‘An event can be described by giving the place in space where it happened and the time at which it occurred. Thus an event is a four-dimensional reality. The time datum which characterises an event is not independent of the coordinates which describe its position in space. Because measurements of time and space both alter when the inertial system is changed, we speak of a four-dimensional space-time. Seen from the point of view of many accelerated systems tachyons can move backwards in time.’36
Confusing qualities! Whereas everything moves from the past to the future in our system, tachyons can travel from the future into the past.
Can this phenomenon be made intelligible?
Imagine a flashlight apparatus coupled to a receiver that can register tachyons. The flashlight is programmed in such a way that it lights up as soon as a tachyon impulse strikes it. Let us suppose that a satellite emits a tachyon impulse dead on midnight. What happens?
It is not yet midnight, but the flashlight lights up before the satellite has ever emitted the tachyon impulse. How can the flashlight apparatus accurately programmed for the tachyon impulse react in advance?
‘Time’ in the tachyons’ inertial system is not identical with ‘time’ in our system. ‘Seen’ from our position, tachyons are travelling backwards faster than light. What we in our system know as the causality principle—namely that every effect must have had a cause—is no longer valid as soon as we are concerned with the four-dimensional space-time of faster-than-light particles.
The apparent contradiction would be resolved if we ourselves were in the tachyons’ system. Then the physical laws would agree again. In our system the idea of from past to future is ‘logical’. We cannot imagine the cause coming after an effect. If there are intelligent beings in a tachyon world, presumably they would not be able to imagine why the future always had to follow a past. For them a much more normal process would be the deduction of the past from the future. If we speak of the ‘distant past’, they speak of the ‘distant future’ in the tachyon world. But it means the exact opposite of what we think of as the future.
Now we must ask ourselves: What is time? What is past? What is future?
In our consciousness ‘time’ is the passing of the present; the past grows.
This simple definition is no longer accurate as it has been proved experimentally that every inertial system has its own inertial time. Even in the choice of identical normal watches times are different in different systems. Scientists all agree that ‘time’ can only be defined in relation to an inertial system. And as no inertial system seems to be superior by the laws of nature, it is physically meaningless to speak of ‘the time’.
We must change our way of thinking. If an event can occur before a cause, what are our points of reference?
The human brain functions in chemical and electrical ways. It develops the imponderables ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ which are not conceivable or measurable in physical terms. Telepathic experiments have clearly proved that ‘consciousness’ both transmits and receives waves. ‘Consciousness’ is also capable of precognition, as parapsychological research calls this faculty. It seems as if ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ are timeless, as if an unknown form of energy entered the brain and whispered some future information about which we really should not know. I am not talking about intimations of the future of the kind anyone can have as a result of fear and sorrow. I mean the genuine precognition which is known to parapsychology.
What actually happens in our brains? Should we imagine some subatomic particles from another dimension, from another inertial system, that provide our consciousness with information about the future? Have events which took place in the distant past already happened in the future? Do we think in a two-sided canal in which past and future information flow into each other? Is it no coincidence, is it right outside our free will, when we christen new present-day technical arrangements by mythological names?
If time is manipulable in the future and the past, where does the direct effect of time stand? It is a grotesque idea, but could we travel into the past with a hypothetical tachyon time-machine and make an event which took place in the present retrogressive? To give an example, could anyone travel back to the ancient Roman Empire on the tachyon time-machine and warn Julius Caesar of his imminent assassination in the Senate? Would the emperor attend the debate in the Senate regardless and be stabbed, as did happen, or would he stay away and change the course of history completely? Shall we be able to influence the distant past from the distant future? Will our descendants in the year A.D. 10,000 already dominate this kind of ‘manipulation’? From this fantastic point of view, is history still unalterable, because it has already been ‘corrected’ from the future and must unfold exactly in such and such a way and no other for reasons inscrutable to us?
If the technology of spacetravel manages to achieve flights close to the speed of light in fifty years—and it will, provided the Black Order of Pessimists does not succeed in wrecking our future—will spacetravel be a first time event for mankind, or shall we only be repeating what our forefathers already did? Am I not contradicting myself with the sentence ‘Our forefathers practised spacetravel’, since I firmly assert that extraterrestrials visited early mankind?
It may sound dogmatic, but I am not contradicting myself. Perhaps this example will clear up the apparent contradiction:
Let us assume that there was a highly technological industrial society on earth 50,000 years ago. Let us also imagine that our technically advanced ancestors had sent high-speed spaceships to another solar system. During these journeys the terrestrial spacetravellers were subject to the laws of time dilation. As the size of the differences in time depends on the speed of the spaceship, we can imagine that 40,000 years went by on earth as opposed to a mere ten years on board the ship.
Now let us speculate that terrestrial civilisation was wiped out in the 40,000 years between 50,000 and 10,000 B.C. By terrible wars, by natural catastrophes, say the breaking up of a polar region and the allied world-wide inundations. By a cosmic event, such as the invasion of bacteria from outer space.
The survivors would have to start again from scratch. Generations after the knock-out blow men are still living in caves. They can write, make fire, fashion tools and social communities, but they only know the glorious past of their own race from the traditions of their forefathers.
Then the crews of the spaceships sent out in 50,000 B.C. burst in on this fresh start. The crews have only changed by ten years.
What will the spacetravellers do? Save what there is to save. Thanks to their superior knowledge, they will rule the survivors and introduce them to the old laws and rules of communal life.
In other words, our ancestors are visited by their own ancestors who come from outer space. Here, too, they would be ‘gods’, who came from the depths of the cosmos, even if they are descendants of one family. History repeats itself.
Am I speaking about past or future, when I suspect that in the not too distant future a spaceship with room for a mixed crew of men and women will be fitted out somewhere in the world? Cultures of various bacteria will be kept in its sterilised frigidaire. Vacuum-packed plastic containers with seeds of all species of plant will be stored in its cargo holds. Little fish will swim in oxygen impregnated basins. The study cabins will contain encyclopaedias with the complete knowledge of our time and there will be shelves full of microfilms of all our technical and scientific knowledge. In its work-rooms simple implements— shovels, rakes, tents—will help the crew to have a chance of survival even at the remotest end of the universe.
A day will come when the crew will tick off all the necessary items on a checklist . . . and set off for the heavens.
And as history repeats itself, the captain of the spaceship will probably be called Noah.
* * *
Communiqué
YEARS ago a friend pointed out that the British Museum housed pictures of tanks that had been used in battles in Sumeria
and Babylonia.
On my next visit to London I was able to verify that the ground floor of the British Museum actually does have large reliefs from Babylonian and Assyrian times that show tank-like vehicles. According to archeologists they are representations of battering-rams of the kind used to break through town walls.
This may be, but is not necessarily so.
Four things struck me about these ‘battering-rams’:
Battering-rams, whatever one imagines by the word, were manned by soldiers. They do not move of their own accord, and certainly not uphill. Even if the crew were protected against arrows and stones, their feet must have been visible. Even battering-rams have to be moved in some way or other and we can see wheels on them. So how were they driven?
The ram at the front of the ‘battering-ram’ can only have an effect if it hits the wall or tower to be stormed at right angles. Rams pointing upwards, as clearly shown in the pictures, make no sense. Kinetic energy has no effect. The upward-pointing ram would have shattered the machine itself on the rebound or sent it up like a rearing horse.
The twin rams to be seen in one picture are quite pointless. If two pointed rams were banged into the wall, their destructive effect would have been reduced by half. But the builders must have been really simple to make both rams point upwards as well.
Last but not least why does a ‘battering-ram’ need a tower?
These two examples of ‘battering-rams’—there are several—made me wonder if they were sonic cannons of the kind used at the storming of the ancient city of Jericho.
‘. . . when people heard the sound of the trumpet . . . the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him. . . .’—Joshua 6:20
5: Signs of the Gods? Signs for the Gods?
IT happened in Athens a few years ago. During a press conference, I noticed a grey-haired man, who asked no questions, but was busy taking notes. Afterwards he came up to me and asked very politely if I knew that all ancient Greek temples, including those which date to mythological periods, stood in exact geometrical relationship to each other.
I must have pulled a face, for he assured me that it was perfectly true. But I am well aware that my listeners like to make me happy by giving me pointers that may lead me to new speculations in my field. No, I replied, I knew nothing about it and I thought it was nonsense, because I could not imagine that the ‘ancient Greeks’ had the geodetic knowledge to fit temple layouts into a geometrical pattern. Besides, I said, the temples were often hundreds of kilometres apart. Sometimes mountains lay between them, blocking the view from one building to another, while he ought to remember that some temples were on small islands which were barely visible from the mainland with the naked eye. No, I summed up, I could not imagine what reason the builders could have had for bringing temples and religious sanctuaries into a geometrical relationship.
The man shrugged his shoulders apologetically and left. My scepticism had disappointed him and I soon forgot him. But I suddenly remembered him when two serious books confirming the Greek gentleman’s claims landed on my desk. One was by Dr Theophanis M. Manias,37 a brigadier in the Greek Air Force, the other by Professor Dr Fritz Rogowski38 of the Carolo-Wilhelmina Technical University at Braunschweig. Both authors clearly prove that all the religious sites, oracles, for example, and all the temples of ancient Greece were laid out according to a ‘geometric-cum-geodetic triangulation pattern’. After reading both books I remembered my conversation in Athens. I should like to apologise to the gentleman for my nonchalant scepticism, but I don’t even know his name. However, he will know about my volte-face when this book is published by Notos in Athens.
The simple fact of buildings laid out according to geometrical principles should not be a ‘miracle’, for ancient Greece produced one of the greatest mathematicians of all time—Euclid, who lived towards the end of the fourth century B.C., taught at the Platonic University in Alexandria and in his fifteen books covered the whole spectrum of mathematics, especially geometry. Was it his idea to place the buildings as they are placed?
Euclid was a contemporary of Plato, the philosopher, who was also active as a politician. Plato sat at Euclid’s feet in Megara and listened to his lectures. Was Plato fascinated by his colleague’s ideas? Did he put his knowledge to use when he had to share political decisions about building commissions? Was that how the architects were instructed to build the temples in a triangulation system?
Unfortunately this hypothesis is wrong, because most temples and holy sites existed long before Euclid!
Nevertheless, Plato must have known about the mysterious geometrical network of ancient Greek buildings, for he mentions a whole series of geometrical contexts in Chapters 7 and 8 of his Timaeus. Plato, master of the limpid dialogue, held geometry in high esteem. Today many books on geometry are still introduced by Plato’s sentence:
‘Let none who are ignorant of geometry have a say. Geometry is knowledge of the eternal being.’
It is quite possible that Euclid told Plato about his observations of already extant geometrical puzzles. But in that case Euclid must have had access to the primordial geometrical knowledge which became stone in the temples and sanctuaries of ancient Hellas. Dr Manias does in fact say: ‘The whole of Euclidean geometry comes from an age-old religious and scientific codex.’37
Of course we all know what the ‘golden section’ is—even Euclid wrote about it. But before I give some staggering examples of geometrical relations between religious sites laid out on the principles of the golden section, I should like to quote the definition which I took from my daughter’s textbook:
If a line AB is divided by a point E so that the whole line is to the longest section as that is to the shorter section, then the line AB is said to be divided into the ‘golden section.’
If we extend a line divided into the golden section by its longer segment, the new line is divided into the golden section again by the end of the original line, B. This process can be repeated indefinitely.
Now some samples:
The distance between Delphi and Epidaurus corresponds to the longer segment of the golden section of the distance Epidaurus and Delos, namely 62 per cent.
The distance between Olympia and Chalkis corresponds to the longer segment of the golden section of the distance between Olympia and Delos, namely 62 per cent.
The distance between Delphi and Thebes corresponds to the longer segment of the golden section of the distance between Delphi and Athens, namely 62 per cent.
The distance from Sparta to Olympia corresponds to the longer segment of the golden section of the distance from Sparta to Athens, namely 62 per cent.
The distance from Eipaurus to Sparta corresponds to the longer segment of the golden section of the distance from Epidaurus to Olympia, namely 62 per cent.
The distance from Delos to Eleusis corresponds to the longer segment of the golden section of the distance from Delos to Delphi, namely 62 per cent.
The distance from Knossos to Delos corresponds to the longer segment of the golden section of the distance from Knossos to Chalkis, namely 62 per cent.
The distance from Delphi to Dodoni corresponds to the longer segment of the golden section of the distance from Delphi to Athens, namely 62 per cent.
The geometrical curiosities are not exhausted with the arrangement of the religious sites in the golden section.
If we describe a circle the centre of which is one holy place and which runs through a second religious site, the circle always touches a third and often a fourth site. For example:
Centre Knossos. Sparta and Epidaurus are on the circumference.
Centre Taros. Knossos and Chalkis are on the circumference.
Centre Delos. Thebes and Ismir are on the circumference.
Delphi, Olympia and Athens are equidistant from Argos.
Sparta, Eleusis and the oracle of Trofonion are equidistant from Mykene.37
Dr Manias also discovered that any tem
ple or site taken as a point also lies on a straight line through two other holy sites.
The incredible thing is that most of these geometrical relations go back to much earlier days than the lifetimes of Pythagoras (about 570 B.C.) and Euclid, the two mathematical geniuses. In fact they go back to the mythological Greek Stone Age. Brigadier Manias shows that seen from a great height the arrangements of the sanctuaries reveal enormous circles, regular pentagons, five-rayed Pythagorean stars, pyramids and even geometrical figures from Greek mythology. To take only one example: According to legend Apollo turned himself into a dolphin and showed the site of Delphi to the priests of Crete. If you draw lines connecting the religious sites between Crete and Delphi, they form a dolphin over 500 km long!
The whole thing is most confusing. The countless geometrical regularities quite exclude chance as the masterbuilder.
So how can we explain the mathematical perfectionism? How can we reconcile it with the standard of mathematical knowledge we attribute to prehistoric peoples? How did they know at what precise point they had to build?
Signs of the Gods? Page 15
