Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (42 page)

She raised an eyebrow.

He tapped his NotePad. “In 1939, Robert Oppenheimer predicted neutron stars above three solar masses collapse into black holes as per Chandrasekhar, and that no law of physics could stop some stars from collapsing to black holes.”

“Oppenheimer? He ran the physics side of the Manhattan Project? Security risk?”

“Yes ma’am. Oppenheimer interpreted singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped.”

“And this whole tablet deal makes us think long and hard about time?”

“Precisely. Oppenheimer’s theory is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this, collapsed stars were called
frozen stars
. An outside observer would see the surface of the star frozen in time at the instant where its collapse takes it inside the Schwarzschild radius. Light from the surface of the frozen star becomes red-shifted very fast, which is what quickly causes the
blackness
of the black holes.”

“Better dead than red,” she said.

He gave a forced laugh. “Many physicists could not accept the idea of time standing still at the Schwarzschild radius, and there was little interest in the subject for over twenty years. But then modern math kicked in. It was 1958 when David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface as an event horizon, a
perfect unidirectional membrane in which causal influences can cross in only one direction
. Rather than contradicting Oppenheimer’s results, this extended them to include the point of view of infalling observers. Finkelstein’s solution extended the Schwarzschild solution for the future of observers falling into the black hole.”

“More names than I need to know,” she said, putting her hand over tired eyes.

“Just trying to be complete. These results came at the beginning of the golden age of general relativity, with weird things like black holes becoming mainstream subjects of research. This process was helped by the discovery of pulsars in 1967, which were, within a few years, shown to be rapidly rotating neutron stars. Until that time, neutron stars, like black holes, were regarded as just theoretical curiosities. However, the discovery of pulsars showed their physical relevance and spurred a further interest in all types of compact objects that might be formed by gravitational collapse. Oh, and D. C. Robinson emerged with the
No-Hair Theorem.
.”

“Einstein had long hair,” she said. “Maybe this was a step backwards.”

Again a polite chuckle. “That math states a stationary black hole solution is completely described by the three parameters of the Kerr–Newman metric; mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. So some of the tables on the Nippur tablets are at least late twentieth century intelligence, which bothers us considerably.

“But it gets worse. The black hole stuff, and the
anthropic principle
which made multiverse theory at least semi-respectable, leads to the Calabi-Yau stuff which, in the form we see on the tables, were at least early twenty-first century. That lets us grasp how anachronistic the tablets are. But I’m here this morning, madam President, more so because of something else.

“Our scanning ion microscopes show us unimpeachable evidence of traces of nanomaterials stuck to the surface of some tablets.”

“Nanotechnology? But then the Sumerians weren’t just doing theory.”

“Exactly. They, or someone they knew, built things that worked. Our microscopy shows broken-down remnants of
nanobots
and
nanocomputers
! They had very dangerous stuff and we can’t understand how.”

“Mud bricks are not a national security nightmare,” she said. “But nanoweapons or time travel are.”

A West Wing staffer poked his head into the oval office. “The Girl Scouts are ready,” he said.

The President sighed, then snapped her face to a telegenic smile. “Okay. Thank you, sir. Next?”

3. Cheating on a Final Exam

“This is Van Damm, your Uncle Sam on the hologram,” his voice announced as the theme song by
Viola & the Terrorists
swelled, and the exploding red, white, and blue icosahedron logo flew apart into spinning faceted fragments. “Tonight’s interview is with that dashing Indiana Jones of the maddening mud tablets, Dr. Dugan Dwamish.”

“Actually
clay
tablets, Van. I’m happy to be here,” said Dr. Dwamish.

“Sure you are. Mud tablets and clay bricks, clay tablets and mud bricks, whatever. Twenty
million
viewers want to know—
time travel
, or
secrets of the ancients
, or
contact with extraterrestrials
?”

“First, Van, let me say I’m not on the payroll of St. Lawrence University, where Duncan J. Melville is doing a bang-up job of explaining what his team has excavated. I’m just a humble millionaire software consultant, and so I can say what the tenured professors are afraid to say.”

“No conflict of interest like those pointy-headed college boys, afraid to bite the hand that feeds them, right. So—contact with extraterrestrials?”

“That would explain a lot. Civilizations in other star systems might be thousands of years ahead of us, and master both starship technology and whatever will make the local humans think they’re gods. Remember the founding myth of the city of Babylon?”

“You betcha! Roll those holograms.”

Images flashed on the projection screen and Dr. Dwamish pointed at the first one.

“That’s Oannes right there, the name given by the Babylonian writer, Berossus in the third century B.C., to a mythical being who taught mankind wisdom. Berossus describes Oannes as having the body of a fish, but underneath the figure of a man. He is described as dwelling in the Persian Gulf, and rising out of the waters in the daytime wearing a helmet filled with water. See? Looks like a space helmet, doesn’t it? The half-fish was said to have enlightened mankind with instruction in writing, the mathematical arts, and the various sciences such as metallurgy.”

“Not biblical Onan, who spilled his seed.”

“Um, no. The name,
Oannes,
was once thought to be derived from that of the ancient Babylonian god, Ea, but it is now known that the name is the Greek form of the Babylonian, Uanna, or Uan, a name used for Adapa in texts from the Library of Ashurbanipal. The Assyrian texts attempt to connect the word to the Akkadian for a craftsman, ummanu, but this is a merely a pun.”

“If you say so, Dr. Dwamish. I’m lucky if I can make a play on words in English that doesn’t offend someone. So spill. Your words, I mean, not your seed. So this fishy guy in the helmet. He looks to you like an ancient astronaut?”

“I’m hardly the first to say so. Iosif Shklovsky and Carl Sagan cited tales of Oannes as deserving closer scrutiny as a possible instance of paleocontact due to its consistency and detail.”

“Paleocontact?”

“Yes, Van. According to certain authors, intelligent extraterrestrial beings called
ancient astronauts
, or ancient aliens, have visited Earth, and this contact is connected with the origins or development of human cultures, technologies, and religions. Deities from most, if not all, religions are actually extraterrestrials, technologies taken as evidence of divine status. These proposals were popularized in the latter half of the twentieth century, by Erich von Däniken, Zecharia Sitchin, Robert K. G. Temple, and David Icke.”

“Okay, ancient astronauts are often used as a plot device in science fiction. Remember the big tablet and the ape men in
2001: A Space Odyssey?
But the idea that ancient astronauts actually existed is not taken seriously by most academics, is it, Dr. Dwamish?”

“The notion has received little or no credulous attention in peer reviewed studies. You said it yourself. Professors are afraid to speculate in ways that might get them fired or could cut off their grant money. In this case, let’s use
Occam’s Razor
. Is it more likely that primitive people in the Middle East thirty-seven centuries ago mastered nuclear physics and black hole Calabi-Yau Manifold Mathematics, or that someone who already knew those things came to Earth and told them?”

“I’ve never been shaved by Occam. So you tell me, and the ghost of Carl Sagan, and our twenty
million
viewers.”

“Suppose you hand in your final exam to the teacher. You have the right answer, written down plain as day. However, the teacher gives you an ‘F’. You ask the teacher,
why’d you give me that ‘F’—I got the right answer
? The teacher responds,
I told you to show your work, but you didn’t show me any calculation, and I didn’t let anyone use their computers in the classroom
. What are we to think?”

“I think the teacher is an A-hole. Not being allowed to use a computer?”

“I mean about not showing your work.”

“Well, Doc, you could be a lucky guesser—”

“But nobody thinks the Babylonians could be lucky enough to guess the right Clebsch-Gordan coefficients in nuclear physics, or the mass ratios of leptons and baryons.”

“Baryons in Babylon, baby! Or, Doc, you could be so smart that you did it all in your head.”

“But if I was that smart, Van, I’d be the teacher, not the student.”

“Maybe you cheated. Maybe you copied the answer from someone who hit the books more than you.”

“Exactly, Van. Maybe the Babylonians cheated on their final exam. Maybe they cribbed the answers from a vastly superior civilization of underwater beings who lived a thousand years each, but were more comfortable undersea in the Persian Gulf, and had to wear helmets full of water when they walked upon the land and taught the Babylonians.”

“And then they climbed in their flying saucers and zoomed away?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Not really. If your guess was as good as mine, you’d be the holo-host, and I’d be the badly made-up college boy. We’ll be right back after these words from my sponsors, about many fine products and superior services. This is Van Damm, your grand slam with an oral exam in the traffic jam.”

The imploding red, white, and blue icosahedron logo reconstructed from spinning faceted fragments and morphed into a globe of Earth, while the last chords from
Viola & the Terrorists
echoed like the trumps of doom.

4. Time, Time is on My Side

“The media doesn’t know about nanodevice fragments found on tablets such as YBC 8888,” said the Director of Interstellar Intelligence Directorate to the audience of committee chairmen and researchers. “That buys us time. What else have we deduced? I need to brief the President. She was quite clear that nanoweapons and time travel are both threats. So which is it? Time travel, or secrets of the ancients, or contact with extraterrestrials, or what? And if this is a national security threat,
who
should be doing
what
about it?”

The Chairman of the Ancient Astronauts Committee replied “We’re skeptical about the
Chariot of the Gods
notion. But, on the other hand, we must keep an open mind.” Then he quoted Shklovski and Sagan:

“Stories like the Oannes legend, and representations especially of the earliest civilizations on Earth, deserve much more critical studies than have been performed heretofore, with the possibility of direct contact with an extraterrestrial civilization as one of many possible alternative explanations.”

“Weaknesses in that approach?” asked the IID Director.

“Proponents of ancient astronaut theories maintain humans are either descendants or creations of beings who landed on Earth thousands of years ago. Much of human knowledge, religion, and culture came from extraterrestrial visitors in ancient times, as ancient astronauts acted as a
mother culture
. Or civilization may have evolved on Earth twice, so visitation of ancient astronauts was the return of descendants of ancient humans whose population was separated from earthbound humans. Although these ideas are generally discounted by academic and skeptical communities.

“In his 1979 book,
Broca’s Brain
, Sagan said he and Shklovski might have inspired the wave of 1970’s ancient astronaut books, disproving von Däniken and other uncritical writers. Sagan reiterated extraterrestrial visits to Earth were possible but unproven, and improbable,” the chairman said.

“Strengths of the approach?”

“Proponents argue that the evidence for ancient astronauts comes from supposed gaps in historical and archaeological records, but that’s the same fallacy as the
God of the Gaps
argument by creationists. We can do much with mere artwork and legends.”

“What kind of legends?”

“Such as
vimanas
, mythological flying machines found in the Hindu epics and in the Book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament. A vimana was a flying object seen as a fiery whirlwind which, when descended to the ground, gave the appearance of being made of metal. It was a wheel within a wheel containing four occupants,
living creatures
, whose likeness was that of man. Wherever the wheels went, the creatures went, and when the living creatures were lifted up, the wheels were lifted up. In chapter four of
Chariots of the Gods?
entitled,
Was God an Astronaut?,
von Däniken refers to Ezekiel seeing a spaceship, just as Morris Jessup also said in 1956. The
Book of Enoch
tells of similar flying objects and beings called
the Watchers
who mutinied from ‘heaven’ and descended to Earth, and Enoch is taken to various corners of the Earth in the object and even to heaven. But there no maps on the tablets of, say, Antarctica, or other indication of such travels.”