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.
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