A new theory of the origin of the terrestrial planets solves longstanding scientific riddles and points to 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 longest 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 a revised and enhanced version of 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 (it was pulled from the outer solar system), including a simple, obvious reinterpretation of the Metis myth. Much new evidence has also emerged. And the theory 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 »
One of the world’s most famous monuments, Stonehenge abounds in mysteries and anomalies.
Why was Stonehenge built in the first place? Why was it radically transformed shortly before 2500 BC into a masterpiece of megalithic architecture? What explains the intricate, changing patterns of the stones over time? Why were the lintels so carefully jointed, and why were they made almost perfectly level? Why the extraordinary effort?
There are rather simple answers to these and other questions, but to get to them we need to set aside preconceptions and come to terms with something that isn’t so simple. Continue reading »
What caused ancient China’s gigantic floods? Who was the real Yellow Emperor? Who was Archer Yi, what was his vermilion bow, how did he target and shoot down nine of ten suns, and why were there ten suns in the first place?
We now know the answers to these and other questions about ancient China. These answers can lead us to a new understanding of Chinese history, of the worldwide Bronze Age catastrophes, and of the history of climate change.
Among the deepest mysteries of ancient Egypt 
is the Great Sphinx of Giza. Researchers, both professional and amateur, have painstakingly investigated its every aspect.1 Yet key puzzles remain, above all the question of why this colossal structure, the ancient world’s largest monument, was built in the first place.
It’s not that serious researchers and free-ranging speculators have not proposed explanations. But every theory put forward falls well short of true persuasiveness or stumbles over inconvenient facts. Here are three anomalies a correct theory should explain. Continue reading »
There are good reasons to think that Earth has turned over on various occasions. But who can be surprised that this notion—so removed from everyday experience and common sense—seems less than instantaneously persuasive?
The good reasons include telling evidence in myths and narrative testimony of the ancients, embedded patterns in ancient culture that give evidence of inversions, and the insights and arguments of two formidable researchers. Now we can: add new reasons that strengthen the case; specify the approximate dates of four inversions; comprehend that Earth is actually prone to inversion; and point to where to find more evidence. We can also see that understanding inversions can not only help us correct errors in interpreting past planetary and Earth science but also provides clues relevant to climate change. 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 »
New evidence and interpretation at the intersection of astronomy and religion can help us better understand the history of the Ancient Near East and of the origins of Islam.
In recent years, a revised and enhanced version of Immanuel Velikovsky’s theory that the planet Venus first entered the inner solar system as a comet with a bifurcated tail around 1500 B.C. (new evidence indicates shortly before 2500 B.C.) has found plentiful substantiation. Now we have a much better explanation of the origin of Venus (it was pulled from the outer solar system by Jupiter’s gravity and, via tidal heating, became a comet with a long tail, overcoming the leading objection to Velikovsky’s theory). Venus interacted with the Earth on a 52-year cycle during the Late Bronze Age, causing catastrophes worldwide. And we now have a framework theory of the terrestrial planets into which these phenomena neatly fit and for which there is much telling evidence. For Comet Venus, there is also newly interpreted, compelling iconographic and linguistic evidence. The names of both Athena (A Fena, the Phoenician) and Poseidon (Bos eidon, the Bull of Heaven), for instance, referred to the double-tailed Venus.
So we can ask, with new-found confidence that the Ancients and Velikovsky were right about Venus, how can we use this to better decipher aspects of the culture of the Ancient Near East and of the background of Islam?
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 »
Curiously, even though the Babylonians reported many details of celestial phenomena, the astrologers of Babylon are said not to have relied on actual observations.
According to a leading expert, “The existence of Babylonian omens for eclipses beginning and clearing in all four directions, or areas of the moon, despite the fact that a lunar eclipse will never begin on the western edge of the moon, indicates a lack of concern with observational veracity in favor of schematic order.”1
But there is another explanation that makes more sense of what the Babylonian astrologers were up to. 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 »