CHAPTER FIVE
Searching backward for ever older memories of disasters brings one to a point where Uranus is father of the gods and corresponds to a huge heavenly body. But what kind of body is it that is close-in, luminous, draped by clouds after a period of imperceptibility, but nevertheless, from its first perception, a second glowing sun ?
Contemplation of this problem leads to a conjecture: the solar system might have been a binary system, which early humans could actually have experienced. "This is the heyday of the cataclysmic binary," declares Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin [1] .
Among the earliest products of the human mind are certain legends, statements, and symbols that may be interpreted to support the theory that a binary system occupied the sky. Most important among these is the reported occurrence of a second "sun" that can be distinguished from the present sun, a bright star, a nova, or the moon.
As late as five thousand years ago, in Egyptian, Babylonian, Hebrew and other cosmogonies there is presented a heavenly body in the "North" that is luminescent by day and radiant by night [2] . The body is accorded divine status, and is called by dozens and perhaps hundreds of names around the world. Were it to be granted that the binary system could carry into the time of observant mankind, then much proto-history that would otherwise seem to be nonsense will appear to be probable.
The discoverable properties of star systems offer a number of indications that the solar system can be modelled as a binary system. Existing knowledge of the solar system can be regrouped around the concepts necessary to a binary model [3] . If in 14,000 B. P. our solar system was multiple, it would be in the company of perhaps half of the star systems of the universe [4] . Instead of one sun there would have been two or more suns orbiting each other. Of the nearest twelve star-systems four are multiple, three of these are binary, and three of them have dark companions that possess masses of 1% or less of the mass of the sun [5] . In this book, I am not only postulating such a binary system as our own, but also am suggesting that it persisted down to about 14,000 years ago.
Alpha Centauri A, a three-star system which, at 4.3 light years' distance, is our nearest neighbor, has nearly the same absolute magnitude as the Sun, 4.8 as against 4.86 for sun. It is in all ways, also, an ordinary medium-sized star system. Binary components frequently have similar separations to the planet-Sun distances within the solar system.
"Has the Sun a Companion Star?" asked E. R. Harrison (1977). He wonders whether a slight acceleration of the solar system detected by pulsar observations may be due to an orbiting binary partner. "The companion star is presumably either a faint white or red dwarf in closed orbit around the Sun, or a gas-accreting nearby neutron star or black hole in open orbit." [6] Harrison adduces Oort to say that a cloud of comets extends a distance of about 10 5 A. U. and this, he maintains, could envelop the Sun and its companion star.
Besides the Sun, there would have been a body that can be called Super-Uranus [7] . The postulated system is here referred to as Solaria Binaria. Between the Sun and Super-Uranus there would have to be a connection, a great axis of fire, an electrical current discharging its powerful pulses across the axis of the binary. Figure 9 shows this and other features of the system. An excessive charge on the Sun would occasion the current or arc.
Around this gigantic axial current, a magnetic field would be induced. This field was composed of ionized gases and contained a number of the chemical elements in atomic and molecular form, including especially water in its three forms. The field rotated around the central axis. Within the outer envelope of the rotating gases were a set of planets, including the Earth. They had budded and grown there in the atmosphere of the tube.
Binaries can have planets [8] . Several binaries show exchange of significant clouds of ionized gases between the stellar components. These carry both charge and matter. In Solaria Binaria, hydrocarbons may well have been plentiful in the gases that passed from the Sun to Super-Uranus.
Nearby binaries contain dwarf companions, a situation similar to Super-Uranus in relation to the Sun. Such dwarf companions have sometimes been seen to flare up, that is, to briefly resemble a small nova [9] . This seems to have happened both to Super-Uranus around 11,500 years ago and later to Super-Saturn around 6000 years ago, when it separated from Jupiter to retire farther into space.
The inner planets rotated around the central "axis of fire" along with the gases of the tube, in a motion that remains today as their rotation around their individual axes. The outer planets were all contained in Super-Uranus. Earth, Mercury, and Mars perhaps retain this fossil motion, whereas the rotations of the outer planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus -- are new rotations, as is the retrograde motion of Venus.
Figure 9 pictures Solaria Binaria as a "stacked" system where the planets spin like balls in the gaseous medium that revolves around the central axis between the two binary bodies. The axis itself wheeled around the Sun, on what will become the "plane of the ecliptic." On the other hand, the Sun was losing, and finally lost almost entirely, its tendency to orbit around its binary. Rather, it undulated "as if" it were trying to perform such a motion [10] , and this motion is probably what Harrison, as indicated above, refers to.
The observed binaries of our galaxy are engaged in heavy discharge of gases among the members [11] . This type of gaseous exchange is presumed here to have constituted the magnetic tube between Sun and Super-Uranus. Since gaseous exchanges must be electrified and have direction, it may be presumed that a current was discharging between the two binary bodies. This current would be radiant and may even be the mysterious "central fire" referred to by the ancients and specifically by Plato in his dialogue, Timaeus [12] . But, also, the rim of the magnetic tube would alight with cooler, slower gases, admitting a luminescence to the contents of the tube including the planets.
Figure 9 has Earth nearest the Sun and the other planets in positions unlike their present ones. The Earth itself is considered to have moved least, and of having been closely passed by other planets in recent history. The total distance between the binary bodies must have been much less in those days. This is suggested not only because observed distance between present binaries vary greatly and can be quite small but also because the ancients appear to have had a knowledge of the planets and to havesuffered from interactions among them that indicate a close ingrouping. The planets would have moved outwards because of changes in the Sun as an accumulator and discharger of electricity.
Like the Sun Super-Uranus was a charged gas cloud with a high density but volatile core. It might have contained about 4% of the mass of Solaria Binaria. It was not unlike the planet Jupiter of today, save that it was radiant and may have carried much more water in its high clouds. Indeed, on occasion, Jupiter has been termed a defunct or vestigial binary. Super-Uranus could not be seen by the hominids of Earth, or by whatever aware beings may have existed on its other planets if they had merely human vision. Its vast cloudy environment and the intervening atmosphere of the tube disguised its appearance.
In Solaria Binaria the Sun had 96% of the total mass and more of the angular momentum than does the presents Sun, mainly because it was rotating or, better, undulating around its partner. The remainder of the mass, 4% in Super-Uranus, accounted for most of the orbital movement within the system. The period of the binary was perhaps months long. (The earliest known calendars in Egypt and Meso-America were of 260 days.) [13] Both the Sun and Super-Uranus exhibited rotation around their axis. In the case of the Sun, the rotation was gradually reduced by intense gaseous discharges and matter flowing from the star's equator. On Super-Uranus, the rotation was increased as the electrified particle stream impinged upon its surface, whipping it like a top. These particles arrived with great energy because they were continuously accelerated as they flowed from the sun to Super-Uranus, whose potential was less negative than that on the Sun.
Figure 9.
THE ORIGINAL STACKED BINARY SYSTEM (SOLARIA BINARIA)
(Click on the picture to view an enlarged version.
Caution: Image files are large.)
The average separation between binary components is 20 astronomical units [14] (20 times the distance between the Earth and Sun today). However in some binaries, the partners are much further apart, in other much closer together. The division of the total mass among the components shows little pattern. "A mass ratio of about 1 to 20 could occur about 5% of the time, and under such circumstances a solar system might form." [15]
The periods that binaries take to rotate about each other extend from the order of a day or less to upwards of thousand years. The period varies inversely with the net interaction between the two bodies. Thus, if the attraction diminishes, the period increases.
The planet Jupiter has a composition resembling that of a star much smaller than the Sun. It had more star-like traits in the past, when it was at least twice as massive. From the radiation it emits, Jupiter is thought to have a subsurface temperature somewhere between 12,000° and 50,000° C. Its chemistry resembles more the gaseous Sun than the inner planets, or even its own satellites; it consists largely of hydrogen in various states, and holds some water [16] . Furthermore, the chemistry of planet Saturn resembles Jupiter, lending support to the theory that these two planets were once one. In Proclus, citing the Parmenides of Plato, occurs a statement that Jupiter separated himself from Saturn; interpreted physically, this suggests a fission." [17] There exists, in fact, much literature on the interaction between Jupiter and Saturn, not only in Greek thought but also in other works of Near and Middle East cosmogony [18] .
The high density of the inner planets suggests that they have had different careers than Jupiter and the outer planets. Venus is an exception to be discussed later, but the others probably existed long before Solaria Binaria began to disintegrate around 14,000 B. P. They each could have supported many forms of life. The chemical elements were fully represented on all of them, because the axial current of the binary circulated along the center of the gaseous tube, literally an electrico-chemical factory. All of the planets would have had similar climates.
Radioactive elements existed in great quantities, but under the electrical and magnetic conditions of the great tube atmosphere, their rates of decay into other elements were high [19] . This rapid decay, which diminished with the general de-electrification of Solaria Binaria, may account for the great ages obtained in tests of radioactive minerals today; their "decay constants" have continually and drastically slowed down.
Without recourse to the ancients, contemporary astronomers have come to the question, as D. McNally of the London University Observatory put it, "Are the Jovian Planets 'Failed' Stars?" "If they can be classified in this way." writes Eric Crew, " this means that any deductions about Jupiter are likely to apply to the other gaseous type planets, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. An event in one of these may also be linked to events in others, so the problem of cosmic catastrophes is that much simpler." [20]
Up to the moment, catastrophists and uniformitarians have conducted their debate on the premise that the planes have always orbited close to the plane of the ecliptic. Whenever catastrophists have invoked planetary or cometary deviations to explain titanic encounters, they have assumed them to occur on or about the imaginary line that defines the orbit of the planet Earth about the Sun. Thus, Venus is said to have been launched into an elliptical comet-like orbit moving in or near the plane of the ecliptic when it created havoc amongst the inner planets [21] . All the collisional mishaps that might have occurred to other bodies -- the meteoroid impacts upon Mars, Mercury, Moon, and Venue, the creation of asteroids from Apollo -- were also supposedly events of a single plane.
A new developmental theory is offered here. It is compatible with quantavolutionary theory and solves simply many important problems, so that I do not hesitate to advance it now. This possibility describes how a binary system reduces to a solar system in the time of humankind. In its primal form it was a stacked binary system where the planets ringed and revolved around the axial electric current that ran between the Sun and Super-Uranus. The magnetic forces circulated around this same axis. The axis is in its present form the plane of the ecliptic. The present planetary rotations are derived from their primeval motions around the old electrical axis. If today the planets are slightly off the axis, and stray slightly around their average position, these are probably ghost motions of their much larger historical rotational orbits.
The planetary orbits that ringed the great axis of fire descended to their centers on the axis that once linked the Sun and Super-Uranus. Thus the electrical system was transformed into what appears to us as an inertial system. I say "inertial" because explanations of motions within the solar system of today are described almost entirely as inertia (with electrical forces admixed as circumstances demand them). The laws of gravitation describe the existing motions as if they had come down unchanged from a uniformitarian past. Not "cosmos without gravitation," as Velikovsky once put it [22] , but gravitational laws without gravitation. The axial rotation orbits of the Pangean planets were proportional to their size and to the intensity of the local electromagnetic current density within the axial tube connecting the binary components. The current would everywhere be uniform. The local current density could vary. The farther from the Sun and hence the farther up the tube, the smaller the diameter of planetary rotation. The planets were enveloped in the outer gases of the magnetic tube, which also were their primordial atmospheres. Heat came from the gaseous clouds in which they were enveloped, and indirectly from the axis of fire, as well as from the great binary bodies.
The primeval human observers could see the incandescent light produced by the central current. The more dense gases near the axis glowed like a huge interrupting neon arc. The perimeter gases of the magnetic tube were probably also radiant. People could not see the Sun or its binary partner through the clouds. The axis of each planet was aligned parallel to the electrical axis; thus the equators all faced the binary axis. The axes of the Sun and Super-Uranus were perpendicular to the electrical axis; as cathode and anode they exchanged electrical current between the closest points on their equators.
The source of the electricity of the system was, and is, cosmic, principally galactic, which, using a mechanism described by Juergens [23] , would have charges built up in the corona of the Sun being continuously discharged along the tube to Super-Uranus, which was less negatively charged. The magnetic current whirling around the electrical current was directed oppositely. The planets within the gaseous tube shared its potential which, like Super-Uranus, was lower than that of the Sun.
The charge on the Sun had "always" been diminishing, owing to a steadily decreasing input current from the millions of other discharging bodies within the galaxy. Little by little, over a long time, its ability to radiate along the line of current thus diminished. Today the magnetic field of the Sun, carried as the "solar wind" into billions of miles of space, stretching even beyond the planet Pluto, is a greatly diffused relic of the great Pangean binary axis current. It presently covers a wide band that strikes into space far above and below the plane on which the planets orbit, and may even be circumglobal; in any event, the band is wide enough to have at one time encompassed the axially rotating planets [24] .( see Figure 10.)
The solar flares that are so important a part of solar behavior, and planetary behavior as well, occur largely between the surface and the corona of the Sun. They develop new sunspots within hours, are immensely energetic, and often penetrate the corona into over 500,000 kilometers of space. The radiation and particles they emit affect the Earth's atmosphere and possibly its motions. Gribbin and Plagemann significantly titled an article in 1973 "Discontinuous Change in Earth's spin rate following great solar storm of August 1972." Often a surge of gas accompanies a flare. Often a single flare, and many occur, has enough energy to provide theoretically a million years of electric power for the whole Earth.
"The physical causes of flares are still unknown, though it is believed that the energy released by a flare.. must come from the intense magnetic or electric fields associated with the solar active region." [25] Bruce describes the Sun as sending out arc discharges continually from its photosphere [26] . The arcs fall back, in my understanding, and become the glow discharge of the chromosphere, because there is no longer an anode binary and a great enough voltage gradient to project the arc through interplanetary space. The solar behavior recited here may be sufficient to understand how I have come to construe the present solar system as a fossil binary, viewing the electricity and gases of the solar flares as "attempts" to reestablish the ancient current, transporting the radiation and elements that the original current carried.
Figure 10.
MAGNETIC FIELD OF THE SUN
Finally the motions of Super-Uranus were affected as the charge it was receiving declined. As the central current lessened, the power within the magnetic tube, which depended upon the strength of the current, also began to lessen; the planets began to convert their axial rotation into self-centered rotation. They moved toward the diminishing "central fire." That is, their angular momentum about the central axis was converted into an angular momentum based about their planetary rotational axes.
The planetary atmospheres cleared partly because of a general lessening of density of the magnetic gases and because of deluges of water from vapors once more evenly distributed within the magnetic tube. Individual planetary atmospheres became separate. From Earth, Super-Uranus began to be seen in the North and the Sun in the South. Super-Uranus, much nearer to Earth, would, if at some 20 million kilometers distance, appear as a colorful live body twice the size of the sun or moon today.
Super-Uranus had been rotating rapidly, whipped by the charged central current like a spinning top. Now it began to slow its rotation and break apart. Great electrical disturbances resulted; meteoroids penetrated the gaseous region of the binarian axis even as they exploded into farther space. The planets moved away from the Sun even as they were receiving more direct radiant energy from it.
Uranus Minor, a fragment produced as the larger body exploded, arched through the solar system along the plane of the ecliptic. This initiated the first of the set of catastrophes that dominated the recent post-Pangean history of Earth, the Lunarian disaster (about 11,500 B. P.). Uranus-Minor passed the Sun, lunged farther into space, then returned to the system, no longer aligned with the other planets on the axis of the binary, but orbiting along the plane now defined by the present solar system.
Super-Uranus (or "Super-Saturn" it should now be called) continued to fragment as it slowed further. In the next great catastrophe (6000 B. P.), it blew off its charged surface shell and fissioned. It became a nova. Vsekhsviatskii, Director of the Kiev Observatory, has described such an event, ascribing it to a time of 100,000 to 500,000 years ago and claiming that some 10 25 grams of material, much of it ice, was erupted into space, bombarding the planets and exciting secondary volcanism everywhere [27] . It is probably significant, that, as Shklovskii and Sagan wrote: "It now seems very possible that all novae occur in close binary systems." [28] When novae occur luminosity increases and the expelled mass is about 10 -4 to 10 -5 of the mass of our Sun. Saturn has .02859% of the mass of the Sun [29] . The expelled minor portion of what was Super-Saturn retreated into farther space, where eventually it became the present planet Saturn [30] . The Earth was deluged with water. The major part of post-explosion Super-Saturn became Jupiter. It maintained its position at the end of the axial current of Solaria Binaria.
The new planet Jupiter's rotation was erratic; its temperature cooled; its charging wind was drastically reduced. Yet it was still the most electrified of the planetary bodies. Jupiter attempted to reestablish its electrical line to the Sun. Sometimes discharges from the Sun and Jupiter would actually make contact across the vast spaces, but the lessened potential made the intervening gas a poor conductor. Only upon occasion did the discharge resume; when it did it wrought destruction upon the Earth, which was closing its orbit around the diminished electrical axis. Earthlings viewed these discharges with consternation.
The Planets reacted to the drop in electrical power in the gaseous magnetic tube by moving inward towards the present plane of the solar system ecliptic. Their axial rotational speed changed into self-rotational motion. The hemisphere of the Earth that faced towards the disintegrating binary was increasingly illuminated as the gas clouds disappeared.
When the time came for the Earth and other dense planets to transform their minor orbits into individual rotations, they changed the tilts of their axes. The circum-current orbit of the equator described the circular motion of its minor orbit; thence the Earth's poles were perpendicular to this orbit.
But, as the Earth moved in upon the dying central current, its equator slowly shifted to the solar ecliptic. Its poles also shifted until they became nearly perpendicular to this plane, as did the poles of the other planets. Since the guiding reins of the central current were exceedingly loose now, individual axial tilts became possible, and did occur on occasion; a strict rule of perpendicularity could not be enforced.
The change from Solaria Binaria would be eased by electrical transitions, which are smoother than mechanical ones and by the quantitatively transforming binary atmosphere; hence the Earth would have been protected against sudden wrenching changes of motion and abrupt temperature changes of an utterly destructive kind.
The clearing skies brought the other planets and the binary bodies into view; they became the cynosure of the human eye in its infant self-consciousness [31] . The binary side was the boreal region, the north; there man saw first super-Uranus, then later Saturn; each in his turn ruled the world. The greatest drama of human history was observable; the birth, struggles and deaths of the gods, From the skies came fires, stones, waters, and also winds.
Why all the planets, having once lost their original circular orbit around the Sun-Super Uranus axis and having moved back and forth on the solar ecliptic plane, should then have reassumed almost circular orbits around the Sun in a plane now perpendicular to the "old" axial orbits is explainable [32] . Circular orbits, taken alone, are a mystery that conventional astrophysics has not yet considered. Even an original circularity was unexplainable under Newtonian laws of gravitational motions. My answer is speculative but all that has been said here necessitates it. The answer is dictated by electrical behavior which dominated the solar binary.
Gravitational forces can maintain stable elliptical orbits because of the interaction between orbital inertia and centripetal attraction. In a closed system electrical forces cannot. Charged bodies in an electrical field will give up to, or take from, the field whatever charges they need for electrical equilibrium, changing all motions necessary in the process. Gravitational fields are conservative. An electrical field does not yield a conservative field.
All of the movements depicted here represent the change from a highly charged electrical system to a low-charged largely inertial system. Electricity is still vital to the system and not only because it produces heat for the Earth. If the galactic electrical sources were denied the Sun, it would collapse upon itself, as would the low density planets. Neutralized, bodies of the system would continue to orbit but purely by inertial attraction, not much different from that which we now observe but without excess radiation and interplanetary plasma. Then the solar system would be truly a fossil system.
In all of these hypothetical adjustments, the Earth maintained "miraculously" smooth phasing in the transition from Solaria Binaria to the solar system (but, of course, every unpredetermined survival is a miracle). People on Earth would actually have observed all that the ancients claim to have observed and left us as myth. Earth and all other planets would have suffered damage in varying degrees at the times claimed in our analysis.
As long ago as 1952, Otto Struve described a fast-moving series of events occurring in the Pleides star-cluster, particularly, Pleione. With unconscious irony, the article was called, "Pleione -- A Story of Cosmic Evolution." [33] By 1905, this star had been observed to lose mass, by minor fissions perhaps. It maintained a very fast rotation, 100 times the rotational speed of the Sun. Then in 1938, Pleione acquired a ring. In 1952, gaseous atoms began to flow with increasing spread outward from the photosphere and reversing layer. They filled an envelope, developed a shell, and then the whole of it disappeared into outer space. The ring had disappeared.
Struve conjectured that the observed sequence was common, and that massive material is lost in space thereby. The process is less violent than novae, Wolf-Rayet stars, P Cygni and SS Cygni stars. Payne-Gaposchkin's comments on the nova cycle make clear that although there can be discerned phases of the Pre-outburst, outburst, and decline to "normality," every nova is different. "Novae... cycles (if any) must be reckoned in centuries [34] . Even in the outburst phase, novae have observably varying behaviors. In the present transform model of Solaria Binaria, we are allowing more time; we discern several novas, and we grant the near total disappearance of the huge atmospheric tube that was the birthplace of the planets and biosphere. Only the Earth's atmosphere, the interplanetary plasma, and some vestigial planetary atmosphere remain.
There is some coherence between this scenario of events and the writings of Bruce, Velikovsky, Rose, Vaughn, Juergens, Milton, Crew, T. Gold, Eddington, Vsekhsviatskii, Ovenden, Bass, and other modern writers, not all of whom are catastrophists, much less supportive of a short-time scale. It is not of incidental significance that astronomers (for instance, Sagan, Isaacman, and Dole) [35] have calculated and published, seemingly without reason or because "the exercise is thought to be suggestive", sets of profiles for "alternative planetary systems." They line up and distribute groups of planets in altered masses and positions along the plane of the ecliptic, and exercise they are compelled to perform despite no conscious theoretical justification for engaging hours of large-computer time to make the simulations. I would say that their results suggest that the order of planets, their masses and their evolutions vary greatly; there are many simulations to be performed, guided by an appropriate theory. One such theory is the system advanced here: that of a largely electrical binary system, transforming (under the eyes of humanity) into a largely inertial-electrical system and redistributing bodies, motions, gases and charges as it evolves.
Life on planet Earth flourished in the binary system. The circumference of the globe was less then. The ocean basins were absent. Mountains were absent as well.
The globe was luminescent but not brightly lit, for the Sun was not visible as such. The skies were always cloudy, and the clouds dropped fresh water, usually in condensations. Occasional rains replenished shallow seas, swamps, and ponds. Hundreds of miles above, a canopy of waters diffused the celestial light. This canopy sky became part of the traits of the great god "Heaven" or "Uranus" to the first true humans, as will be detailed in the next chapter. The Moon was absent from the sky. The climate was equable and warm.
The atmosphere contained oxygen and supported a nitrogen cycle. Most of the species of today existed. So did dinosaurs and nimble hominids. Ecological development proceeded according to uniformitarian principles of a competition for survival. But the extinction of a species was a rare event. So, too, was the birth of a species. As a condition gradually changed, so changed a ratio between and among species; a biological equilibrium was maintained, without abrupt interruption.
The crust of Pangea was sial, heavy in silicon and aluminum elements, as is the crust today. Its depth was uniform; at about 30 kilometers it developed, but very gradually, into heavier silicate magnesium mixtures (sima). Great sedimentation had occurred. It amounts now to 5x10 8 km 3 or 1.3x10 24 gm., [27] but twice as much was on the original crust of Pangea. All the recent vulcanism, seismism, and crustal churning has added little to the sial, for the magma below is not provided with the materials for its manufacture.
There is no evidence that the oceans have destroyed and buried continental material, or could have, since the sial and its sediments are lighter than the sima of the ocean floor. In Rittmann's work on volcanoes, we find the following words: "Since the subcrustal magma is not capable of providing sial by differentiation, we must conclude that little has been added to the sial since the beginning of geological history." [36]
If this mass of land had been accompanied from the early assigned ages by the oceans and ocean basins, it would not have eroded into the sea, for the sea normally pushes back erosion [37] . An exception is the mouths of rivers, but river deltas explain only a small fraction of the vast continental shelves and slopes. The fossil marine beds that are found upon the land today, even high up in the Himalayas, are once-flooded land-beds or they are Pangean shallow water formations. They are the relics of deluges, tides and certain risings visited upon the world by post-Pangean catastrophes. There are few fossil marine beds laying conformably upon plutonic or basaltic sima. The ocean basins did not have to exist to explain them today. Both the uniform and equable climate and level topography of Pangea were the results of a uniform equable atmosphere and a stable solar electrical system. Both ended suddenly.
That the solar system was originally (in Pangea) a Solaria Binaria seems to be evidenced by the most ancient memories of humanity. First came the high clouds, a canopy system. Then came the "planets", actually first the dark sun primary, Super Uranus, with several nearby bodies. Then appeared the true Sun and the Moon, at roughly the same period. Finally came the stars and constellations, as the skies largely cleared.
Earliest homo sapiens or "intelligent human" was a sky-watcher but not a star-watcher. The stars were a later revelation. He watched first the rupture of the canopy, then the heaving off and break-up of the dark, enormous Super-Uranus, then the nearby occasionally lit up Saturn-Jupiter, then the Sun and Moon, then the fiery all-conquering Jupiter and thereafter the stars and the progress of the constellations. The stars developed as creations of the planets and became their creatures, minions, stopping places, and mnemonic markers.
If the skies had been always as they are now, the Sun and Moon would be portrayed early and alone, they would have been the chief gods, and they would have been benignly worshipped, if worshipped at all. The Moon, inasmuch as its birth was attendant upon disaster and its presence was obvious, was more significantly worshipped than the Sun. Over time, its worship became less schizophrenic and paranoid, less brutal, than planetary worship. Still, since its origins were more startling and its apparition more varied, it has been a more powerful and disturbing divinity than the Sun.
The Sun grew upon the scene gradually. It was wreathed in gas clouds at first. The clouds let it through more and more distinctly. For a long time it could not be seen in the "Northern" hemisphere that pointed its pole at Super-Uranus.
Helios, the Greek sun god, was treated familiarly, sometimes almost with contempt. Generally he was respected, well-liked, and rarely gave offense. If the more terrible gods effaced him or displaced him, he resumed his unceasing round as soon as he could or after a period of persuasion by the gods. Unlike the planetary gods, who shone fearfully at night upon many occasions, he shone only by day. He never visibly exploded. He did not throw fits ; he did not frighten people to death. For these reasons, one must doubt the theory that the catastrophes of Earth were owing to solar inconstancies that worked upon an otherwise orderly planetary system.
If the stars would have appeared as they now appear in the clear night skies, then earliest calendars would have been sidereal. No primitive time-reckoners used the rising of a star to measure a day and a year. Yet it is easiest of all to calculate under today's bright skies. Some scholars have sought star calendars. The Egyptians, for example, were supposed to have a Sirius calendar; more likely, Velikovsky argues well, this was a Venus calendar. The Egyptians give the earliest indications of understanding sidereal time, but they first used a lunar, then a Venus, and then much afterwards a purely solar calendar.
The reasons for a calendar were originally to watch for bad happenings in the sky and celebrate their non-occurrence or their anniversaries as good-evil ambivalent events. Only later and secondarily were calendars applied to pragmatic ends as, for example, saying when to plant seeds or collect tribute.
Since the stars appeared dimly and with apparent irregularity, at first and until the Age of Jovea, there was no chance of developing a map of the heavens. The constellations were unknown until about 5000 B. P. Nor, therefore, could the sidereal movements be plotted against time. When, on occasion, observers exclaimed at the movements of the stars, the movements that they referred to were movements of the Earth on which they stood. The ancient late Saturnian analogies in legends of the rocking mill, the rocking churn, the ashwood rotating firestick, referred not to the precession of the ecliptic but to the wobbling to and fro of the polar axis over a short period of years upwards to a century or more, following a catastrophe.
When later the Great Pyramid of Ghiza was built (ca. 4500 B. P.), the regular movements of the stars on the celestial plane were known but not necessarily the 26,000 year precession of the equinoxes. Saturn, as god of the North, had been dethroned. The earliest navigation might follow coastal lines, and then the newly emplaced Moon would permit guidance. The stars were later used for geometry and navigation. But they were not worshipped. The Great Pyramid itself was oriented toward an apparently stable star that then marked the boreal opening, by this time correctly regarded as the North Pole. The North Pole, that is, was operationally defined as the earthly point corresponding to the celestial point marked by the stationary star.
Any boreal star might serve that did not move, and this would mark the celestial North Pole and correspond to the geographical North Pole at that moment in time. Then a structure oriented to it would change its geographical "true-north" orientation only if the ground on which it stood moved. However, the Earth could (and did) shift afterward; and the Earth might even turn completely reversing "north" and "south"; still the geographical North would remain the same.
The Great Pyramid points, within several minutes of error, to the present geographical north pole [38] . Hence, the only possible changes of the ground on which it stands would occur (a) by an improbable sliding from one position at one time and a sliding back into about the same position later, (b) by any amount of longitudinal movement - that is, east and/ or west (which would preserve the north polar orientation), and (c) by the aforesaid several minutes of deviation observable presently in the orientation of the Pyramid, which, if it happened all at one time, would have been a considerable disaster from interrupted rotation and earthquake, or as an earthquake settling the lithosphere after a past catastrophe. Subsumed under the last clause is the possibility that the Earth's shape was not yet accommodated to the approximately 1500-year-old tilt of its axis which would have required an emergence at the old poles and new equatorial region and a flattening at the new poles. However, as stated above, the chances would always be good that, if the Earth's axis tilted, some star would show up to be the "North Star" so far as the orientation of the Great Pyramid was concerned.
Evidences of even earlier orientations of the first geometricians to geographical north are important indicators of a boreal hole in the cloud canopy, which centered invariably upon (unless it was somewhat magnetically affected by the magnetic pole) the geographical north pole. Thus, even without stars, the skies encouraged a science of geometry, surveying, and navigation to achieve some development before the skies could be mapped.
None of this could happen before mankind had become aware, and employed symbols. The theory of Plato's Timaeus affords significant evidence of the thought processes that might have been employed by early human astronomers. It demonstrates the proper role to be assigned to the development of primeval mankind.
As the planets became visible and their effects forcefully experienced, their behavior was studied. It was observed that the planets, gods, that is, visited among the stars. According to the Pythagorean and Platonic theory, each human soul dwelt embodied upon a planet. If a good person, his soul would find its star. Each human should had such a star. If bad, he was reincarnated in a woman's form and successively "lower" forms until he arrived among mere turbulent elements. But, by regaining control of the turbulence through the exercise of rational faculties, he might return to his star.
Depending upon its navigational scheme, each planetary boat had its own ports of call among the stars. The stars and constellations became known by the spectacular events that occurred when one or another planet was visiting them. The planets, too, and therefore the gods, were tied in story and myth to the stars. Thus planet Mars, the "Fox star" Era (Alcor), the third deluge, the Pleiades, Ursa Major, Achilles, and the Fall of Troy are all intermingled in Greek and Near Eastern mythology. "There are, indeed, too many traditions connecting Ursa and the Pleiades, with this or that kind of catastrophe to be overlooked." [39]
Having ordered the heavens and settled the fate of man in relation to the heavens, so goes the platonic myth, the Demiurge retired and "the time machine was switched on." This would have been Super-Uranus (Ouranos, the god of Heaven) in the first age of splendid light. Then, as Taylor interprets the Timaeus, "the subdivision of the circle of the Other into seven, to correspond to the planetary orbits, is a fresh and subsequent procedure on the part of the Demiurge." [40] This would be the beginnings of individual planetary motions, observable by mankind, and would occur in the age of Saturn.
Hundreds of stories of the travels of gods and heroes, although they appear to take place on Earth, "actually" take place among the stars and represent planetary movements, uniform and erratic. Von Dechend learned this lesson after spending a year among 10,000 pages of Polynesian myths [41] . The bloodiest and most terrible stories deal with planetary gods when the planets are misbehaving, acting even more erratically than usual. Myth and legend are almost always anchored in earlier world ages, if not in the dawn of mankind [42] . The contents are elaborated, obscured, even deliberately edited, but their forms and force come from the aboriginal events that they sought to report. The Odyssey of Homer, for example, is sung as a story of heroic travels after the Trojan Wars on an East-West Mediterranean axis. I would place its immediate events at around 695 to 675 B. C., its framework in the two centuries preceding.
A second underlying framework, however, may go back to earlier north-south travels from Scandinavia to Nigeria, when the morphology of the area was much different, that is, across low "Alps" and along a "Saharan Sea." [43] The Arcadians, most ancient among the Greeks who had maintained a political community, "pro-Selenians" who had existed before the Moon, came from the areas of the present day Po Valley and Switzerland and may have pursued this axis of commerce.
But I have identified Odysseus as an alter ego of Athena, the great goddess, who is also identified with the planet Venus, as will be seen. So he is a celestial traveler too. The routes are employed by real cultures, but at the same moment they correspond to celestial travels of gods among stars. The "cosmic" ancient paths of England and other countries, that do not take short and easy routes, are probably celestially influenced, as well as electromagnetic [44] .
Over some ten thousand years the heavy-body motions of Solaria Binaria transformed into those of the present solar system. The composition of interplanetary space also changed. The process was begun as the breakdown of an electrical system that then took on the additional features of a gravitational disruption. Many life-forms may have existed on other planets. But except for the possible continued existence of viral and bacterial forms elsewhere, only on Earth was a rich biosphere preserved and transformed.
The "exceptional" unexplained features of the present solar system support a stacked binary system theory - the differently oriented "fossil" axes of planets: rotational differences; binary behaviors of Jupiter; certain qualities common to the group of inner planets and others common to the group of outer planets; the presence of an electrical character of the solar system today which is only partially governing but could have been fully governing; certain "librations" and eccentricities of planetary motions; the futile efforts of solar flares to establish an interplanetary arc-current, except for the solar wind which behaves like an interplanetary gas and reaches to farthest interplanetary space; the varying orbital and rotational speeds of the planets; the very existence of the plane of the ecliptic which resembles a dead wire; the small deviations from the dead wire plane; the fact that the planets do not orbit in conjunction .
Comets seem to be of recent origin; so do the bodies of the meteoroid and asteroid belts; so indeed do Mercury, Venus, and Saturn and by extension perhaps all planets - features which are acceptable under the postulated model.
Ancient beliefs and observations are compatible with the postulated natural history - ancient knowledge of the physical traits of the planets; legends of the behavior of the gods; confirmation of ancient astrology and of Stoic. Platonic, and other philosophical beliefs.
Certain contemporary theories are also compatible: on the sources of and the ravaging of atmospheres; the variety of elements found on the planets; the heating and cooling of the planets; and the order of the inner planets.
Reasons are found both for resemblances and differences between the sun and the outer planets in their chemical composition, behavior, and temperatures. They may be rotating as turned-off dynamos in part.
Causes of the revolutionary mass extinction and creation of species of flora and fauna become clearer.
The history of the solar system appears to be thenceforth more in line with the gross electrical and explosive behavior of the stars, galaxy, and universe. Concepts of gravity can describe a stable system but what disestablishes a system introduces electrical dynamics.
One can cope with the evidence that more than one comet, or planet, such as Venus was involved in disruptive behavior. The binary, theory explains why all bodies would have to move. Even the sun would have lost its undulating movement almost entirely following the dispersal of the focused binary mass.
There is no ancient comment or legend that describes the solar system a it is; there are many statements as to what it was; the binary system theory is a better reconstruction of the system as it was anciently discussed.
The presence of a heavy atmosphere - the magnetized gas tube - up to the end of the Jovian period is seen to have provided an electrified environment for many major events.
The planets moved out into space, increasing their orbital diameters gradually, as they moved nearer to the central current (now "the ecliptic," which is a motion in space) and were blown by it towards the Jupiter node. But the movements were spacing out in both directions. The ultimate spacing may not be incomprehensible; the intervals may follow "Bode's Law," or a type of the same, as the result of the expulsion of the outer planets into farther space. Bruce in 1944 asserted that when formed by fission in a nova, the separation of binary stars increases gradually [45] . The process of spacing out had begun with the original supernova of the sun, which has produced the binary system in the first place.
The idea that the planets were much more highly charged before than they are today receives support, as do the phenomena (and disasters) that occurred when they were losing their charges to other bodies and to inner and outer space.
The break-up of "Apollo" is more explainable under the present theory than before. Ovenden's proposal that a planet of 90 earth masses existed in the present asteroidal belt until some 16 million years ago invoked only a completely conjectural intruder as the cause of its explosion. More of Apollo's fate is described below in Chapter Nine, as is the behavior of Jupiter. Jupiter still gives signs of instability in its surface features, clouds, temperatures, satellites and motions. This is in conformity with the binary theory.
Electrical "machines" operate less explosively during phase shifts than mechanical "machines". This may help to explain the transition from one system to another without total explosion except in an outright collision. The "Principle of Least Inter-action Action." recently introduced by Bass and Ovenden to explain planetary spacing movements, has much more the connotations of electrical dynamics than gravitational dynamics in it. (The "principle" is merely definitive, not analytic; it holds that solar system bodies tend to position themselves so as to minimize possibilities of collision.)
Solaria binaria as an electromotive system resembles strikingly the human inventions of electrical motors based upon electrical principles [46] . Perhaps the solar system today can also be represented - as an electrified inertial system. Little in existing theory of the solar system and its history stands against a new binary theory. The latest discoveries about solar system behavior, as related in the final chapter of this book, seem, indeed to invite a radical change in conception.
Notes (Chapter Five: Solaria Binaria)
2. D. Talbott (1977); Gibson (1977); D. Cardona (1977); Tresman and O'Gheoghan (1977).
8. "Binaries" (1974) Ency. Brit.
12. Timaeus and cf. L. Rose, in article to be published in Kronos 1980, on Philolaos.
20. Crew (1976), I S. I. S. R., letter, 24-5.
32. Sherrerd (1972); Williams (1971).
37. Donnelly (1883, 1971) 78-9.
39. Santillana and von Dechend, 386.
40. T. Taylor, ed. and trans., The Timaeus of Plato in re 36- d-6 of Timaeus.
41. Santillana and von Dechend, X.
43. Research hypothesis recounted to the author by Livio Stecchini.
44. Michell (1969); Underwood (1969).
45. (1944) 13, presenting data from Russell, Dugan and Stewart, II Astronomy (1938) 703-4.
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