Project LUCAS
Borderland Sciences SETI
Project
Detecting Biodynamic Signals
Interstellar Communication
by Michael Theroux
HISTORICALLY, the alleged
reception of signals of an extraterrestrial origin dates back to
the very beginnings of radio. In fact, we find that the recent
history of the investigation into interstellar communications is
almost completely restricted to the science of radio astronomy
— a technology which is quite limited due to the necessity
of obeying the confines of the electromagnetic spectrum. Early in
his career, Dr. L. George Lawrence recognized this limitation,
and sought to overcome it by introducing a means of communication
which was not bound by conventional electromagnetic laws.
"Biological" or "Biodynamic" communication,
as Lawrence called it, found its medium completely outside of the
electromagnetic spectrum, and therefore solved many of the
problems facing the prevailing radio-astronomical methodology of
interstellar communication. To comprehend the complexity of these
problems, we must briefly detail the historical background of
conventional interstellar communications (hereinafter referred to
as ICOMM).
Radio Astronomy and the Birth
of ICOMM
Both Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi would
be remembered for their early pronouncements of receiving
"alien" signals (see "Communicating with Mars"),
but it wasn’t until 1930 that the birth of radio astronomy
and the consequent reception of radio signals of galactic origin
heralded the beginnings of ICOMM. Karl Jansky, an American radio
engineer, was the first to pinpoint signals originating from the
center of the galaxy in the 30s. Shortly after World War II and
the development of RADAR, the military began frequently
intercepting radio signals originating from outer space. With
this development, the first large radio telescopes would be
employed for purely scientific purposes.
The first plan to monitor the stars for signs
of intelligent life was conducted by Frank Drake, the then
Director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) at
Green Bank, West Virginia in 1960. The project was called
"Ozma", after the imaginary land of Oz, from L. Frank
Baum’s Wizard of Oz. The intended targets were Tau
Ceti (11.9 light years from earth) and Epsilon Eridani (10.8
light years from earth). After observing for a total time of
about 4 weeks in the region of the 21-centemeter hydrogen band,
no signals were found. Thus, ended Project Ozma — and to
this day — no signals have been found by any standard
radio-astronomical methods. Many so-called SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) projects, and several millions of
dollars in funding later, have turned up nothing. Even NASA
showed interest for awhile, spending $60-70 million since 1971,
but in the early 1990s, they dumped SETI and other projects from
their budget.
The SETI institute’s latest endeavor,
called Project Phoenix, began in February 1995 at the Parkes
radio astronomy observatory in New South Wales, Australia. So
far, they have managed to bring in more than $7.3 million in
private donations for their efforts. State-of-the-art equipment
was used to listen to about 200 southern hemisphere stars,
scanning 28 million channels simultaneously at single-Hertz
resolution using the 64 meter radio telescope. A follow-up
telescope located 120 miles away allowed them to distinguish
between terrestrial and galactic signals by utilising Doppler
shift. But, still no ET. Promising signals have all turned out to
be things such as satellites, military radar, and even TV
stations. They haven’t given up though, and plan to focus on
900 northern hemisphere stars next.
The Problem with
Radio-astronomical ICOMM
The major difficulty with radio-astronomical
ICOMM is that at its foundation can lie some very uncreative
quantitative assumptions. The basis for the entirety of this
research assumes that an extraterrestrial civilisation’s
technology is comparable to, and has evolved to a state equal to
our own. Without thought, academia casually presupposes that
there are many, "...civilisations intelligent enough to
build radio transmitters," and "...several million
civilisations matching the Earth’s standard of
development." Quite an egotistical assumption for a
culture that admits no solution to the mysteries of their own
ancient civilisations!
Because technology on this planet has evolved
in a specific direction (in this case toward the quantitative and
mechanistic) does not foreordain that any other
civilisation’s technological evolution must parallel ours.
It is quite possible, and certainly probable that many
civilisations of galactic origin may have technologically evolved
toward the perceptive and qualitative. These may be the standards
by which they seek to communicate, and may offer greater success
considering the great distances with which ICOMM necessitates.
Language of the Stars
The most difficult obstacle to overcome
concerning ICOMM lies with the exchange of information.
Since conventional presumption is so anthropomorphically
restrained, the academics insist on using our own cultural and
societal development as a guide to choosing the proper cosmic
linguistic form. Simple messages, binary call signals,
pictograms, and even an artificial schematic language called Lincos
have been suggested and even transmitted to the stars. But, even
simple language can pose incredible difficulty for scholars
wishing to make an interpretation. Earlier advanced cultures on
our own planet have left us with innumerable writings which still
evade academia’s decryption. Even the late skeptic and
mechanist Carl Sagan foresaw this conundrum: "European
scholars spent more than a century in entirely erroneous attempts
to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the
Rosetta Stone [1799] and the brilliant attack on its translation
by Young and Champollion. Some ancient languages, such as the
glyphs of Easter Island, the writings of the Mayas, and some
varieties of Cretan script, remain completely undecoded at the
present time ...how can we expect that a civilization vastly more
advanced than we, and based on entirely different biological
principles, could ever send a message we could understand?"
Dr. L. George Lawrence was clearly aware of
these facts before he began his pioneering efforts in biodynamic
ICOMM. Dr. Lawrence proposed that certain advanced civilisations
would have developed a means of communication utilising purely
biological principles. This biological exchange of information
has been previously outlined, which also detail Dr.
Lawrence’s experiments in biodynamic transfer of
information. Dr. Lawrence stated that these galactic cultures may
have communicated by a method now lost to our civilisation —
biological communication — where the biodynamic
energy transfer acts as the carrier, and the patternate content
is the modulation. This patternate content is an actual eidoform,
or complete eidetic picture. As an alternative to conventional
radio reception, biodynamic information appears to be transmitted
in a longitudinal point-to-point fashion. One wouldn’t have
to wait light years for the reception of a message — it
could be nearly instantaneous.
Determining the Method of
Transmission
Dr. Lawrence was not without his own
assumptions concerning the possible methods of galactic
transmission. Of course, we have to begin somewhere, and Dr.
Lawrence, being a radio engineer, followed the simple progression
entailed in sending and receiving conventional radio
communications. This follows the Russian theorist Y.I.
Kuznetzov’s outline of the communication process via the
concepts of communication, coding, signal, and modulation.
Lawrence’s version would be detailed thusly: The communication
(Eidetic picture) would be converted into a form suitable for
transmission (biodynamic signal), the coding being the method of
conversion, and the modulation (patternate content) would be the
change in the parameters of the emission serving as the carrier
of the (biodynamic) signal. For reception, one would simply
reverse this process.
Dr. Lawrence arrived at these conclusions based
on his qualitative analysis of the sound emitted from his
experimental setup. The modulations he heard displayed a
character not unlike other conventional transmissions, which led
him to work on their immediate conversion to visual images. At
the very heart of Dr. Lawrence’s system was a unique form of
biodynamic transducer which enabled him to receive and transmit
signals of a biological origin.
Qualitative to Quantitative
Analysis: Biosensor Technology and the Biodynamic Transducer
Early in Dr. Lawrence’s career, he began
work on a series of transducers of biodynamic energy. In order to
utilise quantitative measuring instruments, biodynamic energy
would need to be converted or transduced into electrical energy.
Initial experiments commenced with simple Wheatstone bridge
circuits and plant material as the biosensor. Although the plant
material reacted to biodynamic stimuli such as touch, and even
directed thought, this was found to be unwieldy as the plant
material was possessive of its own consciousness. It could easily
become fatigued and stressed, or would simply seem unconcerned
when experimental matters were conducted. Dr. Lawrence then began
a systematic search of the organic semiconductor library for an
answer. He found that a simple mixture of protein complexes, a
sort of primeval soup as it were, produced remarkable results.
But, the problem of tuning to specific biodynamic energies still
existed. One needed to capture individual responses to particular
stimuli in order to rule out any possibility of unwanted
artifact. This necessitated the addition of special substances to
the soup, to be used as what Lawrence termed the
"excitation" mixture. These ranged from
organo-methylglyoxol compounds to a variety of mineral
compositions — each with their individual response
characteristics. Now, the qualitative reactions of this
biological "soup" could be directly transduced into a
quantitative electrical signal via the use of high impedance
amplifiers, and when mixed with a local oscillator, produced the
desired output signal for analysis.
Project Lucas
Project LUCAS, named after Dr. L. George
Lawrence, was designed with the intention of re-creating these
biodynamic interstellar communications experiments. Myself and
researcher Michael Elsey journeyed to the High Desert area of the
Joshua Tree National Monument for the re-creation. Many months of
preparation preceded the actual experiments — the
fabrication of biosensors and electronic equipment, laboratory
testing, and experiment rehearsal. The project has been largely
unfunded, and the total cost of the experimental setup was under
$1000.
We began the experiment with a
horizon-to-horizon scan of the sky to see if there was any
indication of biodynamic signals present. It was immediately
discovered that one of the newly constructed pieces of equipment,
the actual electronic sensing apparatus, suffered from
electromagnetic interference, and had to be removed from the
experiment. An older unit was inserted in its place and performed
to our expectations with no interference problems. Our initial
targets would be two galaxies in the Ursa Major constellation:
M81 and M82. These were chosen because of all the searches
conducted, Dr. Lawrence had the greatest success there. Our
horizon-to-horizon scanning continued slowly to ensure proper
functioning of the equipment, and eventually would focus in on
the target area. Our first pass at M81 revealed nothing. I was
concerned that the older equipment wasn’t sensitive enough
and I began turning knobs. Nothing happened. As we settled into
the campsite, we decided to leave the telescope and biosensor
focussed in on the target area for awhile. I remembered Dr.
Lawrence’s notes regarding how several weeks would go by
without the detection of any signal, but I was still becoming
somewhat discouraged and impatient by the lack of reception of
signals, and continued to believe the equipment may be to blame.
Suddenly, bursts of modulation poured out of the speakers. I
immediately checked the equipment to make sure there wasn’t
a malfunction. Everything was in order. The bursts lasted only
about ten seconds, and then as if nothing had happened, the
equipment returned to the idle state. This would happen one more
time the entire evening. Both instances were captured to cassette
tape for further analysis.
We feel confident that this project was at
least confirmation of Dr. Lawrence’s findings. There is no
doubt that some kind of biodynamic signal was received from the
direction of the constellation Ursa Major. Ideally, a remote
biodynamic station would be set up to monitor this area on a
continuing basis so more information could be obtained and
analysed. We may return to the problem of interpretation of these
signals at a later time, but for now, the reception of biodynamic
information from space has once again been verified.
Conclusion
Hopefully, there will be enough
interest and time to continue in this experimental direction. The
need for better equipment, and constant monitoring are essential
to such a project, but without proper funding, may be delayed for
several years. Still, we continue experimentation on the transfer
of biological information, and are now working toward development
of simple practical applications of this technology. Working
outside of the electromagnetic spectrum into the domain of
biological energies opens up a vast new area of research far
exceeding the singular employment of interstellar communications.
Technologies which could arise from this pursuit are manifold,
and applications such as point-to-point terrestrial or
extraterrestrial communications, and portable biodynamic
detectors may be a part of the near future.
References
1. Galactic Life Unveiled - The
Phenomenon of Biological Communication Between Advanced Life in
Space and Its Subliminal Effects on Terrestrial Man, by L.
George Lawrence. Borderlands, 1997.
2. "Methods and Receiver for
Biological Data Transport," L. George Lawrence. Abandoned
patent, 1981.
3. "Interstellar
Communication," L. George Lawrence, Electronics World,
N.Y., 86:4, October, 1971, pp.34-45, ff.
4. "New Worlds Revealed by
Living Transducers," L. George Lawrence, Electrical
Review, London, June 2, 1972.
5. "Biological Signals from
Outer Space," L. George Lawrence, Human Dimensions,
HD Institute, Buffalo, 2.2, Summer, 1973, pp.16-18.
6. "Cinema 2000: The Quest
for Extraterrestrial Video," L. George Lawrence, Electronics
and Technology Today, March/April 1992.
7. "Interstellar
Communications Signals," L. George Lawrence, Ecola Institute
Bulletin #72/6A, Reprinted in Borderlands, 1st Qtr., 1996.
8. "Are We Receiving
Biological Signals from Outer Space?," L. George Lawrence, Popular
Electronics, April 1991.
9. "The Starland Galactic
Transmission Theatre," L. George Lawrence. Unpublished.
10. "Biological Image
Transmission," L. George Lawrence, 1989. Unpublished.
11. Contact with the Stars,
Reinhard Breuer, Oxford, S.F., 1982.
12. "The Galactic Gamble -
SETI Researchers Boldly Comb the Cosmos for Stellar Radio
Stations," Michael Mechanic, Popular Communications,
March, 1997.
13. Messages From the Stars,
Ian Ridpath, Harper & Row, 1978.
14. The Search for Life on
Other Worlds, Captain David C. Holmes, USN, Bantam, 1967.
15. Is Anyone Out There?,
Jack Stoneley with A.T. Walton, Warner, 1974.
16. Intelligent Life in the
Universe, I.S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, Delta, 1968.
17. We are Not Alone,
Walter Sullivan, McGraw-Hill, 1964.
18. Charge and Field Eftects in
Bio-systems, by W.J. Aston, Abacus Press, Turnbridge, UK
1984, pp.491-498.
19. Electrophysiological
Methods in Biological Research, by J. Bures, Academic Press,
N.Y., 1967.
20. Organic Semiconductors,
by F. Gutmann and L.E. Lyons, Wiley, N.Y., 1967.
21. "Biosensors," by
C.R. Lowe, Trends in Biotechnology, Elsevier, Amsterdam,
2:3, 1984, pp. 59-65.
22. Biosensors: Fundamentals
and Applications, by A.F.P. Turner, Oxford Univ. Press,
Oxford, UK, 1987.
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