A new theory of the origin of the terrestrial planets solves longstanding scientific riddles and points to exciting opportunities for further investigation.
Kenneth J. Dillon, Intriguing Anomalies: An Introduction to Scientific Detective Work
[Scientific citations can be found in the original: Here.]
[Scientific citations can be found in the original: Here.]
Chapter 9
Theory of the Red Blood Cells
The famous spiral disk found in Phaistos, Crete in 1908 has long defied efforts to translate it or even to identify the language in which it is written or what kind of a document it might be (it is here in color to aid analysis). Though many scholars and amateurs have proposed theories and even translations, none has seemed persuasive to the great majority of observers. A skeptical view holds that the disk is a forgery, but most scholars reject this. Many scholars agree that the small sample of language in the disk makes a breakthrough very unlikely unless and until other samples of the writing are found. Continue reading »
420-meter long Great Serpent Mound in Ohio is the world’s largest effigy monument. Archaeological investigations have yielded conflicting results about its initial construction date, and various theories regarding its meaning have failed to gain traction. But the theory of Immanuel Velikovsky that the planet Venus was originally a comet that approached the Earth and caused great devastation neatly matches key characteristics of the Great Serpent Mound.
Recently, this Venus theory has gained additional credibility from a commonsensical explanation of how a comet-like Venus could have seemed to emerge from Jupiter as in ancient Hindu and Greek myths, including a simple, obvious reinterpretation of the Metis myth; and it has found powerful substantiation from a reinterpretation of the headdress of Queen Nefertari of Egypt, consort of Pharaoh Ramses II, in this image from Abu Simbel (Ramses II’s headdress appears to contain Mars with two moons and a tail, either borrowed from Venus in an encounter or from Martian dust stirred up by an encounter). Continue reading »
A top secret Canadian Security Intelligence Service report leaked on August 27, 2004 may provide the missing piece of evidence needed to identify the long elusive Anthrax Mailer of 2001.
While confirmation is still lacking, we now have enough shreds of evidence to piece together a theory of the case that resolves key anomalies. In turn, that theory can point us toward where we might find confirmatory evidence. Continue reading »
Students have long struggled, often in vain, with the rules of Latin grammar. It’s not the parsing out of the various endings of nouns, adjectives, and verbs that causes the main trouble. One eventually memorizes them or learns to recognize them. Rather, the structure of sentences seems strange to the mind of an Indo-European native speaker. Also, Latin’s heavy use of gerundive and absolute constructions: all those verbal nouns entail a very different pattern of thinking than goes on in modern Indo-European languages. Continue reading »
When Venus first appeared in the skies shortly before 2500 B.C., ancient peoples worldwide strove to come to terms with this brilliant and awesome new comet-planet (the best account is in Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, though it needs some revision). That meant assigning the deity a gender and a name.
In the Near East, they tried both genders. In its masculine incarnation, Venus became the Bull of Heaven (as Velikovsky pointed out, the comet-planet’s body blocked the sun’s rays from the central portion of its tail and thus it was seen as having two horns). In its feminine version, Venus was called Ishtar or Astarte; and in the Levant Astarte was depicted with serpents in her hands—the twin tails of the comet.
In Greece, according to Velikovsky, planet Venus was originally named Athena. Continue reading »
There’s no shortage of candidates for the cause of the mass extinctions of prehistory. But experts have found flaws in every one.
Asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Yucatan clearly played a role in the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65,000,000 years ago, though scientists differ on whether it actually caused the extinction because serious disruptions had begun hundreds of thousands of years before with the basalt flows of the Deccan Traps.(1) Some researchers argue that giant basalt lava flows that poisoned the atmosphere and oceans played a central role in all five major extinctions. But no consensus exists on what forces triggered them.
Lurking in the background, however, is a quite plausible cause, one that would have possessed the power to set off the volcanic activity, air pollution, sea level shifts, loss of oxygen in oceans, climate changes, and other phenomena associated with the extinctions. Yet this cause does not seem to have been proposed, and proving or disproving it will require a good deal of investigation. Curiously, nonetheless, a significant body of relevant research has already been carried out in a subject parallel to the extinctions. But that research languishes in a scientific limbo.
The Martian Theory Continue reading »
Sea-based approaches to the disposal of nuclear waste make it hard for terrorists, rebels, or criminals to steal for use in radiological weapons or in nuclear bombs. The world’s oceans have a vastly greater dilutive capacity than any single land site in the event of unintended leaks (though by the same token the effects of a leak could travel farther). And seawater itself contains a variety of radionuclides, so treating it as a domain in which there is no natural radioactivity runs counter to fact. Meanwhile, without a great deal of additional investment and endless political arguments, land-based geological storage sites will not have the capacity to store all the waste that will be generated in future decades.
The most important rationale, though, is that siting, constructing, and operating land-based long-term storage sites constitute major, difficult technological and political problems. It is wrongheaded and irresponsible to assume that many relatively poor, unstable, and technologically lagging countries with nuclear reactors will deal successfully with these challenges. Too many things can go wrong, with disastrous outcomes.
So a shared international solution to the problems of the long-term storage of nuclear waste should represent a high priority. And investigating sea-based solutions makes eminent sense because they are peculiarly suited to international cooperation.
Four sea-based approaches recommend themselves. Continue reading »
Immanuel Velikovsky argued famously, based on his interpretation of ancient sources, that Venus had emerged from Jupiter as a comet, interacted with the Earth and Mars in the second and first millennia B.C., and then finally settled into a nearly circular orbit of the Sun.
Here are four new lines of reasoning that support this theory:
First, instead of the various unpersuasive suggestions that Velikovsky and others have made for how a cometary Venus could have emerged from Jupiter, we should consider the possible consequences of the immense gravitational field of Jupiter, which pulls into the giant planet a stream of asteroids and comets such as Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994. Continue reading »
- Biophotonic Therapy is the use of light to activate the healing properties of the blood. BT is photomedicine and has a well-characterized clinical profile. A dozen books and some 400 articles in the German, Russian, and English-language medical literature describe Biophotonic Therapy. Other common names for BT are Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation and Photoluminescence Therapy.
- In BT’s extracorporeal form, ultraviolet and visible light are used to treat a small amount of blood, which is then reinfused.
- In BT’s intravenous form, a low-intensity laser (generally at 632.8 nm) shines through a waveguide inside a needle into the blood. BT can also be administered sublingually. Continue reading »
Slipping endlessly through the crack between oral and respiratory medicine, the humble mouthwash has slowly won more respect among savvy practitioners and patients as a solution for specific indications. In Japan many millions of people gargle three times a day with povidone-iodine or other mouthwashes to ward off upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs), and Japanese clinical studies have confirmed the value of this approach. Worldwide, in a less-than-systematic and sometimes downright casual manner, medical practitioners recommend gargling to patients; and many people on their own have decided that gargling makes sense, while millions use mouthwash to protect teeth and gums as well as against halitosis.
Still, for curious reasons, this formidable method of suppressing infections remains in medical limbo. Not because there is no need. The average American suffers 2.5 episodes of URTI per year, with high costs for treatment, lost days of work, and morbidity. URTIs also exacerbate asthma, and they can enter the lungs and prove fatal. Continue reading »
The apparent misdeeds and cover-ups of the administration of George W. Bush related to the terrorist attacks of 2001 remain in historical limbo. President Obama has refused to investigate anything that happened under his predecessor, and neither the Congress nor the media have gotten to the bottom of these tragic events. As a result, the American public has not come to closure on the 9/11 attacks or on the anthrax mailings of 2001, nor is there a shared understanding of such a critical issue as the real reasons that the US attacked Iraq in 2003.
These failures have left the field open to wild speculations regarding these events, generally termed “conspiracy theories”, though this term obscures the crucial distinction between elaborate, prospective plots involving many actors (silly in the context of an open society) and retrospective cover-ups that government officials who have made embarrassing mistakes are all too prone to engage in (very realistic and plausible). However, it is also true that simple prospective plots involving two or three individuals can occur.
These failures to achieve a full, shared understanding of major events that led to unending wars and occupations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia as well as to the undermining of civil liberties have helped to alienate Americans from their government and media, a triumph for America’s enemies. So we must make every effort to establish a clear common interpretation of what actually happened.
The famous Snake Goddess of ancient Crete has long attracted students of history and art. Elegant, risquée, enigmatic, she embodies the mystery and allure of Minoan civilization. Continue reading »