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CONTENTS
115
January / February 2016
®
ANCIENT
MYSTERIES
FUTURE SCIENCE
UNEXPLAINED
ANOMALIES
PUBLISHER & EDITOR
39
42
32
35
J. Douglas Kenyon
CONTRIBUTORS
John Chambers
David H. Childress
Michael Cremo
Jerry Decker
Ralph Ellis
Frank Joseph
Julie Loar
Patrick Marsolek
Marsha Oaks
Martin Ruggles
Robert Schoch, Ph.D.
Steven Sora
William B. Stoecker
Carly Svamvour
Michael E.Tymn
COVER
Orion Nebula & Exoplanet
(NASA photo and art)
GRAPHICS
Randy Haragan
Denis Ouellette
Ryan Hammer
ATLANTIS RISING®
(ISSN #1541-5031)
published bi-monthly
(6 times a year)
by Atlantis Rising, LLC
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Copyright 2015 & 2016
ATLANTIS RISING
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10 24
7 Letters
10 Alternative
News
17 Jerry Decker
The Neurophone
19 Michael Cremoo
The Knowledge
Filter in Africa
23 Superhenge
Surprise
The Site We
w
Thought We Knew
Is Even Greater
24 Ciphers of
the Initiates
Uncovering Secrets
ts
Not Intended
for Our Eyes
40
29 Journey
to Akakor
The Search for Brazil’s
Fabled Lost City
32 The Once and
Future King
Did Arthur Have
a Great Secret?
35 Creation by
the Numbers
When You Do the
Math the Facts
Are Amazing
39 Thomas Jefferson
& the Holy Grail
40 Mrs. Lincoln’s
‘Lunacy’
What Was Wrong
with the President’s
Widow?
42 Dawn
D
of the
D
Dolphins
D They, and Other
Do
Animals, Have
A
SSuper Powers?
45 Reflecting
R
oon Our Sun
M
Might
It Have
a Mirror Matter
Companion?
C
46 Balzac—
B
the
t Inside
Story
S
W
Where
Others Saw
Danger,
He Saw
D
tthe Divine
48 A
Astrology
DVD
50 D
57 Puzzle
P
POSTMASTER:
Send Address Changes to
Atlantis Rising
PO Box 441
Livingston, MT 59047
Order BOOKS, DVDs & MORE: See Our Catalog on Page 74
ALTERNATIVE NEWS
I
n the Atlantis Rising cover story for November/December (#114) “Is Anybody
Home?”, we reported on an imminent acceleration in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). But the case for advanced ET
Life could be developing even faster than we
projected. Recent findings from the exoplanet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope are
raising the possibility of an alien civilization
capable of engineering accomplishments almost beyond meager human comprehension.
Kepler capability, it seems, goes beyond
simple detection of the transiting alien planets
before their local sun. It can also detect unusual shapes for those orbiting exoplanets.
The star dubbed KIC 8462852 in the Cygnus
region, a mere 1500 light years away, has
demonstrated just such strange characteristics,
and, so far, no satisfactory natural explanation, including planetary collisions and
cometary anomalies, is to be had. As Yale
University postdoctoral researcher Tabetha
Boyajian told the Atlantic Magazine, “It was
really weird. We thought it might be bad data
or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out.”
The possibility of alien civilization is not
gladly considered by most mainstream astrophysicists, who remain convinced a natural
explanation for the finding will eventually
come to light, but still, KIC 8462852 is caus-
ing very far-out speculation in some academicc
quarters. One idea put forward by some anaalysts is that we may have stumbled on a
‘Dyson sphere.’ First suggested by science ficction writer Olaf Stapleton in his novel Star
ar
Maker, the notion was later seriously considdered by theoretical physicist and mathemati-ician Freeman Dyson, who inadvertently gave
ve
it his name. The theory is: an unbelievablyy
advanced ET civilization finds its energyy
needs so great, it must engineer a megastruccture to capture the entire energy output of a
star and would create some sort of vast spherr
rical lantern shade to do the job.
Till now, evidence for the existence of
such a structure has been entirely imaginary,
unless you count the work of physicist Paul
La Violette. As Atlantis Rising magazine has
reported several times, La Violette has argued
that the emitters of regular and powerful electromagnetic bursts, known as pulsars, may actually have been built as navigational beacons
for an ancient spacefaring civilization. (See
AR #114) For anyone capable of creating a
pulsar, a Dyson sphere should be a piece
of
p
cake, but still a lot to chew on.
n.
Has the Kepler
Space Telescope
Detected an Alien
Megastructure?
Artist’s conception of a Dyson Sphere. (courtesy of CapnHack http://capn-hack.com)
S
ince long before Robinson Crusoe, thee
plight of a solitary castaway in an alien ennvironment has been the stuff of great enterr
rtainment, and apparently the theme still
ll
works. Tom Hanks’ desert island survival
al
story of 2000, Cast Away, is a recent example,
e,
but right now Mars is hot, at least in thee
news, and in The Martian, the story of an asstronaut mistakenly left for dead, who must
st
fight for survival all by himself, stimulates thee
current imagination in a big way. The lateesummer box office hit, starring Matt Damon,
n,
took millions of earthlings to Mars in both
h
2D and 3D. In its first weekend, in theaters,
s,
The Martian grossed an astounding $55 mil-llion.
Damon’s character may be entirely fictional, but the reality of eventual interplane-
Matt
Damon
as “the
Martian”
10 ATLANTIS RISING • Number
er 115
tary travel is clearly drawing near. In October,
r,
NASA announced its intentions to have a
colony operating entirely independent of
Earth by the 2030s. In a report called ‘Jourr
rney to Mars,’ the Space agency declared, “We
W
We
seek the capacity for people to work, learn,
n,
operate, and sustainably live beyond Earth for
or
extended periods of time. Any journey to
o
Mars will take many months each way and
d
early return is not an option.”
In late September NASA also announced
d
that liquid water has been found on Mars;
s;
and in the meantime Mars One, the Dutch
h
company which intends to launch humans on
n
a one-way mission to the red planet, funded
d
by a reality TV show, says the discovery of
water will make it easier on its settlers. The
Mars One plan is to colonize Mars by 2027,
so maybe there will be a welcome party when
NASA arrives.
Current NASA plans envision an eventual Martian habitat built by robots, and ‘3Dprinted’ from Martian materials. Composite
materials would be pushed though a nozzle
to build a shape guided by computers. Apparently the ultimate structure will be toroidal in
shape. Students and engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are alreadyy competing to produce the winning design..
Martian Castaway Heats Up
Plans for a Red Planet Colony
Subscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much More!
‘200,000-Year-Old’
Civilization Said
Found in Africa
Aerial view of ancient South African ruins
A
ccording to a story appearing on the web
site Ancient-Code.com, researchers
have
h h
discovered very extensive, and previously unexplored, ruins near Maputo in South Africa
that seem to indicate the existence of civilization as long as 200,000 years ago. Early reports describe vast communal areas covering
around a thousand square miles. Aerial photos clearly show many complex stone structures, largely circular in nature, which had
previously gone unnoticed.
South African musician and politician
Michael Tellinger investigated the remote area
in response to reports from a local fireman
and pilot Johan Heine. The area is near severall gold
and
ld mines
i
d appears to corroborate
b
claims made by the late writer Zecharia
Sitchin who argued that an ancient ET people
who called themselves the Anunnaki came to
Earth in search of gold, as long as 450,000
years ago.
If Tellinger is correct, the find completely overthrows the orthodox timeline for
the history of civilization, even the recently
discovered ruins at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey
which—dating to 12,000 years ago—predate
Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid by thousands of years.
s.
The Disappearing
Drones Are Coming?
T
he latest thing in military weaponry is flying-drone technology. In fact, it is already
presenting growing challenges to our privacy
and safety. For those who would like drones
to just go away, the good news is, so would
the people at the Pentagon.
Now the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (aka DARPA) is looking for
ways to make drones, literally, disappear. We
are not, however, talking about the ones that
See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74
may be looking in your bedroom window, or
that might collide with a plane in which you
are flying. We are talking about the ones that
could track terrorists, or deliver lethal explosives to clandestine insurgent camps. DARPA
is concerned that such drones might well end
up in the hands of the enemy and then be
turned against us (in other words, radicalized),
so it is looking for ways to make them disappear, but only after they have flown their mission.
It won’t be easy, but DARPA believes it
may not be impossible to make a drone,
which could deliver a three pound payload to
a pinpointed target 100 miles away and then,
like the secret cassette tapes left for Mr.
Phelps in Hollywood’s Mission Impossible
films, simply dematerialize. The secretary will,
of course,
any knowledge of its acourse, disavow
d
tions..
Number 115 • ATLANTIS
RISING 11
ANCIENT MYSTERIES
The Search
for Brazil’s
Fabled Lost City
cret city of Akakor.
Tatunca Nara, says Brugger,
er was tall with
long, dark hair and a finely molded face. He
n my book Lost Cities and Ancient Mys- had brown eyes, narrowed and full of suspiteries of South America (1986), I wrote cion. In broken German, Tatunca told the
about a strange character named amazing tale of his people, the Ugha MonguTatunca Nara and his claim of a lost city lala, who were “chosen by the gods” 15,000
deep in the Amazon jungle called Akakor. years ago. Throughout, he maintained, it was
Most of the information came from a book all recorded in a tribal book, the Chronicle
published in German and English in 1977 of Akakor, written in his people’s own script.
called The Chronicle of Akakor by Karl Brugger, This, in itself, defies belief, as no written lana German journalist living in Brazil.
guage, we are told, existed among South
The Amazon jungle is one of the last American tribes, including the Incas. He went
true frontiers on Earth. To this day, most of on to say that they spoke Quechua, a written
it is unexplored. People seldom realize that language of 1,400 symbols, all yielding differthe Amazon basin is nearly as large as the ent meanings depending on their sequence.
continental United States. Imagine that every- Not even the Incas, who also spoke Quechua,
thing west of Washington DC was a vast, vir- knew “the script of the gods.”
tually impenetrable jungle filled with
The Chronicle of Akakor, according to
anacondas, fierce cats, huge crocodiles, savage Tatunca, starts at the year zero (10,481 BC on
Indians, and, apparently, lost cities.
the Gregorian calendar) when, “…the great
In Manaus, Brazil, in March, 1972, in a Masters left the Ugha Mongulala. Before the
backstreets tavern, journalyear
zero, men lived like
y
ist Karl Brugger met
animals,
without laws,
a
Tatunca Nara, prince of
without
tilling the soil,
w
Akakor. The meeting had
without
clothing themw
been arranged by friends,
selves.”
The great Masters
s
who believed Brugger
brought
“the light.”
b
should hear the prince’s
In prior times, the
incredible tale. Brugger
continent
had been “…flat
c
subsequently recorded sevand
a soft like a lamb’s back,
eral
interviews
with
…the
Great River still
…
Tatunca and then joined
flowed
on either side.” Bef
Tatunca Nara
him in an attempt to refore
the year zero, no one
f
in a 1990s Jacque Cousteau
turn to his home, the seknows
when, but Tatunca
k
• BY DAVID H. CHILDRESS
I
documentary
See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning
ginning
nniing on P
Page
age 7
74
4
guessed 3,000 years before,
befo
f re, “…glimmering
golden ships appeared in the sky
sky.
k Enormous
blasts of fire illuminated the plain. The earth
shook, and thunder echoed over the hills.”
The strangers who came in the golden
airships said the name of their home was
Schwerta, and they talked of cataclysmic upheavals every 6,000 years. The strangers
looked very much like men, with fine features, white skin, bluish black hair, and thick
beards. The only difference was: they, supposedly, had six fingers on each hand and six
toes on each foot. Tatunca Nara at one point
spoke about the knowledge of the Former
Masters. “We have no tools as they did which,
as if by magic, suspend the heaviest stones,
fling lightning or melt rocks.” The strangers
civilized the tribe and built three great cities
of stone: Akanis, Akakor, and Akahim.
Fast forward to the year 12,143 (1932),
the Ugha Mongulala attacked a white settlement on the upper reaches of the Santa
Maria River, killing all the men and taking
four women captive. Three drowned in an attempt to escape on the return to Akakor, but
one survived, a German missionary named
Reinha. Entering Akakor, she took a liking to
the ancient city and its people, eventually
marrying Sinkaia, the city’s Prince. Together
they gave birth to Tatunca Nara.
Four years after Tatunca Nara was born,
Reinha returned to Germany as an ambassador to Hitler’s Third Reich. She was gone for
Continued on Page 31
Number 115 • ATLANTIS
RISING 29
MYTHS & LEGENDS
• BY RALPH ELLIS
W
alter Kayo sat at his desk in the
scriptorium, the cold chill of
winter half broken by a flickering fire in the hearth. The
velum page before him was still not finished,
yet already his eyes felt heavy and refused to
focus. As he dipped his quill to begin the
final paragraph there was a commotion outside, accompanied by the tramp of heavy
boots. Three burly men strode in bearing
armor and arms, their white mantles emblazoned with large splayed red crosses. They introduced themselves as being ambassadors of
King Baldwin of Jerusalem and deposited a
large manuscript on his desk.
Kayo wafted away the large cloud of dust
they had disturbed and looked balefully at
the enormous volume before him. He had no
The first
ever image of
King Arthur
on Modena
Cathedral in
Italy
Once
Future King
Did Arthur Have
a Great Secret?
idea what it was about, but it obviously
meant a lot more work fo
fforr his small underr
staffed
staff
f fed scriptorium. The officer
off
f f icer in charge
pointed to some marked pages, so Kayo
hefted the manuscript open and started to
slowly read. But the text was old, tattered,
often illegible, and in Aramaic, which was not
his favourite language. Halfway down the
page his eyes started to widen and his jaw
took it upon itself to drop down. He looked
up bearing an expression that clearly stated:
“what the hell is this!”
The officer understood Kayo’s perplexity
and returned a wry smile, which was reinforced by muffled laughter from the two soldiers behind. The officer approached more
closely, disturbing some sheaves on the desk
and creating another cloud of dust. He lowered his voice to a whisper and said: “King
Baldwin wants you to turn this into an interesting story.” Kayo’s jaw was now beyond
control, but he managed a small nod in acknowledgment.
(Walter Kayo is presumed by many Grail
scholars to be the author of Quest for the
Holy Grail, a celebrated thirteenth century fusion of Arthurian legend and Christian symbolism—ED)
Historical Crossword
The story of King Arthur and his gallant
knights that this semi-mythical Walter Kayo
32 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 115
The
T
and
King Arthur and Morgane
sailing to Avalon. Note the
anachronistic medieval
armor. King Arthur was supposed to be a 6th-century
monarch.
eventually crafted is complex, frustrating, and
fraught with contradictions and impossibilities. In the hands of subsequent Arthurian authors, it became a compilation of two
histories blended together in such a clumsy
manner that it betrays confusion in both its
broad outline and finer detail.
Very few of the names and events
recorded in these chronicles exist in the historical record, so the text represents a huge
historical crossword puzzle that is almost impossible to crack. But how can we derive an
answer for two-down in this puzzle if we have
not discovered the solution for five-across?
That is the central problem that has faced all
previous researchers of Arthurian history, beSubscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much More!
UNSUNG HEROES
The Author of
the Declaration
of Independence
Knew Much
More than
We Realized
• BY STEVEN SORA
H
istory records a handful of men
and women who seem to be
gifted with a much greater level of
knowledge. Thomas Jefferson was
one of them. He is most remembered for his
role in writing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but he was much more than a
proponent of a democratic society. There was
another side to the man who did so much to
create a nation. He had connections with
Freemasonry, was most likely a Rosicrucian
and spent time in southern France where the
Cathars may have left a massive treasure and
possibly the Holy Grail itself.
In the year he wrote the Declaration he
was thirty-three years of age and could survey
an estate, calculate an eclipse, dance a minuet,
try a cause, play the violin, break a horse, and
design architectural structures of great beauty.
He was learnéd in geology, cartography,
botany, zoology, anatomy, aeronautics, and
interested in exploration. He could read in
See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74
Greek and Latin, practice law, excavate a burial mound, and during his lifetime he
founded a university, the University of Virginia.
He studied agriculture and re-engineered
the plow. He invented the folding chair and
the swivel chair, although he never patented
such inventions. He wrote on the paleontology of fossils. He could and did recommend
books on chemistry, mathematics, and possibly his favorite science, philosophy. He was a
true Renaissance man. Besides playing such
an important role in forming America’s government and serving as the country’s president, as he is best remembered, he also served
as President of the American Philosophical
Society.
He was an opinionated man and was an
enemy of organized religion and bad government. Like a handful of other colonial leaders,
his religion is described as Deist. This means
that one believes in a higher power without
the trappings of religion and ritual. Freemasons of his time did not have to be Anglican,
Catholic, or Huguenot, they just had to believe that such a power controls the universe.
To be a Deist one is not necessarily a Freemason, and to be a Freemason, one is not necessarily a Deist. The requirement for both,
however, is simply to believe in a supreme
power, God or the great Architect; it doesn’t
matter.
Jefferson was mentioned in twenty-nine
Masonic journals in his lifetime, but there exists no record of his ever being initiated into
any lodge. He did, however, participate in
Masonic cornerstone-laying ceremonies. He
also had a true sense of what Freemasonry
was about. Dr. Bob Hieronimus, author of
several books on the esoteric themes in America’s foundation, said of Jefferson “in essence
he was espousing the foundation philosophy
of Freemasonry, the brotherhood of man and
the fatherhood of God.”
When he was in France, he wrote that it
was good to be in the “land of corn, wine,
and oil.” The corn, the wine, and the oil to
Continued on Page 66
Number 115 • ATLANTIS
RISING 39
THE OTHER SIDE
• BY MICHAEL
TYMN
S
he was said to be the most prominent
female occupant of the White House
since Dolley Madison. Mary Todd
Lincoln, the wife of our sixteenth president, has been described in many other ways,
including homely, self-absorbed, petulant,
dour, fastidious, imprudent, demanding, snobbish, and eccentric. On the more positive side,
she was said to be well educated,
intelligent, shrewd, eloquent, devoted to her husband and children,
affectionate,
witty,
gregarious, debonair, cultured,
frank, sympathetic, and the belle
of the ball.
All of those descriptions
are, of course, subjective and relative. There is one label given to
her that is more objective and,
in fact, legal. She was judged insane, or to use a synonym of the
times, a lunatic. That was the verdict handed down by an all-male
jury in an 1875 trial in a Cook
County, Illinois, courthouse.
The legal action had been
brought by Robert Lincoln, the
only surviving son of the Lincolns, primarily out of concern
that his mother would impoverish herself with her undisciplined shopping habits. There
apparently was also concern that
his mother, who had taken an
interest in spiritualism, would be
duped into giving away her
money to unscrupulous mediums. Whether he was also concerned about his inheritance
being depleted is speculative.
“We the undersigned jurors
in the case of Mary Lincoln are
satisfied that Mary Lincoln is insane and is a fit person to be in
a state hospital for the insane—
that her age is 56—that the disease
is
of
unknown
duration—that the cause is unknown—that she is not subject to epilepsy—
il
that she does not manifest homicidal or
suicidal tendencies and that she is not a pauper.” So read the declaration of the jury after
the jury members heard from five doctors selected by Robert Lincoln, none of whom had
examined Mary Lincoln.
Mary was then confined to the Bellevue
Place Sanatorium in Batavia, outside Chicago,
also referred to as the lunatic asylum. There,
Dr. Robert Patterson, the head of the sanatorium, examined her and diagnosed a “hysterical bladder” and a “nervous debility,” both
resulting from excessive grief on her brain
force, dating back to the murder of her hus-
band and more recently to the death of her
son Tad. Perhaps at the prompting of Robert
Lincoln, Patterson later added that Mrs. Lincoln also suffered from the religious excitement of spiritualism, sometimes referred to as
“theomania,” an affliction suffered by as
many as 25 percent of the female patients.
Patterson quoted the neurologist Dr. William
Hammond that, “the false sensuous impressions [conjured up by mediums] force too
ter, Elizabeth Todd Edwards. It was in Springfield that she met the future president, then
a budding lawyer and fledging legislator.
Though her sister Elizabeth tried to discourage Mary from her courtship with Abraham,
feeling he lacked in education, social status,
and social graces, Mary and Abraham were
married on November 4, 1842.
Robert Todd Lincoln was born the following August, followed by Edward (Eddie),
What Was Wrong with the President’s Widow?
40 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 115
much
h blood
bl d to the
h brain
b i and
d eventually
ll predispose séance seekers to lunacy.” Some years
earlier, Patterson had written that spiritualists
teach that man by some mysterious, unintelligible process can discover truth. “This error
so arouses the passions,” he continued, “as to
bring on the derangement.”
Born in Lexington, Kentucky, on December 13, 1818, Mary Ann Todd grew up in
a large, wealthy, slave-owning family. She was
well educated for young women of that era,
including a finishing school in which she
studied literature, French, dance, drama,
music, and social graces, before moving to
Springfield, Illinois, to live with an older sis-
1846, William
(Willie)
iin 1846
Willi
( illi ) in
(W
i 1850,
1850 and
d
Thomas (Tad) in 1853. But only Robert survived his mother—Eddie dying of tuberculosis
in 1850, Willie of typhoid fever in 1862, while
Lincoln was president, and Tad in 1871 of
pneumonia, pleurisy, or tuberculosis, or a
combination of the three.
Although Mary was from a slave state
and had several half-brothers who served in
the Confederate Army, she was opposed to
slavery and supported the abolitionist movement. It was said, however, that her more relaxed “western” ways—Kentucky being
considered a western state at the time—often
Continued on Page 68
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ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE
I
Do They, and
Other Animals,
Have Super
Powers?
• BY PATRICK MARSOLEK
42 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 115
n 2014, Maddalena Bearzi, a researcher
with the Ocean Conservation Society,
y
and her team were studying a school of
bottlenose dolphins near Los Angeles,
Angeles
California. They were working near shore in
an area where the dolphins regularly relaxed
and fed. One dolphin abruptly headed out
toward deeper water and soon the rest of the
school turned and followed. Bearzi and her
assistant decided to follow them in their boat.
The dolphins increased their speed and the
researchers matched speed to keep pace.
About three miles offshore, the dolphins
stopped, forming a ring around a dark object
in the water. Bearzi’s assistant then yelled,
“Someone’s in the water!” Initially they observed the seemingly lifeless body of a fully
clothed, blonde-haired woman. As they drew
closer, the woman feebly turned her head toward them and raised her hand in a weak gesture for help. It turns out the pair arrived just
in time to save the girl’s life. Afterwards they
discovered she was vacationing from Germany
and had tied a suicide note around her
neck. How is it that the dolphins knew this
girl was dying three miles away from where
they were feeding, and why did they care? Dolphins have cognitive and sensory faculties strikingly similar to our own and may
also have faculties alien to us. Many different
animals display signs of intelligence that are
similar to humans. Crows use logic to solve
complex puzzles, and elephants have grief rituals. In this example, dolphins seem to display a heightened intuitive sense and empathy
for humans. If dolphins not only express empathy for us but act upon those feelings to
help us, this should inform our discussions
about their intelligence, about the human
concept of “intelligence” in general, and how
we relate to dolphins and other aware species.
At the same time there’s a meme in
global media declaring that “dolphins are
dumb,” the author Susan Casey has suggested
in her book Voices in the Ocean that dolphins might have a collective consciousness
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with extraordinary empathic abilities. In part
because of similar displays of empathy for humans, some New Age circles revere dolphins
as spiritual beings with mystical or spiritual
powers. In scientific circles, there are many
different conflicting opinions, with some
claiming dolphins have human-like intelligence, and others claim dolphins are no
smarter than chickens and crows. Scientific interest in dolphins, and perhaps many of the popular beliefs in their abilities, stemmed from John Lilly’s research and
popular writings in the 1950s and 1960s. Lilly
was one of the first neuroscientists to seriously take a look at the cetaceans, in particular recognizing the size and complexity of the
dolphin brain. Through his research he concluded that they have the capacity for language and have very good control of their
emotions. He also believed that if we could
crack their “dolphinese,” we would be able to
communicate with them. His best-selling
books, Man and Dolphin and The Mind of
the Dolphin captured the imagination of the
public. Military and scientific communities have
also become very interested in dolphin re-
K-Dog, a bottle-nose
dolphin training for
mine detection duty,
while wearing a
"pinger" for tracking by
his handler. (U.S. Navy
photo by Brien Aho)
search. The U.S. and Soviet Navys both had
cetacean programs. In the U.S., the Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP) was training
dolphins to sniff out mines and track enemy
divers while trying to find ways to use the dolphins as offensive weapons. At the same time,
a group of scientists involved in the SETI program—the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence—became fascinated with Lilly’s work on
decoding dolphin language. They believed
this research would lead to an ability to communicate with other ET intelligences. For a
time members of this group also called themselves “The Order of the Dolphin” and included such greats as Carl Sagan and Frank
Drake. Sagan became friends with Lilly, visited
him at his laboratory, and tried to convince
him to conduct more rigorous research. Lilly,
however, followed his own path conducting
more and more bizarre experiments such as;
working with sensory deprivation tanks, living
with dolphins in flooded houses, and using
hallucinogenic substances on himself and the
animals. In the end, Lilly moved away from
dolphin research declaring that he wanted to
understand his own mind and even larger cosmic entities. There is a long history of the mystical
significance of these sea creatures that precedes Lilly’s own beliefs. In antiquity, dolphins were linked with the gods. Gemistos
Pletho, a fifteenth century Byzantine philosopher, described the dolphin swimming
through the sea as the mind of God in the
waters. Melville reckoned that if God returned
to Earth in our lifetime, it would be in the
guise of the whale. The Greek historian
Plutarch said “... to the dolphin alone, beyond all others, nature has granted what the
best philosophers seek: friendship with no advantage.” The ancient Norse and Celts both
attributed special healing powers to dolphins.
Lilly’s assertions may have caught the public’s
imagination because they resonated with archetypal and mythological beliefs humanity
has carried about cetaceans from antiquity.
Justin Gregg, a science writer and research associate with the Dolphin Communication Project, suggests that many of Lilly’s
beliefs about dolphins are unfounded and
should be questioned. Gregg asks: if big
brains are the key to intelligence, why do
crows and ravens with their bird brains display forms of cognition that rival those of the
dolphins and primates? There are countless
animals that display astonishingly complex
and intelligent behavior including tool use,
hunting cooperatively, and even showing empathy towards other animals and other
species. Gregg’s book Are Dolphins Really
Smart? sparked a series of articles declaring
dolphins are dumb. In his defense, Gregg
claims that he doesn’t believe dolphins are
dumb, rather, that many other animals are
equally smart, and we shouldn’t elevate dolphins to a quasi-mystical status. Scientific research has confirmed that
dolphins have prodigious cognitive capacities,
self-awareness, complex societies, and even
cultural traditions. These creatures evolved
very differently than land-based mammals, in
an environment with very few external dangers, and abundant food. Dolphin researcher
Lori Marino from Emory University suggests
that the great evolutionary leaps in the size
of dolphins brains coincided with the development of echolocation and with advancement in social complexity. Both these
changes are correlated with communication
skills, which have become subtle and complex. Primates and cetaceans arrived at similar
social cognitive capabilities while evolving
along quite different paths.
Dolphin development is characterized
by long life spans, low reproduction rates,
small litters, and a gestation period of twelve
months. In the womb, the fetus shows a remarkable similarity to humans and primates.
At birth a dolphin’s brain is at about 40% of
its adult size, and, like humans, there’s a long
period of growth where the brain matures and
individuals learn about their society and culture. As an adult, their brain/body ratio is second only to humans. One unique quality in
Continued on Page 70
Number 115 • ATLANTIS
RISING 43
ALTERNATIVE ASTRONOMY
• BY ROBERT SCHOCH, Ph.D.
L
ately I have found myself
thinking about the question
of whether or not our Sun
might have a companion. Is the
Sun part of a binary or multiple star system?
Astronomers have estimated that anywhere
from 30% to over 80% of all stars may be
members of binary or multiple star systems,
s,
so why not the Sun? The classic response is
that if there was a “Second Sun,” then wee
should see it! But the situation may not bee
so simple.
A stellar companion to our Sun might
ht
be very faint, or all together “dark.” It could
d
conceivably be a red dwarf or a brown dwarf
rf
—or possibly it could be a small but densee
black hole. And there is a rather exotic possi-ibility that I find particularly intriguing—aa
companion star could be composed of “mirr
rror matter” (also known as “shadow matter””
or “Alice matter”; see R. Foot and Z. K. Silaagadze, 15 April 2001, “Do mirror planets exist
st
in our solar system?”).
Mirror matter is distinctly not antimatt-
and stars, and other structures, but we as orr
rdinary matter entities are not able to seee
them. Mirror matter photons, particles of
mirror matter light, pass right through ordi-inary matter without significant interactions,
s,
so mirror matter is invisible to us. On a basicc
chemical level, mirror matter does not interr
ract with normal matter. The primary way it
is predicted to interact with ordinary matter
er
is through gravitational attraction. A star
ar
composed of mirror matter (invisible to us)
s)
could have a planet composed of ordinaryy
matter orbiting around it. Our solar system
m
could have mirror objects in orbit around our
ur
Sun—a planet or planets, asteroids, comets,
s,
and so forth. Our Sun could be in a binaryy
the proto-star (our infant Sun)
should have increased considerably. The classic example of conservation of angular momentum
is that of the ice skater spinning
with outstretched arms. As the
arms are brought in close to the
body, the skater spins faster. Oddly our
Sun appears to be missing much of the
angular momentum that, based on theoretical predictions, it should have (Walter Cruttenden
and
Vince
Dayes,
2003,
“Understanding Precession of the Equinox:
Evidence our Sun may be part of a long cycle
binary system.”; “R. F.” [pseudonym], 2015,
“Speculations on the Sun’s Dark Star Companion, According to Physics”). While the
Sun contains more than 99% of the known
mass of our solar system, it accounts for less
than 4% of the angular momentum (estimates
vary).
The Sun’s missing angular momentum
has been postulated to exist in, and/or be due
to, some “dark” companion star. So far, however, it has not been found. But what if the
companion star is composed of mirror matter? Though it may be unseen, the mass of a
mirror matter star would exert a gravitational
effect on the ordinary matter objects of our
Reflecting on Our Sun
Might It Have a Mirror Matter Companion?
ter. Antimatter consists of particles that are
re
virtually identical to ordinary particles but
ut
with opposite electrical charges relative to orr
rdinary particles. When antimatter contacts orr
rdinary matter there is mutual annihilation.
n.
Mirror matter is identical to ordinary matter
er
except that it is a “mirror image,” at the scalee
of fundamental particles, of ordinary matter.
r.
Matter as we know it is said to be left-handed.
d.
As Robert Foot (University of Melbourne) exxplains it:
“. . . [what] experiments have concluusively demonstrated is that the known elemenntary particles behave in a way which is not
ot
mirror symmetric. The weak nuclear interacction is the culprit, with the asymmetry beingg
particularly striking for the weakly interacting
neutrinos. For example, today we know that
neutrinos only spin with one orientation.
If one was coming towards you it would
be spinning like a left-handed
corkscrew. Nobody has ever seen a
right-handed neutrino.” (R. Foot, 14
July 2002, “Does mirror matter
exist?”, p. 1)
Mirror matter particles interact with each other and form elements and molecules, planets
See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74
or multi-star relationship with a mirror matter
er
star or stars.
There are good reasons to suspect that
at
our Sun has a companion. Some researchers
rs
believe that there is something odd about our
ur
solar system—possibly something is missing.
g.
The laws of physics state that in a closed sysstem angular momentum should be conserved.
d.
One theory is that our solar system formed
d
from a cloud of gas, dust, and debris (a nebbula), which was spinning around its center. A
Ass
gravity caused the dust and gasses to conndense into a proto-star, planets, and other
er
solar system objects, the speed of rotation of
solar system. A mirror matter star gravitationally connected to our Sun and solar system
might well provide the missing mass and thus
missing angular momentum. Our Sun might
be gravitationally linked with a mirror matter
star such that both the mirror matter star and
our Sun orbit around the center of their combined masses (barycenter), meaning our Sun
would have significant angular momentum
not just in the spin on its axis, but also in its
movement along such an orbit—yet we would
never “see” the mirror matter companion of
our Sun.
As viewed from Earth there is a group
of pulsars (rapidly rotating neutron stars) that
show anomalous behavior in terms of the
“pulses” of electromagnetic radiation they
emit. This could be explained if the barycenter of our solar system is being accelerated
toward the pulsars in question. The astronomer Edward Harrison (19192007) suggested this could occur if
our Sun is in a binary system (E. R.
Harrison, 1977, Nature, vol. 270,
pp. 324-326). However, Harrison
voiced the opinion it is “hard to
believe that a star so close [to
Continued on Page 71
Number 115 • ATLANTIS
RISING 45
30 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 115
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