RESEARCH INTO BILLY MEIER'S PREDICTIONS
An Informal Report by Ike42 on April 21, 2004
Download PDF of Original Report
Contents
SECTION 1: JUPITER INFORMATION IN THE 115TH CONTACT
1. 115th Contact: Jupiter Features
2. 115th Contact: Miscellaneous Facts
3. 115th Contact: Composition of Ring
4. 115th Contact: Amalthea
5. 115th Contact: Io's Ocean
6. 115th Contact: Eruption Info
7. 115th Contact: Io Plasma Torus
8. 115th Contact: Source of Jupiter's Ring
SECTION 2: OTHER PREDICTIONS
1. 7th Contact, 25 February 1975; 35th Contact, 16 Sept 1975
2. 31st Contact, 17 July 1975
3. 45th Contact, 25 February 1976
4. 1978, Hubble and Toutatis
5. 249th Contact, 13 June 1994
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION
Background
"Billy" Eduard Meier is a man from Switzerland who claims that he has been in contact with extra-terrestrial people (ETs) called Plejarens for most of his life. He says that he has seen their spacecraft, taken numerous pictures and movies, recorded the sound made by one of the flying saucers, met the aliens in person, and communicated with them (often telepathically) on a wide variety of subjects. The body of evidence includes hundreds of photographs of UFOs, a handful of short movies of UFOs, the sound recording, a sample of metal claimed to be of alien manufacture, and thousands of pages of transcripts (called "Contact Notes" or "Contact Reports") of Meier's conversations with the Plejarens. Meier's supporters say that all of the evidence has been scientifically scrutinized and validated by highly qualified researchers and investigators.
I first heard about the case when I read James Randi's March 26, 2004 commentary. I did some reading about it at www.billymeier.com and other sites around the web. At first, the case sounds too well investigated and documented to be any kind of hoax. If it was true I wanted to know it, and if it was a hoax I was curious about how it might have been perpetrated. So, I started reading about the case in earnest. I have only been aware of the case for about a month, but I have probably read a couple of hundred pages of text on the subject.
I didn't find irrefutable proof of the claims. I started getting suspicious when I heard some stories that sounded contrived. For instance, it is said that the aliens "eliminated" a tree that appears prominently in one set of photos because they didn't want people to be able to prove the size of the UFO that is next to the tree in the photos. Another problem was that the more I read the more it seemed that real scientific analysis had not been done. The sound analysis report and the excerpts of the photo analysis which are available on the web did not strike me as reports of methodical, detailed, repeatable experiments. Then I came across several documents which argue that Billy Meier had written some scientific facts before anyone else on earth, and Meier could not have known the information when he did unless the Plejarens had told it to him just as he claimed. The evidence offered for those claims was inadequate, so I undertook a project to research a small sample of those "predictions".
Investigative Approach
My hypothesis is that Billy Meier's source for the predictive information he wrote in his Contact Notes was newspapers and magazines, not ETs.
After approximately two weeks of part-time research (about 42 hours total, I would guess), I did not find any information that is inconsistent with my hypothesis. In fact, I discovered some information that is better explained by my hypothesis than it is explained by contact with ETs.
It has been reported that the Plejarens will go out of their way to discredit Billy Meier <http://www.tjresearch.info/denial.htm>. It is possible that Plejarens exist and have deviously only given Meier information which is consistent with a hypothesis such as mine. However, for the purpose of this document, I am going to presume that none of the information I examined is misinformation. First of all, all the items I consider here have been offered by Meier's supporters as evidence that his claims about ETs are true. And second, if a person believes that any error can be explained away by assuming the faulty item was misinformation, it would be pointless for him to care about my research into the prediction claims.
In this document, I only examine specific, detailed facts that are claimed to have been written by Billy Meier before terrestrial discovery of the same information. Vague predictions like "a new epidemic will arise" have to undergo a different kind of analysis, and they are not considered here.
The date on which a given Contact Notes document was written is open to question because it cannot be verified by an unbiased source. Billy Meier writes a date on each contact, but only the date on which a work is widely published is proof that it existed at that time. If a person (like Meier) really wants to provide dated proof for a piece of information, he easily could buy a small personal ad in a newspaper containing the information. That would be an inexpensive way to prove that the information actually was written on that date: anyone who doubted could go into the newspaper archives and read the original text for himself.
Many of the Contact Notes have been published in book form. The publication dates of those books are the best "confirmable" dates that I am aware of, but there might be other confirmable dates. In this document, I mostly ignore the creation dates claimed by Meier's supporters. I list the earliest terrestrial reports that I could find for the information and sometimes mention that the date is before the confirmable dates. Establishing the date that Meier first wrote his information is a separate problem.
Research Notes
My research resources were the internet and the Marriott Library at the University of Utah. I located most of the historical information using these databases:
< JSTOR (Science journal)
< LexisNexis Academic (major newspapers and magazines)
< ProQuest (New York Times Historical archive)
< EBSCO (others)
In the text, I refer to articles with the publication name and date along with a citation ID in square brackets (e.g. [NYT1]). The full citations are listed in the Reference section at the end.
All of the articles I refer to were published in English in the United States (except The Guardian). I make no attempt to show that Billy Meier had access to the particular publications I reference. All of them are well-known, established publications: New York Times, The Guardian (London), Newsweek, National Geographic, Aviation Week & Space Technology, and the journals Nature and Science. The information I reference was generally available and likely was reported in a variety of publications worldwide.
The earliest publications that I found are not necessarily the earliest anywhere. I hope that I have provided detailed enough information to allow any future investigators to pick up where I left off in researching Billy Meier's claims.
SECTION 1: JUPITER INFORMATION IN THE 115TH CONTACT
Billy Meier wrote some information about Jupiter and its moons in the 115th Contact. My source is an excerpt of the English translation of the Contact Notes in Michael Horn's article "Absolute Proof of Advance Knowledge of the Rings of Jupiter and their Composition by Billy Meier, from his 115th Contact on October 19, 1978" <http://www.theyfly.com/PDF/Horn_RingsofJupiter.pdf>.
Meier claims that this information was written on 19 October 1978, and investigator Wendelle Stevens reported that he received it from Billy Meier on 9 March 1979, but the earliest confirmable publication that I know of is 1982. (I have not personally confirmed that publication date; most of the early books about the Billy Meier Contacts are out of print. However, presumably several thousand copies of the text were published, so the date can be confirmed.)
I found that all of the information about Jupiter that appears in Billy Meier's 115th Contact was published in widely-available magazines and newspapers in 1979, most of it in early March. More recent scientific findings show that some of that information was wrong.
Here is what I discovered about each item:
1. 115th Contact: Jupiter Features
<http://www.theyfly.com/PDF/Horn_RingsofJupiter.pdf>
Jupiter is an "incomplete sun". "Jupiter actually should have become a sun, but its measurements were too small"
"the entire structure [of Jupiter] principally consists of liquid helium and hydrogen."
"cloud formations in the storm funnel of Jupiter would move at extremely high velocity and in a counter-clockwise direction"
The rotation direction of the Great Red Spot and the sun-like hydrogen and helium composition of Jupiter were reported after Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 visited Jupiter in the first half of the 1970s. Some of that information was also found by Earth-based observations.
2. 115th Contact: Miscellaneous Facts
<http://www.theyfly.com/PDF/Horn_RingsofJupiter.pdf>
Jupiter possesses a ring, "much thinner and smaller than the other two around Saturn and Uranus"
"the largest portion of all the outward catapulted material [from the volcanoes] again falls back on Io, and practically closes all volcano openings again"
Io has "gigantic plateaus and mountains"
Io, "in contrast to the other moons of Jupiter, proves to have no carter [sic] landscape, but a fantastic evenness"
"the various large Jupiter moons were of various colors, as for instance red, yellow, brown and white as also orange"
"the moon Europa is exactly the stark opposite of Io, that there the masses of water not evaporated and changed, but that they are frozen to a gigantic armor of ice."
"The moon, Io [...] is the most volcano-active planetary body in the SOL-system." "[Io is] much more active volcanically than the Earth"
"the volcanic eruptions [on Io] would occur with primordial power and resemble monstrous explosions, which would thrust up their ejected material like atomic mushrooms"
"Principally, [the matter ejected from Io's volcanoes] involves dust particles, gasses, ashes and some magma"
All of these facts are still believed to be true. All of them were reported in news articles during March 1979. Most of the articles listed in the References section contain some of these facts, so I am not going to list all the references here.
3. 115th Contact: Composition of Ring
<http://www.theyfly.com/PDF/Horn_RingsofJupiter.pdf>
"the ring around Jupiter, for the most part, consists of particles"
Michael Horn's article claims that the first time scientists reported that Jupiter's ring was made of small particles was August 1995. I found many articles before that. For example, the ring is reported to contain particles in all of these:
Aviation Week, 12 March 1979 [AW1]
New York Times, 1 April 1979 [NYT11]
New York Times, 12 July 1979 [NYT12]
New York Times, 31 July 1979 [NYT13]
Science, 23 November 1979 [Sci3]
This information is still believed to be true.
4. 115th Contact: Amalthea
<http://www.theyfly.com/PDF/Horn_RingsofJupiter.pdf>
The moon closest to Jupiter (Amalthea) "would only measure approximately 200 km in length, which I defined as a gigantic hen's egg."
This information is not correct. Amalthea is not the innermost moon and it has been determined to be approximately 270 km long.
Science, 1 June 1979 [Sci2]
265 +/- 20 km
Science, 23 November 1979 [Sci3]
270 +/- 15 km
However, Meier's information matched that of multiple newspaper and magazine articles in early 1979 which reported that Amalthea was the innermost moon and that it was approximately 200 km long. Here are some articles that gave incorrect information for Amalthea:
New York Times, 7 March 1979 [NYT7]
140 miles long (224 km)
Aviation Week, 12 March 1979 [AW1]
200-220 km long
New York Times, 1 April 1979 [NYT11]
100 miles long (160 km)
"chiefly potassium salts and sulfur combinations would constitute the surface [of Io] and deep into it, and that everything has settled as a very thick crust, after the masses of water on this satellite had receded."
"the moon, Io, once was totally covered with water"
It is not believed that Io was once covered in water. The possibility was suggested in 1979 to explain the appearance of Io. The surface looked like salt flats, which would be explained by evaporated oceans. However, widespread volcanic activity was discovered shortly afterward which also explained the appearance. The surface is no longer thought to be salt flats, and the ocean hypothesis appears to have been abandoned.
Neither of the Voyager summary papers in Science cite evidence that Io ever had a liquid ocean:
Science, 1 June 1979 [Sci2]
"unlike the other satellites, Io has no water absorption features"
Science, 23 November 1979 [Sci3]
(No mention of oceans on Io)
Here are some web pages that mention the salt or lack of water, but do not suggest that an ocean evaporated:
<http://www.nineplanets.org/io.html>
"Unlike the other Galilean satellites, Io has little or no water. This is probably because Jupiter was hot enough early in the evolution of the solar system to drive off the volatile elements in the vicinity of Io but not so hot to do so farther out."
Note that "drive off the volatile elements" is not the same as evaporating a liquid ocean; I believe this is talking about a time before Io was cool enough for water to be liquid.
<http://www.planetaryexploration.net/jupiter/io/io_plasma_torus.html>
"How salt might form on Io is unclear. It may be that there are subsurface rivers or aquifers supplying the fuel for Io's volcanoes that carry dissolved salts, or the salts may be the result of chemical reactions in the atmosphere."
<http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/salt_on_io.html>
"Because the vapor pressure of this salt is entirely negligible, NaCl cannot be in sublimation equilibrium with Io's surface and its presence must directly result from continuous volcanic output."
However, there were some media reports in 1979 that Io once had water:
New York Times, 2 March 1979 [NYT4]
"One of the enigmas of Io is that it appears to be coated with various kinds of salts. But the presence of salt, a residue of the evaporation process, implies that there is or has been water there."
New York Times, 5 March 1979 [NYT6]
"Io's surface appears to be composed of sulfur and a variety of salts, which suggests to the scientist that the moon, dry now, once was a wetter body."
Meier's incorrect information again matches incorrect information reported in the media.
6. 115th Contact: Eruption Info
<http://www.theyfly.com/PDF/Horn_RingsofJupiter.pdf>
"sometimes heights [of Io's volcanoes' eruptions] would be reached up to 180 kilometer" and "would reach ejection velocities up to 2,300 kilometer per hour and beyond"
There are several problems with Meier's report that volcanic plumes would reach as high as 180 km and as fast as 2,300 km/h:
A. Eruptions much higher than 180 km have been witnessed. The following sources report higher plumes:
Science, 1 June 1979 [Sci2]
270 km
Science, 23 November 1979 [Sci3]
280 km
<http://dosxx.colorado.edu/JUPITER/PDFS/Ch14.pdf> [Bagenal] p. 10-11
two at ~400 km, 460 km, ~500 km
<http://www.planetaryexploration.net/jupiter/io/plume_eruptions.html>
400 km, 500 km
B. Ejection velocities much faster than 2,300 kilometers per hour have been determined. (Yes, Meier said "up to" and "beyond" 2,300 km/h, which includes all velocities, but I'm assuming that he meant only a little beyond, otherwise he might as well have said "up to 1 km/h and beyond".) In particular, Science, 1 June 1979 [Sci2] reported velocities about 1 km/s, which is 3,600 km/h.
C. It is particularly strange that the numbers Meier reports (eruptions 180 km high at speeds around 2,300 km/h) are the numbers that were reported by some publications in March 1979, but the units are different. The eruptions observed in March 1979 were about 180 miles high with material estimated to be ejecting at about 2,300 miles per hour. I first noticed this possibility when I visited this web page which reports the numbers in both metric and old fashioned units:
<http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/jupiter_sattellites.html>
"Plumes from the volcanoes reach more than 300 kilometers (190 miles) above the surface. The material was being ejected at velocities up to 1.05 kilometers a second (2,300 miles an hour)."
I did not find "The Holy Grail" (a source published in Europe reporting both 180 miles and 2,300 miles per hour), but several sources listed numbers that are essentially the same:
New York Times, 13 March 1979 [NYT9]
"the cloud of gas and particulate matter rose as high as 180 miles above the surface [...]. Material from the eruption was estimated to be traveling as fast as a bullet fired from a high-powered rifle."
New York Times, 18 March 1979 [NYT10]
"Those pictures revealed volcanic plumes of ash and gases rising as high as 180 miles above Io's surface. Material from one eruption was estimated to be traveling as fast as 2,000 miles per hour."
Aviation Week, 19 March 1979 [AW2]
"eruptions rise to altitudes 150-300km (93-186 mi.) above the surface of the moon, and the velocity of the outflow is estimated at 1,000-2,000 mph"
"The speed of ash and particulars [sic] ejected from the volcano was estimated to be in excess of 2,000 mph"
My explanation for these discrepancies is that Meier read "180 miles high" and "over 2,000 mph" in a terrestrial (probably American) source and accidentally wrote kilometers (the units he was used to) when he copied the numbers. It is also possible that a European source accidentally listed the metric units with non-metric numbers and Meier copied from that report.
In all the writings I have seen, the Plejarens used metric units. It's a stretch to assume that the Plejarens provided these figures in miles and Meier or the translator accidentally wrote kilometers. Twice.
But even if it could be shown that Meier originally wrote "180 miles" and it was somehow changed later, the maximum height reported is still incorrect. That height is just the maximum height witnessed by terrestrial scientists in 1979. Higher plumes were found after that, and it is safe to assume that higher plumes had occurred before. What would cause the Plejarens to erroneously report that particular number as the maximum height of volcanic eruptions on Io?
7. 115th Contact: Io Plasma Torus
<http://www.theyfly.com/PDF/Horn_RingsofJupiter.pdf>
Regarding Io's volcanoes: "the largest portion of all ejected material again falls back on the moon [...]. The rest [...] would be pushed out into space, while a part of it is drawn by Jupiter and very slowly densifies in its ring to a heavy sulfur-ion-combination."
It appears that either the translator or Meier himself did not properly distinguish between the Io plasma torus and Jupiter's ring. I think the word "ring" in the above excerpt should be "torus". If Jupiter's ring is what Meier meant, then the described composition is wrong. I have found no report that Jupiter's ring contains sulfur ions. The Io plasma torus, on the other hand, is thought to primarily consist of sulfur ions. This was widely reported in 1979 (and is still reported today):
New York Times, 4 March 1979 [NYT5]
"Jupiter is surrounded by a belt of charged particles in the orbit of its satellite Io, and that belt now appears to be composed of ionized sulfur atoms, stripped of electrons."
New York Times, 12 March 1979 [NYT8]
"The extremely ionized sulfur particles found in the huge ring encircling Jupiter at the orbit of Io"
Aviation Week, 19 March 1979 [AW2]
"Scientists believe some of the particles escape the moon's gravitational pull and continue into space. These particulates could be the source of the torus--a dough-nut-shaped cloud--that surrounds Jupiter in Io's orbit plane."
<http://www.solarviews.com/french/io.htm>
"The material forms a torus, a doughnut shaped cloud of ions that glow in the ultraviolet. The torus's heavy ions migrate outward, and their pressure inflates the Jovian magnetosphere to more than twice its expected size."
There is another problem with Meier's description. It has not been shown that the volcano blasts are powerful enough to push particles free of Io's gravity. Magnetospheric forces are likely to be what really removes the particles from the moon.
Science, 25 April 1980 [Sci4]
"Somehow, volcanic debris escapes Io's atmosphere, becomes dispersed in the torus, and is ionized there. Mechanisms stymied physicists until early this year, because in order to overcome Io's gravity, the neutral particles would have to travel much faster than they are ejected from the volcanoes. Charged particles in Io's atmosphere, however, would be readily swept up by Jupiter's magnetic field"
"Alternatively, [...] energetic oxygen or sulfur ions crashing into the surface of Io could kick loose many neutral atoms giving them enough energy to escape Io's gravity [...] one ion can liberate several thousand speedy atoms. [...] this 'sputtering' process 'is much more efficient than anyone expected'."
<http://www.windows.ucar.edu/jupiter/magnetosphere/galileo_a34_pass.html>
"The atmosphere of Io is mostly composed of sulfur compounds spewed into the atmosphere by Io's many volcanoes. These sulfur compounds are gradually torn from the top of Io's atmosphere in a process called 'sputtering', thus entering the general space around Jupiter."
<http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Jup_Io>
"As Jupiter rotates, it takes its magnetic field around with it, sweeping past Io and stripping off about 1,000 kilograms (1 ton) of Io's material every second! This material becomes ionized in the magnetic field and forms a doughnut-shaped cloud of intense radiation referred to as a plasma torus."
"the ring around Jupiter, for the most part, consists of particles catapulted outward by large volcanoes of the moon, Io"
Meier claimed the material in Jupiter's ring came from particles ejected out of Io's volcanoes. The source has now been confirmed to be particles knocked off the small inner moons by micro-meteors.
<http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/sept98/jupiter_rings.html>
<http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/status980403.html>
"Jupiter's intricate, swirling ring system is formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's four, small inner moons, according to scientists studying data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft."
<http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Jup_Metis>
"Metis and Adrastea also orbit inside Jupiter's main ring and are undoubtedly the source of the material in the ring. Amalthea and Thebe provide the material for the Gossamer ring."
<http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo/atjup/smallsats/ringsstory.html>
"Jupiter's Small Inner Satellites are irregular in shape due to a history of high velocity, highly energetic impacts from meteoroids, fragments of asteroids and comets. Since these moons are so small, their surface gravities are very low, and the particles kicked up by the impacts easily escape into orbit."
Meier's claim was a hypothesis at various times in the past. Here are some reports from 1979:
Newsweek, 23 July 1979 [NW2]
"[Scientists] speculate that the particles [in the ring] could be volcanic materials spewed out by Io"
New York Times, 31 July 1979 [NYT13]
"An alternate suggestion is that Io, the nearest large moon, somehow replenishes the ring with tiny particles."
Science, 23 November 1979 [Sci3]
"Candidates for sources to supply this material include cometary and meteoric debris, impact ejecta from the inner satellites, and volcanic ejecta from Io, possibly by magnetospheric forces."
This again brings up the possibility of confusion about the ring and the torus. If Meier himself did not realize there was a difference between the ring of particles and the torus of plasma, the information he read about the ring and the torus would have sounded like they were saying the same thing: the material in the ring/torus comes from Io's volcanoes. In the English translation of the 115th Contact Notes, Meier appears to have made this mistake, but I acknowledge that the translator could have been the source of the wording problems.
SECTION 2: OTHER PREDICTIONS
A lot of predictions appear in Billy Meier's Contact Notes. A smattering of those predictions were culled from the Contact Notes and reported by Michael Horn in his article "Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt".
The predictions were published at various times between 1975 and 2001. I do not know for sure when each one was published. In only two cases does my hypothesis require the actual creation date be more than a few months after the reported contact date.
I have examined a few randomly selected predictions. In most cases, I found corroborations that were much earlier than the sources reported by Michael Horn; some of the news items were published well before the date of Billy Meier's contact on the subject.
1. 7th Contact, 25 February 1975; 35th Contact, 16 September 1975
<http://www.figu.org/us/figu/supporter/michael_horn/horn2.htm>
"Meier was encouraged by her to contact a Prof. Michael McElroy of Harvard University with this information"
Here are first public mentions that I found of the information about ozone depletion:
New York Times, 6 September 1974 [NYT1]
"The potential depletion of the ozone layer by nuclear explosions is a new, accidental discovery that arms control officials believe adds an awesome element to the destructive effects of a nuclear war."
"perhaps it would destroy critical links of the intricate food chain of plants and animals, and thus shatter the ecological structure that permits man and animals to remain alive on this planet."
New York Times, 17 October 1974 [NYT2]
"The Defense Department estimates that an all-out nuclear war would significantly deplete the protective layer of ozone in the stratosphere but not to the point of endangering the continuance of life on earth."
"two University of California scientists [...] contend that there was a 4 percent depletion in the ozone layer as a result of 1961-62 explosions."
Science, 25 October 1974 [Sci1]
"Supersonic transports, aerosol sprays, and nuclear weapons [...] are all potential sources of catalytic agents that penetrate the earth's stratosphere and decompose the ozone that shields living things from the worst of the sun's ultraviolet radiation."
"High intensities of this ultraviolet radiation are harmful to nearly all forms of life"
"An increased incidence of mutation has been observed in certain [plants]."
"There are also some indications that increased radiation will interfere with the growth of plankton in the ocean."
"The controversial evidence is thus that the 1961-1962 bomb tests resulted in a moderate, transient reduction of ozone"
New York Times, 28 February 1975 [NYT3]
"Dr. Michael B. McElroy of Harvard University said that [...] bromine appears so effective at ozone depletion that it could be used as a weapon. If injected into the stratosphere over enemy territory in sufficient quantity, according to the proposition, it would purge the ozone, permitting ultraviolet radiation from the sun to reach the ground with such intensity to destroy crops and incapacitate the inhabitants."
Much of the ozone information reported in the 7th and 35th Contact Notes appeared in the New York Times months before the claimed date of contact. The effect of bromine on the ozone layer wasn't in the newspaper until a few days after the date claimed for the 7th Contact. I find it suspicious that the newspaper article and Meier's Contact Notes both mention Dr. Michael McElroy. Why would Semjase encourage Meier to report the information to a person who already knew it? I have to wonder if Meier was attempting to make it appear that he had told McElroy about the danger who had in turn told the newspapers....
2. 31st Contact, 17 July 1975
<http://www.figu.org/us/figu/billy_meier/chimborazo.htm>
"Meier, in his writings, stated the Pleiadians told him that Mt Chimborazo in Ecuador was higher than Mt Everest by 2,150 metres because the Earth is not perfectly round but, rather, bulges in the middle-thus, measuring mountains from sea level is not an accurate way of assessing the true height of a mountain."
This was my favorite item to research. I kept finding earlier and earlier articles until I finally came across this one:
Newsweek, 4 August 1975 [NW1]
"Q. What is the highest mountain in the world? Before anyone hastily answers "Mount Everest," he should hearken to some new calculations by a Smithsonian Institution geophysicist. If you measure from sea level, Everest--at 29,028 feet--still claims the top prize. But if you measure from the center of the earth, the highest point turns out to be the top of Mount Chimborazo, a hitherto obscure Andean peak in Ecuador."
"Chimborazo's new claim to fame arises from its location and the shape of the earth. The planet is not spherical; it has a measurable bulge around the equator. Chimborazo lies just 2 degrees south of the equator, almost on top of the bulge. Using satellite data, Dr. E. Michael Gaposchkin calculated the radius of the earth at this point, then added Chimborazo's altitude of 20,556 feet. The sum: 20,946,233 feet between the mountain's summit and the earth's center. This tops Everest, which sits at the comparatively low-lying latitude of 28 degrees north, by 7,058 feet."
7,058 feet is just over 2,151 meters.
Note that the above Newsweek article was published shortly after Meier claimed that he was told this information by the Plejarens. It would be pretty easy for a person to claim he wrote something just a few weeks earlier than he actually did. (And the information may have been published even earlier elsewhere.)
There is evidence that Meier's information came from Dr. Gaposchkin's calculations rather than the Plejarens: it's wrong.
There have been refinements in knowledge about the shape of the earth, and the altitudes of both mountains (relative to sea level) have been re-measured several times. The confirmed altitudes (above sea level) are:
• Everest: 8,850 meters (29,035 feet).
• Chimborazo: 6,310 meters (20,702 feet). Some sources list Chimborazo's altitude as 6,267 meters, but that's the lower Veintimilla summit. The Whymper summit is 6,310 meters.
Using the new altitudes and the newer WGS84 geoid, the actual difference comes out to 2,202 meters. National Geographic, January 2002 [NG1] and the web page <http://bubl.ac.uk/org/tacit/tac/tac26/thatquiz.htm> agree on that value, which I also calculated from the raw data.
A small numerical difference (2,150 m vs. 2,200 m) is not very meaningful all by itself, but when the incorrect information matches the information available on earth at approximately the time of prediction, it starts seeming very likely that the earth publication was the true source of the information.
3. 45th Contact, 25 February 1976
Corroborated: The Good Life-Independent Journal newspaper, June 27, 1990: EARTHQUAKES, OIL INTER-ACT
I did not find any clear corroborating reports for these items. I did find a few articles from the early 1970s which implied that oil wells caused earthquakes, but they were reports about other things which assumed oil extraction caused earthquakes, not reports of actual findings in the matter. In particular, I was unable to locate the "EARTHQUAKES, OIL INTER-ACT" article to see exactly what it says. I did not find any other reports of this correlation anywhere. However, there were lots of false hits for the keywords "earthquake and oil" because a major concern about earthquakes is that they will rupture oil pipelines or oil well operations. So, it is very possible that I missed a relevant article among all the irrelevant ones. In any case, it does not appear that this correlation has gained wide acceptance in the scientific community.
I did find reports that earthquakes and volcanic activity are not increasing:
<http://www.seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/faq/1999/>
"While it may seem as if Mother Nature is conspiring against us this year, the number of large events (22) is comparable to the average number. The plot below shows the number of earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher each year for the past century. It ranges from a minimum of 6 (1986) and a maximum of 41 (1943)."
<http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/general/increase_in_earthquakes.html>
"A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of earthquakes we have been able to locate each year. This is because of the tremendous increase in the number of seismograph stations in the world and the many improvements in global communications. In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more that 8,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by electronic mail, internet and satellite."
<http://www.nhne.com/newsflashes/nfearthquake.html>
"the global level of both earthquake AND volcanic activity has stayed near annual averages for most of this century."
In the past century, there has been a large increase in oil wells drilled, dams built, and the size of cities, but there has been no corresponding increase in large earthquakes and volcanic activity. There does not appear to be any correlation between those human activities and earthquakes or volcanoes.
4. 1978, Hubble and Toutatis
"1978: Meier writes that a comet would be discovered in late 1980s to early 1990s that would be named Toutatis, may threaten Earth in September 2004
Corroborated: 1989, French astronomers discover comet, named it ...Toutatis, predicted to come closest to Earth September 29, 2004"
I don't know if these two predictions were part of the same Contact Notes or even published at the same time. I am grouping them together because they were both reportedly predicted in 1978, and--if the information was not provided by ETs who could predict trivia in the future-- both items were probably actually written in early 1989.
I found some evidence which raises that suggestion somewhat above mere speculation. First, Toutatis was discovered on 4 January 1989, so it would have been easy to "predict" its discovery and name any time after that (and very hard to do so before that). Second, between January 1989 and April 1989, several articles were published in the New York Times reporting that the Hubble Space Telescope would be launched 11 December 1989 (the "end of the 1980s"). A schedule slip was announced in May 1989, and the launch ended up being delayed several months (until after the "beginning of the 1990s").
So, Meier's Hubble launch prediction was wrong in exactly the way newspapers were wrong in early 1989, and the Toutatis prediction was correct in exactly the way newspapers were correct in early 1989.
Of course, my hypothesis will be refuted if Meier's specific information about Toutatis is proven to have been published before 1989. I looked for the publication history of this item. It is said to be part of Billy Meier's book "Existentes Leben Im Universum" ("Existing Life in the Universe"). There have been two editions published: 1978 and 1993. The first edition does not seem to have achieved a wide distribution.
If my hypothesis is true, the precise details of the Toutatis prediction (like the name of the asteroid) will be found to have been added to the book after 1989.
5. 249th Contact, 13 June 1994
<http://www.figu.org/us/ufology/contact_notes/249.htm>
"Billy: I have a question here regarding BSE, the cattle madness, as this disease is called here in Switzerland. You explained once that basically sheep triggered this epidemic and then it was transmitted to cattle. This epidemic apparently can be transmitted to human beings along with all mammals.
"Ptaah: [...] The incubation period for the disease also varies and must be determined by the life form's resistance to it. This may vary from 3 months to 40 years, even 50. The higher the evolution of the life form, the longer the incubation period. Therefore, with human beings it can range from 40 to 50 years."
While Meier was ahead of the British government scientists' announcement of the definite link between BSE and CJD, there were other scientists warning of strong possibilities before Meier did. Here is one such newspaper report which pre-dates Meier's 249th Contact:
The Guardian (London), 29 April 1994 [GL1]
"BSE has been proved more easily transmissible between mammals than previously thought. Mice, pigs, monkeys--the last two are the animals most physiologically similar to man--have all developed the disease [...] the transmission of BSE to humans cannot be ruled out conclusively."
"we do not yet know the BSE incubation period--it may be 20 or even 30 years."
"Some British scientists predict that BSE and CJD (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease), the human version of the deadly brain disease, are closely connected and are caused by the same agent--a mutated protein or prion. [...] it is enough to eat the meat of BSE-infected cattle to run the risk of developing CJD"
CONCLUSION
If there were proof that Meier wrote some detailed scientific information before it was published anywhere else, it would show that my hypothesis is wrong. I did not find any such cases.
All of the information that I examined from Billy Meier's Contact Notes can be found in sources that were widely available before the confirmed publication of the "predictions". This leaves open the possibility that he took the information from ordinary sources. Some of the information was reported in the media even before the date that Meier claimed to receive it from the Plejarens.
Some of the information that Meier reported is incorrect. Taken by itself, that does not say anything about the source of the information. Information could have come from Plejarens and been transcribed or translated wrong, or the Plejarens could have made a mistake, or they could have deliberately given incorrect information.
However, given that so many of the errors which were reported in Meier's Contact Notes were the same errors that appeared in media reports, it is very likely that Meier's primary source for information was the media.
Other errors, such as the possible ring/torus and kilometer/mile problems, could easily have been caused by a little mistake while re-reporting what had been reported in the media. Those errors are not easily explained if ETs are presumed to be the sole information source.
Multiple errors which match errors in other sources is very unlikely to occur if a person were getting information directly from an independent, reliable source.
The fact is, the more I researched the predictive information in Billy Meier's Contacts, the more likely it seemed that Meier copied his information from widely-available news sources.
REFERENCES
[AW1] Aviation Week & Space Technology, 12 March 1979, "Scientists Sift Massive Jupiter Data", p. 200
[AW2] Aviation Week & Space Technology, 19 March 1979, "Jovian Moon Volcanoes Detected", p. 19
[Bagenal] Jupiter: The Planet, Satellites and Magnetosphere, 2004, Fran Bagenal, Timothy Dowling, William McKinnon. Pre-release: <http://dosxx.colorado.edu/JUPITER>
[GL1] The Guardian (London), 29 April 1994, "Mad Cows And Englishmen", p. 14
[NG1] National Geographic, January 2002, "Ask Us", p. 12
[NW1] Newsweek, 4 August 1975, "The Highest Mountain", p. 53
[NW2] Newsweek, 23 July 1979, "The Moons Of Jupiter", p. 69
[NYT1] New York Times, 6 September 1974, "U.S. Official Warns Of Ozone Depletion From Nuclear War", p. 1
[NYT2] New York Times, 17 October 1974, "Pentagon Replies On Peril To Ozone", p. 7
[NYT3] New York Times, 28 February 1975, "Ozone Depletion Seen as a War Tool", p. 20
[NYT4] New York Times, 2 March 1979, "Voyager Closing In on 4 Large Satellites of Jupiter", p. A12
[NYT5] New York Times, 4 March 1979, "Ideas & Trends: For Jupiter, 270 Years of Astronomy In a Long Weekend", p. E7
[NYT6] New York Times, 5 March 1979, "4 Moons Of Jupiter Are Photographed", p. B12
[NYT7] New York Times, 7 March 1979, "Jupiter's Nearest Moon, Io, Perplexes Astronomers", p. A19
[NYT8] New York Times, 12 March 1979, "Data Back Theory On Jupiter Moon Io", p. B12
[NYT9] New York Times, 13 March 1979, "Voyager Find Io Alive With Volcanoes", p. C1
[NYT10] New York Times, 18 March 1979, "Ideas & Trends: Jupiter's Io Proves To Be a Fiery Moon", p. E9
[NYT11] New York Times, 1 April 1979, "Navigators Who Probe The Mysteries Of Deep Space", p. SM10
[NYT12] New York Times, 12 July 1979, "Voyager 2 Heads Toward Saturn After Relaying Pictures of Jupiter", p. A19
[NYT13] New York Times, 31 July 1979, "In Voyager's Wake, A Trail of Riddles", p. C1
[Sci1] Science, 25 October 1974, v. 186, no. 4161, "Stratospheric Pollution: Multiple Threats to Earth's Ozone", p. 335-338
[Sci2] Science, 1 June 1979, v. 204, no. 4396, "The Jupiter System Through the Eyes of Voyager 1", p. 951-972
[Sci3] Science, 23 November 1979, v. 206, no. 4421, "The Galilean Satellites and Jupiter: Voyager 2 Imaging Science Results", p. 927-950
[Sci4] Science, 25 April 1980, v. 208, "Voyager Beguiled by Jovian Carrousel", p. 384-386
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