The earth stood still?

[Uriah Heep]

As mentioned in the Old Testiment. Any evidence for this?

[Uriah Heep]

PS How do you spell check? Saves making errors like Testiment instead of Testament. Too much of a hurry!!!

[Quizmonster]

There are two biblical references to the sun and moon standing still, but none, I believe, to the earth doing so. Like much in the Bible, it is probably just a metaphoric way of describing time seeming to pass unusually slowly. Certainly, one cannot believe such a phenomenon actually happened, unless one is a fundamentalist believer in the Bible.

[heathfield]

Immanuel Velikovsky was a writer who made many scientific predictions that incurred intense wrath among the scientific and educational communities. (Jupiter transmits powerful radio waves, Earth's magetic field reverses, Venus is red hot and has sulphuric acid in its atmosphere...you get the picture). Problem is, a great many of his predictions have since been shown to be correct - astonishingly so.

One of his theories is that at some time in the past the world has flipped over on its axis, so that at one time the South Pole, and not the North Pole, was pointing to Polaris, the Pole Star.

[Clanad]

There do seem to be some references to the Biblical event in various sources. One of the more pervasive is found here, if you'd like:
http://www.progressivetheology.org/principles/Missing-Day.html

As you can see, it's rebutted in detail, yet other apocryphal stories from various past civilizations seem to reference such a legendary event. Those references are thoroughly debated as well as you can imagine.
The second Biblical reference to a similar event mentioned by Q is found in II Kings 20:8-11 wherein King Ahaz asks the Prophet Isaiah for a sign to confirm that he will be healed...

[heathfield]

Ooops - hadn't quite finished... Anyway, he quotes many legends from all over the world about the sun standing still in the sky, or even reversing its travel. His basis for the theory was that there is distinct evidence for the world's oceans having swept across all the continents. The mechanics for this puzzled him until he came up with the 'flipping over' answer.

This was ridiculed on the grounds that the Earth acts as a gyroscope and so an unimaginable amount of force would be required. So students in a Parisian university worked out the maths, and were amazed to find that it would take very little force, as from a passing body, to tip the Earth over.

Maybe the Biblical reference is part of the human race memory of the actual event, when the sun would have stopped?

[jake-the-peg]

Heathfield - do you have any references for the story about the Parisian student calculations?

I don't seem to be able to find any reference to it in a quick search on the web and there's so much other stuff there I'd have thought everybody would be quoting it.

Any chance it's an urban myth?

[Loosehead]

Interesting heathfield. All the planets rotate the same way except Venus so if Earth was flipped over then so where all the others. I have heard the flip theory before but for Venus as that's the only one where the sun rises in what would be the west on earth. The theory is that it started of the same as us but early in the formation was hit by a large mass which merged with it ans flipped it over.

[Mr Songman]

Sorry Loosehead????

"Interesting heathfield. All the planets rotate the same way except Venus"

Most planets in our solar system, including Earth, spin in the same direction as they orbit the Sun. The exceptions are Venus, Uranus, and Pluto. Uranus rotates nearly on its side relative to its orbit. Current speculation is that Uranus started off with a typical prograde orientation and was knocked on its side by a large impact early in its history. Venus may be thought of as rotating slowly backwards (or being "upside down").

Wikipedia's words.....not mine!! :)

Not my subject really!

[Loosehead]

I meant rotation not orbital direction all the planets orbit in the same direction and they all spin in the same direction except Venus. Yes Uranus has been knocked over but not past 90 degrees Not sure what you are disputing here.

[heathfield]

There's a heap of stuff on pole-shifting etc at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/pole2.htm

Jake - can't for the life of me remember which book had the maths about the pole-flip, but I seem to remember it as an addendum in a later edition of one of Velskovsky's books.

[wacky racer]

Heathfield's explanantion must be the closest. How else can you explain the fact that the moon is accelerating and moving away from the earth.
It cannot have been doing this forever.

[jake-the-peg]

I have to say Heathfield that I think this is incredibly unlikely.

The Angular Momentum of the Earth is 2.7 e 40 kg m sq'd/s - that is 3 with 40 zero's following it. The Torque (twisting force) from a change in angular momentum is equal to the rate of change of angular momentum.

This is not "very little" force in anybody's book unless you're talking about an impact of planetary proportions.

Doing a bit of reading about Velikovsy it seems that he was a psychologist with no real background in physics or Astronomy. He put forward vague explanations for these ideas about magnetic fields being "Stronger than we believed" and stuff like that.

This would require loads of existing physics to be re-written to explain phenomina that we already have a pretty good understanding of.

[maxximus]

velikovsky!! funny you should mention him as i just watched an excellent documentary about him just last night. can't say i have heard of him prior. as you said a lot of his theories have been proven correct. and as heathfield's accurate description of his pole flip theory describes,and if the earth's rotation were to reverse, at some point in theory, the earth would indeed , come to a stand still , even if only briefly. sounds similiar to a book a friend was describing to me based on a legend, called " the day the sky fell " not sure who wrote it. all very interesting, will be looking a little more into this velikovsky character.

[dawkins]

Just to clear a few things up:

Velikovsky was not a scientist and did not make scientific predictions but used comparative mythology and the bible to formulate his theories regarding catastrophes (events like the world flipping on its axis). He made loads of predictions based mainly on reinterpreting myths and legends. Far from, "a great many of his predictions have since shown to be correct", in fact, neither his conclusions or methodologies have been accepted by any sane person. His work on the world flipping over is especially preposterous. See here:

http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/pseudosc/flipaxis.h tm />
In scientific terms there is no evidence that the world has flipped on its axis and it is extremely unlikely that it would.



D.

[dawkins]

ooopps my link has turned out totally preposterous try this:

http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/pseudosc/flipaxis.htm

D