History repeats itself.
Tantalus was the son of Zeus and a traitor! Son of a god and King of Phrygia, Tantalus owed his fame to his privilege of being allowed to sit and eat at the gods’ table, and listen to their conversations. Instead of keeping silent as befits the confidants of the mighty, Tantalus began to betray the secrets of the immortals to his earthly friends. His image grew and grew. Men looked on him as a chosen spirit who knew far more than they did, as a man who could see behind things and events.
In order to keep in favour with his divine champions, Tantalus offered them a banquet. With the idea of putting the gods’ omniscience to the test, he had his son Pelops killed and served at table. Yet before they had tasted a mouthful, the gods sensed his wanton wickedness. They brought Pelops back to life again, but father Tantalus suffered eternal banishment to Hades, the underworld, in which he was to suffer terrible torments. Down there in the dark and wet, wicked papa Tantalus underwent the world-famous punishments connected with his name. He stood up to his neck in clear water, but it ebbed away from him when he tried to drink it; at the edge of the pond hung delicious fruits, but they moved away whenever he tried to grasp them; lastly a rock hung over his head ready to fall and crush him. With these three torments—thirst, hunger and mortal fear—Tantalus paid for betraying the secrets of the gods.
The modern Tantalus is once again about to disclose tremendous secrets—driven to it by research. Scientists at Wisconsin University christened a complicated machine Tantalus. It can accelerate electrons almost to the speed of light. The particles so accelerated emit a strange bluish light which is called synchrotron radiation, a radiation that is much stronger than any dosage of X-rays. It penetrates the structure of molecules and atoms.
In this way the universe will be forced to give up one of its great secrets. The atomic world, previously closed to the human eye, will become visible, the structure of matter will be revealed down to its atomic components. Tantalus the machine is preparing to betray divine secrets. We shall learn to understand the structure of matter and how to form it ourselves. We shall look over the gods’ shoulders.
An old story repeats itself.
The guardians of the cosmic secrets have already been forced to yield up a treasure. The Tantalus machine has already been outdone.
The object concerned shone long ago in the story in the Arabian Nights, Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. In this story which is traditional in Europe, Asia and Africa, Aladdin descended into an underground cave at the behest of a magician in order to bring back the wonderful lamp. If anyone rubbed the lamp, his every wish was granted. When Aladdin realised the power of the lamp, he refused to give it up, had all his wishes granted and married a princess, with whom he lived happily ever after.
Aladdin, too, stands godfather to an apparatus that bears his name. Aladdin is being built at considerable expense in the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Aladdin’s rays are to be a hundred times stronger than those of Tantalus from Wisconsin. The new wonderful lamp is intended to reveal the secrets behind atomic particles. Here perhaps scientists will find out how to take matter apart, convey it by rays to another place and there reassemble it in its original form. Aladdin fulfilled his dearest wish by conjuring up palaces and people from the void. In the future his successors in Brookhaven may be able to do that, too. The first steps have been taken.
In the distant future it may be possible to move matter without traditional methods of transport. Aircraft, ships, railways and cars will be on the scrapheap. In the TV science-fiction series Star Trek trick photography anticipates what may become reality. The film-makers send the crew to the surface of the planet by directional rays.
When Tantalus research is completed, it is hoped that this goal will be reached. Just as a television camera scans pictures and reduces them to many thousands of tiny dots, which are then reassembled on the screen, a cluster of powerful rays will scan solid bodies of any kind, decompose them and carry their molecules and atoms at the speed of light to another place where—presto!—they will be reassembled after their original pattern faster than you can blink. The radiation in Aladdin’s wonderful lamp provides the prerequisite. Fairy-tales become reality.
Nearly all ancient civilisations worshipped the sun. In Sumer the sun god Utu handed on the baton to the sun god Shamach, who represented the beneficent powers of the sun. The Egyptians revered their sun god Re (or Ra), whose name was adopted by other gods to show themselves as creators. Amon Re is an example. Starting with Chephren, the fourth dynasty Pharaoh, even the kings called themselves ‘Sons of Re’. There were temples of the sun in all the larger towns.
Sun worship was also a characteristic of the Inca religion. The Inca rulers traced their origin to the sun god Inti and called themselves ‘sons of the sun’. The ancient Greeks kept their sun god Helios warm by erecting large sanctuaries in his honour on Rhodes. And for simplicity’s sake the Romans called their god the same as the Latin name for sun—sol.
The stimulus to the global concept of a solar religion was the life-enhancing, creative power of the sun itself. It radiated light and heat, and helped men, animals and plants to flourish. People knew perfectly well that nothing could survive without the sun. Without it the earth would freeze into ice and cold and all life would be extinguished.
In this Year of Our Lord 1979 we stand at the gateway to a new global solar religion. Once again the sun will be celebrated in ‘sanctuaries’ and take us all in its spell and promise hope. All over the world solar energy will replace atomic energy, which is so unjustly calumnied.
The first ‘Temple of the Sun’ has been working for ten years near the village of Odeillo in the French Pyrenees. In consistently fine, sunny weather, it can produce temperatures of up to 3000° Centigrade. Large US firms such as Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Exxon, German concerns such as Dornier and Messerschmidt-Bölkow, Swiss enterprises like BBC or the Israeli Holon Institute compete with the Russians to achieve the most successful solar technology. At the end of this intensive research we shall capture x thousand megawatts of solar energy via gigantic satellites and feed it into the new ‘Great Temples’, the solar power-stations, by microwave. It is intended that industrial layouts and all appliances in daily use will rely on solar energy in the not too distant future.
Does this mean that there are no dangers in the use of solar energy? Of course there are, for no form of energy can be handled without a certain amount of risk. The modern sun-worshippers do not talk about it, because it does not suit their book. First they have to damn the cleanest energy, that produced by atomic power, on ideological, not factual grounds. In other words the kindly old sun is shining on our roof.
But supposing that for some reason a micro-wave transmission did not hit the gigantic receiver antennae on the earth, the effect would be devastating. Clustered microwaves alter the structure of cells. All organic life—men, animals, plants—would slowly languish and die. And if in case of war the opposing forces reciprocally shot down the solar satellites from the skies, the lights would go out on earth. In the case of global natural catastrophes even the smallest solar energy installations on rooftops would be absolutely worthless.
What kind of natural catastrophes am I thinking of? The new sun temples will be solidly built in places far from where we actually use them—in desert areas, for example, on the sunny slopes of mountains or as floating solar cells on the seven seas. Great distances have to be covered from these receiving stations to the centres of civilisation where the energy will be used. If the earth’s axis changes its position only minimally, earthquakes and floods of biblical magnitude will occur. If the supply routes are interrupted, mankind will lack vitally needed energy just when it is wanted most.
Climatic changes on a vast scale are undoubtedly taking place. Possibly they will so alter the global weather outlook that regions which were once controlled by areas of high pressure, and so were preferred sites for modern solar temples, will revert to areas of
low pressure with predominantly dense cloud cover. Then our temple of the sun will be in the wrong place! Scientists will warn of years of violent eruptions on the sun and sun spots, which may cause and speed up climatic changes.
Never mind. The sun gods Utu and Shamach, Helios and Re and Sol, and all the others, are revered again. Once again people pray to the life-giving sun. The temples which the modern ‘believers’ build are incomparably dearer than the ancient ones whose stark ascetic ruins impress us. We are determined to worship the sun. Nothing functions without the trademark Helios. As in earlier times. History repeats itself.
Affectionately, almost romantically, twentieth-century technologists give mythological names to their forward pointing discoveries.
Why?
Is mythology overtaking us?
Are we in the process of turning mythology into reality?
Only a few years ago anyone who claimed that divine lightning was more than a mythological name would have been ridiculed. I am surprised that no mythological name was found to fit its earthly counterpart. The invention must have been too surprising. Laser! Everyone knows the name today, but few of us know what it stands for. Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
Last year, 1978, the Americas alone expended 500 million US dollars on the development of laser cannons. If we could add up the investments made all over the world, the sums would be truly astronomical.
Why this lavish expenditure? Divine lightning is meant to explode rockets in flight, to take ‘wicked’ satellites out of the sky. Everything that was once constructed by the earth to use in space may one day have a ‘reverse’ significance. Cities on earth may be ‘evaporated’ from space platforms. The divine lightning of mythology has suddenly become reality. History repeats itself. . . .
But laser is also suited to peaceful activities.
On 24 June, 1978, an uncanny sight could be seen in the sky above Atlantic City. Without exploding rockets, without crackling phosphorus wheels, a fantastic play of light lit up the sky. Heinz R. Gisel, international promoter of celestial light orgies from Zurich, says that his enterprise can ‘paint’ whole scenes in the sky with laser, phantasmagoria visible over 20 km away.
There is no doubt that we are only at the beginning. Ultimately there will simply be no limits. Pictures and writing will be projected into space for 1000 km. On the side of the new moon facing us, flickering letters will read: Coca Cola—Coca Cola—Coca Cola. At full moon religious communities will warn us with black laser beans: the Last Judgement is at hand!
Now I have nothing against this technical magic. If I live to see it, I shall even smirk, because I know that all these things, which for us still lie in the lap of the future, have all existed before. Gods, who appeared with ‘great power and splendour’, projected pictures into the firmament and our technologically unskilled ancestors did not understand them and took them as signs of divine power. Sometimes they saw hands writing, sometimes faces or—as described in the Old Testament—a pillar of fire which shone at night and even by day looked brighter than the light of the sun.
Our space technologists have taken a liking to mythology. They call their satellites Midas, Samos, Cosmos, Pegasus, Helios and so on. They gave their heaven-storming rockets names like Thor, Atlas, Titan, Centaur, Zeus, Jupiter, Saturn and Apollo. Almost the whole great mythological family is assembled in the sheds of the space railway stations. Nostalgia for the past or a prospect of the future?
In the year A.D. 5000 (if so-called historical time is still being counted from Christ’s birth in those days), etymologists will be struggling to explain this text:
The first sign came from Helios. The High Priest assembled the wise men of the land and informed them: the godless enemy is trying to destroy us.
The Council of Wise Men decided that Saturn, the mighty, should take Samos to heaven to get information on the spot and report his observations to the priests.
Hit by a lightning flash of incredible power, Samos fell into the depths of the ocean. There Neptune, the god of the sea, spoke: ‘Transfer a third of your power to me, then I shall ask Nautilus, who dwells under the eternal ice, to help us. The agile children of Zeus are with him.’
Nautilus rose noiselessly from the water, filled with Neptune spirit. He broke through the ice-covering below the North Star and sent the children of Zeus to invade enemy territory on glowing rays. Night became bright as day. It was horrible to see how men were convulsed and crumbled to dust.
While the hostile territory was burning up in the terrible heat, the heavenly guardian Pegasus reported that the godless were entreating Shiva, the destroyer of all, to help them.
When the high priest learnt this, he realised at once that only Nora in the full bloom of her power could be effective against Shiva. Equipped with the fascinating gaze of Helios and Pegasus, he ordered the assembly to concentrate their prayers on Nora. Nora’s veins were filled with power. The habitations of men grew cold. All the angels stood still. With a low humming sound, the children of the gods transferred their energy to Nora.
Then a glowing bright lightning flash flickered forth, lighting up the earth more radiantly than the sun; it rose into the farthest heavens. The death-dealing eyes of Shiva were blinded. The powerful mighty god tumbled helplessly on to the moon.
Even in 5000 years the mythological names will still cause confusion and appear mysterious. Yet the en clair message is so simple:
The satellite Helios reports that the enemy has taken up an attacking position. The supreme commander calls his staff together and confers about the situation.
It is decided to put a Saturn rocket, supported by some Samos satellites, into orbit round the earth.
During the reconnaissance mission Saturn is hit by a laser beam.
The commander of the naval forces takes the view that he can start a counter-attack from the atomic submarine Nautilus provided it manages to divert the enemy forces from its position by fake attacks. Nautilus is equipped with 20 Zeus rockets.
Programmed by the computer Neptune, the supreme commander, Nautilus breaks through the ice under the polar cap and fires its rockets at the target. The enemy commando replies with laser beams, energy for which is drawn directly from the sun. The territory burns up.
Satellites of the Pegasus type measure the energy charge and radio the results to headquarters on earth.
There they recognise the danger at once. There is only one laser which is stronger than the one on the platform in satellite orbit, the laser of system Nora. Nora’s laser cannons are fed by an atomic reactor which is not yet ready to operate. Consequently all the energy in the country is concentrated on Nora. Machines in the factories come to a halt. Houses have no light.
With this concentrated power Nora succeeds in hurling Shiva out of orbit round the earth. Hit by the enormous power of the beam, the platform crashes on the surface of the moon.
We only have to imagine a man of the pretechnological age rising from the tomb and being confronted with our own technical achievements. He would see enormous aircraft rising into the sky, moving pictures flickering in one corner of the room, etc., etc. As this man who was resurrected would have no explanation for the ‘phenomena’, he would think they were magic.
We face the ‘puzzles’ that mythology hands down to us on a reverse footing. Looked at in the usual way, everything has developed nicely and continuously, everything began on a small and primitive scale to become sophisticated and complicated later. There is obviously no place for technology in the distant past in this way of thinking. So if accounts of ‘flying machines’, ray guns and destructive weapons crop up, it can only be a matter of fantasy, magic or ideograms! Excuse my mirth!
I read a newspaper report that the USA is looking for a cloak of invisibility for its aircraft-carriers on the high seas. Cloak of invisibility? I have heard about that before. A cloak that made one invisible was always a sought-after requisite. The ancient Germans firmly believed that elves could make themsel
ves invisible by donning a cloak. In the Nibelungenlied the hero Siegfried won the cloak from the dwarf king Alberich and used it afterwards in successful duels.
But there is a considerable difference between making a person disappear and a gigantic ship of 100,000 tons displacement which travels at 70 kilometres per hour.
Is the US Navy on a hopeless search?
For a long time now enemy attacks on a target have not used a telescope to spot the objective. The human eye is not a reliable operator in mist and rain. Targets are picked up by an electronic ‘eye’. There are two ways of getting the target in the sights. The attacking rocket either flies to the target according to the programme it has been fed with or it finds the target quite independently by rays which it emits: radar, infrared- or microwaves. Target seeking is always done automatically, using target data programmed by a computer or electronically calculated in fractions of a second. If the electronic system can be misled, the technological cloak of invisibility has been found. Is the deception practicable? The newspaper Die Welt comments:
Signs of the Gods? Page 13
