Posted on 05/13/2003 7:31:26 PM PDT by green team 1999
The Great Planet X Debate
11p-12a PST: coast to coast AM radio
Astronomer Phil Plait (badastronomy.com)
will debate alien contactee Nancy Lieder (zetatalk.com) over whether a 'Planet X' will pass close enough to the Earth to cause a pole shift and spur many disasters in the next few weeks.
Plait will then be the solo guest for the last two hours.
for information and discusion only,not for profit etc,etc.
Assuming you've accurately presented his theory here, he was only "right" for fairly flexible values of "right" - the surface temperature of Venus is less than 1/3 of the boiling point of lead, 900 ºF, versus almost 3200 ºF for lead's boiling point.
He wasn't a scientist, his understanding of basic physics was very weak, and he didn't rely on scientific methods to arrive at his conclusions, most of which were ludicrous. His defenders will say "but he got this right, or that right," while ignoring that the vast preponderance of his conclusions were faulty. He might have been right occasionally, just as a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I encourage you to do a web search on debunking Velikovsky; there's a fair amount of interesting material that deals with his mistakes.
Albert Einstein and Immanuel Velikovsky were friends for many years. In 1946 Velikovsky discussed his idea's of an encounter with Venus in the last few thousands years causing a pole shift accounting for much of ancient legend. He left Einstein a draft of his book Worlds in Collisions.Below is the letter of response from Einstein. The two remained friends for years after this. Einstein was interested in the historical record that might include a catastrophic event of extraterrestrial origin (comet, asteroid, ect) but from his knowledge of physics he knew that a a pole shift and encounter with Venus in the last few thousand years were both impossible.
July 8, 1946
Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
526 West 113 Str.
New York City
Dear Mr. Velikovsky:
I have read the whole book about the planet Venus. There is much of interest in the book which proves that in fact catastrophes have taken place which must be attributed to extraterrestrial causes. However it is evident to every sensible physicist that these catast- rophes can have nothing to do with the planet Venus and that also the direction of the inclination of the terrestrial axis towards the ecliptic could not have under- gone a considerable change without the total destruction of the earth's entire crust. It were best in my opinion if you would in this way revise your books, which contain truly valuable material. If you cannot decide on this, then what is valuable in your deliberations will become ineffective, and it would be difficult finding a sensible publisher who would take the risk of such a heavy setback upon himself.
I tell you this in writing and return to you your manu- script, since I will not be free on the considered days.
With friendly greetings, also to your daughter,
Your
Albert Einstein
His ideas may well have been provocative, they may well have been interesting, but they were mostly crazy.
The very first thing out of the lunatic's mouth, as justification for believing that "Planet X" was about to visit the inner Solar System, was: "the weather is crazy and there are more earthquakes lately." and "The on-line-real time seismology reporting system has been taken offline: why else would they do that?"
THe astronomer, when asked to justify why he didn't believe Planet X was about to arrive, said: "There is no evidence of the approach of a large unknown mass in the solar system; no orbital pertabations have been detected, nor anything else to suggest the presence of such an object."
At that point I fell asleep, knowing that the "debate" was for all practical purposes, over.
Yeah, why do so-called scientists say something is impossible and then not offer a theory to explain why it's impossible. For instance, if a theory was out that earth has a twin that stays on the exact opposite of the sun all the time, a scientist could cite the nonexistence of gravity pertabations on Mars and Venus to prove that theory wrong. But when a theory comes out that a large object is orbiting in the Oort cloud, why do "scientists" dismiss it without being able to disprove it? It doesn't seem very scientific to me.
great movie,i bought the DVD,like the special effects on the aliens
found it,mentions saddam in a hurry to build certain bldgs and wanted germany to return a stone gate etc. a must read,I`m surprised it got few hits on this forum.
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