Chandra Wickramasinghe - Cosmic Womb: The Seeding of Planet Earth

COSMIC WOMB

Beginning in the 1960s, Chandra Wickramasinghe, Ph.D., together with Fred Hoyle systematically founded the new science of astrobiology. Their discoveries and explanationsreported in numerous scientific papers and eloquently written booksput them in a class of their own, in the same pantheon of scientific immortals as Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin. And now, the brilliant astrophysicist and astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe, Ph.D., has joined with Robert Bauval in bringing Cosmic Womb to a new early 21st-century audience. Cosmic Womb is required reading for all those who want to understand the origins of life on Earth and throughout the cosmos. It is that important.

EDWARD J. STEELE, PH.D., MOLECULAR IMMUNOLOGIST WITH INTEREST IN VIROLOGY AND EVOLUTION

A fascinating book based on cutting-edge science that gives us twofold, compelling evidencefirst that life (as molecules or bacteria) seeded in the whole cosmos via comets and hence there is a high probability of advanced intelligent civilizations all around us, and second, the embedding of pi, phi, geodetic units, the circumference of Earth, and the speed of light in the Great Pyramid leaves us no alternative but to admit that such a highly scientific civilization has indeed left its imprint on our planet.

CHRIS H. HARDY, PH.D., SYSTEMS SCIENTIST AND AUTHOR OF DNA OF THE GODS, WARS OF THE ANUNNAKI, AND COSMIC DNA AT THE ORIGIN

Cosmic Womb is a book that ties together much of the cutting-edge science and theories that are defining a new paradigm of human origin and self-discovery. It is a masterpiece of investigative research that speaks to a cosmic foundation for the development and evolution of human consciousness, technology, and civilization.

GLENN KREISBERG, AUTHOR OF SPIRITS IN STONE AND EDITOR OF MYSTERIES OF THE ANCIENT PAST AND LOST KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANCIENTS

What a team! This one is really going to make you think!

DAVID ROHL, EGYPTOLOGIST AND AUTHOR OF A TEST OF TIME

Chandra Wickramasinghe, Ph.D., starts off by inviting us to join him on his journey as a scientist searching for the origins of life on our planet. His passion for the topic and his joy with each new discovery are contagious and spellbinding. Then Robert Bauval continues the journey by bringing fresh insights into the Giza pyramid complex as he did in his bestselling book The Orion Mystery.

WILL HART, AUTHOR OF ANCIENT ALIEN ANCESTORS AND THE GENESIS RACE

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my gratitude to my wife, Priya, for her unstinting support at all times and her encouragement, without which my part of the book would not have become a reality.

CHANDRA WICKRAMASINGHE

This has not been an easy project for me. There was a huge learning curve to update myself on various cutting-edge scientific topics and new ideas. But the effort has been truly worthwhile, because it has forced me to reflect on the universe, on our planet, on myself, and, more importantly, on the ancient past in a completely new and exciting manner. As always, my lovely wife, Michele, has had to endure the creation of a book that, in this case, has required her to hear of very unusual topics not normal in this household. I owe Michele an immense debt for having stood by me through thick and thin for nearly forty years. I also give thanks to our two children, Candice and Jonathan, for having finally accepted that their father is not, to say the very least, the paragon of the typical dad. I would like to give special thanks to my beautiful daughter for the concept of the artwork for this book. I am, of course, also grateful to many others, far too many to name here. But the following deserve to be mentioned for their friendship and support: my brother Jean-Paul, Gary Osborn, Robert Dakota, Roberta Comuni, Maria Salabasheva, Dominique Gorlitz, and Richard Fusniak. I also want to express my appreciation to Bethany Brandon, Roberta Comuni, and Anouk Zarbhanelian for having proofread the draft and giving me their useful commentaries. Last but not least I must thank profusely my favorite editor, Mindy Branstetter, as well as all the staff at Inner Traditions Bear & Company for making this book an item to be proud of. Finally a big thank you to my readers around the world: it is because of you that all this effort has been meaningful for me.

ROBERT BAUVAL

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them.

GALILEO

The two greatest mysteries in all nature are the mind and the universe.

MICHIO KAKU

As a science writer, I am constantly amazed at how much stranger science is than science fiction; how much weirder the Universe we find ourselves in is than anything we could possibly have invented.

MARCUS SHOW, INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS, LONDON

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to search wherever that search may lead us.

ADLAI E. STEVENSON II

PUBLISHERS PREFACE

A Mystery of the Third Kind

Space. The final frontier... These words, spoken at the beginning of each Star Trek episode, shaped the imaginations of a generation of baby boomers who dreamed of becoming astronauts, scientists, engineers, and explorers. Suddenly, the idea that there were other worlds and other beings out there became a real possibility. President John F. Kennedy included space exploration in his vision of the new frontier. Our ancestors had crossed oceans, prairies, mountains, and deserts in search of better places. A rocket became the replacement transportation for the ships and covered wagons of earlier times. We humans saw ourselves as the pioneers who would be the first to explore the universe.

But are we the first superior beings who are here on Earth reaching toward space, or were there advanced civilizations from far away who made contact with this planet and brought knowledge so advanced that we are just beginning to grasp the magnitude of such a possibility?

In this book the renowned mathematician, astronomer, and astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe, Ph.D., and the author, lecturer, and Egyptology researcher Robert Bauval have joined forces to provide compelling arguments and possibly even evidence that in ancient times an advanced civilization from somewhere in the cosmos brought life and knowledge to Earth. One important piece of physical evidence that reflects this use of advanced mathematical, geodetic, and astronomical knowledge is the Great Pyramid of Giza, built with the clear intention to have it and its two neighbors aligned with and mirroring the pattern of the stars of Orions belt.

Throughout his life, Wickramasinghe has been consumed with the indomitable desire to know the reason why things are the way they are. As a young boy he asked the questions What is life? What are we here for? What makes the world tick? These are questions that have been asked by our ancestors from time immemorial. Attempts to answer these questions can be thought to define the progress of science.

He was born in tropical Sri LankaCeylon, as it was then calledan island that was tucked away in a remote corner of the British Empire. His father was a Cambridge-educated mathematician who, in the 1930s, had attended lectures by astronomer and physicist Sir Arthur Eddington and University of Cambridge mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy, among others, and had graduated from Cambridge with the highest distinction of B star wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos. It was this background, combined with the fact that Sri Lanka is a country dominated by Buddhist rather than Judeo-Christian traditions, that shaped Wickramasinghes somewhat idiosyncratic scientific and spiritual development.