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March 16, 1998 - Art Bell

02:39:05

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Tom von Flandern - Mars. Linda Moulton Howe - HAARP

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58:07

thomas charles van flandern

55:23

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hundred K S T B from the high desert and the great American Southwest.
		I bid you all good evening or good morning as the case may be across this great land of ours.
		From the Tahitian and Hawaiian Island chains in the west eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, north to the Poland worldwide on the internet, we do get around.
		This is Coast to Coast A.M. I'm Arcel.
		And we've got a lot going on tonight.
		In a moment, Lyndon Montow, an update on the HARP project, a view from the other side.
		And then in the next hour, astronomer Tom Van Clanderen.
		And he's got a lot to say about Mars and a lot more.
		So all of that this night.
		I cannot open the program without commenting on Kathleen Willie's story.
		Of course, I saw it on 60 Minutes like the rest of the world, and I thought she was credible.
		I thought that on balance, she was telling the truth, and this is just a judgment call based on listening to her.
		However, although 60 Minutes and others have billed this as somebody has perjured themselves, it's still he says, she says.
		And until they get proof that what he said is true or what she said is true, unlikely in this case, or until they prove suborning to perjury or some other impeachable offense, there is going to be no change in the White House and the people who are either clamoring for it,
		hoping for it, or saying it will happen are whistling Dixie because it is not going to happen until there is proof of a crime.
		And then there will be a resignation not a moment before.
		That's my take on it.
		That's actually as much as I have to say about it.
		McKinney has been reduced in rank.
		He'll leave the Army as a Master Sergeant and will likely have his retirement benefits cut.
		But he has been reprimanded and demoted, and that's all that will occur.
		As a matter of fact, all the charges by all the women were dismissed.
		He was not guilty.
		And so the one thing they got him on was obstruction of justice in a phone call.
		So there you have that.
		And as I said in a moment, we're going to get to Linda Moulton Howe and follow that with Dr. Tom Van Flander.
		And I think you're going to find that really riveting.
		And I'll give you kind of a rundown on the rest of the week as I can.
		If you have the opportunity, go and grab a piece of paper and pencil.
		Linda Moulton Howe is going to be making some appearances in the next week or so in Florida and then Alabama.
		So you might want to get a paper and pencil ready before the hour is out.
		We will tell you where and so forth and so on, who to call, that kind of thing.
		Anyway, here she comes from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, our science reporter, our environmental reporter, our investigator of crop circles, animal mutilations, things of high strangeness, indeed, winner of several awards for her documentaries.
		From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, here's Linda Mohn.
		How Linda, hi.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
		Well, this past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held the 1998 International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta.
		The main subject was how bacteria and viruses are spreading in unexpected ways now because of so much world travel.
		One case summed up the problem.
		Last year, an airliner took off from Argentina and stopped in Lima, Peru to pick up meals for the flight back to the United States.
		Those meals were contaminated with cholera.
		Only 80 passengers got off in Los Angeles and boarded other planes to go home.
		Consequently, those people became ill with cholera all over the country, creating the largest number of cholera cases at one time in the U.S. since the 1970s.
		CDC's Associate Director Stephen Ostroff confirmed that infectious disease is now the number three killer in the United States after cancer and heart disease.
		He told the media, quote, partly it's because of the globalization of disease.
		By airplane, no place on Earth now is much more than 36 hours away from anywhere else.
		People are simply more mobile across borders, time zones, and environments than ever before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What worries me, Linda, is not only the natural possibilities, but the unnatural ones.
		A lot of people worry about subways and so forth for biological agents.
		I worry about airports.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		Well, and you and I both have experienced more than once getting on an airplane inside of that circulated, confined air, and you get off the plane and two days later you're sick.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remember telling you just prior to your last trip to Tokyo, Linda, when you get to Tokyo, you are going to get sick.
		That's right.
		It was so bad you couldn't even talk.
		You couldn't.
unidentified		That's right.
		I completely lost my voice.
		And for all of us, we should be going through life a little more offensively now and finding something, I guess, to breathe on the planes like Michael Jackson has put over his mouth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I've been told by certain people that if you're supposed to do this or not, but that if you tell the crew, you know, the stewardess, when you get on the plane, that you've got breathing problems, they will give you little canisters to breathe from.
unidentified		Oh, I'll try that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a hint for the traveler.
unidentified		Yeah, I will try that.
		Well, diseases are also being released from rainforest destruction.
		And last week, a leader of Brazil's primitive Yanamami Indians pleaded for help to put out huge fires that have devastated the Amazonian region where the Indians live.
		For the last two months, 1.24 million acres have burned up from fires set by farmers clearing land for crops.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many acres?
unidentified		1.24 million in two months.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Yanomama have enough serious problems of their own right now.
unidentified		Oh, at every level, from disease to every issue of survival, and the situation is out of control now because of the drought in Brazil caused by El Niño.
		This is the worst drought ever seen in the region.
		For five months, there has been no rain at all.
		And now, even more humid rainforests are being consumed by smoke and fire.
		It is really, truly a tragedy that the entire planet should be concerned about.
		And as the world rapidly changes into the 21st century global economy and new dangers and concerns emerge about our environment, tonight I would like to help lessen fear about one issue, Project HARP, the high-frequency active auroral research program in Alaska.
		The idea for HAARP, according to the program's manager, John Heckscher, started back in 1990 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
		The United States government had purchased land in Gokona, Alaska, about 200 miles northeast of Anchorage, to build an over-the-horizon radar installation as part of our Cold War defense system.
		When the Cold War ended, so did funding for the radar site.
		But ionospheric physicists talked to congressmen about their need to study the Arctic ionosphere, a region charged with the plasmas of auroras and electrical disturbances.
		As more satellites have been put into orbit around the Earth, ionospheric disturbances, now known as space weather, are increasingly important to understand.
		If there is turbulence in the ionosphere, it can affect satellite communications for television, radio, shortwave, and the military.
		So a congressional initiative was approved in 1990 to allocate money for ionospheric research on the abandoned over-the-horizon radar site at Kakona.
		Congress also asked the United States Air Force and Navy to manage HAARP, but it was never an official Defense Department, a fully formally authorized and funded program.
		Since then, there has been growing public confusion and controversy the past few years about what happens when HAARP is turned on, which has happened only two or three times a year.
		The last experiment was in June 1997.
		I wanted to talk with a scientist considered to be an expert in ionospheric physics who has no vested political interest in HAARP or the military.
		I located Cornell University professor of electrical engineering, Michael Kelly, who also has a Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley.
		Dr. Kelly has written a textbook used throughout universities entitled The Earth's Ionosphere, Plasma Physics and Electrodynamics, published by Academic Press.
		Professor Kelly was at the HAARP facility in Dakona, Alaska for some of the early experiments.
		He said HARP's radio frequencies are from 600 kilohertz to 1.7 megahertz, radio frequencies just above the AM radial band and not microwaves as some misinformed media reports said in years past.
		Professor Kelly is now working on another ionospheric experiment at Cornell's research facility in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, where he talked with me by phone a few days ago.
		I asked Professor Kelly, if HAARP is transmitting only high-frequency radio waves, as television, radio, and short waves do, then why have some people been concerned that putting energy into the ionosphere could cause damage to the environment or be used for weather and mind control?
		Here is Cornell University's professor, Michael Kelly.
		If you go to Alaska any night of the year and lay on your back and look up at the sky, you see an aurora basically horizon to horizon, even on the quietest night.
		And in the more typical night, you have aurora again horizon to horizon and also maybe 200, 300 kilometers north and south.
		So when you look at that and figure out how many square kilometers, talking about 200,000 square kilometers, that you can just see with your own eyes.
		And every bit of that is getting more energy put in by natural phenomena than is put in in a small spot in the sky by heart.
		So in terms of energy issues, it's absolutely a non-issue.
		So that's point number one.
		Point number two is the effects go away.
		There's no long-lasting effect.
		There's more long-lasting effect of the aurora on the atmosphere by far, orders and orders of magnitude than this radio signal.
		Third is the radio signal.
		The Voice of America puts out, that doesn't transmit up the trans, it said horizontally.
		It puts out megawatts of power.
		It's a radio transmitter.
		End of story.
		That's not some mysterious doozy machine.
		It's a radio transmitter.
		If you go to your radio station, in fact, a nearby radio station in Kakona, there's a high-power efficiency radio station that has very large field strengths in the parking lot of the high school, higher than the field strengths measured on the road going by the house facility.
		It's the same phenomena.
		It's electromagnetic radiation from a radio transmitter.
		There is no credible evidence that the aurora affects the weather.
		Now, the aurora is much more widespread a phenomenon than the small amount of heating of electrons that goes on with the transmitter.
		And there's no, as I said, there's no credible evidence that the aurora itself has any effect on the weather.
		So really affecting the weather on the surface of the earth is just absolutely, completely possible.
		And nonsense when it comes to the energy that HARP is putting at its high-frequency radio signals in the ionosphere.
		Correct.
		And could you possibly describe for the listener what actually is happening from the time that the radio transmitter in Gakona is turned on and aimed at some altitude in the ionosphere?
		What is happening?
		Okay, just like any other radio signal beamed upward, if the radio signal is below the maximum so-called plasma frequency in the ionosphere, the signal will reflect.
		So when you get long-wave radio transmission around the world, like cam radio people use and so forth, they're doing the same thing that HAARP does.
		They have a signal such that it's low enough frequency that it slams off the ionosphere just as if it were a mirror.
		Now, if you raise the frequency up to television-type frequency, use FM radio and television, then that signal will go straight through the ionosphere, essentially leaving none of its energy behind.
		Now, if you just get a perfect reflection off the ionosphere, as is usually the case, then the signal hits ionosphere, bounces off, comes back to the ground, hits the earth, back up to the ionosphere.
		In the case of a higher power system like Luxembourg Radio, which is the first one that did this, the radio in Luxembourg Am Radio was very powerful, and it started to modulate other radio stations because of its effect when it hit the ionosphere.
		That's how this effect was discovered.
		What happens is the radio ray goes up, and what causes the signal to reflect is the fact that the electrons are put in motion, and they re-radiate the signal back to ground.
		That's what happens when light waves hit your mirror at home.
		When you look at your mirror, the light waves from your face hit the mirror, the electrons in the metal reflect the signal, and it comes back at you CDCO.
		The same thing happens with the ionosphere.
		Now, if the power is high enough, the electrons will move fast enough that they start to create their own plasma-physical phenomenon that interacts with the reflective process.
		So at some threshold, the ionosphere no longer acts like a mirror.
	It acts more like an absorbing medium.
	And that's that boundary transition that's utilized by the physics of experiment sunlight.
	Could this in any way be used as a military weapon?
	No, the military interest, as far as I understand, I don't have three friends, but as far as I know, it's primarily for communication.
	The idea of this modulation of ELF waves to create signals for submarines is a credible and probably justifiable military interest in hard-type science.
	As you may know, even today, I think there's ELF radio transmitters in the upper peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin.
	This was a big thing in the 70s and 80s.
	In fact, some of the movies you've seen, they talk about getting the ELF, the ELF signal.
	I think Crimson Tide, there was a little blurb on the ELF, as they called it.
	That's one of the research interests of HUD is to be able to do away with ground-based transmitters, which, to be honest, if there was any effect, you'd see much more of an effect if you lived near a ground-based transmitter than if your transmitter is sitting up in the ionosphere where it's more efficiently coupled to the Earth's ionosphere waveguide, and you don't have ground-based transmitters.
	So the idea here is to use the existing, already existing current system in the ionosphere and just modulate that at the ELF frequency.
	And then the ELF frequency can penetrate the Earth and the ocean and communicate a signal to the SAS.
	Correct.
	There's also an interest in prospecting and the location of underground things like Sodomosa and the bunkers and things like that.
	So you can not only penetrate the ocean, but you can penetrate the ground.
	So there's few physicists who use naturally occurring and therefore uncontrollable ELF and ELF signals to do underground prospects.
	So you could take HARP and modulate in the ionosphere to extreme low frequencies to look for, as it says in the Senate Authorization Bill, to look for underground tunnels, shelters, and structures.
	And could we, at this point, be so refined with HAARP that we could locate all of the underground structures in Iraq that Saddam Hussein has?
	Well, we had a, at this point, the answer, the simple answer is no.
	That's why it's called a research project.
	In principle, I think it is possible.
	And people have been looking for underground tunnels.
	People know, for example, where old gold mines and iron mines are in Alaska.
	And, you know, they've been saying, could we find this?
	And I've seen some pretty convincing evidence that they said, yeah, you could find a hole in the ground by looking at these.
	See, what happens is the waves come down, they penetrate the earth, and they themselves get deflected.
	And if there's no change in conductivity of the ground, then you just get a kind of a mundane pattern.
	But if there's a hole in the ground or if there's some conducting material, then you get a change.
	It's like basically a metal detector.
	It's almost totally analogous to when you walk through the metal detector at the airport.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we're going to have to hold it right there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Art Bell, and from the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AF.
unidentified		Coast to Coast.
		Coast to Coast.
		To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye, from east of the Rockies, dial 1, 800-825-5033, 1-800-825-5033, west of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, 1-800-618-8255.
		1-800-618-8255.
		Now again, here's Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, here I am, and we will continue with Linda Moltenhow's interview in just a moment.
		Boy, do I have some bones to pick with this ionospheric physicist, and we'll pick them at the end of the interview.
		Philadelphia, to continue the interview, here is Linda Moltenhow.
		Linda?
unidentified		Thanks, Art.
		Professor Kelly is explaining how extreme low frequencies can be used to look for underground tunnels, structures, and shelters and metal objects.
		As we continue now, totally analogous to when you walk through the metal detector at the airport, the change of the magnetic field is sensed because you have some metal on your body.
		It's changed and then detected by the instrument.
		So that's almost a perfect analogy to heart.
		And hasn't the concern been by the political activist in Alaska that if you can modulate the ionosphere to an extremely low-frequency signal, and if being attacked down to submarines, that that signal might in some way affect human minds?
		Well, you know, this is just so ridiculous.
		The signal levels are very small.
		Signals that are generated by this very complicated process are almost undetectable by great instruments, let alone affecting the human mind.
		There just is no credibility to the notion that there's some attempt at mind control using these extremely low signals.
		If you were going to do that, you'd be much better off just to build a transmitter on a wire and put it in the ground somewhere.
		You'd have a much bigger signal that you could deal with.
		So just to get it really clear, the amount of extreme low frequency that is coming from just the human cavity resonance of the earth from lightning, storms, auroras, and everything else adds up to a much greater signal that is overwhelming to a certain extent any ELF modulation that you have in the harp and that you have to use extremely refined and sophisticated technology to even get out of the
		background ELF of the Earth the signal that would come down from the ionosphere.
		Yep.
		That's in a nutshell.
		And the reason it's possible is that it's a known frequency.
		If you know, if you have a signal that basically, the natural signals are basically spread out to what we call a spectrum.
		So there's, if you look at it on a telescope or on a TV screen, you see fluctuations to your eye, which were at all frequencies.
		If you know that you have a certain frequency, because that's the frequency that's being used that day, then you can filter the data right around that frequency and pull that signal out of the background noise, which is natural.
		So you can make a statement.
		People say, well, if it's varied by the noise, how could you possibly see it?
		But the planets and technologists use it all the time.
		GPS, for example, a very important global positioning satellite system, the signal that comes from PPS, the ground receivers, your little handheld GPS thing, the signal is actually much less, much less by a factor of 100 than the noise level from, say, the galaxies that are also generating electromagnetic waves.
		But because you know the character of the signal, you can do signal processing to pull that signal out.
		The same thing is true with the ELF that comes from HAP.
		It's a tough thing to detect, let alone used to try to control someone's behavior.
		One thing I do want to mention, which sometimes comes up and I'd like to clarify, people ask me, and I was a legitimate question, are we, by affecting the ionosphere, are we creating ourselves some sort of health hazard much as the ozone problem with fluorocarbon?
		And that's a great question.
		It's definitely worth answering.
		And here's the answer.
		What protects the Earth is the Earth's atmosphere, photoside.
		The very existence of the ionosphere is an indication that the harmful rays from the sun have been absorbed.
		So the ionosphere is a byproduct of this yielding process.
		So you could remove the ionosphere tomorrow, and it would not affect life on the Earth because the atmosphere, which you did not remove, is there, and it would just form another ionosphere.
		And by removing the ionosphere, you mean the stripped electron from the solar wind interaction with the upper atmosphere, they're creating this plasma.
		Yeah, and it's not just the solar wind.
		In fact, earlier I was worried that you might, yeah, when the sunlight itself hits the atmosphere, it's when the ionosphere is formed.
		Okay.
		So it's the sunlight shining on the day side of the Earth, it traces 50 from 70 kilometers up to 2,000.
		Then farther out, you have solar wind interactions that can affect this magnetosphere and so forth.
		So by large, the ionosphere is created by the absorption of harmful radiation from the sun, like X-rays and extreme ultraviolet.
		So that's our first line of defense from the Sun's higher energy electromagnetic radiation, is the upper atmosphere.
		And the ionosphere is a byproduct of that.
		When you absorb that energy, you strip some electrons and form the ionosphere.
		Now, if you make, if you say, well, what happens if you make a hole in the ionosphere, as you can sort of do with these transparency, as you can sort of make a region which you have a lower electron density, is that letting in harmful radiation?
		The fact is, it's not, because the atmosphere is not affected.
		It can only affect the electrons.
		And the atmosphere is still there.
		So if, of course, you easily do this at night, but if it was the daytime, we just immediately ionize again and therefore continue to protect the Earth.
		So there's no, it's a very good question, but the answer is that there is no, the atmosphere itself does not shield the Earth from the X-rays, if we have it, And we're not affecting it.
		Is there any question about any unknown result or effect that could be set in motion by focusing bursts of high-frequency radio waves in the ionosphere?
		I don't have any idea of how that could create any problems.
		I really don't.
		The power densities, as I said, even with the full heart, are comparable to your run-of-the-mill aurora.
		And aurora is a beautiful phenomenon.
		And, you know, it's, like I said, wall-to-wall, light, beautifully structured and so forth.
		And there is no known effect of the aurora on the depth's lower atmosphere.
		I also talked with HAARP program manager John Hecher.
		He is an electrical engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory, formerly known as the Phillips Lab at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts.
		He said that Congress has funded HAARP only in bits and pieces of pork barrel money known as clums-ups, ranging annually from $2 million to $11 million.
		Each year, he's uncertain what funding he will have to keep building the phased array antennas and transmitters or what experiments can be paid for, although they have done one ELS underground test.
		Project HARP Manager John Hexcher.
		As I say, it's only a quarter built.
	We've been working on it 10 years.
	See, the way the money comes, it's very...
	Issue.
	That's correct.
	In fact, I don't even have 98 money yet, all of it.
	I've only gotten like a third of it.
	And who keeps changing and putting in these numbers?
	Congressmen.
	And that's the unknown as far as you're concerned.
	Well, we know where it comes from.
	It comes out of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
	But you see, everybody votes on that.
	All senators.
	I mean, you know, it's not one senator may put it in, but another senator from another state will put something else in.
	So, you know, that's how politics works.
	You vote for this, I'll vote for that.
	And when it's fully constructed, the antenna will cover about 10 acres.
	And when do you think it'll be done?
	At the rate we're being funded by Congress, I will have retired.
	Well, if it is one quarter done after 10 years, you're talking about 40 years.
	That's right.
	Okay, well, then going back to June of 1997 and before, how were you doing research toward this goal of being able to find underground tunnel structures and shelters?
	You put some ELF modulation on the radio waves that you're sending up, and the atosphere essentially demodulates that and re-radiates the modulation frequency, not the HF, but the modulation frequency, which in this case was ELF.
	Now we have a very, very, very, very weak ELS signal.
	But we have the advantage that we know when it was generated.
	So we can use a very sophisticated receiver on the ground called a correlation receiver.
	And what it does, it integrates the noise out and builds the signal up so that we can see that we have a signal, even though it's very, very, very weak.
	Those are the types of signals that we used to look for underground anomalies.
	And what we did was we looked to see if we could image a mine shaft in Alaska.
	We make measurements all over the surface above the mine, take it there, and invert it, and we can, if we're lucky, get an image of that mine.
	We were able to do that.
	One Anchorage, Alaska resident who had spearheaded citizen concerns about HAARPs having potentially dangerous military applications is Nick Begich, past president of the Alaska Federation of Teachers.
	Mr. Begich wrote and published the book, Angels Don't Play This HARP.
	I shared the comments of Professor Kelly and John Heckscher with him and suggested that HARP might not be such a concern if it's only 25% constructed and operates transmitters two or three times a year.
	Nick Begich.
	You know, I would say that, you know, at this point, the fact that it's not fully powered is certainly a relief, I mean, in the sense that what could possibly happen with a bigger system.
	But I don't think it takes us out of the woods.
	The only difference between this and other projects like this is it's discovered at its infancy rather than at its termination or at its end point.
	We would agree that the defense applications, as we've articulated them, that they can be done safely, are certainly the kinds of applications that we would like to see in our defense bars.
	But what we would not like to see is undue risk, the kind of undue risk that the military is famous for now for the other programs that they've developed.
	And I would also agree that the Cold War is over and that maybe the need for developing sophisticated weapons technologies are not there.
	If it's to protect satellites, although some have raised the possibility that these could in fact damage satellites, in fact, the military talks about the use of these systems for anti-satellite applications.
	So again, you know, the question of are we enhancing the situation or are we harming it?
	And we think that deserves a lot broader scope than what the military offers in this program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		And one footnote, John Heckscher said he will have another HAARP open house in Gakona, Alaska this coming August.
unidentified		Said everyone from anywhere is welcome, that they can come and walk anywhere they want to around the transmitters, talk to scientists, and there will be people there to ask and answer all questions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Linda, I have a couple of comments.
		One is, I invited John Hecher, who will certainly give you the party line because he directs the project on HAARP, to debate Nick Begich, and he declined.
		That was well over a year ago now.
		And I had quite a long talk with him, and he did not want to have to answer questions.
		Now, with respect to Professor Kelly, I was sitting here pounding the table.
		You couldn't hear it because I had the mic down.
		Here are the questions that I would have.
		Number one, he laid out an analogy of a radio station and said he made field strength readings in the parking lot that were a lot higher in the radio station than they were near the HAARP project.
		Of course, that is true.
		A radio station radiates horizontal energy to be heard by the local community.
		It intends to radiate in that direction.
		A HARP, on the other hand, Linda, radiates straight up.
		Moreover, and much more importantly, and this is something you need, or I need to ask him about, one of us does, the HAARP antenna array is designed to do the exact opposite of what normal antenna arrays are, even ones that radiate to the ionosphere.
		For example, normally we radiate a very broad signal from the ground, I'm sorry, a very narrow signal from the ground, and by the time it gets to the ionosphere, it is very broad.
		In the case of HARP, the antenna array is the exact opposite.
		It is designed to have a very broad signal from the ground, from the array itself, over, that's why they put it over a big piece of geography, and then end up as a pinpoint of energy at the ionosphere.
		So the professor was wrong with respect to his analogy of a radio station.
		There is no possible way that that analogy works.
		That's number one.
		Number two, when we get to 100 billion watts of power, which is the final stage of HAAA, then you have real ionospheric concerns and, I believe, safety and health concerns.
		Now, I understand that they're modulating a small amount of ELF, but they're modulating that to get to an underground tunnel or bunker right through us.
		And we have reaction to ELF.
		There's no question about it.
		Now, those are my comments, and I think they deserve answers from the professor.
		His analogy just was not technically accurate.
unidentified		Well, fortunately, as John Heckscher pointed out, the funding and the construction is going slowly, and that tonight I talked with Nick Begich, and he would like to see some sort of an open forum organized there, perhaps in association with this August open house,
		in which John Heckscher or somebody who works with him, John Kelly, other scientists, Nick Begich, that they could actually do some sort of a forum and that we do have the time now when things really are not at any kind of an intense development level to get more answers and pose more questions.
		And I will get in touch again with Professor Kelly on these issues.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I've got an announcement for you, Linda.
		Let me make that.
		Linda Molten Howe is going to be speaking at the Project Awareness Conference in Pensacola Beach, Florida.
		That'll be this coming Saturday and Sunday.
		This coming weekend, March 21 and 22.
		She'll be talking about Crop Circle symbols, the human abduction syndrome, and government knowledge and cover-ups based on her new book, Glimpses of Other Realities, Volume 2, High Strangeness.
		Headed for nationwide bookstores in a couple of weeks, the publisher, Paper Chase Press, now taking advance orders for that book at a toll-free number, 1-800-658-9959.
		That's a new number, 1-800-658-9959.
		After the conference on Sunday, Linda will then be in Mobile, Alabama, I guess it is.
		Mobile, Alabama, at the Books a Million store.
		That's at 3960 Airport Boulevard at 3 p.m. to share information from her new book and to sign autographs.
		There's your chance, folks.
		That's Sunday, March 22nd.
		It's Books a Million in Mobile, Alabama at 3 o'clock in the afternoon at 3960 Airport Boulevard.
		And we're woefully short on time now, Linda.
unidentified		Well, I sure do look forward to all of our listeners, anyone who can make the conference, the book signing.
unidentified		And I'm glad that we were able to spend this time tonight, Art, on this important HARP issue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we will see you this coming Sunday on Dreamland, right?
unidentified		That's right.
unidentified		I'll be reporting from Pensacola Gulf Spree.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And by the way, if anybody would like to send Linda a fax on the HARP project business that we just got a little contentious about, you can do it at area code 215-25-491-9842.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, Linda?
unidentified		Thank you, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		See you Sunday.
unidentified		Yeah, happy St. Pat's Day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have a good trip to Florida.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Bye-bye.
		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When we come back, Professor Tom Van Sandra, I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		This is Coast to Coast A.M. It's a naval battle from the Kingdom of Nye.
		This is Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell.
		First-time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.
		702-727-1222.
		Now, here again is Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, are you in for a treat in a few moments?
		Tom Van Flandren, doctor, professor, received his Ph.D. degree in astronomy from Yale University in 1969.
		And we're going to be talking about Mars, comets, exploding planets, exploding universes, you know, the Big Bang, what's on Mars, what we're about to find out about what's on Mars, that sort of thing should be more than just a little interesting.
		And by the way, if you want to read some of what you're about to hear, I suggest you go to my website and scroll on down to the guest area and click on Dr. Van Flandren's name.
		It'll take you over to his website and you will learn.
		It's very well done, actually.
		So, all of that ahead of us, yes, I saw the Kathleen Willey interview on 60 Minutes, and yes, I did believe her.
		She told a very reasonable, credible story, I thought.
		However, and this is a big however, those 60 Minutes said one of them has committed perjury.
		Until that is proven, it is not a crime.
		And as far as I know, there are no witnesses.
		So from a practical point of view, it turns into a he said, she said situation.
		And until something is proven, I think that you've still got President Clinton right where he is.
		His detractors are saying, that's it, he's gone, he's going to have to resign.
		Don't you believe it?
		Unless they come up with suborning perjury, unless they come up with a crime that has been committed, one that can be proved, then he's going to stay right where he is, would be my view.
		So yes, I did see it.
		Yes, I did find it credible.
		No, I don't see that any sort of crime can be drawn from this as yet, one that would pressure a resignation or failing that, support an impeachment.
		The Sanyo 917, remember the other day we spent, I don't know how long, with our guest from SETI talking about spread spectrum.
		It's 10 times more powerful than a normal cordless phone.
		I'm talking about the 917, Sanyo 917 digital spread spectrum cordless phone.
		There simply is not a better phone on the face of the earth today.
		It's 179.95.
		Now, I'll tell you what, C-Crane Company has a record so far from the phone to the base of 5.8 miles.
		This is a cordless phone, a cordless phone with perfect audio, and they have managed to go 5.8 miles from the base.
		Digital encoding of this sort, of course, means nobody can listen to your conversations, not even our favorite government.
		It's the finest cordless phone made today, period.
		It's $179.95.
		We have one other version, just in case you want hands-free operation.
		It's remarkable.
		The Z-Grain Company has converted the phone, so you plug a little headset into it, and the headset has a mic.
		And you don't even have to use your hand.
		You just plug it in, and then flip the phone onto your belt or whatever.
		And you can walk around talking on the phone, using both your hands for whatever else you want to use them for.
		That's up to you.
		That's a very special phone for people with special needs.
		$34995.
		The number to call at 7.30 in the morning for either one or both of these versions would be 1-800-522-8863.
		If you demand the best, here it is.
		1-800-522-8863.
		The C-Crane Company.
		Ad-0-0.
		Tell them you want the ignition system Art Bell has on his Hot Rod Metro.
		It's like a heart transplant for your car.
		That's 1-800-627-8800.
		And check out their webpage at www.jacobselectronics.com.
		Now comes Professor Tom Van Flandren.
		Tom received his Ph.D. degree in astronomy from Yale University in 1969.
		He spent 20 years at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where he became the chief of the Celestial Mechanics Branch.
		In 1991, Tom formed a Washington, D.C.-based organization, Meta Research, to foster research into ideas not otherwise supported solely because they conflict with mainstream theories in astronomy.
		Tom is editor of the Meta Research Bulletin, which specializes in reporting anomalies, evidence that does not fit with standard theories in the field.
		He is also a research associate at the University of Maryland working on improving the accuracy of the global positioning system.
		North Atlantic Books is the publisher of his 1993 book, Dark Matter, Missing Planets, and New Comets.
		And it all fits together, believe me.
		As with his research papers, the book is critical of many standard models in astronomy, such as the Ord Cloud, the Dirty Snowball, and Big Bang theories.
		Tom just returned from an expedition for 100 people to the Galapagos Islands for viewing the February 26th total solar eclipse.
		During his career as a professional research astronomer, Tom has been honored by a prize from the Gravity Research Foundation, served on the Council of American Astronomical Society's Division on Dynamic Reese Astronomy,
		taught astronomy at the University of South Florida and the Navy Department and to a Navy Department employee group, has been consultant to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, has done several spots for the Project Universe series that continues to air occasionally on public television.
		Here he is, Dr. Van Flandren.
		Doctor, welcome to the program.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you very much, Hart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a pleasure to be here.
		Boy, am I glad to have you here.
		There's been a lot of news about you floating around the scientific community for some time now with regard to Mars.
		And I guess I'll begin with that.
		Lindwald Howe interviewed Dr. Malin with regard to the imaging of Mars by the mission that we have there now.
		So I wonder if you can catch us up.
		I mean, let's begin with what the mission is, what you know about the current status of the mission, and we'll go from there.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, last year we sent two spacecraft to Mars.
		The first one had the lander, the Pathfinder, as it's called, that took the shots of one particular spot on Mars where the lander happened to come down.
		And we got photos and some actual measurements of the contents of various rocks on the surface of Mars at that spot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand the craft, by the way, the little vehicle is deader than a doornail now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It declared so the other day.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		Yes.
		It was only expected to have a finite lifetime until its batteries ran out.
		But we learned quite a bit about surface at that spot, including about the huge, huge flood, unlike anything we seem to have ever had here on Earth, that must have occurred on Mars, that left sand dunes 60 feet high in the sand, as ripples.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a big flood.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's a huge flood.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was that the biggest surprise, do you think?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Probably, yes.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		They knew about the flood before, but this startling local evidence of just how massive and how sudden it was was beyond anybody's expectations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What does that mean?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does that mean Mars had an atmosphere?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		It would seem so.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Indications are that at one time Mars had an atmosphere at least as dense as Earth's atmosphere today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
		It's worth asking what, doctor, could strip away an atmosphere as dense as ours from a planet?
		What could do that?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a package of evidence about Mars that fits right in with a completely different line of evidence that there has been one or more planets in our solar system in the past that are no longer present today.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And what we seem to have left behind in their place is streams of asteroids that orbit the Sun.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I believe your contention is that these planets, one or more, actually blew up.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How, Doctor, does a planet blow up?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are a number of theories about what causes both planets and, on the other hand, stars to blow up.
		All of these theories are incomplete.
		It may surprise some of your listeners to know that even though we have no doubt at all that stars blow up, those are called novas for average-sized stars and supernovas for large stars, we still don't have a complete theory of these explosions, but it's obvious they do happen, and a lot of models have been proposed which are out there for testing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would be your best guess?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		In the case of planets, to give just an example out of many for small planets, we know that conditions are very intense in the core of a planet, that pressures and temperatures are very high.
		When you take various kinds of chemicals and drastically change the temperature and pressure, they can undergo a sudden change called a change of state.
		It's like what happens to water when you freeze it to ice.
		It's still H2O, but it's in a completely different chemical form.
		It's now solid instead of liquid.
		Changes of state can also occur in the core of a planet when you increase the temperature or pressure beyond certain limits.
		And of course, there we're talking about heavy elements such as iron and uranium.
		But a sudden change of state in the core of a planet can cause either an implosion or an explosion, depending upon the type of change it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bad for us either way.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's right.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		As inhabitants of a planet, we have certain vested interests in stability.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We do.
		What do we know about the center of our Earth?
		I think we know more about Mars than we do what's down in the middle of the Earth.
		What is there, do you think?
		Is it molten?
		Is it an iron core?
		I've heard all kinds of theories of rotating iron cores and molten stuff.
		And what's down there anyway?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Sorry, for Earth or for Mars?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Earth.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		In Earth, yes.
		As you go deeper and deeper, the weight of the layers above adds more and more pressure.
		So it's getting hotter and more and more packed, denser.
		And by the time you get down through the mantle, which is the layers above the core, you cross the boundary and you're in the core, which is molten, temperatures are millions of degrees,
		pressures unlike anything we experience here on the surface, and primarily iron, although the density isn't right for pure iron, so it's mixed in with some uranium and very heavy stuff, and also some lighter stuff.
		Hydrogen, perhaps, from water has been proposed as one of the lighter ingredients in the core.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, do we know this for sure or is this the best guess?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		This is best guess.
		That is, we can make measurements of certain properties such as the density from the gravity field, such as how deep the transition is from the mantle to the core through seismic waves from earthquakes that pass right through the Earth.
		We can make all kinds of measurements, but then from those measurements, we're just making our best guess of what the chemical composition is and what the conditions are like down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let us presume, for the sake of this conversation, that is exactly the case.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What kind of change of state could occur, and what could cause such a change of state that would so destabilize a planet that it would implode or explode?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, planetary.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Taking ours as an example, as you have described it.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		You would have to gradually be changing the conditions to cause something to happen.
		Because if a planet reaches a steady state where there's a balance between heat intake and heat radiated, then not much is likely to happen to it, even in the deep interior.
		However, we know from actual measurements of the outer planets in the solar system today, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, that these planets are radiating more heat back into space.
		In Jupiter's case, twice as much heat is radiated back into space than it's presently taking in from the sun.
		So there have to be processes going on inside the planet that are generating heat too, and at a rate that is at least as strong as the heat coming in from the sun.
		In the Earth, there is also an excess of heat outflow from heat intake, but it's relatively small.
		The dominant source of the Earth's heat is the sun.
		And the extra heat from the interior is believed to be caused from decay of radioactive elements in the deep interior of the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it would be your view that though we're not perfectly stable, we're probably stable enough that we're not going to blow up or infode?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right, yes.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		We should reassure the audience that certainly the Earth is stable enough that nothing is likely to happen in the next thousands or millions of years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Glad to hear that.
		Now, again, let's go back to Mars.
		Something took Mars' atmosphere.
		Your theory is that there were other planets nearby and that one of them or more of them blew up in the manner you described.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And the key about Mars is that apparently Mars was a moon of this planet formerly orbiting the Sun in the orbit where Mars is now, the planet that blew up.
		It was a larger planet than either Earth or Mars, and Mars was apparently a moon.
		It probably had one or more other moons as well.
		And the chief piece of evidence that Mars was right there at the time of the explosion is that one half of Mars, and it's almost exactly one half, has been pelted so intensely that the craters on that half of Mars are shoulder to shoulder so densely that any new crater that forms today has to destroy old craters underneath it.
		There's no room for more craters.
		They're that dense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		The other hemisphere, on the other hand, is relatively sparse in cratering.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So one side of it, it's like one side of it got hit by a gigantic shotgun.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And correspondingly, the crust of Mars on that side is built up to a thickness of 20 kilometers thicker than the crust on the opposite side of Mars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I believe you also think that this exploding planet accounts for the majority of comets that we see that return to this area, the scene of the crime, so to speak, again and again and again, as well as asteroids which are big chunks of rock and come back again and again and again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that correct?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that is correct.
		Reconstructing the history of the solar system as best we can from evidence from comets, from asteroids, and from meteorites, the bits of asteroids and comets that land here on Earth where we can actually take them in the laboratory and measure them,
		reconstructing this and also using the geological record and rock samples from the moon that astronauts have brought back, we've been able to put together a chronology, and it kind of looks as though the main asteroid belt, the gap between Mars and Jupiter,
		contained one large planet up until probably a few hundred million years ago when it apparently blew up, forming 80% of the asteroids of the main belt.
		Then about 65 million years ago, that date is the same as the date of the death of the dinosaurs on Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, isn't that an interesting coincidence?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, you're suggesting that this large planet of which Mars was a moon blew up, created comets, created asteroids, and threw off a whole bunch of stuff all at once.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that occurred at the same time that our friends, the dinosaurs, died during that Tunguska, was it?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		No, Tunguska eventually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm not a KT event.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		KT boundary.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The KT.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		KT boundary.
		Exactly so.
		You know, all the talk right now in the field is about the Chikshaloop crater in Yucatan, but there are six major impact craters scattered around the Earth that are dated from the same epoch, plus one of the largest episodes of volcanism in the history of the Earth, the Deccan Traps in India, all occurred at the same time.
		Changes in the atmospheres and oceans globally.
		I was amused because I think, of course, that the Earth was suffering from this planetary explosion and not just from a chance single large impact at Chikshaloop.
		But there was a recent NASA survey down there where they were trying to find more samples of meteorites from the big impact in Mexico.
		And in the course of looking for debris from the large impact, they discovered two additional Craters from the same epoch down in Mexico.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So right around the same time, Mars got hit, we got hit, and no doubt other planets got hit as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even our own moon, presumably.
unidentified		That's right.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was from the event 65 million years ago, which was the explosion of the parent of Mars.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And that would have been the one that pelted Mars on one side, blew away most of its atmosphere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it would have been...
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Mars is a red planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand red now.
		Doctor, hold on for just a moment.
		We'll be right back.
		This is coast to coast,
unidentified		A.M. Call Art
		Bell in the Kingdom of Nigh on the Wildcard Line at Area Code 702-727-1295.
		That's Area Code 702-727-1295.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is Dr. Tom Van Flandren as my guest, and he'll be back in a moment.
		Just a brief note.
		Art, greetings from Fairbanks, Alaska.
		The solar wind or something must be howling up there.
		We're being treated to one of the best displays of the Northern Lights Aurora I've ever seen.
		That would be in my 22 years in Alaska.
		Sorry to be missing it.
		Somebody get out there with a camera and send me a photo.
		Van Flandren.
		And, Doctor, when I said, was Mars blue, back when it had water, apparently a lot of water, and lots of atmosphere, surely at least in portions of the planet where there was lots of oxygen and lots of water, it wouldn't have been all red.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I see the picture you're painting there.
		However, that also wouldn't produce a massive flood on this scale either.
		And probably the evidence tells us that Mars couldn't have had stable oceans for very long geologically.
		Rather than have oceans of its own at all, I think it's more likely that the water that produced these floods was itself the result of one of these explosions, actually a later one than the one we were just talking about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it did at one time have an atmosphere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do we have any idea what it would have been composed of primarily?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, the present atmosphere, the main ingredient is carbon dioxide.
		And that may be a leftover residue of the original atmosphere.
		So carbon dioxide may have been the principal ingredient there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's interesting to consider what could destroy a planet's atmosphere.
		Now, obviously, your theory is, I guess, that this planet exploded, thundering Mars, which was very close, with all of this material, and I suppose just blowing the atmosphere away.
		Is that?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And really.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And producing a sudden tilt of the pole of Mars as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know this is a very contentious issue with your colleagues.
		Are you beginning to get some support for this theory?
		I mean, as they look at the fact that, gee, all these dirty snowballs keep returning, these comets and these rocks keep returning, it must mean that they were once in the area in some other form.
		And so that seems like pretty good science.
		What do other astronomers say when confronted with your idea?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, there are a lot of specific questions that arise.
		There is no one objection to the idea that has persisted over the years.
		Each objection that has been raised has been answered, and as a result, papers on the subject have passed peer review and are in the technical literature, even though they always get a lot of criticism in the review process.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, would it be possible that something could collide with our Earth that would have the same rough effect on our atmosphere as whatever hit Mars had on that atmosphere?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, to lose 99% of your atmosphere would require a blast relatively close by.
		Earth is not so situated right now that an explosion of anything except the sun itself could do that kind of damage here.
		So I think that we're not in danger of suffering the same fate that Mars did.
		But Mars was just a moon of this planet that blew up.
		And when your parent planet blows up, that's big trouble for the moon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, but let us define big trouble.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If we were hit by, say, an asteroid five miles wide, made of very dense material, what would the result be?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		The result would be devastation of the biosphere.
		There would be, of course, a huge impact crater in one locale, such as the Chicxaloop crater that we mentioned in Yucatan.
		And that would send a lot of dust and debris up into the atmosphere, and there would be global darkening and nuclear winters, so to speak, for several years.
		And it would kill A lot of vegetation, a lot of life, both on land and in the oceans.
		But it would probably not be fatal to life on Earth.
		It would just be very unpleasant for a very long time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are two possibilities, one more likely than the other.
		The first is that it would hit water.
		We are two-thirds water.
		Better chance it's going to hit water, right?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, if it hit water, something five miles wide, what would happen?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Say it came down in the middle of the Pacific.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would still churn up a lot of debris into the atmosphere because the oceans itself are barely five miles thick in places.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		But, of course, the principal thing it's going to do is cause a huge tidal wave to sweep over the coastal regions of all the continents.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, depending on the size of what hit us, if we were hit, most of the plant and animal life on Earth could go the way of the dinosaurs.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's true.
		If something as large as five to ten miles were to hit Earth today, we'd be in serious trouble as far as the biosphere goes.
		Luckily, impacts of objects that large are in the category of one every 50 million years or so on average.
		So I don't think that impacts that big are something that we ought to stay up nights worrying about because, first, the impacts are very rare.
		And second, objects that large we have probably discovered most of by now.
		It's the objects that are one mile big, such as that one that made the news last week.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was about to bring that up.
		Yes, it was very interesting.
		Everybody got a sort of a quiet scare of something that's going to happen 30 years away, perhaps.
		Now we think that it's not going to happen 600,000 miles, is what NASA says.
		Anyway, the point is that I interviewed Alan Hale that day, actually the next day, and Alan said, yes, but we've only identified one out of ten objects of about that size, he estimated, one out of ten.
		So there's a pretty good chance the other nine are going to get you unless you identify them eventually.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		Yes, his figures are very close to on target there.
		We have discovered almost 200 objects of that size or larger, which are potential threats to Earth.
		And from the rate of discovery and the frequency of duplicate discoveries, we can estimate that there are about 10 times that many waiting to be discovered, where we don't have, no one on Earth has ever seen any trace of the objects, yet they're orbiting out there and can usually only be discovered when they happen by chance to swing relatively close to Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have quoted you a number of times recently, and I hope fairly accurately.
		You have said that, I think you've said that you believe in the region of Sidonia, the phase on Mars, the other objects, that society had better prepare itself because when we get good, clear images, God, I hope we do, of Sidonia, it is going to prove, you believe, that the objects there are not natural objects.
		Is that a fair rendition of what you have said?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
		The tests of artificial versus natural origin for the objects in the Sidonia area of Mars, there are eight such tests, have already indicated to the satisfaction of myself and many colleagues that these objects are likely to turn out to be artificial, which was a great surprise.
		But still, one has to propose the test, do the experiments, and see what the results are.
		And now all the tests that have been proposed are indicating artificial origin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Can you give sort of a 101 to people of why you believe that, how you came up with the numbers that you came up with, why you believe this?
		I mean, it's an amazing thing to contemplate that that face was put there to be seen from space.
		Why do you believe that, Doctor?
		What's the supporting evidence?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, indeed, it is a surprise.
		And I was originally the author or the one in the middle of the 100-to-1 bet.
		Did I mention that to your audience before?
		One of our more convinced colleagues offered to bet at 100-to-1 odds that Cydonia, the face, would turn out to be an artificial structure.
		And I recommended a neutral position rather than taking a position before the evidence was in because that creates biases.
		And while I was discussing that online on the internet, one of my more skeptical astronomer colleagues offered to bet anyone in 100 to 1 odds that Sidonia was of natural origin.
		And I took both ends of the bet to make the point that, of course, for every dollar bet both ways, I'm going to be $99 richer.
		But I thought both sides were going to extremes based on the evidence at the time.
		But now some new evidence has come in, and I think that we now do have enough information to make that call.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I'd like to hear what that is, and I'm sure everybody would.
		In other words, what could come in, what kind of evidence could come in to so quickly and radically change your mind?
		Pull you off the fence.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Let me mention first one of the lines of evidence that I mentioned myself as a possible test, but others did the work on, and then I'll tell you the one where I did the work.
		One of the tests was bilateral symmetry.
		We originally saw only half of the face, one eye socket, the ridge of the nose, part of the mouth, and the headrest on one side.
		And with that view only, we were able to make a simple prediction.
		The other invisible side that was in shadow would, if this were by chance, a feature that happened to resemble half a human face, the other side would be random desert sand or piles of rubble or rock or meteor craters or whatever, but it would not be a mirror image face.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		But now we have computer-enhanced enhancements of images taken at a higher sun angle, and we can see detail in that shadowed side, and even the skeptics like Mike Malin agree that it bears a passable resemblance to a symmetric human face.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nevertheless, in an interview with Lyndon Montcowell recently, he suggested the odds of it being not a natural object would be in the order of about 55 million to one.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, a fallacy that I've commented on myself many times, most recently in a colloquium to NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center.
		There's a very big difference between long odds against something and something where the odds are unknown.
		In this case, we don't have enough information to even begin to estimate odds because we don't know the probability that the galaxy is inhabited, that all the terrestrial planets have already been explored by other beings in the past.
		For all we know, all of the galaxy has already been explored, and the probability of finding artifacts on any one of them is nearly 100%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, but let's stay with Mars for a second in the face and the other objects, the pyramid objects and so forth and so on.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Okay, the new evidence that's come along was in part thanks to one of your listeners on a past show.
		Someone wrote in to me on the internet following a discussion that we had about the exploded planet hypothesis in Mars, and he said, well, gee, what about Sidonia?
		We weren't talking about that in particular, but he said, what about Sidonia?
		Maybe the exploded planet is what did in the builders of those objects if they were built.
		And he said, in that case, the building must have taken place, the building of the objects must have taken place before that big pole shift on Mars, which regular Martian geologists have published in the literature.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you are now leaning toward the concept that there was a Martian civilization, some sort of intelligence on Mars.
		It would take that to build that.
		If indeed it is not natural.
		It assumes that either there were Martians or that somebody came by and built it there.
		But you lean toward the idea that there were, in fact, Martians.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, we'll see in the second when I developed a line of evidence that probably it was not indigenous Martians.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		But indeed, there would have had to have been builders.
		And the interesting thing was on Mars today, the face, if it's supposed to have been built and looked like a face, doesn't really serve the purpose because it's not built right side up.
		It's tipped over at 31 degree angle, and if you wanted it to look like a face, why would you do that?
		It can't be seen from the Earth or any other planet because we're too far away, even with our biggest telescopes.
		It can't be seen from the ground on Mars.
		Who is this supposed to have been built for?
		And if the only place you can see it from is above Mars in orbit or on a passing spacecraft, if it's supposed to be viewed as a face from there, why wouldn't you put it on a conspicuous place like the equator of Mars where you could see it from any approach direction rather than at a random place like 41 degrees north latitude where it is?
		Well, the answer to that suddenly popped out when we looked at the old position of the Mars pole, because lo and behold, we took the coordinates of the old pole as a Mars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh my God, I know right where you're going.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're saying it was on the equator.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		It was exactly on the Martian equator before this pole shift.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And with the correct orientation, right side up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my, my.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		With Mars as a moon of the parent planet, it would have been built so as to be visible from the parent planet.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		So all these little pieces of the puzzle, all these mysteries, suddenly clear up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How far would you estimate that Mars would have been?
		We are 250,000 miles roughly from our moon.
		How far would Mars have been from its parents?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Probably of the order of 50,000 to 100,000 kilometers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And from that distance, under those conditions, from the equator, it would have been completely visible?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		It would have been, that's a good point, it would have been visible in binoculars, but there are two possibilities that could enhance its view from its parent planet, although binoculars would be sufficient.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		One is that you could have illuminated it so that when it was nighttime on Mars, imagine us building something on our own moon to be visible from Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly what I was about to suggest, that one day we may, in fact, build something on the moon to be seen from Earth.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's totally a credible idea.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And if we put it on the dark side and illuminate it, then it will stand out on its own.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, now I think I understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are suggesting that this was built by the people who lived on the parent planet.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or the beings, I guess I should say.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's what seems to make most sense.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And Mars was a moon of that planet, just as our moon orbits the Earth today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you imagine That they built that face as a replica of themselves or possibly as a deity that they would have worshipped?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's an interesting point because the face looks like a human face rather than an alien face.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And one of the interesting lines of conjecture to follow from this, and this is just conjecture now, we're going beyond the realm where the facts can take us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		If it looks like a human face, and coincidentally, we didn't finish the chronology of explosions, but apparently the most recent of these explosions dates from 3.2 million years ago.
		If that's the one that produced the final pole shift on Mars, then that would mean that possibly the inhabitants who built this structure on Mars may have been looking for a new home as recently as 3 million years ago.
		And that's just the date, as nearly as we can estimate it, for the origin of the hominid species here on Earth.
		missing link at all, is about three million years ago.
		So this conjectural line of evidence suggests that maybe...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Maybe we evolved somewhere else and transferred to this planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, now you've really got some people angry.
		It does.
		However, fortunately or unfortunately, it does make sense.
		it really does make sense now i take it that you have run this by some of your peers and i wonder what sort of reaction your This is a lot of information, and I want to be sure I understand it.
		So when we come back from the break, it's a good long one for you, we will again roll over the evidence, the new evidence that causes Dr. Van Flandren to suggest the world had better get ready for a surprise on Mars.
		I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
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		This is Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, my guest is Dr. Tom Van Flander.
		It is a serious, oh my God, moment.
		We'll roll over it again for those of you who have the misfortune of just joining the program.
		Oh, my.
		Wait till you hear this.
		And then we'll move from there.
		That's 1-800-232-5665.
		All right, back now to Dr. Van Flandren.
		And there will be some who just unfortunately joined at this hour in Los Angeles.
		And I don't want them to miss out.
		Basically, you contend that Mars was once the moon of a larger planet which exploded.
		Now, when that explosion occurred, it literally devastated Mars, stripped away the atmosphere.
		Large floods occurred on Mars.
		And now we observe this face on Mars, which you think was indeed intended to be seen from the mother planet, the one that blew up.
		And you said that it is at 44 degrees.
		Why?
		You said would anybody put it there?
		It doesn't make sense.
		But when you look at the polar shift that occurred, the face would have been straight up.
		It would have been at the equator where it would have been seen by the mother planet.
		And do we know for sure that the polar shift would have been exactly that, Doctor?
		To shift the face just that way?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we do.
		That's a result by a Martian geologist, Peter Schultz.
		He wasn't thinking of anything to do with Sidonia or anything to do with exploding planets.
		It was just based on a study of Martian surface features.
		He detected an old location of the geographic pole in the geological past.
		He wasn't able to tell how long ago this had happened, but that there was a sudden shift in the location of the geographic pole, one of the many mysteries about Mars to the regular planetary geologists that is cleared up greatly when we view Martian history in the light of the exploded planet hypothesis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		With that evidence independently gathered and the new photographic evidence or enhanced photographic evidence showing that this face has not one eye but two, has one on the other side and so forth and so on, then when you begin to calculate the odds that this face is not natural, what do you come up with?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, the combined odds of all these tests being passed are rather overwhelming.
		Four of the eight tests I mentioned stand on Their own two feet as statistically significant all by themselves without the help of the others.
		So even just the location and orientation tests alone by themselves have enough statistical significance to say we ought to be paying attention to the likelihood that an object as interesting as the face was built right on the equator or appears right on the equator, that's unlikely to happen by chance.
		But when you look at something like bilateral symmetry, the chances of that happening, remember the shadowed side resembling a mere human face, by rights, we should be looking at desert sand or rubble and not a symmetric human face.
		The odds against that are almost incalculably large.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		50 million to 1.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well taken.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hope so.
		So you have been sort of issuing warnings to people, get ready, because if they do some good high-resolution imaging of the Sedoni region, there's going to be a big, big shock for the world.
		And part of the shock, of course, is going to be, as you explained right at the end of the last hour, that if Mars was the moon of the larger planet, and whoever lived on that planet built this face to be seen from that planet, as it reasonably seems they would, and the face is humanoid, then there is every chance that whoever lived on that planet, as recently as 3 million years ago, was looking for a new home.
		And of course, we would be the third rock from the sun.
		Close by would be their best opportunity.
		we already know they would have to be space-waring people, or they could not have built the face.
		So they could travel in space.
		Would they have had...
		But would they have had warning of what was going to occur to their planet, Doctor, enough warning that they could have, in effect, seeded Earth with life, us?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there would have been plenty of time to prepare for this.
		And if they had the capability of space travel, the most reasonable thing a civilization would do when faced with such a catastrophe would be to try to mount an expedition.
		In fact, I've remarked a couple of times on the perhaps coincidence of what the logical course of action would have been for such a civilization and some of the most ancient writings preserved on this planet.
		In other words, you're on a planet that's going to blow up.
		You know it's coming.
		What are you going to do?
		You're going to try to get a craft together that will carry as many inhabitants as you possibly can save to the distant planet.
		You're going to try to take two of every kind of species.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Space arc.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you possibly can, plant and animal, to preserve as much of what you have as possible.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And you're going to set off on a voyage of indefinite duration across the cosmos and try to start again in this new world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it wouldn't have been an unreasonable voyage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I believe it's thought that we can go to Mars in, what, about 18 months?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		With our technology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, so assuming that they were fairly sophisticated spacefarers and they must have been to build that base, they could have conceivably and reasonably made that trip to Earth.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's right.
		That would not be an unreasonable trip at all for them to make.
		Once they get here, chances are they're not going to be adapted to our atmosphere.
		They would probably not find it immediately breathable without spacesuits.
		But we're talking about, in this conjectural scenario, we're talking about a civilization that had long since reached the point of space travel.
		So it's not an unreasonable additional conjecture that they knew a little bit more about DNA than we know now, and we are already finding out some amazing things about DNA.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, we are.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		The way they would have dealt with the circumstance that they couldn't breathe our air directly is chances are they would merge their DNA with the most viable native species already here on the planet, the primates, to produce offspring that had their genetic characteristics but which was adapted to breathing this air and eating the food and resources on this planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, have the evolutionists yet conclusively proven their point?
		They have not, have they?
		There is a missing link, isn't there?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's what I understand.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Evolutionary biology is not my own field, but I do follow what I read in the journals, and that seems to be the case.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They just can't quite figure it out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of fact, there was a really interesting recent story about, I think it was Core Magnon, I'm not sure, man, not being particularly closely related to present humans from a DNA perspective.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, so it is reasonable then to conclude that somebody might have come along with that kind of technology and made a DNA change to enable them to live and breathe, as it were, on a planet like ours?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, this is still conjectural, but it all would seem to follow reasonably given the circumstances that we imagine must have happened if there were intelligent beings on this planet prior to the explosion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How is this going to you're familiar with the Brookings report, of course?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If we get these images and we find out that This is not a natural thing on Mars, then everybody is going to quickly rush to you and to embrace your theory.
		And it is going to.
		How do you see that affecting civilization, our social structures, science, religion?
		How do you see if one day suddenly the announcement is made, how do you see that affecting us?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a very individual thing because it's a change of perspective on who we are as a species, as a people of the universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you necessarily see a conflict with let there be light?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's an interesting question.
		Some people, when we talk about discovering artifacts on Mars that must have been built, feel a little bit of implied threat there because to them it means there must be them.
		There must be aliens out there with advanced capabilities, and since we don't know anything about them, could they be hostile?
		Other people look at the same evidence and say, gee, maybe them is us.
		Maybe that's our own history.
		And maybe some of these stories in the ancient preserved writings are actually remembrances of the history of our species.
		And the stories of the Garden of Paradise and Noah's Ark and so on that have come down to us through the Western Bible.
		But the same kind of stories are in the sacred writings of all the cultures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I caught the parallel when you talked about the two of each.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Perhaps these are stories of our own history and that what we're getting is just a slightly different spin on them than we've had up to now.
		But that, in a sense, science is discovering the same kinds of things that religious people have believed for a long time.
		So you could see this as a threat or you could see it as a confirmation according to your personal bent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I believe the Brookings report suggested one of the greatest impacts would be on science, would be on scientists.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As you look around at your colleagues, should this prove out to be the case and that day comes, how would you think they would take it?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's also a very interesting topic.
		I have had some lengthy discussions with some of my colleagues just about the more modest possibility that the exploded planet hypothesis all by itself might be the correct model for the history of the solar system rather than the solar nebula hypothesis that is currently in favor.
		There's an awful lot of evidence for the exploded planet hypothesis, and I summarized that in my book, Dark Matter.
		I talk to my colleagues about it, and very often the experts in this field feel a little bit personally challenged and threatened by such a drastic change of perspective for what they have thought and developed their theories and written books and papers on for so many years now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be the exploding careers hypothesis.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there's a bit of that.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		I had one comment expert say, well, if that turned out to be true, he'd dig ditches for a living.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what I mean.
		So you've been sort of issuing these warnings, and they've been circulating all over the place.
		And I think that they're well-founded warnings.
		Now, that brings us to Dr. Malin and the present mission.
		In the interview done by Linda Malton Howe with Dr. Malin, I felt as though he was dancing all over the place.
		I would really love to talk to the man myself.
		I understand that the Arrow Breaking has gone through some change of plans and so forth and so on.
		But he seemed to really go out of his way to suggest that, look, there's a significant possibility we'll never get pictures of the Sidonia region.
		Richard Hoagland was disturbed because the camera was turned off.
		I believe the camera is off now.
		Is that correct?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		And he suggested we'll be missing a very good opportunity to get some pictures of Sidonia.
		Dr. Malin did not at all seem convinced.
		He said, I certainly am going to try.
		But he didn't seem convinced at all that he would get pictures of Sidonia.
		So, I guess my question is, if you embrace Brookings, and I do, I think it's correct, there would be a great disruption to the force, Doctor.
		Even if he did get a photograph, now he says, of course, you know, I'd be the most famous man around and I'd get a Nobel and all the rest of it if I were to prove this.
		I am not convinced that that information would be released.
unidentified		Are you?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a question worthy of being asked.
		But that decision and the information itself will be in the hands of Mike Malin, not anybody else at NASA.
		And Mike Malin is not a NASA employee.
		He's a private contractor.
		But he has been charged as the principal investigator of this mission.
		He built the camera that is on the spacecraft.
		He determines its usage.
		He gets the images as they come in, sets the priorities for the targeting, and does the quick look on the images and decides what's going to be released and when.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you happy with that?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		I would be a lot happier if Mike Millen in particular approached this matter with the same kind of objectivity that I recommended earlier When I talked about the 100-to-1 bet.
		But he has made some public statements, the most recent of which disturbs me greatly.
		He is quoted on his website as saying that, well, what if we get pictures of the face and it still looks like a face?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That seems to be a sort of a setup for the fact that he may believe that now there is, in fact, a face there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or one might even jump another notch and say, maybe he's already seen the pictures.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, that is possible.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Of course, one's imagination could run wild.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, such a statement invites that sort of speculation, doesn't it?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, it made me think that he doesn't take seriously the possibility that the structure could be built.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		He seems to be saying it looks like a face by chance now, and it might still look like a face by chance when we get better pictures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that the recent very interesting work done on showing the symmetrical features of the face, not one eye, but two and so forth and so on, do you think that might have caused him to make that statement?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's difficult to read someone else's mind, but Mike Malin is in a difficult situation, too.
		He can't promise us pictures because there are so many things that can go wrong with this experiment, instrument failure, Martian dust storm, and so on.
		And even if all goes well, the mapping mission is still at the mercy of whatever happens to pass under the lens of the camera.
		So he's in no position to guarantee what we'll get and therefore doesn't want to make promises and create unrealistic expectations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you completely comfortable that if he does get a good image of Sidonia, he will release it?
		I'll let you think about that during the break.
		That's not an easy question.
		Professor Tom Van Flandren is my guest.
		This is Coast to Coast A.M. The talk station, AM 1500 KSTP.
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		Now again, here's Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, here I am, Dr. Tom Van Slandren, who, by the way, in case you haven't heard, received his Ph.D. degree in astronomy from Yale University in 1969 as my guest.
		Spent 20 years at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where he became chief of celestial mechanics at the branch dealing with celestial mechanics.
		And he'll be back in a moment.
		95.
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		All right, now back to Professor Van Flandren.
		Doctor, the question was a tough one, I know.
		And Mike Malin, of course, Dr. Malin, is going to have and does have, as we both know, control over these photographs for a period of time.
		Now, if he were to suddenly get one definitively showing that, voila, this certainly is not natural, I would think that he would go through a certain thinking process before he were to release the photograph.
		And part of that process would probably include talking to the people at NASA, talking to the people in our government, and then how do you calculate the odds of the photograph being released?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, these are all interesting issues that you raise.
		I would certainly feel a lot better about it if Mike Malin expressed his scientific objectivity on the matter and reassured us that he was not going to be influenced by peer pressure or personal beliefs.
		But that hasn't happened.
		Yes, he would probably have to go to NASA with the pictures.
		He would certainly not take it upon himself to either release them or to suppress them without consulting with other officials.
		And I'd say with something of this importance, the decision would ultimately go to the President.
		I imagine that the decision would ultimately be to release the information.
		After all, it's knowledge.
		It's knowledge which is part of NASA's mission and in the public domain.
		This is not part of any classified or military or secret program.
		It is for the benefit of mankind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me tell you a little story.
		Personal story.
		I'm now on the air at 400 Radio stations, I don't know, millions, 15 million people, maybe.
		Anything I say gets magnified a million times.
		Any little sentence, any little utterance, doesn't matter.
		I play on the edge with my radio program, and I'm liable to have anybody on.
		If I have somebody on who claims to be, for example, a witch, or somebody who will come on and explain they practice the darker crafts, or that they don't believe precisely in the God of the Bible as described in the Bible,
		I assure you, Doctor, 20% of the mail and responses that I get, which number in the thousands, over any given show of that sort, will feel that I am the devil incarnate, that I ought to be burned at the stake, that I shouldn't be allowed to delve into or even allow to be broadcasted this kind of material.
		I will get threats.
		I just can't begin to tell you, a good 20%, doctor, really go off the deep end in response to any sort of broadcast of that sort.
		Now, I think that translates pretty well into the general population.
		And I think that it validates the Brookings' concerns.
		That's just my observation from my input.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, does this argue that we should suppress the knowledge?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It might.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The American Revolution was accomplished with a much smaller percentage.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Let's ask some of those people out there if they would rather not know at all than learn something that is contrary to their present belief.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can absolutely promise you by and large, the reaction on the phone is going to be if we start taking calls.
		Oh, yes, I want to know.
		I want to know.
		But there'll be a good 20% hanging out there saying this stuff is of the devil.
		Of the devil, Doctor.
		And I'm just saying that those are pretty serious concerns.
		I think that what you have laid out is perfectly credible, quite probable, and very dangerous.
		Very dangerous.
		So I think we've got that out.
		There is one other thing I want to cover with you.
		Well, actually, several.
		One is the Big Bang.
		I just finished reading a wonderful book by Richard Preston, who's kind of a friend now, called First Light.
		It's kind of a love letter to Palomar Observatory about the history of Palomara and all the rest of it.
		And there's an awful lot of astronomy in it.
		It's a really wonderful book.
		But in one chapter, they cover the Big Bang.
		And I'm trying to come to terms with this Big Bang.
		And I'm trying to understand it.
		In here, I could read it to you, and I don't think I'll belabor it.
		But basically, what it suggests is that at one point there was nothing.
		There was something the size smaller than a quark, if that can even be imagined.
		And that everything we now see, everything that may go out to 15 billion years of look back time, came from an explosion of this one little tiny thing smaller than a quark.
		And I just can't buy it.
		It is the Big Bang theory.
		And I know you don't buy it either.
		What's wrong with the Big Bang Theory?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's even stranger than what you've described, and that's already strange enough.
unidentified		Well, they can't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When it gets too small, then they can't explain it.
		You know, they stop.
		They say, well, we don't know.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's true.
		But also, it's not just an explosion of matter into preexisting space.
		It's an explosion of space itself and of time.
		If you can imagine such things, and I can't, frankly.
		But this is supposed to be the beginning of space itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The beginning of space itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then one, of course, must ask, well, what was there before the space?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Conceptually, according to this theory, nothing.
		This is not an explosion into space.
		It's an explosion of space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But nothing is still empty space.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		These are good philosophical questions.
		I think that the theory just does not stand up to the sound logical underpinnings of its philosophy.
		But we can debate philosophy forever.
		More relevant is does it stand up to observational tests of its own predictions?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, as evidence, of course, they will cite the fact that everything seems to be flying apart, and they will cite as evidence of that the increasing redshift as though it all came from one place originally.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that is one of the underpinnings of the Big Bang theory, that as we look at galaxies surrounding our own galaxy in the distant universe, the fainter and therefore presumably further away a galaxy is, the more its light is redshifted.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And the normal thing that would cause light to be redshifted would be movement away from us.
		However, that's not the only thing that can cause light to redshift.
		Anything that causes that light to lose energy as it travels would also cause it to redshift.
		And there are ways to test whether the light of galaxies is redshifted due to motion away from us or whether it's due to energy loss.
		And those tests are published in the Astrophysical Journal, and they show that it appears to be more likely that the redshift is due to energy loss than due to motion away from us.
		So it may be that even that most fundamental underpinning of the Big Bang theory, the idea that the universe is expanding, it has Not yet been proven observationally, and the newest observational evidence suggests the contrary.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if we didn't all spring from the Big Bang, and if we're not all flying apart from each other, then what would you rather imagine occurred?
		That we have always been here?
		When I say we, I refer to the planets and suns, and I realize that it's an ever-changing process, but is that what you believe versus the little tiny miniature quark that's floating into everything?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, I puzzled over such matters myself for most of my life, and I found that trying to guess the origin of the universe and the nature of things led to theory after theory after theory, which were easily shot down.
		It seems to me it's an insurmountable task asking us to guess by induction what the origin of things was.
		In frustration, I tried a completely different approach, one that's never been tried before in coming up with a theory of cosmology or any of the other types of theories that we've talked about.
		And this is what my book is about, using deductive reasoning instead of inductive in order to get answers to such questions.
		So, for example, in my book, I say, let's imagine that we have nothing, not just vacuum, not just empty space, but nothing.
		And then into this total void, let's introduce one unit of something not otherwise described.
		We discuss its properties.
		It turns out that this something, what would it mean if we said it was moving?
		It isn't moving with respect to anything, so there wouldn't be any way to tell if it was moving or not moving.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No reference.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		No reference.
		In this way, we discuss what properties are possible.
		And in a universe with only one unit of something in it, there are no properties.
		But when we put in two units of something and start to build a real universe, then properties begin to appear.
		And instead of imposing those properties on the universe, we let them come naturally out of the process as we conceptually build a universe.
		And the amazing thing is that when we get well downstream, we eventually arrive at properties that resemble the force of gravity, forces in general of nature.
		We arrive at a natural mechanism that we explain why light would redshift as it traveled and lots of other things that resemble the real universe even better than our conventional models do.
		And this is all described in my book, Dark Matter, Missing Planets, and New Comets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And by the way, where can people get that book?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, linking to your website will allow them to link to mine where there are instructions or what can order from the publisher North Atlantic Books or through the major bookstores, such as, well, I shouldn't probably.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Doesn't Matter B. Dalton is one that I can think of.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Barnes and Noble is another in Ulterior.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, nationwide.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it's called Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets.
unidentified		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I'm still not sure that I understand.
		You said imagine nothing.
		I'll try.
		It's hard, but I'll imagine nothing, nothing.
		And then something, a unit of something.
		And then...
		Then what?
unidentified		Uh, well, from the...
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		No, no boom.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No boom.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		We just start with one unit of substance and develop all the properties we possibly can, which with one unit of substance mainly means we're impressed with the absence of properties.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		When we have a second unit of substance conceptually, we just introduce it with our mind into this universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		There is now a difference that occurs because while there are two units of substance and they're apart, they can't even know about each other's existence.
		But if they came into contact, they could.
		So there are two distinguishable conditions, apart and together.
		And so now suddenly we have the possibility of change in this universe, a distinguishable change that could occur conceptually.
		But if two units of substance are apart and then together and apart again and together again, you can't tell if the interval between contacts is a microsecond or a billion years or infinity, basically.
		There's no way to there's no scale against which to refer, just as there wasn't any scale for distance.
		You can't tell if these things are large or small.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you really, even though it's a different theory, you still have the same problem with origins that those who embrace the big thing do.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		At this beginning point, these things are undefined.
		But as we build and build, we gradually see these properties do emerge from the model.
		And the model that comes out tells us by deductive reasoning that the universe at large, at least in this model, which agrees very well with all the observations, must be infinite.
		But not just infinite in space, infinite in time and infinite in scale as well, meaning that it's infinitely composed of smaller and smaller things all the way down, and there are infinite structures on ever larger scales all the way up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did dark matter contribute to the somethings that we're asked to imagine?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		The answer to that is no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, because there was nothing.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Right.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And the reason why dark matter is a popular theory in astronomy today is because there seems to be a failure of the law of gravitation for large-scale structures in the universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		It looks as though the law of gravity doesn't work right, so we invent dark matter to make everything work right.
		But in this model, there is a natural reason why the law of gravity should fail for large scales, and it fails in just the way that the model predicts.
		And so there shouldn't, we don't need to invent dark matter anymore.
		What we see is what there is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you believe that there are multiple dimensions?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, these things oughtn't to be a matter of belief.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		We can formulate hypotheses and test them in science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think the hypothesis of multiple dimensions is a sound hypothesis?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		You would have to define your terms in order for me to answer that, but I would say that we have evidence for five dimensions and no evidence for dimensions beyond that, as nearly as I can evaluate the tests that have been done.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you familiar with Dr. Kaku?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm sorry, I'm not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Michio Kaku, he is a theoretical physicist at New York City University.
		And he believes that there are ten universes.
		He also believes that there are many civilizations, which he classes for convenience into different categories, type 0, type 1, type 2, and type 3.
		Type 0 is, of course, us.
		Type 1 would, for example, be able to learn to utilize the power of a planet, not as we do now, but more directly, would get to zero-point energy, that sort of thing.
		Type 2 would utilize the power of a star, that sort of thing.
		And that the chances of any Type Zero ever becoming a Type 1 are slim indeed.
		And that many, many Type Zeros arise and, of course, meet their demise, either bringing it on themselves or through some other catastrophic occurrence.
		But very rarely does a Type Zero make it to a Type I. And I don't know that I'm doing justice to what he said, but that's roughly it.
		How does that sound to you?
		Likely, unlikely.
		I mean, do you consider life to be very likely with so many stars and planets, or rather unlikely?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, given an infinite universe with infinite time to evolve things, shall we say that the model that I think matches reality best certainly doesn't have any problem with there being enough time for evolution to occur.
		And to my way of thinking, probably life is evolving at all scales, not just The ones that we can see, because there wouldn't be anything special about our scale.
		In other words, if we imagine in our mind that a neutron, an atomic ingredient of atoms, might be something like a planet, there would be one would expect that life would also evolve at that scale, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, hold on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll be right back.
unidentified		This is coast to coast A.M. The devil went down to Georgia.
unidentified		He was looking for a soul to steal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He was in a vine, but he was way behind.
unidentified		He was willing to make a deal.
		When he came across this young man sewing on a fiddle and playing it hot.
		And the devil jumped up on a hickory gum and said, boy, let me tell you what.
		I guess you didn't know it, but I'm a fiddle player, too.
		And if you care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you.
		Now, you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the devil his view.
		I've got a fiddle of gold against your soul because I think I've better you.
		The boy says, my name's John.
		It's time.
		It's time.
		To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA, then 800-893-0903.
		If you're a first-time caller, call ART at 702-727-1222.
		From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
		Call ART at 1-800-618-8255.
		Or call ART on the Wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
		This is Coast to Coast A.M. from the Kingdom of Nigh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, and we are about to go to the phones with Dr. Van Flandrett.
		So if you have a question, it'd be a good time to come.
		And I can see you're already here.
		Everything's lit.
		So we'll get to your questions in a moment.
		The Beijing Free Play Radio is on sale.
		And guess what, folks?
		Listen very closely.
		Attention, please.
		This is the last day for the spring sale of the spring-powered radios.
		The last day for everything.
		Last night, last day.
		This is it.
		The Beijing is a seven-pound radio, AM-FM shortwave, seven shortwave bands.
		It doesn't require being plugged into the wall, nor does it use batteries because it has a Bayless Clockwork Generator, a remarkable device.
		You turn it for 30 seconds.
		The radio plays for 30 minutes at full room volume on AM FM or shortwave.
		Normally it's $119.95.
		It's on sale today only, last day, $109.95.
		Word to the wise.
		Then there is the second Baijin.
		It is the one I think you ought to have, the one I personally prefer.
		They're both great.
		I mean, it's a great radio, but this second one has a modification installed by the C-Crane Company, so you can only get it from them.
		It's got a little jack on the back.
		You plug in a mag light into it.
		They supply the mag light.
		It's got an LED light-emitting diode light in it, actually three of them.
		And now you plug this in, you wind up the radio, why I say wind it up, turn the crank for 30 seconds.
		And now the radio will play for 30 minutes, and the light will light for 30 minutes.
		Enough light to light a room, to read by, certainly to get by in an emergency and listen.
		The light, the LED, will last 100,000 hours.
		Normally it's $149.95 today only.
		Today only.
		Are you listening?
		$139.95.
		Tomorrow it goes back up to the regular price.
		Limited quantity.
		However, Bob does say he'll give rain checks.
		Even when they run out today, which they probably will, they'll give rain checks to you.
		So this is your one opportunity.
		Don't blow it.
		The number to call in the morning at 7.30 Pacific time is 1-800-522-8863.
		Repeating, 7.30 Pacific, 10.30 Eastern, 1-800-522-8863.
		1-800-526-5000.
		All right.
		Well, the good doctor is in Washington, D.C., as our nation's capital.
		That's three hours away.
		That means he's up really late.
		Doctor?
		Yes.
		Are you willing to answer some questions from the audience?
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		Let's give it a try.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, let's give it a try.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		I'll do my best to remain coherent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		First time caller line.
		You're on the air with Dr. Van Flandren.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		Hi, I'm Rob from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		I would first like to make a comment and then ask that make a recommendation for a guest on your show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a question for my guests?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Right.
		Yes?
		Since if my understanding of the Big Bang Theory is correct, that there was an explosion, and I guess to imply that there's an explosion, there has to be like space for something to explode in.
		I guess what, but I guess according to his theories, it's excuse me, I guess my question is, what was before the explosion?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that is the 64 gazillion dollar question.
		We don't know, and it begins to get philosophical at that point because there's no science to explain it, really.
		So I guess We're going to have to leave you with that.
		That's what I got to.
		There's really no science to explain the instant of creation or what was there prior to it.
		Is that right, Doctor?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that is correct.
		The explosion was an explosion of space, but not into some pre-existing space, into nothingness, replacing nothingness.
		And there are theories that these explosions occur cyclically, expand and collapse over and over again.
		And other theories are that this is a one-time event.
		But this is all just philosophy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is, you can...
		Is it not true that not everything is redshifted?
		Some things are blue-shifted.
		Is that correct?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, there are blue-shifted things, for example, among stars in our own galaxy.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		But of all the galaxies we see in the universe around us, all but one or two of the very closest neighbors are redshifted.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that would imply that if you buy redshift says things are getting farther away, that would imply that everything is flying away.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Another interesting thing, of course, is that when you look at our placement, when you look at Earth in the larger scheme of things, we are really in the outback, aren't we?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're not very close to the center of real action.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		We're not close to the center of our own galaxy.
		Our galaxy is named the Milky Way.
		And we're sitting out sort of not exactly on the edge, but well out of the center neighborhood, about 30,000 light years away from the center of our galaxy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if the center, we're in New York, we're somewhere in Connecticut.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, perhaps even further out than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Vermont, New Hampshire, me.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Van Flandren.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, Ethan, San Diego.
		Well, I actually want to mention about a couple things, and that's about the universe being infinite.
		Basically, it's creating the electromagnetic radiation that's called gravity.
		It's created by every other object except for the object or objects that you're speaking of with a gravitational force.
		And also that the redshift would be created basically by its own electromagnetic radiation pulling it down further away from its point of origin as the observer would be more redshifted or slowed down further it goes.
		Plus also it's about the asteroid belt.
		Basically, if you think of it as being a larger object collided with another object and create a nuclear fusion, it spontaneously would create that gaseous planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, well, Neptune.
		And the outside and the inside planets basically would absorb the gas when it detonated and being pulled into the Sun and create the asteroid belt, Neptune traveling at a different orbit as the rest of the other planets.
		I was wondering about those.
		What do you thought about that?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, those are all interesting ideas.
		You seem to have a talent for theorizing.
		And what you need to do with various any ideas that you come up with is work out all their logical consequences and then propose ways to test them.
		And the success or failure of the tests are what that plus how well they fare at interpreting all the existing experiments and data are what determine whether we accept hypotheses on the scientific table or we don't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, I believe looking out, way out, as they're now able to do with Hubble or with the larger telescopes on Earth, they look for pulsars, for example, don't they?
		Because they are so very bright and then measure the redshift of the pulsars in order to see how far back they're looking.
		Is that roughly correct?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Perhaps you might be thinking of quasars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Quasars, I'm sorry.
		I always do that.
		Quasars, yes.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		In the Big Bang theory, quasars are the active cores of primitive galaxies.
		That's just a theory.
		But yes, when you're looking at quasars, then you're looking at the most distant objects that we could see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How far back have we looked?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Let's see.
		The look back time is now back to approximately 800 million years after the Big Bang.
		That is, according to the Big Bang theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		800 million.
		Wait a minute.
		800 million years.
		After the Big Bang?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, wait a minute.
		The Big Bang occurred 15 billion years ago, I think.
		Right.
		Right?
		Yes, I think.
		So you're saying 15 billion, 800 million years is our present look back time.
		How can that be?
		In other words, I can understand that at 15 billion years, something.
		A quasar maybe or something that you could mark and say, okay, redshift, aha, 15 billion years.
		But after that, there should be nothing.
		Nothing that you could see.
		How could there be if all matters?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the answer again goes back to the nature of the theory, the Big Bang.
		This is not my idea now.
		I'm explaining the conventional Big Bang theory as it is in astronomy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Not an explosion of matter into space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it sounds like an explosion of the Big Bang theory.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		In a real sense, I like that analogy.
		But they're talking about an explosion of space itself, and therefore, when you had the release of this microwave background, that spreads all through space, so everybody sees that constantly in all directions, ever thereafter.
		And when we're looking back as far as we can see, the further out we go, the closer we get to being able to say 800 million years after the Big Bang, I'm talking about if the Big Bang was 15 billion years ago, then we're c we can look back 14 billion, 200 million years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you think, once you get up to 15 billion years, what do you think would be beyond that?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, in the Big Bang theory, the higher the redshift, the closer you're getting to the Big Bang.
		But in other theories, the higher the redshift, the more distant you are looking in the universe in a possibly infinite universe.
		So how far away you're looking depends upon which theory you're using.
		We can't tell absolute distance.
		We can only use a theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but you would think there would be then infinity as one possibility.
		And another would be that if you could look back far enough, be again looking at yourself.
		In other words, that it's one large circle.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's right.
		Well, the Big Bang theory makes certain specific predictions.
		And according to the Big Bang, as we look back to these most distant objects, they should be very, very primitive, just newly formed galaxies with young stars in them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And so far, that's not panning out with the observational evidence.
		On my website, which can be linked to from yours, a summary of the top ten problems with the Big Bang theory, and that's one of them.
		They're problems with the look back that things don't look younger necessarily as we'd frighten them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So, folks, you should go to my website immediately.
		I really mean this.
		And scroll on down to the guest names.
		You will see Dr. Van Flandren's name there.
		Click on that.
		You'll go right over to his website, which is fascinating.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Van Flandren.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Tom.
unidentified		Xavier University in Cincinnati.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		Oh, I just, a thought occurred, this business about the great stone face or old man of the mountain in New Hampshire.
		I think it's just a rock formation, but it's at the right angle.
		That's just a side remark I make that people might be able to test various criteria of whether it's natural.
		Interestingly, if you want to get evolution going any way you can, however you get it going, however you get it going, then of course it can go ahead and do things if you have the time that are utterly fantastic because it can develop and develop.
		Now, some of our graduate students, oh, about three decades ago, about cosmic engineering, the idea that you take the matter around a star, instead of having it concentrate in small planets, spread it out so that you use and capture and use the energy coming from that star over a much larger area rather than letting most of it, all of it go by by missing the small surface of little groves.
		And he went so far as to suggest that if you had it spread out into large spheres so you captured most of it, then evidence that there's such were going on would be you'd have a dim heat coming off from the outside of that because the energy was being used along the way instead of allowing most of it to fly on by.
		Now, if evolution works and works anywhere, then you wanted this energy by, say, electromagnetic radiation, by, say, wash waves, which are not subject to the Dopper shifting effects, as Professor John Hart pointed out quite some time ago.
		And you would then want to communicate the choice of one in four, choice of one in four, choice of one in four business.
		How to make some, how to put together, you give an operational definition of the molecules by transmitting through voltage waves, which being invulnerable to the copper shift.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Excuse me, Doctor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Tom, can you translate that for us?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		A little bit too much, too fast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right.
unidentified		The idea of cosmic engineering, that those who cosmic engine, not what the power, the energy being released by stars lose it, so you'd want to spread the matter out, which was eventually available to you, maybe in the form of high area energy absorbers and users, rather than let it go by.
		Now, the evidence that Professor Peterson does seem to glow, the dim glow of the large sphere of these energy used operations, the cosmic engineered ones, rather than just having the matter concentrated so tiny and losing most of it, and so you might be able to see evidence that such is going on.
		I say if there is such going on and evolution is going there and want to send the specs, so to speak, of how to do them, you would say that specs by giving operational definitions how to make things through a choice of one in four, choice of one and four, choice of one and four tripets say, rather than time waves because you're affected by the doctorship.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, excuse me.
		You've said it again, and I still don't understand it.
		And I'm sure that's my fault not using this?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, what you're talking about seems to be what's popularly called Dyson spheres, which basically are ways to capture the energy emitted by a star by building a structure all around it and getting all the energy in that.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		We might be able to detect such things if there were other civilizations by looking for infrared radiation leaking out of such things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, if I've got this straight and boil all that down, he's saying a civilization that would have learned to harness the power of a star.
		That is right.
		That then is roughly Dr. Cuckoo's description of a civilization that would be a civilization.
		Doctor, have we seen any such evidence?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think the short answer is no, nothing that we would credit as being likely to be Dyson spheres.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		So these things, if they exist, either don't leak much or they're not very abundant in the galaxy around us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So no evidence of that at all yet.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Van Slandren.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, hello.
unidentified		This is Darren in Carson City.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Listening to you on your oldest affiliate, KOH.
		You bet.
		And thank you.
		So, but I have a question and an idea.
		I'd like the doctor's idea, son.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is your question a quick one?
unidentified		Yeah, the question is quick.
unidentified		So quick I could throw it at the end and so is the idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well give us the question first.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very quick.
unidentified		Okay, the question is, I didn't catch in the very beginning of the show, but the current planet theory to Mars, do we know how big it would have been?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, all right.
		And on that note, we will break here at the half-hour point.
		Caller, hold on.
		It is a good question.
		If Mars was the moon of a much larger planet, how big was that planet?
		How much gravity would there have been, and what type of beings would have evolved?
		I'm Art Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast, yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		First, I'm thinking time to generate, to realize that...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Talk Station, AM 1500 KSTP.
unidentified		From the Kingdom of Nye, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		Peace at 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Montana, 255.
		First-time callers may reach Art at Area Code 702-727-1222.
		And you may fax ARC at Area Code 702-727-8499.
		Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My guest.
unidentified		Now again, here's Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now again, here's Professor Van Flandren coming up at a home.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy, interrupting my own announcer.
unidentified		Great, huh?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I just got a letter from a Mr. Anderson in Hackettstown, New Jersey.
		And I guess I've got to ask the rest of you for a confirmation of this for your show on WABC in New York, 7.70 a.m.
		And thought following might interest you.
		This past weekend, I saw a trailer for a soon-to-be-released movie called Mercury Rising starring Bruce Willis.
		I advise his character as, quote, Special Agent Art Bell, unquote.
		Out of memory for a while, then I finally put two and two together.
		Rather interesting, wouldn't you say?
unidentified		Oh, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does anybody else out there have any confirmation of that?
unidentified		If that were speak true?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First Mars attacks and now this.
		Of course, apart your initial investment.
		Only risk capital should be used.
		Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.
		All right, once again, Dr. Fairleigh, if Mars was the moon of a planet, would you guess that planet would be?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's very difficult to estimate, but a best guess would be as big as the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And Mars is smaller than the Earth, correct?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's one-tenth of the mass of the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so there would have been, then, by definition, a lot of gravity on that planet.
		A bigger planet, more gravity.
		Is that true?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		It's true that more mass would mean more gravity, but if it were larger in radius, the surface gravity, because it's further from the center, might actually wind up being less than Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, then that destroys my challenge, because I would have said, how would you get humanoid-looking creatures with, say, double the gravity?
		But you were saying that wasn't the case.
		All right.
		A caller, anything else?
unidentified		Yeah, I have a suggestion.
		I love the theory of the planet expanding.
		But to the face on Sidonia, I have a suggestion for it that kind of contradicts.
		If the human race on Earth was seated here from the race on Sidonia may have been directed towards us, and the theory that I have to add to that, and I'd like to doctor Sugget, you know, comments on, suggests that people see faces in cottage tea ceilings and everything.
		I'm totally susceptible to that.
		I see faces in everything, but I've never been able to see the face of the man on the moon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, wait a minute now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is mythical.
unidentified		Okay, that's what I'm saying, though.
unidentified		But what if the thought of the face on the moon isn't of the planetary there?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, how an old myth was derived.
unidentified		Right, and that somehow was planted in us when we were planted here on Earth so that we would know where to look for our origins.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean kind of like the story of the Ark?
unidentified		I'm not sure how you mean that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, in other words, as Mars, or as rather the parent planet, was preparing to blow up in order to bring everything on, seed a new planet.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		They knew their own planet was demise was coming, and so they sent a start here and built on their own moon a face with answers to our own origins.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I suppose, Doctor, if you can imagine one, you can imagine the other.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Certainly if these structures at Sidonia turn out to be artificial, I think there would be a reduction of some of those you mentioned earlier, Art, that wouldn't want a follow-up mission to land there and structures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my, yes.
		But it would be a wild time on the old planet before we came to terms with it, I guarantee you.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Tom Van Sandren.
		Hello.
		Where are you?
		Hello?
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Amherst, New York.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Amherst, New York.
		All right, you're going to have to yell at us a little bit.
		You're not very loud.
unidentified		All right, I'm sorry.
		I have a rather thought-provoking question to ask.
		I'd like to get weight to know what you think about it.
		One of my professors once asked me, if aliens could have such advanced technology that they could see our planet from where they live, many, many millions of light years away, since light travels so slowly, would they see the dinosaurs?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		The answer to that is yes.
		But of course, you'd have to be 65 million light years away in order to look back 65 million years, because that's how far light would travel in that.
		And in fact, with our technology, as best we know it, the answer would be no, because by the time light had traveled that distance, you wouldn't have enough resolving power left to be able to see anything as small as dinosaurs or even the Earth for that matter.
		But perhaps a very advanced species could solve that problem in some way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is your belief about time?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, as I mentioned before, time would be in this alternative model of the nature of the universe, it would be infinite.
		It comes into or passes out of existence, but rather forms in the universe simply get built up and destroyed.
		That is, destroyed just means broken down into much smaller bitty pieces.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The energy remains.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The energy remains something else.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, as extremely tiny particles.
		Things in the universe are always changing form, but never really passing into or out of existence.
		So time would simply become the universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there really is no time.
		Time is our invention.
		It's the measurement of two objects or three objects or relative movement.
		Time is really nothing at all except our way of measuring change.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's a good way to put it.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Time is a way of making a measurement of the rate at which change is going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can buy that one easily.
		Wildcard line, you are on the air with Dr. Van Flandren.
		Hello.
unidentified		Oh, I'm sorry.
		Good morning, Art.
		Good morning, Mr. Van Flandren.
		This is Kathy and Reno.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be Dr. Van Flandren.
unidentified		Oh, it's Dr. I'm sorry.
		Hi, Kathy.
		I really, hi.
		I like that moon one of that loud scholar.
		That was a good one.
		Okay.
		Short question, and then Art Olis and Alcier.
		All right.
		Okay.
		First, Mr. Van Flandren, I agree with your theories in this area of discussion as far as the missing planet.
		I've been following that line of logic for a long time.
		Okay, earlier in the conversation, you brought up what I have been looking for for a long time.
		You mentioned when following a theory line, and then after you've inspected it from all angles, you said that you can have it tested, your theory tested?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Could you please, and then I'll hang up, could you please say over the air how you go about doing that and who you contact to do that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Good question.
		In other words, how do you submit for peer review, I guess?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was speaking generally about hypotheses, anything that is the nature of an idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll take your epic moon of a larger planet.
		Let's take that one since you're most familiar with it.
		How do you test that?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, first you confront it with the existing observational evidence.
		We know that Mars has a thicker crust by 20 kilometers on one side than the other.
		We know that it's heavily cratered on one half and lightly cratered on the other half.
		We know that the present atmosphere is a small fraction of what it used to be.
		We know that the pole of Mars suddenly was tilted.
		We know that there are radioactive isotopes present on Mars and nowhere else suggesting that it was close to a big explosion.
		All those things fit with the model, but those aren't predictions in forward time.
		The model also predicts that when we get to Mars and take rock samples explosion 65 million years ago, associated with the devise of the dinosaurs here on Earth, we should have gotten to Mars 65 million years old when we can actually get rock samples back here to Earth and date them.
		So there's a definite prediction of the model that those craters are going to date much younger than any astronomer presently believes they will since it continues.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, my question before we go back to the phones, in recent days, weeks, and months, Doctor, we have been experiencing something rather unusual on Earth.
		In Greenland, something gigantic came down in Kaboom in the kiloton range.
		They're going to go look for that when the snow melts.
		Something exploded over El Paso with about a half a kiloton of power, equivalent power.
		In Denver, in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Georgia, I could go on and on and on.
		Every single day with the reports, large objects creating fireballs seem to have been entering Earth.
		Now, we are not in the middle of any planned or known meteor shower that I'm aware of, and it just seems like a lot of unusual activity.
		And nobody seems to be able to explain it.
		Can you?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, I am aware already of a set of circumstances that might offer some insight.
		Of course, if any phenomenon is going on constantly in a truly random phenomenon, you're going to get accidental clusterings here and there.
		But what's the phenomenon?
		Well, it turns out that we know that there are so many of these.
		We talked before about the large asteroids that are a threat to Earth, a kilometer in diameter or more.
		There may be millions of much smaller objects the size of what happened at Tamguska in Siberia in 1903.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's not very common.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Millions of them?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		There may be millions of such objects in Earth-crossing orbit.
		When we get down to smaller objects yet, the kinds that produced air bursts, it's estimated that once in the upper atmosphere, there is an impact that explodes with the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb once a day, just statistically from the amount of debris we're running into.
		Of course, most of the time, that's in the upper atmosphere.
		Nothing ever gets to the surface and we don't notice.
		But it's modern day and a lot more people aware of goings on above us.
		I think that we're tending to notice these events a lot more than was possible any time in the past.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That may well be so.
		Now, one other question.
		This coming November, I'm hearing a mainstream press reports that the Leonard meteor shower is going to be perhaps the one in a hundred, like everybody, that it's going to be tremendous and it may knock out communication satellites that we're really in for quite a show in November.
		Is that...
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is a possibility, but not a likelihood.
		What you're referring to there is to give rise to the showers that are the Leonid meteor showers around the second week of November.
		Every time the parent comet comes by again, which is every 33 years, we get extra intense showers.
		And on a few occasions, the showers have been what are called meteor storms.
		People who, the startled people who saw it, said they had the impression of the Earth rushing through space.
		In 1833, the first great storm recorded in modern times, people all across the United States were awakened during their sleep by the flash of the fireballs outside.
		Some of these storms have been truly intense, not in the sense of threatening, but in the sense of spectacular.
		This year, 1998, in November, or in 1999.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Should something of that magnitude occur, would the world's communications satellites be at jeopardy?
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		I'd have to say yes, even though these are very, very small meteorites, there are so many of them and they're moving so fast that they can damage satellites.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		And I would say some of the unshielded satellites have certainly a higher, much higher than normal probability of suffering some damage during a storm that intense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I depend very heavily on satellites to be here, actually several of them.
		And if any one of them were to go, KU-band or C-band, I'd be gone.
		Well, I'm going to bear that in mind.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Space is so large, fortunately, that the probability of any one of them suffering an impact is not great.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		But collectively, the probability of one of them suffering an impact at a time of a storm is much greater than it would be at any other time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if it did occur, like in space, nobody would be able to hear me scream.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Art.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Steve from South Dakota.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Dr. Van Flanner, you mentioned that the face might have been located at one time at the equator of Mars.
		Yes, that's right.
		We do have somewhat of an artifact analog on our own moon, and that's the 16-mile crater Ukert that reflects an equilateral triangle.
		Yes.
		At certain times of the month, if you were standing there at Ukert, the Earth would be directly overhead, right at the sub-earth point.
		That's a rather unusual thing.
		One side of Mars was more heavily cratered than the other side.
		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very much so, like it was slammed with a shotgun.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Well, our moon, besides being egg-shaped, the crust on the far side seems to be thicker and more heavily cratered than the near side.
		And there's not that much, there's very little maria.
		Would the exploded planet hypothesis be working to affect the moon's geology in this way?
		And that would be assuming if the moon would already be in tidal lock when this occurred.
		I'm off the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Yes, the reason why it keeps the same face towards the Earth today, why the particular side that faces us does, it probably also has to do with the history of planetary explosions throughout the 4.5 billion year age of our solar system.
		We mentioned before that in particular, there was probably one way back at the beginning, a gas giant planet that apparently exploded and gave rise to what astronomers call the early heavy bombardment, which is largely responsible for the huge cratering and the mare or so-called seas, the dark areas on the visible side of the moon.
		And that would have preferentially hit one face of the moon over the other and probably gave rise to the big impacts and the huge outflows that occurred on the side.
		It faces us constantly because it actually has these mass concentrations just beneath the surface.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, we are at the top of the hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have one more hour program left, but it is 5 o'clock where you are, and my presumption is that you need to get some sleep.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry to say that's true, Elza.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		This has been a delight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It has been a delight, and I really, really thank you for coming on tonight in such short notice.
		I really appreciate it.
		Next time I have you on, I want to know why planets are round.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we'll hold that question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, thank you.
thomas charles van flandern ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And good night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's Dr. Tom Van Flandren.

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