wrote:
Ah, yes, shades of "WORLDS IN COLLISION" and
Velikovsky vindicated.

Catastrophism was vindicated practically the day the astronauts came
back from the moon, laden with a discovery buried in the rocks brought
back as Earth-shaking (literally) as the Monolith was in 2001.

The main purpose of the moon missoins -- to find the origin of the moon
-- was fulfilled with that discovery: the moon was originally part of
the Earth, broke off when an body the size of Mars passed through the
Earth's space.

That was Schumaker's (sp?) baby, and he received the final vindication
when Jupiter was struck by the comet the following decade. That had
the same effect on the intransigent geezers in Astronomy that the rock
falling from the sky in Paris in the early 19th century had on the
scientists of the time who had maintained (at the time) there were no
such things as rocks falling from the sky.

The dinosaur comet only served to put the final nail in the coffin of
those dead set against the notion of catastrophism. That's opened up
the floodgates toward the reconsideration and more carefuly examination
of the Tunguska event, as well as possible candidates in the 5th
century or other times.

But as far as Velikovsky goes, he went way overboard with the
insistence that the catastrophe(s) of the 16th century BC had to be an
entire planet causing everything. Number one, you don't need anything
more than a small comet (as the dinosaur comet proved) to render the
effects he sought out. He (and the community at the time) are to blame
for naively missing this point and just automatically assuming as a
pretext to the debate that something large was required. Number two,
you don't need anything extraterrestial in origin to render the effect.
The Toba volcano, for instance, which blew its top c. 69000 BC
essentially wiped out the human race (which is why the modern-day
survivors are all practically clones of one another *and* at the same
time superficially diverse in appearance). Neither Toba, nor the two
volcano eruptions from Yellowstone preceding it (both comparable in
size) was induced by anything from outside the planet. **** just
happens, happens all by itself, and sometimes it happens now.

The community is also to blame in its naive stupidity, vis a vis the
two points raised above, as well as the unconditional acceptance of the
notion that orbits are extrapolable back in time. They are, generally,
*not* -- not without first knowing what prior expulsions of celestial
had occurred. The whole galaxy can literally be swarming in rogue
planetoids and other objects expelled from planetary systems. The most
recent expulsion (which could be as early as the dawn of the telescope
before people could see out beyond Saturn) renders everything in the
way of extrapolation before it invalid with a discrepancy that
potentially increases exponentially in time the further back beyond the
expulsion you go.