Worlds in Collision is a book by Immanuel Velikovsky published in 1950. The book postulates that around the 15th century BC, the planet Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object and passed near Earth (an actual collision is not mentioned). The object allegedly changed Earth's orbit and axis, causing innumerable catastrophes that are mentioned in early mythologies and religions from around the world. The book has been heavily criticized as a work of pseudoscience and catastrophism, and many of its claims are completely rejected by the established scientific community as they are not supported by any available evidence.
Publication Worlds in Collision was first published on April 3, 1950, by Macmillan Publishers.Velikovsky, Immanuel (1950). Worlds in Collision, Macmillan. . Macmillan's interest in publishing it was encouraged by the knowledge that Velikovsky had obtained a promise from Gordon Atwater, Director of the Hayden Planetarium, for a sky show based on the book when it was published.Whelton, Clark 1980. The Gordon Atwater Affair. S.I.S. Review IV (4), pp. 75-76. "Although Gordon Atwater had doubts about certain aspects of Velikovsky's work, he nevertheless found the basic thesis to be tenable. A reading of the manuscript confirmed his view that Worlds in Collision would be a tremendous hit at Hayden. He told Velikovsky that if a publisher for the book was found, the Planetarium would produce a sky show based on Worlds in Collision." The book, Velikovsky's most criticized and controversial, was an instant New York Times bestseller, topping the charts for eleven weeks while being in the top ten for 27 straight weeks.Ellenberger, C. Leroy (1984). Worlds in Collision in Macmillan's Catalogues. Kronos, 9 (2), 46-57. The 20 weeks at the top stated by Juergens in The Velikovsky Affair is incorrect. Despite this popularity, overwhelming rejection of its thesis by the scientific community forced Macmillan to stop publishing it and to transfer the book to Doubleday within two months.
Core ideas
In the book's preface, Velikovsky summarizes his arguments:
Worlds in Collision is a book of wars in the celestial sphere that took place in historical times. In these wars the planet Earth participated too. [...] The historical-cosmological story of this book is based in the evidence of historical texts of many people around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of the northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on old astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material.
The book proposes that Venus formed inside of Jupiter, and that around the 15th century BCE, it was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object and subsequently passed near Earth, though an actual collision with the Earth is not mentioned. In doing so it changed Earth's orbit and axial inclination, causing innumerable catastrophes which were identified in early mythologies and religious traditions from human civilizations around the world. Fifty-two years later, it again made a close approach, stopping the Earth's rotation for a while and causing more catastrophes. Then, in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, Mars (itself displaced by Venus) made close approaches to the Earth; this incident caused a new round of disturbances and disasters. After that, the current "celestial order" was established. The courses of the planets stabilized over the centuries and Venus gradually became a "normal" planet.
These events led to several key statements:
Venus must be still very hot as young planets radiate heat.W in C, "The Thermal Balance Of Venus" (Ch. IX): "The night side of Venus radiates heat because Venus is hot. [..] Venus experienced in quick succession its birth and expulsion under violent conditions; an existence as a comet on an ellipse which approached the sun closely; two encounters with the Earth accompanied by discharges of potentials between these two bodies and with a thermal effect caused by conversion of momentum into heat; a number of contacts with Mars and probably also with Jupiter. Since all this happened between the third and the first millennia before the present era, the core of the planet Venus must still be hot." Venus must be rich in petroleum and hydrocarbon gases.W in C, "The Gases Of Venus" (Ch. IX): "On the basis of this research, I assume that Venus must be rich in petroleum gases. If and as long as Venus is too hot for the liquefaction of petroleum, the hydrocarbons will circulate in gaseous form. The absorption lines of the petroleum spectrum lie far in the infra-red where usual photographs do not reach. When the technique of photography in the infra-red is perfected so that hydrocarbon bands can be differentiated, the spectrogram of Venus may disclose the presence of hydrocarbon gases in its atmosphere, if these gases lie in the upper part of the atmosphere where the rays of the sun penetrate." Venus has an abnormal orbit in consequence of the unusual disasters stemming from its planetary origins.
Velikovsky suggested some additional ideas that he said derived from these claims, including:
Jupiter emits radio noises.In a lecture delivered in October 1953, Velikovsky stated: "In Jupiter and its moons we have a system not unlike the solar family. The planet is cold, yet its gases are in motion. It appears probable to me that it sends out radio noises as do the sun and the stars." (See Lecture before the Graduate Student Forum in Princeton, December 6, 1967) In correspondence with Albert Einstein, Velikovsky (June 1954) repeated his view that Jupiter is not an inert gravitational body, and that it would be found to emit radio noises of electromagnetic (non-thermal) origin; and he offered to stake their debate on the role of electromagnetism in the mechanics of the solar system on this claim. The magnetosphere of the Earth reaches at least up to the Moon. The Sun has an electric potential of approximately 1019 volts. The rotation of the Earth can be affected by electromagnetic fields.
Velikovsky arrived at these proposals using a methodology which would today be called comparative mythology—he looked for concordances in the myths and written histories of unconnected cultures across the world, following a literal reading of their accounts of the exploits of planetary deities. He argues on the basis of ancient cosmological myths from places as disparate as India and China, Greece and Rome, Assyria and Sumer. For example, ancient Greek mythology asserts that the goddess Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. Velikovsky identifies Zeus (whose Roman counterpart was the god Jupiter) with the planet Jupiter and Athena (the Roman Minerva) with the planet Venus. This myth, along with others from ancient Egypt, Israel, Mexico, etc. are used to support the claim that "Venus was expelled as a comet and then changed to a planet after contact with a number of members of our solar system" (Velikovsky 1972:182).
Critical reaction Contemporary reactions
The plausibility of the theory was summarily rejected by the physics community, as the cosmic chain of events proposed by Velikovsky contradicts basic laws of physics. Velikovsky's ideas had been known to astronomers for years before the publication of the book, partially by his writing to astronomer Harlow Shapley of Harvard, partially through his 1946 pamphlet Cosmos Without Gravitation,Immanuel Velikovsky, "Cosmos Without Gravitation: Attraction, repulsion and electromagnetic circumduction in the Solar System" (1946) and partially by a preview of his work in an article in the August 11, 1946, edition of the New York Herald Tribune. An article about the upcoming book was published by Harper's Magazine in January 1950, which was followed by additional articles in Newsweek (Bauer 1984:3–4) and Reader's Digest in March 1950.
Shapley, along with others such as astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (also at Harvard), instigated a campaign against the book before its publication. Initially, they were highly critical of a publisher as reputable as Macmillan publishing such a pseudoscientific book, even as a trade book.Gilbert, James (1997). Redeeming Culture: American Religion in an Age of Science, University of Chicago Press. . Chap. 8, Two Men of Science, pp. 185-7.Grove, J.W. (1989). In Defence of Science: Science, technology, and, politics in modern society, University of Toronto Press. . Chap. 5, Pseudo-science, pp. 120-50. Their disapproval was re-invigorated when Macmillan included Worlds in Collision among other trade books of possible interest to professors listed under the category "Science" in the back of a textbook catalog mailed to college professors.Ellenberger, C. Leroy (1984). Worlds in Collision in Macmillan's Catalogues. Kronos, 9 (2), 46–57. Within two months of the book's initial release, the publishing of the book was transferred to Doubleday, which has no textbook division.
The fundamental criticism against the book from the astronomy community was that its celestial mechanics were irreconcilable with Newtonian mechanics, requiring planetary orbits which could not be made to conform to the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of angular momentum (Bauer 1984:70). Velikovsky conceded that the behavior of the planets in his theories is not consistent with Newton's laws of motion and universal gravitation. He proposed that electromagnetic forces could be the cause of the movements of the planets, although such forces between astronomical bodies are known to be essentially zero.
Velikovsky tried to protect himself from criticism of his proposed celestial mechanics by removing the original Appendix on the subject from Worlds in Collision, hoping that the merit of his ideas would be evaluated on the basis of his comparative mythology and use of literary sources alone. This strategy did not protect him: the Appendix was an expanded version of the Cosmos Without Gravitation monograph, which he had already distributed to Shapley and others in the late 1940s—and they had regarded the physics within it as egregiously in error.
Carl Sagan
In his 1979 science book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, astronomer Carl Sagan wrote that the high surface temperature of Venus was known of prior to the publication of Worlds in Collision, and that Velikovsky misunderstood the mechanism for this heat.Sagan, Carl, (1979) Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science Chapter 7, "Venus and Dr. Velikovsky", section: Problem VIII: The Temperature of Venus. Velikovsky believed that Venus was heated by its close encounter with the Earth and Mars. He also did not understand the greenhouse effect caused by Venus's atmosphere, which had earlier been elucidated by astronomer Rupert Wildt. Ultimately, Venus is hot due to its proximity to the Sun; it does not emit more heat than it receives from the Sun, and any heat produced by its celestial movements would have long since dissipated. Sagan concludes: "(1) the temperature in question was never specified [by Velikovsky]; (2) the mechanism proposed for providing this temperature is grossly inadequate; (3) the surface of the planet does not cool off with time as advertised; and (4) the idea of a high surface temperature on Venus was published in the dominant astronomical journal of its time and with an essentially correct argument ten years before the publication of Worlds in Collision" (p. 118).