I love a good conspiracy theory. It makes me think outside the box and perform sanity checks. But, it looks more and more that some of the “theories” are just spoilers for what’s to come.
If you are into this thing I would suggest History Channel's The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. It is quite good, but sometimes frustratingly lacking in detail.
The House Oversight Subcommittee hearing on UFOs or how the new kids like to call them the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena came and went with not even a whimper. TV and media did their part in desensitizing us to the information that aliens are a real possibility so no one was surprised and just went duh, we know.
2023 is a wild year for anyone even remotely interested in the UFO phenomenon. First, the Navy and Air Force basically said that UFOs are real, and then the Senate got to hear that.
My first introduction to the world of “conspiracies” was via A.C. Clarke’s book Mysterious World when I was just a kid. He would become one of my favorite authors and I’ve read every book he ever wrote, some multiple times. After all, he is the guy who invented the concept of satellite.
So, let’s recap some of the most interesting mysteries and issues:
Humanity, or better said civilization, is older than 5,000 years that historians would like to convince us of.
There was a large cataclysm around 12,000 BC which reset and almost wiped human civilization off the face of the Earth. Geological evidence is undisputed by geologists while archeologists have their fingers stuck in their ears. For that matter, geologists have been saying to archeologists for decades that their assumptions of how old something is make no scientific sense. Unlike archeology, geologists don’t make that many assumptions and they can show data to corroborate their assumptions. It’s like the word Theory, the most collaborated theory is the Theory of evolution but it’s still just a Theory as any proven evidence to the contrary would put serious doubt on its validity. So, even if it’s the most collaborative it can’t become fact. It’s just how the scientific world works. Theories are not guesses. The phrase "just a theory" has no room in science. But is commonplace in archeology and they conflate what fact and theory are. “It’s a fact that the Great Piramides of Egipt were burial places”, no they weren’t. There was never anything found in the pyramids, no mummies, no vases, no writing, but still, archeologists tell us that pharaohs built them as gravestones for themself.
Atlantis was real
Atlantis was real. It was destroyed at that time (around 12.000 BC) and the rainforest of the Sahara was salted turning it into a desert. Even the Smithsonian agrees that the Sahara was a rainforest some 11.000 BC. Their hypothesis is, of course, that the humans must have done it.
Richat Structure, located in Mauretania was first described in the 1930’s and was thought it be a crater but subsequent and latest papers from 2008 concluded that it was not an impact site but formed by terrestrial processes. “Numerous concordant radiocarbon dates indicate that the bulk of these sediments accumulated between 13,000 and 5,000”.
Amazon was filled with large cities.
Gaspar de Carvajal was a Dominican missionary known for his accounts of cities and advanced civilizations in the Amazon during the mid-16th century. Friar Gaspar de Carvajal is most famous for his chronicles of the 1541-1542 expedition led by Francisco de Orellana, which was the first European voyage down the length of the Amazon River looking for its source.
In his writings, Carvajal described encounters with large, prosperous settlements along the Amazon River, which he referred to as the "Province of the Dorado." His accounts spoke of cities, temples, and even rumors of gold, which fueled European myths and legends about El Dorado, a fabled city of gold in the New World. Carvajal's descriptions were among the earliest European accounts suggesting the existence of advanced civilizations in the Amazon rainforest.
However once Spanish came back some 100 years later all they found was the rainforest and the idea that the Amazon supported large, urban civilizations was relegated to conspiracy theory. It was only in the recent decade, with advances in archaeology and satellite imagery, that evidence has begun to emerge supporting the existence of complex societies in the Amazon, similar to those described by Carvajal. These findings include large earthworks, remnants of road systems, and evidence of extensive agriculture and trade networks.
And not just in the Amazon, but on the Yucatan peninsula where Mayas once ruled.
The moon is hollow
On November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 deliberately crashed the Ascent Stage of its Lunar Module onto the Moon's surface; NASA reported that the Moon rang 'like a bell' for almost an hour, leading to arguments that it must be hollow like a bell. The average density of the Moon is about 3.3 g/cm3. This makes the Moon the second densest moon in the Solar System after Jupiter’s Io. This seems very inconsistent with it being hollow.
Unless you take that the shell was made out of more dense material. Let’s say that the Moon shell is made out of NicleIron alloy with a density of about 7.86 g/cm3. To get to the measured density of 3.3g/cm3 the outer shell of the moon would have to be some 524.36 km thick. Which is a lot, but also not that unrealistic. Or, if we plug in some assumptions, like the thickness of Moon regolith and its density combined hard shell and internal void, so I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations:
The radius of the Moon (including both shell layers): Rtotal=1,737.4 km
Outermost shell layer (Moon regolith):
Thickness t1 = 30 km
Density ρ1 = 1.5 g/cm33 or 1500 kg/m3
Inner shell layer (NicleIron Alloy):
Thickness t2 ?
Density ρ2 = 7.85 g/cm33 or 7850 kg/m3
The desired average density of the entire object: ρavg = 3.3 g/cm3
We get the inner, more dense layer to be 293.96 km thick which is half the original calculation. And then again if it was made of some more exotic material it could be even thinner. This gives an internal volume of 12.597.500.000 km3. The inner surface area is 19.5 times the surface area of the earth or just 5.6 times the surface area of the land mass of the earth.
Check out my post about asteroid mining and how John Ringo envisioned the construction of a massive battle station with little effort (but a lot of solar power).
Aliens aren’t alien, they are dinosaurs
While reading “The Others” by Jeremy Robinson I was once again reminded, that Aliens, the classic Grey ones, don’t need to be “Alien” but our long-lost siblings that went to space for far too long and adapted to it. But, unlike Star Trek Voyger’s “Distant Cousins” episode I’m more inclined to think they evolved from Raptors. You know, the Jurassic Park ones…
It sounds completely bonkers but in the 1980’s “paleontologist Dale Russell proposed a thought experiment in which a carnivorous dinosaur evolved into an intelligent tool user.” Additional publications can be found here and here.
Dale Russell’s studies of the troodontid Stenonychosaurus and of ornithomimid theropods, published in 1969 and 1972, inspired him to consider the possibility that some theropod dinosaur lineages might have given rise to big-brained species had they never died out. By late 1980, Russell had considered the invention of a hypothetical descendant of Stenonychosaurus dubbed the “dinosauroid”. There is likely no specific inspiration for the dinosauroid given Russell’s overlapping areas of interest, but his correspondence with Carl Sagan and his involvement in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program were likely of special influence. The early-1980s creation of a life-size Stenonychosaurus model with Ron Séguin gave Russell the impetus to bring the dinosauroid to life. Authors have disagreed on whether the dinosauroid’s creation was an exercise in scientific extrapolation or one of speculative fiction, and on whether its form reflects bias or an honest experiment:
Some other Interesting things
I don’t like to give my opinion regarding these topics as I find it more interesting to point out some information and see where that takes people. Do they do additional research, do they jump to conclusions, or dismiss it altogether? It just makes for a more fun discussion.