Jill: I only now just noticed your question. Answer: Why? Are you cute?
Mr. Velikovsky, DDS. 
Shut up, dlv, I’m talking to Jill.
Now then, Funbuns: how are ya?
TomDark- Nebuli answers the question of non-Egyptian 360 day siderial years well.
The outgrowth of using what ancient astronomers knew to be a very odd number for the length of the year is difficulty in computation. The Mayas, however stuck to their almost exact figure of 365.24… (whatever it was it was dam close) and had to create great cycles of thousands of years. Two different weeks, two different day names and two different month systems, etc.
Most ancient societies (Song dynasty included) reverted to a more “manageble” 360 day administrative calendar that nonetheless created the need for the later intercalations, similar to the 11 day Julian-Gregorian transistion.
[[Jill: I only now just noticed your question. Answer: Why? Are you cute?]]
What was my question again?
[[Jill: I only now just noticed your question. Answer: Why? Are you cute?]]
What was my question again?
Poor Jill.
A. I have read Velikovsky.
B. It’s Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that included the correction for Mercury’s orbit, not the Special theory, which has no bearing on gravity or orbits at all.
C. General Relativity shows that under certain extreme conditions (such as the gravitation field of the Sun at the distance of Mercury), gravity behaves differently from Newton’s theory. The difference is almost immeasurable unless black holes or the like are involved.
Velikovsky’s notions, on the other hand, require all of classical mechanics to be completely and utterly wrong, out in its predictions by tens of thousands of percents, or more. For Velikovsky to be right, gyroscopes wouldn’t be able to work, and heavy objects would have to occasionally take it into their heads to fall upwards. You would have to be able to drink gasoline and to get extra milage by putting sugar in your gas tank.
We would notice that.
But even if his astromechanics were true, it would still be the the case that his explanation of how Joshua was able to command the Sun to stand still requires that a large part of the human race be able to survive the equivalent of slamming into a brick wall while travelling at about Mach 4.
I can accept atheism or deism. I can accept outright miracle. I can accept special providence. But I cannot accept God performing a massive suspension of the laws of physics in order to provide a Rube-Goldberg (British readers: read “Heath Robinson”) “natural” explanation for the miracle he was actually going after.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
Not to get embroiled in this pissing match, but…
from A. Larson:
Example? Stories (myths and legends) about gods were often created to provide moral lessons and teach meaningful points and unite the society with a common heritage, but were parables and allegory, with little connection to reality.
from Tom Dark:
No. If the force of the (alleged) catastrophe were strong enough to eradicate the coral reef structure, we would be left with nothing from that time (coral-wise, at least), not a detailed structural history that just happens to be wrong. Or are you proposing that the catastrophe somehow arranged the previously formed reef structure to show a 365 day/year pattern after it had grown?
As to “millions” of instances of proof that Newton’s mechanics must rule men’s perceptions of celestial motion, there’s no reason that satellites could not be “obeying” some other “laws” which Newton’s match coincidentally match in certain, but not all, areas
Indeed, that could be. And it is known (and mentioned elsewhere in this thread) that Newton’s laws are an approximation the the real situation … but they are an approximation that is indistinguishable from perfection in 99.9% of the cases.
However, if Velikovsky is right, the Newton’s laws are so wrong that their predictions wouldn’t even come close.
jrf
“Newton’s mechanics must rule men’s perceptions of celestial motion, there’s no reason that satellites could not be “obeying” some other “laws” which Newton’s match coincidentally match in certain, but not all, areas”
Physics does not “rule” the universe - like all science it seeks to PREDICT behavior. That’s why theories change - better data, create a better more inclusive MODEL.
No modern scientist mistakes a MAP for the actual TERRAIN.
A. Larson said:
And Tom Dark said:
Well, to squeeze into the minimum possible space what I said in earlier postings, the general consensus is that 360 was a convenient number to use for the days in a schematic or ideal year because it’s a handy round number that’s close to the true value of 365-point-whatever. Everybody knew the year wasn’t exactly 360 days, but it made a nice simple system that the observers adjusted with an intercalary or “leap” month when needed (just as we use a simple 365-and-a-quarter-day system and let the astronomers worry about when to put in a “leap second”). Then this same 360-fold division (very handy in a base-60 system, where you could simply write it as 6,0 or just 6 back in the time before you had a zero) got used for parts of a day, for celestial distances, and finally for any old circle. (As for “why not 100, 400 or 40,” none of them would be much use in a base-60 system because they’re not evenly divisible by 60!)
In other words, 360 emerged as an arithmetically convenient approximation to the true length of the year, and its inaccuracy didn’t matter because they knew how to tweak the calendar whenever necessary to bring it in line with reality. Seems to me like a perfectly reasonable and even elegant explanation of the facts; I don’t understand why anyone would consider it so implausible that they need to rewrite much of ancient history and most of modern physics and geology for the sake of an alternative explanation.
Happy New Year to all,
Kimstu
Oh! You PEOPLE (back of hand laid dramatically across forehead)! You and your facts are SO wearisome.
Jill – don’t be coy, child. You know what question. I’m putting on the Barry White record and getting into my velour smoking jacket right now. Your baby, Ice “T” Dark.
RobRoy, you kinda defeated your own logic mentioning how the Mayans DID use 365.20-odd. But then again, maybe that’s why they didn’t have the wheel, huh? What to do with that darned extra piece of spoke?
Also, “electrodynamics” weren’t figured into gravity when V. realized electromagnetism and electrical charges must have a lot to do with terrestrial and solar movements. How DO clouds stay up in the air, my son? (Here I shall beat you to the punch if you think to use the term “hot air.” Yet I am a merciful opponent.)
JonF, none of your 3 propositions really… disprove, if that’s the word for it… my teasing suggestion that your way of looking at things DOES smack of that particular ludicrousness of denying the existence of a phenomena because it doesn’t fit “laws.” (“Laws” in quotes not to diminutize the concept, but as a shorthand reminder how they do indeed change, particularily the “absolute” ones).
As Kennedy says, there AREN’T any “Velikovskian mechanics,” not even as a prize in a Cracker Jack Box – unless Ginenthal is up to something I neither know nor care about at the moment. V. didn’t propose Newton was “very very wrong.” He proposed the same thing freshman college kids have for decades – maybe the mechanics SEEM to be right, but there needs be something else beneath 'em that may actually run the show. There is no basis on which to demonstrate that Velikovsky’s ideas would render as impudently charged.
Okay, Venus might act up and try to pop us again. Joking.
He proposed also the same thing us nurd kids think spontaneously in freshman high school science when we think about molecules and stuff – that the stars and planets are themselves atoms and molecules of a greater system. A friend of mine proposed we were part of a glob of mayo on a turkey sandwich.
V. had the audacity to think this after age 14, and decided that planets must have electrical charges just like atoms and molecules. This is what got him into hot water with the Cotton Mathers of astronomy, more than anything, or so Einstein told him it would.
As to demonstrating “how the universe has ever changed,” cheeze, I don’t know if you’re just feeding me a straight line or what. Right NOW and for YEARS there have been new laws kicked around that render Newton meaningless. Like the idea of time’s simultanaeity. I like that one. And incidentally, Laplace calculated that gravity must move at thousands of times the speed of light in order to hold anything in place in the solar system. Gravity defies time.
DARN you Kennedy, I’ll grant that you MAY be right because I’m too laz- er, busy, to go check up. I meant Einstein’s theory as put forth in 1905. It wasn’t called either thing back then. Then he messed around with it some more and so had to re-name the first one. One “special,” the other “general.” Fine. Well I forget. Hayfoot, Strawfoot.
On the other hand, I seem to recall that Mssr. Leverrier’s “error of one percent” meant he missed the orbital path of Neptune by a scant SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION GODDAM MILES. YOU can get out and walk the rest of the way. “Accurate,” indeed.
You don’t appear to have read any Velikovsky. Not even Cliff’s notes – had the evil forces of Saganism not barred them from ever being published that way. (Attention all Cruising Christians! What happens when you replace the “g” in “Sagan” with a “t”??? And did you know: in The Whore of Babylon Cuneiform Dictionary, “g” and “t” are INTERCHANGEABLE??? Think about it!!!)
Maybe you’ve read bits of blubber where V. is distorted into unrecognizability, like in “The Gullible Skeptic’s Bible” or some such queasy trash put out by Amherst publications or like. The National Enquirer of Science.
… or you’d have noticed that V. didn’t suggest Venus and Earth collided. Just came close enough to just about wreck everything. The “impossibility” you conceive, hitting a brick wall at Mach 4, is not related to anything Velikovsky wrote.
Remember, YOU pointed out that he read stuff and concluded from reading it that thus-and-so happened; he didn’t invent it all out of a new Law thought up in his basement workshop. V. was phenomenological about the whole thing. It did or it didn’t happen. If it did, thus, and if it didn’t, t’other.
This also goes for the Coral Reef Guy. Just for an instance – can I call you Reef? – just for an instance, Reef, it seems to have so happened that most of the Indian Ocean is a massive lava flow of recent geological origin. Like REAL recent. Like a few thousand years – unless Sagan got his dirty hands on it – Say that Venus and Earth got so close that huge chunks of crackling earth melted – so your great-to-the-nth-power grampaw Erg who survived it described – and this engulfed coral reefs that would have shown a 360-day year? Huh? What about it? Prove that they’d pop right up just as neat as a daisy for evidence after such catastrophe.
There’s a thing to think about – seek ancient coral reefs buried under lava flows… Got scuba gear, Reef?
Larson mentioned EARTH IN UPHEAVAL. You don’t have to scare yourself with the idea that ancient people weren’t a bunch of liars. Read about the physical evidence solely. What is MORE amazing is that, for under a mere 2 centuries, mankind has managed to convince itself there were NEVER any sort of massive natural catastrophes.
And don’t gimme any guff about how “scientists already knew,” Kennedy. You know of course about Darwinian uniformitarianism. THERE is the ludicrous case of “law” dictating what one will choose to perceive in the face of physical evidence.
I got fed the official evolutionary line as a kid – by nuns, in Catholic school, in fact. My lessons said Officially: there never was, never is, and never shall be any other circumstance but the pedestrial stroll of the globes 'round the sun until entropy swallows us up 6 billion years from now. Catastrophes were out of the question. Ever.
Aside: V. opened a can of beans which would make all western religions question their own “eternal laws,” too. Which is why they tend to keep warily away from it. They would have to admit, as would be plainer, that the people who wrote the Bible were nothing but a pack of Wild Injuns, so to speak, and God would have had to have been a primitive IDEA through which they interpreted cosmic events.
They would also have to admit that Jews were far from monotheistic. They were planet-worshipping pagans and the Bible is an account of a struggle toward monotheism (Tho’ I CAN’T imagine what the advantage would be)
Read the Bible lately? The Old Testament especially looks like it was written by a pack of Wild Injuns to me.
No disrespect to my Apache friends, nor to any other native American. I mean the stereotyped and deliberately prejudiced “white” view by the phrase about the writers of the Bible.
Kimstu, what are you doing back in the fray? My question was as well WHY 60??? Thought you could pull a fast one. So tell me why base 60 happened… enough of this “concensus” business.
If people had SOME reason for voting for Bill Clinton, so much more would the Babs have had a reason for picking base 60, not base 12 or 3 or 4 or etc. WHY, Kimstu, WHY? (grabbing lapels with both hands in near-hysterical earnesty)???
…unless the moon, too, traversed the earth in a neat little circle in 30 days or 60 days and nights… or something…
Boys, and my New Girlfriend, I’m going to go do something important, like have milk and cookies. In the meantime, here, I found this awhile ago:
http://velikovsky.collision.org/
And maybe I’ll tune in to see if you’ve actually read any of it. Right or wrong, he’s certainly one of the best writers in town.
Hey Jill, how come it didn’t show up when I put in the HTML code? Here, you guys, read. Kennedy, pay especial attention to BEFORE THE DAY BREAKS.
I find it hard to believe that Tom’s got a girlfriend.
And that, I think, says all we need to know about Mr. Dark.
Let’s all just leave him alone to masturbate in the dark.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
JonF, none of your 3 propositions really… disprove, if that’s the word for it… my teasing suggestion that your way of looking at things DOES smack of that particular ludicrousness of denying the existence of a phenomena because it doesn’t fit “laws.”
I do not believe that a phenomenon cannot exist because it does not fit known laws. I have never intentionally stated that a phenomenon cannot exist because it does not fit known laws. If you think I have stated such a proposition, please provide a quote and your reason for interpreting it that way.
On the other hand, I do believe that a theory (meaming “theory” in the exact scientific sense, not in the vague popular sense) that is known to work should not be discarded without evidence that another theory works better. It is a fact that the astronomic billiards proposed by Velikovsky are wildly inconsistent with Newtonian mechanics (whether or not anyone has worked out a Velikovskian mechanics). It is a fact that Newtonian mechanics works (within known limitations). Therefore, as I stated earlier, one of the following must hold:
-
A fundamental change ocurred in the way the universe works, or
-
Velikovsky’s scenario is wrong.
I believe #2. Apparently you believe #1. There is a lot of scientific evidence that #2 is correct (some of which has been mentioned in this discussion). What evidence can you propose for #1, other than Velikovsky’s writings (which are not evidence, only speculation)? Please don’t tell me to go look under lava flows, tell me who’s looked and fouond the evidence.
He proposed also the same thing us nurd kids think spontaneously in freshman high school science when we think about molecules and stuff – that the stars and planets are themselves atoms and molecules of a greater system. … V. had the audacity to think this after age 14, and decided that planets must have electrical charges just like atoms and molecules.
Whether or not planets have electrical charges, the behavior of planets and the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles are not remotely comparable. The Bohr model of the atom has not been taken seriously since 1900. It is a nice, simple, model that can be useful for introducing atomic concepts … but believing it is just plain wrong. Atoms don’t act like macroscopic bodies in gravitational orbits, even if those orbits are affected by electric charge. Quantum electrodynamics has been verified to a degree far beyond the verification of Newtonian mechanics and relativity.
Laplace calculated that gravity must move at thousands of times the speed of light in order to hold anything in place in the solar system. Gravity defies time
I’m not familiar with such a calculation, but if Laplace did that then he was wrong. Many erroneous predictions and calculations have been made over the history of science, and part of the process of science (which Velikovsky failed to carry out) is detecting and correcting/replacing such errors. Gravity does not defy time, gravitational effects are felt after time lags dependent on separation and predicted (extremely accurately) by general relativity. This too ahs been demonstrated over and over.
Leverrier’s “error of one percent” meant he missed the orbital path of Neptune by a scant SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION GODDAM MILES. … “Accurate,” indeed
The magnitude of the error is irrelevant, it only can be assessed by comparing it to something else. The 1% is significant, the number of miles is not.
Assume that the speedometer in your car is accurate to 1% of its maximum reading, and assume that the maximum reading is 125 miles per hour. You can then know your speed to withing 1.25 miles per hour, which is sufficient for your purposes. However, your speedometer is off by approximately 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 proton radii per hour! Gee, that’s a big number! Do you think your speedometer is useless?
Large numbers do not a significant error make. I can make numbers very small, too: the error in the location of Neptune was about 0.000000000000008 times the size of the observable universe.
Venus and Earth … Just came close enough to just about wreck everything. The impossibility" you conceive, hitting a brick wall at Mach 4, is not related to anything Velikovsky wrote.
If Venus came close enough to produce the effects that Velikovsky claimed, it would have destroyed the Earth to an amount isignificantly different from an actual collision.
it seems to have so happened that most of the Indian Ocean is a massive lava flow of recent geological origin. Like REAL recent. Like a few thousand years.
Reference, please? My understanding is that most of the seafloor under all the oceans, including the Indian, is one heck of a lot older than that.
And there are plenty of unburied coral reefs that show what was described. Also, you don’t need scuba gear to visit buried coral reefs; lots of them have been studied on dry land (where they happened to wind up, and there’s an adequate description of that process without invoding Velikovsky).
My lessons said Officially: there never was, never is, and never shall be any other circumstance but the pedestrial stroll of the globes 'round the sun until entropy swallows us up 6 billion years from now. Catastrophes were out of the question. Ever.
Perhaps so. Then Alvarez (I believe it was him) suggested that one of the great extinctions (the dinosaurs of the late Cretacous, unless I’m misremembering the period) was caused by an asteroidal impact. And most of the scientific community thought he was crazy. But some of them investigated, and they found evidence, and they made predictions which were borne out, and now the asteroidal-impact-extinction theory is widely believed. Only time and further proof will tell whether it will ever attain the lofty status of Newtonian mechanics and qunatum electrodynamics and special relativity.
Something that many people miss (and you may or may not have missed, I don’t know) is that the payoff for verifying a wild scientific theory is incredible. Fame, fortune, and maybe even scads of sexual favors from members of the sex of your choice. There is no monolithic scientific establishment that squashes unpopular theories. There have been unfortunate incidents when meritorious thories have been intially ignored, but there’s always someone who keeps plugging, and the meritorious theories seem to be accepted eventually.
So there is almost no theory so ludicrous that someonedoesn’t investigate it. Velikovsky’s theorys have been investigated, by people who had a lot to gain by proving them true, and those people have reluctantly concluded that Velikovsky’s theories are wrong.
jrf
I thought that it was well-known that the Illuminati changed the coral reef record at the same time that they planted the dinosaur skeletons.
No, they DIDN’T. The Illuminati never even EXISTED. It was the ATLANTEANS all along.
From Tom Dark:
I’m not sure if you mean me (Irishman) or nebuli. Gee, can’t even be bothered to read up the thread and use the right names. Should I now start calling you Tom Dick? Or Spamhead?
JonF already addressed this a little, but I’ll add to it. Tom, you missed my point. If the catastrophe happened as you state, then there would be no coral reefs from prior to said catastrophe showing any pattern, 360 or 365. If the Indian Ocean is a new lava bed (and I’m just taking that as an assumption) then there are no coral reefs in it older than that few thousand years. But coral reefs elsewhere exist older than that, and they are still intact. The ones under that lava bed may be still buried, but others are not.
My original comment was that the coral reefs we examine show a 365 day/year pattern going well before the proposed catastrophe. Thus the comment about the catastrophe changing the existing/surviving coral reefs to show a 365 day cycle after the fact.