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 II, No. 15 Oct 1, 1998 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS GRAVITATION AS FROG . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mel Acheson THE TWO FACES OF "PLAUSABILITY" . . . . . . . Dave Talbott TWO MAORI MYTHS. . . . . . . . . submitted by Ken Dietiker comments by Dwardu Cardona and Dave Talbott THE DOMES ON VENUS. . . . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill LICHTENBERG FIGURES. . . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- GRAVITATION AS FROG by Mel Acheson Ilya Prigogine, from a young age, was concerned that accepted physical theory had a couple of glaring discrepancies from observation: determinism and time symmetry. Most observations are of contingency and irreversibility. No one has yet seen an egg "un-fry" or an old woman rise from her grave and grow young. After years of effort, Prigogine has extended the basic laws of physics to account for irreversibility by incorporating recent discoveries in complexity theory and instability physics. As he relates in _The End Of Certainty_, the results place probability (or, better, possibility) at the core of physical processes. The traditional formulations of mechanistic determinism become a special case for isolated systems at equilibrium. The contrast between the isolated stable models and the interacting unstable ones is as striking as the difference between a dissected frog and its jumping counterpart. The pins of equilibrium and the scalpel of reductionism lay out the frog's mechanism to be described in great detail. But the frog doesn't move. Now consider gravitation: F = GMm/R^2 is well-pinned-down. As one of Piet Hein's grooks says: " ... and who could doubt it, if you have no doubt about it." But when taken off the dissecting table of theory, it starts to quiver: Every measurement of the "constant" G comes up with a different value. Well, maybe someone bumped the table. But now various space probes around the solar system are showing anomalous deceleration. The frog is kicking. When the frog jumps into the galaxy, it behaves unexpectedly: It swims. Decades of observations of velocities and positions of stars have allowed astronomers to construct a diagram of how the galaxy is rotating. Surprisingly, the stars near the edge move about as fast as the stars near the center. In fact, all the stars are moving at about the same speed. Apparently, F = GMm/R. But not to worry: we can get the frog back on the table by catching it in a net of dark matter. Never mind that the net is more massive than the entire galaxy or that we can't see it. The important thing is to retrieve the frog -- and kill it! Now Halton Arp's discovery of the association of quasars with nearby galaxies combined with the discovery of the quantization of redshifts threatens to let the frog escape for good. Each cluster of galaxies and quasars has a slightly different "constant" of quantization. Within each cluster, the quantization spikes are so sharp, the dispersion so small, that when the quantization effect is removed, there is almost no redshift left to attribute to orbital velocities. Arp remarks on page 114 of _Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies_: "Surely gravitation is still working!" The galaxies and their associated quasars are just hanging in space, thumbing their noses at Newton: F = 0. The point of this -- getting back to Ilya Prigogine -- is that "live" systems are considerably more complex than "dead" ones. Every theory has its "domain of validity", as Leon Rosenfeld remarked. But the boundaries of that domain are almost never surveyed. It's easier to crank out the mathematics of a theory than to discover its limitations, and, human nature inclining as it does to the haughtiness of the gods, it's easier to assume universal validity than to mark out the provinces. But universality is merely an assumption standing in for the hard work of verification. Gravitation as we know it will be universal only when its relationships are actually verified throughout space and throughout history. Just as galactic rotation curves and quantized redshifts challenge the easy spatial extrapolation of the "dead" theory, so the detailed global structure of myth challenges the easy temporal extrapolation. The frog is swimming in an uncharted ocean where myth and redshifts proclaim: HERE BE DRAGONS. Universal Gravitation is beginning to look like a dead frog in a farm pond. --Mel Acheson thoth at Whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- THE TWO FACES OF "PLAUSABILITY" by Dave Talbott On several occasions recently, in reference to the Saturn theory, David Davis raised the vexing question of physical plausibility. This is a first shot at putting the question into perspective, particularly for those such as David D who were not present as such questions were discussed over the years. The problem involves two radically different fields of evidence - human memories on the one hand, and physical observation on the other. But truth itself is unified, and one can be certain that when conflicts occur something is wrong on at least one side of the ledger. A false assumption, a false reading of evidence, a false analysis of probability, or an invalid deduction. So how do we deal with the situation when human memories speak convincingly for something which orthodox science, with equal persuasion, denies? The Saturn theory suggests events and natural forces contrary to almost everything believed by the scientific mainstream. Does this mean that science gets to tell us whether the theory is "valid", without showing that we have misstated or misused evidence, or applied reasoning to the evidence improperly? Mainstream theorists can certainly point out the disparity between the claims of the Saturn theory and the textbook history of the solar system. And we can, in turn, point out that things which science considers out of the question were consistently remembered around the world and with a degree of detail and coherence that is inconceivable under usual explanations. But the situation is a stalemate until a ground of reconciliation is reached. What is impossible could not have happened. What happened cannot be impossible. And this fact is, singularly, our basis for confidence that answers CAN be found. We have either misapplied principles of reasoning to the historical evidence, or science is misreading evidence to a profound degree. A quick background statement for more recent subscribers to this list. The Saturn theory involves a congregation of planets including at least two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and the planets Venus, Mars and Earth, all moving around the Sun, with the Earth close enough to these bodies that they present a spectacular and at times frightful presence in the sky. Four key contrasts with conventional theory are inherent in the construction: 1) dramatic changes in the planetary order in geologically recent times; 2) a period of collinear alignment within the hypothesized configuration (during this period, of indeterminate length, the planets stayed in line and were thus seen from the Earth as juxtaposed spheres); 3) a period of axial alignment between the Earth and the collinear configuration, so that Saturn and the other bodies appeared fixed at the pole; and 4) an indeterminate period in which a bright crescent on Saturn visually turned in the sky (due to light from the Sun and the effect of Earth's rotation), the positions of this revolving crescent around the pole reflecting the terrestrial cycle of day and night. Now perhaps you have wondered how I could have ever proposed such a thing, knowing full well that PLANETS DO NOT BEHAVE THIS WAY under the fundamental "rules" of celestial dynamics. Actually, it was easy. I was convinced that the weight of historical evidence is, when evaluated logically and dispassionately, more persuasive than present scientific beliefs about planetary behavior. And this conviction has only grown over the years. The scientific consensus is not a finished encyclopedia with an exclusive on truth, and in fact that consensus is proven wrong every day. Critics have often assumed that when I first proposed the idea of a "Polar Configuration", I simply didn't know that everyday science virtually FORBIDS the underlying concepts. But in fact I knew this very well, and from the beginning I had people repeating the obvious to me. So I said (in print, more than once) that the configuration is, in terms of present scientific understanding, "impossible", or (when I was feeling more charitable to the concept) "highly implausible". To which I would add (in so many words) that the "truth must be out there", even if we have missed it. Now step into this perspective for a moment. I am as certain that huge planetary forms were seen in the sky as I am of any rule of logic, or any natural experience known to man. This is because the universal memory is too explicit, too concrete and too unusual to be explained in any other way. This is now an unshakable conviction with me. Apart from the implied celestial references, the accord of human memories is simply not possible. And I do mean NOT POSSIBLE. I am not asking you to believe this, just to understand that this is the position I hold, which may also help you understand why I believe so strongly that our task is, above all else, to develop a clear and effective presentation of the historical argument. What must be developed is a presentation SO clear that those rare but uniquely capable and open-minded individuals within the sciences will be inspired to ASK THE QUESTION and to help us find the ground of reconciliation. I am not foolish enough to think that I will be the one to solve the challenge scientifically! I have to speak subjectively on this, but I believe that all who have worked to solve a mystery, or to understand a new idea, or to discover a new possibility will share in the confidence I am expressing on this point. It is BECAUSE truth is unified that the sense of a new possibility will always direct you to follow the implications of the idea through a maze of tests. At every step, this was the basis of my growing confidence in the historical reconstruction. As the planetary configuration came into focus, it began to suggest many hundreds of tests, always implying that if I would look in this direction, or that direction, I would find specific data (enigmatic meanings of words, drawings of things not seen in our sky, unexplained re-enactments of cosmic events) consistently speaking for the same underlying forms. And for this very reason, I shall continually urge true explorers in the sciences to follow the tests into their own domains as well. (Still speaking for myself now.) These things happened. That means the dynamical principles must be available to us. The physical evidence must still lie in the ground. It is just that, as Kuhn himself would put it, we are not seeing the evidence properly. To illustrate the way this confidence works, I want to give a few examples relating to the greatest conundrum in the first 21 years of the research - the principle of collinear alignment (planets staying in line while moving around the Sun). Even now, on the Kronia discussion group, we periodically see posters remarking on the "impossibility" of such a configuration. Here is what they are talking about: In any Newtonian system, planets move around a center of gravity. If the hypothesized Jupiter-Saturn system revolved around its own center of gravity as it moved around the Sun, one must deal with the principle of orbital equilibrium and Kepler's Third Law. The farther a planet is from the center of gravity, the slower will be its orbital velocity and the longer will be its orbital period. But planets staying in line would have to have the SAME orbital periods. Therefore, an in-line configuration is gravitationally impossible. Given the imposing momentum of planet-sized bodies, surely no "secondary" force could even come close to resolving the problem. "The polar configuration is a blatant violation of Kepler's Third Law." Even various Velikovskians joined in that refrain. Leroy Ellenberger repeated it many times. Later, Tim Thompson, on the Internet discussion group, talk.origins, repeated it in a series of postings. So how could one claim, based entirely on human memory, that a physical principle MUST be available to support the concept? Well, here's what happened. Some 21 years after I had first proposed a collinear configuration (originally I did not even know that the name for such a thing existed), the dynamicist Robert Grubaugh contacted me with a bombshell revelation. In orbital mechanics, he said, there is something called collinear equilibrium. If you put planets in line around the Sun, close enough to each other that they are all within what is called the "sphere of influence" of the dominating planets (in this case, Jupiter and Saturn), there is for each of those planets an equilibrium position at which they will STAY IN LINE until disturbed. In the unique condition of collinear equilibrium, the usual implication of Kepler's Third Law does not apply! Suddenly, a 21-year objection based on "things KNOWN to science", collapsed. So here was a first demonstration of the maxim, "the truth is out there" - a startling convergence of the historical argument and physical principle. Not just an interesting and unique principle, but the very principle the historical argument DEMANDED. Was this the end of it? No, that began a series of revelations following the same pattern. First, there was the proclamation by critics that something was "impossible" (the favorite word in the lexicon of debunkers); then there was the subsequent revelation that a particular dynamic principle overlooked by the debunkers was the very principle the Saturnian reconstruction called for. I will enumerate a series of examples in submissions to follow, all coming under the same heading - CONVERGENCE. Dave ---------------------------------------------- TWO MAORI MYTHS submitted by K Ken Dietiker Number One: And from nothing came darkness, and then light, and finally the sky and the earth. And Rangi, the sky, and Papa, the earth, came together in love and had many children. But Rangi and Papa were joined inseparably, so that their children had no place to live but were squeezed into the tight darkness between them. At last their offspring crept together to confer about their fate. Tu, the god of man and war, said, "Let's kill Rangi and Papa so we'll be freed. But Tane, the god of the forest, said, "No, let's try to separate them. Maybe we won't have to kill them. If we try hard enough, we can push the sky away and keep Mother Earth to nurse us." So first Rongo, god of cultivated food, tried to force the heaven and earth apart. But he failed. Then Tangaroa, god of all the animals that lived in the sea, tried, but he too had no luck. Then Haumia, father of wild plants, also tried and failed. Warlike Tu then took his knife and hacked away the sinews that bound the earth and heaven, but he still could not separate them. At last, Tane, god of trees, placed his shoulders against the earth and his feet against the sky and pressed with all his might. He thrust the sky above him and held him there. Now at last all of the children of Rangi and Papa could stand up and see the light. Since there was room upon the earth, Tane decided to make some people. He went to the spot where Rangi's blood had fallen when Tu chopped on him and picked up some of the clay. Tane was a god, but he had a man's interest, so he made a woman. Soon she had a beautiful daughter whom he named Hine Titama. When Hine Titama grew up she was very beautiful, so Tane also married her and she bore him several children. But she did not know that Tane was her father. One day she asked Tane, "Who is my father?" For a long time Tane did not answer. At last he told her the truth. Hine Titama cried out in horror, "How could you make me commit such a dreadful crime! I can't bear to live with this shame!" So Hine Titama ran sorrowfully to her grandmother Papa in the deep, dark center of the earth. There she was comforted. And since that time all of mankind has followed her on the trail of death.' (Maori- New Zealand legend) Reminds me of some Greek myths.... Number Two: "When the world was created... Wulbari who was God lay so close upon Asase Ya, mother earth, that men could reach up and touch him. But men were not all respectful of Wulbari. They would cook their food over fires and smoke would blow right into Wulbari's eyes. Even worse, they would use Wulbari as a towel. Whenever their hands were dirty, they would reach up and wipe them off on Wulbari. One old woman would cut a piece off of him and put it into her soup every day. At last Wulbari became so annoyed at the way he was treated by men that he moved up higher in the sky." (Maori- New Zealand legend) Ken Dietiker DWARDU CARDONA COMMENTS: These two myths belong to a universal cycle which can best be titled "The Marriage (and/or Separation) of Earth and Sky." This cycle will be covered in my slowly progressing book on the Saturnian events. All I will say at the moment is that these myths refer to the bisecting of the Saturnian band into two halves (or crescents, if you wish), one light, the other dark, as also described by Talbott in his book THE SATURN MYTH. However, there's more to all this than Talbott was able to divulge at the time he wrote that book. The sequence of events, on the other hand, is far too complex to narrate on this forum. Besides, were I to spell it all now, there wouldn't be much that is new in my book (and hardly any surprises). Dwardu. DAVID TALBOTT COMMENTS: While the Maori tales show the typical signs of fragmentation, dilution, and elaboration, the theme is archetypal and traces to the first mythical expressions in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Dwardu is correct that the appearance of a CRESCENT in the sky is a key to understanding the motif. The nature of this crescent is the subject of continuing exploration. While I originally placed the crescent on a torus-like cloud of material around Saturn (the thesis of _The Saturn Myth_), I subsequently concluded that the crescent was on the sphere of Saturn itself. Of this placement I am now quite confident. The celestial imagery involved is presented in the notebook, "Symbols ofan Alien Sky," pp. 159 ff. Key mythical themes converging on this imagery are: Division of the primal Unity into "above" and "below" The raising up of "Heaven" Birth and first activity of a heaven-supporting giant First appearance of a world pillar or world mountain First appearance of a heaven-spanning crescent Coming of the first dawn; the birth of "time" Comparative investigation will show that these themes are inseparably connected, though in fact none of the connections are implied by natural experience today. What the Saturn theory offers is a concrete reference, suggesting an underlying integrity to the different mythical themes. Once these themes are discerned in proper perspective, it will be seen that they all relate to the fundamental role of Saturn as the Father of Time. Dave ---------------------------------------------- THE DOMES ON VENUS by Wal Thornhill "Another puzzle is the "domes" on Venus. They average 25 km in diameter and 750 meters in height. Their near perfect circularity argues against their formation by purely volcanic means. Compare with an example of the normal, uneven lobate structure of a lava flow from a central orifice. A better explanation is that they are the result of a diffuse electrical discharge on a very thin crust. The surface responded to the gravitational tug of the nearby planetary body and the upward electrical forces, resulting in uplift with little or no melting, and retention of electric scars. This idea is supported by the observation that the domes seem to be prevalent on lava plains and are associated with sinuous rilles. The tops of the domes have a cobweb type pattern of discharge channels and often a small central crater which argue for the surface having remained solid during the uplift of the domes. Humboldt, a 200km diameter lunar crater shows a similar pattern of roughly concentric and radial channels. The central craters on the domes are small, which indicates a "burning-spot" form of discharge which occur at higher currents than that causing the diffuse discharge. The transition from one type of discharge to the other is sudden. The fact that secondary electrical cratering occurs preferentially on the rims of earlier crater walls might also explain the overlapping domes, where the centre of one dome often coincides fairly closely with a point on the circumference of another. In other words, it seems possible that some of the many variations of electric arc behaviour at an anode seen in the laboratory may explain these enigmatic objects. Juergens points out that such raised mounds may be planetary equivalents of "fulgamites" which are mounds of metal, melted and raised above the surface of metal caps placed over the ends of lightning rods. The sides of fulgamites are usually ridged with closely spaced concentric grooves and the bases flared like a bell." -- from a paper delivered to a conference in Cambridge, England, 1993, by Wal Thornhill, concerning the youthfulness of Venus: ---------------------------------------------- LICHTENBERG FIGURES Wal Thornhill Re: Lichtenberg figures, the engineer mentioned in the above excerpt, the late great Ralph Juergens, made a very cogent argument for the rayed craters on the Moon being Lichtenberg figures. It is obvious that the rays have nothing to do with impacts since the rays are generally tangent to the central crater, rather than radial. There are two possible ways of explaining the tangential effect, one is Ralph's - the other mine. Ralph conjectured that the Lichtenberg figure is caused by streamers of electrons leaving the Moon's surface and forming small chains of craters in the process and disturbing the surface to give the rayed appearance. The small craters are distinguishable and cannot have been formed by fall-back of debris from an impact since they do not have the characteristic butterfly shaped ejecta. It is radial. The streamers, just as in earthly lightning, setup an ionised path for the return stroke. Ralph's conjecture was that the return stroke does not necessarily strike dead centre where the streamers were densest a short moment before. My idea is based on the observation that circular craters are formed by a rotating arc (which sometimes leaves a central peak untouched). In this model, the electrical stresses will follow the rotating arc and consequently, electrons ripping across the Moon's surface to satisfy the discharge will arrive somewhat tangentially to the crater. Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com 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/ Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée 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 focus is 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 issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above. Go to the free newsletter page and double click on the image of Thoth, the Egyptian God of Knowledge, to access the back issues.