Monday, May 20, 2013

Is Velikovsky Still Dead ?

WUWT censor and occasional Person of Interest to the Norfolk Constabulary Tallbloke seems anxious to upstage Jim Hansen on the bleeding edge of bad planetary analogy.

Why settle for an alien atmosphere, cosmic rays, or an Iron Sun when you can re-arrange the solar system to suit your taste --

 Was the planet Mercury once a moon of Venus?

5
"This is an essay written some years ago by the late Tom Van Flandern  which was included in his book ‘Dark Matter, Missing Planets & New Comets’. Tom, who worked for many years at the U.S. Naval Observatory, was an out of the box thinker who covered a wide range of astronomical topics, many of them well outside the mainstream. His methodology was a bit similar to my old dad’s approach to cryptic crosswords. “The clue doesn’t give you the answer, but it helps confirm you got the right answer once you’ve got it”. Leif Svalgaard says he was a crank, which in my view means he’s well worth a read. I think this article, tied in with his other solar system formation concepts, deserves to be republished for the assessment and re-appraisal of the talkshop cogniscenti ..."

                                                                         [emphasis added]