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

What can I say? I'm biased, being a long-time friend of Dr. Van Flandern. It's a shame that he's passed on, for he, like Dr. Halton Arp, and Don Hotson championed alternate, viable theories to challenge both the BB community and even the entire entrenched science establishment. Professional science as an industry took a hard wrong turn at some point in the last century, and now fights to maintain the existing paradigm, the well-entrenched status-quo. Why? Because if they embraced the simple truth that their patch-work theories of a so-called Big Bang, or the theoretical physics Standard Model and host of other wrong-headed thinking, they'd know that they've spent entire careers chasing the wrong answers down a bottomless rabbit hole (or should that be a black hole?)... And if you challenge the existing paradigm? You're shunned, you lose funding, and your career could be over. Follow the money, as it's said, if you want to know who's precisely behind all this wrong-headed thinking! But if you want to know what the other extremely viable theories that exist out there are all about, but this book, buy Mathew Edward's Pushing Gravity, Halton Arp's Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, and Dr. Arp's other book, Seeing Red...

So much information...this changed my worldview...it really looks like there could have been more than one planet in our solar system.

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..."

We've had a copy for years and highly recommend it to anyone interested in astronomy.
Van Flandern has different ideas from some others.

Close minded experts will put down this book.

The author suggests alternative hypothesis on big problems in modern astronomy from the fundamental property of gravity to the origin of planets, even contemplated interplanetary civilization in solar system that connects Earth, Mars, and an ancient plant.

Excellent book. Out of box thinking at its best. A must read if your interested in Cosmology and astrophysics.

This made me want to learn more about the universe and do more advanced studies. I recommend it to all of the more educated or technical people that I now.

He easily corrects theories from the mainstream scientists which typically require "special rules" to accommodate their shortcomings. His logic is solid and illustrative and his arguments are cogent and substantive.