There's an alternative energy story that I've been trying to follow closely as it's been developing, and it's beginning to look quite promising at this point.

The Kanzius Effect, is what it's now being called. It's been getting quite a bit more press lately as university researchers have confirmed it and repeated it in the lab. In short, Mr. Kanzius lives down here in Florida, he researches cancer cures out of his house, and one night he thought he had a breakthrough. In the end, he ended up collecting some salt water from the local canal, put it in a test tube, directed high energy radio waves at it, and when a paper towel "wick" was put in it and lit, it continued to burn, without burning up the paper towel itself. Obviously it wasn't exactly what he was expecting, and so he put out some feelers to the scientific community to explore what was going on.

So, how did this happen? That's the source of some debate, but it seems as though the radio waves are somehow destabilizing the water itself, releasing hydrogen, which is then burning. Of course, hydrogen being the future alternative energy source that most people are focusing on, this has gotten some attention in the scientific community. One scientist remarked that the breakthrough is, "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years."

Theories on how it's actually destabilizing the water go in a few directions. Some believe the radio waves are actually mimicking platinum, basically replacing the platinum catalyst in a hydrogen fuel cell. If true, fuel cells would suddenly be extremely cheap, to the point of fuel cell cars probably becoming cheaper than traditional gas powered cars.

Some believe it's even simpler than that. Perhaps, the sodium in the salt water is being superheated by the radio waves, much like metal in a microwave, and that energy is basically tearing apart the water and releasing the hydrogen.

I've also read the suggestion that it's basically twisting of the hydrogen molecules in the water, making it easier to release the hydrogen.

Many people also think that it's simply microwave plasma, and the entire thing is going to turn out to be fake in the end. However, Mr. Kanzius has shown that, contrary to that, the effect continues for some number of seconds after the radio waves are turned off, which wouldn't be possible if it were simply a plasma formed directly by the radio waves.

It is possible someday that this technique might be used to take large quantities of salt water, and make them burn hydrogen efficiently. In a sense, to equate to what we have today, a tub of salt water could more or less function as a battery, storing energy, or even as a replacement for the gas tank in your car. It's possible that someday they will get more energy out of burning the hydrogen fuel taken out of salt water than they will need to put into making the radio waves, if it can be improved to the point of only needing the radio waves as a sort of ignition source, which can then be turned off. Currently, that's not been reported to be true, despite some insinuations that it has.

Using plain old electricity to split off hydrogen from water is, of course, possible. It's called electrolysis. However, it's terribly inefficient, thus, the fact that we can't use hydrogen as a viable, large scale energy source. However, even after just a couple of months of tinkering, reports are that this is over three times more efficient already. Suddenly, the idea of using hydrogen in daily life seems far more possible.

Of course, the end point being, that as of now, it requires more energy put in than you get out in the end, otherwise it would be "free energy" which is probably not going to happen. I'd like to avoid an extensive, exhaustive look at all of the possible pathways and what each would be in terms of energy in and out. We simply don't know enough about what is happening at this point to really look at it that closely.

However, it's obviously a major step forward in the generation of hydrogen, and could very well lead to many discoveries in the future. As a completely unknown process as of just a few months ago, it's gotten to the point now where it's approaching getting the same amount of energy out, in hydrogen, as you put into making the radio waves in the first place.

This is how all major discoveries start, and it seems to be well on its way to making it into our everyday lives.

Over at Mac Tonnies' blog, I saw a link to an article which really put some things into perspective. Rather than try to explain just how crazy it seems, and how far off track we seem to be as a species, let me just do what Mac did, and give you a title:

"Instead of sending HUMANS to Mars 11 times, the USA sent them on a Mission to Iraq"

Regan Lee, of the Orange Orb Blog, has recently posted a short front page article on Book of THoTH. Her article "What Is A Real UFO?" is a basic explanation of the term. Unfortunately, the term really is misused on a daily basis. It's always been one of my pet peeves, so I'm glad to see someone else taking up the cause! Good job Regan.

Has Peru's mysterious illness been explained? Seems like. The New York Times is reporting that a meteor did, in fact, hit the ground, but rather than alien microbes taking a ride through space, or radiation poisoning, it seems like arsenic from the ground water is actually the culprit. The theory is that when the hot meteor hit, it dug far enough into the ground that the local ground water, and everything it's contaminated with, steamed up in a big cloud which made the locals sick. Until I hear a better story, I'll buy it.

The Paul Kimball interview on the Book of THoTH podcast is now up and available. The podcast area where you can download or stream it can be accessed at the link below:

Book of THoTH podcast area

And the Mp3 can be directly downloaded from the link below:

Direct Mp3 link

In this one Paul talks about his new documentary, "The Best Evidence" which everyone on every side of the UFO fence is raving about right now from what I can tell. He also discusses how he feels the state of UFO research stands right now, his umbrage with the term "UFOlogy", his relationship with Stanton Friedman, Alfred Lehmberg, and much more. Jeremy really did a terrific job putting together a great interview here.

I'll certainly be getting a bit more into this one in my next post(s).

This story's a retelling of a story that broke a while back, but I saw a newspaper report on it recently and it's been in the back of my mind.

The California Aggie recently reported on a statistical study done on a previous US government remote viewing study. In short, the US government spent funding research into remote viewing and other paranormal subjects, and had a pile of data which they wanted statistically analyzed. They tapped the American Institutes for Research to find people to do the analysis. In the end, they settled on Jessica Utts, a respected statistician from UC Davis, and Ray Hyman, a skeptic professor of psychology from the University of Oregon.

The results of this study were actually quite convincing, and they more or less told this to congress, in writing, when asked to do so. Utts, for instance, reported that in 966 cases logged by the government research of attempted remote viewing, the correct target was identified 34% of the time. That's far beyond the probability of that occurring by chance, which Utts calculated at 0.000000000043.

For comparison's sake, she did an analysis of aspirin treatment for prevention of heart disease. Those results showed that there was likely to have been prevention is about 25% of cases, with the probability of that occurring by chance at about 0.0003.

As Utts puts it, it's really quite convincing:

"The evidence for [remote viewing] is much stronger than [aspirin preventing heart attacks] and yet we have people taking aspirin everyday to try to prevent heart attacks," Utts said. "People aren't willing to either look at this evidence or aren't willing to believe it when they see it."

She put in her report to congress the following:

"Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud."

So, I guess this brings up the age old question, which I hate to bring up being a scientist, of why doesn't mainstream science recognize this kind of work? I will actually put forward that it's not actually science that won't accept it, although part of the problem lies there. It's really society as a whole that won't, which, obviously, trickles down into the scientific community. I think we probably need to stop asking why science won't accept the results, when there's scientists doing the actual research and then verifying it, and start asking why society won't accept it.

The very first Book of THoTH podcast with our new host, Jeremy Vaeni, aka Bot member valiens, is now posted at the link at the bottom of this post. Jeremy is a UFO Magazine correspondent, author of "I Know Why the Aliens Don't Land" and also has a DVD out called "No One's Watching: An Alien Abductee's Story". He's recently been working on the "Culture of Contact" and has a podcast by the same name already in it's 6th episode.

The first episode is a cross-site podcast featuring Jeremy himself, in a kind of "Meet the New Host" podcast. He talks a bit about himself, discusses and reads from his upcoming book, and introduces the idea of the new Book of THoTH podcast.

For future episodes, there will be site news, interesting forum threads, front page articles and an interview with someone in the paranormal community in each episode. Generally they'll be coming out every other week, but we have our first full BoT episode coming out next Tuesday, and then every other Tuesday from then on out.

On Tuesday you can look forward to a great interview with blogger, symposium organizer, UFO researcher(don't call him a UFOlogist...but I'll get into that after the episode premiers!)etc. Paul Kimball, aka Bot member paulkimball, about his latest documentary "The Best Evidence", his other current projects, the state of UFO research, his uncle Stanton Friedman, and more in this excellent interview.

Podcast Link
(Top Left)

In two weeks, look for another great interview with someone anyone who reads this blog is going to like!

There's a few books I want to give my review of coming up soon. I thought I'd work backwards with my latest read first, and then back to books I read a while back and just haven't had a chance to write down my thoughts on. So, with that in mind, first up is "From Atlantis to the Sphinx" from Colin Wilson.

I just read this a week or two ago during a couple of plane flights. In that respect, it's an incredibly readable book, very easy going for such a diverse topic that delves into many subjects which could be made quite difficult and unreadable. Colin Wilson really does an excellent job of bringing everything from how and when the Sphinx was built, to the history of man and pre-man through fossil evidence, to ancient maps and even neuroscience of man and how our brains may have evolved to the reader in a way which makes for easy, fun, educational reading.

The book starts off with a topic which has been controversial for Egyptologists for decades now; the dating of the construction of the Sphinx. The key point that seems to prove an earlier date than is generally recognized for Colin Wilson is the weathering of the base of the Sphinx. Was it done by sand, leaving open the possibility of the later, more accepted date? Or was it done by water, pushing the date of the construction back to at least 7,000 BC? He presents evidence from geologists, who seem to be at odds with the mainstream egyptologists about this, however, it seems as though many, if not most, geologists who have looked at the base of the Sphinx seem quite confident that there is evidence of water weathering. Assuming that it's OK to push the date back to at least that far, he takes it even further. Using astronomical calculations of the position of stars, it seems likely that the Sphinx, and perhaps the entire Giza plateau, was actually built in approximately 10,500 BC. A date which I've run into many times when researching mythologies from around the world, and in particular ancient Hopi legends and other North and South American mythologies. Can it be a coincidence that this date comes up so often, all around the world?

Going from that starting point, the book takes the reader through many other of Egypt's seemingly impossible accomplishments, from small, intricately cut vases that seem to require technology the Egyptians couldn't, or shouldn't, have had, to the precise measurements, construction and placement of the older pyramids and other artifacts contained within. He raises the possibility of advanced technology, such as some sort of sonic drill to make the precise, tiny, intricate vases, before launching off into another great question. Namely, if the Egyptians suddenly showed up alongside the Nile, ostensibly fresh off of living a nomadic lifestyle with no concept or idea of "society", how did they manage to spring right up and hit the pinnacle of their society right off the bat? Where did their construction ideas come from? Where did their medicine and construction knowledge come from? Is it likely that a society can go from nothing to something that complex without any build-up?

Of course, his point is that it's not at all likely. Leaving you to wonder where they came from and where their advanced knowledge came from. At this point, he quotes extensively from a book that's been on my "must read" list for a long time, but I haven't gotten around to reading yet: "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings; Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age" by Dr. Charles Hapgood. To paraphrase much of the evidence presented at this point, in 1929, a map was found, painted on parchment, and signed with the name Piri Ibri Haji Memmed, This map became known as the Piri Re'is map. Captain Arlington H. Mallery got a hold of the map about 30 years later and came to the surprising conclusion that the map showed Antarctica before it was covered in ice. Since then, it seems to have been proven that the map, in fact, shows an incredibly detailed view of Antarctica in a time prior to its present condition. More maps were found, and they almost certainly prove that there was a rather advanced, worldwide, seafaring society which mapped the entire world in their time. At this point, have we found the source of not only the Sphinx, but other ancient structures from around the world?

At this point I know I wondered about how and when Antarctica might have actually been uncovered. Colin Wilson introduces the theory of the Earth's crust shifting to explain this. Once again, he calls in a Dr. Charles Hapgood book, this time "Earth's Shifting Crust" which explains that in his theory, around approximately 15,000 BC, Antarctica was, in fact, much closer to the equator. If we accept this theory, it seems entirely plausible that at this point in human history a society which was more advanced than we give credit for at that point in time was actually using boats to travel and map the world.

Most mainstream scientists at this point would argue that no proof of this has been found in the fossil record of early man, or in any archaeological evidence. Colin Wilson spends a while going through a book I'm quite familiar with to attempt to disprove this idea. "Forbidden Archaeology" is a book which I first read at least a decade ago and it opened my mind to the idea that mankind was, in fact, much older than we've given ourselves credit for. To attempt to describe all, or even a sampling, of the evidence contained in that book would be nearly impossible without an entire other book review for it(which I'd love to take time to do sometime). However, suffice to say that quite the opposite of the conventional idea that there's no evidence to show for this theory, there's actually quite a bit. A quote from Mr. Leakey seems appropriate here, "If someone went to the trouble of collecting together in one room all of the fossil remains so far discovered of our ancestors...he would need only a couple of large trestle tables to stretch them out." As Colin Wilson points out, within that tiny source from which we've drawn all of our knowledge about human evolution there's quite a few pieces which suggest we might have been around a lot longer than most people think.

Within this fossil evidence of early man, brain size seems to be held in high regard by many. However, Colin Wilson argues, many forbearers of modern man had large brain size, some even larger than our own modern brain. So, brain type and changes must play a large part. At this point he delves into the idea that while modern man has a well known, physical connection between the two halves of his brain, perhaps ancient man did not. The hypothesized result of this would be that ancient man would have felt like he "lived" in the left half of his brain, and from time to time he would almost "hear" a voice in his head. While this would actually be the right side, the more creative side, of his brain helping solve problems, he might have thought that this "voice" was, in fact, his creator, or God's voice itself. It's a well received thought that at some point in human pre-history statues, writings, etc. seemed to change in a way that has led to theories of actual, physical god-like beings have been here on Earth, and then leaving. Wilson argues that, perhaps, what actually happened is that the human brain evolved to the point that the two halves of the brain no longer communicated the way they used to, and now incorporated both parts more equally into daily life. Perhaps this evolution is part of what separates ancient man from modern man.

So in the end, what conclusions can you make from all of this evidence? It seems incredibly likely that the Sphinx, and other ancient structures from around the world were in fact created much longer ago than most assume today. It also seems likely that there was a society, whomever you wish to call them, that traveled the world, and put together a remarkably advanced society sometime prior to 10,500 BC. Probably, modern man had been around much longer than that, to evolve their society to that point.

If you accept those facts, many "problems" with the modern interpretation of early societies disappears. No longer do you have to wonder why the Giza Plateau seems to be the most well constructed, largest construction project in Egypt, where later structures don't show the same complexity or structural integrity, nor even the same size of building blocks. The earlier ones were probably built by pre-Egyptians. No longer do you have to worry about how complex societies seem to have sprung up from nowhere with astonishing speed. They had something to work off of prior to their societies. You don't have to find it a strange coincidence anymore that the ancient symbol for medicine just happens to be a near identical "picture" of DNA. There were people much further back than we now know of working on medicine. You don't have to find it odd that Egyptians, who lived in the desert on the edge of a river, had huge model of seafaring ships buried in the desert. They were working off of previous knowledge of the people who Hapgood called the "Sea Kings".

As Colin Wilson says, however, while that's interesting, what can you take from this? What kind of advancement can we make from knowing this? Perhaps, in attempting to understand how these ancient people thought, and how that may have been very different from how we think, we can understand where their knowledge came from to do such remarkable things. It seems obvious that they were much more in touch with nature and the world than we are. Have we lost our ability to manipulate the world by being so out of touch with it? He takes a long look at lost "magic" and how modern day shamans seem to be able to do things which we can't. One story he tells, which is a retelling from another researcher, is a story of how an island shaman brought porpoises to their death, without ever touching them. The story, in essence, is that a western man was researching the peoples on an island. The king told him that he looked like he needed some porpoise meat. So, the island shaman told him that he'd get porpoise meat. In his "magic" he went into his hut, and either slept, or came close to sleeping. Seemingly, he somehow "linked" with some porpoises out at sea. He came running out of his hut, and told everyone to go down to the water's edge. Sure enough, shortly thereafter, a pod of porpoises came right up to the shore, and a few of them beached themselves.

How could that be possible? Colin Wilson's conclusion is that somehow along the way, ancient man learned how to manipulate the world around him. Rather than being an "animal" who simply reacted to the world, and did his best to deal with it, man learned that he could actually control parts of the world. This was the evolutionary change that he believes actually defines the line between our ape ancestors and modern man. However, today, in our big cities and technological world, we've forgotten much of our ancient knowledge. Can we ever get it back? He seems to think that there's hope, if we want to.


While this review got a little larger than I had hoped, I think it barely scratches the surface of the research which Colin Wilson has packed into under 300 pages of material in this book. Obviously, I'd recommend it to anyone who's seriously studying the untold history of this world.

Wow. That's about all I can say. Has it been so long? I probably don't have many, if any, readers left, but I'm planning on making a full return to the blogging scene. Hopefully some folks will come back and read this and if not...well...I'll keep at it anyway!

Long story short, I've been doing my best to work and keep The Book of THoTH running smoothly while Michael Bourne, aka THoTH, was recovering from his illness. While he's not quite back up to speed yet, it looks like he'll be making his way back.

I'd love to get back to daily blogging, and that's the plan. I've got a bunch of book reviews, articles and other interesting stuff planned, so lets hope it all works out!