ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS.
MODERN MYSTERIES
By John A. Keel
TRIP THE LIGHT-YEARS FANTASTIC
Time stands stil. This moment is
being preserved in a million ways and
some future historian may be able to
hear you mumbling to yourself as you
read this column. He may even be able
to see you and watch you scratch your
ear. Abraham Lincoln's high-pitched,
squeaky voice droning the Gettysburg
Address may stil be audible a thousand
years from now. The terrible battles and
great moments of yesteryear are still
taking place. John F. Kennedy is still
riding through the streets of Dallas.
Christ is still speaking from the Mount.
The hordes of Genghis Khan are still
ravaging the Orient
if you were an astronomer stationed
on the other side of the Milky Way you
would be peering at the Earth across
tilions of miles of space and centuries
of time. Your telescope would show the
Earth not as its at this moment but as it
was hundreds of years ago. You would
not see the gleaming glass towers of
Manhattan or the great dams spanning
ur mightiest rivers. Instead, the North
American continent would appear to be
a pastoral, unspoiled wilderness. You
could watch the Battle of Hastings
(1066 A.D.) as if it were taking place
this very moment.
The light reflected by the Earth in
1086 A.D. is just reaching some of the
star systems in our universe, and the
light ‘radiated by distant stars
thousands—even millions—ot years
ago is only now entering our solar
system. Some of the flickering stars you
09 in the night sky may no longer exist.
Others have long since strayed to new
positions far from the points where they
presently seem to be. Consequently
the universe, as we perceive it, is more
illusion than reality. When we gaze into
the night sky we are looking backwards
into time, seeing things as they once
were but are no longer.
When NASA scientists plan a space
shot to the moon or Mars they do not
aim their rocket directly at their target.
They are obliged to calculate where the
target will be in space days or months
later and the rocket is launched toward
an empty gap—much the same way
that a hunter aims and fires his shotgun
ahead of a fiying bird. Space shots
covering really great distances, such as
the recent probe to Jupiter, demand
months of computer work. A slight
miscalculation could mean missing the
target by hundreds of thousands of
miles.
The movement of objects in space is
not the only consideration. Time is also
a very important element. Time as we
measure it can be different in space.
The faster an object moves through
space, the slower time becomes on-
board. Gravitational fields also influ-
ence the flow of time. Einstein post-
ulated, correctly, that bodies affected
by gravitational ‘fields move along a
path in four dimensional space-time. An
object traveling in a straight line through
space can be deflected toward a larger
mass. A beam of light, for example,
bends slightly when it passes through
the neighborhood of a large star. Thus
many of the stars in the sky were never
in the position where we view them
because their light was “warped” in the
passage through space. Time can also
be warped by gravitational fields. Time
aboard a manned spaceship changes
slightly as the ship escapes the Earth's
gravity. Things slow down minutely but
measurably. The faster the ship moves,
the slower time becomes. When the
ship renters a gravitational field time
speeds up again. Astronauts who have
flown to the moon age at a different rate
than those of us back home on Earth
When they return they are, by a fraction
of a second, slightly younger than the
rest of us.
This space-time warp eftect has long
been a standard gimmick of science
fiction writers. The commander of the
starship Enterprise orders _ his
helmsman to set a course for “Warp
Two.” Science fiction heroes soar to
galaxies hundreds of light years away
by taking a short cut through an imagi
nary time warp.
Butis it really possible to circumnavi-
gate time?
In previous issues of SAGA we have
outlined some of the many cases in
which UFO occupants have expressed
bewilderment over our measurement of
time. Some UFO theorists have
suggested that the ufonauts could be
time travelers originating in our future.
Others have proposed that they might
be visitors from a distant planet where
time is measured differently. If they
have been studying our world from a
distance of several light years they
would be viewing our past and might
arrive here expecting to find them-
selves in the midst of our Civil War. This
would explain why so many of the
observed entities have been dressed in
out-of-date clothes. The lie men in the
rumored UFO crash of 1949 (never
confirmed) were allegedly dressed in
costumes from the Gay 90s! Our
notorious Men In Black, who are appa-
rently directly connected to the UFO
phenomenon, are often seen traveling
in very old cars that look brand new.
Would beings intelligent enough to
travel among the stars be so ignorant of
the measurement of time? Since
Earthtime and its measurement are
strictly human inventions it is quite
possible that alien beings might find it
Confusing. Intelligent entities from
another world might have an entirely
different system. They might, for exam-
ple, have arrived at a more complete
understanding of Einstein's four-
dimensional universe. They could even
have a working knowledge of the elu-
sive single law that controls the entire
cosmos; the law that Einstein sought
but never found. Our own ignorance of
this law obliges us to use primitive
measurements. There could really be a
shortcut—a space-time warp—from
(Continued on page 12)(Continued trom page 10)
star to star as simple as the Great
Circle Route airlines used to span great
distances on this globe. By pursuing a
course winding among the massive
gravity fields of certain stars and “black
holes” an alien spaceship could con-
ceivably shorten not space but time. In
a sense it would plummet through the
fourth dimension, bypassing the rela-
tively slow rays of reflected light and
actually travel backwards in time. Or
forward. A spaceship launched at this
particular moment in time from the
galaxy of Andromeda could arrive at the
Earth in 1897—or 2200. If the occup-
ants of the craft had no working know:
ledge of our measurement of time they
might fail to regulate their course for a
specific period and would be very sur-
prised to arrive at a planet populated
with cavemen, or, possibly, a futuristic
world dominated by computers and
robots. The world observed by their
telescopes would be quite different
from the world linked by the space-time
warp.
The gods of ancient times and the
mysterious spacemen of the 20th Gen-
tury could be the same identical entities
blundering back and forth in ime. Some
of them might even be lost, temporarily
trapped in our space-time continuum
like the earthly ghosts who are sup-
posedly caught in similar traps and
doomed to haunt specific houses or
cemeteries for centuries.
THIS HAUNTED
PLANET
In June 1976, NASA launched Grav.
ity Probe-A (GP-A), a rocket containing
a very sophisticated clock specially
designed to test Einstein's so-called
‘equivalence principle.” A four-stage
Scout D rocket traversed a two hour
eliptical trajectory over the Atlantic
while a duplicate clock on Earth was
compared with the signals from the
space clock. These clocks used atomic
hydrogen MASERs (Microwave
‘Amplification by Stimulated Emission of
Radiation), so accurate they lose less
than two seconds every 100 milion
years. They can measure within five
thousandths of one percent (5 x 10-5)
of the predicted effect. The test was
one of a series to explore the strange
realm of time. The space borne clock
actually recorded a slower passage of
time than its twin in the laboratory on
Earth.
For years now astronomers have
been observing the Doppler effect, or
“red shift,” which is actually a variation
of this space-time warp principle. Dr. R.
V. Pound, of Harvard University, con-
ducted tests showing that the equiva-
lence principle was valid within one
percent (1 x 10-2) for a vertical dis-
12 * SAGA
tance of 75 feet at the Earth's surface
Now the GP-A has established an
accuracy of 50 parts per million (5 x
10-5) in space. In essence, space, time,
and gravity are all interrelated—just as
Einstein theorized. It is highly probable
that we can eventually learn to manipu-
late these three factors and the space-
time warp of the science fiction writers
will become a reality. Our cumbersome
rockets will then become antiquated
junk
Flying saucer contactees have said
for years that UFOs operate on "beams
of light” and force fields. If the ufonauts
are real, and if the UFOs are technolog-
ical machines (both of these “ifs” are
stil very uncertain), they would not
attempt to explain complex post-
Einstein principles to simple farmers
and traveling salesmen. They would be
obliged to define things in terms of light
beams and force fields... terms an
ntutored earthling could possibly un-
derstand. What they have been saying
is that the UFOs have traversed beams.
of energy between the stars, influenced
by gravity and magnetism, and that
they have somehow discovered ways
to circumvent the accepted physical
laws of our known universe. They defy
gravity and atmospheric pressure here
on Earth because they operate outside
‘our space-time continuum. They are
interdimensional rather than extrater-
restrial!
Einstein calculated that when an ob-
ject exceeded the speed of light it would
become energy. A finite object would
become infinite and the traditional laws
of time and space would become nul-
lifled or suspended. Such objects, and
their occupants, would enter another
dimension of existence and be in a time
frame unrelated to the time frame of
their source. A year aboard such a star
ship might be equal to a million Earth
years, and the ship could be traveling
either forward or backward in the time
frame of its home planet. You could
take off from Earth in 1975, visit a
distant star, spend five years there, and,
return to the Earth in 230 B.C. So until
we can work out all the mathematical
problems involved, star travel will re-
main impractical. Any star traveler who
plummets to Earth in 230 B.C. could
find himself in the uncomfortable posi-
tion of being either worshipped or
slaughtered by the natives
‘As we have frequently noted in past
columns, UFOs and occult events tend
to occur sporadically in the same geo-
graphical areas year after year, century
after century. These areas, known as
windows” or “gateways,” often pos-
‘sess interesting magnetic and gravita-
tional characteristics. They dot our
planet and periodically erupt, simul-
taneously into outbreaks of UFO land:
ings, poltergeist activity, and the ap-
pearances of strange monsters. It is
probable that these window areas are
the sites of geophysical anomalies re-
ceptive to beams or rays of energy from
‘outer space; interdimensional energies
which bridge the space-time gap. The
ancient Chinese Yin and Yang concept
was built on this notion, as were the
beliefs of ancient astrologers and magi-
cians. We are just rediscovering some
ancient mysteries and relearning the
ancient truths of how they work. The
infinite energy of a star ship spanning
entire galaxies could reassemble itself
here in almost any form. The distant
spacemen could appear as dragons,
hairy monsters, litle green men—or
Men In Black in antiquated cars,
(Once we untangle the whole space-
time puzzle we may be able to bridge
that gap ourselves. We may be able to
leave our space-time continuum and
return to the past or visit the future. Yet,
ironically, we may never be able to
‘move into the dimension that produces
the UFO phenomenon because the
occupants of that space-time con-
tinuum are on a different level from us
in a very special sense. We can pass
through their beams of infinite energy
but they must adjust their warp to
intermix with us. Contact with them will
always be one way. We might be able
to visit Dallas in November 1963, Get-
tysburg in 1863, or Andromeda in 2363,
but we may never be able to find the
source of the flying saucers because
they come from some point far in the
future or deep in the distant past
completely beyond our space-time con-
tinuum and unreachable by us unless
we can understand and manipulate the
laws that govern their dimension. If we
could visit them, we might appear as
monsters and ghosts in their world, and
the earthly adventurers who risk the trip
might be trapped forever there to haunt
them in bewilderment as they haunt
us. *