Gyroscopic Investing

Btw, the sparking Leydon bottle at the top of the Great Pyramid was first observed by Sir William Siemens, the British inventor. He tells the following story in his autobiography:

Sir William Siemens as a Magician
In his autobiography the late Sir W. Siemens relates an amusing anecdote. An Arab called his attention to the fact that when at the top of the Pyramid of Cheops, when he raised his hand with fingers out-' spread, an acute singing note was heard, the sound ceasing as soon as he let his hand fall. "I found his assertion," he writes, "to be true. As soon as I raised one of my fingers above my head I felt a prickling in the fingers. That this could only be caused by an electrical phenomenon was proved by the slight electric shock felt on trying to drink out of a wine bottle. So I wrapped a full bottle of wine that I had with me in a damp paper, and thus converted it into a Leyden bottle, which was soon strongly charged with electricity by the simple device of holding it high above my head. The Arabs had already become distrustful on seeing small lightnings, as it were, issue from the wine bottles held up by myself and companions, and now held a brief consultation. Suddenly, at a given signal, each of my companions wss seized by the guide who had led him up, who now tried to force him to go down again. I myself was standing at the very top of the pyramid when the sheikh of the Arabs came to me and told me, through my interpreter, that the Arabs had determined that we were at once to leave the pyramid, because we were practicing magic, and it mieht damage their chance of earning a living. On my refusing to obey orders, the sheikh caught bold of my left hand. I had awaited this moment, and held my right hand with the bottle in the attitude of a magician, afterward lowering it slowly toward the point of the sheikh's nose. When quite close to that feature I felt a violent shock run through the bottle to my own arm, and was certain that the sheikh must have received the equivalent. At any rate, he fell speechless on the stones, and a few anxious moments passed before he rose suddenly with a loud cry, and sprang down the gigantic steps of the pyramid with long strides. The Arabs seeing this, and excited by the sheikh's constant cries of 'Magic! magic!' released my companions, and followed their leader, leaving us complete masters of the pyramid."

Source: Google Books

Hmmm.....

Gumby wrote: There seems to be a fair amount of out-of-place physical evidence in the historical record, such as copper-topped poles and inscribed images of wireless lights, among others. And there are well known hieroglyphics about supposed Egyptian electric technology:

Could you fill me in on the "copper-topped poles"?

I guess what I'm driving at is that if this kind of technology existed, it would leave some kind of actual evidence.  There would be some sort of physical artifacts or at the very least someone would have written about it.  Is there anything like that at all?

The evidence for the conventional interpretation, on the other hand, is overwhelming, stretching all the way back to ancient Greek sources and the writings of the Egyptians themselves.

Gumby wrote: I agreed that the Ark of the Covenant theory is totally off the wall.

If not, the "top men" that Indiana Jones was promised are studying the Ark will surely figure it all out. 

KevinW wrote: On a technical level, wireless electricity is usually subject to the inverse square law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law ).  The amount of emitted radiation at a point in space is proportional to the square root of what is emitted, as a function of distance from the emitter.  As a consequence projecting electricity in useful quantities to practical distances is extremely inefficient and would require an immense power source.  IIRC that was the fundamental obstacle that Tesla never overcame.  So I'm skeptical that anyone could make this work without something like a nuclear reactor, and there doesn't seem to be any archaeological evidence for anything like that.

Yeah, it's sort of like how you can (and do) generate extremely minute amounts of current by tuning in to radio waves.  But the amount of current you can get by tuning in is incredibly small compared to the amount of power required to broadcast a strong radio signal.

Lone Wolf wrote:

Gumby wrote: There seems to be a fair amount of out-of-place physical evidence in the historical record, such as copper-topped poles and inscribed images of wireless lights, among others. And there are well known hieroglyphics about supposed Egyptian electric technology:

Could you fill me in on the "copper-topped poles"?

Read about the Dendera Light for details. I don't know much about it. I'm not sure we could expect light bulbs to survive thousands of years.

Lone Wolf wrote:I guess what I'm driving at is that if this kind of technology existed, it would leave some kind of actual evidence.  There would be some sort of physical artifacts or at the very least someone would have written about it.  Is there anything like that at all?

Well, I don't know. From what I can tell, the book actually explores a few different artifacts and many theories relating to ancient Egyptian pyramid electricity power generation.

For instance, here is another interesting 'ancient aliens' theory on what the power plants were used for:

Solving the Pyramid Mystery Part I - http://youtu.be/Jv8CB9VURNc
Solving the Pyramid Mystery Part II - http://youtu.be/lMhyPNme_fs
Solving the Pyramid Mystery Part III - http://youtu.be/CWYJ82iXnWo

The last few minutes of the final video shows an example of a theory on how the pyramids were launching pads for alien astronauts.

You have to admit, the materials used in the pyramid (such as the supposed Mica-lined sluices from Brazil, etc) and the high static charges found by Sir Siemens at the top of the Great pyramid are extremely mysterious, and not very well answered by the tomb fairytale theory.

I can hear the pharoah responding to the quirky Egyptian engineer who proposed the giant electric tower:

Pharoah: You want to do WHAT!

Engineer: It will only take 20 years or so to build and take tens of thousands of workers and when we are done it will light a few lamps.

Pharoah: I think I am going to start calling you "Rube Goldberg."

Engineer: Would you feel any better about it if you got to be buried in it when you died?

Pharoah: Would you like to be buried in it right now?

MediumTex wrote: I can hear the pharoah responding to the quirky Egyptian engineer who proposed the giant electric tower:

Pharoah: You want to do WHAT!

Engineer: It will only take 20 years or so to build and take tens of thousands of workers and when we are done it will light a few lamps.

Pharoah: I think I am going to start calling you "Rube Goldberg."

Engineer: Would you feel any better about it you got to be buried in it when you died?

Pharoah: Would you like to be buried in it right now?

Yeah... that does sound off. I suppose the three-part video detailing the alien launching pads and stationary geo-orbitting satellite energy source actually makes more sense in terms of return on investment

The highly-specific materials and high-precision engineering/plans for a giant tomb don't make much sense — clearly they were the plans of a highly motivated, highly detailed and advanced engineer.

Perhaps a pyramid "tomb" was actually a shrine to departed god-like aliens once the launchpad was decommissioned.

Gumby wrote: For instance, here is another interesting 'ancient aliens' theory on what the power plants were used for:
...
The last few minutes of the final video shows an example of a theory on how the pyramids were launching pads for alien astronauts.

!!!

Why do you find the pyramids move convincing as wireless power generators and ancient alien launch pads?  Why not simply monuments to ego, religion, and (as Tortoise proposed), an Ozymandias-like "look upon my works ye mighty" message that we happen to be the recipients of?

If you had all the resources of a powerful kingdom at hand, an ego that won't quit, and belief in your own divinity and that arrangements for your afterlife must be handled with the utmost care, wouldn't you be inclined to build yourself "something nice"? 

Gumby wrote: You have to admit, the materials used in the pyramid (such as the supposed Mica-lined sluices from Brazil, etc) are extremely mysterious, and not very well answered by the tomb fairytale theory.

It took me a second here but did you switch to Mesoamerica?  Are you talking about Teotihuacan now instead of Giza?

Gumby wrote: The highly-specific materials and high-precision engineering/plans for a giant tomb don't make much sense — clearly they were the plans of a highly motivated, highly detailed and advanced engineer.

Do you mean that you are skeptical that the ancient Egyptians possessed the engineering ability to construct the pyramids?  Because they were smart people in possession of outstanding engineers and the resources to employ a whole lot of labor.  No aliens required.  Just human ingenuity.  Or is your point more, "Why bother with this?"

MediumTex wrote: I can hear the pharoah responding to the quirky Egyptian engineer who proposed the giant electric tower:

LOL.  That's too good.

Lone Wolf wrote:Why do you find the pyramids move convincing as wireless power generators and ancient alien launch pads?  Why not simply monuments to ego, religion, and (as Tortoise proposed), an Ozymandias-like "look upon my works ye mighty" message that we happen to be the recipients of?

As the videos point out, there are too many unanswered questions that 'tombs and monuments' don't adequately answer. Why would they use highly reflective materials to construct various layers of every pyramid? Why would they use highly reflective and electro-conductive materials throughout all of these key areas? Why did Sir Siemens observe "electrical phenomenon" at the top of the Great pyramid, as his guides suggested he would?

Suppose we were on a manned mission to Mars and we the first explorers to discover a set of large geometrically-perfect pyramids — the largest being 90,000,000 cubic feet in volume. And upon conducting a field operation we observed noticeable levels of electrical charges at the top of the largest pyramid as well as highly conductive and reflective materials throughout complex. Would you leave those unexplained observations out of your report? I wouldn't. Why would you ignore them? Why not ask more questions and run more tests?

Lone Wolf wrote:If you had all the resources of a powerful kingdom at hand, an ego that won't quit, and belief in your own divinity and that arrangements for your afterlife must be handled with the utmost care, wouldn't you be inclined to build yourself "something nice"?  :)

How do you know that every pyramid throughout the world was built for someone with an ego? Sounds just as speculative as any other theory.

Lone Wolf wrote:

Gumby wrote: You have to admit, the materials used in the pyramid (such as the supposed Mica-lined sluices from Brazil, etc) are extremely mysterious, and not very well answered by the tomb fairytale theory.

It took me a second here but did you switch to Mesoamerica?  Are you talking about Teotihuacan now instead of Giza?

Yes. The videos talk about this. There are many pyramids throughout the world. How do you suppose they had so many similar electroconductive properties to them?

Lone Wolf wrote:

Gumby wrote: The highly-specific materials and high-precision engineering/plans for a giant tomb don't make much sense — clearly they were the plans of a highly motivated, highly detailed and advanced engineer.

Do you mean that you are skeptical that the ancient Egyptians possessed the engineering ability to construct the pyramids?  Because they were smart people in possession of outstanding engineers and the resources to employ a whole lot of labor.  No aliens required.  Just human ingenuity.  Or is your point more, "Why bother with this?"

Yes, why did the bother with it? Why bother with the highly conductive materials? Why bother with the specific dimensions and precision that are conducive to reflection? Why bother with diverting resources to such a wasteful project? Why bother with creating an electromagnetic field around the area? Why the mysterious tunnels and compartments? Why have an enormous (reflective) gold cap on the top if you know it's going to be looted someday? Why the mica-lined sluices and layers? It doesn't make sense. The tomb theory seems a bit inadequate.

At least the alien theory — which is obviously waaaay out there on the fringe — tries to make sense of those questions. I'm not saying it's actually true. I'm just saying it's a very interesting theory — imagining that the Egyptians used technology that NASA is now experimenting with (as shown in Part I, of the three-part video series).

I don't believe in any of this stuff, but Gumby, you should look into Graham Hancock's 'Fingerprints of the Gods.'
This book is for you.

Very interesting videos, Gumby. I just finished watching them. I especially enjoyed the second one; rarely are ancient technological secrets revealed over the groovy sounds of a dance mix!

I'd like to read a book-length treatment about the "pyramids as wireless power transmitters" theory. Maybe Christopher Dunn's Giza Power Plant would be a good place for me to start. Even if it's complete malarkey, at least it'll be entertaining science fiction.

One thing that's always bothered me about the standard "pyramids as tombs" theory is all the evidence suggesting the pyramids had a strong astronomical purpose in their designs.

For example, Robert Bauval pointed out that the layout of the three main pyramids at Giza corresponds to the three stars of Orion's Belt:



Bauval also showed that in ancient times, the southern shaft of the Great Pyramid's King's Chamber pointed to the constellation of Orion and the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber pointed directly at Sirius (the Dog Star -- the brightest star in the sky).

At least part of the remarkably detailed engineering of the Pyramids at Giza seems to have had an astronomical purpose. Many historians try to brush this off by saying the ancient Egyptians (and most other ancient cultures) were superstitious regarding the objects in the night sky. That may be, but the precision of some of the ancient engineering suggests they had a strong mathematical knowledge of the stars as well.

What would be the most perplexing thing for people of the future to understand when looking at us now? To my mind it would be our finance industry. Investment banking and hedgefunds etc probably consume at least as large a slice of our productive capacity as pyramid building did back then. I guess we make that enormous sacrifice of our resources in an effort to fight entropy to enforce wealth/power inequality. Perhaps pyramid building also fitted in to their system in a similar role. People were preoccupied by needing to build pyramids or provide food etc to the pyramid builders. Having a big mission created a driving force to keep everyone in line and under the command of the establishment.

"Ancient Egypt was doubly fortunate and doubtless owed to this its fabled wealth, in that it possessed two activities, namely pyramid building as well as the search for precious metals, the fruits of which, since they could not serve the needs of man by being consumed, did not stale with abundance. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and sang dirges. Two pyramids, two masses for the dead, are twice as good as one; but not so two railways from London to York.
—John Maynard Keynes"

Looking to the future, Keynes could have said co-located ultra low latency trading systems rather than pyramids or cathedrals. Back then religion was used to commandeer people. Now I guess avarice is used in the same way

stone wrote: What would be the most perplexing thing for people of the future to understand when looking at us now?

I think that it will be trying to reconcile the expansion in our knowledge and technology in the last 200 years or so with a seemingly delusional inability to grasp how short the life expectancy must be of any society premised upon exponential economic growth into perpetuity that relies upon finite resource inputs to facilitate that growth.

MediumTex wrote:

stone wrote: What would be the most perplexing thing for people of the future to understand when looking at us now?

I think that it will be trying to reconcile the expansion in our knowledge and technology in the last 200 years or so with a seemingly delusional inability to grasp how short the life expectancy must be of any society premised upon exponential economic growth into perpetuity that relies upon finite resource inputs to facilitate that growth.

That is, if they can actually find any evidence of our knowledge. Data drives would probably turn to sand after awhile and most books would decompose. We don't leave cave drawings anymore. They'll probably just find inscriptions on the side of the post office buildings and religious stone artifacts every few blocks. And lots of plastic, metal and TVs. Future archeologists might assume we were primitive using drywall and steel skeletons on our skyscrapers instead of more advanced polymers, etc.

MTs example of the defunct space program is a great example. Thousands of years from now, Cape Canaveral might just look like a primitive stone henge.

Gumby wrote:

MediumTex wrote:

stone wrote: What would be the most perplexing thing for people of the future to understand when looking at us now?

I think that it will be trying to reconcile the expansion in our knowledge and technology in the last 200 years or so with a seemingly delusional inability to grasp how short the life expectancy must be of any society premised upon exponential economic growth into perpetuity that relies upon finite resource inputs to facilitate that growth.

That is, if they can actually find any evidence of our knowledge. Data drives would probably turn to sand after awhile and books would all decompose. We don't leave cave drawings anymore. They'll probably just find inscriptions on the side of the post office buildings and religious stone artifacts every few blocks. Future archeologists might assume we were primitive using drywall and steel skeletons on our skyscrapers instead of more advanced polymers, etc.

Our garbage dumps will provide future archeologists with plenty of work.

Strip mining operations will also probably be cause for many questions.  I can see future archeologists and anthropologists speculating that we may have been attempting to build "reverse pyramids" through our open pit mining operations.

Nuclear power plants will also be fun for people of the future to try to understand.  Failing to grasp what we were trying to accomplish with them, people of the future might come to refer to them as "atomic death centers", or maybe "landscape habitability destruction facilities."

MediumTex wrote:Nuclear power plants will also be fun for people of the future to try to understand.  Failing to grasp what we were trying to accomplish with them, people of the future might come to refer to them as "atomic death centers", or maybe "landscape habitability destruction facilities."

Good point. I assume you're talking about the fact that once the power goes out, all of those hundreds of nuclear power plants and the tons of nuclear waste in those cooling pools will melt down, eradicate the ecosystem, and turn the surface of the planet into a wasteland.

I wonder what future archeologists will think of our propensity to hoard gold in vaults — rather than using it more widely for its advanced elemental conductive properties. As much as I hate to call gold a barbarous relic for its now obsolete role as a monetary buffer-stock policy, I can't help but wonder if it's actually possible for an advanced civilization to build a highly successful (and expensive) manned space program while under the limitations of a gold standard.

Gumby,

Does our high gold price really hamper our abilities?  Aren't their other conductors almost as capable?

moda0306 wrote:Does our high gold price really hamper our abilities?  Aren't their other conductors almost as capable?

I think it does. Certainly gold is needed for certain high-conductive low-corrosion applications — many of them haven't been invented yet, or won't be with the price being so high.

For instance — and this is just one example — gold is an ideal element for fuel cells, but it's high cost makes it less practical.

Silver and copper are more conductive per volume, but unlike gold, they oxidize and corrode — effectively destroying their application over time.

Remember the gold record we put into the Voyager spacecraft? It was gold-plated copper so that it would actually survive a multi-millennial trip somewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

Funny story about that... according to Wikipedia, the artists recorded on the golden record signed agreements which only permitted the replay of their music outside of the solar system (no joke).

Gumby wrote:

MediumTex wrote:Nuclear power plants will also be fun for people of the future to try to understand.  Failing to grasp what we were trying to accomplish with them, people of the future might come to refer to them as "atomic death centers", or maybe "landscape habitability destruction facilities."

Good point. I assume you're talking about the fact that once the power goes out, all of those hundreds of nuclear power plants and the tons of nuclear waste in those cooling pools will melt down, eradicate the ecosystem, and turn the surface of the planet into a wasteland.

Yes, and more broadly the idea that nuclear power plants are built based upon the premise that the curent civilization that created it will last far longer than any civilization in history has ever lasted.

Imagine how silly it would seem to us if the ancient Romans had built power facilities that required a significant resource commitment, highly trained engineers and constant monitoring for hundreds of years after the power facility was no longer producing any power. 

If you look through history, civilizations routinely have assumptions about their durability into perpetuity built into their belief systems, but normally this bit of hubris doesn't have any REALLY bad consequences, and we can read about them in the history books and smile at their lack of understanding that they, too, were just temporary organizations of human society. 

What we have done with nuclear power plants is basically risked the human habitability of a certain portion of the earth's surface on the idea that civilization in its current form will be around for hundreds or thousands of years to take care of these complex waste problems, even though there is simply no precedent for anything like this working out very well to date in human history.

Don't they say that the "rainbow serpent" Australian culture stayed pretty much the same for over 30,000 and perhaps as long as 60,000 years. Possibly the  Hadza people in central Tanzania have a system that has lasted without needing to change for 100,000 years. I guess they don't rely on models based around 8% investment returns for perpetuity .

You guys know that a meltdown happens when a reactor runs out of control, so can't happen after it's shut off, right?

KevinW wrote: You guys know that a meltdown happens when a reactor runs out of control, so can't happen after it's shut off, right?

Not exactly.

If there were ever an electromagnetic pulse that stopped the flow of electricity on the planet, none of the reactors on the planet would be shut down properly. We'd all be dead as every core that wasn't shut down (and kept off) melted down simultaneously. Remember, keeping a reactor off requires electricity to be running at all times to keep the fuel submerged.

Also, the bigger problem is likely all of the spent fuel pools that need to have power maintained to them at all times, lest the water boils away and exposes them. It's a major problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool

Say a deadly virus occurs and kills everyone on the planet, Contagion (the movie) style, whose going to keep all the nuclear fuel submerged? Nobody. They will eventually boil their water tanks away and bed exposed to the environment. And this will happen all across the globe.

Is there any phenomenon which could create such a pulse (other than an alien race powerful enough to destroy the planet in many different ways)?

KevinW wrote: Is there any phenomenon which could create such a pulse (other than an alien race powerful enough to destroy the planet in many different ways)?

The sun discharges EMPs all the time. If one were large enough, or the Earth's magnetic shields were compromised (say during a magnetic pole flip), it could theoretically cause an EMP effect that stops the flow of electricity for awhile. Nuclear explosions have also been known to cause an EMP effect. According to Wikipedia, citing 1997 Congressional testimony, a large nuclear device detonated at 400–500 km (250 to 312 miles) over Kansas would cause an EMP all of the continental U.S.

Anyway, here's another scenario... Say a deadly virus occurs and kills everyone on the planet, Contagion (the movie) style, whose going to keep all the nuclear fuel submerged? Nobody. They will eventually boil their water tanks away and be exposed to the environment. And this will happen all across the globe.

Don't forget, the reactors need to be kept off — and that requires electricity and skilled management.

KevinW wrote: Is there any phenomenon which could create such a pulse (other than an alien race powerful enough to destroy the planet in many different ways)?

It happens in the form of certain kinds of solar storms that appear to occur at about 500 year intervals. 

The last such event (and the only one actually recorded in history) was in 1859.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases even shocking telegraph operators. Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire.  Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies.

It would probably instantly fry almost every circuit board in the world.  It's hard to imagine all of the trouble that would cause.

Hold hard cash and physical gold.

For the umpteenth time.

Gumby wrote: Anyway, here's another scenario... Say a deadly virus occurs and kills everyone on the planet, Contagion (the movie) style, whose going to keep all the nuclear fuel submerged? Nobody. They will eventually boil their water tanks away and be exposed to the environment. And this will happen all across the globe.

Don't forget, the reactors need to be kept off — and that requires electricity and skilled management.

The key, I think, is to understand that it only takes a relatively short period of no one at the controls for things to seriously begin to malfunction across the whole system.

I watched with interest last spring when Egypt experienced a mostly peaceful revolution, and yet there was still some looting and destruction of antiquities in Egyptian museums.  I thought to myself: "those items remained safely buried in tombs for thousands of years, and barely 100 years after we dig them up we are already seeing a mob snatch them and destroy them."  Even though we know that human society periodically experiences upheavals there was still no allowance made for that in Egypt, which holds relics of prior civilizations the safety of which surely ought to transcend some passing political turmoil.

What happens is that periodically things just break down for a while.  It can be because of a natural disaster, an epidemic, a war or just a really bad political situation.  When you build systems that require constant monitoring and maintenance you're just asking for trouble.

Imagine 1,000 years from now humans are studying the prior 1,000 years and they point out how the world basically fell into chaos for about 18 months in the year 2137 following the bizarre convergence of a solar EMP event and a global flu pandemic (such convergences are not unprecedented--World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic overlapped in 1918).  During this 18 month period a dramatic amount of electronically stored knowledge was simply lost, there were hundreds of nuclear power plant meltdowns, a significant percentage of the human population died and many systems dependent upon global supply chains simply stopped functioning.

One of the things about complex systems that people often seem not to grasp is that the more efficient a system is the less resilient it is.  When our overall economic system drives everyone relentlessly toward greater efficiency, it also unwittingly often drives us toward less resiliency.