in the next sections of his book, whiston goes on to describe his theory of the creation of the earth, and the flood. he asserted that the earth was originally a comet, which god formed from its initial "chaos and void" into a habitable planet. he also argued that the flood itself was caused when the earth passed through the tail of a comet, which, it was known by that time, are composed largely of water. his analysis was very detailed, and similar ideas were promoted in the 1960s by other creationists postulating causes for the global flood, along with similarity to the ideas of immanuel velikovsky. however, many of them are in direct conflict with contemporary scientific understandings; and comets are not mentioned in flood accounts.