THE ORIGIN HYPOTHESIS

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THE ORIGIN HYPOTHESIS

Archibald Velicrates 2

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To any entity Who questions itself

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I.- SYSTEMS COLLISION ............................................................................11 (Halton Wheeler) .....................................................................................11 II.- COMPARED MYTHOLOGY ..................................................................17 (Graham Talbosky) ..................................................................................17 III.- SCIENTIFIC LEGENDS .........................................................................25 (Carmen Hill) ...........................................................................................25 IV.- SERENDIPITY .....................................................................................28 (Alan Hapgood) .......................................................................................28 V.- NORTH POLE MEETING ......................................................................31 (Lucy Drake) ............................................................................................31 VI.- COERCION, TURMOIL AND MOCKERY ..............................................33 (Lucy Drake) ............................................................................................33 VII.- A FANATIC RELIGION ........................................................................36 (Mario Espejo) .........................................................................................36 VIII.- GLUT, SCREW AND FUCK AROUND .................................................39 (Carmen Hill) ...........................................................................................39 IX.- MARIO’S JOURNEYS ..........................................................................44 (Graham Talbosky) ..................................................................................44 X.- MEGALITHS ON THE BRINK OF THE CLIFF ..........................................49 (Carmen Hill) ...........................................................................................49 XI.- ‘MISALIGNED’ TEMPLES ....................................................................55 (Alan Hapgood) .......................................................................................55 XII.- INTELECTUAL TERRORISM STRIKES AGAIN ......................................58 (Halton Wheeler).....................................................................................58 XIII.- PHILOLOGY REVOLUTION................................................................64 (Carmen Hill) ...........................................................................................64 XIV.- THE CORNERSTONES OF SCIENCE ...................................................77 (Alan Hapgood) .......................................................................................77 XV.- ¿COINCIDENCES? .............................................................................85 (Graham Talbosky) ..................................................................................85 XVI.- THE MYSTERY OF MAPS ..................................................................90 (Mario Espejo) .........................................................................................90 XVII.- CREATION MYTHS ..........................................................................93 (Lucy Drake) ............................................................................................93 XVIII.- WORK. BE FASHIONABLE. WATCH TV. OBEY THE LAW. ACT NORMAL. ...............................................................................................102 AND SAY: ‘I AM FREE’. ...........................................................................102 (Halton Wheeler) ...................................................................................102 XIX.- HISTORIC REVISIONISM .................................................................105 (Carmen Hill) .........................................................................................105 XX.- DRAGONS, SERPENTS, OUROBOROS..............................................109

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(Graham Talbosky) ................................................................................ 109 XXI.- FIVE BIG EXTINCTIONS .................................................................. 114 (Alan Hapgood) ..................................................................................... 114 XXII.- CRATERS CLOSE TO THE POLE ..................................................... 123 (Halton Wheeler) .................................................................................. 123 XXIII.- BULLYING .................................................................................... 126 (Alan Hapgood) ..................................................................................... 126 XXIV.- THE FLOOD: A SOLVED RIDDLE ................................................... 130 (Lucy Drake) .......................................................................................... 130 XXV.- THE GREAT HERESSY ................................................................... 136 (Mario Espejo) ...................................................................................... 136 XXVI.- SCIENTIFIC ANOMALIES .............................................................. 150 (Alan Hapgood) ..................................................................................... 150 XXVII.- SURVIVORS OF A MOTHER CIVILIZATION .................................. 160 (Lucy Drake) .......................................................................................... 160 XVIII.- SWARM BEHAVIOUR .................................................................. 166 (Halton Wheeler) .................................................................................. 166 XXIX. - CHRONOLOGY............................................................................ 179 (Graham Talbosky) ................................................................................ 179 XXX.- FREE WILL .................................................................................... 188 (Mario Espejo) ...................................................................................... 188 XXXI.- MATCHING IDEAS ....................................................................... 197 (Mario Espejo) ...................................................................................... 197 XXXII.- FUSED CONSCIOUSNESS ............................................................ 202 (Graham Talbosky) ................................................................................ 202 XXXIII.- THE OBSERVED OBSERVER ....................................................... 218 (Halton Wheeler) .................................................................................. 218

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PROLOGUE “In any chaos there is cosmos, in any disorder there is a secret order.�

-Carl Gustav JungThis book is really three books. It is on purpose shaped as a novel, thus allowing the possibility to be read as the adventures that happen to a group of scientists and scholars who met and become friends. This is enough as an introduction to a series of topics, which perhaps at a later stage in the readerâ€&#x;s journey may be interesting to research. So, it is not necessary to visit the links and references provided to compare the ideas mentioned in the book. You may regard the content like science fiction if you prefer, although most of the ideas are supported by serious scientists with several careers and investigation years.

The second option consists of taking the theories described, consulting the scientific papers, to corroborate that they are existing models usually not taught in the orthodox cliques of the educational system. That should be enough to convince him that it is not pseudoscience, as pejoratively often adduced.

Contrary to mainstream official hypotheses, some of which should not be considered science because they are not falsifiable and lack experimentation; most of the theories presented offer valid predictions and many have been experimentally verified by scientists.

Finally, there is the advisable and desirable possibility of, not just follow the offered links, but pull them to investigate new horizons and unknown paths. The search process is long and complex, and requires a lot of time, which many readers may consider unavailable. However, if you are "really" interested in finding answers to the greatest questions that have always assaulted the human being, you will be given time wherever you are. We have about a hundred years for it. It is a path to walk oneself. A guide book, or links that tell us where to start 8

or where to find resources, and even a mentor, cannot replace the personal work that the serious researcher must undertake.

The guide book exists, it is called 'Consciencias en Colisiรณn' and it can be obtained in pdf version, by contacting the author.

Anyway, it only represents saving some time, not effort and work to understand all the subjects on which the reader is not trained.

In short, there are three ways to deal with reading it: novel mode, scientific mode and research mode or own knowledge.

Some people will wonder why the issues covered in the book are important, and why they are addressed in the form of adventures full of dangers for our heroes (scientists, historians and philosophers). These subjects, that may seem trivial to someone, are the study of myth, history and a bunch of sciences, all of them regarded as methods of knowledge in our world and society.

The myth offers us clues about the spiritual potential of the human being, who seeks the experience of life, or better, the experience of being alive. The myth is inevitably linked to history, and is essential to understand it. Knowing the past allows us to understand how and why the world is the way it is today. It allows us to understand other cultures. All parents, especially those who have several children, know that when the children have carried out some 'wrongdoing', they try to put the facts from a point of view where they are not responsible, usually diverting the blame to another child. This is done unconsciously since the children know that the adult uses the 'story' (the one about the children) to determine whether he should punish them. History helps children understand who they are.

History is fundamental in the sciences (medicine, biology, physics, sociology, psychology, etc.). Without it there is no progress in any branch of them. The meaning of the story is determined by the historian, who picks up what seems important to him, which depends on his training and his mental freedom. But historians are part of society and transfer the 9

social values commonly accepted in their living epoch to the stories they tell. History teaches values.

We assume that the past is fixed and cannot be changed, although as social values change, so do the descriptions of historians and the vision we have of the same period. Thus, history tells more about the age in which the story is written than about the timeline to which it refers.

The myth is linked to history, and history, to science. Why is science important? Iâ€&#x;m talking about science as a method of knowledge, not to be confused with technology. This question was transferred to a scientist, of whom I will not give the name, as part of the concession of the controversial Nobel Prize in Physics of 2017, asking him if spending billions of dollars in a scientific experiment was important and even ethical. His response was: "... Everyone listens to it (science), and feels inspired to achieve incredible things (like measuring something 10,000 times smaller than a proton" - something that is not so clear and that is within the limits of technology-). "... Society then sees that whatever the problem we may have in the future, can be solved (by technology)." Metaphorically, he acts like Son Goku, who asks chi (energy) from his companions to become super-saiyan god; the scientist asks money (power) to the society becoming a super-sapiens (god / shaman) that can rid society of any problem. Science allows progress as it is a method of knowledge. Technology makes people cling to materialism without considering spirituality.

Except for three theories, the other ones exposed in the book are defended by their respective authors to whom all their merit corresponds. The escraches, coercions and other rogues to which the characters are subjected are based on verifiable facts, except for one single action that has been devised to make the plot more spectacular.

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I.- SYSTEMS COLLISION (Halton Wheeler)

“No amount of experiments will ever prove that I am right, just one will prove that I am wrong.”

-Albert Einstein- Who are you?

Laying down face up on the bed, the light of the full moon allowed me to outline a slight grimace of surprise in Luky‟s expression, from which she quickly recovered.

- I... am. Just that.

- What makes you be you? The essential and immutable that makes you is always you.

She realised that the conversation was on the verge of emotional and metaphysical, and being a professional and passionate about philosophy she did not shy away such a challenge easily.

- It's easier to tell you what things I am not. I am not my name or my identity card number. Neither am I my personality, nor my relationships, because all those things change. My body also does it; my cells are not the same as when I was a girl.

Neither my brain, the neurons are replaced and the synaptic connections vary.

- And a pattern of the arrangement in some parts of your brain, including neurons? Maybe there‟s something that allows continuity of thoughts and memories.

- You know well, that the way how thoughts work or where memories are stored, or how is unknown. But accepting that someday you‟d understand all about it, and you can create technology to replicate it, I couldn‟t be my thoughts, or my emotions or my memories since I am the one who perceives them. I am the one who realizes that I have those things. I am aware of them. That's why I recommend you to meditate.

- I can only think of something that allegedly does not change.

You are your genetic code.

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- Impossible, because it can mutate. If part of my DNA mutated, would not I still feel myself? Also, my body could be cloned, and then it would be pointless to say that there are two 'me'. I have never experienced being two things or being in two places simultaneously.

- Nor I. You are not a handful of atoms and particles, "I continued. Then, what is left? You are not the same person you were a while ago.

- Who says we are? -Luky now used the Socratic Method with me-. We may just have that sensation.

- You could be your immortal soul or a spirit, something not physical.

- That does not solve your question, only translates it to what is the soul or the spirit or what you prefer. It becomes an endless circle.

- Come on, you do not know what you are.

- Well, I know what I'm not. And why. That is not small thing. I am nothing material that physicists can measure. I am a consciousness that realizes that it has, or accesses thoughts, emotions and memory.

- That is very vague and ambiguous.

- It can be but it is the best we, philosophers, have. I think the important thing is not the response but to ask the question, and the way we do trying to answer it.

- Something similar to what cosmologists and theoretical physicists do.

- Maybe that's why we come to this universe.

- To discover its origin?

- Or ours.

In speaking of cosmology and theoretical physicists, the next day I was going to meet at Hudson Bay University, with my old classmate, with whom, strangely enough, I had not come together for three weeks.

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- I found out that Zientific TV wants to film a documentary about your book - Albert Oldtown expelled with a certain scorn, while they were transporting their food trays to a table located close to the lake window in the cafeteria of the Physics Faculty where both worked. ZTV, as they called it in their circles, was a science television channel not considered very serious, to put it euphemistically.

- My publisher hinted something to me, but there is nothing sure. In any case, it will not be as important as the one in Discovery Science where you came into play, "Halton said, knowing that it had never happened. The two physicists were colleagues and there was enough trust between them to play this kind of jokes, but it cannot be said they were close friends.

- Tell me Hal. Where did you get inspired for that book? Was it in the stories of ancient mythology that your girlfriend tells you or were you influenced by Velikovsky's novels?

- As far as I know, ¡they were not novels! It may not be scientific books as we both understand, but definitely not science fiction. About Luky... it has been like a light to me, a guide. Ancient myths that she studies simply fit with my theory. According to your behaviour, I might one day tell you how we met. Anyway, my first aim was to pose it as a scientific novel, because I was aware that science fanatics would hurtle over me hindering my work. And I still have things to find out.

Luky‟s role was decisive in taking that choice. If it weren‟t for her, I would not have dared.

- I see. But you‟ve not answered. What was the novel based on?

- There‟s the distinction of the planets in two families, according to their rotational axes inclination. As you know Saturn, Neptune, Mars and Earth, are about 25 degrees while the Sun, Mercury and Jupiter barely deviate by two degrees.

Admit that astronomers don‟t have a good explanation for it.

At the Perimeter Institute, in Waterloo, Ontario (Canada) had taken place an important Congress of Cosmology, a few years ago. The main cosmologists nowadays and the young rising stars in the field of theoretical physics were attending. Hal and 13

Albert went as beholders, being recent graduates, and since then, conversations about the origin of the cosmos and metaphysics invariably intertwine in their talks.

- Do you still believe in the Big Bang? -asked Oldtown, which sounded more like a conversation of two constituents in a religious faction.

- That is a purely mathematical theory, and maths is a language, a way of describing reality quantitatively. It has no physical basis, and if by „reality‟ we understand everything that we can measure or perceive through our senses or instruments, then the „Big Bang‟ does not refer to anything real. It's just... metaphysics.

- Regarding the maths I must agree with you, they are not a demonstration of anything. However, the inflation of the universe has been convincingly demonstrated...

- If you are going to talk to me of dark and black things that do not interact with anything and, therefore, we can not detect, but exerts gravitational or antigravitational effects as desired...

- It's not about that, Hal. It‟s true that the mechanism of Dark Energy seems somewhat ad-hoc, although the fact that space expands is unquestionable.

- And where does the space expand, Albert? On itself? I have never understood that aspect of the theory well. When I try to explain it to Lucy, she replies that, according to the dictionary, things expand, extend or stretch in space, which is a mere concept -like time-, but according to that definition, nonmaterial things can not be stretched or expanded, nor be bent or curved as your namesake Einstein said.

- Inflation is necessary to explain the receding of galaxies, Hal. It is a fact.

- It is an interpretation -said Hal sharply. "Numerous evidences and papers show that there are intrinsic redshifts. The redshift, which is the third great cornerstone of physics, is undermined.

Hal's father had been an amateur astronomer, although he was no more than a professor of physics in a High School. He named it after Halton Arp, a brilliant and controversial 14

American astronomer in the late twentieth century, who was compared to Galileo by the way the American astronomical establishment treated him, to the point that he was banned from accessing to American installations, and with it to any investigation, for the simple fact of opposing the official academic version on the inflation of the cosmos and the „Big Bang‟. Finally, he was forced to migrate to Germany where he worked at the Max Planck Institute. Like him, Hal argued that the redshift of spectra was not, at least exclusively, due to Doppler Effect (velocity) or cosmological origin (space expansion), but was intrinsic1, which encompassed a wide variety of possible causes2.

- Oh, you're philosophical today. When did our positions vary so much?

- I see that you still believe in the Singularity as if it were a god, a being of infinite density and null volume...

- Well, -Oldtown interrupted-, the Theory of Relativity, which is widely confirmed, shows that the universe was much smaller in the beginning, hence it follows that we come from a singularity.

- ¡Come off it! Einstein's field equations can have thousands of solutions depending on the physical interpretation of the stressenergy tensor. In addition, without trying to act as a historian of science, the solutions of Friedmann and Lemaitre were arbitrated hindsight for what they wanted to obtain. Einstein himself did not believe in the 'Schwarzchild radios', as they called the singularities and black holes.

- Are you going to eat those potatoes? -the astronomer asked, changing the pace.

1

https://bit.ly/2KZUA4t http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/intrinsic_redshifts_in_quasars_and_galaxies. pdf 2 http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nphiarticle_query?db_key=PHY&bibcode=2009ASPC..413...73G&letter=.&classic =YES&defaultprint=YES&whole_paper=YES&page=73&epage=83&send=Se nd+PDF&filetype=.pdf

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- I swap my potatoes for one of your peppers. But remember that in Waterloo, there was not just one of the cosmologists, the young talents or the consecrated ones like Turok or Smolin, who bet on a linear cosmology like the „Big Bang‟, -continued Hal, who did not want to settle the issue-. Even Penrose, who is a mathematician, and was one of the paladins of the theory, has now shifted towards cyclical cosmologies, without beginning or ending.

- Mmm, I was not convinced by the theory of Branas, or the Galactic Natural Selection, or the CCC (Conformal Cyclic Cosmology). Maybe, the Rainbow Gravity would give me better sensations, though to tell tehe truth, I have not studied it in depth -Albert Oldtown acknowledged.

- But you don‟t like the Quasi-Stationary Universe Theory, which is the one Einstein would prefer -Hal smiled at him.

- Well, I give you the point. I remember that I was quite impressed by the theory of the „Big Bounce‟ of the young Singh and his LQC (Loop Quantum Cosmology) - he conceded.

The Big Bounce is more reasonable than the Big Bang, but it still requires inflation, although without singularity.

- Shut up and eat. It's delicious.

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II.- COMPARED MYTHOLOGY (Graham Talbosky) “Science must start with myth, and with the review of myths.”

-Karl PopperI am pretty sure that religions are based on a common „story‟ spread by a Mother Culture, and that the sacred books are local interpretations of succeeding civilizations about the popular prediluvian wisdom. The ancestral legends referred to celestial orbs and narrate events that actually happened in the early history of humanity.

When I met Abdel his view was that this sort of ideas would not be welcomed in some countries, basically in a defense of their 'historical heritage', which is really an economic reason, more than due to religious reasons. Some intrepid people share my opinion, especially young people who have little to lose. As for the civilizations of the East, he became my mentor. He had studied archeology in Sweden during his youth, but he knew a lot more about Khemit by virtue of his indigenous origin than he did because of his career, as he belonged to one of the oldest families in a, still, matriarchal society.

The director of the Egyptian Antiquities Council, Karrar Zahi, did not cease to hinder and harass my research, not only in the land of the pharaohs, but in many archaeological sites, through his contacts network.

In his essay on the debate between biologist Stephen J. Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky, Charles Ginenthal states that "... if science is praised for its achievements, then mythology should be one hundred times more fervently, for its achievements were incomparably superior. The inventors of the myth started the culture while the rationalists and scientists have only changed it". Napoleon himself believed that history was a set of lies on which people agreed. Filmmaker George Orwell postulated that the best way to destroy people was to obliterate the understanding of their history. We have been taught in school 17

that civilizations appeared (out of nowhere) after the Neolithic, and that it was the result of the settlement of nomadic tribes restricted to hunting and gathering what they found on their path. It is unknown why suddenly they began to dominate agriculture, livestock and, as a result, to know the seasons and cycles of the universe; then they developed ceramics, art and better tools; they created laws and a social organization, religions and civilization as understood by us.

Discoveries in Gobekli Tepe, for example, have redressed new versions of history, where religion appeared3 much earlier, during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition (11,000 BC), and it is speculated that the emergence of agriculture and livestock might have resulted –an effect and not a cause-, of a social congregation founded on some type of common belief.

Scientific findings have shown that early crops were carried out, much earlier than the Neolithic, at least 25,000 years (Pleistocene)4. The same happened with ceramics5.

In my books I often bring up many allusions to the illustrious historian Giorgio de Santillana, who was a reference for me at the starting point in my research. In the productive 1950s he wrote his masterpiece 'Hamletâ€&#x;s Mill' co-authored by the German scientist Hertha von Dechend. Its conclusion was that the stories, characters and adventures narrated in mythology "focus on the active powers between stars and planets", which was accepted by a majority of anthropologists and historians, although not all. The appearance of this great work would entail a new branch of study known as compared mythology.

Psychiatrist I. Velikovsky was a polymath of the twentieth century. Historian, mythologist, anthropologist, with extensive knowledge verified in biology, physics, philosophy and archeology and geology, he rubbed shoulders with the high spheres of all these fields in the different universities in which 3

http://museum-of-artifacts.blogspot.com.es/2017/01/gobekli-tepe-where-religionwas-born.html https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929303-400-worldsoldest-temple-built-to-worship-the-dog-star/ 4 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.htm 5 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/story/2012-06-28/old-pottery-foundchinese-cave/55903708/1

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he studied. In 1940 he had the idea that a great natural catastrophe characterized the time of the Exodus, interpreting the phenomena, described in the Bible as the Ten Plagues of Egypt, as natural phenomena due to an extraterrestrial cometary origin. The idea was reinforced when he found a description of similar events in an Egyptian source, that is, the Ipuwer papyrus6 from the Leiden collection.

Santillana associated the symbol of Hamlet‟s mill, which appeared in many cultures of Indo-European origin, with the heavens (others had related it to the oceans); the gods had a mill that they activated every day to rekindle the sun. This mill refers to a northern „zenith‟, a point of the celestial vault around which the other lights turn and which is currently governed by the star Polaris. The stories about mills in different cultures led to link them to the astronomical phenomenon known as 'precession of the equinoxes'. Critics accept the common origin of the mill but discard the ancient knowledge of the precession, and unite it with other legends such as the myth of Prometheus.

Others, directly, think that the old translations have been misinterpreted. However, the myth of Hamlet has a clear relationship with the Amleth of the Gesta Danorum, the tale of Beowulf, or the Amlodhi of the Icelandic Prose Edda, the clavicular stone of Germanic mythology. Not being of IndoEuropean origin, some connect it to the Finnish epic poem 'Kalevala', which according to sources has its origin in Tolkien's Silmarillion7.

Abdel knew firsthand the controversies of the 60s raised by Santillana and Velikovsky, especially as far as history is concerned. There were plentiful gatherings with him and several other 'guardians of the wisdom of Khemit' (name of Ancient Egypt) since I moved to Cairo. The analogies between the legends and the lore of ancient civilizations encompass both, their 'Gods of Creation', 'the banning from Eden', the 'Flood and other environmental catastrophes' - like the plagues mentioned -, and the plots and events that occurred between all 6 7

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/ipuwer.htm Read ‘Consciencias en Colisión’

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those characters and places that were preserved in what is known as 'Sacred Books'. Probably, they acquired such consideration over time, as the original stories -produced from some mother culture- were degenerated and the stories were distorted, and even enlarged with a "snowball" effect. Each subsequent society, among which we find those imposed on us as constituents of 'civilization', added their personal touch or distinctive stamp that differentiated them from the rest, and suppressed those characteristics that, by fashion or by contemporary beliefs, were not acceptable.

Thus, the 'Garden of Eden' or 'Earthly Paradise' myth has characteristic central trees such as the Nordic Yggdrasil and the golden apple tree of Iddun (in Asgard) that granted immortality, the central tree of the Samoyeds (Siberia-Mongolia), the Mesoamerican Ceiba -sometime linked to the Milky Way-, the Celtic and Gaelic Biles, the Hindu Ashvattha and the wish tree (Kalpavriksha), the 'Eternal Fig Tree' (Akshaya Vata) in the Ganges, the 'Persian Gaokerena' (Haoma plant) that appears in the Avesta, the 'Tree of the Egyptian Life' (an acacia) from which arose several of the creator gods of the Ennead such as Geb, Nut, Shu and Tefnut, and the 'Sacred Sycamore' that separated the kingdoms of the living and the dead, the 'Sacred Fig Tree' where the Buddha attained enlightenment (Samadhi), the Chinese peach whose fruit gave immortality, the biblical 'Tree of Knowledge' and 'Tree of Life' at eastern side of Paradise watched by a cherub, whose apples would give eternal life, the Hebrew Kabbalah, and the apple tree in the Greek 'Garden of the Hesperides'. In central Africa (Senegal) they adore the tree 'Somb' or 'Saas', a species of acacia, as axis of the world. Mosesâ€&#x; staff, Asclepiusâ€&#x; staff (caduceus), the rod of Hermes (Thoth), or the Eastern Kundalini, also match the myth of the axis of existence between a physical and a spiritual world. Many of them were guarded by dragons or snakes.

A number of writers on the star tradition identified the dragon that guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides as the constellation of Draconis (whose main star Thuban reigned at the pole thousands of years ago -although it does not 20

have to correspond to the current precession cycle of 26,000 years but could refer to a previous one-). Von Dechend explains that when Draco was at the top of the polar tree, the ecliptic was on the same plane as the equator. This meant that days and nights were the same throughout the year. There was an "eternal spring" (the golden age or legend of the 'Purple Dawn'). Then, due to some great misfortune (cataclysm), the plane of the ecliptic separated from the plane of the equator and the axis of the Earth was tilted. The serpent (Draco constellation) was torn down.

Modern scholars of mythology such as Marija Gimbutas8 or Joseph Campbell bet on the existence of a European-style civilization prior to the advent of the well-known story (the one that begins in the Fertile Crescent and Sumer). Sioux (Lakota), Iroquois, Navajos and other North American tribes have traditions about a tree that acts as the axis of the world, that separates the material world from that of the spirits; material world that sits on the back of a turtle. Columns, celestial pillars and sacred mountains* are in the center of the cosmos. [* Later, I understood that this symbolism had a link with the celestial phenomena of the ancient Earth, when the electrically charged plasmaspheres of the planets thrived and made contact physicists like A. Peratt experimentally demonstrated that plasma figures similar to disks , celestial wheels and pillars could have been generated in the sky, as now happens with the aurora borealis-].

Along with the central axes and trees of life, there are the primordial mountains. The Greeks had the omphalos (stone venerated in the oracle of Delphi), left by Zeus, that symbolized the center of the world, the Pelasgos or Arcadia (land of Arkhas), in Mesopotamia it was talked about a mount full of cedars called Mashu, the Phoenicians or Canaanites wrote about the Guruma mountains that separated heaven and earth, and the twin Targhizizi and Tharumagi mountains that held the 8

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299595827_Marija_Gimbutas_Old_E urope_Goddesses_and_Gods_and_the_Transformation_of_Culture

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firmament9. In the Egyptian Heliopolis had the "Iunu" or pillar of the north (Mehet), there was the primitive mound that gave rise to the Benben, emerged from the primordial waters of Nu, in the myth of Ra. In the Bible appear Mount Nisir and Ararat (Flood). In Tiahuanaco some assimilate the platform called Kalasasaya with 'Kailasa' (a mountain where Shiva and Kubera lived analogous to Mount Meru) of Sanskrit. And, of course, in the Hindu cosmology, Mount Meru is the center and axis of it.

The adventures of Moses narrated in the Hebrew Exodus, fit perfectly in the Acadian stories of Sargon, Oedipus in Greece, Romulus and Remus in Rome, or Karna in the Mahabharata, all of them children abandoned in a basket and raised by third parties10.

Another mythical archetype is that of miraculous births11 or virginal conceptions, such as that of Jesus by Mary, Isaac by Sarah (the woman of Abraham who was infertile), the prophet Melchizedek of Sofonim (the wife of Nir, Noah's brother); Zoroaster (prophet of parsism) whose mother conceived him from a beam of light; Aphrodite (Venus) born of the foam of sea without intervention of his father Ouranos (Uranus), whose genitals were thrown into the ocean by his son Cronos (Saturn) after castrating him; the Hindu god Mithra (associated with Varuna, god of heaven), who was Ahura-Mazda (god of light) for the Iranians, was incarnated in the rock; the story of Horus born of Isis (impregnated by the phallus of the dead Osiris); Krishna himself ('Ramayana'), whose mother Devaki conceived by the spirit of Vishnu; the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) was the fruit of an extraordinary birth when his mother Fubao was struck by a lightning from the Big Dipper; Lao-Tze was conceived when her mother contemplated a shooting star while she was leaning against a plum tree; Muhammad according to the Koran was born of Aminah, who had a vision in which the 9

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-8949/2008/T131/014048/meta https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2016/04/10/anthony-peratt-part-2-backboneof-the-sky/ http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/4287072/?reload=true 10 http://www.fortfairfieldjournal.com/fte/060717.html https://forward.com/articles/9812/the-subversion-of-myth/ 11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_births#Hinduism

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angels visited her and reported that she will soon give birth to a child; Huitzilopochtli (Aztec sun god) born of Coatlicue who was pregnant by feathers that she put on her breast; about Quetzalcoatl there are several stories that make him born of a virgin named Chimalman, to whom the god Ometeotl appeared in a dream, others say that his mother conceives him when he swallows an emerald; the Mayan goddess Ixquic spoke to the beheaded head of Hun Hunaphu in the Xibalba (underworld), who spit on her hand and made her pregnant, giving birth to Hunaphu and XbalanquĂŠ; and many more stories.

Many of these stories are closely linked to the legends about father gods, who are defeated by their sons (El Elyon-Baal Hadad, Satan-Yahweh, Hun-Hunahpu-Vucub Caquix), often castrating them or throwing them thunderbolts, darts or arrows, a story that in some cultures is replicated more than once, in the next generation of gods (Ouranos-Cronos-Zeus, Anu-EnkiEnlil, Osiris-Seth-Horus). Some peoples did not organize the divine hierarchies by military ploys, but the features of parents and children were identical as in the case of the Germanic mythology with Ymir-Odin-Thor or the Hindu of BrahmaVishnu-Shiva.

Strives among the gods were partially solved in open wars, where one of the sides are not called gods but titans, giants, demons, or fallen angels. The Helenistic 'Titanomachy' is the best known, but there are other, as the Eridu Genesis (war between Tiamat and her monsters and Marduk), the Canaanite giants (Rephaim -spirits or giants - Anakim or giants, Nephilim or fallen angels), Viracocha and the destruction of the giants by a flood12, the war between the Aesir and Vaenir and the Ragnarok, and the Asuras and Daityas bickerings in India.

These legends and many more have been preserved in the Bible (Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran -Septuagint, Pentateuch etc.- and manuscripts of Nag Hamadi -New Testament-); Popol Vuh and Mayan Codices [Dresden, Madrid, Paris, Borgia, Grolier...], the 'Pyramids Texts' (Unas and Tethys), or the 'Texts of the 12

http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Ho-Iv/Inca-Mythology.html

23

sarcophagi' that gave rise to the appearance of the well-known' Book of the Dead' ('Papyrus of Ani') whose literal translation is 'Book of those who return during the day'.

Hindu literature is one of the most extensive: the Mahabharata (includes the Bhagavat Gita), the Ramayana, the Puranas (among which is the Bhagavata Purana or Srimad Bhagavatam), and the Upanishads (whose summary is the Mandukya), and includes the Four Vedas; the Rig Veda (hymns to the gods), Yajur Veda (formulas of ritual offerings), Sama Veda (songs and melodies), and Atharva Veda (store of knowledge for everyday life). The Nordics have the Poetic (Old) and Prose Edda, the Avesta in Zoroastrianism, the Qur'an in Islam, and the Greek classics: Hesiod‟s Theogony, Ovid‟s Metamorphosis, and even the Homer‟s Iliad and the Odyssey.

The Canaanites have few texts in cuneiform script, among which the 'Texts of Ugarit' and the 'Cycle of Baal'13 have been preserved, which Jewish scholars pretend to set into the history of Israel, when Israel did not exist until 1948.

Along with the Sanskrit texts, the oldest ones come from the Sumerian, Acadian (and later from Mesopotamian-Babylonian) texts. Among them are the Epic of Atrahasis, the Eridu Genesis, the Enuma Elish (Creation) and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Many of the stories from them I have described -and others I have not-. It is manifest that they all contain the same plots, the same arguments whose characters take different forms and names.

Therefore, it is not easy to discern which one is copy and which one the source, except for its supposed antiquity.

13

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27924890 http://www.israel-a-historyof.com/ugarit.html

24

III.- SCIENTIFIC LEGENDS (Carmen Hill)

“...Many actual scientists, without realising, have undergone metaphysics of matter and mechanicism and regard it as the great expression of scientific truth.”

-Louis de BroglieI still didn‟t know Lucy but later on I knew that her influence drove Hal to seriously consider the possibility that the tales of antiquity had some relation to celestial phenomena. This led him to choose the most extreme possibility of all those he had envisaged in his investigation about the origin of the solar system; the most at odds to traditional ideas and which required a foundational and conceptual revolution in the world of physics, by questioning gravity as a fundamental interaction of nature. Firstly, he had not expressed his views openly in his previous paper submitted for review, fearing of not being supported by his colleagues, and because he had submitted an application for the position of Computer Modelling Associate of Plasma Physics at Princeton. But knowing that he was not alone and seeing that young talents were interested in his theories, he was encouraged to publish his true opinion.

Meanwhile, Alan, who had tried to contact Hal through the University's mail address without success, begins to obsess over the idea that there is a conspiracy to prevent his communication. Together with his personal situation, mostly due to professional attacks, this was unsettling his emotional balance. We all must find that special person, a guru who provides us with a key element with which to wage our own battle. I think I meant that for him unwillingly. So, in order he didn‟t lose his temper, I helped him to find Halton Wheeler, thanks to my former professor of philology, Dunn Scranton, who was now practicing in Quebec.

After exchanging a few emails, he indicated a telephone number to speak with the Department of Astrophysics of the Physics Faculty at Hudson Bay University. Two days later, the first phone conversation took place between them, and soon 25

they were exchanging technical information. "There may be some kind of blockade or surveillance", he wrote literally in his initial messages, though to Halton Wheeler these things seemed like conspiracy theories. The only certain thing is that the initial mails from Australia were lost in an internet server and did not go through the University's firewall.

“There is something that draws my attention to theories of that kind”, he used to tell me. Sometimes, while meditating, I could not prevent my thoughts from arising in an anarchic way. I was seeing Alan like being possessed, not in a pejorative or demonic sense, but as if some ancestor of his, or the spirit of one of the scientists he admired most, materialized inside him, instilling him with his knowledge.

Alan was convinced that the origin of the solar system was not as stable as the commonly accepted nebular theories or their modern derivatives, the „Grand Tack‟ and the „Nice Model‟, claim. If so, there was the possibility that the initial solar system was a binary system, as most systems are found to be actually born as such14 (a claim widely debated now). And if some planets were captured by the Sun, after their formation, their stabilization process may have been chaotic and slow.

Other large planets, satellites, or comets may have modified their orbits recently -at astronomical or geological scale- which provided the mechanism he needed to conclude his theory.

The eighteenth century Nebular Theory, the ideas of a perennial geographical poles and that Hadley cells were the explanation of all the deserts of the world, were not the only legends promoted to the category of scientific theories. The most toxic, brazen and extreme were the Big Bang, worthy of belonging to the philosophers of the sixteenth century and more metaphysical than any other, and the Abiogenesis Theory, which without experiment or observational evidence claims that life comes from non-life, or inert matter. They were a source of skirmishes between theists and other religious factions and recalcitrant atheists. Not to mention the theory „On the Origin 14

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-evidence-stars-born-pairs.html

26

of Speciesâ€&#x;, whose own instigator, C. Darwin, acknowledged that it should be discarded if no evidence were found, which has happened.

Halton Wheeler had felt a similar calling, and according to Lucy, with whom I also communicated in parallel with our partners, was at a crossroads. Making public his ideas about mass and gravity meant crossing a threshold, starting a path that had no turning back.

27

IV.- SERENDIPITY (Alan Hapgood)

“In any activity, it is sometimes healthy top ut a question mark on those things that usually are given for granted.�

-Bertrand RussellWhen exchanging documentation and opinions, I was already sure that the current desertification situation was caused by a change in the rotational earth axis, that is, in the location of the geographical poles, and I realized that this displacement was originated when our planet was captured by our current star, the Sun. Mr. James Lyell was dean of Geology Faculty at Menindee University, but he was not the oldest member there and it was rumored, behind the scenes, that he had been handpicked promoted. Lyell verbally admonished me by reminding me that I would be isolated and shunned by my mates and colleagues. Even so, I not only published my corollary on a rapid displacement of the earth's crust, but gave scientific support to Hal in his controversial theory. Lyell and Nicolas Cuvier, vice-Chancellor of the Council of the Most Important Australian Universities (the Go8), tried to scorn me in each of the meetings, classes and conferences in which they participate, warning the students that this is what happens when someone insists on going against the mainstream.

Something that I had not included in my paper, but that caught my attention was to look for a generic process that could explain the disposition of all the deserts around the world. The Hadley cells, plus the Ferrel and Polar cells, explain the rising movements of the hot air and its descent on cooling every 30 degrees of latitude, north or south. This would cause land desiccation and its desertification over time in the areas of descent. This mechanism is valid for the Sahara, the Kalahari, Arabian Desert and the Middle East and Iran. The Taklamakan in Xingjian, China, is somewhat heeled to the north and the Gobi and Patagonia are hemmed too far north and south respectively. My theory of the displacement of the poles, and 28

with them of the terrestrial equator, could explain with the same process described by Hadley the great majority of desert landscapes without resorting to meteorological phenomena almost impossible to verify, since the climate is a chaotic system whose initial conditions we do not know, which does not allow us to go back into the past for a long time.

My research took a few months but I think it was worth it. In the Argentine desert the glaciers advanced at the end of the period known as Dryas15. In Tanzania you see a termination of the muzzle suddenly 11,500 years ago16. In Kenya, lakes Natron and Magadi obtained two lake maximums, a sign of a possible increase in temperature (if the rotation axis was displaced, the equator went from being inclined to the latitude of Giza to be at the latitude of Kenya, where it is today). In New Zealand, glaciers such as Franz Josef advanced (the equator went north)17. In Tibet, that was only a few degrees from the equator, glaciers advanced considerably towards the end of the Pleistocene18, moving southward, leaving the Himalayas at about 35 degrees of north latitude.

Tropical animal fossils were found in many arctic areas 19 such as Siberia20, from parrots and saber-toothed lions21 to mammoths22 -which was tropical or ยกat least temperate!23 They have been found frozen in the permafrost for 12,000 years.

Another proof that the current poles were not the cold zones they are today.

- I think that, at the moment, I will not publish the theory on the deserts -I told Carmen during the dinner-. Things have not 15

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379112004076 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GC001465/full 17 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17838426 18 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618296000250 19 http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/grisly-find-suggests-humans-inhabitedarctic-45000-years-ago 20 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2051781/fossil-of-tropical-parrot-found-in-icysiberia-leaves-scientists-stunned/ 21 https://www.zmescience.com/science/geology/cave-lion-cub-27102015/ 22 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11430-010-4001-4 23 Mammoth was not a polar animal but tropical (adapted to temperate ones) https://www.livescience.com/6409-woolly-mammoths-survived-arctic-cold.html 16

29

settled yet after the paper about geographical poles, and although both issues are related, it would be counterproductive to cover more than I can.

- You should try to see what you feel when you say things.

Meditation would help you in that, sweetheart.

- I feel we cannot do everything we want.

- You're wrong. We can. Tomorrow at 6.30 Iâ€&#x;ll wake you up.

A casual discovery derived from my research on the displacement of the poles. My theory about the formation of deserts was a case of serendipity.

30

V.- NORTH POLE MEETING (Lucy Drake)

“Read. Believe or not, but read. And the vibration inside will awake an answer in your soul.”

-La Tabla Esmeralda (Hermes Trismegisto)Hal had been contacting Alan on the internet for several weeks and telling me his situation. I try to be an empathic person and I can‟t bear seeing how a person, who simply wants to find out the truth, is unfairly insulted, no matter if it is in the field of science, history or law. Knowing that Carmen, Alan's partner, was my colleague moved us to get in touch, although she changed her job to that of language historian, and anthropology was just a little more than a hobby.

My birthday is at the end of October, so I decided to invite them to Canada for the celebration. Alan had been given a 'forced break' until Christmas -to smooth the situation- and, since Carmen worked telematically, it was no hurdle to spend two weeks in Hudson Bay, meeting Hal and escaping the tension that had been generated in Menindee, his residence in New South Wales (Australia). A former university partner of Hal, an award-winning geophysicist Dr. Richter Kross, gets into a rage when he reads Alan's paper and writes a very aggressive professional article against him, coming to accuse him of having creationist tendencies and putting his religious beliefs before the scientific method. Although Alan tries to defend himself by answering that he is agnostic and that, in any case, he does not believe in gods created in the image of man, the "slander that something is left" works and many colleagues start to regard him a „pseudoscientist‟.

One of the nights during their visit, we went to dinner at a restaurant in Saguenay, basically to not only talk about work.

Hal and I went to pick up Alan and Carmen at their hotel and, as it was early, we spent a nice walk around the Parc de la Rivière-du-Moulin, a beautiful environment fostered by the 31

weather bonanza on those dates, and we devoted ourselves to know each other. Carmen was a very spiritual person, a habitual practitioner of mindfulness. Iâ€&#x;d rather yoga and pilates, which I try to do every day at dawn, so we decided to meet in the morning. Unfortunately, the temperature is not ideal at these latitudes to stay in the park, so Hal suggested that they could come home, since we had rooms to spare and he and Alan were going to the University early. When the sun went down, we entered the dining-room.

During the desserts we heard an explosion; then police sirens and fire-fighters that, fortunately, were in the area try to quell the fire of the new BMW property of Hal. The Policie Chief told us that it is possible that the act was intentional because he had found a carafe of melted gasoline in nearby garbage containers.

- Who may want to burn a scientist's car? I thought. You have no enemies, I said to Hal. - To a greater or lesser extent, we all have. It could be a side effect of 'Saturnâ€&#x;s Collision'.

- It does not seem that they wanted to harm you, but to scare you.

- If their intention was to discourage me, these things are only giving more publicity to the book and scientific papers.

That would be the final push. Evoking his warrior spirit made him determined to fight for something more than science; it was a matter of getting the answers himself. An inside adventure full of dangers that Hal knew he should explore despite the risks. I was there to support him. Like Carmen, perhaps because women have that psychological nuance to convince men, I knew that if we managed to appeal to Alan's pride, it would give him the strength to follow Hal's example. I could not say that Hal became Alan's mentor, but they did share a goal, a vision, maybe a sensation or a feeling, perhaps a consciousness.

32

VI.- COERCION, TURMOIL AND MOCKERY (Lucy Drake) “First you will be ignored, then you will be laughed, after you will be attacked, and finally you will win.”

-Mahatma GandhiThe birthday was that same weekend and the party was already organized; something humble and informal among friends, because Lucy's family lived in the United Kingdom, Hal's family had already passed away and they were still under the shock of the vehicle incident. Economically, it was not a serious problem since the car was fully insured and the insurance company was running the costs and even provide us a good replacement 4-wheel drive car. I stayed with Carmen to go shopping in Quebec, while the boys were in the university where they used to eat when Hal finished his classes.

I ran into Graham Talbosky, whom I met at one of his conferences in Eton, at a shopping center, and I introduced him to my new friend. I believed in his ideas, although I was not convinced, like the rutenian, that Baalbek is the oldest archaeological remains of a Mother Civilization. Anyway, I knew what I had to do was to check things out for myself as Hal always told me. We were both very intrigued by the work of the historian and archaeologist and decided to invite him to the party to continue talking.

- Well, I think they're watching me out at my university, Alan said.

- How is that? –Hal and Graham asked in unison sketching a grimace of indignation and disbelief.

- I am advising some students for their masters and certain ideas going against the grain have arrived to the geophysics department. And I don‟t think that students go against their own interests.

- Something similar happened to me in El Cairo. The President of the Archaeological Council of Egypt, Karrar Zahi, accused 33

me of trying to illegally remove antiquities, but the accusation proved false.

- ¿What was it about? Carmen asked, stung by curiosity.

- A couple of german archaeologists who appeared in a documentary where I was also interviewed, scratched a cartridge engraved in a pyramid to get a sample of an ochre tint, in order to analyse it. Because of their youth and inexperience, I suppose, they did not even ask permission to do so; although Zahi would have never granted it. The fact is that they got the dust, and it was told to the press that the cartridge had been damaged and tried to be stolen by those archaeologists. Zahi, who does not like my theories about Ancient Egypt and its origins, maybe because he has committed too much to his own ones and he would lose influence, power and prestige, accused me of hiring them to steal or destroy the seal. He recklessly said bullshit, and that I did it to promote a theory according to which the egyptians did not build the pyramids, and that I wanted to attribute their building to the jews, and put together a political mess. Everyone who knows me knows that I do not profess any religion, because I am agnostic. Nor have I ever said anything about the hebrew origin of egyptian monuments. The affair is in the hands of lawyers24.

- Thank you for the gifts, -I said- It wasn‟t necessary.

- It„s funny and curious that all of them are related to Egypt commented Talbosky-. Anyhow it is logical given that I live there. By the way, when you go to El Cairo consider yourselves as my guests.

Hal had booked me a cruise on the Nile for Easter, a place I wished to visit. The historian presented to me a beautiful vase of green diorite, from his property, one of those antiques that only a professional can find in unofficial excavations carried out by the natives of the country. Carmen and Alan, who had a stopover in El Cairo, bought us two beautiful alabaster statues they saw in a duty-free with the images of Isis and Osiris.

24

https://www.civradio.com/index.php/civ-news/civilization-list-menu/egyptianmenu/75-the-curious-case-of-the-cartouche-of-khufu

34

At the moment of blowing the candles, Carmen urged me to make a wish, so without thinking twice I expressed my desire to visit Tiahuanaco, which captivated me since I read the work of Arthur Posnansky. They are undoubtedly one of the oldest ruins in the world. However, Graham was trying to convince me that Baalbek should be earlier and we decided to prepare an 'expedition'. I suggested Carmen and Alan to join us, knowing that their state of affairs in Australia was far from ideal, and that they had plenty of free time. Unfortunately Hal must stay in Canada for his classes and must outline his second paper „on the origin of mass and gravityâ€&#x;. For him that was going to purport a point of no return; publishing his ideas about mass and gravity, his image was going to be damaged, and though he did not cared, he knew that he would have difficulties at work.

He was going to face them.

35

VII.- A FANATIC RELIGION (Mario Espejo)

“I think modern physics has leaned towards Plato. In fact, elemental units of matter are not physical objects; but forms, ideas that can be expressed, without ambiguity in a mathematical language.”

-Werner HeisenbergIn Bolivia, Graham told us his own experience in this regard when he moved from country to country. After finishing his studies in Minsk, he moved to Moscow to study history. He made masters in ancient history, and while teaching in institutes in France and Great Britain, he studied archeology. His trips and investigations through the eldest ruins in the world made him dream, in many opportunities, oddities like that the history that he had been taught did not make any sense. His rational part refused to accept it, until he began to study mythology.

Soon after, he moved to Egypt, meeting an indigenous archaeologist named Abdel, who, in addition to his friend, became a guide. His first book was about Egypt, and it addressed thorny issues such as the function of the pyramids, which in no case considered graves, but left open several possibilities. Another topic that elicited the animosity of the archaeological elite was the appointed antiquity of certain temples such as the Osireion in Abydos and the Temple of the Sphinx on the Giza plateau. Since then, his path opened before him clearly.

During a night walk through La Paz, paradoxically (Paz means „peace‟), Alan and Carmen are assaulted by two europeanlooking individuals, a bald bloke and a military style shaved hair geezer, and both armed with a punch and knives. The thieves demand money from them, although they seem more interested in bothering the scientists, asking how they earn their livings and taunting and labeling them as "pseudoscientists" that just say nonsenses and live on the money of the people.

When the situation gets tense and they try to mess with 36

Carmen, cutting a couple of buttons off her sweater, I appeared surprisingly behind the assailant. Thanks to my workouts in the gym and my wanderings around the world, which forced me to learn to fend for myself and gain self-defense knowledge, I grabbed the hand that held the razor and twisted it into a Steven Seagal style jujitsu movement, forcing him to release it. I was careless, so that the other 'thief' left Alan, pushing me and taking advantage to escape.

- Are you OK? -I asked for.

- Yes, thank you. I did not expect this kind of reception, -said the geologist, who was already more relaxed.

- It seems they just wanted to scare you. This city does not have a high crime rate.

- Anyway they have taken just a few American and Canadian dollars that we had in cash - added Carmen offering a smile to her benefactor as a reward-. I think they wanted this gold-plated choker, a gift from my parents. Its value is more sentimental than pecuniary. Fortunately, you arrived on time.

- Mario Espejo, to serve you. Engineer in the process of becoming a paleontologist, I introduced myself. - Address to me informally, please.

- Pleased to meet you -answered the Australian-. My partner Carmen Hill philologist and I am Alan Hapgood, geologist from Australia.

- I can accompany you wherever you wish. I have my vehicle nearby.

During the trip to the hotel they told me about the problems arising from Alan's work and how they had met Hal Wheeler, Lucy Drake and the historian Graham Talbosky, from whom I had already read several things. I profited of the situation to show my interest in getting to know him.

Meanwhile, at the north end of the continent, Hal holds a tense conversation with the rector of his University, Immanuel Laplace, and the Director of Astronomy Department, Albert Oldtown. With fine words they urge him to revise his revolutionary ideas, but with his radical attitude, our friend 37

attacks the arguments of his fellow guests, which were only supported by socio-economic reasons. He asked them if they have read Newton, his description of gravity and mass, and the concept of matter. He restrained himself and did not tell them that his credulous attitude was not scientific at all, but, rather, proper to a religion. Something that Hal, had to learn was that it is impossible to convince anyone of anything. Of course, they refuse to listen to him.

38

VIII.- GLUT, SCREW AND FUCK AROUND (Carmen Hill) “After learning quantum mechanics you are not the same anymore.”

-Steven WeinbergThe cell phone rang when he was in the shower. It was late and he did not know the number so he did not return the call. It was an intense day, because of the classes and because he had stayed up late preparing the documentation he had to present to complete the dossier on the research project about Herbig Haro objects. It was about two in the afternoon, when, at the Hudson Bay University restaurant, he took his cell phone out of the silent mode. Three calls counting that morning. All from the same unknown number.

- Hi Halton, how's it going? A voice on the other side of the line sounded, without waiting for Hal, who had dialed, to say a word.

- Excuse me, who is it? I have several calls...

- I'm Richter Kross, from the university.

- Oh yeah. I remember you. We study paleomagnetism and geochronology in the faculty.

- And waves and lightning theory. I lost your track. I knew about you when you published that paper. You became popular among a few ones.

- Many subjects that I haven‟t made us of. I preferred astrophysics.

- You exposed some pretty curious possibilities. Let's see if one day we can meet and talk about them.

- Actually, I'm pretty messed up with my book and the paper, I've neglected even the tutorials. By the way, where are you working?

- Aha. 'Saturn‟s Collision', a beautiful novel. Now I'm in New Haven with De Gris.

- Who? -Hal said confused.

39

- Charles De Gris, lad. The one who appears in NASA documentaries. Do not you watch TV? - Ah, I know, well... well, I don‟t really like it, but I don‟t have time either.

- As clueless as ever. -He laughed in his particular guise-. By the way, have you heard about the Australian scandal?

- Australia? What happened?

- A colleague of mine from a two-bit university published a ridiculous theory about the displacement of the terrestrial poles.

I do not know how there are still journals that dare to allow that.

- I know that job. In fact, I spoke with that man last week.

- My god. I hope you did not listen to him. That hypothesis has no basis. It is not strange that he is receiving so much criticism in his country. I think he's one of those damn creationists who put their beliefs and their ideology before the scientific method.

- He looked like a very sensible person, and his arguments and papers cite dozens of in-situ geological investigations that prove his thesis.

- That's impossible; there are hundreds of scientists who will tell you that the poles have always been in the same place. The islands of Queen Elizabeth, for example, were covered with perpetual ice during the Pleistocene up to the Straits of Nares and Greenland, as well as Northern Europe covered by a huge glacial layer of several kilometers. Everybody knows. I advise you, do not make such friendships.

- Precisely he showed me geologists papers and other reports and publications in 'Nature' and other specialized magazines about northern Canadian islands that reveal there were no such ice, while several islands of the South Pacific Ocean between Australia and the Kerguelen had it. Why don‟t you argue with him? 25 25

https://notendur.hi.is/oi/AG326%202006%20readings/Canadian%20Arctic/Dyke_QSR99.pdf http://noblegas.berkeley.edu/~balcs/pubs/ISAES_Heard.pdf https://creation.com/fossil-evidence-points-to-scandinavian-ice-age-forests

40

- I prefer not to deal with creationists. I already wrote an article correcting him. In addition, he did not present any credible mechanism to explain that TPW (True Polar Wander).

- I don‟t think Hapgood is a creationist. I recall he‟s agnostic.

On the other hand, I can think of several mechanisms that can explain it, and they have nothing to do with the theories of Einstein and Charles Hapgood, nor with Apollo objects or weak internal geological forces, as some scientists have suggested.

- I repeat that you shouldn‟t give credibility to that guy. Your professional consideration is already in doubt enough -Kross's voice unveiled some indignation. . Sorry, I'm having lunch and this afternoon I have tutorials, as well as a dossier for an investigation...

- Okay, I'm leaving but I advise you do not to get into it way over your head. Enjoy your meal.

And he hung up without giving me time to say goodbye.

After passing by the police station and filing the corresponding complaint, we decided to return to the hotel with Mario, where Graham and Lucy were discussing the itinerary in the cafeteria.

After the introductions, Mario offered to guide us to PumaPunku because he had been living here for three years and knew the place well. He was an extroverted person of Latin character, and Italian origin, according to what he told us and he was skilled in several languages.

- I once read a story about the murder attempt of an Indian or oriental nationality Nobel Prize candidate nationality, I do not remember. It came to light that a fanatical atheist association, known by Interpol as ATHEA, was behind.

- What was its ideology?

- I do not know. It seems that they extorted, blackmailed and harassed theists of all faiths, Shiite Muslims, creationist

http://sciencenordic.com/trees-survived-ice-age-scandinavia http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618211001510

41

Christians or Jehovah's Witnesses. Some vandalism and little more were attributed to them.

- I've heard of some lobbies like that, related to escraches and pressure groups in education policy, Lucy said.

- There was a law proposal to change the rhetorical structure of the educational system in my country, based on the Aristotelian Authority Criterion and the Common Belief Criterion -which is the one implanted in most universities of the planet- to a more dynamic and dialectic or Socratic one. That guy, Kross, who criticized me and accused me of being a creationist, acted as a consultant, and opposed to change the educational model.

- It is hard to believe that scientists get to the point of getting rid of somebody simply for having ideas that dispute their views.

- Anyway…

- What a coincidence. We found a private guide unexpectedly.

-I said, changing the subject.

- It will be a good deal for me. I don‟t pretend to bore you with my story but I emigrated from Europe fleeing from the western whirl. I thought that here I would find answers; something pulled me to these Andean civilizations. I've been studying paleontology for several years but I've stalled.

- If you need help or want to consult any paleontology topic from the geological perspective, don‟t hesitate to say so. It is the least we can do.

- Tell us Mario, why did you feel so oppressed with Western life? -Lucy and I asked, while our eyes crossed amazed.

- The current society is too materialistic. Studying the beginnings of civilization I was convinced that the first cultures, probably all matriarchal, were more in contact with people, and with their inner self. And it wasn‟t because money didn‟t exist.

- It's an educational problem again, I said. It‟s taught in schools.

Just to believe. To compete.

42

- My partner, Hal, always says that people today only think about glutting, screwing around and fucking the others around.

Thatâ€&#x;s the need of money.

The H-shaped blocks of Tiahuanaco had amazed us, although Alan said they were not exactly identical, so they were not mass produced. The site had been covered by mud for a long time, and by dating organic ceramic remains from the deeper layers the official historiography reported the site in about 2,000 years. The archaeoastronomy showed alignments with the solstices of 17,000 ago. The materials must have been brought from faraway places and were accurately carved, filled with aligned holes that could not be made with primitive tools.

In the semi-subterranean temple there are megaliths with surprising figures, which left Graham perplexed, as they didnâ€&#x;t agree with the typology of the current South American races.

Strange animals carved in some stones were also found in ceramic pieces, -Mario told us-. Apparently it was even found a skull of one of those animals, which belonged to a species called Taxodon, which lived during the Pliocene but persisted until the end of the Pleistocene, disappearing along with the Megatherium. The strangest thing was that these animals could hardly live at such altitude, because they are supposed to inhabit warm climates.

Some of the rocks are still magnetized today, in such a way that the compasses do not stop moving when we point to them.

Thanks to our new friend and a local guide we could see a narrow tunnel that connects the pyramid of Akapana with the semi-subterranean temple inside which hung stalactites of more than 50 centimeters; that at the supposed growth rate would place the pyramid beyond 10,000 BC. Whatever the truth, whatever the bearded Caucasian figures represent, it seems that they have some relationship with Sumer (as shown in Fuente Magna Bowl), Egypt, Gobekli Tepe and Pacific islands such as Easter Island, whose Moais have been covered with 10 meters of sediments in the middle of the ocean.

43

IX.- MARIO’S JOURNEYS (Graham Talbosky)

“Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: „The flag is moving‟. The other said: „The wind is moving‟. The sixth patriarch was passing by and told to them: „neither the wind, nor the flag. The mind is moving‟.”

-Ekai, Mumon, The Gateless Gate- Tonight we can contact Hal, -said Lucy who wanted to talk to him-. He said he is connecting by video conference about nine, after dinner.

- Perfect, we can have dinner at home -Mario noticed- and connect my computer to the plasma screen so that we can all see it well.

The menu commissioned by Mario was strictly Bolivian. He had promised them an autochthonous meal and we indeed had it. It started with smoked yucca (cassava) sonso, accompanied by chilli noodles with spicy veal, silpancho (a type of beef pie in the style of a Milanese), and anticucho, some brochettes of meat with potatoes made on the grill. The bread was „cuñapé‟, a cake of cassava flour with cheese. The chuflay drink, a mixture of ginger ale and singani (a white grape muscat), and mocochinchi for desserts, a sweet drink made from dehydrated peaches boiled with clove, cardamom and cinnamon that is then cooled, and that matched well with the humintas, fresh grated sweet corn with cinnamon and raisins, wrapped in corn and, of course, also cooked on the grill.

Together with the desserts came the time of the remote connection with Hudson Bay; the formal introductions and greetings, and the update of the respective academic journeys.

Jumping from one topic to another, descriptions of beautiful places and the typical climatological topics, we came to comment on ancient human cities. Mario was an educated and affluent, though not opulent. His great interest in ancient 44

history had led him to visit many of the oldest known ruins in the world.

- Let's see that I remember -explained the host- I've been in Caral and SechĂ­n Bajo, where we'll be the day after tomorrow, Cuzco, Pisac, Cave Guitarrero, La Joya, Las Ventas, Calakmul, Tres Zapotes, Cholula in Puebla, Tikal, Palenque in America. I visited some remote amazonian places where I had experiences with shamans and drank ayahuasca.

- In Europe I visited Pompeii, Sardinia, Carnac, Stonehenge, Malta, Santorini, Athens, Crete, Catal Hoeyuk, Derinkuyu in Cappadocia, Konya Basin in Anatolia and Gobekli Tepe in Turkey; and short getaways in Castulo in Linares (Spain), Estaçao and Coninbriga in Portugal, ruins of Troy; Kokino in Macedonia, Varna in Bulgaria, and not forget about seeing stone spheres in the Kola Peninsula, next to Finland and New Zembla.

- In Africa, Carthage, Mauritania, Giza, Heliopolis, Abydos, Aswan, Nabta Beach on the border of Sudan and Uweinat in Chad.

- In Asia Uruk, Eridu, Ravy and Ubar or Iram -as you prefer- in Iran; Kyzil next to Mongolia; Harappa and Mojenho Daro in the Indus Valley, Dwarka and Lothal in Gujarat, Mahabalipuram and Barabar Caves in India; Lumbini in Nepal, Angkor Wat and Prasat Phum in Cambodia; Xi'An and Henan in China and Chersky -Pleistocene Park- in the Northeast of Russia. I lack the area of Syria: Sidonia, Byblos, Aleppo, Damascus, Palmira, Tell Hamoukan and Tell Qaramel because they were at war at the moment I could have gone.

We were all stupefied. The silence lasted for almost ten tense seconds. There was no doubt: besides the world, the Lord had a memory.

- And next year -he pointed out laughing, perhaps to cut the silence that was becoming an embarrassing tidbit, he had planned to make a small tour of some islands: the Faroes and the Lofoten in Europe and some islands of Micronesia and Polynesia: Indonesia, Ponape, Tonga, Guam, Tinian, Hiva'Oa 45

near Tahiti, Marae Taputapuatea near Cook Islands, Pi'ilanihale Heiau in Hana -Hawaii-, Rapa Iti and Easter Island, of course.

If somebody wants to join me...

He was short of time for he to finish his sentence and for everyone to raise our hands. On the wall, Hal's voice rang delayed due to the connection lag.

- You only lack to be in Atlantis.

- That would fulfill my dream.

- First you must find it -Lucy objected.

- I have some ideas about that, -interjected with certainty.

- But... are you sure it existed? -Carmen asked.

- And if so, where is it? -Lucy added.

- Where is the Western civilization, Lucy? -I said returning the question socratically-. North America, South America, Europe, east of Asia?

- You mean Atlantis is not a specific city, or a country?

- It is rather a culture, a people in the broad sense of the word.

A civilization, if you want a wider meaning. According to Plato, it had at least ten colonies, which some people assigned to ten islands.

- Wait... I see you a bit too much confident. After all, the stories about its existence only come from Plato, -Hal said from his office.

- Donâ€&#x;t get wrong, -I answered-. There are numerous sources that talk about that ancient society. Critias and Timeus26 are the best known and where the most detailed descriptions are given but in the Book of Enoch27, which was found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, although it was not included by the Church among the official books of the Bible, it is recounted about a similar island. In Chinese mythology itâ€&#x;s written about an island to the southeast where the immortals resided28, and they link it to 26

https://archive.org/details/timaeusofplato00platiala http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/critias.html 27 The Book of Enoch http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/featured-scrolls 28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Penglai

46

what they call the Jade Mountain. Diodoro Sículo speaks of Atlantis29, Herodotus30 calls it Eritrea or locates it in that sea and Teopompo calls it Mérope placing it "beyond the ocean" and it frames it in a battle with Hyperborea31. In the temple of Edfu the walls have inscriptions with the history of the Ancients („Neteru‟) who created the religion and the primordial mounds. A celestial serpent (Seth) caused the splitting of the Ancient‟s home, which was later swallowed by the sea. It talks about the survivors who escape wandering with the pretence of rebuilding the world. It was the first time (Zep Tepi).

- Some authors, I went on, affirm that St. Augustine in his work "the City of God" speaks of an ancient advanced kingdom, others believe that he took the ideas of the myth of Deucalion and Plato. It is mentioned by the poet Pindar and Pliny the Elder32; Strabo spoke of the Iberians and other ethnic groups in the area as Atlantean colonies; and even Apolonio de Rhodas33, in charge of the Library of Alexandria wrote about the Island of the Atlantis in 'Argonáutica', and about the pillars of Hercules.

Some even establish the origin of heroes or sages such as Prometheus, Hercules, Hermes or Apollo in Atlantis.

- But Aristotle seems to have disagreed with Plato in believing the story of Socrates and Solon...

- Aristotle did not deny the existence of Atlantis as some say (some authors misinterpreted a criticism of Aristotle to Homer on the Achaeans as if addressed to Plato) 34.

- In any case, they should have a capital or an operations center, maybe it was the one that 'sank' or 'was buried', and some of their colonies, as you call them, could survive the cataclysms.

29

https://repositorio.uam.es/bitstream/handle/10486/674985/BP_12_18.pdf?sequence =1 30 https://georgeosdiazmontexano.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/herodoto-y-laatlantida-georgeos-diaz-montexano/ 31 J.L. Espejo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq-aaEDVyJ8 32 http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/tag/pliny-the-elder/ 33 Apolonio de Rhodas y 'Argonáutica' http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/tag/apolloniusof-rhodes/ 34 http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/aristotle-and-atlantis-n/

47

Alan introduced himself to the conversation, guessing that it might have some relation to his theory of Pole Displacement.

- Cataclysms, perhaps caused by the capture of a planetary system and the rearrangement of their orbits -Hal kicked jokingly, almost with a laugh, though deep down he wanted to think that the theories of all of them could fit perfectly with each other.

- I let you develop the scientific theories -I appealed while sipping my mocochinchi-. Would you like to know what my hypothesis is, because it is just an idea and, naturally, I cannot prove it? The capital you suggest was not covered by water.

- We are anxious, -said Carmen staring at Lucy, eyes wide open.

When I emptied the glass, I uttered a solemn word in a solemn tone: ยก"Antarctica"!

The conversation lasted until late in the morning, among drinks, laughter and surprises. My hypothesis amazed them so much that some of the spark that Mario had lost caught him again. He recognized that he felt these were not empty speculations and, without noticing, I would become his adviser. One of the topics that several members of the group were fascinated by was the interest of ancient cultures for astrology and astronomy. Was it due to a process of cultural diffusion by a common mother civilization or was it the result of its own technological development? And why was there so much interest in space, when his main concerns should have been to feed themselves, shelter and weather? Maybe there was a relationship between all of that.

48

X.- MEGALITHS ON THE BRINK OF THE CLIFF (Carmen Hill)

“Standard Model seems to break down in almost all possible ways, and all the failures started in the 30s. Everythings points to science having turned the wrong direction then.

After three hundred years of continually simplifying the description of the universe, with less entities and simple laws, suddenly turned around with bigger complexity and entities multiplying like rabbits.”

-D.L. HostonThe next day dawned cloudy, which was common at that time considering that we were close to the Titicaca and there was some humidity. The trip to Cuzco was long and stodgy because of the tortuous road, but a good mood prevailed in the expedition. Today it was time to visit Pisac, Sacsayhuamán and Ollantaytambo. The next day, Machu Pichu, and the following, a trip to Caral.

- It is taught that 20,000 Incas built Sacsayhuamán for 70 years, Mario explains, but there is no type of technique or mechanism for the carving or extraction, transportation or exact placement of the stones. As you can see, they are fitted in a way that does not fit a pin and does not have any mortar.

- Do you know where the stones came from? -I asked.

- The only nearby quarries are 3 km in that direction towards Sisicancha35. However, they have a different molecular structure observed with electronic microscopes. The blocks of the megalithic walls have a microcrystalline structure and those of the quarries contain even microfossils.

That led to a theory that the Incas could dissolve and reconstitute the limestone36. Something similar is said of some 35 36

Cantera Sisicancha http://old.world-mysteries.com/mpl_9.htm Sacsayhuamán Evidence Suggests Incas Could Dissolve & Reconstitute Limestone http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1116489/pg1

49

limestone blocks in Giza, although there it was directly manufactured.

- I heard that the Spaniards asked who had constructed it and when the Incas told them that they weren‟t the builders it was considered a demonic work. In fact, the Church ordered to destroy all pagan monuments and buildings, and the site was used as a quarry for the construction of cathedrals, except for the large monolithic blocks of these walls that could not be shot down by their cannons.

- You are right Graham. Think about how you are breathing just from walking and that the bigger blocks reach 360 tons.

- You seem to be fit Mario, -laughed Lucy.

- I'm used to altitude. Anyway, there is hardly enough trees here to obtain wood for transportation. The ones that you see in the area are eucalyptus trees, and they are a foreign species that did not appear in the region until the 19th century. Above, as in Tiahuanaco or Cuzco, only bushes grow.

- And why is it said that it was built by the Incas in the 15th century? I sighed as we walked.

- A historian, Cieza de León, wrote that he thought that it had been built by 20 or 30 thousand men dragging blocks up the mountain37. However, others like Garcilaso de la Vega, who grew up and lived here and was married to an Inca princess, wrote that he was completely unaware of the creation of the site and methods employed, and he marveled at the solemnity of the place.

- If in Egypt many of the constructions are inexplicable only from brute force and simple tools, imagine here without even such tools, and going up and down mountains, -Graham said.

- Perhaps the smaller stones that the Spaniards retired to make their churches were really raised by the Incas -Alan suggested.

37

Cieza de León sobre Extracción y Transporte en Ollantaytambo https://goo.gl/Ec5aTJ

50

- It is said that the Incas regarded these stones alive, -said Graham-. It is true that today we can see quite similar patterns of cellular structures but...

- It was investigated and theorized that perhaps the stones were discarded and restored with some chemical-physical process.

- It is strange that the limestone being overheated loses its properties becoming lime. It occurs to me that a hot tip if applied on a ductile material could leave some of the unexplained marks that are all over the complex. As a geologist, I think that these walls seem made earthquake proof.

I have read that even small-scale models have been made. As for what you said about transport, the limestone is brittle, especially if it was dragged by this type of soil. I do not see how it could be moved so much distance between slopes.

Back to the vehicle, Mario guided us through a detour, which he named the Inca Trail. Through steep places we come to a rocky massif where we can see several bowls and remains of visibly worked blocks, and in the mother rock itself gaps from where some of the material seemed to have been excavated.

- For the Incas many of these objects were considered sacred.

They are called „huacas‟ or „wakas‟ in the Quechua language.

The Incas had a kind of shamans, sages or teachers called 'amauta'.

- The most absurd thing of attributing these structures to the Incas is not knowing how they transmitted their obvious, great knowledge about construction, carving and transportation without writing, as their only form of information storage called „quipu‟, which consisted of knots, was a sort of an abacus.

- Science today has become a religion, where nothing of what is taught in the universities is questioned as if they were absolute truths, not even what appears on TV -commented Alan.- Completely agree -Mario said-. What is taught today in universities is mostly scientism, not science.

After two hours up and down slopes we all fancy a break for lunch, especially the girls. Graham, who was older than all of 51

us, seemed in good physical shape. Mario had hired a vehicle for the transfer in the area, and by the narrow dirt road that led to Ollantaytambo were numerous large blocks made of what I was told was rhyolite, a kind of granite, abandoned in the ditches, over which there were no transport traces or brands.

Nor would anyone bother to mount large cranes to remove them to a place where they would not disturb.

In Pisac we stayed for just an hour because we wanted to get to Ollantaytambo before it got dark. About 40 km north of Cuzco, what was left of the so-called Temple of the Sun, stood on a steep slope and precariously balanced on the precipices that our car has just crossed.

- Those blocks are... -the words did not come out, and this time it was not because of fatigue.

- This is granite, -Alan told me-, much denser and heavier than limestone.

- Mario pointed to an area on the other side of the valley, crossing the river-. ÂĄThere is the quarry!

- How the hell -not to repeat the rude word that Alan releasedthey brought these monsters from there? They weigh 50 tons each.

- And how they positioned them with that accuracy. Itâ€&#x;s one of the great mysteries of the place.

The slope was constituted by a series of narrow terraces made with small blocks like those farming terraces visible in the whole world. At the top of the cliffs there were enormous blocks and next to it a corridor with 9 windows, which really did not look anywhere because they were arranged against the hillside, was still standing. For the Spaniards, the Sacsayhuaman complex was a fortress, but according to many historians it was a cult center for the Sun and another for the Moon, and it also had some kind of relationship with the rays because of its radial structure.

52

- The French researcher J.P. Protzen conducted an experiment in 1994 with 200 natives who dragged a block of 14 tons38 -it is said. I know of an experiment with two tons moved about 150 meters. In no case does it explain to raise several blocks by a path to the edge of a precipice, which in any case, would require more than two thousand five hundred people according to some scholars.

- And where do you put them on these 'paths'? Lucy roared, rightly.

- It's as if... the blocks that were on the road... were in the ditches, some invading the road and others in the interior, at the end of the slope -said Alan thoughtfully-. It's as if they had rolled from above.

- I think I'm following you. -Graham's eyes were now shining-.

Look at the opposite slope, from here you can see about thirty large monoliths scattered downhill. What could have brought them there?

- Earthquakes? Mario asked himself. It is a very active area.

- The material should then be on the same slope, not so far from terrace to terrace.

- Water? -I spoke unthinkingly.

- Mmmm, the river is small and goes through the bottom of the hill. Unless it had suffered some deviation after its birth.

- If there was an avalanche of water and mud, it was not from below, because the blocks point towards it. The source must have come from behind the walls, the hillside itself. Alan did not seem convinced.

- What's the matter, Alan?

- It cannot be the Vilanova River, because it flows from above to below, where it becomes the Urubamba River. It would go upstream.

38

Jean Pierre Protzen Ollantaytambo experimento 14 toneladas https://goo.gl/jssoQZ

53

- We are at 2,800 meters, said our guide, and Pisac is even higher. And we have not seen there indications of this type of destruction.

- Dead end.

54

XI.- ‘MISALIGNED’ TEMPLES (Alan Hapgood)

“They believed that the foresight was dependent on following the track of things. If you knew enough, you may be able to predict anything.

That has been the belief revered by science since Newton.

Now, chaos theory has thrown it out of the window.”

-Michael CrinchtonRereading the press of Sydney, Carmen was startled to read an article in which I was branded as 'nerd' and other derogatory terms such as 'crank'. It stated that a Committee had been set up at the University of Menindee to decide if it was viable to cast me off from my professorship. I sighed. I was sure that Nicolas Cuvier was behind the affair.

- Lyell is just guy with pull. He does what he is told to. I do not think the idea of a committee is his, -I stammered as I sipped my hot coffee with a dash of milk.

- Nonetheless it seems deplorable that Lyell did not defend you if only to protect the honor of his University.

Mario asked me to explain my theory, which baffled him.

- You know, there‟s a colleague engineer who published a couple of years ago a statistical theory about the alignment of numerous ancient 'temples', 'places of worship', and megalithic sites in general, assuming that the intention of the builders was to orient them to the geographic north pole. According to the author, the great majority of ancient ruins do not seem aligned to the north because the poles had changed its position due to a phenomenon called True Polar Wander.

- Interestingly, the displacement of the geographical poles (TPW by its acronym) is accepted as valid on Mars and Venus39, but not on Earth, -exclaimed-. ¡That‟s just a bloody great!

39

TPW en Marte http://www.jstor.org/stable/24967875 Venus tiene su superficie

55

- When a series of individuals have dedicated their careers and have spent half of their lives believing in something, it is not easy for their ideas to change. In fact, in anthropology we were taught that you cannot convince anyone of their ideas when they are already settled. It is the evolution of a couple of generations, when the old guard disappears, that young people with new ideas impose different criteria, -explained Lucy who was preparing to take the plane back.

- I didn‟t know that theory, but True Polar Displacement is something accepted in modern geology40. It is assumed that when the continents were united, in the so-called Pangea, hundreds of millions of years ago-the continents 'floated', separating at a rate of one degree only every million years.

Strangely, astrophysicists claim that a faster TPW occurred on Mars. A fellow colleague published a book about a theory he had devised with the help of Einstein himself, in 1956 about the 'Displacement of the Earth Crust'. They calculated a displacement of the axis of rotation from 30 to 40 degrees in about ten or twelve thousand years.

- I‟ve read the book -confirmed the engineer-. I did a little research when I read the theory of the 'temples'. In fact, the author stated that the displacement of the lithosphere was faster than conventionally accepted but not as much as that of the book. If I remember correctly about 38 degrees in 330 thousand years. The issue is that the displacement of the crust is related to climate changes, at least during the Pleistocene. It is something more solid than explaining them only by the Milankovitch cycles.

- But that would bring severe historical consequences, Carmen said bringing the issue to her territory. rejuvenecida (actividad geológica?) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/94JE00388/abstract 40 https://www.princeton.edu/news/2006/08/25/planet-earth-may-have-tilted-keepits-balance-say-scientists http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JB090iB09p07737/full https://people.earth.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Evans/26_07cRaub+TOG%20TPW.pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/95JB01510/abstract

56

- That's right. -Mario was quick to respond, since he was expecting the question-. The author published a study with alignments of ยกmore than 500 places!41 Tracing the intersections of the alignments of all of them obtained a cloud of points, whose highest densities were between the meridians 45 and 65. He got up to five groups of intersections around the meridian 50 degrees west, that would be more or less stable positions of the pole in the past. Interestingly, the southernmost group is at latitude of 55 degrees approximately, in the area of Newfoundland or Quebec (65 degrees west) where Lucy lives, depending on the meridian we take.

- And if the North Pole was located there, the South Pole would be in the Indian Ocean, slightly south of Perth (115 degrees east) and east of the Heard and McDonald Islands, as shown by the paleo-geological data of my theory -Alan wrote with a pinch of pride Lucy Drake had returned to Canada after her successful stay in the Andes, and Graham Talbosky was on his way to Egypt, where in addition to research projects in the Baalbek area he had in mind a travel agency business, specialized in areas of historical interest co-funded with his collaborator Abdel. He was convinced that both Mario and I myself were going to take our particular leap of faith.

41

https://mariobuildreps.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Orientation-of-LatinAmerican-Pyramids-and-Temples.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKgUGDuuVB4

57

XII.- INTELECTUAL TERRORISM STRIKES AGAIN (Halton Wheeler) “What you resists, persists.”

-Carl Gustav Jung- I received your note on this year's budget. Does it mean that the number of projects will be reduced?

- You do not understand Halton. This year, the University will not grant any money for research in astronomy, theoretical, or fundamental departments. And let‟s see if there is something for the other departments of the Physics Faculty.

- I think you are exceeding yourselves -I replied, frowning.

- Remember that I warned you, -Laplace answered. The fact that the budgets are revised with the New Year has given the education authorities the right to withdraw part of the funds.

You have harmed the University.

- "Namaste," I muttered in a low voice, as I withdrew.

Scientific progress and scientific careers depend on novel ideas.

Therefore, one might expect the scientific community to embrace intellectual innovations as a blessing for progress.

Two recent studies, however, show the opposite. One examines how the presence of a prominent and established leader in a research field discourages new people from entering and presenting ideas considered unconventional. The other reveals a „bias against novelty‟ that often prevents innovative research from gaining the attention and recognition it deserves, at least initially.

The authors explored how star scientists influence the flow of ideas by examining what happens in a scientific field when a dominant figure dies unexpectedly; understanding this as occurring before the scientist retired or assumed a predominantly administrative role. They identified 452 eminent scientists from academic life observing that their first-line disappearance affected the „vitality‟ (as measured by publication rates and funding flows) of the corresponding 58

subfield. The publication rates of the collaborators of the star declined as the most immediate effect. Surprisingly, however, the increase in publication rates by scientists who had not previously collaborated with the star “more than compensated” for the decreases. In fact, “these publications represent the first incursion [of non-collaborators] into the subfield of the extinct star” 42.

“Of course, that the aforementioned stars or leading scientists do not employ such obvious tactics as degrading grant applications or rejecting publication requests in journals.

Instead, the more subtle barriers, such as what the authors call „the shadow of Goliath‟, discourage newcomers from challenging a prestigious colleague”. These include the „intellectual closure‟, which the authors define as a strong agreement between the members of the field “in the set of questions, approaches and methodologies that drive the field forward”, as well as „social closure‟, which develops when the members of the field function as “a tightly knit clique”, often collaborating with each other, and perhaps also checking each other's manuscripts. All this develops tacitly. It is not a meeting hidden behind an „illuminati group‟ that directs the sciences.

New scientists are forced to publish in second-line journals, and even in exotic countries like Armenia, as happened to the once famous astronomer H. Arp who was forced to leave the United States and emigrate in Germany. Just as the Church censored the writings in the days of Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo, the specialized journals filter the contents to be published and only after that phase, several months or years later, those studies can be issued to be reviewed by peers. After a few months of revision, they are accessible to the rest of the scientific community. The dependence of the financial agencies on ratios, such as the number of citations to a study or work in other publications, prevent the papers published in second or third row journals from accessing the money needed to initiate 42

http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/07/how-scientific-culturediscourages-new-ideas

59

research projects, as well as the progress of several fields of knowledge.

Use windows of citations considerably longer than the usual 2 or 3 years, „a wider portfolio of indicators‟, avoid “a monodisciplinary approach in peer review” and instead attract reviewers from a range of disciplines, are some of the measures recommended by the authors of the studies. To prevent the leading scientific conservators in every field and moment from hindering innovative ideas by monopolizing funding, they propose that agencies use double-blind peer review and limit the amounts that any individual laboratory can obtain. The double-blind review means that both the identifiers of the reviewer and the author are hidden for all of them, during the review. The funders, they say, should also grant „bonus points‟ to new researchers, and “emeritus awards to induce high-level scientists to put an end to their laboratory activities” could help clear the way for newcomers.

Lucy intended to support me; not just me, but somehow all the scientists who were in analogous situations like Alan and Graham, and published an article in a sociology journal called “Intellectual Terrorism strikes again”. One case that appeared in the world press (including the non-specialized one) was the Nobel Prize winner in medicine Luc Montagnier, discoverer of the AIDS virus. But this matter goes back much earlier, when a prestigious biologist, Dr. J. Benveniste, director of the French National Institute of Health, published a study giving scientific value to homeopathy, something that should not have pleased much to the powerful pharmaceutical industry. The study was issued in important scientific journal, but the journal's director, the physicist J. Maddox supported by a well-known science skeptic named J. Randi, forced the biologist to accept them into his team to reproduce the experiment, which he did not achieve.

The reputation of Benveniste was seriously damaged and he was removed from important positions, its grants withdrawn and its theory forgotten.

The virologist L. Montagnier had little to lose as he was about to retire. His support for the theory of his late compatriot 60

resulted in the theory of the „Memory of water‟ and a famous documentary. His support of homeopathy made him lose the friendship of many colleagues; it was stated that he suffered from senility, that his fame had gone to his head and that he was not qualified for his work among other niceties43. Thanks to the fact that he still had some prestige, and in conjunction with an international team led by Jamal Aïsa and the Italian G. Vitiello, he managed to demonstrate that with large dilutions and using sonic transducers, a DNA sequence of a virus could be reproduced from a distance44. Despite the success he had no choice but to follow the path that other geniuses had previously and emigrated in China in search of funding to continue their research45. Homeopathy was reinforced from this voyage46.

A survey conducted by a scientific publication of 270 members of the international community, including graduate students, senior professors, laboratory heads and Fields medalists (prize awarded to mathematicians), revealed that, in a variety of ways, their careers are being hijacked by „perverse incentives‟.

The scientific process, in its ideal form, is elegant: ask a question, establish an objective test or experiment and see if the answer corresponds to the prediction. Then, repeat. Science is rarely practiced according to that ideal.

Nowadays, the success of scientists is often not measured by the quality of their questions or the rigor of their methods.

Instead, it is measured by the amount of money they earn, the amount of studies they publish and how they sell their findings to attract the public. Along with the mentioned survey, which both (Luky and I) read, there were also interviews, and they offered a wide variety of ideas to improve the scientific process and bring it closer to its ideal form. (It must be recognized that the survey was conducted in the fields of medicine and biology 43

https://francisworldinsideout.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/luc-montagnier-2008nobel-laureate-will-follow-the-steps-of-jacques-benveniste/ 44 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368378.2015.1036072 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/329/1/012001/meta 45 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6012/1732 46 http://extraordinarymedicine.org/intellectual-terrorism-in-science-yes-it-happens/

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and in English-speaking countries) 47. It is the way in which money is distributed that puts pressure on laboratories to publish many articles, and generates conflicts of interest and encourages scientists to exaggerate their work. In addition, scholarships have durations of less than 3 years, which excludes the possibility of incubating long-term projects. Most of the capital for grants is public, comes from governments.

There are few cases in which angel investors finance research, except in a few cases of risk and technology companies that can provide very short-term benefits.

Another concern: when independent sources of funding, government or university are exhausted, scientists are forced to turn to the industry or groups interested in generating studies to support their agendas. For example, research in nutrition is sponsored by the big food multinationals. Many professionals emphasize that they must spend half of their time writing scholarship applications and providing documentation.

As for the replication of experiments, it has been shown in current studies that of 83 works examined in the field of psychiatry only 16 were repeated with satisfactory results48 and in 11 of them the effects produced were much lower. Journals are also reluctant to publish replication studies, unless they “contradict previous findings or conclusions�. The result is to discourage scientists from controlling the work of others. The second problem is that many studies can be difficult to replicate. Sometimes their methods are too opaque, as in the case of the LIGO49. Sometimes, the original studies had too few participants to produce a replicable response. And sometimes, as we saw in the previous section, the study is simply wrongly designed or completely wrong.

47

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12016710/science-challeges-researchfunding-peer-review-process 48 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26159600 49

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_LIGO_guilty_of_Scientific_Fraud http://vixra.org/pdf/1712.0017v1.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iphcyNWFD10

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As things stand, researchers are encouraged to publish new and positive results and to allow negative results to be left in computers and filing cabinets. This leads back to the problem of „publication biasâ€&#x;; not all the studies that are carried out actually are published in journals, and those that do, tend to have positive and dramatic conclusions. If institutions began to reward the quality of a researcher's work, rather than the quantity, this could encourage further reproduction and discourage the search for positive results (bias). It is of little value to confirm the results of another laboratory and try to publish the findings.

The article was dedicated to all those nonconformist scientists who are being claimed over time. .

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XIII.- PHILOLOGY REVOLUTION (Carmen Hill)

“You shoudn‟t express yourself more clearly than you can think.”

-Niels BohrWhile Alan, advised by his lawyer, continued with his classes trying not to stomping in the puddles, I was concentrating on a book project. From the conversations with Alan, and lately with Hal, I got the impression that science was a dialogue of deafmutes. I had been analyzing, from a philological and semantic point of view, various debates and lectures on scientific matters that were related to the work of Alan and Hal. Many symposiums, university classes and television programs are freely available on the internet and I had a lot to choose from.

Those that most caught my attention were those that dealt with topics bordering metaphysics, theology or philosophy, those that contained famous relativistic or quantum paradoxes, because I observed that the vocabulary or jargon of each specialty contained words that had different meanings for each interlocutor. It was a „Tower of Babel‟ and after consulting with Graham, our expert in mythology and symbolism, it could well be that this story has something to do with the different meanings with which each person can interpret the same word, sign or signifier.

Controversial issues such as the origin of the cosmos, the solar system, or the origin of life, led to diverse interpretations of key words. I decided that scientists should include a semantics course in their careers. These confusions are common in contents related to spirituality, religion and philosophy. The debates about agency, determinism or consciousness, had the custom of uttering words with very vague and ambiguous meanings, with which the participants had all the ballots of not reaching any consensus.

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One of the words whose misunderstanding surprised me to a greater degree was that of 'Universe', where the suffix 'uni' clearly indicates that it is one or only, it means 'everything that exists'. If it really comes from the Latin ('unus-versus' or one rotated) is debatable, but in every the dictionary that I looked for to make me sure, came the connotation of 'everything'.

Therefore, the creation of terms such as 'multiverse' defined as an indeterminate multitude of universes is incoherent, since, obviously, there can only be one 'whole', singular, not plural. If at least these cosmologists defined it as a multitude of worlds, even if they were not in thermodynamic contact as Hal says, without any information or energy being able to pass from one to another, in that case, the word „multiverse‟ could be accepted as a speculative concept or abstract idea. That does not mean that it can be considered as something real. „Real‟ and „existing‟ are other concepts that most bewilderment entails. As a language professional, I feel a certain shame that my colleagues define two terms, one based on the other.

Certain words have ambiguous meanings and are hard to describe, but if we make A equal to B and B we define as A, then it does not provide any knowledge about any of them. In fact, one of them is superfluous and only creates mess. After an intense search I discovered that the meaning of 'reality' in the field of science is not the same as that of 'existence'. It is used 'real' only in those objects or phenomena that can be perceived, either directly through our senses or indirectly through instruments or devices, and in this way can be measured under different arbitrary scales. In philosophy the term „objective reality‟ is used. In the framework of science, there are objects or phenomena called virtual; these are not considered real insofar as they cannot be measured or observed, for reasons that are not detailed here. The point is that these objects are considered to exist but are not real. Then, the definition of „existence‟ would come to include those real things, plus the things that without being, can interact with those that are real, 65

becoming through a mysterious process into existing real entities.

Alan had spent the whole week trying to teach me why in science a measurement can objectively provide different results according to the observer or the frame of reference in which that measure is taken. It is not a matter of lack of confidence, but sometimes someone used to deal with certain topics is able to transmit their knowledge better than other whose field is different. On Sunday almost midnight we contacted Hal on the internet.

- Good morning there, Hal. And thanks for the waking up so early.

- No problem, Carmen. How's Alan? You already know that Luky gets up at seven o'clock for his meditative routine and I have got used not to stay up late even on weekends. I‟ve got time to have breakfast and everything. Later we will go out for a bike ride.

- How's Lucy? I have not talked to her in three weeks, except in emails.

- She‟s downstairs, meditating or doing housework but I think she will go up to say hello. What is it that you wanted me to explain about the objectivity of the measurements?

- I have been trying to explain to her that objective and correctly valid measurements can be made with different results according to the observer, by means of the paradoxes of „Special Relativity‟, like that of „the twins‟ and „the barn‟, but I think I confuse her more than clarifying it.

- I get it. Let's see Carmen. Suppose you are two people, you are Alice and Bob is your partner, both physicists. Imagine that Alice is on a platform in front of a tunnel of, say, 10 meters and Bob is driving a locomotive of also 10 meters in length that approaches there at a great speed, close to that of the light.

- I follow you.

- It is very important that you take into account the points of view of both, call them A and B. From the frame of reference of A, the locomotive shrinks, according to the theory of 66

Einstein, in a phenomenon known as „length contraction‟, and also the time it takes to arrive is reduced as the speed of the machine is closer to c (the speed of light). This is called „time dilation‟, that is, an increase in the scale, rule or clock with which the time from A is measured.

- Ok. And from B‟s perspective?

- In Bob's frame of reference, the length of the machine is the same and does not vary, as does its sensation and measurement of the passage of time. On the contrary, he perceives that the rest of the world moves towards the locomotive with relativistic speeds, as physicists call them, and therefore he sees the tunnel shrink and measure less. Similarly, the station's clocks would seem to be slower.

- Strange, but go on.

- Maybe, but up to here there is no paradox. Imagine that when the train passes through the tunnel, the doors close quickly.

That‟s as seen by A. For B, the tunnel was shorter than the locomotive. According to Einstein, the disagreement between them about if was the train or the tunnel that contracted is normal, but it is assumed that there can be no disagreement about whether the doors hit the locomotive. It must be an objective fact.

- And do they?

- From A‟s point of view, clearly not. Then B cannot perceive an impact of the doors either. How is it possible if you measure the tunnel shorter than the locomotive? The crux of the matter lies in the concept of „simultaneity‟. For two observers in different reference frames, they will not agree on whether two events occur “at the same time”.

- As space and time cannot be separated, the variation of one affects the other.

- For A, the doors close at the same time, trapping the machine.

For Bob, the second door closes as soon as the nose of the locomotive enters the tunnel and opens soon after; then, when it is already coming out, the entrance door closes.

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- Very mysterious. What if the doors do not reopen?

- Good question -the Canadian laughed-. The subject is complex but, basically, the train cannot be considered as a solid, incompressible object. When approaching c, its structure ceases to exist as such, as at rest. If there were unbreakable doors that could close at a sufficient speed to trap the device, it would be compressed and trapped inside even from B‟s point of view.

- That‟s bizarre.

- Imagine that you are in space and you see the Earth rotating from West to East at 1600 km / h; and through a telescope you see an airplane traveling across the equator from East to West at that same speed. It would seem to you that the airplane is stationary and that the Earth is the one that moves. ¡The movement is relative!

- I get that.

- In the example of the barn and the staircase, or the train and the tunnel, as you prefer, from the point of view of A, the train that is shorter, enters the tunnel and a signal arrives at the same time to both doors that close before the train leaves. (I know that this is technologically impossible but this is a thought experiment). From the point of view of B, the entrance door is moving away from the signal -which we assume in the middle of the tunnel-, and it takes longer to reach the entrance door than the exit door, which approaches the device that issue the signal and gets also closer to the signal itself.- Therefore, the exit door closes before.

- The conclusion I draw is that the vaunted objectivity of science is not what they sell us, but depends on the observer or the frame of reference, as you call it.

- That‟s right. There are many more paradoxes in physics. In another moment I‟ll tell you about paradoxes with the „problem of measurement‟ and other quantum physics experiments that defy common sense and formal logic.

- What's that?

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- When physicists experiment with subatomic particles, the supposedly fundamental components of matter, it has been proven that such particles only exist as corpuscles at the moment they are observed -indirectly, by means of sophisticated instruments-. When they are not being tested, they behave as waves; that is, probabilities, expressed by a mathematical artifice called „wave function‟, and that represent all the possibilities of materializing as a corpuscle or object when making an observation.

- Are you saying that observation or detection transforms immaterial things or probabilities into materials? I exclaimed, dazed.

- That‟s what it seems. I mean, that's the most logical interpretation given to the subject.

- Then how can you argue that the cosmos is deterministic if its foundations are... random?

- Look. The Schrödinger equation or wave function is completely deterministic. What happens is that, when there is an increase in knowledge about a system or a particle, let's say we make a measurement, we can know the energetic state of it, or perhaps its position in space-time. What cannot be known at the same time are both magnitudes at the same time. In fact, the more accurately we know its energy, the more its position is dematerialized, and the more we focus on its location, the less we know about its energy (speed or movement). This is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

- I think I'll have nightmares today.

- Hahaha, -Hal laughed-. When you get used to it, it's not that difficult. The wave function represents mathematically the different states that the particle could adopt superimposed. It's called Superposition Principle. It's just a language like any other but with numbers.

- Quantitative instead of qualitative. Yes, I understand that mathematics is another way of describing the physical world.

- What is needed is a mechanism that explains how, this leap of knowledge causes a superposition of states to become a well69

determined state. That's what they call the Wave Function Collapse.

- „Wave function‟, „Superposition‟, „Uncertainty‟ and „Collapse of the wave function‟. I'm taking note.

- To observe subatomic particles or systems of them we should use other particle to interact with the target particle. Keep in mind, that when I say particle, I mean a wave-corpuscle duality, not directly something material.

- OK. - The problem is that interacting does not solve the problem, because the other particles are given by a wave function that previously collapsed. By „crashing‟, so to speak, both particles are said to intertwine. The „Quantum entanglement‟ makes some of its properties linked.

- Mamma mia. But that leads us to an endless circle, doesn‟t it?

- Right. It requires a source or observer external to the system50 that produces the collapse of all its particles. And that can only be caused by a conscious observer. „Decoherence‟, as that circle is called, does not solve the problem51.

- The observer is the key.

- The observer or experimenter is the one who decides what questions to ask the system or particle, by introducing a probe or test into it, and it will be the experimenter himself who gets the answer. Only a conscious observer seems to have the ability to choose and collapse a wave function.

- Uff... This becomes very philosophical.

- Do you know the anecdote that Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein had when they talked about reality, about whether it was objective?

50

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s100530170207?LI=true https://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.4156.pdf Karl Popper http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.473.23&rep=rep1&ty pe=pdf 51 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0202101

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- Not. Tell me.

- Bohr asked him if he believed that the Moon existed when nobody looked at it. And the truth is that you cannot prove that it does exist, or that it doesn‟t.

- I think today is a new moon, but in a few days I‟ll check it we laughed-.

- Just remember that we are not passive observers. As a namesake of mine said, “the Universe is participatory”. I send you some links to deepen if you wish52.

I was perplexed by the parallels between physics and philosophy and I sensed that, perhaps, that was why Lucy and Hal were so comfortable with each other. I have never liked mathematics; I prefer poetry to describe the world than cold numbers, but I recognize that a certain amount of quantification of the environment is necessary for the relationships with other beings.

Although Alan and I do not usually watch television, much less movies, the fate had reserved us a surprise when, tired of trying to understand the western logic about relativistic paradoxes, I connected the plasma screen and Alan lay down with me on the couch. The film “The genius of love” was projected, a romantic comedy without much artistic relevance, but Alan cleared himself when he heard the name of Zeno's paradox.

- Damn, precisely! It is not a relativistic paradox but it has a lot to do with it.

According to the Greek philosopher Zeno de Elea, the fictional story began with Achilles trying to catch a turtle that escaped from him a few meters away. He tried to show that the hero could never reach the turtle, although he ran much more than this one, because if he traveled half the distance the turtle had gone a distance, then there was another distance that was halfway traveled and the Turtle was a little further, and so on.

There was always a distance that could be one half, time in which the turtle could flee a little more. Alan explained that it 52

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB7d5V71vUE

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was not until the late eighteenth century when the mathematician James Gregory showed that a sum of infinities could yield a finite result, as long as the terms of the sequence were decreasing. This is called convergent geometric progression.

It is something similar to the so-called „Argument of Incoherence‟ that I discussed with Lucy later. This says that any material thing presupposes a place in space („locus‟ in Latin), and by occupying three dimensions it cannot be considered indivisible. And the process continues indefinitely, so that there cannot be a primordial ultimate material reality. In Mahayana Buddhism there is the concept „Tahata‟ which means suchness. It‟s something like emptiness, Sunyata, what happens when you stop trying to define something, the ultimate truth. The buddhist Theory of the Two Truths53 says that no ultimate or primordial description of reality is possible for all dichotomies eventually dissipate including causality. The ultimate truth is beyond any concept, it is emptiness, tality and final limit. Relative truth is what allows us to use the categories of cause and effect, subjective and objective, or equality and difference.

Many scientists, including Hal and Alan, told me that physics considers elementary particles (electrons and quarks) as points (they have neither volume nor dimensions). Thus, no causal activity is possible, the particles could not be grouped together and form material objects.

- Regarding the paradox of Zeno, there is something very curious -Alan said, and I guess he had read it somewhere, not long ago-. In quantum mechanics, you know the story of 'Schrödinger's Cat'.

- The one they put in a box and we do not know if he is alive or dead until we observe?

53

https://jaygarfield.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/engaging-buddhism-full012214.pdf

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- That same one. Technically speaking, it is found in a superposition of states, alive and dead at the same time. And all the intermediate states that you can think of.

- That is possible only in a Hindu logic system, what they call 'nyaya'.

- That is why it clashes with the education of Western scientists. The case is that the act of observation produces the so-called collapse of the wave function, and that ends with the superposition of states.

- And? - Quantum mechanics is based on probabilities. The sooner you observe the situation of the cat, the more likely to find it alive.

According to Zeno's paradox, if numerous inspections are carried out (conscious observations), we are continuously collapsing the wave function. This would allow us to lengthen „artificially‟ the life of the cat. In theory.

- Let's see the end of the movie, -I answered, unable to prevent a grimace of a smile from appearing on my face-.

The next day I got up refreshed and full of energy. Perhaps during the night, I absorbed the philosophical wisdom inherent to the scientific paradoxes I was explained during the week, but after daily meditation, I felt full of a „light‟ that made me feel „complete‟. I do not know how to describe it in a better way with words without extending myself too much. Strangely I felt the urgent need to address my own path, in relation to the evolution of ancient languages, and that I had to emobody my ideas -which I ought to recognize were not entirely my owninto a book for the coming generations.

My theory, or book if I really ended up writing it, was not going to be precisely well received in the community of philologists and anthropologists. It consoled me to think that other scholars had maintained similar theories before54 55 56, 54

Yves Cortez - Le français ne vient pas du latin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZmSkVwjbvw https://repositorio.ufsc.br/handle/123456789/178910?show=full

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and in a way I was brave enough to expose my ideas publicly. I had the feeling that, just as Alan, I had to carry my own cross.

But it was my responsibility in the life that I had to live, and somehow, it made me feel closer to my partner.

The commonly accepted theories about the origin of languages and races focus on the Kurgan Hypothesis, according to which a pre-Indo-European nomadic culture, called Kurgan, migrated during the Chalcolithic from the steppe of East Asia to the Caspian , dividing between Europe and the Middle East to the west of India (Indus Valley). This nomadic culture, submitted according to some theories [theory of the Aryan invasion], or slowly imposed according to others [Aryan migration], (there are innumerable variants), to the existing sedentary civilizations which stood in their way. I find it difficult to glimpse a nomadic culture, which must have been necessarily less numerous, to come to a settled people, with roots, customs and language, which should logically be more developed.

Additionally, they should have much more free time for this.

Another alternative theory to these, defended by oriental linguists and scholars affirms that Hindus themselves were the inhabitants of the Indus, and transmitted their culture and language to the so-called Aryans, thereafter expanding by Europe. Recently, a theory called Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm (PCP) emerged in southern Europe, which states that Proto-Indo-European languages come from a common culture that expanded during the period known as the Würm Glaciation [before the Glacial Maximum (LGM), -would be about 50,000 years ago if the dates are accurate-] from Africa to the Mediterranean and another branch to the Middle East, from where a sub-branch migrated to the Russian steppe becoming the Aryan race.

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Lenguas románicas no son hijas del latín https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251246839_Danielle_Corbin_Pierre_ Corbin_and_Martine_Temple_eds_Lexique_16_2004_La_formation_des_mots_ horizons_actuels_Villeneuve_d'Ascq_Presses_Universitaires_du_Septentrion_E UR_2300_ISBN_2-85939-844-9 56 Carmen Huertas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPI_Y4hdIaU

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However, and this inspiration has been reinforced since I met Graham and, to a lesser extent, Lucy, I am convinced that this common culture may have been what is commonly known as Atlantis. It is believed that the Atlantean culture forged several colonies that, if it was truly a so advanced civilization, could perfectly be worldwide spread. If Graham is right, and Antarctica housed the capital of such a civilization; and if Alan is right and the pole was close to the Kerguelen or the Heard and McDonell Islands, of which I am fully convinced, the migration of the Atlantean survivors could have started in South America (Mario approves this) and from there to North America, Eastern Siberia (steppe), and from there to the Indus valley, the Middle East and Africa; and additionally they could have traveled the chain of Pacific islands to Indonesia (perhaps the sunken subcontinent of Zealandia) and / or Southeast Asia.

Something that should not be overlooked, in the strict philological aspect, is that spoken and written language does not go hand in hand. The people do not have to speak in the same way that the cults write. De facto that does not usually happen. During the Pleistocene, a period that I will not date for now, unless Alan took action on the matter and give scientific support for my thesis, there were several languages according to most hypotheses currently held. We could distinguish between the austric macrofamily, the sino-caucasian and the nostratic one. The first would encompass the ancestral languages of Southeast Asia such as Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Javanese language, Malay and the Austronesian languages. The second major group includes the Sino-Tibetan languages, which contain the several variants of Chinese such as Mandarin, Steppe and Caucasus-Urals. Amerindian languages such as Nahuatl, Quechua, Maya, Cherokee and other lesser-known languages, such as the Nilo-Saharan and the Niger-Congo family are perhaps isolated branches. Lastly, there is our great nostratic group, to which the Dravidian languages such as Tamil belong, African-Arabic languages such as Arabic and Semitic, and the great Proto-Indo-European branch.

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From this sub-section, grow the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages, the Romance languages, and the Indo-Iranian branches with Bengali and Hindi with a greater number of speakers.

The analysis of words and endings has led me to the conclusion that many words taken for granted as Latin origin -and even Greek- could be from Slavic, Germanic or Baltic languages, since Latin would not be a mother language but, rather, a brother or parallel language. Hence, the Sanskrit that is older, it contains 9 declensions or cases, the extinct Latin only 6 and the German only 4. Languages tend to simplicity, not complexity.

Moreover, the so-called Aryan race, which descended from the northern steppe and Siberia to the Indus valley being known there as Vedas, were the survivors of Atlantis as Graham will demonstrate and extend the Proto-Indo-European language and in general all the Nostratic languages. If this is correct as I believe, Kurgan's hypothesis and Aryan migration might be in real predicament or not, although this should not separate me from the path I feel I have to travel.

The next stage was to take the step that I so much encouraged Alan to take. It is very different when you are the subject, the protagonist. There are setbacks that make you adopt a new approach. „I'm going to take my timeâ€&#x;, -I said to myself. There is a difference between knowing the way and walking the path.

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XIV.- THE CORNERSTONES OF SCIENCE (Alan Hapgood)

“If a special geometry must be made up to explain a falling apple, even Newton can be shocked by the complexity that arises when addressing really difficult problems.”

-Sir Oliver Lodge, 1921The relationship with Albert Oldtown had normalized. After all, since their postgraduate days they had always argued about sport, science and even likes about women, if Albert liked toasted skin and brunettes, Hal liked Ukrainian women with green eyes. With Laplace it was different.

The differences between Laplace's rhetorical ideas and the revolutionary ones of the young Halton about the origin of gravity and the property known as mass, and the concept of matter were insurmountable. The rector, graduated in physics, had been engaged in bureaucratic tasks for years and did not question absolutely anything that he was taught to memorize in school. It was as if he had no free will.

The coffee shop of the University had a restaurant category. In fact, the chef had got along with Hal since he has signed him a copy of his book. He had moved from Quebec to Saguenay to have some conversation about unconventional ideas in science, so to speak, while having a coffee with Hal. Actually there was another reason, to get off with a waitress, about whom Hal didn‟t know much; how or where they met, but she was supposed to work at Hudson Bay University. Hal did not lavish too much in those breaks, but it was good to have the chef happy because from time to time some delicacies fell. But the restaurant was also the time of day when it used to coincide with Albert Oldtown. He also liked to talk about cosmology but on a more strict level. Hal didn‟t keep up about Oldtown‟s girlfriends before graduating; but he knew that he has been married to a biophysicist who was a teacher at a high school.

He had barely seen her in pictures, except once when he hardly exchanged a sentence with her, and gave him the impression of being an inflexible woman.

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The Prince of Wales Award in physics had been awarded to some of the physicists who had won the Nobel a few months ago for a controversial discovery about gravitational waves. For Oldtown it was an interesting topic. In some previous conversation Hal had already spoken of the third of the fundamental pillars of science, referring to the light spectral lines redshift of stars and galaxies. This phenomenon was crucial for the Big Bang theory and without it, it was impossible to calculate distances from very remote objects. The subject of the week was related to another of the bastions of physics, namely, gravity.

- Well, another prize for Fishbone -Oldtown said, standing behind in the line of self-service.

- Good afternoon Albert, I had not seen you. At this time it is not usually so full.

- Today we're not going to have special scallops from the chef.

Must be busy.

- I see that you havenâ€&#x;t come for my company - Hal joked.

- You know I'm very interested in your opinion. Itâ€&#x;s always a different point of view.

- In relation to gravitational waves we already talked about it when the Nobel Prize was granted. And I imagine you surfed the internet and saw the many who cast their doubts on the 'experiment' -he made the gesture with his index and middle as quoting, meaning that it was an irony-.

- I admit that in our world there are many things that are "too big to fail". The LIGO, Brookhaven or the LHC are too expensive and too big to be a failure. It's like with Bearn Sterns, General Motors, Fannie Mae or AIG; sometimes they allow a big fish like Lehman to fall because of their internal quarrels, but the system depends on the flow of money. I think the expenditure in LIGO was 620 kilos.

- Plus the millions of dollars it charges for maintenance and the spending in electricity. 1 MW lasers, vacuum creation in 4kilometer tubes, constant temperature...

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- But at least, it demonstrates the gravitational Relativity of Einstein clearly.

Hal knew he was saying that to needle him since he did not agree, like many others, and looked at him with a mischievous face or dissatisfaction, like an emoticon. However, that day he fancied a bit of life and entered the rag.

- What the hell demonstrates an experiment that in 40 years has not given more than a signal, that was validated one year, and the following was proved to be noise or interference? Wouldnâ€&#x;t it be that they were looking forward to receiving another sample of noise in both facilities?

- It is true that the Danish team that was also looking for gravitational waves has criticized the results as unsatisfactory.

At least they are supposed to be granted access to the data of experiment, which other scientists couldnâ€&#x;t do.

- That's another point; they ought to dump the data on the network. Even live. Let's see, they are trying to measure an interference signal in the laser of 10-18 meters, ten thousand times less than a proton length. Supposedly... because thatâ€&#x;s not very clear either.

- And that those squeaks may have been random fluctuations as the Danes said or caused by changes in temperature, traffic...

On the internet there were many such arguments, especially because of the device tolerance.

- Well, it's already the fourth or fifth demonstration of Einstein's Gravitation. Why do they insist on demonstrating it every 5 years? Hal scoffed as they sat down.

Among the crowd appeared the chef with a plate of breaded pork escalopes and offered them to the scientists-. I hope you like them-. As a consideration he was offered to sit down. The scientists thought he would be very busy and could not take a break at rush hour. Contrary to his expectations, he accepted.

- Just a minute. You see how this is today. I want to ask you something. I read on a website that the mass of a body may not be constant. I have seen some papers about that but maybe my level does not allow me to understand it well.

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- Are you preparing for the University? -asked Oldtown, who already knew that, being a chef, his knowledge was not that of a layman.

- It's a complex question, -Hal said. One minute is a short time.

- But, these escalopes, that by the way are exquisite, are worth it -Oldtown argued acknowledging the bribe.

- The first thing is to state the definitions of what we are talking about, if you refer to the mass at rest or relativistic mass...

- No, of course. I mean, I already know that if an object goes at the speed of light, its mass increases. Resting mass.

- In that case the mass at rest of an object does not change, it is equivalent to the potential energy of it -Oldtown said. - Forget what you read in pages out there...

Halton did not know whether to finish fast and enjoy the meal or give a serious and ethical explanation. He thought he would feel better if he did it and could enjoy the manduca more.

- It‟s not that easy. We do not know what the mass is. Except that it is a property of matter.

- The mass is the amount of matter -the orthodox replied.

- A very definition of NASA, extrapolated from Newton. It's not bad for not having read him -said the unorthodox Hal. - And what is the definition of matter? -the chef asked.

- I'm glad you ask that question.

- 'Matter is the measure of the quantity of itself that arises from its density and volume together' -Albert interrupted, to show that he had already read Newton's 'Principia Mathematica'57, after an earlier conversation about the subject he had with his partner.

- Fantastic. But you have forgotten that he then says that “he calls that body or mass”. That is, it talks about a system or object, not particles.

- And? 57

Principia Mathematica - Natural Philosophy https://archive.org/details/newtonspmathema00newtrich

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- I will answer both of you with another question: How do you measure the mass of an object?

The chef looked at Oldtown waiting for him to speak.

- Weighing it.

- Then, we measure a force, that its inventor -call him discoverer if you prefer- named gravity. “The gravity is a centripetal force by which the bodies are dragged or impelled towards a point like center” -said, reading his phone.

- A force that had to overcome the inertia, which he called 'vis insista', that is, resistance to change in the current state of the object or system -Oldtown completed- who had already devoured his two escalopes.

- How is a force applied to an object? Hal said while savouring some spoonful of stew. ¡Nothing is ever touched! ¡Nothing is in contact! It is a repulsive action of the electrons of your hands with those of the object, action and reaction... electrostatic.

- So, how do we know the mass? Summarize please.

- It is calculated from Newton‟s formula, the product of the masses of the two bodies, the Earth and a small object for example, which are understood as invariable and the constant of universal gravitation divided by the square of the distance between them, which is variable.

- The funny thing is that they say that Hooke and Halley, other physicists, had already discovered that formula years before, from the 2nd Law of Kepler.

- He wants a summary, Albert. The fact is that you should notice that Newton's Law does not contain the variable time, only space or distance. For him his transmission was instantaneous.

- But Einstein appeared and corrected the Law, equating mass and energy.

- Mass, ¡not matter! as somebody erroneously say -pointed Wheeler fussy.- The concepts are not interchangeable.

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- And from that arises the so-called Equivalence Principle, which you probably know -he reminded the chef-; equivalence of inertial mass and gravitational mass.

- Which, by the way, is an assumption of Einstein; it is not a fact that can be proven.

- And the G? How did Newton find it out?

- He didn‟t. He knew that there was a constant of proportionality for his tests with pendulums but it was Cavendish years later who found it for the first time by means of a torsion scale.

- It does not end there. The constant G is something mysterious, we have barely measured it for 300 years and sometimes the results vary...

- They are tiny variations,-Oldtown demanded, defending his position, and seeing the malevolent intentions of Hal. - Maybe, but 300 years is very little time. We do not know how G would turn out on another planet or galaxy. Not much less what it was a thousand years ago, or 10 million years.

- Shh, -he whispered-. If they hear you say that, they are able to give you the settlement, -he laughed.

- The ethics of a scientist is before money. Gravity is the first cornerstone of science. And it could be in question. I'm not the only one who thinks so.

- Then it can vary? -the chef said, signalling to his kitchen-hand that he was going back.

- My opinion is that the mass is a variable property58 59, and with it the constant G, and that they are a function of electrical stress - or current flow, if you prefer-. The greater the current is the greater gravity is. And I think that, in the past, it fluctuated several times.

58

Materia eléctrica: Masa, peso y densidad http://www.everythingselectric.com/electric-matter/# http://worldnpa.org/abstracts/abstracts_6239.pdf 59 Gravedad eléctrica http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_6063.pdf http://www.holoscience.com/wp/electric-gravity-in-an-electric-universe/

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- You're staking too high, boy.

- Thanks, I have to go back. Another day we continue.

- You have to pass me the recipe of escalopes -Albert bellowed raising his voice so that the chef, who already moved away, listened to him. He turned to his colleague. -You've gone too far with that affirmation, donâ€&#x;t you?

- Not at all, although I cannot prove it directly. Nor you that G has not changed60.

- That's right but you know. Radical revolutions require huge proofs.

- Do you think the fact that the dinosaurs disappeared is not good evidence? 61 Or the fact that in the past presumably primitive and with no technology men moved huge megalithic blocks that today we would need super-cranes that were not available until the end of the 20th century?

- I think you are exaggerating. All this is proven in their respective fields.

- False, -Hal said, savouring the last escalope-. I donâ€&#x;t know of any scientific experiment that has proven that certain blocks could be moved and located precisely. Nor does it make sense that a meteorite killed all the saurians of the planet in a stroke62.

A cloud of ash that covered the entire atmosphere would have ended almost all life forms. Some friends of mine who are historians and palaeontologists corroborate these things.

- Well lad, challenge the system. But then do not complain.

- There are papers on these things. ÂĄDo your own research!

More and more scientists are claiming a more logical science, with more experiments and less mathematics and computer simulations.

60

Paleogravity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252075572_A_Modified_Approach_to_Est imate_the_Paleogravity 61 Gravity and evolution of locomotion https://goo.gl/ZDkUC5 62 Dinosaurs gravity tolerance http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=9DAD04FE038FF911 BE4CCB4020194D94?doi=10.1.1.1001.9231&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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- You like to go against the tide. It‟s easier to follow the herd.

- Maybe for you. Let's go for dessert. And I‟ll send you some links to your phone about papers that will interest you. They are of the last fortnight.

The titles of them were: “Stars of low mass extremely close to Sagittarius A” 63, “Dwarf stars of low mass change their radius continuously” and “the impact of Chicxulub predates the Cretaceous-Paleogene limit” 64.

63 64

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-alma-infant-stars-surprisingly-galaxy.html Chicxulub impact previous to K-Pg limit http://www.pnas.org/content/101/11/3753

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XV.- ÂżCOINCIDENCES? (Graham Talbosky)

“Believed myths tend to become true.

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.�

-George Orwell y Joseph CampbellE-mailing with Lucy was frequent. The conclusions obtained from sharing our studies and knowledge allowed us to recognize the numerous coincidences between cultures from all over the world with different origins and epochs according to the most orthodox version of history. Lengthening of ears, skulls, mummification methods, growing products, working of pottery and architectural techniques and stonework are shared on several separate continents, not only geographically but during thousands of years, according to certain proclaimed 'scholars'. Totora boats (boats made with reeds, stems and high prows) on separate continents, were common across the globe more than three thousand years ago. The trepanation of skulls is more of the same, often attributed to religious motives and, for the most eccentric ones, to advanced surgical techniques.

- What do you think of the sacred mountains? Apart from the coincidences, do they reveal any connection with the pillars or celestial stairs?

Meetings by IRC were frequent, sometimes by videoconference, between Carmen and Lucy. One went late to bed connecting at 11 hours in the night, and the other got up early in the morning at 7 o'clock. I myself participated in some of those talks during the noon in Cairo. Sometimes we talked about the circles engraved on rocks, in caves or on the same fields or mountainsides. The mandalas (circles in Sanskrit) have been found in India, China, Australia and their aboriginal tribes, Aztecs, medieval Europe, Celtic and Druid cultures, Greece, Navajo Indians or Tibet. In the center of many mandalas a Mount Meru or primordial mount is depicted, around which the universe revolves; the Hopi have their Black 85

Hill; in Tibet the Kang Rinpoche, known by Kailash in various European places; Kuen-Lun in China, where Shangri-la might exist, being the dwelling place of the first Emperor, the primitive god Sangdi who makes clear and close reference to the celestial pole -even in the palaces and structures of the Xua and Erlitou cultures-; in Greece they had Mount Olympus and Mount Othrys; for the Jews the Sinai and the Ararat; the Canaanites mount Zaphon, the Taranaki for the natives of New Zealand; Mount Koya-san in Japan and also Shumi-sen which is a literal equivalent of Indian Mount Meru; in Heliopolis, Egypt, the Ben-Ben (pyramidion) represents the primordial Mount, identical to the Hara Berezaiti of the Persian Avesta...

- I have studied some Siberian towns, for my work with IndoEuropean languages and I know that the Kyrgyz, Baskirs and Tartars speak of an 'iron pillar'. I think even the teleuts from Turkey.

- I believe that the symbols of the pillar of Egyptian Shu, and the djed -which some attribute to a tower of communication or an electric pylon-, are also related to the Primordial Mount, and represent the support of the cosmos. Summarizing: stability.

- It‟s not so clear for me, Graham -Lucy argued-. The symbolism of Shu and Tefnut can be extrapolated, but sometimes I think we speculate too much with the interpretations of the signs, which after all, are very subjective.

- You have it in Mesopotamia. For many Ninurta was Saturn; for others it was Mars and Shamash was Saturn, and it was the 'stationary god on a foundation'. In addition, the Babylonians called Saturn, „Kaainu‟, that in the Greek pronunciation 'kiun' means pillar. In India there is the Yambuduipa, literally 'the land of the Yambu trees', which some colleagues call the cosmic pillar.

- Yes, and in the astronomy book Surya Siddhanta it is referred to as the northern hemisphere; while Patala was the southern.

- That reminds me of a polar configuration. But it seems flimsy and far-fetched. Very weak.

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- Anyway, -Carmen finished-, the Mongols and Kalmucks have a sacred mountain they call Sumur, similar to Su-Meru.

- Didnâ€&#x;t Mario say something about a mountain where a god lived, Tlaloc I think, in Mexico?

- He was referring to the Colhuacan mountain where the sky joins the earth and lived Mixcoatl -I answered-, a god associated sometimes with the polar star, sometimes to the Milky Way. One day we were taking inventory of the celestial symbolism.

Carmen tried to link the meaning of the images with Alan's theories, while Lucy did the same with Hal's.

- Let's see what we have -wrote Carmen-. There are hundreds of pictograms with rising moons, many accompanied by stars of 3 or more points; Sumerian, Acadian or Semitic iconography and their Babylonian and Assyrian heirs preserving such forms.

The Egyptian hieroglyphics also contain those drawings; and stars and floods are usually united65. Of the Hellenistic era and the Roman Empire, we have thousands of coins with them. Not to resort to medieval engravings and coins. In many cultures they have been preserved to this day in their religions and national flags.

- Do not forget the snakes and ouroboros.

- That myth can be studied later. I have plenty of information that I am sorting. As soon as I have time, I'll finish it and I'll get it to you, -I interrupted, knowing that, in fact, I hadnâ€&#x;t started the task.

- All right.

- Okay. On the one hand we have static gods in their abode or celestial throne66, the pole, the Xiuhtecuhtli of the Mayan and Chinese mythology, the Egyptian Heliopolis and the Greek Helios or the Hindu Brahma. We have all the ancient 'gods' 65

Stars and crescents in ancient times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_and_crescent https://coinweek.com/ancientcoins/star-crescent-ancient-coins/ 66 Static central suns http://qdl.scs-inc.us/2ndParty/Pages/8709.html

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who had their boats, ships, cars or transports in the Greeks, Vedas, Scandinavians, and Egyptians.

- You have the halos or auras, sometimes represented as cloaks, of the divine beings -I added-. Something that you can easily use. In Persia, Japan, in Greco-Roman legends, Hebrew, Tibetan Buddhism, Vedas, in ancient Egypt, and wandjinas in South Africa, South America and Australian aborigines.

- The classic symbols of tarot and astrology referring to planets67. The Sun enclosed, two concentric circles, with or without cross both inside and outside. Venus the female symbol of the circle and a cross; Mars the masculine, circle and arrow.

The symbol of Saturn also looks something like a cross with a sickle or scythe, as the 'god' of agriculture. They are also easy to include in a planetary model like Hal's.

- Radiant suns, with gods riding on them in Celtic, Germanic, Babylonian, Hebrew, Canaanite, Jewish, Greco-Roman and in Mycenae and Troy mythology. The same in Native American tribes68 called the 'wheel of medicine' at times, in Persia, in the Aztecs, the Mayans -as in Palenque- etc. The suns with inner crosses gave way, most likely, to rotating discs with swiveled crosses, swastikas, and the symbol of the Earth.

- Slavs, Scandinavians69, Hindus, Arabs, Phoenicians; the Egyptian Ankh, the Greek and Babylonian cross of Tammuz, and even the Mayans had crosses for the god of fire Kauil (son of Itzamá) before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers. The Romans had the „crux simplex‟ (a stake), the „crux commisa‟ in the form of T and the „crux immisa‟ typical of Christianity.

- And the Incas had the Chakana cross -Carmen rounded off, surely having heard it from Mario, although I did not ask it.

67

The Saturn Myth - https://goo.gl/CpGoet Sun symbols in America (North and South) https://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-americansymbols/sunsymbol.htm https://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/nativeamericansymbols/symbols-and-meanings.html 69 http://maestroviejo.es/4000-year-old-bronze-age-petroglyphs-in-sweden-becamethe-sacred-symbols-of-georgias-creek-indians 68

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- The symbol of the eye in the sky I have seen it frequently as well.

- It's late, Carmen blushed through an emoticon. –We may go on tomorrow with more symbols.

- Okay. Goodnight.

- Good, good night, Carmen. And good morning Lucy, -I saluted. See you soon.

During the following days I continued to gather information about myths and symbols, wandjinas, halos and auras, myths about virgins and many other things. The relationship with Carmen and Lucy had become more familiar than professional.

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XVI.- THE MYSTERY OF MAPS (Mario Espejo)

“Religion is a controlling attempt on the material world we live on, through the world of desires developed inside us, as a result of biological and psychological needs.”

-Sigmund FreudThe decade of the 50s was verbose in the production of revolutionary works. From the masterpiece of comparative mythology, „Hamlet‟s Mill‟, by G. de Santillana and H. von Dechend, to the bible of the scientific heresy „Worlds in Collision‟ by Velikovsky, through several books by the American military geographer Charles Hapgood among which highlights „Maps of the ancient sea kings‟. I use these sources to elaborate my own theory about the chronology of civilizations.

When starting a journey you do not know your enemies, and sometimes, not even your friends. I knew the latter. The problem is that sometimes the enemy is you yourself. My challenge was clear; I even knew the title of my goal: „Map of lost civilizations‟. My friends from Canada and Australia had already started their adventures and their powerful adversaries were exposed. My antagonist had not been revealed yet.

Cartography is an extremely complex science even for an engineer. Representing a sphere in a plane implies that angles, distances or surfaces appear distorted. Many types of projections have been devised (gnomic, stereographic, orthographic, polar, meridian...). Tangent auxiliary geometric figures have been used, creating conical or cylindrical projections that can be displayed in a plane. I say all this, because a series of maps was found, some contemporary to Columbus, such as Piri Reis of 1513, O. Finaeus of 1531, Buache 1753, Mercator 1569 or Ben Zara 1487, which contain impossible technical characteristics for the time. The most striking, however, is the orography and coastlines of 90

unexplored lands or lands that are supposed under eternal ice70 (they can only be detected via satellite). Neither badly nor well drawn, Antarctica should appear in the sixteenth century. It looks like a very pilgrim excuse to say that it was located in the south to balance the globe. The map of Admiral Piri Reis was composed according to himself from previous maps dating back to the time of Alexander the Great {illogical if we consider that America and Antarctica appear}. It was discovered that the map was centered on Syena (the current Aswan), and referenced to the geographic North Pole (not the magnetic one, the only that could be known). The fragment of the map that has survived [of the 4 original parts] contains 5 compass roses that mark points from where the projections were drawn. After drawing the grid with plane trigonometry, the geographers observed that there were small errors. It was concluded that Piri Reis had used the incorrect measurement of Eratosthenes Earth, and the length of the Greek measure known as the stadium was determined at 166.72 meters. Remaking the grid with those measures the errors disappeared almost completely. If the source maps of Reis came from Alexandria, it meant that the Greek geographers had had almost perfect ancient maps in their hands. Surprisingly, the map turned out to be drawn in Mercator projection, supposedly discovered in 1569.

The idea of guessing the situation of mountain ranges, channels carved by rivers or the absence of narrow marine passages that today are now known but not at that time, is completely absurd.

This is explainable if there were landmasses that are nowadays underwater. Equally puerile is to justify the drawing of coasts and unknown lands with incorrect lines or arbitrary interpretations of the researchers.

To me, the maps were not a mystery anymore. Even so, there were many others to be solved. The origin of the solar system might have had in Proto-Saturn, or even in Proto-Jupiter, binary 70

https://ancient-code.com/stunning-nasa-map-shows-antarctica-ice-freeevidence-human-occupation/

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companions of the Sun, perhaps being the Earth part of them.

What caused the destruction of Andean sites such as Ollantaytambo? Is the matching in myths and legends a coincidence or is it the consequence of a process of cultural diffusion by a mother civilization or its survivors? Did these survivors lead to more primitive peoples, orienting their temples and megalithic monuments to the North Pole of each epoch? Were Aryans / Vedas the promoters of Nostratic languages? Was the capital of Atlantis in Antarctica? The enigmas accumulated.

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XVII.- CREATION MYTHS (Lucy Drake)

“In the beginning, it was the nothingness which exploded.”

-Terry PratchettDuring Easter, we traveled to El Cairo where we made the mandatory tourist visit to the Giza Pyramids. Of course, we enjoyed a luxury guide, not only due to Graham, of whom we were guests, but because he knew several guides in the city; some of them, young archeology students who normally resided abroad and were now on their land. A special permit, allowed us to access the underground of the Giza plateau Rostau as it is known-, as well as many places in Saqqara, Dashur, Abydos, Dendera, Luxor and Karnak, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Elephantine Island, and Philae in Aswan. I would have liked Carmen to be with us and have a meditation session inside the Great Pyramid of Cheops, as I know that some groups have had the privilege of doing.

It had always seemed to me a mystical and mysterious place.

The positive side was that I could have more time to be with Hal, since he had been working a lot in the last months and we hadn‟t made a trip like that since our relationship was formalized. Graham had, for some time, the idea of organizing a small travel business for professionals, with access to unusual places where special permits are required, technical conferences and advice to start research projects for graduate students; so he had to meet with local guides in Aswan. Mario had proposed the idea of extending the model to other parts of the world, beyond the Middle East where Talbosky was best known, although the project was in its infancy. That did not stop him from accompanying us a good part of the journey and telling us many of his ideas and interpretations about hieroglyphs and texts that Carmen would have marveled at. I was disturbed by some of the stories about creation, the oldest that circulate about the Ancient Empire of Egyptian culture.

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The Giza plateau is plenty of tunnels, many of them still full of water today, despite the 8 km that separate the current riverbed.

Graham showed us photos of the early twentieth century and even some images of the nineteenth century where water was seen very close to the “stone mountains� that looked like small hills in the distance. He also instructed us, to pay more attention to all the stones and blocks that had been cut, sawed and perforated in all the surroundings, of some lesser-known temples than the Sphinx and the three great pyramids.

- Look where you walk. Look at that raised floor at the base of the pyramid, Hal. The blocks are a meter higher than the ground, and bear in mind that this was perfectly leveled to support the weight of the pyramid. These channels in these huge limestone rocks are a mystery; officially to drain the liquids used in religious rituals.

- I read that there are two and a half million blocks of limestone only in the big pyramid.

- Over 114 thousand polished white limestone cladding blocks disappeared after being stolen by the growing population of El Cairo, especially after some earthquakes, to restore the city.

And about 40 huge granite blocks were used to build the King's Chamber.

- These patios and platforms on each side of the pyramids do not look like the original appearance, -I said self-absorbedly.

- Not at all, adjacent columns and temples were erected here.

Look at the stones of the ground, they are carved to fit exactly as if an automatic optimization of the stone had been made when it was extracted from the quarries; one was right here on the plateau, and that of white limestone in Tura, crossing the river in that direction.

- And those rounded stones with protrusions -I exclaimed - are identical to those we saw in Peru, in Sacsayhuaman and Cuzco.

- That's right, and the analogies do not end there, in some places you can see stones with very similar metallic staple marks used to provide stability to the walls, in theory. Not to mention mummification techniques and so on.

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- Look at this. That seal is from the pharaoh Shepseskaf of the 4th dynasty. Some egyptologists believe that in the Old Kingdom the Egyptians already recycled much of the material on the plateau, whose age would therefore be very old. Graham was on automatic pilot. I did not stop taking pictures.- Now we cannot go down here because they are doing restorations in this area but if you look over here you will see these cracks along the entire wall. They are famous for the controversy that a couple of geologists had about what caused the erosion of the Sphinx and these marks, but it was clear that it is due to water. If it was due to run-off or to the direct action of the rain, it is secondary. In any case, it must have taken thousands of years to produce such wear on this and the west wall. Alan's opinion as a geologist would be interesting about that.

- How old do you think the monument is? -I asked for.

- As I say, it cannot be 2,500 BC, but I cannot say if it is 5,000, 7,000 or 10,000 BC. Several climatologists believe that the Sahara was green until 5,000 BC but even so it must have taken thousands of years to produce such erosion. It is also known that the Sphinx has been buried under the sand for a long time, although not totally.

- If you want my opinion Graham, I will tell you that if the tests of Alan are valid as it seems, and the pole changed places, the climate would take several hundred if not thousands of years to dry up. -Hal sounded categorical-. And I can provide the physical mechanism for the pole to move. It takes several hundred years to cover this enclosure with sand, and several thousand to turn a garden into sand and dunes. If such a process began then in 7,000 BC and we give it about 2,000 years for erosion to wash away all this material and what is seen under the body of the lion, we are talking about 9 or 10 thousand years before Christ.

- I do not think it is crazy, Hal. All that you see there in the back has been restored in several stages. Take pictures of the temples that we are visiting in front of the Sphinx. The missing material between the lion and the eroded enclosure on which 95

we walk was excavated and its blocks used to build these two temples in front of it.

- Those temples are at a lower level -I repeated maybe because I had read or heard it-. It seems that it is built like this so that the Sphinx can have a panoramic view of the East and see the Sun rise.

- It makes sense, said Hal. Later, after descending and entering the temples that Graham was going to show us, the style seemed to change.

- Look at the style and remember it because you will see it again in Abydos. It seems rough, observe these blocks of pink granite brought from Aswan to more than 1,000 km; each cut of a size and shape, but symmetrical on each side.

- It does not fit a sheet of paper like in Peru.

- It's not just that, look at the precision with which they are cut; they seem optimized as Graham has said. And fit! The density of the granite is about 2.7 gr / cm3, so I calculate that some of these blocks weigh more than 300 tons...

- ...The roof is missing...

- In addition there is no plaster or mortar among the stones pointed our guide-. Personally I think that the origin of these, so-called temples is Predynastic.

- Do you think they are as old as Tiahuanaco? -I asked.

- It's hard to say, Lucy. By the type and construction technique it is possible that they are contemporary. The theory that Mario explained about the alignments indicates that Tiahuanaco and Puma Punku are oriented to the current pole, like Giza, which probably places them in a common era. Sacsayhuaman and Ollantaytambo would be earlier.

- Why would they insist on using a stone so expensive to work, slightly radioactive and conductive? , -asked Hal to himself, we understood-. These walls give the impression of having been created earthquake-proof, hence the multiple sizes and shapes.

- As in South America!

- And what about the Sphinx? How old do you think he is?

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- You are the expert Graham, -Hal said respectfully-, but if you expect us to believe that this is from the same time as the pyramids, I would say that I have serious doubts.

- My opinions are not the conventional ones. The style of the blocks of the „Valley‟ and „Sphinx Temple‟ we have just seen and those walls that surround the body of the lion, through which we have descended, are from the same period. I do not know if they are previous to the pyramids, but I doubt they are from the first dynasties of Pharaonic Egypt.

- What do you rely on to state that? -I asked.

- I suppose you've read the theories of alignments with Orion.

The Sphinx is the arrow that points to the Age of Leo, 10,000 BC. It is known that Tutmoses IV found the monument buried to the head in 1400 BC. Many archaeologists believe that he reshaped his head to make it in his image, which is why it is much smaller than the body. Others say that a lightning broke the head of the lioness and that was why Thutmose recarved it.

- It seems logical. The walls that surround us are full of frills and channels where it seems that water has come down. The horizontal marks look like wind and sand, but the vertical ones have to be from water. It is a subject for geologists but I doubt that here it rained enough in the 3rd or 4th millennium BC. - Not only that, Hal. If you remember the Saqqara tombs ten kilometers to the north, made with clay bricks, they are almost intact. If it had rained heavily during the Old Kingdom they would be much worn. This limestone is much more resistant but you can notice the degradation, especially in that part of the Sphinx.

- I read some English geologists who say that around five thousand or six thousand BC there could have been an orchard in the Sahara.

- We can ask Alan, although I doubt it. Furthermore, erosion would take 2 or 3 thousand years to occur. That brings us back to 7 or 8 thousand. Seismic resonance tests were made on the surface that we are on, and it was calculated that the back part is worn half of that it is in the front. If we suppose that the 97

Sphinx was repaired during the first dynasties from behind, as it is seen that there are many layers of patches, the front should have at least four thousand years more.

The last mystery of the Sphinx is the rectangular cavity existing five meters below the body, and almost nine by twelve meters in size. It seems to be manmade but, although one can enter the Sphinx, it is unknown if there is any way to reach that hollow.

The permits to excavate have been discarded due to the danger of collapse.

During the boat trip on the Nile to Abydos, I spent more time with Hal, Graham would meet us in Luxor but we had a guide waiting for us in Abydos. His job nickname was Horus, like the god. Native of the region of Nubia, he was a right-hand man for Abdel, Grahamâ€&#x;s friend to whom we already knew in El Cairo briefly.

- Those columns and their crossbars are huge; they must weigh about 65 tons‌ at least today.

- Egyptologists think that this temple was built at the same time than Seti I that we have just seen, but as you can see it is built 15 meters below and it is known that it was partially buried in sand.

-The comment of Hal went unnoticed by Horus, at least the final comment-. The Nile in ancient times could have been wider and reach up here, or maybe the riverbed could have been diverted. The fact is that we do not understand how it could be built under water. You can still see that it is flooded.

Hal had read the documentation that Graham had sent us about the places we were going to visit, and we both knew what things to look at. The blocks were scattered everywhere, they were huge and had no inscriptions. It was hard to accept that it was a temple of the New Kingdom like Seti's one a few meters away.

- Seti I is a 1300 BC temple, but there are thermoluminescence dates (OSL) dating from 2030 BC71 and others that go beyond 71

http://maajournal.com/Issues/2013/Vol13-3/10.pdf

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3000 BC. Thermoluminescence (OSL) measures the last time the rock was exposed to sunlight. In the Temples of the Valley and the Sphinx of Giza samples were taken giving dates of 2500 BC, as expected. It is more reliable than radiometry but it has its problems72.

- That may mean that the temples were reused, not that they were built on that date. The Sphinx was repaired at least three times during the Empires.

- What a pity you couldn‟t visit the „Well Osiris‟73 as it was closed for repairs, -said Horus-. Recently it has been said that it is 2930 BC. - Many things do not match in this country. Or dating techniques are unreliable, and the radiometry and the ratios given as constant have varied over time -I will not enter in what factors affect it-, or what you call „creator gods‟ like Osiris possessed an amazing technology to boost these temples apparently under water, -he pointed at the semi-submerged pillars.

- Another thing, habibi, is that Strabo‟s sources dated Osireion in 100 BC associated with Seti I. Does that mean that they also did not know its real origin?

- Almost certainly. Another anomaly that I see is that it looks like the whole „temple‟ seems to have been covered by a roof with two layers. Why did the worshipers of the gods need two layers of roof with blocks of tens of tons?

- Speaking of the blocks -I continued-. Look, those are the notches and shapes that Graham indicated to us. Identical to the ones we saw in Peru. Unfortunately you didn‟t see them.

- I have seen your pictures. The irregular shapes in which they have cut the fitting corners are perfect, as in the images. The same happens at Temple‟s Valley in Giza.

- A temple dedicated to Isis, explained the guide.

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http://www.icr.org/article/examining-thermoluminescence-dating/ http://www.guardians.net/hawass/osiris1.htm

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- This dedicated to Osiris and the other to Isis. Mmm. Please, Horus. Can you take us to the corridor with the list of kings?

- Dynastic and Predynastic I guess, -he said, recognizing that we knew where we were treading.

- Pass me the camera Hal; I want to photograph every cartouche. Especially the ones on this side. These are the same lists of kings, demigods and „Followers of Horus‟ -not of you, I joked to the guide -, that in the Turin‟s Papyrus74, the Palermo Stone75 and the Aegiptiaca of the priest Manetho76. The founders of Khemit. The creators of myths.

Unluckily Graham wasn‟t with us. We were meeting him that night in Luxor. While we dined as his guests in a discreet restaurant in the city, we discussed some of the wonders we had visited and the inconsistencies that academic versions had. The interpretations of the Osireion or the Sphinx Temple were not very credible, because there were no engravings (to tell the truth there were few crude ones in the Osireion that could have been made later). The sizes and the necessary technical skills to cut and set huge blocks of granite at great heights do not match with a dynastic culture that saw the gods as human beings with superpowers. The enormous mountains of carved fractured granite, whose ceilings disappeared or are scattered around the place, let us glimpse that their antiquity was much greater. We were struck by the sediment layer on which the site appears to be excavated, with a type of water erosion similar to that seen in the Sphinx enclosure at Giza. For a geologist like Alan, such a layer of marl belonging to the Cretaceous implies that the excavation must have taken place many millennia ago.

- To me -Graham said categorically-, this is not the work of the dynastic Egyptians, the inhabitants of Khemit. I call its builders, the Ancients.

- You have a big challenge ahead, -I said, encouraging him.

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https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/div-classtitleegyptianand-near-eastern-chronology-adilemmadiv/E42535189736B6221511381C1E474B7C 75 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00438243.1991.9980172 76 http://www.ancient-egypt.co.uk/people/pages/manetho.htm

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- I wanted to write a book called „Principia Historica‟, although perhaps the title is pretentious. I have to gather more evidence and now I'm involved in the travel‟s agent business.

- Come on Graham, that sounds like an excuse, -Hal said.

As the Egyptologist J.A. West said, “Egypt is a legacy, not an origin”. However happened the creation of the historical world, the history that is taught in schools, took place in several places almost simultaneously, on a fairly accurate date associated with a cataclysm –or a series of them- and that all professionals of history, archeology and mythology know. The „Andean Altiplano‟, the „Fertile Crescent‟, and Khemit are some of those sites.

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XVIII.- WORK. BE FASHIONABLE. WATCH TV. OBEY THE LAW. ACT NORMAL. AND SAY: ‘I AM FREE’.

(Halton Wheeler) “Question everything. Learn something.

Don‟t answer anything.”

-EurípidesThe lore that made up what is known as „history‟ was incredibly richer than I would have liked to admit. And not only „cause of the knowledge of the ancients in astrology or astronomy, but for their way of relating socially. It is possible that, with more or less technology, -thing I did not know-, they would be happier than the men of the 21st century. Luky‟s influence was noticeable in my vision of the world, modern and ancient, which was increasingly holistic. Unfortunately I had to go back to Hudson Bay, because at the end of Easter my duties and teaching activities claimed for my presence, which, on the other hand, were beginning to be discussed, as it had leaked that I gave to some advices on how to look for their own research to final year students at odds with the mainstream.

How to investigate without being dragged by the orthodox current and encouraging them to think for themselves.

And if Luky influenced me, Graham did it on her and Carmen, both of whom were increasingly influenced by the old myths.

The myth of Ra had a metaphysical connotation, something similar to the singularity of the Big Bang. According to experts, it represents the origin of everything that exists -time, space and matter-; the beginning of the universe [and the other gods] is a philosophical process that starts from the unity {„The All‟ for the hermeneutics} and leads to plurality. The unit has no other choice, it has no agency, free will; it can only be divided, create duality. But once there is duality, there is trinity; there are A, B and the relation between both, the Greek „logos‟, which in some religions they call „Holy Spirit‟. Once there are three 102

things or elements there may be other „existential planes‟, the material being one of them. Atum-Ra, self-created god of the rising sun, gives rise to Shu (dryness) and Tefnut (moisture), Geb (Earth) and Nut (Heaven), Isis (life) and Osiris (underworld, dead), and Nephthys (fertility) and Seth (time, desert or violence).

In the myth of Osiris, this represents abundance, vegetation and agriculture, being represented in green on many occasions. The time of the ruling of Osiris is assimilable to Paradise or Eden, or the Platonic Golden Age (Satya or Krita Yuga in Hindu mythology) or Purple Dawn. Also the „Age of the Perfect Virtue‟ in Taoism and China, the „Brilliant Yima‟ of the Persians or the „Peace of Frodi‟ in the Nordic and Germanic myth. If we transfer these legends to the analogy that personifies the planets in god-kings, as scholars like Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend claim, during the stabilization of the solar system, Osiris (Saturn) is sent to the underworld by Seth, taking the roles of the brown dwarfs protoSaturn and proto-Jupiter. Later in the development of the myth, Horus plays the role of the hero (Jupiter or Zeus, some myths scholars assign that role to Mars, which appeared later in the stories), who defeats (sends to the underworld) the former occupant of the „heavenly throne‟, Seth (Saturn or Cronos). In the Bible, Yahweh is equivalent to Jupiter (Zeus, Horus or Osiris) and Satan to Saturn (Cronos or Seth in both the myth of Osiris and Horus). In the legend of Genesis, Cain (Seth) kills Abel (Osiris), and then Set takes the role of Abel, according to Eva (Isis), and becomes the leader.

Everything has its influence and makes us interpret things in the most diverse ways. This is true in mythology or history but equally so in any of the sciences, which are ultimately made by subjective beings. However, it is one thing to have our own vision, our interpretation, and another is to be subjected to persuasion or manipulation by others (I will not enter into the distinction of both concepts as Luky would), especially individuals or dominant groups. To avoid this we must know 103

the methods used to condition us, both consciously and subconsciously.

Almost all of us have had the experience of being machinegunned by questions; not Socratic ones, but those aimed to obtain personal or internal knowledge, personal information needs, desires and weaknesses-. The commercials use this tactic. In personal relationships, negative language is often used in the form of humor or sarcasm to obtain a position of superiority over the other, although it also usually occurs in professionals. Aggressive behavior, often in the form of more or less subtle threats, appears in areas such as science and academic institutions, as we have seen in other chapters.

Judging, criticizing and intimidating are part of the mechanisms that the manipulators spend to psychologically place themselves above.

Negative language, judgments and criticisms or aggressive behavior are shared tricks by the strategy of making us feel guilty; they seek our alienation (limit our personality) to create domination and dependence. This is one of the handicaps of specialization in the scientific world, the loss of the global and holistic vision and the drug-like dependence of the system.

Finally, orthodox science, which controls the media (press, audiovisual, educational centers, journals), floods us with information, which is a very effective procedure to avoid finding the facts and looking for the “truth�. Another additional objective of information saturation is to hide its own weaknesses and anomalies and to prevent scrutiny.

Any parent is on the lookout for certain types of manipulation that we use unconsciously since we are born till childhood. To avoid the goings-on of the system, meditation -our own inner observation-, and the 100% alert perception, which both Luky and Carmen try to inculcate, is a fundamental skill.

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XIX.- HISTORIC REVISIONISM (Carmen Hill)

“Human mind fits certain viewpoint and those who regard nature from such a standpoint throughout most of their lives, might hardly embrace new ideas.”

-Antoine LavoisierLucy Drake had her own personality. Despite his youth she struggled to build a reputation in the field of anthropology, and she did not care whether good or bad. She wanted to learn, but above all to know the truth, even if it was only a small portion of it. One way to achieve this was to be guided by a veteran expert like Graham Talbosky. With almost twenty years of difference between them, his dynamism didn‟t lag behind. They shared the common goal of finding out the true history of the human race, but also the desire to convey to the population the, at least great probability, that things had happened in a very different way than was said. The great contribution of Graham to Lucy was the inquisitive spirit. Many times he talked to her about the „Sherlock Holmes‟ of history, researchers and explorers like West, Hancock, Bauval, Marcel Homet, Houdin, the Colonel Fawcett, Dunn, Mariette or even Sir William Flinders „Petrie‟.

There are numerous cases in which publications and scientific and historical studies have been censored by professionals and scholars whose ideas did not fit the accepted paradigm. Best sellers and lucrative books have been withdrawn from researchers such as Velikovsky or Arp, who had to earn their livings abroad or within small companies whose publications did not reach much publicity.

Insightful observations of mathematicians such as De Lubicz or engineers such as Bauval led to the formulation of theories that wreaked havoc on “cuac-ademic” orthodoxy [original periphrasis of J.A. West that refers to that vast majority of graduates who simply repeat as parrots what they have been taught without investigating other possibilities for themselves].

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These are some of the „Sherlock Holmes‟ of the story as Graham likes to say. Others contributed with scientific methodologies, to branches of history such as Sir William Flinders „Petrie‟ and A. Mariette to archeology, whose works are followed today by people like R. Schoch or C. Dunn. There were also explorers like Colonel Fawcett or Marcel Homet who have influenced current travelers like Mario. And you cannot forget all those polymaths, historians and philosophers, Babylonian, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and more recent ones, some of which have contributed so much to create the desire to investigate the intricacies of human history, both in me as in Lucy. Be this regarded as my tribute to these illustrious researchers.

- Revisionism is necessary -Graham explained in one of our conversations- because “too many things are assumed in history and in science”. If bones or keramik remains are found inside temples or buried in megalithic monuments, it is assumed that they belong to the people that created those places, when it is far more likely that they were passers-by who settled there, relocating and restoring the site. The need for a discipline to appear scientific (objective and absolute truth) makes us assume that certain ratios that we perceive as constant during the few years of scientific method, such as rates of radioactive decay, have been constant throughout the life of the samples [thousands or millions of years], and that the ratios of parent and child elements were identical in the past. If an unknown script is found to be deciphered, its translation is interpreted according to the paradigm of the translator's time, it is believed by default that these ancient people could not have knowledge of astronomy, mathematics or biology; strange devices are thus dated at later dates, rejecting older dates as anomalies.

- That‟s due to the dogmatism and rigidity of the system -I said.

- I imagine you are aware of the controversy that was generated by many samples of coal and oil containing radioactive carbon14. Evolutionists attribute such presence to errors in the processes of measurement and contamination of samples.

- At least that shows the inherent difficulty of the method.

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- Nowadays it is well known that there is a dilution effect due to the emission of solid fuels77 in the atmosphere that appears to have a lower concentration of C14 -more antiquity-. In the second half of the 20th century there is another factor: nuclear tests78.

With the help of Hal and Alan the conclusion was obvious. The C14 dating process is long and complex, subject to errors and deviations: clean samples of carbonates and organic materials are heated with copper oxide, cleaned; the gas is filtered and sealed it in a torch bulb, send it to a particle accelerator, weighed against benzene; an organic sample is added (scintillating material); flashes are counted… Then they make statistics of several tests with a PC... There are so many weak links that even a neophyte may doubt the results. On the one hand it is a statistical process and on the other almost impossible to confirm.

The history must be, not revised, but changed because the dates of most civilizations are based on these irregular methods.

- We have several places whose possible dates put them around 10,000 BC or earlier, -used to comment Graham when recapitulating-. Gobekli Tepe, Yonagumi, Baalbek, Gunung Padang, Tiahuanaco (Lucy‟s favorite), Sacsayhuaman, Cuzco, Ollantaytambo, Pisac and Caral and probably Easter Island whose statues have been largely covered with sediments, Ponape, where Nan Madol has underwater structures that do not have been erected before an ice thaw, Guanahacabibes in Cuba, Dwarka in the Indus river‟s mouth and several islands of Sunda and Zealandia subcontinents and the Pacific.

- I cannot ignore the sites excavated in rock that our engineer Mario admires so much. Derinkuyu, Cappadocia, Jordan, churches and Ethiopian temples, the Barabar, Ajanta or Elora 77

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-fuel-burning-obscuresradiocarbon-dates/ 78 http://www.cirac.org/shroud/Discussion/C14-Dating.htm https://journals.lww.com/soilsci/Citation/1967/08000/Factor_Affecting_the_Acc uracy_of_the_Carbondating.2.aspx https://goo.gl/je5CTF https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/JC075i015p03089

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caves (which include the Kailasa temple) in India, the megaliths of Mount Shoria (Altai) between Siberia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, Iraq al-Amir nearby of Baalbek, the caves of Etruria and megalithic Maltese constructions, Mycenae, the megaliths in Vottovara next to Finland, in Belova island next to Estonia, Guam, Tonga, the Marianas and a long, very long etcetera. And this is a brief summary.

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XX.- DRAGONS, SERPENTS, OUROBOROS (Graham Talbosky)

“Like a man was the sun when it showed, and his face gleamed when earth‟s surface was dried… He showed himself when he was born and stayed fixed in the sky like a mirror.

Certainly, it was not the same sun we see, it is said in ancient lores.”

-D. Goetz y S. Morley, Popol Vuh, 1972, p. 188The myth of a Dragon, which is sometimes a beautiful princess or maiden with long hair and others a harpy witch, and the Hero who saves the princess, extends globally. The best known are naturally the Greek ones, but there are several other stories about the dragon defeated by a hero or warrior god. Perseus and Andromeda is the story of the fight of the sea monster Cetus, sent by Poseidon, to destroy Andromeda for being more beautiful than their daughters, the Nereids. Perseus came to destroy the Gorgon Medusa, and approaches invisible to Cetus, because he wore the helmet of Hades. The second of the twelve works of Hercules was to finish the Hydra, a sea serpent that guarded an entrance to the underworld. The Hydra was the daughter of Typhon and Echidna; the first a gigantic serpent and the most devastating creature in Greek mythology, the second a griffin, half human, half snake, mother of most monsters. The Hydra had several heads, and a poisonous breath. Hera had sent the Hydra to defeat the hero, but he covered his mouth and nose to protect him from poisonous gases, while throwing arrows with fire at the tail of the Hydra.

Some say that with a sickle or scythe, others that sword in hand, and still others with his mace, Hercules was launched against the monster beheading all her heads. Finally, we have the story of Zeus and Typhon. Some authors mention that the dragon / serpent was the son of Hera alone, others attribute their „paternity‟ to Cronos. Typhon tried to usurp the control of Olympus to Zeus by maintaining a terrifying battle. Zeus, 109

eventually, defeats him by throwing his most powerful rays at him, and sends him to Tartarus.

In Japan the myth is known as Yamata no Orochi, and the hero is called Susanook; another version speaks of Ryojin, a dragon with three claws that symbolizes the ocean, being able to transform itself in human and lives under the sea like PoseidĂłn with his trident. He is also considered the father of Japanese kings' dynasties. In some countries the dragon has negative connotations like in Europe, in others like China, it is positive.

Perhaps this is the country par excellence that most venerates the Dragon; Gonggong or Kanghui is a destructive god related to water, who is usually defeated by another superior god; the Dragon King, one of whose epithets is the god of wells and springs, Shihai Longwang, god of the four seas and several more. The imugi (literally great lizard) are the Korean dragons, those who have not reached the rank of superior dragon by not having captured a yeouiju (jewel or orb). It contrasts with the Chinese in his long beard, and how the Chinese and Japanese are associated with water and agriculture. Bakunawa is a mythical snake from the Philippines, which is believed to be the cause of eclipses. The Vietnamese dragon, Long, is represented in sinusoidal form, with fins, long hair and beard, without horns and open mouth. They are responsible for the crops and the weather.

I gave up a dozen old books on mythology and popular wisdom that some 'scholars' with little respect for their profession call folklore. While reading the Journal of Ancient History and Archeology, I heard Lucy whispering some paragraphs for herself in a low voice. I think she had been doing that for three hours and she seemed tireless.

- Beyond, there are legends with dragons all over the planet79.

In India they are called Naga, and they acquire the form of a cobra, sometimes with several heads –I heard her muttering-.

Vritra is another characterization of the dragon / serpent related to natural disasters and drought, which is destroyed by Indra, 79

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dragons_in_mythology_and_folklore

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god of lightning. History says that it swallows the ocean with all its beings and does not release them until it is defeated.

- In the Scandinavian Ragnarok, the gigantic serpent of the Midgard, Jormungander, faces Odin. The god of lightning and thunder, his son Thor, saves him and overcomes the snake, not without falling down by his poison shortly after, with what his duel is drawn, as almost all duels of Ragnarok.

- I know the German mythology Graham. I am English.

- The same argument is valid for Persia where it is called Azi Dahaka. There are world-renowned legends about these beasts that, biologically speaking, are impossible. However, scattered everywhere there are stories about snakes, some of them winged, and about heroes who fight them. In some cases the role of evil dragon and beautiful princess has been associated to the same being, a kind of alter-ego.

- In medieval European mythology there are huge amounts of tales linked to dragons, creatures in the shape of giant snakes with two, sporadically four, legs, typical of the heraldic -now she was reading to me aloud-. The Wyvern, who has two wings, usually appears on the banners. Others are paired with mountains such as the Wruenele or dragon worm or reptile; the dragon of Bisterne, which became a mountain defeated by the knight Sir Maurice de Berkeley, who ended up going mad and dying turned into a tree; the dragon of Bignor who had his lair on the mountain; the Blue Ben, in West Somerset (England), is said to be the devil's steed and there is even an Ichthyosaur skull in the city museum that is believed to be the head of the dragon; the reptile of Lambton, in Fatfield in the northeast of England, was killed by Sir John Lambton during the time of the crusades.

- You've forgotten the best known, I said boasting, the Welsh Ddraig Goch, the red dragon whose fight with a white dragon, to whom he defeats, and whose battle was witnessed by King Vortigern, according to Merlin; the red is Welsh and the white represented the Saxons .

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- She jumped to other pages previously marked ignoring my words. - Sarkany, Hungarian dragon in human form with multiple heads; Zomok, winged serpent; Zmey another winged dragon in the Slavic countries; Vishap in Armenia; Yilbegan similar to Slavic in the Siberian zone; Balaur and Zburator in Romania; Vere Celen pre-Islamic dragon; Cuélebres, winged dragons of Asturias and Cantabria who ate cattle and people; Coca is a female dragon in Portugal that fights with San Jorge, a „Vibria‟ they call it in Catalonia where the hero is Sant Jordi, the dragon breathes fire and the breath of the dragon can rot things; Bolla is the Albanian dragon who fights Saint George, and on the day of his name day he is said to open his eyes until he sees a human and devours him; the Kulshedras also of Albania, who have horns, dorsals and wings, and are fought by the „Drangues‟, knights with super-powers, and their battles are seen as lightning storms; Dreq is from the Macedonian zone and represents the devil; for the Tatars Zilant, national symbol of Kazan; in Lithuania it is a hydra with many heads called Whistles...

- And what conclusion do we get?

- There are many more. In Haiti and in Benin, next to Equatorial Guinean, there is Ayida-Weddo, a dragon related to wind, water, fire, and voodoo; in Senegal a story about Kweku Tsin and his father Anansi who went out to hunt being chased by a dragon having to escape by climbing a ladder to heaven.

The Egyptian Apophis, the Hebrew Azazel, Gorynich (a zmey) in Russia, the Hittites had the god of the storm Illuyanka, the Sumerians had Kur, referred to a mountain or the underworld (Irkalla), mixed in legends with Tiamat, goddess of the sea and mother of the gods. In Mesoamerica, the Quiche speak of Gukumatz, the Mayans of Kukulkan and the Aztecs of Quetzalcoatl, plumed flying serpents, related to the planet Venus; Xiuhcoatl also Aztec is a fire serpent interpreted as the weapon of the gods (lightning); Quechuas and Incas had Amaru, a serpent with the feet of a bird and wings, linked to Tiahuanaco and capable of transcending the underworld; Yam, the god of the sea of the Canaanites, rival of Baal, who defeats 112

him in the form of Baal-Hadad; The Jewish Leviathan is associated with this same battle with God to that of Marduk and Tiamat, Indra and Vritra, Baal and Yam, or Thor and Jormungander. Even the Guarani have their Teju Jagua, a lizard with seven dog heads that exhaled fire.

- Did you find out something about the Ouroboros?

- I checked what you sent me by mail. There are snakes or dragons that devour their own tail in alchemy, in China, India where the Sun is seen to be inside them-, in Hermopolis and even the American Sikysatki Indians have theirs.

- It's enough.

- In your opinion, what is its meaning?

- Each mythologist has his own ideas, but if you want an idea that fits in a common paradigm with the ideas of our common friends you should ask Hal. - Hal? What does he know about mythology?

- Who says that the nexus of such legends is not scientific?

- I hadnâ€&#x;t thought of it that way.

The doorbell rang. It was Abdel who came to say goodbye because he had to return to his hometown in Lebanon. Graham held him in high esteem and, of course, invited him to have a tea, according to his custom.

- Abdel has to travel home tomorrow -I warned Lucy-.

- Good evening, Miss Drake. I came to say goodbye, I have business in Byblos but I hope to see you again.

- It has been a pleasure to have met you Abdel. Do not doubt that we will see each other. This summer we are planning to go to Baalbek with some friends.

- If you are in the area, do not hesitate to call me. My son or I will guide you through the most remote places in the Middle East.

- We will, Abdel.

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XXI.- FIVE BIG EXTINCTIONS (Alan Hapgood)

“Almost 2.500 million years of prokaryotes and nothing more –two thirds of life history in the lowest level of recorded complexity-… Why life remains so much time in that stage if complexity offers such benefits?”

-Stephen Jay GouldThe year was nearing completion and I had an overwhelming accumulation of work. On the one hand, a biologist friend of mine wanted to write a professional article on the extinction of dinosaurs, or K-Pg event. I always try to speak of historical periods, such as the Cretaceous and Paleogene, without using numerical dates because I am not sure if their dating is quite correct. On the other, I had some tutoring and guidances that put a lot of responsibility on me because I could not suggest quite openly to my students to perform some field work, oriented in the direction of my own research, if I didn‟t want to get into more trouble.

Lucy travels to India where she will meet with Carmen. A girls journey, that leads them to meet a spiritual guide called Jiddhu.

Jake Sturrock was a curious guy. It cannot be said we were friends. Since I knew him, I had seen him in Sydney three times while attending some conferences. On this occasion, he had gone to Adelaide to listen my talk, and it was he who contacted me. I know that as a young man he was a convinced atheist, and I know that his favourite book was „The Selfish Gene‟. A few years later, I learned from third parties that had become a creationist, publishing a small essay called „The anthropocentric genetics‟, which extolled epigenetic factors over genetic factors, which he considered almost irrelevant. It is not that he believed that the Earth was six or ten thousand years old, but he did think he could have a few million.

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His academic training was not negligible. Besides being a biologist he was a chemist specialized in radiometry. After greeting us and catching up on what had happened to our careers in recent years, he fired.

- I'll get to the point. You see, I've been in contact with my colleagues in Europe and the United States and I've come to the conclusion that, at least, the disappearance of the saurians was not caused by the impact of a meteorite80 81.

- Well, the impact of all those comets like Chicxulub is just a hypothesis...

- That they have elevated the illustrious range of theory. I have also known paleontologists who have found fossil bones dating in a few tens of thousands of years.

- You already know that is not my specialty -I said, and added hesitantly- and that I do not believe in any god created in the image of man...

- Okay, I didn‟t come to argue about religion. I was not religious either, and now I think it is an explanation as feasible as any evolutionary theory.

- I repeat that I'm agnostic. Nor am I interested in gods created by man through cryptic mathematical language that give him “mystic powers”. It seems so selfishly anthropocentric to think that we can understand or explain something about a god, whatever the attributes or qualities that we assign to him. There will be eight billion different definitions of God in the world. I mean singularities with infinite densities and zero volumes, -I said, quoting Hal to soften the situation-.

- You should talk to the people of the Paleogroup.

-It was as if he had become one of those Bible-sellers who pretend to possess the absolute truth-.

- My interest in the gods is centered on the ancestral mythology and its relationship with the stars. In fact, I am sure that the 80

The final cause of dinosaurs extinction is still mysterious

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El impacto del Chicxulub es anterior al límite K-Pg http://www.pnas.org/content/101/11/3753

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912969009386535

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ancient gods were planets and hence a great part of the coincidences among the urban legends of all the world cultures.

-Although he didn‟t know, I was realizing that the explanations that Carmen, Graham, and even Lucy were sending to the rest of our group were soaking us-. What is clear to the experts, -I told him trying he didn‟t see it as my own opinion-, is that the Bible and other sacred books are copies of more ancient scriptures and other stories, which have the same plots, the same gods, with other names, obviously.

- Okay, Alan. What I want is to know your opinion about how the change of the Earth rotation axis, about which you speak in your paper, could affect the temperatures of the globe and, consequently, the species. Especially, the great reptiles.

- It's all in the paper Jake - I squelched trying to sneak away. I was still thinking about what characteristics a god would have for me. And for Carmen and the rest of my group of friends.

Definitely, it was something pending to talk about.

- Do you think there could be dinosaurs walking with humans?

I don‟t mean Homo sapiens, but specimens of the genus Homo82 83 84 85.

- It's difficult, I can not tell you, because I haven‟t investigated it.

- Although not for religious reasons, I have the impression that you would like to do it.

- Since when do you know me so well? -I said distantly and self-protectively. It was at that moment when I realized that he 82

Soft tissue samples in fossils of dinosaurs that should not exist http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065128113000020 83 Organic molecules and remains of Archaeopteryx feathers revealed by synchrotron images https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2889062/?tool=pmcentrez 84 Organic molecules of mummified hydrosaur http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/06/30/rspb.2009.0812 85 Mastodon and Tyrannosaurus Rex proteins found by AMS http://science.sciencemag.org/content/316/5822/280 Collagen in Cretaceous bone http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la047682e Vessels and soft tissue TRex cells https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?Db=pubmed&Cmd=Retrieve&list_uids= 15790853&dopt=abstractplus

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was fostering my curiosity and that I wanted to find out what this mystery was about-.

In biology, geology and paleontology, five major extinctions of life on the planet are considered. The first of these is the Ordovician / Silurian in the Paleozoic or Primary Era that took with it 25% of families and 80% of species, whose causes are allegedly related to the displacement of Gondwana supercontinent to the south or to massive volcanism. The second in ascending chronological order was the Carboniferous or rain forest collapse (CRC), 300 million years ago that ended with 17% of families. The largest of all was that of the Permian, it is estimated about 250 million years ago, and it was given the name of the Great Mortality because it ended with the life of 90% of marine species and 75% of terrestrial ones.

Numerous hypotheses are considered, as an exacerbated volcanism by large basalts found in Siberia and China, possible massive asteroids impacts, or the drastic increase of CH4, or SH2. Alternative theories suggest that all these causes were followed in a period that would take 1 million years. The most famous, however, is the extinction of the Triassic / Jurassic, 150 million years ago (in the Mesozoic or Secondary Era); that eradicated 23% of families and began the hegemony of the great saurians. The alleged cause was again attributed to large meteors or even a comet, which additionally could have caused earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanism. Finally, the extinction of the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) or Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) happened 65 million years ago, killing 17% of existing families and with them the large reptiles that had dominated the secondary period. Its official cause, although disputed by many, was a meteor in Yucatan known as Chicxulub, which, in parallel, and as always supposedly, would have triggered a series of simultaneous climatic and geological disasters.

- A French radiologist named Emily Evin and a Russian, Igor Ivanov, have published several papers explaining that the radiometric decay rates have varied over time, due to multiple factors -Sturrock continued with his tactic of feeding my 117

interest-. Among other factors, rates are affected by neutrinos86, chemical changes such as nuclear combustion87, physical changes such as pressure and temperature increase88, distance from the Sun89 and the degree of activity of the same, low frequency electromagnetic fields90, ionization (for example, in the case of supernovae91), and there are even experiments of supercooled metals and nanoparticle lasers that modify them92.

- It's impressive if you have papers of all that.

- They are published in journals. You can search for them yourself.

- Do not doubt that I will, as soon as I have time, -I said-.

- We'll be in touch.

- I hope Hal helps me, -I said, getting up.

- Hal? -he asked while doing the same.

- Halton Wheeler, a physicist.

- I don‟t know him.

- I would appreciate it if you send me the links or documents that you have and you would save me a lot of time that I just don‟t have.

- It's okay. You give me your opinion.

- Beware.

Paraphrasing Hal, radiometry is „the second of the pillars of science‟, along with gravity and the light spectral redshift. The 86 87 88

89

http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V08NO2PDF/V08N2FAL.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:8292072 http://people.earth.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Lee/16_Lee_GSN_ecap_deca y_2008.pdf

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/100830FischbachJenkinsDec.h tml https://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3283 90 https://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/807793 91 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.4669.pdf https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.06573 92 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.6276.pdf https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/01/faster_decay/ http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060804/full/news060731-13.html

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radiometry discovered by Becquerel and Curie at the end of the 19th century, provided a means of absolute and objective dating of geological structures, rocks and even the planet itself. Like everything, it is based on a series of assumptions and premises, such as that the initial conditions of the rock sample are known exactly, that the amount of parent or daughter isotopes in a sample has not been altered by different processes of that of radioactive decay (contamination of samples is common) and that the disintegration rate of the parent isotope has remained constant since the rock was formed. There were years of war between creationists and evolutionists, to impose their prejudices and religious tendencies and in the University we were taught that evolutionists had won. It seems that there is still resistance.

In Dwarka, near the mouth of the Indus River on the IndianPakistani border, Carmen and Lucy had hired a local guide to submerge on the coasts. They were good swimmers and had learned to dive years ago, Carmen in Spain and Lucy in the United Kingdom, where she was born. The guide had promised to teach them some remains of stones from the ancient submerged city of Dwarka, which according to the Mahabharata was the place where Krishna lived. What they did not know is that these dives had been declared illegal for more than five years, with the excuse that the divers spoiled the heritage, and so on. The reality is that permits were not granted to professionals of geology or archeology and there were hundreds of applications from around the world denied each year. Some days later they travelled to Agra.

- The first thing you should do is connect to the ground, root yourself. -Jiddhu spoke to them with all familiarity, when they had only known each other for 3 days. The girls intended to stay for two weeks in India, where Carmen wanted to visit museums with which she had contacted and to review several documents in Sanskrit. Lucy was also interested in the origins of the Aryan, or Indo-European, culture if you will, prior to the Harappa settlements.

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- You must ground yourselves and become present in your body -continued the Buddhist-. It is important for good health.

In this way, not only you connect, but you also open yourself to the energy of the planet, providing your body, mind and emotions with the energy (ki) that you need.

Lucy listened to the clear English of her instructor silently with her eyes closed, while breathing the intense smell of incense that filled the wide lounge. Carmen was more accustomed to that style of guidance for abstracting from the material world.

- We live in a very linear, literal and brain-focused society.

Many people call it mind-focused but mind is not the brain –he explained them during their first encounters-. People see themselves as a head with hands, in front of their computers or their mobile phones or their vehicles and forget their body and spirit. Western civilization is not a rooted culture, is not connected to the planet. To be in connection with ourselves, it is essential to be present. This is, „alert perception‟ at the current time at a 100%. That's what it's called being grounded.

It is about having a constant flow of energy, which you can visualize as it passes through the chakras, from below in the sacrum upwards, till the seventh above the head.

He spoke with parsimony, with an unconventional calm, and his presence was relaxing.

- Your feet have to be connected to the ground, but your head must be open to detach from the energies that you don‟t need and to welcome our spiritual energies –he went on-. Close your eyes, and the rest of the senses, not only the obvious five, but also the thought, the pain, the pressure, the temperature, etc.

The best way to start is concentrating our attention on the present, might be in the breathing... without forcing it, just observing it..., feeling the abdomen inflate, the air dispersing through each part of your interior..., or you can focus on the heartbeat.., or maybe, in the sounds that you hear in the distance..., always alert...

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A week later of our conversation I had several papers and scientific links in my personal email. Interestingly, they did not come from Sturrock but from his secretary who had compiled all the information along with telephones and contact mails.

However, I did not open the attachments because the end of the course was keeping me busy. I would have time in a few weeks, I thought.

The talk with the creationist biologist drove me to formulate a reflection on whether scientists, in general, do science or are dedicated to transferring the ideas we have been taught from one to another. In many places they call that „scientism‟, in a somewhat derogatory way, why not to say it. It is as ugly or grotesque as treating collated theories with contrasted data as pseudoscience, or to use terms like „crank‟ or „nerd‟. Things that, unfortunately, I had experienced with Lyell and Cuvier.

Will the extinction of scientists ever occur?

Carmen and Lucy assiduously visited Master Jiddhu during a stay at his modest farm on the outskirts of Agra, near Jaipur.

They had visited the ancient capital of the Mongol Empire, especially to see the Taj Mahal, and perhaps it was chance that led them to meet the wise man. One of the tasks that he used to practice was to impart his knowledge, especially among the many Western tourists who sought to start their journey in the world of spirituality. One day after visiting the Punjab region and the historic sites of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, he spoke to a dozen visitors and guests about a conversation held by A. Einstein and the Indian writer and philosopher R. Tagore about the nature of reality. The scientist maintained the existence of an objective reality while the eastern polymath felt that reality was a spiritual or mystical world from which the so-called physical or material reality derived. Einstein recognized that concepts such as beauty were linked to human presence or existence (the attribute of consciousness was assigned exclusively to animals), but the concept of truth, which he himself called „his religion‟, were rooted in a final material 121

reality93. Einstein wrote: “It is clear that the space of physics is not, in the last analysis, nothing that is in the independent nature of human thought. It is a function of our conceptual scheme [mind]. The space conceived by Newton is a proven illusion, although for practical purposes a very fruitful illusion�

94 . His teachings made a deep impression on the girls.

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Deepak Chopra- Einstein-Tagore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vG_h6E0yg 94 https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/Edge20171230 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-1philscience/

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XXII.- CRATERS CLOSE TO THE POLE (Halton Wheeler)

“Now, we know that it is proved that the moon is not out there when nobody looks.”

-N. David Mermin, físico de CornellIf another “event in extinction mode” has to happen (the 6th mass extinction expected by scientists), and the knowledge based on faith and beliefs is replaced by a personal knowledge, in many cases internal; just maybe, that event has already happened in the past. But do not expect to see proof of such extinction in a crater.

The world is a hive of archaeological mystery and perhaps one of the most important is the Australian fluvial system of Murray Darling. It extends throughout much of the continent, but attached to it is a system of sand dune windows. These lunettes are round and up to 100 meters high. In the lunette of Lake Victoria 15.000 bodies of aborigines were found buried95.

Most archaeologists believe that it is a cemetery that spans thousands of years. I think it's the aftermath of a great geophysical destruction that happened very quickly. What caught my attention –I knew this thanks to Alan-, was that south of the Great Lakes and even reaching South Carolina, there are similar craters or large puddles (they are flooded) called Carolina Bays (Maryland Basins)96. They are concentrated elliptical depressions along the Atlantic coast, although they exist in the area of Quebec and surroundings. Its origin is a mystery because they are only found in these two areas of the globe97.

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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/arco.5048 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012825294000666 96 https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/articleabstract/63/2/167/4481/carolina-bays-and-their-origin?redirectedFrom=fulltext 97 http://www.geulogy.com/norfolk/norfolk-meres-mystery.html http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cbayint.html

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Hal to Alan: “The most general explanation, although unofficial, is that some large meteor entered the atmosphere exploding at a certain height during the Holocene-Pleistocene transition period, bursting into pieces that fell along several rows on the Laurentian ice sheet (which covered eastern Canada and part of Greenland, according to orthodox sources throughout the country). A possible explanation that we give is that an electrically charged environment (very different from the current one; the celestial bodies, like all bodies, tend to neutrality), would produce electrical arc discharges capable of lacerating the earth's crust. I think it was possible in the first approach of Saturn to the Sun, that large arc discharges remodelled the surface of the planet by excavating the Colorado Canyon or Valles Marineris on Mars. There is no shortage of experiments with plasma arc discharges98 that have obtained similar patterns to those observed on Mars and other structures in the solar system. For this it is necessary to assume that the planets have varied their orbits and that they were electrically charged” 99.

Alan‟s email: “There is evidence that there was an inversion of the Earth's magnetic field known as the Laschamp event 100 that was recorded in Lake Mungo near here. Magnetic anomalies have also been recorded between the Pliocene and the Pleistocene (3-5 million years ago) 101. According to Graham, there are also legends of rays launched by the gods and other actors, some of whom had scars. Scarface in Mayan/Aztec mythology struggling to defend the star of dawn (Venus); the story of Zeus and Typhon, as well as the giant Enceladus, as well as Chiron and Hercules suffering deep wounds; Indra and Ravenna in India, are some examples.

98

https://www.theepochtimes.com/did-a-giant-cosmic-lightning-bolt-hit-mars-couldone-hit-earth_899276.html http://www.ispc-conference.org/ispcproc/ispc22/P-I1-14.pdf https://goo.gl/BzUThc 99 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/91556/is-the-earth-negatively-orpositively-charged http://www.prespacetime.com/index.php/pst/article/view/93/89 100 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012821X88900581 http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1305/515 101 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012821X71901348

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It is obvious why these discharges occurred around the poles, if our theory is correct. Then there are the inselbergs (mountains of hard material raised by volcanic processes amidst soft material that erodes during millions of years theoretically).

Unfortunately, that theory fails because inselbergs like Shiprock, are made of an igneous rock (in appearance) formed by ultra-potassium sandstone, which is not very resistant and would erode quickly. The fulgurites (metamorphic rock in the form of a tube composed of vitrified silica) are formed by vitrification of the ceramic material in the ground due to sustained lightning (resembling igneous rocks)”.

Hal to Alan: “NASA itself has recognized that lunar craters are electrified102. Conclusion, many craters, not all, can be produced by electric shocks.

As an appendix, there are two types of electric shocks.

Negative discharges produce craters (they accumulate material in the electromagnetically dragged center and have fused material terraces around); the positive ones, which are stronger, attract the negative material of the subsoil producing extrusions and channels (analogous to the Lichtenberg figures). It‟s industrially produced in a well-known process called EDM. 75% of electrical discharges in storms are intra-cloud; 20% cloud-to-ground or negative, 5% are positive (from the high storm region there is an ion flow to the ground)”.

Alan's final answer: “Totally agree. See you soon and you‟d explain me whether certain craters in the solar system can have electrical origin. I‟m talking about Herschell crater in Mimas, Tycho and Aristarchus on the moon, and several other aligned craters on Mars, Callisto and so on”.

“P.D.: Carmen asks me to tell you that she has decided to publish her theory about the origin of Nostratic languages and Aryan-Veda migration. She knows that she will not be offered a cathedral chair, but she doesn‟t mind working on translating Sanskrit, Mandarin or Arabic texts”.

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https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/electric-craters.html

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XXIII.- BULLYING (Alan Hapgood)

“Ideas which need people to rearrange their world envisaging, trigger hostility."

-James GleickThere have been numerous cases of workplace harassment103 in the short history of science. Some of them are well known as those of Thomas Edison on Nicola Tesla. Edison dared to electrocute elephants with alternating current to show people the dangers of this respect to the direct current defended by him. The prestigious nineteenth century biologist Richard Owen, who coined the term „dinosaur‟, is remembered for his affaires with the paleontologist Gideon Mantel; with its influence in the high scientific instances of his epoch, he tried to avoid the concession of a prize to Mantel, in revenge by some corrections that Mantel had done to a work of Owen. The cases of the inventors of Silicon Valley and the first functional transistors broke the friendship of W. Shockley, J. Bardeem and W. Brattain, co-founders of Bell Telephone (now AT & T) and even of I. Newton and G. Leibniz contesting the invention of calculus are also popular.

One of the most extreme cases was the mistreatment suffered by the geologist Alfred Wegener, discoverer of the „Continental Drift‟, whose ideas were considered pseudoscientific during the first half of the 20th century. The geologist was reviled and ridiculed in universities and official meetings of the scientific community, even to the point of being used as an example of warning to students, that anyone who opposed the accepted thesis would follow the same path104. The conservative and evolutionary Smithsonian Institute could not avoid having to write an article recently, amending as far as possible the

103

https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/5-beloved-scientists-who-wereactually-bullies#page-3 104 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-continental-drift-wasconsidered-pseudoscience-90353214/

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treatment given to one of the scientists whose ideas are now considered a dogma.

In the decade of the 50s, the case of doctor in psychiatry Immanuel Velikovsky, a modern polymath versed in various disciplines such as history, anthropology, and physical sciences, with no small knowledge of biology and geology, had a great media impact. Velikovsky rubbed shoulders with the elite of the scientific community of his time, including Albert Einstein, who is said to be a good friend. In fact, although he did not publicly support his ideas, he was one of the few who did not get enraged to the scientist. One of the astrophysicists who most tapped against the rutenian was the american Carl Sagan, who later became famous for the television documentary series „Cosmos‟. At least, Sagan had the courage to devote three minutes in one of his chapters to apologize in his own way and to recognize that science should not try to suppress opposing ideas by force105. Years later, many of Velikovsky claims were surprisingly verified by technological advances and space probes, referring to the atmosphere of Venus, its temperature, the emission of radio waves by Jupiter, predictions about lunar rocks or composition of Mars, etc.

Since the emergence of science (scientific method as such) in the Renaissance, the first notable case was that of Giordano Bruno who was finally burned at the stake by the Catholic Inquisition, for defending the same ideas as Copernicus and Galileo. Both of them moved with a lot of tact, and were only investigated as heretics (as subsequently Newton and Descartes), warned and put under surveillance. In the twentieth century, the American astrophysicist H. Arp received a similar consideration, and is known as „the Galileo of the twentieth century‟106. Although he was not placed under house arrest, he was forced to leave his country because he was denied access to all kinds of scientific facilities, emigrating to Germany where 105

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MlN7iVIuhk Successful Velikovsky predictions http://www.velikovsky.info/Velikovsky's_predictions 106 http://osnetdaily.com/2014/01/modern-day-galileo-who-refuted-big-bang-theorydies-at-86/

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he continued his research. His sin was to perform astronomical observations that contradict the predominant view of spectrum lines redshift as caused by the speed of galaxies or quasars. By demonstrating that there are non-cosmological (intrinsic) causes for the redshift, he put in serious doubt the validity of the Big Bang as an officially accepted theory.

Sturrock's secretary had also provided me with papers, civil documents and links that showed the harassment that some paleontologists, colleagues of Sturrock, had been submitted to, for their creationist ideas even though their methodology and studies were scrupulous. Hugh Miller, for example, presented findings that contained traces of soft tissue and collagen in dinosaur bones. The creationist „Paleochronology Group‟ presented the results at a Geophysics Congress in Singapore, with dates obtained by sending „incognito‟ samples to be analyzed. The result was 50.000 years. The paper was removed from the web after the Congress, and a letter from the Association of Geosciences of Asia and Oceania responded by letter that the paper was removed from its website having been admitted to review by mistake107 and by virtue of its authority as leaders of it had rescinded it.

The same group, using the services of A. Cherninsky and the facilities of the Mass Spectrometer Accelerator of the University of Georgia (CAIS), was publishing on the web, dates of dinosaur bones with very recent dates108; so that the director of the center, J. Speakman, intervened prohibiting access to the installation to any member of the Paleochronology group. The excuse was not the methodology but the fact of having drawn conclusions about the age of the Earth and the proximity of the existence of the saurians, so the CAIS stopped providing dating services.

Mark Armitage worked as manager of the „Confocal and Electron Microscopy Suite‟ in the Biology Department at the University of California at Northridge from 2010 to 2013. Mark was suddenly fired by the Department of Biology when his soft 107 108

http://newgeology.us/presentation48.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23414624

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tissue discovery on a Triceratops horn was published. The university claimed that his appointment had been temporary and claimed lack of funds for the position. This was new to him, and contradicted previous statements and university documents. The case is under legal action for unjustified dismissal and religious discrimination by California State University Northridge (CSUN) 109.

The paleontologist Gertha Keller was another of the scientists whose presence was considered non-pleasant in congresses on meteorite impacts. Her colleagues avoid, even today, to interact with her110.

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http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/07/24/scientist-alleges-csun-fired-him-fordiscovery-of-soft-tissue-on-dinosaur-fossil/ 110 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030926065930.htm

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XXIV.- THE FLOOD: A SOLVED RIDDLE (Lucy Drake)

“Define the word „exist‟ and you‟ll know if God exists.”

-Bill GaedeThe heat was suffocating in Egypt at that time. We decided to go to the beaches of Alexandria and when coming back we went through the airport where Alan's flight was scheduled to arrive around 3 in the afternoon. They had not seen each other for almost a month and the greeting was more than affectionate.

I got the impression that they wanted to be alone so when we got to Graham's house, of whom we all were guests, I stayed with Mario to go to the Han-el-Halili market. Hal was arriving the next day at noon, and I wanted to buy him a gift.

The next morning Carmen and Alan were going to visit the monuments of Giza. Afterwards they were taking a similar tour to the one that Hal and I took three months ago along the banks of the Nile. Graham was going to accompany them through the Giza plateau and Heliopolis, but Abdel was waiting for them in Abydos, to guide them through the remaining itinerary, giving them a few days to be alone. Naturally, Mario had already visited Egypt several times and his intention was to go to Baalbek and Tell Qaramel.

The conversations about the current hot weather led me to an investigation about the climatic changes of past ages. In Barbados and other tropical places there are signs of many climatic changes between cold and hot times, some in relatively short periods of time, such as coral terraces that formed the landmass as sea levels advanced and receded in these periods.

In underwater extractions of sediments in many areas of the ocean you can find remains of foraminifera whose types and chemistry of their shells reveals the type of climate that existed in that area while they lived. This leads us to the conclusion that during the Mesozoic (300-70 million years ago) ice could not exist anywhere on Earth because the temperatures were too 130

hot. Graham with the help of Alan had examined weather data and other evidence collected by geophysicists and paleoclimatologists. Some rock formations in Africa show tilites (rocks formed by glacial alluviums that have been lithified), that is, there were glaciations during the Paleozoic Era (more than 300 million years ago). It is well known that the Milankovitch cycles (precession, nutation or orbital inclination, and eccentricity of the orbit) greatly influence the cyclical climatic changes of the planet, although both concluded that the temperature charts hardly fit with sufficient accuracy in the Pleistocene.

- It is already generally accepted among the new generations Alan said-, that studying the strata extracted from the sea bottom mud since 10.000 BC, these changes occurred at least every millennium. The icebergs, in their sliding across the continents, dragged towards the sea a great amount of rock dust deposited it in the oceanic bottoms when the ice melted and the icy waters sank111. This process poured a large amount of fresh water decreasing the density of the water on the conveyor belt, thus altering the Gulf Stream. The global system that circulates around the world's oceans in several sections of conveyor belts is called thermohaline circulation (CTH). Its water stopped sinking and the circulation of the belt stopped temporarily until the climate lowered abruptly. Once the ice melted, the belt restarted conducting hot water from the tropics in a much slower process that raised the temperature of the northern regions slowly. These oscillations are known to have occurred about 20 times in the last 60 thousand years.

- If we have an answer in the Milankovitch cycles, why is it necessary to shift the poles to explain the end of the last glacial period? -Mario argued.

- To begin with, we are talking about a generic period, since it is difficult to date the sediments using ice cores -Graham explained. The ice layers methods analyze O18 / O16 ratio, by 111

Pulse 1A http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7176/full/nature06589.html

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laser scattering, chemical analysis (Na-K, SO4-2, conductivity, pH acidity of the ice...)

- In many places also the firn (compacted snow) annual layers are not preserved; snowfall and rain are not important because the climate is arid112, -Hal added. Allied airplanes of World War 2, which were left in Greenland, were covered by 90 meters of snow (hundreds of layers) in just 25 years, when a rescue team tried to recover them113.

- And, according to Alan, there are no dating events older than 2000 years that are reliable, with historical records and clear signals in ice cores. Look at these papers.

- To conclude, Alan showed that supposedly frozen areas of the islands of Queen Elizabeth, nowadays under the ice, and areas of the north and west of Antarctica were devoid of ice in the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, something that cannot be explained by Milankovitch cycles, not even with other theories, which show that the changes in temperature precede CO2 increases in eight hundred years, and that these increases are linked to sunspots and star activity114.

- “No offense, boys” -Mario argued as devil's lawyer. The uniformitarian geologists can say that those studies about zones supposedly covered with perpetual ice that you say were recently free of ice, must belong to remote periods. Maybe even when the supposed supercontinents like Gondwana (Africa, South America, India, Oceania and Antarctica) separated from Laurasia, at the end of the Jurassic.

- Then -I said-, shouldn‟t there be sauropods in Antarctica?

- There are partial findings. The bibliography I have found has five recent books with circular references (they quote to each other), -Graham said-. Either way, it could be that the whole globe had a warm temperature, as predicated by Hal's theory.

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http://www.pnas.org/content/97/4/1331.full http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/04/us/world-war-ii-planes-found-in-greenlandin-ice-260-feet-deep.html 114 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1191/0959683602hl514rr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R26PXRrgds 113

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The continents would already be in their current setting and the Antarctic heeled from the pole.

- I got up on a skeptical plan today -Mario acknowledged- but some topics seem flimsy, both in the orthodox versions and in Alan's theory.

- Alan's version causes many fewer anomalies than official ones, and our theories fit together.

- The official theories in different branches, from cosmology to the origin of life or civilization, do not match each other Graham said to Hal-. Look at this Mario: Alan left me a copy of his work.

One of the heated debates about the age when areas of Antarctica were warm has to do with a sedimentary formation, called Sirius, found throughout the Transantarctic Mountains115. This has forced climatologists to reduce the period of stable ice in the area to the Pliocene (which they considered 5 million years ago).

Sediment layers in ancient river valleys in Queen Maud Land, northeast of the continent and sediment analysis of ice cores in the Ross Sea, fixed their age by mass spectroscopy (AMS) between 11.500 and 9.500 years. The timing of the melting of the Ross Sea calls into question current models of the contribution of Antarctic glacial ice to sea level rise in the Holocene and suggests that the recession was relatively gradual and aligned with the deglaciation of the northern hemisphere and its eustatic pulse (it means that a uniform change in sea level may be due to the increase in the amount of water or the variation of shape and capacity of the associated oceanic depressions).

- We are assuming that the datings are approximate, assuming that in a range of 10.000 years the radiometry has minor errors, said Hal, since we think that there had not been a great variation in the terrestrial electromagnetic environment.

- I agree with that, said Mario.

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http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glacial-geology/the-sirius-debate/

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- Finally, the paper gives references to studies that speak of sediments under the ice of the Ross Sea, to the southeast, which in the last million years has been at least three times devoid of ice116. It cites „Harwood et al‟, and others117 who found fossils of beech at 1.800 meters of altitude dated in 3 million years and that the Ross Sea was not frozen 6.000 years ago118.

- It's okay, it's fine. I accept octopus as a companion animal, Mario said-. What seems irrefutable is that in that key period, whenever it was, there was a global warming that brought about the end of the Younger Dryas119, the melting of the Laurentian icecap and the global floods.

- Regarding the floods or deluges described in ancient sacred books, they could have been either reduced local phenomena, or reviews left by a previous mother civilization about a psychic trauma that was imprinted in the collective unconscious of societies.

- Is that your personal opinion? -I asked Graham.

- There are five groups of evidence pointing to a global flood during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. There are cities submerged in the coasts of all the globe120; the sea level at that time rose to 150 meters according to some121; the flood of the Black Sea by the Mediterranean waters goes back, at least, to 7.000 BC, and not to the times of the Hebrews122; there are settlements and temples buried in mud and sand even in high mountains at heights superior to 3.000 meters; exceptionally 116

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-icesheet-greater-than-losses 117 https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-icesheet-greater-than-losses 118

https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=tPM KJbAAAAAJ&citation_for_view=tPMKJbAAAAAJ:q3oQSFYPqjQC 119 http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/pubs/broecker_science.pdf 120 Ver ‘Consciencias en Colisión’ (pág. 988) 121 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e768/516ec4aa364529e9a89622181b2b0ce1eb9 8.pdf http://science.sciencemag.org/content/265/5169/228 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003101829090056D 122 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018204001087

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salty lakes on all seven continents123; and finally, identical stories in different cultures.

Facing ourselves was a good training for what was coming over. In the other hand, Carmen's struggle was a battle of ideas and concepts. She fought in the Platonic world, not in the material one. Of course she had enemies, or at least discordant opinions, within her guild, but for society, the language and its origin were something far more subjective than the sciences, which are mistakenly considered objective.

123

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12665-017-6443-x http://ponce.sdsu.edu/lakesalinityworld.html

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XXV.- THE GREAT HERESSY (Mario Espejo)

“What we call mass looks like a guise, and all inertia is inherently electromagnetic.”

-Henri Poincaré, 1914The response letter read: “…The scientific consultants of the magazine and myself, are dismayed by the pretensions in your previous paper „on the origin and evolution of the solar system‟, since you took sides for such extreme options, not contemplated by the current scientific bias… we are forced to reject your request for publication in our journal”. As happened with Princeton's refusal, this neither surprised nor intimidated Hal. „Scientific America‟, „Nature‟ and „Physics Review Letters‟ had also declined the possibility of publishing the work of the two physicists, although they already expected it from the mainstream media. It's something that happens too often, unfortunately, and has happened with very prestigious people and even with Nobel Prize winners. The answer of „Science‟ was still to come but they had no hope in it and they assumed that it would be necessary to resort to second line journals or in a more „daring‟ country. They had contacted Icarus, who had just been acquired by a major publisher. Other options were to resort to acquaintances, which could help them and were not afraid to be chastened by the experience.

Ten days later Hal was on vacation at Graham's house, outside of El Cairo. Although he didn‟t like the heat very much, it was nice to change the scenery; so a few days drinking tea under some palm trees, watching in the distance those majestic mountains of carved limestone, whose function we do not know, are inspiring for anyone.

In two days Carmen and Alan were coming back from Aswan as passengers in Abdel's car. It was not as romantic as the first days of cruise up the Nile, but it was the most practical way if they wanted to join the group in the trip to Aleppo.

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- Hal, I wonder, do you really think you can prove your theory about the formation of the solar system, starting from the raid of the Saturnian dwarf star system into it? Where would the Earth be?

- Short answer: No. - Then, I do not understand... -I was confused-.

- The point is that my theory fits with other theories in other branches. Like Alan's for example.

- But habibi, -answered Luky condescendingly, who had nicknamed him that way in „petit committee‟ since his trip on the Nile in April-, is it worth it to go through all those criticisms if we're not sure...

- I'm sure. I know almost all the existing theories, and mine does not present so many known anomalies. All the others have multiple problems that they can‟t solve, from the original „Nebular Theory‟ to the „Nice Model‟, along with the „Grand Tack‟.

- Sorry, I didn‟t mean to doubt you.

- Well, you must doubt about any information that does not come from your own research. The contrary makes we incur in dogma. It's what I fight for. And it's worth it, just with there being a person to whom my work will serve as a guide for his own research. That is the path of science.

- We, the group, are in that path -I said-. But it would be better if our scientific colleagues were focused on these ideas and not just normal people without means to investigate.

- Both are necessary. Of course, I would like to convince some very promising young talents that are enthusiastic people. But you cannot force it.

- That‟s true. Desire leads to suffering when we don‟t achieve the goals. Master Jiddhu says it is called „samsara‟.

- Well, we'll have to achieve them anyway -I rushed.

- When one thing is achieved, another is desired, and so on.

And if you already have everything you want, there is the fear 137

of losing it and you suffer to keep it. The acceptance of the present is the wisest position.

- She‟s got you, Mario, hahaha.

Graham's voice waving us was heard from the backyard of the house where the three friends lay in their folding chairs. Their host was starting his holidays and in a couple of days they would all go on a pleasure trip to Beirut, to visit some of the oldest cities of the ancient world: Sidon, Byblos and Tire.

- What are you doing? –the rutenian croaked.

- Hal is explaining that he cannot reliably prove his theory.

- Really? -he asked with signs of clear frustration.

- Look, -said the aforementioned-. There is a branch of mathematics called „Theory of Chaos‟, which probably Mario knows as an engineer. It was invented by Henry Poincaré in the late nineteenth century, and it is very useful in dynamic systems very dependent on subtle variations of its initial conditions. For example, solar systems, climate, the stock market, sociology, traffic, or complex movements of particles in a plasma or ionized gas.

- That means, -I agreed, leaving the already empty glass of Martini- that by not knowing the positions, speeds, masses, and other peculiarities of the system in its origins we cannot determine its future evolution; neither in reverse.

- The most that modern astrophysicists can do and, in fact do, is to perform complicated computer simulations, to try to predict the behavior of the system in a short time. As time increases, the uncertainty grows exponentially. And to make matters worse, they only use gravitational parameters.

- I understand that the current configuration may have arisen from thousands or millions of possible combinations of some initial characteristics. -Graham showed that he had caught it-.

Two days later, Alan and Carmen were resting from their hasty trip back, hardly unpacking while the rest were doing it. The trip was short and comfortable, as was his arrival in Beirut, despite being in the middle of the summer season. Three days had been booked at the hotel before traveling to Aleppo, where 138

Abdel had found a good accommodation in one of the areas less damaged by the war that had just ended a year ago and had devastated Syria.

The first days in Lebanon were spent in going to the beach and shopping, but we also made visits to ancient places such as the caves of Jeita-Grosso and the city of Harissa-Daraoun, where it is said that 42 civilizations have stayed. All this took place in the surroundings of the city of Byblos, where Abdel had his residence and led us to tourist sites. He explains that his city is about 9.000 years old; logically, all archaeologists and local dwellers pull to their side to get more recognition saying that their cities or monuments are the best, the oldest, the most beautiful...

The next day we visited, to the north, Tire and Sidon, where laid some Roman ruins like those of Magadouche. The afternoon was free but we all were expecting the most important day though Graham had already seen Baalbek, but he continued to feel amazed by it. Near Palmyra, it is the temple of Jupiter in Baalbek, usually attributed to the Romans, although most archaeologists, and more importantly, modern engineers, believe that the Romans already found the place in ruins and just rebuilt it.

- Of all the Roman temples, the Temple of Bacchus is the best preserved of all the Roman temples in the world, -Abdel said with perfect English-. And we have it here in Lebanon, -he remarked proudly-. Interestingly.

- Maybe it's because it‟s not Roman, -Graham said-.

- The temple of Venus is in a worse state, but the biggest of all temples in Baalbek is the Temple of Jupiter or Baal. The podium or base of it, which we are going to climb now, is twelve meters high and has several megalithic layers, hundreds of tons each.

- And here we have the famous „Trilithon‟ –I said astonished- .

I estimate that each one of these blocks would now weigh ¡more than 800 tons!

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- The blocks below, must weigh at least half of that, which is not little. They're also carved with angles, -Hal observed.

- There you are the famous “roman” column which was used as filling for a hole under those megaliths. It has been regarded as proof of roman origin –avowed Graham-.

- But what‟s the point of putting a cylindrical stone under rectangular blocks. Even a child building a “Lego game‟ realizes it lacks stability.

- Maybe it was just a repair –Alan observed-.

- A roman repair? It would mean that the buildings broke very soon and easily. It might be an ancient repair –I replied-.

- In the time of the Romans there were 54 columns surrounding a portico, of which today only remain those six -continued explaining Abdel-. They measure 20 meters and their weight would be greater than 100 tons.

- ¡For Baal‟s sake! -whispered Lucy sketching a smile-, how could they erect them? And those entablatures have at least five meters.

- Not the columns since they seemed to be in cylindrical sections but the precision with which they are set, „habibi‟ – said Hal-. Perhaps it‟s not so strange that it‟s the only “Roman” temple so well preserved.

- There are no historical writings that describe the construction of these temples, which is odd as romans are known to record everything -Abdel conveyed-. The only reviews of roman building in Heliopolis, as they called it, are about the Temple of Bacchus by Antonius Pius in the first century AD, and that atrium named „The Great Court‟ made by Septimus Severus – said pointing to the place. His son Carcalla constructed that part of the Temple of Jupiter called „The Propylea‟124. The basement podium is acknowledged to be pre-roman125.

124

http://www.livius.org/articles/place/heliopolis-baalbek/baalbek-photos/baalbektemple-of-jupiter-propylaea/?

125 http://www.bollettinodiarcheologiaonline.beniculturali.it/documenti/generale/3_L OHMANN.pdf https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/007589111X12966443320819

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- The temple of Venus was later destroyed by Constantine the Great when he promoted to Emperor and he established Christianity as official religion in the 4th century. Eight of the columns of the temple were disassembled and cut down, then moved to Istanbul and embodied in the temple of Hagia Sophia according to his commands126 -Abdel added-.

- Why did they need to cut and transport such blocks one thousand kilometers if they were able to quarry and build them? – Carmen and Alan asked simultaneously-. It makes no sense.

- What's carved on those capitals are like swastikas, right?

Carmen said surprised.

We were too flabbergasted to speak. Such an accumulation of megaliths, perfectly fitted and sculpted was unique on the planet. That's why Graham thought that it was where the origin of our civilization was established. Or, at least, was the cradle of the Mesopotamian and Indus civilizations, when the Fertile Crescent began its environmental decline.

- Now we will take a walk around those huge steps, we will see a few more large blocks and we will go through a curious tunnel, as a portico, to go to the quarries -commented the guide.

In the Sheikh Abdullah quarry awaits the famous largest monolith of the world.

Turning to the right, we descended by enormous steps, flanked by a wall at the left, with a several hundred tons stone. Hal went behind the guide and stopped at the base, stupefied. Abdel smiled. - But this is... impossible.

- If it could be weighed, it would be almost a thousand tons. ÂĄIt's huge!

- What the hell happened here? To have been repaired by the Romans is full of carved blocks and broken columns all around.

Lucy was entranced. Carmen pointed to the middle distance.

126

http://www.romeacrosseurope.com/?p=7129#sthash.1GMMBFYq.XpdzWCdo.d pbs

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- More swastikas. That is not Roman.

- That's why I think it has a connection with the Indus cultures.

A little on his own, Alan did not stop taking pictures. His instinct as a geologist drove him to stop at a stack of columns of syenite, a metamorphic igneous rock.

- It must come from Aswan. They are very similar to the ones we saw a few days ago and I do not think there are granite quarries closer to here-.

- Those holes that have some blocks do not know what function they would have- Hal said. Abdel shrugged. - Neither do I know. If they weighed little perhaps they were to insert some means of transport or handle. Is it well said? he asked, doubting some words in a non-native language.

- Perfectly, and well-reasoned.

- That's rhyolite - the geologist said.

- The one who loved?

- Those split reddish columns. Where did they bring that stone from?

- Look at this wall. It is decisive, -declared the historian categorically-. Up to this point you have blocks of medium size, with a maximum of thirty tons. From here to the end of it, they are herculean, hundreds of tons. Maybe the first ones are Roman, but these...

They left the main area by a long, wide passage whose side walls were equally colossal blocks. However, the roof was different. It was built in arc form with smaller blocks. It seemed as if the Romans had found no roof and had supplied it with one of its typical semi-circular arches.

This time silence was the master of the situation. Not even we gave rise to exclamations of amazement. The „Stone of the Pregnant Womanâ€&#x; was Herculean, gigantic, colossal, and huge and all the adjectives that you want to add. With something more than twenty meters long and four and a half high and four of base, something more in the upper part, the limestone block 142

oscillates between 1000 and 1200 tons. -Many theories have been proposed to explain the quarrying, which as you see is not yet finished below, but none convinces me, -Graham anticipated before people could ask anything -. Look at these crossed diagonal marks that are seen here below, Mario-.

- As an engineer -I said-, I cannot say it‟s impossible but I think it would take thousands of men and such a great deal of resourcefulness and brilliancy that I seriously doubt that the Romans had it, because if they wanted go down in history by their megaliths, the greatest ones would have been erected in Rome. All those architect hypotheses who believe that they have solved all the mysteries of the world, through computer studies and computer simulations, seem outrageous to me.

- Totally according, -said Alan-. That's not science.

- Scientism.

- Some animations cannot be the substitute of an experiment concluded the physicist of the group-. I‟ve also seen some of those videos, and even with winches, it seems stupid to say that you could put logs underneath. The weight would destroy them completely. On the other hand, at this moment in situ I see no trace of a possible track or road, nor it is even a plain ground. I see that these small holes that can also be seen in the temple, which according to the videos were intended for ropes or supports, are also made here, in unfinished stones not even ready to be taken out of the quarry. Ridiculous.

- That‟s not all. There is no writing that relates the construction of the place. The Romans had many historians: Herodotus, Xenophon, Diodorus, Berossus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo, Livy, Plutarch, Sextus Julius Africanus, Eusebius of Caesarea-; none of them left an account of its construction Graham was blunt-. We know more about how the pyramids were built by Herodotus than Baalbek.

- Yes, Abdel has told us.

- And even if something had been found, the most natural thing would be to think that the Romans tried to get all the credit 143

showing this as a sample of its greatness and power -Carmen said in her argument-.

It seemed that we were all in agreement. Further south, Abdel showed us a second quarry with another monolith of similar dimensions. In this one they emphasized some notches in the back part, indicating that smaller blocks of the colossal megalith had been extracted.

- Surely, -Graham noted-, they were made by Roman or some subsequent culture, who, seeing the impossibility of using the megalith, decided to use it as a source of raw material for their construction or repairs, and took out a few pieces.

Next to the first stone there was a second one whose excavation was barely begun and was half-buried but was already several meters high. We estimated its length in almost forty meters because it was lost underground, and its width between six and eight. The weight appraisals of the „Baby Stoneâ€&#x; were ridiculous, some 1.600 tons. Alan had been informed online before arriving in Aleppo and warned that new scientific studies recently surveyed the area warning of the possible existence of several monoliths under the ground of the quarries.

In any case, the three or four large monoliths seemed halfburied as well, which could be indicative of an enormous lapse of time since they were initially worked.

In the next few days we had planned excursions, guided by Abdel, to the ruins of Tell Hamoukar, a city that is officially dated around the fifth or sixth millennium BC, and Tell Qaramel on the border with present-day Iraq, for which we enjoyed of a permit thanks to Graham and Abdel. Scientific discoveries have shown that there were farming and growing plants several tens of thousands of years ago, thanks to genetic modifications suffered by grain when they are cut into latifundia dating from 30.000 BC. The enclave itself has been labelled as pre-Neolithic for its ceramic remains.

During the return of archaeological excavations, Hal was thoughtful all the way. In our vehicle, in addition to Hal, I was 144

accompanied by Lucy and Graham driving. At dinner time, he behaved in the same way.

- Are you okay? -his partner asked him.

- Yes, sorry, I was just ruminating ideas.

- What about? -I dared to say.

- About the “bunch of mountain” that we saw in Baalbek. I've been thinking about it for two days.

- Tell us when you get things straight.

The dinner was surprisingly delicious. And I say this because we did not want to stay in luxurious international five star hotels, but decided to leave some economic income in the battered economies of the local people. That night was our last night in the city and we got a very pleasant impression of its gastronomy. The lentil stew with small pieces of a type of pasta, was called „burnt fingers‟, they say because the farmers who invented the recipe could not resist eating it before the pan cooled down. It is served spicy with a mixture of tamarind and salted lemon juice and sautéed garlic. The combination of sour, sweet and salty was fantastic.

There were few people in the small hotel-restaurant, so we could talk quietly without fear of disturbing anyone. I do not recall whether Alan told us that he had received the visit of a creationist biologist after a conference in Adelaide. Certainly, he had enjoyed little spare time and when he arrived in Egypt he wished to stay with Carmen, whom he had not seen for a month. Anyway, he acknowledged not being very motivated to study his theories about the extinctions of the Mesozoic reptiles, perhaps influenced by a religious ideology. Lucy secretly reproached his attitude, trying to make him see that a scientist must be open to all kinds of ideas, what Carmen called having a „holistic mind‟.

However it was she convinced him that, if those theories were weightless, he could easily dismiss them, so it wouldn‟t be hard to take a look at those papers. Halton reinforced his argument by explaining that he also believed that the extinction of the Cretaceous was not due to the impact of a meteor, nor to 145

multiple volcanic eruptions, that geologists knew as „Deccan Traps‟. Everyone knows these theories, because they have been widespread through all kinds of documentaries and movies and, naturally, we were intrigued.

- The Chicxulub meteor theory of Álvarez family127 has extensive support thanks to the iridium layer that seems to exist in the corresponding strata -I commented-.

- Well, according to Sturrock's papers, it's wrong. I have investigated a little, and I‟ve seen that other paleontologists have the same opinion, -Alan asserted-. Some give the crater a maximum of three hundred thousand years128.

Hal took advantage of the tessitura to explain to us what was going through his head.

- I have already told you about the pillars of science, with gravity being the most important. It is a supposedly fundamental force, which Newton described and baptized, as a function of a property of matter, which he also invented called „mass‟. Here I must say that the definition of matter according to science is: “anything that has mass and volume”. The mass is not measured directly, let‟s say we couldn‟t count all the particles of an object, but we measure the force that another object, like the planet Earth, exerts on the first, usually smaller.

Thus, the mass is not measured; it is calculated from that force.

Matter has two other fundamental properties apart from the mass: the electric charge and the spin but we will not enter into further details about them.

- Well -he went on seeing that we followed him-, the force we measure by Newton's Law, depends only on the radius or distance to the square of both objects, since conventional science assumes that the mass property of an object is always

127

https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-abstract/127/1112/1507/126064/triggering-of-the-largest-deccan-eruptions-bythe?redirectedFrom=fulltext 128 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030926065930.htm Gertha Keller https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12038-009-0059-6

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the same. That is, the mass and the constant of proportionality called G are both constants. You follow me?

- Yes -in unison-.

- Dinosaurs, especially large sauropods of more than 50 tons, which some argued that may reach more than 100, have physiological and physical limits, to breathe, run, or simply lift their own weight129. Some papers from colleagues show that the maximum weight limit for reptiles with our gravity cannot exceed 75 tons130, but some reduce it to 50 and others to 20.

Think that the elephant is the terrestrial animal with the highest current body and weighs less than 10 tons.

- And he is dragging his feet -Lucy completed looking like she had heard that before.

- Additionally, the force that any muscle can exert is independent of the size of the muscle or of the body. This is important. The force that a muscle of the legs of the animal to hold a weight depends on the section of the leg, that is, of a length squared. The weight, however, increases with volume, a cube length. Therefore, it is not enough to increase the muscle to support more weight, because it will always increase faster than the force exerted by it131.

Alan spoke: -I‟ve also read that the Pterosaurs and Archeopteryx could not fly132.

- And surely they didn‟t run and jump as they show us in movies, documentaries and books133- Lucy said.

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Implicaciones del peso-masa dinosaurios http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.1995.10011575 130 Peso máx 20 ton https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022519381903076 http://www.dinox.org/qa-economo.html Peso máx 75 ton https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140114090826.htm 131 La fuerza músculo depende de la sección https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4968477/ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00137.x/full 132 Pterosaurios no podían volar https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090428-giant-pterosaursfly.html http://science.sciencemag.org/content/188/4189/676.1 Ni Archaeopteryx https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-iconicarchaeopteryx-lose-its-ability-to-fly/

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- To conclude with Newton, gravity was an instantaneous force for him. Einstein corrected it saying poetic metaphors; such as that gravity was not a force but the curvature of something not material, as the concept of space. But he did something interesting, which we all know because we've seen it printed on T-shirts. E = mc2. The mass is equivalent to energy. Therefore, the mass property must be considered a variable. And the gravitation constant G, which has dimensional units of L3/M*T2, too. In physics, it is understood as a constant, any parameter or value that is universal (everywhere equal) and does not vary in time. It is said to be a fundamental constant if it does not have dimensions (units).

- Where does that take us? -I asked, glimpsing that it was related to his introspection during the trip.

- That it is known with increasing certainty that gravity does not quite fit with Newton's Law134, especially below two hundred micrometers135.

- What do you mean? -Graham replied, in a way that to stranger would seem suspicious-. That gravity does not really exist?

- No, the force that we usually know by gravity exists, of course. However, I think that it is not a fundamental force or interaction of nature. A fundamental force or interaction is one that does not derive from others.

- And is that important? –Carmen questioned.

- Inertial mass, the one that resists changing its state of rest or movement, and gravitational mass are equivalent, that is, push and lift. Atoms become into electric dipoles (as in the London or Van der Waals Force), and the nucleus, which has almost all the „mass‟, is attracted by the negative pole of the next dipole and so on. The orbit of the electron becomes oval by that 133

T-Rex no podría correr http://www.nature.com/articles/4151018a https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031018282900050 http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/e81-077#.WKxA0rNyN2Q 134 Gravedad no se conforma a Newton https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02727280 135 No hay gravedad por debajo de 200 micrómetros https://physics.aps.org/story/v7/st8

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attraction, and the lower end of it is more positively charged than the upper end closer to the surface, because the electron is less time on that side -as it happens in the planets with the perihelion and the aphelion-. It is easier to understand in a drawing –Hal said seeing the faces of the girls mainly. He took out his cell phone and showed it to them-.

- The sum of forces of those dipoles is gravity, -Alan explained.

- All the atoms are distorted infinitesimally, that's why the force of gravity appears to us as tiny as 10-39 times the electromagnetic force –I stated-.

- Yeah, -Hal huffed.

- Wait a moment, -said the historian and head of the expedition. What about the increase in mass by relativistic paradoxes (the twins, the barn...)? How is that increase in mass allegedly caused by relativity explained?

- Particle physics uses the famous accelerators to produce huge electric and magnetic fields, which, by the way, spend so much light that a small country, like Lebanon could live comfortably well. These fields provide charge to the accelerated particles, what dogmatists who earn their living from those experiments interpret as a relativistic mass increase.

- In that case, gravity could be shielded, cancelled...

- Negative, -interrupted the Canadian-. The dipoles act like small permanent magnets always united in a chain. It is a great magnet with two poles.

The digression was prolonged, but it was necessary to know what the relationship between the origin of gravitation and the dinosaurs was. Alan was obviously the one who raised the question.

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XXVI.- SCIENTIFIC ANOMALIES (Alan Hapgood) “How lucky we are to find a paradox.

Now we have hope to progress...”

-Niels BohrThe idea of doing a study work among all the members of the group had come to mind to more than one of us. Lucy had been the first to suggest it and had immediately received the support of Carmen. Hal and I were more reluctant to mix anthropology, philology, history, physics and geology. Without forgetting that we were already immersed in other matters that, apart from creating problems, took away most of our free time.

A personal proposal was to write a book, with scientific references but without the sophistication of an official paper that, on the other hand, would be very difficult to accept by a journal. And that is what leads to the fragmentation of knowledge and exacerbated specialization. We did not even have a clear idea of what type of scientific or sociological journal or history to present it, if it was carried out. Graham launched the suggestion to write a trilogy, based on our knowledge progress timeline; so that each of the parts covered first the most scientific aspects such as physics, geology and biology, and in the second installment exposing its consequences from the anthropological and historical points of view. As a corollary, the last installment would condense our personal conclusions into a new holistic vision of the world, and provide a philosophical and moral perspective, the spiritual pillars that all the members of the „gang‟ would like to transmit as a pattern for the new generations.

The anomalies of orthodox science do not stir up current theories to be rethought; conversely, ad-hoc explanations are sought, such as dark matter, dark energy, neutrino oscillations, neutron stars, pulsars, magnetars, supermassive black holes, MACHOS, dark hydrogen, dark flux, etc. Anything but discarding the model. It is absurd to explain something that we do not know ¡with something else that we also do not know!

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Science believes that everything is essentially mechanical.

Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, instead of living organisms with their own objectives. Even people are machines, „heavy robots‟, in the words of R. Dawkins, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers. All matter is unconscious; without interior life or subjectivity or point of view; and human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains. Nature has no purpose in itself. All biological inheritance is material, transported in the genetic material (DNA). Minds are nothing more than the activity of brains. Memory is material, it is stored in the brain and it is eliminated when dying. Unexplained phenomena such as telepathy are illusory and mechanistic medicine is the only one that really works.

Scientists like R. Sheldrake have warned us of these dogmas and assumptions. All these come together in the axioms of science [necessary for there to be knowledge]: Nature is ordered (it has patterns and structure); there are physical laws that we can know (perceive, measure, express and reproduce); these laws are consistent or universal (the Copernicus Principle); and every effect has a cause which is its origin {Principle of Causality}.

- The Big Bang is full of anomalies, -Hal told us-. To begin with, how does something expand on itself? The theory arose from mathematics -mathematics was not developed from observations as required by the scientific method. ¡It‟s a language! It relies only on two pillars: the redshift, which we have already seen that it is not due to cosmological causes (or Doppler), and in the microwave background radiation (CMBR) as a consequence, which would fit into several theories.

- Even the inflation mechanism of the universe makes Big Bang and „singularity‟ unnecessary -I explained-. Now it is believed that the expansion is accelerating due to an unknown dark energy. And that seems to contradict the Energy Conservation Principle, energy is created from „nothing‟.

- There are many things that contradict the model. Many astronomers are against the Great Sloan Wall (a matter 151

concentration of 500x200x15 million light-years). The cosmic background radiation of 2.7 degrees Kelvin assumes a homogeneous and uniform distribution of galaxies.

Inhomogeneities like that, debunks it.

- Then there are the problems using Type Ia supernovas as distance yardsticks, because their brightness varies (they are not „standard candles‟) -added Mario-. Their non-degenerate binary partners affect its brightness136. The correction process in the luminosity of Type Ia supernovae is key, and I‟ve read that rigorous statistical tests show that universal expansion ¡would be non-accelerated!

Another issue that has generated more anomalies is the solar system and planet formation. The collapse of a protoplanetary disk takes 100 thousand years (for massive stars) and 10 million for a Sun-like star137. In 3-10 million years, the disk is dissipated by the solar wind which does not allow time for the consolidation of planets via gravitational accretion.

- In this subject, it appears the philosophical „Argument from First Cause‟; if protostars collapse by gravity, how were the first stars formed when no supernovas were possible to start the alleged process of compaction of gas and dust?

- The formation of „Hot-Jupiters‟ is unknown, it does not fit with current planetary models, -Hal announced-. Electrical interaction among planets, moons138 and stars139 is not explained by gravitational theories. In addition, the supposedly observed accretion disks have magnetic fields140, which imply electric currents circulating.

- Magnetized lunar rocks141, the magnetic field remaining on Mars142, asymmetric and dipolar magnetic fields on Neptune 136 137 138

139

140 141

https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.07261 https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0405271 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AGUFM.P43F..02J%20http://electriccosmos.org/planets.htm%20https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0209070.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-astronomical-society-publicationsseries/article/div-classtitleplanetstar-plasmainteractionsdiv/951CAD5C13433F2B6CB35BD9A84E6992

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and Uranus143, Jupiter's powerful magnetic field, its enormous dawn, have unknown origins, and we resort to „Dark Hydrogen‟144 and similar artifacts to explain them. „Magnetic ropes‟ between Saturn and the Sun are observed after explosive „double layers‟, that physicists call „magnetic reconnection‟.

Saturn's magnetic field is perfectly symmetrical with respect to its rotation axis, which prevents the creation of the dynamo purportedly responsible for the magnetic fields.

- You know a lot of things, guys, -Carmen interrupted-. How is it possible that scientists ignore all that?

- When it takes a lifetime, a career dedicated to something, the change of mental paradigm is very difficult to assume explained Lucy showing that she knew about psychology-.

- There was a historical „war‟ between theists and atheists for wresting power from the Church since the Middle Ages in the West -avowed Graham from a historical point of view-. The atheists took advantage of the power that the Church was losing over people, to impose their evolutionary ideas on universities, schools, communication media and others.

- There are asteroids with magnetic field145, craters aligned in Callisto146 and the Moon, as if several meteors had impacted following a straight line. Do tidal forces cause „volcanic eruptions‟ of Io‟s „'mobile volcanoes‟?147 -Hal and I were still immersed in a cataract of anomalies that we wanted to be known to the public. The strange channels and drawings on the surface of the moon Europa have no explanation either (cracked ice?). -Hal, as an astrophysicist, went on with the mysteries of the cosmos; I tackled with the chemical and geological-.

- The varied composition of comets (minerals that require high temperatures, igneous rocks, elements that need liquid water148 https://mgs-mager.gsfc.nasa.gov/Kids/magfield.html https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.01042.pdf 144 https://www.space.com/33286-dark-hydrogen-gas-giant-planets.html 145 https://phys.org/news/2017-06-magnetic-memories-metal-world.html 146 http://strangesounds.org/2014/10/mysterious-line-craters-surface-jupiters-mooncallisto.html 147 https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/io-volcanoes-displaced.html 148 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24372113_Evidence_for_Liquid_Water_ 142

143

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and others that cannot be formed in their presence) make their spatial origin unviable -continued-. They must come from planets. The water or ice that our colleagues detect is actually the spectral emission of the OH- ion. The hydride ions react with the positive charge of the solar wind H+ (protons) 149 and produce the observed water in the coma.

- X-rays150 and UV rays151 emitted by comets have been detected, even after the impact of probes such as „Deep Impact‟ in comet Temple-1. Look at this album of photographs from NASA; you can see detailed geological structures with strata, plateaus, cliffs and steep walls. Many comets suffered sudden increases in brightness being very far from the Sun, some of them surpassing it in luminosity152.

- And you try to ascribe all this to a solar system model governed by electromagnetism, isn‟t it, Hal? - The planetary systems were created from a plasma nebula (conductive ionized gas), through which electricity flows („Birkeland currents‟ such the ones causing auroras) -the aforementioned commented-. These generate a perpendicular magnetic field that compresses the plasma into filaments, and in certain points they are concentrated („Z-pinch‟ effect) giving rise to the accretion of matter. This material is separated chemically through a mechanism called „Marklund convection‟.

In these stellar nurseries, organic molecules have been detected153, and energy jets that move at high speeds154. These clouds are associated with a type of young developing stars called T-Tauri155, where planetesimal discs are observed and which supposedly support the „Disk Instability‟ model. What on_Comets https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26399830 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/305228/fulltext/36447.text.html 150 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103597957225 http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/00_releases/press_072700.html 151 http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2892160.pdf 152 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991Natur.353..407I http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071116/full/news.2007.261.html 153 https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06041 154 http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/2309-sig06-002a-Spitzer-Infrared-View-ofHerbig-Haro-49-50-A-Cosmic-Tornado 155 https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0207536 149

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they see are Herbig-Haro objects from different perspectives and in different stages.

- The human body itself uses electricity; the plants use it to communicate156, even with animals such as bees157, which are electrically charged. Even spider webs are.

- Many studies confirm that plants have intelligence158 (understood as the ability to solve problems by oneself). Other scientists are beginning to consider that they have awareness159, perception of their environment.

- Consciousness is in all that is alive, -Lucy believed.

- We do not even know what life is. Certain characteristics are attributed to life: metabolism, evolution?, reproduction, a body?, DNA?, but biologists were not able to give a definite answer to the NASA, when they were asked what to look for in space. Can oil drops be considered alive and not a virus?

- Hal said that the best definition of life is given by thermodynamics: “An open system that takes order of its environment (matter or energy) to maintain or create internal order, expelling disorder to its environment”.

- But the question is: does life arise from non-life or only from a previous life?

- Many of these beliefs determine the steps of scientists when looking for answers. If DNA were necessary for life, so aminoacids. If organic molecules have been found in space, and aminoacids in comets, many believe that life can come from space („panspermia‟). The Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier showed that water could store electromagnetic information160 („water memory‟). Structures such as DNA are capable of emitting electromagnetic waves161, which can be stored as 156

https://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/april/electric-current-plants-041310.html https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130221143900.htm 158 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.4161/psb.5.11.13243 159 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/biocentrism/201703/are-plants-aware 160 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/306/1/012007/pdf 161 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6204761 http://sphq.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/03/etudes_Montagnier_Electro-signals-produced-byaqueous-DNA.pdf 157

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information and transmitted electronically to reconstitute DNA or a virus, for example, in a container with water to which that information is supplied. That is the basis of homeopathy162.

Maybe be because there was no biologist among us but we did not have a theory about the origin of life, although we knew that electromagnetism played an important role. DNA is a fractal antenna for „living‟ organisms163. The question of whether human and primate DNA differed much or little brought a controversial debate. We found very different opinions supported by works, ranging from 2%, 5%, 8%, to the infamous 70%. The 1% option only applies to nucleotide substitutions in small sections where they can be aligned.

Coincidences depend on the way of comparing [arbitrarily, 2.4 billion nucleotides are taken in alternate sequences, but 1.3 billion are left out] 164; the result is subjective; similarity is true only if we ignore a high percentage of primates and human genome.

- Are you saying we do not descend from apes?

- In some cases I would risk my neck -he laughed-. No. I just say that scientism is full of assumptions.

At the beginning of the 21st century it was believed that 80% of DNA had no function and, basically, it was useless. It was known as „Junk DNA‟. In 2012, the ENCODE project reversed this situation, finding utility at 80%, leaving only 20% as garbage165. During the following years several papers have appeared that assure that not only 80%, but up to 92% of has no role in proteins encoding, being classified as garbage again166.

Is it possible that junk DNA has epigenetic functions -related to the environment-, and that the environment is more important than genetics itself, even in behavior? 167 Genes are not self162

https://www.dsalud.com/reportaje/el-tratamiento-con-microdosis-una-alternativasorprendentemente-eficaz/ 163 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09553002.2011.538130 164 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbY122CSC5w https://goo.gl/x77UmC 165 https://evolutionnews.org/2012/09/junk_no_more_en_1/ 166 http://www.pnas.org/content/110/14/5294.long 167 http://www.nature.com/articles/nsmb.2480 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/279/5356/1454

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emerging; they need an environmental signal for their activation168.

- It is postulated that living matter and self-organization are emergent phenomena that appear spontaneously. In those systems the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

- I don‟t know what to answer Carmen. I'm confused. I know that learning is something emergent, there are experiments with that, but little more. I guess it's debatable. Lashley's experiments showed that even without 60% of the brain, lab rats kept learning, then the learning does not depend on the brain169.

- However that may be, I agree that epigenetics is more decisive than genetics -Graham, Lucy and Carmen stood as paladins of spiritual reality over science.

Although not a specialist, Hal used to read every article of physics that came into his hands. In an article about „Schumann Resonance‟ it was explained „the Wever Bunker experiment‟. It showed that the absence of Schumann waves affected circadian rhythms and health170. Experiments subjecting bee hives to ELF and VLF electromagnetic emissions also did so, influencing their behaviour171.

As far as my field is concerned, many things that have been covered in previous chapters; others, such as polistrata fossils that require an ultrafast deposition or upright tree stumps in Yellowstone172, put conventional geologists in serious trouble to explain them. Prior to the Primary Era (Paleozoic), it is believed that there were two „Snowball Earth‟ (the whole planet was covered with ice and snow, feeding back the albedo effect which reinforced the situation preventing the planet from leaving a perpetual glacial age). Several hypotheses have been written to explain them: the passage through an interstellar 168

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.950120908/abstract https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/karl-lashley 170 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11826883 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4684-9004-6_5 171 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.485.5704 172 http://www.grisda.org/origins/24002.htm#VI-B 169

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cloud173, the mysterious geological disturbance that caused a reduction of CO2 and CH4 in Namibia174; the eruption of a super-volcano, but nothing has been clarified. It has also been suggested that the rotational axis of the Earth could be tilted 60 degrees after the supposed impact of a planet called Theia which led to the formation of the Moon175.

In the Antarctic continent were found whole fossilized forests, which certainly cannot have grown in the tropics, since they are a combination of deciduous and perennial forest (the typical in tropical regions not subjected to seasons)176. At the other extreme, there are innumerable evidences of the displacement of geographical poles; Greenland was free of ice for long periods of time in the Pleistocene177; several islands in the polar circle (from Zhokhov to Wrangle Island) were free of ice, a remains of animals and tools were discovered178; the Siberian plains were free of ice and full of animals (many of which were frozen almost instantaneously)179, remains of plants and animals in north-eastern Greenland180, much of the northern islands of the Canadian archipelago, were not even touched by the Keewatin and Innutian181 ice sheets, the Laurentid ice sheet reached as far as the south of the archipelago (Banks Island) 182; the Kerguelen Islands (or French southern islands 49 degrees south), Heard and McDonnell islands, Auckland, Macquarie and Campbell islands show glaciers, till and moraines in the end of the Pleistocene.

- It is amazing that scientists recognize that they donâ€&#x;t know how the vast magnetic fields of space183 between galaxies, 173

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004GL021890/full https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2001GC000244 175 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/281/5381/1342 176 https://www.livescience.com/40893-weird-ancient-antarctic-forests.html 177 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v540/n7632/abs/nature20146.html 178 http://www.jstor.org/stable/40316394?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents 179 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1502-3885.2003.tb01230.x 180 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2699.1999.t01-1-00315.x/full 181 https://goo.gl/eeQ5Jf https://notendur.hi.is/oi/AG326%202006%20readings/Canadian%20Arctic/Dyke_QSR99.pdf 182 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379109001267 183 http://www.astrowatch.net/2017/05/mapping-magnetic-bridge-between-our.html 174

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nebulae, stars, planets and even asteroids originate, but they do not accept that their theories are erroneous and electric currents exist in space.

- I read an article from NASA in which they recognized that the Sun was a magnetic star but they didn‟t know where that field was created184.

- Let‟s add what came out in the „NG‟ magazine a few weeks ago, about having detected a lot of exoplanets with retrograde orbits and enormous obliquities. Thus, we have two clear reasons to rule out ipso-facto the nebular model of gravitational accretion.

- Well, they are not going to do that, -Hal said.

- After all these inconsistencies, I guess your argument is that “science is the belief in the ignorance of the supposed experts”.

- Exactly.

- Just as “history is a lie that historians agree on”, -Graham said sarcastically.

In the following days came the answers, negative of course, of „Science‟ and „Icarus‟. The worst of all was that some of Hal's acquaintances, including the editors of his book, were recanting their initial support for publishing the new work. The publishers had the prerogative to publish essays and books of certain universities, which accounted for their main business, so they were pressured and forced to withdraw their support to Hal‟s papers. It was over.

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XXVII.- SURVIVORS OF A MOTHER CIVILIZATION (Lucy Drake) “What do I think of western civilization?

It should be a good idea.”

-Mahatma GandhiEl Cairo is a cosmopolitan and beautiful city, but it causes abhorrence for its filth, bustle, urban anarchy and infernal vehicle traffic. Graham, unlike Hal, was a person who liked to be well informed of the news around the globe, but he actually disliked politics and economics, which are the most recurrent topics in press and television. Near his residence there was a news stand oriented to the many tourists and foreigners who lived in the surroundings, where we bought the international newspapers of our countries. The table was laid and while Graham and Carmen served lunch, Hal, Alan, Mario and I were reading our journals or answering mobile messages.

- Wow, there was a meeting at the United Nations on climate change. Another one.

- I think there‟s a great economic interest behind so much insistence in making us feel guilty of pollution and climate change, -said the geologist-.

- Do you think climate change is a whopper? -Mario asked.

- When talking about „climate change‟ they mean, as a rule, to an anthropic change, generated by man. Let's see, we have to define what a normal climate is. Climate change is the norm, temperatures vary every day, seasonal variations are even more abrupt, and even changes from one year to the next. The change is normal.

- You're right -Graham added-, it seems they‟re trying to make us feel responsible and charge us more taxes because of the pollution.

- The climate varies throughout the history of the planet -the geologist continued, sketching a smile that allowed glimpsing certain approval to the words of the head of table-. Little 160

change at the equator and much more at the poles. To talk about long-term climate changes, you have to keep in mind graphs of different time scales. The change in temperature is linked to O16 / O18 isotopes ratio, called the „delta index‟. For example, 65 million years ago the climate has cooled in a 5-point delta drop, which is equivalent to a decrease of 20 centigrade degrees in polar ocean water temperature. The warming that began the last 10.000 years is a trifle.

- And if you want proof that human beings are not to blame for global warming, I can show you a collection of photographs and illustrations of icebergs, icy peaks and valleys in mountains around the globe made since 1750 to 2000, where you will see that they are receding for more than two hundred and fifty years. Nothing to do with the Industrial Revolution or the traffic pollution started after the Second World War, -Hal replied with his deep voice-.

- Are data on CO2 and ice cores manipulated then? And graphics? And glaciations?

- Not necessarily. But there are works that show that temperatures are ahead of CO2 increase in 800 years. The graphs that people like Al Gore present are biased, they refer to close periods just over a few thousand years ago, -Alan said.

Hal finished, barely taking his eyes off the article.

- Regarding glaciations, Milankovitch cycles, which are based on the Earth's movements, three sorts of precession, three of nutation and a couple kinds of eccentricity cycles, have a considerable influence in cooling and warming the planet in about some hundred thousand years.

- Oh blimey, ¡this looks like Richter Kross!

- Who? -asked the forgetful Bolivian.

- A geophysicist who criticized my work and who doesn‟t really take to me, -he reminded her.

- The one we mentioned at your house and speculated he might belong to ATHEA, the terrorist organization.

- Maybe we exaggerated -said Carmen who had started serving the salad.

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- Look at the picture, -Hal said as he passed the american newspaper to Mario. Alan, who was beside him, bent over to take a look.

- But... the image is not clear, though I‟d swear that the one in the left margin of the picture is ¡Cuvier! And the one next to him, whose face is not seen, ¡could be Lyell!

- Hon, don‟t you think you're being carried away by your imagination, -Carmen claimed-. It has an explanation that Cuvier, as a geologist, attends a summit on climate, but what business has Lyell there?

- That's what I do not understand, but I'm scared.

During the meal they talked about Cuvier's teasing on Alan's work in „Nature‟. Anyone would say that he was on purpose causing as much havoc as possible to his own Faculty, possibly to instigate the fall of Alan. Although Carmen suggested not going into the rag with the taunting, since there was nothing to win, Hal maintained that they could not always be turning the other cheek. Mario commented on a case that appeared in the conventional press about a geneticist who, after 40 years of ridicule and denials, confirmed his theory about the primordial role of genes in multiple sclerosis185. Hal and Alan had been thinking that they should wait for new generations. Kross himself had attacked Hal on television programs when he spoke in favor of Alan's theories; his companion in New Haven, the famous astrophysicist Charles De Gris, had previously shown a great fury with „Saturn theories‟, with protostars as companions of the Sun in the formation of our solar system. Later, in his famous television program „The Universe‟, he pondered his statements, arguing that science should not try to suppress ideas contrary to one's own by force, however wrong they may be. It was a dubious way to apologize for his previous pursuit.

Another issue that arose in relation to the journals while enjoying a delicious kusherie (an Egyptian rice with lentils sprinkled with chopped peppers), was the choice of the new 185

http://www.med.ubc.ca/after-40-years-of-denial-doubt-and-derision-a-scientistfinds-vindication/

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editor of „Science‟, a well-known champion of charging high fees for scientific papers publication186. No less than about three thousand dollars wanted to be paid, something that being one of the most important magazines could have serious repercussions in the revision of new theories and knowledge, contributing without doubt to increase the dogmatism among the scientific community.

- I have a sketch of my next book, -Graham sighed, as if he did not want the neighbors to know. If you want to read it, I'll give you a copy, but please be discreet. I still lack the final conclusion and several intermediate details.

Graham and I had had a cordial understanding about the antiquity of Baalbek and Tiahuanaco and decided that both could have been colonies established by the survivors of the mother civilization that most of us know as Atlantis. The surprise came from Mario.

- My book is also in draft stage.

- What is your conclusion? -we asked.

- In my case, I don‟t need a conclusion because I'm going to let the reader take his own judgments. I limit myself to expose the data and the statistics, both my own ones and the results of the author of the theory of the „temple alignments‟. However, I'm not convinced to publish it because a lot of the work I'm talking about makes reference to the work of a colleague and I think I should get his permission.

- How are your theories different?

- His theory is purely statistical. Mine, based on Alan's work, and partly on Hal's, it only speaks of the last position of the geographical poles. My database is smaller in quantity but I have obtained data from places which do not appear in his.

- Finally, what have you taken from my theory?

- The step when Earth changed from orbiting Saturn to be captured by the Sun, which might have caused it to have an 186

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inclination of about 25 degrees. The same process happened on Mars and Venus, and the subsequent captures of any of these two orbs caused a change of the Earth rotation axis some additional 35 degrees. That locates the North Pole about 55 degrees latitude, about Quebec or about Newfoundland. The South Pole should have been placed over Melbourne or Adelaide.

- Or Menindee, -said at the time, the compatriots of the kangaroos.

- Or Menindee. Then a new passage of Venus before stabilizing in its current orbit with its rotation axis inverted helped the gyroscopic movement of the Earth to gradually return to its original 23.5 degrees inclination.

- Relax; you can use whatever you need. I can even sign below.

- Maybe my fellow engineer will not fancy rivals.

- Courage Mario, -Carmen said, putting her hand on his shoulder.

- Anyway, Mario's theory fits well with my idea of the vanishing of the mother civilization, -Graham continued-. The hecatombs chain that destroyed Atlantis, its capital, must have taken place during the period known as Dryas. The second flyby of Venus (or Mars or even Mercury) probably occurred after the glacial maximum (LGM) or at the beginning of the Old Dryas. Earthquakes, floods and volcanism ended the cold season, which was not as widespread as people think. With the Holocene, and the Age of Leo came calm, new fertile lands while other sites were flooded.

- They'll ask you for proof, -I said-. Something solid in which to hold it.

- There is a group of more than 60 multidisciplinary scientists187 who have hundreds of papers in favor of a cometary impact as the cause of the end of the Young Dryas Alan was typing some web addresses in Grahamâ€&#x;s personal computer-.

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https://cometresearchgroup.org/publications/ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016.short

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- The specialist in „Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics‟ P. LaViolette already postulated the impact of comets to explain the extinction of megafauna and the end of the ice age188 -Hal told us-. It is a possible hypothesis, although it is rejected by the majority. Anyway I don‟t bet on it. First, because there were 3 Dryas, three rapid cooling and three super-rapid heating, and it would be arduous, statistically speaking, to explain the fall of at least 6 comets. Second, the impact of a meteor can explain melting, flooding or volcanism that could clog sunlight and cool the climate but does not explain warming. Third, even if an asteroid decomposes into thousands of pieces, the annihilation of large species and not that of small mammals is not understandable.

- Corbyn or Schoch blame the increase in solar activity, brutal coronal mass ejections (CME), and electric plasma discharges on Earth.

- Whatever the reason, -Carmen said-, the climate changed, the mammoths became extinct and geological phenomena were derived. We must adopt the thesis that best fits with our other theories, without causing anomalies.

- Another mystery. As far as my work is concerned was that more and more places are found dating back to the beginning of the Holocene, and even cities and settlements such as Jericho, Aleppo, Byblos, Sidonia, Damascus, Catal Hoyuk, Konya Basin, Uweinat , Nabta Playa, Ravy, Ali Kosh or the scandalous Gunung Padang of 26.000 years.

- And what is the problem?

- The problem is that if I affirm that Atlantis existed many travel agencies will not want to work with my adventure travel company. And I cannot harm Abdel.

- Difficult solution.

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https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/viewFile/3464/pdf

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XVIII.- SWARM BEHAVIOUR (Halton Wheeler)

“Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.”

- Konrad LorentzOne of the great problems of knowledge, grosso modo, is the overlapping of its different disciplines. There is great respect, largely hypocritical and double-dealing, on the part of the theologians not to interfere excessively in the field of science; and of scientists for not crossing the boundaries with philosophy. It is as if the scholars of each of these sectors wanted to preserve their niche of followers or readers avoiding attacks and criticism from the rest, thus causing knowledge to be fragmented and not very holistic. The result is a sort of knowledge increasingly closer to a faith or belief, than to an integral knowledge derived from a personal research path, which is what could be considered internal knowledge. It was the famous physicist Richard Feynman who said: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts. I will never make this mistake again. I will not listen to the opinion of the experts, I will do the calculations myself “; and also “... First of all we do not know all the basic laws of physics, there is a growing border of ignorance...”.

Intelligence is defined as the ability to understand or comprehend; and also as the ability to solve problems by oneself. In that aspect, intelligence clashes with the „criterion of authority‟, which leads people to assume and believe things for the simple fact that they were or are postulated by prestigious geniuses of the past or recognized scholars of today. This Aristotelian argument is reinforced, in many cases, by the socalled „criterion of common belief‟ or „Argumentum ad Populum‟, according to which if the majority thinks one thing, they are right.

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Historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and paleontologists feel the need to put dates to everything, which to be honest happens in all sciences. Unfortunately, the accuracy that many people would like to have is perhaps impossible. The girls and Graham knew that the Universe was between 13.7 and 15 billion years old, according to the Big Bang theory, but they did not know where that figure was coming from.

- To explain that, I must go back to the mid-twentieth century, when two physicists and mathematicians developed the tensor equations of Einstein's General Relativity. The Einstein field equations are 16 partial differential equations (in hyperbolicelliptical geometry) coupled non-linearly describing the gravitational effects produced by a given mass in general relativity. They write something like this G = 8Ď€ T , where G is the tensor of curvature and T is the energy-stress tensor.

As a result of the symmetry of G and T the actual number of equations is reduced to 10. A solution of these equations is an appropriate metric for the given distribution of the mass and the pressure of the matter.

- For a spherical mass distribution the Schwarzschild metric is used, which offers certain types of numerical solutions; if we assume an axial symmetry in rotation, the Kerr metric is used; if we assume that the universe is homogeneous and uniform, the necessary metric is that of Robertson-Walker and so on.

Then you can see that depending on the number of assumptions we make we would get hundreds or thousands of concrete solutions. The Belgian Lemaitre, and the Russian Friedman, each one independently, obtained spherical solutions concluding that, if the universe expands as it looks like, I recalled, its volume was smaller in the past, the shorter wavelengths radiations (higher frequencies), and its temperature would increase as we traveled backwards.

- This last part is easier, said all three.

- If we had to extrapolate „infinitelyâ€&#x; further back, we would reach a singularity, where physics breaks down. The modern 167

understanding of the primitive Universe, says that an „inflationary state‟ preceded the hot and dense Big Bang, and that the inflationary state had an indeterminate duration. So, when they talk about „the age of the Universe‟, they refer to how much time has passed since the Universe could be described for the first time, from the Big Bang to today189.

- I think we're following you, -Luky said, staring at his friends-.

It seems that Alan understands you better.

- In a homogeneous, uniform and isotropic universe the Big Bang happened everywhere. It's a universe without a center Mario was also listening.- Imagine that instead of three dimensions we have two, wide and long, without height. We would have flat geometric shapes, such as squares, circles or lines. What would a circle and a square or a triangle look like to each other? -Alan asked.

- Mario seemed like he was going to answer but Hal stopped him with a gesture-. Let them answer.

- They would be line segments, -Graham stammered with some doubt-.

- Right. Imagine our solar system, galaxy and so on, drawn on a flat, two-dimensional surface, like a balloon. Now imagine that it starts to swell. All galaxies separate and move away from each other.

- And there is no center of the universe then -Carmen said, happy to have understood.

- Okay. „Habibi‟ has explained me that, -Luky recalled-. When we look at stars or galaxies, we see them not on the surface of the globe but the light they emitted in the past, when the cosmos was less inflated.

- Returning to the supposed age of the cosmos; if we can measure how the Universe is expanding today and assume it has expanded throughout history in the same way, we can infer what it was like and how long it has been expanding. Hal 189

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/04/29/how-do-we-know-theage-of-the-universe/#1c439cdc6155

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finished his presentation. Three things are used for this. The first is the ladder of distances, which is based on a succession of methods that astronomers use to measure distances from the closer stars that we use as a reference. The brightness is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. The brightness is a more subjective magnitude; it is the amount of perceived light. The luminosity is the light, the radiation emitted by an object, be it a star, a planet or a light bulb.

- The brightness is measured in terms of bright, the lumens of the bulbs, clarified Mario.

- The apparent brightness of an object is inversely proportional to the illuminated area190 (B = L / 4Ď€ d2). In astronomy there are the so called „standard candlesâ€&#x; to measure distances191. The problem is that they have to be calibrated. At the beginning of the last century, some stars called Cepheids were used to measure distances, then they were found to be variable. Thus nearby Cepheids did not have the same properties as those of other farther galaxies. Something similar happens now with Type Ia supernovae. But that is another matter.

- Carmen asked-: How did they know that the Universe was expanding?

- E. Hubble invented the standard candle method to determine the distances of distant objects (relatively near, but then it was believed that our galaxy was the whole cosmos) of the space according to its luminosity comparing it with the Cepheids.

Hubble thought he discovered a star that was, in fact, the Andromeda Galaxy (our nearest neighbor). The cosmos passed from 100 light-years to millions. But he observed that the spectra lines of the farthest stars were moving towards red [redshift], and associated it with a Doppler-like effect. He thought it could only mean that the universe was expanding.

- You said there were three things or mechanisms to measure distances. What are the other two?

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http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit1/bright.html https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/users/shadia/lectures/habbal_astro11001_spring2009_lecture33.pdf 191

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- Precisely the redshift used to measure distances to distant objects. The third is the variation with time (decrease frequency or increase in wavelength) of the background radiation from the Big Bang, which is called 'microwave background radiation' or CMBR. Calculating backward they came to the conclusion that the cosmos had 15 billion years of expansion.

- What is clear to us -recounted Luky- is that they calculate distances to distant objects based on the closest ones. How were the distances to the closest stars, such as the Cepheids, known?

I suspect that optical media such as telescopes were used.

- So it is. Trigonometry is used, a method called parallax.

- From the parallax, which is an angle, to the Cepheids and other standard candles and positioning them in graphs, called „HR diagramsâ€&#x;, distances from farther stars and nearby galaxies are measured. With other allegedly standard candles such as Type Ia Supernovae, they measure distance from the farthest galaxies and quasars; using the redshift to calculate the recession rate (they make the guess that the displacement is caused by the Doppler effect or caused by the inflation of the universe -they call it cosmological-}. With the Hubble formula v = Ho * d, and making tests, they changed the values of H, the Hubble constant, which has varied a lot in history and depends on the type of cosmology that is considered.

The problem of determining the age of the universe is closer to the problem of determining the values of cosmological parameters. The ΛCDM model assumes that the Universe contains normal matter (baryonic), cold dark matter, radiation (photons and neutrinos) and a cosmological constant (dark energy). The fractional contribution of each element is debatable, leaving aside that it is not known what dark matter and dark energy are. Dark energy is blamed responsible for the acceleration of expansion. There is also the problem of baryonic asymmetry. For every baryon (protons and neutrons) there are more than 1010 photons, and this asymmetry is constant as we look further away (in space and time); when 170

with space expansion it should be denser in the past. This problem is known as baryonic asymmetry.

Regarding redshift, there are a large number of additional mechanisms, studies and observations that prove that its variation is not uniform with distance but is quantized; and that there are other causes than cosmological or Doppler ones, what has been called intrinsic redshift. Russell192, Tift193, Arp194, Narlikar195, Gallo, Wolf and many others have contributed papers describing mechanisms such as chemical redshift196, Wolf effect (like resonance in tuning forks)197, intrinsic redshifts in spiral galaxies (which ascribe redshift as a function of their youth)198, Raman peaks in spectroscopy199 and many other anomalies200.

Before moving on to write down the chronology of our ideas on paper, a further clarification was required. It is necessary for people to understand where the idea that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old comes from. Of course here there were no distances or speeds with which to speculate.

- The age of the planet is not inferred from the age of the cosmos, not even the age of our solar system –explained Alan taking the floor-. Already in the eighteenth century, philosophers speculated with a long terrestrial history of some hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Darwin, after his trip to the Galapagos, and influenced by uniformitarian and atheist geology books, promulgated the idea that the Earth would be about 300 million years old. His only scientific observation was the erosion of chalk deposits (not even 192

https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0503440.pdf http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1983ApJ...268...56C 194 https://www.nature.com/articles/2251033b0 195 http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1993ApJ...405...51N/0000051.000.html 196 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1260085/ 197 http://www.nature.com/articles/326363a0 198 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10509-005-3425-3 https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0203466 199 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749603617317615 200 https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.1015 193

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counting the time of deposition). In 1862, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), who was the most important physicist of his time, saw that the temperature increased the further while descending below the surface, and concluded that the Earth was cooling slowly. The idea of a sphere of incredibly hot liquid was already coming from Descartes and Leibnitz. The pieces of material on the surface would sink before solidifying, creating convection currents that kept the Earth at a uniform temperature until solidification began in the nucleus. The temperature gradient was set at around 1ยบF (0.6ยบC) for every fifteen feet (4.5 meters) and Kelvin also made his own measurements of conductivity in the rocks. He needed to know the core temperature, that he thought was formed by solid rock, so it could not exceed the melting point of the rock. His calculations, with a wide margin due to uncertainties in the measurements (which are still difficult today) allowed him to offer a range of between 30 and 400 million years, to allow the solidification of the surface.

The uniformitarian geologists could not accept that the Earth was so young. Biologists could accept a finite age, but 100 million years seemed a too small number. Darwin's evolutionary theory, supported by uniformitarian and atheists, did not contemplate 400 million years as a sufficient span for the evolution of so many species. Creationists and catastrophist geologists supported Kelvin.

T. Huxley defended Darwin and attacked Thomson's calculations, indicating that, while they seemed consistent and accurate, they were based on erroneous assumptions. The physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the Canadian astronomer Simon Newcomb presented calculations of 22 and 18 million years respectively independently, according to the time it would have taken the Sun to evolve to reach its current diameter and intensity from the gas and dust nebula from which it was formed according to the current nebular theory (they assumed that the Sun shone as a consequence of the heat generated by its gravitational contraction since the nuclear fusion process was then still unknown).

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- There were quite a few disputes between theists and atheists regarding the uniformitarian and catastrophists‟ views interrupted Graham-. The former held that the changes and geological processes are slow and gradual; the latter said that the changes accelerate and take place abruptly in short periods of time. Many religious factions were ascribed to one posture or another.

- Even today there are religious beliefs regarding the mechanism of nuclear fusion -I said-. It sounds heretical, but it is possible that nuclear reactions are not the Sun's energy source. At least, the only source. By not extending myself, there are several things that the Eddington Nuclear Model does not explain, and neither the peculiar modern excuses do adequately. The more we move away from the sun the more the solar wind acceleration201; the drastic increase in temperature towards the corona (the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere)202; the coronal holes, which pretend to be explained by an artifice called „magnetic reconnection‟ that violates Maxwell's laws according to many physicists203; sunspots temperatures are 1.500 K lower than its surroundings204; discordances in solar cycles (11/22 years); and the lack of 2/3 of the neutrinos supposedly produced in nuclear reactions. Regarding the latter, an ad-hoc mechanism called „neutrino oscillation‟ (a change in the type of particle) was discovered or invented by delicate experiments in Japan and Canada. This mechanism implies that the neutrinos must have some mass (they were believed to have no mass) to interact with particles. Their mass is not really detected but just a disappearance ratio. The fact that neutrinos have mass, breaks the Standard Model by making it necessary a new particle model called SUSY super-symmetry, of which no element has yet been detected.

201

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2006RG000195 http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qcorona.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422629/ 203 https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/breaking-magnetic-field-lines.643257/ 204 http://spaceyug.com/they-mystery-of-sunspots/ 202

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- If these ideas are published, both in the form of a novel, as a serious study, and disregarding how many citations we make, we will lose a lot of support and friends in the professional field. We will be given beatings from everywhere.

- So, we let the establishment get away with it?

- Or we publish a story in a sly way, so that they donâ€&#x;t feel offended and we wait a couple of generations, expecting the new ones to be less fanatical.

- Or directly that they be non-religious scientists.

- Let's leave these moral disquisitions for later -Alan said, to whom we had left halfway through his speech-. Returning to the subject of the Earth's age; Darwin's son, an astronomer at Cambridge, proposed that the Earth and the Moon had separated at the beginning of their existence when they were still liquid masses, and he calculated how long itâ€&#x;d take the Earth to develop the 24-hour day (it is estimated that 4,000 million years ago the Earth rotated every 6 hours). It came out to be 56 million years ago, which supported Kelvin's values.

- Other physicists calculated the rate at which the oceans would have accumulated salt through erosion processes, determining that it would have an age of about 80 to 100 million years. It seems that the catastrophist/theist coalition had an advantage but the uniformitarian/atheist empire counterattacked. In 1895, John Perry, using a model of a convective mantle and a thin crust, estimated that the age of the Earth was between 2.000 and 3.000 million years. But the big blow came the following year when Becquerel discovered radioactivity, and the next, Marie and Pierre Curie, discovered the radioactive elements polonium and radium. E. Rutherford realized that the heat given off by radioactivity was due to the transmutation of chemical elements, and in spite of that some had short lifetimes, others such as uranium, thorium or lead had very high half-lives.

Geologists such as Holmes and Barrell observed that the elements were arranged in isotopes with different numbers of neutrons; and that layers of strata had formed at different speeds, and therefore it was incorrect to use the current 174

geological change rates to infer the dates of the evolution of Earth's history.

- Are you finished?

- Summarize, please!

- In 1921, the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science accepted that the age was a few billion years. Most of the samples from the Earth do not allow to directly determining the date on which the Earth was formed from the solar nebula, because the Earth has undergone processes that determine the presence of its core, mantle and lithosphere. In turn, these elements have gone through a long history of mixing and dispersion processes such as plate tectonics, erosion and hydrothermal circulation.

All these processes can negatively affect the dating by radiometric methods, since they can compromise the traits of the samples, by canceling the assumption that it has remained a closed system. This refers to the fact that either the parent nucleus or some intermediate daughter nucleus may have run away from the sample partially, which would result in an incorrect calculation of their age.

It is considered that some meteorites represent the primitive material from which the accretion solar disk was formed. That's why they are taken as closed systems for some isotopes, and that's what C.C. Patterson used to set the current age in 4.555 million years studying the decay of Uranium-Lead in a meteor of Diablo Canyon in Arizona.

- The everyday dogma –I contended-. Assumptions, suppositions, presumptions, speculations and conjectures.

- Well that's how, during the second half of the 20th century, the vast majority of geological and fossil layers have been dated in absolute terms -Alan affirmed-.

- Absolutist method I daresay, -Graham exclaimed-.

- Science has that problem. They believe that you can start from a certain point and that all the premises that you have below are absolute certainties. There is a total faith in the 175

institutions, and an excessive respect to the expertise and specialization.

I had worked with the Californian plasma physicist Tony Bostick for a few months in connection with his ideas of the behavior of the planets plasmaspheres in an electrically charged environment, and when he read about my work, we got in touch. Bostick had contacts among the association of engineers that may offer a new hope.

In the following days Alan told us about the so-called swarming behavior, which is observed in some animals such as swarms of bees, ant colonies, krill or fish banks, flocks of birds, herds of antelopes, and so on. Their behavior is coordinated and complemented by optimizing the movement or function of each member to achieve a common goal205.

- Do you think there is a collective unconscious, a kind of „morphic field‟206, capable of storing information, which animals automatically use for some kind of instant communication? -Mario asked-.

I responded in my style, with another question. -Are you suggesting that this field, or „akasha‟ as Luky would say, can contain a group consciousness that gives an identity to the group different from that of each individual?

- That idea is disturbing -acknowledged the historian, in whose library we were gathered. In addition to a brutal amount of books covering all subjects you might imagine, there was a good internet connection where we could investigate comfortably-.

- The same term is applied to the behavior of decentralized systems or particles. Swarm intelligence is trying to be applied to improve machine performance207; -I shouted referring to what I had just read-.

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http://www2.ece.ohio-state.edu/~passino/swarms.pdf https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332928708408747 207 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=37401.37406 206

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- Memory seems to be a non-local phenomena208, it does not seem to reside in neuronal synapses. If there is a nonorganic memory field that integrates all the structures of the universe, it no longer makes sense to see life as an organic phenomenon, Alan said-.

- If Conway-Kochen's theorem209 is correct, even subatomic particles could have a certain degree of consciousness. If I remember correctly, it says that if human experimenters have only a minimum of free will, in that case, a subatomic particle as an electron must also possess a certain degree of will. And quantum mechanics seems to support this argument.

- You mean that there could be a collective memory of us as a group? –Graham asked-.

- According to Freud, -explained Lucy- individuals have „repressed memories‟ blocked by the unconscious, caused by high stress or traumas, and tend to „repeat them compulsively‟, sometimes in the form of dreams. What he called „unconscious‟ was renamed by Jung as „subconscious‟ (a term invented by Fr. Janet), and he stated that below there is another layer he called „unconscious‟. Further down, the „Collective Unconscious‟ is located.

- And maybe a consciousness that sees each of us as organs or cells of a higher level entity -Carmen pointed out-.

- This appeared in the early stages of species development -she continued-, and can be accessed only through excited states of consciousness, perhaps with drugs or through deep meditation.

Or it can be accessed by groups dominated by intense emotions, or groups such as families, friends, peoples, nations and even the entire civilization.

https://www.tendencias21.net/La-inteligencia-de-los-enjambres-mejorara-elcomportamiento-colectivo-de-las-maquinas_a16212.html 208 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/memories-may-not-live-in-neuronssynapses/ 209 https://www.sciencenews.org/article/do-subatomic-particles-have-free-will https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-006-9068-6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZqUEAACfyk http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread706605/pg1

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- Perhaps that field of collective memory, or collective unconscious, is “where the ultimate reality starts and is stored”, the „implicate order‟ that some of my colleagues specializing in quantum physics have postulated.

Close to the end of the month came the approval of the NPSS (Society of Nuclear and Plasma Sciences)210, a company affiliated with the IEEE, to publish the paper of Hal and Bostick. As a phoenix they rose from their ashes.

210

IEEE (Instituto Ingenieros de Electricidad y Electrónica) y NPSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_Nuclear_and_Plasma_Sciences_Society

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XXIX. - CHRONOLOGY (Graham Talbosky)

“The universe is an unending transformation in flux whose previous states we are not privileged to know."

-David BohmOne afternoon, the intense heat of the day had accumulated in the house while my guests and friends were either sleeping or lying on the sofas in the living room and the library. The drowsiness and apathy had been tight on us, because of the great temperature sensation and the high humidity of that week.

Hal and Lucy were in the library, Carmen and Alan in the living room, each isolated on his own cell phone, barely having the strength to lift it. I raised my voice just enough to be heard in the adjoining room but not in the rooms on the other side of the house.

- We agreed on writing down an approximate chronology of the most representative historical events.

- A bath in the pool would be fine -planted Alan with a yawn-.

Afterwards, we have a snack and we talk about it.

Several scholars of the Renaissance, Classicism and Enlightenment were critical of the contemporary historiography that was devised, distorted, and some say that invented, by a few Jesuit and Benedictine monks; headed by J.J. Scaliger (an old Protestant who reconciled with the Catholic Church ending in the Jesuits) and the theologian called D. Petavius. It is well known that ancient history has suffered major blows in the form of the destruction of books and other valuable sources of cultural information; since the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the 1st century BC, which had been plundered previously since 391 BC, until the infamous burning of books by the Inquisition.

Thus, it is difficult to recognize the veracity of the information of historical events, since few reliable sources have survived.

Most ancient writings were made on clay tablets or inscriptions 179

in stone, others on papyrus or sheets of rice or linen fiber (which were quickly degraded by humidity and temperature) and finally on parchments (untanned animal skins). The paper (cellulose or other vegetable macerated fibers) could last up to 500 years if it was isolated from large changes in temperature and humidity. Some heroic Greek, Roman and Middle Eastern historians made successive copies of some documents, which the few educated members of the clergy during the so-called dark period, had to be translating, reinterpreting and moving to new paper supports. Paper was adopted by the Arabs in the seventh century and did not reach Europe until the fourteenth century, shortly before the appearance of the printing press.

I should mentioned some of the free thinkers who discussed the interpretations and historical dates of Scaliger and Petavius, among which are the Castilian De Ercilla, the French J. Hardouin, the German R. Baldauf, or the most recent Russian scientist of the nineteenth century , N.A. Morozov. His compatriot, a quite recognized in the eastern scientific circles, called A. Fomenko, has proposed a quite radical alternative „New Chronology‟, together with several collaborators. His accounts regarding the lunar eclipses211 between 700 and 1.100 made him deduce that there were a number of years in between that did not fit. His statistical method concludes that there were three periods of 300, 1.000 and 1.800 years in the chronology of Scaliger where the history was artificially delayed backwards.

- Even Isaac Newton himself, a polymath, carried out an intense criticism based on 40 years of research on the chronology written by Scaliger, -I said-.

- Indeed, -Hal said-. Not only did he dedicate the nights (three quarters of his time) to alchemy, but, according to his own words, his masterpiece was „Revised Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms‟. It might be possible that history had been 211

Robert Newton http://hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/atext/rrn85.htm https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/21174750?q&versionId=25247367 A.Fomenko https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01301804

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sent back in time to 1,800 years in the case of the Ancient Egyptian Empire.

- Unfortunately Newton is known only for his contributions in mechanics, optics and mathematics -Mario added while joining the snack-.

- And maybe it was the less important of his work.

- Then we have people like Velikovsky, or the more modern Hancock, who have different views of the chronology of civilizations.

- However, the first was closely related to the chronology of Scaliger, although he located the great events of the Bible and other sacred books in the time of the first cultures, in the Fertile Crescent.

- First of all we should draw up a scheme with relative dating, Alan suggested-, since the official dates are based on radiometry, which is not reliable. At best, we can be guided by ice-cores climate graphs.

Since the age of the planet was not clear without the contribution of radiometry, we opted for a relative chronology between periods, beginning with the Paleozoic (Primary Era) beginning with the Cambrian Explosion that orthodox science dates 540 million years ago but could have happened 50 or just 5 million years ago. The further away from the present the higher the difference might be.

The first proto-Saturn nova would happen something later, with the first approach of the Herbig-Haro-like Saturn system; the old nebula in which the „polar configuration‟ might have formed during the Mesozoic (Secondary Era). This period would end with the first serious contact of both plasmaspheres.

Proto-Saturn magnetosphere should have been quite positively charged, and experiencing a strong increase in brightness in its coma or plasma sheath (at a distance of one hundred astronomical units from the Sun). Saturn cathode role would be snatched by the Sun when fusing both systems.

If it was already settled, of what I‟m not fully convinced, the „polar configuration‟ could be maintained if there were large 181

electromagnetic potentials that provide a repulsive force; in addition to the attractive force (gravity alone could not handle such model). The climate would be much warmer than the current one (even at the poles) and the gravity around one third of today's. The last mass extinction (K-Pg, which finished the saurians), dated conventionally 65 million years ago (could have been as many as 6 million or just 650 thousand years), was due to doubling gravity force, together with a decrease in temperatures in the middle and polar latitudes.

Most likely, in the early stages of the Tertiary, perhaps in the Oligocene period, Proto-Saturn began to lose mass (albeit with ups and downs for long periods of time), being located at some 60-50 astronomical units of our current sun star. The formation of several mountain ranges, large seismic movements and volcanic eruptions thousands of times more destructive than the current ones, determined the geomorphology of the planet while the Saturn system lost Uranus, and later Neptune, both captured by the Sun. The appearance of Venus may happen at a distance of between 5 and 3 AU, at the beginning of the Pleistocene; giving origin to the „polar configuration‟, as described in ancient lore, that under different versions defended Velikovsky, Cardona or Jno Cook.

- Both gravity and electromagnetism are inverse functions of the distance that separates objects. But Saturn's magnetic field would reshape the intensity of the electric field in the form of an „apple‟ (magnetic lines coming from one pole and entering the opposite), and only the gravitational attraction would be spherical, -Hal explained-. The electrical repulsion would be formed by the lines of magnetic force within the Proto-Saturn plasmasphere with a region of lower electrical potential (and therefore a lower repulsive force) at the poles. There, no force would impose on the other; a point of stable equilibrium would be reached between two planets.

Mario, as an engineer, understood that the remaining components of the configuration (Venus, Mars and Earth) each perceived the electric charge of the others and repelled since they were all negatively charged.

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- And that would produce an induction of opposite voltages in them, wouldn‟t it Hal? - I think so.

- The tendency to neutrality would generate electric arc discharges in an attempt to achieve charge balancing.

- And the time in which the Saturn nova remained with the three small planets wrapped in a „reddish atmosphere‟ would be what the myths called „Purple Dawn‟? –Carmen asked-.

- There is that possibility, yes. Approximately half a million years ago. But it could refer to the nova phase when the birth of Venus, the stage known as „Expulsion of Eden‟ took place. It should have been a few tens of thousands of years ago.

- What would be the first of the three rocky planets to leave the configuration? -Alan asked-. Mars for being the youngest?

- Based on the simulations that I carried out, probably.

- About two hundred thousand years ago, -Lucy added, reading Hal's papers-. And the Earth was captured a scarce hundred thousand years ago.

- The last interglacial period -conventionally attributed to the Milankovitch cycles-.

- Saturn would be five or six A.U., and Venus would get rid of its gravitational influence seventy-five thousand years ago.

- As a geologist I believe that the last glaciation, the Würm, began shortly after the Toba super-eruption. These events must have been related to the first of Venus approaches, until reaching its current orbit.

- The gravity may have been even higher than nowadays, and large electric shocks would force the inhabitants of the planet to dig cities under the rock to survive.

- Rock that, on the other hand, should be softened.

- That happened in the first transit of the „comet‟ Venus -said Carmen glancing at the papers-. And the inclination of the rotation axis was increased by 35 degrees compared to the current one –now gazing at Alan-.

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- From the historical and mythological point of view, it is not less important. The interaction or battle between Jupiter and Saturn ended with this being sent to the „underworld‟. During this time the Atlanteans, in their heyday, would coexist with lithic tribes, and I would even say, with the last descendants of previous cultures.

The electrical interactions between the magnetospheres of the three planets neutralized a large part of their negative charge; and the gravity was reduced again to a third of ours. Gradually the gyroscopic movement of the planet would recover the axis inclination, helped by Venus‟ last close flyby while reducing its orbital eccentricity. Venus finished with its axis „downwards‟ (180 degrees). It was during those millennia that megalomaniac megalithic structures such as Sacsayhuaman, Ollantaytambo or Baalbek had to be built. At the beginning of the Old Dryas, twenty thousand years ago, happened the last push of gravity and the last electrical neutralization in the atmosphere. It was the time of the so-called „Aryan migrations‟ (the Vedic sages), the extinction of large mammals such as the mammoth, maybe the „sinking‟ of Atlantis, and the construction of Tiahuanaco or the pyramids of Giza by the survivors.

- What kind of inheritance do we want to leave to the next generations? -Lucy commented switching the subject-.

- If you mean in relation to the publishing of our theories, I think the ideal would be to decide democratically, -Mario boasted-.

- Since democracy does not exist in any democratic country, as people don‟t make laws, perhaps we can govern ourselves and make our own decisions -Hal spoke on behalf of the group-.

We all took the political issues with fresh humor.

- How about a book, a scientific novel? -Lucy said-.

- Something like that I think we suggested, -Carmen went on-.

But we may have to distribute the task.

- Since we all carry personal diaries we could write the story by chapters, each one with his specialty -hinted Alan-.

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- Another option is to make a chronological account since our first encounter in Quebec. And perhaps we could all narrate the ideas and theories of another, to offer the reader more than one point of view –I conveyed-. Always with the help of the expert if something is not clear.

- I support that motion -Hal said raising his arm-.

- How do we organize it?

Whether we did it in the form of a novel or a scientific book, someone had to play the role of the devil's advocate, because many readers might be as critical as our own scientific colleagues. Luky, stoically, assumed that role.

- A possible reader would wonder, why should I care what happened thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, and how did civilization appear and our society developed?

- The news only speaks of murders, wars and corruption, in all countries. When the alarm clock rings, people often mentally curse having to go to work another day, to endure the impertinences of their manager or superior, and to swallow the upstart decisions of their bosses. While they prepare their breakfasts, they listen to the news about the acquittal of some politicians in the government by the judges, and they disown on how citizens can be so naive to go on voting for such bad and corrupt politicians, that they hide their fortunes in Switzerland and other tax havens. The following news may refer to the collapse of the financial markets or to the „exploitsâ€&#x; of some powerful country president that sold weapons to other countries and now threatens to intervene them militarily. If not that, it is a new case of pedophilia, rapes or abuses, which should make people, manage to turn off the radio receiver.

- What has to do, that the supposed peak of human social evolution is a depraved, corrupt and violent society, with knowing the history of the beginning of civilizations and science?

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- That has an easy answer -Carmen replied-. But it is better to guide the reader socratically towards a dialogue, by asking the right questions. Why do you think society is like that?

- Because they are a band of handlers, lazy and materialistic.

- Are? Aren‟t you a part of that society? Are just „bad‟ the other people?

- And you are too.

- Again, it is not a question of individualizing. We all have to assume our share of responsibility. Do not pass the buck.

Here I intervened as a mediator.

- And what should be done then to solve it? -the reader would ask, already on the defensive side.

- History tells us who we are and science must, at least, tell us what we are not, -Carmen answered-. If the reason that the supposedly most advanced society is full of wars and calamities is materialism, ambition and selfishness, maybe it is because it focuses on a wrong goal.

- If people believe that they are a bunch of atoms, molecules or cells, that after a hundred years are going to dissipate and what they know as „I‟ disappears, it is logical that humans think that the best they can do in this world is “glut, screw and fuck”, Hal added-. Knowing who we are and what we do here, in this physical universe, must guide us towards that goal that we have to discover.

The word “stress” began to be used in 1.930 to refer to a set of separate symptoms that caused a disease, something somatic. I say this because the scientists took more than twenty years to understand that a mental (psychological) cause was what produced all those physiological problems.

Scientists are trained to solve specific problems, every time more and more concrete and punctual. They call it specialization. That is why by looking at each of the symptoms they could not understand the origin of the stress. Scientists analyze things (break down into smaller parts), when what they 186

should do is synthesize, observe the whole thing in a holistic or general way, put the parts together. Physicists like D. Bohm struggled to change the way of studying physics, seeking a more global vision than that offered by quantum mechanics and relativity; an underlying reality governed by hidden variables that, like guide waves, drive the movement of the material particles that we assume as ours.

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XXX.- FREE WILL (Mario Espejo)

“I can teach nothing to anyone, just to make them think.”

-SócratesWe all have a deep sense of volition that we can choose and make decisions rationally (or perhaps not so much in some cases), and that, therefore, there can be no doubt about the quality of the will associated with our being. However, there is also in us, or that I suppose from my own experience, the feeling that all things happen for some reason that perhaps we do not know. This is known as the „Causality Principle‟ or „cause-effect‟. But if we do not know the reason for something, which prevents us from inferring its cause or motive, it may possibly imply that this assumption, made unconsciously, in our day to day is not correct.

Therefore, there are two fundamental cornerstones of our sense of „being conscious‟, which seem incompatible with one another; on the one hand the feeling that we have free will and on the other the feeling that every „event‟ (effect) is determined by an antecedent „cause‟. This philosophical position is called Determinism. To clarify concepts, absolute determinism is the position that holds that everything is determined from the beginning of time (let's say the Big Bang if we believe in it).

The opposite view is randomness, absolute chance, and not indeterminism as some modern philosophers carelessly adduce.

Any intermediate positioning gradually moves away from determinism or from randomness.

I was immersed in these thoughts while preparing a tray of tea with pastries, during a break in my conversation with Lucy and Graham, our summer host. The large kitchen communicated with the patio of the house where we used to sunbathe, and where Lucy and Carmen meditated at sunrise usually, and occasionally at dusk because it is oriented East-Southwest.

Carmen and Hal appeared through the service door.

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- Do you want tea with mint or do you prefer a chai? -I asked knowing that Carmen liked the chai with milk-. We had bought it in the market especially for her and Lucy.

- Chai. With milk and vanilla.

- We are debating on determinism and free will -Lucy summed up-. The point of view of a scientist may be fine.

Most of the scientific community adopts a deterministic position to a greater or lesser degree. Biologists and doctors, according to Hal, are absolute determinists with atheist beliefs.

Physicists tend to be more moderate, perhaps because they have studied quantum mechanics. From a materialist-reductionist profile, where only matter is considered as ultimate reality, the will is seen as a process, in the same way that consciousness.

Both processes must be caused, according to the axiom of causality, by an earlier event, in a chain of circumstances that we might not understand totally.

- If the mechanism that causes a brain to make a decision is not known, can we argue with certainty that such a mechanism exists, as per the assumed principle of causality? -Hal snapped.

- Alan added that there were even studies212 that showed that a brain is prepared almost 500 milliseconds before making a conscious decision. Do we then take our decisions or are these predetermined in advance and our sense of will or agency is a mere illusion?

- Or maybe it's not the brain that makes the decision; it's a mere intermediary -Carmen pointed out-.

Lucy, with her studies in philosophy, had deepened more into the subject and offered us broader viewpoints.

Since the time of Descartes and Leibniz, -she interjected-, there is an endless discussion about dualism and monism. In general, the dualistic argument says that there is a material and an 212

http://brainworldmagazine.com/whos-the-decision-maker-your-brain-or-you/ https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2112 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brainsciences/article/unconscious-cerebral-initiative-and-the-role-of-conscious-willin-voluntary-action/D215D2A77F1140CD0D8DA6AB93DA5499

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immaterial or spiritual world if you prefer. Current science is based on a monistic paradigm where the only thing that is contemplated is the material world and its relationships. The spiritual does not exist and things like consciousness or agency are very powerful illusions created by the brain.

- And this materialism has become a religion -added his companion-. The „Standard Model‟ of particles is defined as the basic, fundamental and last structure of matter. The smallest known indivisible particles are divided into families, called bosons and fermions, which, in turn, are subdivided into quarks and leptons. Unions of quarks form protons and neutrons, which are composite particles, and their family is called hadrons, while electrons or neutrinos are leptons. Bosons are much more energetic particles that originate the various force fields of the four supposedly fundamental known interactions (gravitation, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetism), but their lifetime (time of existence) is very limited, about 10-25 seconds. The biggest oddity is that, by definition, the fermions (quarks and leptons) are point particles, that is, they do not have physical dimensions (height, width or thickness) and therefore, they do not have volume. If we bear in mind that the definition of matter is “everything that possesses the property invented by Newton called mass, and volume”, then we see that the fermions are not matter! How is it possible that the union of particles of zero volume forms hadrons with non-zero volume? -Sorry for the interruption-. Go on Luky -he concluded.

- However, Unitarianism or Monism can also refer to the mere existence of the spiritual or mental world as real, leaving the material world as an illusion or „maya‟ as Buddhist wisdom says.

- In all this conversation we have not defined what we mean when we speak of „existence‟ and „reality‟ and I think it is essential if we pretend to understand each other -said the linguist-.

- Well... light us up, I joked.

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- The problem is that dictionaries have a lot of meanings of some words and these ones are very generic and imprecise. In fact, in this fundamental case, in addition to vague definitions are useless, since they usually define „existence‟ as “what is real” and „reality‟ as “that which exists”.

- They are equivalent and furthermore superfluous, -Graham said-. One of them is spared or must be redefined. It does not make any sense to define A in terms of B and this in terms of A, because we stayed as we were.

- In the scientific world we usually differentiate between „real‟ and „virtual‟ particles or if you want unreal. These are considered as such because they „exist‟ for very short periods of time, we speak of Planck scales, being impossible to be measured. I think you've heard about quantum fluctuations, and zero point energy or vacuum energy. These particles are created in pairs, matter and antimatter, during each fluctuation annihilating almost instantaneously. What happens is that, supposedly, since this has never been directly observed, in special circumstances such as next to the „event horizon‟ of a black hole, one of them can be attracted by the hole without having time to annihilate and the other particle becomes then a „real particle‟.

- If I understood correctly, -Carmen followed-, the virtual particles are unreal but they exist as they are able to interact with the real particles.

- So it is.

- Then, in short, we have that „to exist‟ means that “it is real or interacts with what is real”, and „real‟ means that “it can be measured or perceived by our senses”, -our host said.

What was clear to us is that the issue of existence and reality, is more a metaphysical and linguistic question, than strictly scientific and philosophical, and being as we are a multidisciplinary team, we should not worry much about stepping on the theoretically field of another. Each one of us must travel our own way, our own scientific, philosophical and interior investigation to know ourselves, to know what we are, 191

what we have come to do, and what is beyond our brain that makes the decisions that we believe to take through the conscious. To believe that we are free to make our own decisions and that these are not determined in advance, it is necessary a „causal gap‟ that breaks the chain of „cause-effect events‟.

The other issue of which we have a firmly rooted feeling is our consciousness, the awareness of who we are. Perhaps we don‟t know what or how exactly it works, but nobody will ever affirm that he is not or does not exist. Many „knowledge professionals‟, among which I include scientists, philosophers and theologians, associate themselves with the body and, in the end, with the brain, which they equate with the mind. The mind is considered a sub-process of the brain. Some theorists of religion even transfer these qualities to their gods, creating them in their own image; an almost human being, but with super-powers. A great majority of „neophytes‟ describe themselves, beyond their corporeal matter, as “a being that thinks, feels and judges or reasons”; using words like “mind”, “spirit”, “soul” and even “heart”. We have verified this in the group and it can be witnessed by each of the readers.

Something we did not want to discuss was the theme of God, as each of us wrote down on a sheet a list of possible God attributes and features. Of course, each one differed remarkably from the rest. There are probably billions of definitions of that concept on the planet, which made it ridiculous to delve deeper.

Returning to the topic of “What are we?” It seemed easier to discard what we are not, to find our true essence, that immutable that allows us to recognize ourselves as „me‟. By all this, we discard the thoughts, the emotions, the memories or memories and in general any perception, since they change continuously. Lucy told us about the famous Descartes quote „I think, therefore I exist‟, which she took as incorrect but recognizing its value in the measure of the epoch and the circumstances in which it occurred, and rebutted it with the well-known hypothesis of „Evil Demon‟ or „Evil Genius‟. Hal provided another classic example among scientists, known as 192

„Mary the Blind from birth neuroscientist‟, who does not have a first-person experience of color until she is operated on and regains her vision, despite her absolute knowledge of the subject. The most amazing mystery related to the so-called „hard problem of Consciousness‟ is reflected in the „philosophical zombies‟ hypothesis213.

Our philosophical guide expressed it in the following way: some professional colleagues appeal to the fact that consciousness is a biological phenomenon or an illusion produced by the brain, however real it may seem. According to this thesis, all beings would be a kind of deterministically programmed machines and it would not make sense to talk about living or inert matter. But, she makes objections to this idea. Who is then the subject who suffers this illusion? That subject, she reasons, must be a conscious entity. To Carmen it seems a linguistic nonsense to express that an inert illusory matter suffers an illusion. Hal quoted a famous predecessor of his who said “There is no out there, out there”, meaning that our consciousness or mind creates the illusion of things, the reality we perceive.

- In the materialist-reductionist system, where science has become almost a religion, a dogma that is blindly believed, we are driven to believe in good and evil; in which a proposition can be correct or incorrect. -Graham taught us that there are different systems of logic such as the Hindu214, where a sentence can be correct, incorrect, or both, or none of them-.

- Hal supported his idea by saying that this is being endorsed by relativistic physics (with paradoxes such as the barn and staircase) and quantum physics (paradoxes such as Schrödinger's cat). Reality is subjective; ¡it applies to events and not objects!

Indeed, although during sleep it seems that there is less brain activity (less , , y waves in EEG) there is no less 213

http://consc.net/papers/2dargument.html https://philpapers.org/rec/STAWII http://lapiedradesisifo.com/2013/11/05/en-qu%C3%A9-consiste-y-paraqu%C3%A9-sirve-un-zombi-filos%C3%B3fico/ 214 Lógica Nvaya-Nyaya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_logic

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sensation of I. The world that our brain sees is not something objective outside. The philologist of the group made us understand that in the background of the great dilemma lies a question of language: we can say “I am” with absolute certainty, as a subject that cannot be dispensed with, but we cannot affirm categorically “I am this or that”, not even “I am conscious” since that turns us into objects and these can be dispensable in a sentence.

The last weekend we did not go out. On Monday Hal and Lucy departed to the north and Alan and Carmen to the south; I was doing the same the next day. We spent the weekend in resting and rambling on consciousness. Without being specialized in psychology, we had to consult diverse sources to verify how many types of consciousness are referred, and often confused, in the global or generic discourse. For Freud and Jung consciousness was a state; they separated the states of the mind in conscious, subconscious and unconscious (they wrote about mind as a brain effect, at least in the case of Freud). The first is defined as the perception of oneself present. The subconscious is a state in which information is accessible if we focus our attention (such as when walking back home). The unconscious processes are primitive or intuitive desires that we cannot consciously access. Sometimes they emerge and modulate the behavior.

- Some languages have different words for different meanings, -explained Carmen-. Thus in English the term „awareness‟ is usually employed to refer to consciousness, but only in terms of perception of the environment, which is its etymology. That is why it is sometimes confused with „consciousness‟, which is a broader and generic term. Another word that is confused is „wakefulness‟, which represents the alert or conscious state. My travels and knowledge of Hindu philosophy, especially having read and listened to J. Krishnamurti, -she laughed-, have shown me that few of us can reach a state of 100% alert perception.

- What do you mean? –Graham said-.

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- Krishnamurti speaks of being attentive to the environment, but mainly to what happens around and affects us. For example, when someone does something or says something, that event provokes certain feelings or emotions and we must always be attentive to our interior, accepting it and understanding why such judgments or emotions arise in us. He emphasizes this strongly.

- I understand.

- This brings us back to the subject of subjective reality -Hal muttered, I think subconsciously-. If our consciousness creates our reality… Sorry -he rectified-, if Consciousness creates our reality we should not believe that there is a fundamental objective reality, but a consciousness that sets the foundations of what scientists call measurable or observable reality.

- That reminds me of the teachings of the sage Jiddhu -replied Lucy sending back an accomplice glance to her partner-. The concepts are not something real, in the sense that they are not material, -now she looked at Carmen, her companion in the trip through India-.

- The reality from the point of view of physics is based on three concepts, namely: space, time and matter -detailed his fiancé-.

The three are inextricably linked; one is defined depending on the other two. It makes no sense to speak of space without time, neither of both without material objects that serve to measure or perceive that space-time.

- Certainly science (the process known as „scientific method‟) is meant to be objective. By definition it is an objective knowledge method. Therefore, it cannot touch consciousness, nor consider it from a scientific point of view.

- For some cultures, call them religions if you rather, everything is soul or spirit. I prefer this word because it contains less religious connotations, or simply consciousness.

In that sense „Everything is God‟. This doctrine is known as Pantheism. Do not confuse it with the Panentheism where God contains the world, -observed Carmen-. I have argued about this with Alan sometimes, and I have come to the conclusion 195

that the brain is a receptor organ (or perhaps also a transmitter), a kind of antenna for external stimuli such as thoughts, perceptions, or memory.

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XXXI.- MATCHING IDEAS (Mario Espejo)

“Contented model defenders want to have a ruling theory, because when it's confirmed they can return to a resting state, all their certainties in place. The reigning western model of education with its emphasis on finding a simple right answer supports this tendency.”

-Martin, the Opposable MindOur Australian friends had returned to their country a few days before the rest, because Alan had disturbing issues with his University and the news of his email augured bad omens. The Go8 seemed willing to make him serve as a lesson for young scientists. The same that happened with other scientists throughout history, from G. Bruno to Wegener to name a geologist. After Carmen, his chair was the axis of his world, and this was being shaken, to use a metaphor related to his work. The economic problem was minor because they could live comfortably, but his students and research were priceless.

When he departed his nervous condition was palpable.

The notary had already completed the procedures for the transfer of Graham‟s part of the travel business to Abdel onerously, although he had urged our friend to continue his work without caring about the economic consequences, but Graham felt less conditioned in his work, without fear of missing anything to say that he believed should be counted.

Fortunately, in other parts of the world there are publishers who do not depend on a lucrative contract with universities, which gives them an open mind.

The „Map of Lost Civilizations‟ could have legal consequences, so I decided not to include my colleague's statistics in the book.

Simply, a reference to his work and his scientific papers in recognition of his inspiration, having requested the author's permission to quote him. In any case, I had enough material of my own to reason the theory and demonstrate that the data, 197

verifiable in the different ancestral megalithic sites, could support my hypothesis.

Both projects had resurfaced with such force and they were so advanced that the group was on the rise. It was excessive. A phone call from Melbourne froze Lucy's soul in the still Canadian summer. Carmen was devastated, because no one expected such a disastrous outcome. Alan's car had crashed into a huge eucalyptus tree when, according to police reports based on some witness, he dodged a van going out of some building under construction in reverse gear, outside of Menindee.

After hearing the news about Lucy, we decided to travel to Menindee in Australia, although we had already planned to meet for the spring equinox of the southern hemisphere for Carmen's birthday. Graham was the first to arrive and he booked us room in his hotel. Alan had no family, except for some uncle in Sydney, and Carmen's parents would arrive from Spain the next day. As soon as they landed, Hal and Lucy left their bags unpacked and went with Graham to the General Hospital of Victoria. He was in a coma.

The first day doctors told her that Alanâ€&#x;s body was unharmed; he had no serious internal injuries, except bruises and scratches.

Next day, he went into a coma and his body did not respond verbally or optically even though he was hemodynamically stable. Seeing him connected to the machine was very hard for Carmen even though she was convinced that Alan could feel her close to him. On the third day, Lucy met her and they merged in a deep embrace. She could hardly cry. The doctors had told her that the first days were critical. We could barely stay in the room for a few minutes, but Carmen and Lucy were sure that they could transmit him energy in a sort of Reiki. In fact, Carmen practiced reiki daily. On the fourth day, Carmen was having dinner with her parents at their hotel, when she received the news that Alan's condition had improved somewhat within gravity. His coma scale had risen to a less severe degree, responded ocularly to painful stimuli and showed abnormal motor responses.

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The fifth day she came down at dawn. His motor response was gone, as was any incomprehensible verbal activity. The delta waves of his encephalogram (EEG) showed uncommon strange peaks, but the doctors recommended her not to have many expectations. His MAOI and DMT levels were well above normal. When I arrived in Australia, I hardly said anything to her. Graham had picked me up and updated me, so I just hugged her. I reminded her that she, better than anyone else, knew that Graham was not the body lying in that bed, and he had a trip to travel.

Now that „Map of the lost civilizations‟ had coherence within the context of „Principia Historica‟, and that their ideas were coherent with the „Displacement of the geographic poles‟ and „The mechanism of formation of the deserts‟ and these with the model of „The solar system formation from a sub-brown dwarf Nova ProtoSaturn‟, Alan could not feel that satisfaction. The next morning she had already made up her mind. She spent a lot of time with her parents whom she had not seen for a long time, but the rest of the day she was relentlessly practicing reiki to Alan‟s body or lying on the armchair next to his bed. She had not practiced her meditation exercises for days and was upset.

And the seventh, instead of resting, he „rose up‟.

Actually his body had not suffered anoxia or lack of irrigation at any time so no complications of brain character were expected. He had come out of the coma as if nothing. The doctors were perplexed.

Upon arrival he was being visited by Dr. Gray, a neurologist and psychiatrist who we knew had just participated in a conference on awareness and near death experiences (NDE) in the very headquarters of the UN. The doctor had a huge volume of information collected in personal investigations related to the existence of consciousness independently of the brain.

Samantha Gray was convinced that near-death experiences in hospitals around the world after cardiac arrests or accidents with loss of brain mass showed that consciousness can exist and be lucid regardless of the cerebral cortex. Although the 199

case of our friend had not been so extreme to be included such kind of exhaustive studies of NDE, where they had protocols to know the experiences of patients.

After the interview, we saw doctors leave talking with each other, but I could not avoid crossing my gaze with hers for a few moments that seemed eternal. Alan had been conscious for several hours, but his body had been immobile for a week and they advised us not to prolong the visit excessively.

- Where have you been? -Lucy asked smiling-.

- I‟ve just talked about the same thing with the doctors. It is difficult to describe it. What I remember of these seven days, it seems to me as if had happened in a few moments. They are unconnected things.

- Something about the accident?

- The sensation of impact.

- They said he has to be under observation for a few days, but for my birthday he‟ll be at home.

- I guess you'll stay until the party, -Alan demanded-.

- Well, but you have to tell us your experience, -I said-.

- As I‟ve said to Carmen, I remember specific things about her.

I saw her body but his head was something like that of a dinosaur. Other times, I saw her in a dark tight dress, emanating a yellow-orange aura which made her floating hair turning blonde.

- I thought in dyeing, -Carmen said with a smile-.

- I remember calling her, but her presence was fading.

- He says he felt like he was coming back home after a long time.

- Beyond that, I felt suddenly sucked by a kind of... well or pit, tentatively I think it was my body; my chest went ahead, towards the surface, I sense. Suddenly, I didn‟t see anything, it's like when you don‟t see because of too much light, but I could feel presences.

- Family? –Graham said-.

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- In the distance, but I didn‟t have time to reach them. The presences seemed to me, as beings that had lived on Earth before. I don‟t understand why, but I know they were scholars in their time.

- Scientists? Philosophers? Priests or initiates? -Hal asked-.

- I hardly remember. I don‟t even remember my dreams.

- It's the same with me. When I wake up my mind feels inspired. Being conscious, even after washing my face and returning to bed, I lose the notion of reality. Ten minutes later I remember vestiges of a huge quantity of information that I know was brutal but I cannot access it.

- Something like that. It was as if those presences were part of my mind.

Lucy stepped in with a phrase that caught my attention. - Since I studied philosophy, I felt that Socrates, or part of him, was part of me. Maybe because of sharing ideals.

- One thing is certain. Now I know how to face Lyell and Cuvier.

- He wants to make a website and a YouTube channel with videos, to publish his ideas. I told him to take things slowly but he's so stubborn...

- The entities that I have spoken to, invited me to follow an unknown path. In the depth of darkness, I didn‟t need light.

There was, and I feel it now too, a spirit within me, a personality that I perceived in the other side.

- You remember a lot of things, -Graham said from behind.

- Flashes are coming. It's as if I were a mixture of several of those personalities. They are like voices in my interior that give me ideas. I will write a book for university geology students.

But without giving definitive conclusions, only questions, guides and resources so that they investigate and obtain their own conclusions. A holistic education in several disciplines and a Socratic training.

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XXXII.- FUSED CONSCIOUSNESS (Graham Talbosky)

“Know ye, O man, whatever form ye inhabit, surely it is one with the stars. Thy bodies are nothing but planets revolving around their central suns.”

-La Tabla EsmeraldaE. Tolle says that the „ego‟ or „I‟ periodically needs to be in conflict with something or someone to strengthen their sense of separation between the „me‟ and the „other‟, without which it cannot survive.

How can something immaterial as the consciousness arise of something material like a brain? If consciousness is a mere emergent illusion, a secondary effect of the brain, who is the subject that suffers this illusion? There are numerous indications or evidences, of consciousness with little or no functional brain, verified by NDE215. Everything that science knows about consciousness is limited to phenomenology: correlations between neurons and perception, stimulation of regions and elements and ablation or removal of certain parts and their effects.

- Little is known about the functioning of the brain, but we know with certainty that a single neuron does not think; we do not know how many are needed. In addition, the mechanism that makes us perceive sensations and emotions is missing, explained our honored host. It seems to be being demonstrated that the retina emits photons besides absorbing them, which would provide scope to establish quantum communication and

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Ian Stevenson https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/who-we-are/dr-ianstevenson/ Pim Van Lomell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h93dLIn6rVc Proyecto AWARE https://iands.org/news/news/front-page-news/1060-awarestudy-initial-results-are-published.html Sam Parnia http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957214007394 Bruce Greyson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_qBIw7qyHU

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synchronization between brains216. What was formerly called derogatory parapsychology and even pseudoscience is studied today by neuroscience under acronyms such as ESP and ECM. Alan's problems at his university had not disappeared but he had maintained the position. The Council of Universities of Australia had dismissed the pressures to fire him so as not to cause a rumpus and not be involved in an even greater scandal.

Probably they did not dare, after the accident, to look bad before public opinion. Carmen had told us that Alan‟s mood was much better when the group met than during the routine of daily life. Since his conversation with the creationist biologist Sturrock, and motivated by Hal's talk during our last night's dinner in Syria, he had resumed and refreshed his knowledge in biology, a career he never ended but which he found fascinating. If we add the „spiritual influence‟ of his charismatic friend, it was not surprising that he was linking the study of biology with knowledge about consciousness.

- Alan has started doing meditation. He has still some difficulties staying with his legs crossed and his back straight for more than half an hour but I think his initiative is a worthy endeavor, -Carmen joked looking at him mischievously-.

- Even I am turning more and more towards my interior Mario's voice said without shyness.- I had already practiced meditation, and even yoga sporadically, but the more time I spend with you, the more I am interested in the spiritual aspects of the ancestral civilizations, over the merely historical or archaeological ones.

- I‟d rather empty my mind looking at the stars lying in the darkness of the garden, although Luky doesn‟t stop inciting me -the physicist assured-.

- Dr. Gray is preparing a trip to India to study some cases of children who have memories of past lives that have been collected by medical professionals in hospitals of that country.

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http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.1995.80.3.791 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.823.6646&rep=rep1 &type=pdf

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- It seems that places with a cultural background where these beliefs are rooted in people, it is more likely to arise cases of past life memories, similar personality traces, birthmarks and birth defects and even self-acquired skills related to past lives exposed Carmen-, in which the emotion and the desire to return to their favorite nation was clearly perceived.

- In any case, there are registered cases of links to previous lives in Africa or in Jewish and Christian people in various parts of the world, -said Alan, who had been informed by his doctor-.

- Your conclusion is that, under exceptional circumstances, consciousness can be detached from the brain, I understand, Mario summarized-.

- And produce more vivid and intense experiences.

Alan and Carmen showed us scientific papers that supported these claims, as well as books by expert physiologists, biologists and doctors in medicine, and even showed us videos of conferences and symposia on the subject.

- Why does not the medical guild accept this type of evidence about near-death experiences (NDE) or extrasensory perception (ESP) as evidence that there may be consciousness without a material medium? -Hal asked-.

- You, better than anyone, should know that scientists perform countless assumptions during their investigations and, these being subjective, are influenced by their beliefs. If these are based on a reductionist paradigm, where only what can be measured or perceived is taken into account, and consciousness is not visible or measurable, it is logical that they do not pay enough attention to it.

- But you can see its effects. In fact, „behaviorism‟ is a theory that flourished to give a scientific appearance to consciousness, because behavior is easier to measure and compare than consciousness.

- Hal, you yourself have lectured me many times arguing that particle physicists invent new particles endlessly, and that they do have no way of “seeing” them or measuring them directly 204

and that that is ridiculous -retorted Luky-. They describe the characteristics of those supposed new particles depending on the effects they produce in the environment. And we always reach the same conclusion that it is not easy to discern if one event that accompanies another is cause or effect of the first.

- Touché.

- That makes sense, -Mario reinforced-. When someone is depressed or euphoric, it is known that certain substances appear; neurotransmitters that may be the cause or a consequence of the state of mind.

The living room was surrounded by glass doors where the spring sunset sun penetrated from the flowery Zen garden. The elements of the garden included a Koi pond, a tub with water, the sources of water, the Akari (outer spout), fine sand (which is a representation of the vast ocean), polished stones and quartz crystals, but also candles and seashells. To the north, a meditation area built in teak wood with northeast-northwest orientation, allowed to visualize both the sunrise and the sunset.

There was hardly any vegetation except bushes and three large Eucalyptus trees, which provided a pleasant shade in the summer months. The doorbell rang and Carmen went to the intercom, but my mind was scattered in other worlds.

- If the consciousness is independent of the brain or can be -I was expressing my thoughts aloud, speaking almost subconsciously-, perhaps not only the animals could have some kind of consciousness, whose effects might be light but observable in insects or plants, possibly in a superficial level.

- And you could go further, -Hal said-. Maybe what biologists call inert or non-living matter, a mountain, a rock, a planet or a simple electron might be regarded to possess a certain degree of consciousness, as Conway and Kochen speculated. Of course, I don‟t think we are capable of noticing its effects on the environment.

- Vegetarians, especially strict ones, usually claim that they do not eat meat or fish because they don‟t want to cause pain in animals; following their argumentative line, they assume that 205

the plants do not have such feelings of pain, although I have never been convinced of that...

- Youâ€&#x;re smart to doubt it, -answered a voice from the entrance of the wide hall that connected with the room where we were gathered.

Sophisticated and elegant in appearance, she wore soberly with flannel trousers that were tight enough to allow them to assume legs turned by the regular use of high heels (something unusual for a scientist) and a linen blouse. His beauty was not exuberant, but of that type that pretty women have, not beautiful women. Samantha Gray is one of those women painters die for portraying, trying to capture with their brushes the perfect combination of beauty and fantasy. The porcelain dolls burned with rage at the sight of her face passing before them, with the swing of her graceful hips as she approached the group. A long golden hair clung gracefully to his starched mouth that caressed her almost perfect teeth and harmonious cheekbones. Her deep eyes, that drag you to the emptiness of her person, settled on Mario.

After acting as hostess, Carmen introduced Sam to the group, as she wanted to be called, and nobody noticed the attention that she and Mario gave themselves. Our hosts apologized for not having warned us that they had invited the neurologist, since she had not confirmed her presence at the party, warning that it would be difficult for her to attend. She was a woman with great personality, as she showed in her entrance, and without having as much experience as our traveling companion, she had been around.

During a snack of nuts and sandwiches, we talked about some of our cultural trips through South America, and the Near East.

Carmen and Alan had already had some conversation with her in the hospital, where Carmen and Lucyâ€&#x;s stay in India came up. Afterwards, Sam resumed the interrupted conversation about the consciousness of the plants.

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Science has long wondered if plants „feel‟217, although it is obvious that they are very aware of things like gravity, water sources and light. It is also obvious that they achieve these perceptions in very different ways from us, mammals, or even so-called lower life forms. Tadpoles and other amphibians detect light with pigmented cells on their skin, so they can adapt their camouflage to various backgrounds. Sparrows can adjust their circadian rhythms without using their eyes at all.

They can feel the light through feathers, skin and bones. And mice can do the same, even when they are blind. Forms of life that lack eyes, like plants, obviously depend exclusively on other types of sensory methods to experience reality. How they perceive time in the world, involves detecting and responding to light in a non-visual way. In higher order animals, the brain „controls time‟. But a plant does not have a brain, so information and “memories” must be stored in other ways perhaps in the same way that a plant knows in which direction it should grow. The way humans store our time sensations remains mysterious. So it will be even harder to figure out how plants use all this information to serve their survival needs218.

Since the passage of time, in the final analysis, is only a tool that organisms create and use to perceive what is happening around them and to effectively respond to the flow of their physical environment, the plants have obviously done a job good enough to survive for, supposedly, seven hundred million years.

- In general, we call something „sensible‟ only if it speaks to us or responds to us in the biological scale that humans use. But we have a lot to learn about the nature of life, -she explained-.

- It seems obvious that they communicate219, -Lucy said-. If we define intelligence as “the capacity to solve their problems”, it 217

Are plants aware? https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/biocentrism/201703/are-plants-aware 218 La inteligencia y la memoria de las plantas http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.4161/psb.5.11.13243 219 Como piensan y se comunican las plantas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4w5xYLwiU https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-plants-think-danielchamovitz/

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is clear that the kingdom of plants has solved theirs during the history of the planet.

- For their reproduction, the plants use identical sexual processes based on the fusion of sperm cells and oocytes. Plants attacked by pathogens develop immunity using processes and mechanisms similar to those that operate on animals. Last but not least, both animals and plants use the same molecules and pathways to guide their circadian rhythms220.

In the conversation, which seemed to me extremely interesting, I acted as a mere observer, and limited myself to exposing the conclusions when the others seemed to agree.

- It is clear to us that „consciousness‟ is something more than mere perception221 („awareness‟), either of the environment or about oneself.

- And something more than a state of alert („wakefulness‟). All these are aspects of consciousness; it seems to me, -said Alan-.

- My view is that it has been good for you to practice “mindfulness meditation” as I suggested -Sam laughed looking at Carmen-.

We all laughed until Mario, who gave the impression that did not want to seem the least informed about the matter, spoke.

- It was already known that the way of thinking, modulates the way the brain acts. I guess it has a lot to do with the placebo effect222. We had to inform her of our „inquiries‟ about consciousness and perception, the conscious, the subconscious and the individual and collective unconscious. In any case, she seemed predisposed to follow us in our ramblings about reality.

- According to your inquiries, do you believe that consciousness lies in the neo-cortex? I warn you, that there are also theories that blame the limbic system223 as its source, -she informed us-.

220

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-540-28516-8_2 https://www.ted.com/talks/stefano_mancuso_the_roots_of_plant_intelligence 221 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1022912206810 222 Placebo https://livskvalitet.org/pdf/BMJ_Placebo_explained.pdf 223 http://journalpsyche.org/limbic-cortical-theory-of-consciousness/

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- Personally, -Alan took the floor-, I think it does not arise from any part of the brain but is processed and transformed there.

Then it becomes what psychiatrists call conscious.

- I think we all agree is that it is some kind of antenna or „digital-analog‟ converter, -the engineer said sarcastically-.

The conversation continued between laughter and deep sentences, both scientifically and philosophically speaking.

Between drink and drink we enjoyed seafood and Spanish potato omelet skewers that Carmen learned to cook in her native Mediterranean.

- A few months ago, at the end of our holidays in El Cairo, we touched on the theme of free will, determinism and dualism or monism. Most doctors and biologists adopt absolute deterministic positions. As a biologist, -Mario asked her-, are you radical about that Sam? - I must be the exception that confirms the rule -smiled-. Let's see, I don‟t think we are absolutely free in our choices, but I can‟t believe that everything that happens is predetermined from the beginning. It seems that in the group you agree enough on these subjects –she said looking at every one of us.

After a short pause, she added jokingly- Have you also solved the question of God? - We decided not to go deeply into it, -Lucy said, taking the initiative-. We did a test writing God‟s characteristics and attributes on a paper and we realized that everyone understood something different, so it didn‟t make sense to speak about it.

- I think most of us consider ourselves agnostics -added Carmen-.

- Neither is it an issue that worries me too much. My family was Christian and it is the doctrine with which I am most familiar but I am not a practitioner.

- Consciousness is something „bigger‟ if you want. Ancient wisdom gave it a divine consideration -I expressed it the better I could-.

- I see you have a dualistic perspective.

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- Don‟t be so sure, -responded the British anthropologist and philosopher-. Carmen and I are monists; we think that only the spiritual world exists and that the material or physical world is a product of it... of the creative consciousness.

- Leaving aside the definitions of existence and reality, which we must reformulate from our vantage point.

- Hal, however, thinks that we live in a “Matrix” -Lucy finished.

- It is not exactly “Matrix”, but a holographic universe. Imagine a sphere full of information (matter, energy or whatever) and mentally create a solid concentric sphere that compresses it, from our horizon to the point of turning it into a black hole.

Since quantum mechanics affirms that information cannot be lost, this information must be stored on the surface of its „event horizon‟. Thus, the maximum information will be the revolution area of the sphere that constitutes the horizon of the hole. This implies that in any volume, the room in which we are, for example, can only contain the information that can be stored on its surface. And it also means that everything in the hole can be represented by the information of its frontier or surface horizon. The boundary of the hole is a hologram. This is an important postulate called the „Holographic Principle‟.

The information is not stored in any privileged position of space-time.

- The information is defined as the “communication or acquisition of knowledge” -specified the expert in languages-, and, like the word „selection‟, require a conscious entity.

- Then if the information cannot be lost, the consciousness either.

- I'm amazed, -Gray laughed-.

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- It's a kind of Plato‟s cave allegory, -Lucy vowed-, but in scientific terms.

- ¡Now it's clearer! -And we all laughed-. Wow, I've never stopped to consider these things so deeply.

- If you spend more time with us you will get this „spiritual evolution‟ - Mario joked making the gesture of quotation marks with the index and middle fingers. His phrase sounded more like a wish than a joke.

- Momentarily I believe that I adhere to a spiritual definition of reality, as something not only objective, but subjective.

Objective reality can be measured physically; the subjective reality can only be experienced. I don‟t think any of them is more “real” than the other. Both exist.

- Dualism - “Temporary dualism”, they laughed.

The night dragged on with more banal conversations, politics, society, economics and all those trivial topics that Hal and Alan hated. The next day Hal was going to accompany Alan to the small University of Menindee and in the afternoon, I had to return to Egypt with many things to meditate on.

It seems that there is no specific moment of biological death.

Life, in any case, is a process of transformation, and death is part of it. In an instant, consciousness is „alive‟, focused on physical reality. In the next one, it is focused on a completely different place, in a different reality system. It is „not alive‟ or „dead‟ if you like. The next moment it is „alive‟ again, focused on our reality, but we are not aware of that intermediate moment in which it was not alive. The sensation of continuity, therefore, is based on a „yes‟ and a „no‟ pulsation of consciousness. Perhaps when the individual consciousness leaves the body, the simple consciousness of atoms and molecules remains and is not canceled. We create reality according to these beliefs and expectations: such is the nature of consciousness in whatever reality it is found.

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The mystery of reality seemed the endless story, a vicious circle that returned us again and again to the starting square. The only certainty is that, for there to be a reality, there must be an observer, a conscious entity capable of interpreting what it perceives, of feeling the influence of a fact or an object to consider it real. Many people confuse technology with science, and regard the latter a legacy of science, which is not.

Technology is a product of the scientific method. However, many disciplines and „theories‟ do not make use of it, but in spite of that, are yet called science. The purpose of science is to obtain knowledge. The purpose of technology is to improve human life at the comfort level. For example, the ancients invented the wheel (technology) without even knowing π, or they dominated the fire without knowing that the air is composed of nitrogen and oxygen or that it is plasma.

Technology has blinded the human being, especially since the twentieth century. And unfortunately, the neophyte public tends to associate the materialist and reductionist philosophy adopted by the emerging science since the dawn of nuclear physics, with the scientific method and its advanced technological devices.

The effect or theory of the „black swan‟224 explains that an event that is surprising has an important effect and is often rationalized inappropriately afterwards. In this way, religious beliefs are transferred to science. Science has become nowadays, „Too big to fail‟, as it happens with large corporations, especially banking and financial ones. Huge facilities such as LIGO, Fermilab, Tevratron, BNL or LHC had an incalculable cost that has not provided great technological applications. The “discovery” of new theoretical subatomic particles, which seems so absurd to a large part of the physicist‟s community, is still being paid by the taxpayers without them being aware about what that research brings them in return. In order to justify them, important prizes are awarded and dubious discoveries are validated, which allow us to 224

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDbuJtAiABA

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prolong an aberrant energy and maintenance cost that could allow many small nations to live better.

Abdel's family was descended from an ancestral tribe in Egypt that was matriarchally ruled. My friend was considered a wise man by his people, and in a different way to Jiddhu, he seemed to be quite spiritual for them. Sometimes, I have told stories from Abdel, according to which, humanity has had several conceptions of its own reality, to which it has deliberately turned its back, so it seems, in the last century.

On Monday they took supper late. Carmen had accompanied me to the Mildura airport, from where I left for Egypt with stopover in Adelaide. Mario had a flight at midweek and asked to be excused that night. He had a dating for dinner with Dr. Gray, which did not surprise us at all. Alan and Hal had spent a day at their university, and it was somewhat uncomfortable for Hal, though not surprising, to be observed by several of the scientists working there.

- Sociologists often use the term „real‟ to refer to everything that produces effects, -said Luky-.

- But, everything produces effects, everything has a cause, every event is the effect of something. Even if there is free will, we can argue that our decisions are caused by something immaterial that we do not know, or are the result of innumerable factors that have influenced us throughout our lives.

- It is true. It does not seem conclusive.

- The difference between the concepts or definitions of „existence‟ and „reality‟ of the scientific establishment and ours, -explained our hostess-, are the degree of inclusion; „existence‟ includes „real‟ and „virtual‟ (what is not real or what cannot be measured). Science includes them both. But then, for anything „to exist‟, there must be a conscious entity of that something. That‟s the question Hal raised for me via videoconference about whether the moon exists when nobody looks at it.

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- Bravo! I see you've got it.

- Can there be a world (better than calling it a universe), if there is no conscious being? –she finished-. That makes no sense.

- That shows that the Big Bang did not exist, -mocked Luky-. If there was no conscious being, by definition, nothing existed.

They commented with the girls about the feelings they had of being scrutinized, while Alan was showing Hal the facilities of the small university. More than scientists and professors they looked like village gossips. Alan was used to it, and Hal, in fact, did not care.

- In the Western world, a good teacher is considered to be the one who clearly explains a subject and makes it easy for the student -Luky commented, which I am sure she had heard from the sage Jiddhu-. Eastern traditions have an opposite view; that of a guide that helps the student find something for himself.

Hal was about to cross that diffuse limbo that separates the state of consciousness from the dream state, when Luky's sweet and calm voice took him out of „trance‟.

- It is quaint that, after years of introspection, the only one hundred percent true conclusion I could reach was that „I am‟.

A very biblical, wise or religious sentence, a priori impossible to deny. Do you remember our conversation in Saguenay?

- Yes -he answered-, or so I think.

- I infer, or perhaps I feel, that there is no way to de-identify ourselves from the true being, from the „I am‟. The ego needs identification, belief and interest to expand and reinforce itself.

However, the practice of “100% Attention in the present”, in perception itself, weakens it, and solves the problem.

A similar conversation, as they were told later, was taking place in the owners' room, across the hall.

- Do you remember what I told you when I came out of the coma, about identification with „oneself'‟? In this case, it was Alan who undertook the issue.

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- Sure, why?

- Since it is impossible to separate from the feeling of „I‟, of the ego, while we are consciously materialized in a body, and given that we cannot objectively say what we are, what attribute or essential characteristics constitute what we call „I‟, there is only that the „I‟ (which must solve the riddle) ¡does not exist!

- Are you saying we do not exist? Carmen sat on her side semistunned. Where are then our consciousnesses, those that make the moon, or reality exist when they are observed?

- There is no differentiation, „my‟ consciousness, „your‟ consciousness, the group‟s consciousness, the atoms‟ one, social groups or galactic clusters, do not differ. We are all the same Consciousness.

- Jiddhu, our spiritual guide, told us that, eventually, we would realize that there is no subject; only experience, perception, consciousness exist. The rest, subjects and objects, are illusory (maya).

- He‟s right. There must be an evolution from person to presence.

- Our next trip should be India. I want to visit Jiddhu and, in addition to Agra, we could visit Patna.

The neurologist, Sam Gray, and our friend Mario had also talked about these issues. According to Gray, people who firmly believe that their consciousness is a product of the physical body, try to cling to it, at the moment of death.

Tomorrow would be her last day of stay in Australia, which made them feel melancholy. To Hal, returning to Hudson Bay meant an illusion to conclude and present his work „On the origin of gravity‟, but also a concern for the certainty that his days in the University were numbered. There was some possibility of moving to California or Los Alamos thanks to Tony Bostick, and he could always earn his living writing books and making documentaries and lectures.

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- Do you think that a decision in the present can affect events of the past as suggested by some interpretations of quantum mechanics? -he spoke as they sat at the table-.

- I understand you mean the „Deferred Choice‟ experiments said Alan-.

- Did you know that Sam has a nephew who is a quantum physicist, as well as a theorist, mathematician and doctor of philosophy? -Mario intervened, cutting us off-. And that, he has not yet turned twenty-five.

- Impressive, he exclaimed. We would have to sign him for the group.

- Hopefully we do not have to teach him to speak, -Carmen said-. Many of these geniuses don‟t know the meaning of words like consciousness, existence, reality, information, energy, matter, life, species, evolution or selection. Not mentioning the concepts of God, spirit or soul.

- And do not forget about space, time and the fundamental properties of matter: mass, charge and spin -Luky said looking at his companion with a broad smile-.

- If the mind, or individual consciousness, interacts with that which is real (can be measured or perceived), by definition, it exists -affirmed Alan resounding-.

- Physics itself accepts that „reality‟ (material particles that we can measure) is created by things that are not real, such as quantum fluctuations or singularities, -he said-. Without considering the quantum mechanics, the „Standard Model‟ predicts that matter is formed with fermions („point particles‟), and points cannot be measured, then they are not real.

- So, the issue is that the individual mind or consciousness is not aware of other higher individual consciousnesses, just as a cell is not conscious of our mind, but, perhaps, it is about atoms and molecules that the surround it.

So, the universe is everything that exists. „Existence‟, is what is „real‟ plus „what interacts with the real‟. „Reality‟, is „what can be perceived‟. What is „perceived‟, is „everything that is 216

detected by physical senses‟. The „senses‟, are „the ability to perceive stimuli‟ (physical agents, chemicals, etc.). Here we enter an endless loop, a vicious circle. “Perception means to feel, and sense implies to perceive”. The language fails us.

And no arbitrary method of describing the universe, existence or reality is sufficient; be it language, algebra, symbology or geometry. Whatever agreement or abstraction we take, a specific language or a numerical basis, the „last reality‟, the „true existence‟, the universe as „The All‟, is unknowable. Pure agnosticism

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XXXIII.- THE OBSERVED OBSERVER (Halton Wheeler)

“How clumsy is the human mind to guess the nature of things, when it is abandoned by the analogy of what we see and touch directly."

-Ludwig Boltzmann- What you are will begin to include what you have been in other lives, and you will begin to make plans for your next physical existence, in case you decide to have it, Jiddhu told us.

The entity, the true multidimensional being (to translate it coherently) is aware of all its experiences, and its knowledge is, to a certain extent, available to the various portions of the being; including, of course, the physical body. These different portions of being, in fact, will eventually become fully conscious parts.

- What can be done, not say to convince, but to attract others to the path of unity? -Alan asked-. Can we influence them?

- In the same way we should allow the thoughts passing through while meditating, without opposing them, you have to ignore the judgments and opinions of others, transcend them.

Only by being oneself, without allowing emotions to obfuscate us. Staying alert, we quiet the mind; we achieve inner peace, harmony, which will make someone come to see why we are so serene. Or happy, as some people would say.

- What means transcend?

- It means going beyond the influence of your thinking.

Consciousness -added the guru, considering the matter needed clarification- creates the sensation of a problem in order to achieve the experience of transcending it.

- That could be an elegant definition of existence.

Three months later we were in Agra. Luky and I had been the first to arrive but Mario's flight landed in barely three hours 218

apart, so we waited for him at the airport, where we took lunch.

Graham arrived the next morning, while Alan and Carmen did it in the afternoon, this time accompanied by Dr. Sam Gray who was temporarily residing in Melbourne for work reasons.

Mario was in charge of going to welcome them, of course.

All the group members now did our meditation exercises, Graham included. We had arrived on weekend, and we were introduced to the monk Jiddhu by Carmen and Luky. He agreed to include us in a group that came every day at dawn, where for three hours, we performed meditation and sang (more properly listened to) mantras.

- When the experience is divided into its smallest ingredients, the physical reality of everything fades, -Mario said-. We tell ourselves a story that the experience depends on something that is “out there”, but it‟s not like that.

- In a certain way you‟re right -answered Sam-. We depend on sight to go around the world; the light that bounces on objects makes them visible, but how? Nobody knows. The photons, the quanta of light, are invisible. The brain literally has zero light inside it; it is a dark mass of cells wrapped in a fluid that is not so different from the sea water. (There are extremely weak traces of photon activity in the brain, but the optic nerve does not transmit photons to the visual cortex). Because there is no light, there are no images either. When you imagine the face of a loved one, nowhere in the brain does that face exist as a photograph. How the electric potentials triggered by neurons become “conscious consciousness”, no one knows. At present, no one can explain how invisible photons, become chemical reactions, and weak electrical impulses in the brain create the three-dimensional reality that we all take for granted. Brain scans detect electrical activity, so an fMRI contains patches of brightness and color. Then something is happening in the brain.

But the true nature of the sight is mysterious.

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- However, one thing is known. The creation of sight is made by you. Without you, the vast universe, which extends in all directions, cannot exist.

- A colleague of mine, called Deepak Chopra, says that “qualia requires human participation”. He explains that experience is the base state of everything, including the activity of doing science, and that each quality is a human construction derived from experiences, the neurologist argued. Another species with a different nervous system would participate in the universe in a way totally unknown to us, with our human nervous system.

- I can partially agree, -I said as we entered the hotel dining room-. As a physicist having studied quantum mechanics, I think that the interpretation of the „Participatory Universe‟, a cosmos in which all of us are integrated as co-creators, can be extended to all macroscopic objects and particles.

- It is a very panpsychist vision -Carmen recanted, while sitting.

- In that universe, the observer and the observed, coincide argued the renewed Alan-, because you experience nature in your consciousness, and there is no other source for reality as we know it.

- What if there is something real that cannot enter human consciousness? -the doctor asked, ignoring the definition of „real‟-.

- „Real‟ is what you can perceive or measure, Sam, -I said-. If there is something virtual (unreal), or spiritual, call it as you prefer, not material, I don‟t think we can know it.

- Even if abstract mathematics could “infer” the existence of “realities or virtual worlds” beyond our ability to detect or measure them, we should realize that mathematics itself is linked to human observers. ¡A mathematician is needed to understand mathematics! -said Graham-.

- In short, consciousness is split in our minds to experience the cosmos -concluded Luky-.

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There were two days left for Christmas, and we were going to stay in the country until the „New year‟s day‟, when we would be visiting Patna. Jiddhu, in some of his comments, after the meditation sessions, said that the true unconscious is not unconscious. On the contrary, it is so profound and unspeakably conscious that it overwhelms. The life we know is simply one of the many areas in which he is aware.

On one occasion, Alan told him about his experiences while he was in a coma and about the “teachings” of the entities he dealt with who he called “the guides”, whose purpose is to help correlate and understand multidimensional existence and lead the newcomers to improve as much as possible to its conscious attention. Only by learning to feel, experience and intuitively perceive the depths of our own experience can we have a glimpse of the nature of „The All‟. By becoming more aware of our consciousness when it operates in physical life, we learn to observe it while acting in those other less familiar areas. The „probable realities‟ are only „probable‟ because we are not aware of them. „The All‟, which Jiddhu compared to Brahma, Unity, or God if someone prefers that translation, is alive in the smallest part of itself, conscious, within every molecule, and endows all his parts, all his creations, with their own capabilities; which then act as inspiration, impulse, guidelines and principles (to describe it in some understandable way), with which these parts seek to create themselves again, and also re-create their own worlds and systems.

One night, sitting and having a tea on the porch of one of the colonial bungalows where we stayed, Sam was interested in the Chronology that we had designed a few months ago.

- Mario revealed to me some insights about your theory on the formation of the solar system -she addressed to me, obviously-.

What is different about your idea of others already exposed?

- I guess you mean the theories of Velikovsky, Talbott, Cardona, Thornhill or Cook, among others. All of them situate 221

the cataclysms provoked by the approach of an orb (Venus in most cases), in its process of stabilization, between the first and third millennium BC. My idea is that these events happened progressively until 10.000 BC and started much earlier.

- What do you base that difference on?

- My orbital simulations show that stabilization time should last more than 5 thousand years, although I cannot rule out that it could have happened during that time. The neutralization of the electric charge of the terrestrial magnetosphere (and the other orbs plasmaspheres, such as Venus in this case), requires a period of time that is difficult to estimate, but definitely longer, -I said, looking at Graham wishing him to take up the slack-.

- Finally, the myths and legends of the Fertile Crescent age were already altered and degraded, the characters originally meaning gods and celestial phenomena having become legendary heroes.

- I understand. The historical and mythological argument seems to me a matter of logic and difficult to reject. But it looks like the formation of the Earth and the planets collides with the commonly accepted and contrasted idea that their disposition was almost equal to what we observe today.

- If the idea is so clear, why are there almost a hundred different theories to explain the formation of the solar system? Alan went ahead-.

- There are no agreements. That is a matter of the advertising media and the education system. Although three quarters of these hypotheses are based on gravitational models of accretion, the only arguments provided are computer simulations, fed only with gravitational rules. With a force that only stretches in one direction, it is almost impossible to stabilize a system if it didnâ€&#x;t start almost identically to what we see today.

- And what other strength do you suggest?

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- Electromagnetism, which may be is not so different to gravity.

Newton himself wrote it225. Electromagnetism has both versions, attractive and repulsive force.

- Now I understand the reason of your problems with the scientific establishment.

- The issue is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of anomalies with respect to official theses. The „Nebular Theory‟, of the philosopher Kant, continues to be taught in schools, when in 1998 a substitute called „the Grand Tack‟ had to be created to explain the planetary migration observed in other planetary systems recently found. In 2005, they invented another one called „Nice Model‟, to explain the orbital resonances (between Jupiter-Saturn and Neptune-Uranus).

- Whoa.

- And every year more inconsistencies are published as new discoveries are made in exoplanets, new „Hot Jupiters‟, and eccentric orbits such as comets226.

- Do you think Venus is a comet?

- The distinction between planets, comets or asteroids does not depend only on size but on other characteristics. Now it behaves basically like a planet in terms of its orbital eccentricity, but its magnetosphere has a huge invisible coma227, which almost reaches the Earth, and continues to discharge electrically into the solar plasma. Its retrograde rotation228, that is, its axis of rotation is pointing downwards, seems to tell us that some interaction “knocked it down” like a spinning top.

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https://newtonprojectca.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/newton-generalscholium-1729-english-text-by-motte-letter-size.pdf 226 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.00006 227

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118842324.ch3/summary 228 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-venus-spins-the-wrong/

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- As a geologist I must add, that its temperature is very high229, capable of melting lead, and its atmospheric pressure 92 times ours. Its surface is also very young230.

- Its rotation is very slow, and its day takes longer than your year. However, the ultrafast winds of its atmosphere indicate that it should be very fast231. As to whether the solar system is stable at present, it is debatable. It's only been three thousand years since we observed it, and in the last 16 years, Venus has slowed down its rotation in almost 7 minutes232. Some try to attribute it to climate and tides233, but it has been proven that gravitational forces, by themselves, cannot explain the resonant rotation of Venus and Earth234. This phenomenon makes that, when approaching, it always shows us the same face, like the Moon.

- Spooky. I see that you know how to do your work.

Something that caught our attention in India was why big adult elephants were only “fastened� by a leg and a small chain, or even a rope, from which they were clearly capable to get loose.

They explained to us that they were trained that way since they were born, and when they reach adults, their minds are conditioned and they do not even suspect they can free themselves. Sam seemed to remember reading about similar experiments with fish in an aquarium, which were deprived of access to a part of it by transparent crystals, so that when they were adults and the crystals were removed, they did not 229

https://www.livescience.com/14676-greatest-mysteries-venus-cosmosuniverse.html 230 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/venus-may-havesurprisingly-youthful-skin-180957436/ 231 https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.06549 232 http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/02/scienceshot-venus-slowingdown 233 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-weather-makes-daylong/ 234 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0019103569900682

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penetrate this area, despite there is no physical obstacle; and similar ones with flies that did not fly over transparent urns, since they were raised with the top of the urn covered by a plastic film, which was removed when they had grown. That's what they call Premature Cognitive Commitment.

- The only way to overcome this situation is, in the first place, to recognize our conditioning; and then practice meditation and mindfulness at every moment, Carmen and Luky explained to us. It is an almost obsessive self-reflection, to be asking ourselves why we feel what we feel, how an event or situation makes us feel, which may be conditioning our responses or beliefs; but also asking us profound questions like who I am, what is my purpose if there is one, what kind of life we want for ourselves or our children, what education, what kind of social relationships we want even with our adversaries and what relationship we establish with nature and the cosmos.

- We must learn to be responsible for our own perceptions, experiences and thoughts, which we cannot forget that are conditioned by the Collective Unconscious.

- Do you think the morphic field that Sheldrake talks about exists? -the neurologist asked surprised-.

- After my post-traumatic experience, I can affirm that it does.

- It is clear to me that you understand consciousness as an immediate knowledge that the subject has of himself, of his actions and reflections.

- A reflective knowledge of things.

- But that “consciousness” would be individual, it would be what I call „a mind‟. A mind in which the ego persists, -Carmen said-. It is about transcending that mind to recognize, even if it is a mere glimpse, of the „Total Consciousness‟.

- „The Unit‟.

- „The All‟.

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- Let it be clear, that we do not talk about God. As a philologist I like to use the language correctly. The purpose of language is that we can understand each other. Most people consider the idea of God as a being in the image of humans but with superpowers.

- Just as they consider the soul as something they possess.

- And „The Unit‟ does not have certain attributes that usually characterize God, such as „will‟ or „free will‟. The only option of „The Unit‟ is to divide itself.

- The key is to split itself to experience the universe from other perspectives -Sam snapped-.

- A cosmic game to discover who we are -I finished-.

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