Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site imsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!elsie!imsvax!ted From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) Newsgroups: net.physics Subject: The realm of physics, and the late Immanuel Velikovsky Message-ID: <457@imsvax.UUCP> Date: Sat, 9-Nov-85 21:56:32 EST Article-I.D.: imsvax.457 Posted: Sat Nov 9 21:56:32 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 11-Nov-85 07:31:27 EST Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD Lines: 128 It has been brought to my attention that a number of the amateur physicists who regularly post to net.physics have posted articles on the late Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky. This discussion is normally confined to net.origins, since it involves historical and mythological interpretation, things physicists are not normally interested in. I would like to invite any of the net.physics viewers who have any interest in this topic to pick it up on net.origins. I thought you might also like to read what a couple of PROFESSIONAL physicists have had to say about Velikovsky. I Robert Bass is a former Rhodes scholar who took his doctorate under Aurel Wintner in 1955 and three years of post- doctoral work in non-linear mechanics under national medal of science winner Solomon Lefschetz at Princeton. He is credited with the only dynamical explanation of Bode's law, and with a paper in the Summer 1974 issue (# 8) of Pensee which basically settled once and for all the whole question of whether Velikovsky's scenarios were "physically possible". The abstract for the paper reads as follows: 1) 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. 2) As demonstrated in the text in considerable detail, it is perfectly possible, according to Newton's laws of dynamics and gravitation when three or more bodies are involved, for planets to nearly collide and then relax into an apparently stable Bode's law kind of configuration within a relatively short time; therefore Velikovsky's historical evidence cannot be ignored. 3) If one started Venus in an orbit lying entirely between Jupiter and Saturn, with precisely the appropriate initial position and velocity, it would within less than two decades work its way inward into an orbit lying entirely between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. (This follows from observations of the comet Oterma III and the fact that, in the restricted problem of three bodies, the mass of the smallest body is irrelevant.) 4) There is no plausible explanation for the anomalous (retrograde) rotation of Venus, other than that it originally had prograde spin and was later flipped upside- down by a near collision with some other planet. 5) The fact that the spin rate of Venus is now mysteriously locked in resonance with the rate of revolution of Venus relative to the Earth (so that Venus presents the same face to Earth at every inferior conjunction) may provide a dynamical clue as to which planet Venus encountered. 6) Laplace's theorem allegedly proving stability of the solar system (1773) was shown to be fallacious in 1899 by Poincare; in 1953, dynamical astronomer W. M. Smart proved that the maximum interval of reliability of the perturbation equations of Laplace and Lagrange was not 10**11 years, as stated in 1895 by S. Newcomb, but actually at most a small multiple of 10**2 years. 7) The eminent dynamical astronomer E. W. Brown, 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. The paper itself amounts to about ten pages of very fine print and I can't reproduce it here without getting thrown out of usenet for cause. Copies are probably still available from the BYU physics dept. If all else fails, I could photostat copies of this article and send them anyone interested, offer limited to those with advanced degrees in physics, astrophysics etc. since nobody else would have a prayer of understanding it. Contact me by UNIX mail if interested. II I don't have to tell any of you who Albert Einstein was. But did any of you know that he and Velikovsky had been pals at the Prussian Scientific Academy; that, along with Heinrich Loewe, they had edited the Scripta Universitatus, the major cornerstone of the present Hebrew University in Jerusalem? Some of his thoughts on Velikovsky may be read in a letter TO Velikovsky dated March 17, 1955: Dear Mr. and Mrs. Velikovsky, At the occasion of this inauspicious birthday you have presented me once more with the fruits of an almost eruptive productivity. I look forward with pleasure to reading the historical book that does not bring into danger the toes of my own guild. How it stands with the toes of the other faculty, I do not know yet. I think of the touching prayer, "Holy St. Florian, spare my house, put fire to others!" I have already read carefully the first volume of the memoirs to "Worlds in Collision" and have supplied it with a few marginal notes in pencil that can easily be erased. I admire your dramatic talent and also the art and the straightforwardness of Thackery who has compelled the roaring astronomical lion [Shapley] to pull in a little his royal tail, yet not showing enough respect for the truth. Also, I would be gratified if you could savor the whole episode for its humorous side. Unimaginable letter debts and unread manuscripts that were sent in, force me to be brief. Many thanks to both of you and friendly wishes. Your, A. Einstein I am just an ordinary businessman myself, and know very little of physics. Therefore, when I read or hear about anyone ridiculing or "debunking" Velikovsky's theories because they supposedly violate the "laws of physics", I can only assume it is because they think they know more about physics than Robert Bass and Albert Einstein.