Who’da thunk that a member of the U.S. Congress could come up with a Bold New Idea (BNI)? By and large, career politicians are not high on anyone’s list of favorite persons, except maybe their campaign contributors; they generally tend to be hyper-cautious, self-centered, and glad-handedness. So, when one of them puts forward a BNI, one ought to sit up and take notice.
The congressperson in question is one Louis Gohmert of Tyler, Texas, who represents the 1st Congressional District of that state. By all accounts, Gohmert’s intellectual capacity leaves something to be desired, but that is neither here nor there. He has proposed a clear and distinct BNI, and one should sit up and take notice. During a recent congressional hearing on natural resources, he said (and I am not making this up!): “We know there’s been significant solar flare activities. Um, and so is there anything that the National Forest Service or [Bureau of Land Management] can do to, uh, change the course of the Moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the Sun? Obviously, that would have a profound effect on our climate.”
Indeed!
Do I hear your snickering and scoffing, dear reader? Do I hear you poo-poohing this brilliant observation?
Well, The Chas is not snickering and scoffing. He is not poo-poohing. His vast store of knowledge prevents him from taking so cavalier an attitude, which he will now demonstrate. You are advised to sit up and take notice.
I am reminded of the 1961 British science-fiction film, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, wherein too many nuclear tests at one point on the Earth’s surface resulted in a shift in the planet’s orbit. Our world started hurtling toward the Sun, causing world-wide droughts, wildfires, and heat-related deaths. And what was the eventual planet-saving solution? Why, exploding more nuclear devices on a point opposite that of the previous explosions, thus moving the Earth back to its original position.
(The only country currently engaged in nuclear tests on a regular basis is North Korea, but they are small devices, not powerful enough to knock Planet Earth for a loop. Still…)
The day after I read representative Gohmert’s BNI, I read in an environmental magazine a wee tidbit concerning the melting of the north and south polar regions leading to polar drift. Due to the addition of large volumes of liquid water, the poles are shifting their positions and with them the Earth. Happily, the only noticeable effect is that the length of the day has increased by just a few milliseconds. Still….
Let us move into the realm of theoretical astrophysics (one of my favorite topics) and the theory proposed by Dr. Emmanuel Velikowsky in his 1950 book, Worlds in Collision. Velikowsky was not an astrophysicist per se, he was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst by profession, and thus real astrophysicists tended to ignore him. For the most part, he relied upon comparative mythology and ancient texts to back up his ideas.
The title of his book is misleading, however. There were no collisions recorded; instead, there have been near-misses galore. He points out one of these close encounters in particular. For this scenario, he focused upon the Greek myth of the birth of Athena, goddess of wisdom. According to legend, Athena sprang into being fully formed from the brain of Zeus. Because most legends contain a kernel of truth, Velikowsky theorized that a moon of Jupiter broke free of the gas giant’s gravitational pull and, by the Sun’s gravitational pull, hurtled toward the inner Solar System.
The runaway moon came close enough to the Earth to cause much geophysical damage (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flooding.). Genesis 1:2 says: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep.” For good measure, Velikowsky suggested that the pass-by was responsible for the 10 plagues mentioned in Exodus.
The moon continued on toward the Sun, swung around it, and was sent back by slingshot in the direction from which it came. This time, however, it did not cause any geophysical damage; rather, it bumped the Earth out of its orbit and sent it farther away from the Sun into a new orbit. The moon then assumed an orbit of its own between Mercury and our world and became the planet Venus. I have extended this theory by suggesting that there was a ripple effect in which Mars was displaced into a new orbit further away from its original one. Velikowsky points out that ancient astronomers had posited a 360-day year, but soon discovered that the year had gained five-plus days. A shameless plug here: I incorporated Velikowsky’s theory into my novel, The Seranane Construct, Book One, pp. 153-4.
There you have it, dear reader: Two speculative views on shifting the Earth’s orbit, one from a trained professional who has done his homework, the other from a career politician who hasn’t. Are you sitting up and taking notice yet?
Just a thought.