It bears noting that, for a long time, a subset of heretical scientists have been arguing for a physics with no cosmic speed limit. Van Flandern:

For example, increasing the temperature slows a pendulum clock and increases its length, yet this does not mean that something happens to time or space. Only the attempted measures of time and space using the pendulum clock, but not time and space themselves, are affected by temperature. In a similar way, in Lorentzian relativity, only the attempted measures of the dimensions time, space, and mass are affected by speed, but not the dimensions themselves. …Time and space themselves are simply dimensions (concepts), and cannot be changed by motion, by potential, or by any material entity.

And that, in brief, is why there is no universal speed limit in LR – nothing ever happens to time itself, just to certain types of clocks attempting to keep time. Such clocks might malfunction or stop operating altogether at speeds at or above the speed of light. But there is no slowing of time to prevent reaching such speeds. And other types of clocks exist for measuring time unaffected by speed or potential, just as many types of clocks are unaffected by temperature.

Just sayin.’

More than previously thought, epic example of scientists trying to save their moon origin theory in the wake of this water that their theory utterly failed to predict.

Again. Not sure how many more times this has to happen before it stops being “controversial”.

Now available here as a Google Doc.

And when you’re done reading it you can have a nice hot cup of this:

Kind of a niche market for these, but if you dig on heretical astronomer Tom Van Flandern, then you’re going to want to look into these fine items from the Gonzo Science Gift Emporium.

Basically, to suggest that Tom Van Flandern is right is to question the Big Bang, and/or to question the nature of gravity, and/or to support an “exploded planet” origin of the asteroid belt and comets. So, just send a case of these to your local observatory, and then sit back and watch the paradigms collapse. Mwah ha ha ha ha!

Holy crap. And that’s using Big Bang assumptions. Essentially an admission that when it comes to astronomy, everything is up for grabs.

The astronomers carried out two sets of observations in the same region, hunting for light emitted by galaxies born 10 billion years ago.

[Translation for non-Big Bangers: They were hunting for high-redshift objects.]

The first looked for so-called Lyman-alpha light, the classic telltale used to compile cosmic maps, named after its U.S. discoverer, Theodore Lyman. Lyman-alpha is energy released by excited hydrogen atoms.

The second observation used a special camera called HAWK-1 to look for a signature emitted at a different wavelength, also by glowing hydrogen, which is known as the hydrogen-alpha (or H-alpha) line.

The second sweep yielded a whole bagful of light sources that had not been spotted using the Lyman-alpha technique.

They include some of the faintest galaxies ever found, forged at a time when the universe was just a child.

[Translation for non-Big Bangers: they found a bunch of low luminosity, high-redshift objects this way, which rogue astronomers Arp et al. would say is just what they’d heretically expect of matter newly created/ejected from active galactic nuclei (”Moreover, the closest and therefore most recent ejections have the highest relative redshifts, and the lowest intrinsic luminosities.”) , essentially the opposite of the mainstream’s interpretation of the great Rorschach Test in the sky. Based on this and Arp’s observational evidence, we would expect many of these “background” galaxies the mainstream just found to actually be objects ejected from foreground galaxies, but with higher redshifts and so assumed by the mainstream to be background. They will in general tend to be just a few arcseconds away from the foreground galaxies, which will also be criss-crossed with ejection lines of quasars. That’s the smell of pure heresy people.]

The astronomers conclude that Lyman-alpha surveys may only spot just a tiny number of the total light emitted from far galaxies. Astonishingly, as many as 90 percent of such distant galaxies may go unseen in these exercises.

“If there are 10 galaxies seen, there could be a hundred there,” said Hayes.

And we’re supposed to trust them on dark matter?

(Thanks to princelumber for sending along the link.)

I’ve read so much debunking of the idea that meteorites are rubble-piles, instead of solid rocks, that I am generally skeptical of theories that rely on the rubble-pile concept, like this so-called solution to the meteorite color mystery:

The Earth “changes the colour” of asteroids by shaking them up as they pass, according to scientists.

Researchers report that this solves the mystery of why the meteorites that land on the Earth often do not match the colour of asteroids in space.

…

Dr Clark Chapman, an astronomer from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in the US explained that these asteroids were “not monolithic, solid bodies”, and were more like “rubble piles”.

So on the surfaces of these rubble piles, rocks are shaken and turned over, to reveal a fresh, unweathered surface underneath.

I’m not sure asteroids must have a rubble pile structure to match the data - could it be that they’re solid bodies, but covered with loose debris and dust, as explained in Tom Van Flandern’s NEAR Challenge below, which he won?

The exploded planet hypothesis (as described in Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets) implies that all asteroids and comets are formed as debris clouds during the explosion of planet or moon-sized bodies at astronomically recent epochs. Only those asteroids involved in collisions will have their orbiting debris removed, forming families (in the case of long-ago collisions) or jet streams (in the case of recent collisions). For most “loner” asteroids and comets, the original debris clouds around the primary nucleus should still be intact. The debris would consist of material of all sizes from dust to near-primary-nucleus size. Normal evolution of such debris clouds under tidal forces would tend to concentrate much of the debris into the orbital plane, and to collect some of that planar debris in an equatorial ring at the synchronous satellite orbit location (typically 1-2 radii above the asteroid surface). Debris inside the synchronous orbit should be cleared out by tidal forces and mostly found now lying on the surface of the primary asteroid.

Besides, I thought this rubble-pile idea was put to bed already - hasn’t every actual observation of both asteroids and comets turned up solid bodies, as below? Just sayin - I know the theory is that they’re rubble piles, but the observations actually support solid bodies at least as well:

Swift’s Take on Deep Impact http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/swift_take_deep_impact.html?672005

Summary - (Jul 6, 2005) Scientists monitoring NASA’s Swift satellite had a good view of Deep Impact’s collision with Comet Tempel 1. … One of its most important observations from the impact is a quick rise in ultraviolet light. This means that the impactor struck a hard surface, as opposed to something soft and snowy.

…The Deep Impact team also mentioned “layers”, with the higher material rough and the lower portions of the surface smooth. This suggests a geologically evolved object rather than a primitive one.

I saw this headline at New Scientist’s blog: “Rumors that first dark matter particle found“.

I thought, “I predict they didn’t.”

I click through and find:

The gossip mill went into overdrive after a rumour leaked out that the CDMS collaboration has had a paper accepted by the journal Nature. Word is that the paper will appear in the 18 December issue.

Nature is an unusual place for particle physicists to publish their papers and this has prompted speculation that the news must be big.

….

Update: in an email to the blog Resonaances, Nature’s senior physical science editor Leslie Sage has squashed the rumours that a paper is about to appear in the journal

Sofa King predictable.

Dark matter would have to exist for them to find it:

The Big Bang requires sprinkling galaxies, clusters, superclusters, and the universe with ever-increasing amounts of this invisible, not-yet-detected “dark matter” to keep the theory viable. Overall, over 90% of the universe must be made of something we have never detected. By contrast, Milgrom’s model (the alternative to “dark matter”) provides a one-parameter explanation that works at all scales and requires no “dark matter” to exist at any scale. (I exclude the additional 50%-100% of invisible ordinary matter inferred to exist by, e.g., MACHO studies.) Some physicists don’t like modifying the law of gravity in this way, but a finite range for natural forces is a logical necessity (not just theory) spoken of since the 17^th century.

Milgrom’s model requires nothing more than that. Milgrom’s is an operational model rather than one based on fundamentals. But it is consistent with more complete models invoking a finite range for gravity. So Milgrom’s model provides a basis to eliminate the need for “dark matter” in the universe at any scale. This represents one more Big Bang “fudge factor” no longer needed.

QED

Mainstream comet theory tells us that since comets formed in the early solar system and have remained unchanged since then, they will contain early materials untouched by the processing steps of planet formation. So the goal of collecting comet dust is to get this early material and study it for clues to the early solar system.

So when the Stardust mission returned samples directly from a comet, and the material wasn’t as primitive and unprocessed as all that, there was surprise all around. Well actually I bet Tom Van Flandern wasn’t surprised since his underdog theory predicted it, but reams of successful predictions didn’t do him any good since he didn’t support the dominant theory.

“Ultra-primitive” comet dust has finally turned up for the mainstream in this study but only indirectly, from comet grains collected from the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Talk about fishing expeditions.

Some of Tom Van Flandern’s successful Exploded Planet Hypothesis (EPH) predictions:

One way the EPH has distinguished itself from competitive theories is in predicting that many comets and asteroids will have satellites. The satellites of comet Hale-Bopp, discovery of the asteroid Ida’s moon Dactyl, and the “Near Challenge Results” are all examples of the success of this genuine prediction.

The EPH was recently used to make exceptionally accurate predictions of the November 1999 Leonids meteor storm, as well as for the two subsequent years. See the complete 2000 and 2001 predictions. This same methodology also predicted another Leonids storm in 2002 as well as a Perseids storm in 2004.

Some of the successful mainstream predictions: (crickets)

[originally published in the Zenith City Weekly]

The scientific method includes the principle that expert testimony outweighs non-expert testimony. This ideal is rigorously adhered to until the testimony of the expert deviates from the scientific orthodoxy. In that case the expert becomes a heretic and is shut out of the entire enterprise. The following examples are intriguing case studies of experts who were cut loose for the crime of scientific apostasy. The scientific establishment thus protects itself, and the public, from experts gone wild.

Halton Arp

Halton Arp, a Ph.D., worked his way to the top of his field, was repeatedly recognized as a senior scientist, and awarded distinguished prizes. For a while he was president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific - a company man. Most importantly he authored the renowned astronomers’ tome, the , later publishing a sequel covering the southern hemisphere. It is through these works that Arp became the expert on “peculiar” or unusual galaxies of any sort, and he consequently became an important voice on the subject of galaxy formation, which is a critical issue for understanding the Big Bang. Essentially no one had achieved his knowledge of galactic morphology and hence their origins. These topics are central to answering the questions surrounding the origin of the universe.

If you had something you had to know about the evolution of galaxies, you would have been smart to ask Arp, but he would have told you that his findings uncomfortably contradicted the status quo. Arp was lauded until he began publically recanting the Big Bang theory. Based on his literally encyclopedic observations of anomalous galaxies - he wrote the book! - Arp dared assert that the theorists had it all wrong. From the facts he could deduce about galaxies and their life cycles, based on his award-studded lifetime of professional training and expertise, Arp simply could not make his data conform to the needs of the Big Bang theory.

Arp was in an ideal position to see that theories of galactic formation had gone drastically wrong. The scientific method (as codified in the “criteria of adequacy”) demands that we give Arp’s testimony a lot of weight, as opposed to those who do not know as intimately what they are talking about, which is . But instead of remaining an experienced, trusted expert in his field, Arp’s telescope time was cancelled by a committee and he was cut loose as a pariah. His work remains the antidote to all the “dark matter” and “dark energy” bullshit one hears so much about.

Tom Van Flandern

The late Tom Van Flandern’s expertise was in the physics of the solar system, namely the intricate orbital dynamics of the sun, planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. Van Flandern knew as much as anyone on earth about the operation of the workings of the solar system. His scientific credentials were as big as a house; a mathematician who got his Ph.D. from Yale in Celestial Mechanics (the mathematical certainties of the solar system as expressed through the physics of orbiting bodies). With this skill set he worked for 23 years with the U.S. Naval Observatory, predicting eclipses and other celestial events with pinpoint accuracy. At a certain juncture, after it became obvious to him that asteroids commonly had orbiting moons of their own, he realized that the history of the solar system was different than the canonical establishment version. With a Ph.D. in Celestial Mechanics from Yale he bloody well knew the physics involved, and one thing he knew for sure was that asteroids will almost never just “capture” a moon. The only plausible origin of asteroidal moons is if a larger body explodes, then the pieces will orbit each other. Van Flandern was essentially resurrecting the exploded planet theory of the origin of the asteroids, long idle in the dustbin of history in the absence of confirming evidence. Now he had the evidence in the form of the asteroidal moons. After all those years of working within the establishment, Van Flandern went public with his heresy. His expertise had led him to rewrite the history of the solar system, and like Arp he was promptly shut out of the journals and conferences, a scientific death sentence.

Video explaining Tom Van Flandern’s reconstruction of the history of Mars, as per his Exploded Planet Hypothesis.

New Scientist: Seven things that don’t make sense about gravity.

And remember, no matter how many things don’t make sense about a given dominant paradigm like this, the establishment would still rather keep it around than junk it for Tom Van Flandern’s not-dominant theory that does the job better. A lot to unpack here but suffice it to say, if we did it Tom Van Flandern’s/Le Sage’s way, all New Scientist’s ”things that don’t make sense about gravity” would disappear.

But that, apparently, is not a good enough reason to junk a dominant theory that doesn’t make sense. Because well, it’s dominant.

 Forwarded from Mike Van Flandern (Tom’s son and the current director of Meta Research):

Minor Planets Circulars regularly publishes names given to asteroids. Asteroid 52266 has been named “Van Flandern” with the following citation:

(52266) Van Flandern = 1986 AD

     Tom Van Flandern (1940-2009) predicted and comprehensively analyzed lunar occultations at the U.S. Naval Observatory in the 1970s.  In 1979 he published pioneering papers on the dynamics of binary minor planets.  He helped improve GPS accuracies and established Meta Research to support alternative cosmological ideas.

What this shows is that there are Tom Van Flandern sympathizers among working astronomers. Tom’s radical rethink of astronomy lives! 

This is really going to bother 6324xxx, the asshole who hijacked Tom’s Wikipedia bio.

Having found the Tom Van Flandern article at Wikipedia to be unsatisfactory, and not being wikipedians as such, we here present a much, much better one of our very own. We tried to make it sound like a wikipedia article, borrowing a couple lines even to make it seem like the wikipedia article of a parallel universe. It may not follow all of wikipedia’s rules, but it bloody well addresses the substance of Why Tom Van Flandern Is Important about 1000x better than the current travesty. To specifically address the controversy surrounding his wikipedia article, let us not only say that Tom Van Flandern should have a wikipedia article, but that it should look more like ours than it does now. (And like the Wikipedia article, our alternate may be considered a work in progress - a few more references to track down etc…)

The Gonzo Science Alternate Wikipedia Article for Tom Van Flandern

The actual Wikipedia article

Discussion page of the Wikipedia article where you can really get a sense of how contentious the history of the article is.

Eric Lerner, plasma cosmologist, claims scientific suppression in 2004

Eugene Mallove, friend of alternative cosmologist Tom Van Flandern and editor of Infinite Energy magazine who claimed scientific suppression in the case of Pons-Fleischmann, victim of unsolved 2004 murder

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - For immediate release

Sequim, Wa – Noted astronomer Thomas C Van Flandern succumbed to colon cancer on January 9, 2009.  He graduated from Xavier University in 1962, briefly attended Georgetown University in 1963 and received his PhD in astronomy from Yale in 1969, specializing in celestial mechanics. Dr. Van Flandern’s early work is well regarded within his field, but he was more broadly (and controversially) known for his later scientific contributions.

Fascinated with astronomy from a very young age, Dr. Van Flandern made his first contribution to the field at age 19.  In 1959, Tom and his friend Dennis Smith (age 17) set the world record for number of artificial satellites tracked during a month as part of project Moonwatch in Cincinnati.  Tom made his observation from his personal telescope purchased with money earned from his paper route.

Dr. Van Flandern worked at the U.S. Naval Observatory for 21 years and became Chief of the Celestial Mechanics Branch of the Nautical Almanac Office. His team contributed to the regular production of The Nautical Almanac, among other projects. After retiring from the civil service, Van Flandern served as a Research Associate at the University of Maryland Physics Department, and as a Global Positioning System (GPS) consultant to the Army Research Laboratory.

In his book “Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets”, Dr. Van Flandern presented the case for several controversial theories, most notably that the speed of gravity must propagate significantly faster than the speed of light; both comets and asteroids are remnants of an exploded planet; back-ground radiation is not caused by an expanding universe and therefore the big bang is invalid; Mars is an escaped moon of an exploded planet formerly located in the asteroid belt; and that some structures on Mars are artificial.  Dr. Van Flandern successfully predicted the discovery that asteroids with satellites, co-published peer reviewed papers on the speed of gravity with J.P. Vigier, and collaborated with Esko Lyytinen in improving the model for predicting meteor showers. Unfortunately detractors frequently use his claims of artificiality on Mars to marginalize both him and his work.

We have lost a courageous titan of scientific free inquiry.

[Tom Van Flandern helped us out a lot. He gave us an exclusive interview which appears in our book Gonzo Science. We also used to publish an online column at the Anomalist (column since defunct), and one of their regulars, an editor over there I think, publically got mad at us for saying the big bang theory sucked, and for showing a fondness for Van Flandern’s idea that black holes do not exist after all. This editor guy tried to nail us on some very finely parsed technical astronomy questions that, being generalists, we couldn’t answer. So we emailed Tom Van Flandern and basically said, “we don’t want to run crying to you every time someone bloodies our nose on the playground, but this guy over at the Anomalist is pressing us on these very technical matters and we wonder if you’d want to take a crack at it.” Sure enough, Tom emails a reply over and the guy backed down citing his deference to the master. It was awesome. We also have a rap about Tom on our CD (click here and select track #4 “Menace 2 Tha Orthodoxy”), which we sent to him, but he begged off making any comments saying he “didn’t like rap.” I think he was mortified. At any rate, it was always fun to interact with him, albeit by email, and as gonzo blogger Matt can attest, Tom always seemed to have time to spend answering questions and explaining complicated things. Tom Van Flandern was a gentleman and a scholar, and we will all miss him here. -Jim]

I am surprised van Flandern doesn’t have this included in his metaresearch page, unless it is in the full paper, and not just the abstract.
Notice the asymmetrical cratering.
Near side.

Far side

I wonder how many more moons display this kind of asymmetry?

[Jim here hacking Matt’s post. I wanted to make sure Matt’s idea here gets understood in the context of Van Flandern’s observation of “distribution of black material on slowly rotating airless bodies (the ‘black axiom’)”, which is evidence of a blast wave moving through the solar system from an exploded planet. Matt is also on-bounds in questioning the origin of the lunar seas in that identifying the origin of craters as impact-related or volcano-related is not always so cut and dry. This wikipedia article mentions a couple of the problems that might lead to currently-accepted models being overthrown:

Some volcanic features can resemble impact craters, and brecciated rocks are associated with other geological formations besides impact craters. Non-explosive volcanic craters can usually be distinguished from impact craters by their irregular shape and the association of volcanic flows and other volcanic materials. An exception is that impact craters on Venus often have associated flows of melted material.

The distinctive mark of an impact crater is the presence of rock that has undergone shock-metamorphic effects, such as shatter cones, melted rocks, and crystal deformations. The problem is that these materials tend to be deeply buried, at least for simple craters. …

• High-temperature rock types, including laminated and welded blocks of sand, spherulites and tektites, or glassy spatters of molten rock. The impact origin of tektites has been questioned by some researchers; they have observed some volcanic features in tektites not found in impactites. Tektites are also drier (contain less water) than typical impactites. While rocks melted by the impact resemble volcanic rocks, they incorporate unmelted fragments of bedrock, form unusually large and unbroken fields, and have a much more mixed chemical composition than volcanic materials spewed up from within the Earth. They also may have relatively large amounts of trace elements that are associated with meteorites, such as nickel, platinum, iridium, and cobalt. Note: it is reported in the scientific literature that some “shock” features, such as small shatter cones, which are often reported as being associated only with impact events, have been found in terrestrial volcanic ejecta. ]

A sad day indeed.

Tom Van Flandern will be out of the office until further notice.

On November 11th, 2008, Tom was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer under emergency conditions. Since then his condition has been stabilized and he has returned home, but he continues to be focused on the complications of fighting this aggressive disease. In the spirit of Meta Science, Tom is pursuing alternative medicine approaches with good track records to battle this otherwise fatal disease.

Tom’s priorities right now are appropriately his medical issues and ordering his personal affairs. Regrettably he has little time for his normally important science issues at the moment. The Meta Research Board of Directors is tending to organizational matters. Meanwhile, Tom is checking email intermittently as his treatments and condition permit. Please limit messages sent to Tom’s Meta Research email account to urgent science/Meta Research issues ONLY. If you have a truly urgent message send it marked ‘high importance’ to the regular Meta Research mailbox, <>. Otherwise please hold your correspondence until further notice. Tom hopes to return his attention to Meta Research matters if and when his health improves.

We’ve received many inquires about Tom’s condition and warm wishes from friends and colleagues. Thank you. Please send future well wishes to We value these emails and promise each will be read and passed on to Tom. Your support is important to him. We regret we will be unable to respond.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and assistance.

Mike Van Flandern (Tom’s oldest son) for the Meta Research Board of Directors

[UPDATE: Tom Van Flandern has died. RIP. Interested readers may find the aggregate of our posts about Tom Van Flandern, a truly gonzo scientist, here. Thank you. He will be missed. -Jim]

Three years after they crashed their satellite into Comet Tempel 1, the mainstream adults in charge still have no idea what happened.

A big part of the problem is that the gigantic cloud obscured the comet’s nucleus until long after the main spacecraft had passed by. To this day, the mission team can only guess at the size of the crater creted by Deep Impact’s frontal assault. By one well-regarded estimate, it could be anywhere from about 80 feet (25 m) to more than 350 feet (100 m) across — depending on whether the cometary surface was hard or fluffy.

Maverick astronomer Tom Van Flandern predicted it was hard:

Mainstream experts are divided about which outcome to expect. But one model, the satellite model for comets, a corollary of [my] exploded planet hypothesis, is unambiguous in its prediction: The comet nucleus is a single, solid asteroid. The impact will leave a small, shallow crater perhaps 10-20 meters in diameter, will produce no new jet, and will have no lasting consequences on the comet. It will simply produce an impact flash as the probe vaporizes, then will cause the comet’s coma to temporarily brighten as new carbonaceous dust is ejected from the asteroid regolith and the impact crater.

The crater couldn’t be measured, but the collision was consistent with his expectations. And he publicly made a prediction to test the strength of his model, whereas the mainstream will patch their model to fit any new data.

Advantage: Tom Van Flandern.

Sky & Telescope has the story:

Most likely it’s a fragment from the crust of a much larger body that melted throughout eons ago before being shattered to smithereens.

Nice of them to admit that. The asteroid also sports a chain of seven craters. That dovetails with Van Flandern’s ideas of asteroids having their own “moons” as a result of the planetary breakup process - i.e. chunks of the exploded planet would come to orbit themselves. As those orbits degrade, one would see linear marks where the smaller bodies land on the dominant body. Either roll marks (like were seen on the NEAR mission), or crater chains, where multiple-body moonlets came apart on the way down (like was seen when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up and peppered Jupiter). All phenomena supportive of Van Flandern, if not outright predicted by him. He is still ignored by the astronomical establishment.

A “movie” of the asteroid, with crater chain becoming visible, here.

No intertellar dust found yet in Stardust comet probe samples.

Comets maybe not interstellar therefore - maybe chunks of the exploded asteroid planet? Heaven forfend!

Another anomaly for mainstream planetary astronomy:

A newly discovered planet seems to have a surprisingly powerful influence on its parent star, forcing the star to rotate at exactly the same rate as the planet orbits. The planet’s day is also the same length, so the pair are fixed in a face-to-face whirl.

The puzzle is how this planet, called COROT-Exo-4b, could have so dominated the vastly larger star, which is bigger than our Sun.

The mystery disappears if we eject the mainstream view of planetary formation, in which planets accrete in a disk of leftover material around their parent star. What if planets are “spun off” from their parent stars instead - then might not they initially share rotation rates and day lengths, as hypothesized here by radical astronomer Tom Van Flandern? I’m no physicist but it seems more likely that COROT-Exo-4b is a brand-new baby planet, freshly spun off from its mother star. Otherwise astronomers need to assume the much larger star has somehow been gravitationally dominated by a much smaller planet - clearly nonsensical and requiring certain ugly theoretical backflips. It is exactly backwards. Maybe what makes the most sense in this case is to junk the mainstream theory of planetary formation.

I’ve always hated that positively Velikovskian theory anyway:

US scientists have found evidence that water was held in the Moon’s interior, challenging some elements of the theory of how Earth’s satellite formed.

The Moon is thought to have been created in a violent collision between Earth and another planet-sized object.

Scientists thought the heat from this impact had vaporised all the water.

But a new study in Nature magazine shows water was delivered to the lunar surface from the interior in volcanic eruptions three billion years ago.

This suggests that water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence.

Tom Van Flandern has been arguing against the conventional theory of moon formation for years. In his view, rocky planets fission off single moons as a natural result of “overspinning” during their formation, which pinches off a piece of the parent body. It’s a bit technical but it’s not nearly as shamefully Velikovskian as the conventional collision-with-a planet-sized-body theory:

First consider the case that the rotating body is solid or has substantial material strength, as for the Earth-Moon system. Then just the weaker of the two globules at either end of the prolate major axis would fission, and the rest of the body would snap back to a smaller, rounder shape with a slower spin. … So only a single moon results. This would apparently be generally true – gaseous or liquid parent bodies would produce pairs of moons by fissioning, whereas solid bodies would produce singlet moons.

The BBC article about the setback for the conventional theory quotes a scientist (Erik Hauri of the Carnegie Institution) who helped make the finding:

We were really surprised …. It suggests the intriguing possibility that the Moon’s interior might have had as much water as the Earth’s upper mantle.

Uh, dude? They have the same amount of water because they are from the SAME BODY. And Tom Van Flandern IS NOT SURPRISED. Talk to him and find out why his theory is so much more fruitful than yours, and then get on the right side of history.

Old news, but never hurts to visit.

The most obvious theory was that something on the spacecraft themselves created a braking force–leaking gas or heat radiation, perhaps. Over the years, however, researchers increasingly viewed this hypothesis as less likely, and some physicists began to explore possible flaws in Newton’s laws and relativity. Others posited that dark matter was the culprit: it might exert a gravitational or drag force. A third theory embraces the idea that a minute acceleration exists in the velocity of light, which might result in the appearance that the probes are slowing down: if light travels faster, telemetry signals arrive faster, and the craft seem to be closer.

Steady State constant creation models seem to fit this perfectly, if everything is gaining mass around us all the time. Seems a likely explanation for a spacecraft that is evenly slowing down, yet isn’t even mentioned in the piece.

Positively Velikovskian.

 NASA says it was leftover space debris.

Tom Van Flandern says a planet exploded in Mars’ face.

You decide.

What do you know? Supports the exploded planet hypothesis.

Here we’ve got an article about how the “late heavy bombardment” of meteors appears to have taken life on earth in a new direction, i.e. caused diversity instead of extinction. This is an implicit correlary to Tom Van Flandern’s exploded planet hypothesis. Everyone ignores this fact in this mainstream science press article (Science Daily), including the reporter, and they use this bombardment/new life connection as evidence of some version of the rapidly-gaining-currency Panspermia theory (i.e. life is imported world-to-world on meteors and/or comets).

While I applaud this sort of background acceptance of Panspermia, which Allen and I have long pointed out is perfectly reasonable, that’s not the whole story. Because once Panspermia becomes the full-on dominant paradigm, it will have to contend with the simple idea that these life-bearing meteors and/or comets might originate from destroyed planets within our own solar system.

In this view, the Panspermia theory is supporting evidence for the exploded planet hypothesis. Because if you are willing to accept that life got here on meteors and comets, Occam’s Razor suggests you might give some thought to possible local sources of such life-bearing space rocks.  From the Science Daily article, this is the scientist who showed more biological diversity after the heavy bombardment of meteors:

“So far, our research has shown that it was a regional phenomenon around Baltica, the Baltic Sea of that time. The area underwent an extraordinary change during a short period of time in terms of the evolution of new species, primarily shellfish, e.g. the so-called brachiopods, which resemble today’s mussels, but which already at that time were quite different. We will now be studying whether this was a global phenomenon. It will be really exciting for the entire history of evolution, especially as it does seem that there is some truth in it and in the impact theory.”

Allright, granted the man is a paleontologist. So he’s a specialist who can’t see very far outside the paleontological toolbox. And the reporter can’t either. Because on the face of it, it seems obvious to me that the impactors of the late heavy bombardment were remnants of an exploded planet, one that had its own life and ocean - we already know meteors have salt water. Some of that exploded planet made it here, is what the Science Daily story says to me.

The meteorite that smashed into Peru is causing waves … among meteor scientists. There seems to be little agreement about what even happened - did it come in fast from directly above, or slow from an angle? Was it a stony meteorite or a metal one? The disarray either portends a complete paradigm shift - unlikely - or the development of a “theory patch” to accomodate the anomaly.

Peter Schultz told the conference that the meteorite was travelling at about 24,000km/h (15,000mph) at the moment of impact - much faster than would be expected.

“This just isn’t what we expected,” said Professor Schultz, from Brown University in Providence, US. “It was to the point that many thought this was fake. It was completely inconsistent with our understanding of how stony meteorites act.”

Typically, fragments shoot off in many directions as the meteorite hurtles towards the ground - the so-called “pancake” model of atmospheric descent. 

Professor Schultz believes fragments from the Carancas meteorite, which crashed to Earth on 15 September last year, may have stayed within the speeding fireball until they struck the ground.

This might have been due to the meteorite’s high speed.

At the velocity it was travelling, fragments could not escape the “shock-wave” barrier which accompanies the meteorite’s passage through the atmosphere.

Instead, the fragments may have reconstituted themselves into another shape, which made them more aerodynamic. Consequently, they encountered less friction during their plunge to Earth, holding together until they reached the ground.

“Although [the meteorite] is quickly broken up, it is behaving like a solid mass,” Professor Schultz told the conference.

Dr Thomas Kenkmann, from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, offered an alternative view of the Carancas impact. His modelling of the event suggests it was probably caused by a meteorite travelling at low speed and a slanting angle.

But Professor Schultz said quartz grains collected from the impact site had been “shocked” - or subjected to intense pressures. This, he said, was a good sign the “impactor” had been travelling at high speed.

Some scientists, however, remain doubtful of these interpretations. After his conference talk, Dr Kenkmann was pressed by one scientist on whether a magnetic survey of the crater had been carried out to look for signs of an iron, rather than a stony, projectile.

I think they should ask Tom Van Flandern:

The hypothesis of the explosion of a number of planets and moons of our solar system during its 4.6-billion-year history is in excellent accord with all known observational constraints, even without adjustable parameters. Many of its boldest predictions have been fulfilled. In most instances, these predictions were judged highly unlikely by the several standard models the [exploded planet hypothesis] would replace. And in several cases, the entire model was at risk to be falsified if the prediction failed. The successful predictions include: (1) satellites of asteroids; (2) satellites of comets; (3) salt water in meteorites; (4) “roll marks” leading to boulders on asteroids; (5) the time and peak rate of the 1999 Leonid meteor storm; (6) explosion signatures for asteroids; (7) strongly spiked energy parameter for new comets; (8) distribution of black material on slowly rotating airless bodies; (9) splitting velocities of comets; (10) Mars is a former moon of an exploded planet.

Uh, the “Mars as former moon of exploded planet” part isn’t exactly widely accepted, but 1-9 (all of which are natural consequences of the theory) should be enough to be pretty convincing for most mainstream meteor scientists - their own record of prediction frankly sucks. You’d think they would be falling all over themselves trying to change paradigms. They should at least be calling up those with successful predictions and asking them for tips and pointers. But as I’ve noted elsewhere, Van Flandern’s phone ain’t exactly ringing off the hook.

The science of asteroids and comets continues its embarrassing backslide into irrelevance, aided and abetted by stenographic science journalists who don’t ask hard questions. If it weren’t so crass, we would suggest a parallel between the current comet science situation and the run-up to the Iraq war, something like: “Faulty paradigm leads to debacle; no consequences for continued failure; neutered press goes along.”

The faulty paradigm is that comets and asteroids formed from leftover debris in the early solar system. Although it’s the dominant paradigm, it has not yielded anything but total failure in terms of making predictions. If the dominant paradigm were correct, the stories in the scientific press would read like this: “Comet observations confirm theory.” However, the record of all recent observations has been one of continual surprise. And science journalists will not stand up to the scientists and say, “Enough.” Instead, they dutifully report that the dominant paradigm is still dominant - even though the data constantly contradicts it. It’s a bait-and-switch one sees time and again over the years, and the form it takes is this: “Report surprising data; transcribe scientists’ comments expressing surprise; close article with reminder that comets and asteroids formed in the early solar system.” What no one can explain is how anyone can confidently say that comets and asteroids formed in the early solar system, when the data yields nothing but surprises and contradictions. It is irresponsible to fail to hold this paradigm to account. Watch how this issue has played out in the pages of New Scientist, normally one of the more progressive science magazines:

24 January 2008 . “…Early on, scientists found surprising evidence that (comet) Wild 2 contained some material from the inner solar system that had been heated to more than 1000° C due to its proximity to the Sun … Now, scientists have been surprised again as further study suggests Wild 2 is made mostly of material from the inner solar system, and that the object has a composition more like that of an asteroid than what was expected of a comet … It was expected that the comet would contain pristine material … from the cloud of gas and dust that formed the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago, since the comet would have been unaltered by heat so far from the Sun. But this study, along with previous measurements of atomic isotopes in the Stardust samples, suggests the comet is not a good probe of this primitive material.” (Comment: it actually suggests that neither comets nor asteroids are made of “primitive material” at all – which should point to the conclusion that they are chunks of an exploded planet, the only alternative.)
 

26 September 2007. “(Comet) P/2007 R5 is not the only object that has been difficult to classify as either asteroid or comet. In the past few years, objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter have been found to sport comet-like tails. ‘We’re finding now that it’s not so cut and dry.’” (Comment: the fact that comets and asteroids appear to be identical has long been expected by proponents of the exploded planet theory.)
 

14 March 2006. Comet Wild 2 contains elements that formed at white-hot temps: “surprising,” “remarkable.”
 

08 September 2005. Comet Tempel 1 is revealed by Deep Impact to contain clay and carbonates which could only have formed in liquid water: “creates problems,” “rewrite(s) how we think.” (Comment: no evidence that comet scientists have rewritten how they think, despite being wrong.)
 

20 July 2005. Impacts can give facelifts to asteroids, casting doubt on currently accepted asteroid ages: “…casts doubt on the reliability of current asteroid dating methods,” “calls into question the habit of dating asteroid surfaces through their cratering record.” (Comment: deflates certainty about asteroids’ supposed early formation.)
 

04 July 2005. Struck by Deep Impact, Comet Tempel 1 confounds the expectations of everyone involved by acting like a solid body (expected by exploded planet theory) instead of a rubble pile (expected by dominant paradigm): “‘Geez … going to take some explanation.’”
 

Time to take the dominant paradigm around the barn and shoot it.

The trick is to change paradigms. In this case, we have some neo-Velikovskians crossed with the plasma physics community, arguing that Big Bang scientists are seemingly always surprised by new phenomena - phenomena that fit neatly into the paradigms of the Big Bang’s detractors. We have often noted this trend - it says that the Big Bang is weakening, even as none of its opponents is the clear successor.

There are several paradigms that would love to replace the Big Bang theory. I can’t pick between them all: plasma physics, Quasi-Steady State Cosmology, Tom Van Flandern’s Meta Theory, etc etc.

It’s interesting to note the article we’ve linked to here has the whiff of Velikovskianism. Plasma physics seems to be the place where Velikovsky’s supporters wound up - and they’ve all got a mad-on for the Big Bang theory.