In the weekly scientific
journal Nature, issue 3rd November 1928, there appeared a
letter to the physicist Carl Stormer penned by one Jorgen Hals, a radio engineer
from Bygodo. The letter read: "At the end of the summer of 1927 I repeatedly heard signals
from the Dutch short-wave transmitting station PCJJ at Eindhoven. At the same
time as I heard these I also heard echoes. I heard the usual echo which goes
round the Earth with an interval of about 1/7th second as well as a
weaker echo about three seconds after the principal echo had gone. When the
principal signature was especially strong, I suppose the amplitude for the last
echo three seconds later, lay between 1/10h and 1/20 of the principal signal in
strength. From where this echo comes I cannot say for the present, I can only
confirm that I heard it."
Hals had discovered a phenomena that was later to be called
Long-Delayed Echoes. During the half-century following this discovery,
scientists from around the world have studied the phenomena but have not been
able to offer a satisfactory explanation to account for all the evidence
accrued. Essentially the LDE phenomena is that radio
messages can be transmitted into space and are 'reflected' back to Earth off an
object or objects elsewhere in space; the ionosphere and the Moon acting as the
two main 'reflectors'. Over 100 reports exist of the phenomena, yet some of the
reports refer to echoes being received seconds later at their original
transmitting station.
Since the radio waves travel at 186,000
miles per second, and the distance between the Earth and the Moon varies from
221,460 miles to 252,760 miles, the longest the radio wave should take to be
reflected back to Earth is 2.7 seconds; any delay longer than that would
indicate reflection off an object further out in space than the Moon. Carl Stormer, the recipient of Hal's letter, teamed up with a
Dutch researcher, Van der Pol from the Phillips Research Institute in Eindhoven
and in September 1928 they began experiments to validate Hal's findings. They
radiated radio call-signs of different lengths at 30-second intervals
and the results they achieved from 11th October 1928 demonstrated
delays in the signal of between 3 to 15 seconds. Van der Pol confirmed these
findings in a telegram that read "Last night special emission gave echoes here
varying between three and fifteen seconds. 50% of echoes heard after eight
seconds!" (1)
Yet, as noted above, 2.7 seconds would be the longest it would
take to reflect such a signal back from the Moon, and it would take over four
minutes for the echoes to reflect back from our nearest planet in the Solar
System, Venus. Clearly, the echoes were being reflected off something between
Moon and the nearest planet. Stormer continued to investigate the phenomena and
his work was duplicated by intrigued researchers from all over the world. tormer published his findings in August 1929, and attributed
the echoes to some form of 'auroral causes', however such an explanation was,
and remains, unsatisfactory. Later another natural explanation for LDEs was
proposed by Anthony Lawson in the 1970s (2). Essentially he
contended that the signals were reflected off the ionosphere or other natural
phenomena. His hypothesis was regarded as impressive by the British
Interplanetary Society who gave him Fellowship of their Society. Lawton's work
almost killed off research into the phenomena, however what limited research
that continued concluded that "we still don't know which of the proposed
mechanisms are valid." (3).
What made the puzzle more intriguing were the different time
delays in receiving the signals back after their transmission. Stormer and Van
der Pol noted echoed delays to their transmissions (in seconds) that read
8-11-15-3-13-8-8-12-15-13-8-8. Either there were a number of reflective objects
out there to account for these time differences or something else was happening.
That something else was happening was proposed by Professor
Ronald Newbold Bracewell (top). Born in Sydney, Australia, Bracewell later
worked in the CSIRO Radiophysics Laboratory during World War II and 1949-54. He
then moved to the United States where he joined the Electrical Engineering
faculty of Stanford University, and later became Lewis M. Terman
Professor at the University. Bracewell is the author of over 200 technical
papers and four books and was at the University at the same time as Arthur
Schawlow, inventor of the laser. His theory about the Long Delayed Radio Echoes was that
they were what might be expected from a Von Neumann Probe (the Von Neumann of
Corso fame.) Von Neumann had proposed that alien probes may have been launched
from some far distant civilisation and remained in orbit around planets likely
to harbour life until contact could be made on the 'dawn' of that civilisation's
radio era. Bracewell concluded that such a probe might listen to radio
transmissions from our planet and repeat them on the same frequency to confirm
contact with an alien intelligence. Such a concept is quite logical, for this way the 'alien' probe could be
guaranteed to permeate the transmitting world's atmosphere and be in a language
or form understandable to that host world.
Explore forgotton clues scattered throughout history that are suggestive
of an alternative history.
Join the world-wide search for evidence
of a lost civilisation that predates
known history.
Has Earth already been contacted by other civilisations either in the distant past or in recent centuries?
A discussion of the emergence of advanced technologies and the bizarre invasion of Antarctica after WWII.
A discussion of sightings of UFOs in the sky above Earth and within the solar system, including Moon anomalies.
Evidence the Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials and how the public had been subject to disinformation.
A list of credits and sources for the themes and issues explored
in Violations.
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