Were the Dogons visited by aliens from outer space - or somewhere closer?

People who are keen to believe that aliens from outer space have visited Planet Earth at various times in our history sometimes point to the Dogon people of Mali (West Africa) as evidence of such a visitation.

This is because the Dogons appear to possess certain pieces of astronomical knowledge that they could never have worked out for themselves. In particular, they are very well informed about the star Sirius. This was reported by a French anthropologist named Marcel Griaule who studied the Dogon people during the mid-20^th century and wrote about them in 1946.

The Dogon people knew that Sirius was a double star, with one of the pair taking 50 years to orbit the other. This was extraordinary knowledge, given that the companion star is too faint to be seen with the naked eye and the Dogons did not have telescopes to look through.

What explanation could there have been for this knowledge? Surely they must have been visited at some time by aliens who lived on a planet that orbited one of the Sirius stars?

Or might it have had something to do with the team of astronomers who had visited Mali in 1893 to view a solar eclipse?

© John Welford

Exploring the Summer Triangle

The Summer Triangle is the name given to an area of the night sky that contains several features of interest for the amateur astronomer.

Out On The Lawn

In 1933 W H Auden wrote a poem (“A Summer Night”) that begins with the lines:

Out on the lawn I lie in bed

Vega conspicuous overhead
In the windless night of June …

Leaving aside the merits of the poem – and there are many – nobody could fault Auden’s astronomical knowledge. On a clear night in June, if you lie looking up at the stars on an English lawn in June you will hardly fail to be aware of the prominent star Vega, which is the fifth brightest star in the entire sky. 

Vega forms one of the extremities of what is known as the Summer Triangle, the other points being Altair and Deneb. The Triangle is what is termed an “asterism”, by which is meant an arrangement of stars other than an officially recognised constellation. Altair forms the lowest point of the triangle, with Vega to the top right and Deneb at the top left.

All three stars are also members of constellations: Vega is in Lyra (The Lyre), Deneb in Cygnus (The Swan) and Altair in Aquila (The Eagle). Each named star is the brightest in its constellation.

An Optical Illusion

It is easy to imagine that the constellations and asterisms seen with the naked eye represent actual associations of stars that are relatively close to each other. However, this is rarely the case, because what we are seeing are stars along certain lines of sight when viewed from Earth. A star can be many times further away from us than its apparent neighbor, and the Summer Triangle provides an excellent example of this fact. 

The closest of the three stars to Earth is Altair. It is 16.7 light years away, which means that we are seeing it as it was 16.7 years ago. Vega is 25 light years away but appears to be somewhat brighter than Altair. That is because Vega is considerably more luminous than Altair, which is a main sequence dwarf star – as is our own Sun. Altair is 11 times more luminous than the Sun, but Vega is 52 times more luminous and therefore appears brighter than Altair despite being considerably further away.

Even more striking is the case of Deneb. It appears to be three times fainter than Vega, but that is because it is nowhere near as close. It has been estimated that it could be between 1,550 and 2,600 light years away, and would be invisible to the naked eye were it the same sort of star as Vega or Altair. However, Deneb is a white supergiant star with a diameter 200 times greater than that of our Sun and it is 200,000 times more luminous. Were Deneb to be at the same distance from us as is Vega, it would appear so bright that it would cast shadows at night and be visible in daylight!

The Milky Way

If the sky is dark and the Moon not shining, a viewer of the Summer Triangle will not fail to be impressed by the sweep of the Milky Way crossing the Triangle between Vega and Altair. It is even more impressive when viewed through a telescope.

This “river” is the combined light of the many millions of stars that form part of our galaxy. The tilt of Planet Earth means that viewers in the Northern Hemisphere can only look “outwards” whereas in the Southern Hemisphere you would look “inwards” towards the heart of the galaxy. That is not a great limitation as far as northern viewers are concerned, because our Sun lies in one of the outer swirls of the galaxy (the Orion Arm) and there is plenty to see that is in the same swirl as ourselves and in swirls even further out, such as the Perseus and Cygnus Arms.

Albireo

This star is just to the left of a line drawn between Vega and Altair and about halfway along that line. It can be seen with the naked eye, but even a modest telescope will reveal it to be a double star with strongly contrasting components in terms of color – Beta Cygni A is amber and Beta Cygni B is blue-green. It has been suggested that Beta Cygni A is itself a double star, making Alberio a triple-star system.

However, the jury is still out over whether Alberio represents a true double/triple, with the components orbiting a common centre of gravity, or whether this is an optical double with Beta Cygni A and Beta Cygni B merely being seen along very close lines of sight.

Epsilon Lyrae

If there are questions about the composition of Alberio, there are none about Epsilon Lyrae, which lies quite close (visually) to Vega. This is a genuine “double double”, with the two main components also being doubles. You would need very good eyesight – or modest binoculars – to resolve the main division, but something much stronger in terms of telescopic power to see the system in all its glory – around 200x magnification in a four-inch aperture telescope should do the trick!

The impression that these stars are sitting on top of each other is easy to gain but somewhat misleading. The Epsilon Lyrae system (which probably contains more than the four stars indicated above) is 162 light years away, which is 6.5 times further away than Vega. The fact that it is possible to resolve the components at all using standard ground-based equipment must mean that they are at some distance from each other. Each of the two doubles are around 120 AUs (astronomical units) apart. Given that an AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun, that distance takes you considerably beyond the orbit of any known object in the solar system – the most remote object discovered to date is at 103 AUs and Pluto is almost cheek by jowl with the Sun at an average distance of 39.5 AUs!

The distance between the two main pairs in Epsilon Lyrae is on a completely different scale, at 10,500 AUs. When seen in the context of its own star system that sounds like a vast distance; however, when one considers that the distance to the Sun’s nearest star neighbor, Proxima Centauri, is 268,000 AUs, the Epsilon Lyrae stars sound to be almost touching each other!

Nebulas M57 and M27

Two impressive planetary nebulas can be seen in the Summer Triangle. A nebula looks like a fuzzy star when seen through low-resolution equipment, but a better telescope will reveal its true nature, namely the expelled outer layers of an ancient red giant star that reached the end of its life as a giant and continued as a white dwarf.

M57, which is known as the Ring Nebula, is about halfway between Vega and Alberio, slightly to the right of an imaginary line between them. A three-inch aperture or larger telescope will reveal the dramatic colors of what has been described as a “celestial smoke ring”. M57 is 2,300 light years away from us.

Alberio lies halfway between M57 and M27, which is known as the Dumbbell Nebula. It is brighter and larger than M57 and closer to us at 1,360 light years. It is easier to spot than M57 and was in fact the first planetary nebula to be identified. It has been calculated that the original red giant star threw off its outer layers about 14,500 years ago, leaving its core behind as a white dwarf star that is the largest such star discovered to date.

Time spent with a moderately powerful telescope pointed at the Summer Triangle will be well rewarded!

© John Welford

All aboard the starship to Proxima Centauri!

Let’s suppose that – 100 years hence, maybe – it is decided that Planet Earth is no longer inhabitable and the human race will have to decamp to another planet if it is to survive. After much debate it is concluded that Mars is far from suitable so the journey will have to take a lot longer – to the next nearest planet that could sustain human life, namely one that orbits Proxima Centauri B, some four light years away.

OK – we know that light can make the journey in four years, but no spacecraft could possibly travel at anything like that speed. Indeed, the best we can imagine given the propulsion technology available to us is around 700,000 kilometres per hour, which means that the journey would take around 6,300 years!

Is that feasible? Let’s imagine what that would involve. Of course, if a spacecraft left Earth with a journey of that length in mind, the astronauts who began it would die of old age before they had gone even a fraction of that distance. The only option would be for a whole community of people to set off in a very large spaceship that could not only sustain life for thousands of years but enable them to breed new generations of people as they went along.

An awful lot of new generations! If you estimate that a new generation arrives on average every 25 years, that is more than 250 generations that will be born, live and die during the voyage. It is now 2018 – 6,300 years ago our ancestors by 250 generations were living in 4282 BC, when agriculture was first being developed in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, metalworking was in its infancy in some parts of the world and the Pyramids and Stonehenge were still thousands of years into the future!

Can you imagine what it would be like to spend your whole life on a vast starship whizzing through space, knowing that you had absolutely no choice in the matter and that you would die exactly where you had been born, your only real function being to produce the right number of babies to keep the community in perfect balance? 

Presumably it would be essential to develop virtual reality to the extent that people could lead entirely artificial but realistic lives, maybe similar to that of the hero of “The Truman Show”? Otherwise everyone would surely lose their minds!

There is also the question of preventing disease from wiping out the community before it gets to where it’s going. That will imply the thoroughgoing screening of all the “starters” to make sure that there are no genetic imperfections that could lead to fatal or debilitating conditions emerging several generations down the line. It will also mean that some of the community will have to learn medical skills as they go along – presumably from previous generations or from a highly sophisticated library.

How much lifestyle choice will the voyagers be allowed to have? Suppose that a substantial portion declare themselves to be gay and refuse to breed? Should this be a genetic trend that is screened out at the outset, or would that mean introducing a form of eugenics – extreme social engineering – that is morally indefensible?

And who will enforce the rules down the generations? How will they do it, and what sanctions will be at their disposal?

Hm! A lot of questions! So is the idea even remotely conceivable? It may surprise you to learn that there are people who have given serious thought to these issues and produced computer models for the ideal starship community – apparently you start off with 49 men and 49 women and that is what you get at the end! 

It sounds crazy to me – what do you think?

© John Welford

Psyche could reveal secrets about Earth

There is a small minor planet, only 210 kilometres across, that could unlock some of the secrets of our own planet. This is Psyche, which orbits in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. 

There is a lot that we don’t know about the origin and inner structure of Earth. In particular, we do not know exactly how the planet came to be formed or what the composition is of its solid metal core. We cannot examine this directly because it is surrounded by thousands of kilometres of molten metal and magma. 

So where does Psyche come into the picture?

Observations of the asteroid reveal that it is composed almost entirely of solid metal, and there is nothing else in the solar system – as far as we know – of which this can be said. The implication is that Psyche is a remnant of a former planet that was once considerably larger, but was so battered about by collisions with other objects that all the outer layers were knocked off to leave only the solid metal core. Could this therefore be similar to what lies at the heart of Planet Earth?

Astronomers are keen to send a probe to Psyche to find out. A launch date for a mission to Psyche has been set for 2022, with the destination reached in 2026. 

The spacecraft will be equipped with a range of instruments to enable the nature of Psyche’s gravity to be established, which will in turn allow deductions to be made about its composition and structure. There will also be a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer on board, which will be used to discover the exact range of metals of which Psyche is composed. It is thought that the main elements will be iron and nickel, but there is a distinct possibility that silver, gold, palladium, copper and iridium will also be present.

The purpose of the mission is to gain knowledge, from which inferences will be made about Earth’s interior. The assumption is that the early solar system contained many similarly composed lumps of metal, most of which coalesced and ended up as planetary cores.

However, there is also room for speculation about how such a world might be a source of future benefit to mankind in terms of its content. All that metal, just sitting there doing nothing! An estimate has been made of what Psyche might be worth in terms of monetary value, and it is a truly staggering figure,  namely ten quintillion dollars – a one followed by nineteen zeros!

If anyone imagines that all that metal could be transferred to Earth and the value realized, they need to think again. For one thing, the idea is pure fantasy. For another, the value of something like gold depends on its scarcity – make vast quantities of it available and it will no longer be valuable!

© John Welford

Arsonist birds

Eyewitness accounts from Australia have suggested that certain species of bird of prey practice a food-finding technique that involves spreading fire with the intention of driving prey to where it can more easily be caught.

What they do is visit an area where a fire is taking place (usually started by natural means such as a lightning strike), take burning sticks from the fire and then drop those sticks in a non-burning area which then catches fire. Small mammals and birds flee the fire and are then caught by the raptors, which are mainly black kites, whistling kites and brown falcons.

A report cites the evidence of a firefighter in Northern Territory who was fighting a blaze near a uranium mine when he saw a whistling kite – only 20 metres away – take a burning stick and drop it on the other side of the road from the fire. This caused a new fire to break out. The witness reckoned that at least seven new fires were caused by the kites.

Another firefighter reported a similar event in which hundreds of kites swirled above a wildfire and were able to start new fires in grassland 50 metres away. 

It is believed that such action is quite common, especially when it appears that the original fire is unlikely to spread or will soon be extinguished, meaning that no more prey will be forced out unless the birds take matters into their own beaks and ensure that fresh fires break out.

There is evidence that this behaviour is not limited to Australia, with reports of similar incidents coming from Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is quite possible that wildfires that were thought to have been spread by the wind, or even by human arsonists, may have raptor birds as the culprits.

It has also been suggested that spreading fire in order to catch prey may be something that birds have done for hundreds of thousands of years. Indeed, using fire to gather food may be something that predates the existence of human beings. Raptor birds evolved millions of years before humans did, and may have “tamed” fire long before any of them clapped eyes on a human.

© John Welford

The Great Comet of 1680

The comet that appeared in the sky in November 1680 has two main claims to fame. It was the first to be discovered by telescope and the first to have a known orbit. 

It was found by accident by Gottfried Kirch, a German astronomer, when he was actually observing the Moon through his telescope, but as it approached closer to Earth it became clearly visible to everyone as it streaked across the sky. 

The orbit was calculated by Isaac Newton who made use of his new theory of universal gravity, publishing his results in his “Principia Mathematica” in 1687. 

The Great Comet was seen twice – once as a morning phenomenon as it headed towards the Sun and later in the evenings as it made its return journey towards the outer regions of the Solar System. Newton was the first person to appreciate that these appearances were of the same comet. It had previously been assumed that comets travelled in straight lines, passing through only once. Newton’s discovery that comets travelled round the Sun in parabolic curves was what enabled Edmund Halley to predict that the comet named after him would return every 76 years.

Robert Hooke, the English physicist, noticed a stream of light issuing from the comet’s nucleus. This was the first description of the emanation of jets of material from active areas.

The Great Comet will not be seen again in the lifetime of anyone alive today. Its orbit takes it into the outer regions of the Solar System and it will not return for more than 9,000 years!

© John Welford

The Vela Supernova Remnant

The Vela Supernova Remnant is an object within the constellation of Vela, which can only be seen in the southern Hemisphere. It is about 6,000 light years away.

Around 10,000 years ago a massive star exploded as a supernova that would have been easily visible from Earth. It has been estimated that – for a short time – it would have been as bright as the Moon in the night sky. 

At the heart of the Remnant is a pulsar, this being a rapidly spinning neutron star that is the extremely dense core – only 12 miles in diameter - of the original star. The pulsar rotates about 11 times every second, emitting radiation as it does so. At gamma-ray wavelengths the Vela Remnant is the brightest object in the sky.

The Vela pulsar was only the second such object to be discovered optically, the flashes being observed in 1977. 

The Remnant itself is a spherical shell of material that has been expanding into the interstellar medium ever since the supernova explosion.

© John Welford

Planet X and The Goblin

Astronomers have long taken the view that the Solar System has a planet that nobody has seen but which might offer an explanation for some of the phenomena that have been discovered and which present as-yet-unanswered questions. This planet is believed to be of substantial size and therefore unlike any of the dwarf planets that are known to exist in the outer reaches of the Solar System. However, it is the very size and mass of this planet that is believed to cause the phenomena in question, such as the elongated orbits of the dwarf planets and the existence of comets that are sent hurtling towards the inner Solar System from their natural orbits way beyond that of Pluto.

The planet has been given the title Planet X – the X can either be taken to signify “unknown” or the Roman numeral for ten. It would have been the tenth planet when Pluto was still regarded as the ninth. 

In October 2015 a new dwarf planet was discovered that might help in the search for Planet X. The dwarf is about 300 kilometres in diameter and probably consists of a ball of ice. It was nicknamed “The Goblin” thanks to its discovery at around Halloween.

Work done since the initial discovery has shown that the Goblin has an extremely elongated orbit that takes it about 2300 times further away from the Sun than Earth. A complete orbit would take about 40,000 Earth years.

The Goblin would appear to be orbiting as one of a cluster of similar objects, which poses the question of why such a cluster might form. The intriguing thought is that Planet X, if it exists, would have precisely the effect that is being seen, namely providing a gravitational tug that herds objects including the Goblin into their extreme orbits.

This suggests that Planet X has a similarly elongated orbit and might therefore be so far away from the Sun at present that it is unlikely to be seen from Earth any time soon. But at least the discovery of the Goblin gives astronomers hope that they are looking in the right direction.

(The illustration is an artist’s impression of another dwarf planet, namely Sedna)

©John Welford

Space is not completely empty

A vacuum is defined as a space that contains absolutely nothing, and it is often thought that the space between the stars and galaxies constitutes a perfect vacuum.

However, this is not necessarily so. Within every cubic kilometre of space there will be at least a few atoms of dust and gas.

It has been discovered that interstellar space (i.e. the space between our solar system and neighbouring stars) contains atoms of hydrogen and helium as well as small amounts of dust. The proportion of these is 90% hydrogen, 9% helium and 1% dust.

The dust comprises silicates (compounds of silicon and oxygen), carbon and iron.

Intergalactic space contains minute amounts of ionized hydrogen, by which is meant hydrogen nuclei from which their electrons (one per atom) have been stripped away. 

So space is not empty – just very nearly so!

© John Welford

'Oumuamua: a visitor from deep space

On 18^th October 2017 a strange object was seen by astronomers that could only have come from outside the Solar System. It was given the name `Oumuamua, which means “scout” in the Hawaiian language.

The cigar-shaped object, no more than a kilometre in length and about 140 metres in diameter, was clearly moving at high speed and it soon passed out of the range of Earth-based telescopes. Efforts were then made to find it by using the Spitzer Space Telescope (which operates in the infrared frequency range) but these were unsuccessful. The Hubble Space Telescope was also used in the search, and had more success, but not a lot more.

However, there were various factors that limited the observations that could be made. One was `Oumuamua`s small size, another was its dimness. When a comet traverses the inner Solar System it emits a trail of gases and particles that make it relatively easy to see, but this was not the case with `Oumuamua, which emitted almost no carbon dioxide or monoxide. 

Another reason for the lack of direct observation was that `Oumuamua was not moving at the speed that had been predicted for it. This might have been due to ice on its surface turning into gas as it passed the Sun and speeding it up. When the Spitzer telescope was pointed at its expected position it had already moved beyond it. 

Another oddity about `Oumuamua it that it is tumbling end over end but still moving at great speed. This speed is such that there is no possibility of any probe being able to launch and move towards it, because any such probe would never be able to catch up.

As to what `Oumuamua is and where it came from, these are questions that have yet to be answered. One suggestion - probably the least likely - is that it could be part of an alien spaceship that broke up in interstellar space, possibly millions of years ago.

It has been speculated that `Oumuamua is not alone in visiting the Solar System from somewhere else. Some of these objects might well be captured by the Sun’s gravity and end up in orbit as asteroids or comets. Several asteroids have been identified that are on eccentric or tilted orbits that suggest an origin outside the Solar System. These will clearly be much easier to investigate than a fleeting visitor like `Oumuamua.

© John Welford

Could Planet Earth be Hollow?

We have long been aware that there are people around who think that the Earth is flat, but did you know that there are also believers in the apparent fact that the Earth is hollow? The idea is that other worlds exist within the shell that we all know about and various theories have arisen as to the nature of these worlds.

One can see from ancient writings, including the Old and New Testaments, that people in the distant past believed in an Underworld that was a real place. The Ancient Greeks believed that rivers such as the Styx were routes to Hades, and this belief was probably based on the geological phenomenon of rivers disappearing underground in mountainous areas composed of limestone rock, of which there is a considerable amount in Greece!

Underground worlds were graphically portrayed in Dante Alighieri’s poem “Inferno” (the first volume of his “Divine Comedy”), written around 1300. His vision of Hell comprises nine concentric circles or spheres with the ninth, the abode of Satan, being at the centre of the Earth, which must therefore be hollow.

But the remarkable thing is that people in more recent times have also believed that such an arrangement is possible!

Captain Symmes

John Cleves Symmes was an American who fought against the British in the 1812 war. In 1818 he came up with the idea that there were four concentric spheres inside the Earth, each one being inhabitable. He said that they could be reached via openings at the North and South Poles.

He wanted to mount an expedition to find these worlds from the North Pole, and to establish an American settlement on one of them, to which he assigned the name “Symmzonia”.

Unbelievable as it might seem, his incessant lobbying of the US Congress actually led – in 1828 – to funds being found for a Naval expedition comprising three ships, but fortunately President Andrew Jackson, who was otherwise extremely keen on the expansion of the United States above the Earth’s surface, had enough common sense to realise the folly of seeking to do so underneath it! The expedition therefore never materialized.

Cyrus Teed

In 1868 Cyrus Teed proposed a Hollow Earth concept that literally turned the notion inside out. His idea, which he termed “Koreshan philosophy”, was that the world was indeed hollow but we are actually living on the inside!

He maintained that the Universe was not infinite but consisted of the hollow Earth surrounded by seven shells of different metals, with absolutely nothing beyond that – not even empty space.

At the heart of the hollow was a black counter-Sun that was dotted with bright points of light. The Sun and the planets whizzed around on orbits between the counter-Sun and the inner surface of Earth.

Although this concept must surely strike anyone with half a brain as being utterly loopy, Cyrus Teed managed to get some people to believe in it, and there are rumours that there even some around today!

Raymond Palmer and Neo-Nazis

Raymond Palmer was an editor of science fiction periodicals, notably “Amazing Stories” and “Flying Saucers”. In the latter, in 1957, he broached the idea that flying saucers (which were his own invention) did not come from distant planets but from within Planet Earth.

Although Palmer was not a Nazi sympathizer there were plenty of people who were and who were happy to use Palmer’s ideas to further their cause. Many neo-Nazis wanted to believe that Adolf Hitler and his close associates were still alive and were biding their time until they could re-emerge and continues the “struggle against world Jewry”. The idea that there was a hidden world beneath this one suited their crackpot philosophy down to the ground (and way below it!) – Hitler was down there now, sending out flying saucers on reconnaissance missions.

Miguel Serrano

Miguel Serrano was a Chilean neo-Nazi who was a prominent exponent of “Esoteric Hitlerism”, which combined Nazism with a variety of occult and racial ideologies.  

Serrano believed that the Aryans – believed by the Nazis to be a race of supermen from whom Germanic people were descended – had arrived on Earth from another dimension and established a continent at the North Pole called Hyperborea. Unfortunately, some of the Aryans polluted the race by mating with non-Aryans, after which the pure Aryans slid through the polar opening into the hollow Earth, where they were able to maintain their racial purity.

After being defeated in World War II Adolf Hitler escaped by submarine to join the Aryans in their underground city of Agharta.

Incredible as it might sound, there really are people who think that this utter garbage is actually true!

© John Welford

Claude Vorilhon and the Raëlian religion

Something is out there!

The belief that “we are not alone”, in terms of Planet Earth as the home of sentient life, has gained considerable ground in recent years as a result of increasingly powerful telescopes being able to detect planets in orbit around other stars, which in turn has reduced the odds considerably of a number of those planets being able to sustain life.

However, the assumption that such planets existed preceded the proof by many years, and that assumption gave rise, especially during the second half of the 20^th century, to a growing conviction on the part of many people that inhabitants from those planets are in the habit of paying visits to Planet Earth. Not only have these ideas spawned a whole host of supposed “sightings” of UFOs (unidentified flying objects), and many novels, films and TV series based on such possibilities, but some people have combined the search for extra-terrestrials in flying saucers with religious persuasions in order to construct some extremely weird and wonderful belief systems. One such person is Claude Vorilhon (born 1946).

Claude’s conversion to Raël

Claude Vorilhon is a Frenchman from Vichy, central France. His early interests were singing and racing cars. He had some success as a teen pop star and then became a sports journalist as a means of gaining access to the world of motor racing.

His world changed in December 1973 when, according to him, he had an encounter with the pilot of a flying saucer, whom he met in the crater of an extinct volcano near Clermont Ferrand in central France. Fortunately, the alien had had the good sense to learn French so that he could tell Vorilhon that he had been chosen to spread the word that human beings had been placed on Earth by an advanced alien race called the Elohim, but that things had not quite worked out as planned and a few changes had been decreed to be necessary. Vorilhon, now to be called Raël, was to have the task of preparing mankind for the return of the Elohim who would come in peace to install a new world government.

Raël would later claim to have been taken in a flying saucer to the planet of the Elohim where he met Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and other prophets who had had the same task as Raël in previous ages. Raël has written a number of books that outline his story and his teachings, these including “Extraterrestrials Took Me to Their Planet” in 1975 and “Yes to Human Cloning” in 2001.

The Raëlians

It is always surprising to learn that people such as Vorilhon can gain a following, but then so did Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and the rest. Estimates of how many Raëlians there are vary considerably, depending on who is doing the estimating, but a figure of at least 50,000 worldwide would not be disputed by many of those in the know.

With any movement such as this it pays to look not only at what its followers believe but also at the methods they are prepared to use to achieve their aims. If those methods raise serious moral question marks, then the basis of the movement must also be called into question. Is this a genuine religious movement or the work of a talented con artist? Mark Twain once remarked that religion began when the first conman met the first fool, so, if he was right, how easy is it to tell “real” religion from “fake”?

Parallels with other religions

When examining Raëlism, many features seem to have parallels in well-established religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, Mohammed wrote the Koran under dictation from Allah, and Raël got his instructions from a man in a flying saucer in a volcanic crater. According to Moses, the Jews were God’s chosen people to be given special blessings and the responsibility of spreading those blessings to less fortunate peoples. In Raëlism, the leaders in the forthcoming world government will come from a “geniocracy” composed of people with an IQ that is 50% higher than that of the average. There are other examples that could have been selected.

Technical solutions to world problems

The new world of peace and prosperity that is forecast is one that makes full use of modern technology. Strangely enough, given that the Elohim are supposed to have 25,000 years of scientific development to their advantage, the technologies that Raëlism proposes to use to benefit mankind are those that mankind has already managed to discover for itself, albeit with some tweaking that seems to derive more from science fiction and wishful thinking than the knowledge of advanced beings on a distant planet.

Raël’s idea of immortality is that humans will be cloned, with the expectation that the personality of the individual will be transferred into a new body that is created from cells saved from the old one. Cloning is known to be a feasible technology, but the Raëlian version would include rapid development of the clone in a manner that sounds remarkably like that envisaged by Aldous Huxley in his novel “Brave New World”. Another disturbing aspect of this aspiration is that cloning would be used selectively, the decision on who deserves immortality being in the hands of a “Grand Council of the Eternals”. As well cloning deserving cases, it has been suggested that suicide bombers, for example, might be brought back from the dead so that they can be given fitting punishments.

Raëlism has a whole panoply of levels and hierarchies, coupled with activities that determine the level to which a follower belongs. There is a baptism ceremony and a series of meditation exercises. Seminars are held, at which a certain amount of sexual freedom is allowed. Raëlians have campaigned for women to be allowed to go topless in public, and this “new age” aspect of the religion might account for its popularity in certain quarters. It has also caused legal difficulties for Raël and his followers in several countries that do not tolerate the free and easy lifestyle that his religion advocates.

Follow the money

Another question that must always be asked of a religious movement of this kind is, “Is anyone getting seriously rich out of all this?” The answer here would appear to be “Yes”, in that there seems to be quite a lot of money floating around. One of the aims of the Raëlians is to build an embassy that will be a fitting home for the Elohim, complete with a landing pad for their spacecraft and room for all the followers to camp around it. Many millions of dollars have already been raised for this project, although a site for the embassy has yet to be found.

In the meantime, Raël himself has been able to enjoy a career as a racing driver, although he has now retired from this. He lives comfortably enough, surrounded by his adoring devotees as he waits for the Elohim to make their next move.

The question posed above remains open. It is clear to most observers that the Raëlian Religion is nonsense and could well pose a danger to its adherents. However, there are many parallels to be seen between it and religions that have been established and respected for many centuries. How is it possible to be certain that one religion is a fraud and another is not? Does Raëlism not require all religious devotees to ask what their religion would have looked like had it been founded as recently as 1973?

© John Welford