Speaker 1: Okay, I want you to try something with me. Wherever
you are right now, unless you're driving, of course, please
keep your eyes on the but if you can, just
close your eyes for a second, and I want you
to clear your mental whiteboard, just a glank slate. Now
I'm going to ask you to picture an alien. Don't
try to get creative or invent some wild sci fi creature.
Just let the very first image that your subconscious serves up,
just let it pop into your head.
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 1: Okay, hold on to that image. Now. I am willing
to bet, I bet good money that I know almost
exactly what you're seeing right now. You're seeing a humanoid figure.
It's short, right, maybe three and a half four feet tall.
The skin is gray, maybe it looks a little damp,
and the face is just dominated by this massive, bulbous
head with two enormous almond shaped pitch black eyes. No whites,
no irises, just these.
Speaker 2: Black, void, classic gray.
Speaker 1: That's the one, exactly. It's the face on the T shirts,
it's in the cartoons, it's the star of every abduction
movie usually. Just you know, we dismiss this as a Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Trope, right, a cultural invention.
Speaker 1: We tell ourselves. Oh, I only imagine them that way
because Spielberg Er, you know, the X Files, told me
that's what they look like. It's just a cultural feedback loop. Sure,
But here is the question that, honestly, it keeps me
up at night, and it's the question that's going to
launch our entire journey today. What if that isn't a trope?
What if that image isn't the product of a special
effects budget but a scientific inevitability.
Speaker 3: That is a genuinely unsettling thought. You're asking if the
universe itself, if the laws of physicis might actually force
intelligent life down a specific evolutionary path that looks exactly
like our nightmare.
Speaker 1: That is exactly what I'm asking. Welcome everyone to Trilling Threads.
We are the show that pulls at the loose threads
of the universe just to see what.
Speaker 3: Unravels, and I'm here to help weave those threads into
something that hopefully makes a little bit of sense.
Speaker 2: It's a real pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Today's thread is well, it's a long one. It stretches
from the outer reaches of our.
Speaker 3: Galaxy and it touches down on the dusty red surface
of Mars.
Speaker 1: And it ends a buried, deep, deep underground in the
sands of Egypt.
Speaker 2: It's quite a journey.
Speaker 3: We're going to be connecting some pretty disparate fields today.
We've got astrophysics, the well the very controversial history of
the search for life on Mars, and an ancient, mysterious
bunker that frankly sounds like it's straight out of a
horror film.
Speaker 1: It really does. So our mission for today is to
seriously analyze a pretty terrifying possibility that the contact we're
all looking for in the future. You know, there are
big radio dishes in our telescopes. What if it already
happened in the distant past.
Speaker 3: And more importantly, did that contact leave behind physical evidence
that we can touch today exactly?
Speaker 1: And not just any evidence. We are talking about potential
biological proof. We're drawing from some really heavy source material here.
We've got astronomical data from the Lazella Observatory and chilling
original mission logs from the nineteen seventy six Viking Mars Lander,
and archaeological reports from all the way back in the
eighteen fifties about a place called the Serapeum.
Speaker 2: It's a lot to cover.
Speaker 1: It is so let's just let's unpack this. Let's go
back to that image, the gray Why do they look
like that? Why not I don't know, giant crabs or
floating gas bags. Why the big head in those giant eyes.
Speaker 3: Well, to answer that, you have to look at the environment.
Biology is at its core, just a reaction to environment.
We look the way we do because our ancestors had
to survive on Earth with Earth's gravity, Earth's sun.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So now let's look at a really interesting discovery. It
was made back in two thousand and nine at the
Lascilla Observatory in Chile. Astronomers there identified a planet that
was orbiting a star called Glee'ze six' sixty SEVEN.
Speaker 1: C gleeze six six SEVEN. C it sounds like a license.
Speaker 3: Plate it, Does but this is the crucial detail. Here
it is not a star like our, sun a yellow.
Dwarf it's a red, dwarf an m.
Speaker 1: Star and what does that mean, Practically.
Speaker 3: Well these are actually the most common type of star
in the. Galaxy they're, everywhere but they're, very very different
from what we're used. To they're, smaller and they are much.
Speaker 1: Much, cooler cooler in, temperature not you, know, attitude, right, Correct.
Speaker 3: Glee's sixty sixty sixty SEVEN c is only about one
point four percent as bright as our.
Speaker 1: Sun wait one one point, four not, Fourteen, no one point.
Speaker 2: Four just think about that for a.
Speaker 3: Second if our sun is one hundred watt light, bulb
this star is a one.
Speaker 2: And a half watt. Bulb it's incredibly.
Speaker 1: Dim that's practically. Dark so If i'm standing on a
planet orbiting that, star what does nuone even look? Like
is it just night all the?
Speaker 3: Time you would look like a deep twilight On, earth
you know that moment just after the sun has, set
but before it's truly. Dark imagine, that but all day,
long a sort of, ruddy dim eternal.
Speaker 2: Dusk. Wow but here's the.
Speaker 3: Kicker this, Planet glee six sixty SEVEN cc is in
The goldilock.
Speaker 1: Zone the habitable zone not too, hot.
Speaker 3: Not too, cold, precisely is at just the right distance
for a liquid water to exist on its. Surface so,
naturally scientists started to speculate if complex intelligent life evolved
a habitable world where the lights are effectively turned way way,
down what would it have to look like to?
Speaker 1: Survive, okay, right let's build an alien IF i can't,
see If i'm this constant, TWILIGHT i need better tools
for seeing.
Speaker 3: Exactly human eyes are designed for a flood of. Photons
our sun just blasts this planet with, light so we
have relatively small pupils because there's so much light.
Speaker 1: Available you're filtering it.
Speaker 3: Out we, Are but on a world or getting a red,
dwarf you are starving for. Light you need to capture
every single photon you possibly, can and we have examples
right here On. Earth look at nocturnal or deep sea.
Animals look at a tarsier or an owl or fish
from The Mariana.
Speaker 2: Trench what's the common? Trait massive, eyes enormous eyes.
Speaker 3: Relative to their skull. Size they're basically just giant. Lenses
and on an alien world you wouldn't just need big.
Eyes you might need them to see in spectra that we, can't.
Speaker 1: Like infrared heat signatures.
Speaker 3: Exactly to hunt or to avoid predators in near total.
Darkness seeing heat would be a huge, advantage and you
wouldn't have the whites of the eyes like we.
Speaker 2: Do that's wasted.
Speaker 3: Space you'd need the maximum possible surface area for the
retina for light gathering, cells so.
Speaker 1: They would likely appear entirely black or maybe reflective like
a cat's.
Speaker 3: Eye that's the scientific prediction a giant head to accommodate
a large, brain but also to serve as a platform
for two, massive pitch black optical.
Speaker 1: Sensors, okay so that's one for one with the folklore
a giant, head giant black. Eyes it's not a creative,
choice it's a biological necessity for that.
Speaker 2: Environment it matches.
Speaker 3: Perfectly now let's talk about the, body the planet. Itself
this least six sixty seven cc is what we call
a Super.
Speaker 1: Earth meaning it's bigger than our.
Speaker 3: Planet, Right it's more, massive it has a larger, diameter
and a larger planet usually means one very important thing for.
Speaker 2: Biology higher.
Speaker 1: Gravity, okay so everything is. Heavier gravity is pulling you down.
Harder that mean everyone there is super strong Like superman.
Speaker 3: Strong, yes but more, specifically they'd have to be. Compact
think about the simple physics of.
Speaker 2: Blood pressure On.
Speaker 3: Earth your heart has to pump blood up against one
ge of gravity to reach your. Brain if you're six feet,
tall that's a certain amount of work your heart has
to do every second of your.
Speaker 1: Life and if you double a, gravity you double the.
Speaker 3: Workload your heart would have to be like a supercharged
engine just to keep you from fainting every time you stood.
Up being tall in a high gravity, environment it becomes
a biological death. SENTENCE a simple fall could shatter your.
Speaker 1: Bones your heart would just give.
Speaker 3: Out it's a huge evolutionary. Disadvantage so natural selection would
strongly favor a different body. Type you would be, shorter,
Stouter your center of gravity would be much lower to
the ground for.
Speaker 1: Stability you wouldn't have, long spindly legs that could easily.
Snap you'd have a, stable, compact powerful.
Speaker 3: Frame precisely maybe three four feet, tall built to withstand
falls and to minimize the strain on the cardiovascular.
Speaker 1: System so let's just recap. This we've taken a real
planet around a real, star and just by applying the
basic laws of physics and, biology we've designed the dominant
species and it has to be three to four feet
tall with a, sturdy compact. Body it needs a large
head to hold a, brain and two massive black light gathering.
Speaker 2: Eyes that's where the science leads.
Speaker 1: Us we just used astrophysics to design a gray alien
down to the last, detail and that.
Speaker 2: Right there is THE aha.
Speaker 3: Moment for years and, years sweptics have, said and you,
know for good, reason that the gray is just a
projection of our own human, fears maybe a distorted image
of a human infant or, fetus.
Speaker 1: Right something from our own Subconscious but the.
Speaker 3: Math from exoplanetary science suggests something completely. Different the math, says,
no if you come from a planet orbiting one of
the most common types of stars in the, universe this
is just what you look.
Speaker 2: Like it's not, psychology it's.
Speaker 1: Physics that changes the entire. Conversation, yeah it moves it
from you, know ghost stories in folklore into the realm of.
Exoiology it implies that when people all over the world
described these specific, beings they aren't all sharing the same.
Speaker 3: Hallucination they might be describing a biological reality of being
perfectly adapted to its home.
Speaker 1: World In glease six sixty, Seven sea is only what
twenty two or twenty three light years.
Speaker 3: Away that's right in the grand scheme of the, universe
that is right next door our cosmic.
Speaker 2: Neighbor but you, know.
Speaker 1: We don't even have to look that far to find
a potential sign of. Life we only have to go
to the planet right next door to us To. Mars
To mars the obsession of the ancients and you, know
modern scientists. Alike it has.
Speaker 3: A hold on the human imagination like no other.
Speaker 1: Place so we're transitioning a little here from what they
might look like to where are? They because if a
species like that is traveling the, stars they might just
stop at the neighbor's house on their way.
Speaker 2: To, earth the cosmic pit stop.
Speaker 1: Exactly and for that we have to talk about nineteen seventy,
six The viking.
Speaker 3: Mission this was a monumental year FOR nasa and for THE.
Us it was the bi. Centennial there was immense national
pride and pressure to deliver a major scientific, win especially
after The apollo missions had.
Speaker 1: Wound, down And viking one was the big. Show it
was the first spacecraft to ever successfully make a soft
landing on The martian's surface and actually.
Speaker 2: Operate the tension and mission control must have been. Unbelievable,
OH i can't even.
Speaker 1: Imagine AND i love the descriptions from the source material
about that first image coming. Back the probe, lands the
camera starts, scanning and this picture gets built on the,
screen lined by painful, wines and it looks, Familiar it
looks like. Home it looked like The American, southwest Like
arizona or The Mohave. Desert one scientist even joked that
he half expected to see a prospector with a donkey
wander over the Next.
Speaker 3: June it Made mars feel. Tactile it wasn't just a
red dot in the sky. Anymore it was a, place
a place you could imagine walking.
Speaker 1: On but they weren't there for the. Scenery they were
there to.
Speaker 2: Hunt they were hunting for.
Speaker 3: Life viking, was for all intents and, purposes a biological
laboratory on three. Legs it had this little robotic arm
designed to oop Up martian, soil the regolith and dump
it into four different experiments inside the.
Speaker 1: Lander and this is where the story gets so. Controversial
this is where you could argue one of the biggest,
mistakes or maybe even cover ups in scientific history.
Speaker 3: Happens it's a story that still causes heated debate.
Speaker 1: Today so walk us through the main, experiment the one
designed by doctor Gil.
Speaker 3: Levin, Okay doctor Gil levin designed what was called The
Labeled Release, experiment OR, lr and it was brilliant in its.
Speaker 1: Simplicity how did it?
Speaker 3: Work the basic idea is that all life as we
know it, anyway, metabolizes it, breathes it takes in, nutrients
and it releases waste gas.
Speaker 1: Like yeast making bread, rise or as exhaling carbon.
Speaker 3: Dioxide exactly the same. Principle so the experiment took a
tiny thimbleful Of martian, dirt sealed it in a little,
chamber and then injected it with.
Speaker 2: A nutrient, solution a food.
Speaker 1: Source.
Speaker 3: Right it was basically a radioactive chicken soup for. Microbes
the carbon atoms and the nutrients were. Radioactive so the
theory was if there were any little bug in that,
dirt they would eat the soup.
Speaker 1: And then they'd burp out radioactive.
Speaker 3: Gas, precisely and a guider counter inside the chamber was
set up to detect those gas, bubbles and he ticks
on the counter meant something was metabolizing the.
Speaker 1: Food it's so, elegant so. Simple so what? Happened did
they find any? Bubbles they?
Speaker 3: Did the data stream came back To earth and the
graph showed this, distinct beautiful.
Speaker 2: Curve the soil was.
Speaker 3: Reacting it was releasing gas in exactly the way that
a sample of soil from A california desert or An
arnica would it was positive according to the success criteria
THAT nasa itself had set before the mission ever. Launched
it was a clear positive result for all intents and.
Purposes viking had found life On.
Speaker 1: Mars so why don't we celebrate? This why isn't there
a life On Mars? Day Global? Holiday why DID i
not learn this in?
Speaker 2: School because of the second?
Speaker 3: Machine there was another instrument on the, lander was called THE,
GCMs the gas chromatograph mass. Spectrometer what was its? Job
its job waspletely. Different While levin's experiment looked for the
behavior of, life the, breathing THE GCMs was designed to
look for the physical. Bodies it was supposed to find
the organic, molecules the carbon compounds that make up living.
Speaker 1: Things so one was looking for the, action the other
was looking for the.
Speaker 2: Quarks that's a great way to put.
Speaker 3: It and THE GCMs found nothing. Nothing it came back completely,
sterile no organic matter. Detected so NOW nasa had this massive.
Contradiction one machine is screaming it's alive and the other
way is saying it's a dead.
Speaker 1: Rock and they just canceled each other.
Speaker 3: Out, WELL nasa is and has always been a very conservative.
Organization they couldn't risk announcing the discovery of life and
then being. Wrong the embarrassment would have been, catastrophic.
Speaker 1: So they chose the safer.
Speaker 2: Answer they. Did they concluded that the breathing That.
Speaker 3: Levin's experiment saw must have just been some, weird exotic
chemical reaction in The martian soil that was mimicking a life.
Signal they officially ruled no, life and as Gil levin
himself said in an, interview there goes the.
Speaker 1: Ballgame but the source material for today suggests that this
was a monumental error in. Judgment this is where.
Speaker 2: It gets really really, interesting looking back with.
Speaker 3: Hindsight years, later other scientists went back and analyzed the
design and crucially the sensitivity of those two, machines and
it turns out that THE, GCMs the machine that killed the, discovery,
was to put it, bluntly incredibly. Deaf it was a
very crude instrument by today's.
Speaker 1: Standards what do you mean by?
Speaker 3: Crude it required millions of bacterial cells in a given
sample to even register a.
Speaker 2: Hit if you.
Speaker 3: Had, say ten thousand bacteria or even one hundred thousand
in that thimble of, soil THE GCMs would have, Said,
nope nothing to see.
Speaker 1: Here, wow, Okay so what About levin's, machine the one
that got the positive.
Speaker 2: Result it was the. Opposite it was hyper.
Speaker 3: Sensitive it could detect the metabolic activity of as few
as thirty bacteria.
Speaker 1: And thirty so wait a, minute you're telling me there
could have BEEN i don't, know half a million microbes
in that soil, sample all happily breathing away and Triggering levin's.
Experiment but because there weren't millions of, them the other
cruder instrument just completely missed.
Speaker 3: Them that is now considered the most likely. Scenario we
found life in nineteen seventy, six but because of a
fundamental mismatch and the sensitivity of our own, tools we
convinced ourselves it wasn't.
Speaker 1: There that is just it's tragic, scientifically think of where
we would be. Now if we had spent the last
fifty years following up on that.
Speaker 2: Result we would have been looking for.
Speaker 3: Biology, instead we spent decades focusing on, geology looking for
signs of ancient. Water because we operated under the assumption
that the planet was completely, dead it set back the
search for life by, generations and the.
Speaker 1: Whole context has changed since then, right, Yeah back in seventy,
six we didn't even know if there were other planets
outside Our solar.
Speaker 2: System not a single one had been.
Speaker 3: Confirmed back, then we still thought solar system like ours
might be incredibly rare. Accidents and now, now thanks to
The kepler Space telescope and other, missions we know they
are absolutely. Everywhere the first exoplanet was affirmed in nineteen ninety,
two which won The Nobel. Prize today we've confirmed over
four thousand and there are thousands more.
Speaker 1: Candidates the Physicist Michio kaku has a great way of putting.
This he, says just go outside on a clear night
and look up at the. Sky on, average every single
star you see has a, planet and the statistics suggests
that about one in every twenty of those stars has
an earth like planet orbiting.
Speaker 2: It the numbers are just.
Speaker 3: Overwhelming the idea that we are alone has gone from
a possibility to a statistical.
Speaker 1: Fantasy and now we have The James Web Space, telescope
which can actually take color images of these exoplanets and
scan their atmospheres for. Biosignatures we're looking for things.
Speaker 3: Like, oxygen, methane, water, vapor the chemical fingerprints of.
Speaker 2: Life we're moving from.
Speaker 3: Asking if life is out there to asking when we're
going to get the definitive.
Speaker 1: Proof but the sources we're looking at today suggest something
even more, profound something that flips the whole search on its.
Head it is that we aren't just looking for for cosmic.
Neighbors we might be looking for our, parents our.
Speaker 3: Creators the ancient astronaut, theory the idea that we are the,
offspring that the visitors didn't just fly by and, Wave
they got, Involved they, interacted they tinkered with the local, wildlife.
Speaker 1: And that idea brings us right back to the. Ancients
they didn't have The James web, telescope but they were
obsessed with the, stars and they were especially obsessed with
one star in, Particular.
Speaker 2: Mars.
Speaker 1: Mars Why. Mars it's the.
Speaker 3: Color it's the only object in the night sky apart
from The moon that isn't just a white point of.
Light it's, distinctly unmistakably.
Speaker 1: Red and in the ancient, world red meant one, thing,
blood blood on the.
Speaker 3: Battlefield, exactly so almost every ancient culture that tracked the
stars Associated mars with, war, conflict and. Death The babylonians
called the Planet nirgul after their god of, fire plague and.
Speaker 1: Death The greeks Had, aris their god of, war.
Speaker 3: And The, romans who were a warrior culture through and,
through they Adopted mars as their patron, deity symbolic. Father
they believed their incredible success in conquest was because they
were literally descended from the god of that red.
Speaker 1: Star but The egyptians they saw it, differently didn't. They they
weren't afraid of.
Speaker 2: It, no they honored.
Speaker 3: It there's a famous star, map The sentiment star, map
from around fifteen thirty FOUR. Bc it's one of the
oldest astronomical charts in the, world And mars is placed very.
Prominently they even painted it on the ceiling of the
tomb of the PHARAOH.
Speaker 1: Ceti the first why what was their? Connection for The?
Speaker 3: Egyptians the stars weren't just distant. Objects they believed the
gods were real beings who lived among, them who came
from the.
Speaker 2: Sky the sky and the earth were, connected.
Speaker 3: And this belief it leads us to a specific, place
to physical evidence that we can still touch and measure,
today a place that baffles modern.
Speaker 1: Engineers we need to go To, Sequara. Egypt, yes this
is my favorite part of this whole. Thread we are
leaving the abstract world of astrophysics and microbial data and
we're going to the, concrete or rather. Granite let's talk
about this serapim Of.
Speaker 3: Sakuara the serapium is a place that if you strictly
follow the mainstream timeline of ancient, technology it just shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Exist it is a complete.
Speaker 1: Anomaly so set the scene for the. Listener the year
is eighteen. Fifty an archaeologist Named Auguste mariette is digging
in the, desert right.
Speaker 3: And he's out there and he spots the head of
a sphinx sticking out of the. Sand so he starts,
digging and he finds it's not just one, sphinx it's
the start of a long avenue of.
Speaker 2: Them they were over one.
Speaker 3: Hundred it, originally and they lead directly to a buried,
hillside to a blocked.
Speaker 1: Entrance And, mariette from What i've, read was not a
man known for his, patients not at.
Speaker 2: All he didn't have time for careful. Excavation he just
brought in.
Speaker 1: Explosives, Boom welcome to nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Archaeology he blasts the entrance open and he descends into
the subterranean. Complex it's a massive tunnel system carved directly
out of the living limestone. Bedrock it's, hot it's, dark
that air hasn't moved in thousands of. Years the source
describes it as feeling like you're descending into the bowels
of the.
Speaker 1: Underworld and along the main passageway there are these alcoves
carved into the.
Speaker 3: Walls, yes and inside each of these alcoves is one
of the.
Speaker 1: Boxes the. BOXES i feel like calling them boxes is
just it doesn't do them justice at.
Speaker 3: All it's like calling a modern aircraft carrier a. Boat
these are, sarcophagi but on a scale that is just
hard for the mind to. Comprehend they're twenty four of
them in.
Speaker 1: Total what are they made?
Speaker 3: Of they're carved from single solid blocks of either black,
Granite aswan granite or, basalt some of the hardest stones
on the.
Speaker 2: Planet and the dimensions are.
Speaker 3: Staggering each one is roughly thirteen feet, long seven and
a half feet, wide and about ten feet.
Speaker 1: Tall and the, weight this is the part that just
blows my mind every.
Speaker 3: Time the main body of the box weighs around seventy.
Tons the, lid which is a separate solid piece adds
another twenty five to thirty, Tons so you're.
Speaker 1: Looking at a combined mass of nearly one hundred. Tons
for each one one.
Speaker 3: Hundred, tons that's the equivalent of about fifty large SUVs
or a bowing seven to fifty seven passenger.
Speaker 2: Jet and there are twenty four of.
Speaker 1: Them and these aren't sitting out in the open desert
where you could theoretically build a giant. Crane they are
deep underground inside a narrow, tunnel a tunnel that.
Speaker 3: In many places is barely wider than the boxes. Themselves
there's only a few feet of clearance on either. Side
there is absolutely no room for a huge workforce of
hundreds of slaves to pull on. Ropes there's no room for.
Speaker 1: Leverage so the logistics of just getting one hundred ton
object down or ramp through this confined, space turning ninety degree,
corners and then lowering it perfectly into a recessed alcove
without scratching the, walls.
Speaker 3: It's an engineering white, mare even with today's, technology with
the supposed tools of Ancient, egypt it seems utterly.
Speaker 1: Impossible and then there's the precision of the work. Itself
these aren't just, big rough hewn.
Speaker 2: Rocks, no not at. All this is the other part
of the.
Speaker 3: Mystery engineers Like Christopher dunn have taken modern precision instruments.
Speaker 2: Down there to measure, them and what do they.
Speaker 3: Find they found a level of craftsmanship that is just
shocking the internal corners or machine to a perfect ninety.
Degrees the flat surfaces are polished to a mirror. Finish
the overall flatness is accurate to within two ten thousandths
of an inch.
Speaker 1: Ten thousands, right that's laser. Precision that's optical grade.
Speaker 2: Quality it absolutely.
Speaker 3: Is and you have to remember the mainstream story is
that these were made during a time when the only
tools they had were copper chisels and stone pounding.
Speaker 1: Balls you cannot cut granite with a copper. Chisel it's
just it's physically. Impossible granite is a session on the
most scale of. Hardness copper is a. Three the granite
would just shred the.
Speaker 3: Copper you would need diamond tip, tools or high speed,
steel or some kind of advanced sonic or laser technology
to achieve this kind of precision in this kind of.
Speaker 1: Material so we have an impossible object made with impossible.
Technology in an impossible, location which brings us to the
million dollar, question what were they? For what was inside these?
Speaker 3: Things the conventional textbook explanation is the cult of the Apist.
Speaker 1: Bul, okay what is? That explain that for?
Speaker 3: Us the official story From egyptologists is that The egyptians
worshiped a sacred bull called The APIs, bull which they
believed was a physical manifestation and avatar of the God.
Speaker 1: Osiris so they didn't worship the animal, itself but the
god inside.
Speaker 3: It correct they believed when this sacred bill, died its
spirit would merge With. Osiris so archaeologists say The serrapium
is simply a grand, cemetery a series of tombs for
these sacred.
Speaker 1: Bulls but there's a pretty obvious size issue with that, theory,
RIGHT a massive.
Speaker 3: ONE a prize bull is a big, animal for, sure
but it's not thirteen feet long and ten feet. Tall
if you were to place a mummified bull inside one
of these, boxes it would take up maybe fifteen twenty
percent of the total. Volume the rest is just empty,
air and that.
Speaker 1: Goes against everything we know About egyptian burial. Practices they're human,
coffins their sarcopha. Guy they fit the body like a.
Glove they were, Efficient they didn't waste precious space or.
Speaker 3: Materials, Exactly why would you go to the incredible effort
of quarrying and moving one hundred tons of granite from
a site hundreds of miles away just to bury a
one ton.
Speaker 2: Animal it is overkill on a planetary. Scale it makes
no practical. Sense so if it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Just a tomb for a, bull what was it? For
and this is where the story takes a really dark
turn Because, mariette the guy with the, explosives he actually
found one of them still, sealed didn't?
Speaker 2: He he.
Speaker 3: Did most had been looted in, antiquity but one was apparently.
Untouched and later at a related site for a different
bowl cult called The, bousham they found others that were.
Speaker 1: Also, Sealed so they cracked the. Seal they managed to
let that thirty ton. Lid they, did and what did
they find?
Speaker 3: Inside they didn't find a perfectly preserved mummy of a sacred,
bull wrapped in linen and covered.
Speaker 2: In gold and.
Speaker 3: Jewels they found What mariette described as a stinking mass of.
Speaker 1: Bitumen you mean like asphalt paving?
Speaker 3: Tar, yes a, thick, black sticky, sludge and suspended inside that,
tar they found shattered fragments of.
Speaker 1: Bone, wait, shattered not an intact. Skeleton they crushed the,
bones crushed.
Speaker 3: Them pulverize them into small, pieces and then boiled them
an asphalt and sealed the whole mess in the.
Speaker 1: Box this contradicts EVERYTHING i THOUGHT i knew about Ancient.
EGYPT i thought the entire point of their religion of
mummification was. Preservation you needed the body to be intact
for the, soul the, ka and the ba to recognize
it in return for the.
Speaker 2: Afterlife you are one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: Right to the Ancient, egyptians the preservation of the physical
body was the single most important part of their funerary.
Rights to intentionally destroy a, body to break the, bones
that was the ultimate, crime the ultimate.
Speaker 2: Desecration it was called the second death because.
Speaker 1: It meant the spirit was annihilated, forever it could never be.
Speaker 2: Reborn it was the worst fate.
Speaker 3: Imaginable it was, Illegal it was anathema to their entire belief.
Speaker 1: System, okay so let's just try to follow the official logic.
Here they built the most, expensive most, indestructible most technologically
advanced heavy duty vaults in human history in order to
house the remains of a creature that they had intentionally
and violently destroyed and.
Speaker 3: Desecrated when you put it like, that it makes absolutely
no sense at, All not as a, tomb not as
an object of.
Speaker 1: Reverence it makes perfect sense as.
Speaker 2: A, prison a, prison or a containment.
Speaker 1: Vessel a containment.
Speaker 3: Vessel what if the serrapium wasn't built to honor the apist,
Bowl what if it was built to contain, it to
make absolutely sure that whatever it, was it never ever got.
Speaker 1: Out this brings us right to the thrilling thread theory
of the, day the offspring.
Speaker 3: Theory if we entertain the, possibility just for a, moment that,
extraterrestrials the beings The egyptians called the, gods were actually
here on, earth and that they were as many ancient texts,
describe manipulating, life experimenting with. Genetics while science is a messy,
process ever experiment is a.
Speaker 1: Success you're talking about, hybrids genetic.
Speaker 3: Mistakes the ancients wrote about them, Constantly the, minotaur, chimeras,
sphinxes beings that were a mix of human and ANIMAL.
Speaker 2: Dna we have always treated these as myths as. Fantasies
but what if.
Speaker 1: They were biological. Realities what if The APIs bowl wasn't
just a special Bull what if it was a genetically amplified, monstrosity.
Speaker 3: A failed, experiment something that was perhaps dangerously unstable or,
powerful or maybe something that was just, wrong an.
Speaker 1: Abomination and when it, died or more likely when it
had to be put, down The egyptians were terrified of.
Speaker 3: It they believed it had the blood of the gods in.
It they were mortally afraid that it could, regenerate that
it could resurrect.
Speaker 1: Itself you don't just bury it in the. Sand you
take extreme. Measures you crush the bones to destroy the physical.
Template you seal the fragments and bittimen to create a
chemical and biological.
Speaker 3: Barrier and then for good, measure you put the whole
toxic mess inside one hundred ton airtight ground pressure vessel
and seal it with a thirty ton lid that's so perfectly.
Fitted nothing can, escape not a, spirit not a, gas
not a single particle of.
Speaker 2: Radiation.
Speaker 1: Nothing it looks less like a religious ceremony and more
like a high level hazardous waste discosal.
Speaker 3: Protocol that's exactly what it looks like you're not trying
to honor, Something you're trying to neutralize it and lock
it away.
Speaker 1: Forever that is a genuinely chilling. Thought you're standing in that,
dark silent, tunnel surrounded by twenty four of these hundred ton,
boxes and you suddenly realize you aren't in a church
or a. Cemetery you're in a containment facility for alien genetic.
Speaker 3: Mistakes and if the gods were the ones running the,
lab it suddenly explains the impossible. Technology maybe The egyptians
didn't cut the granite with copper.
Speaker 1: Chisels maybe the gods provided the containers for their own field,
experiments like a cosmic sharps. Box.
Speaker 2: Here put the bad ones in, this and For god's,
sake don't open it.
Speaker 1: Precisely and if the gods eventually, left where did they
go and did The egyptians believe they could follow?
Speaker 3: Them, well that leads us to the final thread we
need to pull, today the pyramid, Texts.
Speaker 1: And these are located right near, by aren't?
Speaker 3: They right next door to the serapium At sokra in
the pyramid of a sixth dynasty king Named. Teddy they
are the oldest religious writings in existence carved directly into
the walls of the pyramid's.
Speaker 1: Chambers they are, just you, know hymns or poems to the.
Speaker 2: Gods, no they read like a set of.
Speaker 3: Instructions Mainstream egyptology calls them spells or utterances to help
the Dead pharaoh navigate the.
Speaker 1: Afterlife but if you read them with a modern technological, eye.
Speaker 2: They read like a technical.
Speaker 3: Manual they describe the king ascending to the sky on
a pillar of smoke and. Fire they talk about him
sitting on iron thrones that fly through the. Heavens they
describe in detail the mechanics of how to join the imperishable,
stars and.
Speaker 1: They're very specific about which stars were. Here it's Always,
orian always A.
Speaker 3: Ryan the texts explicitly say the king must travel to
the constellation Of orion to become a star himself to
return to the realm of the Goddess.
Speaker 1: Cyrus The egyptians were very clear about their. History they
said that in a remote period they called Zeb, tepi
the first time the gods lived on earth among.
Speaker 2: Humans and then they.
Speaker 3: Left and the pyramid texts from this perspective aren't a
metaphor for. Dying they are a flight. Manual they are
the instructions for how to travel through space and catch
up with.
Speaker 1: Them so let's put it all. Together you have a
technical manual for interstellar travel carved on the walls of
a tomb located right next to a high tech containment
facility for what could be alien.
Speaker 3: Hybrids the pieces fit together in a way that is,
very very hard to. Ignore once you see the, pattern it.
Speaker 1: Creates a single cohesive. Narrative we're not looking at dozens of,
isolated unrelated. Mysteries we're looking at the remnants of a.
Speaker 3: Legacy a legacy of, contact of a presence on this
planet that was far more advanced than we.
Speaker 1: Were, okay so let's bring this all. Home let's look
at the big picture we've painted, today the entire, thread
from beginning to.
Speaker 3: End we started twenty three light years away From earth
at a red dwarf star Called.
Speaker 2: Glease six sixty SEVEN.
Speaker 3: C we use the hard laws of physics in biology
to determine that any complex life that evolved there would
almost certainly look exactly like the gray aliens of modern. Folklore,
short sturdy with massive black.
Speaker 1: Eyes it's not a, fantasy it's an. Adaptation, then we
came much closer to, home To. Mars we saw how
in nineteen seventy six we likely found, living breathing microbial
life in the, soil.
Speaker 3: But because of our own technological, clumsiness a mismatch in our,
instruments we dismissed the result and convinced ourselves the planet
was dead for fifty.
Speaker 1: Years and we saw how the ancients weren't looking for.
Microbes they Saw, god a god of, war a blood
red omen in the nice.
Speaker 3: Sky and finally we descended deep into the, earth into The.
Serapium At, sakora an underground, bunker were one hundred ton
granite boxes built with a precision that seems impossible for
the time.
Speaker 1: Hold the, crushed desecrated and permanently sealed remains of something
that the we're desperate to keep locked away.
Speaker 3: Forever the narrative that emerges is that we, are in
some sense the. Offspring the gods didn't just. Visit they,
tinkered they built, Things they made, us and apparently they
also made.
Speaker 1: Mistakes and that leads to the final AND i think
most provocative thought THAT i want to leave with, you
our listener. Today we are right now in a new
golden age of space. Exploration The James Web telescope is
actively looking for those biosignatures in the atmospheres of distant.
Worlds we're sending out signals with projects LIKE. Seti we
are essentially shouting into the, Void, hello is anyone?
Speaker 2: There we are knocking on a cosmic.
Speaker 1: Door we. Are but if the serrapium teaches us, anything
it's that some doors were locked from the inside for
a very good. Reason if the gods left this planet
thousands of years ago and they went to the incredible
trouble of sealing their dangerous mistakes in these impossible granite,
prisons are we so sure we want them to come?
Back are we sure we want them to answer the
door when we.
Speaker 3: Knock it's the Altimet pandora's box. Question isn't it our
innate curiosity versus our instinct for self?
Speaker 2: Preservation it really.
Speaker 3: Is.
Speaker 1: Yeah so here is my question for, you for everyone,
LISTENING i want you to imagine yourself in that tunnel
you're In. Saquara it's, silent it's. Dark you're standing right
in front of one of those hundred ton, boxes and
you have the technology to open. It you can lift that.
Lid do you do. It do you crack the, seal
do you let the light in and whatever else might
be in there? Out or do you decide that some
secrets are better left buried in the.
Speaker 2: Dark you know that's a tough.
Speaker 3: One my scientific curiosity would be screaming at me to open,
it BUT i think my gut would say to leave it.
Speaker 2: Closed there are some things we just might not be ready.
Speaker 1: FOR i Think i'm with you on, that BUT i
have a feeling a lot of our listeners would be
grabbing the nearest.
Speaker 2: Crowbar oh, absolutely the temptation would be.
Speaker 1: Immense let us. Know leave a comment with your, answer
would you open the? Box that's all the time we
have for this session of thrilling. Threads thank you so
much for. Listening keep pulling those, threads stay, curious and
always watch out for what might.
Speaker 2: Unravel goodbye, Everyone take, care