WORLDS in COLLISION, in 1950, Shook the Scientific World and the Furor Bas Not Yet Abated
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WORLDS .IN COLLISION, the most discussed book of our time, propounds the startling theory that more than once within historical times the order in our planetary system was. disturbed .and caused enormous· cataclysms; the earth became a primeval chaos lashed by tornadoes of cinders; the skies darkened; 1and masses were destroyed and large portions of the bu• man race perished. The publication of WORLDS IN COLLISION, in 1950, shook the scientific world and the furor bas not yet abated. Many of Dr. Velikovsky's assumptions that were regarded as contradicting established views in science have been verified and confirmed by new dis coveries. IMMANUEL VELncovsK1 studied natural sciences at the University o( Edinburgh, history, law and medi• cine (M.D.) in Moscow, biology in Berlin, the work ing of the brain in Zurich, and psychoanalysis in Vienna. Since 1939 he has lived in the United States. , .. ~ .. '... ... ' . -_. □ llil~&rnmrn~ wrn~oraoow~~ll -_-_ ALAUREL EDITION To Ellsheva Published by Dell Publfshing Co., Inc. 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, N.Y. 10017 Copyright© 1950 by Immanuel Velikovsky All rights reserved. For information, contact Doubleday & Company, Inc, Laurel ® TM 674623, Dell Publishing Co., Inc. Reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc. New York First Laurel Edition-May, .1967 Fifth printing-August, 1969 Tenth printing-August, 1972 Eleventh printing-January, 1973 Twelfth printing-July, 1973 Thirteenth printing-November, 1973 Printed in U.S.A. The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from the following books: G. A. Dorsey, THE PAWNEE: Mythol ogy, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1906; MAIMONI DES: THE GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED, translated M, Friedlander, B. P. Dutton, Inc., 1928; Clements R. Markham, THE INCAS OF PERU, E. P. Dutton, Inc. 1910; SHAKUN TALA AND OTHER WRITINGS OF-KALIDASA, trans lated A. W. Ryder, Everyman's Library, E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1912; James Moffatt, THE BIBLE: A NEW TRANSLA TION, copyright, 1935, Harper & Brothers: The Loeb Classi cal Library, Harvard University Press; Homer, THE ILIAD, translated A. T. Murray, 1925; Hesiod, THEOGONY, trans lated H. Evelyn-White, 1914; Euripides, ELECTRA, translated A. S. Way, 1919; Plato, TIMAEUS, transl R. C. Bury, 1920, • and THE STATESMAN (POLITICUS), transl. H. N. Fowler, 1925; Apollodorus, THE LIBRARY, \rans!. J. B. Frazer, 1921; Seneca, THYESTES, transl. F. J. Miller, 1917; Virgil, GEORGICS, transl. H. R. Fairclough, 1920; Ovid, METAMORPHOSES, transl. F. L. Miller, 1916; Philo, THE ETERNITY OF THE WORLD, transl. F. H. Colson. 1941; Plutarch, LIFE OF NUMA, transl. B. Perrin, 1914; Lows Ginsberg, THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS, copyright, 1910, 1928, The Jewish Publication Society of America; L. de Cambrey, LAPLAND LEGENDS, Yale University Press, 1926; THE PHILISOPHY OF SPINOZA, ed. J. Ratner, copyright, 1927, Modern Library, Random House, Inc.; R. A. Daly, OUR MOBILE EARTH, copyright, 1926, Charles Scribner's Sons; Evelyn Stefansson, HERE IS ALASKA, copyright, 1943, Charles Scribner's Sons; J. F. Fleming, TER RESTRIAL MAGNETISM AND ELECTRICITY, McGraw• Hill Book Company, New York. 1939. PREFACE to the paperback edition of Worlds in Collision First published in ·1950, this book was left unchanged in all subsequent printings1 ; nor have any textual changes been made in this paperbound edition. This was so by design: I wished to keep the text in its original form in order that, unaltered, it should face .all subsequent discoveries in the fields it covers or touches upon. Should there have been changes, the reader of a new edition would be unable to judge to what extent a book, heretical in 1950, could mea sure up to later deyelopments. In 1950 it was generally assumed that the fundamentals of science were all known and that only details and deci mals were left to fill in. In the same year, a cosmologist, certainly not of a conservative bent of mind, Fred Hoyle, wrote in the conclusion of his book, The Nature of the Universe: "Is it likely that any astonishing new develop ments are lying in wait for us? Is it possible that the cosmology of 500 years hence will extend as far beyond our present beliefs as our cosmology goes beyond that of Newton?" And he continued: "I doubt whether this will be so. I am prepared to believe that there will be many advances in the detailld understanding of matters that still baffle us. But by and large I think that our present picture will turn out to bear an approximate resemblance to the cosmologies of the future," and he referred to the limitations of optical means in penetrating the depth of space. The years that have passed since the publication of Worlds in ColUsion have seen the first great achievements in radio astronomy, the discoveries of the International Geophysical Year, and the dawn of the space age. The picture has changed completely. Signs of recent violence, 1 By the summer of 1964 15 hard-cover printings in the United States, and 14 in Great Britain. J s [ disruption, and fragmentation have been observed on earth and elsewhere in the solar system: a submarine gigantic canyon that runs almost twice around the globe-a sign of a global twist; a layer of ash of extraterrestrial origin underlying all oceans; paleomagnetic evidence that the magnetic poles were suddenly and repeatedly rev~rsed and, it is claimed, the terrestrial axis with them; gases escaping from some craters on the moon, thought to be cold to its center; an exceedingly high surface heat of Venus. Further more, with the discovery of radio signals arriving from Jupiter, of the existence of a magnetosphere surrounding the earth, of the solar plasma, of the net charge on the sun, and of the magnetic field permeating the interplanetary space, decisive evidence has come up that the solar system, and the universe in general, are not electromagnetically sterile-a basic change in the understanding of the uni verse, its nature, and the forces active in it. The words found in the Preface to the 1950 edition, designating the work as heresy in realms where the names of Newton and Darwin reign supreme, should no longer· evoke the same spontaneous rejection on the part of even the most conservative in science, unless it is a defense mechanism devised to protect an inner realization of in certitude. "What, to the scientist, constitutes a realJy satisfactory sort of success for a theory? The answer lies largely in the words generality, elegance, control, and prediction." 2 As to generality, hardly anyone raised an objection. Possibly there was some elegance in the timing: when these words were written in 1960, ten years after the publication of my book and the great opposition it provoked, some of the most compelling data were radioed by the space vehicle, Pioneer V. I would like to relate here a few details about the control and prediction of two crucial tests, decisive for this book. Early in my work I came to the understanding that Venus is a newcomer to the planetary family, that it had a stormy if only short history, and that it must still be very hot and "giving Q.ff heat"; further, that it must be surrounded by ~ a very extensive envelope of hydrocarbon (petroleum) gases and dusL Such claims were in total disagreement 2 Warren Weaver, ''The Imperfections of Science," Proc. of the A.mer. Philos. Soc., Oct. 17, 1960. ] 6 [ with what was known in 1946 when I completed the manu script of the work or in 1950 when it was published. To stress the crucial nature of these claims, they were put under the headings "The Gases of Venus" and "The Ther mal Balance of Venus" immediately preceding the section, "The Enp." Should I be right in these claims, the entire chain of deductions-of which the identification of the extraterrestrial agent of the , paroxysms described is but the final ring-is strengthened. And since these .crucial claims were in flagrant discord with accepted values, in case of confirmation they ought · not to be denoted as lucky guesses. As late as 1959, Venus' ground temperature was calcu lated to be only 17°C, three degrees above the mean annual temperature of the Earth. But by 1961, from the nature of the radio signals emitted by VenuS', it-was found that Venus' ground temperature is about 315°C, or 600°F. Dr. F. D. Drake of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, responsible for this reading, wrote: "We would have ex pected a temperature only slightly greater than that of the earth," and th~ find was "a surprise . • . in a field !n which the fewest surprises were expected." There was admittedly no satisfactory explanation of such high temperature of Venus in the frame of the accepted notions. Greenhouse effect could not explain so high a temperature, nor could radioactivity decaying for billions of years. The Mariner II, the space vehicle that passed Venus in December, 1962, was instrumented to detect whether the heat is real and as high as 600°. It found it real and a full 800°. It found, also, that the night side of Venus is, if anything, hotter than the day side and that light does not penetrate the cloud cover. It must be gloomy and bleak under this cover, it is stated in the Mariner report by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; very little greenhouse effect could realize itself under such conditions. The other crucial test .concerned the gaseous envelope of the planet. In 1946, four years before the publication of this book, I directed a request and inquiry to Professor R. Wildt of Yale and the late Professor W. S. Adams of Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories, foremost au thorities on the subject of planetary atmosphere, indicating that the presence of hydrocarbon gases and dust in the cloud envelope of Venus would constitute a crucial test for ] 7 [ the cosmological concepts evolved from the study of his- · torical sources.