If I'm reading his stuff correctly then by complete chance I can shed some light on the depth of research that went into at least one part of this.
From
COSMOS WITHOUT GRAVITATION:
- Cyclones, characterized by low pressure and by winds blowing toward their centers, move counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. This movement of air currents in cyclonic vortices is generally explained as the effect of the earth’s rotation.
Anticyclones, characterized by high pressure and by winds blowing from their centers move clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. The movement of anticyclones has not been explained and is regarded as enigmatic.
Cyclones and anticyclones are considered a problem of fluidal motion with highest or lowest pressure in the center. As the movement of anticyclones cannot be explained by the mechanistic principles of gravitation and rotation, it must be concluded that the rotation of cyclones is also unexplained.
Way back in about 1978 I was part of a group of four students who had to produce a ten minute video presentation that explained what the direction of rotation was around a low pressure area in the Northern Hemisphere and why it was this way.
We were all doing Electrical and Electronic Engineering degrees, so we didn't even know that there was a definite answer to this. We basically had to allocate the work out between us - one to actually do the presentation, one to do the cameras and lighting, one to operate the video recording and effects equipment and one to find out the answer and write the script.
I was the one who had to find out the answer and write the script. Now remember I was starting from a knowledge base of literally zero in this area - and it was
way before the World Wide Web
. I took an educated guess that the best place to look for the answer and, more importantly, an explanation I could understand and graphics I could nick was the copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica in the University Library.
Sure enough after less than an hour of searching I had found an entry that gave me the answer. I don't remember how long it took me to understand it enough to write a script for the presentation but we're talking no more than a few hours (writing the script took ages but that's because coming up with a good script is hard, even just to fill a ten minute slot). I won't bore you with an explanation but if you want to look it up the key word you need to know is
Coriolis.
USA Today has a simple explanation with some useful links.
Now the point of this rambling recollection is that if you want to know why winds rotate the way they do you can go from knowing nothing to having a reasonable grasp of it in just a few hours armed with nothing more than access to the Encyclopedia Britannica. So you have to wonder about the
scientific rigor and vast knowledge that concludes that "the rotation of cyclones is also unexplained".
While reading COSMOS WITHOUT GRAVITATION I noticed it is very old (1946). Now I have to confess I didn't have a clue when this Coriolis did his work. The
answer seems to be 1835, although he didn't apply his work to weather systems. This had to wait until 1856 - a mere 90 years before Velikovsky wrote his stuff.
Oops! Wrong Planet