Letter: Cosmic shock

Your announcement of "startling new" research supporting evidence for cometary bombardment in historical times demonstrates considerable gall on the part of a scientific community that vilified the work of a man whose name does not even now appear to earn their grudging recognition, 47 years after the event ("Comet debris...", 30 March). In 1950 and 1955 Immanuel Velikovsky published the first such startling research in Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval. Those books covered in detail the archaeological, geological and palaeontological evidence which supports the view that extraterrestrial bombardment has had a profound effect on the history of man.

M Wilson

Duns, Berwickshire