The Mars Mystery Read online

  Because one isolated result proves nothing, Crater devised a number of tests to see how often a “tetrahedral” triangle could be created randomly, defining a tetrahedral triangle as

  any triangle whose angles in radians are given in simple terms of quarter, half, or whole number multiples of pi and t.8

  Crater’s tests were thorough and professional (as might be expected of a scholar whose job is the calculation of patterns).9 He randomly generated 100,000 three-mound placements on a computer, finding just 121 randomly occurring E-A-D triangles. Then he analyzed 4,460 actual triangles formed from natural Martian features, of which only two were tetrahedral E-A-D triangles. Based on these odds Torun reckoned that the chances of the E-A-D triangle occurring naturally was “slightly more than one in 1,000.”10

  This was not an impressive result, and did not rule out the possibility of coincidence. But more was to come.

  TETRADS, PENTADS, AND HEXADS

  Craters next step was to introduce mound G, which nestles at the feet of the southernmost of the large city structures, thus forming the tetrad G-A-D-E. It contains two identical right-angled triangles, A-E-G and G-A-D and its geometry is entirely determined in terms of t and pi, as is also the case for the geometric divisions of a tetrahedron.

  Crater now included the next closest mound—mound B, to the right of triangle E-A-D—to form a pentad G-A-B-D-E. Like the cogs of some great wheel meshing together, triangles A-D-B and E-A-B exactly mirror triangles A-E-G and A-G-D. What’s more, all the angles within the pentad also turn out to be functions of t.11 Some wider plan must lie behind this setup, Crater suspects, because:

  The geometry that most optimally describes the mound placements suggests, with stubborn redundancy, the geometry hinted at in Torun’s model of the D&M Pyramid.12

  Next to be analyzed was mound P, found to the west of mound G. Here, too, the results are confirmatory: triangle P-G-E is a mirror of GE-A and E-A-B. The odds of such a hexad forming naturally, Crater estimates, are about 200 billion to one.13 These triangles also repeatedly include the significant angle of 19.5 degrees.14

  The final development came in February 1995. While studying Crater’s results, Stan McDaniel realized that the pattern formed by five of the Cydonia mounds (G-A-B-D-E) appears to imply a rectangle, even though two corners of that rectangle are “missing.” Using the geometrical analysis performed by Crater, the proportions of the grid were found to be a significant figure in terrestrial sacred architecture—1:1.414, or 1 to the square root of 2.15 As the reader will recall, sqrt 2 is one of the values repeatedly “printed out” by the geometry of the D&M Pyramid.

  THE MESSAGE AND THE CONSPIRACY

  Following up on Torun and Craters pioneering work, Richard Hoagland set about combing the Cydonian plain for more alignments that might make sense in terms of tetrahedral geometry.

  His first discovery was that the angle between the so-called cliff to the east of the Face and a “tetrahedral pyramid” found on the far lip of the crater on whose ejecta blanket the cliff lies is 19.5 degrees: t, the tetrahedral constant.

  Hoagland also claims that the “teardrop” on the right side of the Face lies at a point that is exactly equidistant between the City Square and the D&M Pyramid—this distance being 19.5 arc minutes of the circumference of Mars! A second measurement, from the teardrop to the great buttress of the D&M pyramid, corresponds with l/360th of the polar diameter of Mars.16

  But this system of dividing up circles and spheres into 360 degrees is surely an Earth-based invention … isn’t it? Therefore, even if we accept the “way-out” view that the Cydonia monuments are artificial, how can we explain that their presumably alien builders used the same 360-degree system that we do, and even followed geometrical conventions that are of venerable antiquity here on Earth?

  Torun and Hoagland came to the conclusion that a message was deliberately being sent, quite possibly targeted at “us,” and that the circumference of the planet was continually referred to in relation to the tetrahedral constant for a specific purpose. “All this seems to be directing us,” Hoagland theorized in 1987, “to place the inscribed tetrahedron in a planetary sphere such as Mars itself….”17

  On Independence Day, 4 July 1997, NASA’s lander Pathfinder touched down in the once catastrophically flooded Martian channel known as Ares Vallis. Richard Hoagland was the first to point out that Pathfinder has a pronouncedly tetrahedral design with distinctive solar panels in the form of equilateral triangles. Moreover, its landing site in Ares Vallis is located at 19.5 degrees north latitude.18

  Probably NASA meant nothing by this. Still, we cannot deny that the act of placing a tetrahedral object on Mars at latitude 19.5 contains all the necessary numbers and symbolism to qualify as a “message received” signal in response to the geometry of Cydonia. Moreover, such a game of mathematics and symbolism is precisely what we would expect if NASA were being influenced by the sort of occult conspiracy that Hoagland, for one, is always trying to expose.

  PART THREE

  Hidden Things

  14

  Disinformation

  The broad mass of a nation … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

  ADOLF HITLER, MEIN KAMPF, 1925

  COULD NASA know more about Cydonia than it has admitted? Could it have discovered something there that it has decided to withhold from the public?

  In 1938, as Europe readied herself for war, the peoples of the New World found themselves threatened not by some maniacal fuhrer seeking to establish a new order of darkness, but by invaders from Mars. It happened when Orson Welles broadcast his own adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds on the radio. The radio-play was so realistically presented that many believed it to be a genuine news report. The widespread panic that ensued revealed what a two-edged sword mass communication could be. It brought people together, but its power to influence vast swathes of the population was clearly immense.

  In Germany, Goebbels churned out propaganda films and fed them to the masses, exaggerating resentments and xenophobia (present throughout Europe at this time), and twisting nationalist sentiments to result eventually in the Holocaust. What Hitler had said in 1925 was turning out to be literally true—people were believing the “big lie.”

  But propaganda was not an invention of World War II and did not end with it. This begs the question of whether NASA scientists today could be abusing their authority—leading the people on or even deliberately lying over Cydonia and other issues? If Welles managed to convince 1930s America that it was being invaded from outer space even though there was no invasion, then it seems obvious that a government should be able to find ways to hide or devalue information concerning contacts with beings from other planets, or traces of intelligent life found on Mars, or that some new fact has been uncovered in explorations of Mars that is of enormous significance for all mankind.

  Generally speaking, government agencies find it easier and preferable to reinforce already held beliefs than to introduce new ones. We therefore have no difficulty envisaging situations in which NASA might decide not to share everything it knows with the public—for example, if it believed that a specific piece of information might be socially, or politically, or economically destabilizing. We can also imagine other less honorable motives that might lead officials to hide the truth about certain types of discovery.

  Because such things are possible, and because discoveries have been hidden and hushed up in the past, we think it would be naive to place any great confidence in NASA’s repeated assurances that the monuments of Cydonia are all natural landforms. Like other big state bureaucracies, NASA has lied and will lie again. We think the evidence suggests that it has lied about Cydonia ever since the Face on Mars was first discovered.

  DUTY TO WITHHOLD

  NASA is not some Starship Enterprise on a “mission to seek out new worlds and civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” On the contrary, NASA is the disturbed child of two
dysfunctional parents—paranoia and war.

  NASA was formed in 1958 at the height of the Cold War when all advances in space science were spin-offs from the development of more efficient killing machines. The exploration of space itself was directly linked to defense policy.

  To a certain extent, this Cold War mentality still prevails. Thus, although it is funded from public taxes, NASA is finally not responsible to the people but to the government of the United States. Nor does any law compel it to share information openly with the public. In Section 102 (c) (a) of the Act of 29 July 1958 (The Space Act), which formed NASA, we read:

  NASA is charged with the making available to agencies directly concerned with national defense of discoveries that have military value or significance….

  Information obtained or developed by the Administrator in the performance of his functions under this act shall be made available for public inspection except:

  a) information authorized or required by Federal statute to be withheld, and

  b) information classified to protect the national security.

  So it seems that NASA actually has a “duty to withhold” certain categories of information.

  THE BROOKINGS REPORT

  NASA scientists cannot know for sure, on present evidence, whether or not the structures of Cydonia are natural or artificial. Many intelligent people therefore suspect there must be some very strong reason why NASA has for so long failed to test the AOC hypothesis.

  It has been suggested that a 1960 Brookings Institute report may contain a possible clue. The report is entitled Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs. Amid other advice it urges that if NASA should ever discover evidence of extraterrestrial life, it should seek to control this information for reasons of public security, considering the plight of “societies sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways.”1

  At the level of policy and strategy the Brookings report recommends that NASA should always ask, and consider very carefully

  how such information, under what circumstances, might be presented to or withheld from the public for what ends. What might be the role of the discovering scientists and other decision-makers regarding the release of the fact of discovery?2

  The report was commissioned by NASA in 1958 (the year of its inception) from the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., and was delivered to the chairman of NASA’s Committee on Long-Range Studies in 1960.3 It includes a subsection starting titled “Implications of a Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life”:4

  Cosmologists and astronomers think it very likely that there is intelligent life in many other solar systems…. Artifacts left at some point in time by these life-forms might possibly be discovered through our future space activities on the Moon, Mars, or Venus.5

  The Brookings Report evisages that hard evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life might have severe effects on political leaderships—shaking society up and causing the public to question entrenched elites:

  The degree of political or social repercussions would probably depend on leadership’s interpretation of (1) its own role; (2) threats to that role; and (3) national and personal opportunities to take advantage of the disruption or reinforcement of the attitudes and values of others.6

  UFO

  The policy of secrecy regarding possible alien artifacts stems back some years before NASA was formed. The recommendations of the Brookings Report only echo earlier statements made by the American government.

  The “Report of the Meetings of the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects Convened by Scientific Intelligence, CIA, January 14–18, 1953” concludes:

  The continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena [UFO encounters] does, in these perilous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic.7

  Many conspiracy theorists in the United States passionately believe that such conclusions were first drawn six years earlier—in 1947, to be precise.

  THE CRASH OF ’47

  The modern UFO phenomena can be said to have begun with the sighting of nine “saucer-shaped” objects flying over Mount Rainier, Washington, by pilot Kenneth Arnold on 24 June 1947.8 Two weeks later, rumors began to circulate concerning an alien spaceship that had supposedly crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico.

  The “Roswell Incident” has been given much public attention recently due to the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the crash in 1997. It is an understatement to say that it has caught the imagination of the present generation: an increasing variety of claims about the crash have been put forward in recent times, most of which accuse the U.S. government of covering up the evidence. It was to refute such claims that the Pentagon embarked on a four-year research program to dismiss these theories.

  In a report titled Roswell: Case Closed, published on 24 June 1997 (fifty years to the day after Arnold’s first sighting of “flying saucers”), the Pentagon claims that what crashed at Roswell was a high-altitude weather balloon and that the “alien bodies” reported to have been found beside it were “life-size dummies from top-secret simulated parachute drops.”9

  The crash was discovered by Mac Brazel, a rancher checking for storm damage near the Roswell Army Air Force Base (RAAF). The wreckage that he found consisted of a strange shiny material that was immutable, returning to its original shape when crumpled into a ball. Unable to identify this substance, he handed it in at the air base. On 8 July 1947 the base issued an official army press release stating that a “flying disk” had been found, the local paper’s headline stating RAAF CAPTURES FLYING SAUCER ON RANCH IN ROSWELL REGION.10 Within hours the Pentagon contacted the head of the local radio station and told him to stop broadcasting the news, and a new press release was issued stating that what had really been found was a weather balloon.

  A major challenge to this story was mounted by several Roswell locals who vociferously claimed to have seen not just wreckage but also the occupants of the wrecked craft. Frank Kauffman, a civilian working at RAAF at the time, reports seeing the bodies of five aliens being placed into body bags by the military. Also among the witnesses was Colonel Philip Corso (now retired), who was on General MacArthur’s intelligence staff during the Korean War and on President Eisenhower’s national security staff for four years. He claims to have seen at least one short, gray, hairless alien body after it had been removed from the site and stored at Fort Riley, Kansas:

  At first I thought it was a dead child they were shipping somewhere, but this was no child. It was 4 ft., human-shaped figure with arms, bizarre-looking four-fingered hands—I didn’t see a thumb—thin legs and feet, and an oversized … lightbulb-shaped head.11

  THE DUMMIES

  The Pentagons counterclaim that the bodies were just “life-size dummies from parachute drops” is an admission that there was at least something at Roswell that could be mistaken for alien bodies. But how likely is it that such dummies would have landed right next to a crashed balloon? What were the military doing testing parachutes on the night of a violent storm?12 If the eyewitnesses can be trusted, why place the dummies in body bags? Moreover, what is to be made of statements from several of the witnesses that one of the “aliens” survived the crash and was seen moving?

  The army press officer who issued the 8 July press release in 1947 would later sum up the the many absurdities of the Pentagons position:

  It’s just another cover-up. Any dummy knows what a dummy looks like, and those weren’t dummies.13

  UFO RELIGIOUS CRISIS?

  But why would NASA want to cover up evidence of intelligent aliens?

  To be sure, the Brookings report does suggest a possible motive. However, the public of the year 2000 does not have the same fears as the public of 1960—and NASA must know this. Surveys in the 1990s suggest that 65 percent of all Americans believe that a
UFO did crash at Roswell.14 In addition, surprisingly large numbers of people, probably running into tens of millions, believe that they have either seen or been abducted by alien entities.

  As there is clearly no widespread panic about these matters, how likely is it that there would be panic over the as yet hypothetical discovery of alien artifacts on Mars?

  The surveys suggest there would be no panic. On the contrary, such news would probably be received positively even by so-called fundamentalist groups. One particularly instructive report is the Alexander UFO Religious Crisis Survey: The Impact of UFOs and Their Occupants on Religion. Written by Victoria Alexander for the Bigelow Foundation, Las Vegas, Nevada, the report considers responses to questions by 230 leaders of religious communities across America (134 from Protestant churches, 86 from Roman Catholic churches, and 10 from Jewish synagogues). While the relatively small size of this survey means that it cannot be taken as definitive, its results are surprisingly clear. As Alexander sums up:

  The numbers are not just statistically significant; they demonstrate unmistakable trends. Even though this was a pilot study, for the first time there are data concerning the perceived relationship between religion and the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The data are counter to the widely held belief frequently posited by many in the UFO community predicting doom and destruction in the wake of verifiable contact.15