Immanuel Velikovsky, scientist or twit?

Dexter Sinister

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Geez Dex, I was just throwing something out there for discussion.
My apologies pockets, I didn't mean to snap at you, I was a little exasperated at the time by other peoples' foolishness (not here...well, mostly not here...in real life) and it seems it made me a little intemperate. Sorry, I should have put more thought into that. I'll try in future not to bring my real life emotional baggage into these forums... :smile:
 

mt_pockets1000

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Jun 22, 2006
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My apologies pockets, I didn't mean to snap at you, I was a little exasperated at the time by other peoples' foolishness (not here...well, mostly not here...in real life) and it seems it made me a little intemperate. Sorry, I should have put more thought into that. I'll try in future not to bring my real life emotional baggage into these forums... :smile:
Not a problem Dex. I was not offended in any way. Just a bit concerned about your overall well being that's all. It's all good hombre.
 

darkbeaver

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Q-CD vol. 2: Cosmic Heretics, Ch. 4: A Proper Respect for Authority 7 2

Still Sagan could invest himself with V.'s claims, and probably
(though he would not meet with me to talk about such matters) he
was convinced that the father was well dead and gone and was
terrified at the feeling that V. now wished to be patriarch to him.
Interviewed by Richard Baker on BBC 4 (radio) "Start the Week,"
30 March 1983, he was asked, along with other guests, "the
moment in your life that you've been most pleased about?" Sagan
talked of the, "delightful moments" when his predictions about
planets were borne out by space vehicles on the spot. Pressed for a
"particular discovery," he replied "Well, the discovery that the
surface of Venus is extremely hot, about 380 deg-C, [Actually it is
much higher] and produced by a massive atmosphere Greenhouse
Effect that keeps the heat in..." The second is a dubious theory, not
at all original with him.
That he could claim the first can most charitably be regarded as a
slip of the tongue, such as Sigmund Freud describes; inadvertent
and often embarrassing utterances, they are usually prompted by a
strong suppressed desire of the speaker to make a point otherwise
prohibited by rules, morals, or truth. Sagan, one might surmise, let
the claim slip out as an expression of general megalomania, but the
particular claim, out of all those he might have thought of, strikes at
V.'s well-established claim of predicting the high heat of Venus.
There is here a hint of psychological pressure working to take for
his own specifically the property of the father.
 

Dexter Sinister

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You're one of the people whose foolishness exasperates me. If you think Velikovsky, and now von Daniken it seems, contributed anything useful to science, you understand even less than I originally credited you with.
 

darkbeaver

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You're one of the people whose foolishness exasperates me. If you think Velikovsky, and now von Daniken it seems, contributed anything useful to science, you understand even less than I originally credited you with.

Well Dexter when you allow your exasperations to rule your house you can be enticed to rash actions and vitriolic prosecution of argument. This can ultimately lead to defeat. In this particular case though, you have no argument, so you've simply decided to unilaterally disregard the high standards adhered to thus far in this thread by CC members in good standing down to the level where you have perhaps become to used to rolling. If you can't admit the plain undeniable truth that the millions of books sold by both Velikovsky and von Daniken have contributed to science then what point has anyone of entertaining conversation with you sir?
I would wager that both these writers have kindled great interest in science, in fact I know they have. Velikovskys theroy won't go away, it gathers support now faster than at any other time. I find the whole subject intensely interesting.:smile:
 

#juan

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My point in bringing up Erich von Daniken was to present my opinion that both Velikovsky and von Daniken were selling a bill of goods that wouldn't stand up to critical scientific examination. Of the two, von Daniken was the most entertaining. It was fun debunking Chariots of the Gods.....It probably would have gone quicker had we had today's access to computers and the internet.
 

#juan

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Beside this load of malodorous malarky, von Daniken was almost a relief:

Some of Velikovsky's specific postulated catastrophes included:

  • A tentative suggestion that Earth had once been a satellite of a "proto-Saturn" body, before its current solar orbit.
  • That the Deluge (Noah's Flood) had been caused by proto-Saturn entering a nova state, and ejecting much of its mass into space.
  • A suggestion that the planet Mercury was involved in the Tower of Babel catastrophe.
  • Jupiter had been the culprit for the catastrophe which saw the destruction of the "Cities of the Plain" (Sodom and Gomorrah)
  • Periodic close contacts with a cometary Venus (which had been ejected from Jupiter) had caused the Exodus events (c.1500 BCE) and Joshua's subsequent "sun standing still" incident.
  • Periodic close contacts with Mars had caused havoc in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.
Wapedia - Wiki: Immanuel Velikovsky
 

darkbeaver

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So do I, obviously, or I'd have abandoned this thread long ago. I'm always interested in the reasons why apparently intelligent and perceptive people like you believe in so much stuff that's provably nonsense.

Maybe what you thought was provable nonsense isn't. If you could prove it to be nonsense Dexter I would incorporate the revelation immeadiately. If authority and convention could prove anything it would long ago have put the subject to rest. On examination the subject has very, very long history and a cast of thousands of the finest minds from the widest possible disiplines, something a unifying force would be expected to display. It provides for the mess of history and it illuminates the very roots of human development and relations. I think of it as the greater part of the missing link.
 

darkbeaver

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Jan 26, 2006
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Beside this load of malodorous malarky, von Daniken was almost a relief:

Some of Velikovsky's specific postulated catastrophes included:

  • A tentative suggestion that Earth had once been a satellite of a "proto-Saturn" body, before its current solar orbit.
  • That the Deluge (Noah's Flood) had been caused by proto-Saturn entering a nova state, and ejecting much of its mass into space.
  • A suggestion that the planet Mercury was involved in the Tower of Babel catastrophe.
  • Jupiter had been the culprit for the catastrophe which saw the destruction of the "Cities of the Plain" (Sodom and Gomorrah)
  • Periodic close contacts with a cometary Venus (which had been ejected from Jupiter) had caused the Exodus events (c.1500 BCE) and Joshua's subsequent "sun standing still" incident.
  • Periodic close contacts with Mars had caused havoc in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.
Wapedia - Wiki: Immanuel Velikovsky

Juan let's leave electricity alone for the moment. If one decent size captured ball gets played on the solar billiard table what do you see happening?
 

Dexter Sinister

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If you could prove it to be nonsense Dexter I would incorporate the revelation immeadiately.
No you wouldn't, because I have, several times, in this thread and others, and so have other people, it's actually pretty easy. If Velikovsky were right, there are major features of the earth and the solar system generally that should not exist but do, and features that should exist but don't. You've been given lists of some of them directly, and links to other analyses that cover the subject more comprehensively. The physical evidence does not sustain his ideas, and your policy has always been to ignore it, deny it, or offer more baseless ad hoc hypotheses to explain it.
 

#juan

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I assume you are talking about some new, comet or planet, getting locked into orbit around our sun. If it were of a decent size as you said, it would have some kind of affect on every other body in the system. Depending on the size and orbital distance, it's effect on the existing planets and their satillites could range from a minor orbital wobble to a major disruption and possible destruction of an existing planet or the newcomer. Moons could be yanked out of orbit and they could collide with another planet......If that other planet was Earth, it would be devastating. The solar system would suffer some of the affects for years afterwards.
 

darkbeaver

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I assume you are talking about some new, comet or planet, getting locked into orbit around our sun. If it were of a decent size as you said, it would have some kind of affect on every other body in the system. Depending on the size and orbital distance, it's effect on the existing planets and their satillites could range from a minor orbital wobble to a major disruption and possible destruction of an existing planet or the newcomer. Moons could be yanked out of orbit and they could collide with another planet......If that other planet was Earth, it would be devastating. The solar system would suffer some of the affects for years afterwards.
What do we have for the age of the solar system 5 billion or so? That's a lot of space/time I wonder what the math says about the probabilities of collision. What I'm eluding to is the impossibility of uniformatism, it is impossible that types of collision have not happened many times. I don't think you'll disagree with that seeing how the evidence is on every body in the solar system, all we have to do is adjust the timeing and the method of interaction to fit the thousands of records of those same interactions. The entire span of extant human history, art, philosophy and mythology is stuffed full of celestial disequilibrium in fact it is strongley suggested that homo sapien sapien is a direct product of that chaos.
 

darkbeaver

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No you wouldn't, because I have, several times, in this thread and others, and so have other people, it's actually pretty easy. If Velikovsky were right, there are major features of the earth and the solar system generally that should not exist but do, and features that should exist but don't. You've been given lists of some of them directly, and links to other analyses that cover the subject more comprehensively. The physical evidence does not sustain his ideas, and your policy has always been to ignore it, deny it, or offer more baseless ad hoc hypotheses to explain it.

Features! Jeebus crispus you can't even admit to an electric sun when it's bleeding well obvious that it is such and that the fusion model is total dog squat. Velikovskys record of prediction is better than any scientist before or since and I read nothing but crap from mainstream science commentary. Even today I'v read retarded things like "flux ropes" used in the following retarded article.

Auroras: What Powers the Greatest Light Show on Earth?



Stephen Battersby
New Scientist
Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:46 UTC


© ImageBroker
Polar lights, seen over the White Sea, White Karelia, Russia.

A few times a day, a gigantic explosion shakes the Earth's magnetic shield, triggering a chain of events that lights up the polar skies with dazzling auroras. These explosions are substorms, and how they happen has long been a mystery. Until now, no one has been able to explain how they gather the energy to create such spectacular displays, or what happens to trigger them.

Now a flotilla of NASA satellites is finally providing answers. They could help us understand not only one of nature's greatest spectacles, but also help predict more serious space weather, which can endanger satellites and astronauts, and even scramble electrical systems on Earth.

The northern and southern lights have fascinated people throughout human history, and there has been no shortage of attempts to explain them. Galileo described these auroras as sunlight reflected in vapours rising from the Earth, while Descartes proposed reflections from ice c
 

Dexter Sinister

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...you can't even admit to an electric sun when it's bleeding well obvious that it is such...
No it's not. Do the calculations, they're fairly simple classical physics and don't involve any of the quantum theory or relativity theory you're so scornful of. An electric current with enough power to produce the sun's measured energy output would also induce a magnetic field of an easily calculable size at the distance of the earth from the sun, and that field is not present. You're wrong, but as usual I expect you'll just deny it or ignore it.
 
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darkbeaver

the universe is electric
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A Real 'Theory of Everything'
The editorial of New Scientist of 10 December 2005 is headlined:
"Ideas needed: The hunt for a theory of everything is going nowhere fast."

It underlines the parlous state of theoretical physics in its inability to reconcile relativity and quantum theory and so find what is grandly called a "theory of everything."



Mathematics ain't Physics

Those who would aspire to a theory of everything are told they must undertake "the gruelling complex and abstract mathematics" required for the task. Who says so? Mathematicians of course. It is a chronically narrow view, like looking through the wrong end of the telescope and imagining you see stars. This view has led to elitism in physics based on mathematical ability. Most bizarre have been those who claim to see God in their own image – as a mathematician.

One expert on relativity theory attempted to discourage such hubris. He publicly exposed an inconsistency in Einstein's special theory of relativity. Following his experience of other leading experts deliberately misinterpreting and misrepresenting the problem he posed, he wrote: "I am not yet convinced that facility in performing mathematical operations must inevitably deprive its possessor of the power of elementary reasoning, though the evidence against me is strong."1

The same expert was later moved to declare, "The mathematician is more akin ..to a chess player than to one endowed with exceptional critical power. The faculty by which a chess expert intuitively sees the possibilities that lie in a particular configuration of pieces on the board is paralleled by that which shows the mathematician the much more general possibilities latent in an array of symbols. He proceeds automatically and faultlessly to bring them to light, but his subsequent correlation of his symbols with facts of experience, which has nothing to do with his special gift, is anything but faultless, and is only too often of the same nature as Lewis Carroll's correlation of his pieces with the Red Knight and the White Queen - with the difference whereas Dodgson recognised the products of his imagination to be wholly fanciful, the modern mathematician imagines, and persuades others, that he is discovering the secrets of nature." To be gifted in mathematical ability does not imply comparable gifts in perception and critical reasoning. We perpetuate a popular delusion, fostered by mathematicians, by equating the two. As a result, theoretical physics has gone nowhere for the past century.

DB: I have no scorn for quantum physics. CBC Ideas did an interview with James Lovelock this evening titled "The way to think about science" it was about you and Juan, common specialists. He of course is an independent GP of science as he describes himself this allows him to produce results from experimentation and observation, he said that the obvious problem screwing science today was the utter isolation into specialists camps and the retardation accross the board by industry driven motives. A very smart chemist is Lovelock a man of very great discovery and invention he has for most of his career gone through exactly the same crap as Velikovsky because he was seen as providing creationists with ammunition against Darwin with his Gian theroy of the selfregulating biosphere, which is a fact by the way. He first came to it while working for NASA. It was a good programe, ideas that is. Math is beautiful but it's only a tiny part of the whole thing and no separate part is more important than the next in fact no separation exists. Science seems to always work best when it has the widest possible input.DB
 
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Dexter Sinister

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It's the math that generates quantitative predictions that allow theories to be tested against measurements of how nature actually behaves. Without that, you don't have a theory of physics, you're just waving your hands around. On your favoured electric sun model for instance, unless that model can produce quantitative statements about things like the average kinetic energy of the electrons in the current, the current density, the size of the current, the power delivered to the sun by that current, and the size of the magnetic field such a current would induce, which can all be tested against measurements, you don't have a theory. You have an untested hypothesis. It's easy to test that one with known data and a few reasonable assumptions. There's an upper limit on the average kinetic energy of the electrons in the current, for instance, or we'd see a flood of x-rays from the sun as they strike the matter in the sun, there's a lower limit on the power in the current, it must at least equal the sun's power output, and there's an upper limit on the size of the induced magnetic field, it must be smaller than the earth's field at our distance from it or compasses wouldn't work.

I'll give you a hint: it's easiest to work backwards from the magnetic field strength. The magnetic induction B a distance R from a line of current of J amperes is B = uJ/2pπR, where u is the permeability constant. Usually the symbol is the lower case Greek letter mu with a small subscript of 0, but I can't show that with the character set available to me here. B cannot be more than about half a gauss, that's how big the earth's field is, u and R you can look up, π I presume you know, and figure out what the maximum current J can be in amperes. Then you can figure out how many watts a current that size can generate subject to certain reasonable assumptions about the density of electrons in the current and their average velocity, knowing that the wattage of the sun is about 4x10^26. You'll find that no possible combination of current density and electron velocity can match the sun's observed power output and at the same time induce a magnetic field that would not overpower compasses on the earth.

Elementary physics busts the electric sun model Beave. There's no way around it. It's wrong. Quite apart from the fact that neutrinos are observed flowing away from the sun, and only nuclear processes produce neutrinos...
 

darkbeaver

the universe is electric
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I can see there is no skateing arround you,no threatening no sweet talking, mirrors and smoke have no effect on you, you must have your math, I'll do it, not just for you but me to. It'll be fun, a nice exercise, see you in the spring.