Randall Carlson of Sacred Geometry International is in Grimerica and will proceed to blow your mind wide open.  Randall is a master builder and architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, geological explorer and renegade scholar. He has 4 decades of study, research and exploration into the interface between ancient mysteries and modern science, has been an active Freemason for 30 years and is Past Master of one of the oldest and largest Masonic lodges in Georgia. Darren and Graham chat with Randall about the connection between platonic solids, time, our solar system and ancient megalithic structures.

They talk about the drastic changes this ball of mud rotating through space has gone through in just the last 12,000 years alone and they speculate on how old and modern our ancient man may have been. Randall has made a truly eye opening and fascinating 4 hour dvd illustrating the Cosmic Patterns and Cycles of Catastrophe. Randall hints at some of the revelations being revealed in his upcoming book and he gives the Grimerican’s a bit of homework to do. This episode even gets a little political and of course it shows how much the mainstream science community is stuck in their dogmatic paradigm.

http://sacredgeometryinternational.com/

http://sacredgeometryinternational.com/cosmic-patterns-and-cycles-of-catastrophe-dvd-preview

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvuraN2vNapqhIpDIgIRO7eIk6gPvweqw

The Making of a Catastrophist:

http://web.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnelly/donbiog.html

Interesting related links etc….

Sacred Geo music and Gothic Cathedrals, George Lesser

http://andrewnormanmusic.com/archives/101

Buckminster Fuller

http://bfi.org/

Gematria – Secret Numbers of God

http://www.secretnumbers.org/gematria/index.html

Keith Critchlow

http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/authors/Keith-Critchlow.aspx

Okotoks, AB. Erratic – Big Rock

http://history.alberta.ca/historicsites/

Graham Hancock

http://www.grahamhancock.com/

Sang Real

http://www.arthurian-legend.com/more-about/more-about-arthur-4.php

http://www.innerworkingsresources.com/node/21

Various links:

http://www.goldennumber.net/golden-ratio/

http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/history-of-numbers-part-2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

http://www.russelldale.com/phil-material/V1_Hessen.pdf

http://dmso.org/articles/pharmacology/CellularMolecularAspects.pdf

http://www.secretsinplainsight.com/

Paradigm Symposium 2014

http://www.paradigmsymposium.com/

Donald Duck Learns Sacred Geometry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVTPwPh7ioU

Not much time for an intro in this episode. Please help out the show and contribute via the 50/50 MoneyBomb.

http://www.grimerica.ca/moneybomb/

Review The Show

https://grimerica.ca/itunes

MUSIC

Grimerica Theme – Lock & Key

X Files Dub – Dubway Beatfresh

Chase The Sun – Drop Out Orchestra Rework

Tricks – WJLP

Rock It Out – Crush Effect

GRIMERICA TALKS TO RANDAL CARLSON

DARREN: All right, guys. This afternoon, in Grimerica, we are going to be talking with Randall Carlson of the Sacred Geometry International. He has got a DVD coming out. And it is just some really mind blowing stuff.

I first actually heard Randall on Joe Rogan’s podcast. And it was like, within, I think I was ten minutes in, and I was already on the internet looking for his email address to try and track him down for our show. But first, how is going tonight, Graham?

GRAHAM: Hey, buddy. Just like I mentioned in the chat room. I am more excited than usual. I am really, really looking forward to this chat with Randall Carlson.

He is a master builder and architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, geological explorer and renegade scholar. He has got like four decades of study, research and exploration into the interface between ancient mysteries and modern science.

He has been an active Freemason for 30 years. Past master of one of the oldest, largest Masonic lodges in Georgia. He has been recognized by the National Science Teachers Association for his commitment to science education for young people.

And as Darren mentioned, we heard him on Joe Rogan for like three hours. Blew our minds. And he didn’t even touch on sacred geometry, really. And that is kind of what we are going to start off talking with him about, I hope.

He has got a DVD out, like four hours that him and Cameron Wilshire put out, and it is called Cosmic Patterns and Cycles of Catastrophe. And I had a little preview last night and this morning. And yes, crazy mind blowing stuff.

DARREN: Yes. This is right up our alley. We have been looking forward to it for a long time. And it is funny.

We were hoping we could have this one go a little bit longer than average. And then Cameron emailed last night saying that that is how you like it as well. So, everything should work out just perfectly here.

So, you had mentioned kind of, before we went on air, that you were a home builder, or a master builder, I think. And I was just kind of, right off the bat, I was wondering how it is that you know, how you came into this.

Because I am kind of — we find ourselves in the same spot. Like, we are kind of in the same industry, and yet we are doing this on the side, trying to go down these rabbit holes, and learn as much as we can.

CARLSON: Well, that is a good question. It goes back, really to the early 70s. And things that were happening, you know, in the late 60s and early 70s. And I got involved in some rather interesting projects. Mostly along the lines of Buckminster Fuller’s dome.

GRAHAM: I was going to ask you about that.

CARLSON: Yes. I mean, I think that is what kind of got me going down this path. Because I got involved with a group that was building a couple of Buckminster Fuller domes up in the north woods of Minnesota.

And I got into that, and got really intrigued by the geometry, the Fuller geometry that he was using. And one of the domes was kind of — the architect who designed it integrated Fuller’s concepts along with concepts of Islamic design. And so, it was very interesting.

And then the — one of the projects, the one I just mentioned, this fusion project was featured in a national publication called Shelter. Which, I think came out in 1973, if memory serves me correct.

And in that, was just a compilation of a lot of different things having to do primarily with vernacular architecture and experimental architecture and so on. Our dome that we had built was featured in that. But there was a lot of other information too, about design of Islamic architecture and some of the principles they were using.

That was my first exposure to the idea of the Golden Section, or so called divine proportion. And it was also my introduction to the work of Le Corbusier who incorporated the Golden Section into his system that he called the modular system, which was based upon derivative Golden Ratios from the human body.

So, that kind of led me into you know, being intrigued. I had always enjoyed geometry. And I had always enjoyed math. So, that kind of just led me into this path of trying to learn more about how geometry was used by builders in the past.

Because, this is early on in my career. So, I am basically learning the techniques and the methods of modern building. But, I just got intrigued by how things were done throughout history. And I think that is where it would have begun. And then it expanded from there.

Because I had quite divergent interests. So I was looking at various spiritual traditions and things, and discovered that there were kind of this whole domain of spiritual architecture. And so, as I kind of begin to look into that — look into it, into greater depth, I discovered that there was similar principles throughout a lot of the ancient structures. Particularly, structures that we would think of as sacred.

And so, I think between like, ‘73 and ‘78 — I actually became a Freemason in 1978. So, I guess it has actually been more than 30 years now, or 35 years plus. So, I guess that would be the intro. The bio was a little bit dated.

But anyways, by the time 1978 had rolled around, I had explored what was available back then. There wasn’t a whole lot. It kind of led me into — it definitely led me into Freemasonry. Because I began to look at the design principles of the Gothic cathedrals. And so, I eventually took a trip to Europe and toured the cathedrals and other sacred buildings, collecting information and data.

And I would say, it just proceeded from there. You know, now there so much more available than there was back in the 70s. You know, this was just an emerging paradigm back then.

GRAHAM: Uh-huh.

CARLSON: And you know, I accessed as much as I could. I found a couple of — a double set of books called Sacred Geometry. Let’s see. It was by George Lesser [phonetic]. It was the first, earliest finding that I was able to come across the term, sacred geometry.

And he wrote it, this book, I think it was in the 1940s. And it was primarily about the geometry used in churches and cathedrals. So, I devoured that. I digested it. It was primarily — that is where I learned about the two systems, ad quadratum and ad triangulum. Which, based on the square is the ad quadratum, and ad triangulum is based upon the equilateral triangle.

And so, I next began to look into the Kabbala, or Kabbala. And found that there was interesting things about geometry in there. That actually related to architecture, which was kind of surprising. And I looked into alchemy and hermetic traditions.

I looked into Hindu architecture. I looked deeper into Islamic architecture. I did classes with Keith Critchlow [phonetic] who is probably one of the world’s foremost authorities on Islamic art and architecture.

And I never did get to meet Buckminster Fuller, because he passed away before I really had the resources to connect with him. But Keith Critchlow actually had been a student of his, and I think, actually wrote some of the introductions to some of his books on synergy that he wrote. I don’t know if you have ever seen the two volume set that he put out, again, early 70s?

GRAHAM: No. It sounds fascinating, though.

CARLSON: Oh, yes. It is about 800 or 900 pages of just the densest material. It is a challenge to get through it, you know. Buckminster Fuller liked to invent his own terminology. So, you have to kind of get through that. But that is pretty much how it was.

You know, then I began to always try to experiment whenever possible, using principles of geometry that I was learning. Really, and pretty, just practical mundane ways. Discovered that you know, geometry was an extremely useful skill to have when you are out there trying to build things.

And I realized, you know, I went back. I procured some of these old 19th century books on architecture and carpentry and stuff. And as I was reading them, I realized that, you know what, these guys in the 19th century really had a highly skilled, sophisticated, technical understanding of the principles of math that they were using.

And these were just regular carpenters. But you know, when you are talking about laying out you know, elliptical arches and church cathedrals and a lot of things like that, you get into some fairly sophisticated geometry.

GRAHAM: Uh-huh.

CARLSON: So, I started studying some of that. And whenever possible, began to apply it on projects that we were doing. And I found it very useful.

But you know, my studies have just continued on a log, in that vein. Somewhere about the late 70s, I believe reading into, you know, studying ancient manuscripts, ancient texts, rather, such as the Vedic texts, and studied some of the Mayan codices that I had access to, I realized that you know, there was a numerical basis to so much of this.

Just like, a lot of folks know that there is a numerical — an underlying numerical information in the Bible. Well, there is, in virtually every one of these mystical or spiritual or metaphysical traditions that I began looking into. I found that there was this underlying realm of number and geometry.

And what really surprised me was the consistency of it. Like, the numbers that I discovered through, you know, reading about early Christianity and the Bible were the same numbers that were coming up in reading the Vedas.

And then, I became aware — and I also have always been interested in astronomy. And so, you quickly begin to realize, by the 60s, the 1960s that it had become well known that Stonehenge had an astronomical basis. And so, a lot of research was coming out of the 70s, like the work of Alexander Thaum, with his surveys of the megalithic structures throughout the British Isles, where he showed both the geometry and the astronomy.

So, I got a hold of both of his books, and studied them in depth, to try to understand the archaeo-astronomy that was going on. And that was — the appreciation began to dawn on me, of how they had integrated geometry with astronomy.

GRAHAM: Uh-huh.

CARLSON: And architecture. And that was — there is no specific point where I can say, there was this — where the, you know, the heavens opened up, and it was all revealed to me. It was kind of a gradual process of picking up the pieces, connecting the dots.

And then, I came to realize that you know, the astronomical end of it was yielding up numbers. And I quickly discovered that a lot of these numbers were actually derived directly from astronomy cycles. And you are probably familiar with the procession of the Equinox?

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: Yes. Good. So, that serves kind of as a basis for developing these cycles. Both the subcycles and the megacycles that are built upon it. And they are encoded in a lot of the ancient traditions.

And those numbers and ratios that you find between these time cycles are exactly the same numbers and ratios that you find encoded in the architecture, the sacred architecture. Which to me was, that was definitely at a hobble, when I realized that.

That you know, it led me to the realization that when you are talking about sacred geometry, most people would just say geometry. You immediately start thinking of spatial phenomenon. You start thinking of you know, either like two dimensional patterns. You can start thinking of polygons or polyhedra, or forms in space.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: But sacred geometry also includes the geometry of time. And then, that is where we get into a whole another realm of realizing that there is a cyclical nature to time. Just as the ancients all over the world believe.

And that these cycles are very important, as far as understanding the rise and fall of civilizations, you know, evolutionary changes, biological changes. And I think that our predecessors on this planet were aware of that on some level, and began to try to incorporate knowledge of these cycles into their architecture.

So, you know, Stonehenge was demonstrated, oh, years ago by Gerald Hawkins to be, and Fred Hoyle to be an eclipse predictor. And most of these structures will show or demonstrate or code somehow the cycles of time. And they all seem to be based upon the so called Great Year, which is just another term for the processional cycle.

And this is what, you know, we have all heard about — you know, the ages of the world. And we talk about the Age of Taurus and the Age of Aries and the Age of Pisces and now the Age of Aquarius. Well, there is a lot of folks out there who can talk about that, who don’t really understand the technical aspects of it, or the astronomy of it.

But really, all it is, is this processional cycle of the Vernal Equinox transiting through each of the signs of the Zodiac, each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, on an average period of about 2,100 years.

DARREN: Yes. It is like 26,000 years, the full procession?

CARLSON: The full procession is generally given in most astronomical texts as about 26,000 years; that, rounded off. If you take the measurements of the rate that have been made in the last couple of centuries, I think it comes out to about 25,800 something years. There is a sort of a sacred number that one finds in the canon of ancient numerology that is 25,920.

And that is really close enough, as far as we know with precision what the actual cycle is. Because the rate of procession of the Equinoxes that we have measured in the last couple of centuries may not be the constant rate throughout the entire cycle, you see.

So, it may speed up a little bit. It may slow down. We don’t know that the axial spin of the Earth actually does trace out an exact circle. It may be slightly elliptical. In which case, there would be variations throughout the cycle. Sometimes, speeding up. Sometimes, slowing down.

But certainly, the number 25,920 comes close enough for any conceivable use. And then, that is the number that we find integral to the ancient canon of numerical cosmology. And so, like in Angkor Wat, the huge temple complex in Cambodia, the whole thing is laid out according to the numerical ratios that are derived from that processional cycle.

GRAHAM: Oh, that is crazy.

CARLSON: It is crazy.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: But it raises questions about you know, how much our predecessors on this planet really know.

GRAHAM: Yes. I was going to ask you — you have kind of already answered it. But before we got into like all of the numbers at the detailed level, which we do understand, it must be difficult for you on audio, because you have such a visual presentation. Your movie is very, very visual. And the numbers, and the connections just blow you away.

So, I was going to ask you to summarize all of the connections. And you kind of already answered most of that. But you found, you know, connections with the Plutonic solids and the ancient structures and the Earth and the Moon and you know, cosmological things and time.

CARLSON: Yes. Yes, it all seems to be integrated into the system. And what the origin of the system was, is anybody’s guess.

GRAHAM: Uh-huh.

CARLSON: I mean, it seems to be embedded in the architecture of the Solar System for certain. And it also seems to be embedded, you know, in the living world, in the biological realm. Because we certainly find geometry in living things. You know, it is embedded in the human anatomy, in the proportions of the human anatomy.

And so, I think that again, the origin of the system is anybody’s guess. But I think it goes way, way back. Because what we see is, at the very dawning of civilization. Which now, let’s call it in round numbers, 5,000 years ago, we see the first representations of you know, human culture in the form of architecture. Sacred geometry was an integral part of that.

And when I say, sacred geometry in that context, I am also implying the astronomy that goes along with it. And so, and then over the years, it has gone through a series of declines and then revivals.

And so, we see, I think the last great revival and utilization of some of these concepts was during the High Middle Ages, during the period of the building of the Gothic cathedrals, which ran roughly from the mid-12th century to the early 14th century; for about 150 years. And then, there were various shifts, both cultural and social shifts, but also environmental shifts that I think brought the great age of Gothic building to a close around, oh, between 1310 and 1320.

And that is why a lot of the cathedrals, if you visit them, you know, they give you the impression of not having really been finished. And a lot of them weren’t finished. It is almost as if you know, a bell rang and everybody put down their tools and left. Which is kind of one of the mysteries.

But I concluded it is a number of factors converging all at once. One of the things would have been the onset of the Little Ice Age which caused a number of agricultural collapses over a period of five or ten years, between about 1310 and 1330, right in that early 14th century period. And those agricultural collapses caused famine, which then led to the Black Plague.

You had a population crash. And so, the resources that had been available during that — the Medieval Warm Period, which ran from about 1000 AD to this, you know, early 1300s, came to an end. And the prosperity that accompanied that global warmth in terms of an extended growing season, you know, higher elevations at which crops could be grown, and so on — what you had was a well fed population that was booming for a couple of centuries.

And increased wealth and trade. And it was this that largely stimulated the Gothic cathedral building, there. Because a few hundred years earlier than that, Europe just didn’t have the resources. And then, with the onset of global cooling, in the early 1300s, like I say, you had a couple of serious years where basically, agriculture in Northern Europe just collapsed completely.

And this caused widespread hunger and famine and weakening of immune systems. And then, this allowed the onset of the Black Plague which just decimated the population of Europe.

And that was largely the end of you know, the High Middle Ages as we know it, and the Gothic building boom. So, and then a lot of the traditions either became lost or went underground. And this is, I think, when we see the — I am guessing that this is when we would have seen the first rise of speculative Freemasonry, which was basically an attempt to preserve some of the secrets and techniques and traditions of the guild craft builders during the Middle Ages from complete loss.

And so, originally in the guilds, you had to be an actual practicing mason, to become a member. But then, as the commissions began to decline, and you know, a lot of the stuff was on the verge of being forgotten, this is when they began to open the ranks to non-builders. And it became, it shifted from operative masonry to speculative or philosophical masonry.

The change was not all at once. It was gradual over a period of centuries. And then, in the early 1700s, that is when you had the reformulation of these various dispersed lodges into the modern Masonic lodge, around 1717, I think it was.

GRAHAM: Does that have something to do with why America kept the Imperial system, the sacred part of this whole number, the sacred geometry of it all. Like, why did the rest of the world go to metric, if there is such a meaning behind all of these numbers?

CARLSON: Well, because of the fact that the rest of the world did not appreciate that there was this meaning behind the numbers.

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: I mean, the rest of the world had gone metric a century and a half, already on their way to becoming metric before it was really realized that there was this geometric or sacred basis if you will, to ancient metrology. And so yes, it is a very good question you have brought up.

The Imperial system actually does preserve elements of ancient, very ancient systems of measurement. And the systems of measurement, it is interesting that is coming up now. Because in our sacred geometry online course, one of the things that we are actually getting into now in the second level, about midway through the second level is sacred metrology.

And how these — how sacred geometry unifies many of these units of measurement that were used throughout history and throughout the ancient world to build the sacred structures. Very interesting stuff.

GRAHAM: Yes. We will have to link to that online course. I wasn’t sure if that was an online course, or you had to actually go into a classroom. So, that is fascinating.

CARLSON: Yes. It is an online course.

GRAHAM: That is great.

DARREN: Everything is in the internet nowadays, Graham. Come on.

GRAHAM: Yes. That is true. So, going back to the — you go way, way back and find out that this sacred geometry is used in buildings, as far we can go back, right. Like, you talk about the pyramid, and how that might be older. And so, have you speculated at all? Or how do you think this information — how did everybody across the world back then know about this?

CARLSON: Well, here is another good question. You know, we need a context for even addressing a question like that. And I think the context would work something like this. We have 5,000 years roughly, of recorded history. And that begins with cuneiform writing. And in most standard texts, cuneiform writing in the Fertile Crescent, you know, Sumeria, between 4,500 and 5,000 years ago represents the emergences of civilization, recorded.

GRAHAM: Recorded. Yes. Yes.

CARLSON: Recorded, as we know it, right. If we look at, you know, the rise in civilization, we can go back. And we will see references to the emergence of agriculture. And it is usually given as 10,000 years ago.

GRAHAM: Okay.

CARLSON: The first rise of cities, 8,000 — 9,000 years ago. The dispersion of languages, you know, 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. The domestication of animals, the same thing. Well —

DARREN: Some people might say we are domesticated. Where did I hear it the other day when they said, we have become Homo Sapiens Domesticus or something like that?

CARLSON: You know, yes. I think we are becoming way too tame for our own good. It is — yes, I think so. So, anyways, we go back 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, and we find all of these elements of things that we think of as this is the first emergence of civilization. Well, we go back a millennium or two earlier than that, and we get to this major geological epoch shift —

MS. BOSTICK: Uh-huh.

CARLSON: From the Pleistocene to the Holocene. Now, when I was coming through school, the idea, the model of geology was strict gradualism.

MS. BOSTICK: Yes.

CARLSON: If anybody like an Immanuel Velikovsky or somebody who started talking about catastrophes was considered a crackpot. Well, as it turns out —

DARREN: Unless they are in a church.

CARLSON: Unless you are in a church, a fundamentalist church where you — yes, you think that everything happened in 6,000 years. And if it did, if the whole planet was created in 6,000 years and the mountains were built in 6,000 years and all of the strata was laid out, of course, then it would have to be necessarily catastrophic.

Well, you know, what geologists have done in the 19th century was push the geological timetable back hundreds of millions of years. So, what they now did was say, well, we have got virtually infinite time to accomplish anything. So, when you have virtually infinite time, think about the work that you can do with one drop of water, or one of grain of sand at a time.

At the same time, as geological uniformitarianism is becoming the dominant model of Earth history, you have Darwinian evolution, which is becoming the dominant model of biological history. And it also requires long, interminably slow incremental changes.

DARREN: Yes.

CARLSON: And so yes, these two major paradigms kind of converged and became just the dominant way of looking at science. Particularly, you know, biological or geological science, around the turn of the century. And anything considered catastrophic was seen as a throwback to theological interpretations, biblical fundamentalism. So, it was rejected out of hand.

So, what we see is, coming through the 20th century, we see these quote unquote crackpots who are actually out there in the field looking at evidence that is clearly indicative of some kind of catastrophes. And they kind of, you know, kept the paradigm alive. You know, people like J. Harlan Bretts and others who were — Harvey Harlan Integer [phonetic] who was speculating that there had been great catastrophes triggered by asteroid impacts, like back in the 1940s when nobody was talking about that at all.     J. Harlan Bretts, I don’t know if you know who he is. He was a geologist who discovered the gigantic Missoula Flood evidence, out in the Pacific Northwest, which was completely outside the conventional framework of geological thinking. Well, you had these guys who were documenting this evidence, kind of off on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, the geological and paleoentomological community are just not even looking at this stuff. Because it is so completely outside their framework of thinking. Everything happens slowly. And if you start invoking the idea of fast change, rapid change, catastrophic change, then you are a crackpot.

Well, what happened was is, so much of this evidence began to accumulate that eventually, you begin to have converts, who begin to go, admit, you know. And you see this shift happening suddenly, starting in the 1950s, accelerating through the 60s and 70s.

And in 1980 was the year that three separate teams published work indicating that the Cretaceous Tertiary Boundary, the one where the — you know, the dinosaurs went extinct, had been profoundly catastrophic. And that it was probably triggered by an impact with something from space.

And that marks a major point of departure in the thinking of the scientific community. And it opens the door to the realization that yes, catastrophes may actually be a part of the history of the planet.

Now, fast forward to where we are now, and I think that really, if you look at the evidence with an unbiased view, you begin to realize that if the catastrophes that have really been the major shapers of the planet that we live on. And that a short lived catastrophe might last anywhere from you know, days to a few years, might compress as much change into that short period of time, as would otherwise take thousands upon thousands of years of normal change.

Okay. Now, with that context, what we have got to realize is that between ten and 12,000 years ago, the planet was undergoing this major gear shift if you will. It was transitioning out of the Ice Age.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: And people, unless you have been taught or really thought it through, you just don’t appreciate how significantly different the planet was during the Ice Age.

GRAHAM: And how long was that Ice Age, by the way. I need to picture, like, the length of that.

CARLSON: Okay. It is generally given as about 100,000 years.

GRAHAM: Okay.

CARLSON: But that is an older model. Again, almost derived from more steady state conditions.

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: Whereas what the evidence is showing now is that within that 100,000 something years there are actually interruptions, intervals actually, of interglacial war. So now, what we have got is what is known as the Late Wisconsin [phonetic], which is the final major glacial phase of this presumably 100,000 year long Ice Age. And it really began — its dating is interestingly showing up at right around 26,000 years ago.

And we have evidence at hand, I would suggest, between roughly 26,000 years ago and 40,000 year ago, the area that was swallowed up by the ice, which was all of Canada and a big chunk of the Northern United States was actually forested between 26,000 and 40,000 years ago. And the onset of this final phase was quite rapid. Like, perhaps within a century or two or even less.

The ice grew very rapidly. And as the ice grew, it was being fed by the hydrological cycle which is drawing evaporated water out of the ocean. So, as the ice is growing, ocean levels are falling. So, you basically lost about 7 million square miles of the Earth’s surface to the ice.

But at the same time, gained about 10 million square miles because of the fact that the dropping sea level exposed the Continental Shelves of the planet, which are mostly less than 400 feet in depth. And 400 feet is a round number. So about how far sea level dropped.

Now, you know in modern discussions, we are talking about, you know, due to climate change and so forth. You know, one or two feet of sea level change over the next century. But you have got to think to a 400 foot sea level change, and what that would do.

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: And so, during the Ice Age, you know, if you start going back and you look at the climate of the Earth and the distribution of the flora and the fauna and where would have been the most benign place for human beings to form settlements and build communities, maybe even cities. What has been on the coastlines, at the time. Where equatorial curves might have, you know, delivered some heat to provide some respite from the glacial cold.

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: Also, along river valleys and probably at lower elevations. Well, with the transition out of the Ice Age, one of the things that I am trying to do with my work is to make people aware of how profoundly and extremely catastrophic that transition really was. And what it really means to rapidly bring up sea level 400 feet.

So, what we get here is that the idea that you know, had there been established communities of any level of sophistication, they would have probably been on the coastlines which are now 400, 300, 400 feet of water. So, that is why I have kind of maintained for years now that marine geology and marine archaeology is probably now the future of archaeology, if we can begin to discern.

And already, we are seeing discoveries. So, some of the stuff that Graham Hancock is doing, like over at Yonaguni and off the shore of Japan, or Okinawa. I don’t know how that is going to play out yet, whether that underwater formation is totally natural, totally artificial or somewhere in between.

But it does appear that it is — from what I have learned, it appears to be a natural formation that was carved by humans. But it is now, you know, under a hundred feet of sea water. Which means, that you have to go back 10,000 years to find the date at which it would have been carved.

So, what I am getting at here is that we are kind of in a situation now, and it hasn’t really sunk through to mainstream academia that we maybe need to be rethinking our history. And I try to get back to — I haven’t lost sight of the question that led to this ramble here.

Which is, where did this come from? Well, when we go back and we look at the very beginning of recorded history, 5,000 years ago, we find this very sophisticated knowledge. We find knowledge of astronomy, of geometry, of engineering, of geology and geodesy incorporated in all of these structures that we are finding — that are between 4,000 and 5,000 years old.

So, what we are seeing is, we are seeing these very simplistic you know, societies that are either hunter gatherers or subsistence farmers, one generation. A generation or two later, they are building these extraordinary temples.

GRAHAM: Uh-huh.

CARLSON: Where is that impetus coming from? You know, where is the impetus coming from, to suddenly organize on a level that you can build the Pyramids of the Giza Plateau? Or to build Stonehenge or some of the other — you know, in North America here. Like, in Louisiana, there is Poverty Point, and a couple of others that are between 4,000 and 5,000. Huge monumental earthworks that are between 4,000 and 5,000 years old.

Lochans Break [phonetic] is actually closer to 6,000 years old. And that is an elliptical series of eleven hills that were artificially created by somebody. And it has very interesting geometry in it.

And some researchers have actually demonstrated that these formations, you know, include things like the Golden Ratio, and other principles of sacred geometry. So, where in the world does this come from?

Well, here is — I am going to throw this out. This is a hypothesis that would need to be obviously tested against the evidence.

GRAHAM: Okay.

CARLSON: But when you think about human beings on planet Earth, modern human beings, right. How long have we modern humans been occupying this planet?

GRAHAM: 180,00 to 200,000 years?

DARREN: I don’t know. Mike Creamover would say maybe even longer than that.

CARLSON: Yes. He might. Although, you know, I am basing this on conservative, hard, skeletal evidence.

GRAHAM: Okay.

CARLSON: So, I am perfectly willing to think longer than that. But for purposes of my — the point I am making, I mean —

GRAHAM: Right. Okay.

CARLSON: If we go even 150,000 years, 200,000 years, somewhere in that span of time, we are basically acknowledging that most of the human story on Earth is missing. You know, if we — we have this convenient prehistoric model of cave men living in caves, you know. Wandering around with their clubs, dragging their womenfolk by the hair or whatever. Like Alley Oop.

DARREN: [unintelligible].

CARLSON: In their spare time, you know, maybe painting some pretty extraordinary paintings on cave walls.

DARREN: That sounds like the life. Now, you have to pay big bucks to go do something like that, these days.

CARLSON: I know. It probably did have its advantages. But at the same time, listen. When you woke up in the morning in the Pleistocene, bear in mind that one of your major goals of the day was to not be eaten by a giant cave bear or a sabre tooth cat or a direwolf.

So, your priorities might have actually been a little different during the Ice Age. Although, now what I am getting to is that there is no reason to reject out of hand the possibility of sophisticated civilizations you know, 15,000 or 20,000 years ago.

And usually most critics will then say, I mean, like for example, in Graham Hancock’s work, you know, I have read a lot of the critics of his work, who are very dismissive. Kind of, you know, rolling their eyes.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: Ancient civilizations, yes. Well, if there was always ancient civilizations, where is the evidence?

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: Well, listen my friend, what you don’t want your family to realize is how extensively this planet has been remodeled in the last 10,000 or 20,000 years.

GRAHAM: Yes. And 10,000 years is nothing, really. I feel like, if we live a hundred years, I don’t feel like 10,000 years is a long time, really. It just seems —

CARLSON: No.

GRAHAM: So, I have got a question before, and it kind of goes along with this whole thing, from Red Pill Junkie in the chatroom, before I forget. And he is asking, is there evidence, or have you come across any about these ancient megalithic sites being built by different builders. Not necessarily Homo Sapiens, but say, Denisovians or Neanderthals?

CARLSON: Not really. That is an interesting question. That, I don’t know. Now, when you are getting to the mythology of it, yes, you find interesting things. You know, like there is tales about giants in ancient Britain, building some of the megaliths. Now, what does that mean? I am not sure.

Certainly, we do know that the Pleistocene has actually been — Charles Darwin himself referred to the Pleistocene as an age of giants. Of course, what he is referring to is, there is the giant megafauna that mostly went extinct during the transition.

But clearly, you know, during the late Pleistocene, things were very big. You know, you had the North American Pleistocene Lion for example. Typical examples of that, that have been found suggest that it was 50 percent greater in body mass than a large African Lion.

You know, you had giant ground sloths that were the size of elephants. You had the Columbian Mammoth, or Mammothus Imperator, as it was called, that stood 16 feet tall at the shoulders. The list went on and on. You had beavers that weighed 500 and 600 pounds. Armadillos almost the size of, you know, small Volkswagens. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

You had these giant animals. And that was one of the characteristics of the fauna of the end of the Ice Age. Well, I think it would be fair to ask, you know, perhaps just as you have these specimens of giant animals, could it have been that there were giant hominids as well?

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: And there is some tantalizing evidence out there, suggesting that there was.

GRAHAM: You keep beating me to my questions before I ask. So, that was one of my questions. Are you talking about the ancient giants in America, like from the guys like Richard Dures and that kind of research.

DARREN: That is —

CARLSON: I am not familiar with that research. However, there is a lot of stuff. Particularly from the 19th century, where they have uncovered skeletons of giants. Seven — when I say giants, I am not talking about 50 feet tall. I am talking about seven to eight feet tall. In some cases, larger than that.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: a lot of these, you know, we don’t have photographic evidence. But what we do have is a lot of accounts. And you know, often times written by very trustworthy individuals. Doctors, theologians.

You know, people who were there and witnessed these excavations. And in some cases, multiple people signed affidavits claiming yes, we did see this. We saw that eight foot skeleton that was dug out of this mound.

GRAHAM: Until the Smithsonian came around and grabbed it.

CARLSON: That is what it seems like. Yes. Yes.

DARREN: It seems to be. If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck —

CARLSON: Yes. And so, there are some very interesting stuff regarding you know, larger than modern humans. And it does suggest — you know, there are so many traditions. You know, mythical traditions.

Of course, we all know the story of David and Goliath. But you know, the ancient mythology is replete with stories about larger than normal human beings. And then there was the work of what is his name, the Swedish geologist in the turn of the century who — in Northern Sweden. He dug up several skeletons who he claimed were eight and nine feet tall.

I am trying to remember his name. It will come to me in a second. Yes. But you know, there is a lot of that. You know, it really suggests that this standard view of history is leaving an awful lot out.

GRAHAM: Yes. Okay. So, since we are on that kind of topic, this ancient knowledge of sacred geometry and all, there is — you can’t but ask the question, since so many civilizations around the world have legends and myths about star people and contact with you know, extraterrestrial civilizations. I mean, what do you think about that?

You know, some of this. And I am not trying to discount the smarts of any, you know, paleolithic man. But what about that? You know, some visitations to disseminate some of this knowledge?

CARLSON: Well, I am open minded. But at the same time, the way I look at it is, even though it is — I am open minded about it. And it is possible. I don’t think we need aliens.

Basically, if we could have — I mean, all you have to do is look at what they are all about in history. Look at the — since the scientific Enlightenment and the rise of science, you know, since the Renaissance times, and how quickly we have progressed to the fact that we can sit here now, doing what we are doing on Skype right now.

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: You know, we are linking the whole planet. It is becoming linked into this — into a grid where we can begin to communicate instantaneously around the planet, because of the fact that we have the satellite system. You know, I mean, think about Google Earth, think about — I mean, all of the technologies and scientific breakthroughs that have occurred in the last century.

I mean, my grandfather who I knew well, when he was a kid, there were no airplanes. You know, there were no — they were still in the horse and buggy days, right. So, here we are only a few generations later, and look at how far we have come.

Now, let’s suppose that in the next decade or two, we have an environment catastrophe on the same scale as what occurred in the Pleistocene Holocene transition 12,000 years ago.

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: What would we expect to see of our civilization 10,000 years from now? Not much at all.

GRAHAM: Yes. That is hard to imagine. Because with all of the — you know, the steel and the glass and the big cities, it is really hard to imagine. But I have heard you explain it before. And it kind of does make sense.

CARLSON: Yes. I mean, the infrastructure we have created requires constant maintenance. Because as soon as we stop maintaining it, it begins to degrade.

Nature quickly begins to seize control. And it doesn’t take long. I mean, we have probably talked about that on a number of other interviews that I have done.

But you know, the idea is that it doesn’t take long you know, for the — a century or two and all of the grounding systems in these tall builders are going to have basically deteriorated to where they are no longer effective. So, then what happens is you have lightning strikes. And these lightning strikes are going to start fires.

And once the glass begins to break, and you have weather entering in, you know, the steel begins to rust. Three or four centuries of the steel rusting, the buildings are going to be collapsing into heaps. Give it another couple of Millennium, the steel is going to have rusted away. It is going to become completely oxidized.

DARREN: It would be hills.

CARLSON: Yes. And you are going to have nature taking over. You will have soil layers over the piles of rubble. And you know, another few Millennium go by. You know, you can be a hunter out walking in the forest, going over a hill and having no idea that that hill was once the rubble of a city. You see. And you know, of all of the architectural materials that we could use to build enduring infrastructure, stone would be the most enduring.

Steel is not that durable over the long term. So, yes. I mean, and this is even just — you know, there is always an if. One of the Discovery Channel or Smithsonian, or somebody did a thing a couple of years ago about, what would happen if humans just abandoned — what if we just left the planet?

DARREN: Yes. I remember. I think that was on the History Channel, where they showed what would happen after this many years and that many years. And it doesn’t take long.

That is funny, because when I was — whenever I watched Ancient Aliens, that seemed to be — that was more of what I took away from it than aliens, so much. Was that there was something going on in our past. You know, humanity’s cycle has been more like up and down than we think.

CARLSON: Yes. Do you know what it is? Go ahead.

GRAHAM: No. I just has an example, because we had a flood here in Calgary a couple of years ago, last December — not December, but last spring or whatever. And I was traveling to the Little River area, where we see the Bow River.

And I was with a couple of friends that used to go there all of the time. And this was after the flood. And there was all of the remnants of the flood and everything. And the river had actually completely changed course.

Like, what we were standing on was hundreds of yards of gravel and rock where the river used to be. And the river in a day or two or overnight hat completely rerouted itself. And now, it is just a bit of a shock to me going, holy fuck. In a day, this river, probably all of the way down for hundreds of miles, I think, just shifted itself.

CARLSON: Yes. And that is exactly what I was talking about earlier, when I was saying that these catastrophes, whether they are even local or regional catastrophes or something on a much larger scale, they will do as much geomorphic work in a day or two, sometimes, as otherwise might take centuries or thousands of years. And what you saw is really a good example of that. There was a flood. So, you guys are out of Calgary?

GRAHAM: Yes.

DARREN: Yes.

CARLSON: Well, you probably know about Okotoks Rock, then. North of Calgary?

DARREN: We know where Okotoks is.

CARLSON: You know, down there.

DARREN: I played baseball there.

CARLSON: Okay. But you don’t remember the big rock.

DARREN: No. I have never heard of that.

CARLSON: The town of Okotoks.

GRAHAM: Okay.

CARLSON: The name, or the Indian term, I forget which tribe it was, that named the Big Rock. It sits out on the prairie south of Calgary. Okay. So, now, you guys have an assignment. And that is, you have to make a short pilgrimage down to the Big Rock.

GRAHAM: Okay.

DARREN: Yes.

GRAHAM: Is that what they named the brewery after? The Big Rock, maybe?

DARREN: Maybe.

GRAHAM: Big Rock Brewery. Yes.

CARLSON: Well, that would have to be. Right.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: Okay. What you have there is an 18,000 ton metaquartzite erratic boulder that was then placed by a flood. And when you are standing there looking at this thing, and trying to comprehend the flood that would have moved that boulder, you are going to start taking a sense of the things that I am talking about.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: And what is really bizarre about this, is that based upon the sedimentology of the ground in which it is sitting in, it is partially sunk into the ground. And it is broken into three pieces.

It was not transported by normal glacier, like a normal glacial erratic. Because of the fact that you — if you go look at it, you will see that it has sharp corners, and you know, it is not ground off like a normal glacial erratic is.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: And here is the other bizarre thing. It is a metatype of metaquartzite rock, whose origin, there is two mountains; Mount Rokeson and Mouth Edith Cabell that have that same type of rock.

Now, this Okotoks is part of what is known as the Foothills Erratics train, because it reaches for 500 miles from the mouth of the Athabasca River down into Montana.

CARLSON: Okotoks is the biggest one of the — there is thousands of them. But Okotoks is the biggest and most impressive one.

But the really bizarre thing about this, and when you are standing here, looking at this massive boulder and thinking about the forces that could move it, appreciate the fact that its origin was on the western side of the Continental Divide. And it is now sitting at the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, out on the prairie.

DARREN: Oh, so those mountains are on Vancouver side.

CARLSON: Yes.

DARREN: Holy fuck.

CARLSON: Yes. On the Vancouver side.

GRAHAM: And what you are saying —

DARREN: They washed over the mountains.

GRAHAM: Well, and it didn’t go over a long period of time, right. It got there pretty quick.

CARLSON: Yes. It had to have gotten there quick. Absolutely. It got there quick. And that is part of the mystery of how you transport an 18,000 ton boulder across the Continental Divide and put it 200 miles south of its original position.

DARREN: Indians are pretty tough dudes.

CARLSON: Yes. Obviously. Well, you know, it is clearly indicative of some type of a major catastrophe. And the flood — most likely, it was transported on an iceberg, because of its pristine condition.

And the fact that there is a couple of thousand of these erratics strewn over the prairie, it suggests that there was an equivalent number of icebergs. And so what you had basically, is an event that appears to have dated right around this major transition that we are talking about, you know, 12,000 years ago.     So, once you guys go down there and look at this thing, you know, you may want to know the whole story of it. Which I would be glad to relate to you. You know, I could even send you pictures, email you some photos of it, so you know what you are looking for.

GRAHAM: Yes.

DARREN: Yes. I need to go check that out for sure. That is like literally 20 minutes from the studio.

CARLSON: Yes. It is in your back yard. And what that is going to do is, that is going to be the thing that I kind of, I think, opens your mind, opens your eyes to these kinds of events that we are talking about here. Because the forces that emplaced those erratics, I think were part of a global event.

And a global event that had, you know, very diverse regional expressions. But, you know, this, in fact in the next — in September, I am going with Graham Hancock. And we may even — we’ll have to see how much time we have.

But we are going to be starting in Washington State, and coming across Idaho and Montana. And we are going to make a road trip from the West Coast, probably the Portland are, to the Minneapolis, Minnesota. And what we are going to do is, we are going to follow the southern margin of the Great Ice Sheet.

And we are going to be documenting evidence that it underwent this catastrophic meltdown. And if we get a chance to divert it, if we have an extra day or two, we are going to divert up into Canada. And we may, because I would like to show Graham the Big Rock, so he begins to really appreciate the kind of forces we are talking about here.

DARREN: Well, if you guys make it up to Canada, we will have to have you guys in the igloo here for an in-person chat.

CARLSON: Yes. And if we don’t, what we should do is stay in touch. And then early next summer, I am planning a major trip that is going to explore Alberta and British Columbia.

GRAHAM: Wow.

CARLSON: Because, I think British Columbia, if you go up in the Canadian Rockies, you know where Prince George is?

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: I think that was ground zero. One of the multiple ground zeros of the last great global catastrophe.

GRAHAM: Wow.

CARLSON: That is the things I want to explore.

GRAHAM: Wow.

CARLSON: Because you see, we are talking about a massive, massive extreme severe disruption of the Ice Sheet Complex, around 12,000 years ago, 13,000 years ago. And as a consequence of that, there were just these enormous floods of meltwater issuing off the front of the ice sheet. And in some cases, these meltwater floods approached a billion cubic feet per second. Which is — I mean, even as I say it, I know you probably don’t have any context or handle to even understand what a billion cubic feet per second looks like.

GRAHAM: No.

CARLSON: No. Well, nobody does.

DARREN: Well, that is funny. Because we were even watching — I don’t know if I was with you, but we were watching some old footage of the Tokyo tsunami. And it is like, watching that, it is like you are watching a movie; it is surreal.

And that is like probably .00001 percent of what was going on when these — well, what probably amounts to what was it, the Biblical floods from all the different religions, was probably so fucking crazy —

CARLSON: Yes. You were watching what, the Asian tsunami, the Japanese one, or the Indonesian one of 2004. Either one, it is mind blowing, isn’t it?

And you are like, the Japanese tsunami, I think the highest recorded wave in one area, and it was because it had the funneling effect of a bay that it went into was 80 feet. I think the average height of the wave when it made landfall was like 20 to 30 feet. Right.

Well, now picture — and I use the image of a tsunami to try to convey to people what is happening. Because the meltwater floods that came off the ice sheet were in fact really, the only comparable things, things that we could compare them to in modern experience is a tsunami.

But there are places, like in Montana, Idaho and Washington, and in British Columbia, where the water — like in some of these valleys, like the Clark Ford Valley, which is one I will be traversing. I don’t know. Have you gotten down into Montana, Idaho, Washington much at all?

GRAHAM: No.

CARLSON: Do you ever get down that way?

DARREN: Well actually, I have got quite a few friends that jump over to like Whitefish area.

CARLSON: That is north of Flathead Lake.

DARREN: Yes. I have never been myself. We did drive to Minnesota a couple of years ago for the Paradigm Symposium. But we had considered going through Montana, but it added like three hours to it already, like a 20 hour drive.

CARLSON: Exactly. Well, there are places there. Now, you picture that the wave that is approaching Japan and causing all of that destruction, 30 to say 50 feet. Well, some of these waves of meltwater, coming off of the ice sheet 12,000 years ago, varied between 500 and 2,000 feet deep. I will, between 500 and 2,000 feet deep.

There are mountain valleys in Montana, in Washington, in Idaho where if you know what you are looking for, you can stand on the valley floor. And you can see the high water marks on the valley walls, where the water, the floodwaters scoured away and left broken, you know, tortured rock with no topsoil.

And you can very clearly see a line of demarcation between the broken rock, the etched rock and then the tree line. And the treeline starts, say at 4,000, let’s say for example, 4,200 feet above sea level.

And you are standing on a valley floor that is 2,000 feet above sea level. So, what you are basically seeing is the passage of a flood through that valley that was over 2,000 feet deep. Now, that is really almost inconceivable.

Now, right there in the Clark Ford Valley, you may be tempted, like to pull up Google Earth if you get a chance. Look at the Clark Ford Valley. And what you will see there, is a valley that is basically about seven miles wide. It varies between three miles and seven miles wide.

And water flowing through there again was over 2,000 feet deep. And it was probably moving on the order of 50 to 60 miles an hour.

Now, the peak discharge of that water, that flood water passing through that valley is estimated to be about 350 million cubic feet per second, okay. So, we are talking about maybe a third of the largest discharge estimated from the melting of the ice 12,000 years ago.

If you took every single stream, creek and river flowing on earth today, every single one, right, added them together. I mean, every river. The Mississippi, the Missouri, the McKenzie, the Yukon, the Columbia, the Rhone, the Rhine, the Thames, the Nile, the Amazon, every one, large and small, added them together, multiply that by ten and you still wouldn’t have the flow that was going through the Clark Ford Valley.

And that was just one of hundreds of flows of meltwater coming off the ice sheet. And all of this ultimately flowing into the oceans of the world, and rapidly bringing sea level up.

DARREN: So, the civilization before us must have been burning too many fossil fuels, too.

CARLSON: Obviously, that is what it was. Yes. They went reached the tipping point. They went from 399, they went from 400 parts per million to 401 parts per —

DARREN: Fucking boom.

CARLSON: That was it. No, I suspect what it was, was a change in the astronomical environment. In looking for triggers, I think the most likely thing was the Earth got caught in a cosmic swarm for a few Millennium.

DARREN: Yes. I think we talked to Robert Schoch about a month and a half ago. And he was talking about some sort of solar outburst, or solar activity causing a rapid melt of the glaciers. And that is kind of why the people who maybe originally made the Easter Island heads there, the Maori.

CARLSON: The Maori?

GRAHAM: Maori.

CARLSON: Maori.

DARREN: The Maoris, yes. All the quarries were under water there, and he figured there had been a couple of hundred foot rise in water, or something like that.

CARLSON: Yes. Now, you know, I — I am certainly open to Robert Schoch’s idea of solar flare. I am still more inclined to think it is more like a celestial bombardment rather than the sun.

However, we have to understand that most cutting edge models suggest that the Solar System operates as a dynamic unity. So, there are variations in the flux of material into the inner solar system from the Oort and the Kuiper Disc. There are also variations in the solar output, changes in the heliosphere that are probably linked to the orbits of the planets.

Some of the work of let’s see, Rhodes W. Fairbridge and others — the late Rhodes W. Fairbridge, if anybody listening wants to look him up, he has done some very good, very interesting work showing that the gravitational influence of the planet can actually — of the planets, particularly Jupiter and Saturn — can induce changes in the heliosphere, that could then in turn affect the geomagnetic field of the Earth. Which would have environment and climatological consequences.

My research — which would be difficult to go into when we are just talking verbal, without graphics and imagery to explain it — basically would suggest that all of the periods of the planets are linked in this kind of cosmic harmony.

And that also, the delivery of material to the inner Solar System, such as comets — because what happened — there is very interesting research that has come out in the last decade or so suggesting that it is a conjunctions of the large outer planets that cause comets in the inner reservoir of the Kuiper Disc to become unstable and begin to migrate towards the sun.

GRAHAM: Uh-huh.

CARLSON: Well, if you have a large cometary object, let’s say, 20 to 50 miles or a hundred miles in diameter, and these objects begin to come into the inner solar system, they undergo a hierarchy of disintegrations that requires maybe 10,000 or 20,000 years to go from a single integrated comet nucleus into a meteor stream. And during this time, the meteor stream and the comet orbit undergoes processional changes, which can cause epochs where these streams are passing though the Earth’s orbit, right.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: So, what happens is, when Earth’s orbit is intersecting the orbit of a disintegrating comet or a meteor stream, the potential for an impact goes up exponentially, from the normal background.

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: And there is a group of British Neo-Catastrophists, Bill — William Napier, Victor Kloob, and a number of others that have been working on this since the early 80s or even late 70s, suggesting that there are epochs of accelerated bombardments, which are generally caused by large comets being delivered to the inner Solar System, undergoing a hierarchy of disintegrations and then Earth encountering the by-products of those disintegrations.

And let’s say the Earth runs through a stream of cosmic dust. Well, what that is going to do is, it is going to increase the opacity of the atmosphere, reduce the amount of solar energy that can reach the surface, and induce a global cooling.

And you know, let’s say that on the other hand, debris falls into the ocean and lost water vapor into the atmosphere. Well, you know, the most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor.

DARREN: So, the water car is not a good idea.

GRAHAM: Say that again?

DARREN: So, the water car is not a good idea.

CARLSON: I don’t know about the water car, but why not? [inaudible] water.

GRAHAM: So, is that part of a regular cycle, like of a great year, then. Is that why people think that you know, every 5,000 years or so —

DARREN: Yes. But the Earth, like how long does it take for the Solar System to go around like the side of the galaxy? It seems like the Earth takes a long time before the Earth is ever in the same place again. It is like every day is a new day and a new adventure.

CARLSON: Yes. Well, it takes a couple of hundred million years for you to go around the Bat Galaxy completely. Now, of course, within that span of time, the Solar System is oscillating above and below the galactic plane. Most of the debris of the Solar System in dark matter is concentrated along the galactic plane.

So, part of the hypothesis of people like Victor Kloob and others of the Neo Catastrophists school is that — you know, Michael Rappino, I think, has done a bunch of work along these lines and others, suggesting that when the Solar System is passing through the galactic plane, we are going to be more subject to disruptions.

Now, you have got to picture, when you think of the Solar System, it is eight planets plus Pluto, and Pluto is the outermost. And beyond that, there is nothing. Well, that is an old model, obsolete. What we now know is that outside of the orbit of Neptune, Uranus and Neptune is this disc of billion of comets.

DARREN: The Oort cloud, isn’t it? The Oort cloud?

GRAHAM: This is right around the planet.

CARLSON: Yes. This is the Kuiper Disc. Named after Gerard Kuiper who first theorized that it existed. And outside of the Kuiper Disc is the Oort cloud. And the Oort cloud is like a spherical shell of hundreds of billions of comets. Right.

Now, think of it this way. You have got this spherical shell of comets that reaches literally halfway to the nearest stars, right. A couple of light years out it reaches. And then on the inner stages of the Kuiper Disc, it grades in, of the Oort cloud, it grades into this Kuiper Disc, right.

DARREN: Uh-huh.

CARLSON: Now, it appears that the Kuiper Disc is kind of like a holding reservoir between the outer zones of the Oort cloud and the inner planetary zone. The Oort cloud sees to be affected by forces on a galactic level, like changes in the galactic environment, potentially like I described. The passage of the Solar System through the galactic plane.

GRAHAM: Right.

CARLSON: Perhaps nearby supernovas causing disruptions within the Oort cloud, which will send a scattering of comets that will begin making long spiral orbits, that will bring them into the Kuiper Disc. Okay. That becomes like a holding pen if you will.

Now, the inner zones of the Kuiper Disc, it is in a quasi-stable situation, where you know, it takes very little to perturb them in their orbit. But there actually isn’t many forces, gravitation or otherwise that can perturb them.

However, recent work has suggested that conjunctions of the large outer planets can cause enough of a gravitational nudge on the quasi-stable comets on the inner Kuiper Disc to dislodge them. Once they become dislodged, they are going to do one of two things. They are either going to move away from the sun, or they are going to move closer to the sun.

If they move closer to the sun, and they become within the orbit of Neptune, well, what happens now, now they are within the gravitational field of the planets. And you can actually begin — it has been likened to a bucket brigade where the planets, it just so happens coincidentally, that their masses and their distances are exactly spaced such that they would need to be in order to transfer comets from the Kuiper Disc to the inner Solar System. Now, that has some interesting implications.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: One is, that it suggests that if the models, the exo-biological models of life’s origin on earth are accurate, which I think that they are probably on the right track, assuming that the introduction of life on Earth was extraterrestrial.

GRAHAM: Like a panspermia kind of thing?

CARLSON: Panspermia. Exactly. And so if comets are the primary instrument by which you know, biological precursors are delivered to Earth —

GRAHAM: Okay.

CARLSON: Now, what you have is, that it requires the architecture of the entire Solar System to accomplish that. You see?

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: So it is — again, it is like when we start with, like the SETI program, where we are looking at other planets, we are discovering there is all kinds of other planets. But what we see when we look at our planet is sort of like the Goldilocks paradigm

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: Which is that it has to be just right, you know. It is either too big or too little. Too close to the sun. Too far away. You know, the presence of a Moon like we have, would be absolutely imperative. Because without the Moon, you have no tides. Without tides, you don’t have any inner tidal zone. Without an inner tidal zone, you can’t get life from the oceans onto the land.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: It is really — when you begin to look at it, it is almost as if — you know, I hate to say this.

GRAHAM: Design?

CARLSON: Design. Yes. It does.

GRAHAM: Yes.

CARLSON: It has that. Either that, or just by random coincidence of you know, the universe and creation, we happen to be inhabiting the one system where everything is just right.

(Break.)

(End of Part One.)

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