The controversy that arose from the works of Immanuel Velikovsky beginning with his Worlds in Collision, published in 1950. Velikovsky argued in long and scholarly works that Earth was subject to violent catastrophes in historical times and that evidence of these can be found in the myths and legends of all cultures, as well as in Earth’s recent geological history. According to Velikovsky, the key events took place between the fifth and eighth centuries B.C.E. when Venus, which had been a comet with a tail, came from the vicinity of Jupiter and nearly collided with Earth. Later, its contact with Mars caused that planet to pass very close to the Earth.
Velikovsky’s ideas attracted large popular following, but were also debunked by established scientists. The hostility of the scientific establishment in the United States, threatening a boycott of the publisher’s scientific textbook division, caused the original U. S. publisher to transfer World in Collision to another publisher that did not publish scientific texts.