspective that is an understandable interpretation. I don’t share your view.
Don’t worry, I never expected you to.
I checked 10+ authoritative sources. When I look up something as well researched as calendars I don’t expect to find any great disagreement. I didn’t find any disagreement in fact. All references I found agreed about these ancient calendars. They all agreed with each other and did not agree with your assertion. After finding these results I saw no reason for further investigation. If you can supply a similarly authoritative source that disagrees with these then I will gladly take a look and revise my opinion.
So unless the entire discipline of researching ancient calendars has been taken over by those seeking to discredit this obscure statement by Velikovsky then I conclude that my original statement is true.
To be fair the field was probably not as well researched when Velikovsky was doing his work. He may have been making a statement that was correct as far as anyone knew at the time. His data has simply been shown to be incorrect by further investigation.
You have said that when you are wrong you like to admit it. Well here is your chance.
Reference please? Sagan was one of the key scientists in proving that Venus had a hotter-than-expected surface temperature due to its runaway greenhouse effect.
aside - I’d love to get into this debate…if only I had the time to read thru it all. oh well. carry on.
Just as you MUST find 360 day calendars and attribute them to the same “changed” solar period even though they were developed and discarded by many societies at different epochs and are easily explained by the primacy of the lunar system prior to the collection of enough information on the movement of the stars to identify the solar year.
Whatever.
AnotherHeretic wrote:
[emphasis mine]
You misspelled “annoyed”. Hope this helps.