Month: April 2025

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The Sagan Paradox, Chapter 1: The Golden Record

Introduction and Carl Sagan’s Early Work

Artwork inspired by Linda Salzman Sagan’s design for the Pioneer plaque, commissioned by NASA: click here view the original design

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) was an American astronomer, astrobiologist, and author. After NASA was founded in 1958, Sagan became a consultant for the agency. His first job involved planning the explosion of an atomic bomb on the moon, the A119 project. Highly controversial, to say the least. In 1961, at the age of 27, he published a study on the atmosphere of Venus. In 1970 he researched the conditions that could lead to the emergence of life in the cosmos on distant planets. To achieve this, he exposed frequently occurring elements to the UV radiation of a young sun and observed how amino acids, the building blocks of life, were formed from them. Carl Sagan became a full professor at the astronomy department at Cornell University. Around this time, talk shows began inviting him as a popular guest to discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Reference: Carl Sagan, Long wavelength ultraviolet photoproduction of amino acids on the primitive Earth

“Hello, Aliens!”: Voyager Probes Get Sagan’s First Broadcast

In 1972 and 1977, Carl Sagan sent the first messages to extraterrestrials into space on the panels of the space probes Pioneer 10 & 11 and the Golden Record of Voyager 1 & 2.

The gold-plated aluminum cover (L) of the Voyager golden record (R) both protects it from micrometeorite bombardment and also provides a key to playing it and deciphering Earth’s location. NASA

It contains greetings and wishes for peace from the people of Earth in 55 languages. Earthlings extend their friendship, wish happiness and health, and express hope to one day meet their cosmic neighbors. They also express the desire for goodwill and harmony among all beings in the universe.

Reference: Golden Record Greetings – NASA Science
Each of the Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, carried a golden phonograph record. One of its purposes was to send a message to extraterrestrials who might find the spacecraft as it journeyed through interstellar space.

The greetings are in alphabetical order, from Akkadian (an extinct language for over 2000 years) to Wu Chinese. The inclusion of Akkadian in this earthly record is pretty strange. One day, these transmissions might be intercepted as they pass through space by an alien culture.

Voyager’s ‘Cosmic Map’ Of Earth’s Location Is Hopelessly Wrong

With the help of the included pulsar map, these aliens could potentially find Earth. Pulsars are stars that rhythmically emit radiation, like interstellar lighthouses. We can use them as a cosmic GPS.

Pulsar GPS: Sagan’s Star-Beacon Timecode Reveals 1971 Earth

Over long periods of time, the frequency of a pulsar slows down. Thus the pulsar map designed by scientist Frank Drake and graphic artist Linda Salzman Sagan is not only a determination of the position of our Earth in space, but the map also precisely pinpoints the position of Earth in time: 1971.

What if a prospective alien civilization has or develops the ability to time travel? What would they do with the information provided by our space probes?

Speculation about the subject makes for the greatest sci-fi story ever told. This is particularly true when we consider the included Mesopotamian-language greeting and the Annunaki creation myths—some of which have been popularized by Zecharia Sitchin and others.

Of course, intercepting our space probes is extremely unlikely. It could take millions of years, if at all. But then again, the life expectancy of the Golden Records is 5 billion years.

Aliens recovering the Golden Record
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Video: From Abandoned Child to Cosmic Visionary: The Incredible Journey of Eric Habich-Traut!

Eric Habich‑Traut, founder of The Contact Project, blends technology, human potential and cosmic inquiry. His extraordinary journey spans intrauterine memories shared with figures like Bradbury and Dalí; childhood inventions; a 1986 UFO sighting in Ireland; precognitive visions of the Challenger and K‑219 disasters; and quantum‑physics inspiration from Prof. Günter Nimtz. His 2025 research introduces new math on the “Wow!” signal’s speed, theorizes superluminal brain waves behind PSI phenomena, and offers a simplified string‑theory model of quantum entanglement. Space and time remain our next frontier.

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The Probability Fallacy (Schrödinger Equation)

In quantum mechanics, particles don’t have definite positions or velocities until they are measured. Instead, they are described by a wave function that provides a probability distribution for where a particle might be found. This wave function is often determined using the Schrödinger equation.

Image: “Real life pipe”, inspired by surrealist René Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”

The idea that particles pop in and out of existence in random places based on probability calculations is not science; it’s ignorance. It serves as a mathematical crutch because we don’t know the mechanism that explains the behavior of quantum particles. The Schrödinger equation helps in these probability calculations.

To argue that probability calculations are the mechanism for this behavior is like claiming that the sun rises every day because there’s a 99.9999% probability that it rises every day. This sunrise probability is empirically proven. It may have been invoked to explain sunrises in the Middle Ages, because we didn’t know of any other good reason. But we know since Copernicus that the real reason for the sunrise is Earth’s rotation (around the sun).

We can theoretically describe any system using quantum mechanics, including Earth’s orbit, as a wave function (click here for an example). But that doesn’t add value or clarity to our understanding of how the sun rises and sets. Nor does it add value or clarity to our understanding of quantum mechanics, even through the Schrödinger equation.

Equation for Earth’s orbit as a wave function; the wave function Ψ(t) is not probabilistic in this case but geometrically encodes Earth’s orbital path.
Earth’s orbit as a complex wave function

Science progresses by constructing models that predict observations, even when mechanisms are unclear. The Schrödinger equation and its probabilities are “tools” validated by experiment. They are NOT models or metaphors.

The search for quantum mechanisms continues.

How phenomena are modeled (epistemology) and what the phenomena fundamentally are (ontology) are two different things. The goal of science is to describe phenomena and to make predictions based on the description.

The goal of science is to describe phenomena and to make predictions based on the description. For this reason, I will continue to describe quantum tunneling (and even entanglement) as a property of 0/1D space.”

Erich Habich-Traut

For this reason, I will continue to describe quantum tunneling (and even entanglement) as a property of 0/1D space (zero-dimensional and one-dimensional space). My metaphor can explain a lot of Psi phenomena (telepathy, remote viewing, clairvoyance, superluminality, teleportation, spooky-action-at-a-distance). Surely, these can also be explained in terms of probabilities. However, I have a model, a working metaphor.

Image: This is not an atom (Atomium, Brussels)

Such likeness allows me to say complex things in a fairly simple manner.

The Schrödinger equation could also lead to new perspectives, perhaps we are looking for a new Copernicus.

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On the existence of “Aldebaranians”

Aldebaranian Extraterrestrials and Telepathic Contact?

Upon reviewing the “Vril Project” material, it becomes clear that the details provided regarding the drawings and symbols—which supposedly form the basis for telepathic contact—are incorrect. On these grounds, I conclude that the proposed contact with an Aldebaranian species is entirely fictitious.

Aldebaranian interstellar space battlecruisers, AI extrapolation of images based on telepathic contact claims

Aldebaran is known as the bull’s eye ◎ in the constellation Taurus (The Bull), and is 65 light-years distant from us. It’s right next to the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster. Aldebaran has been described as a follower of the Pleiades.

Fun Fact:
The Pioneer 10 probe, launched in 1972, is on its way to Aldebaran. Although it no longer communicates with the Earth, it will reach Aldebaran in about 2 million years. 

Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (author of “The Occult Roots of Nazism”) states that “In the early 1990s, the Austrians Norbert Jürgen Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl developed new Nazi UFO myths involving ancient Babylon, Vril energy, and extraterrestrial civilization in the solar system of Aldebaran.”

According to myth, the Aldebaranians made contact with the Third Reich and helped in the development of German UFOs.

According to Ella LeBain, author of “Who’s who in the Cosmic Zoo?“,

an emerging fringe narrative claims Nazi Germany accessed a “stargate” to the star Aldebaran, using trance mediums and telepathic “light‐code” secrets in ancient Hebrew to justify genocide and develop advanced UFO and atomic‑implosion technology—dubbed the “Black Sun.” Drawing on works by Zechariah Sitchin and Phyllis Schlemmer, the theory links Sumerian and Babylonian empires to Nazi occultism and portrays extraterrestrial “Elohim” as the architects of Phoenician and Israelite origins.

According to the same account, post‑1945 American agencies seized Nazi UFO blueprints and recruited German scientists for both NASA and a covert “underground” space program. Proponents warn that Aldebarans—alongside reptilian “Draconians” and Grey aliens—now lurk within global elites, aiming to forge a Fourth Reich and a New World Order. Mainstream historians and scientists reject these claims as baseless, citing a complete lack of verifiable evidence for any terrestrial stargate or telepathic warfare

Origin of the Aldebaran Contact Claim

The initial reference to telepathic contact with Aldebaranian beings, through mediums such as Maria Orsic and “Sigrun,” originates from a single source: Ralf Ettl (d. 2006). According to David Childress, oftentimes a guest on “Ancient Aliens,” Ettl was residing in London in 1989. At that time, he received a parcel containing documents describing this alleged contact. Childress was the first to recount this origin story.

The “Vril Society” in Historical Context

The parcel purportedly contained information about telepathic mediums associated with the “Vril Society,” who contacted Aldebaran beings around 1919. However, an examination of historical references to the “Vril Society” reveals significant inconsistencies in the narrative:

• 1947: The first mention of a “Vril Society” appears in an article by defected German Third Reich rocket engineer Dr. Willy Ley, titled “Pseudoscience in Naziland.” Although Ley mentions the Vril Society, he makes no reference to telepathic mediums or extraterrestrial contacts. Instead, meditating upon an apple core reveals the nature of “Vril.”

• 1960: A subsequent reference to the “Vril Society” occurs in the book “The Morning of the Magicians,” which cites Ley’s article and introduces a link to the Theosophical Society and the Rosicrucians with the Vril Society.

• 1990: It is not until the release of Ralf Ettl and Norbert Ratthofer’s narrative, “The Vril Project,” that any claim of telepathic contact, extraterrestrial communication with Aldebaran, or connections to the Thule society or UFOs is introduced.

The Narrative of “The Vril Project”

Ralf Ettl and Jürgen Ratthofer describe a secret meeting held in December 1919. At this meeting, the innermost circles of the Thule and Vril societies gathered. The medium Maria Orsic allegedly presented two stacks of papers. One stack featured a bizarre-looking German Templar secret script, while the other contained what appeared to be a normal, legible text.

According to the narrative, these texts were received via mediumistic channeling—dictated both in a mysterious “temple script” and in a language completely unknown to the medium. Orsic herself believed that the unknown language must have been ancient and Near Eastern in nature. Later, it was asserted that this mysterious language was Sumerian—i.e., the language of the ancient precursors of Babylonian culture. The Aldebaranian language is identical to Sumerian! That’s because the Aldebaranians came to visit Earth 500,000 years ago. And then again later.

(The author Zecharia Sitchin told a similar story in 1976 in his book “The Twelfth Planet.” Only his extraterrestrial Anunnaki came from “Nibiru,” a planet in our solar system beyond Neptune.)

Critical Analysis of the Claims

A closer look at the claims and evidence presented in “The Vril Project” reveals several inconsistencies:

• Sumerian Writing and Language:
Although the Sumerians invented writing, the script they developed—cuneiform—is markedly different from the so-called 13th-century “temple script” described in the narrative. Sumerian cuneiform is recorded on clay tablets that are over 5000 years old and bear no resemblance to any secret “Temple” script.

Moreover, the Sumerian language does not sound like German (click here for a sound sample). This contradicts the report of a language that “almost sounded like German” yet remained incomprehensible.

• The Nature of the Message:

The messages received by Maria Orsic were in German and encoded with a simple substitution cipher. The availability of a cipher key would have allowed for the deciphering of the texts. This undermines the claim of an entirely unknown language.

• The Black Sun Symbol:

A central symbol in esoteric Nazism is the Black Sun, which appears in two distinctly different versions:

– Wewelsburg Black Sun Version:
This version is found at Wewelsburg in Germany, which served during the Third Reich as the spiritual center of an emerging Nazi ideology. It’s only a fairly recent claim that the design resembles a Black Sun.

What is not known:

The spoked mosaic of the ‘Black Sun’ at Wewelsburg (designed after 1934) is derived from the decorative rim of the Samarra Bowl. This bowl was discovered by Ernst Herzfelder around 1914 and later exhibited in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The bowl’s center features one of the oldest known swastika depictions. Samarra is located in the region historically known as Sumeria.

You can stretch the Samarra bowl’s meandering pattern to match the Wewelsburg mosaic’s pattern. It is strange that the authors of “Esoteric Nazism” didn’t pick up on this Sumerian connection.

– New Black Sun Version from “The Vril Project”:

Another Black Sun version was first presented in Ettl’s 1990 pamphlet “The Vril Project” and later featured in the pseudo-documentary “UFO: Secrets of the Third Reich” (1995). Peter Moon’s “The Black Sun: Montauk’s Nazi-Tibetan Connection” (1997) also presents this design. It is similar to the old flag of the Japanese empire. Additionally, this eye-catching design closely resembles the 16-spoke strobe disk of mechanical, low-bandwidth television. This type of TV was first pioneered in 1925.

In 1985, Carl Sagan posed a hypothetical question in his novel “Contact.” He asked, “What if the Nazis didn’t have television in 1936? Then what would have happened?”

What indeed? The video snippet below is from Ralf Ettl’s UFO film,
which kickstarted the popularization of the “Reichsflugscheibe” theory:

Was Ettl inspired by Carl Sagan’s novel, to design his “Black Sun” based on a TV strobe disk? Could the “Aldebaranian” writing on it serve as evidence of “extraterrestrial influence?”

The Ettl Black Sun version
Around the perimeter of the graphic is a slogan of the Thule Society. This slogan is encrypted using the “Templar Script” substitution cipher in German. By no means is it extraterrestrial. Spoiler: Here is the translation (click).

At the center of the disk, two runes are identified by Ettl and Ratthofer as a double “EH” rune (ᚾᚾ). In reality, the correct reading of the double Naudiz rune is “NN.” We can interpret this as an abbreviation for “Neo-Nazi.” This detail further suggests that the story is a post-war fabrication, as there was no such group before or during World War II.

Conclusion

An analysis of the available evidence exposes a series of anachronisms and inconsistencies within the “Vril Project” narrative. Erroneous claims regarding ancient language, misidentification of historical scripts, and contradictory symbolism all undermine the credibility of the telepathic Aldebaran contact story. In light of these discrepancies, the proposed contact with an Aldebaranian species must be regarded as entirely fictitious.

There are several false claims within the literature; this analysis restricted itself to the claim of telepathic contact by mediums of the Vril society. Almost all other claims are also false. Despite this, Revell created a UFO model based on the claims made in the Vril project about German flying saucers.

Verdict: FAKE

References

  1. “The Sound of the Ancient Sumerian Language (Entemena of Lagash).” YouTube, https://youtu.be/3QticJ8mww4.
  2. Ley, Willy. Pseudoscience in Naziland.
  3. Barkun, Michael. A Culture of Conspiracy.
  4. Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. Black Sun.
  5. Pauwels, Louis, and Jacques Bergier. The Morning of the Magicians.
  6. “The Vril Project.” 1990.
  7. Farrell, Joseph P. Nazi International.
  8. Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Occult Roots of Nazism.
  9. Zündel, Ernst. UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapon.
  10. de Lafayette, Maximillien. UFOs, Maria Orsic.
  11. Wissensbuch der ILU-Lehre.
  12. Ettl, Ralf. Das Babylonier Buch.
  13. Fort, Charles. The Book of the Damned.
  14. Strube, Julian. Die Erfindung des esoterischen Nationalsozialismus im Zeichen der Schwarzen Sonne.
  15. UFO: Secrets of the Third Reich. 1995.
  16. Moon, Peter. The Black Sun: Montauk’s Nazi-Tibetan Connection. 1997.
  17. van Helsing, Jan. Geheimgesellschaften und ihre Macht im 20. Jahrhundert.
  18. Ratthofer, N.J. Galaxisimperium Aldebaran.
  19. van Helsing, Jan. Unternehmen Aldebaran.
  20. Childress, David Hatcher. Vril: Secrets of the Black Sun
  21. NAZIS ‘FIRST WITH FLYING SAUCERS’
    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/139966106
  22. Flying Saucers Do Exist, Says Scientist
    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47626536
  23. ENGINEER CLAIMS ‘SAUCER’ PLANS ARE IN SOVIET HANDS;
    https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000015471.pdf
  24. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Goodrick-Clarke