From the review of Rankin's work, posted by Shanghaiceltic:


"At the centre of the book is what he calls his "new theory", a rather bold contention that gravity doesn't exist (hence the Earth can flip over) and that the Sun isn't the centre of the solar system, but is revolving round a magnetic centre - a black hole that is as yet undiscovered."

If gravity doesn't exist ... hmmm, if I can divide both sides of this equation by zero, I can warp any result out of it you like.

And as Grab has said, you need something like this to get round the thorny problem of conservation of angular momentum. Take a gyroscope, set it spinning, and then try and turn it over by 140 degrees. It does not want to go. It will submit to brute force, but try measuring the effort you must make to force it over, compared with the comparatively small weight (mass) of the gyroscope.

Compared with the earth's axis of rotation suddenly reversing, the earth's magnetic axis is known to swap polarity. This can be proved by measuring the magnetism preserved in the rocks either side of plate spreading centres such as the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Here is a BBC site on the subject. If you ignore the infantile metaphors they use to attract the attention of Joe Public, it has quite a lot of good information.

It must be noted that these magnetic pole reversals are not associated with mass extinction events.


The other phenomenon used to support Rankin's theories, quoted in the review, that mammoths were found to be rapidly frozen almost in the act of eating tundra or Alpine meadow flowers, has been well known for many years. The most likely explanation would appear to be the very rapid local climate shifts associated with the change from "Ice Age" to "Interglacial" climate regimes and back again.



This is not to imply that Rankin, or anyone else proposing any new theory of physics or geology or whatever, is necessarily a charlatan. After all, Evolution was unheard of two hundred years ago, and Plate Tectonics dates as a properly worked-out theory only from the nineteen-fifties. (Wegener was on the right track almost a hundred years ago, but lacked the observations and experimental facilities to take his theories to their logical conclusion.)

However, the field has been rather spoiled by people like Velikovsky, who, rather than defend their theories on the evidence, claimed to be the victims of conspiracies to silence them.