Matrix

The Matrix

August 26, 2012

September 11, 2012

September 30, 2012: A Refined GESTO

October 1,

UFO-Science:

A 36-page editorial

and

a one-hour fifty-minute video

I recently rewatched the film The Matrix, released in 1999. Only the beginning of the movie genuinely interests me. However, likely for commercial reasons, the director had to weave in spectacular fights—Kung-Fu and all that. The film’s ending begins with a high-speed massacre: Neo and Trinity gun down dozens of helmeted humans. Then, attention shifts to a final duel between "the chosen one" and "Agent Smith," each using their "superpowers." Rapid punches, special effects, and spatial illusions. Neo, the Christ of the 21st century, stops bullets with his mind, etc...

Boring, clichéd, but "necessarily commercial." Without this, the film probably wouldn’t have succeeded.

The heroes of The Matrix: Trinity, Neo, and Morpheus

What I take from this film is a very relevant allegory of the world we see developing more and more each day before our eyes (though we’ll return to this parallel after many digressions along the way).

What is the plot? A young man, Neo, an IT specialist working for a large corporation during the day, leads a secret life as a highly skilled hacker. It is through his computer that he makes contact with mysterious individuals, led by a certain Morpheus.

At the same time, this group attempts to reach out to him, while other equally mysterious figures—wearing dark glasses and displaying chilling coldness—seize him and implant a device into his body through his navel.

One of the "agents" serving the Matrix

He wakes up in his apartment, wondering whether he was hallucinating, whether this story about the implant was just a bad dream.

Then, Morpheus’s group takes him and abducts him in a vehicle. A woman threatens him with a revolver while another applies an "implant extractor" to his navel. Neo sees a bloody, wriggling object resembling an insect being placed into a transparent capsule.

• So it was true after all! he says...

He is then offered a choice: follow the instructions given to him, or get out of the vehicle.

He chooses the first option and finds himself face-to-face with Morpheus. The latter explains that his life as he knows it isn’t truly real. He offers Neo a chance to face reality by making a choice. In his hands are two pills: one blue, one red. If he takes the blue pill, the world will remain as he perceives it. If he takes the red pill, everything could change—but this new state of consciousness would become irreversible.

Neo chooses to swallow the red pill.

All of this reminds me of the presentation given by American billionaire Jimmy Walter regarding the first video investigation challenging the official version of the events of September 11, 2001, which emerged online.

As far as I know, he was quite seriously ill (I don’t know what happened to him afterward). He decided to use some of his money to fund a conference, held, I believe, at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Walter financed the travel of dissidents and experts, as well as the recording and editing of the event. Then, he produced and distributed large numbers of DVDs, freely available to anyone who requested them.

I know he came to France and spoke before journalists, distributing this document. He was surprised that they gave it no attention.

Finally, in his last act, he paid for the hosting of a website from which the film Confronting the Evidence—which lasted, if I recall correctly, three hours—was "viewable." The video file was subtitled in numerous languages.

At the time, I had already published many personal reflections on the events of September 11, 2001, on my website. When I saw this video appear, I immediately posted the following call on my site:

• I don’t personally know how to save this file. But those who can, please do so, because this site won’t be around for long.

This was done by only a very small number of internet users. Two or three managed to save the image file and the corresponding French and English audio files. Barely in time, as I believe the site disappeared from the web within less than forty-eight hours.

This was a significant event in internet history. Censorship hadn’t been fast enough. The fact that several internet users had saved these files made it extremely difficult to block them.

I believe this is what gave rise to the website reopen9/11.

I still remember Jimmy Walter’s presentation.

At one point, he said:

In part 1, when Jimmy Walter gives his presentation. At t = 3 min 33

The short video clip, in avi format.

This honest Jimmy Walter said:

"Get ready—the awakening will be brutal."

Walter was deluding himself. It wasn’t brutal. Ten years later, in 2011,

there was no awakening at all.

Everything in a single image.

And in this other one:

Billions of human beings, millions in our country, returned to sleep, consuming artificial dreams in their individual bathtubs filled with pink gel. No echo in our press, to the point that I judged it useless—like with other topics—to try to awaken my readers. I decided instead to focus the little energy I had left at age 75 on the dangers of nuclear power. In fact, recently, the magazine Inrockuptible sent a young journalist to investigate "conspiracy theorists," of whom I was one, she said (she based her report on the "vox populi" of internet forums).

At the time when Walter’s video was released, having not yet seen The Matrix, I didn’t understand the allusion. Today, it’s become crystal clear to me.

According to what I’ve read, both on Wikipedia and on the website of a humanitarian association he sponsors (which is under threat), he now lives outside the United States. Here are, immediately provided by a reader, the links to this video document recorded in 2004, three years after the events—and eight years ago.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xecpx_911-confronting-the-evidence-1-3_news

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xecqv_911-confronting-the-evidence-2-3_news

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xecsa_911-confronting-the-evidence-3-3_news

Now let’s return to The Matrix. Having chosen the red pill, Neo escapes from the simulation in which he was trapped. I see this scene as a very powerful allegory.

Instead of imagining himself as a simple programmer working for a company, "paying his taxes and helping his landlady carry out her trash," he finds himself floating in a kind of bathtub filled with pink liquid. His body is connected to multiple tubes.

Looking around, he sees an endless number of human beings, similarly imprisoned, floating in this pink fluid, linked by countless tubes.

Do you recognize yourself in one of these pods?

I found this image very powerful.

He manages to escape this sinister prison and finds himself "somewhere," accompanied by Morpheus and his new companions. These people "live" aboard a "ship" and have escaped what they call "the Matrix." Neo’s body is covered in scars marking where multiple tubes once sustained his vital functions, keeping him in this pseudo-life.

After these people "rebuild his muscles," a rite of passage begins under Morpheus’s guidance. He recounts history, explaining that "machines" took control of a planet ravaged and transformed by its human inhabitants into a heap of ruins.

The machines, having become intelligent, realized they could harness energy from humans—a form of bio-energy—provided they enslaved them, keeping them fed with substances enabling growth and allowing them a "form of life," totally virtual (we’re rapidly approaching this reality). In exchange, the machines would benefit from all the natural energy generated by human bodies.

To keep humans in this state of servitude, the machines created various interactive programs that delivered stimuli to these human beings—true vegetables—perceived as "the world they live in."

A world extremely well-crafted, capable of lasting indefinitely, were it not for a few "rebels," led by Morpheus, who somehow miraculously escaped this slavery. These rebels manage to contact other humans, pulling them from their zombie-like condition, provided they’re willing to land in this "real life"—which isn’t particularly pleasant. On the "ship," comfort is minimal and food is poor.


This "machine world" has spawned a kind of "police," hunting down these rebels. They aren’t human beings, but tracking and destruction programs.

A vision quite extraordinary, in the literal sense of the word.

I now wish to attempt decoding this allegory and explain how I see things.

Humanity: A Symbiotic Mammal

Since humans learned to chip stones and make fire—since they experienced this "extra-biological" development by creating technology in all its forms—they have become a symbiotic creature, living in symbiosis with the mechanization they created.

Initially, this symbiosis was limited to the body. His knives, his spears, were artificial fangs. The clothes he made protected him from cold, becoming an artificial skin. This ensured survival. Soon, these external attributes became indispensable, even vital. Without weapons, he’d be devoured. Without clothes, cold would kill him.

Fire became an astonishing technological advancement. It provided calories during cold weather. Its light allowed him to venture into dark places like caves and live there. Cooking food made it more digestible. This "extra-corporeal digestion" opened up a wider range of edible products for humans.

At this stage, he was already fully symbiotic—meaning that if we removed these attributes or "gadgets," he wouldn’t survive.

He invented ranged weapons, killing at ever-greater distances. He used poison, enabling him to defeat animals much stronger than himself. He created defensive weapons: shields, armor.

The development of his articulated language didn’t stem from a new symbiosis. Humans simply used their phonation abilities more effectively—something primates lack. Their communication capabilities were thus enhanced.

Writing represents another step in symbiosis. Writing implies a material support. And this support immediately gained the ability to

propagate messages through space and time.

What the tribe or group passed down was no longer limited to oral tradition but contained limitless possibilities.

The invention of paper, followed by printing, multiplied communication possibilities—and also the potential for "brainwashing," vehicles for diverse ideologies, and the structuring of belief systems.

Development of Human-Machine Symbiosis

I recently watched a video about Watt’s machine. Before this invention, humans already knew how to use natural elements to generate work: falling water, wind. They had also domesticated draft animals. Watt created the first true machine, increasing

the symbiosis between man and machine.

I believe we can now confidently jump to the modern era. Let’s skip the countless offshoots and variations stemming from technological development. Today, what is truly new?

If we consider the level of World War II, not much has changed in fact. Radio replaced couriers or homing pigeons, and bombers replaced ancient catapults. It was only in 1945 that humanity entered a new phase of its symbiosis with machines, with the advent of nuclear weapons, which quickly underwent a delirious, hyper-teleological (translating an unprecedented "overcoming of finality") development.

Their non-use stems from the inability so far to miniaturize nuclear weapons. Whether fission or fusion-based, we haven’t yet gone below the 300-ton TNT equivalent threshold necessary for critical mass.

For those unfamiliar with this concept: a nuclear explosion via fission is triggered by a chain reaction when a given mass—called "critical mass"—is assembled in a compact geometry.

• It’s 48 kilograms for uranium-235 and 10 kilograms for plutonium-239.

This mass can be reduced if the metal is compressed under extremely high pressure, created by explosives arranged around a hollow sphere made of fissile material. This was first demonstrated on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, when the spherical "Gadget" device was detonated from the top of a tower during the Trinity test. Twenty-four days later, on August 9, 1945, a similar bomb, dubbed "Fat Man," was dropped on Nagasaki.

The plutonium bomb "Fat Man"

The "percussion" material is heavy—uranium-238 (heavier than lead). When fission begins, the fission plasma expands immediately, pushing atoms apart and effectively halting the chain reaction. Thus, only a small fraction of the fissile material undergoes fission. In this sense, the atomic bomb is an inertial confinement system (thanks to the inertia of the "percussion" material).

People tend to believe this second bombing was conducted to "test a plutonium bomb."

The first bomb in history, dropped on Hiroshima, was uranium-based.

Excerpt from Wikipedia: the structure of the uranium bomb "Little Boy"

It’s uncertain whether this diagram is perfectly authentic. Something is missing that would prevent the bomb from functioning. If the cannon’s core were filled with air, compression would oppose the assembly of the two uranium pieces. It would have been better to evacuate the air from it. With precautions to prevent accidental firing due to air ingress.

The plutonium bomb was the first tested, at Alamogordo, on U.S. soil, on July 16, 1945 (Trinity test). It was a spherical device named "Gadget," suspended at the top of a tower.

The first plutonium fission bomb test at Alamogordo, July 16, 1945

This plutonium-239, also fissile, was synthesized (with a half-life of 24,000 years, it doesn’t exist naturally on Earth) by running a uranium reactor at full power, built at Hanford along the Columbia River. It produced fast neutrons that transmuted non-fissile uranium-238 into fissile plutonium-239. This development was extremely rapid. The first uranium reactor, built by Italian Enrico Fermi, operated under the stands of Chicago’s stadium in 1942. It worked immediately and was instantly scaled up by a factor of a thousand.

Twenty-four days later, the same device—now with a casing—exploded over Nagasaki. This test was conducted solely to assess the effects of plutonium-239 bombs on buildings and civilian populations. The first bomb dropped on Hiroshima might have been sufficient to impress the Japanese military leadership and prompt surrender. If surrender had delayed, the second bomb could then have been used.

I note in passing that uranium-235 and plutonium-239 aren’t the only atoms capable of sustaining chain reactions or "autocatalytic dissociations" (via emitted neutrons).

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masse_critique_%28r%C3%A9action_nucl%C3%A9aire%29

However, uranium-235 is the only fissile atom found naturally in trace amounts (0.7%) in ore, due to its sufficiently long half-life (700 million years). As we’ll see later, everything found in Earth’s crust was produced during supernova explosions. Only elements with sufficiently long half-lives survived. Others don’t exist naturally in the crust.

Thanks to the system compressing a hollow sphere (mainly plutonium), critical mass could be reduced to just a few kilograms. But these weapons suffer from their power and toxicity. It’s extremely difficult to use them without the attacker risking harmful radioactive fallout—due to the ejection of radioactive debris into the upper atmosphere and the thermal updraft caused by intense heat release. We must also consider the "balance of terror," the "MAD" effect ("mutual assured destruction").

Nevertheless, nuclear weapons are still used in the "discreet" form of depleted uranium shells (uranium-238). This is the reprocessing of enrichment waste from natural ore, which contains only 0.7% fissile uranium. The argument is that uranium-238 is both heavier than lead and dense enough to penetrate thick armor.

But beyond this penetrating power, uranium-238 is

pyrophoric—it burns brilliantly in air, producing fumes that "the enemy," or "civilians to punish" or "to bring under control," will inhale, or pulverized waste that will be ingested, causing teratogenic effects.

There have been treaties regarding anti-personnel mines, but nothing about this new weapon.

At this point, a remark is necessary. The materials composing terrestrial planets—solid bodies—are the result of

accretion

from debris created by supernova explosions. Without developing a full course on the mechanisms of

nucleosynthesis,

we note that the primordial universe consisted of hydrogen nuclei (simple protons), mixed with electrons, forming a plasma.

Digression on Nucleosynthesis

As long as the temperature of the cosmic soup exceeds one billion degrees, no nucleus can form. When it drops below this threshold after three minutes, helium forms. This is the first

nucleosynthesis.

It ends after 35 minutes, when the temperature falls below 300 million degrees. At the end of this process, the cosmos consists of 75% hydrogen nuclei and 25% helium nuclei (two protons and two neutrons).

The universe then enters a long period of dormancy. Nothing else can form. What gives rise to galaxies, and eventually stars, is a mechanism discovered by Englishman

Sir James Jeans

(1877–1946):

gravitational instability.

Consulting his Wikipedia page, I discover some of his thoughts:

• The flow of knowledge points toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to resemble a great thought more than a machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder in the realm of matter... we should instead welcome it as the creator and governor of matter.

• Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

(excerpt from one of his many popular science books: The Mysterious Universe).

The carbon atom is tetravalent. It can bond with different atoms, producing a vast array of compounds. These bonds can form, break, and change at temperatures close to "ordinary temperature"—that is, between boiling water and melting ice—giving rise to biochemistry. We know life adapts well to temperatures near these two extremes.

Buy quickly the August 2012 issue of Science et Vie

This shift is historic. On page 64, the magazine references past issues, including two from the 2000s, where the idea of Earth’s life being unique was still emphasized.

But now, the magazine shifts gears. Terrestrial planets have been discovered among the 800 exoplanets found in the past 15 years. Among them are candidates whose orbits place them "in the habitable zone."

The arguments?

• Water is found everywhere in the universe (page 58)

• Most planetary systems ultimately resemble our own: flat systems (with an "ecliptic plane"), terrestrial planets near the star, large gas giants at the periphery, low orbital eccentricity. In short, stable systems (page 59)

• Life can colonize places previously considered uninhabitable. In deep oceans, bacteria thrive near thermal vents where temperatures approach 100°C. The same applies to pressure, pH, and acidity or alkalinity of the environment (page 62).

• Supernovae aren’t as harmful as thought (page 63).

• A moon isn’t necessary to stabilize a planet’s rotation and enable life to emerge (page 65).

On this last point, scientists previously invoked

chaos theory,

arguing that Earth’s motion could be chaotic—unsuitable for life. Only the presence of its satellite could stabilize its rotation. But they forget that chaos theory models planetary motion as rigid, massive spheres. It overlooks

dissipative mechanisms

and

tidal effects.

Tidal effects act on all celestial bodies—whether the Sun, gas giants, or terrestrial planets. They cause mixing within the medium (plasma in the Sun, gas, liquid, or magma in planets), generating heat that is then dissipated into space as radiation.

These tidal effects are key to the entire dynamics of the solar system. It’s them that rapidly converge the chaotic dance of proto-planets around their star. Among all these bodies, the one that imposes the ecliptic plane is the one with the greatest angular momentum (MRV)—in this case, Jupiter.

A Jupiter that causes the Sun to adjust its rotation axis to become perpendicular to the orbit of "the king of gods." Because Jupiter’s angular momentum—due to its rotation around the solar system’s center—is greater than the Sun’s, which also orbits that center.

Planets

exchange energy via tidal effects,

using the Sun’s amorphous mass as a resonator. Souriau calculated that planets raise the Sun’s surface by one centimeter—a massive effect. Any planet creates this tidal effect on the Sun, which, not being solid, responds to any perturbation regardless of origin. The gravitational field is thus altered, and this alteration is perceived by all bodies orbiting the Sun. Thus, planets exchange energy "via the Sun." Since this effect varies inversely with the cube of distance, Saturn affects Mercury’s orbit as much as Mercury affects Saturn’s. Orbits settle into the ecliptic plane and become circular. Planetary rotation axes evolve to become perpendicular to the plane where the most matter now resides—the ecliptic plane. As planets rotate, this realignment of their axes can only happen gradually. Hence a motion of

precession.

Want an idea of this precession? Buy a small gyroscope from any toy store, and instead of placing it on a table, hang it from a string—you’ll see it do this:

Precession motion of a suspended gyroscope

whose axis tends to become vertical

Still, we must eventually find an explanation for the various anomalies in the solar system—such as Uranus, a giant planet, having its rotation axis completely tilted on the ecliptic plane.

Let’s move on...

The Explosion of Exoplanets

Thus, very quickly, a statistical calculation: the universe would contain

10 billion trillion habitable planets!!

An interesting detail, noted by those who know:

it seems that "viable" planets orbit around the most common stars in our galaxy—stars not identical to our Sun. On page 60, we read: "In eight years, the HARPS spectrograph has indeed recruited 102 stars, called red dwarfs, discovered 9 rocky planets, and provided a fundamental figure: 41% of red dwarf stars have a rocky planet in the habitable zone. These are stars ten times less massive than the Sun and 100 times less luminous. Yet these stars make up 80% of the Milky Way’s stars, which could harbor tens of billions of habitable planets!"

Red dwarf stars have surface temperatures below 4,000°C, while our Sun’s is 5,750°C.

Because these stars are less luminous, for a planet to lie in the "water zone," it must be closer. Since the square of orbital periods varies with the cube of semi-major axes, the year on these planets would also be shorter than ours. If the rotation axis is inclined relative to the orbital plane, seasons would be... shorter! By how much? Calculate using a factor of 100 for insolation. The orbital radius is ten times smaller than Earth’s. The orbital period is 31 times shorter than Earth’s, resulting in years of 12 days and seasons of 3 days!

If life developed preferentially on planets orbiting within the water zone around cooler, less luminous stars than our Sun, this would mean most life-bearing planets wouldn’t experience seasonal cycles. Just a simple observation.

Of course, the higher the star’s surface temperature, the longer the "year." We’d go from tens of days to a few months. Why not?

What’s interesting is that instead of wasting time waiting at Arecibo for a possible message from an alien civilization sent via such a primitive and slow medium as radio waves, astronomers have focused on detecting atmospheric measurements during planetary transits. If spectroscopic data reveal free oxygen and various "bio-markers," this would betray the presence of life on that planet.

What form of life? That’s the question. The imagination of our science journalists falters here. On page 73, we read:

• If there is single-celled life, there’s a possibility it could become multicellular. Then an entire ecosystem could develop, with many different species (page 71).

What audacity, sheer boldness!

Minds evolve slowly. Hubert Reeves, now 80 years old, has even observed that Nature, at the atomic and molecular level, shows little imagination. Could there then be preferred pathways taken by life, he wonders? Since formic acid is found in interstellar clouds, why not suggest such a lack of imagination in the development of these multicellular beings? From there to imagining humanoid beings emerging elsewhere—with two eyes, two arms, two legs—it’s but a small step.

Well, I imagine we’ll have to wait another good fifteen years before this devastating idea takes root in this journal. Let’s not go further down this slippery slope that leads to excommunication.

Always nucleosynthesis

Before discussing "The Matrix," let’s briefly mention its material substrate. When stars form, nucleosynthesis resumes. In the hearts of stars, hydrogen atoms fuse to produce helium once again. This occurs in two different ways, depending on the star's mass. In stars of modest mass, this synthesis happens directly. You’ll find the diagram of this process, called the "proton-proton chain," at

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_nucl%C3%A9aire

In more massive stars, helium is produced through a "carbon-nitrogen-oxygen" cycle in which carbon acts as a catalyst (it is recycled with each cycle).

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_carbone-azote-oxyg%C3%A8ne

I translated the book "The Stars" from English in 1989, part of the Time-Life series.

Translated from English by ... Jean-Pierre Petit

If some rediscover this book, with its gray cover, in a library or secondhand, they may find my name on the last page, in small letters. The illustrations were hideous, but the text fascinated me.

Online:

http://www.amazon.fr/Les-Etoiles-Time-Life-Books/dp/273440480X

Flipping through the copy I have, I come across some data. Massive stars, whose mass exceeds 8–12 solar masses, "burn their hydrogen from both ends." In the end, in less than a million years, they’ve exhausted this "fusion fuel."

Then, helium atoms fuse to create heavier elements: carbon (12 nucleons, actually an "assembly" of three helium nuclei), and oxygen (16 nucleons: an assembly of four helium nuclei).

The fusion reactions then produce neon (20 nucleons, 10 protons and 10 neutrons—equivalent to five helium nuclei) and magnesium (24 nucleons, 12 protons and 12 neutrons—equivalent to six helium nuclei).

Then silicon forms (28 nucleons, 14 protons and 14 neutrons—equivalent to seven helium nuclei), and sulfur (32 nucleons, 16 protons and 16 neutrons—equivalent to eight helium nuclei).

• Synthesis of oxygen and carbon: one million years
• Of neon and magnesium: one thousand years
• Of silicon and sulfur: less than one year

The star then resembles an onion, with elements distributed in successive layers ordered by mass.

This is where things go wrong. In just a few days, silicon and sulfur produce iron. Up to this point, fusion reactions were exo-energetic. The energy released heated the star’s core, and the resulting pressure counteracted gravitational collapse. For the process to continue along this logic, iron would need to be able to combine with any element present in the star to keep producing energy. But this proves impossible.

Iron becomes the ash of fusion reactions.

And ash doesn’t burn.

What is ash?

When you gaze into a fireplace, you see an architecture built from stacked logs. As they burn, this structure gradually collapses. When everything is consumed, only a gray layer of ash remains in the chimney. Gravity has won. The bonds between the molecules that made up the wood have been destroyed one by one. Much of the carbon has combined with oxygen from the air to form CO₂, which escapes through the chimney. But what remains?

Wood ash—what is it?

• 20 to 25% calcium oxide (quicklime)
• 13% potassium oxide (potash) and sodium oxide (soda)
• 9% various oxides, including magnesium and iron

The balance doesn’t add up. Refer to the encyclopedia. The key point: fire operates through exothermic oxidation reactions using oxygen from the air. But oxides are well known—they don’t burn.