by Jacques Bergier

Seventy million year ago, the Earth was inhabited by giant reptiles: gigantic lizards, colossal saurians, who slithered, swam and flew. Their reign lasted 100 million years, whereas, according to the most optimistic estimates, man has had barely six million years.

This means that these species of reptiles had in order to become adapted and to evolve, an infinitely longer time than man. Furthermore, it is impossible to pretend that they represented an evolutionary failure: any species that last 100 million years must be considered fully adapted. Yet few species that were contemporaries of those reptiles survive, for example, certain crabs, which have not changed in 300 million years. In fact, in less than one million years the giant reptiles entirely disappeared.

How and why?

We can scarcely maintain that it was because of a change in climate; for even when the climate changes, the oceans hardly vary, and many of these reptiles lived in the oceans. It is impossible to believe that a higher form of life was able to exterminate them. This would have required a considerable army, whose traces we would certainly have found.

One amusing hypothesis is that our ancestors, the mammals, might have fed on dinosaur eggs. But it is only that: an amusing hypothesis; the ichthyosaurs deposited their eggs in the oceans, out of their adversaries reach. It has been said that the grasses changed and that the new grasses were too tough for the big reptiles. A completely unlikely hypothesis: large numbers of vegetation types survived, on which they could have fed perfectly well.

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The giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands, the ones that interested Darwin so much, did not die of hunger.

One could say that species grow old, become senile, and die. But this is bad logic: the preservation of the genetic code prevents a species from dying out. And why haven ‘t those species that are still living after several hundred millions of years, such as crabs and cockroaches, become senile too?

None of these hypotheses hold. But something happened. What then? An ingenious hypothesis has been outlined by two Soviet scientists, V. I. Krasovkii and I. S. Shlovsky, both of whom are eminent astrophysicists-especially the latter, who is the author of some extremely important works in astrophysics and radio astronomy and it was Shlovsky, in fact, who studied synchrotron radiation and showed that relatively rapid and extremely violent events can be produced at the center of galaxies as well as in space in general.

The two Soviet scientists explain the end of the dinosaurs by hypothesizing a star explosion that occurred at a relatively the small distance from our solar system: a supernova at five or 10 parsecs from us that would have increased the density of radiations coming from space lending credibility to this theory, the English radio astronomer Hanbury Brown believes he has detected traces of the explosion of a supernova 50,000 years ago at a distance of only 40 parsecs from the solar system.

Two U.S. scientists, K. D. Terry of The University of Kansas and W. H, Tucker of Rice University, have recently given close quantitative study to the problem. They have observed stars that, when they explode, actually produce such radiation bombardments. The effect of a bombardment varies according to the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field. This field partially protects us from the bombardment of cosmic particles by turning away those with a magnetic charge and forcing them into orbit around our planet.

But this magnetic field varies in intensity.

Right now it is on a downswing and will reach a low point about the 36th Century A.D. It is possible that 70 million years ago a violent bombardment may have coincided with a diminution in the Earth’s magnetic field, bringing about a wave of mutations in which the dinosaurs died and man’s ancestors were born. According to an East German scientist, Richter, the bombardment originated at the center of our galaxy and was extremely powerful, in spite of being produced at such a considerable distance.

If we accept this theory, as we well may, we still must ask what caused the massive explosion? I first outlined my explanation in 1957 during a broadcast on French television. I still remember the uproar that followed, and I still stand by my hypothesis: that the star explosion that killed the dinosaurs was deliberately induced, designed to set off a slow process of evolution leading to intelligent life; that we were created by extremely powerful beings. Knowledgeable both of the laws of physics and of the laws of genetics, these beings who could truly be called gods-set in motion a series of events that will not stop with man but will continue until this evolution results in other gods, beings equal to their creators.

Obviously, this hypothesis is very bold.

More than once already, however, we have speculated on the existence of beings infinitely more powerful than ourselves.

We have even offered quantitative estimates on what their technoloqies might be.

The greatest source of energy, which is demonitrated-in the H-bomb, is the conversion of hydrogen to helium. Now the amount of hydrogen in the oceans is enormous, but there is even more in the sun. We can certainly imagine beings capable of extracting hydrogen from the sun and using it. Theoreticians call the civilizations of such beings civilizations of type III.

What has become of these civilizations?

Do they still exist in the universe?

Many fine minds are answering this question affirmatively. Shlovsky considers it a not entirely far-fetched hypothesis that the quasars and the pulsars, up to now unexplained celestial objects, may be signs of biological activity. The Soviet scientist believes we should examine the sky systematically for what he calls “miracles”; that is, phenomena that cannot be explained solely by known natural laws or by imaginative extrapolations of those laws.

Among these phenomena, Shlovsky would place the abnormal behavior of Phobos, the satellite of Mars that, according to him, might be an artificial construction; the observation of a particular type of star, type R, that produces a short-lived element that does not exist in nature technetium. This condition has suggested to eminent scientists. the possibility that intelligent beings are bombarding these type R stars with technetium to produce a signal.

Other serious investigators-Carl Sagan, for example, believes that beings of type III civilizations can modulate the electromagnetic emission of a star as easily as we modulate those of a transmitter of sounds and pictures, and a group of Soviet researchers under the direction of astrophysicists Kardaschev and Pschenko are currently investigating such signals.

This group believes that, considering the various static disturbances that affect the Earth’s atmosphere, it will be necessary to place a radio observatory on the dark side of the moon in order to detect these signals. But in any case, their calculations have demonstrated to them that with completely conceivable means of energy, signals can be sent up a distance of 13,000 parsecs- in other words, to a greater distance than that which separates us from the center of the galaxy.

A U.S. astrophysicist, Freeman J. Dyson, envisages an even more fantastic “miracle” in the sky. He believes that there exist beings who can utilize the entirety of energy produced by their star.

These beings must no longer be living on planets; instead, they inhabit artificial spheres that they have built themselves and that totally surround their star.

Other ” miracles,” it seems, have been observed in the sky. Though they are rarely mentioned in scientific publications bec·ause they seem too fantastic, you hear them talked about at astronomical congresses, during meals and in the corridors.

For, example, there is speculation concerning certain multiple star systems that might be composed of stars of different ages; that is to say, stars coupled necessarily as a result of intelligent activity.

We see, therefore, that the existence in the universe of beings much more powerful than ourselves is being taken as a serious possibility. It is being quantitatively envisaged by eminent scientists.

We need not add to these speculations.

We should simply note that the human form perhaps ought not to be rejected. It is possible that it is one of the major stable forms of intelligence in the universe. We do not utilize one-tenth of our brains. Our civilization is far from being perfect. We do not have the least idea of what a civilization would be like in which human beings , used 100 percent of their brain capacity. And it is not at all absurd to attribute to such a civilization in the stars, if it exists, powers analogous to those of type III civilizations.

Such a point of view seems more plausible to me than all the inventions of science fiction. But be that as it may, my intention is not to study the possible forms of extraterrestrial beings but rather what I believe to be their manifestations.

To me, the first of these manifestations might have had as its result the end of the dinosaurs. Considering. that the Earth’s evolution had been heading down a dead end, that there had not been any progress with the giant reptiles for 50 million years, the Intelligences, wanting perhaps to increase the number of their “brothers in reason” (am expression of the great Soviet mathematician Kolmogoroff ), reversed the direction of this evolution and set up a new evolutionary goal. We do not, for the moment, know to what it is leading; but it would be absurd to believe that man as he is today was the end they were pursuing.

Perhaps the Intelligences will be forced to wipe out our species and set another chain in motion. This may be an inspired intuition. In any case, the Intelligences seem far removed from H. P. Lovecraft’s Great Old Men, who created life on the Earth by mistake or as a joke.

With this concept in mind, it is interesting to note th~t intelligent signals have been spotted coming from celestial object CT A 102. At least the wavelength of these signals have been calculated as coming from the vicinity of CT A 102, and it has been established that they contain the fundamental wavelength of the universe, the radiation transmitted by interstellar hydrogen.

Since that discovery, Prof. Gerald Feinberg of the New York Academy of Sciences has adv9nced the opinion that these signals from the Intelligences are transmitted by particles that he calls tachyons, from the Greek word meaning rapid – particles that can be conveyed in the void more rapidly than light without any contradiction of Einstein’s theory.

When methods for observing and detecting the tachyons are perfected, we will probably receive signals being transmitted by other races whose evolution also was set in motion by the star that killed the dinosaurs. And perhaps we will detect the observation devices of the Intelligences, who are certainly observing us in the same way we observe microbe cultures, under a microscope.

Although we have some precise notions on the energy sources the Intelligences might have had available for making their experiments-sources that are extensions of those we ourselves are using in our experiments on the hydrogen and anti-matter bomb-our knowledge in the area of genetics is still too vague for us to be able to imagine how directed mutations could be produced at a distance. We first need to know how mutations can be directed.

In order to produce directed mutations, a radiation of very short wavelength, or particles with very high energy, would have to be employed . It would next be necessary to modulate this transmission in order to transfer genetic characteristics on this modulation in the same way that images are transferred by a television channel. Calculations will show that this is possible, provided that very short waves, on the gamma-ray band, or particles on the Broglie wavelength and on the short gammas are used.

Indeed, it is possible for us to conceive of a laboratory apparatus-for example, a laser-regulated to produce the kind of radiations that would induce mutations. But when we try to imagine a mutation on the scale of a star created and modulated by the Intelligences, our imaginations fail.

A virus would undoubtedly have the same difficulty trying to imagine a laser.

The creatures who built and modulated the star that killed the dinosaurs really were gods. They are probably the same Intelligences who regulate to a hundred billionth the frequency of those celestial objects called pulsars, and the fact is that more and more scientists admit, in private, that the pulsars are artificial so many, indeed, that this hypothesis will probably soon appear publicly in most official
publications.

Hq,ving noted this, we must recognize that most signs of the Intelligences activity must escape us for the moment. In the same way that whole civilizations have lived without knowing about the radio, or of the existence of other solar systems, we will very probably remain unaware of highly important phenomena that, were we able to detect them, would undoubtedly prove to us the existence of other civilizations.

It is equally possible that perfectly classic phenomena may, in reality, be, without our suspecting it, manifestations of intelligent activity. In this regard, I can cite two hypotheses.

John W. Campbell, the late physicist, and science-fiction writer, studied cosmic particles-particles reaching us from space endowed with very high levels of energy capable of reaching 1011 electron volts. These particles are made of element groups with which we are familiar, ranging from hydrogen to iron. But this very ordinary matter is launched abruptly at a formidable speed as if a fraction of interstellar gas had suddenly been accelerated until it reached speeds bordering the speed of light. The mechanism that produced this acceleration remains unknown, although Fermi, Shlovsky and many other scientists have offered different models.

Campbell, for his part, suggested that the universe is full of SP.aceships that are moving at speeds close’ to that of light. As these ships sweep interstellar gas before them, we observe a trail – a wake – that is none other than the cosmic rays we have detected.

It cannot be said that Campbell’s hypothesis has exactly been received with delirious enthusiasm by physicists. However, one American physicist, Robert Bussard, has suggested a model for an an interstellar ship that would absorb interstellar gas by means of a scoop placed in the bow, from which it would obtain energy through fusion, and would then utilize the products of the reactions-such as propulsion fluid –the propellant then being ejected through the stern.

If the universe is full of this sort of spaceship linking the stars, then Campbell was right. And that happened to him almost exasperatingly often.

We can also imagine perfectly well that the mysterious variable objects called pulsars are beacons guiding these interstellar ships in the night of space.

A second hypothesis comes from a Russian scientific writer, Ekaterina Zouravleva.

According to Ms. Zouravleva, we constantly receive signals from space, signals that were sent at the birth of humanity and undoubtedly well before that.

This signal is made up of the aurora borealis and the aurora australis (the northern and southern lights).

Whatever the truth or otherwise of these two examples, the principle of the hypotheses are probably good even if their authors do riot take themselves too seriously.

Shlovsky had cause to observe one day, in a conversation with friends, that there are two kinds of hypotheses: the working hypothesis, intended to serve p.s a point of departure for study; and the conversational hypothesis, which serves to pass the time agreeably between two meetings on the mathematics of interstellar plasma.

The basic hypothesis of this article that we are the result of a series of mutations set off from the outside is a working hypothesis; the presence of messages to be decoded in an aurora borealis a operational hypothesis.

What other solar systems, or at least what other stars possessing solar systems, could have been influenced by the artificial source of energy that killed the dinosaurs?

If we go a reasonable distance from our solar system-for instance, 15 light years-we find five: Alpha Centauri, Epsilon Eridani, 61 Cygni A, Epsilon Indi, and Tau Celi. In centuries to come, research will undoubtedly be carried out to see if life exists in these systems: If it does, it will be interesting to find out if this life resembles ours, if the rocks on the planets of these systems bear traces of a cosmic bombardment that was produced, on our scale, 70 million years ago. With such a second fix, we could then locate in space the star, either artificial or artificially controlled, that killed the dinosaurs.

Until we have such a cross-reference, unfonrtunately, we are unlikely to discover our “foulding” star, Within a distance of 1,000 light years, we find approximately 10 million stars, and it is currently impossible to know which of these might be the dead debris of an artificial star created by the Intelligences.

The destruction of the dinosaurs certainly came from the cosmos and not from our solar system, but the study of cosmic influences connected to the galaxy is still in its infancy. We have been able to observe numerical coincidences, which are perhaps only coincidences. For instance, the frequency of the great glacial periods, about 250 million years, corresponds roughly to the rotation period of our solar system around the center of the galaxy, which is about 230 million years.

And an attempt is also being made to determine the frequency at which the center of our galaxy, where chain star explosions and disturbances are produced of which we have only a very faint idea, throws off sprays of condensed matter.

Unfortunately, we still have far to go in this study, though interesting discoveries are being made. For example, it is being debated whether or not it is the chain star explosions that are at the origin of the mysterious quasars, which are scarcely more bulky than single stars and which liberate as much energy as whole galaxies.

It is generally admitted that these quasars are something completely new and that it is currently impossible to envisage a scientific hypothesis that could render an account of them.

Some scientists think that humanity might one day be able to understand and even reproduce the energy source of these quasars. This is one of the justifications for the fantastic budgets swallowed up by such organizations as CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research). For myself, I feel that humanity is already menaced with destruction by the H-bomb and that a brake must be put on research institutes that might put at our disposal fantastic powers for whose use the human race is not yet ready. The ancient alchemists were completely right in believing that the secrets of matter had to be jealously guarded. If Hitler had had the means of exploding a star the way the Intelligences exploded the star that killed the dinosaurs, he would certainly have done so. Therefore I hope that studies of very high energies will not succeed for some time and that the power to kindle and extinguish stars freely will never be entrusted to the military or to politicians.

We have already made, in going from TNT to the H-bomb, a jump of 10′. What this means is that a hydrogen bomb weighing one ton can liberate an amount of energy equal to that of 10 million tons of TNT. This is what we call a 10-megaton bomb, and of course bombs of this sort actually exist. A comparable jump would take us from the energy of the H-bomb to the energy necessary for inducing the explosion of a star. In other words, a progress similar to that which brought us in 20 years from the TNT bomb to the H-bomb would place the power of the Intelligence sat our disposal.

Thus I hope that this development will not happen during the lifetime of current humanity, which has proved only too well of what it is capable. But to believe that this progress will never occur, in a universe that has existed at least 20 billion years, is extremely naive.

Somewhere in the universe, viruses evolved into Intelligences. If the phenomenon occurred several times, the different Intelligences must have come into contact; as Teilhard de Chardin said, “Everything that rises must converge.” A botanist at Harvard, Elso Barghoorn, has proved that certain bacteria lived on the Earth three billion years’ ago. It has required this time, and the assistance of the Intelligences, to lead from these bacteria to us, and even if it takes 10 billion years for the Intelligences to appear naturally, this time would only be half the observable age of the universe.

There is nothing in known science that conflicts with theories concerning the existence of the Intelligences. There is no longer anything conflicting with the possibility that they may have intervened.

Perhaps they have set up a detection and observation satellite in our solar system that is none other than the mysterious Phobos, the satellite of the planet Mars. Perhaps they have set up those protective radiation belts around the Earth that· we are just beginning to discover. Perhaps . .. *THE END