Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Venus?



I read Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision in high school. I was so
fascinated by the sureness of the way he said that one could calculate
these orbits that I decided at that moment that I would become a physics
major. Odd inspiration but I think it relates to a previous thread on this
list as to whether or not we should talk about pseudoscience in our
conceptual physics courses. Many have argued here that it would waste time
that could be devoted to "real" physics. I remember, after enrolling in my
first physics class, hounding the poor teacher about how you make such
calculations. Unfortunately, he was one of the old style teachers who
taught the course as an exercise in memorization - like biology. It wasn't
until I enrolled in freshman physics in college that I was made aware by
the faculty that most of what Velikovsky said was bunk.

Actually, like most pseudoscience, there are some surprises. Velikovsky
predicted that Venus must be very hot because of the way it was formed by
Jupiter. At the time (1950) it was assumed that Venus was cool - like
Earth. It was quite a coup for him later when it was discovered how hot
Venus' atmosphere actually was.

Bob at PC