UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released its files on another famous name in the annals of ufology: George Van Tassel, alleged UFO contactee, and builder of California’s famous Integratron.

Van Tassel was like many in the 1950s UFO scene, who prior to his interest in visitations by “Space Brothers” had been heavily involved with metaphysical subjects and groups. What set him apart from many others, however, was Van Tassel’s legitimate involvement with mechanical engineering and aviation. Van Tassel was barely out of his teens when he relocated to California from his hometown in Jefferson, Ohio, to work in a garage owned by his uncle.

It was while working there that he met a German immigrant and part-time prospector named Frank Critzer. Staking his claim near Giant Rock, California, Critzer was later killed during a police raid that occurred at the location in 1942; it was later revealed that Critzer had been a suspected German spy.

Van Tassel in 1964

(Credit: KVOS Channel 12 Films, Center for Pacific Northwestern Studies, Western Washington University)

After Critzer died, Van Tassell took an interest in an abandoned airport near Giant Rock and was later granted a contract by the Federal Government to undertake a restoration of the property under the Bureau of Land Management. With his background in mechanical engineering and prospective airstrip near Giant Rock, Van Tassel went on to work for some of the more high profile names in aviation during the ensuing years; these included Lockheed, and flight innovator Howard Hughes’ own Hughes Aircraft, among others. Eventually, Van Tassel would also turn his airport and surrounding attractions near Giant Rock into a sort of “Mecca” for the soon-to-be-booming flying saucer craze.

The FBI’s file on Van Tassel, numbering 315 pages, is mostly concerned with photocopies of pamphlets Van Tassel co-authored, which includes one titled, “Proceedings from the College of Universal Wisdom” (Van Tassel was Director of the College of Universal Wisdom in the early 1950s, according to the pamphlet). The batch of documents opens with a letter by an individual (whose identity is redacted) sent to John F. Malone, the Special Agent in Charge at the FBI’s Los Angeles, California field office. The letter explains that the author is filing the information with Malone “at the request of my friend” (a name that is also redacted), who had been “Seeking some information concerning the activities of individuals and the group known as the College of Universal Wisdom.”

“The group ostensibly is devoted to a study of space ships and interplanetary communication,” the unnamed individual writes, “but its consistent ‘line’ in its publication is an attack upon atomic weapons and preaching of a nebulous peace. George W. Van Tassel is listed as Director of the College of Universal Wisdom, and I know nothing whatever concerning him.

“However, at least one of the prominent guests at the space ship convention at Giant Rock Airport, Sunday, April 4th, has been questioned about supposed communist affiliations,” the informant writes.

However, in addition to Van Tassel’s associations with the Giant Rock area and his organization, the files do elaborate on the Bureau’s concerns about Van Tassel’s airstrip, and the location’s former connections to a possible German spy during the war.

“You may recall that this area was the scene of some sensational happenings during World War II,” the author of the letter to Special Agent Malone writes, “when it was believed to be the projected site for refueling of suicide planes, possibly to be launched from Japanese submarines on the Gulf of California in an attempt to reach and bomb Hoover Dam’s penstocks and power houses to cripple the airplane industry here. Your office no doubt has the full story on what happened then including the destruction by dynamite in an underground room beneath Giant Rock of the then owner.”

Incidentally, Van Tassel and his family actually lived in quarters within these areas excavated by Critzer in the 1940s, and beginning in 1953, he began holding public meditation events in these underground chambers. The same year was the launch of the annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention, as referenced in the letter to Special Agent John Malone, which ran until Van Tassel’s death in 1978.

The Big Bang Theory hasn’t been having a good year. First, of course, the iconic television sitcom of the same name ended. Besides being a top-performing show right up until the end, it did wonders for convincing the general public that nerds can be cool while showing nerds that they can meet attractive soulmates as long as they don’t spend too much discussing Star Trek movies or string theory. Then last week, THE Big Bang theory itself was brought into question by new data which seems to show that an old star appropriately dubbed “Methuselah” is actually older than the universe. If that hit to its big ego was wasn’t big enough, a study released this week showing how dark matter, which was thought to have been created by the Big Bang, actually predates it. What next? Secret documents showing Dr. Sheldon Cooper cheated on his IQ test?

“If dark matter were truly a remnant of the Big Bang, then in many cases researchers should have seen a direct signal of dark matter in different particle physics experiments already.”

Tommi Tenkanen, a postdoctoral fellow in Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University and author of “Dark Matter from Scalar Field Fluctuations” published recently in Physical Review Letters, uses the enemy of many weak theories – mathematics – to put the Big Bang theory into question. Tenkanen developed a simple mathematical framework (graphs can be seen here) which illustrates a scenario where dark matter was produced in a period of cosmic inflation BEFORE the Big Bang, causing a massive production of scalars. Scarlars (also called scalar boson – you can see where this is going) are boson particles whose spin equals zero. The only boson particle ever found is the Higgs boson, also known affectionately as the ‘God particle’ because it gives all other particles their mass. In other words, it created the mass of the universe, which up until now was believed to have birthed the universe.

Figure 1

The parameter space relevant for the “fuzzy DM” scenario [25]. Contours show the value of $H_{*}$ required for $χ$ to constitute all DM. The regions below the horizontal red dashed line and between the dotted green lines are in tension with observations of the Lyman- $α$ forest [26] and the recent Event Horizon Telescope data due to the black hole superradiance mechanism [27], respectively. See also Ref. [28] which placed tentative constraints excluding the entire region shown here. The lower limit for $x$ axis, $χ_{*} / H_{*} ≃ 7 \times 10^{4}$ , is given by the isocurvature constraint (14).

Figure 2

The region of the model parameter space where the scalar simultaneously constitutes all DM (along the red curve) and avoids the DM isocurvature constraints (blue region). Also the region $m \leq 0.4 GeV$ , $H_{*} ≲ 10^{5} GeV$ in the lower left corner is allowed. The result is not sensitive to the exact value of $β$ . Above the blue region, $m > H_{*}$ , the scalar fluctuations during inflation are strongly suppressed.

Does this mean dark atter really existed before the Big Bang?

“We do not know what dark matter is, but if it has anything to do with any scalar particles, it may be older than the Big Bang. With the proposed mathematical scenario, we don’t have to assume new types of interactions between visible and dark matter beyond gravity, which we already know is there.”

Well, if the math says it did … then it did – although it would be nice to have some physical evidence to back it up. Tenkanen told Phys.org that’s coming in 2022 when the Euclid satellite is launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium. It will be carrying a near-infrared space telescope that will accurately measure the acceleration of the universe as it expands, thus giving scientists the means to trace back to the origins of dark energy (the theoretical cause of the expansion) and dark matter (the content of up to 85% of the universe).

Or not.

“It’s going to be very exciting to see what it will reveal about dark matter and if its findings can be used to peek into the times before the Big Bang.”

That’s a BIG if … meaning the Big Bang theory — and the universe and all that is in it — is safe.

For now.