October, 2003 Newsletter

Wecome back to all those patient souls who still hunger for the truth about the exciting history of the Earth and mankind, as revealed by ancient myth. Now that our site has been reconstructed, we plan on resuming our newsletters, but instead of sending the entire newsletters to hundreds of our correspondents, we are now simply sending links directly to the newsletters on our site. Also, they will be in HTML to avoid problems between certain versions of the Adobe Reader and Windows operating systems.

If any of the articles appeal to you, please forward them to your friends and acquaintances. One of the great shames of the Internet superhighway, and we are all partially to blame, is that most of the bandwidth is used for crass communications, which I need not enumerate. I would like to believe that these articles are more meaningful and cause the recipient to stop and think about deeper and important subjects, such as the history of mankind, his religion and the meaning of our short lives in the greater scheme of things. As Oscar Wilde put it; "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." So surprise your friends with some 'stardust.'

Common Grace

Grace is defined as:unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification. In the Christian religion there are several aspects of grace, the most commonly known being Saving Grace, through which God grants an individual a place in His Kingdom. Common Grace is the gift of God which is provided to all people around the world, with no distinction as to religion, good or evil deeds, ethnic background, or social status. It comprises the bountiful Earth on which we live, the vast oceans, the sweet air we breathe, the seasons that mark our years, the rain and the Sun, the food we eat - the sublime things, which make our lives possible and enjoyable. Although Christians are taught the concept in Sunday school, they fail to see an immediate link between Common Grace and Jehovah because the current scientific dogma is that that the natural world has been the same for billions of years.

One of the most profound ideas suggested by the Velikovsky/Ackerman (V/A) scenario is an understanding of how a higher power may have only recently regenerated the Earth to enable its population by billions of human beings. Until the recent solar system chaos becomes common knowledge, no one will really appreciate Common Grace. Until now, no modern man or woman has any idea of the great changes made to the Earth in the last dozen millennia. I maintain that without these profound changes the bounteous world as we know it could not exist. The V/A scenario makes it possible for us to understand how major changes in a solar system were activated by small physical actions leveraged by a level of intelligence far beyond our own.

I propose that the most ancient of these changes occurred some 12,000 years before the present (BP). And because it occurred even before the time of myths, on which the V/A scenario is based, it is impossible to know how the event was set in motion. This was the capture of the Moon in orbit around the Earth. Immanuel Velikovsky (Worlds in Collision) pointed out several clues in ancient writings, including Biblical verses, indicating that some cultures ‘remembered’ a time ‘before the Moon.’ Moreover, statements of the Egyptian priests recorded by Solon the Greek, and from a number of other cultures, indicate that they remembered four ‘overturnings’ of the Earth, also referred to as ‘new skies.’ We suggest that the first two such events delineated the Upper Dryas (11000 to 10000 BC) and were caused by the capture of the Moon in orbit around the Earth. The trauma of those events is marked by innumerable broken bones of extinct and extant animal species, found buried in great caches around the world, also cited by Velikovsky (Earth in Upheaval). Numerous animal species, including the saber-toothed tiger and the wooly mammoth, became extinct at that date. As indicated by later events during the Vedic period, slippage of the lithosphere relative to the solid core of the Earth, lubricated by several thousand kilometers of liquid core between them, provided an enormous energy sink which made such captures possible. We suggest that this capture was the first of a number of actions intended to prepare the heretofore unstable Earth for its occupation by mankind. It is a well known fact that the Moon, acting on the oblate figure of the Earth, constrains its spin axis to a modest range of angles, ensuring against great shifts in climate which today could result in a destruction of the civilized world.

The next major event was the impact of a single body from outside the solar system on Jupiter around 4000 BC. This impact released 10⁴³ ergs and resulted in profound modifications of the entire solar system, which up to that date comprised the four great planets, Earth, and priori-Mars which orbited closer to the Sun than Earth and was full of life. The material ejected by that impact contracted to form proto-Venus, the Galilean moons, over fifty smaller Jovian satellites, the main asteroid belt, millions of asteroids in highly eccentric sungrazing orbits and set in motion a sequence of events which profoundly modified the Earth.

The rampaging, incandescent proto-Venus triggered a 3000-plus year period of planetary chaos, which I call the Vedic period. Sweeping by the Earth twice in an interval of some thirty years, overturning the lithosphere, scorching and flooding the surface, these encounters destroyed the inferior species of neolithic beings that occupied our planet up to that date. The resulting state of the Earth is described in Genesis 1:2

“And the world becamewithout form and void.”

It was only after this destruction that the re-blossoming of the Earth and the introduction of Homo Sapiens Sapiens by the ‘elohiym took place, as told in Genesis 1:26-27

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Our dating of the great impact that resulted in the destruction of all fauna on Earth agrees closely with the age of mankind as specified by the ages of the biblical patriarchs. From this I infer that the Bible tells the story of the Earth only for the last 6,000 years.

During the same short thirty year period, proto-Venus ejected the only other terrestrial planet, which I call priori-Mars, from its ancient interior orbit into one which intersected that of the Earth. At that time priori-Mars was full of life, with a magnetic field, ample water and oxygen in its atmosphere. So was set in motion a 3000-plus year period of planetary resonance between Earth, priori-Mars and proto-Venus, which profoundly enhanced the Earth at the expense of the smaller planet. Amazingly, this was accomplished by the periodic capture of priori-Mars in a geosynchronous orbit around the Earth for fifteen years at a time, followed by its release into an independent orbit around the Sun for an equal amount of time. Based on ancient myth, this cycle was repeated one hundred times. Thus priori-Mars spent some 1,500 years in a geosynchronous orbit over the Transhimalayas. This enormous body looming stationary above the Earth was the biblical ‘firmament,’ a solid body which dominated the sky. Thus Gen 1:6-8 ‘And God said,

"Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.”

The waters which were above the firmament were those on the surface of priori-Mars at the beginning of the Vedic period. A complex of Earth was drawn up through this water by the tidal force of the nearby Earth while in orbit close to the Earth (44,000 km center to center) the smaller planet was gradually deconstructed by the combined tidal forces of the Earth and the Moon. The net result was the capture of over ninety percent of its atmosphere and water by the Earth. Thus as the population of the Earth increased more and more precious resources including water and oxygen fell to the Earth, for their support and nourishment. Only at the completion of this period, which ended in 687 BC, did the diminishing flow of priori-Mars’ precious resources to the Earth cease, and the wasted shell we now call Mars slid into the cold reaches of interplanetary space.

Using knowledge far beyond that of modern science, the Lord sacrificed the more ancient smaller planet, priori-Mars, which was full of vegetable and animal life, to provide the oxygen and water needed to revitalize the Earth. In his great wisdom, He knew that the revitalization of the Earth could not be accomplished by a single encounter. Why did this require one hundred separate interactions? Because the north pole of priori-Mars remained pointing toward the Earth during each 15 year encounter, each interaction only permitted the capture of a significant fraction of the water from its northern hemisphere, but was not able to capture much in the its southern hemisphere, which remained pointing away from the Earth. During each of its ‘R & R’ sessions, when it orbited the Sun independently, priori-Mars’ water was redistributed equally around the planet. Thus, when it again entered geosynchronous orbit, more water was available for capture from its northern hemisphere by the Earth. The repetition of this cycle one hundred times enabled Earth to capture over ninety-nine percent of all the water and oxygen on priori-Mars, leaving it the desolate planet we observe today, with less than 0.02% water and 0.13% oxygen in its atmosphere. The diminishing sea which surrounded the north pole of priori-Mars has been recognized by planetary scientists and named Oceanus Borealis.

I cannot help being amused by those ‘visionaries’ who propose the ‘greening of Mars,’ especially in light of the progress mankind has made in greening the deserts of our world. Ignoring the obvious clues to the absence of water (0.02 % atmospheric concentration) scientists still insist that the vast amounts of water lie hidden beneath its surface, when the abundance of water which flowed in great torrents into that ocean are now part of every being on Earth. God used the ancient planet for the purpose of replenishing our Earth, and then put it in a safe place in the deep freeze, where it can cause no harm. We can explore this wasted body, but to expect any number of human beings to live there is preposterous. As for as understanding its recent past, that has already been recorded in the sacred myths of many ancient cultures in such detail that will never be determined by a few geo-astronauts poking around on the surface.

Another aspect of Common Grace in ancient times was the exotic and ubiquitous ‘food from heaven’, known in various cultures around the world as soma (Vedic), ambrosia (Greek), and manna (Jewish). The great variety of cultures which laud this material as ‘a god’ is convincing evidence of its world-wide distribution over a long period of time. During each encounter with the Earth, the northern hemisphere of priori-Mars was full of volcanos and volcanic vents. Its interior was convulsed periodically by alignments with the Sun, Moon or proto-Venus when at inferior conjunction, at which time hot rocks were ejected through volcanic vents, carrying with them great storms of surface rocks, dust, atmospheric gases and water, much of which fell to Earth. Vegetable matter was also swept along, heated in the lava fountains, carried into orbit around the Earth where it was vacuum freeze-dried, and eventually fell to Earth and condensed as a dew-like substance which was nourishing, pleasant to eat and even intoxicating. This supplemented the diet of ancient peoples during the period in which the reinvigoration of the Earth was not yet complete.

Amazingly, the events which occurred during the Vedic period continue to effect the climate of the Earth to this day. The additional water obviously increased the ‘greenhouse’ effect which warmed the Earth, but I believe that there is a more subtle process at work, of which conventional science still has no knowledge. A jet of hot gases had been issuing from the impact site on Jupiter into interplanetary space for over five millennia. The intensity of the jet only recently (~1940) decreased below the level needed to expel mass from the Jupiter, as evidenced by the cessation of the ‘drift’ of the Great Red Spot, which was actually a measure of the slowing of Jupiter’s rotation. The material ejected by the jet over the last 6,000 years has formed the outer layers of the Galilean moons, the main asteroid belt, and has placed millions of asteroids in eccentric orbits around the Sun. As the orbits of the latter decay, they impact the Sun causing the high temperature of the chromosphere, sunspots and solar flares. The resulting coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep out through the solar system and strike the atmosphere of the Earth causing the Aurora Borealis. Recent studies have shown undisputably that this sunspot activity, with a period of approximately eleven years, warms the climate of the Earth.

Thus God created a new planet (proto-Venus) for future habitation, wiped clean the Earth, sacrificed a smaller more ancient planet in order to revitalized the Earth and maintains it for mankind to this day. His profound knowledge of the physical world allowed Him to set in motion this chain of events by the mere deflection of a single body traveling through our galaxy, so that it would impact Jupiter in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time. The energy of its impact was sufficient to accomplish all of the above, and much more. Thus, His love, manifested in Common Grace still sustains us, in spite of our complete lack of understanding and arrogance toward God, manifested by scientists claim that we evolved from apes and that the imperfect ‘sacred cow’ called science makes the notion of God obsolete.

In Firmament and Chaos, we discuss many other interventions of God into the ancient history of mankind. They include: His wrath upon those that worshiped The Planets, which he placed in motion, instead of acknowledging his hand in their presence; The knowledge He gave the Biblical prophets concerning specific comings and goings of priori-Mars, as in the destruction of Sennacherib’s army, the movement of the ‘column of smoke and fire’ at the time of the Exodus of the jews from Egypt, and the abnormal motion of the Sun and stars as the Earth adjusted to the capture or release of priori-Mars. But these were specific events that are not really part of Common Grace. Please read the full texts to understand all of these things.

Multiple Jupiter Jets

A recent paper “Multiple jets and zonal flow on Jupiter”, by C.A. Jones, J. Rotvig, and A. Abdulrahman, discusses attempts to ‘model’ the atmosphere of Jupiter in order to show the cause of the prominent, colored belts and zones which flow around the planet in opposite directions parallel to the equator at different latitudes. The alternating velocities of these belts and zones are superimposed on the image of Jupiter at the right. The paper begins as follows: [See paper for citations]

“Understanding the large scale circulation of Jupiter’s atmosphere has long been a major challenge for planetary science. Detailed information about the surface flows came back from the Voyager and Galileo missions, and the increase in wind speed with depth reported by the Galileo probe adds weight to the Busse [1976, 1994] model. Busse suggested that the zonal flow was driven by convection in the ~104 km deep zone between the surface and the magnetic core. Recent numerical simulations [Christensen 2001, 2002; Arnou and Olsen, 2001] have found zonal flows of the right order of magnitude arising from driving by Reynolds stresses, and laboratory experiments in rapidly rotating convecting systems [Manneville and Olsen, 1996] also show that zonal flows occur naturally in such systems.”

The ‘surface’ referred to in this paragraph is the top of the visible cloud layer. The authors confirm the findings of other authors, who generally conclude that the only ‘models’ of the planet which produce multiple zonal flows moving to the east and west, are those which include friction (Reynolds stresses) at the lower ‘boundary’ of the atmosphere. Of course, such a rigid boundary cannot exist, in a conventional sense, on a gaseous planet. Scientists dodge this conundrum based on the quantum mechanical model of a pure hydrogen planet, which predicts that a new conductive state of hydrogen exists below 10,000 km, due to the great pressure at that depth. But in order to assume that, what intuitively should be a very ‘slippery’ or gradual transition zone between the two states of hydrogen at this depth, acts more like a solid planetary surface, a new wrinkle has been added. The authors explain:

The simplest model for the boundary friction term is to assume that the metallic core is a rigid rotator, bound together by the magnetic field. The evidence suggests that typical core velocities are orders of magnitude smaller than jet velocities [Sarchenko and Jones, 2003], so a rigid boundary condition is a reasonable first approximation.

Their premise is that the conductive hydrogen center (below a depth of 10,000 km) is bound by the magnetic field into a rigid rotator that is, believe it or not, stationary. This is difficult to accept because the rotational period of Jupiter’s atmosphere based on the Great Red Spot, and its magnetic field are of the same magnitude.

It seems that all the scientists who have published on this subject are trying to reinvent the wheel. I say this because the trade winds on earth, which are quite similar to the zonal jets on Jupiter, have long been understood to be a direct result of the fact that the atmosphere of the earth is a thin layer bounded at the bottom by the rigid surface of the planet. Therefore it is logical to postulate that a solid planet lies beneath the zonal flows on Jupiter, just as on Earth. However, there are two profound differences between the trade winds and the zonal jets on Jupiter. The Jovian flows, along with the Great Red Spot, have never faded or changed latitude in the over-three hundred and fifty years that they have been observed, whereas the trade winds come and go. Secondly, is the important fact (not addressed in the paper) that the Jovian flows are not symmetrical with respect to the equator. The figure above clearly shows the asymmetry in the wind velocities, with the strongest westerly jet coinciding with the latitude of the north side of the Great Red Spot.

V/A Paradigm Explains the Jovian Jets

As we maintain in Firmament and Chaos and a number of articles, Jupiter (as well as Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are all solid bodies composed primarily of water ice but in a less dense, less compressible form called gas hydrates or clathrates. Their structure resists the compression thought to occur with normal ice at high pressures - the oversight of which has misled planetary scientists into thinking that the giant planets cannot be composed of ice. These solid gas hydrates, which only form under high pressures, have another important characteristic. They act as 'cages' in which ‘guest’ molecules or atoms are usually encased. In fact, on Earth, where they exist at greater depths than most petroleum deposits, they are considered the most promising future energy source because they encapsulate large quantities of methane. I maintain that it is by means of these clathrates that all the elements in the periodic table are incorporated into the great planets. The most common element is hydrogen (hooray!), but not in the exotic superconducting form currently imagined. It is instead in the form of solid gas hydrates and many of the molecular species encapsulated within them. The absence of the touted three cloud layers and the less-than-expected amount of water found in the Jovian atmosphere by the Galileo probe, were due to the fact that most water is frozen into the solid body of the planet.

I maintain that the solid surface of the gas hydrate planet Jupiter lies only some 1,000 km below its cloud tops. It is this truly solid surface that forms the boundary layer required to produce the zonal jets. Moreover, the zonal flows are not driven by some form of primordial energy still leaking from Jupiter’s interior after 4.5 billion years, because any such source would produce symmetrical flows in the northern and southern hemispheres. All of the atmospheric features on Jupiter are driven by hot gases streaming upward from a great crater located at 20 degrees south latitude. The most prominent of these features, the Great Red Spot, is formed by the material in the hot gases still streaming from the 6,000 year-old impact crater. The coloration of the GRS and the zonal flows is due to the combining and ‘freezing’ of the great variety of compounds released from the crater as they rise to colder and colder temperatures.

Due to its rapid rotation (less than ten hours for a complete rotation of a planet 318 times the mass of Earth!) the strong ‘Coriolis force’ induces a vorticity gases rising from the crater. The rising column of gases are swept westward due to the rapid rotation rate, and therefore do not appear at the top of the atmosphere directly over the source crater. The rising column rotates counter-clockwise because it is in the southern hemisphere. Thus it induces a westward flow to the atmosphere to its north and an eastward flow to the atmosphere to its south, as shown in the figure. Given this driving force and the friction of the solid clathrate surface at the bottom of the atmosphere, the remaining zonal flows naturally form adjacent to the primary ones. Thus the entire system of zonal jets are driven by the energy still spewing from the crater which was formed by a great impact 6,000 years ago. We suggest that its longevity is due, in part, to the release of energy stored in the solid clathrate body of the planet, particularly methane, which is one of the dominant gaseous compounds detectable at the cloud tops, as evidenced by the fact that the Cassini proble used a methane spectral filter to study the motion of the zonal jets [Porco, et al., 2003].

The Lunar Regolith

A recent paper, entitled “Distribution and modes of occurrence of lunar anorthosite,” by B.R. Hawke et al (JGR 108, No. E6, 5050, June, 2003,) analyses the nearside-farside asymmetry, using telescopic near-infrared spectra and multispectral images of the Moon provided by the Galileo and Clementine missions. The primary finding presented in this paper is that anorthosites have now been located on all sides of the Moon, corroborating the notion that it was once completely covered by a magma ocean. Anorthosite, is the least dense mafic rock and would have come to the surface by a process called plagioclase flotation.

The new finding comes from higher resolution measurements of the nearside, which heretofore seemed to constitute a

“forbidden zone ... on which anorthosites were not found.”

The authors report a number of highly localized sites where anorthosites are exposed on the nearside. These are all located on or very near impact basin rings, which are distributed broadly across the nearside. They conclude that these impacts raised the anorthosites of the original crust through a superimposed stratigraphic layer, allowing them to be observed. Their presence at numerous locations on the near side implies that they underly the entire nearside, corroborating the notion that the entire lunar surface was originally formed by

“cumulate flotation of a global magma ocean.”

This begs the question of the origin and composition of the layer which covered the nearside after the formation of the ancient surface but prior to the impacts which formed the great basins. The authors state:

“In every instance, the anorthosites were exposed from beneath a shallower near-surface layer of more pyroxene-rich material. This near-surface unit is generally composed of anorthosite norite or noritic anorthosite. It should be noted that while this near-surface unit is more mafic than the pure anorthosite layer, it still contains abundant feldspar. The thickness of this more pyroxene-rich layer ranges from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers.”

Other data, primarily low concentrations of FeO and TiO2, imply that the majority of the farside is pure anorthosite, except for a region of more mafic material thought to be scattered from the large, deep South Pole-Aitken impact crater.

“It is a major challenge to develop and test hypotheses for the formation of the nearside stratigraphic sequence. The processes responsible for the upper crust/lower crust dichotomy have been discussed in several recent publications and will not be considered in detail here.”

In other words, no one has successfully explained the nearside “upper crust.” The authors then launch into a hand-waving attempt of their own to explain the material covering the nearside anorthosites. This involves a quenched or frozen crust which was later penetrated by impacts excavating more mafic material from the magma ocean beneath. The problems which arise in their explanation are illustrated by statements such as:

“It is difficult to quantify this process because of uncertainties concerning the early lunar impact flux, the rate of crustal formation, and other factors.”

The process which formed what is termed here ‘the upper crust’ is at issue, not its physical or chemical makeup. As seen by practically everyone in the world at the time of the Apollo lunar landings, the ‘stratigraphic layer’ which covers the nearside anorthosites is a very fine powder or dust. Lunar geologists call it ‘lunar soil’ in order to make it sound more like the Earth, which it definitely does not resemble. The proper term for this powder and the few brecciated rocks on the surface is regolith, the definition of which is given in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as: unconsolidated residual or transported material that overlies the solid rock on the earth, moon, or a planet.

A completely independent group, the Lunar Soil Characterization Consortium, a group of lunar-sample and remote-sensing scientists, has undertaken the extensive task of characterization of the finest fractions (tiniest grains) of lunar soils, with respect to their mineralogical and chemical makeup. They characterize the lunar soil as follows:

If it were not for the return of lunar soil, we would still not understand why the spectrum of lunar soil is so unusual. We observe the intricacies of particles in the laboratory, but have never been able to duplicate the effects of weathering processes accumulated over time. We are in a directly parallel situation with our current understanding of Martian soil from spectroscopic techniques. We know it contains a ferric component and we know something of its elemental composition; we know it is very fine grained; we know it is the cumulative weathering product of Martian lithologies, some of which are known from meteorites. A summary of several relevant lessons from studying lunar soils include: 1) Physical and chemical processes fractionate the soils with respect to local rocks. 2) Meteoritic contamination (largely from the constant rain of micrometeorites) cumulates in the soils. Lunar estimates are about 2-3 percent. 3) The fine fraction dominate observed optical properties, regardless of the presence of larger particles. Individual particles may accumulate coatings and rinds. 4) The spectral characteristics of the weathering products of iron dominate soil spectra. On the Moon it is highly reduced iron (typically 10's of nm in scale); on Mars it is highly oxidized (nano-phase?) iron. Modeling this 'gunk' or 'crud' is illusive. 5) Although weathering products dominate most spectra, signatures of the mineralogy of regional terrain can nevertheless be detected as subtle superimposed features. 6) Small-scale outcrops where soil has not been able to form or accumulate are critical markers of local lithology diversity. In planning exploration strategies using remote detectors, this latter lesson is particularly important and underlines the need for high resolution.

Over twenty years ago, one of the pre-eminent astrophysicists of the twentieth century, Sir Fred Hoyle, in The Cosmogony of the Solar System pointed out that the nearside of the Moon was much smoother than the far side, and suggested thatit was because a fine powder had filled all the depressions. Relief measured by the Apollo radar altimeter records of the near and far side corroborated that suggestion. He felt that explaining why the regolith is present only on the nearside, was necessary before science could claim to understand the Moon. He also pointed out another interesting fact about the regolith.

“ ... almost all lunar geologists are of the opinion that rock emerged long ago at the Moon’s surface from melting processes that took place in the sub-surface layers ...[however] ... the molten material did not burst out on its own accord. The appearance of molten rock at the surface was precipitated by the puncturing effect of the impacts of substantial bodies from outside. In this way it is thought to connect the cratering of the Moon’s surface, caused by impacts, with the flat floors which the larger impact areas on the front face of the Moon are observed to have, in particular with the flat floors of the maria. The floors are generally believed to be caused by the gushing out of molten rock from regions below the solid crust.

This picture would essentially have been proven if visits to the lunar maria had revealed the presence of extensive lava beds. But no astronaut has ever stood upon a lava bed. It is commonly stated that lava flows have been found on the Moon, but such statements are incorrect. Lava flows have been found only in the imagination of those who have examined distant photographs taken from [of?] the Apollo landing sites. What astronauts actually found was a great deal of fine powder. Embedded or lying on the powdery surface was a multitude of rock fragments. Subsequent chemical analyses of the rock fragments showed them to be of highly variable chemical composition, making it quite unlikely that they were fragments from a single coherent flow of molten rock. Rather they seem to be ejecta from impact events that occurred over a wide areas of the Moon’s surface.

The rocks have clearly been melted, fine-grained basalts have been recovered from the maria. But the profusion of small particles added to the Moon (and of which the Moon might even have been constructed) provides a medium of low sound speed for impacting objects, and this creates a highly favorable situation for impact melting, quite apart from the possibility that the rocks are fragments of impacting objects which experienced melting before they hit the Moon. The heavily scarred lunar surface shows that there were very many impacts, often overlapping each other. Thus some regions would be melted and remelted. Impact areas would produced localized sheets of rock, which would then be available for breakup and scattering by subsequent impacts. And in encounters of low speed (of under 2 km s-1), the impacting objects could themselves have supplied rocky fragments to the Moon’s surface. The isolated rock fragments do not demand lava flow from the interior of the Moon. Nor do rocks of a particular type, like basalt. ...

Because of the great importance of these questions for terrestrial geology, I will now review a number of features of the Moon’s surface unconnected with the detailed study of rock composition and structures, which seem to me to point overwhelmingly to a picture quite remote from that which is favored by most lunar geologists. Or put it otherwise, if lunar geologists are to maintain their position in a satisfactory way, there is a whole array of other remarkable facts about the Moon which should surely be given convincing explanations, rather than being dismissed with clearly inadequate explanations, or with none at all. ...

A good place to start a discussion of these ‘forbidden’ issues is with the five huge impact craters found on the opposite side of the Moon, of which one is found in [Hoyle's] Figure 18.1. If the floor of the Mare Imbrium is a lava flow, why is there no such flow on the floor of the big crater in Figure 18.1? Why is the phenomenon of the flat bottom shown not only by Mare Imbrium but by all the large craters on ‘our’ side but not by those on the other side? How is it that big impacting objects hitting the Moon on our side could manage to punch through to underlying molten rock, whereas impacts on the other side did not do so? Because the protecting solid crust was thicker on the other side, some geologists have said. But the same phenomenon applies to craters quite a bit smaller than the biggest ones, showing that the difference between ‘our’ side and the other side would need to be large, the crust being much thinner on our side, to a point where the explanation becomes of very doubtful validity.

The same phenomenon is shown by the altimeter record shown in Figure 18.3. This record makes it clear that the difference of elevation between high ground and low ground is about twice as great on the far side of the Moon than it is on the near side. This difference is only explicable, I would suppose, if the low basins on the near side have been submerged by some kind of filler material, by a sea of material out of which only the high ground rises. Although this explanation might at first sight be thought to admit lava as a possible filler material, how then do we explain another important feature of the altimeter record, namely, that there are far more sharp peaks on the far side than on the near side? To explain this remarkable difference we have to suppose that the filler material has been able to smooth the high ground on the near side as well as fill up hollows in the low ground. How do lava flows smooth high ground? A fine powder, such as the astronauts have always found on every lunar landing site, a fine powder able to compact itself into a friable rock under pressure, would seem to be a far better candidate for the filler material than lava. Fine powder could fill out irregularities in the high ground, whereas lava could not achieve this at all.”

Hoyle tried to explain the origin and movement of the fine regolith that filled only the depressions on the nearside, suggesting after Gold, that the incidence of electrons charged dust particles, allowing them to bounce downhill and fill depressions. In order to explain why this only happened on the nearside, he hypothesized that the magnetic field of the Earth was required to focus solar electrons on to the Moon. Given that the alignment of Sun, Earth and Moon is relatively infrequent, this was one of his less successful explanations of planetary ‘mysteries.’ Still, where is all the dust on the far side? Thus the problem remains.

Hoyle also pointed out that seismic measurements made by Apollo instruments indicated that the top layer of the nearside lunar crust, as thick as two kilometers, comprised unconsolidated material, consistent with the definition of regolith. The authors of the paper cited above fail to acknowledge these aspects of the layer which overlies the nearside anorthosite.

The Velikovsky/Ackerman Explanation

Although Fred Hoyle recognized the importance of the nearside/farside dichotomy problem better than most lunar specialists and even suggested that the regolith was the result of deposition from space, he never solved the problem of its origin. The V/A scenario gives the only viable explanation. It is clearly stated in the Vedas that the ‘beings’ created by Brahma (the greatest lava fountain on priori-Mars) whose ‘home’ was on the Moon, were called the ‘fathers.’ The vast number of convulsions of priori-Mars that occurred during the ‘dance encounters’ due to alignments of the two with the Moon sent large hot bodies from the interior into space entraining with them great storms of rocks, dust, and atomized rock and iron, from the lava fountains. The ejection was aided by the tidal force of the nearby Earth and the centrifugal acceleration of priori-Mars in its one day orbit around the Earth. Although many rocks fell to Earth, a great deal were ejected into orbits which entered the sphere of influence of the Moon and fell to the nearside surface.

In this manner a layer several kilometers deep was deposited on the nearside of the Moon, covering the original anorthosite crust. The falling clouds of rock and dust impacted the un-consolidated regolith that had fallen previously, causing melting at microscopic scales. If the Moon had had an atmosphere, these tiny particles would have been turned to ashes upon entry, but instead they impacted the soft surface material. Their chemical/mineral makeup was dictated by the material ejected from priori-Mars. The estimate that 2 to 3 % of the fine soil are meteorites is completely wrong. The entire surface is covered by several kilometers of meteoritic dust from priori-Mars. As a result, the ‘lunar rocks’ and dust returned to Earth by the Apollo astronauts are all from priori-Mars. By the same token, the range of ages calculated for them are due to their ages on priori-Mars, modified by the heating, both on the red planet and upon impact on the Moon. The age of the Moon will only be correctly determined when astronauts land on the far side and bring back to earth a true piece of lunar bedrock. We may have one or two in hand now, but the confused makeup of the nearside makes it impossible to determine which ones they are.

Even more spectacular, the giant maria which characterize the face of the Moon, were also caused by bodies ejected from priori-Mars. Ancient myth tells us that a single stream of hot, glowing bodies was shot out of the same volcanic vent in rapid sequence and struck the Moon one after another as amazed humans watched. These bodies barely reached the Moon, and as a result, impacted at relatively low velocities. Since they were very hot they were already softened and the additional heat of their impact in the soft cushioning regolith caused them to flatten and remain in the basins formed by their impacts. At the same time the impacts created rings exposing some of the original underlying anorthosite crust which were discussed in the Hawke paper. Small regolith storms continued for a number of years after these great impacts, but not enough to obscure the presence of the more mafic rock which formed the basins. Thus the mascons at the impact sites are to a combination of the compression of the existing surface plus the mass of the impacted mafic rock. There are no lava flows on the Moon.

Researchers from the Fermi Institute and the University of Chicago who have calculated the impact velocities for a dozen large impact basins conclude that they are very low, indeed, six of them fall below the escape velocity (2.4 kilometers per second) of the Moon. ^[1] Although there are a number of assumptions in their method, they conclude that most of the basin forming impacts had systematically low impact velocities. The currently accepted theory cannot offer any explanation as to why there should be such low impact velocities.

The creation of the maria is graphically described in the Egyptian myth of Osiris. Osiris was the Egyptian name for the great lava fountain, comprising hardened vertical tubes, located at the north pole of priori-Mars directly facing the Earth. At one alignment of the pair with the Moon (i.e. the Moon passed behind priori-Mars) a series of large (> 10 km) hot bodies were ejected from the fountain vent in rapid succession, causing it to collapse (as it did innumerable times.) Thus Osiris was thought to have been killed and his body parts shot into space. While Isis (the Moon), his lover, was away (occulted by priori-Mars), Osiris’ enemy Set was said to have cut up his body into fourteen pieces and spread them around so that he could not be reconstructed. But the faithful Isis went around and collected all the parts of his body and at each place where she found one she built a monument. The monuments she placed were the maria. To this day the Egyptians celebrate a holiday called ‘the day of Osiris’ entry into the Moon.’

Lastly, the center of mass of the Moon is known to be offset from the geometric center toward the Earth, by about two kilometers. Lunar geologists believe this is due to to an asymmetrical distribution of mass in its interior, but this is not the case. It is the regolith, including the maria rocks on the nearside which has caused the mass offset.

The V/A scenario explains the recent origin of the regolith, why it is present only on the nearside, how it filled the high as well as the low areas on the nearside surface and the ~2 km. offset of the center of gravity from the geometric center of the Moon.