mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL III, No. 18 Dec 31, 1999 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS BLINDNESS, STUPIDITY, AND SPECULATION . . . . . . by Mel Acheson THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY: Part II . . . . . . . . excerpts from Dwardu Cardona's SIS Silver Jubilee Paper SATURN 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Amy Acheson, Bob Johnson, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Arstrong, Ev Cochrane CLOSEST FLYBY OF IO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill THE SUN IS AN ELECTRIC SHOCKER!. . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- BLINDNESS, STUPIDITY, AND SPECULATION By Mel Acheson In discussing the question of progress in scientific revolutions, Kuhn noted: "There are losses as well as gains [in a paradigm shift]..., and scientists tend to be peculiarly blind to the former." In a footnote, he elaborates: "Because science students 'know the right answers,' it is particularly difficult to make them analyze an older science in its own terms." [_The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, Third Ed., University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 167.] Noting that in his broadest use of 'paradigm' Kuhn included instrumentation with theory, I would apply his footnote to data: Because scientists know the right procedures, it is particularly difficult to make them attend to evidence outside the sensitivities of their instruments. Chapman refused to look at (or even to discuss) Alfven's experiments that contradicted the "perfect insulator" theory of space. Modern astronomers refuse to look at Arp's display of connections among objects of different redshifts. Now Thomas Gold presents a most clear-cut example of scientific blindness and loss of data in his recent book, The Deep Hot Biosphere [New York: Springer-Verlag, 1999]: "The invention of the seismograph meant that it was no longer necessary to experience an earthquake directly, or to interview someone who had, in order to assemble data on the event.... [Eyewitness reports] were no longer believed to hold any value for the scientific venture." [p. 145] Gold proceeds to describe many eyewitness reports from ancient times to modern. A constellation of recurring phenomena becomes apparent: "Eruptions, flames, noises, odors, asphyxiation, fountains of water and mud..." often occur before the quake. Gold concludes on page 147: "The accumulated observations maintained in folklore and contemplated by the intelligentsia of the time meant that the ancients recognized a variety of phenomena that seemed to serve well as warnings of an impending quake. In some ways, folklore is of more practical value to residents of earthquake-prone regions than is our modern science." He describes several incidents where people were able to evacuate their villages and towns a few hours before an earthquake because they were alerted by odors, fogs, or unusual animal behavior. Folklore has saved many lives; seismographs and stress meters have yet to achieve one correct prediction-probably because they're measuring only effects, not causes. Gold adduces this evidence-and several chapters more-to support his theory of upwelling primordial gas from deep within the earth. He also mentions the near-impossibility of attracting any attention to the theory or even to the observations that call into question the prevailing assumptions. "Thus many scientists...seem to have fallen into the rut of the nearest convenient theory. They explore the terrain of this rut very effectively, down to the minutest feature within the walls, yet they will not climb out for another look." [p. 103] This fear of "another look" is more than mere scientific blindness. It's a deliberate squeezing shut of one's intellectual eyes, a rejection of insight, a refusal to learn. It's directly connected to belief, to the assumption that one possesses the only possible right answer, which therefore obviates one's considering further questions or "other looks." Ignorance can be overcome with persistence and study. Ignorance, indeed, is the beginning of learning. But the refusal to learn is stupidity, and for it there is no remedy. Scientists have limited time, as do we all. It's understandable that they should ignore many things not immediately pertinent to their current work. Sometimes even the pertinent must be ignored. But that's merely ignore-ance. The mark of stupidity, and of the belief behind it, is the use of the term 'impossible' and the accompanying rejection of speculation. Thomas Gold again [p. 208]: "The history of science offers example after example of apparently inexplicable features for which perfectly rational explanations were finally found. In nearly all such cases, assumptions that were universally believed obscured the truth so effectively that no progress toward a solution seemed possible. Yet it is to just such apparently inexplicable features that we must hope to find clues that will show us how to unburden ourselves of false beliefs. "Speculation is a vital step in this process. It was once speculated that the earth revolved around the sun. Without this speculation, I do not think that any systematic avenue of research would have produced the evidence that clinched this theory. At a time when proposed solutions are still speculative, they are the driving force for the researches that will prove them right or wrong and will thereby put our thinking on a new and better track." Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- THE DEMANDS OF THE SATURNIAN CONFIGURATION THEORY: Part II Excerpts from Dwardu Cardona's SIS Silver Jubilee Paper Summaries by Amy Acheson [ed. note: the text of the introduction to this paper is available at http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/cardona.htm and the full text of the paper is scheduled for publishing in an up-coming issue of Chronology and Catastrophism Review - see http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/index.htm for more information.] AMY ACHESON: Part I of this paper recounted many of the unusual global attributes of the planet/god Saturn as portrayed in mytho- historical records from all over the world. Among these were Saturn's connection with an age of darkness, Saturn as supreme ruler of The Golden Age, Saturn's association with the beginning of time, Saturn as motionless, Saturn as the sun and Saturn as the sun of night. This section of the paper concluded with these phrases concerning another unusual behavior of Saturn: DWARDU CARDONA WROTE: Consider further the motions of the celestial object called Ra. In a statement found in one of the Coffin Texts, the deity is addressed with these words: 'You shall go up upon the great West side of the sky and go down upon the great East side of the earth.' Is this not contrary to what the Sun does? Does the Sun 'go up' in the west? Does it 'go down' in the east? Thus Faulkner, who translated this passage, could not help stating that this 'unexpected reversal of the points of the compass is incomprehensible' - and ended up by blaming what to him was an inconsistency or 'a blunder in an early copy which no one has noticed or at least attempted to correct.' This explanation, however, presupposes that there must be other texts which give the rising and setting of Ra correctly. But, as David Talbott has indicated, 'wherever the direction of the [sun] ship's movement is explicitly connected with the phases of morning and evening, the texts always reverse the direction expected by the solar interpretation. More than that, when sailing in his ship, or boat, Ra is said to move down at dawn, and 'upstream' at night contrary to what we see the Sun doing in our sky. How, then, can mythologists continue to perpetuate the lie that the Egyptian Ra was a personification of the Sun? CARDONA CONTINUES: THE POLAR STATION But hold on - someone may have already noticed. If, as the model assumes, Saturn appeared motionless in the earth's north celestial sphere, how could it have been seen to rise and set, even if contrary to the way the Sun does? This is a point that troubled me for some time until, with Dave Talbott, I came to realize that the fault lay with mythologists and not mythology. Or, to state it more correctly, the fault lay with those who had translated the ancient myths. Not that I blame them because, after all, they only had the arrangement of the present sky to work with. In short, when it comes to the Egyptian Ra, the terms 'rising' and 'setting' were actually mistranslations. If we were to translate the Egyptian texts concerning Ra literally, and forget about what the Sun is supposed to do, we find that the light of the god is simply said to 'come forth' and 'recede'. The god himself 'comes out' and 'goes in.' Egyptologists, of course, will claim that this was the way in which the Egyptians alluded to the rising and setting of the Sun - and, as I said, one cannot really blame them. But, as Talbott noted, when we say today that the moon comes out at night, we do not really mean that it rises, but that it grows bright. And so, also, with Ra - the god did not rise and set; he simply grew bright and dimmed. And this is vindicated by the additional fact that the god was said to come forth and recede while remaining em hetep, that is, 'at rest' or 'in one spot.' And, in fact, it was this immobility of Saturn, stated of the god and of the planet, that made me realize very early in my research, together with Talbott, but independent of him, that Saturn once occupied a stable position in Earth's north celestial sphere. AMY: Cardona then quotes Assyro-Babylonian, Hebrew, and Egyptian sources which translate the meaning of local names for Saturn as 'the steady planet' and 'the resting planet'. He speaks of rituals in which Saturn is referred to as 'without motion' and 'without movement.' He quotes the Makiritare Indians of Venezuela, 'Wanadi is like a sun that never sets.' CARDONA: . . . If Ra was the Sun, as mythologists would have us believe, why was it said to have been without movement? Unless I am mistaken, there are only two ways in which the planet Saturn could have appeared suspended motionless in the sky without rising and setting. The first, and most believable, is to assume, as Lynn Rose has done, that Earth orbited Saturn in phase-lock, very much as the Moon does in relation to Earth, thus always pointing the same hemisphere toward Saturn. AMY: The second way in which Saturn could have appeared suspended motionless in the sky is if it were stationed at the celestial pole. Cardona quotes from Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, Iranian, and Celtic myths, a few of the many hundreds of traditions which place Saturn in the north. He quotes Lynn Rose in Lynn's belief that after the phase-lock era of Saturn came to a close, the ancients knew of no other "immovable station of the sky" in which to place Saturn, so universally revised their myths to locate Saturn at the pole. Cardona also mentioned as a possibility David Talbott's suggestion that Saturn may have moved from phase-lock to polar station. Either way, Cardona says that the polar position of Saturn is an integral part of global mythology. CARDONA: What is of additional importance, however, is the fact that the record of the ancients does not describe this strange situation always in the same manner, but, on the contrary, in a hundred different ways which speaks against a diffusionist borrowing of the belief. To be continued Editor's Note: The Saturn Theory is one which relies on information from many fields, each adding a few ounces to the weight of evidence. In the first two parts of this paper, Cardona has presented a small fraction of the mytho-historical evidence. In the next sections, he will discuss some of the physical evidence. For some of the symbolic evidence, see Ev Cochrane's article at: http://www.ames.net/aeon/Rock_Art/rock_art.html For more about the linguistic evidence, see Dave Talbott's articles, HOW CATASTROPHIC EVENTS GENERATE LANGUAGE, and THE MYTHIC ROOTS OF LANGUAGE in THOTH III-14, III-15, and III-16. ---------------------------------------------- SATURN 101 By Amy Acheson Discussion by Bob Johnson, Michael Armstrong, Ev Cochrane First of all, the Saturn Theory is an absurd theory, "bizarre in the extreme" according to Dwardu Cardona, one of its main researchers. It's not something you want to believe (or dismiss) with a single reading. Furthermore, the entire story hasn't been told yet, although there are at least four books in the works that will hopefully remedy that. Velikovsky first pointed the way to Saturn in one short section of an article titled _On Saturn and the Flood_ in the Fall, 1979, issue of Kronos. It read: "This memory of the seven days of light preceding the Deluge(10) is a most important indication of the physical cause of the catastrophe. The intense light, filling the sky, points to a source in a nova within the solar system. "If, as all evidence indicates, the nova was in fact Saturn, we may obtain an estimate of the Earth's distance from the source of the illumination in the following way: The light from Saturn's explosion probably reached the Earth in a matter of minutes, practically simultaneously with the beginning of its nova phase; but the waters followed seven days later. Though ejected in the same catastrophic disruption, the Saturnian gases or filaments took a week to reach the Earth. If we can estimate the initial ejection speed of this material(11) and fix with some approximation the length of the day at that time, it may be possible to get an idea of how far removed the Earth was from the focus of the cataclysm. It is conceivable that the Earth was, at that time, a satellite of Saturn, afterwards possibly becoming a satellite of Jupiter." In the same issue of _Kronos_, Lynn Rose expanded on Velikovsky's comments in an article titled _Variations on a Theme of Philolaos_, suggesting that earth was once a satellite of Saturn in phase-lock orbit with Saturn stationary over the Arabian Peninsula. Harold Tresman, co-founder of the British catastrophist group, the SIS, independently arrived at a similar conclusion to that of Lynn Rose. Dwardu Cardona and Dave Talbott (and later Ev Cochrane) delved deeper into the mythology and discovered that the coherent substratum of myth required altering the theory from earth as a phase-lock satellite of Saturn to the Polar Configuration model. Here are some websites where you can learn more: You can find a simple introductory slide show here: http://www.kronia.com Here you'll find an abstract of a paper by Dave Talbott prepared for a world conference in Italy in June, 1999: http://www.unibg.it/convegni/NEW_SCENARIOS/Abstracts/Talbott.htm Here you'll find an autobiographical essay by Dwardu Cardona: http://www.ames.net/aeon/Road_to_Saturn/road_to_saturn.html Here you'll find introductions to papers given by Dwardu Cardona, Wal Thornhill and Ev Cochrane. http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/ More of Ev on Saturn Symbolism can be found here: http://www.ames.net/aeon/Rock_Art/rock_art.html The Electric Universe compliments the Saturn Theory. Although each is a groundbreaking theory in its own field, the two together support each other and open new vistas of understanding. That's why we include it in THOTH. You can find out more on Wal Thornhill's website: http://www.holoscience.com >From an astronomical point of view, I think that NASA's press release last week (Nov 19, 1999) presents the most amazing piece of evidence I've seen yet in favor of the Saturn Theory. They state simply that the processes happening on Io today are the same as the processes which formed the major features of the earth as recently as 15 million years ago (non-catastrophic dating.) To me, it's obvious that the processes happening on Io are the result of its proximity to the gas giant Jupiter (tidal or, more likely, electrical.) If the same processes were happening so recently on earth, then is it absurd to imagine that earth was then in close proximity to a gas giant, either (phase-lock or polar)? Exactly as remembered in our mythological heritage! Bob Johnson says: I am . . . prepared to accept that the earth was probably a satellite of Saturn . . . one simple hypothesis explains a great deal of observations and myths. What I am not so sure about is the further need to restrict the earth's relationship to Saturn to a polar model. This is what I mean by using Ockham's razor - cut away the unnecessary elements and see what's left. It seems to me that the reliance on interpretation of myth alone is poor grounds for postulating a physical model that may have existed but which raises more questions than it answers. Where, for example, are the inconsistencies in the simple Saturn satellite theory that need further explanations as provided by the polar model? Is it inevitable that, given the electrical relationships between the bodies, the earth would necessarily adopt a polar configuration orbit? I have seen nothing yet to suggest that this is the case. My query could have been phrased 'what other evidence is there (apart from interpretation of myth) that only a polar model explains?' Michael Armstrong suggests: One of the geo-physical (and therefore strongest?) pieces of evidence for the PC is that the earth is egg-shaped with the Northern radius of the earth being significantly longer than the Southern-prolate to the north. This indicates that the earth still hasn't "relaxed" from having been stretched in the northern directions. Couple that with the arctic region generally being flat and scoured down to bedrock with up to 400 feet of "muck" (silt, sand, gravel, chewed up pieces of wood and bones, even frozen animal carcasses) and you have a simple case for there having been a vortex comparable to the axis mundi of the PC model that collapsed at some point. Ev Cochrane: This is a very good question, needless to say. Michael has already provided a good answer. Dwardu's recent address at the SISR symposium . . . goes into this question in some depth. Yet the fact remains that the mythical-historical record does provide very solid evidence in support of a previous axial alignment of the respective planets. Dave's article "The Ship of Heaven" from 1988 presents the most complete discussion of this question from a logical standpoint. ---------------------------------------------- CLOSEST FLYBY OF IO by Wal Thornhill NASA have released the first images from their Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1999, closest flyby of Io. See them at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/io . My earlier prediction that the so-called volcanoes would be much hotter than the estimates made at lower resolution has been hinted at by NASA. They say that the "lava" might be hotter than 1600K. This scenario sounds like a replay of the surface temperature of Venus! The picture caption reads: "The active lava was hot enough to cause what the camera team describes as "bleeding" in Galileo's camera, caused when the camera's detector is so overloaded by the brightness of the target that electrons spill down across the detector. This shows up as a white blur in the image." But 1600K is only red-hot. What lava on Earth, even when photographed at night, would cause bleeding of a solid-state camera image? It usually occurs only if such a camera is pointed at a very bright light. I think that is precisely what occurred at Io. The Galileo camera was looking at a number of arc-lights in the form of cathode spots. Their temperature could range as high as 5 or 6000K over very small areas - approaching that of the surface of the Sun. The descriptions of the burnt-out white smears in the picture as lava fountains are a classic example of seeing what you want to see. To see detail in the bright light would have required a neutral density filter which would have darkened the rest of the picture to obscurity. But NASA knows that it is a volcano (just as they knew Venus wasn't all that hot) so that didn't enter into their plans. However, it is the remainder of the image that confirms the electric arc model. The picture caption reads: "Also of great interest is the flat-topped mesa on the right. The scalloped margins are typical of a process geologists call "sapping," which occurs when erosion is caused by a fluid escaping from the base of a cliff. On Earth, such sapping features are caused by springs of groundwater. Similar features on Mars are one of the key pieces of evidence for past water on the Martian surface. However, on Io, the liquid is presumed to be pressurized sulfur dioxide. The liquid sulfur dioxide should change to a gas almost instantaneously upon reaching the near- vacuum of Io's surface, blasting away material at the base of the cliff. The sulfur dioxide gas eventually freezes out on the surface of Io in the form of a frost. As the frost is buried by later deposits, it can be heated and pressurized until it becomes a liquid. This liquid then flows out of the ground, completing Io's version of the 'water cycle.'". NASA scientists have had to introduce the ad hoc requirement of different liquids flowing beneath the surface of both Mars and Io to drive the hypothetical surface sapping. The process of sapping has not been well studied on Earth and the photographs given as examples in Prof. Baker's book, The Channels of Mars, do not look much like that seen on Mars and Io. Sapping requires a replenishable source of liquid and the surface material to be harder than that beneath. Neither Mars nor Io shows any sign of liquids on the surface. So the 'water cycle' on Io is a desperate analogy considering that the erosion on Io is an order of magnitude or more greater than any examples of sapping seen on the Earth - which has an abundance of liquid water. Once again, the Io close-up shows a surface that bears all of the classic features of a spark-machined surface - the flat crater floors and steep scalloped walls to the machined area. It is ironic that in comparing it to the Martian "fretted" terrain, NASA has chosen another superb example of cathodic erosion. Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- THE SUN IS AN ELECTRIC SHOCKER! By Wal Thornhill The accepted model of how the Sun works has the energy that forms sunspots, heats the corona to a million-degrees and accelerates the solar wind to a million miles per hour all being generated in a nuclear furnace deep inside the Sun. That energy is calculated to take something like 100,000 years to percolate to the surface. So NASA's press release of December 13 titled "The Day the Solar Wind Disappeared", is quite a shock. It reported that the solar wind that blows constantly from the Sun practically disappeared between May 10 to 12, 1999. NASA put a brave spin on this baffling surprise by emphasizing the trivial fact that it allowed scientists to see the Sun's corona directly. NASA scientist, Dr. Keith Ogilvie, said "The May event provides unique conditions to test ideas about solar-terrestrial interactions. It also strengthens our belief that we're beginning to understand how the Sun-Earth connection works." It may have strengthened the beliefs of some scientists in their models. But such illogical reinforcement has been seen before in astrophysics. For example, when the expected flood of neutrinos from the nuclear-powered Sun did not materialize, belief in the theory was restated and the fault declared to be with the neutrinos. Certainty in these cases seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of supporting data. It may have something to do with the very human need to view our Sun as a reliable and therefore constant source of energy. Certainly that need is exemplified in the term "solar constant", used as a measure of solar energy reaching the Earth. The point that NASA avoided mentioning is that the thermonuclear model of the Sun has no way of easing off the accelerator pedal for the solar wind. In fact it is not clear why there should be a solar "wind" at all if the Sun is merely a self-gravitating ball radiating energy into space. As Fred Hoyle wrote in Frontiers of Astronomy in 1955 under the title, The Mystery of the Solar Atmosphere; "We should expect on the basis of a straightforward calculation that the Sun would 'end' itself in a simple and rather prosaic way; that with increasing height above the photosphere the density of the solar material would decrease quite rapidly, until it became pretty well negligible only two or three thousand kilometers up." Since 1955, a complex of magnetic fields has been discovered on the Sun. They have been assumed to come from within the Sun, somehow bypassing the highly-conducting photosphere to release energy in the corona. But theory has been unable to explain or predict many of the detailed features discovered on the Sun. In particular, it does not explain why the solar wind should accelerate beyond the hot corona. Prof. Kenneth Lang in his book Sun, Earth and Sky, has a chapter titled (somewhat ironically given this latest discovery) - "The Eternal Solar Wind". He writes; "...we still do not know exactly what heats the corona or what gives the solar wind an extra boost to 700 kilometers per second. The heating of the solar corona presents one of the most fundamental, unsolved problems of contemporary solar physics." The problem was solved 30 years ago by the outstanding engineer, the late Ralph Juergens, in his pioneering work on electric stars. That model is built directly upon observations of the Sun. It does not begin with a priori assumptions about constancy of output, internal constitution of a star or unseen behavior beneath the photosphere. He shows that all of the features and behavior of the Sun (and all other stars) can be explained if the Sun is an anode in a galactic glow-discharge. It is a simple model that can be confirmed in the laboratory. That is not possible for the thermonuclear model of stars where the conditions at the center of a star are not reproducible on Earth. The only requirement for stars to continue shining for long periods in an Electric Universe is for the galaxy to continually receive charge from deep space. This requirement is met by recent advances in plasma cosmology models. I believe it is confirmed by the amazing quantized redshifts of quasars discovered by the astronomer, Halton Arp. So the Sun shines by courtesy of its electrical environment in a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Its size, color and energy output are all determined by its environment. Electric current in a plasma flows along magnetic field lines in "ropes", known as Birkeland currents. Each "filament" of the rope exhibits long-range attraction and short-range repulsion for other parallel filaments. The result is that they twist together to form ropes. It is the (usually invisible) plasma equivalent of multi-stranded copper wire. That the Sun is the focus for a plasma discharge can be seen in the filamentary phenomena at every scale above the photosphere and the even spread of magnetic field lines from the Sun's pole to equator. The discovery by the solar polar spacecraft that the Sun's field is not a dipole was a great surprise. So, the electric sun model has no difficulty with short-term changes in the solar wind. The solar wind with its flux of charged particles forms part of the galactic circuit. The sudden shutdown merely reflects an inhomogeneity in the small-scale Birkeland currents delivering power to the Sun. A galactic arm scale rotation of Birkeland current may result in the variability of the sunspot cycle, including the switch in magnetic polarity. It does not require the ad-hoc invention of invisible complex goings-on inside the Sun. Applying the principle of Ockham's Razor, the electric sun model is superior to the standard model. Applying B. J. F. Lonergan's Canon of Completeness which requires a theory to account for all the data, the electric sun model is superior to the standard model. For example, a correlation between the neutrino count and the solar wind particle flux is expected in the electric model but is inexplicable in the thermonuclear model. Nuclear cookery takes place in the photosphere, not in the center of the Sun. THE SUN IS AN ELECTRIC SHOCKER! Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, now with regular features on the Saturn theory and electric universe, may be ordered from this page: http://www.kronia.com/html/sales.html Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovskian/ http://www.bearfabrique.org http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.holoscience.com http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Cosmology.htm http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.e-z.net/~mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our focus is on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation. --- You are currently subscribed to kroniatalk as: mikamar at e-z.net To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-kroniatalk-36515E at telelists.com