Attos' Magazine

Volume #69, December/2009

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

Ice Ages

Not many thousands of years ago, we are taught, great areas of Europe and of North America were covered with glaciers. Perpetual ice lay not only on the slopes of high mountains, but loaded itself in heavy masses upon continents even in moderate latitudes. Where today the Hudson, the Elbe, and the upper Dnieper flow, there were then frozen deserts. They were like the immense glacier of Greenland that covers that island. There are signs that a retreat of the glaciers was interrupted by a new massing of ice, and that their borders differed at various times. Geologists are able to find the boundaries of the glaciers. Ice moves very slowly, pushing stones before it, and accumulations of stones or moraines remain when the glacier retreats melting away.

Traces have been found of five or six consecutive displacements of the ice sheet during the Ice Age, or of five or six glacial periods. Some force repeatedly pushed the ice sheet toward moderate latitudes. Neither the cause of the ice ages nor the cause of the retreat of the icy desert is known; the time of these retreats is also a matter of speculation.

Many ideas were offered and guesses made to explain how the glacial epochs originated and why they terminated. Some supposed that the sun at different times emits more or less heat, which causes periods of heat and cold on the earth; but no evidence that the sun is such a “variable star” was adduced to support this hypothesis.

Others conjectured that cosmic space has warmer and cooler areas, and that when our solar system travels through the cooler areas, ice descends upon latitudes closer to the tropics. But no physical agents were found responsible for such hypothetical cold and warm areas in space.

A few wondered whether the precession of the equinoxes or the slow change in the direction of the terrestrial axis might cause periodic variations in the climate. But it was shown that the difference in insolation could not have been great enough to have been responsible for the glacial ages.

Still others thought to find the answer in the periodic variations in the eccentricity of the ecliptic (terrestrial orbit), with glaciation at the maximal eccentricity. Some of them supposed that winter in aphelion, the remotest part of the ecliptic, would cause glaciation; and some thought that summer in aphelion would produce that effect.

Some scholars thought about the changes in the position of the terrestrial axis. If the planet earth is rigid, as it is regarded to be (L. Kelvin), the axis could not have shifted in geological times by more than three degrees (George Darwin); if it were elastic, it could have shifted up to ten or fifteen degrees in a very slow process.

The cause of the ice ages was seen by a few scholars in the decrease of the original heat of the planet; the warm periods between the ice ages were attributed to the heat set free by a hypothetical decomposition of organisms in the strata close to the surface of the ground. The increase and decrease in the action of warm springs were also considered.

Others supposed that dust of volcanic origin filled the terrestrial atmosphere and hindered insolation, or, contrariwise, that an increased content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere obstructed the reflection of heat rays from the surface of the planet. A decrease in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would cause a fall of temperature (Arrhenius), but calculations were made to show that this could not be the real cause of the glacial ages (Angstrom).

Changes in the direction of warm currents in the Atlantic Ocean were brought into the discussion, and the Isthmus of Panama was theoretically removed to allow the Gulf Stream to pass into the Pacific at the time of the glacial periods. But it was proved that the two oceans were already divided in the Ice Age; besides, a part of the Gulf Stream would have remained in the Atlantic anyway. The periodic retreats of ice between the glacial periods would have required periodic removal and replacement of the Isthmus of Panama.

Other theories of equally hypothetical nature were proposed; but the phenomena held responsible for the changes have not been proved to have existed, or to have been able to produce the effect.

All the above-mentioned theories and hypotheses fail if they cannot meet a most important condition: In order for ice masses to have been formed, increased precipitation must have taken place. This requires an increased amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, which is the result of increased evaporation from the surface of oceans; but this could be caused by heat only. A number of scientists pointed out this fact, and even calculated that in order to produce a sheet of ice as large as that of the Ice Age, the surface of all the oceans must have evaporated to a depth of many feet. Such an evaporation of oceans followed by a quick process of freezing, even in moderate latitudes, would have produced the ice ages. The problem is:

What could have caused the evaporation and immediately subsequent freezing? As the cause of such quick alternation of heating and freezing of large parts of the globe is not apparent, it is conceded that ‘at present the cause of excessive ice-making on the lands remains a baffling mystery, a major question for the future reader of earth’s riddles.”

Not only are the causes of the appearance and later disappearance of the glacial sheet unknown, but the geographical shape of the area covered by ice is also a prob1em. Why did the glacial sheet, in the southern hemisphere, move from the tropical regions of Africa toward the south polar region and not in the opposite direction, and, similarly, why, in the northern hemisphere, did the ice move in India from the equator toward the Himalaya mountains and the higher latitudes? Why did the glaciers of the Ice Age cover the greater part of North America and Europe, while the north of Asia remained free? In America the plateau of ice stretched up to latitude 40° and even passed across this line; in Europe it reached latitude 50°; while northeastern Siberia, above the polar circle, even above latitude 75°, was not covered with this perennial ice. All hypotheses regarding increased and diminished insolation due to solar alterations or the changing temperature of the cosmic space, and other similar hypotheses, cannot avoid being confronted with this problem.

Glaciers are formed in the regions of eternal snow; for this reason they remain on the slopes of the high mountains. The north of Siberia is the coldest place in the world. Why did not the Ice Age touch this region, whereas it visited the basin of the Mississippi and all Africa south of the equator? No satisfactory solution to this question has been proposed.

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