The Story of Hanns Hoerbiger's Cosmic Ice Theory This is the story of a remarkable cosmolo

The Story of Hanns Hoerbiger's Cosmic Ice Theory

This is the story of a remarkable cosmology concocted by an Austrian
mining engineer, Hanns Hoerbiger. Hoerbiger was not only a mining
engineer, he was an amateur astronomer. Often, he would use a small
telescope to look at assorted celestial bodies, especially the Moon.
According to his account, early in this century, as he was looking at
the Moon, he was struck by the apparent brightness of its surface. He
had his first "recognition," that what he was seeing was ice, piled up
in blocks, producing the brightness and roughness he saw. Some nights
later, he had a dream and his second "recognition." He dreamt that he
was suspended in space, watching the swinging of a silvery pendulum,
which grew longer and longer until it broke. "I knew that Newton was
wrong and that the force of gravity stops at three times the distance
to Neptune," he concluded. This was the starting point for his Cosmic
Ice Theory.

This theory he worked out, in collaboration with a schoolteacher named
Philipp Fauth, in a giant book called _Glazial-Kosmogonie_. Here is
what it said: Once upon a time, there was a supergiant star in the
direction of the constellation Columba. A smaller star, dead,
water-soaked to the core, fell into it. It was heated up, vaporizing
the water, and causing a great explosion. The fragments of this
smaller star were spewed out of the supergiant into interstellar
space. The water condensed out into ice, forming giant ice blocks. A
ring of this ice formed, as well as a small number of solar systems.
This ring is known to us all as the Milky Way. Among the solar systems
that formed was our own, with many more planets than exist today.

The Solar System has had a long history of evolution. Interplanetary
space is filled with traces of hydrogen gas, which cause the planets
to slowly spiral in. Also spiraling in are ice blocks which approach
closer than three times the distance to Neptune. The outer planets are
large because they have swallowed a large number of ice blocks, but
the inner planets have not swallowed nearly as many. One can see ice
blocks on the move in the form of meteors, and when one collides with
the Earth, it produces hailstorms over an area of many square
kilometers. When one falls into the Sun, it produces a sunspot. It
gets vaporized, making "fine ice," which covers the innermost planets.
The Earth has had several satellites before it acquired its current
one. They were once planets, in orbits of their own slightly beyond
Earth's, but they were captured one by one over the eons. Once
captured, a satellite would slowly spiral in, as the planets are doing
toward the Sun, until it disintegrates and becomes part of the Earth's
structure. One can identify the rock strata of several geological eras
with these satellites.

The last such episode, the infall of the Cenozoic Moon and the capture
of out present-day Moon, Luna, is remembered in the form of countless
myths and legends. This was worked out in some detail by Hoerbiger's
English follower Hans Schindler Bellamy, though some of it was
originally due to Hoerbiger himself. Bellamy tells us that, as a
child, he would often dream about a large moon that would spiral
closer and closer in until it burst, making the ground beneath roll
and pitch, awakening him and giving him a very sick feeling. When he
looked at the Moon's surface through a telescope, he found its surface
looking troublingly familiar. When, in 1921, he learned of Hoerbiger's
theory, he found it practically a description of his dream. He
explained the mythological support he found in such books as _Moons,
Myths, and Man_, _In the Beginning God_, and _The Book of Revelation
is History_.

Mythology, Bellamy tells us, forms a "science of pre-Lunar culture."
As the Cenozoic Moon spiraled in, it pulled up the Earth's oceans into
a "girdle tide," while the rest of the Earth sank into an ice age. The
people were forced into mountainous highlands in such places as Tibet
and the Andes. The gigantic Moon, pitted and scaly, soon revolved
around the Earth six times a day, causing an equal number of eclipses
of the Sun and itself. It inspired legends of dragons, battles of gods
in the sky, and the Devil. These final days are recorded in the Book
of Revelation in the Bible and inspired the idea of
_Goetterdaemmerung_, the twilight of the gods.

Eventually, this moon broke up, and its pieces fell onto the Earth,
causing rains of hailstones. As the Earth went back to its old shape,
there were gigantic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The girdle
tide flowed back over the rest of the Earth, inspiring countless flood
legends, including Noah's Flood. Bellamy tells us that he had always
wistfully hoped that there is some historical basis for the story of
Noah's Flood. What followed was a time of peace and tranquility,
remembered in a variety of legends, including that of the Garden of
Eden. The first chapters of the Book of Genesis tell of the
re-creation after that catastrophe. The story of Adam and Eve is, in
fact, the story of a Caesarean birth a heroine of the flood had.
Somehow, the myth got the sex wrong! Naturally, there was a serpent in
this paradise, and it was the capture of the Earth's present-day moon,
Luna. When it was captured, it caused more earthquakes and disasters,
and sank the continent of Atlantis. It is slowly spiraling in, and
will one day share the fate of the earlier moons.

He had some interesting responses to the criticism that he inevitably
received. When anyone pointed out to him that this or that assertion
of his did not work mathematically, he responded: "Calculation can
only lead you astray." One recalls that he was an engineer. When
anyone pointed out to him that there existed pictures that show that
the Milky Way consists of billions of stars, he answered
straightforwardly that the pictures had been faked by "reactionary"
astronomers. He had a similar response to accounts of measurements of
the surface temperature of the Moon, which exceeds 100 degrees
Centigrade in the daytime. To one critic, he wrote back: "Either you
believe in me and learn, or you will be treated as the enemy."
Astronomers generally dismissed his views and the following it
acquired as a "carnival," though it took some very un-carnival-ish
overtones later on. Although Hoerbiger's theories have a lot in common
with Immanuel Velikovsky's theorizing about the recent history of the
Solar System, the scientific community had a much calmer reaction to
Hoerbiger's theories than to Velikovsky's, and his publisher was (as
far as I could learn) never boycotted.

His book came out in 1917, during the First World War, and did not
attract much attention. But afterward, a mass movement based on the
theory appeared. Its members exerted considerable public pressure to
get the theory accepted. The "movement" published posters, pamphlets,
and books, and even a newspaper, "The Key to World Events." One
company would only hire those who declared themselves convinced of the
truth of the theory. One astronomer at Treptow Observatory spent half
his time answering questions on the theory. Some followers even
heckled astronomical meetings, crying "Out with astronomical
orthodoxy! Give us Hoerbiger!" Along the way, the name was changed
from the Graeco-Latin _Glazial-Kosmogonie_ to the Germanic
_Welteislehre_ ("Cosmic Ice Theory"), or WEL for short. In the 1930's,
the "movement" became more and more pro-Nazi (Hoerbiger died in 1931,
so we cannot tell what his opinion would have been). Supporters of the
WEL said things like: "Our Nordic ancestors grew strong in ice and
snow; belief in the Cosmic Ice is consequently the natural heritage of
Nordic Man.", "Just as it needed a child of Austrian
culture--Hitler!--to put the Jewish politicians in their place, so it
needed an Austrian to cleanse the world of Jewish science.", and "the
Fuehrer, by his very life, has proved how much a so-called 'amateur'
can be superior to self-styled professionals; it needed another
'amateur' to give us a complete understanding of the Universe." Alas,
Hitler himself was not enthusiastic about the idea, and the Propaganda
Ministry felt obliged to state that "one can be a good National
Socialist without believing in the WEL."

After World War II, the WEL "cult" dropped out of sight. But it revived
sometime afterwards, and, according to my information, continues to
have members in both Germany and England. In the 1950's, a pamphlet
supporting the WEL stated that "proof of the theory awaits the
conclusion of the first successful interplanetary flight, a matter in
which the Institute is greatly interested." But more recently, some of
its supporters have dropped the idea of an icy lunar surface, though
they continue to support the view that it was captured and that its
capture destroyed Atlantis.


References:

Hans Schindler Bellamy: _Moons, Myths and Man_
Martin Gardner: _Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science_
Willy Ley: _Watchers of the Skies_
Patrick Moore: _Can You Speak Venusian?_

-- 
/Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster
/lip@s1.gov