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

Why 666 is the number of the beast

The Book of Revelation (the final book of the Bible’s New Testament) mentions 666 as the “Number of the Beast”. But what exactly is the significance of that number?

Revelation and the Beast

The Book of Revelation has been subject to interpretation all through the ages, mainly because of its many cryptic references. The author (who may or may not have been the John wrote the Gospel or the three short letters that are also part of the New Testament - indeed, almost certainly neither of them) describes a vision that is chock full of strangeness and symbolism, much of which is expressed in numerical form, with the number seven being particularly prominent.

Chapter 13 verse 18 reads (in the King James version):

“Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred threescore and six”.

Many people have puzzled over this reference, with the general consensus being that it refers to Satan and that there is therefore something fundamentally evil about the number 666. Movies have been made in which people possessed by demons have been found with the number 666 tattooed on their heads. 666 therefore signifies the Antichrist.

So who is the Man referred to in the text?

There is a very straightforward answer to this question, which is the Emperor Nero. It is quite possible that Revelation was written not many years after Nero’s persecution of the Christians following the great fire of Rome in 64 AD. It is possible that Saints Peter and Paul were among the martyrs who died at that time.

That was clearly enough to make Nero a “beast”, and there was also confusion over his apparent death by suicide in 68AD, in that not everyone was convinced that he was actually dead. If Nero had escaped and was still alive, could he be about to return at the head of an army and wreak more chaos?

The message behind the verse in Chapter 13 is that the beast can be defeated if and when he returns, either in the form of Nero or one of his successors, all of whom were evil in the eyes of Jewish Christians.

The clue lies in the number 666. This is Nero’s number because of the coincidence of his Greek name being highly significant in terms the Hebrew system of “number letters”. In Greek, Emperor Nero is “Kaisar Neron” which in Hebrew letters (which do not include vowels) is “qsr nrwn”.

In the Hebrew system, letter q stands for 60, s is 100, r is 200, n is 50 and w is 6. The letters of “qsr nrwn” therefore add up to the number 666.

Sixes and sevens

The significance of this is that the number 7 is particularly powerful within Israelite number symbolism. Seven is the perfect number because it is addition of three – the divine number – and four – the number for the created world. All three numbers keep cropping up as being highly symbolic – three members of the Trinity and four corners of the earth, for example.

The Book of Revelation is addressed to seven churches and there are mentions of seven seals, seven trumpets, and much else besides. The Beast has seven heads because he aspires to match the perfect number, but, as the author points out, he can never do so because his number is a succession of sixes. The message of Revelation is therefore to convince people that God’s people, with the perfect number seven supporting them, will always triumph over the Roman world’s inability to get beyond six.

It may sound like playing with numbers, but to the original readers of Revelation (and many since that time) all this is highly significant.

© John Welford

The Priory of Sion hoax

Dan Brown’s best-known novel was founded on a myth, but it was a myth which he appeared to believe to be true despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The Da Vinci Code

Readers of Dan Brown’s well-known 2003 novel “The Da Vinci Code” soon become aware that the plot centres on the activities of a secret occult organisation known the “The Priory of Sion”. A murder takes place in the Louvre, Paris, the victim being the Priory’s Grand Master. As the story unfolds we are told that this society has existed for hundreds of years, its mission being to guard the secrets of the origins of Christianity, and in particular the fact that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had descendants who are alive today. Previous Grand Masters had included Leonardo Da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton.

It is clear from Brown’s preface to the book that he regarded the Priory of Sion as being a historical entity, dating from 1099. He cited as his main source the 1983 book “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” by Michael Baigent et al, who claimed to have first-hand evidence of the Priory’s existence and history from its current Grand Master.

Mere invention

However, the whole edifice was to come crashing down in 1993 with an admission in court by a French occultist, Pierre Plantard (1920-2000), that the Priory of Sion was entirely fictional and existed nowhere except inside his own head. This admission seems to have escaped the notice of Dan Brown, whose bestseller appeared ten years later!

The Priory of Sion was invented in 1956 as an attempt to link Roman Catholicism with occultism. Plantard was a right-wing Frenchman (from south-west France) with Fascist sympathies, who had previously, in 1940, created a secret society called Alpha Galates and had served time in prison for so doing.

The Priory of Sion appears to have been an attempt to revive Alpha Galates. Plantard claimed that it was a large organisation with a hierarchy of membership levels that could be obtained for certain sums of money. However, this was all a con and Plantard served another prison sentence for fraud.

Undaunted, Plantard continued to advance the cause of the Priory despite the fact that, for much of its existence, he was the sole member. He came across another fraudster, Noel Corbu, who had invented a mysterious past for a restaurant he was opening at Rennes-le-Chateau near the French Pyrenees. Plantard determined to do the same for the Priory and concocted the history that deceived firstly Michael Baigent and then Dan Brown.

The web of legends and half-history that Plantard wove included the Albigensian “heretics” of the 13^th century, the Merovingian rulers of first millennium France, the 18^th century German “Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross” and much more besides. Documents were forged that claimed to back up his claims, and it was these that eventually landed Plantard in court.

In 1984 Plantard tried to put an end to the Priory but then tried again in 1989 with a new set of claims which got him nowhere.

Believing in the myth

Despite all the evidence that the Priory of Sion was founded on nothing but the imagination of a fantasist and convicted fraudster, many people have fallen victim to believing the whole story. As with many such cases, people will believe what they want to believe, however flimsy the evidence.

The fact that fictions such as the Priory of Sion have achieved such wide notice and attracted much credibility should serve as a warning that other, more widely accepted, beliefs in what cannot be proven should also be looked at far more critically. However, once a mind is firmly closed to reason it is very difficult to re-open it!

© John Welford