Domain (11 page)

But it is what we cannot see that forever links these monolithic structures to one another, for at the heart of their design lies a common mathematical equation that demonstrates an advanced knowledge—a knowledge of precession.

Again, a brief explanation:

As our planet floats through space on its yearly journey around the Sun, it rotates on its axis once every 24 hours. As the Earth spins, the gravitational pull of the moon causes it to tilt approximately 23.5 degrees to the vertical. Add the Sun’s gravitational pull on our planet’s equatorial bulge and you have a wobble at the Earth’s axis, similar to that of a spinning top. This wobble is called precession. Once every 25,800 years, the moving axis traces a circular pattern in the sky, relocating the position of the celestial poles and equinoxes. This gradual westward drift also causes the signs of the zodiac no longer to correspond to their respective constellations.

The Greek astronomer and mathematician, Hipparchus, is credited with having discovered precession in 127 BC. Today we know the Egyptians, Mayans, and Hindu understood precession hundreds, if not thousands of years earlier.

In the early 1990s, archaeoastronomer Jane Setters discovered that the Osiris myth of ancient Egypt had been encoded with key numbers that the Egyptians had used to calculate the Earth’s varying degrees of precession. Of these, a particular set of digits stood out among the rest: 4320.

More than a thousand years before the birth of Hipparchus, both the Egyptians and Mayans had somehow managed to calculate the value of pi, the ratio of the diameter of a circle, sphere, or hemisphere, to its circumference. At 481.3949 feet, the Great Pyramid’s height, multiplied by 2pi, precisely equals its base (3,023.16 feet). Incredible as it seems, the perimeter of the pyramid comes within 20 feet of equaling the diameter of the Earth, when our planet’s dimensions are scaled down to a ratio equaling 1:43,200, numbers representing our mathematical code of precession. Using the same ratio, the Earth’s polar radius is equal to the pyramid’s height.

It turns out that the Great Pyramid is a geodetic marker lying almost exactly on the 30th parallel. If its measurements were projected onto a flat surface (with its apex representing the North Pole and its perimeter the equator), the monolith’s dimensions would equal the Northern Hemisphere, scaled down to, again—1:43,200.

We know it takes 4.320 years for the equinoctial Sun to complete a precessional shift of two zodiacal constellations or 60 degrees. Multiply this number by 100 and you have 43,200, the number of days noted in the Mayan Long Count calendar equaling 6 Katuns, one of the key numerical values the ancient Maya used when they calculated precession. A complete cycle of precession takes 25,800 years. If you add up all the years of the Popol Vuh’s five cycles, the time period equates exactly to one precessional cycle.

Hidden within the dense Kampuchea jungle in Cambodia are the magnificent Hindu Temples of Angkor. The bas-reliefs and statues proliferating on the complex include precessional symbols, the most popular being a gigantic serpent (Naga), its midsection coiled around a sacred mountain in the milky ocean, or Milky Way. The two ends of the serpent are being used as a rope in a cosmic contest of tug-of-war featuring two teams: one representing light and good, the other, darkness and evil. This movement, combined with the churning of the Milky Way, represents the Hindu interpretation of precession. The Puranas, the sacred scriptures of the Hindu, refers to the four ages of the Earth as Yugas. Our present day Yuga, the Kali Yuga, has a duration of 432,000 mortal years. At the end of this epoch, the scriptures claim the human race shall face destruction.

The ancient Egyptians, Maya, and Hindu—three distinct cultures located in different thirds of the world, each existing at different intervals in our past. Three cultures who shared a common, advanced knowledge of science, cosmology, and mathematics and used their wisdom to create mysterious architectural wonders, each structure constructed for a single, hidden purpose.

The oldest of these structures are the great pyramids in Giza and their timeless guardian, the Sphinx. Lying to the northwest of the temple known as the House of Osiris, the magnificent limestone figure of the human-headed lion is the largest sculpture in the world, towering six stories high and extending 240 feet in length. The creature itself is a cosmic marker, its gaze oriented precisely due east, as if waiting for the Sun to rise.

How old is the Giza complex? Egyptologists swear by the date of 2475 BC (a period that just happens to fit Egyptian folklore). For a long time it was difficult to argue, as neither the Great Pyramid nor Sphinx left behind any determining markings.

Or so we thought.

Enter the American scholar, John Anthony West. West discovered that the 25-foot-deep trench surrounding the Sphinx exhibited unmistakable signs of erosion. Upon further investigation, a team of geologists determined that the damage had not been caused by wind or sand, but purely from rainfall.

The last time the Nile Valley saw this type of weather was some 13,000 years ago, the resulting effects of the Great Flood, which occurred at the end of the last ice age. In the year 10,450 BC, Giza was not only fertile and green, its eastern sky also faced the very figure the Sphinx was modeled after, the constellation of Leo.

While all this was happening, Robert Bauval, a Belgian construction engineer, realized the three pyramids of Giza (when viewed from above) had been plotted precisely to the three belt stars of Orion.

Using a sophisticated computer program designed to account for all precessional movements from any view of the night sky at any geographical location, Bauval discovered that, while the Giza pyramids and the stars of Orion’s belt had been somewhat aligned in 2475 BC, an infinitely more accurate alignment had occurred in 10,450 BC. During this latter date, the dark rift of the Milky Way had not only appeared over Giza, but would have mirrored the meridional course of the River Nile.

As mentioned earlier, the ancient Maya considered the Milky Way a cosmic snake, its dark rift referred to as Xibalba Be, the Black Road to the Underworld. Both the Mayan calendar and the Popol Vuh reference the concepts of creation and death as originating from this cosmic birth canal.

Why were the three pyramids of Giza aligned to Orion’s belt? What is the significance of the precessional number, 4320? What was the real motivation that drove our ancestors to erect the monuments of Giza, the pyramids of Teotihuacan, and the Temples of Angkor?

How are these three sites linked to the Mayan prophecy of doom?

—Excerpt from the Journal of Professor Julius Gabriel,

Ref. Catalogue 1993-94 pages 3-108

Floppy Disk 4: File name: ORION-12.

Chapter 5

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012
MIAMI, FLORIDA

3:3O A.M

M
ichael Gabriel’s dream unravels into a night terror. Worse than any nightmare, it is a violent, recurring dream that creeps into his subconscious—a whisper in his brain that takes him back to a pivotal moment in his past.

He is back in Peru, a young boy again, not yet twelve. Staring out his bedroom window at the sleepy village of Ingenio, he listens to the muffled voices coming from the next room. He hears his father speaking to the physician in Spanish. He hears his father sobbing
.

The adjoining door opens
. “
Michael, come in please
.”

Mick can smell the disease. It is a rancid odor, an odor of sweaty bedsheets and intravenous bags, of vomit and pain and human anguish
.

His mother is lying in bed, her face jaundiced. She looks up at him through sunken eyes and squeezes his hand weakly
.

“
Michael, the doctor is going to teach you how to administer your mother’s drugs. It s very important that you pay close attention and do it correctly
.”

The silver-haired physician looks him over
. “
He’s a bit young, Señor
—”

“
Show him
.”

The physician pulls back the sheet, revealing a porticath tube protruding from his mother’s bandaged right shoulder
.

Mick sees the tube and is frightened
. “
Pop, please, can’t the nurse
—”

“
We can’t afford the nurse anymore, and I need to complete my work in Nazca. We talked about this, son. You can do this. I’ll be home every evening. Now concentrate, focus your mind on what the doctor’s going to show you
.”

Mick stands by the bed, watching the physician closely as he fills the syringe with morphine. He memorizes the dosage, then feels his stomach turn as the needle is injected into the porticath, his mother’s eyes rolling upward
…

“No! No! No!”

Michael Gabriel’s screams wake every resident in the pod.

Deep Space

The lightweight probe Pluto-Kuiper Express soars through space, eight years, ten months, and thirteen days from home, a mere fifty-eight days and eleven hours from its destination, the planet Pluto and its moon, Charon. Resembling a high-tech satellite dish, the science craft continues broadcasting its uncoded signal back to Earth by way of its 1.5-meter high-gain antenna.

Without warning, an immense ocean of radio energy blasts through space at the speed of light, the low end of a hyperwave pulse bathing the satellite in its high-decibel transmission. In a nanosecond, the probe’s telecommunication subsystem and monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) are fried beyond recognition.

NASA: Deep Space Network Facility

2:06 P.M.

Jonathan Lunine, head of the Pluto Express science team, leans against a row of mission-control consoles, half-listening to Dr. Jeremy Armentrout as the engineer addresses the new members of their ground team.

“—the PKE’s high-gain antenna continuously transmits one of three possible tones. These essentially translate to: Everything’s okay, data ready to downlink, or there’s a serious problem that needs immediate attention. Over the last eight years, these signals have been monitored by—”

Lunine stifles a yawn. Three consecutive eighteen-hour shifts have taken their toll, and he is beyond ready to start the weekend.
Another hour in the briefing room, then it’s home to an afternoon nap. Redskins play the Eagles tomorrow, should be a good game
…

“Jon, can I see you please!” A technician is standing by his control console, signaling urgently. Lunine notices beads of sweat across the man’s forehead. The operators on either side appear to be working feverishly.

“What’s the situation?”

“We’ve lost contact with the PKE.”

“Solar wind?”

“Not this time. My board’s showing a massive power overload affecting the entire SDST communications system and both flight computers. Sensors, electronics, motive effectors—everything’s down. I’ve ordered a complete systems analysis, but God only knows what effect this is having on the PKE’s trajectory.”

Lunine signals for Dr. Armentrout to join them. “Flight control has lost contact with the PKE.”

“Backup systems?”

“Everything’s down.”

“Damn.” Armentrout rubs his temple. “First priority, of course, is to reestablish contact. It’s also imperative that we relocate and continue to track the probe before too much time elapses and we lose the PKE in deep space.”

“You have a suggestion?”

“Remember back in the summer of ‘98 when we lost contact with SOHO for about a month? Before regaining contact, we were able to locate her by beaming radio signals from Arecibo’s big dish off the satellite, then picking up the bounce using NASA’s dish in California.”