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

182 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Even granting that humanity somehow survived this apocalypse,
there is still a problem. The Moon orbits the Earth at a distance
of 400,000 kilometers. If Venus were to get so close to the
Earth that it could actually exchange atmospheric contents, it
would have to get closer to us than the Moon. If that had happened,
the Moon’s orbit would be drastically changed. Usually
when you take three objects, two of them massive and one less so,
and let them interact gravitationally, the least massive one is
ejected from the system completely. In other words, under almost
every circumstance, had Venus come that close to the Earth, the
Moon would have literally been flung into interplanetary space. At
the very least its orbit would have been profoundly changed, made
tremendously elliptical.
The orbit of the Moon is elliptical, but nowhere near as stretched
out as it would have been after a close encounter with Venus. The
very fact that the Moon—and we, too—are here at all shows that
Velikovsky was wrong.
There’s still one more thing. The Hebrew calendar, still going
strong after nearly 5,800 years, is based on cycles of the Moon.
Any passage by Venus would have changed the length of time it
takes the Moon to orbit the Earth. Yet, if we look to the Hebrew
calendar, we see that it hasn’t changed for nearly six millennia. The
events described by Velikovsky took place 3,500 years ago, thousands
of years after the Hebrews started their calendar. This means
that the Moon’s orbit has not changed measurably since long
before the biblical disasters took place.
Remember, Velikovsky used ancient texts to support his beliefs.
Yet, here we see that one of the most basic of all ancient tools, the
calendar, directly and completely refutes his hypothesis. Had Venus
done any of the things Velikovsky claimed, the Moon’s orbit would
have changed.
PPP
Finally, according to Velikovsky, after Venus was done palpating
and poking the Earth, it finally calmed down and settled into its
present orbit. Remember, if this happened it’s far more likely that