Ancient Aliens s15e08 Episode Script

1 NARRATOR: In the Mojave Desert, there is a structure built to bestow everlasting life.
BARBARA HARRIS: People were supposed to walk in one door and come out the other and be healed.
NARRATOR: And according to the architect, it was designed by otherworldly beings.
He could communicate with distant ancestors or even time travelers coming and going from the Earth.
DAVID CHILDRESS: They showed him the future, and this was his destiny.
JONATHAN BERMAN: In your wildest imagination, you wouldn't come up with something like the Integratron.
The dome was taking many different scientific ideas and melding them together.
NARRATOR: Could this strange domed building really provide the key to immortality? GIORGIO A.
TSOUKALOS: If we could figure out the Integratron, then, for all intents and purposes, we could live forever.
NARRATOR: There is a doorway in the universe.
Beyond it is the promise of truth.
It demands we question everything we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
Aerodynamics engineer and inventor George Van Tassel is in his hotel room preparing to reveal his latest scientific discoveries in a television interview when he suddenly and unexpectedly dies.
Friends and family members are shocked when it is reported that he suffered a fatal heart attack, since Van Tassel, at 67 years of age, was in perfect health and had shown no warning signs.
His sister, Peggy Manyo, became suspicious when she discovered that the body had been cremated before she was even notified.
And perhaps most curious of all, his wife Doris claimed that, during her husband's funeral, their home was ransacked and George's papers stolen.
As soon as he passed away, mysterious vans and trucks showed up, and all of his equipment and plans and drawings and a lot of his writings were loaded up into these trucks supposedly government trucks and hauled away, never to be seen again.
If the government found all this stuff important enough to show up right after he died and haul it away, then at least some people within the government believed there was something worth studying, something worth looking at.
NARRATOR: But what was George Van Tassel working on that would elicit so much interest from the United States government and even prompt family members to speculate that he may have been murdered? While Van Tassel had been working on a number of intriguing projects, including an anti-gravity device, his masterwork was a machine he built in the Mojave Desert called the Integratron.
It was a machine designed to extend life and perhaps even lead to immortality.
George Van Tassel often quoted Corinthians 15:26.
"The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
" George believed that our lifespan is too short and, in order to get wisdom, we should live longer.
And that was part of his motivation to create this machine, to bring wisdom to people.
'Cause just as you're getting it together, boom, you die.
If you could walk through this machine counterclockwise, come out the other side and be 30% younger, what more could you do with your life? TSOUKALOS: It's in the middle of nowhere.
It's incredibly flat.
And there you see this white, round building with a half dome on top, and it's got these 16 sections.
MICHAEL MASTERS: The Integratron was made in a way that is very ideally suited for capturing energy and the way George Van Tassel thought of the Integratron as a battery charger, a way to prolong life.
TSOUKALOS: The basic idea behind the Integratron was to introduce a machine, through harmonics, with which you then can rejuvenate your cells.
Because if we could figure out a way from preventing our individual cells from deteriorating or getting older, then, for all intents and purposes, we could live forever.
NARRATOR: At the time of his death, George Van Tassel had just announced that the device he had been working on for 24 years was 95% complete and would be fully functional within weeks.
When his house was ransacked during his funeral, the core of the Integratron and other critical components also disappeared, leaving no question as to what the intruders were after.
Those papers and that equipment, none of that has ever been seen again.
NARRATOR: Could this unusual structure located in the middle of the Mojave Desert really hold the key to immortality? While it may sound far fetched, many who have studied the incredible story of George Van Tassel are convinced that he might actually have succeeded in a quest for eternal life that has endured for thousands of years.
BERMAN: We took a bite out of that apple in the Garden of Eden.
We had knowledge.
But the price of that knowledge was that we were aware of our own mortality.
And since that day, we've been looking for that fountain of youth, that way to extend our lifespan or maybe even live forever.
NARRATOR: In 2018, archaeologists excavating the tomb of a Han dynasty noble family in Luoyang, China, unearthed some of the earliest evidence ever found of human efforts to cheat death.
Recently, in an archaeological dig in a Chinese burial chamber, an ancient 2,000-year-old bronze pot was recovered with the remnants of a substance that was later determined was probably an elixir of immortality.
NARRATOR: Ancient Taoist texts confirmed the liquid substance to be a legendary potion brewed by Chinese alchemists, granting eternal youth to those who dared drink it.
Lab results revealed the potion is largely made up of potassium nitrate and alunite, which, while not poisonous, are used in pesticides, fertilizers and rocket propellants.
FISHER: It's a powerful reminder of the fact that humans, probably for thousands of years, have had this sort of desire to-to extend our lives.
NARRATOR: The Han dynasty elixir is just the latest of many ancient attempts at immortality discovered by archaeologists over the years.
But what drives humankind to seek eternal life? Is it merely self-preservation? Or could there be another force at work, one that may be connected to the fact that every ancient culture on Earth described the gods as immortal? In ancient Greek myths, we learn of the food of the gods, which they called ambrosia, an immortality food.
These beings possess some form of a-a liquid or an elixir that, ultimately, somehow altered their blood and promoted immortality.
TSOUKALOS: Some of the stories that we hear about this drink, ambrosia, is when the eyewitness is taken up into the sky.
There are actual ancient Greek mythologies that describe these shiny star islands that descended from the sky and then, under their own propulsion, moved around.
The entire Greek pantheon of gods is based on visiting extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that humanity's centuries-old quest to attain eternal life is fueled by a desire to become like the otherworldly beings that our ancestors actually encountered? Curiously, there are a number of stories from the ancient world presented not as fiction but as historical record that describe people of an earlier age living extraordinarily long lives.
In the Old Testament, the Book of Genesis, we learn of figures like Noah and Methuselah who lived for hundreds of years, 800 and 900 years.
The Bible never tells us how they were able to live that long.
TSOUKALOS: There is an artifact at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, that is called the WB 44 Kings List of ancient Sumeria.
On there, you have a chronology of kings, and the combined years of when these rulers were in charge is 241,000 years.
And on that WB 44 list, you have so-called historical figures, where you actually have archaeology corroborating existence of those people.
So, in my opinion, the WB 44 list is a list of extraterrestrial space travelers, and the entire Kings List is correct.
NARRATOR: Could it be that George Van Tassel and many others like him have been driven by a deep-seated memory of a time when our ancestors existed alongside extraterrestrials who seemed to live forever? Perhaps the answer can be found by examining the events that led to the construction of the Integratron and George Van Tassel's alien encounter.
NARRATOR: Standing alone in California's barren Mojave Desert is a towering seven-story boulder called Giant Rock.
It is here that George Van Tassel's strange journey began in the 1940s, just three miles from where he would eventually build the Integratron.
MASTERS: Giant Rock is a 25,000-ton boulder that takes up 5,800 square feet, and is, until recently, the largest freestanding boulder in the world.
NARRATOR: This massive boulder has long been held sacred by local Native American tribes, who believe it to be a site of great power.
HENRY: Spiritual vortexes like Giant Rock are known to be places where people can have extraordinary spiritual experiences, healing experiences, deep states of meditation.
And what we find out at Giant Rock is that the local Native American Indian tribes, the Serrano and the Chemehuevi, would do their ceremonies at Giant Rock.
But only the chief was allowed to get close to Giant Rock.
NARRATOR: In November of 2019, ancient astronaut theorist David Childress traveled to the site of Giant Rock to meet with local historian Barbara Harris, and learn more about the inception of the Integratron.
- Hello, Barbara.
- How you doing? Hi.
Thank you for coming.
Thanks for having me here.
So, please tell me the story of-of Giant Rock.
Well, they say it is millions of years old.
And, uh, basically this whole area here is made up of granite.
And, many, many years ago there's a, a volcanic eruption.
And, of course, this is a product of that volcanic eruption.
What is the early story of, of Giant Rock, then, with Native Americans? Well, this ground was considered very sacred by the Native Americans.
And they would come here and use it seasonally.
But they considered it so sacred that only the shamans and the chiefs were allowed to stay here at the rock.
At the turn of the 19th century, the homesteading and the white man started to come in.
And that has to do with this early prospector, who lived under the rock.
Frank Critzer, and he was responsible for building the roads to Giant Rock.
NARRATOR: In 1930, George Van Tassel had a chance encounter with prospector Frank Critzer at his uncle's auto repair shop in Santa Monica, which led to him investing in Critzer's mining operations in the Mojave Desert.
Critzer was known in the area for his eccentric behavior, which included using mining dynamite to blow a hole in the bottom of Giant Rock one big enough to live in.
Van Tassel's initial ties to the area stem from a friendship forged with Critzer over the years.
CHILDRESS: He lived under this rock? HARRIS: Yes, he was actually a guy who was looking for people to come and visit him under his rock.
However, Frank, he also had a dark side to him.
So, in July of 1942, the U.
S.
Government had the Old Man's Draft.
And, and it required people between the ages of 18 and 64 to register for the draft.
And so he got caught up in that, did he? - Yeah, he was 54.
- Okay.
And the-the local sheriffs came out here, who happened to be friends with him, and offered to take him into the local town to register for the draft.
He walked into a back room and came out wearing a pair of binoculars that had wires attached.
And he basically said, "Leave me alone, or we're all gonna go to hell together.
" And he took the two wires, put them together and - Right under here, then? - Yes.
Okay, wow! And he blew up into little pieces.
And, uh, one sheriff actually, one of his rib cages came off and impaled into a the other one.
-And the other sheriff came flying -Wow.
- Out of the bottom of the rock.
- Yeah.
And the other sheriff, who stood out here, stood in shock while it all happened.
NARRATOR: Frank Critzer's bizarre and violent action shocked the local community.
Many questioned if he may have been influenced by the energy of Giant Rock itself which the local Native American tribes had warned was only meant for sacred purposes.
And, according to geologists, Giant Rock does, in fact, produce energy.
The interior of the rock is white, because it is primarily composed of quartz a mineral that generates an electrical charge when under stress as it would be inside a massively heavy rock.
Giant Rock is also believed to be located on top of a natural earth energy line, also known as a ley line.
George Van Tassel said the Integratron needed to be in a special place, full of energy.
We have a gold mine right nearby.
This area has ley lines and aquafers.
There's actually a mountain of quartz right here.
And you can feel the energy when you're here.
NARRATOR: Could electrical energy emanating from Giant Rock have had a deadly effect on Frank Critzer? Despite the horrific event that occurred at Giant Rock, one man was still drawn to the site George Van Tassel.
Over the course of his many visits to Critzer's rock home, he had become convinced that it was a place of unusual energy.
Now, you have a vacancy under the rock! - Van Tassel told his wife, "Pack the girls" - Santa Monica to "we're moving out to live under a rock!" So, did the Van Tassels - live underneath this rock then? - No, actually, most of their living quarters were outside.
The underground area was primarily used for his channeling and meditations, so, as the story goes, Van Tassel had an experience.
NARRATOR: Before his death, Frank Critzer had transformed the nearby ancient lake bed into a small airport.
According to George Van Tassel, on the night of August 24, 1953, a craft landed on the runway that was not of this world.
He described the encounter in a 1964 television interview.
INTERVIEWER: What did you see? A bell, a bell-shaped, uh, type of, uh, anti-gravity, uh, ship that they operate as a scout ship out of their big carriers.
How big? Uh, this was 36 feet in diameter and 19 feet high.
And where was it, on the ground? No, it was hovering ten feet off the ground.
And, uh, a man got off of the ship and approached me.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go into this ship? I walked with him to a spot underneath it, and, uh, an anti-gravity beam took me up through a hole in the bottom.
NARRATOR: While skeptics were quick to write off George Van Tassel as some kind of delusional mad scientist, many who knew him, or have studied his work, believe he was nothing short of a genius.
George was super smart.
At 14, he drops out of school.
At 17, he becomes a certified pilot.
Moves out west, and worked for Howard Hughes and then became friends.
They both had a calling to, let's say, higher or mystical or psychic experiences.
CRAIG HODGETTS: The parallels would be Edison, who thought in this realm of electricity that nobody could understand, but he somehow channeled.
Or Nikola Tesla.
He was so sensitized to the electromagnetic spectrum that many of his inventions just came naturally.
And that may have been some place where George Van Tassel came from.
NARRATOR: George Van Tassel claimed that over the course of his life, extraterrestrials communicated with him many times.
And the most important message he received was to build the Integratron.
An eclectic group of several hundred travelers descend upon the Mojave Desert to gather at Giant Rock.
It is here that George Van Tassel holds his annual Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention.
And while there are no paved roads or facilities of any kind, it has attracted enough attention to garner a feature in Life magazine.
So, George has the idea he's gonna do the first intergalactic spaceship convention.
Couple hundred people show up.
It's a beautiful event.
Two years later, there's 11,000 people there.
The 1950s and 1960s, uh, Giant Rock ended up being the nexus of the most highly attended UFO conferences that has ever happened in the United States.
NARRATOR: The Giant Rock convention was largely responsible for fueling interest in the UFO phenomenon.
But for George Van Tassel, it served a more important purpose.
George goes on to give these conventions for 23 years, collects donations, and uses that as a way to help fund the dome.
NARRATOR: Van Tassel claimed that the extraterrestrials that had communicated with him at Giant Rock gave him instructions for building a machine that could rejuvenate cells in the human body to extend life perhaps indefinitely.
At the peak of the Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention attendance he gets an architect to draw up the plans for this vision that he has, this vision of a white dome in the desert that he's going to build near Giant Rock.
And in 1958, they break ground and they begin work.
NARRATOR: While many in the mainstream scientific community paid little attention to Van Tassel's project, some believe he was a visionary on the level of Nikola Tesla, who also claimed to be in contact with alien entities.
MASTERS: George Van Tassel was very clearly influenced by Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American researcher known throughout the world as a genius.
Contributed so much to science and electricity and innovation.
VALONE: Nikola Tesla published an article in 1898, and Tesla states in his article, when you're exposed to high voltage for a short period, say 15 minutes or less, you get beneficial effects.
Tesla was an inspiration for rejuvenation, and this is what George Van Tassel was very attuned to.
And, in fact, Tesla announced that he had been receiving radio waves from extraterrestrials, specifically messages from Martians.
So this is very similar to George's experiences.
And both of them were interested in the effect of high voltage on humans.
NARRATOR: Both men were derided by the scientific community for their claims of alien contact.
But today, it is well known that electromagnetic waves have a number of beneficial effects on the human body, including nerve regeneration, wound healing, pain management, and even treating diabetes.
And like Nikola Tesla, George Van Tassel did attract the attention of at least one government organization during his lifetime the FBI.
The FBI's involvement with George Van Tassel, which was considerable, started in the 1950s.
The Feds were interested in the technology that George was working with and uncovering at the Integratron.
NARRATOR: Declassified FBI documents confirm the Bureau did, in fact, conduct surveillance on many of Van Tassel's speeches and presentations for years.
ERIC RANKIN: He was definitely monitored by the FBI.
They were aware of what he was doing out in the desert.
If you go back into the early '50s to the early '60s, that was the high point around the world of people seeing extraterrestrial craft.
NARRATOR: During this time of increased UFO activity in the late 1950s and early '60s, Van Tassel finally had the resources necessary to begin constructing the Integratron.
It is the circular plan, two-story, hemispherical, umbrella dome structure, 43 feet in diameter and 33 feet tall designed to facilitate cell rejuvenation by means of the manipulation of electromagnetic waves.
INTERVIEWER: Let's talk about this picture.
This is a picture of the, uh, machine we're building down there.
This structure's actually up.
We're working now on the parts on the equipment that operate it.
This rim around here has armatures 57 feet in diameter, which would be better than four times bigger than the biggest armatures ever made before.
LAYNE: The incredible thing about the construction is there are no nails.
Every piece is fit together.
All the wood, it's formed, it's shaped.
A little glue, and then there's the fiberglass shell.
NARRATOR: Construction of the building was completed in 1960, but Van Tassel would manufacture the technology to power it himself.
Over the next two decades, he worked on the apparatus to achieve his goal of cell rejuvenation through the controlled manipulation of electromagnetic waves.
HODGETTS: Because it's all built of wood, it's unable to conduct electricity back to the Earth, and so there's simply this kind of swarm of electromagnetic energy within the vessel that essentially can't get out.
And so in theory, your cells, which are also electrical impulses within them, may be rejuvenated and recharged so that their electrical component is not fading away as you get older.
NARRATOR: While the Integratron was never finished, one man who worked closely with George Van Tassel has managed to build a working model that represents the device at 95% completion.
Is it possible that the key to activating the immortality machine is still within reach? NARRATOR: Continuing his investigation of the Integratron, David Childress has arranged to meet with Bob Benson - Hey.
I'm David Childress.
- How you doing? NARRATOR: A protégé of Van Tassel's, and one of the only men alive known to have worked directly with him.
- You knew George Van Tassel.
- Sure did, yeah.
And I got some things I'd like to show you.
Oh, good.
I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Yeah.
All right.
NARRATOR: In Van Tassel's final years, Bob Benson helped him to publish various writings on the scientific principles behind the Integratron.
BENSON: So I was living here, at his house.
- CHILDRESS: At his house? - At his house.
- Which was at the Integratron.
- Right.
And what was he like then? Very down-to-earth, but he was very intelligent.
He was wonderful.
NARRATOR: While Van Tassel never disclosed the full details for building his rejuvenation machine, Benson attempted to create a model of it based on what he learned.
BENSON: He didn't leave takeover instructions for anybody, so nobody knew what to do, so I looked for the research, and I couldn't find anything.
So I had to go on my own.
And what I did, I said, well, I'll start by building a model.
I incorporated the things that I knew.
This spoke thing you see here, that's an actual electrostatic generator.
It's 58 feet in diameter, it weighs 1,500 pounds, and it's lifted up with air jets that are around the bottom.
- Uh-huh.
- And there's brushes on them, and what they do is they generate electricity.
NARRATOR: The electricity generated by the brushes travels through a wire that connects to a capacitor.
The capacitor is designed to discharge when it reaches a certain level of electricity.
It starts off very low, like this.
As it goes, it builds up to a part.
It builds up, builds up, builds up, builds up, build up.
Builds up Bang! And then this comes on.
This is the spark gap.
This is the regulator.
See? Boom.
Now it's regulated.
You walk through this little door right here, you walk around the back of it and out the other end there.
And you're rejuvenated instantly.
It's a rejuvenation machine, sent by extraterrestrials to help human beings.
CHILDRESS: So how close do you think that George Van Tassel was to completing the Integratron? Well, he says it was 95% done.
NARRATOR: Doctor of Engineering Physics Tom Valone is an expert in what is called "bioelectromagnetic healing" and has spent years studying both Nikola Tesla and George Van Tassel.
Based on his research, he believes the Integratron was decades ahead of its time.
I would say that the genius of George Van Tassel is very evident in the design of the Integratron.
He integrated a number of technologies that were slowly being evolved over the 20th century.
The spark in the middle is an actual Tesla coil, and this is designed by Nikola Tesla to not only provide for the study of high voltage, but also biological benefits of being exposed to just Tesla coil frequencies.
The design we have here is the, um, best current knowledge that we have of finishing the Integratron design.
NARRATOR: Considering what scientists now know about how electromagnetic frequencies and ions can benefit the human body, is it possible that George Van Tassel really was just weeks away from completing a working immortality machine? While Van Tassel was ahead of his time, he claimed to be tapping into knowledge from the ancient past.
VALONE: He constantly referred to the Old Testament in regards to the references for angels and for God and the construction of the Integratron.
But he was convinced from his extraterrestrial experiences that angels were space people.
CHILDRESS: And Van Tassel said that the instructions that he was given to build the Integratron were very similar to the instructions that Moses was given by the God Yahweh to build a tabernacle.
So Van Tassel believed in ancient extraterrestrials and UFOs, and he saw all of these things as connected.
NARRATOR: Van Tassel was particularly intrigued by the Great Pyramid of Giza, which he believed was built to utilize the piezoelectric properties of the quartz contained within its granite blocks.
In the piezoelectric effect, electrical energy accumulates in rocks and otherwise lifeless matter.
VALONE: We see even in George's writings that the pyramids were, to him, a powerhouse made of granite, and therefore piezoelectric and very high energy accumulators.
George was convinced that the pyramid structure was designed to rejuvenate people.
Van Tassel had computed that the site of the Integratron was also in line with the Great Pyramids and that this area was a rare vortex where energies from beneath and above the Earth made it possible for us to be in contact with intelligences that we usually weren't able to easily reach.
NARRATOR: Could the Great Pyramid have once acted as a fountain of youth that enabled people to live for centuries, as is described in both the Hebrew Bible and the Sumerian Kings List? If extraterrestrials really did give George Van Tassel instructions for building the Integratron, is it possible that they were providing humankind with a technology that existed on Earth thousands of years ago? Perhaps further clues can be found by examining newly discovered aspects of the Integratron that may reveal it had a second and perhaps even more profound purpose.
NARRATOR: In the year 2000, many of George Van Tassel's followers were dismayed when the new owners of the Integratron decided to use the structure to house sound baths.
But others believe it brings to light a key element of Van Tassel's intention.
The Integratron was made in a way that is very ideally suited for capturing energy and especially sound energy.
It has tremendous acoustic properties, and the way the sound moves about and reflects off of the domed structure is really unique to this building and comes back to the way it was constructed and the way it was made and the materials that went into producing it.
HENRY: The dome of the Integratron enhances the acoustic experience within.
This is very much like ancient temple sites like Newgrange that are somewhat domed and also focus on the acoustical experience.
RANKIN: It's a real mystery that it has all these beautiful sound qualities and properties to it.
But it's interesting to consider that all along, maybe the Integratron's design really was as a sound frequency machine more than an electrostatic generator of some sort.
It seems odd that there would be so many amazing acoustical properties to it if they weren't supposed to be there.
Maybe it could've been both, both sound and using electromagnetism in its design.
NARRATOR: Although Van Tassel's direct work at the Integratron ended more than 40 years ago, its unusual architecture continues to produce scientific revelations.
But if the structure's acoustic and geometric properties serve a technological purpose, what could it be? RANKIN: The Integratron is a beautiful geometric building divided into 16 parabolic arcs in the dome up top, and then it's an octagon on the bottom.
So it seems to be functions of eights, fours, 16s.
All geometrics have a sum total of their angles.
Well, it also means that we are living in a harmonic system.
HENRY: The sacred geometry of the Integratron is very unique.
It is a 16-sided building.
We don't see those very often.
We did see one in a painting by Raphael, The Marriage of the Virgin, where he shows a 16-sided tower that is thought to be Solomon's Temple.
This is very important because Solomon's Temple was the permanent home of the Ark of the Covenant, and maybe this is what Van Tassel was hinting at with the construction of the Integratron.
The Ark of the Covenant is a device that opened up a blazing portal through which Moses or an Israelite high priest could communicate with an otherworldly being.
NARRATOR: The Ark of the Covenant? The sacred object that was described in the Bible as a device with which to communicate with God? Is it possible that George Van Tassel, who sometimes referred to the Integratron as the Tabernacle, was building a machine that would not only rejuvenate the human body but would use acoustic frequencies to connect with otherworldly beings? RANKIN: It is allowing us through our mental state, without ever having to make actual contact with an extraterrestrial, that there is some latent design built into us, possibly intentionally, that we have a little transceiver that when we get everything right and we start playing these tones according to these exact codes and keys left behind for us, that we might open this portal of communication.
Perhaps this is ultimately what Van Tassel envisioned the Integratron doing, was being able to open up a portal or a gateway so that he could communicate with extraterrestrials coming and going from the Earth.
NARRATOR: If the incredible story of George Van Tassel is true and he was carrying out an alien agenda, could the Integratron be more functional than we know? Could it be used to reconnect with the very beings he claimed to be in contact with and thereby recover the key to completing it? NARRATOR: More than four decades after his death, George Van Tassel's Integratron still stands in the Mojave Desert.
While the device was never finished, many still see it as commemorating a genuine extraterrestrial encounter.
When you come to the Mojave Desert, there are a couple of places you have to go.
You have to go to Joshua Tree National Park.
Then you have to go to the Integratron.
And people come from around the world to see it.
The Integratron is the center, historically, of UFO culture.
There's talk of trying to reengineer the Integratron at some point in the future to have the spinning armature outside and generate this electronic field.
Many scientists and physicists and experimenters have been going out there for a couple of decades now, and there definitely is something subtly going on energetically at the Integratron.
It is still a frequency machine.
NARRATOR: If extraterrestrials really did give Van Tassel instructions for how to build the Integratron, might the same alien beings one day choose another human conduit to finish the project? Could it be that humanity simply was not ready to possess such powerful technology? If so, it would not be the first time.
Throughout history, we have individuals who claim to have been mysteriously given information that would lead to the advancement of humankind.
In the 1400s, Leonardo da Vinci said that ideas came to him during meditation.
He sketched things like helicopters and tanks.
All sorts of devices that couldn't be realized in his lifetime.
In the early 20th century, the Indian mathematician Ramanujan credited a Hindu god with giving him theorems that mystified everyone at the time but which now form the basis of string theory.
And then we have Nikola Tesla, who claimed that he was communicating with aliens and that he had the key to wireless energy.
But he died before he could give this technology to humankind.
So it may be that in each of these cases, we were given information we weren't quite ready for but that would be realized at some future time.
HODGETTS: I feel very confident in the fact that this is the work of pure inventive genius.
And if it's not aligned with, uh, contemporary values, that doesn't invalidate its genius.
But there's no question that something, some catalytic event, shifted his focus from being a you know, a-a businessman, an engineer, to having this vision for something almost extraterrestrial.
Because of George Van Tassel's mysterious death in 1978, the Integratron was never completely finished.
But it's fascinating to think that George Van Tassel did meet with extraterrestrials and they showed him the future.
POPE: Some people have speculated that the extraterrestrial agenda is all about a continuous process of evolution to improve us.
To make us more intelligent.
To civilize us, perhaps.
To bring us to a level where perhaps, one day, we'll be fit to take a-a wider role on the galactic stage.
This phenomena that's taking place today is as old as our history, as our civilization.
This isn't anything new that's occurring.
They're walking among us on the Earth all the time, and we don't realize it.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Integratron provides a glimpse into humanity's future? Was George Van Tassel chosen to plant the seed that will give rise to the next giant step in humankind's evolution, one that will lead to lifetimes that are measured not in years but centuries? Perhaps the Integratron is more functional than it appears, and only when we are able to activate it will we be empowered to fulfill our alien destiny.