From: bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com   
      
   On 1/13/26 16:17, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   > 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”.   
      
   	Which adds one more element to finding exoplanets with Earth-like   
   characteristics. Most of them have higher gravity and have not been hit   
   by a "Theian" body and the Moon has a sixth the gravity of earth and   
   lots of super Earth exoplanets have gravity that seems to be one sixth   
   stronger than Earth's own gravity.  Terra-forming may be harder and require   
   the use of lots of energy to direct appropriate sized bodied to collide   
   with Super Earths to cut them down to size.   
   	Some people believe that this collision was necessary to lift the   
   the oxygen producing bacteria from the depths to the surface of the   
   healing crust.   
      
   	bliss - reads too much maybe?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)