September 2002

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In This Issue:

Redistributing Earth's Mass

The Earth is slightly oblate (by about 0.3%) due to its axial rotation and large-scale mantle convection. The gravitational potential is described by a spherical harmonic function in which the term J2 describes its oblateness. If J2 decreases with time, it implies that the mass above 35.3 degrees latitude, actually its moment relative to the spin axis, must be increasing relative to the moment below that latitude. J2 has been measured for some twenty-five years using satellite laser ranging. These measurements indicate that it was decreasing linearly by 3 x10-11 per year. But according to Cox and Chao1 since 1998 it has started to increase.

The earlier decreasing trend in J2 meant that Earth was becoming less oblate. This observation was thought to be the result of postglacial rebound - the viscous relaxation of Earth's mantle that began when polar ice caps started to melt at the end of the last glaciation 18,000 years ago, for example, around Hudson Bay in Canada. One problem with this explanation is that the nominal time required to obtain isostatic equilibrium is 10,000 years, so the rebound of earth should have long since been concluded. The V/A scenario suggests that this glaciation only ceased 2,700 years ago, which is much more consistent with the current rate of rebounding.

In early 1998 J2 suddenly started to increase substantially, indicating a large-scale mass redistribution of the mass moment from higher to lower latitudes, large enough to overshadow the rebounding mechanism. The paper discusses several mechanisms that might explain these observations: melting of the polar ice caps, melting of Alpine glaciers, or melting of Arctic sea ice. According to current knowledge, however, none of these can explain the observations. Ice cap melting should indeed lead to a rise in the global mean sea level, but measurement of Greenland plus West Anarctica ice height changes are “ too small and if anything ... implies a mass transport that is opposite the observed anomaly.” See the article entitled “Antarctic Sea Ice Increases Over Past Two Decades”

Cox and Chao rule out the atmosphere as a possible source, leaving (they say) two potential candidates: Earth's fluid outer core and the oceans. They suggest that a sudden change in material flow at the top of the fluid outer core, as evidenced by geomagnetic "jerks" (sudden changes in the trend of the secular variation of the geomagnetic field), could produce anon-negligible change in J2. The fault in this argument is that the circulation of liquid iron in the 2000 km deep outer core takes place at ponderously slow rates, requiring thousands of years for one revolution. Earth scientists still believe that the geomagnetic field is generated by these motions, but the sudden ‘jerks’ in the field imply that it is due to a superconducting current in the solid (FeH) inner core, as suggested in Firmament. 2

They also state that large-scale mass redistribution in the oceans remains a serious candidate. But there is no evidence indicating an oceanic (and hence climatic) origin for the observed change in J2.

The Velikovsky/Angiras (V/A) scenario of recent catastrophic reorganization of the planets provides new insight on these observations. As discussed in both Firmament and Chaos,practically the entire complement of priori-Mars’ water was transported to the Earth during one hundred 15 year dance encounters when the surface to surface distance between the two was only some 30,000 km. We maintain that this influx raised the sea level on the Earth by several hundred meters. This transfer was more or less immediate, due to the proximity of the two bodies but some of that water probably remains in space within the gravitational influence of the Earth and is falling at a diminishing rate.

However, we do not believe this is the only source of water that may currently be increasing the oblateness of the Earth. There is a source of water generated in our scenario which dwarfs the amount which fell to the Earth from priori-Mars. The V/A scenario was triggered by the enormous impact of a body from outside the solar system on Jupiter. We estimate the total energy released from the impact at 1043 ergs. Proto-Venus condensed white-hot from the ejected material. See the V/A scenario on www.firmament-chaos.com. Of particular importance is that this new process of terrestrial planet creation results in the expulsion of ten times more water than the mass of the proto-planet, because Jupiter is mostly water ice. Because of its high temperature the proto-planet retains only the refractory elements.

One beautiful result of this process is that although the body of the proto-planet is initially so hot that all water is expelled and cannot condense on the surface, the enormous amount of water vapor remains in the inner solar system and is gradually swept up by the proto-planet as it cools,and by the other extant planets in the millennia after the event. This alleviates the requirement that the entire oceans on Earth had to be transported via comets from the outer solar system.

This hypothesis has a direct bearing on the question of the increasing obliquity of the Earth. We maintain that this enormous mass of water, ten times the mass of Venus, was cast into interplanetary space only six thousand years ago. It froze into tiny ice crystals which adhere in fluffy, lacy, tenuous ‘snowballs’ in the weightlessness of space where they circulate undetected until a planet such as the Earth approaches. We propose that they have been falling into the Earth’s atmosphere for millennia, gradually increasing its water inventory. Only a massive global influx of this scale could possibly change the very oblateness of the Earth. This influx would logically be expected to vary with time as the ‘cloud’ expands and drifts. We suggest that the influx has been occurring at a lesser degree up to 1998, but was overshadowed by the rebounding of the glacially depressed northern regions. Now a denser portion of the cloud is drifting into the Earth’s orbit and the increasing influx of water is making its presence felt in the form of the increasing obliquity.

Is there any evidence of such an influx? The answer is that there are four separate pieces of evidence:

  1. A recent article in The Journal Science reports that a Spanish scientist, Jesus Martinez-Frias collected a 2 kilogram ball of ice that fell from a sunny sky in Tocina. Over the course of a week he ‘gathered up’ several more projectiles, and then the phenomenon ceased. No airplanes are known to have overflown the area on the day of interest. Researchers are trying to explain this as hail, but are having great difficulty but solid ice cannot form in the absence of thick, highly visible clouds. We suggest that several unusually large tenuous snowballs from space could have been the source.
  2. In 1983 a great controversary was sparked by Louis Frank, a scientist working with images from the NASA Dynamics Explorer 1. He claimed that the images contained evidence of a large number of house-sized ‘snowballs’ were falling into the gravitational field of the Earth. His estimate was that 30,000 of these tenuous snowballs were falling into the upper atmosphere of the Earth every day. He was argued down by practically every other scientist, most of them claiming that these were just noisy pixels or meteoroids. But the controversy flared again in 1996 when the higher resolution NASA Polar satellite images resolved the bodies into several pixels and made possible the tracking of the bodies from frame to frame, proving that they were real physical objects. Just one set of images taken between 3 and 5 Earth radii showed several thousand ‘atmospheric holes’ in the ultra-violet. Some argue that these ‘bodies’ would leave glowing meteor-like trails and recent impact ‘splashes’ on the Moon, and since these are not observed, they cannot be real.
  3. Scientists studying the Earth's upper atmosphere are finding more water vapor than current theories, which discount the existence of small comets, predict. The latest report comes from an ozone-watching satellite deployed and retrieved during the flight of the space shuttle Discovery in August of 1997. One of the instruments aboard the satellite, called CRISTA-SPAS, is the Middle Atmospheric High Resolution Spectrograph Investigation (MAHRSI). Robert Conway of the E.O. Hulburt Center for Space Research at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC was quoted in news reports as saying that MAHRSI had found a "startling" amount of hydroxyl, a product of the breakdown of water, above altitudes of 43 miles. One explanation for the existence of all this water vapor at these altitudes, is the small comets proposed by University of Iowa physicist Louis A. Frank.
  4. The article cited at end of third paragraph above.
There is ample evidence of the influx of water from space and the only reasonable explanation lies in the V/A scenario of recent planetary chaos.

Mythical Images Associated With priori-Mars

Most mythical images associated with priori-Mars arose from surface features - transient or permanent. Permanent ones remain intact today and have been photographed by space probes orbiting Mars. These are the result of combinations of surface relief, coloration and shadow. Doubtless primitive peoples recognized their resemblance to various animals when priori-Mars orbited close to the Earth. It is only necessary to look at the NASA images of the red planet from a more child-like point of view in order to become aware of these forms. The agreement of the features mentioned in the myths with those we find on Mars today is evidence that ancient peoples observed them with the naked eye.

For example, there are two elephantine features, shown in Figure 1 corresponding to two mythical elephants. The first, Airavata, Indra's elephant, is in all likelihood inspired by the shape of the residual south polar ice cap. This white elephant with trunk raised is also the likely source of the oriental notion that an elephantine form with raised trunk is a sign of good fortune. The second elephant image merely shows the head and trunk. This is probably Ganesa, since the myth involves his head being severed from his body.


Figure 1: Elephants

The two images of the Valles Marineris shown in Figure 2 are inverted (north pole at the bottom) because that was its orientation during the dance encounters. The Valles Marineris is the most prominent feature remaining today and was incorporated into the myths of many cultures. It was described as a great bird in flight, Garuda, in Hindu myth, the 'vahan' or animal which 'carried' Vishnu. As priori-Mars revolved geosynchronously around the Earth, remaining fixed in the sky over the Himalayas, it went through phases like the Moon, gradually disappearing into shadow each morning. This was the source of the Greek myth that a vulture daily tore at the flesh of Prometheus, imprisoned above the Earth. It was also most likely the source of the peacock in Tibetan myth.


Figure 2: Eye of Horus

At the end of each ‘dance encounter’ the Egyptians saw the glowing solid core of priori-Mars protruding through the Valles Marineris and called it the’eye of Horus’ or the ‘eye of Ra.’ The hieroglyph for the eye (Figure 3) is an unmistakable reproduction of this feature, except that the core is no longer protruding through it.

In figure 3, upside-down images of a horse or bull (lower left) and a monkey (left center) can also be seen. In Hindu mythology, a bull was said to be the vahan of Siva and the Vedic deity Vayu, (later Pavan), the god of wind and noise that comes propelling the dust and making all things ruddy, is said to have had a son, by a monkey mother.


Figure 3: Mosaic

The same animals appear in the 'vision' of the biblical prophet Ezekiel, and in the book of Revelations, attributed to the disciple John. Ezekiel saw a creature with four heads. This vision may be a composite of the four headed volcanic feature called Brahma (now collapsed) by the Hindus and the animal features visible today on the surface of Mars. John describes four living creatures around the ‘throne.’ The first is a lion, the second is an ox (the horse), the third has a face like a human being, which may be the figure which we described above as resembling a monkey, and the fourth creature is like a flying eagle. As a result of this and a number of other statements in the biblical Revelations, we suggest that the mythical imagery was meant to reveal the events observed on priori-Mars by ancient cultures during the Vedic period. This leaves open the question as to exactly how much of this last chapter of the New Testament actually has to do with predictions of the future, as is currently supposed.

At the left of Figure 4, three circular faults delineate the center of the Tharsis Bulge, giving some indication of the magnitude of its elevation during the Vedic period. Its true magnitude is better indicated by the radial fault system centered on the bulge which surrounds the entire planet. Figure 4, in which the colors indicate the elevation above the datum, gives a good indication of what the Hindu’s called the face of Siva and the Egyptians called Horus. The two outer volcanos, which erupted continuously during the dance encounters, were seen as 'eyes' at night and even during the day. The Tharsis Bulge was the nose (Siva) or beak (Horus). Valles Marineris cut into the bulge giving the impression of an open beak. Horus was often described as a ‘child’ because the Valles Marineris appeared to be a finger on which he was sucking. The greatest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, appeared in the forehead of this deitys face like a ‘third eye.’ This was the origin of the placement of an adornment on the forehead in many eastern religions, and probably also of the placement of the smudge in the Christian catholic celebration of Ash Wednesday.


Figure 4: Tharsis

The volcanos inspired the eyes on the sides of the Tibetan Stupas (Figure 5), which represents priori-Mars. The mast on the top represents the dominant volcanic feature on priori-Mars, called Prajapati (Vedic), Brahma (Hindu), Zeus (Greek) and Osiris (Egyptian). It formed from a myriad of hardened lava tubes at the north pole and extended perhaps a kilometer into the air. Projecting downward toward the Earth it was partially supported by the tidal force of the Earth. It collapsed repeatedly when convulsions wracked priori-Mars, only to be rebuilt again. This is how the heavier rock, which is normally deeper in the planet turned out to be on the surface. The rubble from these collapses comprises the strewn fields which extend to the horizon in the panoramic images returned from both Viking landers. Note that the eyes are around the sides and not at the apex. This is consistent with the V/A theory that the axis of rotation of priori- Mars, located in the northern plains hemisphere, faced toward the Earth during the dance encounters. The eyes are painted on all four sides to simulate the rotation of priori-Mars.


Figure 5: Tibetan Stupas

Egyptians and Greeks were not the only cultures to see a great curved beak on priori-Mars during the dance encounters. The bird's head mask from Bhutan, shown in Figure 6, is also characterized by a prominent open beak. Confirmation of our interpretation of this as a Mars deity is supplied by the third eye positioned in the forehead, representing Olympus Mons.


Figure 6: Birds Head Mask

The form of a beak also appears in the carved masks and totem poles of the Kwakiutl Hamatsa Indians of western Canada. Figure 7 shows a mask representing their 'Crooked Beak of the Sky,’ currently on display at the University of British Columbia Museum of Archaeology. It is particularly interesting that the beak is described as 'crooked.’ This is consistent with the offcenter location of the Tharsis Bulge, the collapsed form of the beak. In addition, the Vallis Marineris, which constituted the 'opening' in the beak, is not symmetrically positioned. If these people had just 'invented' an imaginary sky god, they would certainly not have made it ‘crooked.’ It was because they were reproducing what they saw on priori-Mars that they made it match as closely as possible.


Figure 7: Crooked Beak

The whole globe of priori-Mars resembled a lion head, with the area now called the northern plains being the face and the southern highlands being the mane. This was the inspiration for the many lion heads in ancient Egypt and Tibet. Many egyptologists believe that the original head of the great sphinx was that of a lion. This is consistent with the fact that it faced east, in the direction of priori- Mars, which remained stationary over the Himalayas during the dance encounters.

Another ‘feature’ of Mars which was described in the Vedas was the dual deity Yami-Yama. This was also a priori-Mars incarnation. It was said to be the deity which received the souls of the dead when near the Earth and delivered them to the gods, the stars, when it left. It was described as as ‘a green man with a red cloak.’ This imples that a portion of the surface of priori-Mars, now known as the southern highlands, was still covered with vegetation during the Vedic period, while the red cloak referred to the northern plains where all the volcanic eruptions took place. This was the origin of the dual nature of the deity. Another indication of this surface duality appears in the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol, in Figure 8.


Figure 8: Yin-Yang

The Chinese pagoda represents the now collapsed lava fountain feature, which was the primary deity in almost every eastern religion. This was Prajapati (Vedic), Brahma (Hindu), Osiris (Egyptian), Buddha, and Zeus (Greek). Brahma was said to have four or five heads, due to separate planes of glowing liquid minerals suspended at its top. These multiple layers are represented by the stacked protruding roofs of the pagoda, Figure 9. Note the similarity of the pagoda and the Egyptian Tet symbol, which represent the same feature on priori-Mars.


Figure 9: Chinese Pagoda

Lastly, Yama was said to have two dogs which circled him and acted as sentinels. These were the tiny satellites of Mars, Phobos and Diemos. The former, pictured in Figure 10, certainly gives the impression of a dog’s head.


Figure 10: Phobo

The parallels of mythical images and the features on Mars are practically innumerable. Many more are discussed in Firmament and Chaos. Please take the time to read them completely because the sheer number of interlocking facts is what really makes the strongest case for our theory of recent planetary chaos.

Corroboration of the V/A Theory from Radiocarbon 14 Dating Corrections

The radiocarbon dating method determines the time since the death of a living plant or animal, up to about 25,000 years. The Earth’s atmosphere currently contains a known ratio of radioactive 14C to the stable isotope 12C both in the form of carbon dioxide. When living plants or animals die, they cease to ingest the atmospheric carbon dioxide and the radioactive isotope begins to decay. Because the half-life of 14C is known (5960 years), the ratio 14C/12C theoretically allows the calculation of the time since the death of the organism. The fundamental assumption on which this method is based, is that the ratio of radioactive carbon 14 to normal carbon 12 in the atmosphere has remained constant over the entire period, from ancient times to the present.

Since the 14C in the atmosphere is continually decaying, the only way in which the amount can remain constant is that it is continually being produced in the atmosphere at the same rate. This production is thought to be the result of a two-stage process. In the first, high energy particles from the sun split the nuclei of atoms in the upper atmosphere and release neutrons. In the second, some of these neutrons enter the nuclei of Nitrogen (14N) atoms, the most plentiful of the atmospheric gases, and eject a proton, producing 14C, which quickly becomes incorporated into carbon dioxide gas.

However, scientists have come to realize that there are large systematic errors in the basic radiocarbon dating of ancient remains. These imply significant changes in the atmospheric ratio. By using alternate dating methods such as counting sequences of tree rings, it has been possible to determine corrections that must be applied to the basic method, as a function of age.

Unfortunately they have no explanation of the cause of these deviations from the ‘expected’ ages. Moreover, they fail to recognize the profound nature of a process capable of changing the entire atmosphere of the Earth in less than a thousand years. This change would have to be of global proportions, such as an extended close encounter with another planet with a different atmosphere. This is exactly what we propose in the V/A scenario. We suggest that the source of these errors are the very events revealed in the V/A scenario - the interactions of proto-Venus and priori-Mars with the Earth - events of which modern science is blissfully unaware.

How does this hypothesis fit the data? The graph in Figure 1 shows the deviation of the true ages from those calculated from the radiocarbon method alone. Note that the corrections change monotonically from 5,000 to about 2,500 years before the present. We claim that the original encounters with Venus occurred 6,000 years ago and that the extended encounters (15 years in duration) with priori-Mars continued until 2683 before the present. The change in the correction implies that during this period the atmosphere of the Earth was undergoing change. The change between 6,000 and 5,000 years BP is less pronounced, perhaps due to a different mixture of gases from the close encounters with proto-Venus. Between 6,000 and 9,000 BP the correction remained constant, implying there were no big changes in the atmosphere of the Earth. The more ancient data implies that a similar rate of change in the atmosphere occurred around 10,000 years BP.


Figure 1: C14 Dating Corrections

The correlation of the data with the events and dates of the Vedic period predicted by the V/A scenario are striking. Only events of this magnitude could produce just such fluctuations. These events: (a) the proto-Venus interactions with the Earth, at which times the planet-sized tail of volcanic ash completely enveloped the Earth; (b) the many explosive exchanges of atmosphere from priori-Mars, which, because it was closer to the Sun than the Earth before the birth of proto- Venus, would have had a different 14C/12C ratio or a different proportion of Nitrogen in its atmosphere; and (c) the evidence from the Hindu myths that at least on one occasion, a naked fission reaction occurred at the top of the column of smoke and fire, lasting days or weeks, which would have resulted in the Earths atmosphere being bombarded by a massive flux of neutrons. These are all events which had the potential of modifying the 14C/12C ratio in our atmosphere, thereby upsetting the fundamental assumptions on which radiocarbon dating is based. The dating errors could have resulted from changes in the concentrations of both carbon dioxide and nitrogen, from which the 14C is thought to be produced. The important thing to note is that the corrections only change during the Vedic period and much earlier, in the Younger Dryas, both periods in which the V/A scenario claims there were ongoing cosmic interactions with the Earth.

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