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From: news@fedfil.UUCP (Ted Holden) Message-ID: 2711@fedfil.uucp Newsgroups: talk.origins Sue Bishop and a few others continue to accuse me of ignoring "facts" in these posts. Consider the facts which Bishop and the others are quite happy to ignore. Worlds in Collision begins with an application of logic to the historical record, beginning with the book of Joshua in the OT: JOS 10:5 Therefore the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon, gathered themselves together, and went up, they and all their hosts, and encamped before Gibeon, and made war against it. JOS 10:6 And the men of Gibeon sent unto Joshua to the camp to Gilgal, saying, Slack not thy hand from thy servants; come up to us quickly, and save us, and help us: for all the kings of the Amorites that dwell in the mountains are gathered together against us. JOS 10:7 So Joshua ascended from Gilgal, he, and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valour. JOS 10:8 And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear them not: for I have delivered them into thine hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee. JOS 10:9 Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly, and went up from Gilgal all night. JOS 10:10 And the LORD discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth up to Bethhoron, and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah. JOS 10:11 And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword. JOS 10:12 Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. JOS 10:13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. JOS 10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel. Velikovsky noted the basic features of cosmic disaster or near disaster here; he noted that, were a very large body to nearly collide with Earth in such a way as to somehow or other cause the effect of a lengthened day, that one might also reasonably expect meteorite showers (the great stones from heaven here attributed to the Lord) to come along with, particularly if such were part of the trailing debris of a large comet or newly formed planet. Velikovsky noted, however, that the person who wrote this story down would not have known of such a connection given the standard view of history and of earth and human origins, i.e. to him the sun was a magic light of some sort which God caused to go around the Earth. Odds are, such a story if fictional, would not include the detail of the bollides. Obvious conclusion: something very likely is big-time wrong here (here being the standard uniformitarian view). Velikovsky checked out rabbinical literature dealing with the incident described in the book of Joshua and indeed found further description and details of disaster. The book he wrote is called Worlds in Collision, and it describes a major disaster which befell our planet around 1500 years before Christ, and which also involved the planet Venus, our 900 degree Fahrenheit next neighbor in the solar system. Of course, if Velikovsky is correct, one would expect (since 1500 BC isn't really THAT long ago) to find accounts in far off corners of the world describing the great catastrophe of 1500 BC, AND ascribing its cause to the planet Venus. Conversely, if Sagan is correct and Venus has been in its present orbit since before man's time on earth, there is NO WAY that we should read this same account from Egypt and Mexico, which to our knowledge had no contacts in 1500 BC. That would involve these two totally separated groups of people totally fabricating the same preposterous tale and ascribing to it the same preposterous cause by PURE CHANCE. Of all people, Sagan, the great expert on probability, should know what the odds are on that. Zero. Nonetheless: ............................................................ Part I, the tale from central America: Central American people had achieved a high level of organization at the time of the arrival of the Europeans and, although most of these peoples literature was burned by the Spaniards, a few pieces survive not only in hieroglyphics, but also in our own alphabet, which Mayan priests very quickly picked up on. One version of the tale survives in the Mayan Popul Vuh, or Council Book. A number of translations of the Mayan council book (Popol Vuh) are now available in inexpensive paperback form; I have here a copy of Dennis Tedlock's translation, Simon & Schuster / Touchstone 1985/86. Again, the basic idea of the first half of Worlds in collision: that Venus (then on an erratic, stretched elliptical orbit) nearly collided with Earth, causing every manner of havoc, encounters with debris trailing Venus beginning with fine dust and growing to ferocious storms of large meteorites, rains of burning hydrocarbon substances (interaction of Venus' atmosphere and ours), giant earthquakes, fierce winds, flooding nearly everywhere etc., followed by a protracted period of near total darkness either as a kind of semi-nuclear winter caused by debris hanging in our own atmosphere, or because our own present relationship with our own sun was not yet completely established. During that time, Venus itself served as a light source, at least some of the time. Back to the Popol Vuh. We read the tale of the third race of people, who the Mayans regarded as a wooden race because: p 84. "They were not competent, nor did they speak before the builder and sculptor who had made them and brought them forth, and so they were killed, done in by a flood." "There came a rain of resin from the sky." p 260. "Andres Xiloj commented: 'This was turpentine that fell, and it was burning as it fell'". This is the same tale which we read in Exodus ("and so there was thunder and hail, and fire mingled with the hail... ...and the fire ran along the ground... etc.) p 84. "There came one called Gouger of Faces; he gouged out their eyeballs." "There came Sudden Bloodletter; he snapped off their heads." "There came Crunching Jaguar; he ate their flesh." "There came tearing Jaguar; he tore them open." p 84. "They were pounded down to the bones and tendons, smashed and pulverized even to the bones. Their faces were smashed because they were incompetent before their mother and their father, the heart of sky, named Hurricane. The Earth was blackened because of this; the black rainstorm began, rain all day and rain all night. Into their houses came the animals small and great. Their faces were crushed by things of wood and stone." p 58. "The longest fast, 340 days, corresponds to a segment of the Mayan Venus calendar, beginning with the departure of Venus as the morning star, and continuing through its stay in the underworld and its period of reappearance as the evening star, leaving just eight days to go before its rebirth as the morning star. This probably commemorated the heroic adventures of Hunahpu and Xbalanque in Xibalba, the long darkness endured by the first generation of lords as they watched for the appearance of the morning star..." p 85. "Such was the scattering of the human work, the human design. The people were ground down, overthrown. The mouths and faces of all of them were destroyed and crushed." p 86. "This was when there was just a trace of early dawn on the face of the earth, there was no sun. But there was one who magnified himself; Seven Macaw was his name. The earth/sky was already there, but the face of the sun-moon was clouded over. Even so, it is said that his light provided a sign for the people who were flooded." A very clear and precise statement; following the catastrophe, a celestial body other than the sun or the moon provides light for the world. p 360. "The PV does not specify Seven Macaw's actual astronomical identification... but A. gives it as Ursa Major..." A. is simply wrong. Ursa Major isn't bright enough; remember, this is all through an atmosphere heavy with dust and debris for a protracted period. p 86. "[Seven Macaw speaking] 'I am great. My place is now higher than that of the human work, the human design. I am their sun and I am their light, and I am also their months [they should begin to figure time by me]. So be it: my light is great. I am the walkway and I am the foothold of the people, because my eyes are of metal... And this nose of mine shines white into the distance like the moon. Since my nest is metal, it lights up the face of the earth. When I come forth before my nest, I am like the sun and moon for those who are born in the light, begotten in the light. It must be so, because my face reaches into the distance,' says Seven Macaw." "It is not true that he is the sun, this Seven Macaw, yet he magnifies himself, his wings, his metal... The faces of the sun, moon, and stars are not yet visible, it has not yet dawned." Seven Macaw is, of course, Venus. The people are seeing all of this through a ruined atmosphere, hence some confusion of effects. p 89. "Here is the beginning of the defeat and destruction of the day of Seven Macaw by the two boys, the first being named Hunahpu and the second named Xbalanque. Being gods... [i.e. celestial objects]... p 342. "Hunaphu and his twin succeed their father and uncle in controlling the morning star aspect of Venus, playing ball at an eastern site..." This tale goes on for many pages. Not only does Venus dominate all of these stories, but we actually see the origin of the various Meso-American ball games i.e. they are intended to represent the celestial disorder being referred to in the Popol Vuh as well as in other sources. William Mullen, writing in an article entitled "The Mesoamerican Record" mentions five dominant traits of the Mesoamerican cultures: 1. Urbanization with large populations spread around great ceremonial centers. 2. Belief in cyclical world ages ended by cosmic agents, jaguar, fire-rain, wind, flood, earthquake. 3. Human sacrifice. 4. Ritualistic ball game. 5. Venus worship. Number four we preserve to this day in the form of the NFL. Velikovsky mentions a time of wandering in darkness after the great catastrophe: this is seen in pages 175 - 200 of (Tedlock's translation of) the Popol Vuh: p 176. "When they came away from Tulan Zuyua, they weren't eating. They observed a continuous fast. It was enough that they watch intently for the dawning, that they watch closely for the rising of the sun, taking turns at watching for the great star named daybringer. This one came first before the sun when the sun was born, the new daybringer. Page 176 mentions sacrifice and ritualistic self-torture to bring about the first sunrise: "It remains for you to give thanks since you have yet to take care of bleeding your ears and passing a cord through your elbows. You must worship..." Which the people did and still lamented: "Alas, we won't be here when we see the dawn, when the sun is born, when the face of the earth is lit." i.e. the people were afraid they might die of old age first. p. 181 "And then, when the sun came up, the animals small and great were happy." Whew! p 182. "There were countless peoples, but there was just one dawn for all tribes. And then the face of the earth was dried out by the sun... Before the sun came up it was soggy, and the face of the earth was muddy before the sun came up. And when the sun had risen just a short distance, he was like a person, and his heat was unbearable. Since he revealed himself only when he was born, it is only his reflection which now remains. As they [witnesses] put it in their own words: 'The sun that shows itself is not the real sun'." "They were overjoyed when it dawned. The people on the mountain of Hacauitz were not yet numerous, just a few were there. Their dawning was there... ...And that became their citadel, since they were there when the sun, moon, stars appeared, when it dawned and cleared on the face of the earth..." Of course, I don't claim to know every detail of what was going on here. We have more bits and piece of a picture; Velikovsky's picture, not that of Sagan or establishment scientists. These people were seeing the sun for the first time, the sun from our present close orbit for the first time, or just the sun after a very long period of darkness. Recent studies indicate a time frame for these events which correlates well with Velikovsky's date of roughly -1500 for the big catastrophe in WinC. ................................................................ Part II. The tale from Israel I won't bore you with excessive details here; you can read it for yourself in the King James bible. The 14'th chapter of the book of Isaiah contains a hymn of thanksgiving, after Venus settled into stable orbit and ceased to be a threat: "How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer, Son of the morning [morning star] ... how art thou cut down to the ground, which did'st weaken the nations... which made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof... ................................................................ Part III. The view from Egypt One version of the Egyptian equivalent of the same tale is found in E.A. Wallis Budge's "Gods of the Egyptians" Vol I, pp 388 - 399, wherein Ra, the old and dying chief God (actually a small star in the last stages of dying out and being removed to an orbit little visible from earth], sends his eye to destroy mankind, which are beginning to blaspheme and no longer take him seriously enough: From Samuel Noah Kramer's "Mythologies of the Ancient World", Doubleday Anchor, pp 89-90, we read the following concerning the Egyptian conception of the so-called "Eye of Ra", which we read much of in Egyptian mythology: "Only the eye of Re is identified as a heavenly body in a few sentences in the pyramid texts. We used to understand them as though the eye of Re was identified as the sun, but a careful interpretation of them has unmistakably shown that the eye of Re was the morning star..." i.e. this is common knowledge amongst Egyptologists. Those who might doubt Kramer as a source can check pages 37 - 40 of the latest version of LaRousse's popular mythological encyclopedia (Pierre Grimal, I believe I'm remembering the name correctly, editor). You'll find the same identification of Sekhet, the Eye of Ra, and Venus. The following fragment of the Egyptian version of Phaeton myth may thus be seen as clearly implicating the planet Venus in the event. To the best of my knowledge, Velikovsky was unaware of at the time WinC was published. The most common translations of Egyptian texts from pyramid and tomb walls are those of E.A. Wallis Budge, and Dover offers inexpensive, high-quality paperback versions of these. Budge published his translations towards the end of the last century, and had no ax to grind pro or con Velikovsky. In Budge's "Gods of the Egyptians", Vol I, pp 388 - 399, we read the story of the destruction of mankind. As the story goes, the great god (Ra) had grown old and feeble and men began to blaspheme, saying: "behold, his majesty, life, strength, health, has grown old, his bones are like silver, his limbs like gold, his hair like lapis lazuli real" The attendant gods counseled sending the eye of Ra to punish mankind: "... let thine eye be upon those who blaspheme thee. ...Let go forth thine eye, let it destroy for thee those who blaspheme with wickedness, not an eye can proceed it in resistance, when it goeth down in the form of Hathor [Venus]... Went forth then goddess this, she slew mankind on the mountain... Said goddess this, when I had power over mankind, it was pleasing to my heart... It came to pass that Sekhet [again, Venus] of the offerings of the night waded about in their blood, beginning in Suten-henen... Note the term "she slew mankind on the mountain". Where else do we find this phrase? Isaiah 2/19: And they shall go into the holes of the rocks and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Isaiah 2/21: To go into the clefts of the rocks and into the tops of the jagged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Normal earthquakes don't give much warning; running up into clefts in high mountains thus isn't a normal reaction to them. Isaiah, however, is talking about a different kind of an earthquake, such as has not been seen in awhile. The thing is, that when the CAUSE of the earthquake is right there in the sky getting closer daily, you don't need to be but so much of a prophet/astrologer/astronomer to know that you'd BETTER get to high ground or do some kind of thing before long, or your ass is grass. The peculiar phrase from the pyramid wall is in the same vein, describing people seeking shelter in the hills, and mostly dying anyway. ................................................................ Now, all of this is what I view as a new and correct approach to very ancient history, but Sue Bishop claims that in believing in this, I AM IGNORING FACTS i.e. I am ignoring the fact that certains types of evidence such as that from ice cores, when interpreted as they presently are by a generation of scientists who ASSUME the uniformitarian hypothesis, shows a very long uniformitarian past for our earth. I've got news for you, Bishop, Hyde, and all the rest. I am PROUD of the fact that I am able to make valid judgements as to what to ignore in a situation such as this, and I shall CONTINUE to ignore your bullshit evidence involving ice-cores and varves. In fact, I've even got an admission to make. I don't know what a varve is and I don't even care. I may eventually look it up, but books which I am currently reading include one by Yann on the war between Chengis Khan and the Khwaresmian empire and a book by a man named Tolstoy, and the cover on that book says "VOYNA I MIR", and it's in two volumes and each is quite thick, and I'm only on volume one at present, and I assuredly will not get to varves until AFTER I finish these two books. Ted (Proud to Ignore the Facts) Holden HTE --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: news@fedfil.UUCP (Ted Holden) Message-ID: 2712@fedfil.uucp Newsgroups: talk.origins Sue Bishop, Bill (Piled Higher and Deeper) Hyde, and others claim I am ignoring facts (i.e. their bullshit ice-core and varve interpretations) in these posts. I claim they are not only ignoring a solid ton of historical evidence, but that establishment science routinely falsifies evidence which might otherwise tend to overthrow the entire doctrine of uniformity upon which almost all natural science is based. Evidence involving the planet Venus is especially in danger. Venus is a very complex system. The one thing which for sure is not going on on Venus is Sagan's bullshit Super-Greenhouse effect. Images which we've now all seen show Venus' entire surface to be a sea of lava, most of it recent. That says new planet, ala Velikovsky. The heat at the surface is native, due to the planet's recent formation; what greenhouse effect does exist due to the thick CO2 layers holds the heat and restrains it from escaping as rapidly as it otherwise might. By nobody's account does any more than 2% of solar energy get to Venus' surface, and since the middle cloud layers absorb the vast bulk of any solar energy, any theory (including SGH) trying to explain the heat of Venus as an affect of solar energy must predict the middle cloud layer to be hotter than the surface, which it is not. Super Greenhouse is thus seen to involve a gross violation of the second law of thermodynamics. NASA scientists and other astronomers aren't all liars, but the effect of their interpretations of Venus data aren't easily distinguishable from propaganda and lies. NOTHING coming from Venus matches up with their standard theories, i.e. the Astronomer's Dogma (thanks to McCanney): 1. The solar system formed from a swirling gas and dust cloud 4.5 B years ago, and the order of the planets has not changed since. 2. The Universe began in a big bang 10 B years ago, and has been expanding since then. 3. Newtonian gravitation is the sole force that governs the cosmos and electromagnetic forces have little or no effect on the motions of the planets. 4. Comets are dirty balls of ice which sublimate when near the sun. The implications of these tenets as regards Venus include the notion that Venus should be in thermal equilibrium after all those billions of years. It isn't. Emperical data confirms this, both in the low atmosphere and in the high. Both figures have been bent to conform to the astronomers dogma. If you fix everything to conform to your theory, then everything will match up and the whole support each litle part, as establishment likes to point out. My own best guess as to what is going on on Venus is more or less as follows. You've got a layer near the surface which is more or less translucent. Heat radiates from the surface through this layer to the middle cloud layer as the probes indicated and then the heat must seek other ways upwards, including the concentric waves mentioned by Ginenthal. Somewhere near the top, the heat again radiates off into space. Albedo is the main element on which the measurement of thermal flux near the top of Venus' atmosphere depends, and is acknowledged to be difficult to measure. As it was measured in the late 70's, Venus appeared to have a net 15% outwards thermal flux. Later corrections in all likelihood were inspired mostly be a perceived need to eliminate this undesireable finding. Even the official measurements given out today have Venus showing a net outward thermal flux within error bounds of no effect. A thermal outflux of 10 - 15% at the top would be ballpark for matching the upward IR flux measured by the probes mentioned in the text following, i.e. the empirical data more or less matches without the benefit of being doctored to suit the astronomer's dogma. ...................................................................... ...................................................................... The Nov. 13 1980 issue of New Scientist contained an article entitled "The mystery of Venus' internal heat", which read as follows: "Two years surveillance by the Pioneer Venus orbiter seems to show that Venus is radiating away more energy than it receives from the sun. If this surprising result is confirmed, it means that the planet itself is producing far more heat than the earth does. F.W. Taylor of the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford presented these measurements at a Royal Society meeting last week. Venus surface temperature is higher than any other in the solar system, at 480 C. The generally accepted theory is that sunlight is absorbed at Venus' surface, and re-radiated as infrared. The later is absorbed in the atmosphere, which thus acts as a blanket, keeping the planet hot. It is similar to the way a greenhouse keeps warm. Pioneer has shown that there is enough carbon dioxide and the tiny proportion of water vapor needed to make the greenhouse effect work -- just. If this is the whole story, the total amount of radiation emitted back into space, after its journey up through the atmospheric blanket must be exactly equal to that absorbed from sunlight (otherwise the surface temperature would be continuously changing). But Taylor found that Venus radiates 15 percent more energy than it receives. To keep the surface temperature constant, Venus must be producing this extra heat from within. All the inner planets, including earth, produce internal heat from radioactive elements within their rocks. But Taylor's observations of Venus would mean that the planet is producing almost 10,000 times more heat than the earth, and it is inconceivable according to present theories of planetary formation, that Venus should have thousands of times more of the radioactive elements than Earth does. At last weeks meeting, Taylor's suggestion met with skepticism - not to say sheer disbelief - from other planetary scientists. Taylor himself has no explanation for his result. He simply points out that the discrepancy seemed at first to be simply experimental error - but with more precise measurements, it refused to go away. More measurements are needed before astronomers accept the result, and most planetary scientists are obviously expecting - and hoping - that the embarrassing extra heat will disappear on further investigation. It would be naive to assume the astronomical community would sit around waiting for the extra heat to go away of its own volition. Later explanations (from the astronomical community) would have us believe that an error had been made in our estimate of the albedo of Venus, and that the subsequent corrections have put the notion of thermal equilibrium at least within the error- bounds of what is actually observed. Do you believe it? ............................................................. Consider then what happens as probes descend deep into the atmosphere of Venus towards the surface. I am looking at two articles from Icarus magazine dated 1982 and 1985, the first by H.E. Revercomb, L.A. Sromovsky, and V.E. Suomi of the Space Science and Engineering Center, Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, the second by the same three gentlemen along with R.W. Boese of NASA-Ames (Icarus 52, 279-300 and Icarus 61, 521-538). Both of these articles involve the infra-red flux sensors on the Venus probes which landed in Dec. 1978, so that even by the time the first article was written (82), these people had quite awhile to think about what the probes had told them. Three small probes carried net flux radiometers carried externally, and a larger probe carried an infrared radiometer internally, which viewed the atmosphere through a window. All of these instruments measured the infrared flux of the Venereal atmosphere. In the upper atmosphere, all of these instruments showed infrared fluxes which the scientists could at least think about living with; as they descended, however, all began to show very large net fluxes UPWARDS, which is what you might expect if (HORRORS) Velikovsky's view of Venus were the correct one: "Below the Venus cloud deck both LIR and SNFR flux measurements appear to affected by serious errors..." "...Although the LIR [large probe enclosed instrument] measurements might be correctable, using the multispectral information of the data to deduce the magnitude of the asymmetry, no reliable corrections have yet been obtained [by 1982 three years after the fact]... Thus we cannot at this time make use of the LIR results..." However, if the scientists lacked imagination in forcing the large probe data into a suitable uniformitarian, Saganesque mold, no such lack occurred with the data from the probes carried on the three small probes: "The magnitudes of the corrections for both instruments are determined by forcing agreement with a range of calculated net fluxes at one altitude deep in the atmosphere, where the net flux must be small because of the large density of CO2. "Must be small" based on the known facts of uniformitarianism and "Super-Greenhouse". The idea that four separate instruments of two different sorts, three carried externally and one internally all telling the same story MIGHT possibly just be correct does not even occur to the scientists. Religious belief overrides evidence; the round evidence must be pounded into the square hole. .............................................................. Several posters on t.o noted that such large flux differentials (as high as 600 w/m**2) would necessarily translate into equally large outflows at the top of the atmosphere which CAN'T be, because our industrious astronomers have already adjusted the figures for the top of the atmosphere right? That's what the little section regarding Taylor's talk was about. Besides, how would the planet throw off that much heat? .............................................................. From a journal article of Charles Ginenthal: A 1973 article in New Scientist noted the work of four scientists at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory demonstrating that Venus shows "regular changes in the spectrum of its atmosphere," with marked variations in the carbon dioxide lines on a four-day cycle: Ginenthal here cites the actual New Scientist article (vol 58, 1973, page 72): Over 20 years ago, Gerard Kuiper noted day-to-day fluctuations in the infrared spectrum of Venus, but no one has yet got to the bottom of these changes. In order to study the oscillations A.T., L.G., and J.W. Young and J.T. Gerstrahl obtained spectra nightly during the autumn of last year [1972]. Their data on the carbon dioxide line show an unmistakable oscillation. The observed variation is not periodic, but more akin to a relaxation oscillation in which the amplitude builds up on successive cycles and then suddenly collapses. In order to produce the observed changes the cloud deck of Venus must be moving up and down as much as one kilometer, simultaneously over the entire surface of the planet. Such a large atmosphere oscillation requires a high input of mechanical energy. This condition is difficult to account for in the case of a slowly rotating planet heated uniformly by the suns rays [greenhouse effect]. Therefore, the cycle variations point to some unexplained, deep-seated property of the atmospheric dynamics. Ginenthal offers his own explanation: What is very apparent is that the surface heat is building up so strongly that it cannot be convected away as rapidly as it builds up. The super-hot air therefore expands and rises, pushing the layers above it which also expand and rise. The process goes on until the upper air layers have risen sufficiently high to permit heat to dissipate more rapidly in the freezing altitudes of space, following which the entire atmosphere contracts to repeat the process. The amount of energy required to accomplish such a feat is far greater than could be produced by any "greenhouse" that lacks a cover! It is thus impossible to reconcile the observed condition with a thermally balanced atmosphere: an ancient planet would have achieved a thermal equilibrium long ago. Hence the fact that the Venusian atmosphere is not in equilibrium makes the "greenhouse" effect a charade and points to the same conclusion as the other considerations reviewed above. Again, several t.o posters have insisted that the vertical waves mentioned exist only in the upper atmosphere [an effect without a cause]. Ginenthal correctly notes that this cannot be: "One cannot assume that only a small part of the upper atmosphere is raised because there would have to exist a layer in the atmosphere that is hotter than the layers beneath it. The hottest layer of gas is found at the surface; therefore, the point of lift occurs from that point upward. The temperature of Venus falls steadily from the surface. i.e. the same old war between Sagan and the second law of thermodynamics. That law doesn't seem to LIKE Sagan does it? Another physical law which seems to mitigate against Sagan is the adage of nature abhorring a vacuum... .............................................................. The following is also from Ginenthal's "Sagan and Velikovsky" "A physicist, Leopold Strabismus (his humorous pseudonym meaning crosseyed) at the author's request undertook to calculate the amount of energy necessary to raise the Venus atmosphere 1 kilometer over the entire planet. What Strabismus found was that based on equations of state in thermodynamics, he could obtain the measured sea-level atmospheric pressure of earth as it coincides with results from the kinetic theory of gases. Dr. Strabismus has taken this demonstration one step further by showing the total gravitational weight of Earth's atmosphere divided by the Earth's surface area yields the same result." "Strabismus states, 'Specific weight versus altitude figures were obtained for Venus, via NASA. But when the equation was applied to these figures, it led to a computed surface pressure for Venus well in excess of the MEASURER surface pressure of 90 bars. The surface pressure should be greater based on this equation of state analysis; therefore, some force must be pushing upwards against the weight of the atmosphere. That is, even without raising the atmosphere one inch, a force is clearly lifting up the atmosphere. This is in total defiance of what is required for an atmosphere in thermal balance." "However when this pressure is driven through an atmospheric shell of one kilometer, thickness at the topopause of Venus, it yields an energy of 2.96 E+23 foot pounds, each time the cloud layer is raised. The energy is over 29 trillion, trillion foot pounds. The raising of the Venus atmosphere occurs about 80 times a year. Thus, the 29 trillion must be multiplied by 80, yielding 2.32 trillion quadrillion foot pounds of energy per year. The sun's radiation produces nothing like that amount of energy in the Venus atmosphere, but a hot volcanic surface can provide the necessary energy. [which is precisely what the Magellan probes are showing] "An atmosphere in thermal equilibrium does not behave as described above. Of this oscillation, Sagan breathes not a word. .............................................................. If Sagan is correct and our system is billions of years old, and Venus has been in its present place for billions of years, then ancient astronomical charts and observations MUST show Venus in its present orbit. Indeed, scientists claim that they DO; they used some of this evidence at the AAAS meeting in 1974 which produced "Scientists Confront Velikovsky", claiming that the well-known "Venus Tablets" of the Babylonian king Ammizaduga showed Venus entirely in its present orbit in the middle of the second millennium BC i.e. during the period when, according to Velikovsky, it would have perforce been unstable. But then, a number of real scholars began to take a harder look at the Venus Tablets. The following is from an article by Lynn E. Rose from the Winter 73 issue (#III) of the Pensee Journal, the old Student Academic Freedom Forum. This is a long article which I could not quote in its entirety. The article treated mostly with the manner in which the tablets involved have been translated in the past. The key paragraph of the article read as follows: "Unfortunately, nearly all treatments of groups one and three on K. 160, and of the genuinely observational material on the other Venus tablets that supplement K. 160, have been based on what I call the "astronomer's dogma". The "astronomer's dogma" is the uniformatarian attitude that the solar system has for untold years been just as it is now, and that Venus and Earth in particular have always been on the same orbits they are on now, except for certain very minor perturbations that are for most purposes entirely negligible. This means that we can look at the present motions of Earth and Venus and then judge on that basis how accurate the ancient observations were. If the ancient observations do not conform to what would be expected from the present state of affairs, then the ancient records were defective, and were either fictions or errors, but could not have been accurate observations of what was going on in the sky; accordingly, it is up to us to rewrite those ancient records so that they WILL conform to what we see in the sky today." Rose notes the nature of Venus as it appears to us first as evening star, disappears for a few days of inferior conjunction, reappears as morning star West of the sun for some months and then disappears during superior conjunction. He notes that one of the Babylonian tablet fragments (K. 160 from the library of Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum) appears to be a record of these comings and goings: "Let me give some typical passages from the tablet: "In the month of Sivan, on the twenty fifth day, Ninsianna [that is, Venus] disappeared in the east; she remained absent from the sky for two months, six days; in the month Ulul on the 24'th day, Ninsianna appeared in the West - the heart of the land is happy. In the month Nisan on the 27'th day, Ninsianna disappeared in the West; she remained absent from the sky for seven days; in the month Ayar on the third day, Ninsianna appeared in the east - hostilities occur in the land, the harvest of the land is successful. "The first invisibility mentioned in these lines involves a disappearance in the east, an invisibility of two months, six days, and a reappearance in the west. This seems to be a superior conjunction. The second invisibility involves a disappearance in the west, an invisibility of seven days, and a reappearance in the east. This seems to be an inferior conjunction. Most of the data in groups one and three on the tablet are of this form. But the lengths and spacings of these invisibilities have a certain irregularity about them, and they do not conform to the manner in which Venus moves at present. "The data given in the second group on the tablet do have regularity - even too much regularity to be believable, - but they do not conform to the present state of affairs either..... These kinds of things are well-known to scholars who have actually studied the tablets. Rose mentions numerous translators, Boseanquet & Sayce, Schiaperelli, Langdon and Fotheringham... He notes [as an example], that: "The next major study of the Venus tablets was by Langdon and Fotheringham in 1928. Their book is important for the student of the tablets in that they bring together a great deal of material that is not available in any one other place; unfortunately, however, their book is dominated and severely handicapped by the astronomer's dogma, and they find it necessary to scoff at much of what the tablets say was actually seen, simply because such things are not seen today." He cites also the case of Van der Waerden: "Further attempts to deal with the tablets along uniformitarian lines were made by Ungnad in 1940 and van der Waerden in 1946. Van der Waerden plays the uniformitarian game much better than some of his predecessors, but the main reason I want to mention him here is that he is the clearest example I have found of an unfortunate way of talking and thinking that is characteristic of uniformitarians. He says at one point, after either rejecting or radically rewriting about three out of four of the recorded observations, that: "All I have done is to remove inner contradictions from the text." ............................................. .............................................. Charles Ginenthal (Sagan and Velikovsky) has a great deal to say about the Ammizaduga tablets, pp 281 - 284, quoting Livio C. Stecchini's "The Velikovsky Affair": "The Venus tablets of Ammizaduga is the most striking document of early Babylonian astronomy. These tablets, of which we possess several copies of different origin, report the dates of the helical rising and setting of the planet Venus during a period of 21 years... "Since the first effort at explanation of Archibald Henry Sayce in 1874, these figures have challenged the wit of a score of experts of astronomy and cuneiform philology. (Father Franz Xavier) Kugler (1862 - 1929), a recognized major authority on Babylonian and biblical astronomy, chronology and mythology, opposed the contention of those who claim that these documents must be dismissed as nonsense." [because they do not conform to present orbital patterns for Venus] Indian and Central American records also show Venus moving on an orbit other than its present one. Ginenthal cites Evan Hadingham ("Early Man and the Cosmos): "The Venus pages [of the Dresden Codex] bear little resemblance to a modern astronomical table." Ginenthal goes on to say: "Since Hadingham, like the astronomers who dealt with the Babylonian tables cannot conceive nor accept this evidence that Venus' orbit was different in the past, an analysis is created to dispose of this information. This is so in spite of Hadingham's asserting the following regarding Mayan astronomy: 'The precision of the observations documented in the few surviving hieroglyphic books is astonishing. For instance, one book contains a scheme for the correction of Venus observations [present variety as opposed to the distant past] which ensures an accuracy of approximately two hours in five hundred years... How were they able to score such phenomenal success in their observations?'" Again, Ginenthal: "Astronomers, in attempting to deal with this evidence respecting Venus, either ignore the data or invent systems to explain it away so that it will conform to their uniformitarian view. By employing a sledge hammer, they smash the tablets of Ammizaduga to bits and then reassemble the fragments to prove that Venus' orbit has never changed. Although Velikovsky does not explain the precise cause for the circularization of Venus' orbit except to invoke electromagnetic forces, the plain evidence of the ancient astronomers shows that Venus' orbit was different, and therefore, more elliptical than its present, almost circular orbit and thus, there must exist a force that circularized it. This is a bona-fide example of circular reasoning. The tablets are changed in translation to conform with what everybody KNOWS to be reality i.e. uniformitarianism. Then these same mis-translated tablets are used by the typical yuppie "scientist" to refute Velikovsky. And the funny thing is that, at bottom, all of the evidence which Bishop, Hyde, Meritt, and these others keep accusing me of ignoring is of this same nature, i.e. falsified evidence, and the act of falsification, i.e. of causing all such evidence to conform to uniformity, has become as second nature to these "scientists" as using a stick shift. They no longer even realize they're doing it and get incensed when accused of doing it. Ted Holden HTE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Benjamin T Dehner Subject: Re: Falsifying Data Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA From: btd@iastate.edu (Benjamin T Dehner) Message-ID: btd.702539798@pv7413.vincent.iastate.edu Newsgroups: talk.origins I wish I could include Ted's original article, but it was too long to repost. Instead, I will post general comments about it. 1) Ted lies about the surface features of Venus. He claims that Venus is a smooth, lava-covered surface. The Magellan radar maps of Venus are available via anonymous FTP at ames.arc.nasa.gov (I forget where; ask/look for FAQ on sci.astro or sci.space.news for more info) which CLEARLY show mountainous and rugged terrain. 2) Ted shows total ignorance of radiative transfer and atmospheric modeling. He mistakes measurements of the infra-red (IR) energy flux in the middle atmosphere with IR flux at the top of the atmosphere, does not take into account any convective processes which may be going on, nor does he take into account the true complexities of radiative transfer. Only a complete atmospheric model of Venus (with loads of data) can show us what is going on. However, Ted would never accept such a model, as it would be based on current 'uniformitarian' physisc. Furthermore, Ted gives us no clue as to how HIS physics work so that we can try a model based on that. 3) Ted shows total ignorance of observational/experimental physics. He wants to read a number on a dial and plug it in. Uunfortunately, this ain't so. First of all, there is ALWAYS an error associated with any measurement. Furthermore, all insturments must be calibrated to some extent. This usually requires input data from a calculated model. (See above.) While admittedly, this can lead to some biases, there are some self-checking parts involved in this; usually a good order-of-magnitude estimate is known well beforehand. 4) like a good creationist, Ted jumps all over any statement that sounds vaguely like "we don't know". Modern science doesn't have all the answers, so therefore we should drop everything for the first crackpot that comes along. 5) Ted calls almost all astronomers liars and dogmatics. Several responses suggest themselves, varying from insulting to obscene. While I don't mind so much insults directed at me, as I have little concern for the opinions of Ted, he is now attacking the integrity of a professional community of which I am a part. Keep it up Ted; one of these days you will have a chance to prove your paranoid rambling in a court for a slander suit. Benjamin T. Dehner Department of Physics and Astronomy btd@iastate.edu Iowa State University . Ames, IA 50011 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Worlds in Collision begins with an application of logic to the >historical record, beginning with the book of Joshua in the OT: [Pages of mythological drivel deleted] But Ted, in another post, discussing Arctic weather conditions you stated that written history went back only as far as the Roman Empire. Now you are presenting all sorts of stories from long before the foundation of the Roman Empire, which you seem to regard as solid unimpeachable fact. As usual you want it both ways when it suits your ridiculous point of view. -- Bruce Munro. || ...!mcsun!ukc!stc!bruce

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