Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets: Paradoxes Resolved, Origins Illuminated Second Edition

Book Description

Tom Van Flandern's book adds a new dimension to cosmology--not only does it present a novel approach to timeless issues, it stands up to the closest scientific scrutiny. Even the most respected scientists today will readily admit that the Big Bang Theory is full of holes. But it takes a new look, like Dark Matter, Missing Planets, and New Comets, to explain not only why the theory is wrong but what to substitute in its place. If you are curious about such things as the nature of matter and the origin of the solar system, but feel inadequately equipped to grasp what modern science has to say about such things, read this book. You will not get the all too common condescending attempt to water down the `mysteries' of modern science into a form intelligible to little non scientist you, but rather a straightforward new theory, logically derived in front of your eyes, which challenges the roots of many of today's complex accepted paradigms, yet whose essence is simple enough to be thoroughly communicated to the intelligent layman without "losing it in the translation."

Customer Reviews:

thinking about fundamentals - a tour de force.......2006-07-14

I was extremely impressed by the amount of thinking that went into this book. Whether you agree with Van Flandern or not, he goes deep, challenging fundamental assumptions at every turn. His writing is also first rate. Van Flandern is very good at communicating difficult ideas -- not an easy thing to do.

I started out skeptical about exploding planets. By the end the author had almost convinced me. In the process I learned a great deal about celestial mechanics. I found especially appealing his idea that gravity has limited range of 2 parsecs. That would explain so many things. Like Van Flandern, I regard the Big Bang as a lot of nonsense. I also suspect that he is probably correct about the origin of the Valles Marineris on Mars -- the deepest canyon in the solar system. What an ingenious idea. And I admire Van Flandern for discussing controversial subjects, such as the monuments of Mars. His updated synthesis is the best I have seen yet. Clearly R.C. Hoagland benefitted greatly from Van Flanern's ideas. What a story.

I disagree with the author in several areas. Van Flandern could be correct that most comets originated from a disintegrated planet. That is plausible, though whether this happened via an explosion or a collision, I still have my doubts. I suspect there have always been rogue objects of unknown origin moving through the solar system. His explanation why these objects could not come from interstellar space was not entirely clear to me. Hale Bopp was much too large to be derived from a moon sized body.

The book was published before the discoveries of Hyakutake's ephemeral tail and cometary x-rays, which in my view are diagnostic for an electrical cometary connection. I wonder if Van Flandern is aware that several years ago a physicist in New Mexico demonstrated that terrestrial lightning causes x-rays, a discovery that's been confirmed many times, since. I believe that cometary x-rays and those caused by lightning are one and the same phenomenon.

I subscribe to the solar capacitor model. In my view the astronomer Bessel was correct long ago when he argued for an electrical connection between sun and comet. Van Flandern's discussion of comets touches on but neglects to discuss in full a most telling point: That comets are wildly variable in their brightness. Why, for example, was Halleys' comet 200X as bright after perihelion as before, at the same distance from the sun? Fred Hoyle described its display as a series of explosions. This sort of show could not be due to reflected light, alone, even if Van Flandern is correct that some of the material in the coma is debris from the original break up. I believe the extreme variability of X-ray generation and brightness is caused by solar flares and coronal mass ejections. In other words, there is a direct connection between sun and comet. Nor can a break up model account for the preponderance of smoke sized particles in the coma. The same is true for the vast cloud of hydrogen surrounding comets. All of this suggests electrical phenomena -- which NASA and mainstream science continue to ignore and dismiss.

I believe that comets draw in ionized material from the rear via the tail. And free hydrogen is attracted to the negatively charged nucleus from all directions. This is not my model. I don't take credit for it, though I won't mention the originator's name because I promised him I would not. (His initials are J M)

A few other points: I doubt very much if the rings of Saturn are as old as Van Flandern thinks. Back when the fine detail in the rings first became known, the astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier argued that the rings could not be older than 10-20,000 years. After which the fine detail would gradually wash out and be lost. I suspect that physicist Paul LaViolette is correct that the rings are the signature of a recent event (see his book Earth Under Fire). In LaViolette's view this was caused by a galactic superwave. LaViolette thinks the cosmic wave pushed the sun's nebular cloud of dust back into our solar system, wreaking all manner of havoc, causing the ice ages etc. The same explanation would account for the zodiacal disk, a remnant that apparently is tipped 3 degrees away from the plane of the solar system, i.e., in the direction of the galactic center. Again, this is Paul's argument.

My other point of disagreement concerns Venus. Van Flandern's link with Mercury implies that Venus is a very old planet. How, then do we account for its tremendous heat? Venus should have cooled down long ago. The Magellan Mission showed that the planet is 85% volcanic -- though I suspect even this high number understates the reality. Could a greenhouse cause this? Of course not. The heat is coming from the planetary core. But why? Simple. Venus is very young, perhaps only a few thousand years old. I've studied the so called Venusian impact craters and can discern no difference between them and the planet's volcanic craters. Some of the "impact" craters actually have large associated lava extrusions. In my view most or all of them are volcanic in origin. Venus has many volcanic features unique in the solar system -- why? Simple. It is the youngest planet, by far.

I believe Venus was originally a giant comet that was captured by the sun. I know celestial mechanics can't explain the how of this -- but if it's shown that large comets do attract ionized material from the rear they can actually add enormous amounts of mass, which would slow them down, shortening their period and making capture a realistic possibility. I suspect that some of the other planets (and some of the moons) had a similar origin.

In short, I largely agree with Van Flandern. But I also hold for an altogether different capture mechanism (originated by J M) governed by electromagnetism. In an unpublished draft of his Principia Isaac Newton wrote:

"He who investigates the laws and effects of electrical forces with the same success and certainty [by which I have investigated celestial mechanics] will greatly promote philosophy [i.e., natural philosophy], even if perhaps he does not know the cause of these forces. First the phenomenon should be observed, then their proximate causes, and afterward the causes of the causes, should be investigated, and finally it will be possible to come down to the causes of the causes (established by phenomena) to their effects, by arguing a priori..."

Plenty of dubious ideas.......2004-11-11

This book sure has some wild hypotheses! But I think they tend to show not imagination and courage but poor intuition.

Let's start with Van Flandern's idea that gravity propagates much faster than c, the speed of light. That is, does the Sun pull you towards where it is, or to where it was 8 minutes ago? I think Newton might well have agreed with Van Flandern's argument that were gravity to propagate at c, planetary orbits around the Sun would be gravitationally damped and unstable, and the Solar System would not exist.

But this argument is false. It is the same for electromagnetism. A charge moving at constant speed pulls you towards where it will be when the field reaches you. A charge moving with constant velocity does not radiate: the lowest order radiation term is the dipole term, corresponding to an accelerating charge. And gravitational radiation depends not on the dipole term, but the typically much smaller quadrupole term, which can become significant for a body with a changing acceleration.

Examinations of binary pulsars have indicated that a quadrupole moment does indeed lead to a gravitational damping and orbit decay. Not only that, the decay is consistent to within 1% of the speed of gravity equaling c. I find that convincing. Moreover, near-occultation observations of quasars may support this conclusion as well. And on top of that, a speed of gravity greater than c would transmit a signal backwards in time.

Van Flandern argues that there is nothing special about c, given that we use electromagnetic waves to measure time and length. He's wrong. As Swiatecki and others have illustrated, the constancy of c is a consequence of the local spacetime manifold. Imagine a number of very thin boards with identical rectilinear grids and identical synchronized stopwatches fixed at all gridpoints on all boards. Now let the boards slide around at varying speeds and directions. Then smash one of the watches on the top board so hard that it stops all the watches directly beneath it. Later, smash another one the same way. You'll quickly discover the differential interval between spacetime events, and that will give you the value of c. And we've found c without any reference to light or to Maxwell's equations.

Van Flandern supports the "fission" theory for the origin of the Moon, rather than the "giant impact" theory. While that's still possible, evidence is leaning heavily away from his idea.

Now, what about a recently exploding planet creating the asteroid belt? Well, sure, there are many asteroid orbits that are unstable over really long times. But there's plenty of evidence that some asteroids have been around since the beginning of the solar system, and that what we're seeing is simply lots of collisions, not explosions. Moreover, a recent explosion, without a clear mechanism no less, is a little provincial as a theory.

The funny part is that there are some wild phenomena, such as planetary migrations, especially in other stellar systems, which do bear plenty of investigation. We don't need to start by indulging in arbitrary and dubious speculations: explaining what's right in front of us is exciting enough!

I think Van Flandern's comments about the "face on Mars" once again showed poor intuition. That "face" looked awfully strongly like something with a natural origin.

Van Flandern does not like the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which he feels disregards the need for an underlying reality behind all the concepts. I think this actually may be a fair criticism, but there are alternative formulations of Quantum Mechanics which avoid such problems.

Finally, Van Flandern goes after the Big Bang theory of the origin of our Universe. I think that's a mistake. The evidence is overwhelming that the Universe was once much denser and much, much hotter. We see that from the Hubble expansion, from the 2.7 K blackbody radiation, and most important, from the helium percentages in the visible universe corresponding to Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Complaining about the beryllium percentage is very poor intuition indeed: we'd still have that dense, hot universe just as the Big Bang says. He'd have been better off attacking the Inflationary models of the early universe: these are still fair game.

Um, it could be that the accelerating expansion of the universe is heading towards a singularity (called the "Big Rip") in a finite time. Perhaps in a few billion years, spacetime will reach this. In the final million years, the galaxies would disperse, including our Milky Way. In the final months, our solar system would fly apart. In the final hours, the Earth would disintegrate, as gravity would no longer bind it together. At the end, all particles would explode as well. If you like wild ideas, this one is far more realistic than most of what Van Flandern proposes.

The best explanation of Very Long Period comets........2003-10-28

If you want to know the very best explanation of the origin of the Very Long Period comets, this is where you will find it. If you combine the section on the Missing Planet, with a pile of album cover art by Roger Dean (on the YES album covers like Yessongs) you will know more about the history of the solar system then most professional astronomers. Is this hyperbole? No. Van Flandern is right about the origin of comets, but given the mindset of the astronomical community, protons will decay before they admit it.
Van Flandern is akin to A.C. Clarke in one way: Someone once said about Clarke that "if he had stuck to any one hypothesis, he would have been a dangerous man." Like Clarke, Van Flandern works many hypotheses. And if it is permissible to have a favorite Clarke book or theme, it is certainly also permissible to extol the virtures of DM,MP&NC on the basis of the MP&NC material alone.
Science will advance at four times the current pace when they stop ejecting people like Halton Arp and TVF from their ranks.

Brand new thinking about timeless astronomical issues.......2002-10-24

Tom Van Flandern's book adds a new dimension to cosmology--not only does it present a novel approach to timeless issues, it stands up to the closest scientific scrutiny. The author has a proven track record and top notch credentials, so when he begins his hard-hitting critique of the status quo it's a breathtaking read, for laymen and scientists alike. Let's be honest about the Big Bang Theory--even the most respected scientists today will readily admit it is full of holes. But it takes a new look, like Tom Van Flandern's book, to explain not only why the theory is wrong but what to substitute in its place. This is a significant book and if you read it you will get a thrill just as those who read Copernicus and Galileo must have gotten a thrill to realize they were reading about the future of science. Read it--you won't be disappointed.

Not so dark matters.......2001-06-16

__________________

Van Flandern was a consultant to the government regarding the Global Positioning System. Doubts had been expressed that the GPS could remain accurate due to a relativistic effect known as "frame dragging", but TVF concluded that, through a slightly too convenient coincidence, "frame dragging" didn't apply to this particular narrow case. It's clear that he understands conventional theories very well, and that's what made it possible for him to develop his Meta Model, the discussion of which comprises the first half of this book.

I can see how the Meta Model discussion would not get high marks, as it clearly didn't in at least one of the earlier reviews here. I read most of it, finally got bored, and skipped into the second half of the book (first edition ISBN 1556431554) which pertains to TVF's Exploding Planet Hypothesis.

When he wrote the first edition, the Alvarez theory was gaining momentum elsewhere in the sciences, as the position of the impact crater that ended the Cretaceous had been located at Chicxulub (the crater had been located circa 1960, but the Alvarez theory didn't come around until 1980 -- see "Night Comes to the Cretaceous" by James Lawrence Powell, ppback 0156007037 hardcover 0716731177).

TVF didn't mention any of that, spending time instead on the "Face on Mars". At that time (early 1990s) the newest surface photos from Martian orbit were still those of Viking from the 1970s. The "Face" did exist, and it was an artifact -- but it existed only in those photos, and was only an artifact of the lower resolution of the Viking cameras, as opposed to that of the recent (late 1990s) orbiter. I don't see how any reasonable person can look at the higher res photos (as opposed to both the Viking photos and the low res photos from the new orbiter, which can mimic the resolution of Viking) and conclude that the "Face" is artificial. This devotion to a completely discredited idea is not to TVF's credit, and as someone who respects his intellect and many of his ideas, I wish he'd knock it off.

The best part of either edition is the discussion of TVF's Exploding Planet Hypothesis (EPH). He uses the model to explain things like the tipped axis of Uranus, disturbed moon system of Neptune, retrograde rotation of Venus, Earth-crossing objects, and various other things which have made thoughtful people wonder for a very long time. In the original edition the EPH was about 3.2 million years ago.

This new edition extends the EPH by adding an earlier exploding planet dated to 65 million years ago, in order to provide a source for the object which crashed into the Earth and ended the dominion of the dinosaurs. TVF's extension seems a bit ad hoc, but once a single unexplained planetary explosion has been posited, additional ones shouldn't be considered surprising or forbidden. On the other hand, TVF had already questioned the (also ad hoc) Oort Cloud idea, and that's the leading competitor (and dominant paradigm) for a source of the Chicxulub object. Since TVF is devoted to building a single comprehensive model to explain oddball characteristics of various solar system objects to replace the dozens of (also ad hoc) unique explanations.

[see "Shoemaker by Levy" ISBN 0691002258 for some brief comments quoted from Shoemaker regarding the role played by Jupiter in sweeping the Solar System of transitory debris -- TVF needs multiple exploding planets because such debris would either be kicked out of the system or bent into untroubling orbits within ten million years, mostly due to the presence of Jupiter]

TVF's discussion of the origin of Earth's own Moon is a great reason to buy this book, and a great place to begin reading it for those who are like me, and enjoy picking at a book here and there. It's also a discussion I'd like to criticize a little. TVF discusses the four basic models of lunar formation, then picks them off one by one, as he offers his own model (fission from Earth due to overspin). The problem with his critique of the capture model is that his arguments apply also to his overspin model, and there's nothing he can do about it. Furthermore, the early presence of water on the Earth (a discovery that I think antedates this new edition of "Dark Matter") reduces the likelihood that the Moon was born of fission from Earth, either due to TVF's model or the more conventional impact model which is the dominant one of the five presented.

Book Description

Nine years after the publication of Comets and the Origin and Evolution of Life, one of the pioneering books in Astrobiology, this second edition revisits the role comets may have played in the origins and evolution of life. Recent analyses of Antarctic micrometeorites and ancient rocks in Australia and South Africa, the continuing progress in discovering complex organic macromolecules in comets, protostars and interstellar clouds, new insights into organic synthesis in comets, and numerical simulations of comet impacts on the Earth and other members of the solar system yield a spectacular wealth of new results.

This second edition is thus actually a new book. As the first edition it is intended as a comprehensive review of current research, accessible to graduate students and others new to the field. Each chapter was prepared by experts to give an overview of an aspect of the field, and carefully revised by the editors for uniformity in style and presentation.

Customer Reviews:

Comets important in the evolution of biosphere.......2000-11-26

Series of articles considering the role of comets in the evolution of Earth's biosphere. For example, A. Delsemme writes about The Origin of the Atmosphere and of the Oceans. It is argued that Earth's atmosphere and its oceans, as well as much of the carbon found in its biosphere, was brought to the Earth by comets. Although present-day impacts of comets are modest, in the first billion years, and especially first half billion years, of the Earth's existence, a large bombardment of comets occurred, as reflected by the cratering record observed on the Moon, Mars and Mercury. The cometary delivery of matter would explain the siderophile metals in the Earth's crust, and would explain how an ocean and atmosphere remained despite depletion by large body impacts.

Astrobiology, Comets And the Origin of Life

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Astrobiology, Comets And the Origin of Life
Chandra Wickramasinghe
Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Big Splash: A Scientific Discovery That Revolutionizes the Way We View the Origin of Life, the Water We Drink, the Death of the Dinosaurs, the C

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Descends into the pseudoscientific style
Amazing and recently proved true!
The Big Letdown.
Incredibly involving, well written book.
Outstanding book about modern science and new discoveries

The Big Splash: A Scientific Discovery That Revolutionizes the Way We View the Origin of Life, the Water We Drink, the Death of the Dinosaurs, the C
Louis A. Frank , and Patrick Huyghe
Manufacturer: Carol Publishing Corporation
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Descends into the pseudoscientific style.......2005-01-28

Dr. Louis A. Frank has emphatically championed a very controversial theory. He believes that approximately 40,000 small comets are bombarding the Earth every day. In his theory, those comets are largely made up of water, and they are the origin of the majority of the water currently on the Earth. At the time this book was written, his theory was largely dismissed, but in the last five years, there has been some movement in his direction. Additional evidence has been discovered that indicates that something is going on, the unresolved question is whether it is due to the actions of water comets.
The problem with this book is that it occasionally reads like one of those nonsensical pseudoscience diatribes. It starts with the subtitle, which is the longest I have ever seen and continues into the dust jacket, where a paragraph is written entirely in uppercase. Inside, there are sentences that go beyond scientific arguments. For example, on page 123 there is the statement, "...there were objects out there that had never been detected before. It did not matter whether they were small comets, cometesimals, automobiles or sick cows." Well, yes it does, for his theory to be true those objects must be comets and one does not win scientific arguments by stating absurdities.
The descent into pseudoscientific jargon reaches a peak in chapter 24, "Where Are You Now, Galileo?" Every pseudoscientist quack uses the "they laughed at Galileo" argument. They try to convince people that their arguments are right by citing examples from history where the experts were wrong. However, this does nothing to strengthen their arguments and Frank is much too good a scientist to descend to this level. In fact, I will always remain convinced that this type of argument is an admission of how weak their positions are. Scientific theories will always live or die on the evidence and ad hominem attacks in defense of your scientific propositions only proves the weakness of your case.
There has been a slight movement in thought towards Frank's controversial theory in the past decade. However, while this book may convince some that he is right, the tone and form of the arguments do nothing to convince those who reach their conclusions based on the evidence. His cause would have been better served had he either not written it or maintained a scientific mindset when he did so.

Amazing and recently proved true!.......2004-06-20

Every so often you read a book that changes the way you look at everything because it shows that something we took for granted is wrong. This is one of those books. Frank is not a terrific writer. There are slow passages and sections that are overly detailed and filled with arcane information. However, he is a scientist that stumbled on the origin of water on Earth . . . small comets that are constantly hitting Earth's atmosphere. This is astounding and went against all of the accepted geologic theories of the origin of water on the planet.
This book is also about the tunnel vision of scientists and the vicious in-fighting that goes on in academia when the status quo is challenged. There is a truism that scientists don't change their minds; they just die off and are replaced by scientists who believe the new theories.
I read this book when it first came out and was mightily impressed. Just recently a newly lofted satellite has proven Frank correct and a Scientific American article detailed the proof and the fact that his nay-sayers are now either eating crow or are marginalized in their continued denial. Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Earth sciences.

The Big Letdown........2000-03-15

The subtitle overstates the significance of this book (A Scientific Discovery That Revolutionizes the Way We View the Origin of Life, the Water We Drink, etc). The Big Splash is very technical and , for those of us without a Doctorate in Geophysics it is quite a dry read. The references to the Space Program and the human elements that show the competition and back-stabbing that goes on in the scientific community are more interesting and help to move you to the end of the story, but, this is little solice for the feeling of being let down at the conclusion (or lack thereof) at the end of the book. Unfortunately, this book is probably the best you can find on the topic, though. I guess you cannot expect every scientific story to be a great read. If you need the data and answers to questions you can find in this book (like I did), you probably won't find it anywhere else. Grab a cup of strong coffee.

Incredibly involving, well written book........1999-06-30

Dr Frank develops a hypothesis that is very plausible, well supported and a suprisingly engrossing read. By the time I finished, my beliefs in the objectivity of the scientific community had been severly shaken.

He makes a rather complex subject easy to understand and enjoyable. If only I had been fortunate enough to have more teachers in college that could make a subject come alive.

Outstanding book about modern science and new discoveries.......1999-06-15

Frank explains in wonderful detail the problems that a scientist has when he makes an important discovery outside of his accepted expertise. He is not the first to suffer from this prejudice, nor will he be the last. But, it is important for us to be reminded that science too, often wears blinders and because of this, important discoveries are ignored and it takes decades before we are able to move forward in our knowledge of how things work.

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Chondrules and the Protoplanetary Disk

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521552885

Book Description

This book is the first comprehensive review of chondrules and their origins since a consensus developed that they were made in the disk of gas and solids that formed the Sun and planets 4.5 billion years ago. Fifty scientists from assorted disciplines have collaborated to review how chondrules could have formed in the protoplanetary disk. When and where in the disk did they form? What were they made from and how fast were they heated and cooled? What provided the energy to melt chondrules--nebular shock waves, lightning discharges, protostellar jets? Following an exciting international conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the latest answers to these questions are presented in thirty-four articles, which will appeal to researchers in planetary science and meteoritics.

Comets and meteors: Their phenomena in all ages; their mutual relations; and the theory of their origin

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Comets and meteors: Their phenomena in all ages; their mutual relations; and the theory of their origin
Daniel Kirkwood
Manufacturer: J.B. Lippincott & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0006AEFD2

Comets and the Origin of Life (Proceedings of the College Park Colloquia)

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Comets and the Origin of Life (Proceedings of the College Park Colloquia)

Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 9027713189

Comets, Asteroids, Meteorites : Interrelations, Evolution and Origins

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Comets, Asteroids, Meteorites : Interrelations, Evolution and Origins
A.H. [Ed] Delsemme
Manufacturer: Toledo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LZHSFE

Comets: Nature, Dynamics, Origin, and their Cosmogonical Relevance (Astrophysics and Space Science Library)

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Comets: Nature, Dynamics, Origin, and their Cosmogonical Relevance (Astrophysics and Space Science Library)
Julio Angel Fernández
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1402034903

Book Description

The book covers the most recent ideas about the nature and dynamics of comets, including a thorough discussion on Oort cloud dynamics which has not received due attention in other books on the subject. It also discusses the most relevant aspects of the physics and chemistry of comet nuclei, highlighting their importance as relics of the protoplanetary disk and, perhaps, as carriers of water and organics that permitted the development of life on Earth. The book contains several tables with useful data, and an ample bibliography covering the most recent work as well as some historical key contributions to the subject. It may be suitable as a textbook for graduate students with some basic knowledge of celestial mechanics and astrophysics, as well as a consult book for comet researchers, or researchers from other related fields willing to start working on comets, or get an updated view of the subject.

Comets: Their Origin, Nature and History

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Comets: Their Origin, Nature and History
Henry William Elson
Manufacturer: Sturgis & Walton company
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B000863N9G

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