KANSAS CITY, MO PUBLIC LIBRARY MAR 1989 JALS DATE DUE Earth in upheaval. 1 955 . Books by Immarvjel Velikoviky Earth in Upheaval Worlds in Collision Published by POCKET BOOKS Most Pot Ian Books arc available at special quantify discounts for hulk purchases for sales promotions premiums or fund raising SpeciaJ books* or txx)k e\( erj)ts can also tx.' created to ht specific needs FordetaJs write the office of the Vice President of Special Markets, Pocket Books, 12;K) Avenue of the Arm-mas New York New York 10020 EARTH IN UPHEAVAL Smnianue! Velikovsky F'OCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, IMC 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N Y 10020 Copyright 1955 by Immanuel Vehkovskv Published by arrangement with Doubledav tx Compauv, 1m Library of Congiess Catalog Card Number 55-11339 All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever For information address 6r Inc. Doubledav Company, , 245 Park Avenue, New York, N Y' 10017 ISBN 0-fi71-524f>5-tt Fust Pocket Books punting September 1977 10 9 H 7 6 POCKET and colophon ae registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, luc Printed in the USA ACKNOWLEDGMENTS WORKING ON Earth in Upheaval and on the essay (Address before the Graduate College Forum of Princeton University) added at the end of this volume, I have incurred a debt of gratitude to several scientists. Professor Walter S. Adams, for many years director of Mount Wilson Observatory, gave me all the in- formation and instruction for which I asked concern- ing the atmospheres of the planets, a field in which he is the outstanding authority. On my visit to the solar observatory in Pasadena, California, and in our cor- respondence he has shown a fine spirit of scientific co- operation. The late Dr. Albert Einstein, during the last eighteen months of his life (November 1953-April 1955), gave me much of his time and thought. He read several of my manuscripts and supplied them with marginal notes. Of Earth in Upheaval he read chapters VIII through XII; he made handwritten comments on this and other manuscripts and spent not a few long afternoons and evenings, often till midnight, discussing and debating with me the implications of my theories. In the last vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS weeks of his life he reread Worlds in Collision and read also three files of "memoirs" on that book and its reception, and expressed his thoughts in writing. We started at opposite points; the area of disagreement, as reflected in our correspondence, grew ever smaller, and though at his death (our last meeting was nine days before his passing) there remained clearly defined points of disagreement, his stand then demonstrated the evolution of his opinion in the space of eighteen months. Professor Waldo S. Clock, Chairman of the Depart- ment of Geology at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, a recognized authority in dendrochronology (dating of tree rings), with the help of his graduate students searched the literature pertaining to the tree rings of early ages, and also gave me answers to ques- tions in his field. Dr. H. Manley of the Imperial College, London, Professor P. L. Mercanton of the University of Lau- sanne, and Professor E. Thellier of the Observatoire Geophysique of the University of Paris, gave me freely of their knowledge in the field of geomagnetism and sent me reprints of their works. Professor Lloyd Motz of the Department of As- tronomy at Columbia University, New York, never tired of testing mathematically and of commenting on various problems in electromagnetism and in celestial mechanics which I offered for discussion. Dr. T. E. Nikulins, geologist in Caracas, Venezuela, repeatedly drew my attention to various publications in the scientific press that might be of help to me; he supplied me with the source dealing with the discovery of the stone and bronze ages in northeastern Siberia. Professor George McCready Price, geologist in Cali- fornia, read an early draft of various chapters of this work. Between this octogenarian, author of several books on geology written from the fundamentalist point of view, and myself, there are some points of agreement and as many of disagreement. The main one among the latter is that while Price is opposed to the very theory of evolution and is supported in his disbelief by the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii fact that since the scientific age no new animal species have been observed to emerge, I offer in the concluding chapters of this book ("Extinction" and "Cataclysmic Evolution") a radical solution of the problem. With Professor Richardson of the Illinois Institute of Technology I spent several days discussing a few problems in physics and geophysics. With no one do I share the responsibility for my work; to everyone who gave me a helpful hand while the atmosphere in academic circles was generally charged with animosity, I express here my gratitude. To my daughters, SHULAMITH and RUTH FOREWORD OVER TWENTY years have passed since this work first saw the ink of print and the light of a bookstore dis- play. In these intervening years the clock of unraveling science ticked ever muie swiftly, and man's penetra- tion into the mysteries oi space had the aura ot revela- tion. The face of the earth, the face of the solar system, the sight oi our galaxy and of the universe beyond, all changed from serene and placid to embattled and con- vulsed. The earth is no abode for peaceful evolution for eons uncounted, or counted in billions of years, with mountain building all finished by the Tertiary, with no greater event in millions of years than the fall of a large meteorite, with a prescribed orbit, unchang- ing calendar, unchanging latitudes, sediment accumu- lating slowly with the precision of an apothecary scale, with a few riddles unsolved but assured of solution in the very same frame ot a solar system, with planets on their permanent orbits with satellites moving with a better-than-clock precision, with tides coming in time, and seasons in their order, a perfect stage for xii FOREWORD the competition of species; the spider and worm and fish and bird and mammal all evolved solely by means of competition among individuals and between species, from the common ancestor, a unicellular living crea- ture. Man was scheduled for a rude awakening from such a blissful and paradisiacal dream. Whereas not long ago he reproached himself for being a warlike disturber in a peaceful nature, he found himself only imitating aggressive and explosive nature; whereas he relegated the vision of such convulsions into the realm of tran- scendent and esoteric beliefs of Satan and Lucifer and the end of the world he was awakening to find real indices of the awesome past of his mother earth, ash of extraneous origin covering the ground under her water expanse, a ridge split by a deep canyon en- compassing the oceans, bearing evidence of an enor- mous torque in the embrace of which the earth shud- dered, her poles repeatedly reversed, and also wander- ing; her little sister in this bi-planet system the moon no more a lovable luminary to lighten our nights, but a sight of an inferno, a ravished world, with no Life left, millions of acres of destruction, battered and molten and bubbled, a picture not new, but not real- ized in its meaning to earth. Our glorious day luminary sends tongues of plasma to lick its planets that splay and harden their magnetic shields to protect themselves from such lovemaking. Radio signals are sent by planets to tell of the anguishes of their inorganic souls, and raido signals come from colliding galaxies, and the placid universe is but an expanse crossed by radiation some of which is lethal, by fragments of disintegrated bodies, by signals of danger sounded from all direc- tions, the only peace coming from the conviction that no great unpleasantness could be in store for us, for the jewel of creation, certainly not by the will of a lov- ing Deity, not by the decree of omniscient science. Fair is the outlook considering that this system just emerged from the battles that our ancestors under- stood as Theomachy the battle of the gods and en- FOREWORD xiii tered a settled state possibly for a very long period in terms of human lives; fair also is the outlook consider- ing that for almost every peril a panacea was provided by a protective supreme intelligence? thus the de- structive ultraviolet rays and other such radiations are held back by the ionosphere, and the cosmic rays are kept under control by a magnetic shield, and the shield is created by the rotation of the earth and the earth is kept rotating, and though it is not in the center of the universe as man thought only twelve generations ago, it is in the optimal place at a distance from the sun that assures it of the right measure of heat, so that its water supply in its bulk should stay neither evaporated nor trozen, and the very supplies of water and atmosphere are right for life. In such optimal con- ditions the living forms that evolved in the paroxysms of nature enjoy another age of growth and plenty and man, the conqueror of nature which evolved him, reaches for space that always limited him to his native rock and, a victim of amnesia as far as his own recent past is concerned, plays some dangerous games with the atom that he succeeded in cracking open, himself morally not iar distant from his ancestor who hit a spark from a flint and made fire.