Willy Woelfli | Searcharxiv

arXiv2013

On the choice of ingredients for a theory of the Ice Ages

"With five parameters one can fit an elephant". This provocative statement expresses the fact that when a theory has several adjustable parameters, an agreement with empirical data can be of modest value. What about a theory which contains unobserved objects? This is the subject of this paper. It is motivated by a model of the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene, which postulates a hot planet in an extremely eccentric orbit. This object has many consequences. It is rather well defined by the requirements, that it must not be in conflict with laws of nature, nor with empirical data. It must have sufficient mass to produce a rapid geographic pole shift on Earth after a close flyby at the end of the Pleistocene, and also be small enough to disintegrate at this occasion and to evaporate during the Holocene. These requirements leave hardly any adaptable parameters. In this situation, the agreement with further data, in particular the reverse Dansgaard-Oeschger events of the Holocene, represents a significant support of this theory.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2010

Traditions connected with the pole shift model of the Pleistocene

As is well known, during the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20'000 years ago, the ice was asymmetrically distributed around the present North Pole. It reached the region of New York, while east Siberia remained ice free. Mammoths lived in arctic regions of east Siberia, where now their food cannot grow. Therefore the globe must have been turned in such a way that the North Pole was in Greenland. The required rapid geographic pole shift at the end of the ice ages has been shown to be physically possible, on condition that an astronomical object of planetary size in an extremely eccentric orbit existed. In this postulated situation it was red hot and a disk shaped gas cloud reduced the solar radiation on Earth in a time dependent way. A frequent objection to this hypothesis is that the phenomena should be reported in old traditions. This paper quotes such traditions from passages of Platon, Herodotus, Ovid, papyrus Ipuwer, Gilgamesh, the Bible, American Indians and other civilizations. Far from being exhaustive the examples show that apparently strange traditions can report observed facts. This connection is of mutual benefit for science and humanities.

physics.geo-ph↗