Sky and Telescope - March 2018 - 53

Venus mimics all the phases of the
Moon as it circles the Sun inside Earth's orbit,
as shown in this near-ultraviolet sequence recorded in 2007.

ancestors, Velikovsky asserts, because
they suffered from a "collective amnesia" that repressed all memory of these
occurrences. As further proof, he details
how Venus is conspicuously absent from
various historical tabulations of planets
prior to about 2000 BC.
Velikovsky acknowledged that his
scenario was at odds with established
physics. But any inconsistencies weren't
due to his myth-as-fact interpretations;
instead, he pointed to the "need for a
new approach to celestial mechanics" in
which electrical forces and magnetism
trumped the power of gravity.
Understandably, astronomers of the
day were outraged by all of this. It took
Velikovsky four years to get Worlds in
Collision published, ﬁnally getting a
green light from Macmillan in part
because a sympathetic Gordon Atwater,
then head of astronomy at New York's
American Museum of Natural History,
promised to create a show for Hayden

SIM ON K IDD; V ENUS SEQ UENCE: SE A N WA LK ER

July 17, 2017

Planetarium to depict the book's planetary pinball. But Atwater was summarily ﬁred before that could happen.
Strenuous objections by Harvard's Harlow Shapley, Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin,
and other academics - including a
boycott of Macmillan's astronomy textbooks - caused the publisher to jettison
this literary hot potato to Doubleday.
The book and its author merited a blistering editorial in Sky & Telescope.

A Curious, Believing Public
Remarkably, Worlds in Collision became
phenomenally popular in the summer
of 1950, especially among the New
York literati. Advance articles about the
forthcoming book in Harper's, Collier's,
Reader's Digest, and elsewhere whetted
the public's appetite. Once in print, the
book rocketed to the top of the New
York Times' best-seller list and remained
a top-ten pick for ﬁve months.
Although pilloried almost universally
Aug. 31, 2017

p Normally featureless to the eye, Venus revealed subtle atmospheric features when captured in
near-infrared light (610 nm) during its apparition before dawn in mid-2017.

by professional astronomers, Velikovsky
remained a frequent acquaintance of
Albert Einstein. More than a decade
later he gained a modicum of support
thanks to Princeton physicist Valentine
Bargmann and Columbia astronomer
Lloyd Motz, whose letter in Science
(December 21, 1962) pointed out
Velikovsky's successful predictions that
Jupiter was a source of radio energy and
that Venus must be very hot.
Still, one has to wonder why the
outlandish premises of Worlds in Collision got so much traction in the ﬁrst
place. Science historian Stephen Jay
Gould wrote, "The Velikovsky affair
raises what is perhaps the most disturbing question about the public impact
of science. How is a layman to judge
rival claims of supposed experts? Any
person with a gift for words can spin a
persuasive argument about any subject
not in the domain of a reader's personal
expertise." Advocate-turned-critic Leroy
Ellenberger notes, more pointedly, "The
less one knows about science, the more
plausible Velikovsky's scenario appears."
Six decades later, Worlds in Collision
is rapidly disappearing in the rearview mirror of history, yet our human
penchant for intriguing but outlandish
scientiﬁc claims remains.
¢ Senior Editor KELLY BEATTY keeps
close watch on Venus just to make sure
it doesn't suddenly sprout a tail and
careen toward Earth.
sk yandtelescope.com * M A RCH 2 018

http://www.skyandtelescope.com

Sky and Telescope - March 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - March 2018