venus
Photo credit: Christian Reusch
Immanuel Velikovsky was a non-scientist who fancied himself a scientist and took to putting together an elaborate theory about the solar system that made very little sense. He published a book that sold extremely well in the US called Worlds in Collision, which posited that many of the crazy events that happened in the Bible actually did take place, and that they were caused by other celestial bodies. Namely, Velikovsky thinks—based on mythology and readings of ancient texts—that Mars and Venus caused many different disasters and strange happenings by passing too close to the planet.
Part of the contention is that Venus rotates backward, and is thus not a “normal” member of the solar system. Velikovsky believed that the disasters spoken of in the Bible had analogues in other cultures around the same time, and they were all caused by the planets Mars and Venus, although it’s hard to say how he established which was caused by which. His theory was vehemently denied by scientists, who were not at all happy about his odd idea.
8 Solar System Climate Change
Photo credit: Christian Reusch
Immanuel Velikovsky was a non-scientist who fancied himself a scientist and took to putting together an elaborate theory about the solar system that made very little sense. He published a book that sold extremely well in the US called Worlds in Collision, which posited that many of the crazy events that happened in the Bible actually did take place, and that they were caused by other celestial bodies. Namely, Velikovsky thinks—based on mythology and readings of ancient texts—that Mars and Venus caused many different disasters and strange happenings by passing too close to the planet.
Part of the contention is that Venus rotates backward, and is thus not a “normal” member of the solar system. Velikovsky believed that the disasters spoken of in the Bible had analogues in other cultures around the same time, and they were all caused by the planets Mars and Venus, although it’s hard to say how he established which was caused by which. His theory was vehemently denied by scientists, who were not at all happy about his odd idea.
8 Solar System Climate Change