The Integratron is a 38 feet (12 m) tall cupola structure with a diameter of 55 feet (17 m) designed by ufologist and contactee George Van Tassel. Van Tassel claimed the Integratron was capable of rejuvenation, anti-gravity and time travel. He built the structure in Landers, California (near Joshua Tree), following instructions that Van Tassel vehemently claimed were provided directly to him by visitors from the planet Venus. The Integratron machine was started in 1957, the structure erected in 1959. It was financed predominantly by donations, including funds from Howard Hughes. [1] [2]
After Van Tassel's death in 1978, the building had a series of owners (and was left in various states of disrepair) before sisters Joanne, Nancy, and Patty Karl bought it in the early 2000s. The sisters promote the Integratron as an "acoustically perfect structure", and offer "sound baths" they describe as "...meditation-like sessions accompanied by tones from 22 quartz crystal bowls, creating binaural beats for relaxation and rejuvenation". [1] The building is now a part of the National Historic Register, and continues to be stewarded by the Karl sisters and their adult children.
George Van Tassel was a former aircraft mechanic and flight inspector who moved to California's Mojave Desert to operate an airport and inn. While there, he began meditating under Giant Rock, which the Native Americans of the area held sacred. In August 1953, Van Tassel claimed he had been contacted both telepathically and later in person by people from space, who gave him a technique to rejuvenate human cell tissue. Acting on these instructions, Van Tassel began constructing the Integratron in 1954. Construction costs were partly paid for by an annual series of successful UFO conventions, the Giant Rock Spacecraft Conventions, which continued for nearly 25 years. The main structure's construction was complete circa 1959, but Van Tassel continued to work on the device until his sudden death in 1978. [1]
According to Van Tassel, the Integratron's workings rely on the generation of strong "intermittent magnetic fields" resulting in the generation of plasma in the form of a coronal discharge and negative air ionization inside the building. The Integratron is based on the Multiple Wave Oscillator, invented by Georges Lakhovsky, a combination of a high voltage Tesla coil and a split-ring resonator that generates ultra wideband electromagnetic frequencies (EMF). Van Tassel speculated that electromagnetism affects biological cells, and believed that every biological cell has a unique resonant EMF. According to van Tassel, the generation of strong ultra wideband EMF by the Integratron "resonates" with the cell's frequency and "recharges" the cellular structure as if it were an electrical battery. Van Tassel claimed that human cells "rejuvenated" while inside the structure. Van Tassel also claimed the Integratron is intentionally constructed atop a powerful geomagnetic anomaly and its construction is entirely of non-ferromagnetic materials, the equivalent to a modern radome. [2]
After Van Tassel died, there was a proposal to turn the Integratron into a disco, but that plan was never realized. The Integratron's new owners operate it as a tourist attraction and offer "sound baths" where groups of people are "exposed to harmonic sound frequencies" produced by quartz bowls, claimed to have a deep calming effect. According to one of the structure's docents, the Integratron is an "acoustically perfect sound chamber". [3] [1]
The Integratron was added to the National Register of Historic Places in April 2018. [4]
The English indie rock band Arctic Monkeys recorded part of their song "Secret Door" at the Integratron in 2008. [5]
A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs (tines) formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic metal. It resonates at a specific constant pitch when set vibrating by striking it against a surface or with an object, and emits a pure musical tone once the high overtones fade out. A tuning fork's pitch depends on the length and mass of the two prongs. They are traditional sources of standard pitch for tuning musical instruments.
A waveguide is a structure that guides waves by restricting the transmission of energy to one direction. Common types of waveguides include acoustic waveguides which direct sound, optical waveguides which direct light, and radio-frequency waveguides which direct electromagnetic waves other than light like radio waves.
In electromagnetism and electronics, electromotive force is an energy transfer to an electric circuit per unit of electric charge, measured in volts. Devices called electrical transducers provide an emf by converting other forms of energy into electrical energy. Other types of electrical equipment also produce an emf, such as batteries, which convert chemical energy, and generators, which convert mechanical energy. This energy conversion is achieved by physical forces applying physical work on electric charges. However, electromotive force itself is not a physical force, and ISO/IEC standards have deprecated the term in favor of source voltage or source tension instead.
Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with the lowest frequencies and the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, typically with frequencies below 300 gigahertz (GHz) and wavelengths greater than 1 millimeter, about the diameter of a grain of rice. Radio waves with frequencies above about 1 GHz and wavelengths shorter than 30 centimeters are called microwaves. Like all electromagnetic waves, radio waves in vacuum travel at the speed of light, and in the Earth's atmosphere at a slightly lower speed. Radio waves are generated by charged particles undergoing acceleration, such as time-varying electric currents. Naturally occurring radio waves are emitted by lightning and astronomical objects, and are part of the blackbody radiation emitted by all warm objects.
George Adamski was a Polish-American author who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he displayed numerous photographs in the 1940s and 1950s that he said were of alien spacecraft, claimed to have met with friendly Nordic alien Space Brothers, and claimed to have taken flights with them to the Moon and other planets.
Black triangles are UFOs reported as having a triangular shape and dark color, typically observed at night, described as large, silent, hovering, moving slowly, and displaying pulsating, colored lights which they can turn off.
Beamforming or spatial filtering is a signal processing technique used in sensor arrays for directional signal transmission or reception. This is achieved by combining elements in an antenna array in such a way that signals at particular angles experience constructive interference while others experience destructive interference. Beamforming can be used at both the transmitting and receiving ends in order to achieve spatial selectivity. The improvement compared with omnidirectional reception/transmission is known as the directivity of the array.
George Wellington Van Tassel was an American contactee, ufologist and author.
Contactees are persons who claim to have experienced contact with extraterrestrials. Some claimed ongoing encounters, while others claimed to have had as few as a single encounter. Evidence is anecdotal in all cases.
Daniel William Fry was an American contactee of the 1950s who claimed he had multiple contacts with an alien and took a ride in a remotely piloted alien spacecraft. Fry was born in Verdon Township, Minnesota.
Long John Nebel was an influential New York City talk radio show host.
Landers is an unincorporated community in the High Desert region of the Mojave Desert, in San Bernardino County, California. Landers' population, as of 2017, is 2,982 people. Its residents are sometimes referred to as "Landroids"—an allusion to the popular UFO culture in the area—and its official slogan is "Beautiful Skies, Miles of Smiles," adopted pursuant to a contest held by the Landers Association in early 2014. It was submitted by Ms. McCall's 3rd and 4th grade class at Landers Elementary School and was unveiled on June 10, 2014. However, for almost half a century, Landers has been known to its residents as "the land of 1000 vistas".
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) is a claimed sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, to which adverse symptoms are attributed. EHS has no scientific basis and is not a recognized medical diagnosis, although it is generally accepted that the experience of EHS symptoms is of psychosomatic origin. Claims are characterized by a "variety of non-specific symptoms, which afflicted individuals attribute to exposure to electromagnetic fields". Attempts to justify the claim that EHS is caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields have amounted to pseudoscience.
Truman Bethurum was one of the well known 1950s UFO or alien "contactees"- individuals who claimed to have spoken with people from other inhabited planets and entered or ridden in their spacecraft.
Wayne Sulo Aho was an American contactee who claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings. He was one of the more obscure members of the 1950s wave of contactees who followed George Adamski.
Giant Rock is a large freestanding boulder in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California, and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms. The boulder covers 5,800 square feet (540 m2) of ground and is seven stories high. Giant Rock is the largest freestanding boulder in North America and is purported to be the largest free standing boulder in the world.
Otis T. Carr first emerged into the 1950s flying saucer scene in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1955 when he founded OTC Enterprises, a company that was supposed to advance and apply technology originally suggested by Nikola Tesla. The claim to be applying some idea of Tesla's was quite common among exploiters of the flying saucer movement in the 1950s; for example. George Van Tassel's Integratron was supposedly based partially on (unspecified) lore from Tesla, partially on lore from friendly Space Brothers from Venus.
Ghost hunting is the process of investigating locations that are purportedly haunted by ghosts. The practice has been heavily criticized for its dismissal of the scientific method. No scientific study has ever been able to confirm the existence of ghosts. Ghost hunting is considered a pseudoscience by the vast majority of educators, academics, science writers and skeptics. Science historian Brian Regal described ghost hunting as "an unorganized exercise in futility".
Ashtar is the name given to an extraterrestrial being or group of beings that a number of people claim to have channeled.
A flying saucer, or flying disc, is a purported disc-shaped UFO. The term was coined in 1947 by the news media for the objects pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed flew alongside his airplane above Washington State. Newspapers reported Arnold's story with speed estimates implausible for airplanes of the period. The story spurred a wave of hundreds of sightings across the United States, including the Roswell incident and Flight 105 UFO sighting. The concept quickly spread to other countries. Early reports speculated about secret military technology, but flying saucers became synonymous with aliens by 1950. The term has gradually been supplanted by the more general military terms unidentified flying object (UFO) and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).