From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Robert Bass on Velikovsky and Physics
Date: 14 Dec 92 04:27:54 GMT
Organization: HTE





I am not a dynamical astronomer.  Robert Bass is or was;  I am uncertain
as to whether he is still alive.  His credentials read as follows:

Rhodes scholar, doctorate under Aurel Wintner, world's leading
authority on celestial mechanics, 3 years of post doctoral work in
non-linear mechanics at Princeton under Solomon Lefschetz.
Developed a dynamical explanation for Bode's law in the 1950's.

At the time of his major article in the Pensee Journal, he was a
professor of physics and astronomy at Brigham Young.  Robert Bass would
appear to be a heavyweight, and he claimed that ALL of the arguments which
various scientists have presented purporting to show that Velikovsky's
historical reconstructions violated physical/astronomical laws were so
much bunk.  One thing to note is the following:  that whereas Ralph
Juergens and a number of very gifted people have sought to rationalize
Velikovsky's scenarios using electro-magnetic forces, Bass is claiming
that no such is needed.  He is claiming that a system such as ours could
radically alter its appearance within a space of a few thousands of
years, and this be untraceable in the sense that backwards extrapolation
from the resultant system would indeed show the "billions and billions"
of years which the plenipotentiary explicateur of yuppie science from
Cornell is so fond of expounding upon.

Bass' article appeared in the summer 1974 issue of the Pensee Journal,
the old Student Academic Freedom Forum, issue VIII.  The abstract read
as follows:

1)  The subtle but fatal flaw in the perceived opinion regarding the
alleged immutability of the planetary distances is the following
inadequately recognized fact:  whether or not the solar system is stable
in any of the senses defined by LaPlace, LaGrange, Poisson, or
Littlewood, or is quasiperiodic, it need not be "orbitally stable".

2)  As demonstrated in the text in considerable detail, it is perfectly
possible, according to Newton's laws of dynamics and gravitation when
three or more bodies are involved, for planets to nearly collide and
then relax into a nearly stable Bode's law type of a configuration
within a relatively short time;  therefore Velikovsky's historical
evidence cannot be ignored.

3)  If one started Venus in an orbit lying entirely between the orbits
of Jupiter and Saturn, with precisely the appropriate initial position
and velocity, it would within LESS THAN TWO DECADES work its way inward
into an orbit lying entirely between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
(This follows from observations of the comet Oterma III and the fact
that, in the restricted problem of three bodies, the mass of the
smallest body is irrelevant.  

4) There is no plausible explanation for the anomalous (retrograde)
rotation of Venus, other than that it originally had prograde spin and
was later flipped upside-down by a near collision with some other
planet.

5)  The fact that the spin rate of Venus is now mysteriously locked in
resonance with the rate of revolution of Venus relative to the earth (
so that Venus presents the same face to earth at every inferior
conjunction) may provide a dynamical clue as to which planet Venus
encountered.

6)  LaPlace's theorem allegedly proving stability of the solar
system(1773) was shown to be fallacious in 1899 by Poincare;  in 1953
dynamical astronomer W.M. Smart proved that the maximum interval of
reliability of the perturbation equations of LaPlace and LaGrange was
not 10**11 years, as stated in 1895 by S. Newcomb, but actually at most
a small multiple of 10**2 years.

7)  The eminent dynamical astronomer E.W. Brown, in his retiring speech as
president of the American Astronomical Society in 1931, quite
explicitely stated that there is no quantitative reason known to
celestial mechanics why Mars, Earth, and Venus could not have nearly
collided in the past.


All of which is certainly good enough for me.  Bass' article mentioned a
couple of mathematical backup papers which I've not seen and which might
still be available from Brigham Young, but I don't need them.  I've
checked all of the historical references, and they all check out.
Theory exists in order to explain reality.  History IS reality.  When
the two conflict, you change the theory.  In this case of course, it
appears to be only in the minds of the lesser lights that there is any
conflict.  If a guy like Bass can't see any, I don't see any reason to
worry about it.

Note that of the seven items Bass mentioned, all can be seen as denying
that Velikovskian scenarios violate physical laws in any sense.  Two can
be seen as indicating that Velikovsky's scenarios or something entirely
like them are positively required by the available evidence;  again:

4) There is no plausible explanation for the anomalous (retrograde)
rotation of Venus, other than that it originally had prograde spin and
was later flipped upside-down by a near collision with some other
planet.

5)  The fact that the spin rate of Venus is now mysteriously locked in
resonance with the rate of revolution of Venus relative to the earth (
so that Venus presents the same face to earth at every inferior
conjunction) may provide a dynamical clue as to which planet Venus
encountered.

Item four appears to assume the usual multi-billion year history of our system
as a starting point, although the logical implications of the observation
essentially demand that that view be abandoned.




-- 
Ted Holden
HTE

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