A new theory of the origin of the terrestrial planets—that Jupiter’s gravity pulled them inward from the outer solar system—solves longstanding scientific riddles and offers a rich agenda for further investigation.
Based on his interpretation of
ancient sources, Immanuel Velikovsky argued famously that Venus had emerged from Jupiter as a comet; interacted with the Earth and Mars in the second and first millennia BC, causing the Bronze Age catastrophes; and then finally settled into a nearly circular orbit of the Sun.
Four new lines of reasoning support a Revised Venus 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 toward it a stream of asteroids and comets such as Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994. Continue reading »
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 »
411-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 Venus Theory correcting 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 Revised 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 »
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.
A Revised Venus Theory corrects Immanuel Velikovsky’s original theory that the planet Venus first entered the inner solar system as a comet with a bifurcated tail around 1500 BC (new evidence indicates around 2525 BC). Now we have a much better explanation of the origin of Venus (rather than fissioning off of Jupiter, it was pulled from the outer solar system by Jupiter’s gravity and, via tidal heating, became a comet with a long tail). 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 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 with new-found confidence that the Ancients and Velikovsky were right about Venus, we can ask how can we use this to decipher aspects of the culture of the Ancient Near East and of the background of Islam.
When Venus first appeared in the skies around 2525 BC, 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 has been corrected in a Revised Venus Theory). 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 »
In his Worlds in Collision (New York: Macmillan, 1950), Immanuel Velikovsky argued that Venus emerged as a red-hot comet from Jupiter and passed Earth every 52 years, causing the Bronze Age catastrophes, before settling into its current orbit. His claim set off a controversy in which his theory was rejected and stigmatized. But over the years, new findings have changed the picture. Here are eight new reasons to accept a Revised Venus Theory, based on the evidence and reinterpretation in The Knowable Past (2nd edition, Washington, D.C.: Scientia Press, 2019). Continue reading »
A new theory of the origin of the terrestrial planets—that Jupiter’s gravity pulled them inward from the outer solar system—solves longstanding scientific riddles and offers a rich agenda for further investigation.
The origin and distribution of water on the terrestrial planets make a good place to start investigating this theory. Radiation pressure and the solar wind pushed water molecules out beyond the “snow line” around 4.5 AU, so how did Earth come to have a relatively significant amount of water?
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-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 66,000,000 years ago, though scientists point to the serious disruptions that had begun hundreds of thousands of years before with the basalt flows of the Deccan Traps.1 Giant basalt lava flows that poisoned the atmosphere and oceans played a role in four or perhaps all five major extinctions. But other enormous basalt flows have not caused extinctions, nor did they cause the tsunamis associated with various extinctions.2 Researchers have suggested many other mechanisms, but there’s no consensus at all.
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, mass wasting, sea level shifts, loss of oxygen in oceans, climate changes, and other phenomena associated with the extinctions.
The Martian Theory Continue reading »
Historian and scientific researcher Kenneth J. Dillon discusses his theory The Outer Solar System Origin of the Terrestrial Planets (OSSO). OSSO explains how Mercury, Earth, the Moon, and Mars originated outside the orbit of Saturn, then were pulled inward by Jupiter’s gravity. Tidal friction heated them to incandescence, then they tidally locked to Jupiter and were separated, moving as comets into their present orbits. See also https://www.scientiapress.com/outer-solar-system-origin.
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 »
There are good reasons to think that Earth and Mars originally formed a single protoplanet—Terramars—outside the orbit of Jupiter. Then, about 4.47 billion years ago, Terramars was pulled by Jupiter’s powerful gravitational field past the gas giant. As Terramars neared Jupiter, tidal forces heated it to the melting point, and Jupiter tore Mars away from Earth, leaving the Pacific Basin. Both planets, now turned into red-hot comets, sped off into the inner solar system.