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by Mikhail Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov
FROM THE EMINENT SOVIET JOURNAL:
'SPUTNIK'
July 1970
from
TheForbiddenKnowledge Website
Spanish version
Although people long ago began to wonder whether the "canals" on Mars were the creation of cosmic engineers, for some odd reason it
has not occurred to look with the same eyes upon the peculiarities
of the lunar landscape much closer at hand.
And all the arguments
about the possibilities of intelligent life existing on other
celestial bodies have been confined to the idea that other
civilizations must necessarily live on the surface of a planet, and
that the interior as a habitat is out of the question.
Abandoning the traditional paths of "common sense", we have plunged
into what may at first sight seem to be unbridled and irresponsible
fantasy. But the more minutely we go into all the information
gathered by man about the Moon, the more we are convinced that there
is not a single fact to rule out our supposition.
Not only that, but
many things so far considered to be lunar enigmas are explainable in
the light of this new hypothesis.
AN ARTIFICIAL SPUTNIK OF THE EARTH?
The origin of the Moon is one of the most complicated problems of
cosmogony. So far there have been basically three hypotheses under
discussion.
HYPOTHESIS I: The Moon was once a part of the
Earth and broke away
from it. This has now been refuted by the evidence.
HYPOTHESIS II: The Moon was formed independently from the same cloud
of dust and gas as the Earth, and immediately became the Earth's
natural satellite.
But then why is there such a big difference between the specific
gravity of the Moon (3.33 grams per cubic centimeter) and that of
the Earth (5.5 gr.)? Furthermore, according to the latest
information (analysis of samples brought back by the U.S. Apollo
astronauts) lunar rock is not of the same composition as the
Earth's.
HYPOTHESIS III: The Moon came into being separately, and, moreover,
far from the Earth (perhaps even outside the Solar system).
This would mean that the moon would not have to be fashioned from
the same "clay" as our own planet. Sailing through the Universe, the
Moon came into Earth's proximity, and by a complex interplay of
forces of gravity was brought within a geocentric orbit, very close
to circular. But a catch of this kind is virtually impossible.
In fact, scientists studying the origin of the Universe today have
no acceptable theory to explain how the Earth-Moon system came into
being.
OUR HYPOTHESIS: The Moon is an artificial Earth satellite put into
orbit around the Earth by some intelligent beings unknown to
ourselves.
We refuse to engage in speculation about who exactly staged this
unique experiment, which only a highly developed civilization was
capable of.
A NOAH'S ARK?
If you are going to launch an artificial sputnik, then it is
advisable to
make it hollow.
At the same time it would be naive to
imagine that anyone capable of such a tremendous space project would
be satisfied simply with some kind of giant empty trunk hurled into
a near-Earth trajectory.
It is more likely that what we have here is a very ancient
spaceship, the interior of which was filled with fuel for the
engines, materials and appliances for repair work, navigation,
instruments, observation equipment and all manner of machinery...
In
other words, everything necessary to enable this "caravelle of the
Universe" to serve as a kind of Noah's Ark of intelligence, perhaps
even as the home of a whole civilization envisaging a prolonged
(thousands of millions of years) existence and long wanderings
through space (thousands of millions of miles).
Naturally, the hull of such a spaceship must be super-tough in order
to stand up to the blows of meteorites and sharp fluctuations
between extreme heat and extreme cold.
Probably the shell is a
double-layered affair--the basis a dense armoring of about 20 miles
in thickness, and outside it some kind of more loosely packed
covering (a thinner layer- -averaging about three miles). In certain
areas--where the lunar "seas" and "craters" are, the upper layer is
quite thin, in some cases, non-existent.
Since the Moon's diameter is 2,162 miles, then looked at from our
point of view it is a thin- walled sphere. And, understandably, not
an empty one. There could be all kinds of materials and equipment on
its inner surface. But the greatest proportion of the lunar mass is
concentrated in the central part of the sphere, in its core, which
has a diameter of 2,062 miles.
Thus the distance between the kernel and the shell of this nut is in
the region of 30 miles. This space was doubtless filled with gases
required for breathing, and for technological and other purposes.
With such an internal structure the Moon could have an average
specific gravity if 3.3 grams per cubic centimeter, which differs
considerably from that of Earth (5.5 grams per cubic centimeter).
A BATTLESHIP THEY COULDN'T TORPEDO?
The most numerous and interesting of the formations on the lunar
surface are the craters.
In diameter they vary considerably. Some
are less that a yard across, while others are more than 120 miles
(the biggest has a diameter of 148 miles). How does the Moon come to
be so pockmarked?
There are two hypothesis - volcanic and meteoric. Most scientists
vote for the latter.
Kirill Stanyukovich, a Soviet physicist, has written a whole series
of works since 1937 in which he expounds the idea that the craters
are the result of bombardment of the Moon for millions of years. And
he really means bombardment, for even the smallest celestial body,
when it is involved in one of those fastest head-on collisions so
common in the cosmos behaves itself like a warhead charged with
dynamite, or even an atomic warhead at times.
Instant combustion
takes place on impact, turning it into a dense cloud of incandescent
gas, into plasma, and there is a very definite explosion.
According to Professor Stanyukovich, a "missile" of a sizable
character (say 6 miles in diameter) must, on collision with the
Moon, penetrate to a depth equal to 4 or 5 times its own diameter
(24-30 miles).
The surprising thing is that however big the meteorites may have
been which have fallen on the Moon (some have been more than 60
miles in diameter), and however fast they must have been travelling
(in some cases the combined speed was as much as 38 miles per
second), the craters they have left behind are for some odd reason
all about the same depth, 1.2-2 miles, although they vary
tremendously in diameter.
Take that 148-mile diameter crater. In area it outdoes Hiroshima
hundreds of times over.
What a powerful explosion it must have been
to send millions of tons of lunar rock fountaining over tens of
miles! On the face of it, one would expect to find a very deep
crater here, but nothing of the sort: there is three miles at the
most between top and bottom levels, and one third of that is
accounted for by the wall of rock thrown up around the crater like a
toothed crown.
For such a big hole, it is too shallow. Furthermore, the bottom of
the crater is convex, following the curve of the lunar surface. If
you were to stand in the middle of the crater you would not even be
able to see the soaring edge-- it would be beyond the horizon. A
hollow that is more like a hill is a rather strange affair, perhaps.
Not really, if one assumes that when the meteorite strikes the outer
covering of the moon, this plays the role of a buffer and the
foreign body finds itself up against an impenetrable spherical
barrier. Only slightly denting the 20-mile layer of armour plating,
the explosion flings bits of its "coating" far and wide.
Bearing in mind that the Moon's defense coating is, according to our
calculations, 2.5 miles thick, one sees that this is approximately
the maximum depth of the craters.
A SPACESHIP COME TO GRIEF?
Now let us consider the chemical peculiarities of the lunar rock.
Upon analysis, American scientists have found chromium, titanium and
zirconium in it. These are all metals with refractory,
mechanically
strong and anti-corrosive properties.
A combination of them all
would have enviable resistance to heat and the ability to stand up
to means of aggression, and could be used on Earth for linings for
electrical furnaces.
If a material had to be devised to protect a giant artificial
satellite from the unfavorable effects of temperature, from cosmic
radiation and meteorite bombardment, the experts would probably have
hit on precisely these metals. In that case it is not clear why
lunar rock is such an extraordinarily poor heat conductor - a factor
which so amazed the astronauts? Wasn't that what the designers of
the super-sputnik of the Earth were after?
From the engineers point of view, this spaceship of ages long past
which we call the Moon is superbly constructed. There may be a good
reason for its extreme longevity. It is even possible that it
predates our own planet. At any rate, some pieces of lunar rock have
proved older than the oldest on Earth, although it is true, this
applies to the age of the materials and not of the structure for
which they were used. And from the number of craters on its surface,
the Moon itself is no chicken.
It is, of course, difficult to say when it began to shine in the sky
above the Earth, but on the basis of some preliminary estimates one
might hazard a guess that it was around two thousand million years
ago.
We do not, of course, imagine that the moon is still inhabited, and
probably many of its automatic devices have stopped working, too.
The stabilizers have ceased functioning and the poles have shifted.
Even though the moon keeps that same side turned towards us, for
some time it has been unsteady on its own axis, on occasion showing
us part of its reverse side which were once invisible to observers
on the Earth - for example, the Selenites
themselves if they made expeditions here.
Time has taken its toll. Both body and rigging have disintegrated to
some extent; some seams on the inner shell evidently diverged. We
assume that the long (up to 940 miles) chains of small craters
formerly ascribed to volcanic activity were brought about by
eruptions of gas through cracks appearing in the armour plating as a
result of accidents.
No doubt one of the most splendid features of the lunarscape - a
straight "wall" nearly 500 yards high and over 60 miles long
- formed
as a result of one of the armor plates bending under the impact of
celestial torpedoes and raising one of its straight, even edges.
The Moon's population presumably took the necessary steps to remedy
the effects of meteorite bombardment, for example, patching up rents
in the outer shield covering the inner shell. For such purposes a
substance from the lunar core was probably used, a kind a cement
being made from it. After processing this would be piped to the
surface sites where it was required.
Not long ago astronomers discovered variations in the gravitational
fields near the large "seas". We believe the reason to be this: the
Moon's dry seas are in fact areas from which the protective coating
was torn from the armor cladding.
To make good the damage to these
vast tracts, the installation producing the repair substance would
have had to be brought immediately beneath the site so that it could
flood the area with its "cement". The resulting flat stretches are
what look like seas to the terrestrial observer.
The stocks of materials and machinery for doing this are no doubt
still where they were, and are sufficiently massive to give rise to
these gravitational anomalies.
What is the Moon today? Is it a colossal necropolis, a "city of the
dead," where some form of life became extinct? Is it a kind
cosmic
Flying Dutchman? A craft abandoned by its crew and controlled
automatically?
We do not know and we shall not try to guess.
WAITING FOR THE EVIDENCE
We have put forward in this article only a few of the
reasons - unfortunately the evidence is so far only
circumstantial - for our hypothesis, which at first glance may appear
to be crazy.
A similar "crazy" idea was put forward in 1959 by Professor
Iosif
Shklovsky, an eminent scientist, in relation to the "moons" circling
around Mars.
After carefully weighing up the evidence he concludes
that they are both hollow and therefore
artificial satellites.
We feel that the questions we have raised in connection with our
Moon provide sufficient food for serious thought on the matter; the
result may be the illumination of our many lunar riddles.
Now, of course, we have to wait for direct evidence to support our
idea. Or refute it...
Probably there will not be long to wait.
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