So who was he? Immanuel Velikovsky: Too Many Ideas.... •Born 1895 •M. D. 1921 Peter Watson • Tel Aviv in 30‘s •Worlds in Collision (Doubleday 1950) •Earth In Upheaval (Doubleday 1955) •Ages in Chaos

So who was he? Basic Thesis

•AAAS (American • Basic 'experimental' input is vast array of Association for the myths from many cultures. These represent the incomprehensible as seen by primitive man, Advancement of Science) and hence can be interpreted as historically debate with Sagan, accurate data. Goldsmith, Mulholland (1974) • Note there is a lot of evidence that even trained observers are incapable of seeing novel •Honorary degree phenomena for what they really are. (Lethbridge, 1978) • Many myths tell the same story: e.g., many •Died 1985 peoples tell of magical food falling from the sky. • Manna that sustained the Israelites, 1.Nile turned to blood •Velikovsky • Morning dew in the Icelandic Eddas, extracted the 2.Plague of frogs common 3.Plague of Lice • Honey from the clouds in the Rig-Veda of the Hindus, features, and 4.Plague of flies

welded them 5.Death of Cattle • Honey from the clouds in the Finnish Kalevala, into a history of primeval 6.Plague of Boils Hera, symbolizing the Earth, was shrouded in • 7.Plague of hail ambrosia, disasters. e.g. Exodus: 8.Plague of locusts • Maori legends have two magical dews, the heavy 10 plagues of for eating and the light for drinking. 9.Plague of darkness Egypt All these seem to be associated in the legends 10.Death of first-born with times of great upheaval and darkness

Followed by Velikovsky’s Model

• Parting of Red Sea • 3000 BC: lies between Earth and Sun, • Provision of Manna in the desert • ejected from • Pillar of cloud by day, as (birth of Athene from Head of • a column of fire by night Jupiter),

• leaves behind great Red Spot on Jupiter 1450-1400 BC • Venus passes close to 747-687 BC earth • Mars and Venus in • nearly collides with Mars, elliptical orbits, ejecting it from old orbit (Exodus) • Mars almost collides with Earth

• Stops rotation of Earth temporarily

• (Battle of Jericho)

Analysis: the Biblical story of 687 BC Exodus. • Final near collision: • First entry into comet’s tail: ferric dust precipitated, poisons rivers, • Mars settles into current orbit • Babylonian myths have the blood of the monster Tiamat poured upon the earth

• (Nile turned to blood)

• Warmth of the comet's tail ! Plagues of frogs, Lice, flies • Interaction with Venus caused earth's axis to be stopped and • Earthquakes triggered by Venus first drain Red Sea and permanently shifted: then trigger tsunamis, which drown Egyptians • Iran saw a 3-fold day and 3-fold night, • Parting of Red Sea • Chinese legends speak of a holocaust during which the sun does not set for several days and the land was aflame

• Plague of darkness • Meteorites from cometary core: • Hydrocarbons from tail are turned into • Annals of Cuahtitlan “sky rained, not water, but fire and red- carbohydrates by bacterial action, allows survival of the hot stones” Israelites in the desert (Manna) • Death of first-born • Earthquakes and volcanoes triggered by Venus ! volcanic explosions and earthquakes

Pillar of cloud by day, a • Atlantis legend: a land of great natural wealth and column of fire by night advanced civilization that sank beneath the waves in a single day and night of misfortune. • Eruption of Mt. Thera on Santorini destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete: (Knossos is 120 km • Plato gave Atlantis dimensions of 200 kilometres away). by 400; pre-eruption Santorini was about 20 x 40.

First explosion on scale of Mt. St. Helen, deposited • Huge cloud of dust from Santorini had worldwide ash over the eastern Mediterranean • effects, extending as far as China, Image courtesy • followedNASA/GSFC/ perhaps 20 years later by a “paroxysmal eruption” which produced catastrophic tsunamis. METI/ERSDAC/ • beginning of the Shang dynasty also dates from ~1620 B.C. JAROS and U.S./ Japan ASTER Science Team • Astronomers at Harvard suppressed the publication of • But Velikovsky Worlds in Collision, by forcing Macmillan's to reject the predicts much book, with the threat that no more academic textbooks more: would be sent to them for publication. • “Frankly,..... the publication must cut me off from the Macmillan Company” • Hard to escape • Howard Shapley, Director Harvard Observatory (Jan the conclusion 1950) that, if we are to judge a scientific • Rights transferred to Doubleday theory by its “Several attempts have been made to link such a move to results, • stop the book’s publication to ..the Harvard Observatory. conventional This idea is utterly false.” astronomy is marginally • Howard Shapley (Sept 1950) worse. • “This was not only immoral, but a blunder.” Isaac Asimov.

Then why are Velikovsky's ideas unacceptable? • The short answer is that his solar system doesn't conserve energy, or momentum or .

• E.g stopping the Earth’s rotation would cause temp everywhere to rise by 50°C (don’t think you’d be fighting the Battle of Jericho, but the walls would definitely tumble down!)

• But he was the first person to link Mt Thera to Exodus!