mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== THOTH -A Catastrophics Newsletter- VOL I, No. 26 November 15, 1997 EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (10)...................David Talbott Mars Mission: NASA Mapping Info Submitted by Kevin Weinhold Dialogue on Comets................................Amy Acheson Worms living on frozen methane hydrate URL Site Submitted by David Moshinsky ----------------------------------------------- Quote of the day: Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand. Spinoza ----------------------------------------------- VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (10) By David Talbott (dtalbott at teleport.com) [EDITOR'S NOTE: This continues Talbott's series of articles on the myth of the comet Venus.] DEMONS OF DARKNESS Let us now consider the role of darkness in the myths of the Great Comet. Throughout Mesoamerica, the arrival of the cosmic night was a pervasive subject of ritual re-enactment, from macrocosm to microcosm; the darkness into which the world sank symbolically at the end of the 52-year cycle was the same darkness remembered with each setting of the sun, as every household recalled the dangers of the greater darkness in primeval times. But the doomsday fears of Mesoamerican peoples do not just reflect the ancient experience of a darkened world. At the root of these fears is a memory of the "chaos-hordes" let loose, the great cometary cloud which overtook the world in the mother of all catastrophes. Numerous ritual celebrations represented this swarming cometary debris by crowds of warriors and other participants adding through their dress and gestures the elements of commotion, disarray, darkness, and mock combat--these frenzied crowds being as much a part of the ritual occasion as the officiating priests or sacrificial victims. The panoply of images involved here will provide countless details about an event far more terrifying than historians have dared imagine. The crucial principle is the connection between ritual symbols and remembered events: the local rites commemorated death and disaster on a COSMIC scale. Thus, all of the components of the "darkness" theme are significant--throngs of people shouting in confusion or running about; the feathered ornaments; paper streamers waving in the wind; a pervasive fear that their children will be turned into mice; the fear that monsters with disheveled hair (a global cometary motif) will rise out of the darkness to devour them. Indeed, such themes constitute a tapestry of ancient cometary myths and symbols. And the repeated fears and gestures are not fixed to a single rite or to just one symbolic occasion, but to every level at which the darkness theme occurs. Symbolically, for example, every setting of the sun contained an aspect of the former disaster. When dusk arrived it came as a reminder of the cosmic night--the twilight of the gods. Natives of pre-Columbian Mexico retired to their own dwellings and covered themselves. At night the chaos-demons were out, and children could be turned into mice (a mythical form of the swarming celestial debris with cometary tails, the "children" of the comet- goddess). And while the people slept, it was the priest astronomer's duty to monitor the heavens at dusk, midnight and dawn, to "divine the course of events." In the shadow of the remembered catastrophe, every form of darkness contained a seed of uncertainty and terror. Then, in the morning, the obligatory sweeping of patios and walkways occurred--symbolically, the sweeping away of the night. Not just the darkness, but the gathered dust and clutter filled a special role in Mesoamerican daily life and ritual, as symbols of the great dust-cloud which overtook the world in ancestral times. So in the sweeping rites, we see the dust as an analog of this cloud--the chaos hordes--together with the symbolism of the female head of the house as "sweeper," a role defined by the mother goddess Toci herself, whose "broom" is a prominent feature in the commemorative rites (see discussion of Toci and sweeping rites in discussion to follow; also later discussion of the "broom" as universal comet glyph; in the form of a "broom," "flail," "fan," or "whisk," the Great Comet itself "scatters" the chaos-cloud.) No doubt such symbolism at the daily, microcosmic level was diluted over time and progressively gave way to the growing complexities of culture and practical necessity, but the residue of an ancient and unrecognized experience was still there at the time of the Conquest. Of course, the recollection of the cosmic night appears in more dramatic forms when an UNUSUAL occurrence of darkness breaks the normal pattern. Consider Sahagun's description of the people's response to an eclipse-- Then there were a tumult and disorder. All were disquieted, unnerved, frightened. Then there was weeping. The common folk raised a cup, lifting their voices, making a great din, calling out, shrieking. There was shouting everywhere. People of light complexion were slain [as sacrifices]; captives were killed. All offered their blood, they drew straws through the lobes of their ears, which had been pierced. And in all the temples there was the singing of fitting chants, there was an uproar, there were war cries. It was thus said: "If the eclipse of the sun is complete, it will be dark forever! The demons of darkness will come down, they will eat men!" In these fleeting moments of the eclipse, the people relived the unforgettable night, repeating the great din of the world-ending catastrophe and venting their fears of the devouring chaos hordes. Were these fears, in origin, different from the (tempered) fear of dusk, or different from the terror aroused by the conclusion of the 52-year cycle (noted in our previous submission)? An examination of the different contexts will show that the entire complex of "darkness" fears always recalls the same comet-like cloud descending upon the world. It should not surprise us, therefore, that the very same fear is seen in relation to the eclipse of the moon. When the moon was eclipsed, his face grew dark and sooty, blackness and darkness spread. When this came to pass, women with child feared evil; they thought it portentous; they were terrified [lest], perchance, their [unborn] children might be changed into mice; each of their children might turn into a mouse. Such fears are rooted in myths and memories the modern world has failed to comprehend. There is an ARCHETYPE of cosmic "darkness," with deeper and broader meaning than could be extracted from any single commemorative occasion. Alone, the symbols can only point ambiguously backwards to unrecognized trauma. But in combination, the symbols will provide a rich profile of the world-ending catastrophe, accessible to any researcher willing to break free from a methodology that sees only fragments and asks the fragments to explain themselves in isolation from the whole. Of course, the planet Venus would seem an unlikely source of sky-darkening clouds (or of sky-clearing "sweeping," for that matter). And yet the remarkable Mesoamerican association of Venus with the eclipse and darkness has been documented by the vigorous research of Ev Cochrane. "Like most ancient peoples, the Maya considered eclipses of the sun to be a time of dire peril," Cochrane writes. "It was commonly believed, in fact, that the world might end during a solar eclipse. In the eclipse tables contained within the Dresden Codex, an eclipse is symbolized by the figure of a dragon descending from the glyph of the sun." On the relationship of the "eclipse"-dragon to Venus, Cochrane gives us the verdict of the eminent Mayan scholar, Sir Eric Thompson: The head of the monster is hidden by a large glyph of the planet Venus. One is instantly reminded of the Aztec belief that during eclipses the monsters called Tzitzimime or Tzontemoc (head down) plunged earthwards from the sky. These monsters include Tlauizcalpanteculti, the god of Venus as morning star. It is therefore highly probable that the picture represents a Tzitzimitl plunging head down toward earth during the darkness of an eclipse. A glyph immediately above the picture appears to confirm this identification, for it shows the glyph of Venus with a prefix which is a picture of a person placed upside down. A remote star could darken the entire sky? Here we see, in a clear profile, the dilemma for conventional study. Under the standard approach to this subject, the images are far too incredible to have any foundation in natural experience. Hence, they must be entirely fanciful. And hence, any attempt to see natural experience in these hieroglyphs must be preposterous. That is the fundamental circular reasoning on which the modern understanding of myth and symbol has been constructed. As a result, the patterns suggesting deeper levels of coherence are not even noticed. What is unthinkable is of no interest. So we do not realize that the fear of darkness is not just the fear of being unable to see clearly. As concretely expressed in myths and rites, it speaks for a collective memory; and even the lesser expressions of this fear are but shadows cast by a far greater terror, when the whole sky became the theater for the twilight of the gods. --------------------------------- MARS MISSION: NASA Mapping Info Over the four months after orbit insertion, aerobraking and thrusters will slowly convert the original elliptical capture orbit into a nearly circular 2 hour polar orbit with an average altitude of 378 km, ALLOWING COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE PLANET EVERY 7 DAYS. Preliminary mapping operations will begin in January, 1998, and the primary mapping mission begins 15 March, 1998. The spacecraft will be in a "sun- synchronous" orbit so that each image will be taken with the sun at the same mid-afternoon azimuth. DATA WILL BE ACQUIRED FOR ONE MARTIAN YEAR (APPROX. 2 EARTH YEARS). The spacecraft will also be used as a data relay for later U.S. and international missions over the following three years. Mars Global Surveyor is the first spacecraft to be launched in a decade-long exploration of Mars by NASA. Launches will be occurring every 26 months, in 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2005, involving orbiters, landers, rovers, and probes to Mars. Orbiters launched in 1998 and 2003 will contain other instruments to recover the planned Mars Observer objectives. More detailed information on Mars Global Surveyor is available from the NSSDC Master Catalog. The Mars Global Surveyor will consist of six primary investigations: The Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) - Michael Malin, Malin Space Science Systems The Mars Orbital Camera will take high resolution images, on the order of a meter or so, of surface features. IT WILL ALSO TAKE LOWER RESOLUTION IMAGES OF THE ENTIRE PLANET over time to enable research into the temporal changes in the atmosphere and on the surface." From: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/marsurv.html Emphasis added. ---------------------------------------------- KRONIA GROUP DISCUSSION: [Poster named Rob]: >Since ALL comets start pretty far out from the sun (ones >close up have been melted by now), ANY comet that swings into the >inner solar system has a very eccentric elliptical orbit. [Amy Acheson ]: First of all, I don't agree with his statement that ALL comets start pretty far out from the sun. This is a deduction from the uniformitarian assumption that all the bodies in the solar system were formed 4 billion years ago. If they were all formed 'way back then, and they continue to disrupt at the rate we've observed them disrupting in the past few centuries, then all the close up comets would have disrupted by now. [Note that I'm describing a similar phenomenon but not using the term that Rob used--melted because by using that term Rob assumes two other mainstream astronomical concept that I disagree with: 1) that comet's tails are caused by solar winds melting their fragile icy structure, and 2) that comets are basically icy snowballs.] In order to explain the fact that some comets have actually survived for 4 billion years, conventional astronomy has had to invent an imaginary Oort cloud way out beyond Pluto where these fragile bodies live safely out of reach of the sun until they manage to perturb each others' orbits enough for an occasional one to fall into the inner solar system and circle (ellipse?) around for a while, growing and losing a tail with every orbit, before it, too, completely melts down. By the way, taking the rate of disruption of comets over the past couple of millennia (there were 57 comets recorded the year Julius Caesar died--all naked eye; they hadn't invented the telescope) points to either a recent (a few thousands of years ago) comet-making event or an impossibly large number of comets "in the beginning" 4 billion years ago. [Rob again]: > There are lots of speculations as to why a comet starts > falling in from way far out in the solar system to the inner > system. Some of them just have very long period orbits and > only show up every few thousand years. [Amy replies]: Hale Bopp is one of those. [Rob again]: > Other ones may have had very circular orbits way out there, > but were disturbed by passing very close to another body and > have had their >orbits changed so that they are newly > eccentric. This body would have to pass pretty close to > them, however, and would have to be pretty massive, compared > to the comet. [Amy replies]: None of these suggestions takes into account Bob Grubaugh's recent orbital analysis which showed that of the 15 brightest comets of this past century, most of them, regardless of the length and eccentricity of their orbits-- Haley's and Hale Bopp included--intersect the plane of the ecliptic in a relatively small sector of the solar system which includes the region of the asteroid belt. . This would tend to indicate that they weren't formed 'way out there in the Oort belt, but more likely originated in a fairly recent event that occurred within the general vicinity of the asteroid belt. [Probably the asteroid belt itself is also a result of that event.] [Rob again]: > When a body has a very eccentric orbit, its velocity isn't > constant over the course of an orbit. As it swings far out, > it slows down considerably. As it passes close by the > parent body, it's going its fastest. In the case of comets, > this means that they are moving pretty fast when they get to > the inner solar system. "Pretty fast", for our purposes > here, means SEVERAL KILOMETERS PER SECOND faster than the > planets that live in the inner solar system. > It's worth mentioning here that a body in a given orbit can > only move at a speed consistent with that orbit. In a given > spot in a given orbit only ONE velocity is permissible. If > the body is speeded up or slowed down somehow, then the > orbit has to change to reflect the new speed. This means, > for example, that the earth or Venus can only move at a > certain rate in their path around the sun, any faster and > their orbits would change. [Amy replies]: Perhaps oversimplified, but this is a fairly straightforward description of Newtonian Mechanics. What he's leaving out is that at certain points in these orbits, it's easier to change due to the influence of another body. That's why NASA is flying Cassini past Venus twice and Jupiter once to build up orbit changes that will take it to Saturn with a minimum of rocket fuel. The two-body problem (how two bodies interact gravitationally) is easy to solve. With three, it's much more difficult (a huge prize was awarded by the French Government to the astronomer who finally solved it in the late 1700's, I think.) The nine- body problem (nine planets) hasn't been solved yet. [Rob again] > Another thing worth mentioning is that the planets, due to > the way the solar system was formed, have pretty circular > orbits. Pluto has the >most eccentric orbit, so eccentric > that it sometimes moves inside Neptune. It's eccentricity > is 0.248. This is still FAR less eccentric than a comet's > orbit that comes in close to the sun, but it's more > eccentric than the other planets. [Amy replies] Again, he's assuming that if Venus was a comet, it must have come from the Oort cloud and had similar eccentricities to what scientists today define as a comet. Velikovsky's case for Venus being a comet depends on the definition given by the ancient observers, not modern astronomers, which is a star with a tail, and may or may not be associated with any amount of orbital eccentricity. By the way, Venus still has remnants of a tail, reaching almost to the earth's orbit. It was discovered just recently by the SOHO satellite. [Wal Thornhill suggests that it is the eccentricity of comets--not their fragile snowball make-up--that causes them to grow tails (as they cut across the changing potential of the solar magnetic field) and that, if you kicked an asteroid into an eccentric orbit, it would "become" a comet, and that Venus appeared to be a comet because of eccentricity, and that even the whole Saturnian system became a comet (that is, grew a tail) when it was captured by the sun. But he (Wal) never gave me and Mel an adequate explanation of (A) why Kahoutek didn't grow a spectacular tail and (b) why Velikovsky (at the MacMaster's Conference in '74) predicted that it wouldn't. But we're jumping way beyond the discussion of cometary Venus here.] [Rob again]: > Here are eccentricities for all the planets: > > Mercury 0.206 > Venus 0.007 <<-- !!! > Earth 0.017 > Mars 0.093 > Jupiter 0.048 > Saturn 0.056 > Uranus 0.046 > Neptune 0.010 > Pluto 0.248 > > Interestingly, Venus has the most perfectly circular orbit > of the planets. This orbit is so circular that it's > farthest from the sun is about 67239000 miles, but it's > closest is about 67237400 miles, a difference of only about > 1600 miles--far less than the radius of the planet (in other > words, DAMN circular). Earth, by comparison, varies > about 13,500 miles from high point to low point. [Amy replies] The most circular orbits in the solar system are those of Uranus' 15 moons. And, funniest thing, these orbit Uranus' equator, which is tilted almost perpendicular to the ecliptic. How they got that way and why they're so circular is a mystery. But it's a mystery that says something to me: 1) They sure as hell didn't form gradually over millions of years out of a rotating solar disc in the plane of the ecliptic, and 2) Until you can explain, with current astronomical processes, how these moons got so circularized, you better not use those processes to deny what ancient observers claim to have seen. [By the way, are you aware that the same astronomical errors about the orbit of the planet Venus were made in both Babylon and ancient Mexico? They both claimed an invisibility of 90 days at superior conjunction, something completely impossible under the present-day orbits of earth and Venus.] [Rob again] > By contrast, a comet which swings out by Pluto, then swings > in through Venus' orbit will have a long axis about 40 > astronomical units long, but a short axis about 1.5 to 2 > a.u. long. If you put this through the equations, you find > an eccentricity of greater than 0.9. [Amy replies] Again, Velikovsky never said that Venus came from out beyond Pluto--that's Rob's assumption from his modern definition of a comet. Velikovsky says Venus originated from Jupiter within human historical memory. In Grubaugh's model, Venus originated from Saturn in the vicinity of the present day asteroid belt. In Thornhill's model Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, bunches of moons and probably asteroids, too, did come from outside the solar system in one clump sometime in the recent past (over a similar range of time as since the dinosaurs). [Rob again] > All of this goes to show that comets have MUCH more > eccentric orbits than planets and are moving much faster > than planets when they reach the inner solar system. > Now, keeping all of this in mind (it's a lot, I know), we > can reach an interesting conclusion. If a body is in an > elliptical orbit that goes from the distant edge of the > solar system down to the inner solar system (the orbit > comets follow), then the body is going much faster than the > planets when it reaches the inner solar system. If you want > that body to STAY in the inner solar system (say if that > body is to become the planet Venus) it must SLOW DOWN A HELL > OF A LOT when it reaches the inner solar system. Somewhere, > you have to come up with a force that will impart many > kilometers per second of change of velocity to a body the > size of Venus. Even worse, this acceleration has to happen > WHILE IT'S IN THE ORBIT YOU WANT IT TO HAVE. In other > words, the body can't come sailing in, hit some other body > on the way, then find it's way into Venus's slot. If you > want it to wind up where Venus is, you HAVE to correct its > velocity as it reaches Venus's orbit. [Amy replies] Again, he's taking into account only gravitational interactions, and simplifications of them at that. Astronomers don't understand why our solar system has a Bode's law configuration, but Wal Thornhill's plasma model indicates that the low eccentricities and orderly distances between planets is a function of the fact that interacting systems settle into non-interacting systems at a fairly hasty rate. He thinks that each of the planets makes a "home" for itself at the limit of the next inward planet's electrical influence. That interplanetary electrical discharges (recorded in the past as thunderbolts of the gods, but not seen in present day, thank the gods) will have exactly the effect Rob is calling impossible: circularizing orbits. [Another "by the way" here: when ancient artists picture the thunderbolts of Zeus, they show the football shape of a plasma discharge in a vacuum rather than the long jagged lightning bolts we're familiar with in thunderstorms. Where do you think they got that idea?] [Rob again] > For example, I take it that Velikovsky claims Venus > interacted with earth and may have gotten some delta-v from > that interaction. That's fine, but it's not possible for > ANY delta-v received in EARTH's orbit to lead to a body > settling down in Venus' orbit. [Amy replies] A plasma interaction between closely approaching planets could have wielded so much delta-v and delta-g (gravity changes) and delta-m (mass changes) that the orbital outcome of any interaction is mathematically unpredictable. {By the way, such interactions would have left fragmented magnetic anomalies like those discovered on the moon by the Apollos and last week on Mars by Surveyor.} [Rob again] > At BEST, this might lead to an elliptical orbit that > swings down to be tangent with Venus, then up to be tangent > with earth. In this best-case scenario, Venus would have > ample opportunity to hit earth again, have its orbit (AND > the earth's) effected to become MORE elliptical and so on. > This best case orbit still has MUCH more energy than Venus' > Orbit today. [Amy replies] Here Rob's assuming that only Venus' orbit changed, and that the earth and other planets are still where they always were. Velikovsky never made any claims about previous solar system order, except for the minor mention that earth may have once (before the Venus thingy) been a satellite of Saturn, the statement from which Dave Talbott took his inspiration. [Rob again] > Here's another datum for you. Jupiter has several > satellites, but a few of them are thought to have been > "captured" by Jupiter, not part of its original formation. > These were probably asteroids which got to close to > Jupiter and came under it's gravitational influence. All of > these captured satellites have much more elliptical orbits > than the Jupiter's proper satellites, they have more inclined > orbits (relative to the others) and some of them even move > in retrograde (that is they orbit in the opposite direction > from the others). Things "captured" don't tend to have > circular orbits, because there is no force to give them the > push that will "circularize" their orbits as they are > captured. [Amy replies] Jupiter's "captured satellites" are all distant ones--the equivalents of the outer planets to our solar system, which are the most eccentric of our planets. The inner planets move closer and faster, so their orbits will regularize more quickly. The British astronomer, Ovenden, showed by computer model that at the distance from the sun of earth's orbit, three hundred revolutions was enough to stabilize almost any random beginning configuration into a Bode's-law configuration. And he was using only gravitational interactions. Needless to say, lots more than three hundred years have passed since 1500 BCE, the time Velikovsky places the Venus episode. [Rob again] > So, I return to my original question at long last: If Venus > is a captured comet, what force imparted a >many-kilometer- > per-second change of velocity to put it into a very circular > orbit? [Amy replies] And, to summarize my answer: Venus being a comet doesn't necessarily imply capture from outside the solar system, although it doesn't rule out the possibility. In either case, gravitational interactions alone are capable of circularizing its orbit. But both the ancient records and modern discoveries in cosmology suggest that electromagnetic interactions also played a significant role. --Amy Acheson ---------------------------------------------- WORMS LIVING ON METHANE HYDRATE An announcement with implications for life on other worlds. A team funded by National Oceanic Atmospheric Admin announced discovery of worms living on frozen methane hydrates at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. http://angelfire.com/biz/russetpress/ ------------------------------------------------ PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE-- http://www.kronia.com/~kronia/ Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.ames.net/aeon/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/velikovskian/ http://www.access.digex.net/~medved/Catastrophism.html http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.tcel.com/~mike/paper.html Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensee Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://nt.e-z.net/mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our initial focus will be on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation. We welcome your comments and responses. New readers are referred to earlier installments in issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above. Go to the THOTH page and click on the image titled "Thoth: the Egyptian God of Knowledge" to access the back issues. Michael Armstrong Mikamar Publishing mikamar at e-z.net