From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   On Tue, 13 Jan 2026 11:28:29 -0000 (UTC), Charles Packer wrote:   
      
   > Raise your hand if you're old enough to remember an eerily similar   
   > controversy a generation earlier: "Worlds in Collision" by Immanuel   
   > Velikovsky. Compare and contrast.   
      
   Scientists live in deathly fear of being taken for cranks, or being   
   misinterpreted by cranks.   
      
   E.g. Soddy and Rutherford arguing over whether to use the old   
   alchemical term “transmutation” when they succeeded in converting one   
   chemical element into another.   
      
   E.g. Bretz’s discovery of the glacial flooding episodes that created   
   the Scablands of the US Pacific Northwest, at just about the time that   
   geology thought it had got rid of the religious baggage of the   
   Noachian Flood idea.   
      
   E.g. Wegener being ridiculed over the idea that South America and   
   Africa were once joined together, only to break up and drift apart   
   over time. It took decades for him to be proven correct.   
      
   Velikovsky was wrong, but Sagan argued that it wasn’t necessary to   
   assassinate his character as well. And yes, it turns out worlds have   
   collided, though perhaps not quite to the cosmic-billiards-type extent   
   that he claimed -- one current theory is that our own Earth-Moon   
   system was created by the collision of the precursor Earth with a   
   (now-destroyed) body called “Theia”.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)