just because we are in the middle of a cycle that doesn’t mean bodies from the oort cloud or the other areas of the solar system can’t possibly happen to come through at other times. You are being very simplistic. So it can’t happen because we are in the middle of the cycle. Did you see Hale-Bopp? Guess it really didn’t happen?
I apologize for the fragmentary post above- I shouldn’t try composing before my morning caffeine injection.
ALarsen:
You seemed to be implying that the possible “Nemesis” cycle could have caused the catastrophe alleged by Velikovsky, and I was merely pointing out that the cycle, if it even exists, would have had nothing to do with it. Of course a comet or asteroid could hit the earth at any time, but the point is it would leave unmistakeable evidence of having done so if it was large enough to produce the effects that you claim it did.
On the countrary, there is only one map known to exist- others are only speculative inventions in the minds of proponents. The known map is from the 16th century, and I sincerely hope your “13 century” above is a typo for “15th century”, otherwise it would be pointless to continue a debate over the age of documents (or anything else).
No- the earth slowing its rotation does not cause the Moon to recede. However, the slowing of the Earth’s rotation and the receding of the Moon are both caused by the same agency- the tidal effects of the Earth/Moon gravitational attraction- and so they occur in tandem.
Nebuli: 13 vs 15 century. Typo, sorry! I’ll do some research on it, but the maps (more than one) did predate Columbus, and that’s why they created such a stink.
You questions of why aren’t proofs seen. Ref Alaskan “muck.” Ref Bones of tropical animals in English caves due to floods. Ref Mammoths. Ref Sea levels and roads or walls of fitted stone leading down (I think in the case of the one by Bermuda, past 3000 feet). The submersible “the Alvin” followed it down to that level and it was still going. It was either 300 or 3,000 ft. 3000 seems a bit much, my memory is not perfectly clear on that one. Ref the evidence of a tilting earth, and ref ancient forests in Greenland, Antarctica, and under the North sea.
Tom Dark: Your post got cut off at the bottom of page two just as you were retrieving a fact ???
Jon F: Reply errata #1. Should have said that the polar axis of Uranus lies in the plane of the elliptic rather than the north pole points at the sun. Errata #2. How the hell did my name get on top of the post? Personal note to Anti-Einstein Crank. Must edit better.
Addition: Or Antarctic’s ice cap could have been on water and the Arctic on land, so sea levels wouldn’t have changed any. Or both caps could have been on land and the sea levels would have dropped an additional 300 to 400 feet (As it obviously once was in historical times). Remember also if you will, the underwater cave paintings found on/in the coast of France.
Also if memory serves me well, Schilemann actually dug down a couple of layers (six comes to mind) below Troy before realizing his mistake. Also if I remember, he found “lots ‘o’ gold” and I seem to recall a photo of his wife or another woman wearing a beautiful golden necklace they found. (If I’d found it, no-one would ever have known.) I keep hoping to one day find a bag of money that dropped of the back of a Brinks truck!
Now let’s hopefully lay the 360 day/degree controversy to rest. Of course this is only if the worthy opponents accept ancient wisdom and facts. I have a 1779 (no typo) leather-bound, 18 volume edition of “Universal History.” It’s a bit hard to read in ye olde English, but I will quote exactly.
Quote pp xxxi: “The Sarus, therefore contained three thoufand fix hundred days or juft ten old Chaldaean years, of three hundred and fixty days each; and that, before the deluge, not only the civil, but alfo the tropical, folar, and lunar year confifted of twelve months, of thirty days apiece, or three hundred and fixty days in the whole, has been fully proved by a modern writer.” (Here is a footnote reference to Allin’s Difcourfe on the ancient Year, in Mr. Whifton’s Theory, book xi, p. 144.)
In continuing he states: “The Egyptians, who addicted themfelves to the ftudy of aftronomy in the earlieft ages, and were well acquainted with the notions, periods, and ftations of the planets, were the firft who adjufted the length of the year to the annual revolution of the fun, by adding to their twelve months of thirty days apiece five additional days and fix hours, while the Greeks and Romans ufed the more rude and inconvenient form of intercalculating a month every third year. However, the five additional days, as Syncellus informs us, were not introduced til a thoufand years after the deluge, and never were looked upon a proper parts either of the year, or of any of its months, but as days beloiging to the nativity of five feveral Egyptian deities, who as it is obferved in a famous tradition related by Plutarch, were to be born neither in any year, nor in any month.” unquote (with two footnotes that I didn’t quote.)
So I feel the 360 years are sufficiently proven and the five days were more like “virtual” days with no reality in the year, as was stated. I should like to add however some more brown stuff for the fan. Where do you guys/gals think our 60 second, 60 minute, 12 and 24 hours came from? any guesses that they were also based by the Chaldaeans on the 360 day year, just like the degrees in a circle? How’s them apples?
So to Nebuli, etal, Why should it be a concidence if the length of the year was divisable by the length of the day if the day length was derived from the year in the first place? Another proof? and this one came right from you. Thanks. Keep it up and you all will prove the 360 basis of the year/circle/time to yourselves without Tom Dark, etc., having to spoon-feed you.
As a further note of interest, I had always thought that the semi-spherical shape of the earth was a fairly recent finding. Yet on page 14 of the same 1779 Vol one, I find: “While the earth was beieved to be a perfect fphere, it was enough to find the true length of any one degree of latitude: becaufe one would confirm all the reft: but fince the eftablifhment of Sir Ifaac Newton’s philofophy, the figure of the earth is underftood to be that of a fpheroid, gradually flatted towards the poles: fo that a degree fo the meridian at thofe places muft be longer than any where else.” Unquote.
Note to Irishman regarding the truth of myths and legends. Page xxvii of the same Vol one. "In after-ages, when the ufe of letters was introduced, poets, it is true, are faid to have been the firft hiftorians: but we muft not fuppofe whatever they wrote to be a mere fable. Their ground-work was often truth, though embellifhed with various fictions. Thus, for inftance, Homer’s poem ought not to be regarded only as an excellent poetical performance, but as the moft antient hiftory of Greece; infomuch that, if we had no other remains of antiquity than Homer’s works, to convince us of the Trojan war, and the taking of that city, we could not call in queftion the truth of that event. Unquote.
Irishman/Nebuli/JonF: Back to the moon and earth. The original words by JonF were the “conservation of momentum,” not frictional losses. I do however take your point and agree that the earth’s days are lengthening as the earth’s rotation is slowed by tidal friction and I do believe that the moon always keeps the same face towards the earth for the same reason of tidal energy loss (libration being taken into account), however the idea that the moon is slowing and therfore is moving away because of the slowing, is a non-starter. This idea of the moon slowing and therefore moving away to conserve angular motion as the earth slows, is one of the many fictions of today’s science (I realize that measurements??? have shown that the moon is moving away by 2 inches per century but do I really believe it?? . . . Don’t really! Since it is only last year that they finally said that Everest is 6 feet taller than figured. If we can’t even measure a mountain here on earth with exactude . . . ??).
If the moon was to slow down, it would move closer, not farther away, and if it stopped, it would come crashing down to earth, and chicken little would have good reason to run around screaming that the sky is falling. Awk, buk buk bukk.
What I want to know is if anyone (even those I may have insulted in the past in the spirit of the game) has any knowledge of a really high-magnification, industrial-strength, illuminated magnifier that an old woman without much mobility can use.?? Any telephone numbers for places that make something like this would be greatly appreciated.
McMaster-Carr[/url"], especially [url=http://www.mcmaster.com/pdf/105/1834.pdf]this page (for which you’ll need the Adobe Acrobat reader). Seven pages of the suckers, including good explanations on the first page.
jrf
The earth could stop rotating this very instant and the moon wouldn’t move an inch farther away
If the Earth were to stop rotating, the effect on the Moon would depend on what mechanism caused the Earth to stop rotating. The mechanism referred to by Nebuli, and known to many educated people (but not, apparently, to you), is that Newtonian mechanics predict that the drag caused by tidal interactions of the Earth-Moon system cause the Moon to move away from the earth, and predict the rate at which this happens. This prediction has been tested (by bouncing lasers off the reflector that the astronauts left on the mon) and verified.
Of course, if the Earth’s rotation were stopped by magic, science could not predict the effect on the moon.
Proposing scenarios without a mechanism or mathematical model included (explicitly or by reference to common knowledge) is meaningless.
I do not, and never have said, that V was correct in his thoughts about Venus
OK, then, what theory are we discussing? Velikovsky’s, yours, or an amalgam of the two?
Velikovsky certainly said that Venus and Earth were the two main bodies involved, and if you remove Venus from his theory you have a lot of backfilling to do.
and Mars, don’t forget Mars
If you read my statements carefully, you will see that not only did I not forget Mars, I left room for you to bring in a few more plantets if it suits you.
look at our moon for example and dozens of moons around the other planets and then think of Uranus. It’s moons orbit it at ninety degrees to the elliptic and it’s north pole aims at the sun
Ecliptic, not elliptic. None of those bodies are in Solar orbit. They are indeed in orbit, and the genesis of those orbits can be explained by several scenarios, all of which are consistent with Newtonian mechanics, and many of which involve catastrophic collisions that would have destroyed all life on the affected bodies and left millions of indicators in the geological/selenogical/areaological/whatever-ological record until enough millions of years pass to obliterate them. But going into nearly circular Solar orbit after grazing the Earth multiple times within a very short time frame (and, possibly, interacting with other bodies such as Mars) is inconsistent with Newtonian mechanics. And Newtonian mechanics works. If you’re want to discuss a scientific theory, you’re going to have to propose some mechanisms (or refer to other’s proposed mechanisms) and make some predictions that can be verified.
and hot little Venus’ rotation is retrograde. Shades of Newtonian impossibilities).
None of the items you mentioned are inconsistent with Newtonian mechanics. They are just unusual. The scenario of any astronomic body approaching the Earth multiple times in anything close to the time period proposed by Velikovsky and then entering a stable Solar orbit with low eccentricity is inconsistent with Newtonian mechanics. Therefore, I (and the scientific community) will not consider such a scenario plausible or possible until a mechanism (or mathematical model) is proposed by which that could happen and that mechanism/model is shown to make the same predictions as Newtonian mechanics in cases that we can verify observationally or experimentally.
However it is not impossible for a different body entirely to have perturbed the earth and then either passed on back to outer space or perhaps
No, it is not impossible. But that interaction would have left subtle traces, such as the extinction of life on Earth. Unless you want to propose a mechanism by which life could have survived on Earth?
Logic and science cannot prove that something cannot exist, although they can prove that something does not exist or is so unlikely to have ever existed that it may as well be taken as proof of nonexistence.
New scientific theories arise and become accepted because they explain observations better than old theories. What observations does your unknown body (which came from somewhere and then went somewhere) explain?
Your disputation of the earth tilting just because science can’t figure out how with today’s beliefs (which don’t include cosmic catastrophe) isn’t reason enough.
It is true that inability to explain an observation is no evidence against the nonexstance of that observation. If you look back over your posts, you will find that on several occasions you have commited that error.
But the fact that people have been unable to find a mechanism by which this could have happened, when we have good reason to believe that we could find that mechanism if it exists, is an argument (not evidence) against the plausibility (not the existence or nonexistence) of the propsed phenomenon.
I do not assert that the tilting did not happen just because we haven’t been able to figure out a mechanism, I assert that it did not happen because it is wildly implausible, there is no evidence that it occurred (the evidence you mentioned previously has been investigated and discredited) and there is no good reason (such as observations that don’t fit with curent theories) to beleive that it did occur.
There are many basic items of science that science can’t answer but none-the-less are true
Yes. So what? Science is a continuing process; we have no reason to believe we will ever understand everything (although some people have hopes). Almost all of the science we have works and has been proven over and over again. Believing the Velikovskian scenario requires us to believe that incredible amount os the science that we know works does not work … and I’m not going to believe that without evidence and calculations.
Take magnetism for example. Electrons orbiting the atom to cause it, is probably the cause, but what is it
Nobody has ever proposed that electrons orbit atoms. Assuming that you meant “electrons orbiting nuclei in atoms”, we’ve discussed the Bohr model elsewhere and electrons do not orbit. So orbiting electrons are not the cause of magnetism, and no serious scientist believes so.
But so what? We would love to know the fundamental cause of magnetism, but we do have equations that describe its interactions and properties. And those equations work to an incredibly impressive level of correctness. Whether or not we know the fundamental cause, the equations WORK. If we do find a fundamental cause or new theory, the existing equations won’t be discarded. They may be modified to include special circumstances, but they won’t go away.
Everyone knows that a negative charge is an excess of electrons, but what makes the electron itself negative, or the proton positive?
Again a fascinating question but,** in the context of this discussion**, so what? Do you contend that we cannot predict what electrons and protons do because we don’t understand the fundamental reason why they are charged? I hope not, because our ability to predict using quantum electrodymics is the most tested and verified fact in science.
Inertia is a total mystery to science, yet it is one of the most basic attributes of matter
Yes, there are many fascinating questions in science. Why do bodies have inertia? Why is the mass in Fi=Ma equal to the mass in Fg=G(m1)(m2)/R^2?
But those questions have nothing to do with whether or not Newtonian mechanics works and yields correct predictions. Or do you propose that Fi is not equal to Ma (under the circumstances of teh majority of interactions) ? Do you propose that Fg is not equal to G(m
Just a few more items that I’ll respond to, just to prove that I can
lf the maps show Antarctica as clear of ice, wouldn’t you normally come to the conclusion that the poles were in other positions?
No, not from just that. I would first question whether it is reasonable to suppose that Piri Reis’ maps shows Antarctica at all. It’s likely that it doesn’t. However, assuming for the moment and for the sake of argument that it does, there are many other explanations. Maybe Reis knew there was something there but didn’t kow the conditions or temperature. Maybe he just left out the ice; he did leave out lots of other information. Maybe the poles were indeed in different positions.
But that’s not the end of the story. We take these various hypotheses (and maybe others) and consider what they imply. We make predictions as to what we’ll find if we look for certain things. And through that process we find that the hypothesis that the poles were in different places fails. The Reis map may still be evidence for that hypothesis; but plenty of other evidence contradicts it. So we discard the hypothesis.
The existence of one piece of evidence, or a few pieces of evidence, or even many pieces of evidence, for a hypothesis {b]does not count**. What counts is the preponderance of evidence; the balance between evidence for and evidence against. In the case of the different locations of the poles, the pan comes down heavily on the evidence-against side.
In case you don’t know, and you must not to swallow this, a body including yours, would still decay if drowned or covered in mud
The cause of death and the cause of a particular degree of preservation can, and often are, different. The article addresses this issue. I suggest that you read it.
If you haven’t ever read about it, when they found mammoths in the late '20s they not only fed their dogs but cut off steaks and ate them themselves
Yes, I’ve read that. Another fairy tale. Same reference.
Eugene Shoemaker …t said that he’d been fighting other scientists since the sixties about whether or not the crater was meteoric. It came directly from the horse’s mouth, so don’t pontificate on what you don’t know anything about.
I’m not pontificating, I am stating facts - I was taught that Arizona’s Meteor Crater was an impact crater in the 1950s. And it was referred to as “Meteor Crater” then.
I can’t find a timeline right now, but the items I do find strongly sugggest that Shomaker’s statement was mistaken or that you misunderstood it. For example, http://www.barringercrater.com/.
And he said then that the comet hitting Jupiter was the reason his meteor theory was finally accepted
Ok, so that’s one fact (assuming that you are remembering correctly). There are plenty of other facts. Shoemaker-Levy collided with Jupiter in July, 1994. At http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news81.html we find “Gene Shoemaker received his doctorate from Princeton in 1960 with a thesis on Meteor Crater.”. Princeton doesn’t give out doctorates unless they believe that the sicence is valid (although not necesasrily correct). The discussion at http://www.barringercrater.com/science/ does not indicate dates directly, but strongly indicates that the crater was accepted as an impact crater before World War II. At http://ireland.seds.org/apod/ap971117.html, we find “In 1920, it was the first feature on Earth to be recognized as an impact crater.”
Thre’s lots more, but the preponderance of evidence is that Shoemaker’s theories were accepted long v\before the Jupiter impact.
But my real point is that they are accepted.
Tell it to Wagener that his theory wasn’t really suppressed.
I would if I could. His theory was not accepted as quickly as it should have been, but it is widely believed now. Therefore it was not suppressed.
The Rubin/Ford case about faster-than-normal star orbits in spiral galaxies wasn’t the one that was suppressed by a monolithic science establishment. By that time Vera was part of the establishment. But it was 30 years before, when she found galactic movement superimposition on the Hubbell flow, that was suppressed. For many years she was blackballed and couldn’t get her story out until finally the old guards died off. Tell her that it wasn’t really suppression and I’d sure she’ll love you for it.
Re her and Fords latest findings of fast star movement
What evidence do you have that it was “the old guard dying off” that caused acceptance of her theories? I have often explicitly stated that there are cases in which theories were not accepted as quickly as they would be in an ideal world. This case is still not evidence of a correct theory that was successfully suppressed by a monolithic establishment.
I’m sure the establishment will find some way of explaining the extra-fast movement without having to rethink any basic dogma. They are pretty good at it, they’ve had plenty of practice
“Dogma” is a poor choice of words here. Of course, the scientific community has plenty of practice at re-thinking and incorporating new results; that’s one way of defining what science is. Old models are seldom discarded completely, just reworked and modified, becausue that’s the only way to maintain the millions of successes of the old models. Totally new models and paradigms are adopted only when necessary, but it does happen (e.g. quantum mechanics).
How could you not hear of Jocelyn Bell?
I had heard of her but forgotten the name. Are you familiar with Mushkelishvilli? A giant in his field!
But she didn’t get the Nobel prize for finding them. How’s that for not being suppressed
What evidence do you have that she should have gotten a Nobel prize? Are you saying that all important discoveries should earn Nobel prizes? Are you saying that you think her discoveries are not part of the accepted theories of science because she did not get a Nobel prize?
sweetcakes
Sweetcakes?
Schilemann … found Troy … He shoved their faces in it, they had no choice but to accept it and he obviously proved himself right
Exactly my point. You come up with a theory, then you set out to prove it. You don’t toss out wild suppositions, especially those that contradict facts that are established by centuries of experimentation, and then whine in the corner because the scientific community doesn’t immediately award yo the Nobel prize. Well, maybe you (the generic you, not the specific you that I am addressing) do, but it’s not science.
Ever thought that the reason that you’ve "never seen any evidence of any paper that was blocked from publication . . . would be because it could never get published?
No. There are lots of things that could serve as such evidence. For example, correspondence (letters, email, whatever). Such things have a tendency to come out, especially when they are embarassing to some distinguished people.
Or even personal testimony about discussions, although I would weigh such evidence by the interests of the people invloved and the likelihiood of corect recollection.
jrf
They were his summary of commonly-discussed objections to Newton’s theories, as V. understood them in 1946.
Understood. But what he wrote proves that he didn’t understand them at all.
“Cosmos Without Gravitation”… interesting and as usual, grammatically lucid
Interesting in the sense that it’s fascinating that people can accept such garbage, grammatically but not scientifically lucid. Using his point numbers, a quick perusal without further investigation yields:
- Ignorance of gas dynamics. 2. Ignorance of photochemical processes. 3. Further ignorance of gas dynamics combined with ignorance of the atomic/molecular theory of matter; an H2O molecule is lighter than an O2 molecule or an N2 molecule. 4. An unproven supposition presented as fact, and ignorance of the real quantum-mechanical nature of atomic “collisions”. 5. I don’t know. 6. Perhaps believable at the time, but not now that we have made direct measurements of the extent of the atmosphere 7. I don’t know, but I doubt that anticyclones are unexplained. 8. Total garbage with no justification. 9. Again perhaps believable at the time, but not now. 10. I don’t know. 11. Ignorance of gas dynamics and the effects of radiation pressure. 12. Maybe the sun’s shape was thought to be perfectly circular at the time, but it is no more. 13. Flat-out incorrect, and known in 1946. 14. Flat-out incorrect, the Newtonian formula includes the product of the masses and does indeeed agree well with the Keplerian empirical formula (and Newton’s law of gravitation definitely did contain a product of the masses in 1946). 15. Flat-out incorrect; this guy doesn’t know anything whatsoever about gravitational theory. 16. I don’t know, but in light of Velikovsky’s obvious total ignorance of gravitational theory, I doubt it. 17. Light pressure exists but Velikovsky doesn’t bother to calculate its effects and compare that calculation with obbservation; he just assumes that the resutls would fit his theory. 18. Maybe so, but we should see some more references to other’s work here. 19. Maybe that was the state of knowledge then, burt we’ve learned more since then. I am amused that somone who doesn’t even know that Newton’s law of gravitation is Fg=G(m1)(m2)/R^2 is presuming to state what “**cannot ** be accounted for by Einstein’s formulas” (emphasis added).
Oh boy, I give up. I’ve already responded to a lot of the other garbage in this essay.
Or Antarctic’s ice cap could have been on water and the Arctic on land, so sea levels wouldn’t have changed any. Or both caps could have been on land and the sea levels would have dropped an additional 300 to 400 feet (As it obviously once was in historical times)
In historical times there has been no land in the Arctic. Again you are tossing out suppositions without considering the consequences. Or do you think that the ice caps leaped from one set of polar regions to another?
Remember also if you will, the underwater cave paintings found on/in the coast of France
Nope, not familiar with them. Explanation and references, please?
I have a 1779 (no typo) leather-bound, 18 volume edition of "Universal History
Are you contending that no new discoveries or changes in interpretations have occurred in that field since 1779?
I realize that measurements??? have shown that the moon is moving away by 2 inches per century but do I really believe it??
Interesting. You are claiming that we can just ignore observations when we they are inconvenient? That’s not science, that’s mysticism. A scientist with a theory that predicts that the moon is not receding from the earth wourld feel required to find error sin the observations or incorporate them into the theory, not just ignore them.
If we can’t even measure a mountain here on earth with exactude
Lordy me, are you at all familiar with the process by which the height of Everest was originally measured? Step-wise triangulation starting at the foot of the Indian subcontinent! Coming within a few feet over such a distance using the tools of the time is astounding, probably the second greatest feat of trigonometric calculation and measurement in history (I’ve got to pick Shackleton’s navigation to South Georgia as the greatest). The tools we have are a lot better now.
f the moon was to slow down, it would move closer, not farther away, and if it stopped, it would come crashing down to earth, and chicken little would have good reason to run around screaming that the sky is falling
Wrong. A common fallacy of those who have no knowledge on Newtonian mechanics.
jrf
What I want to know is if anyone (even those I may have insulted in the past in the spirit of the game) has any knowledge of a really high-magnification, industrial-strength, illuminated magnifier that an old woman without much mobility can use.?? Any telephone numbers for places that make something like this would be greatly appreciated.
Damn, how’d my first reply get so screwed up?
http://www.mcmaster.com.
Especially:
http://www.mcmaster.com/pdf/105/1834.pdf
which resulted from searching on keyword “magnifier” “in our index” and picking “illuminated magnifiers” from the resulting list.
jrf
The original words by JonF were the “conservation of momentum,” not frictional losses. I do however take your point and agree that the earth’s days are lengthening as the earth’s rotation is slowed by tidal friction and I do believe that the moon always keeps the same face towards the earth for the same reason of tidal energy loss (libration being taken into account), however the idea that the moon is slowing and therfore is moving away because of the slowing, is a non-starter
Er? Perhaps I said “conservation of momentum” when I meant “conservation of angular momentum”, but other than that I stand by my statements.
The Earth’s rotation slows because of tidal friction. Angular momentum, which is conserved, is angular velocity (rotation speed) times radius (from the center of rotation) squared. The angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system would decrease if the Earth’s rotation speed slowed and nothing else happened. We predict (from the fact that angular momentum is conserved) that something else must happen; the mass and/or the radius must increase appropriately. The mass doesn’t increase. The radius does. The moon and the Earth move farther apart. The amount of motion can be predicted from the equations and … (drum roll, please) … agrees with the measurements made after the prediction! (rim shot).
jrf
Reference the statemetn that Shoemaker said that the Arizona impact crater was not accepted as such until Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter: In addition to the other references I posted, from http://www.tlc.discovery.com/stories/science/meteors/hit4.html we see “At the time, they were just getting an inkling of the impact meteorites might have on Earth. Some thought the crater was volcanic, others believed it to have been created by an extraterrestrial impact. By 1929, 38 years after scientific exploration of the crater began, it was considered the first on the planet to be authenticated as an impact crater”.
So the Discovery channel does not agree with you …
jrf
Jonf:
Further evidence along the same line. The June 1928 issue of National Geographic has an article on the “Meteor Crater”, which includes this line:
“For thirty years, at least, Meteor Crater has been less a bowl than a football for scientists, professional and amatuer, in the fields of astronomy, geology, physics, engineering, and even ballistics. Most autorities agree now that the crater is indeed the mark of a gigantic mass of meteorites. Probably it can be considered the tomb of a small dead comet.”
The title of the article is “The Mysterious Tomb of a Giant Meteorite”.
In the same article, mention is made of the 1908 event over Siberia, and suggests that it was also caused by impact of a comet or meteorite. Obviously mainstream science had no problem with the theory of catastrophic impacts in 1928.
Ugly
A Larsen said
For the above phenomena to be evidence for the catastrophe which you maintain occurred, it seems to me that they must meet at least three conditions- they must be real; they must actually have been of catastrophic origin; and they must have been contemporaneous with the alleged cause.
As to the 1st point- some of your claims have already been debunked on this forum. IIRC I have seen others debunked elsewhere, but since I can’t cite definite references, for the sake of argument lets give your examples a pass on this one.
2nd point- some of your examples may be the result of cumulative processes. For instance, the supposed Bermuda steps (and only 300 feet deep) are the remains of drowned beachfronts resulting from a centuries-long rise in sea level at the end of the last Ice Age.
3rd, and crucial, point- your examples, to the extent that they are even real, occurred over a wide time range, and are not clustered around a date of c. 4000 BC. The mammoths found eroding from the permafrost come from many dates of approx. 50,0000 to 10,000 years ago. Remains of a remnant subspecies of pygmy mammoths (nice oxymoron) have been found on Wrangel Island from more recently than 4,000 BC. The forests in Antarctica are from millions of years ago. Thus your supposed evidence has no internal consistency.
Another example of the lower sealevel during the Ice Age, and long before the date of your supposed catastrophe.
Are you serious? Hours, minutes, and seconds are derived from the length of the day, but the length of the day and of the year are naturally determined by celestial motions and have nothing to do with human derivation. Do the coral polyps growing in daily and annual cycles know or care what conventions are established by Mesopotamian sages? Further, since the day’s length and the year’s length are determined by independant natural cycles- the earth’s rotation in the former case and the earth’s orbit in the latter- they are in a whole number relationship only on rare occasions.
I feel like a real piker compared to Jon F by signing off after such a short effort, but “from each according to his ability.”
Two things:
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Since this is about the calendar now (instead of the circle): Selamat Hari Raya to all!
-
A.L./Tom Dark: how about apologizing for the racial slurs you’ve posted in here?
Sorry, no time to respond this weekend as I’d hope, particularily to JonF.
However: “Proposing scenarios without a mechanism or mathematical model included (explicitly or by reference to common knowledge) is meaningless.”
JonF’s statement above illustrates for each of his postings the original mark I made about his main argument. It would seem some insist despite themselves that events can’t exist unless there is first a “law” made up for them. Hope to get to that in detail.
Monty appears to have nothing to add to the discussion but imagine intents of “racial slurs.” My exegisis for my remark “the bible appears to me to have been written by ‘Wild Injuns’” was added to the remark. Apology was inherent.
Unless you personally are a native American who requires more apology and further clarification of my meaning, butt out.
If you are, you have them again.
If your motives are religious instead, bite me.
Tom Dark quotes Jonf and makes a comment:
Funny. In all my dictionaries,“proposing scenarios” and “events” seem to have completely different meanings.
Ugly
I imagine nothing, you moron. I, and everyone else who read your comments, saw your slurs against Native Americans, Irish, and Germans. Just because you think only members of those groups can be offended by such slurs doesn’t mean the rest of the planet can’t be offended. But then, your incredible lack of understanding of the topics at hand displayed here doesn’t bode well for your understanding that last bit either.
As to not appearing to have anything to contribute: Again…WRONG! Hari Raya is an incredibly important calendrical event in Islam. The Arabic term for it is Eid al-Fitr which is the First Day of the month following Ramadan. As it happens, that just happened and therefore I wished “Selamat Hari Raya” to all…“A Peaceful Day of Feasting.” Even to such a cretin as you.
It would seem some insist despite themselves that events can’t exist unless there is first a “law” made up for them
no no No NO NO NO NO NO, as I have explicitly stated on three occasions now. The existence or nonexistence of events is independent of our models and theories (ignoring for the moment the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). If you attempt to explain an event or ** propose a scenario of how an event happened** then you are making a model or creating laws or however you want to look at it.
I would certainly appreciate it if you would refrain from making such statements about my beliefs, which I have specifically disavowed several times, with no evidence; this is the third time you have done so and the third time I have asked you to stop. You are misunderstanding my postings. If I made a mis-statement or a confusing statement I will acknowledge the error, but I cannot do so until you tell me from which statements you are drawing this incorrect conclusion.
jrf
Angular momentum, which is conserved, is angular velocity (rotation speed) times radius (from the center of rotation) squared
Angular momentum, of course, is mass times angular velocity times radius squared. Must be gremlins somewhere …
jrf
Yes JonF, thanks a lot for the web address of the hardware store, I looked at it briefly and will go back to it after this, it looks promising. Behind that gruff exterior lies a gentleman, a real sweetie, and thank you very much it is really appreciated.
Now let’s go back to fun and games and insulting one another before I get to liking you.
Before I start, let me say that this will be my last inout on V. And on the 360 degree circle and the 360 day year and the clock, as I think we’ve exhausted the subject and I consider them proven. I’ve always believed that you can lead the horse to water . . . but if he doesn’t drink, let him go thirsty.
I’ve said time and again, that the matter of Venus is a moot point… The true message is that “shit happens,” which has been verified amply by evidence here on earth and which you don’t seem to want to research. Why can’t you believe that it can and did happen while man has been on this earth? Are we so special it just couldn’t happen here. Is there a special God that looks out for us? I’ve not seen any evidence of either so far. Even though relativity may say that each individual is the center of the universe (the supreme egocentrism concept) and everything is relative to us, it still doesn’t protect us from an uncaring universe.
I’ve tried to be gentle and not use an elephant to swat a fly. I’d rather lead you into thinking for yourself than hit you over the head. If you actually read “Worlds in Collision” and haven’t just jumped on the Venus bit and thrown it back with embellishments, as an acquaintance of mine used to do, without knowing a bit more than what was said to him previously (You’re name wouldn’t be Paul Pederson by chance), then you would know that in W’s in C, V postulated that myths and legends had a basis in fact and he set out to see what common threads native tribes had in their oral and written traditions throughout the world. He concluded that catastrophe happened and happened within historical times. Because of legends showing Venus as having a cometary tail and such as Venus springing from the brow of Jupiter, etc., and because of stone star maps, V concluded, probably erroneously, that Venus, the planet we know today once endangered Earth and Mars. I’ve said this before and will not elaborate with the exception of something that I mentioned in passing, that Venus has a retrograde rotation. You ignored this with an airy wave of the hand as unimportant. Better not dismiss it so easily, in fact you should think again if you want to get inside V’s mind. If you subscribe to the rotating dust cloud formation of the solar system which formed the sun and the planets, you should also know that Newtonian mechanics, which you give lip service to, would not allow part of that rotating accretion disk of dust to rotate in some places in one direction and in other places in the opposite direction, in the same dust cloud. The rotation of the dust cloud is what gives planets their orbital direction and speeds and also their rotations, including that of the sun. The very fact that Venus is rotating retrograde and Uranus has its polar axis in the plane of the ecliptic (thanks for the correction, my spelling is getting worse in old age), should ring alarm bells in your mind. Both of these observations prove that some sort of cosmic catastrophe happened to those two planets as neither of them are according to the current theory of solar formation, so why not Earth? Even our moon shouldn’t be and the theory of an impact is still disputed. As one scientist put it recently, it would be a lot easier for science if the moon did not exist. So V had his reasons for choosing Venus, and wrong though that choice may have been, his main point that catastrophe happens is entirely correct. There is shit in our backyard.
You remind me of a wide-eyed innocent sitting eagerly at the feet of his college professor, nodding agreement with his every pronouncement as sacred writ. Have you never questioned? Have you lost that inner child that questions, why?
As loath as I am to destroy your idealism, you really must learn not to swallow today’s science in whole cloth as you obviously do (there’s a word for that, it’s called gullible). You also must learn not to be so literal. An old Chinese proverb goes, “He who asks a question is a fool for a minute. He who doesn’t ask a question is a fool for his entire life.”
- Moon moving away. You said: “If the moon were stopped by magic, Science could not predict the effect on the moon.” Puulleease! If our science doesn’t know what the moon would do if it stopped orbiting the earth, then they should all take up astrology and they’d better get another day job flipping burgers too. Do I really have to refute that with the obvious? [Grabbing your labels and falling to my knees pleadingly, al-la Tom Dark, and looking up into your eyes,] “Say it ain’t so, JonF.” Even the most retarded, ah . . . comprehension-handicapped student in the alternative physics class would probably be able to answer that one. (I’ll do a live test in the next week or so and find out.)
- You said, Proposing scenarios without a mechanism or mathematical model is meaningless. Ever hear of Gedunken experiments? I sure hope so. In a thought problem (see I just told you what it was, just in case), (like Einstein always used) Einstein said that we are free to stipulate anything that is not an outright contradiction. So stipulating a thought problem with the moon stopped or the earth stopped rotating is a perfectly legal way of setting up a problem in theoretical physics and Einstein did it all the time. So can we.
- V’s use of Venus maybe was wrong. All right, was wrong, but his catastrophe theory wasn’t.
- Ecliptic, not elliptic: I stand corrected, thank you, my spelling is getting worse as old age approaches, (getting old’s the pits), but as long as you know what is meant I shall muddle through. I did say it was almost impossible for Venus to have endangered earth (and mars) and then go into an almost circular orbit around the sun. I said 'almost impossible but not ‘totally impossible,’ given perfect conditions (which itself is most highly unlikely), and that is one reason that I don’t accept V’s use of Venus. So I said that it was highly improbable, do you read and then ignore what you read?
- Given the rotation of the other planets as I said, Venus’ rotation is contrary to the others and is impossible without another cosmic intervention or a new theory of solar formation.
- Why such interaction “would of necessity destroy 100% of life on earth,” I don’t understand. There are varying degrees of catastrophe. Is there no room in your philosophy for less than 100%? Ever hear of gradualism? Whether a glass is half full or half empty is not the question, it is a half glass. Things do not have to be all or nothing, black or white. There is plenty of room for shades of gray. Even in the time of the flood, (geological fact and not just biblical lore) there were still survivors; there was more than one Noah.
- “. . . so unlikely to have existed that it may as well be taken as proof of no existence.” What errant rubbish! What kind of logic were you taught? Are modern schools that bad? The platypus comes to mind. Furred like an animal, lives most of its life in water like an amphibian, lays eggs like a bird but is a mammal, has webbed feet of a swimmer with claws of a digger, has a venomous spur like a snake, duck-billed, and a beaver tail, has everything but wings, etc., but you would say it was so unlikely that it’s unlikelyness is proof of it’s non-existence. Grow up.
- “It is true that inability to explain an observation is no evidence against the non-existence of the observation and that I committed that error.” Read again, sunshine, I said that “absence of proof is not proof of absence,” which agrees with the above. Because Wagener couldn’t prove his observation of continental drift, was not evidence that his observation that the continen