Ancient Aliens s08e07 Episode Script
The God Particle
It has been called the key to the universe We are just discovering something which is completely blowing our minds.
a gateway to new technologies We're going into a vast unknown territory.
Who knows what we'll find? and possibly the most important scientific breakthrough of all time.
It's going to open up new layers of our understanding of reality.
Could the so-called God particle really reveal the truth about our origins? And might clues to its significance have been left here on Earth thousands of years ago by extraterrestrial beings? We can use this to understand our place in the universe and even to teleport and travel through time and space.
Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.
What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And if so, might there be evidence in the discovery of the God particle? _ _ _ _ Every religion seeks to answer the same question: "Where did we come from?" Philosophers, sages and priests have pondered our origins since the dawn of humanity, while science has looked for evidence that might one day give us the answer.
Both religion and science approach the idea of where we come from with a set of rules.
Science has the scientific method.
Religion comes at the same question with its own set of rules a presupposition that a God or gods exist.
Religion gives us a certain view of reality.
And science gives us a different view of reality.
And yes, there are points at which these two worldviews are compatible.
Science and religion, at their best moments, are searching for truth, as is philosophy.
Especially at moments like the moment of the big bang, the moment of creation, the genesis.
These streams of thought converge.
In effect, science and religion and philosophy are all searching for the same thing.
It reminds me of Einstein's question: "What were God's thoughts when he was making the universe?" If science and religion are both searching for answers to the same questions, then why do we so often consider them at odds? Is it necessary that one negates the other? Science speaks nothing whatsoever about the existence of God.
And because of that, there's still an opening for God.
Right? There's still a possibility that God stands behind all this, that God's responsible for the big bang.
In the ancient world, the philosophers were the scientists.
There was no clear distinction between hard research and theological speculations.
All serious thinkers were trying to figure out the nature of reality.
Now we consider these to be separate pursuits.
If we truly want to bridge the gap between religion and science, we must recognize that religion needs to become more scientific.
And science would benefit by becoming a wee bit more religious, not in the mythological sense, but by looking back to the religious, and "what they interpret to be myth," and say, if there's any legitimacy or reality to this, what is it? Let's explore.
Let's discover.
Let's find out what the truth is.
As our technology advances at an increasingly rapid rate, are we getting closer to discovering our true origins? And finding out whether or not we really are alone in the universe? Some believe a recent scientific breakthrough may prove to be a giant leap forward in our search for the truth.
Geneva, Switzerland.
Here, buried over 300 feet beneath the Earth and covering a remarkable 17-mile expanse, is the largest and most complex machine ever created: the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC.
Smashing tiny protons together at speeds of nearly 670 million miles per hour, the LHC creates such intense energy that some people are afraid it could actually create a black hole and swallow up the entire Earth.
The Large Hadron Collider is a real triumph of human civilization.
It's easily the most complicated and powerful device that human beings have ever built.
You're actually firing two protons into each other and having them collide with an enormous release of energy, recreating conditions in a very small area similar to the big bang in its very earliest instant.
It is a bit like going back in time, towards the big bang or the beginning of the universe getting to points in the history of the universe where the energies were that high.
On July 4, 2012, thousands crowded outside an auditorium at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, to hear the announcement of the LHC's first major finding.
Streaming the event live across the world, scientists prepared to reveal a discovery that could solve a decades-old mystery about the nature of our universe.
The atmosphere in the room was, uh, was incredible.
It was not like a normal physics symposium or seminar.
It was truly something of completely different magnitude was was going to be announced, that it is completely extraordinary, which it was.
As a layman, I would now say I think we have it.
What the scientists at CERN had discovered was a tiny bit of matter that some call, the God particle.
Scientists around the world celebrated the discovery of the God particle as a milestone in human knowledge and thought that it's going to open up new layers of our understanding of reality.
But just what is the so-called "God particle"? And what is it telling us about the universe? Known in the scientific community as the Higgs boson, the particle was first theorized by physicist Peter Higgs in 1964.
Its discovery confirms the existence of an invisible force throughout the universe known as the Higgs field.
Scientists believe when particles interact with this field, they acquire mass, which slows them down, and allows them to form matter such as planets and stars.
An image that's often used is ping-pong balls moving through sand or sugar.
Sometimes they're pushed down real deep.
Sometimes they're on top of the sand.
If you're on top, you move around quickly.
If you're deep in, you move slowly.
And that interaction with this other Higgs particle is what gives other particles their mass.
You really can't overemphasize the importance of finally saying there is a Higgs particle and that we really are on the right track.
There's great excitement in the scientific community because the Higgs field permeates all of space-time.
It's possible, theoretically, to effectively switch off the mass of particles and achieve near-light speed very easily.
This could open up not only the planets, but the stars to human exploration.
Whether it's through science, religion, philosophy or the ancient astronaut theory, the fact is we are all seeking answers to the same questions.
Who are we? Where do we come from? And ultimately where are are we going? And so we celebrate a discovery like the Higgs boson or "God particle" because it brings us that much closer to answering the questions that have fascinated humanity for thousands of years.
Scientists believe that the discovery of this tiny particle could represent a quantum leap in our understanding of the universe.
Some have even proposed that it could open the door to anti-gravity technology, travel at the speed of light, and the creation of wormholes.
However, ancient astronaut theorists propose that the God particle is not a new discovery, but rather a rediscovery.
Chandigarh, India.
This thriving city at the foot of the towering Himalayas is the capital of India's Punjab state.
It was in this region of Northwest India that scholars believe a series of religious texts called the Vedas were compiled from oral stories that had been passed down for centuries.
The Vedas, according to the Indian tradition itself, were put together in the final form about 5,000 years ago.
But these hymns had been circulating in the Indian region for a long time.
We do know that not a single letter of the four Vedas has changed, unlike any other texts in the world.
So, there was a belief that the text of the Vedas should not be tampered with because they represent the entire cosmos.
In the Hindu lore, the Vedas are not of Earthly origin.
They are from mysterious sources.
And they are from before time.
They are from before human history and are said to be from before even the gods.
Major figures in modern science were ardent students of the Vedas.
Bohrs and Schrodinger read arduously.
Oppenheimer could read it in Sanskrit.
Even Einstein and Tesla were known to have read it.
It had a profound influence on modern thinking.
Inside these ancient tomes are Hinduism's first stories of creation.
In one Vedic text called the Rig Veda, creation was said to have begun suddenly and explosively from an infinitesimal point of pure energy.
It describes this strange cosmic egg that begins as a single concentrated point.
And everything expanded from this single concentrated point to form the universe.
Now, if you look at this from a modern perspective, this actually reflects modern science's big bang theory, where the universe began as a singularity and expanded to form the universe as we know it today.
To me, the similarities are astounding.
It's not like this idea was just banging around for anybody to see.
It was a concept that our scientists didn't start to embrace until the 20th century.
And yet it was already there in these texts that are at least 3,000 years old, if not much older.
What is remarkable in the Vedas is that they were able to come to an understanding, which is very similar to the understanding that modern science has reached through the intuitions of our great contemporary scientists.
Is it really possible that the Hindu creation story from the Rig Veda is evidence that people living thousands of years ago may have had knowledge of the precise scientific process involved in the creation of the universe? A process modern scientists are only just beginning to understand? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and believe that further proof can be found in another early creation story the Hebrew bible's Book of Genesis.
One of the first phrases in Genesis: "Let there be light.
" And this is like the moment of the big bang.
The whole universe began effectively as light, as energy.
We're speaking of moments of existence that humans would experience just as a great flash of light.
And in that sense, the story of Genesis in the Bible and science converge.
We have in this verse the description of the very first light, the light out of which all things came, the light which led, finally, to matter, to things of substance, to the universe itself.
In current scientific theory, fractions of a second after the big bang, the Higgs field transformed what had been particles of light into mass, matter into creation itself.
We have very strong parallels with the Scriptures.
First, light and then matter.
Similar descriptions of the universe beginning from a single point of light can be found in cultures throughout the ancient world, from Egypt to China and to the American Southwest.
In the Egyptian creation narrative, the very first god was Atum.
He emerged from the darkness to create Egyptian civilization.
The Sumerian, the Egyptian, the Norse something emerges out of darkness.
Order emerges out of chaos.
Where there was no form, form begins.
There is something about these stories that is beyond any one of them that seems to allude to a greater reality.
But how is it that the ancient world's most sacred texts all describe creation in much the same way as our current scientific theory? And where did our ancestors get this seemingly advanced understanding of the origins of the universe? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answers may lie in the stories of the man who compiled the Vedic texts in written form, a mysterious sage named Veda Vyasa.
In the Hindu mythologies, Vyasa is believed to be a reincarnation of the god Vishnu, and that Vishnu specifically took on a human embodiment to be able to write down these classic texts.
This sage, Vyasa, who is the author of the Vedas was said to be an immortal.
And, ultimately, one of the gods himself.
Some have suggested that Vyasa came to Earth to record and impart this Vedic knowledge to mankind.
Now, could it be possible that he was in fact an extraterrestrial who came here with the direct mission to bring knowledge to mankind and guide them in their understanding of science and physics? Could Veda Vyasa really have been an extraterrestrial? And might he have educated mankind about the workings of the universe thousands of years before the Large Hadron Collider was ever even constructed? But if so, why? Ancient astronaut theorists believe further evidence can be found in the stories of a Greek scientist The Thracian coast, Greece.
At the northern end of the Aegean Sea lie the ruins of an ancient metropolis.
Abdera was a thriving seaport and trading center.
It was a wealthy hub of commerce between empires and the home of one of history's greatest thinkers: Democritus.
Democritus was a Greek philosopher in the fifth century before the Common Era.
He was not just a philosopher, but a scientific theorist.
In fact, his great gifts have led him to be revered as the father of modern science.
Democritus was born to a wealthy family and educated by Persian Magi learned priests who were said to control the fates.
It was believed that he was trained by the magi, these priests of the east, and that he also traveled to Egypt and to Babylon and studied with the secret masters who had these ancient wisdom teachings hidden in their lineage.
Democritus traveled quite a bit and, through his travels, learned, uh, quite a lot traveling east through in what we call the Ancient Near East studying with the Magi and studying with Chaldeans who were known for their magical, mysterious learnings and their magical, mysterious knowledge as well.
Through his travels and his interactions with people said to have mysterious knowledge, the young philosopher and mathematician came up with a radical theory concerning all matter in the universe.
Democritus theorized that everything people, plants, stone and sun were made of the same stuff: tiny particles he called "atomos.
" He developed an early version of the atomic theory.
It is an early theory of everything in the world being made up of these very, very small, invisible particles which Democritus then called atoms.
Democritus argued that there's a fundamental building block.
Even though we couldn't see them, that was the theory, the philosophical theory that was in Ancient Greece.
This is long before science.
When Democritus was talking about atoms, it's amazing how close he got to what we really know.
What he was motivated by was the idea that if you cut something up, the pieces still have the same properties.
And so he just did the thought experiment well, if I keep cutting it smaller, then eventually, I'll have the smallest possible piece, and that's the atom.
And that's what gives it its properties.
That's basically our picture of matter now that smallest piece is the protons, neutrons, and the electron that make up the atom.
What Democritus articulated 2,500 years ago is remarkably similar to today's Standard Model of physics the basis of our search for the Higgs boson, or God particle.
But how could Democritus have known about the atom and the forces that govern it? Could it be that Democritus had access to advanced and perhaps even extraterrestrial information about the quantum realm? Some ancient astronaut theorists believe that the answer may lie in an even more radical suggestion Democritus made about the cosmos.
In his writings, Democritus proposed that there are many worlds and that these worlds even sustained life.
Now, could it be that by "other worlds" he was maybe even referring to parallel universes? As we fast forward from Democritus to the more current era, where the idea of parallel universes have really taken off is the multi-universe view, where all possible universes has occurred.
This is very similar to Democritus's idea of making all possible universes.
But now they're very much next to each other, parallel in space, as well as occurring in time.
Some cosmologists today believe our universe is one of many, and that the God particle could lead us to discovering these other universes.
Is it possible that Democritus had knowledge of this And might that information have come to him not only from a different world, but perhaps a different universe? Democritus claimed to communicate with what he thought were parallel worlds.
He sometimes would exercise his energy by going into places of the dead and would receive what he thought were voices and information which would predict the future.
Some accounts of Democritus describe him as having access to magical powers with which he could control the weather and predict natural disasters.
He also allegedly communicated with what he referred to as other worlds.
And he described images and voices that came to him giving him all sorts of information.
Is it possible that the priests of the magi, the priests of the Egyptian mystery schools and the priests of Babylon taught him some form of ancient practice that allows the human body to become an instrument to connect directly on a telepathic level with extraterrestrial beings? The more that we draw forth in science, we're going to discover the truths of the past that have long been hidden from us.
Yes, mankind has been directed from the beginning.
But did Democritus truly understand atomic theory and the concept of multiple universes all the way back in the fifth century B.
C.
? Or is it possible as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest that he was simply documenting information passed on to him by more advanced beings? Clues about our universe deliberately left for us to discover over time? Perhaps the answer can be found by looking at the discovery of the God particle and its connection to the Mayan calendar.
Palenque, Mexico.
These majestic stone ruins are all that remain of the once powerful Mayan city.
With its towering stone pyramids and ornate plazas, Palenque reveals the true sophistication of the Mayan civilization.
In terms of scientific and artistic achievements, the Maya were among the world's best ancient civilizations.
Their advancements in math, engineering, astronomy, geometry were unparalleled in the entire Americas.
It was in this ancient Mayan city that researchers have unearthed one of the best examples of a remarkable calendar that tracked not only days and months, but also ages spanning thousands of years.
The Maya were very, very intent on recording the passage of time, so much so that early scholars called the entire culture esoteric time worshippers.
They had a number of calendrical cycles.
One of the last ones they made we call the long count.
To the Western mind, you could look at it as the odometer on your car.
It clicks through time, and scholars have a difference of opinion whether it is a cycle that will reset itself or whether it is a system that can go backwards and forwards into perpetuity.
The Mayans were obsessed with the idea of time cycles and worlds.
They believed that we had existed in three previous worlds and that they could forecast or predict the emergence of a new world.
That was the purpose of the Mayan calendar, was to pinpoint a specific date and time when one world would end and a new world would begin.
The Mayan calendar last turned on December 21, 2012.
Thousands of people from around the world descended on Mayan sites to mark the event.
Some, however, saw dire omens in the occasion.
The Mayan prediction of the end of the world in December 2012 caused a firestorm of prophecy watchers and people believing that it was actually doomsday.
But, as we know now, nothing of that nature actually happened at that time.
If it wasn't a doomsday clock as many believed, then just what was this ancient calendar predicting? Ancient astronaut theorists suggest it may have in fact been counting down, not to the end of the world, but to the dawn of a new era in human history.
The Mayans never said it was gonna be doomsday.
They simply said it would be a new moment of creation.
Maybe the Mayan calendar predicted a monumental leap forward, a transition that would lead us into a whole new era of scientific understanding and possibility.
What did happen was we discovered the God particle, the Higgs boson.
So perhaps what the Mayan calendar was trying to predict was not some terrible catastrophe, but our own very important discovery of the God particle and how we can use this to understand our place in the universe.
If the Maya did indeed predict the discovery of the God particle, did they also leave a clue as to where this knowledge will take us? Some ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer may be found blocks of hard volcanic andesite at another Mayan archaeological site in Izapa.
On Stela 5, there is a depiction of a mythological tree that the Maya believed connected the cosmos and the Earth.
For the Maya, the world tree bridged the seen and the unseen, the celestial and the earthly.
The Mayans believed the tree exuded a kind of syrup or sap called the itz.
It had qualities that allowed portals to open to make contact with unseen dimensions.
It was the key, if you will, to other worlds.
The Mayans talked about this type of cosmic ooze that they thought literally emanated from the world tree.
The itz actually opened up portals to other worlds.
Maybe they're talking about some type of advanced energy that they didn't directly have access to, but had the understandings and teachings possibly taught to them by extraterrestrials.
When I looked at the symbolism of the sacred tree, I got to thinking, what if that sap is the Higgs boson, the God particle? And you have scientists saying that it could potentially lead to time travel and our ability to create tiny wormholes.
Now, is it possible that we can use the discovery of the God particle and the Higgs boson to understand our place in the universe and even to teleport and travel through time and space? Was the Mayan calendar devised to predict the discovery of the God particle? And if so, could this mean that we are getting closer to a reconnection with alien beings that visited Earth long ago? Some ancient astronaut theorists believe another clue may be found just outside the entrance to the Large Hadron Collider with the statue of Shiva.
Geneva, Switzerland.
Outside the headquarters of CERN's Large Hadron Collider is a 12-foot statue of the Shiva Nataraja, or the Dancing Shiva, one of Hinduism's most powerful gods.
Lord Shiva is one of the three great gods of the Hindu teaching.
He is the god of destruction.
His job is to destroy, but it is in order to renew.
He destroys and creates.
His energy, the dance he's considered the lord of the dance, a cosmic dance, and it is the dance of destruction and recreation.
God Shiva is a complex character.
It's very difficult to understand Shiva in one uh, in one word, because he is the god of procreation, and he is also the god of destruction.
He is also the god that destroys everything, because everything that is created must come to an end.
According to Hindu mythology, Shiva is the god who will one day destroy the universe to make way for a new one.
Shiva's cosmic dance is not seen as a negative, even though it is greatly destructive.
It is destroying in order for something new to be created.
So it is an essential part of the process of life that things are cleared away so new things, new possibilities, better possibilities can emerge.
But could the various attributes associated with this Hindu god be connected to a recent discovery made at the Large Hadron Collider about how our universe could suddenly and catastrophically end? One of the intriguing outcomes of the Higgs boson mass measurement is the realization that the Higgs boson and the top quark may put us right on the ragged edge of an instability condition in the universe.
The universe can exist in several different states.
Water.
It can exist as steam, as liquid water, frozen ice.
If the universe changes state, it would produce bubbles of space-time expanding at the speed of light that could destroy everything, all normal matter, all everything in the universe as we know it.
Some people are seeing theories that say there's going to be expanding bubbles of nothingness that will create new whole new universes.
And, in a sense, we know that the universe has to be unstable because it made the big bang in the first place.
Could Shiva not only be a mythological deity that represents the ancient Hindus' understanding of the universe, but might he also have been an otherworldly being who passed on information to our ancestors that we are only now rediscovering? Maybe the great god Shiva, the destroyer, was actually trying to communicate in ancient times things that we're learning today about breaking things down to the finest particles and understanding that these are how we understand the basis of life at a subatomic level.
In Hindu tradition, Shiva was often portrayed as blue-skinned with a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
And if you look at the different depictions of Shiva's dance, you see that he is almost always surrounded by some type of a circular structure with flames.
We see parallels to technology where he's always depicted in this circle when he's doing his cosmic dance.
It seems very similar to what we see at the Hadron Accelerator in this large circular particle accelerator.
Maybe there's some tie-in between Shiva being depicted in a circular device and the way we're smashing particles now in the Hadron Accelerator.
Now, what did our human ancestor artists try to depict here? Do the accounts of his cosmic dance refer to some type of misunderstood technology, very much similar to the Large Hadron Collider? In the Catholic Mass, there is a ceremonial artifact called a monstrance.
If you look at this image, if you look at this item, it has a burst of light.
Very similar to the pattern of Shiva's light, this dance of creation.
Some say this shape can be seen in the Hadron Collider at CERN.
Does this suggest that the invention of tools, like the Large Hadron Collider, are happening as part of a plan? Did celestial beings who came to Earth in the distant past give early humans insights into the origin of existence? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answers may be found not in what CERN has already uncovered, but in discoveries yet to come.
CERN headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.
The Large Hadron Collider was heralded as a monumental success when it helped to discover the Higgs boson, or God particle, in 2012.
But that was only the beginning.
Since then, researchers have embarked on a multi-year project to upgrade what is already the most powerful machine on Earth by retrofitting it with bigger, better, and more efficient systems.
When the Large Hadron Collider is activated again in 2015, it will wield at least double the power it did in 2012, and could boast even ten times more by the end of the decade.
When you look at the size of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, you realize that we really are pushing the limits of technology.
The Large Hadron Collider is something like seven times more powerful than anything else that's existed before.
We'll be even able to get even closer to conditions in time, even closer to the beginning of the big bang.
The work that is happening right now during the LHC shutdown is to prepare the detectors and the experiments for the big energy step.
We are going into even more higher energy, and that means that we are probing deeper, and we can be just around the corner of discovering something which is completely blowing our minds.
The human race is going to be focusing more energy in a small area than we've ever done before.
So, we're looking for a whole new phenomenon.
The scientists at CERN hope that by increasing the power of the Large Hadron Collider they will not only be able to learn more about the God particle, but also uncover other, perhaps even more profound secrets of the universe.
But some scientists have voiced concerns that the Large Hadron Collider could create a black hole that would swallow up the Earth, set off a massive nuclear explosion, or even form a vacuum bubble that could tip the balance of the entire universe.
Perhaps this is a little hubris.
And we all know what happens when physicists get full full of hubris.
But there's always a little bit of fear when you're pushing back the frontiers of science.
It's part of the frontier spirit.
We have to admit that we don't know how the universe started.
And as we go into higher and higher energies, we don't know what we are going to find, because this physics at these levels is an experimental, completely experimental, uh, science.
We don't have the complete understanding and description of the universe that can create this anxiety and fear that we might create something that will end the universe.
When we look at the experiments that have been conducted at CERN with the Large Hadron Collider, it may be that humanity is taking its first baby steps towards the actual construction of the universe.
We're manipulating matter at the subatomic level.
And we are literally harnessing the forces of creation themselves.
The amount of the universe that we see and know that is part of the standard model of physics is only, like, four percent of the mass of the universe.
We're going into vast, unknown territory.
We're going to be witnessing events that no human being has ever witnessed before, and energy density scales no human being has ever been able to create before.
So it's very exciting.
Who knows what we'll find? By wielding the incredible power of the Large Hadron Collider, could we one day recreate the big bang to form an entirely new universe, and at the same time, destroy our own? Or might we instead be reaching the threshold of a new age for mankind? If ancient astronauts came to our planet hundreds of centuries ago, perhaps they deliberately planted the seeds of knowledge that would eventually lead us to where we are today.
Perhaps finding the so-called "God particle" will allow us to finally answer mankind's most persistent questions.
Who are we? Where did we come from? And the most persistent of all: Are we alone?
a gateway to new technologies We're going into a vast unknown territory.
Who knows what we'll find? and possibly the most important scientific breakthrough of all time.
It's going to open up new layers of our understanding of reality.
Could the so-called God particle really reveal the truth about our origins? And might clues to its significance have been left here on Earth thousands of years ago by extraterrestrial beings? We can use this to understand our place in the universe and even to teleport and travel through time and space.
Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.
What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history? And if so, might there be evidence in the discovery of the God particle? _ _ _ _ Every religion seeks to answer the same question: "Where did we come from?" Philosophers, sages and priests have pondered our origins since the dawn of humanity, while science has looked for evidence that might one day give us the answer.
Both religion and science approach the idea of where we come from with a set of rules.
Science has the scientific method.
Religion comes at the same question with its own set of rules a presupposition that a God or gods exist.
Religion gives us a certain view of reality.
And science gives us a different view of reality.
And yes, there are points at which these two worldviews are compatible.
Science and religion, at their best moments, are searching for truth, as is philosophy.
Especially at moments like the moment of the big bang, the moment of creation, the genesis.
These streams of thought converge.
In effect, science and religion and philosophy are all searching for the same thing.
It reminds me of Einstein's question: "What were God's thoughts when he was making the universe?" If science and religion are both searching for answers to the same questions, then why do we so often consider them at odds? Is it necessary that one negates the other? Science speaks nothing whatsoever about the existence of God.
And because of that, there's still an opening for God.
Right? There's still a possibility that God stands behind all this, that God's responsible for the big bang.
In the ancient world, the philosophers were the scientists.
There was no clear distinction between hard research and theological speculations.
All serious thinkers were trying to figure out the nature of reality.
Now we consider these to be separate pursuits.
If we truly want to bridge the gap between religion and science, we must recognize that religion needs to become more scientific.
And science would benefit by becoming a wee bit more religious, not in the mythological sense, but by looking back to the religious, and "what they interpret to be myth," and say, if there's any legitimacy or reality to this, what is it? Let's explore.
Let's discover.
Let's find out what the truth is.
As our technology advances at an increasingly rapid rate, are we getting closer to discovering our true origins? And finding out whether or not we really are alone in the universe? Some believe a recent scientific breakthrough may prove to be a giant leap forward in our search for the truth.
Geneva, Switzerland.
Here, buried over 300 feet beneath the Earth and covering a remarkable 17-mile expanse, is the largest and most complex machine ever created: the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC.
Smashing tiny protons together at speeds of nearly 670 million miles per hour, the LHC creates such intense energy that some people are afraid it could actually create a black hole and swallow up the entire Earth.
The Large Hadron Collider is a real triumph of human civilization.
It's easily the most complicated and powerful device that human beings have ever built.
You're actually firing two protons into each other and having them collide with an enormous release of energy, recreating conditions in a very small area similar to the big bang in its very earliest instant.
It is a bit like going back in time, towards the big bang or the beginning of the universe getting to points in the history of the universe where the energies were that high.
On July 4, 2012, thousands crowded outside an auditorium at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, to hear the announcement of the LHC's first major finding.
Streaming the event live across the world, scientists prepared to reveal a discovery that could solve a decades-old mystery about the nature of our universe.
The atmosphere in the room was, uh, was incredible.
It was not like a normal physics symposium or seminar.
It was truly something of completely different magnitude was was going to be announced, that it is completely extraordinary, which it was.
As a layman, I would now say I think we have it.
What the scientists at CERN had discovered was a tiny bit of matter that some call, the God particle.
Scientists around the world celebrated the discovery of the God particle as a milestone in human knowledge and thought that it's going to open up new layers of our understanding of reality.
But just what is the so-called "God particle"? And what is it telling us about the universe? Known in the scientific community as the Higgs boson, the particle was first theorized by physicist Peter Higgs in 1964.
Its discovery confirms the existence of an invisible force throughout the universe known as the Higgs field.
Scientists believe when particles interact with this field, they acquire mass, which slows them down, and allows them to form matter such as planets and stars.
An image that's often used is ping-pong balls moving through sand or sugar.
Sometimes they're pushed down real deep.
Sometimes they're on top of the sand.
If you're on top, you move around quickly.
If you're deep in, you move slowly.
And that interaction with this other Higgs particle is what gives other particles their mass.
You really can't overemphasize the importance of finally saying there is a Higgs particle and that we really are on the right track.
There's great excitement in the scientific community because the Higgs field permeates all of space-time.
It's possible, theoretically, to effectively switch off the mass of particles and achieve near-light speed very easily.
This could open up not only the planets, but the stars to human exploration.
Whether it's through science, religion, philosophy or the ancient astronaut theory, the fact is we are all seeking answers to the same questions.
Who are we? Where do we come from? And ultimately where are are we going? And so we celebrate a discovery like the Higgs boson or "God particle" because it brings us that much closer to answering the questions that have fascinated humanity for thousands of years.
Scientists believe that the discovery of this tiny particle could represent a quantum leap in our understanding of the universe.
Some have even proposed that it could open the door to anti-gravity technology, travel at the speed of light, and the creation of wormholes.
However, ancient astronaut theorists propose that the God particle is not a new discovery, but rather a rediscovery.
Chandigarh, India.
This thriving city at the foot of the towering Himalayas is the capital of India's Punjab state.
It was in this region of Northwest India that scholars believe a series of religious texts called the Vedas were compiled from oral stories that had been passed down for centuries.
The Vedas, according to the Indian tradition itself, were put together in the final form about 5,000 years ago.
But these hymns had been circulating in the Indian region for a long time.
We do know that not a single letter of the four Vedas has changed, unlike any other texts in the world.
So, there was a belief that the text of the Vedas should not be tampered with because they represent the entire cosmos.
In the Hindu lore, the Vedas are not of Earthly origin.
They are from mysterious sources.
And they are from before time.
They are from before human history and are said to be from before even the gods.
Major figures in modern science were ardent students of the Vedas.
Bohrs and Schrodinger read arduously.
Oppenheimer could read it in Sanskrit.
Even Einstein and Tesla were known to have read it.
It had a profound influence on modern thinking.
Inside these ancient tomes are Hinduism's first stories of creation.
In one Vedic text called the Rig Veda, creation was said to have begun suddenly and explosively from an infinitesimal point of pure energy.
It describes this strange cosmic egg that begins as a single concentrated point.
And everything expanded from this single concentrated point to form the universe.
Now, if you look at this from a modern perspective, this actually reflects modern science's big bang theory, where the universe began as a singularity and expanded to form the universe as we know it today.
To me, the similarities are astounding.
It's not like this idea was just banging around for anybody to see.
It was a concept that our scientists didn't start to embrace until the 20th century.
And yet it was already there in these texts that are at least 3,000 years old, if not much older.
What is remarkable in the Vedas is that they were able to come to an understanding, which is very similar to the understanding that modern science has reached through the intuitions of our great contemporary scientists.
Is it really possible that the Hindu creation story from the Rig Veda is evidence that people living thousands of years ago may have had knowledge of the precise scientific process involved in the creation of the universe? A process modern scientists are only just beginning to understand? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and believe that further proof can be found in another early creation story the Hebrew bible's Book of Genesis.
One of the first phrases in Genesis: "Let there be light.
" And this is like the moment of the big bang.
The whole universe began effectively as light, as energy.
We're speaking of moments of existence that humans would experience just as a great flash of light.
And in that sense, the story of Genesis in the Bible and science converge.
We have in this verse the description of the very first light, the light out of which all things came, the light which led, finally, to matter, to things of substance, to the universe itself.
In current scientific theory, fractions of a second after the big bang, the Higgs field transformed what had been particles of light into mass, matter into creation itself.
We have very strong parallels with the Scriptures.
First, light and then matter.
Similar descriptions of the universe beginning from a single point of light can be found in cultures throughout the ancient world, from Egypt to China and to the American Southwest.
In the Egyptian creation narrative, the very first god was Atum.
He emerged from the darkness to create Egyptian civilization.
The Sumerian, the Egyptian, the Norse something emerges out of darkness.
Order emerges out of chaos.
Where there was no form, form begins.
There is something about these stories that is beyond any one of them that seems to allude to a greater reality.
But how is it that the ancient world's most sacred texts all describe creation in much the same way as our current scientific theory? And where did our ancestors get this seemingly advanced understanding of the origins of the universe? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answers may lie in the stories of the man who compiled the Vedic texts in written form, a mysterious sage named Veda Vyasa.
In the Hindu mythologies, Vyasa is believed to be a reincarnation of the god Vishnu, and that Vishnu specifically took on a human embodiment to be able to write down these classic texts.
This sage, Vyasa, who is the author of the Vedas was said to be an immortal.
And, ultimately, one of the gods himself.
Some have suggested that Vyasa came to Earth to record and impart this Vedic knowledge to mankind.
Now, could it be possible that he was in fact an extraterrestrial who came here with the direct mission to bring knowledge to mankind and guide them in their understanding of science and physics? Could Veda Vyasa really have been an extraterrestrial? And might he have educated mankind about the workings of the universe thousands of years before the Large Hadron Collider was ever even constructed? But if so, why? Ancient astronaut theorists believe further evidence can be found in the stories of a Greek scientist The Thracian coast, Greece.
At the northern end of the Aegean Sea lie the ruins of an ancient metropolis.
Abdera was a thriving seaport and trading center.
It was a wealthy hub of commerce between empires and the home of one of history's greatest thinkers: Democritus.
Democritus was a Greek philosopher in the fifth century before the Common Era.
He was not just a philosopher, but a scientific theorist.
In fact, his great gifts have led him to be revered as the father of modern science.
Democritus was born to a wealthy family and educated by Persian Magi learned priests who were said to control the fates.
It was believed that he was trained by the magi, these priests of the east, and that he also traveled to Egypt and to Babylon and studied with the secret masters who had these ancient wisdom teachings hidden in their lineage.
Democritus traveled quite a bit and, through his travels, learned, uh, quite a lot traveling east through in what we call the Ancient Near East studying with the Magi and studying with Chaldeans who were known for their magical, mysterious learnings and their magical, mysterious knowledge as well.
Through his travels and his interactions with people said to have mysterious knowledge, the young philosopher and mathematician came up with a radical theory concerning all matter in the universe.
Democritus theorized that everything people, plants, stone and sun were made of the same stuff: tiny particles he called "atomos.
" He developed an early version of the atomic theory.
It is an early theory of everything in the world being made up of these very, very small, invisible particles which Democritus then called atoms.
Democritus argued that there's a fundamental building block.
Even though we couldn't see them, that was the theory, the philosophical theory that was in Ancient Greece.
This is long before science.
When Democritus was talking about atoms, it's amazing how close he got to what we really know.
What he was motivated by was the idea that if you cut something up, the pieces still have the same properties.
And so he just did the thought experiment well, if I keep cutting it smaller, then eventually, I'll have the smallest possible piece, and that's the atom.
And that's what gives it its properties.
That's basically our picture of matter now that smallest piece is the protons, neutrons, and the electron that make up the atom.
What Democritus articulated 2,500 years ago is remarkably similar to today's Standard Model of physics the basis of our search for the Higgs boson, or God particle.
But how could Democritus have known about the atom and the forces that govern it? Could it be that Democritus had access to advanced and perhaps even extraterrestrial information about the quantum realm? Some ancient astronaut theorists believe that the answer may lie in an even more radical suggestion Democritus made about the cosmos.
In his writings, Democritus proposed that there are many worlds and that these worlds even sustained life.
Now, could it be that by "other worlds" he was maybe even referring to parallel universes? As we fast forward from Democritus to the more current era, where the idea of parallel universes have really taken off is the multi-universe view, where all possible universes has occurred.
This is very similar to Democritus's idea of making all possible universes.
But now they're very much next to each other, parallel in space, as well as occurring in time.
Some cosmologists today believe our universe is one of many, and that the God particle could lead us to discovering these other universes.
Is it possible that Democritus had knowledge of this And might that information have come to him not only from a different world, but perhaps a different universe? Democritus claimed to communicate with what he thought were parallel worlds.
He sometimes would exercise his energy by going into places of the dead and would receive what he thought were voices and information which would predict the future.
Some accounts of Democritus describe him as having access to magical powers with which he could control the weather and predict natural disasters.
He also allegedly communicated with what he referred to as other worlds.
And he described images and voices that came to him giving him all sorts of information.
Is it possible that the priests of the magi, the priests of the Egyptian mystery schools and the priests of Babylon taught him some form of ancient practice that allows the human body to become an instrument to connect directly on a telepathic level with extraterrestrial beings? The more that we draw forth in science, we're going to discover the truths of the past that have long been hidden from us.
Yes, mankind has been directed from the beginning.
But did Democritus truly understand atomic theory and the concept of multiple universes all the way back in the fifth century B.
C.
? Or is it possible as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest that he was simply documenting information passed on to him by more advanced beings? Clues about our universe deliberately left for us to discover over time? Perhaps the answer can be found by looking at the discovery of the God particle and its connection to the Mayan calendar.
Palenque, Mexico.
These majestic stone ruins are all that remain of the once powerful Mayan city.
With its towering stone pyramids and ornate plazas, Palenque reveals the true sophistication of the Mayan civilization.
In terms of scientific and artistic achievements, the Maya were among the world's best ancient civilizations.
Their advancements in math, engineering, astronomy, geometry were unparalleled in the entire Americas.
It was in this ancient Mayan city that researchers have unearthed one of the best examples of a remarkable calendar that tracked not only days and months, but also ages spanning thousands of years.
The Maya were very, very intent on recording the passage of time, so much so that early scholars called the entire culture esoteric time worshippers.
They had a number of calendrical cycles.
One of the last ones they made we call the long count.
To the Western mind, you could look at it as the odometer on your car.
It clicks through time, and scholars have a difference of opinion whether it is a cycle that will reset itself or whether it is a system that can go backwards and forwards into perpetuity.
The Mayans were obsessed with the idea of time cycles and worlds.
They believed that we had existed in three previous worlds and that they could forecast or predict the emergence of a new world.
That was the purpose of the Mayan calendar, was to pinpoint a specific date and time when one world would end and a new world would begin.
The Mayan calendar last turned on December 21, 2012.
Thousands of people from around the world descended on Mayan sites to mark the event.
Some, however, saw dire omens in the occasion.
The Mayan prediction of the end of the world in December 2012 caused a firestorm of prophecy watchers and people believing that it was actually doomsday.
But, as we know now, nothing of that nature actually happened at that time.
If it wasn't a doomsday clock as many believed, then just what was this ancient calendar predicting? Ancient astronaut theorists suggest it may have in fact been counting down, not to the end of the world, but to the dawn of a new era in human history.
The Mayans never said it was gonna be doomsday.
They simply said it would be a new moment of creation.
Maybe the Mayan calendar predicted a monumental leap forward, a transition that would lead us into a whole new era of scientific understanding and possibility.
What did happen was we discovered the God particle, the Higgs boson.
So perhaps what the Mayan calendar was trying to predict was not some terrible catastrophe, but our own very important discovery of the God particle and how we can use this to understand our place in the universe.
If the Maya did indeed predict the discovery of the God particle, did they also leave a clue as to where this knowledge will take us? Some ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer may be found blocks of hard volcanic andesite at another Mayan archaeological site in Izapa.
On Stela 5, there is a depiction of a mythological tree that the Maya believed connected the cosmos and the Earth.
For the Maya, the world tree bridged the seen and the unseen, the celestial and the earthly.
The Mayans believed the tree exuded a kind of syrup or sap called the itz.
It had qualities that allowed portals to open to make contact with unseen dimensions.
It was the key, if you will, to other worlds.
The Mayans talked about this type of cosmic ooze that they thought literally emanated from the world tree.
The itz actually opened up portals to other worlds.
Maybe they're talking about some type of advanced energy that they didn't directly have access to, but had the understandings and teachings possibly taught to them by extraterrestrials.
When I looked at the symbolism of the sacred tree, I got to thinking, what if that sap is the Higgs boson, the God particle? And you have scientists saying that it could potentially lead to time travel and our ability to create tiny wormholes.
Now, is it possible that we can use the discovery of the God particle and the Higgs boson to understand our place in the universe and even to teleport and travel through time and space? Was the Mayan calendar devised to predict the discovery of the God particle? And if so, could this mean that we are getting closer to a reconnection with alien beings that visited Earth long ago? Some ancient astronaut theorists believe another clue may be found just outside the entrance to the Large Hadron Collider with the statue of Shiva.
Geneva, Switzerland.
Outside the headquarters of CERN's Large Hadron Collider is a 12-foot statue of the Shiva Nataraja, or the Dancing Shiva, one of Hinduism's most powerful gods.
Lord Shiva is one of the three great gods of the Hindu teaching.
He is the god of destruction.
His job is to destroy, but it is in order to renew.
He destroys and creates.
His energy, the dance he's considered the lord of the dance, a cosmic dance, and it is the dance of destruction and recreation.
God Shiva is a complex character.
It's very difficult to understand Shiva in one uh, in one word, because he is the god of procreation, and he is also the god of destruction.
He is also the god that destroys everything, because everything that is created must come to an end.
According to Hindu mythology, Shiva is the god who will one day destroy the universe to make way for a new one.
Shiva's cosmic dance is not seen as a negative, even though it is greatly destructive.
It is destroying in order for something new to be created.
So it is an essential part of the process of life that things are cleared away so new things, new possibilities, better possibilities can emerge.
But could the various attributes associated with this Hindu god be connected to a recent discovery made at the Large Hadron Collider about how our universe could suddenly and catastrophically end? One of the intriguing outcomes of the Higgs boson mass measurement is the realization that the Higgs boson and the top quark may put us right on the ragged edge of an instability condition in the universe.
The universe can exist in several different states.
Water.
It can exist as steam, as liquid water, frozen ice.
If the universe changes state, it would produce bubbles of space-time expanding at the speed of light that could destroy everything, all normal matter, all everything in the universe as we know it.
Some people are seeing theories that say there's going to be expanding bubbles of nothingness that will create new whole new universes.
And, in a sense, we know that the universe has to be unstable because it made the big bang in the first place.
Could Shiva not only be a mythological deity that represents the ancient Hindus' understanding of the universe, but might he also have been an otherworldly being who passed on information to our ancestors that we are only now rediscovering? Maybe the great god Shiva, the destroyer, was actually trying to communicate in ancient times things that we're learning today about breaking things down to the finest particles and understanding that these are how we understand the basis of life at a subatomic level.
In Hindu tradition, Shiva was often portrayed as blue-skinned with a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
And if you look at the different depictions of Shiva's dance, you see that he is almost always surrounded by some type of a circular structure with flames.
We see parallels to technology where he's always depicted in this circle when he's doing his cosmic dance.
It seems very similar to what we see at the Hadron Accelerator in this large circular particle accelerator.
Maybe there's some tie-in between Shiva being depicted in a circular device and the way we're smashing particles now in the Hadron Accelerator.
Now, what did our human ancestor artists try to depict here? Do the accounts of his cosmic dance refer to some type of misunderstood technology, very much similar to the Large Hadron Collider? In the Catholic Mass, there is a ceremonial artifact called a monstrance.
If you look at this image, if you look at this item, it has a burst of light.
Very similar to the pattern of Shiva's light, this dance of creation.
Some say this shape can be seen in the Hadron Collider at CERN.
Does this suggest that the invention of tools, like the Large Hadron Collider, are happening as part of a plan? Did celestial beings who came to Earth in the distant past give early humans insights into the origin of existence? Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answers may be found not in what CERN has already uncovered, but in discoveries yet to come.
CERN headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.
The Large Hadron Collider was heralded as a monumental success when it helped to discover the Higgs boson, or God particle, in 2012.
But that was only the beginning.
Since then, researchers have embarked on a multi-year project to upgrade what is already the most powerful machine on Earth by retrofitting it with bigger, better, and more efficient systems.
When the Large Hadron Collider is activated again in 2015, it will wield at least double the power it did in 2012, and could boast even ten times more by the end of the decade.
When you look at the size of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, you realize that we really are pushing the limits of technology.
The Large Hadron Collider is something like seven times more powerful than anything else that's existed before.
We'll be even able to get even closer to conditions in time, even closer to the beginning of the big bang.
The work that is happening right now during the LHC shutdown is to prepare the detectors and the experiments for the big energy step.
We are going into even more higher energy, and that means that we are probing deeper, and we can be just around the corner of discovering something which is completely blowing our minds.
The human race is going to be focusing more energy in a small area than we've ever done before.
So, we're looking for a whole new phenomenon.
The scientists at CERN hope that by increasing the power of the Large Hadron Collider they will not only be able to learn more about the God particle, but also uncover other, perhaps even more profound secrets of the universe.
But some scientists have voiced concerns that the Large Hadron Collider could create a black hole that would swallow up the Earth, set off a massive nuclear explosion, or even form a vacuum bubble that could tip the balance of the entire universe.
Perhaps this is a little hubris.
And we all know what happens when physicists get full full of hubris.
But there's always a little bit of fear when you're pushing back the frontiers of science.
It's part of the frontier spirit.
We have to admit that we don't know how the universe started.
And as we go into higher and higher energies, we don't know what we are going to find, because this physics at these levels is an experimental, completely experimental, uh, science.
We don't have the complete understanding and description of the universe that can create this anxiety and fear that we might create something that will end the universe.
When we look at the experiments that have been conducted at CERN with the Large Hadron Collider, it may be that humanity is taking its first baby steps towards the actual construction of the universe.
We're manipulating matter at the subatomic level.
And we are literally harnessing the forces of creation themselves.
The amount of the universe that we see and know that is part of the standard model of physics is only, like, four percent of the mass of the universe.
We're going into vast, unknown territory.
We're going to be witnessing events that no human being has ever witnessed before, and energy density scales no human being has ever been able to create before.
So it's very exciting.
Who knows what we'll find? By wielding the incredible power of the Large Hadron Collider, could we one day recreate the big bang to form an entirely new universe, and at the same time, destroy our own? Or might we instead be reaching the threshold of a new age for mankind? If ancient astronauts came to our planet hundreds of centuries ago, perhaps they deliberately planted the seeds of knowledge that would eventually lead us to where we are today.
Perhaps finding the so-called "God particle" will allow us to finally answer mankind's most persistent questions.
Who are we? Where did we come from? And the most persistent of all: Are we alone?