Recovering the Lost World - Appendix B: The Celestial Mechanics

Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology --Jno Cook
Appendix B: The Celestial Mechanics.

[Table of Contents]
$Revision: 21.54 $
Contents of this appendix: [Planetary Stability] [The Asteroid Belt] [The End of Paradise] [Outer Orbits] [Inner Orbits] [Coincident Orbits] [Crossed Orbits] [Plasmasphere Interactions] [Compression Marks] [Venus] [The 52 Year Cycle] [Mars] [Using an Ephemeris] [The 8th and 7th Century] [776 BC, the Ballgame] [747 BC, First Earth Shock] [686 BC, Second Earth Shock] [685 BC, the Nova of Venus] [A Change in the Axis] [Endnotes]
"The main theories of astronomy are as remote
from experience as to be spooky."
-- Alfred de Grazia "The Divine Succession" (1983)
[Text and graphics updated February, 2010.] This appendix presents the celestial mechanics I have used as background to the narrative of this text for the event of 3147 BC and the era after 3147 BC. Note that I will use the year 3147 BC for the end of the "Age of the Gods" throughout this appendix. After looking at the initial conditions, the remainder of this appendix presents likely later orbits of the inner planets, which do not deviate from what would be expected under the influences of gravitational and occasional electrical forces.
One reason for this discussion is to counter interpretations like, "Mars then left its regular position and almost collided with the earth in about 700 BC," as Stephen Jay Gould wrote in "Ever since Darwin" (1977). Planets do not leave orbits.
But orbits change over time in relation to each other, enough to have caused interference in the remote past, without leaving much evidence of orbital disturbances. It is unfortunate that Velikovsky titled his 1950 book "Worlds in Collision," when there were no collisions, and could not be. The electrical interaction between 'colliding' planets happened at distances of hundreds of thousands to millions of miles, with exception of the era of 800 to 650 BC, when Mars (and Mercury) indeed came "close."
Planetary Stability

Robert Bass, a former professor of mathematics, physics and astronomy, in "Can Worlds Collide?" (Pensee, 1974, elaborated in Kronos, 1975, and at SIS Glasgow Symposium, 1978), after reviewing all of the debate on planetary stability since Laplace (1773), wrote of the astronomer E. W. Brown, who...
"...in his retiring speech as President of the American Astronomical Society in 1931, quite explicitly stated that there is no quantitative reason known to celestial mechanics why Mars, Earth and Venus could not have nearly collided in the past."

This was twenty years before Velikovsky took up this topic. Following is the opening premise and the final conclusion of the article above...
"The subtle but fatal flaw in the received opinion regarding the alleged immutability of the planetary distances is the following inadequately recognized fact: whether or not the Solar System is stable in any of the senses defined by Laplace, Lagrange, Poisson, or Littlewood, or is quasi periodic, it need not be 'orbitally stable.'"

"... observations and theory would agree that the solar system is in a quasi-periodic motion stable in the sense of Laplace and orbitally stable. Also, numerical integrations backward in time would show that no near collision had ever occurred. Yet in actual fact this deduction would be false."

Ellenberger

There have been attemps to disprove Bass' conclusions. A more vocal critic among Saturnians has been Leroy Ellenberger, who, in "A lesson from Velikovsky" (Skeptical Inquirer, 1986), points to Bass' "arm-waving" science...
"As it turns out, the impressive technical articles supporting Velikovsky are as lacking in substance as Velikovsky's use of sources that Bob Forrest has convincingly discredited, as in SI [Skeptical Inquirer], Winter 1983-84. Thus, despite all of Velikovsky's references, no credible "historical" evidence for his cataclysms exists. Also, the "wild motions" invoked by Bass in 1974 to explain Velikovsky's orbit shuffling do not apply to planets in our solar system and his arguments that disrupted orbits can settle down quickly are actually groundless."
"The less one knows about science, the more plausible Velikovsky's scenario appears, especially when most of the discussion is hand-waving."

He quotes J.D. Mulholland as...
"Bass does not do celestial mechanics, rather he talks celestial mechanics. I do not believe his conclusions, nor do I believe that they are firmly founded in rigorous mathematics. They are largely hand-waving."
-- [http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/vlesson.html]

Be that as it may be, much of the argument revolves around the stability of the four-planet shishkebab alignment (mentioned in Chapter 1, "Introduction"), and the misunderstanding of "electro-magnetism" as "magnetism." Ellenberger is correct as long as the context is so limited, and Mulholland may be correct about the mathematics. After all, Bass' exploration of a mathematical basis for Bode's Law has come of nought, but that does not impact on the current topic.
De Grazia

Alfred De Grazia better understood the point made by Bass, which has little to do with mathematics or equations. He correctly observed...
"If anything can be added to his account, it may be that Laplace, the mathematical godfather of the stability of the heavens (with Newton as father), had himself expressed original doubts on their stability despite his mathematical proofs."
"It develops that Laplace was more sinned against than sinner, by those who made a uniformitarian religious dogma out of his mathematics of stability. For the same Laplace had written: 'The sky itself, despite the orderliness of its movements, is not inalterable.' Further, the stability of the present order 'is disturbed by various causes that can be ascertained by careful analysis, but which are impossible to frame within a calculation.'"

"Is disturbed by various causes..," is the sort of thing coming out of the past which today we feel we have resolved. After all, Neptune was discovered on the basis of a disturbance in the orbit of Uranus. Yet, we still do not understand the causes for some of the stray motions of the Moon. [note 1]
De Grazia adds a further note...
"Nevertheless, Bass is correct in his account of how Laplace was used in history by scientists who were fighting for uniformitarianism and against the need for any divine intervention in world affairs. He has shown how the successors of Laplace expressed themselves in intuitive language, supposedly the bane of the conventional astronomers. 'Whenever these allegedly authoritative statements about time intervals of validity [of calculations of celestial stability] have been made, they are without exception accompanied by words like 'supposed', 'appeared', 'hope', 'seems', 'might', and 'think', revealing clearly that the writer was relying on his personal intuition rather than quantitative evidence."
-- Alfred De Grazia "Chaos and Creation" (1983)

I think that Bass' analysis hold up. Planets will likely achieve stability sooner than expected, and that the time periods ought to be counted in thousands of years -- not billions -- and that the changes will erase their history in the process. It is admittedly more complicated than just the interaction of gravitational forces in a flat plane. Electrical fields have to be considered, the hiding effects of plasmaspheres, and the effects of the constant (and occasionally extreme) flow of plasma from the Sun and between planets.
The whole process of planetary interactions is dynamic, and not easily analysed. At close range the electrical fields of planets will keep them apart under conditions where gravity draws them together. It is certainly not a matter of planets "crashing into each other." Considering that a typical planet's plasmasphere extends outward by ten to twenty planet diameters, the electrical interactions for Earth, for example, would start 80,000 to 160,000 miles away from the surface. For Jupiter the point of first electrical 'contact' is 800,000 to 1,600,000 miles.
Action at a Distance

The evidence we have of earth shocks and the shifting of the crust in response to a temporary swing of the rotational axis has been assumed (by others) to have been induced by a magnetic couple between two planets -- Earth and Venus, or Earth and Mars. Yet Venus and Mars do not have magnetic fields. It has also been suggested that a tilt in the axis might have been in response to gravitational forces of a passing planet acting on the slight bulge of the Earth at the equator (which representing about one percent of the Earth's mass).
I have no confidence in either of these. What has been neglected is the 'touching' of the magnetospheres of passing planets. Plasma contacts could very possibly be made at extremely long distances, measured in millions of miles. Plasma flow is bidirectional. The tail of the Earth's magnetosphere (plasmasphere) extends at least as far as Mars (40 million miles). As NASA has discovered and plotted, the tail of the plasmasphere extends far away from the parent body without diminishing in size. [note 2]
The above musings have been to the effect that planets would not need to get anywhere close to each other in order to interact dramatically. The possibility of a close call remains, but "crashing into each other" is out. Samuel R. Windsor and Donald W. Patten, in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996), suggest close approaches of Mars, in the 8th century BC, on the order 30,000 miles. If the description by Hesiod in his "Shield of Hercules" is any indication, the disk of Mars during a close approach in the 8th or 7th century was an overwhelming sight. At this distance the damage to the Earth's crust would have been stupendous, not only from a sudden repulsive impulse on the hemisphere of the Earth facing Mars, but also gravitational disturbances and especially because of a traveling electrical arc. Hurricanes of lifted soil and carbonized vegetation would have been swept along with the arcing. The close approach was possible because Mars has no magnetic field or atmosphere so that its plasmasphere is very limited and held close to the surface on the Sun-side and orbital sides of Mars. I will return to the topic of plasmasphere interactions further below.
The Asteroid Belt

The solar system is strewn end to end with rocks and grains of silicate dust. In the 1970's it was estimated that there might be 100,000 asteroids. Today 300,000 have been detected and plotted, and the estimate for additional smaller asteroids ranges into the millions.
The distribution of asteroids is mainly in the region from 2 to 3.5 AU, between the planets Mars at 1.5 AU and Jupiter at 5.2 AU (with more among the inner planets and at 40 to 50 AU). The eccentricity of the orbits and the great variety of orbital inclinations suggest additionally that the asteroids represent a very old history of cataclysmic interactions. The distinct groups of iron meteorites and 3 groups of distinct stony meteorites (distinct by chemical and crystaline makeup) constituted four separate rocky or dead planets which could have inhabited the space between 2 and 3 AU, which were blown apart by Saturn entering the Solar System in the remote past, after an absence of 300 to 700 million years, and more frequently since the Cambrian.
These outer planets would be the first objects encountered by Saturn on entering the inner reaches of the Solar System and the prime target for interplanetary thunderbolts of huge proportions. Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus could absorb such lightning strokes, for they have gas and liquid envelops. A rocky planet would not withstand a bolt -- the rush of electron to the surface would break the bonds of the silicates and blow the planet to smithereens, especially if it was similar in size to Mars or the Moon.
A plot of locations and plots of orbital inclinations and orbital eccentricities of the asteroids belt reveals that the objects are in wildly chaotic orbits, and has obviously been subjected repeatedly to unpredictable gravitational and electrical forces as Saturn passed through the belt (and followed by Jupiter and the Titans after 3147 BC). The dispersion of the asteroids is probably mainly due to gravitational disturbances and due to electrical repulsion. The ubiquitous cratering, however, is due to electrical arcing.
Source of the Asteroid Belt

In the 1960s and 1970s, on the basis that the asteroid belt represents the remnants of the dust which 'coagulated' to form the Sun and planets, it was assumed that some objects (asteroids or comets) would be traveling on hyperbolic trajectories, representing objects which either had recently been subjected to 'collisions' with other objects, or were entering the Solar System from outside of the region beyond any of the planets. On an 'open' hyperbolic trajectory such objects would never return after once entering the inner reaches of the Solar System. If this was how stars and planets were created, then this should still be happening.
But none have ever been found. All trajectories are closed elliptical orbits. This suggests both that the asteroids are local residents (they do not enter from interstellar space) and that the original interactions, which led to their wildly elliptical and greatly inclined orbits, were local (happening within the region of the planets) and had culminated a long time ago, rather than continuing to today. This in effect means that the asteroids are not remnants of 'planet formation' dust.
I would suggest an alternate theory of planetary breakup and dispersal of the material over time. An estimate of the depletion of the asteroid belt could be made on the basis of the repeated passages of Saturn through the belts. If on a first breakup of a planet only 15 percent remains on closed orbits, and then, with each of 40 passage of Saturn (20 in each direction) through the broken rocks perhaps another 10 percent was lost -- in effect ejected from the Solar System -- then what would remain would be only 0.2 percent of the original mass.
0.15*0.9^40 = .002

Today it is estimated that all the asteroids together make up a mass of a sphere less than half the diameter of the Moon, and thus 1/8th its mass. The mass of the moon is..
7.35 x 10 exp 22 kg.

One eighth of this is about..
1 x 10 exp 22 kg

If today the remnants add up to only 1 x 10 exp 22 kg, then the original planets would have amounted to a half dozen moon-sized to earth-sized bodies -- totalling 500 x 10 exp 22 kg. The Earth has a mass of 600 x 10 exp 22 kg. The Moon is 7.3 x 10 exp 22 kg. [note 3]
Gaps in the Asteroid Belt

What is left today is an array of objects widely dispersed, mostly located in a region spanning some 200 million to 350 million miles from the Sun, but all on stable orbits. One element of this stability is the existence of some ten distinct gaps where no (or fewer) asteroids are found. All these gaps are at locations where the orbital period is a fraction of Jupiter's period today, 2:1, 3:1, etc up to 5:1 (and a few odd ones).
It is assumed that the gaps were created as asteroids at the gap locations passed Jupiter (objects closer to the Sun travel faster than objects further away) and were subjected repeatedly by the gravitational tug of Jupiter with each passage past the location of Jupiter, even though this amounts to only a fraction of a percent of the gravitational effect of the Sun.

Image: "Histogram of the semi-major axis of asteroid objects; gaps in the belt are marked." (Data: ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.html. Plotted at case.edu/sjr16/; additional graphics added.)

This would certainly be true if Jupiter had been at its present location for billions of years. But this would not be true, or would represent only an incomplete process, if, as I have maintained, Jupiter had only arrived at its present location since 2200 BC. Yet many of the gaps, especially those far from Jupiter's current location are well established, although admittedly many gaps represent only approximations to the current orbital period of Jupiter (some of which is due to the difficulty in making observations). [note 4]
If Jupiter had been at its present location for over 4 billion years, then the gaps in the asteroid belt, even though resulting from gravitational tugging amounting to a fraction of a percent of what an asteroid experiences from the Sun, would have to be more clearly defined than they are. Over the course of 4 billion years the belt would have segregated into very clearly defined rings and the gaps closest to Jupiter would have been the most clearly defined. Astronomers have wondered why the asteroid belts is not uniformly segregated into rings.
In fact, we might probably expect that all of the material would have dispersed by now. Four billion years is a very long time. Asteroids at the 2:1 resonance location would have passed Jupiter 4 billion times; asteroids at the 5:1 resonance location would have passed Jupiter 20 billion times.
If Jupiter actually had spent all of its time, since the earliest creation of the asteroids, at a much closer distance to the Sun, rather than 5.2 AU, could the same gaps be accounted for? In fact, if Jupiter were located at 0.7 AU the same gaps would result from the resonance with the period of an inner location, 1:4, 1:5, etc, up to 1:10 (and a few odd ones).

Resonance of Asteroid belt gaps for current and previous location of Jupiter approximate Jupiter at 5.19 AU Jupiter at 0.7 AU asteroid ------------------ ------------------- gap [AU] value resonance value resonance 1.78 1:0.201 5:1 1:4.05 1:4 1.91 1:0.223 9:2 1:4.51 2:9 2.06 1:0.250 4:1 1:5.05 1:5 2.26 1:0.287 7:2 1:5.80 1:6 2.50 1:0.334 3:1 1:6.75 1:7 2.70 1:0.375 8:3 1:7.56 3:4 2.82 1:0.401 5:2 1:8.09 1:8 2.96 1:0.431 7:3 1:8.70 ? 3.03 1:0.446 9:4 1:9.01 1:9 3.28 1:0.502 2:1 1:10.14 1:10

This is not entirely a coincidence, since any inner orbit for Jupiter would establish resonances throughout the asteroid belt. I checked for resonances at other distances, but 0.7 AU looks most likely. [note 5]
From my perspective, this resolves the question of how close Jupiter was to the Sun before 3147 BC. I had earlier suggested, "at one or two AU." Now Jupiter can be placed at 0.7 AU, probably on a fairly circular orbit. Saturn and its planets would have to be on an elliptical orbit which extended past 0.7 AU. That is the only way that Jupiter and Saturn could have 'collided' (in 3147 BC) and for Jupiter to have been seen in the day skies directly after the collision, as recorded in flood tales worldwide.
I would assume that Saturn's orbit might have reached 0.9 AU at aphelion. If this eccentric orbit amounted to a period of 225 days (as suggested in Appendix A, "Chronology") then the average orbit of Saturn would have to be 0.72 AU, with a perihelion at 0.54 AU. This would certainly not fry the Earth to a crisp, and keep the northern hemisphere at a reasonable climate (although warm) if winter occurred at perihelion, as it does today.
The End of Paradise

In 3147 BC, Saturn, and the planets traveling with Saturn, while on their eliptical orbit, crossed over the orbit of Jupiter. The result would have caused Jupiter initially to be attracted to the Saturnian planets (and the reverse) before the plasmaspheres made contact.
A separation of 1.3 million miles can be calculated as equal to the distance where the gravitational attraction between Jupiter and Saturn would practically equal the gravitational effect of the Sun. The resultant vector might have brought Jupiter to a standstill. At this separation the plasmaspheres would certainly touch. [note 7]
If now we have a reasonable estimate for the location of the orbit of Jupiter before 3147 BC, and an estimate of how close Saturn might have come to Jupiter at the 'point of collision,' then reasonable estimates of the vertical separation distances between the planets traveling with Saturn can also be generated. None of these local gravitational and electrical repulsive forces would have changed the orbits or the orbital inclinations (to the equator of the Sun), or, for that matter, the axial inclination of the individual planets. I'll discuss separation distance further below.
The electrical forces between the planets, when their plasmaspheres intersected, shoved all the planets from their orbits and brought the large planets nearly to a standstill. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all eventually relocated into the far reaches of space. Suggesting that Jupiter was gravitationally attracted to Saturn and its planets before the electrical interaction started would explain the somewhat inexplicable fact that Jupiter also was removed far away from the Sun. Jupiter might have come to a standstill, it might have reversed its direction of travel. Jupiter relocated to a position seven times farther out from the Sun.
This type of 'collision' would have had a very low probability of ever happening, for although Jupiter and Saturn were on nearly the same average orbit, they had likely fallen into a synchronous orbital relationship which would vary only slowly. It is obvious also (from later analysis, below) that the orbital inclination of the two planets differed enough to prevent an electrical interaction. Jupiter and Saturn today are on orbits separated by 5.67 - 4.51 = 1.16 degrees in inclination. That amounts to a maximum of 0.7 * AU / tan(1.16/rad) = 34,699,710 miles at 0.7 AU.
But at some point in time there was going to be a close call, where the distance between Jupiter and Saturn would become critical. That happened in 3147 BC. [note 6]
Image: 3147 BC, initial gravitational interaction between Jupiter and the Saturnian planets.

Before electrical contact was made by the merging plasmaspheres, gravitational forces would have removed Jupiter from its orbit, as well as the Saturnian planets. All together the Saturnian planets represented a mass considerably less than half the mass of Jupiter. Jupiter, approaching on an inner orbit, would have been removed from its circular orbit to a larger orbit (or, as shown in the sample above, changed direction or slowed down). The Saturnian planets would have increased the speed of their forward motion.
That Jupiter had already left its orbit before the electrical contact was made could be guessed from the fact the the "Bull of Heaven" was identified before the home of the Gods was wrecked. Jupiter would assume the "Bull" form as soon as it left its normal orbit and formed the lower plasma mountain in response to the change in the electrical field of the Sun. The horns of the Bull, seen on top of its approaching mountain-sized body (during the day), is the globe of Jupiter backlighted by the Sun. This perspective could only happen if the Earth were located some millions of miles below the orbit of both Saturn and Jupiter.
A critical distance, where the planets would suddenly be subjected to massive electrical repulsive forces, would be defined by the size of their plasmaspheres, extending 20 or 40 planet diameters beyond the surface of each planet. Jupiter's plasmasphere (magnetosphere) today actually extends (from the planet) some 40 or 45 planet diameters -- it is 3.5 to 4.0 million miles wide.
Image: 3147 BC, initial electrical interaction between Jupiter and the Saturnian planets after possible movement induced by gravitational forces.

The tail Jupiter would have extended much further -- perhaps to 100 million miles. I would therefore suggest that Jupiter was located east of Saturn during this interaction (and as depicted in the above diagram), for otherwise the tail or lower portion of Jupiter's plasmasphere would have interacted with Earth somewhat later.
I would estimate that the intersection of the plasmaspheres happened at a distance of maybe 2 to 4 million miles to have had the massive effect which I have postulated, and which we have on record. The plasmaspheres would connect suddenly, forming a single encompassing coma -- like soap bubbles merging -- subjecting both planets with the shock of a repulsive electrical force which would counter and far exceed any gravitational attraction and be followed by a sudden explosive flow of electricity to pass between them.
The electrical force would represent and impulse, starting suddenly at a maximum value and decreasing quickly as opposing charges were induced at the facing surfaces of the planets and as the planets distanced from each other. As the planets retreated from each other, the electrical interactions (arcing) would as suddenly cease as the single containing plasmasphere collapsed to individual plasmaspheres enclosing (and electrically isolating) the individual planets.
Did this actually happen? The "Chilam Balam" records the battle in brief form..
"Then Oxlahun-ti-ku [Saturn] was seized by Bolon-ti-ku [Jupiter]."
"Then Oxlahun-ti-ku [Saturn] was seized, his head was wounded, his face was buffeted, he was spit upon, and he was (thrown) on his back as well."
-- Ralph L Roys, tr, "The Book Of Chilam Balam Of Chumayel" (1933)

Egyptian legends have it that "his majesty, Osiris, died when he fell on his side at the river bank." The 'river bank' is the ecliptic, and Osiris is here likely to be Saturn. After Earth escaped it would have immediately changed its orbit to have the Sun as one of the centers. It would have moved onto the ecliptic as it is understood today. From that vantage point Saturn would have been seen edge-on within a month, looking as if he had fallen, -- no longer surrounded by its rings, but with the rings now intersecting the planet.
What cannot be explained is how, after 3147 BC, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Titans all fell into nearly perfectly rounded orbits, rather than defaulting to orbits which were wildly elliptical. An elliptical orbit is the expected orbit for a disturbed object, as the asteroids attest to -- at least, that is the thinking of what would result under a theory of celestial mechanics based solely on gravitational interactions. We must also explain how the small planets Earth, Mars, and Venus managed to escape the fate of the Titans.
All four of the large planets relocated to a distance from the Sun proportional to their mass, with one exception. Nearly the same repulsive electrical force was experienced by all the planets, and thus the deceleration of the orbital speed was proportional to the inverse of their mass. The exception is Uranus, which should have been relocated to an orbit beyond Neptune, but was not. Uranus' orbit was relocated to an orbit nearer to the Sun than the orbit of Neptune. What would explain this is the suggestion that the Saturnian planets were not leaning into (toward) the location of Jupiter. That would make Uranus the most distant from Jupiter, when all three planets received their initial repulsive shocks, in addition to being located off-center to the axis of Neptune and Saturn. Uranus would have received a lesser shock.
Considering the enormous charge carried by the giant planets, it will become obvious that reforming of the enclosing plasmasphere for the giant planets would lock out the smaller planets, so that the smaller planets, enclosed in their own newly configured plasmaspheres, never experienced the electrical field of Jupiter or Saturn and the Titans. Otherwise Earth would have been tossed into the far reaches of the Solar System.
The tiny planet Earth, the furthest from the Saturnian group, remained on an inner orbit. Venus was torn away (escaped) somehow from Saturn. Venus may have been excluded simply because Venus was on an orbit far above and outside of the rings of Saturn, and presumeably not located between Jupiter and Neptune at the moment the plasmaspheres touched. From 'flood reports' worldwide, Venus seems to have rounded the globe of Jupiter (as seen from Earth), now located on the night side of Earth, before heading into an orbit around the Sun with a period nearly identical to the orbit of Earth (as would be expected). Mars and Mercury seem to have remained with Saturn and were not released until some years later, probably when Saturn entered the asteroid belt and reconfigured its plasmasphere.
Outer Planet Orbits

The current inclinations of the orbits of Jupiter and the other outer planets should reflect their interaction in 3147 BC, that is, that their current orbital inclinations would have retained the history of their starting point of the 'collision' of 3147 BC at 0.7 AU from the Sun.
There would be no reason for the inclination of the orbits to change, although it remains to be suggested that the orbits would 'flatten' over time, under the gravitational influence of the other planets. But the angle of the eventual orbit would mainly have been determined by the angle each of the larger planets made with the equatorial of the Sun at the location where they were all coincident in 3147 BC. We should be able to get a glimpse of the vertical distances between the larger (outer) planets in 3147 BC.
Although I have some confidence in determining the location of the outer planets, I have somewhat less confidence that we could extract relevant information about the inner planets, for they may have been released from the grip of Saturn at different times and would thus have have established their new orbits (with the Sun at one of the centers of the ellipses of the new orbits) from a different location than 0.7 AU.
The chart below shows the vertical distances between the planets in 3147 BC. The vertical separation between planets assumes all were located at 0.7 AU from the Sun. The inner planets are not shown, but will be considered separately, below. [note 8]

object inclination inclination vertical separation of orbit to of orbit to of adjacent planets ecliptic Sun's equator [million miles] [degrees] [degrees] as shown Uranus 0.77 6.23 1.95 (above Saturn) Jupiter 1.31 5.67 1.34 (above Saturn) Neptune 1.77 5.23 0.82 (above Saturn) Saturn 2.49 4.51 ---

Predictably, Uranus is at a considerable distance above Saturn, nearly two million miles. Saturn in turn is below the 'level' of Jupiter, by over a million miles. Thus Earth would have been even lower and Jupiter would initially have been seen from earth from a low angle. As described in the various flood legends, the crescent of the Sun's light would have been seen on the lower portion of Jupiter, seen as a 'ship' moored to a 'mountain' of plasma discharging from the south pole of Jupiter.

Neptune, which definitely is a Saturnian planet, can be fit into this configuration. We do not know anything of this planet from mythology (except for references in the Quiche "Popol Vuh"). The name for the planet was selected in AD 1846 to match classical mythology as being one of the Titans banished by Zeus (Jupiter), as related by Hesiod. (Uranus was similarly named, but the planet certainly is not the Uranus, "Father Sky," who was the father of Kronos, Saturn.)
Although it might turn out that Neptune could be associated with one of the Gods or Goddesses of antiquity, it is unlikely that Neptune was ever seen, since it would have been directly above Saturn and certainly was close enough, 0.8 million miles. Saturn is twice the diameter of Neptune. Saturn and its rings would have easily obscured Neptune.
The reason for considering the possibility that Neptune had hovered above Saturn before 3147 BC is that Neptune is today found in the extreme reaches of space, in fact, to 32 AU. Additionally, both in the earlier Gravettian period of the Upper Paleolithic (28,000 to 24,000 ya) and again after about 5600 BC, the figurines display distinct breasts above the large belly and butt. With Uranus forming the head, and Saturn the belly or body, the location of an additional planet directly above Saturn would be required to form the breasts, probably as an outline of its equatorial toroidial plasma belt. Neptune is larger than Uranus.
The most convincing evidence comes from the Magdalenian period of the Upper Paleolithic, 17,000 to 14,000 years ago, when the Venus Figurines, from a period 10,000 years earlier, become strangely elongated and hardly realistic looking. Elsewhere I have postulated that at about this time Earth had risen in its orbital latitude, so that the figure of the Saturnian planets was no longer foreshortened into the typically squat Venus Figurines of the Aurignacian and Gravettian periods of 30,000 to 24,000 year ago. Rather than dismiss the sculptors of this era as incompetent, as many archaeologist do, I suggest that we are being presented with a realistic depiction from a point of view where the orbit of Earth is at nearly the same level as the Saturnian planets. Without too much effort the sculptures reveal four or five separate globes connected in plasma contact. The sculptures are being forced to appear as an image of a woman, because that had been the long-standing tradition.
Outer Planet Spin Rates

I have assumed (earlier) that the electrical and gravitational interaction in 3147 BC slowed the travel of each of the large planets to a value which would correspond to the new (slower) orbital speed of each of these planets at their eventual location far from the Sun.
Of course we have to ask, if both Jupiter and Saturn slowed to a forward speed which they would have at their remote locations, what happened to the kinetic energy and rotational momentum?
The repulsive electrical interaction, which brought the planets to a near standstill, was short lived. Likewise the electric discharges which were involved in the near collision must have been enormous, but simply cannot account for the energy exchanges which were involved. Plasma exchanges are always constrained by time and are self-limiting.
What then happened in the collision of 3147 BC that resulted in the relocation of four planets to much larger orbits? The simplest answer might be to suggest that the orbital momentum which was lost by each of the planet was translated to rotational (spin) momentum. In fact, both Jupiter and Saturn spin at inordinately high rates for their size (9 and 10 hours), and, interestingly, their spin rates are nearly identical.
What I have suggested earlier is that Saturn revolved at about 24 hours before 3147 BC, so that from Earth, below its south pole, Saturn would have stood still. This suggestion could be extended to the other outer planets also, that is, that each of them in relocating to a larger orbit (which reduced orbital momentum) increased their spin rate (which increased the spin momentum).
On strictly mechanical terms, the conservation of rotational momentum will not allow this unless the planet somehow gained mass, increased in size, or a force was applied. That force may have been electrical, or simply the exchange of kinetic energy (KE). [note 9]
I suspect, therefore, that, before the collision, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus, rotated about their individual axes at a lower rate than they do today. The suggestion supports my earlier speculation that before the collision of 3147 BC, Saturn most likely rotated at 24 hours. Seen from Earth, located below Saturn before 3147 BC, Saturn would have stood still visually -- it would not have been seen as rotating.
New Inner Planet Orbits

The inner planets did not relocate to the far reaches of space, but, released from their gravitational grip of Saturn, immediately started on new orbits with the Sun as the center (one of the centers) of their new orbits. The orbital inclinations shown in the chart below are calculated as before. From this it appears that Mercury and Venus started from a location above Saturn. Mars and Earth, however, start from below Saturn, as per my original assumptions. Earth started from a location furthest below at 2.8 million miles distance from Saturn, also as expected. Mars started from a location 730 thousand miles below Saturn. However, see the caveat, below.
What the chart also shows is that Venus would have had a location well above Saturn, and in fact close to the inclination of Jupiter (as also confirmed by 'mythology'). The data for Mercury is strange. It looks to be very far above Saturn, although I have suggested that Mercury was located directly below Saturn.

object inclination inclination vertical separation of orbit to of orbit to from Saturn the ecliptic Sun's equator [million miles] [degrees] [degrees] Mercury 7.0 0.00 -5.13 (above?) Venus 3.4 3.60 -1.03 (above) Saturn 2.49 4.51 --- Mars 1.85 5.15 0.73 (below) ** Earth 0.0 7.00 2.83 (below) ** may be 2.0 or more, see text

The terms "above" and "below," in the chart above, were selected on the basis of today's angular separation. The location of Mercury is totally uncertain (it is likely to have been below Saturn). Mercury was bolted by Earth in 686 BC, however, and changed its orbit radically. That might account for the discrepant data for Mercury. Details are shown further below.
The seven degree angle that the Earth's orbit has (today) to the Sun's equator, the largest of any planet, speaks to the fact that Earth was furthest removed from the vertical location of the other planets.
The distance of 2,830,000 miles, shown in the chart above, between Earth and Saturn differs significantly from my earlier estimate which had placed Earth a half million miles below Saturn (400,000 miles), so that the disk of Saturn would subtend ten degrees. It should be expected, as I have also mentioned earlier, that Earth would have slowly distanced itself from Saturn as the coulomb charge of Earth increased. Additionally, the earlier estimate was based on the slimmest of data.

For Earth, perhaps a distance of 2.8 million miles below Saturn is not unexpected. The White Crown of Upper Egypt seems to depict this situation. The bulb at the top of the bowling-pin shape, which would be Saturn, has been reduced to a size smaller than Mars.
At a distance of 2.8 million miles, Saturn would look three times as large as the Moon does today. Mars, if located nearly a quarter of a million miles below Saturn, would just become a speck. Mars obviously was much further from Saturn. We cannot tell from the depiction of the Red and White Crowns, however, because these images probably depict Mars at its closest approach to Earth in the period before 3147 BC. [note 10]
The location of Earth with respect to Jupiter can also be verified from the description of Noah's Ark. The crescent seen on the bottom of Jupiter looked like a boat or ship, probably equal to the first quarter of the Moon (but at the bottom of the sphere). For this the Earth would have to be a considerable distance both below (vertically) and behind (away from the Sun) at perhaps 45 degrees. Thus Earth might have very well have been located some 3 million miles beyond and below Jupiter.

And certainly the distance between Saturn and Mars, listed in the chart above, is not correct. If Mars and Mercury, were carried off by Saturn from the 'collision' location of 3147 BC, then the vertical separation should be calculated for a distance from the Sun greater than 0.7 AU. If we assume that these two planets were not released until the edge of the Asteroid Belt was reached, then a distance to the Sun of maybe 2.0 AU would be more appropriate. That would place Mars about 2 million miles below Saturn at the time of the delayed release. Mercury would have had a similar early orbit, moving from the asteroid belt to the Sun and, like Mars, crossing Earth's orbit in the process. [note 11]
Coincident Orbits

As Saturn approached Jupiter, with Venus in orbit above Saturn and Mercury, Mars, and Earth some distance below, the small planets might have experienced the additional gravitational attraction of Jupiter as well as an electrical repulsion (when the plasmaspheres touched). The resulting interactions would have been unpredictable, and any number of things might have happened. But in fact it seems that the electrical field of Jupiter was never experienced. It might, at any rate, have completely destroyed the Earth's crust. But the gravitational attraction of the Sun prevailed for both Earth and Venus; both almost at once assumed new orbits around the Sun. Mars and Mercury followed later.
This suggests that Saturn's plasmasphere almost instantaneously reshaped to account for the contact with Jupiter's plasmasphere, leaving the distant planets Venus and Earth free from the electrical fields and the electrical interactions, and thus subject only to gravitational forces. Mars and Mercury, closer to Saturn, seem to have remained within Saturn's plasmasphere, to be released at a later date, possibly when Saturn entered the asteroid belt (at which time its plasmasphere would have contracted). Isis hides the newborn Horus among the bulrushes of the swamp. The swamp is the Absu. [note 12]
Uranus moved to a larger orbit immediately, initially moving to behind Jupiter. On the second orbit of Earth around the Sun after the flood, the raven is seen behind Jupiter, seeming to move closer to Jupiter's 'mountain' as the Earth approached the location of the planet (in the night sky), and then seen moving away again as Earth passed Jupiter. "And he [Noah] sent forth a raven, which went to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth." The raven is also mentioned in the Sumerian flood story. [note 13]
Having shot past the point of the collision, the Earth, and later Mars, moved from their previous orbits below the Sun's equator, making the Sun again one of the centers of their elliptical orbits, in effect changing the inclination of their orbits to the Sun's equatorial. Venus, already near Saturn's old path (which had the Sun at one focus) would settle on an orbit nearly duplicating the prior orbit of Saturn (except as noted above), and thus end up with a perihelion close to the Sun, probably as close as Saturn had come in the previous era.
Earth and Venus would have had their aphelion at the location of the collision between Saturn and Jupiter -- 0.71 or 0.72 AU -- with Venus, because it started above and away from Saturn, having its furthest location from the Sun at a somewhat greater distance than Earth. This would result in having the orbit of Venus extend beyond the orbit of Earth in the future.
Mars and Mercury ended up with orbits of the greatest aphelion, perhaps two AU or more, since apparently they was released later, when Saturn had moved into the asteroid belt, and probably within a short time of each other. Thus Mars assumed the largest orbit, and, apparently overran the orbit of Earth, periodically coming very close to Earth in the process. Mercury also crossed over Earth's orbit, and got as close to Earth. We have what seems like records of the sightings of these two planets near Earth in the Palermo Stone, and in the lists of pharaohs of two dynasties in Egypt, and the list of Kings at Kish in Mesopotamia, but nothing much of a record of destructive interactions. This is certainly also true for the period 2200 years in the future, the 8th and 7th century BC.
What is being described here is based entirely on later interactions of the inner planets, observations which have come down to us from remote antiquity, plus the facts we currently have at hand, which include the present conditions of the Solar System.
"He also sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from the face of the ground." Venus nearly followed the old orbit of Saturn around the Sun, but from a location somewhat above Saturn in 3147 BC. The orbit of Venus is today inclined about 3.61 degrees to the equatorial of the Sun, the second least inclination (after Mercury at zero degrees). Saturn's orbit is inclined at 4.51 degrees to the Sun's equator, the third least in orbital inclination.
The mythology of Greece holds that Venus was 'born' from the 'skull' of Zeus (Jupiter). This was seen on the first circuit of the Earth on its new orbit around the Sun. To the Greeks the first sight of Venus was as it first appeared from behind the globe (the skull) of Jupiter -- rather than from behind the mountainous outpouring of plasma at its south pole which was understood as his body or garment. [note 14]
The dove returned to the ark on the mountain, as seen from Earth. After the second circuit around the Sun the dove returned with a green branch -- Venus had developed a green cometary tail of ionized hydrogen gas. On the third orbit the dove flew out again but did not return. Earth and Venus had relocated on their orbits to where Venus could no longer be seen as an outer planet.
Mesopotamian 'flood' mythology mentions that a swallow was also released to test the waters. This is most likely Mercury, which will eventually be identified as Thoth by the Egyptians (although Mercury was not available at this time). Mercury has only a weak magnetic field and thus its plasma tail likely assumed the shape seen in many comets, a split tail -- like a swallow.
Earth would start to orbit the Sun with an inclination of seven degrees to the equator of the Sun. This was determined by how far below the other planets Earth was located in 3147 BC. The separation between Earth and the other planets can be determined from the current orbital inclination to the equator of the Sun. Once a planet starts to circle the Sun there is little urgency or reason to change its inclination, except through the minute periodic gravitational attraction of other planets.
Crossed Orbits

Following below are some estimates of the orbit of Venus and Earth in terms of their perhelion and aphelion. This is of interest if it is held that planets 'collide' when thier orbits cross. The orbits of Earth and Venus were probably nearly the same at first, as would be expected, and likely crossed, but none of all the possible crossings ever resulted in physical interference with each other.
Using Kepler's Third Law, the average orbits can be found from (T{Venus} / T{Earth})^2 = (r{Venus} / r{Earth})^3, which is easiest accomplished by setting the radius of Earth's orbit to 1, that is, 1 AU.

----------- Venus interval for the various periods -------------- time period Venus period Venus orbit Earth period Earth orbit after 3147 BC unknown unknown 240 days 0.75 AU * after 2349 BC 231.1 days 0.737 AU 260 0.79 * after 2193 BC 229 0.733 273 0.83 after 1492 BC 225 0.724 360 0.99 after 747 BC 224.7 0.723 365.24 1.00 * data from calendar analysis, Appendix A

In 2349 BC Venus and Earth might have approached no closer than 12 million miles, and probably on the order of 17.5 million miles. This was the estimate derived earlier (in an endnote to Chapter 9, "The Career of Jupiter") based on the time of travel of a plasmoid from Venus to Earth and the timing of eyewitness accounts around the world.
We can be fairly certain of the separation distance of about 12 or 17.5 million miles, for if Venus had approached Earth as close as (perhaps) a million miles, then, as many others have suggested, Earth would have been obliterated by the gravitational forces, and our Moon would have been lost.
If in 2349 BC, Venus struck from a distance of 12 million miles, then we would expect the 'contact' of 1492 BC to mostly repeat at the same separation distance. The orbits of Venus and Earth changed, but not all that much, and it would be reasonable to suggest that the planets would again meet under nearly the same conditions. In 1492 BC, if Earth and Venus were on circular orbits (which they were not), then they would have approached no closer than 9 million miles.
(0.83 - 0.733) * AU = 9,021,000 miles.

Yet, as we know, catastrophic interactions took place in 2349 BC and 1492 BC despite these immense distances. It would have to be suggested that the initial orbits of all the inner planets were eccentric, moving on part of their orbit much further from the Sun than estimates of the average radius of the orbits would suggest. We know virtually nothing about the eccentricity of the orbits of Mars and Mercury. We do know some things about the orbits of Venus and Earth, although the information is late -- dating from the 7th century BC.
An investigation by Lynn Rose and Raymond Vaughan in 1994, of the 7th century BC "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga," found in the library of Assurbanipal (reported at the Kronia Conference, Portland, 1994), determined that the eccentricity of the orbits of Venus and Earth were still at 0.15 and 0.10 respectively before 670 BC, but Earth's orbit became nearly circular (0.01) in 670 BC. The eccentricity of Venus changed to today's value of 0.006 at an unknown later date.
I have suggested elsewhere that the period of Venus probably did not change significantly in remote antiquity. Using the eccentricity of 0.15 found by Rose and Vaughan, the perihelion and aphelion of Venus can be determined from the average orbital radius, the semimajor axis.
The eccentricity multiplied by the semimajor axis (the average radius of an orbit) will yield the amount by which the perihelion or the aphelion of the orbit (the closest and furthest distance from the Sun) differs from the 'average radius' of the orbit. The perihelion of Venus, for example, in 685 BC, will be found to be..
(1 - 0.15) * 0.723 AU = 0.614 AU

The aphelion would be..
(1 + 0.15) * 0.723 AU = 0.831 AU

Assuming that the eccentricities found by Rose and Vaughan are indicative of earlier conditions, we could calculate the perihelion and aphelion of both Venus and Earth for various time periods and compare these to see if the orbits potentially crossed.

Perihelion and Aphelion of Venus before 685 BC, 0.15 eccentricity time period semimajor axis perihelion aphelion after 2349 BC 0.737 AU 0.626 AU 0.847 AU after 2193 BC 0.733 0.623 0.843 after 1492 BC 0.724 0.615 0.832 after 747 BC 0.723 0.614 0.831

Similarly the perihelion and aphelion of Earth can be found for various estimated orbits in antiquity as follows.

Perihelion and Aphelion of Earth in antiquity, 0.10 eccentricity time period semimajor axis perihelion aphelion after 3147 BC 0.75 AU 0.675 AU * 0.825 AU after 2349 BC 0.79 0.711 * 0.869 after 2193 BC 0.83 0.747 * 0.913 after 1492 BC 0.99 0.891 1.089 after 747 BC 1.00 0.990 1.010 * -- Earth perihelion falls within Venus aphelion

These numbers define orbits which potentially cross, since until 1492 BC the perihelion for Earth was less than the aphelion for Venus. What is certainly shown from the above table, is the possibility that the two planets were on a genuine 'collision paths' until 1492 BC. Since Earth was three times displaced to a larger orbit by Venus, then Venus would have to be inside the orbit of Earth at the moment an electrical contact was made. Coming close to each other would be insufficient reason for interaction. To interact electrically the plasmaspheres of the planets have to touch. This only happens if two planets are in line with the Sun while 'passing' each other, because the tails of the plasmaspheres of planets all point away from the Sun. [note 15]
Plasmasphere Interactions

A plasmasphere tail has to "strike" the plasmasphere of another planet to make electrical contact. With the planets all orbiting at different periods and at different inclinations to the ecliptic, this would be an infrequent event. The interior of the splasmasphere tail is the media for electrical forces, but the edges (the double layer) of the tubular tail are more likely to be the conduit in a contact involving an arc.
The passage of Mars at the distance of the Moon would gravitationally raise no more than lunar tides, but would certainly allow plasma interchanges. Lightning from space would strike the Earth. Venus at a distance of 2,000,000 miles (and looking as large as the Moon), would raise tides as high. The chances of an arc traveling that distance are certain. But I do not think, as I have pointed out in previous text, that Venus came any closer than 17.5 million miles in 2349 BC or 9 million miles in 1492 BC. These distances probably saves Earth from complete devastation, for it is not the electrical arcs which are destructive, but the initial repulsive electrical forces, which, as we know, managed to propel Earth millions of miles further away from the Sun (15 million miles in 1492 BC).

Image: Planet plasmaspheres. Electrical forces are not experienced outside of boundaries; gravitational forces are experienced under all conditions.

At any rate, although gravitational effects increase and decrease with the distance between planets, the electrical forces are sudden, presenting their full force at the moment the enclosing plasmaspheres of two planets touch and merge -- in effect presenting a sudden shock to the Earth. It is these sudden forces which were recorded as the Earth shocks of antiquity. More on this below.

Image: Planet plasmaspheres. Electrical forces are experienced as soon as the boundaries are breached.

Electrical forces are experienced as soon as the boundaries of the two plasmaspheres are breached, and there is a line of sight between the two planets. Since all planets present themselves as electrically negative, the initial force would be one of repulsion. The start of the interaction would be followed by a rapid linear decline -- as one of the planets induced an opposite charge in the facing surface of the other. With the added induced charge the voltage difference between the two planets would increase rapidly, and it is this which will cause electrical arcs to travel from one to the other.
The interactions will all end as quickly as the individual plasmaspheres of the two planets reformed. Thus any interaction would eventually stop because both planets continue in their travel around the Sun, although perhaps on changed orbits, and would pass each other -- the inner planet traveling faster.
The Earth's axis would twist if the initial jolt were delivered off-center to the axis of the Earth (above or below the equator). The wrenching of a planetary axis would exhibit a sudden unset in response to the shock, and then start to swing in a circle as an induced gyroscopic reaction sets in as a response. (This is explained further below.) The twisting motion would decline as the applied force decreased and it stopped. The momentum of both the initial applied torque, even after it ceased, and the momentum of the reaction torque, would continue to twist the polar axis in the direction of a correction, with a declining effect.
The axis would be twisted, but the inclination of the axis would return to where it started from, for the reaction torque would decrease and cease as the axis again approached its initial location (where it initially pointed to in the dome of the stars). The order of the seasons might change, but only temporarily. The energy of the impact would be dissipated in heat, and in the relocation of the planet to a new orbital location.
Additionally the difference in the electrical potential between the planets would cause attempts at charge equalization -- an electrical arc (lightning) would strike from one planet to the other. The lightning strikes, however, would be a secondary action compared to the initial repulsive forces due to the electrical fields. The lightning would take time to travel, for it is a physical transfer of charged particles, and when traveling millions of miles it might be seen approaching Earth.
One would wonder why interactions between the inner planets were not more frequent. It depends on a number of factors which are listed below. I'll use this listing also to suggest the limited mechanics of interactions, and explain the reaction torques.

Although the plasmaspheres of planets extend millions of miles away from the Sun (30,000,000 miles for Venus today, 40,000,000 miles for Earth), the plasmaspheres are in effect blind. They do not 'see' the plasmaspheres of other planets they may be passing or nearing.
Plasmasphere tails extends away from the Sun, in the direction of the decreasing electrical field, and in the past were seen in glow mode (as comet tails are still seen). Today the plasmaspheres of all the planets are in dark mode. But only if two planets are directly in line with the Sun could the plasmasphere of an inner planet reach the plasmasphere of an outer planet.

Venus, because it has an atmosphere, would have had a large and bright coma, but because it lacks a magnetic fields the tail splayed out like the tail of a comet.
Mars, without an atmosphere, had a very closely held coma, perhaps composed only of dust, with a tail composed of ions and electrons borrowed from the Solar Wind. The records of Mesoamerica, that four times Mars was seen approaching Earth as a "mighty demon bat" (after 747 BC), suggests that perhaps the dust-envelop extended into space away from the planet.
The plasmaspheres of planets on adjacent orbits will not make contact very frequently. Today the Earth and Venus line up exactly with the disk of the Sun only four times every 243 years (technically known as a 'transit' event). These four transits are grouped in two pairs (with each pair separated by 8 years), at 129.5 and 113.5 year intervals.
The reason for this should be obvious: since all the planetary orbits are tilted at diverse angles to the equatorial of the Sun (the orbital inclination) and planets travel at different speeds, the likelyhood of an alignment of two planets and the Sun is low.
In antiquity, the period at which Earth and Venus lined up with the Sun seems to have been 52 solar years from 2349 BC through 2193 BC, and near 48 or 50 years at other times. The '52 year period' is discussed separately below.
This suggests that the orbit of Venus changed very little over the complete span of all the interactions -- some 3000 (solar) years. In fact, from various estimates of the orbital period of Venus derived from Mesoamerican calendric sources, it seems the period of the orbit of Venus changed by only two days. I'll address this peculiarity below.

The plasmasphere tail of a planet would completely bypass another planet if the line of sight from the Sun passed above or below the other planet, even though the two planets come relatively close to each other. (For Earth the 'closeness' would be measured at about 20 or 30 planet diameters.)
Image: Earth and Venus in line with the Sun.

If the edge of the plasmasphere tail brushes the plasmasphere of another planet it will probably have little effect, although there are two instances, in the 8th and 7th century BC, involving Mars and Mercury. There will be an influx of charged particles, which might not be noticed by the other planet. A direct hit of repulsive forces might be avoided, but lightning strikes could still happen via the double layer of the plasmaspheres, and certainly there could be an exchange of the ions constituting the double layer. [note 16]

The incoming charged particles are a constituent of the Sun's outflow, the Solar Wind, since the outside layer of a plasmasphere is in effect an efficient conductor of electricity.

If the portion of the main body of the plasmasphere tail runs into the plasmasphere of another planet there will be a sudden realignment of the two plasmasphere surfaces so that the two planets become enclosed within a single plasmasphere. (Of course 'sudden' is relative, for it involves the selective ionization and separation of the surrounding plasmasphere surfaces.)

After two plasmaspheres have touched, each planet becomes aware of the electric field of the other planet and both will experience the physical shock of a sudden repulsive electrical force. (All planets experience each other as negatively charged.)
This electrical force is not to be neglected, especially since it will be experienced suddenly and at full force. The two shocks experienced by Earth in 747 BC and 686 BC were of this nature. It could jog a planet to a new orbit, for it would generally be experienced at right angle to the orbital path. The two planets would be physically propelled away from each other. (But this was not always the case; see "686 BC" below.)
A stupendous siesmic shock would be experienced which would travel around the Earth. At the location facing the other planet, the crust would be depressed, uplifting adjacent areas. This can be seen at the Caloris basin of Mercury, which extends over about one third of a hemisphere (see image, further below). As the Earth continued to rotate the depression would move toward the west (or away from the tilt of the Earth), but the impact would cease as a change in the charge was accomplished through induction. The force on the crust (on one hemisphere) would transmit to the mass of the Earth, moving it to a different orbit away from the Sun.
Gravity acts throughout the whole of a mass. The effects can be modeled as if the force of gravity acts through a single point at the center of the Earth, and thus through the central spin axis. Gravity, even if it moves a planet, will have no effect on the Earth's spin.

The electrical forces, on the other hand, are applied to the crust of the Earth (not to the interior), and on the portion facing the other planet. The other hemisphere of the Earth would be in the shadow of the electric field of the other planet and would not experience a force. The impacting force would, of course, be transmitted to the whole Earth.
The Caloris basin of Mercury, as with the Orientale basin of the Moon, are both circular because Mercury and the Moon did not rotate the way Earth rotates. The depressions on Earth, if they are found, would exhibit a semicircle of raised mountains on one side and flat region on the other side. The flat region would indicate the direction of travel of the Earth's surface at the moment the repulsive force was applied or directly after. The application of the exterior force would have traveled in the opposite direction. The lack of mountains (at the lagging edge) is the result of the Earth's surface moving away from the location of the impact, due to the rotation of the Earth and the tilting of the Earth's spin axis away from the point of impact -- a combination of the leverage applied by the external force and a gyroscopic reaction. I'll detail the reaction torque below.

Image: View over northern Alabama, looking northeast. Google Maps, courtesy of Dennis Cox, http://sites.google.com/site/dragonstormproject/

There should be four of these semi-circular areas dating from the last 4000 years. These should be recognized as being recent, that is, represent surface scarring which shows none of the marks of millions of years of weathering. There should be two very large impact basins from the passage of Venus in 2349 and 2193 BC. The contact of 1492 BC was made in the Pacific, and left no mark on the land. [note 17]
A second set would represent the contact with Mars in 747 BC and with Mercury in 686 BC. The basin created by Mercury can be readily seen as centered on northern Alabama, US.
The events by Mars in 747 BC and Mercury in 686 BC, would cause much smaller impressions. The impact of 686 BC can be generally located from the 'legendary' observations of North American Indians, and placed with considerable certainty in northern Alabama. There will be no tribes indigenous to this area with such stories.

Image: View over northern Mexico at 29 degrees north latitude, looking north by northeast. Google Maps, courtesy of Dennis Cox, http://sites.google.com/site/dragonstormproject/

At first I suspected the mark of the 747 BC event to be located in northern Mexico, just south of the Mexico-US border, as shown above. The location of the semi-circle of raised mountains in this case points away in the 'wrong' direction from the center of the impact basin -- in an arc from north to east. The 'wrong location' of the crushed and shoved-over mountains can be justified from the latitude, 29.08 degrees north, which constituted the Tropic of Cancer (30 degrees north) before 685 BC, combined with the date of the impact.
It suggests that the extension of the direction of the impact (the vector) went below the center of the Earth. This would cause the northern hemisphere to tilt toward the Sun (with a reaction torque moving the Earth's rotational axis toward the trailing part of the orbit). The view of north American Indians would not have have been the same as was reported for Alabama. The Sun would have lifted in the sky, not dragged down. Additionally, I should add, the size of the basin is far too small. Its identity thus remains unidentified.

The force acting on one hemisphere would represent an unbalanced force if there was any misalignment with the other planet, and the forces were experienced above or below the equator, that is, either in the northern or in the southern hemisphere.

This would be recognized as an externally applied torque to the spinning Earth. The reaction to an external torque is a twist with an axis at right angles to both the spin axis and the axis of the applied external torque. This is an interaction between three vectors.

"Image: Gyroscopic reaction to a torque applied above the Equator"

The spin axis of the Earth may be considered the first of the three rotational vectors. It points in the 'up' direction, and the spin is counterclockwise around this axis.
An off-center force (shown as applied above the equator in the sketch above) applied from the direction of the Sun (the direction of an inner planet) would present a rotation about an axis defining the forward motion of Earth on its orbit. This is the second vector. In this example, it would attempt to rotate the top of the spin axis away from the direction of the Sun.
The third vector is the resultant gyroscopic reaction, and is defined as a rotational axis at right angle to the other two vectors, and thus (in this example) pointing away from the Sun. The rotation about this axis is also in the counterclockwise direction so that it will attempt to move the Earth's spin axis away from the forward direction of orbital travel.

Seen from above the Earth, the axis will thus dip (tilt) away from the Sun and away from the forward travel of the Earth (in this example). Seen from above, the tip of axis will look to be rotating in a counterclockwise direction. Seen from below (from Earth) the rotational axis will seem to describe a clockwise path through the dome of the stars (facing north). The stars will rotate through the sky in the opposite direction from normal.

For the case of an unbalanced force applied to the southern hemisphere, this would result in the attempt to tilt the top of the spin axis of the Earth in the direction of the Sun. The reaction torque is the opposite -- it will attempt to tilt the axis in the direction toward the travel path along the orbit.
Note that in the diagrams above the Earth's spin axis is shown perpendicular to the plane of the orbit. This is never the case. It is shown in this manner here for the sake of graphic simplicity.

The spin axis of the Earth, and the earth with it, would swing its axis through a loop -- at least as long as the spin axis remained in motion. In the case of a force applied above the equator, the axis will swing through a loop because it it being forced simultaneously to tilt away from the Sun and at a right angle away from the forward direction of the planet's travel -- 'backward,' if you like. The reaction torque will start up instantaneously and will continue to exert its force to counter the motion bending the spin axis away from its initial direction in space. The result is a precession of the axis -- a wobble, like a spinning top which is slowing down in rotation, except that the wobble will not continue, for the Earth, after all, is not a top placed on a table. [note 18]
The start of movement of the spin axis after a shock starts quickly but smoothly, for inertia has to be overcome. Inertia is the resistance of objects to a change in movement. Anything loose from the Earth, like the oceans and the atmosphere, would resist the start of the changed motion of the crust, and move in the opposite geographic direction.
Once the motion is started, the same resistance to a change would guarantee that Earth's axis would continue its circular wobble, but the rate of movement would drop rapidly as the external torque is removed. The reaction torque would shift value continuously to bring the Earth's spin axis back to the location it started from.
This is how a gimballed navigational gyrocompass works. The fact that the spin axes of all the planets still align either with the Sun's spin axis (within a few degrees) or are inclined 31 to 32 degrees away from the Sun's axis, confirms the fact that the gyroscopic reaction -- the wobble -- will return the axis to the location it started from.

When the plasmaspheres merge the planets will also recognize the charge difference between them and will attempt to equalize charge, first by inducing a change in the charge of the facing hemispheres. This changes the repulsive force to an attractive force, mostly felt by the crust. This induced charge also increases the voltage difference between the planets and an electrical arc might strike between the planets to equalize charge -- a lightning strike which could travel millions of miles within the highly conductive interior of the plasmasphere (or, as likely, along the double layer of the outer edges). Once struck, and arc will continue even as distance increases. The bolt could sweep around a planet if it struck laterally, for Earth will continue to rotate.
As Dennis Cox, who has investigated altered land forms, has pointed out (at [http://sites.google.com/site/dragonstormproject/]) the results of the initial lightning strike would have been absolutely stupendous. He writes (in this case about the basin in northern Mexico)..
"There are tens of thousands of square miles of assorted ejecta, and breccias, and of rivers of melt, and pyroclastic materials in northern Mexico. All in pristine, unweathered condition like they only happened yesterday. And if you follow those materials up stream back to their respective sources you find no volcanoes, and no craters, only bare patches of smoothly melted stone. Or miles-wide, irregularly shaped melt basins, or strangely shaped denuded mountains with all traces of alluvium blown away. And which, sometimes, in their undulating lines, and angular scale-shaped ridges, look for all the world like the spine of a dragon sleeping in the earth."

Cox assigns the causes to comets or meteors, and thus talks of object downcast from the skies. He continues..
"... almost all of the objects' kinetic energy gets translated to heat. The heat hits the ground in a supersonic, hyperthermal downdraft of perhaps millions of degrees. Most of the time even the detonation shock wave itself gets transformed into the heat. But here is no missing energy. And it doesn't 'dissipate harmlessly' in the atmosphere. The mountain is still history; it just very quickly, and violently, melts and goes away. Think about a gust of wind so hot that it instantly makes granite flow like water. And is just another gust in a turbulent storm. Then realize it's not imaginary. Such things have happened in the recent past. There are mountain tops at 13,000 feet elevation in the Rocky mountains of Colorado, their glacial ridges melted, blasted, and blown over the ridge top in runnels of melt, like wax on the sides of a candle. And recent enough that the blast melt materials have never been subjected to the grinding action of a glacier. Or mountains in eastern Texas softened and tossed around like waves in an angry sea."

The charge equalization might involve repeated single lightning strokes, or involve a lightning strike which does not let up, but continues to blast and travel mile after mile. We should expect the arc to be tens of miles wide. But this is only the eye of the hurricane. The effects at the edges would have extended maybe hundreds of miles. This would be a rotating whirlpool of soil, dust, molten rock, and flaming incinerated forests.
As the planets start to distance from each other the plasma would turn to glow mode and, for Earth, dissipate at the atmosphere. Even a number of full days of arcing will not equalize the charge between planets, as Juergens has pointed out. A lightning strike which would carve the Grand Canyon (a bolt which is suspected to have arrived from Saturn) would only reduce the charge of the striking planet by a fraction of a percent.
Lastly, any massive flow of electricity would induce a momentary exterior magnetic field and possibly alter the magnetic field of the planet, but only locally, since magnetism falls off rapidly with distance from the current flow.

The 9 items considered above explain why 'collisions' were so infrequent. Between 3147 BC and 685 BC Venus passed the location of Earth some 3500 times, yet in only a few instances was there any recorded interaction with Earth, even though Venus may have come close many times. Seven instances are noted in Mesoamerican sources (four for the period of 2349 BC through 2193 BC). Overall, in only three instances the orbit of the Earth was changed significantly enough to have been recorded in calendar changes, two of which occured in 2349 BC and 2193 BC.
As presented above, the method whereby Earth changed its orbit always involved a displacement radially away from the Sun. Earth apparently never moved toward the Sun. Thus the inclination of the planet's orbit would remain the same. From this follows what I proposed earlier, that the inclination of the orbits of the planets has not changed significantly in 5000 years since 3147 BC.
It could, however, be suggested that two planets could be off from being exactly in line with the Sun by the diameters of their plasmaspheres. Then the thrust to a new orbit would be at an angle to the original orbital inclination. But for the combination of Earth and Venus this difference in alignment would not be much more that about 20 planet diameters, thus about 160,000 miles. This displacement is absolutely insignificant compared to the radius of Earth's orbit -- 93,000,000 miles. I do not think, therefore, that even under these possible unusual conditions the inclination of the orbit would change by even a fraction of a degree.
Lastly, it should be noted that Venus would react quite differently to a plasmasphere contact. Venus has an extremely heavy atmosphere, nearly 100 times the mass of the Earth's atmosphere. It's atmosphere is like an ocean. Because of its density and the 700 degree Fahrenheit surface temperature, the atmosphere represents the location of Venus' exterior electrical charge.
The dense atmosphere would therefore be the location of the electrical forces impinging on Venus in meeting another planet. But rather than being transmitted to the surface in one hemisphere, the forces would be absorbed by the atmosphere and distributed around the planet, buffeting the crust with compression waves from all directions. The planet would not likely relocate to a new orbit, and in fact it looks like the orbital period of Venus has not changed significantly since 3147 BC, except for becoming circular at some point after 685 BC.
Compression Marks

If, as I have suggested, the Earth has experienced massive compressive forces a number of times due to the line-up with another planet, we should be able to search the Earth's surface for compression marks. Two stand out clearly, a cresent of mountains in the Himalayas, and a smaller similar semi-circle in northern Alabama (US).
Before setting out some details, let me list what little we know of the impacts. The following lists the compression marks since 3147 BC:

year of impact agent suspected location comments 2349 BC Venus Tibet documented 2193 BC Venus Pacific ? undocumented 1492 BC Venus Central Pacific slim evidence 1440 BC Venus unknown land undocumented 747 BC Mars central Asia? suspected 686 BC Mercury north Alabama documented

"Documented," as used here, means that we can follow a trail of what was seen and was recorded in legends and myths worldwide. "Suspected" means that there is a trail of destruction which points to an inception somewhere east of the string of destroyed sites.
There are other suspect locations, marked by crescents of mountains -- northern Mongolia south of Lake Baikal, the Elburz mountains south of the Caspian (edging on northern Iran), and a region in northern Mexico at 30 degrees latitude (noted in the text). In all cases (including the land contacts in the list above, but excepting Mexico) the crescent is in the south or southwest of what would be the contact area. This shows that the Earth immediately tilted away at a rate much greater that the normal displacement of the Earth's surface due to rotation. But this is to be expected, for if the shock moved mountains, it must have been stupendous.
What I will do in the following is to describe the likely sequence of an impact. The reader should realize that although the 'impacts' were local, these were induced from afar -- for Venus at distances of 20 million and 10 million miles. In three diagrams below I'll relate what seemed to have happened at the locations where we have some evidence. But first there is a need to look at two other 'impact craters,' the Moon's Mare Orientale basin and Mercury's Caloris Basin.
First of all, we could expect any of the impact marks to be circular. If a planet remained standing still, that is, not rotating (or nearly so), the reaction torque would not send the planet into a spin which changed the location of the impact. This seems to be the case for the two very large circular marks on the Moon and Mercury. It is also possible that the compressive forces were applied only briefly.
Going by the record of Mesoamerica, the Moon's Mare Orientale was likely formed shortly after 2349 BC. Mercury's Caloris Basin was probably created in 686 BC. Both consist of rings of mountains and circular flat plains, surrounding a flat central depression.
The ring of mountains of Mercury's Caloris Basin is 963 miles in diameter. The Moon's Orientale Basin is 578 miles in diameter.

Image: "Mare Orientale basin of the Moon"

Orientale Basin is located at the extreme lower left edge of the Moon, as seen from Earth. The Orientale Basin is overlaid with younger craters, although it is thought to be one of the 'youngest' craters or basins. It is held to be 3.9 billion years old by establishment astronomers.
Unlike other circular depressions on the Moon (the Mare basins), the Mare Orientale is not a flat field of flooded basalts, that is, melted rock resulting from an extended electrical arc. The Orientale ejecta extends beyond the 600 mile diameter of the rings for another 300 miles, and "contains linear patterns that point back to the center of Orientale" (Wikipedia).
The peculiar overall shape of both was likely created with an initial repulsive impulse which depressed the central area causing the outer edges to lift in response. The outer ring of mountains was caused by fracturing of the crust which is pushed away from the center (overthrust). Rock fractures at a 60 degree angle from the point of impact of a blow. With both the surface of the small planet and the applied force angled away from the center of the impact area, breaking faults at a low angle to the surface, together with forces directed away from the center, would shove a ring of crust onto the adjacent exterior surface. The drag encountered by the moving material would crumple the displaced crust into mountains.
The interior basin, on the other hand, stretched in subsiding from compression, fractures in shear (faulting, a process whereby a section of land just drops down). The Caloris Basin of Mercury is noted for "lava plains," and "radial troughs." "The exact cause of this pattern of troughs is not currently known" (Wikipedia).
Within seconds of the onset of 'seeing' the exterior negative voltage, electrons of the planet with a lesser charge would be chased away from the region, and the crust of the planet would start to assume a positive charge. That would rapidly dissipate the repulsive forces, and change them to attraction instead. The sudden withdrawal of the repulsive force would allow the depressed center to relax and raise itself again, with the result that the raised outer rings would then start to subside. The later lifting force will have the same effect.
I am not at all confident if a reversal of polarity is the cause of the cessation of the compressive force. It may also be due to a realignment of the plasmasphere of the impinging planet. I'll return to this further below.
Because the lifting forces (or the negation of compressive forces) build in magnitude over a period of time (although this could be short), they will not cause the shock-induced damage of the initial compressive forces. The initial shock is not to be neglected. It is this which probably makes the central depression look like a relatively smooth lava field, as it may also have done to the smooth outer ring. Rock melted and flowed like wet clay.
If the subsequent forces provided a lift, these would have seriously aided the recovery, making the two regions of the Moon and Mercury look like car dents which have been hammered out.
Both Mercury and the Moon show crustal damage at the antipodal locations from the impact marks. Astronomers have identified these as being the result of shock waves traveling from the Orientale Basin of the Moon and the Caloris Basin of Mercury to meet at the location directly opposite -- all the way around the Moon and Mercury. An "asteroid impact" capable of sending such shock waves clear around a planet should have split the Moon or Mercury in half.
Himalayan crescent

The crescent of mountains representing the Himalayas is the prime representation of a massive compression contact. The Himalayas slid (or were shoved) from the north and northeast onto older mountains.

Image: Himalayan crescent and Tibetan plateau.
Rand McNally 1968.
The Tibetan Plateau is nearly flat compared to the Himalayas. A satellite image follows. In the upper left is the Tarim Basin. India's lowland are below the Himalayas.

Image: Himalayan crescent and Tibetan plateau. NASA satellite image.
If a compressive impact leaves a circular mark on a planet which does not significantly rotate, like Mercury and the Moon, the result is entirely different for Earth, which rotates through 360 degrees in 24 hours. A planet standing still will not produce a gyroscopic reaction. The fast rotation of Earth, however, would cause an immediate gyroscopic reaction, a movement at right angles both to the torques of the applied forces and to the spin.

The initial reaction of the crust, however, would be the same as for a planet which was not rotating. The center would be compressed and would subsequently subside. The edges would raise in response, but also be subjected to compressive forces. Because these impinge at an angle, the shear, which normally break rock (the crust) at a 60 degree angle from the direction of impact (as any bricklayer knows), would break the crust at an angle greater than 60 degrees to the normal of the surface, in effect 'shoving' the crust ahead of the compressive forces.

The forces drop off unexpectedly rapidly from the center of the contact area. This is the result of combining the nearly parallel electrical field due to the foreign planet with the spherical orientation of the electrical field due to the Earth. In addition, the curvature of the Earth (or the Moon, or Mercury) is such that the effect of an exterior force lessens rapidly.

area planet planet degrees planet compression area Diameter Diameter Circumf subtended Moon Orientale Basin 578 mi 2159 mi 6783 mi 31 deg Mercury Caloris Basin 963 3030 9518 36 Earth Himalayas 1700 7923 24891 24

What happens subsequently is that the Earth continues to rotate, thus having the external forces applied to a region away from the initial contact. The direction the Earth moves, however, does not follow its normal rotation (to the east), but a direction determined by the impact forces and the gyroscopic reaction. For an impact to the northern hemisphere, the new direction to which the Earth's surface would move (with respect to an exterior reference) is toward the northeast, thus bringing the southwest under the external impinging forces. [note 19]
Thus we can define a lagging edge of the circle of impact (northeast) and a leading edge (southwest). The lagging edge now experiences reduced forces, and relaxation of the originally uplifted crust will be aided by this. Although I have shown the leading edge as uplifting or consolidating in the diagram above, this is not certain. What has happened at this juncture it that the compressive forces have diminished as the external electrical field induces a change of charge in this section of the crust. Electrons are chased away, and the surface becomes more positively charged.
At this point in time (and this could take only very little time, measured in minutes), the compressive (repulsive) force are failing and perhaps have become attractive, that is, the exterior planet now will attempt to lift the crust. This will aid the region of the initial depression, helping it back up, and causing the lift at the lagging edge to subside. But at the leading edge of the contact region the portion of the crust, which initially raised in response to the central depression, will be raised even further (and causing an additional subsidence beyond the leading edge). The result of this are shown in the following diagram.

With the reversal of the electical field facing each other between Earth and the exterior planet, an attempt would be made at a charge equalization -- an electrical arc would pass between the planets. In fact, the equalization arc might start up from the planet with the greater charge at the moment a voltage difference between the two is sensed (even with both planets at a negative charge).
Now we reach a problem. The compressive scar obviously shows a sudden letup, but the cause for this is not at all obvious. The sudden cessation of the compressive forces cannot be due to an arc between the planets, for this would take much more time to be felt by Earth, in that the arc would have to travel from some 10 million (1492 BC) or 20 million (2349 BC) miles.
In 2349 BC it looks like the arc from Venus traveled for approximately 6 hours, and was, in fact, a disconnected plasmoid bolt. From 'mythological' sources, the bolt would have been enormous, and would have fryed the Earth (at least, the eastern Mediterranean region), if the initial shock had not tilted the Absu up to face the approaching plasmoid bolt. The release of the plasmoid would also have suddenly dropped the electrical field of Venus, and it is this which suggests a cause for the sudden cessation of the compressive forces.
I am not entirely comfortable with this electrostatic simplification, especially the change of a portion of the Earth's surface to a positive value. We are here not considering a local thunderstorm, which will chase away surface electrons, but something immensely larger and of a potential (voltage) measured in billions of volts.
Obviously the initial repulsive shock was limited, and in fact, at some point stopped as suddenly as it had first started. It is the crescent of shoved-over mountains which shows that the repulsive forces stopped suddenly. Otherwise we would see the Himalayas spread across India and Pakistan like frosting on a cake. The same goes for the mountain ring surrounding Huntsville, Alabama.
The Orbit of Venus

Shown in the diagram above, Venus' elliptical orbit falls inside the Earth's orbit, but the portion furthest from the Sun could cross Earth's orbit. The planet Venus would be seen between the Sun and Earth every two years or so, and would line up directly between Earth and the Sun at intervals of 700 or 800 years. These "meetings" would depend, among other things, on the slow rotation of the second nodal points of the orbits of Earth and Venus.
The orbit of any planet is an ellipse, with one 'focus' (nodal point) at the Sun, and the other some distance away from the Sun. The second focus of the elliptical orbits slowly rotates (precesses) around the Sun. There will therefore be periods of hundreds or thousands of years where two planets would never come close. Precession of orbits is gravitationally induced and thus depends on how close the orbits of various other planets are, and the sizes of the planets.
Precession of orbits should not be confused with precession of the equinox (the intersection of the equatorial of the sky and the ecliptic). The equinox currently moves 50 seconds of a degree west per year. This is determined by the precession of the rotational (polar) axis. The precession of the rotational axis takes 27,000 years. [note 20]
The Earth's current orbit moves 10 seconds of a degree east per year (in a counterclockwise direction as seen from above). Currently the Earth's orbital precession takes 40,000 year to complete a full swing around the Sun. (Other sources suggest 90,000 years.) The location of the aphelion of the Earth's orbit (the part of the orbit where Earth is furthest away from the Sun, which corresponds to the location of the second nodal point) slowly moves in a circle around the Sun. Aphelion of Earth's orbit is today reached at about July 4th.
In the case of Earth and Venus, there would be a series of 'close calls' when the precession of the orbits caused the two planets to reach the same radial location around the Sun at the same time. The close calls would be spaced widely apart in time, for it would depend on the ratio of the lengths of the orbits of the two planets, and additionally, the inclinations of the orbits would have to match. Four approaches, at an interval of 52 years, resulting in plasma contacts between Venus and Earth, happened between 2349 BC to 2193 BC and twice between 1492 BC and 1440 BC. [note 21]
Approach of Venus in 2349 and 2193 BC

An approach of Venus with Earth happened in 2349 BC. It had been waiting to happen for 700 years. As Venus crossed between Earth and the Sun, the plasmaspheres of the two planets touched and merged, a sudden electrical repulsive impulse from a distance of about 20,000,000 miles shoved Earth away from the Sun and a giant plasmoid electrical arc traveled from Venus to Earth, followed by lesser plasmoids. Details are recounted in Chapter 9, "The Career of Jupiter." The orbit of Earth enlarged by 5 percent. The Absu was severely disturbed and disappeared. Venus probably retained its orbit or reconfigured it -- perhaps changing its ellipticity. The rotational period of Venus remained almost the same. (This would suggest that the rotational momentum changed.)
Because of the spectacular nature of the event, we know a considerable amount about this. It includes the 'flood' of Noah, the flood of Yao in China, the fall of the Absu, the return of Jupiter from death, the appearance of the Pleiades, the placement of the southern stars, and the appearance of the Moon. There are retellings from Babylonian, Bible, Canaan, Chinese, Egyptian, Maya, and Vedic sources. The day of the year (Gregorian equivalent) for the event is noted in Chapter 9, "The Career of Jupiter," and can be verified from Olmec site alignments, discussed in Chapter 18, "Olmec Alignments."

The orbit of the Earth enlarged to 260 days (from 240 days). The Moon appeared as the Earth moved to a larger orbit. Because the Earth's orbit may have rounded somewhat with this event, the orbit of Earth fell completely within the orbit of Mars after 2350 BC, and until 747 BC Earth and Mars never interfered with each other.
The electrical contact with Venus in 2349 BC was the first of four such events during this era (I suspect). All can be dated (or at least, estimated) from the records of the first histories. The details are reported in Chapter 9, "The Career of Jupiter." For the last event (of 2193 BC) we have considerable climatic and historical evidence, but no spectacular tales. Akkad collapsed and the Old Kingdom of Egypt came to a sudden end. The Earth's orbit again enlarged, to 273 days. This last contact happen 156 years after 2349 BC, in 2193 BC -- three times 52 years. The 52 year interval, I should note, was only in effect during this period. At later times it was 47 and 50 years.
Venus in 1492 and 1440 BC

A second series of approaches between Venus and Earth started in the year 1492 BC, with the second some 50 years later in 1442 BC (originally thought to be 52 years, and 1440 BC). Venus, on an inner orbital path, overtook the Earth on the sun-side side of the Earth's orbit. This approach was apparently much closer (about 10 million miles) than the previous contact of 800 years earlier (about 20 million miles). Following a massive compressive slam in the Pacific Ocean at about one degree north latitude, an arc from Venus to Earth was delivered laterally, traveling (perhaps) a number of times around the globe. [note 22]

Genesis details two more contacts, one 6 days later, and one 6 weeks later. Even if these intervals were written to conform to a required completion before the Sabbatical seventh day or seventh week of the new era, it does not matter. It would, as I have pointed out, take about 6 days for the plasmasphere tail of Venus to pass by the plasmasphere of Earth.
The climatic and historical record of the events stand out clearly. The immediate effect of the circumferential arc was a cloud cover lasting decades, resulting from the arc traveling through the Pacific, Indian, Mediterranean, and Atlantic oceans. But more likely the cloud cover was due to the compressive force which landed in the Pacific Ocean, which was followed directly by a lifting force. And then an arc. The cloud cover is described in Genesis and in Mesoamerican records. The Israelites "walked in darkness" for 40 years; in Mexico "the people grew up in darkness."
The most drastic, and permanent, change was a severe decline in temperature. Much of this can be attributed to a radical change in the orbit of the Earth, a sudden jump from 273 days per year to 360 days, which moved Earth 20 percent further from the Sun.
Afterwards, Venus would frequently have been seen in the daytime skies, and perhaps periodically at close range ('close' being defined as 10,000,000 miles or so). This is the image of the goddess Isis or Inanna, generally benevolent but with a mean streak recalled from earlier encounters.
The 52 Year Cycle of Venus

2349 BC - 2193 BC

The interval between approaches of Venus was known by the people of Mesoamerica to be 52 years. This would initially have been derived from observation in the era of 2349 BC to 2193 BC. The 52 year period can be verified, or strongly suggested, if it is found that the synodic period for Venus is a near integral division of 52 Earth years. Assuming, initially, that the period for Venus was 225 days, as it is today, and the Earth's year was 260 days, the synodic period is..
260 * 225 / (260 - 225) = 1671.43 days

This period divides into 52 Earth years as a near even integer value, or reasonable fraction, as follows..
52 * 260 / 1671.428 = 8.088

If it could be assumed that the period of repetition of approaches of Venus was an even 8 years, then the synodic period of Venus could be calculated as..
8 * 260 = 2080 days

From this a more reasonable (believable) orbital period of Venus could be found to be 231.1 days..
260 * 231.1 / (260 - 231.1) = 2079.10 days

2193 BC - 1492 BC

For the period between 2193 BC and 1492 BC I have assumed an orbital period of 273 days for Earth, but the period of Venus has to be estimated. This is so because there is only discordant data available.
The following table calculates the synodic period of Venus for values of orbital periods from 231 days to 225 days. The first value is the likely orbital period before 2193 BC; the second value is the most likely orbital period after 1492 BC. Thus a synodic periods at either of these extremes are not legitimate values for this time period.
There is no continuity of dates at regular 52 year intervals between the four contacts by Venus after 2193 BC, and the first contact in 1492 BC. I suspect that in the intervening period (2193 BC to 1492 BC) the Venus cycle was something other that 52 solar years. (The coincidence of the 52 year period between the Mesoamerican Tzolkin and Haab calendar is a mathematical construction which is independent of the actual seasonal calendar.) Since we have no guarantee of what the 'Venus cycle' was in actuality, the synodic period for Venus can to be tested for various values of the Venus cycle, using 52 years through 45 years.

------ Venus interval for the period of 2193 BC - 1492 BC ------------ Venus Synodic -------------- interval * 273 / synod ---------------- period period 52 yr 51 yr 50 yr 49 yr 48 yr 47 yr 46 yr 45 yr 231 1501.50 9.45 9.27 9.09* 8.91 8.27 8.54 8.36 8.18 230 1460.23 9.72 9.53 9.34 9.16 8.97* 8.78 8.60 8.41 229 1420.84 9.99* 9.80 9.60 9.41 9.22 9.03* 8.83 8.64 228 1383.20 10.26 10.06 9.86 9.67 9.47 9.27 9.07* 8.88 227 1347.19 10.53 10.33 10.13 9.93* 9.76 9.52 9.32 9.11 226 1312.72 10.81 10.60 10.39 10.19 9.98* 9.77 9.56 9.35 225 1279.68 11.09* 10.88 10.66 10.45 10.24 10.02* 9.81 9.60 * - near whole values

I would reject orbital values nearer 225 days (today's value), since the catastrophe of 1492 BC caused a very large change in the Earth's orbit, and would have caused a proportional change in the orbit of Venus. It is thus more likely that a value closer to an orbital value of 231 days is a likely candidate. That suggests an orbital period for Venus of either 229 days or 230 days. I am selecting 229 days.
However, from information detailed in the later Chapter 19, "The Day of Kan," it looks like there were 11 'sightings' of Venus in the 520 year period (called a 'may') ending shortly after 1440 BC. From the above table, for an orbital period of 229 days, a reduction to 48 or 47 years would be suggested. Of these two, a 47 year cycle comes closest to filling the time interval from 2193 BC to 1492 BC with a nearly even number of intervals -- it comes to within 4 years of 2193 BC.
47 * 15 - (2193 - 1492) = 4

1492 BC - 747 BC

It would seem that the Venus period would be firmly established, even though based on slim data, for the period of 1492 BC to 747 BC. The catastrophe of 1492 BC was followed by another contact in 1440 BC, "52 years later." However, the date of 1440 BC is very uncertain. Velikovsky settled on 1440 BC by applying the well known Mesoamerican interval of 52 years. This was certainly the interval when Mesoamerica expected the end of the world, but it was based on the fact that the Haab and the Tzolkin calendar come again to the same day-name and day-number combination after an interval of 52 years. In Mesoamerica it was thought that the Tzolkin calendar regulated the movements of the planets.
The Venus period therefore ought to be investigated in a manner similar to the chart above. The Earth's period was 360 days; the period of Venus should be less than 229 days and more that 225 days. There were no further contacts between Earth and Venus after 1492 BC. The contact of Venus with Mars in 776 BC is not likely to have changed the orbit of Venus significantly, since Mars is only 1/8th of the mass of Venus. Again, in the table below, we are looking for whole numbers or reasonable fractions.

------ Venus interval for the period of 1492 BC - 747 BC ------------ Venus Synodic -------------- interval * 360 / synod ---------------- period period 52 yr 51 yr 50 yr 49 yr 48 yr 47 yr 46 yr 45 yr 229 629.31 29.7 29.1 28.6 28.0 27.4 26.9* 26.3 25.7 228 621.81 30.1* 29.5 28.9* 28.3 27.8 27.2 26.6 26.0* 227 614.44 30.4 29.9* 29.3 28.7 28.1* 27.5 26.9* 26.3 226 607.16 30.8 30.2 29.6 29.0* 28.4 27.8 27.2 26.7 225 600.00 31.2 30.6 30.0* 29.4 28.8 28.2 27.6 27.0* * - near whole values

For two reasons I would select a period of 225 days for Venus (which is nearly today's value). First, because the synodical period of 600 days shows up in calendars dating from this period as a decimal product of the period of the Moon (30 days) and the period of the Earth (360 days.) Second, because it is most likely that the contact with Venus in 1492 BC reduced its orbit in equal measure to the 100 day increase in the Earth's orbit. The change of the Earth's orbit in 747 BC and 686 BC were due to Mars and Mercury, not due to Venus.
Selecting a Venus cycle of 50 years moves the event of 1440 BC, when the Sun stood still for Joshua, from 1440 BC to 1442 BC. This resolves the difficulty Velikovsky had in justifying a date of 1440 BC. I have not corrected this elsewhere in this text.
747 BC - today

After 776 BC, or, actually, after 685 BC, there were no further close calls by Venus on a 50 or 52 year cycle, for the orbit of the Earth had rounded in 685 BC. Mesoamerica, however, continued to celebrate 'world endings,' but based entirely on the Haab and Tzolkin calendars, as it had always been. The period for this is 52 years of 365 days (18,980 days), which is somewhat shy of 52 Gregorian years, but not enough to make a difference.
summary of Venus orbital periods

From the above we have the following estimates of the period of Venus for various periods of time.

----------- Venus interval for the various periods -------------- -------------- Venus ----------- time period Earth period period synodical Maya cycle 3147 BC - 2349 BC 240 days up to 240 unknown unknown 2349 BC - 2193 BC 260 231.1 days 2080 days 52 years 2193 BC - 1492 BC 273 229 1420.8 47 1492 BC - 747 BC 360 225 600 50 747 BC - today 365.24 224.7 583.9 52

The Orbit of Mars

Mars did not escape from Saturn until after Saturn had receded some distance from the Sun. As established in Appendix A, "Chronology," Mars probably was released 80 years after 3147 BC, and thus was first seen in 3067 BC, or perhaps as late as 3000 BC.
By that time the planets Jupiter and Saturn would already have relocated 50 or 100 million miles further away from the Sun. By the time Mars was released it would have started with an aphelion much further away from the Sun than Earth or Venus, probably at two AU, the edge of the asteroid belt.
The orbit of Mars overrode the orbit of Earth during the first 300 years (and to 747 BC), and, by an amazing coincidence, repeatedly crossed it close to Earth. The Egyptians will understand this as Horus taking on the leadership of Egypt (similar interpretations obtain in Sumer). After 3067 BC, Mars and Earth came close enough (Mars beyond or above Earth), for Mars to make electrical contact (via a plasma stream) to Earth -- recalled from the text of spells on coffins and pyramids, and eventually recorded in the Egyptian "Book of the Dead."

Traveling on the orbits depicted above, Earth and Mars would near each other only on rare occasions. In the 300 year period after 3067 BC this happened at 25 to 35 year intervals. Mars would appear almost in the same orbit as Earth, close by, above the northern hemisphere, seen at first on the night side, and then seen rotating around the sky and, depending on the location and distance to Mars, perhaps entering the northern skies to make a loop back. The movement and rotation of Mars is, of course, caused by the rotation of Earth. When close to Earth, a plasma connection was established between Earth and Mars. Mars would be repulsed as soon as the plasmaspheres of Earth and Mars connected and would lose its plasma connection with Earth as soon as some distance was achieved.
Image: Edge-on view of the orbits of Earth and Mars, over a sequence of a plasma contact.

This sequence of events probably lasted only a few days at the most. Then Mars was off again into deep space, repeating this performance approximately 30 years later. The event of sitting on a throne, with what looked like a race around the skies of Earth established the 'Sed' festival for the Egyptians, celebrated at 30 year intervals.
Since Mars does not have an atmosphere (it was probably stripped away thousands of years earlier) or a magnetic field, its plasmasphere would be limited in size. That would suggest that Mars could have come fairly close to Earth (200,000 to 300,000 miles) before touching Earth's plasmasphere, especially if Mars approached Earth from above Earth's orbit, as would be suggested by the imagery of a 'rotating' mountain. At that distance Mars would be about the size of the Moon today.
The Egyptians identify the planet Mars as Horus, the reincarnation of Osiris (Saturn), who had just previously -- actually a lifetime earlier -- been murdered by Seth (Jupiter). (These identities change over time.) The sweep of Mars near Earth was accompanied, as expected, by a conical plasma stream from the ionosphere of Earth to the southern hemisphere of Mars -- seen from Earth as the mountain of Horus which travels with him. This periodic display continued to about 2700 BC.
We don't know why it stopped, or exactly when. Certainly the approaches of Mars would have effected its orbit repeatedly, or it may have been interference by Venus, whose orbit periodically came close to the orbit of Earth. The orbit of Mars would be effected with each close call with Earth. Thus it is not unexpected that after about 300 years the Earth and Mars never closed in on each other again, at least, not again until 2000 years later, in the 8th century BC.
If we go by Horus names taken by pharaohs, and the kings of Sumer with God status, it looks like the orbit of Mars fell completely away from the orbit of Earth after 2700 BC, for the references to God-like kings in the Mesopotamian "King List" cease. By 2600 BC humans start building mountains of chalk and pyramids of stone to invite a return of the God, something which happens world-wide. The constructions are an indication that the primary image had disappeared, and typically, the humans feel like it is up to them to induce the return of the God. The Egyptian pyramids, however, also have the sense of a different objective, that is, to provide grave sites for the earlier Gods. This is discussed in the text.
Using an Ephemeris

Throughout this text I have checked the heavens with an ephemeris program named "SkyGlobe 3.6," written by Mark Haney in the early 1990s and issued by KlassM SoftWare. It shows the Moon and planets, the ecliptic, and the constellations. It can be set for different geographic locations and different dates. As locations I mostly used Cairo, Baghdad (for Babylon), and Beijing. From my perspective, the program will be in error at dates earlier than 685 BC. More on that below.
SkyGlobe makes allowance for the precession of the equinox, skips the year zero, and switches from Gregorian to Julian in October of AD 1582 (based on Julian days). Correction from a Julian calendar to a backward extension of the Gregorian calendar can by (approximately) accomplished by adding 1 and a half days for every 400 years before AD 1582. [note 23]
Locations on the dome of the stars are identified by elevation and azumith, and Right Ascension. RA (in hours) is calculated from the spring equinox for the date being viewed, which is a drawback at times (even though it is the standard today). Because the motions of the planets are based on calculated approximation, there is some slippage in moving far into the remote past.
The program also allows seeing the Solar System in rotation from above. This feature is of great value in checking for locations and conjunctions of the planets as a function of time. A single key will allow rotating the system in hours, days, months, etc.
As with any ephemeris calculations, some corrections have to be made. All the dates before the current era should be corrected by four years for the error introduced in our reckoning by Dionysius Exiguus in AD 532. Thus for any known date in the eastern Mediterranean, the ephemeris should be pointed to a date four years earlier -- further back in time (and on occasion, five years). For hand calculations an additional error of one year, for the passage from BC to AD, needs to be kept in mind. The SkyGlobe ephemeris program, however, properly skips the year zero between the eras, although this takes it out of phase with 'astronomical' dates by one year.
Patten and Windsor write the following about Exiguus:
"Dionysius Exiguus was a medieval monk, who was given the task of resolving a calendar dispute as to the proper date for Easter. Later research revealed Dionysius had missed four years in assessing the year of Christ's birth. Many centuries before this error was identified, his dating system for history had come to be accepted."
"His error was not revised, in order to minimize confusion. By the time his error was realized, the sequencing of historical dates for the Roman Empire and for early Christianity had long ago become too widely accepted. So Dionysius' dates were kept, and mankind was left with a quixotic system. The accepted system cites that Christ was born in 4 B.C.E., seemingly an impossibility."
-- Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996).

The correction of 4 years applies to dates for the eastern Mediterranean region, where all dates are tied to the Babylonian "King List" developed by Ptolemy, extending from 747 BC until the second century AD. It does not apply to dates from China where researchers of the 19th century have correctly converted dates to an absolute Western chronology. All celestial dates from China which I have inspected via an ephemeris were correct for the listed date.
I need to add one more caveat. An ephemeris program based on today's orbits cannot be correct for dates before the 7th century BC, for I claim that the orbits of Venus and Earth (and probably Mars also) changed in the eight and seventh century. In adddition I have claimed that the whole dome of the stars rotated some 15 degrees after 685 BC, in effect shifting the equinox by two weeks.
But it is unlikely that the changes in orbits in the 8th and 7th century BC would make any significant difference when it comes to using an ephemeris for earlier dates. Conjunctions might be off by a few days at most. This is because most of the changes I have proposed involve orbital eccentricity, of which we know, admittedly, almost next to nothing. If a planet's orbit changes shape, the planet will slow down on the portion of the orbit further away from the Sun and speed up on the portion closer to the Sun. The net effect is that the period does not change significantly.
For the changes in 685 BC we have little to go on except what we know about Venus from the Mesopotamian Tablets of Ammizaduga and the Maya canonical values of the appearances and disappearances of Venus (from the Dresden Codex). The Maya values (last recopied in AD 1200 from earlier sources of about AD 700) total to 584 days, as they do today, even though the appearances of Venus in the skies and its disappearance behind the Sun differ from today's values by as much as 40 days. (See Chapter 11, "Quetzalcoatl.")
A change in the orbit of Earth or Venus would make a difference in the synodic period of Venus only if we insist that a change in the shape of the orbit would in effect constitute a new orbit. But the synodical period of 584 days of Venus remained the same before 685 BC as after, even if portions of the time of the appearances and disappearances of Venus in the skies changed considerably. This last relates to the changes in the eccentricity of the orbit of Venus, which has subsequently become nearly circular. But the ratio of the synodic period of Venus to Earth in 670 BC is nearly the same as today (1.63, today it is 1.625).
The change in the Earth's orbit, which added 5 1/4 days to the year in 747 BC, is only a 1 1/2 percent change from a 360 day orbital period.
Lastly, the relationship between the Earth and its Moon and the Sun is radial. A change in the shape or size of the orbit does not change eclipses of the Sun or Moon significantly.
What this means is that, first of all, an ephemeris can be used, with some caution, for the period before 685 BC or before 747 BC, and it can probably be used back to 1492 BC. But, secondly, this also means that nothing will be proven about changes in the Earth's orbit, its ellipticity, or the timing of the equinox, from earlier records of eclipses of the Moon or the Sun. However, there were no eclipses visible in the regions away from the equator before 747 BC.
I do not trust the program for the orbit of Mercury before 686 BC, which I will discuss below.
The Eighth and Seventh Century

The orbits of Mars and Earth crossed, after 1492 BC, but differences in inclination of the orbits and the location of their respective aphelion kept the two planets apart most of the time. If nothing else, these interactions kept alive the images of the Gods and their incomprehensible activities. It would take a long time before the slow alterations in the orbits would bring Mars close enough to Earth to cause any damage.
That started to happen in the eight century BC. The details can be gleaned from a number of sources, including Mesoamerican annals, and Chinese records. There are a number of dates marked with celestial events during these two centuries, which are discussed below, including the following:

776 BC, the suspected date when Mars and Venus both show up on the day side of Earth, and the ballgame with the Moon.
747 BC, the date of an Earth shock, a change in the orbit of earth, and the start of 'the era of Nabonasser.'
686 BC, the date of a second Earth shock, but due to Mercury.
685 BC, the nova event of Venus, and a change in the aphelion, which moves Earth's orbit away from Mars' orbit.

What I will do below is to present only ephemeris information for these events. All the other evidence is presented in detail on the narrative pages of the main text. All the dates shown below are on the Julian calendar.
The Ballgame of 776 BC

The date of the ballgame of 776 BC was inferred (by others) from the date of the first Olympic Games (772 BC). The question to be asked of an ephemeris program for the year of 776 BC is if Mars and Venus could simultaneously appear on the day side of Earth in 776 BC. [note 24]
Of course using an ephemeris based on today's orbits will place Mars outside of Earth's orbit. I will have to suggest the existence of eccentricities which no longer show today and assume that in actuality Mars crossed the orbit of Earth at an earlier time. Venus, still on an eccentric orbit, would come near Earth but remain inside the orbit of Earth. The only requirement for an ephemeris program is to show that Venus, Mars, and Earth might have been in (or near) inferior conjunction at some date during that year.
An inspection of the orbits of the planets between the years 800 BC to 700 BC show any number of these near conjunctions of Mars, Earth, and Venus during this period, at six and seven year intervals. The following endnote lists these, along with the angle between the three planets, as measured from the Sun.
Mars is at inferior conjuction in February of 776 BC (thus passing close to Earth), with Venus passing Earth (or certainly seen) at the same time on the day side. Between February 24th and 25th, the Moon passes by Venus in the day sky. It is a remarkable coincidence that one of these conjunctions fall in 776 BC. [note 25]
Mars in the 8th Century

It seems that only after the simultaneous appearance of Venus and Mars just inside the orbit of Earth in 776 BC -- which became the starting point for the Olympiads -- did Mars repeatedly start cruising close to Earth. (In Chapter 11, "The Death of Quetzalcoatl," I propose, however, that the contacts started in 806 BC.)
In the diagram above I have noted two possible locations where Mars might might have made a near-contact with Earth. (They should be placed further apart in the diagram.) It should be expected that these would be separated by years -- that is, after Mars made an approach at the location in the lower right quadrant of the diagram above, the following close approach would happen at the location in the upper right quadrant a number of years later. (This mechanism of alternating locations is after Patten and Windsor.)
747 BC, the First Earth Shock

Patten and Windsor, in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996), propose that the length of the year changed in 701 BC. Considering the evidence of calendar changes following on 747 BC, I will hold with the date of 747 BC. The starting year 747 BC (-747) and the date of February 26 is used for the compilation of the "Era of Nabonasser" by Babylonian astronomers. [note 26]
Patten and Windsor, for reasons of the celestial mechanics of their model, suggest a close approach of Mars and Earth and a change in the length of the year in 701 BC, and place this at the time of a full Moon. In their model, Mars travels between Earth and the Moon on the night side, and disturbs both orbits. This scenario is demanded if only gravitational interaction are used to change the orbit of the Earth. My suggestion is that Mars traveled between Earth and the Moon on the day side. Thus I would suggest a new Moon and assign it to the year 747 BC.
The year 747 BC can be inspected with an ephemeris program. It will be the first year for which an ephemeris program should be nearly correct. Mars is in inferior conjuction (on the assumption that its travel took it inside the Earth's orbit) on about mid March of the year 748 BC, Julian (-747) (which is 8 days earlier on the Gregorian calendar, but not exactly on February 26th). March 2 or 3 is the day of a new Moon, the second after the winter solstice. [note 27]
"The present definition of the Chinese New Year, as the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice, dates from the inception of the T'ai-ch'u Era in 103 BC."
-- Kelley L. Ross (2004)

The Maya Long Count, the count of days since August 11, 3114 BC, reaches a "zero position" at Baktun 6, with all the other cycles at zero (6.0.0.0.0). A change in Baktun happens only at about 400 year intervals. Baktun 6 was reached on February 28, -747, Gregorian.
687 or 686 BC, the Second Earth Shock

The second Earth shock can also be searched for. This event was suspected to have happened in 686 BC (-687), on March 23. There have been suggestions that 701 BC should be used, but we have a parallel record for -687 from Chinese records, and the suggestion for a date of March 23. It could be suggested that the Earth shock of 686 BC should have Mercury as the agent.
What is certain about this event is that none of the numerous people, including Immanuel Velikosky, who have attempted to establish the year and date have come up with anything conclusive. A perusal of "Worlds in Collision" (1950) and the unpublished manuscript "The Assyrian Conquest" (after 1978), will establish the fact that no agreement has been reached. The only certain date is from two Chinese sources, and both equate to March 23, 686 BC (Julian). The confusion encountered by Velikovky may simply be due to the missmatch of astronomical chronology for China and the chronology of the eastern Mediterranean. The Chinese dates were retrocalculated in the 19th century, and are listed as atronomical dates. These dates should be reduced by four years to match dates in the chronology of the eastern Mediterranean.
The event itself can be established by accessing an ephemeris for the date of March 23, 686 BC. The year of 686 BC is correct. It is specifically noted by Legge in "The Ch'un Ts'ew and The Tso Chuen" (tr 1872) -- "The Spring and Autumn Annals." The other source date, from the Bamboo Books, was calculated by Biot in the 19th century as 687 BC and is correct only if this date was meant to be in astronomical notation, in which case it is equivalent to 686 BC in Julian notation.
What will be seen is that Mercury was almost directly between the Sun and Earth on March 23, 686 BC (Julian). As expected, this only happens when the Earth's orbit crosses the equatorial plane of the Sun -- thus at or near the equinox, on March 29, Julian. On March 23 the Sun and Mercury are displaced 7 degrees in azimuth, and 2 degrees in altitude. However, as explained below, I do not trust my ephemeris program to be entirely correct for Mercury during this period. Four days earlier, on March 20, The Sun and Mercury are within a 1.1 degrees azimuth and 0.1 degrees in altitude.
Additionally, in the afternoon, Mars stood in the sky, below the altitude of the Sun and to the east. Mars should be understood as falling within the orbit of Earth at this portion of Mars' orbit. This places Mars much closer to the Sun than an ephemeris program will show. An ephemeris which places Mars outside the orbit of Earth, will show Mars much further to the east, with an angle of about 135 degrees between the Sun and Mars, as seen from Earth. If Mars is placed inside the orbit of Earth, and along a radius line to the Sun, it would subtend considerably less than 90 degrees in the sky. [note 28]
With the placement of these three planets (Venus is the third) all in the same quarter of the sky with the Sun, the American Plains Indian tale of the snaring of the Sun by Coyote, and the rescue by a mouse, starts to make sense.
Certainly it would seem that a plasmasphere tail from Mercury extending 57 million miles to Earth is an uncommon anomaly for a small rocky planet, although the appearance of Mercury as the Mouse God "Smintheus" in 686 BC certainly suggests that it still had a plasmasphere tail at that time. Mercury today has no plasmasphere tail that we can notice.
But Mercury may have come much closer. If, as North American Indians hold, Mercury blotted out the Sun, it would have been between a half million and one quarter million miles from Earth at the time it eclipsed the Sun. Mercury is about the size of the Moon. That means its orbit was radically different at that time from today, as I have maintained in earlier text. The plasmasphere tail would only have needed to reach a half million miles.
The shock felt by Earth was also experienced by Mercury. At a mass of only 1/20th that of Earth, the repulsive electrical impulse would have bolted Mercury away from Earth, and likely displaced Mercury to the much smaller orbit. Today the orbit of Mercury falls entirely within the orbit of Venus, although it still has the greates orbital eccentrity of any of the planets. This also suggests that the ephemeris program, which can reasonably (and cautiously) be used in era before 685 BC, might produce considerably error for the orbit of Mercury. In this case, four days.

Mercury not only shocked Earth, but also may have changed the Earth's orbit some small amount, reducing it to 365.24 days -- the current value. The only way this could have happened is if Merury made contact with Earth on the east side of the orbit, but, as we know from the tale of Coyote, toward the day side of Earth. This sequence might happen if Mercury was in the process of crossing over Earth's orbit from day side to night side. The diagram above in not entirely correct, but shows a possible interaction.
The Caloris Basin of Mercury

At first, on seeing the Caloris Basin of Mercury, I wondered if in 686 BC Mercury might already have been standing still, that is, rotating the Sun like a moon, always showing the same face to the Sun, or at best rotating very slowly. On the one hand, that ought to be expected, for Mercury, as the planet closest to the Sun -- which could have extended back for billions of years -- would have received more of the Sun's outflow of plasma than any other planet. Like almost all the satellites of the planets, its spin had been reduced to synchronous rotation about the parent planet, in this case, the Sun. Today Venus has achieved that status also. The Earth is slowing its spin at a rate of one second per year, and will be the next to come to a standstill.
If Mercury clashed with Earth on March 23, 686 BC, Julian, it would have received the massive shock of electrical repulsion on one face only. Normally the destructive forces distribute over a planet, because planets continue to rotate during the electrical contact. Mercury, however, if it were standing still or rotated only slowly, would have experienced the forces only in a large circular pattern on one hemisphere. Away from the center, where the external forces impinged at an angle to the curving surface of the planet, the destructive effects would fall off and be of a lower magnitude.
But rather than requiring Mercury to be rotating only very slowly, it should also be rocognized that the impact would have lasted only minutes before the exterior electrical field (of Earth) would have started to induce an electrical field of opposite polarity at Mercury -- in effect chasing away electrons, as storm clouds do to the Earth's surface where they pass over. As the polarity of the surface of Mercury facing Earth changed, it would have become a site of electrical arcing.

Images: Left: Caloris Basin. Right: Caloris Basin location on Mercury. After JPL, 1975.

The Caloris Basin of Mercury is located at the equator and occupies somewhat over 30 percent of Mercury's diameter. Thought to be 800 miles in diameter in 1975, it was measured at 963 miles in January, 2008. Caloris is mostly a flat plain with of what looks like lava fields. Caloris is additionally ringed with circular sets of mountains, and Mercury has an antipodal location where shock waves converged to break up the crust. If this is the mark of a collision with an asteroid, then it is the largest impact crater in the Solar System. The impact should have obliterated Mercury and removed the fragments entirely from the Solar System. If it was caused by electrical force between Mercury and Earth in 686 BC, then the marked circles seem almost too small.
In addition to the fact that the surface of Mercury falls away rapidly from the center of the impact, thus causing only sliding damage at the periphery (mountains), the applied force was also radial, and similarly fell away from the center. A shoving movement of the crust would have happened at the edges of the basin.
A year later, in 685 BC, when the Sun went into high activity, and both Venus and Mercury flared up like suns, every surface feature of Mercury was overlaid with cathode burn marks -- or 'meteor impacts' as astronomers call them.
685 BC, the Nova of Venus

The details of the nova event are found in the text of Chapter 11, "The Death of Quetzalcoatl," and Chapter 12, "Modern History," and need not be repeated here. For the whole of this period of the year 685 BC there is a point by point coincidence with the "Sibylline Star Wars" prophesies dating from AD 100 (see Chapter 13, "The Sibylline Star Wars"), plus a recounting in actual time periods in the "Chilam Balam" (see Chapter 16, "The Chilam Balam Books").
The Sky in 685 BC

Tracking the change in the zodiac and the constellations in the sky and arriving at some results took some graphical manipulation with the ephemeris program, since the center of the sky could not be arbitrarily moved. The results are listed in Chapter 11, "Quetzalcoatl."
Image: The sky before 685 BC, at the vernal equinox. The horizon line is incorrect, it should be rotated counterclockwise. Also, the longitudinal lines should meet at Ursa Major, rather than below Ursa Minor.

Above is the location of the vernal equinox in 685 BC before Venus went nova and the Earth's polar axis shifted to a different location in the sky. I had to set the ephemeris program to 1995 BC to simulate the condition.
The large circle is the dome of the stars, including the ones below the horizon. The horizontal line is the horizon; the single diagonal line is the ecliptic; the other diagonal lines are the longitudes (one hour apart) and latitudes.
Since I cannot move the polar axis in this simulation, the grid of latitudinal and longitudinal lines is incorrectly located. The longitude lines should converge at the location of the polar axis in the basket of Ursa Major. You can see that the polar axis as shown on this diagram has relocated using the current assumptions about the precession of the polar axis.
The location of the ecliptic and the planets and constellations is correct, since these do not change with a change in the polar axis. Only the grid of the longitudes and latitudes is incorrect. That will change the apparent locations of the planets and constellations in the sky, a topic I address in Chapter 13, "The Sibylline Star Wars."
I had to use a date of April 9 (Julian) to have the Sun locate at the intersection of the horizon, the equatorial, the ecliptic, and at a Right Ascension of zero hours (the longitudinal line through the Sun). (This is equivalent to mid March on the Gregorian calendar and thus the spring equinox.)
Image: The equinox before 685 BC

In the above image, the Sun is about to rise and is located at the intersection of the ecliptic, the equatorial, and the zero hour longitude line. The zero hour longitude is aligned almost perfectly with one of the horns of the constellation Taurus. (The horns are on the right.) At the tip of the tail of Taurus, and already above the horizon, are the Pleiades. These have announced the start of spring for perhaps thousands of years, and certainly since 2349 BC.
The location at which the Sun rises is correct, that is, it is at zero degrees of Taurus (30 degrees of Aries) in the manner in which the zodiac was divided up in remote antiquity. (Today "zero degrees of Aries" is wherever the equinox is located, currently well into the constellation Pisces.) It is based on what we know of the location of the equinox between 200 and 100 BC, when it was held to be at 8 degrees of Aries.
In the above diagram the slope of the zero hour longitude and the slope of the equatorial are incorrectly shown, as I noted above. The slope of the longitude line should be much less, since it would point to Ursa Major. The zero hour longitude line would thus go through the Pleiades, rather than above it. The equatorial latitude line would be at a right angle to this and pass above the constellation Aries and below the constellation Gemini. Thus in remote antiquity the Pleiades rose at the same longitude line.

Image: Before 685 BC, east hemisphere

Image: Before 685 BC, west hemisphere

The old horizon line, the previous equatorial, and the previous zero and 180 degree longitudes are shown above. Notice that Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is located at (or near) the equatorial (at the bottom of the East hemisphere Image). Sirius was the principle star used in ocean navigation in remote antiquity in the Mediterranean, for it would rise almost directly east and set almost directly west during fall and winter nights, traveling in a semi-circle through the southern night skies.
Sirius was also held to be the depth gage of the the Duat ('the sea' or 'the swamp') by the Egyptians. When it reached its highest point in the night sky, the second brightest star in the sky, the star Canopus, would be seen almost directly below Sirius, 35 degrees lower in the sky. Canopus was known as the weight of the plumb bob. The Egyptians, of course, insisted that the two stars were used as a depth gage by the ship of Osiris -- or whatever planet God was seen skimming across the top of the celestial ocean in his barge.
When Sirius showed up -- through fall and winter -- it was known to "make the ocean boil." Sirius is the brightest star in the skies, and this has to be an old reference to Sirius shimmering through the Absu, since before 685 BC Sirius rose nearly in the east, which of course was also the location where all the rings of the Absu converged. The rings would have been in motion, causing the starlight of Sirius to refract in constant ripples. Thus in rising and setting, Sirius would at least make the ocean (both the real ocean and the celestial ocean) look to be boiling.
Additional details of the changes in the sky in 685 BC may be found in Chapter 13, "The Sibylline Star Wars."
A Change in the Axis

It seems doubtful if the energy transfered during a plasma discharge from the Sun is enough to accomplish a change in the inclination of the rotational axis of Earth, but since it happened, and since there seems to be a direct causality (at least, in time) between the changes in the Earth's axis (and perihelion) and the plasma events of 685 BC -- the nova of the Sun, we have to accept the conclusion that there was a connection.
Image: The dome of the stars after 685 BC, showing the prior location of the Earth's axis.

Since we have no records of sudden cataclysmic changes on Earth during this time, except for the impact attributed to Mercury a year earlier (686 BC), it has to be assumed that the effect of the nova produced the results over an extended period of weeks or months. [note 29]
The Maya "Chilam Balam" claims that the disturbance of the Sun (leaving its normal path) lasted 40 days. The Zend-Avista claims 34 days for the flare-up of Venus. In Chapter 16, "The Chilam Balam Books," I have determined the spans of time for the event. Chapter 18, "Olmec Alignments," determined the actual dates from site alignments in use in the Valley of Mexico.
The Maya "Chilam Balam" also claims that the Sun returned in "three heaps of years," which probably means 'bundles' of years, that is, groups of five, thus 14 years, counted inclusively. This clearly is a calendaric consideration. The same day of the Tzolkin associated with the earlier setting location of the zenithal passage of the Sun returned again in 14 measures of the 260 day Tzolkin. It has nothing to do with the instability of the Sun.
... axial inclination

Image: Axial and orbital inclination of Earth compared with the axis and equatorial of the Sun.

As previously shown in Chapter 2 ("Cosmology"), the diagram above compares the spin axis of the Earth with the spin axis of the Sun. The diagram would represent the mid winter position along the orbit, when the plane defined by the spin axis of Earth and the radius of the orbit is perpendicular to the plane of the orbit (even if only as a mental exercize).
By adding the inclination of the orbit with the equatorial of the Sun (7 degrees) to the inclination of the Earth's spin axis to the normal to the orbit (23.5 degrees), the amount that the Earth's spin axis differs from the spin axis of the Sun is found to be 30.5 degrees.
What were the conditions before 685 BC? We can assume with some confidence that the inclination of the orbit with the equatorial of the Sun (7 degrees) has remained the same since 3147 BC. But we know nothing of the Earth's prior (before 685 BC) axial inclination, except what we are told from Indian sources, and what can be inferred from the Olmec and Valley of Mexico site alignments (Chapter 18).
It might be assumed that, since 3147 BC, the axis of rotation of the Earth pointed in the same location of the sky as the axis of Saturn, Neptune, and Mars -- an axial inclination of near 31.5 degrees to the axis of the Sun. (Discussed in Chapter 2, "Cosmology.") This would suggest that the most likely axial inclination before 685 BC would fall within a degree of 24.5 degrees..
31.5 - 7 = 24.5 degrees.

However, there is no physical claim for this. It is not a law of nature (that I am aware of), even though by coincidence the Earth -- as a Saturnian planet -- today matches the absolute value of the inclination of the other three planets. Additionally, the remaining non-Saturnian planets violate the supposition of this coincidence. Perhaps only by coincidence did the axis of the Earth end up, after 685 BC, at 23.5 degrees.
I would suggest that before 685 BC the inclination of the Earth's axis was 30 degrees to the normal of the Earth's orbit. Additionally, there is no reason to assume that the axial inclination was not at 30 degrees from long before. This would have the Earth's axial inclination at 37 degrees (30 degrees plus 7 degrees) to the axis of the Sun. This would place the Earth's axis in Ursa Major. There was no enlargement in the Earth's orbit in 685 BC, and a change in the inclination of the orbit would have been very unlikely.
A change in the axial inclination would not change the geographic pole, or the location of the equator. A change in the axial inclination would change the climate somewhat, but not radically. A change in the axial inclination would, however, change Mediterranean ship navigation by the stars radically, as noted above -- it was much easier at an inclination of 30 degrees. [note 30]
... India

The Indians of the 7th century BC suggested that the shift in the Earth's axial inclination was 6.5 degrees, and thus was 30 degrees before 685 BC (23.5 degrees plus 6.5 degrees).
Axial inclination can be measured from the difference of the elevation of the Sun at the winter and summer solstice. The tilt of the axis is equal to one half of the difference in the Sun's elevation. The tilt can additionally be found from the new location of the apparent center of rotation the north sky at night -- if maps were available of the previous location (elevation) of the stars. Star maps were certainly available in Mesopotamia at that time, and there is no reason to believe that they were not being made also in India.
There are a number of indications that the axial inclination had been at 30 degrees for thousands of years, besides the general notion in antiquity that spring had always started with the first showing of the Pleiades.
... tomb of Senmut

There are Egyptian tomb decorations which imply that the axis of the sky went through the center of Ursa Major since before 1492 BC. The earliest is the tomb of Senmut, the Calendar Registrar and Visier to Queen Hatshepsut. Senmut's tomb remained uncompleted in 1493 BC, when catastrophe struck Egypt.

Image: A portion of the tomb of Senmut, ca 1500 BC, Thebes. Construction halted in 1493 BC.

The central portion of one of the panels depicted the circumpolar constellations, but, in typical Egyptian form, not very accurately, for these were mystical objects rather than plotted stars. The long pole-like object may represent the occasional plume of plasma seen rising from the north polar region. The tomb was carved before the plasma plume of 1492 showed up, and is thus based on reports from 2193 or 2349 BC. The plume may also be understood as a continuation of the Nile into the north sky.
The rotational center of the sky is denoted by the figure holding a shorter pole stuck into the mummified ox, which is Ursa Major. The depiction does not change significantly over the next thousand years, except that the mummified ox becomes a mummified rear leg of an ox. Ursa Minor is depicted as a plow (often with a jackal astride) close to Ursa Major. The standing pregnant hippo (with a crocodile on its back) is the constellation Draco, but upside down from our depiction, so that the two bright stars are the feet rather than the eyes of the dragon. A hippopotamus does not have long hair, it does have sharp pointy teeth. The knife-like object in her right hand, by the way, is a Nile river-bank anchor. In later depictions Draco is clearly studded with stars so that the identification is certain. The crocodile represents the iconography for flowing water, and thus the original river to heaven.
Depictions like this continue periodically into the future. The mummified ox is depicted as a standing ox in the tomb of Seti I (dated probably to 700 BC), set on a scale being rotated by a person (god). The hippo's lance is the plasma plume seen in the north skies, which, as I have noted earlier, would show a bend into the tail region of the Earth's magnetosphere. In later depictions the plasma plume is properly shown as curving toward the ox. In later depictions the giant spike next to the hippo takes a number of bends before landing at the rear of the ox. It is not certain if the Egyptian tomb carvers knew what to make of any of this. [note 31]
The best that can be suggested from these tomb depictions is that the pan of Ursa Major had been the center of the sky from at least the era since 2193 BC. By the other anachromisms of Senmut's tomb (discussed in an earlier endnote of Appendix A, "Chronology"), it could be suggested that this condition may have extended back to before 2349 BC, when the year was 240 days.
... the "Chilam Balam"

More convincing, and certainly more accurate, information comes from the "Chilam Balam," which places the Pleiades above the intersection of the ecliptic and the equatorial after 2349 BC, when the Absu fell. See Chapter 16, "The Chilam Balam," for details. But here, too, nothing is known of the prior era, although perhaps nothing could be known if the Absu obscured the south skies. Since the Pleiades obviously first appeared after 2349 BC, they would have been obscured by the Absu in the previous period, from 3147 BC to 2349 BC.
... Olmec site alignments

The final confirmation that the rotational axis of Earth was at a different value from today comes from the 'era-ending' alignments of the ceremonial centers in Veracruz and the Valley of Mexico, which is discussed in Chapter 18, "Olmec Alignments." This data reveals the absolutely certainty of an earlier 30 degree inclination of the Earth's rotational axis.
... earlier axial inclination

The Olmecs and their predecessors would have seen the Saturnian planets very low in the sky in the north. The 'pole star' would have been seen at only 20 degrees above the horizon. If at that time the rotational axis of Earth was radically different from the rotational axis of Saturn, then the Olmecs would have recorded Saturn as dipping below the horizon (the sea!) on a daily basis. In sections of the "Chilam Balam" which speak of the first creation (4200 BC), and before, there is no such indication. Although Saturn is noted as 'walking about like a drunken person,' he does not disappear. But that Saturn dipped to or below the north horizon can be inferred from the "Popol Vuh," however.
In one section of the "Chilam Balam," which speaks of Mars starting to wander away, there is mention of him drilling holes in the back of the mountain. The mountain is probably the cloud bank seen in the north Atlantic, and the holes may be the shadowed flutes edges. But the fact that Mars disappeared behind the mountain suggests that Saturn itself remained further away from the horizon. That puts a limit on how much different the rotational axis of Earth was from the axis of rotation of Saturn. With Saturn at a diameter (originally) of about ten degrees, as I suggested earlier, it could have comfortably traveled in a circle of some ten degrees about a spot 20 degrees above the Earth's north horizon, without seeming to touch the horizon or dip into the ocean.
It is very unlikely that the rotational axis of Saturn was disturbed in 3147 BC during the run-in with Jupiter, for Saturn is massive. Thus if the rotational axis of Earth was within ten degrees of the rotational axis of Saturn, and with Saturn's axis inclined about 30 degrees away from the rotational axis of the Sun, the Earth could have been at an inclination of 37 degrees from the rotational axis of the Sun. With the plane of the orbit of the Earth established at seven degrees below the equatorial of the Sun after 3147 BC, that would cause the Earth's axis of rotation to be at a 30 degrees inclination from the normal to its orbital plane.
... changing the axis

Although I have used the 6 1/2 degree displacement of Ursa Major as noted by Vedic sources to arrive at the previous axial inclination of 30 degrees and a displacement of the equinox by 15 days, the retrocalculationg of the location of the Earth's axis to 685 BC (after the nova event), does not satisfactorily locate the axis to the current circle of polar axis precession. The jump from the location within the pan of Ursa Major should really have been on the order of about 15 degrees. This despite the fact that the relocation of the equinox can be verified from the apparent change in the latitude of Babylon, and from the change in the shadow of the gnomen at Jerusalem, both of which, as I suggested earlier, also most likely involved a lag of 15 days.
Additionally, the site alignments used in the Valley of Mexico and among the Olmecs, which are frequently selected to represent the previous axial alignment of the Earth, are within 0.3 degrees of where they would be expected for an axial inclination of 30 degrees. So, despite the suspected discrepancy of the Vedic measure of 6 1/2 degrees, the result derived from this tallies with all the later data.
What still has to be suggested is a mechanism for the change in the Earth's axial inclination. In an earlier endnote I quoted de Grazia's comment that Velikovsky had considered an external magnetic field. But neither of the two planets which had electrical contacts with Earth, Venus and Mars, have magnetic fields. Additionally, the possibility of a magnetic couple changing the axis of rotation is unlikely both because the magnetic poles do not coincide with the axis of rotation (the magnetic poles is thus not related to the axis of rotation), and because magnetic field are weak. As I mentioned earlier, a constantly applied torque is required -- a force applied off-center from the Earth's center.

Image: Precession of the Earth from an externally induced constant torque."
A planet passing Earth at inferior conjuction (directly between the Sun and the Earth) would not be capable of providing a constant force. A passing planet, as I have pointed out earlier in this appendix, causes a single impulse force, which immediately induces a change of charge on the surface of Earth which faces the other planet, thus almost immediately cancelling the original repulsive force. As seen for the close call by Venus in 1492 BC, this single force could certainly be massive enough to bump the Earth to a much larger orbit. But a planet at inferior conjunction does not represent a constant applied force or torque.
In fact the only body of in the Solar System capable of always presenting itself in full view of the Earth is the Sun. If then, during the 40 day course of the nova event, the Sun presented a much higher electrical field, it would also present a higher than normal repulsive force. Neglecting for a minute that the Earth should have been protected from the Sun's electric field by Earth's plasmasphere, it becomes obvious that a nova event starting in mid June would have seen the Earth's axis angled toward the Sun, starting 9 days after the solstice (June 6 in 685 BC). With the northern hemisphere facing the Sun, the repulsive force of the Sun's electrical field would have been offset from the Earth's center.
The off-center force thus represents a torque, a swing of the rotational axis (the north pole) away from the Sun. Because it was not lifted for 40 days, the reaction torque (at right angles to the spin and the applied torque) would start to precess the polar axis of the Earth. The precession would be considerably slower than the rotation of the Earth's axis.
If this were the case, then what the "Chilam Balam" says, "it came about that the sun in Katun 3-Ahau was moved from its place for three months," is correct, for the Sun in the skies, and the stars at night would have moved in circles centered on the north pole. This also conforms to the claim of the Phaethon legend that Phaethon "lost control" of his father's sun-chariot. Nonnos, describing the same event in AD 450, wrote, "Even the axis, which turns in the centre, began to totter through the whirling ether."
There are large problems with these notions, however. First, of course, is the idea that the Earth would be protected from noticing the external electrical field of the Sun by the Earth's shrouding plasmasphere.
It might be suggested that the large expulsion of the Sun resulted in the disappearance of plasmasphere, but this is not likely for Earth. The disappearance of a plasmasphere might in fact be suggested for Venus and Mercury, which have no magnetic fields, and which would allow these planets to be seen "in flames," so that in effect both of these planets were reduced to conductors in the transmission of an electric current from the Sun. Something similar seems to have happened to Earth, though, for Assurbanipal notes Venus as "raining fire over Arabia," and later Roman authors note Venus as burning up Ethiopia (where 'Ethiopia' is generic for 'southern lands').
Second, there was no change in orbit recorded for the Earth, although Lynn Rose and Raymond Vaughan, in their 1994 analysis of the "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga," note that the Earth's aphelion (the part of the Earth's orbit furthest from the Sun) changed directly after 685 BC. The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit did not change at this time. That happened in 669 BC in eastern Mediterranean chronology, thus 664 or 665 BC, some 16 years later. Considering that under gravitational mechanics, a change in the location of aphelion would normally take thousands of years, it is in this case obviously part of the same external effect which changed the inclination of the rotational axis of the Earth.
Third, the change due to an external force would probably not have set the Earth into a precessional movement, for the electrical force due to the Sun would have first tilted the rotational axis away from the Sun, followed by a movement (tilting) toward the trailing part of the Earth's orbit, this last due to the reaction torque. This change in location of the rotational axis would reduce the applied torque to zero as the center of the applied force would start to coincide with the Earth's equator, and thus the center of the globe.
Fourth, the change in the surface charge which would have been induced at the Earth's surface facing the electrical field of the Sun should have negated the repulsive force very soon after the Sun's field was first sensed. This change of induced charge would take some time, but, as mentioned earlier in these texts, in the case of a passing inner planet, the delay would only reduce the effect of the exterior electical field to an impulse.
Despite of the reservations listed above, what happened in 685 BC would have involved an extended low level of force applied to Earth. There are, of course, other possibilities. The change in the inclination of the axis may have been entirely due to the landing of the plasmoid at the Sun. I have suggested, based on the estimated length of the plasmoid, that the arrival likely would have taken nine hours. Additionally, the "Popol Vuh" suggests a reaction by the Sun which extended over five days during which the planets were not seen, but during which time additional plasmoids from Jupiter arrived. This conforms to what the "Dionysiaca" of Nonnos seems to imply with the statement, "Even the axis, which turns in the centre, began to totter through the whirling ether," that the tottering of the axis was limited to an end event. But, of course, Nonnos' document was written a thousand years after the events of 685 BC.
The AD 115 "Sibylline Star Wars" document give no clear indication, only statements of the change in the dome of the stars. The Roman author Ovid (in the first century AD), did much better in descriptive details. Ovid notes that regions of the Earth were burned up, that Phaethon had to struggle against "the whirling poles" and was swept away by the "swift axis," that the normal path of the Sun through the skies was not followed, and that the northern constellations attempted to dip into the sea. He ends with the note that the Earth "sank back a little lower than her wonted place" (paraphrased by Velikovsky).
The "Chilam Balam," similarly is specific about the path of the Sun, reading that the Sun "was moved from its place for three months" (which is 40 days, as I have noted.) This is as close as we can come to a contemporaneous record, for the information was taken from day-books ("The Council Book") dated to the year of the event. The Olmecs could not record that the Sun was moved from its place for this term, unless on the first day after Venus and Mercury flared up, the Sun indeed did not set at the expected horizon location. Nor did it again for all of the period of the three months (40 days). As demonstrated in Chapter 18, "Olmec Alignments," the people of Mexico kept track of the azumithal horizon locations of the setting Sun to within a fraction of a degree.
... implications

There are a number of implications which derive from a 30 degree axial inclination.
First, the idea of a doorway falling on the Absu, by the shadow of the Earth, has to be modified from my earlier suggestion. At 30 degrees axial inclination, the shadow would have reached only 4000 miles, rather than 6000 miles, onto the equatorial rings above the Earth (at mid-summer and mid-winter). A lowered shadow would make the Absu look even more like it had a doorway. The height of the rings, and how many could be seen from various latitudes remains the same (because the rings are a property of the Earth).
Second, the ancients insisted that the polar apparition -- Saturn and its planets -- rotated in a circle "without cease." This would be true if the rotational axis of Earth did not ever line up with the rotational axis of Saturn, Neptune, and Mars. A circle 10 degrees around the polar axis, means that the polar apparition could be seen, daily, at geographical locations of more than 20 degrees below the equator.
This also suggests that there is no basis for selecting planets as "Saturnian" or "Solar" by the inclination of their rotational axes. Simply, if a planet had been in the grip of Saturn for thousands or millions of years, the spin axis of a planet might eventually align with the spin axis of Saturn, as Neptune and Mars certainly did -- Mars having been below Saturn for at least 40,000 years, and possibly three million years. Uranus never did align its spin to Saturn.
This is where I started this investigation, by considering the identity of spin axes.

Endnotes

Note 1 --
"A mathematical description (set of equations) that represents nutation [of the Moon] is called a 'theory of nutation.' In the theory, parameters are adjusted in a more or less ad hoc method to obtain the best fit to data." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutation
[return to text]
Note 2 --

Image: Mars in June and September of AD 2001.
The dust storms on Mars are brought on when Earth passes Mars at the time of the perihelion of Mars (the closest approach to the Sun). Earth passed Mars on about June 16, 2001, with Mercury also in inferior conjunction. Mars was a few degrees off the ecliptic, so that an exact alignment was not achieved. But the exterior of a plasmasphere (and its tail) is a conductor of electricity, and could support the concentration of Solar Wind protons and ions impinging on Mars.
The tail of Venus's magnetosphere extends to Earth. See the file [Venus and Epidemics] for current interactions between Venus and Earth.
[return to text]
Note 3 --
A frequency plot of orbital inclinations (see below), which hides the information of the ten gaps where there are no asteroids, suggests that five planets may have been destroyed. The distribution seems to consist of five superimposed gausian distributions. A distribution of orbital inclination is the most likely graphical representation which would more or less preserve the original in-situ locations of the parent bodies.

Image: "Histogram of the orbital inclination of objects in the asteroid belt." (Data: ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.html. Plotted at case.edu/sjr16/) Additional graphics added.

Tom van Flandern has suggested that the meteorites fallen to Earth (and thus the contents of the Asteroid belt) represent at least 3 or 4 planets.
Note also the extent of the orbital inclinations. By comparison, planetary orbits vary only seven degrees from the ecliptic. Although the mode of the distribution of the asteroids is at about 4 degrees, the mean is located at about 8 degrees. There are secondary peaks at 9, 12, and 23 degrees.
[return to text]
Note 4 --
Another graph of the distribution of asteroids, below, based on some 4000 objects known by ca AD 1950. Please note that the vertical axis is not linear. This exagerates the asteroids closer to Mars. The horizontal axis shows the number of known objects at the respective location. The gaps can be clearly seen.

Image: "Image: Asteroid distribution with distance from the Sun in AUs. After Zdenek Kopal "The Realm of the Terrestrial Planets" (1979)"

[return to text]
Note 5 --

orbital resonances for various locations of Jupiter approx 0.50 0.70 0.90 1.10 1.30 1.50 1.70 1.90 asteroid AU AU AU AU AU AU AU AU orbit [AU] orbit orbit orbit orbit orbit orbit orbit orbit 1.78 6.72 4.05* 2.78 2.05* 1.60 1.29 1.07* 0.96 1.91 7.46 4.51 3.09* 2.28 1.78 1.44 1.19 1.01* 2.06 8.36 5.05* 3.46 2.56 1.99* 1.61 1.33 1.13 2.26 9.61 5.80 3.98* 2.94* 2.29 1.85 1.53 1.30 2.50 11.18 6.75 4.63 3.43 2.67 2.15 1.78 1.51 2.70 12.55 7.58 5.20 3.85 2.99* 2.41 2.00* 1.69 2.82 13.39 8.09* 5.55 4.10* 3.19 2.58 2.14 1.81 2.96 14.40 8.70 5.96* 4.41 3.44 2.77 2.30 1.94 3.03 14.92* 9.01* 6.18 4.57 3.56 2.87 2.38 2.01* 3.28 16.80 10.14 6.96* 5.15 4.01* 3.23 2.68 2.27 * -- near whole-number values

The resonances may be calculated from Kepler's third law which defines the relationship between the period of an orbit and the radius of an orbit, as follows..
(T{Asteroid} / T{Jupiter})^2=(r{Asteroid} / r{Jupiter})^3

The asteroid belt period, as a fraction of multiples of the period of Jupiter is found by using 1 for the period of Jupiter and AUs for the orbital radiuses..
T{Asteroid} = sqrt((r{Asteroid} / r{Jupiter})^3).

[return to text]
Note 6 --
The variation in the relationship of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn would probably be on cycles spanning thousand to tens of thousands of years.
[return to text]
Note 7 --
The gravitational forces can be calculated, and from this the an estimate can be made of the (horizontal) separation distance between Jupiter and the Saturnian planets. The separation distance turns out to be some 1.3 million miles between Jupiter (a mass of 1898 kg x 10 exp 24) and the combination of Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus (with a combined mass of 756 kg x 10 exp 24).
The mass of the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus as follows..
- Sun, 1,789,100 [10 exp 24 kg]
- Jupiter, 1,898 [10 exp 24 kg]
- Saturn, 568; Neptune, 102; Uranus 86; total 756 [10 exp 24 kg]
From..
G=f(Mm/r^2)

..the gravitational attraction between the Sun and Jupiter, at a radius of 0.7 AU, and dropping exp 24..
1789100 * 1898 / (0.7*93)^2 = 801251 [no sensible units]

The distance between Jupiter and Saturn/Neptune/Uranus to achieve the same forces..
sqrt (1898 * 756 / 801251) = 1.338 [10 exp 6 mi]

This is 1.3 million miles. To half the effect the distance would have to be multiplied by 1.4 (the square root of 2), which is about 2 million miles.
[return to text]
Note 8 --
The separation distances are from the tangent of the differences in the angles, times the assumed distance to the Sun, as per..
vertical distance = 0.7 * AU * sin(angle/deg) / cos(angle/deg),

.. using 0.7 AU as the location and 93 million miles for one AU.
To obtain the distance, for example, between Uranus and Saturn..
0.7 * AU * sin((2.49-0.77)/deg) / cos((2.49-0.77)/deg) = 1,954,865 [mi]

Adding, properly, about 1.5 or 2 million miles to 0.7*AU makes little difference in the vertical separation distances. The reader will note that the calculations include a shortcut in that they assume the repulsive forces are directed from the Sun, instead of being directed from Jupiter. This also will make almost no difference.
[return to text]
Note 9 --
I have not done the calculations for an exchange of KE involved. Electrical energy could be at cause also, and there are some hints from recent measurements.
Since 1973 it has been repeatedly noticed that whenever Earth experiences a massive Coronal Mass Expulsion from the Sun, the Earth's rotation suddenly decreases, although only by nanoseconds. The speed of rotation increases again over the following few days, at a slower rate than the initial decrease in rotational speed, and returns to normal.
The process of slowing down and regaining speed thus seems to result from a sudden change in the coulomb charge of Earth (intercepting solar protons), followed a reduction of the surplus charge over the following days through the normal leakage out to the space away from the Sun along the Earth's plasmasphere.
The spin of the Earth is decreasing currently. The international atomic clock, which determines the length of the day for Earth, has been adjusted by thirty leap seconds since 1972. The Earth's rate of rotation has slowed 30 seconds in 32 years -- about a second per year. This is certainly much more than the nanosecond deviations experienced with the occasional CME's. Extrapolating one second per year to the time since 3147 BC, results in a calculated loss of 1.4 hours. Although this represents an extreme and probably illegitimate extension of the data, it confirms my supposition that Earth (and also Mars) today spin at the same rate, or nearly the same rate, as before the breakup of 3147 BC, and also suggests that Earth and Mars both rotated at about 24 hours per day before 3147 BC.
In the last 25 years, Saturn has slowed its rotation from 10 hours and 45.5 minutes (1982) to 10 hours and 39.3 minutes (2004) -- about six minutes, or an average of 17 seconds per year. This data is based not on the rotation of its cloud cover, but on the rotation of its magnetic field. This is an astoundingly large amount, and difficult for astrophysicists to comprehend and explain.
[return to text]
Note 10 --
The White (and Red Crown) of Egypt depict Mars in the stream of a plasma connection in glow mode from Saturn, probably at a late date in the "Age of the Gods" -- after Saturn had ceased its initial nova condition in arc mode. The White Crown shows the plasma stream frontally lighted by the Sun and thus hiding Mars. The Red Crown shows the same stream at night, back lighted by the Sun (and casting a partial shadow) with the red surface of Mars showing through the plasma stream.
If we assume that the White or Red Crown of Egypt represents approximately the size of a human head and seen at a comparative distance of a hand held at arm's length (that, of course, is very subjective), then it might have subtended about 2.5 to 3.0 degrees (the angle subtended by a hand at arm's length).
On the basis of the above conjecture, it could be suggested that the upper bulb of the White Crown, representing Saturn, would be about 1.5 degrees wide visually (half the width of the larger Horus bulb). That clearly places Saturn 2.8 million miles from Earth.
72000 * (cos(1.5/deg) / sin(1.5/deg)) = 2.75 million miles

The same reasoning, applied to Mars in its lowered position, reveals a distance of about 80,000 miles between Earth and Mars at the closest approach..
(arctangent(4200/80000))/rad = 3.0 degrees.

[return to text]
Note 11 --
At two AU the distance would amount to..
2 * au * sin((2.49-1.85)/deg) / cos((2.49-1.85)/deg) = 2.1 million miles.

At 2.5 AU the distance would amount to
2.5 * au * sin((2.49-1.85)/deg) / cos((2.49-1.85)/deg) = 2.6 million miles.

In both instances, Mars would have been much closer to Earth. In fact, this might be suggested from the "King List," where the last descend to Earth of Mars was only 80 years prior to 3147 BC, much less than the average of 141 years of the previous seven 'reign lenghts.'
[return to text]
Note 12 --
Electrons in the Van Allen belts of the Earth, a toroidial ring of plasma a few thousand miles above the equatorial regions, will move to different locations over distances of a thousand miles in only a few seconds with a lightning strike experienced far below in the atmosphere of the Earth (the last few miles above the surface). We could expect the same rapid reconfiguration when two planetary plasmaspheres intersect. A thousand miles in two seconds ("a few") represents a speed on the order of 2 million miles per hour. This is actually the speed of the Solar Wind in the region of space near Earth today.
Mars and Mercury may have remained within the plasmasphere of Saturn after 3147 BC because Mars, having been in violent discharge from Saturn at least since the Gravettian, 40,000 years ago, must have been at a potential equal to that of Saturn's plasmasphere. I can place Mercury in the polar configuration only since the late in the Gravettian (ca 24,000 ya) or in the Magdalenian (17,000 to 14,000 ya), but certainly long ago.
The plasmasphere which reformed around Saturn would have no cause to exclude Mars from its enclosing bubble. Only on arriving at the asteroid belt, would the plasmasphere of Saturn have radically reconfigured itself to match conditions of the nearby conducting dust and rocks, resulting in the exclusion of Mars and Mercury from Saturn's electrical influence.
This scenario seems reasonable in accounting for the release of Mars (and Mercury) 80 years after 3147 BC, as well as accounting and the swarm of dust and asteroids which accompanied Mars for the following 2200 years. It would mean that Mars' initial orbit (as also for Mercury) was very elliptical, with aphelion at the edge of the asteroid belt.
[return to text]
Note 13 --
The raven might have been Saturn, with its rings forming the wings.
[return to text]
Note 14 --
There are other 'births' in Greek mythology. One records the birth of a God (planet) from Zeus' thigh -- thus the planet was first noticed as it appeared from behind the lower mountain shaped coma. This will turn out the be Dionysus.
[return to text]
Note 15 --
I suspect that the orbital period of Venus might have been on the order of 240 days initially, when the Earth's period was also 240 days. With the eccentricity of Venus at 0.15 and the eccentricity of the earth at 0.10, the orbit of Venus would certainly have overrun the orbit of Earth.
[return to text]
Note 16 --
The reader should take this statement as an admission that, first, we know only a little of the interactions of plasmaspheres, and second, that the effects are neither as clear-cut nor as discrete as presented here.
[return to text]
Note 17 --
I initially placed the event of 2349 BC in central Asia. A map inspection reveals two semicircular configurations of mountains, both with the open (flat) side pointing north or northeast. One is identified at the lower edge by the rim of mountains of the Himalayas, with Tibet as the flat area of the basin. The Tibetan plateau is known to be of 'recent' origin. In fact, it is held today by geologists that both the uplift of Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau are as recent as "after the end of the last ice age," thus about 11,000 years ago. This largely argues against the plate tectonics notion of the Indian subcontenent colliding with Asia some 60,000,000 years ago, although the current Himalayas do constitute the uplift of a previous set of more modest mountains.
The other large impact basin is further north, with Lake Baikal included in the curvature. I would suggest that this is the impact of 2193 BC, which in this case may have caused the further lift of the Tibetan plateau. This may be misidentified, however. Since we are aware of a long period of reduced light (reduced agricultural production) starting in 2193 BC, it would be suggested that the impact of 2193 happened in an ocean.
I should point to an article by Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor, "Catastrophic Theory of Mountain Uplifts" in 'Catastrophism and Ancient History' (1991), fairly convincingly assigns the uplift of the Himalayas and other mountain ranges to close passes of Mars in the 8th century BC. I'll reluctantly assent to some other mountain ranges, but not the Himalayas, since the overall structure of these mountains and the adjacent areas do not easily conform to the geological mechanics envisioned by Patten and Windsor.
[return to text]
Note 18 --
The Earth as a gyroscope is not equivalent to a top set on a table, and does not react the same way to an impulse. There is absolutely no comparison between a toy top or gyroscope and a sphere spinning in space.
The top is subject to a normal force directed up from the bottom, and the force of gravity along the same axis. As it is nudged, the force acting through its center of gravity is offset from the point of contact at the bottom. This constitues a couple acting permanently around the horizontal center of the top. The reaction torque resulting from this will set the top into precession. And it will be permanent. Nudge it more and it will turn upside down instead. The top will do this when the force of sliding friction (about 20 percent of the normal force) has been overcome.
Until a top is removed away from the effect of gravity, and off the table, it will not act like Earth under the influence of an impulse.
[return to text]
Note 19 --
Because the contact in 2349 BC happened at the fall equinox, it is amenable to a simple analysis. At the fall equinox the axis of the Earth was tilted 30 degrees 'forward' along the orbit. The center of impact may be estimated to be about 40 degrees north of the equator. If the hit occurred when the impact point faced the Sun, then the impact was not directed through the rotational axis of Earth, but on a line 30 degrees removed and through the Earth, but above the center. Thus the first reaction was a tilt of the Earth to the northeast -- 30 degrees east of north.
The gyroscopic reaction would immediately change that to a movement of the Earth's axis away from the first tilt. The two motions would describe a counterclockwise circle of the Earth's axis as seen from above.
[return to text]
Note 20 --
The Moon's orbit, which describes a wavy-lined circle at the same distance from the Sun as the Earth, but at a slightly different orbital inclination, precesses in only 19 years to produce a repeating series of eclipses.
[return to text]
Note 21 --
My estimates from other considerations is that the orbit of Venus only changed by a few days between 2350 BC and 1492 BC. The likelyhood of the 52 year cycle is discussed in the text.
The tally of seven approaches can be ascertained from the text of the Maya "Chilam Balam" books. See Chapter 16, "The Chilam Balam." Note that the number of closely spaced approaches decreased over time, as did the severity of the electrical contacts. For one of the last close passes, in 776 BC, Venus remained well inside the orbit of earth, and may have made electrical contact with Mars and the Moon, but not with Earth.
I should note that only for far distant interactions would two planets have to line up with the Sun, for the Sun's electrical shadow determines the location of a planet's plasmasphere tail. But planets could interact electrically at much closer distances if two plasmaspheres brushed against each other in passing. This apparently happened with Mars and Earth in 3000 to 2750 BC and again in 806 to 687 BC. The contact between Mercury and Earth in 686 BC was also accomplished (I suspect) at a short distance.
[return to text]
Note 22 --
I had originally only considered gravitational interaction for the displacement of the Earth's orbit in 1492 BC, and thus had Venus pass on the night side of Earth. Velikovsky, however, suggests that Venus passed on the day side of Earth, based on textual evidence. When the electrical interaction is considered, this make sense. If we allow for the repulsive forces of the electrical fields which would become 'visible' to the two planets during a plasmasphere contact, then the Earth was 'shoved' to a larger orbit instead of being gravitationally 'pulled.'
[return to text]
Note 23 --
Greater accuracy is achieved with the use of a public domain calendar conversion program written by John Walker, which allows conversion between the Maya Long Count (with the Tzolkin and Haab days) and the Julian Calendar and Gregorian calendar. I use a modified version which allows use of either the August 11 or the August 13 correlation.
The advantage of the backward extended Gregorian calendar is that it represents solar years, although the days of the year will be out of phase with reality. The Julian calendar, based on Julian days, diverges progressively from solar years.
[return to text]
Note 24 --
Additional data brought to bear on this event by Velikovsky was a "reference to some celestial event of 776 BC" from a secondary source referring to the Shih King, the Confucian "Book of Odes." However, the "Book of Odes" lists only an eclipse of the Sun. As a book of collected poetry the Shih King is not really concerned with celestial events.
James Legge translates the passage of the "Shih King" as..
"At the conjunction (of the Sun and Moon) in the tenth month, on the first day of the Moon, which was Hsin-mâo, the Sun was eclipsed."

Legge further notes ..
"This eclipse is verified by calculation as having taken place in B.C. 776, on August 29th, the very day and month assigned to it in the poem."

It is only curious that this is the only "celestial event" which is listed in a book of poetry, and it may be a coincidence that this is in the same year as the event of the ballgame.
By my retrocalculation the eclipse happens in the late afternoon on September 6th 776 BC on the Julian Calendar, which is astronomical year -776 for the ephemeris program I am using, and August 29 -775 on the Gregorian calendar, matching Legge's date quoted above as "B.C. 776, on August 29th." Of course both my ephemeris program and the savants of the late 19th century are using the same assumptions about the constancy of the Solar System. But I do not think this was simply a solar eclipse by the Moon, for the date is 30 years before 747 BC, when the Moon's orbit reduced enough to actually cause eclipses to be seen on Earth.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica, reports..
"A date of 776 BC was formerly adopted for such an event, but modern computations show that no solar eclipse in that year was visible in China. A revised date of 735 BC has been proposed."

I disagree. A solar eclipse (if there was one) was certainly visible in Peking on the date above, although perhaps in the late afternoon. The EB may also have reference to a reading of the first stanza as if the eclipse of the Sun followed an earlier lunar eclipse. An earlier lunar eclipse would have been 14 or 15 days earlier, at night. On August 22 (Julian), at 1:45 AM, the Moon is on the ecliptic (in line with the Earth and the Sun) and 12 hours removed from the location of the Sun. That defines a lunar eclipse. The EB continues with...
"Throughout the subsequent thousand years or so, lunar eclipses were hardly ever reported in China -- in marked contrast to solar obscurations, which were systematically observed."

What Velikovsky failed to note from his secondary source, is that in the third stanza of the ode mention is made of lightning and geological disturbances, including the lifting of streams and valleys.
Grandly flashes the lightning of the thunder.
There is a want of rest, a want of good.
The streams all bubble up and overflow.
The crags on the hill-tops fall down.
High banks become valleys; Deep valleys become hills.
Alas for the men of this time!
How does (the king) not stop these things?

I find it very interesting that the "solar eclipse" is associated with catastrophes. I would assign the movement of hills and river and the lightning strike to a close passage of Mars, but the year 776 BC in China, based on astronomical data, does not match the year 776 BC in the eastern Mediterranean, based on chronological data. It is off by four years, which actually may not be a problem, since the first Olympic Games could have started either 4 or 8 years after the event.
It should also be realized that texts in China, dating from the seventh century BC, were often corrected, even as late as AD 900 or AD 1000. Others have suggested this, and I have noted this for the entry concerning the calendar adopted by Yao as described in the Annals of Shu. It is possible that the lunar eclipse followed by a solar eclipse were retrocalculated at a late date and inserted to account for the disturbances noted in the poem. I believe that no lunar or solar eclipses were experienced anywhere (except perhaps in the tropics) before 747 BC.
[return to text]
Note 25 --
The following lists the coincidental inferior conjunctions of Mars and Venus with Earth, between 800 BC and 700 BC. The angles listed are measured from the Sun, and are taken from print-outs of visual best approximations of 'close passes' of Venus and Mars.

Image: "Mars, Earth, Venus on February 17, 776 BC; Mars shown within Earth's orbit"

year* angle interval 800 17 deg 6 793 11 7 787 24 6 780 10 7 <-- 776 BC 774 26 6 768 21 6 761 15 7 755 28 6 748 20 7 744 28 4 736 28 8 729 25 7 716 22 13 712 20 4 * corrected by 4 years

The corrected date corresponding to 776 BC is marked. I have excluded conjunctions of 30 degrees or more, some of which happen at odd intervals of two, four, or five years. The date of February 25 -780 Julian is February 17 -779 Gregorian, and equal to the year 776 BC in eastern Mediterranean chronology.
[return to text]
Note 26 --
Velikovsky mentions, in the unpublished "The Assyrian Conquest"..
"It is often asserted that the Era of Nabonassar was Ptolemy's invention; but it is a fact that one of the most important of the Babylonian historical texts, the so-called "Babylonian Chronicle" (B.M. 92502), starts with the reign of Nabonassar, or the year -747. See H. Winckler and J. N. Strassmeier, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, II (1887), pp. 163-168. Cf. D. J. Wiseman, 'Chronicles of Chaldean Kings' (London, 1956), pp. 1-2."
-- Immanuel Velikovsky, from "Haremhab's Contemporaries" at [http://www.varchive.com]

[return to text]
Note 27 --
Velikovsky quotes from J. de Costa, "The Natural and Moral History of the Indies" (1604), that the new year among the Indians of Mexico started on February 26th (supposedly on the Julian calendar, but this is on the Gregorian calendar).
From another secondary source I have information attributed to Bernadino de Sahaguán, in "Historya General de Nueva España" (ca AD 1530) who identified the start of the Aztec year with February 12 (supposedly) on the Gregorian calendar. February 12 is 14 days before February 26, and may be a specific date in the 16th century AD. If so, then February 12 (AD 1530) falls on the Julian calendar, equivalent to February 22 on the Gregorian calendar (of the same year).
[return to text]
Note 28 --
The inferior conjunction with Mercury on February 23, 686 BC, Julian, should be kept separated from the inferior conjunction with Mars, six days later, on March 1, 686 BC, Julian. The dates can be confusing because the inferior conjunction of Mars falls on February 22 on the Gregorian calendar.
[return to text]
Note 29 --
The requirement of conservation of orbital rotational momentum might be enough to account for the changes. But an accounting of the energy balance among the planets involving the interactions of 1500 BC and 747 BC has not yet been successfully made.
Patten and Windsor, in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996), perform calculations for the exchange of momentum between planets in a limited series of close approaches between Earth and Mars in the 8th and 7th century BC. The computational exercise is of great interest in that results are forced to a set of starting conditions about dates and later orbits. Using these boundary conditions a solution was found with an iterative process of calculations, not unlike the method used by Rose and Vaughan in fitting orbital eccentricities to the data of the "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga." However, Patten and Windsor seem to have neglected the inclination of planet orbits to the ecliptic.
The boundary conditions use by Patten and Windsor included the current orbits of Earth, Mars, and Venus as end points. But these were not established yet in 701 BC, which Patten and Windsor use as one end point. We know from Rose and Vaughan that the orbits of Venus and Earth had not yet circularized in 701 BC. Even after the circularization of the Earth's orbit in 670 BC, there were two additional small changes in the orbit of Earth. And of course we have no records (which have been analysed) for the following centuries, when Venus assumed its current near circular orbit.
[return to text]
Note 30 --
As an example, for Chicago (at 42 degrees latitude) at summer solstice, the following are the height of the Sun at noon, the location of sunrise in degrees north of east, and the length of daylight, for various values of axial tilt.
	axial        height of        sunrise,        longest day
     inclination    Sun at noon     degrees north      [hours and
      [degrees]      [degrees]        of east           minutes] 
         20            68.0             27.4             14:32
         23.5          71.5             32.4             15:04
         30            78.0             42.2             16:10 
 
Winter conditions are basically the reverse of summer conditions (with sunrise at degrees south of east).
	axial        height of        sunrise,        longest day
     inclination    Sun at noon     degrees south      [hours and
      [degrees]      [degrees]        of east           minutes] 
         20            28.0             27.4             9:26
         23.5          24.5             32.4             8:54
         30            18.0             42.2             7:48 
 
[return to text]
Note 31 --
See Ove Von Spaeth "Dating The Oldest Egyptian Star Map" Centaurus V42 (2000).
[return to text]
Calculations are in Unix bc notation, where ^ denotes exponentiation; the functions (a)rctangent, (s)ine, and (c)osine use radians; angle conversions to radians or degrees by the divisors rad=.017+ and deg=57.2+; other functions are shown as f( );
units: million == 1,000,000; billion == 1,000,000,000;
one AU == 93,000,000 miles.

URL of this page: http://saturniancosmology.org/mech.php
This page last updated: Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Size of this page: 33005 words.

Feel free to email me with any comments or corrections. Find an email [address] here.
Copyright © 2010 Jno Cook
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms and licence of Creative Commons. A copy of the license is included on the page entitled
Creative Commons Deed 2.5

Recovering the Lost World, A Saturnian Cosmology --Jno Cook Appendix B: The Celestial Mechanics.

Planetary Stability

Ellenberger

De Grazia

Action at a Distance

The Asteroid Belt

Source of the Asteroid Belt

Gaps in the Asteroid Belt

The End of Paradise

Outer Planet Orbits

Outer Planet Spin Rates

New Inner Planet Orbits

Coincident Orbits

Crossed Orbits

Plasmasphere Interactions

Compression Marks

Himalayan crescent

The Orbit of Venus

Approach of Venus in 2349 and 2193 BC

Venus in 1492 and 1440 BC

The 52 Year Cycle of Venus

2349 BC - 2193 BC

2193 BC - 1492 BC

1492 BC - 747 BC

747 BC - today

summary of Venus orbital periods

The Orbit of Mars

Using an Ephemeris

The Eighth and Seventh Century

The Ballgame of 776 BC

Mars in the 8th Century

747 BC, the First Earth Shock

687 or 686 BC, the Second Earth Shock

The Caloris Basin of Mercury

685 BC, the Nova of Venus

The Sky in 685 BC

A Change in the Axis

... axial inclination

... India

... tomb of Senmut

... the "Chilam Balam"

... Olmec site alignments

... earlier axial inclination

... changing the axis

... implications

Endnotes

Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology --Jno Cook
Appendix B: The Celestial Mechanics.