Christmas In The Good Old Days
ChatterBank17 mins ago
As mentioned in the Old Testiment. Any evidence for this?
No best answer has yet been selected by Uriah Heep. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Immanuel Velikovsky was a writer who made many scientific predictions that incurred intense wrath among the scientific and educational communities. (Jupiter transmits powerful radio waves, Earth's magetic field reverses, Venus is red hot and has sulphuric acid in its atmosphere...you get the picture). Problem is, a great many of his predictions have since been shown to be correct - astonishingly so.
One of his theories is that at some time in the past the world has flipped over on its axis, so that at one time the South Pole, and not the North Pole, was pointing to Polaris, the Pole Star.
There do seem to be some references to the Biblical event in various sources. One of the more pervasive is found here, if you'd like:
http://www.progressivetheology.org/principles/Missing-Day.html
As you can see, it's rebutted in detail, yet other apocryphal stories from various past civilizations seem to reference such a legendary event. Those references are thoroughly debated as well as you can imagine.
The second Biblical reference to a similar event mentioned by Q is found in II Kings 20:8-11 wherein King Ahaz asks the Prophet Isaiah for a sign to confirm that he will be healed...
Ooops - hadn't quite finished... Anyway, he quotes many legends from all over the world about the sun standing still in the sky, or even reversing its travel. His basis for the theory was that there is distinct evidence for the world's oceans having swept across all the continents. The mechanics for this puzzled him until he came up with the 'flipping over' answer.
This was ridiculed on the grounds that the Earth acts as a gyroscope and so an unimaginable amount of force would be required. So students in a Parisian university worked out the maths, and were amazed to find that it would take very little force, as from a passing body, to tip the Earth over.
Maybe the Biblical reference is part of the human race memory of the actual event, when the sun would have stopped?
Sorry Loosehead????
"Interesting heathfield. All the planets rotate the same way except Venus"
Most planets in our solar system, including Earth, spin in the same direction as they orbit the Sun. The exceptions are Venus, Uranus, and Pluto. Uranus rotates nearly on its side relative to its orbit. Current speculation is that Uranus started off with a typical prograde orientation and was knocked on its side by a large impact early in its history. Venus may be thought of as rotating slowly backwards (or being "upside down").
Wikipedia's words.....not mine!! :)
Not my subject really!
There's a heap of stuff on pole-shifting etc at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/pole2.htm
Jake - can't for the life of me remember which book had the maths about the pole-flip, but I seem to remember it as an addendum in a later edition of one of Velskovsky's books.
I have to say Heathfield that I think this is incredibly unlikely.
The Angular Momentum of the Earth is 2.7 e 40 kg m sq'd/s - that is 3 with 40 zero's following it. The Torque (twisting force) from a change in angular momentum is equal to the rate of change of angular momentum.
This is not "very little" force in anybody's book unless you're talking about an impact of planetary proportions.
Doing a bit of reading about Velikovsy it seems that he was a psychologist with no real background in physics or Astronomy. He put forward vague explanations for these ideas about magnetic fields being "Stronger than we believed" and stuff like that.
This would require loads of existing physics to be re-written to explain phenomina that we already have a pretty good understanding of.
Just to clear a few things up:
Velikovsky was not a scientist and did not make scientific predictions but used comparative mythology and the bible to formulate his theories regarding catastrophes (events like the world flipping on its axis). He made loads of predictions based mainly on reinterpreting myths and legends. Far from, "a great many of his predictions have since shown to be correct", in fact, neither his conclusions or methodologies have been accepted by any sane person. His work on the world flipping over is especially preposterous. See here:
http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/pseudosc/flipaxis.h tm
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In scientific terms there is no evidence that the world has flipped on its axis and it is extremely unlikely that it would.
D.
ooopps my link has turned out totally preposterous try this:
http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/pseudosc/flipaxis.htm
D