It is over and against the prevailing monopoly of uniformitarian thought (which proposes that oceans of time are necessary for anything and everything, both geologically and biologically) that Mr. Patten proposes his view of historical celestial crises, global catastrophes.  Such catastrophes may explain many features about several planets.  Such catastrophes, relative to the Earth-Moon system, explain the raising up of mountain ranges, sweeping across the face of the Earth in arcuate alignment, similar to the mountain patterns of the Moon.

This was achieved suddenly, and by tidal upheavals within oceans (of centrifugally rotating lava) within the Earth's crust.  Simultaneously, tidal upheavals engulfing the oceans raised tides of subcontinental dimensions on the Earth's crust, thus the historically recorded Deluge, or Flood.

Patten, Hatch and Steinhauer's work on catastrophism comes to modern science in an age when the accepted ideas of cosmology have been exposed as being in serious question. Increasingly, as data is gathered by the space age probes and research of the Moon, Venus, Mars and other planets, evidence is mounting that the inner part of the solar system has been exposed to interplanetary catastrophes. It has not had a history of unbroken celestial peace, or functional isolation.

Ours is a period of academic flux with innumerable breaches in the established systems of thought. Patten, Hatch and Steinhauer have provided a theoretical framework by which we are able to approach the reconstruction of past events. The authors contend that adding what is observable in nature today, and the scars of the solar system (from craters almost everywhere to still observable comets!), can be combined with what was observed, experienced and carefully reported by ancient man. In this methodology, a new validity is given to historical observations.

Most of the craters on Mars are on one side - not the other!  This is evidence for (an astral event, i.e.) a past catastrophy; thus it is not evidence that most of the craters were made one at a time down through eons of supposed time.

(words by Physicist, Ronald R. Hatch)
Don is inquisitive.  He looks for patterns in geography and in history, and he finds them.  Would you have thought of counting the craters on Mars (by 10° grids) looking for a pattern?  Or would you have thought of analyzing the Biblical record of ancient catastrophes, looking for a cyclic pattern?  In both cases, Don perceived, he looked and he found.  ...He found that 91% of the craters on Mars were all in one hemisphere if its center were viewed at 45° S. lat. and 160° W. long.  Such indicates that 82% of the thousands of craters of Mars all occurred during one single catastrophic hour.  ...

Twelve or thirteen items of physical evidence are presented and discussed in the first six chapters.  The evidence will be from the scars of Mars and its two tiny satellites.  It will be that Mars was out there, in an orbit much different than its modern orbit, and it was the red planet that caused the fragmentation of the asteroids.  ...But that is just part of the damage caused by Mars in its former orbit. 

This evidence, accurately reported and interpreted, will show that the "planetary collisionists", the minority of astronomers, have been closer to the truth, and the majority, the "accreters" have been dead wrong. 
 

Mars' craters (left) are almost all on one side.  And its huge "scar" (right) is long enough to reach from Seattle to Pensacola!

Cosmology is a study of the past conditions, past positions and the evidence thereof, of the solar system as it once was. The heart of the issue is what the evidence indicates. The photos of the planets in our Solar System point to unexpected episodes of violence as well as for our home planet system, the Earth-Moon system. What was the nature of these ancient sudden and violent episodes?

The first step is to review the thoughts in cosmology of the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, and Chaldeans. They viewed the seven planets in the heavens as seven deities. These seven deities were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They recorded and reported their day count per year, which was 360, not the modern 365.256. The Sumerians adopted this number from their (then accurate) calendar into their measures and standards....