The only possible conclusions we can draw from this are:
1) Duncan Lunan is a highly imaginative con artist (in fact he has published science fiction stories before)
2) Prof. Lunan interpreted the graph incorrectly and his extrapolations are more speculative
3) An advanced civilization in the vicinity of Arcturus (Hokulea, the guiding star of Hawaiian mythology) sent an unmanned satellite probe to monitor Earth 15,000 years ago, to be activated by radio waves when Humans reached that technological point in their evolution. A dialogue could then have been established, and we might have gained much more than the misunderstood reference greeting.
SOURCE: Anomalies Network
Many sceptics claim the legend was retrospectively created after the 1998 pictures emerged, with the preceding odd events weaved into the story to make it more convincing.
The noises from 1899 and 1928 remain a mystery, but the possible causes do not so far include an alien satellite, according to scientists.
They insist research shows that in 1954 Mr Keyhoe had been promoting a UFO book and the articles had been written in a tongue-in-cheek fashion by the papers.
A follow-up, but less widely read, article in Time also confirmed that the strange satellite had in fact been the remains of an Air Force Discoverer satellite that had gone astray, they found.
There are reports that Mr Cooper, although maintaining he saw a number of UFOs in space, never claimed to have seen the Black Knight satellite on that mission or at all.
Mr Lunan is also later reported to have denied suggesting any alien satellite had its origins 12,600 years ago and that his conclusion that the noises were a star map were from unscientific methods.
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About "ghost
echoes" and the "Radio Flying Saucer" effect
by Volker
Grassman
The mystery of long delayed radio echoes (LDE) baffles radio amateurs and scientific experts for many decades. You may find qualitative interpretations in the literature but no quantitative model is yet available capable to explain the phenomenon with scientific conviction. The so-called 'multiple-tone effect' misguides VHF radio amateurs by giving the illusion of an Aurora band opening ... but there is none. Contrary to LDEs, the multi-tone finds a simple explanation because it is caused by radiowaves reflected by airplanes crossing the antenna beam which results in heavily distorted radio signals similar to the audio pitch which is well known in Aurora backscatter QSOs.
Long-delayed radio echoes (LDE) are defined as radio echoes received 1 to 40 seconds after transmission. LDE are mainly reported on HF but radio amateurs also report LDE on EME circuits in 432 as well as 1296 MHz. I was a teenaged SWL (many years ago, actually) when I heard about this mysterious radio echoes the very first time. In that book, Duncan Lunan, professor of the Scottish Association for Technology and Research was referenced with his idea of an alien radio repeater, i.e. he interpreted LDE by an extraterrestrial space probe travelling in our solar system for more than 30.000 years. I wasn't very much impressed about this idea but my interest was nevertheless attracted by this strange radio propagation phenomenon.
I therefore decided to contact Prof. Lunan but my letter returned several months later. The Scottish mail obviously tried very hard to identify this professor, without any success though and I was convinced the whole story is nothing else than a fake. One or two years later I was surprised by finding another article also featuring this long-delayed radio echoes - and this was a serious article, apparently, which finally referenced the JGR, i.e. the Journal of Geophysical Research. At that time I had no idea what the JGR is (it is in fact one of leading scientific journals in geophysical research) - and even the bookstore in my little hometown couldn't figure out where and how to get that document. Thus, I was facing another dead end and I finally gave up further investigation.
The situation changed at university because you cannot deal with ionospheric research without knowing this excellent scientific journal. And I indeed discovered that article in the library and I was speechless: Long-delayed radio echoes are discussed by serious scientists - in terms of a real geophysical phenomenon rather than in terms of alien space probes. In recent years, I compiled a hugh amount of scientific literature on this phenomenon including this review article from Muldrew which was published in JGR in 1979. He discussed all aspects of long-delayed radio echoes even far-fetched ideas and, believe it or not, he mentioned Duncan Lunan in that scientific paper. I was pretty much baffled to learn that Mr. Lunan is a real character being referenced in a scientific journal. However, in that article Mr. Lunan wasn't introduced as a professor in research and technology but was introduced as ... a science fiction author. From my perspective, long-delayed radio echoes is a curiosity - in all aspects.
by Volker Grassman
SOURCE: DF5AI.net - Amateur Radio Propagation Studies (ARPS)
Long-Delayed
Radio
Echoes: Observations and interpretations
VHF
Communications, 2, p. 109-116, 1993
SpecialTopics1b1
(Englise="+4">Black Knight Satellite
1954 Encounter
On August 23, 1954 the technology magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology released a story that created quite a stir in the American population. It also angered Pentagon officials who were trying desperately to keep the story secret. The short one paragraph article in the "Washington Roundup" section stated:
Pentagon scare over the observance of two previously unobserved satellites orbiting the earth has dissipated with the identification of the objects as natural, not artificial satellites. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, expert on extraterrestrial bodies from the University of New Mexico, headed the identification project. One satellite is orbiting about 400 miles out, while the other track is 600 miles from the earth. Pentagon thought momentarily the Russians had beaten the U.S. to space explorations.The next day the New York Times, basing their story in part on the Aviation Week story, wrote their own version telling of the discovery of the two objects orbiting the earth. In a matter of days the story was all over the country. Not all people, however, believed the objects were natural, as the chances of capturing two asteroids by the earth's gravitation field was almost impossible.
Many in the public simply assumed that the two objects were artificial and might have been tied into the close approach of the planet Mars which always seemed to bring with it many more UFO sightings that the norm.
On the evening of November 28, 1954, at radio station WGN in Chicago, the two satellites were the topic of conversation. The radio host Jim Mills, and his guest for the day UFO researcher John Otto (referred to in CIA documents as "the villain in our story" and "the scoundrel"), got an idea to try and communicate with the orbiting satellites. The plan of action was carefully planned and kept secret until the day of the plan.
At exactly 11:15 during the radio show, Mills made an announcement that they were going to attempt to send a signal to the orbiting satellites, and get the aliens to send back a message for the radio listeners. Mills announced that in ten minutes - at 11:25 they would prompt the aliens to send their message with the words "Come in Outer Space." Only 10 minutes warning were given to prevent someone in the audience from getting a truck with the proper radio equipment and broadcasting a signal.
Mills announced that once they had prompted the space men to talk they would shut off the microphones in the studio for fifteen seconds. They would, however, continue to broadcast their signal to the Chicago audience. The aliens were expected to tap into the WGN transmitter, and send their signal to the radio listeners. All the radio listeners were encouraged to run and get a tape recorder so they could record the signal if it did come through.
When 11:25 arrived, Mills uttered the words "Come in Outer space" and turned off the microphones. The two men had a radio in the studio so they too could hear the alien message. They sat and waited the appointed fifteen seconds but hear nothing coming over their own radio. The show ended and the two men left the studio.
Mills and Otto were away from the studio when the calls began to come in. There were four calls in total coming from people who claimed that they had heard the alien message. They were from varying places around the radio listening audience. Later, CIA documents revealed that five Chicago ham radio operators also claimed to have taped "these wired coded messages from outer space." (One listener in Wisconsin stated they too had made a tape recording of the message but it was never recovered.)
One of the callers who claimed to have received a message were two older sisters who lived north of the studio. The two sisters, Marie and Mildred Maier phoned and were upset about the joke the station had just played on the listeners. They stated that it was not funny to be playing jingle bells pretending it was a message from space.
They were told that jingle bells had not been played, and arrangement were made to visit with the ladies. John Otto met with the women to get their story, and was able to make a copy of the tape. The tape was then played a number of times over the air. It apparently did sound like jingle bells with some sort of strange telex noise in the background.
In early 1955 the Maier sisters reported on their UFO experiences, along with the story of the message from space in the Journal of Space Flight. The Office of Scientific Investigation at the CIA saw the article and contacted the Scientific Contact Branch to recover the tape.
Two men from the Chicago Contact Division, Chief George O. Forrest and officer Dewalt Walker, met with the sisters to recover the tape. Because the CIA was openly claiming that they had no involvement in the UFO phenomena, beyond their short involvement with the 1953 Robertson Panel, they could not tell the Maier sisters they were from the CIA.
What they did to overcome this problem was to dress up as Air Force officers to make the Maier sisters believe they would be dealing with the Air Force. They did this as the Air Force was publicly known to be working on UFOs. The CIA had always publicly denied they were involved in the investigation of UFOs, so any involvement by the CIA had to be hidden.
Their first attempt to recover the tape from the two women was unsuccessful. The women were impressed that the government was interested in their tape, but they would not part with it. In the second visit the two intelligence officers were able to get a copy of the tape. They forwarded a copy to CIA headquarters.
Forrest wrote that he felt the case was not a hoax. "In all seriousness," he wrote. "We don't think that the sisters themselves are trying to fake anything." He then wrote that he hoped the Chicago office would be informed if there should be an answer.
It was over until 1957, when NICAP researcher Leon Davidson, talked to the Maier sisters and decided that he would like to talk to the Air Force officer who had recovered the tape. Furthermore he was very interested to see the analysis that the Air Force had done on the tape.
Davidson wrote to the address that Dewalt had given the sisters, and received a reply from Walker stating that he had forwarded the tape to the proper authorities and had not further information.
Not satisfied and now assuming Walker might actually be CIA he wrote to Eisenhower's Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles demanding the results of the tape analysis, and the real identity of Dewalt.
Dulles did is what the CIA normally does in such cases. Firstly, he reported Davidson to the FBI as a possible subversive, and secondly he created a new lie.
The Air Force was contacted by the chief of the Chicago Contact Division and told to write a letter to Davidson falsely telling him that Dewalt was in fact an Air Force officer and that the tape had shown only identifiable Morse code from a known U.S. licensed radio station.
Next J. Arnold Shaw, assistant to Allen Dulles, wrote Davidson on May 8, 1957 with a carefully worded statement which deflecting involvement away from the CIA to the Air Force. "A survey of the intelligence community has resulted in the determination that the tape in question was analyzed by another agency of the government," wrote Shaw. "We believe you will receive another communication shortly from the Air force which will answer your query as to the nature of the recording."
Armed with this new information Davidson again contacted the CIA demanding to know the identity of the Morse code operator and the name of the agency that had done the analysis claimed by the Air Force. As the CIA had claimed the tape was not analyzed they were in a situation where they didn't know what to do
CIA officers under cover contacted Davidson and promised to try and get him the name of the Morse operator and the identification of the transmitter if possible. This, of course, was just a stall tactic.
When this did not pacify Davidson, the CIA again dressed up an intelligence officer who met with Davidson in person in New York City, and this officer tried to talk Walker out of pursuing the case any longer. He told Davidson that the Air Force could not "disclose who was doing what." Davidson would not accept the argument and pressed on. The officer then agreed to see what he could do.
The general rule for the CIA seemed to be "keep lying till you get it right." When confronted with a letter from Congressman Joseph Karth related to Davidson's claims that he was being lied to by the CIA, the CIA chose to lie outright to the Congressman. Karth was told that other than a brief involvement with the Robertson panel, the "CIA has not participated in any flying saucer activities and has referred all correspondence to the Air Force." As to Mr. Davidson's charges the CIA wrote to the congressman;
Mr. Davidson's belief that this agency is involved in the 'flying saucer furore' and is using this as a tool in psychological warfare is entirely unfounded. His indication that CIA is misguiding persons in leading them to believe in Flying Saucers is also entirely unfounded.
The next lie in store for Davidson involved a CIA officer who had dressed up as the Air Force officer phoned Davidson back and told him a thorough check showed that the signal had been of U.S. (not outer space) origin, and the tape and notes had been destroyed to conserve space.
Knowing now that he was getting the runaround by the CIA, Davidson warned the agent that "he and his agency, whichever it was, were acting like Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamster Union in destroying records which might indict them."
This statement led to a funny series of messages inside the CIA. People dealing with Davidson were warned that he had already been given too much information, and too many names. No one was allowed to answer anything from Davidson unless the letter was registered. They were reminded that they were under no legal obligation to answer questions from the public.
Strangely, this technique of simply ignoring Davidson actually worked. Eventually, Davidson seemed to give up on the case, and the tape from outer space was forgotten until 1997 when the CIA retold part of the story in their 1997 report A Die-Hard Issue: CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90" which was published in "Studies in Intelligence" in 1997.
Note: This author has spent over two years trying to recover the documents used to footnote A Die-Hard Issue: CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90" related to the Maier case.
 |
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Three weeks ago, headlines announced that the U.S. had detected a mysterious "dark" satellite wheeling overhead on a regular orbit. There was nervous speculation that it might be a surveillance satellite launched by the Russians, and it brought the uneasy sensation that the U.S. did not know what was going on over its own head. But last week the Department of Defense proudly announced that the satellite had been identified. It was a space derelict, the remains of an Air Force Discoverer satellite that had gone astray. The dark satellite was the first object to demonstrate the effectiveness of the U.S.'s new watch on space. And the three-week time lag in identification was proof that the system still lacks full coordination and that some bugs still have to be ironed out.
First Sighting. The most important component of the space watch went into operation about six months ago with the construction of "Dark Fence," a kind of radar trip wire stretching across the width of the U.S. Designed by the Naval Research Laboratory to keep track of satellites whose radios are silent, it is a notable improvement on other radars, which have difficulty finding a small satellite unless they know where to look. Big, 50-kw. transmitters were established at Gila River, near Phoenix, Ariz, and Jordan Lake, Ala., spraying radio waves upward in the shape of open fans. Some 250 miles on either side, receiving stations pick up signals that bounce off any object passing through the fans. By a kind of triangulation, the operators can make rough estimates of the object's speed, distance and course.
On Jan. 31 Dark Fence detected two passes of what seemed to be an unknown space object. After detecting several passes during the following days, Captain W. E. Berg, commanding officer of Dark Fence, decided that something was circling overhead on a roughly polar orbit. He raced to the Pentagon and in person reported the menacing stranger to Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke. Within minutes the news was communicated to President Eisenhower and marked top secret.
In the confusion, there was a delay before anyone took the step necessary to positively identify the strange satellite: informing the Air Force's newly established surveillance center in Bedford, Mass. It is the surveillance center's job to take all observations on satellites from all friendly observing centers, both optical and electronic, feed them into computers to produce figures that will identify each satellite, describe its orbit and predict its behavior. Says one top official, explaining the cold facts of the space age: "The only way of knowing that a new satellite has appeared is by keeping track of the old ones."
It took two weeks for Dark Fence's scientists to check back through their taped observations, and to discover that the mysterious satellite had first showed up on Aug. 15. The Air Force surveillance center also checked its records to provide a list of everything else that was circling in the sky, and its computers worked out a detailed description of the new object's behavior. The evidence from both Air Force and Navy pointed to Discoverer V, fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif, on Aug. 13.
SOURCE: Time
Magazine
On
September 3, 1960, seven months after the satellite was first detected
by radar, a tracking camera at Grumman Aircraft Corporation's Long
Island factory took a photograph of it. People on the ground had been
occasionally seeing it for about two weeks at that point. Viewers would
make it out as a red glowing object moving in an east-to-west orbit.
Most satellites of the time, according to what little material I've been
able to find on the black knight satellite, moved from west-to-east.
It's speed was also about three times normal. A committee was formed to
examine it, but nothing more was ever made public. - See More
The following is an
archived article about the Black Knight
Satellite, from Feb. 11, 1960:
 |
 |
"In 1963, astronaut Gordon Cooper supposedly reported a UFO sighting during his 15th orbit in Mercury 9 that was confirmed by tracking stations, but there is no evidence that this actually happened. Brian Dunning notes that this story appears in "virtually every UFO book about the Black Knight case", but says that no record of such an event was given by NASA, radar station personnel, or from any contemporary source. Dunning describes the story as "purely an invention of modern writers"."- Wikipedia
"Three years later, Gordon Cooper was launched into space for a 22 orbit mission. On his final orbit, he reported seeing a glowing green shape ahead of his capsule, and heading in his direction. It's said that the Muchea tracking station, in Australia, which Cooper reported this too was also able to pick it up on radar traveling in an east-to-west orbit. This event was reported by NBC, but reporters were forbidden to ask Cooper about the event on his landing. The official explanation is that an electrical malfunction in the capsule had caused high levels of carbon dioxide, which induced hallucinations." - See More
 |
The Black
Knight Satellite
by John Emerson
The black knight satellite. I'm not really sure what to make of this story. I've only seen the most sporadic mention of this thing on the occasional website. But man, as a long time fan of Philip K. Dick, the first time I heard about it my eyes sure went wide. Regardless of the truth of the situation, it's one hell of a tale.
The most cited report of the satellite comes from Disneyland of the Gods, by John Keel. He reports that in February 1960 the US detected an unknown object in polar orbit, a feat that neither they or the USSR had been able to accomplish. As if that wasn't enough, it apparently was several sizes larger than anything either country would have been able to get off the ground.
And then, the oddness began. HAM operators began to receive strange coded messages. One person in particular said he managed to decode one of the transmissions, and it corresponded to a star chart. A star chart which would have been plotted from earth 13,000 years ago, and focused on the Epsilon Bostes star system.
On September 3, 1960, seven months after the satellite was first detected by radar, a tracking camera at Grumman Aircraft Corporation's Long Island factory took a photograph of it. People on the ground had been occasionally seeing it for about two weeks at that point. Viewers would make it out as a red glowing object moving in an east-to-west orbit. Most satellites of the time, according to what little material I've been able to find on the black knight satellite, moved from west-to-east. It's speed was also about three times normal. A committee was formed to examine it, but nothing more was ever made public.
Three years later, Gordon Cooper was launched into space for a 22 orbit mission. On his final orbit, he reported seeing a glowing green shape ahead of his capsule, and heading in his direction. It's said that the Muchea tracking station, in Australia, which Cooper reported this too was also able to pick it up on radar traveling in an east-to-west orbit. This event was reported by NBC, but reporters were forbidden to ask Cooper about the event on his landing. The official explanation is that an electrical malfunction in the capsule had caused high levels of carbon dioxide, which induced hallucinations.
Creepy, cool, story to be sure. There's two things in particular which are of particular note to Philip K. Dick. The most obvious is the idea of a satellite orbiting the earth and sending coded communications to it. One of the theories Dick had for his experiences was that they had been triggered, or enhanced, by an extremely ancient and alien satellite. The initial 2-3-74 experience also began with a very similar color to the first sighting of the black knight, a reddish pinkish light beamed directly at him.
Phil also mentioned in his exegesis that he considered ten of his novels to be of particular importance, with the novel valis as the cipher to unlock their meaning. These ten books, the "meta novel", are Eye in the Sky, Time Out of Joint, The Man in the High Castle, The Game Players of Titan, Martian Time Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, UBIK, A Maze of Death and of course VALIS. I think it's fair to include Radio Free Albemuth in there as well, which was written after his meta novel statement, and which is in many ways a retelling of VALIS. What's interesting here is that he wrote the first, Eye in the Sky, so soon before the black knight sighting. About three or four years before it was detected by radar. Well, if in fact it was ever there to be detected.
Relevant quotes from valis:
"The satellite," Fat said. "VALIS. Vast
Active Living Intel-ligence System. It fires
information down to them?"
"It does more
than that," Kevin said. "Under certain
circumstances it controls them. It can override
them when it wants to."
"And they're
trying to shoot it down?" I said. "With that
missile?"
Kevin said,
"The early Christians-the real ones-can make you
do anything they want you to do. And see-or not
see -anything. That's what I get out of the
picture."
"But they're
dead," I said. "The picture was set in the
present."
"They're dead,"
Kevin said, "if you believe time is real. Didn't
you see the time dysfunctions?"
Relevant quotes from Radio Free Albemuth:
Since my contact came in most strangely
between 3:00 and 4:00 A.M., I realized that
probably a booster satellite, of alien origin,
orbited Earth, a slave communications satellite
that had been sent here thousands of years ago.
'What are you
doing sitting out on the patio?' Rachel asked me.
'Listening,' I said.
'To what?'
To the voices of the stars,' I said, although more accurately I meant the voices from the stars. But it was as if the stars themselves spoke, as I sat there in the chilly dark, alone except for my cat, who was out there out of custom anyhow; each night Pinky sat on the railing of the patio, communing as I was but over a longer period of time, over his entire adult life. Seeing him now I understood that he was picking up information in the night, from the night, from the pattern of blinks that came by starlight. He was hooked up with the universe as he sat here now, like myself, gazing upward silently.
The new personality in me had not
awakened from a sleep of two millennia; it had,
more accurately speaking, been printed out by the
alien satellite, impressed on me afresh from
outside. It was an addition, not a substitution in
place of me but a kind of package identity based
on the total knowledge of the satellite. It was to
raise me to the highest level possible in my
ability to cope. The satellite, itself linked to
higher life forms, was concerned with my capacity
to live; it or they, the totality of them, had
seen me faltering under the oppression, and their
response was reflexive. It amounted to a rational
attempt to give aid to whoever was in touch with
them, who was capable of assimilating their
printout. I had been selected for that reason
alone. Their concern was universal. They would
have assisted anyone they could reach.
The tragedy lay
in their inability to reach the people of our
planet.
One odd point that Moyashka had noted
which he could not account for was the fact that
the radio signals came only when the source was
above Earth's dark or night side; during the day
the signals ceased. Moyashka conjectured that the
so-called Heaviside layer might be involved.
The signals,
although short in duration, seemed 'highly
information rich' because of their sophistication
and complexity. Curiously, the frequency changed
periodically, a phenomenon found in transmissions
seeking to avoid jamming, Moyashka stated.
Further, his team had discovered, entirely by
accident, that animals in their Pul-kovo
laboratory underwent slight but regular physical
changes during the time of signal transmission.
Their blood volume altered and their blood
pressure readings increased. Provisionally,
Moyashka conjectured that radiation accompanying
the radio signals might account for it.
[Ed. Note here
the, perhaps slight, similarity in the name of the
fictional scientist who discovered the satellite,
Moyashka, and the Australian Muchea tracking
station which picked up Cooper's sighting.]
If the Russians did photograph the ETI satellite, the invader, they would find it old and pitted. I had been there thousands of years.
The satellite had passed from our world and, with it, the healing rays, like those of an invisible sun, felt by creatures but unseen and unacknowledged. The sun with healing in its wings.
Even if the stations in this local region or sector are all overshadowed and don't light up any longer, it is a sight to remember. With this the satellite presented us with its final insight into the nature of things: synapses in a living brain. And the name we give to its functioning, its awareness of itself and its many parts - ' She smiled at me. 'It's why you saw the figure of Aphrodite. That's what holds all the trillions of stations into harmony.'
'Yes,' I said, 'it was harmonized, and
over such distances. There was no coercion, only
agreement.'
And the
coordination of all the transmitting and receiving
stations, I thought, we call Valis: Vast Active
Living Intelligence System. Our friend who cannot
die, who lies on this side of the grave and on the
other. His love, I thought, is greater than
empires. And unending.
SOURCE: Phildickian Gnosticism
 |
In Disneyland of the Gods, John Keel writes of the Black Knight satellite. Never mind the almanac. You won't find it listed with Sputnik or Explorer. Black Knight is the name given to a radar blip discovered in 1960. This mystery satellite was found in a polar orbit, something neither the US nor the Soviets had accomplished. It was several times laps the strangest effect associated with the Black Knight is the Long Delay Echo (LDE). The effect observed is that radio or television signals sent into space bounce back seconds (or even days) later, as if recorded and retransmitted by a satellite. They didn't begin with the Black Knight, but they were part of its mystery. Keel places the earliest LDEs in the 1920s. It's not in Keel's book, but in 1974 another mystery entered earth orbit. No radar saw it. No ham operator listened to it. One man contacted it- or rather, was contacted by it. That man was science fiction author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982). Dick is probably best known to the public for writing the stories on which the movies Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), and Screamers (1996) were based. Before the movies, there were the books. That's where we'll find Dick's own encounter with a Black Knight.
Beginning in February of 1974, Dick had a series of "mystic" experiences (substitute "paranormal" or "fortean" or "psychotic" if you like). When he died eight years later, he was still unsure of their origin or their meaning. Left behind was what he called the Exegesis, an 8000- page, one-million-word continuing dialogue with himself written late, late at night. This is where we go to find the Black Knight's return.
Very little of Dick's Exegesis has been published. The Black Knight material formed the core of four novels - Radio Free Albemuth, VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. They remain in print. All four read as autobiography. The pivotal element in each is Dick's own contact with the Black Knight, which he called the Vast Active Living Intelligence System, VALIS for short. In a series of visions and coincidences, VALIS revealed itself to Dick as an ancient satellite from another world. It was sent here long ago by three-eyed, crab-clawed beings from a planet orbiting Fomalhaut. T for the satellite: Zebra. He called it Zebra because of its ability to mimic its surroundings. We'll discuss that in a moment, when we return to LDEs.
Dick's contact began with a vision of St. Elmo's Fire filling his apartment. It was a strange pink flame which burned but did not consume. He says his cat saw it too. It was strongest at night. Dick would lie in bed unable to sleep, watching the light show. He compared it to a rapid-fire succession of modern paintings by the likes of Klee and Kandinsky. At one point he wondered if Soviet scientists were working with the aliens on psychotronics experiments. He thought they might be beaming images at him from a Moscow Museum. His dreams during this period took on a whole new nature, so much so that he began referring to them as tutelary dreams because of their information-rich content. He experienced numerous waking visions as well.
In some of his visions, Dick saw Soviet scientists rushing around behind the scenes to keep the alien satellite functioning. Strange texts which appeared to be Russian operating manuals were held up for him to see. The Builders, as he came to call the aliens, were sometimes seen floating in large vats of water, observing the operation. The whole complex system was apparently set up solely for his benefit!
Dick saw VALIS as a benign entity. He saw its position as teacher, sometimes protectress. (I say "protectress" rather than "protector" because VALIS reminded Dick of his twin sister Jane, who died in infancy.) He credited VALIS with taking charge of his life, recovering a lot of income due from unpaid royalties, and even re-margining his typewriter.
While listening to the radio one day, Dick heard the words of the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" change to a warning from VALIS: "Your son has an undiagnosed right inguinal hernia. The hydrocele has burst, and it has descended into the scrotal sac. He requires immediate attention, or will soon die." Dick rushed him to the hospital and found every word to be true. The doctor scheduled the operation for the same day.
Dick occasionally heard other, less positive messages from his radio at night, even when it was turned off. Admittedly, hearing voices and claiming harassment from an energy beam are symptoms of mental illness, but there seems to be something more at work here. Anybody can claim crazy, incredible things, but only Philip K. Dick produced works of art because of it. In the end, though, he may have overexposed himself to it. As he hinted in VALIS, too much of a good thing can kill you.
Dick had another vision. He saw the pink St. Elmo's fire coalesce into a door perfectly proportioned to the Golden Mean. Through the door he saw ancient Greece, or some other Mediterranean land. He later regretted never stepping through it. This brings us full circle to the subject of Long Delay Echoes. As Dick sat staring at the Y in an ICHTHYS sticker in his window one afternoon, he pondered these strange occurrences. As he did, he saw first-century Rome fade in and remain superimposed on top of 1974 California. The experience lasted through February and March. He still knew which was the vision and which was real, but when he looked away and then looked back, Rome was still there.
The message he decided VALIS was sending him is that we still live in Roman times. Nothing has changed, we still live under the rule of a cruelly corrupt empire, and the Christian apocalypse is near. VALIS predicted the downfall of a King. Nixon left office soon after. As Dick said in VALIS, "The Empire Never Ended." This catch-phrase was made known to him in one of his tutelary dreams.
If this concept of one "reality" superimposed onto another is difficult to conceptualize, let's consider a parallel from more orthodox (!) sources. Without trying to establish or deny its validity, the field of psychic archeology tries to do exactly what Dick had happen to him. This is akin to remote viewing with a time element involved, rather than one of space. This author is in possession of a small number of unpublished correspondence describing others' experiences of this phenomenon. One called the satellite "Max." Dick was not the only one.
Though Dick's vision of Rome faded, his tutelary dreams continued for six more years. So did the AI voice (Artificial Intelligence), a soft feminine voice he heard in times of stress and during hypnagogic revery. This was the aspect of VALIS which reminded him of his late twin sister Jane. He claimed to have first heard it during a high school physics exam (it gave him the answers) 25 years earlier. During the VALIS days it told him, "The Head Apollo is about to return. St. Sophia is going to be born again; she was not acceptable before. The Buddha is in the park. Siddhartha sleeps (but is going to awaken). The time you have waited for has come." It's in The Exegesis. Dick quoted it in VALIS.
It all appeared to end November 17, 1980. Dick claimed to have had a theophany that day, though witnesses noticed nothing unusual. Dick suddenly comprehended God as infinite, by nature incomprehensible. In other words, the Exegesis would never solve anything because there was no answer to be had. Dick actually stopped writing for a time because of this, but was at it again before too long. It was the search that was important to him, after all. He wrote The Divine Invasion around this time, which was when the voice finally stopped.
Dick persisted in
speculating for the remaining year of his life,
and managed to produce one more novel before the
er> Alien Speech Found in NASA's Saturn
Radio Signal
..
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June 30,
2007
Posted by
jostvandyke Youtube
Important info - Please read:
Speech patterns have been found in a
radio signal released by NASA almost 3 years
previously in 2004.
Judge for yourself what the voices
are saying, it is a very bizarre anomaly but very
much worth investigating.
Instructions:
1) Download and save the original WAV file from NASA/Cassini website:
SOURCE: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/saturn/audio/pia07967-072504.wav
2) Open an audio editor like Cool Edit or Sonar and raise the pitch/frequency of the file by 12 tones with the pitch shifter... and there it is, speech patterns.
How can anyone explain this anomaly. Certainly NASA have no explanation for it after we presented the file to them for their opinion. SETI also don't know what make of it. What do you think?
SOURCE: http://cassini.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/cassini/SKR2/
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Apollo X Gets
Glimpse Of An Extraterrestrial Monolith In Space
by Richard
Boylan, Ph.D. 1998
drboylan@jps.net
Apollo X Gets Glimpse Of An Extraterrestrial Monolith In Space; Later A Secret Military Space Shuttle Retrieves the Space Beacon
The following information was disclosed to me by a reliable confidential informant, who previously worked on contract for the National Security Agency, and maintains connections within the Intelligence community. This informant, whom I shall call "Jesse", has over 40 years of notes from a very close relative, who served as CIA liaison to the National Security Council on UFO/ET matters. This information has been confirmed by a second source, Dr. Michael Wolf of the National Security Council's unacknowledged subcommittee, the MJ-12 Special Studies Group. I have talked with Dr. Wolf about the notes' author, Jesse's relative. Dr. Wolf said that that CIA official "was like an uncle to me."
The reports which follow are thus not "leaks", but rather based on planned releases of information. These releases are part of a public Acclimation Program, an official though unacknowledged U.S. Government policy of "processed release of information", as Dr. Wolf described it.
According to "Jesse", in 1969 the Apollo 10 astronauts Stafford, Cernan and Young were the first to film an extraterrestrial space beacon, dubbed The Monolith, somewhat like, but smaller than, the one in Arthur C. Clarke's book/movie "2001". They were not, however, the first astronauts to spot this ET beacon. The Monolith was first sighted by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, in 1961. He was followed into space that same year by American astronaut Alan Shephard, who also sighted the beacon. Apollo 10 went to it, and filmed it from every angle. The Monolith acted like a communication beacon. Jesse said, "It sort of acts like the message received in the movie "Contact". It had a message on it, in addition to a map of the extraterrestrial civilization which placed it there], and how to get to them."
The Apollo 10 astronauts brought back the message captured on film. The Monolith's energy affected Apollo 10's instrumentation, so that its crew almost didn't get back. As soon as the film Apollo 10 took came back to Earth, those Intelligence compartments which deal with UFOs were busy poring over information from the Monolith.
The government then used an early secret military space shuttle to go get the Monolith itself. This covert military spacecraft flew years before the first "official" NASA Shuttle's public flights in 1981. The spaceplane is operated by a secret military astronaut program out of Vandenburg Air Force Base, California, among other locations. The second flight mission of this unacknowledged military shuttle retrieved the Monolith, and brought it back to Earth in 1972 for study. [1]
After being retrieved, the Monolith was then transferred to a secret research facility. Scientific analysis of the Monolith was conducted at this domed underwater facility located north of Abaco, the northernmost of the Bahamas Islands. RCA Corporation is in charge of that experimentation research, Jesse says. Jesse stated, "They did it underwater, after they saw people dropping like flies. They figured that there would be better containment [of the Monolith's suspected cosmic energy emanations] underwater." He noted that the space beacon "has a sound to it, like it talks. It also gives off a light show." Dr. Michael Wolf shed additional light on the beacons. "They are 'postcards from the rim'. They emit both light and tone signals, sending a mathematical language. There may be five or more ET civilizations involved in setting up these beacons."
Among the scientists who worked on it were famed astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command General William Stubblebine, (ret.), National Security Council consultant Dr. Michael Wolf, and a former division head of CIA. Everyone who had prolonged close physical contact with the Monolith got cancer, Jesse says. "And those who tried to dissect it [the Monolith] died right there on the spot." The CIA Counter-Intelligence official and Dr. Wolf got colon cancer. The CIA man required surgery, but Dr. Wolf's cancer later went into a spontaneous remission. Dr. Sagan eventually died of his cancer.
Jesse feels that there are many more space beacons out in space, acting as "postcards". "I'm sure Mother Russia had one." [2]
Jesse also revealed a 1973 formula for gravity control, used by the military to construct antigravity aerospace vehicles.[a] He disclosed that noted quantum physicist Jack Sarfatti was in a position to be familiar with this gravity formula used by the government. Jesse observed, "With regard to Sarfatti, as I can determine it [from the notes], he was on site doing work on the relationship between downed UFO's and back-engineering, to the degree that he assisted in the gravity makeup formulae."
Jesse added that Sarfatti noticed that the captured UFO's field propulsion guidance was focused on the ET pilot. "[The UFO pilot console] had the hand placement with micro holes and light-emitting senses [sensors] to feel the impulse of the sudden hand movement; hence it [pilot and UFO] became as one. The driver always feels the outer skin's 'road feel', so it [the UFO] can handle better than a Corvette at 125 mph in fifth gear in the big curve." Jesse added, "Then again, Sarfatti has these [formula] numbers...he can attest to the numbers and even affirm that [antigravity field propulsion] is in use today! Matter of fact, the formulae even tell a story of the skin association between flyer and craft." [3] They [ET pilots] think [a command]...and go. Sort of like...point-click and ship! Boom...you're there."
The RAND Corporation (a CIA think tank) holds the key to the [gravity-control] formulae." Jesse revealed. "Our Navy even set up the United Earth Space Naval Forces. I believe this group to be in existence today." [4]
[a] phi(x) =<0lphi(x) l0 > + ?(x), where <0lphi(x)l0> is the vacuum expectation value, and m2^<0lphi(x)l0>^2 represents the particle's density of the ground state in the non-realtivistic limit. The action of this field in the presence of gravity is...intrinsic gravitational cosmological constant Lambda/ 8piG receives a contribution (1/2) m2^<0lphi(x)l0>^2.
Extraterrestrial Base On Earth, Sanctioned By Officials Since 1954, Now Revealed Secret U.S.-USSR Manned Space Station, Positioned In Orbit For Past 30 Years, Also Disclosed
In July of 1952 the world was electrified by large newspaper headlines and photos of squadrons of UFOs flying repeatedly over the nation's Capital in Washington, DC. Four months later WW II General Dwight Eisenhower was elected President. The same month President Eisenhower took office (January, 1953), the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) was ordered to determine if UFOs were interstellar vehicles. OSI convened the Robertson Panel of scientists, which recommended expansion of an Air Force study of UFOs, Project Blue Book.
A year later, in April, 1954, as documented by Gerald Light, President Eisenhower made a secret trip to Muroc Field (now Edwards Air Force Base), in the California desert, accompanied by generals, reporter Franklin Allen of the Hearst Newspapers Group, Los Angeles Catholic Bishop James McIntyre, and others. The President had previously arranged to be in nearby Palm Springs, CA, purportedly for a golfing vacation. He "was spirited over to Muroc one night," while reporters were fed the cover story that the President had a toothache and needed to see a dentist. While at Muroc Air Field, Eisenhower was present while an extraterrestrial disc landed. Several Star Visitors emerged to converse with the President and the generals. The extraterrestrials requested that Eisenhower make the public aware of extraterrestrial contact with Earth forthwith. The President protested that humans were not ready, and needed time to be prepared for adjusting to this stupendous reality. By the end of the following month, May, 1954, President Eisenhower's CIA Director, Walter Bedell Smith, Prince Bernhard of Netherlands, David Rockefeller and other top world financiers, later-Secretary of State Dean Rusk, later-British Minister of Defense Denis Healey, and other Western power leaders convened the inaugural meeting of the Bilderberg Group, "a means of Western collective management of the world order". [5] One of the early items on the Bilderberg agenda was extraterrestrial contact. Shortly after establishing itself, the Bilderberg Group collaborated with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), another international policy body devoted to world management. They discussed the problem of adjusting humankind to extraterrestrial presence. Bilderberg and CFR decided jointly in the mid-1950s to enter into an arrangement with the extraterrestrials: The ETs were given an island in French Polynesia as a base on Earth. This arrangement afforded them an opportunity to monitor closely Earth cultures and behavior; and it permitted Earth governments a way to monitor extraterrestrial culture and behavior. "It became an on-going experiment," as my former-NSA informant put it. He added that when official public announcement of the extraterrestrial presence occurs, "they will be the ones introduced to Earthlings; "Oh, by the way, we want to welcome our neighbors from the Pleiades, who by the way have been here since [the beginning of Earth] time, but [are] actually living in our place, date, space and time.'" "They are the diplomatic corps." Jesse reported that the U.S. particularly held out for many concessions before agreeing to the arrangement. (He did not specify what those concessions were, but history subsequent to 1954 suggests that what the U.S. obtained was the lion's share of extraterrestrial scientist consultants, to assist American scientists in understanding and adapting exotic ET technologies into such devices we now know as the computer chip, fibre optics, lasers, gene-splicing therapy, cloning, night-vision equipment, super-tenacity fibers (such as Kevlar lightweight armor), aerospace ceramics, Stealth technology, particle-beam devices, and gravity-control flight.) NSC's Dr. Michael Wolf has previously revealed in his book The Catchers of Heaven that he worked with ETs as part of his governmental duties. "I met with extraterrestrial individuals every day in my work, and shared living quarters with them," while doing research at extremely- classified underground government research laboratories. He added, "Zetas work in underground facilities, as requested by the U.S. Government. The ETs are not breaking the U.S. Government-Zeta treaties, but the Government has broken treaties by mistreating ETs, and trying to fire on UFOs."
Dr. Wolf also described working with very human-appearing races dubbed the Nordics and Semitics. He said, "The Semitics and Nordics [ETs] come from Altair 4 and 5 and from the Pleiades [star systems]." Wolf also disclosed that in 1954 the U.S. had four extraterrestrial corpses in the "Blue Room", Hanger 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. These bodies came from a series of retrievals of downed UFOs. "The first UFO came down in 1941 into the ocean west of San Diego, and was retrieved by the Navy." [6] Between that and the first publicly-announced Roswell UFO crash in 1947, Wolf says there was another crash in 1946, as well as two other crashes in 1947.
The following additional revelation will permit you to ignore those Boeing commercials and NASA press releases about how America currently is building its own first manned space station. My ex-NSA informant revealed that there has been a manned "deep space platform" in orbit above Earth for over thirty years! "It [has] had three-man [American] crews as well as Russians 'on' since '68!" He further states that since 1973, the space station received additional extremely-high technology, "and has had upgrades since." His disclosure confirms reports I had heard previously from former military officers about a secret space platform in orbit. This disclosure makes clear that the Cape Canaveral Space Shuttles launches, and the "first" American space station being assembled by NASA', are just government "cover" programs. Such programs have served to deflect the public from becoming aware before now of the existence of a black-project military space station, and of classified military craft which can go well past orbit into deep space. Jesse furnished me additional details about its operation. The space station has been serviced by secret military spacecraft long before the first American Space Shuttle flew in 1981. In 1988 previous models of spacefaring military vehicles were superseded by the "Nautilus", a spacecraft with a rounded delta shape built jointly by special projects divisions of Europe's Airbus Industrie and U.S.'s Boeing Corporation. Nautilus has a propulsion system which utilizes magnetic pulsing. Nautilus-type craft make twice-weekly trips up into space and back, to service the secret international space station. The Nautilus is based in Utah. My informant would not identify the base, but said that it was positioned within a mountain so stealthfully that you could drive by and never know it was there. He also stated that the principal headquarters of the U.S. Space Command has been relocated from Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado to this underground installation in Utah. [7] Look for further significant disclosures in the weeks and months ahead, as the current U.S. Administration tries to disentangle itself from 50 years of Cold War secrecy. And as it does so, those who have felt all alone with their personal experience of contact by Visitors from the stars, (who have been deeply involved in our society and its evolution), should feel less isolated.
Footnotes:
1. Jesse provided additional comment on successor craft to the secret military Space Shuttle. "Matter of fact, it (military Shuttle) was replaced in '85 with Aurora up to '92", thus indicating that the oft-rumored Aurora hyperfast aerospace vehicle not only was operational since 1985, but is already obsolete. Jesse says that its successor "followed on with DarkStar's retro-fit." This, according to the late USAF Colonel Steve Wilson, is the Lockheed X-22A DarkStar, a two-man discoid craft, which uses antigravity technology on a airframe perfected on Lockheed's "cover" program, a conventional unmanned reconnaissance drone, the X-22, also called DarkStar. Jesse tantalizes with a hint about the antigravity DarkStar's having becoming obsolete by "another [craft] in 2001", yet another exotic space vehicle. Jesse added, "The [Cape Canaveral] Shuttle stuff you see is for Hollywood to direct."
2. And the apparent coincidence of Arthur C. Clarke writing in "2001"about a Monolith discovered by astronauts turns out not really to be a coincidence at all. Jesse revealed that Clarke has been in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency, and thus could well have heard about the non-fiction Monolith even before its retrieval.
3. "It depends on the vacuum expectation value to go particle ground state, and with this you time travel on a wave."
4. Jesse says that Dr. Wolf was at the RAND Corporation at one point in his career, and developed an 18-foot-wide torus-shaped antigravity field, using counter-rotating magnets. Wolf was quite familiar with the government gravity-control formulae, being involved in UFO research as a member of NSC's MJ-12 [UFO information control] subcommittee.
5. (Sklar, H., ed., 1981. Trilateralism. Boston: South End )
UFOTruth - http://UFOTruth.listbot.com
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Rendezvous with Rama is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1972. Set in the 22nd century, the story involves a thirty-mile-long cylindrical alien starship that passes through Earth's solar system. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers, who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries.
This novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and is widely regarded as one of the cornerstones in Clarke's bibliography. It is considered a science fiction classic, and is particularly seen as a key hard science fiction text.
The "Rama" of the title is an alien starship, initially mistaken for an asteroid and named after the Hindu God Rama. (Clarke mentions that by the 22nd century, scientists have used the names of all the Greek and Roman mythological figures to name astronomical bodies, and have thus moved on to Hindu mythology.) Asteroid 31/439 is detected by astronomers in the year 2131 while still outside the orbit of Jupiter. The object's speed (100 000 km/h) and the angle of its trajectory clearly indicate that this is not an object on a long orbit around our sun; it comes from interstellar space. Astronomers' interest is piqued when they realize that this asteroid not only has an extremely rapid 4 minute rotation period but it is quite large in size for an asteroid. An unmanned space probe is launched from the Mars moon Phobos, and photographs taken during its rapid flyby reveal an absolutely cylindrical object 16 kilometres wide and 50 kilometres long, made of a highly reflective material. In other words, this is humankind's first encounter with an alien space ship.
The manned solar survey vessel "Endeavour" is sent to study Rama, as it is the only ship close enough to do so in the brief period of time Rama will spend in our solar system. Endeavour manages to rendezvous with Rama one month after the space ship first comes to Earth's attention, when the giant alien spacecraft already is within Venus orbit. The 20+ crew, led by Commander Norton, enters Rama and explores its vast interior, but the nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remains enigmatic throughout the book. The only lifeforms are the cybernetic "biots" who completely ignore the humans. Endeavour is finally forced to leave a few weeks later as Rama moves too close to the Sun for Endeavour's cooling systems to compensate. Rama then is flung out of the solar system toward an unknown location in the Large Magellanic Cloud, using the ion.
SOURCE: Wikipedia Rendezvous with Rama
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Originally
posted by Esoterica a member of ATS
Post
ID 292902
Thread - http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread292902/pg1
I was in a bookstore and was just flipping through a bargain book of weird happenings. One entry, only a couple of paragraphs long, caught my interest because I had never heard of it before.
The basic blurb was that in 1957, an unknown satellite was detected shadowing the Sputnik I craft. It was in a polar orbit, something that neither the Americans or Soviets were capable of at the time. There was a statement that ham radio operaters pickd up radio transmissions that were "decoded" (whatever that means) as being a star map that indicated the craft originated from Epsilon Bootes 13,000 years before. This object was dubbed "The Black Knight."
Also in this blurb, there was mention that science fiction author Philip K. Dick believed that he was in contact with this object, which he wrote several novels about, and gave it various names (VALIS, Zebra).
So obviously intrigued, I did some searching on ATS and found no mention of it. Google had a few returns which indicated this story was first written about in John Keel's "Disneyland of the Gods." The effort is hampered because there are several legit satellite projects codenamed "Black Knight."
The information of Dick's experiences and writings indicated he received visions, and seemed to interperet the experience and object in somewhat Christian religious terms, in addition to strange communications and diagrams he couldn't interperet. He eventually became paranoid Russian scientists were attempting to control the satellite. A science fiction writer infamous for his heavy drug use eventually living out a sci-fi story... seems to me just as likely that it was just his lifestyle catching up to him than any ET communication. But who knows.
In my searching, I also discovered a very close story from 1927, 30 years earlier. It involves the phenomena of Long Delayed Echoes. Essentially, these are radio transmissions that are reflected back, apparently from space, seconds to minutes after they are first sent. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. It could be atmospheric effects just making it appear as if the transmissions are coming from space, or it could ben an alien craft attempting to communicate with us. Logically, it would send back transmissions it recieved from Earth because it could be almost positive that we could receive it. Anyway, the story is that Norwegian scientists received strange radio "echoes" in 1927-28. In the 1970's Scottish astronomer Duncan Lunan interpereted the delayed transmission as a star map... of Epsilon Bootis. Whether these are two instances of the same stragne transmissions, or one story is a retelling of the other is unknown to me. It wouldn't be the first time the same ideas were repackaged and attempted to be passed off as a "new" anomalous story.
Anyway, I made this thread just to get the story out there, and to ask if anybody has any additional information regarding it. Below are links to everything pertinent I could find on the internet, and most are just retellings of the same story in different forms.
Wow, front page. Didn't expect so much interest
Anyway, I spent some more time researching. The first polar orbiting satellite was launched in 1960. The Black Knight story (apparently from Keel) states the polar orbit in 1957 was impossible. It is possible that there may have been a test of a polar orbiting satellite in 1957 coinciding with the Sputnik launch, but it may have met catastrophic failure and swept under the rug after the success of Sputnik. But I don't think there ever was a Black Knight.
The first article I linked to stated polar orbits were impossible in 1960, which is flat out wrong, as I've discovered. Also, Keel's book mentioning the subejct was apparently first published in 1988, long after Dick had died and Lunan had released his analysis of the 1920's event. Ample time for Keel to purposely or accidentally merge many stories together.
Honestly, I believe the Black Knight event to simply be a retelling of three separate events. One, is the LDE event from 1927-28, interperetted in 1970 by Duncan Lunan. The second was the large object detected in polar orbit in 1960. The third was Dick's experiences. By 1988, these had merged into a single story, with Sputnik as a backdrop to give an added degree of mystery because at that time, polar orbits were "impossible." After all, it's our first object placed into orbit, [i]of course[/i] the mysterious alien probe will be interested in it. It's a great story.
But, just because I believe the Black Knight story to be a synthesis of different events doesn't mean there's nothing to those events. The LDE from 1927-28 I find interesting, as the supposed massive object detected by NORAD in 1960. Dick's story is a little to odd for me to touch at this point, and it's hard to palce it into a timeline when one fo his main points end sup being that time is an illusion. I'll do a little more reading tomorrow, but it's late. If anyone has any information they know of (or something to discredit my confabulation theory), please feel free to add it. It'll probably be appropriate to modify the OP as well, I'll get to that later.
As an aside, a "Black Knight" is a term for a knight which either has no allegiance or wished to hide it, covering his colors and symbols. It would be a good name for a mysterious alien satellite.
Reply to post by SuicideVirus
I do kind of like that idea, though. That a few people in the world are selected (or are predisposed) to receive some cool super advanced knowledge from a large library located somewhere out there. Aldeberan, I guess. Hopefully it hits somebody smart enough to know what to do with it. Otherwise, I could see where it might drive somebody nuts.
As an odd sort of tie in, when one looks at history, you find that people in diverse locations are working towards finding an answer to the same problem, sometimes on the same track of thought.
When one steps back from the actual discoveries, it's almost like a classroom setting where a "teacher" asks a question, with a hint towards the answer, and the brighter students start working on the problem.
And the "spark" in different locals seems not to be just one of technical discoveries in the sense of inventions of a mechanical nature. There is no way to be sure, but there seems to have been separate, yet nearly identical, timelines for the invention of writing, basic math, fire, burial of the dead, and such things.
Now I know that sometimes these events were "discovered" separately by region on a time frame that would have allowed the migration of the idea from one culture to another, and so it might have been. But that would mean that such diverse cultures as those in Mexico, building pyramids,were in some way influenced by the architecture from somewhere like Egypt. And that is argued to have not been possible either.
As an example, around 650 AD the use of the placeholder/number "0" came into widespread use. This was the same time frame as the Mayan people of Central America, who also used the concept of "0". Now without some contact between the two cultures, which mainstream science says did not happen, then it is odd that the "0" would appear to both cultures at that point in history when both had gotten on well enough without it for such a long time.
Now before anyone rubs my face in the fact that there are explanations and shadings to the times involved, please remember that I am just pointing out an overview that cultures of wide diversity seem to come to the same end conclusion at ABOUT the same time in history, and that at first blush it seems odd that it would be so.
However, a "teacher in the sky" that struck people with a thought or idea would reasonably explain this away. It just struck more than one person at more than one location.
Do I think that this is what has happened in our past? No, I do not. BUT, I also don't have a better theory either. Such are the mysteries of the past. So it leaves one to wonder.
Pegasus Addition: The discovery of the Liquid Fuel Rocket at almost the same time by A Russian (Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky), a German (Dr. Hermann Oberth) and an American (Dr. Robert H. Goddard). These three nations became the rocket super powers...
I found a very interesting document which ties in with the time line of the original story.
http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil/saas_Theses/SAASS_Out/Hunter/hunter.pdf
Page 19 states:
"The cause was a rather unusual incident in the spring of 1960 which apparentln="center">
