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From: jes1@akgub.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: OOrt Cloud
Message-ID: <828@akgub.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Apr-87 08:27:15 EST
Article-I.D.: akgub.828
Posted: Thu Apr  2 08:27:15 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Apr-87 17:23:04 EST
Organization: AT&T Technologies/Bell Labs, Atlanta
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	Soon after the publication of his *Worlds in Collision*
in 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky was accused of "creating new forces
in nature to suit his needs." That same year, J.H. Oort suggested
(speculated) that there is a diffuse cloud of gas, dust, and comets
that is gravitationally part of our solar system some 40,000 times
as far from the sun as the earth. He went on to suggest how many
comets it contains, how it originated, and how it releases the
comets that we observe passing through our part of the solar system.
This is the most popular idea today on the origin of comets - even
though it does not rest on a single shred of observational or
theoretical evidence!

	During a recent conversation with a quite orthodox profes-
sor of astronomy, I related that Velikovsky had concluded from an
extensive analysis of *human records* that the earth had been dis-
turbed in its motion by a planet-size comet some 3500 years ago.
The professor responded with a patronizing smile and then chal-
lenged, "But a comet that large has never been observed." Then I
smiled and asked, "When was the Oort Cloud last observed?" He
smiled again - but had nothing more to say.

					     J.E. Strickling