When I
was a kid, I was fascinated by what we called “Outer Space.” There were these
straight lines on Mars that many believed to be canals that had been built by
Martians to conserve and distribute the meager liquid water that was assumed to
exist on Mars. I believed that some of us Earthlings would be traveling to Mars
in the 20th Century. However, the various space probes going to Mars
have discovered what is basically a lifeless planet. Not even primitive one-celled
critters or bacteria have been found. Also, no liquid water can exist in the
extremely thin atmosphere of Mars. The tiny amounts of water that exist is ice
at the polar ice caps, which immediately turns into small amounts of water
vapor when the ice melts. There is hope that water might be found in underground
rock foundations. Hope.
Venus was often assumed to be something like a primitive Earth. At only 67 million miles from the Sun, it would have been much hotter than Planet Earth. However, it was assumed that the cloud cover over the entire planet would help shield Venus from the intense solar heat and radiation. Many believed therefore that temperatures on the surface were moderate, and that life on Venus would perhaps be like life as it was assumed to be on Earth 100 million years ago, perhaps with dinosaurs!
Recent space probes have found that Venus has a surface temperature of about 900 degrees F, or about 475 degrees C. The thick toxic atmosphere actually traps the heat with a runaway greenhouse effect. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is about 90 times as great as on Planet Earth, enough to crush us immediately if we were not baked first by temperatures hot enough to melt lead. This was just as predicted by Immanuel Velikovsky.
These changes in perception of the planets were new to me. However, Velikovsky was a great man of science writing over 70 years ago who would not have been surprised. He died in 1979 at age 84. Fortunately, he lived long enough to see many of his theories of the solar system being verified by modern science with the various space probes. However, when Immanuel Velikovsky published his landmark book Worlds in Collision in 1950, he was widely condemned and ridiculed by what might be called the Scientific Mafia. He was mostly right about conditions on both Mars and Venus, although he did hope that some sort of primitive life might be found on Mars.
When I was in school so many years ago, the prevailing thought was that the planets had all been in pretty much their current orbits for millions of years. Also, most of the various geological formations on Earth came about gradually, also over a period of millions of years. My uncle Paul Driscoll (the most learned man I have ever met) believed in something called catastrophism, whereby most geological formations on Earth came about from a series of cataclysms. Years later, I discovered that Immanuel Velikovsky believed the same thing.
When I started reading Worlds in Collision a couple decades ago, it did sound a bit fanciful. Velikovsky claimed Venus had a highly elliptical orbit that crossed through the orbits of Earth and Mars. He claimed that the Planet Venus was at one time a gigantic comet, and that in about 1500 BCE, Venus made its two closest approaches to Earth.
Also, during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, the comet Venus approached Mars, tearing it out its orbit, with Mars in turn also menacing our planet. After all of these terrifying encounters, Venus finally lost its extremely eccentric orbit and lost its comet characteristics and settled down into its present planetary behavior. The effects of these encounters were truly catastrophic. Oceans were displaced, organic populations destroyed, continents drowned, civilizations overwhelmed, the lengths of lunar months and solar years were changed, and mountains built and demolished. All of this happened in mankind’s historic memory less than 4000 years ago.
If you have stopped reading this article at this point, I fully understand. I was tempted to stop reading Velikovsky. However, as I read through his book, I was astounded at his research. He did this long before the Internet came along. He assembled a vast amount of information from many different sources from around the world. Velikovsky was a scholar in many variant disciplines: Geology, astronomy, history, biology, ancient religions, the Bible, as well as linguistics. He learned several languages as a child. As an adult, he was fluent in Russian, Hebrew, French, and English, and was knowledgeable in other languages such as Latin. He was born in Russia in 1895, studied medicine in France, and graduated in medicine in Moscow in 1921, which wasn’t easy to do for a Jew to do during those antisemitic times. He lived in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in 1924—1939 where he practiced psychoanalysis. In 1939, he moved to New York City.
After reading his Worlds in Collision, I am convinced that the two greatest geniuses of the 20th Century were Albert Einstein and Immanuel Velikovsky, both of whom were Jewish. He had been working on his theories, which he presented for about ten years. Then he published Worlds in Collision in 1950. He presented his evidence, which had been accumulated from testimonies, traditions, legends, and religions the world over. He also had science to back up his theories. His book is highly documented, footnoted, and indexed.
Velikovsky was not a religious Jew. However, he believed in the historicity of the Bible. But instead of assigning supernatural explanations for various miracles, he believed that there were natural explanations for various events of the Bible, such as the plagues of Egypt, attributing them to extraterrestrial agents, in this case, Venus. Nevertheless, I see the hand of God in this, even if there were natural events that caused the plagues. The timing of the plagues was amazing, as they occurred at just the right time! The end result was the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
This is where the story gets really nasty. An American astronomer, Harlow Shapley, led an attempt to stop the publishing of Velikovsky’s book, even before the book appeared on bookshelves. He also enlisted a famous geologist and an archeologist in this effort. None of them had read the book or examined the evidence. When it finally appeared, denunciatory reviews were arranged by professors who also boasted of not having read the book. The reviews often included false accusations against Velikovsky, accusing him of saying or writing things he never said or wrote. They finally succeeded in getting the publisher, Macmillan, to cease publication. Eventually Doubleday and then Dell picked up publication, where it remained a best seller. The book is still available in bookstores, as well as on the Internet from various sources.
Nicholas Copernicus (1473—1543)
experienced similar persecution from the scientific and intellectual mafias of
his day. Copernicus dared to say that the Earth revolved around the Sun!
Horrors! Today Copernicus is held in high esteem around the world. However, in
his day, he suffered much persecution, as did
Galileo in later years.
Folklore from around the world alleges rains of burning pitch, or naphtha, including the stuff that fell on Sodom and Gomorrah almost 4000 years ago. Velikovsky asserts that this material came from the planet Venus on one of its near encounters to Earth. Velikovsky also asserts that hydrocarbons (petroleum gas) in the Venus atmosphere were transported by gravity to Earth in another near encounter. Hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride are also in the atmosphere of Venus. The most common gas is carbon dioxide. We generally call petroleum a fossil fuel. Curiously, we never find fossils in petroleum. Perhaps the old man got this one right as well.
Discoveries in the years since 1950 have caused major revisions in books about astronomy to correct the misinformation of earlier texts. On the other hand, no major claims made in Worlds in Collision have had to be retracted. Many claims of Velikovsky thought to be false by the scientists in 1950 have since been found to be true. For instance, he predicted that rocks rich in oxygen would be found on the moon, and recent unmanned moon expeditions have found this to be true.
In his book, Velikovsky documents ancient calendars over 3500 years old. Most had 12 months of 30 days each. The ancients were not stupid. This was exactly how it was, with 360 days in a solar year, and 30 days in a lunar month. And this is how it was in the original Biblical calendar. When reading Genesis 7:11 and 8:3-4, we discover that there were exactly 150 days between the 17th day of the second month and the 17th day of the seventh month. That means that each lunar month had 30 days. Each month began with the New Moon, just as it does today with the Jewish calendar. However, today the Jewish months alternate between 29 days and 30 days, because a lunar month now is 29.5 days, slightly shorter than it was in Genesis.
The ancients were also extremely fearful of Mars. Why? It was because of near encounters with the Red Planet thousands of years ago. Jonathan Swift, in his book Gulliver’s Travels in 1726, wrote about the two moons of Mars, and even gives the times for each moon to revolve around Mars. Modern astronomers didn’t even know these moons existed until they were discovered by astronomer Asaph Hall with his powerful telescope in 1877. Velikovsky (page 283) believes that Jonathan Swift apparently had information recorded by the ancients over 2,000 years ago, and Swift recorded this information in his book. The near encounters with Venus and Mars eventually altered the orbits of Earth and its moon to where they remain today. And of course, the orbits of Venus and Mars eventually settled in to where they are today.