Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

WORLDS IN DERISION 177
Today, we would interpret that—if we are particularly literalminded—to
mean that the Earth’s rotation stopped, so that it only
appeared that the Sun and Moon were motionless in the sky.
Somehow, a day later, it started its rotation again.
Velikovsky, quite literal-minded indeed, was researching this
event and discovered reports of a meteor storm that supposedly
happened just before the Earth’s motion stopped. To him, the
meteors indicated an astronomical cause for the biblical passage.
This idea dovetailed neatly with other legends he found, such as
those in ancient Greece. The goddess Minerva, associated at the
time with the planet Venus, was born fully grown from the head
of Zeus (associated with the planet Jupiter). Other cultures had
vaguely similar claims of ties between Jupiter and Venus. Velikovsky
suspected that these legends were actually based in fact. From
there, he shaped his idea that the planet Venus was indeed literally
ejected from the planet Jupiter, and subsequently encountered the
Earth on multiple occasions.
It was the first such encounter with Venus that stopped the
Earth’s rotation. Somehow—Velikovsky is never really clear on this,
but instead invokes vague claims of a previously unknown electromagnetic
process—Venus was able to slow and stop the Earth’s
spin during an exceptionally close pass. Venus then moved off, but
a day later came back for a second pass that started the Earth’s
rotation again. Venus itself was sent off in a long, elliptical orbit,
only to pass by the Earth again some 52 years later. Over time,
Venus settled down into its present orbit as the second planet from
the Sun.
There are so many flaws with this idea that it’s difficult to
know where to start. For example, Velikovsky points to many passages
in ancient texts that describe a great comet in the sky, the
passing of which precedes many of these catastrophes. How to reconcile
this with the planet Venus? Well, he says, Venus was ejected
from Jupiter as a comet. It didn’t become a planet proper until it
found its way into a stable orbit around the Sun.
First, ejecting something with the mass of Venus would be very
difficult to say the least. Velikovsky suggests that Venus fissioned