ted@imsvax.UUCP (07/21/84)
The concept of Jupiter and Saturn having been live
stars is well known to followers of the Velikovsky
controversy, but less well known to the general
scientific community. Consider the following: stars
are generally thought to be thermonuclear engines, but
our sun, in many ways, acts like an electro magnetic
engine. Rather than getting cooler the further one
goes from its center, as one would expect in the case
of a thermonuclear engine, the sun gets cooler from its
center to its surface, and then much hotter again out
towards the photosphere. Ralph Juergens and others
have proposed a theory in which stars appear as focal
points of gigantic interstellar electrical discharges,
a theory which first appeared in the old Pensee journal
and may still be available in print in Doubledays
"Velikovsky Reconsidered". This theory makes for
interesting reading for those who can understand it;
it describes thermonuclear reactions in stars as an
effect rather than a cause.
Consider the scenario in which a relatively large
star (like our sun) was to capture one or two small
stars ( like Jupiter or Saturn). If the thermonuclear
theory were correct, the small stars might reasonably
be expected to remain stars. However, given the other
theory, the two small stars would die. Imagine
watching a small (hundred and fifty foot) lightning rod
glowing in a storm when, suddenly, the ACME lightning
rod company truck drives up and, in the middle of the
storm, ACME employees build a thousand foot lightning
rod right next to the smaller one. The smaller
lightning rod, no longer the path of least resistance,
the focal point of the discharge, would cease glowing.
That such was the fate of Jupiter and Saturn was
the unanimous belief of the ancient world. However,
lacking anything like our understanding of
electrodynamics and physics, they did not couch those
stories in the kinds of terms we would. To them, the
gods had grown old and died. The clearest of the
ancient versions of this tale is found in Dr. E. A.
Wallis Budge's "Gods of the Egyptions", written in the
1890's. It describes the god Ra (Jupiter) having grown
old and feeble, and mankind blaspheming him, and Ra
sending his eye, the goddess Sekhet (whom philogists
had identified with the planet Venus before Velikovsky
was born) to slay all of mankind. This is essentially
the major story told in "Worlds in Collision". Note
also that the red spot on Jupiter, which was visible
to the ancients, is shaped like a human eye and is
clearly the inspiration for the pervasive references to
"eye of Ra" and the "eye of Horus" in Egyption lore.
On the subject of debunkings, I feel compelled to
note the following observation: that some pretty
thorough debunkings have tended to look rather bad in
future centuries. Remember Edouard Hanslick, the man
who "debunked" Richard Wagner? The most prominant
Viennese opera critic of his day, he is remembered
today only, if at all, as the little man who called
Richard Wagner a charlatan. Do any of you remember the
names of the little men who "debunked" Copernicus and
Galileo? Immanuel Velikovsky's critics will be
remembered about the same way in a hundred years or so.