mch

158 OUR ANCESTORS CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
ence dictates that this distance must have been greater in the
past than now, because all satellites descend in a very slow spiral
toward the planet around which they rotate. This is caused by
the deceleration due to friction with cosmic dust. The smaller
satellites lose their distance faster than the bigger ones, which
have more favorable ratios of mass to the area of their cross sections.
But there is a contradiction here. While the laws of celestial
mechanics tell us that the moon in the past must have been
farther from earth than today, legends and sacred texts from all
corners of the globe tell
us the opposite—that the moon in the
past was bigger and closer to us. It even looked much bigger
than the sun. How do we solve this puzzle? Well, let's start by
examining the known facts.
In the ranges of the Andes at an altitude of 12,000 feet geologists
have found stretches of marine sediment reaching 640 km
all the way from Peru to BoHvia, clear evidence beyond any
doubt that the level of the ocean only some tens of thousands of
years ago was 12,000 feet higher there than today. Similar sediments,
dating from the same geological period, have also been
found in the Himalayas, in South Asia.
A geologist would be tempted to say right away that it wasn t
the sea but the mountains of Peru and Bolivia that rose to this
level, because the tectonic plate supporting the Cordillera range
was pushed upward. But the sediment line is relatively recent
compared to the millions of years since the Andes were created.
So it must be the sea that once rose, as it still does all around the
world twice every day, except that once there was a gigantic pull
that made the sea cHmb 12,000 feet in a huge bulging ring
around the equator. And such force could only have been produced
by a big celestial body very close to the earth. It must
have been a closer and larger moon whose gravitational force
pulled most of the water from all oceans into that bulging ring,
like a gigantic, permanent tidal wave.
Some people think it was the planet Venus that passed very
close to earth in the past. And it certainly does seem true that
Venus has not always been part of our solar system. Some think
the phenomenon was caused by a moon, not necessarily the first
one our planet had. Both theories may be right and it is even
possible that both Venus and our moon combined forces to raise