mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Home The Velikovsky/Ackerman Scenario - Catastrophism The following scenario is the net product of my work. It sums up the entire sequence of events interpreted from ancient myth in the language of modern science. I maintain that planetary science was led astray by an ambitious young astronomer (Carl Sagan) who, at the bidding of Harlow Shapely, viciously attacked Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, which was on the correct track. The currently accepted interpretations of the data, which comprise the content of every book on the solar system are hypothetical, not fact. They are all based on the misconception that, because the solar system has been stable for the last 2,000 years, it has been that way for 4.5 billion years. My scenario of recent planetary chaos is such an amazing story that it is difficult for most people to accept, but I am completely convinced it is true. It is particularly difficult for the followers of Carl Sagan to accept, because they are trained to believe that there is only one answer to a problem, and that they have that answer. Those with a more rounded background, particularly those with a knowledge of the classics and mythology, who have a broader base of knowledge, have a tendency to be more accepting of the mysterious aspect of ancient writings, that is not fully understood by modern man. The Upper Dryas - The Capture of the Moon? Some 11,640 years BP (before the present) two catastrophic events occurred which, I believe, profoundly modified the Earth system. Based on evidence turned up by Velikovsky, this pair of events caused two overturnings of the lithosphere. These signaled the beginning of a major metamorphosis of the Earth. We suggest that the two events, separated by 1300 years, that delineated the Younger Dryas period, the Preboreal to Younger (or Upper) Dryas (PB/YD) transition, and the YD/Holocene transition were the final encounters that marked the capture of the Moon into its current orbit around the Earth. These two final passes of the Moon exerted sufficient torque on the outer, rigid portion of the Earth, the lithosphere, to `overturn' it. These overturnings resulted from tidal forces on the equatorial bulge and on the Tibetan-Himalayan complex which was first uplifted at that time. Each of these close passes resulted in the rotation of the spin axis of the lithosphere, on which we live, by approximately 180 degrees. This meant that, after the first encounter, the Sun rose in the west and set in the east. The second close pass resulted in a similar event, thus returning the lithosphere to its original orientation. It is possible that during the millennium called the Younger Dryas, the Moon had a number of less traumatic encounters, which, although they did not overturn the Earth, did each expend a significant amount of the lunar orbital energy. The net effect of this sequence of encounters was the capture of the Moon in its current orbit about the Earth. Although specialists in astrodynamics have never considered this mechanism, we claim that the 'slipping' of the lithosphere relative to the solid core of the Earth provided the 'energy sink' which made the capture possible. The slippage, which also comes into play later in our scenario, is possible because the solid core is separated from the lithosphere by several thousand kilometers of liquid iron in the outer core. These events were extremely destructive, resulting in the extinction of hundreds of animal species, many in North America. But, as a result of this capture, the climate of the Earth was stabilized in a way that now prevents the radical variations of temperature that characterized the climate before that time, i.e. the ice ages and interstitials. The Greenland ice cores show unequivocally the profound climate change that occurred at that date. These ancient encounters initiated the up-thrusting of the Himalayan-Tibetan complex, which was already unstable by virtue of the impact of the Indian plate into the Asian plate. Geologists, trained in uniformitarianism, believe that this uplifting took place an inch at a time, and therefore required at least two million years. We claim that it took place as a result of close encounters with the Moon and later with proto-Venus. The uplifting of this massive region had a profound effect on subsequent interactions between priori-Mars and the Earth. The Pre-Vedic Solar System Prior to 4000 B.C. there existed only two terrestrial planets, what I call priori-Mars and the Earth. That is, Mercury and proto-Venus were not present in the solar system. Priori-Mars, the more ancient of the two by some 800 million years, was in an orbit similar to that of Venus today. It had a thick atmosphere, lots of surface water, rain, and a myriad of life forms similar to those found on Earth. The entire planet was covered with vegetation. Jupiter was a calm, bluish, ice planet, similar to Uranus and Neptune as currently shown in NASA Voyager photographs. Saturn was the brightest planet in the heavens, because it already had its extravagant ring system - the result of material splashed into space by an large impact a few millennia earlier. Uranus and Neptune also existed but could not be seen by the naked eye. The Earth was in an orbit similar to its present one, but it was not the hardy planet we know today. It did not have as much oxygen in its atmosphere as it now does. The oceans reached only to the edges of the continental shelves and the Mediterranean comprised three land-locked fresh water lakes. Species of Neolithic beings, evolved from lower forms of hominids over millions of years, tended herds, did some farming, built modest shelters, and made tools of Bronze. However, as late as 4,000 BC, we (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) did not yet exist. The Vedic Period Begins - Proto Venus Encounters Then approximately 6,000 years ago a massive galactic 'traveler' entered our solar system at very high velocity and impacted the calm blue ice planet Jupiter, releasing at least 1043 ergs. It bored deep into the icy surface of Jupiter (currently thought to be a gaseous hydrogen planet) and vaporized a mass of material, which was several times the mass of Venus today. This mass of vaporized material rebounded into space through the atmospheric tunnel created by the impactor. The resulting plasma cloud was thousands of times the volume of Jupiter itself and glowed with a golden color. Most of this mass rebounded with such high velocity that it escaped the gravitational pull of Jupiter and went into an eccentric orbit around the Sun. It quickly contracted due to its mutual gravitational attraction. Its gravitational potential was converted to heat as the converging atoms collided, forming a star-like body or proto-planet, with a temperature above 10,000 Kelvins. This was the birth of proto-Venus. Its initial orbit brought it closer to the Sun than the current distance of Venus from the Sun, while its aphelion was near Jupiter, its point of origin. Its initial orbital period was approximately five years and it crossed the orbits of the Earth and priori-Mars. The great energy of its eccentric orbit was rapidly converted to heat, due primarily to interactions with the Sun at perihelion. Two mechanisms were active in this process. Tidal forces greatly distorted its shape and caused chaotic motions in its fluid interior. Moreover, electromagnetic forces, due to the interaction of the ionized body of the proto-planet with the magnetic field of the Sun converted even more of its orbital energy into internal heat. Thus it was reheated again and again at each perihelion passage, repeatedly increasing its temperature above 10,000 degrees for decades. This resulted in the rapid reduction of its eccentricity and is an example of how, in certain unique circumstances, electromagnetic forces become significant in astrodynamics. Its high temperature caused great volumes of volatiles, preferentially the lighter elements, to be out-gassed and lost to space. Thus the same process of converting orbital energy rapidly to heat resulted in the increasing of its average density from 1 gm/cm3, characteristic of the material before its ejection from Jupiter, to over 5 g/cm3, characteristic of a terrestrial planet. This is how all terrestrial planets are formed. The great beauty of this process is that although the volatile light atoms, such as hydrogen and oxygen, are initially lost to space, they remain, invisible, in the inner solar system and are captured by the proto-planet when it cools or by older extant planets like the Earth. This eliminates the process, currently espoused, that all the water on all the terrestrial planets had to bee supplied by billions of comets. Proto-Venus had innumerable close encounters with priori-Mars because its perihelion was near to the orbital radius of priori-Mars. The net result of these encounters was to eject the latter from its ancient inner orbit, to one of larger and larger radii, as the two bodies exchanged orbital energy. The combination of the solar retardations and Martian encounters reduced proto-Venus' eccentricity rapidly to the point that it barely reached the vicinity of the Earths orbit in less than fifty years. At the same time the radius of priori-Mars' orbit was moved outward, bringing it closer and closer to the Earth, their encounters providing a startling and scary show which included the continuous quaking and creaking of the Earth. . During this fifty year period the flaming proto-Venus passed extremely close to the Earth on two occasions, with only a few planetary radii separating them, and scorched a significant fraction of the Earth's surface. In addition, its tidal forces on the equatorial bulge and the Himalayan complex exerted an impulsive torque on the lithosphere of the Earth, which, in less than a day resulted in its complete turning over in space, without reducing its rate of spin. The solid core of the Earth, isolated from the lithosphere by several thousand kilometers of liquid iron, continued to spin in the same sense. To the survivors, the Sun was then seen to rise in the west and set in the east. But within a few decades proto-Venus returned, torqueing the lithosphere back to its original orientation. On the first pass proto-Venus scorched the Earth across North Africa, the Middle East, and northern India, burning everything in its path. The heat was so great along this path that all organic material was obliterated, creating the great deserts that now exist in these areas. All the volcanoes of the Earth erupted. The Nile river was completely dried up. These two overturnings of the lithosphere were similar to those earlier ones marking the Younger Dryas. They caused kilometer-high tidal waves which swept across entire continents, tumbling great boulders before them, killing most Neolithic people and animals and leaving the low lying areas filled with water and clay from the depths of the oceans. As a result of these catastrophic encounters, which reversed the sense of rotation of the Earth relative to the stars. Surviving cultures `remembered' these events in terms of the creation of 'a new sky' or 'a new Sun.' Soon after this, a complex three-planet interaction occurred between priori-Mars and proto-Venus in the vicinity of the Earth. As a result of this encounter, sufficient orbital energy was transferred to priori-Mars to send it for the first time into an orbit which crossed that of the Earth. The same interaction further reduced the radius of proto-Venus' orbit, as dictated by the principle of conservation of energy, so that henceforth it remained inside the orbit of the Earth, signaling the end of the most destructive phase of what we term the Vedic period. In this eccentric orbit, proto-Venus still came quite close to the Earth every fourteen or fifteen years, due to the correspondence of its aphelion to its inferior conjunctions (alignments with the Earth and Sun). The very hot proto-Venus remained in this orbit for over three millennia and remained an imposing sight when it approached the Earth, still glowing a dull red color but with a beautiful blue atmospheric envelope acquired from priori-Mars and from gases vented from its super-hot interior, and a comet-like tail resulting from the loss of hot sulfur to space. The resonance between the three planets was such that proto-Venus and priori-Mars both approached the Earth every fifteen years. At those times proto-Venus' powerful tidal force caused alternately, the capture and fifteen years later, the release of priori-Mars, a cycle that repeated for more than three thousand years. The Priori-Mars Encounters These encounters were so amazing that no one in modern times, not even Velikovsky or all the science fiction writers in the world, have imagined. Priori-Mars was captured in a geosynchronous orbit, tidally locked onto the Himalayan-Tibetan complex, with its north pole oriented toward the Earth. The two planets actually revolved about their common center of mass, like a lop-sided dumbbell. This period of their revolution defined the length of a day, which, because of the greater moment of inertia of the pair, became 360 days per year. Upon each capture the spin axes of both planets changed. As priori-Mars approached, its spin axis was torqued around from its normal orientation, roughly parallel to that of the Earth, until its north pole pointed directly toward the Earth. This is not understood by a single scientist to this day, but is based on sound physical principles. The torque was caused by the tidal force of the earth acting on a great anomalous mass near the equator of priori-Mars, which is now known as the Tharsis Bulge. This feature was much more pronounced during the Vedic period, due to earlier interactions with proto-Venus. The tidal force on this raised mass continually torqued the spin axis of priori-Mars in the direction of the center of the Earth throughout every dance encounter. The resulting motion was manifested to observers on Earth as a wobbling celestial wheel with a diameter twenty times larger than the Moon, slowly spinning about its axis once per day. The northern hemisphere of the larger priori-Mars, fixed only 35,000 kilometers above the Himalayas. In one Rig Veda hymn the Earth and priori-Mars are described as being like two wheels at the opposite ends of an invisible axle. In another the author wonders what prevents it from falling to Earth. However, under 'normal' circumstances, Tibetan-Himalayan complex is 30 degrees north of the equator. As priori-Mars approached and became tidally latched onto this complex, it forced the spin axis of the Earth's lithosphere to migrate about thirty degrees, so that the tidal link was on a new temporary equator. As indicated above in the case of the proto-Venus encounters, the lithosphere is free to rotate independently of the solid inner core. As a result of this thirty degree shift, the temporary 'north pole' of the Earth, during each of the dance encounters, was relocated to Hudson Bay, in North America. When priori-Mars broke away every fourteen years, the pole reverted to its current position. Taking the Hindu myths at face value, one hundred such encounters took place during the Vedic period. The anomalies in the apparent motion of the Sun and stars, chronicled in many cultures, occurred at the transition times, either when priori-Mars was being captured or released. Some of these peoples could not even see priori-Mars, because it approached from the Sun side, or cloud cover or because they were located on the other side of the Earth. These apparent accelerations or retardations of the Sun were due to the reorienting of the spin axis of the lithosphere on which we live. This process involved relatively little energy dissipation, because the rate of spin of the Earth did not change significantly. It seems at first consideration that such a massive body as priori-Mars rotating about the Earth once a day would have traumatic effects on the Earth, but this was not the case. Although enormous ocean tides were raised on both bodies, their orbits and spins were oriented in such a way that, once established, the tides on both bodies remained stationary. Because priori-Mars was in a geosynchronous orbit the tide on the Earth did not sweep around the planet once per day, as do the tides due to the Sun and Moon. Also because the north pole of priori-Mars continually pointed toward the Earth, its tide remained stationary at the pole. This configuration, once established, was one of minimum energy dissipation, and therefore relatively quiescent. Nature favors such configurations. The greatest trauma for the Earth occurred during the engagement and disengagement of the two planets, under the auspices of the nearby proto-Venus, at which times earthquakes were continuous. There is a persistently recurring notion in the myths of ancient cultures that the Moon is a great mirror and that the light highlands and dark maria are in actuality reflections of the continents and oceans of the Earth. The idea is sometimes attributed to Aristotle, but there is a hint of the idea in the writings of Homer, dating to the eighth century B.C. In the 19th century Alexander von Humboldt encountered the mirror concept at Isfahan, Persia. Of course this is not true of the Moon, but we believe there was a valid precedent for this idea. It is quite possible that when the tidal sea formed on the side of priori-Mars facing the Earth, it acted as a mirror and therefore the Vedic people might have been able to see a small image of the Earth in that sea because it formed a convex mirror in space. The visibility of this image would have depended on the brightness of our sky, whether the side of the Earth toward priori-Mars was illuminated, and whether the surface of priori-Mars was in darkness. A few generations after priori-Mars departed the scene, the true nature of the reflecting body was `forgotten' and the best explanation for the heavenly body became the Moon. Thus, as amazing as it might seem, the pictures taken by the Apollo astronauts of the beautiful blue Earth suspended in the black void of space may not have been the first image of the Earth seen by mankind. The tidal force of the Earth caused strong marquakes in the northern hemisphere and the reduced pressure caused melting of subsurface rock. This was gradually drawn up through myriads of cracks and first appeared within the Oceanis Borealis. This was the Vedic `golden egg' in the midst of the waters, the first manifestation of the great deity Brahma. Gradually the eruption increased through the waters and became a lava fountain that eventually attained an altitude of 1000 kilometers. This was made possible by the hardening of millions of vertical lava tubes which were supported in large degree by the tidal force of the Earth. Seven great volcanoes, called the seven holy rishis (priests) in Vedic lore, also rose up during each encounter. The reappearance of these features, considered deities, was the origin of the notion of reincarnation in all ancient eastern religions. When the two mutually orbiting planets passed through alignments with the Moon, the Sun and Moon combined or proto-Venus at inferior conjunction, priori-Mars' interior was convulsed and great hot bodies as large as twenty kilometers, were ejected from the interior carrying with them great storms of smaller surface rocks, red dust, and atmospheric gases including water into space. Most of the atmospheric gases and water fell to Earth and over the 3,000 plus years of the Vedic period completely changed and enriched the Earth beyond anything imagined today. The large bodies became the Near Earth Asteroids and short period comets, such as Borrelly, which has surprised scientists because it is mostly rock the size of Mt. Everest, with a small amount of vapor being expelled from a few vents. These events were repeated to such a uniform degree that the Vedic hymns specifically divided each encounter into four 'kalpas' of gradually decreasing length, describing the progression of events from one to another in great detail. The different kalpas were characterized primarily by the nature of the bodies that were ejected into space from the interior of priori-Mars in each period. It is stated in many instances that the same progression of events was repeated during each encounter. As a result of these convulsions and the continuous tidal force of the Earth which they punctuated, priori-Mars deviated more and more from a spherical shape - forming a shape that resembled the head of a lion and the even more distorted shape like the head of a pharaoh, with its characteristic headdress, formed by liquid iron from its outer core, extending down on either side of the head and the stylized beard, which represented the great flaming lava fountain. The liquid iron from the core was the source of all iron meteorites. These distortions may have changed the moments of inertia of priori-Mars until the angular momentum of its spin and revolution around the Earth were incompatible, causing the dance encounter to become unstable just about the time of the next 'favorable' conjunction of proto-Venus, which caused them to disengage. Flooding on Earth The transitions to and from the dance encounters were accompanied by continuous earthquake activity because the tidal forces exerted on different tectonic plates tended to pull or push the plates horizontally. In those days earthquakes were taken for granted. The most notable effect, particularly in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Indus Valley (where a large fraction of the ancient population lived), was tidal flooding at the time of the capture and release of priori-Mars. Its mass was about 0.16 times that of the Earth and its center approached to within 44,000 kilometers of the center of the Earth. As a result, it produced an enormous ocean tide, some 5000 feet, which inundated northern India. But unlike the tides we experience today which sweep around the globe as it rotates, this tide remained fixed for fifteen years at a time. This radically changed the sea level around the Earth, raising it in northern India and lowering it in a circular band centered on the Himalayas. As a result, the ocean depth was greatly reduced in a band which included the Arctic Sea north of Asia, the Bering Sea, the Western Pacific, Indonesia, northern Australia, the east African Coast, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. The flow of the waters to their new tidal levels was constrained by the local topography to a degree. But at the onset of each dance encounter the water of the Mediterranean was drawn across the northern Sahara and flooded what is the center of Egypt, Cairo and the Giza plateau, as deep as 50 meters. The Mediterranean also exited through the Red Sea, and flowed over the Negev, Palestine and further north, through the Jesreel Valley through Mesopotamia within the Tigris and Euphrates valley to the sea. This adjustment took, at most, a few days, and the new coastlines that resulted from the presence of priori-Mars remained stationary for the duration of each encounter. The low-lying areas along these courses remained inundated for months or years after each flood. During the dance encounters, the Mediterranean and Red Seas were almost completely emptied, and whatever residual water remained evaporated during the fifteen year encounters. Proof of this comes from multiple layers of evaporates which cover the bottom of the Mediterranean and Red Seas. This is currently misdated and thus called the `Messinian Salinity Crisis' by geologists, who cannot imagine what caused many complete dessications of such a large body of water. Similarly, the flooding of northern India to an altitude of 5000 ft. is evidenced by the Siwalik deposits in the foothills of the Himalayas, which comprise the remains of millions of sea-level animals, such as Hippopotamus. The flooding in our scenario was more complex than the mere shuttling back and forth of the waters due to the arrival and departure of priori-Mars. Throughout the Vedic period, there was a massive influx of water from priori-Mars - the `Deluge from Heaven.' Much of this fell initially in the Tibetan-Himalayan complex where it collected in great lakes in the high mountain valleys. These broke their containment and catastrophically cut the five great river channels through the Himalayas in days or weeks. Convincing evidence of this lies in the fact that the headwaters of all five originate in the vicinity of the sacred Mt. Kailas, called by the Tibetans, `the home of Indra on Earth.' The rise in sea levels due to this influx is difficult to access because a great increase of mass in the oceans may simply compress the ocean bottom and not be evident as sea level changes. The sea level increases of the recent geologic past are estimated at about 150 meters, but this is attributed to the melting of ice-age glaciers. At the termination of each fifteen year encounter, an amazing event occurred which was probably crucial. The solid iron core of priori-Mars appeared through a great crack, currently thought to be a canyon - the Valles Marineris. This was probably the opening through which the liquid iron from the outer core exited slightly earlier. It appeared as a great eye, and was called the `eye of Horus' by the Egyptians. The cracks around this feature exactly trace out the shape of the hieroglyph representing the `eye of Horus.' This event was also the origin of the one eyed `Cyclops,' of Greek myth, who were renown iron workers. At the end of each encounter, the solid core of priori-Mars completely exited the planet and dropped into a lower, faster orbit around the Earth. Its speed, relative to the stationary priori-Mars, was the source of its designation as the speedy one, or the messenger of the gods - Mercury. At the same time, the outer shell of priori-Mars began to drift westward. After one orbit of the Earth, the solid core rejoined its lithosphere and was described as riding it piggy-back away from the Earth. The solid core reentered the shell once away from the tidal influence of the Earth. During the next fifteen years priori-Mars reshaped itself, and the water lost from its northern hemisphere was redistributed around the planet in preparation for the next encounter. The Final Breakaway The question inevitably arises as to how Mars got from an orbit that crossed that of the Earth for over 3,000 years, to where it is now. The explanation is very interesting because it also explains how Venus` orbit became circularized and the origin of the `planet' Mercury. The end of the Vedic period was signaled by the final breakaway of priori-Mars. Based on Velikovsky's date of the death of Romulus, we estimate that this occurred in 687 B.C. At that time something different happened that caused priori-Mars' orbit to slide outward some fifty million kilometers from the Earth, never to return to its vicinity. Specialists in astrodynamics will initially voice disbelief at the notion of this kind of orbital change, claiming that priori-Mars' new orbit would still have to intersect that of the Earth. But, as with all of the other ideas presented here, they lack the knowledge provided by ancient myth. Although the core of priori-Mars had rejoined the lithosphere on all previous occasions, something different happened on the final one. The change in the length of the month just at that time, from 36 to 29.5 days, implies that the Moon may have interacted with one part of priori-Mars while it was separated. In some way the iron core of priori-Mars was deflected in a completely different direction from its lithosphere. The result was that the lithosphere drifted outward in the solar system and the core drifted inward, in such a way that conservation of energy and angular momentum was maintained. Where did they go? The lithosphere collapsed forming a smaller solid spherical body and drifted out and became the planet we now call Mars. It s low density and lack of a magnetic field are consistent with this scenario. The core drifted into the inner solar system and went into orbit around the Sun. We now call it the planet Mercury. Proto-Venus probably interacted with the core as it moved sunward, because proto-Venus' orbit is now circular, and a resonance between it and Mercury has been documented. Hopefully, more sophisticated computer modeling will allow us to determine the physical details given the scenario presented here as a starting point. No models yet exist because no one has ever come close to understanding that these amazing cosmic interactions ever occurred. The beautiful Earth we know today did not exist twelve thousand years ago. That ancient Earth was a much more hostile and dangerous place. But beginning with the stabilization of the Earth at the time of the Younger Dryas, followed by the cosmic encounters during the Vedic period, the Earth was surely prepared for mankind. The primary creation was obviously started billions of years ago. But the preparation of the Earth for mankind was made only 'yesterday.' What a profound and exciting discovery! The Priori-Mars-Forming of Earth One of the most irresponsible notions advanced recently in the popular space literature is that of 'terra-forming' Mars, that is, modifying it to be more earth-like. The very notion that mankind could modify the environment of an entire planet hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth is ludicrous, considering that we have been unable to modify the great deserts of the Earth, some of which are adjacent to oceans. What these writers, indeed all the scientists on the Earth, do not understand is that the Earth itself was just revitalized, by the infusion, on a planetary scale, of all the atmosphere and water originally on priori-Mars, during the Vedic period. As a result, priori-Mars is bone dry - in spite of the landforms left by the massive tidal flows that occurred only a few thousand years ago. Scientists, who believe that these massive flows occurred billions of years ago, still ponder the question of where all the water went. Ironically, it makes up a part of every living thing on this earth. Unfortunately, those proposing to terra-form priori-Mars are counting on using Martian water, which they believe resides in the permafrost, just below the surface. The puzzle of "where the water went?" was intensified in late 1998 when the NASA delivered priori-Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter revealed that the northern ice cap contains only one tenth of the calculated minimum volume of water required to carve the great outflow channels on its surface. The latest probe, Mars Odessy, supposedly has found significant water hidden in the top three feet of the Martain soil in areas poleward of 55 degrees latitude. However, the gamma ray spectrometer gives only a crude estimate of the amount of hydrogen in this layer. Scientists make the huge assumption that this is in the form of water. It could well be a completely different compound or the dessicated remains of millions of tree roots, which died less than 6,000 years ago. If you have any questions or comments about this site, send an email to angiras at firmament-chaos.com