Ancient Aliens has clearly run out of topics that are (a) ancient and (b) related to aliens. As a result we got this episode, S07E03 “The God Particle,” about the discovery of the Higgs Boson at CERN in 2012. My grasp of particle physics is not nearly as good as my understanding of ancient history, and it is that disconnect between the knowledge of the audience and the facts that stand behind the speculation that allows ancient astronaut theorists to insert aliens into the very fabric of the universe, where they take on the role of God. You will forgive me if my comments are rather truncated since I’m not at all familiar with the physics behind the Higgs Boson—though neither are ancient astronaut theorists. The more I think about it, the more telling it is that the show has permanently retired the old Ancient Aliens title card, which featured a faux-Egyptian tomb wall, in favor of the new blue one that shows the cosmos bathed in the blue light of God. The show isn’t about ancient times anymore but rather cosmology, in a bastardized sense. We open with the on-screen text of Genesis 1:1 merged with 1:3 so God’s first act is now to make light, which the show likens to the Big Bang through on-screen visuals. The show equates religion and sciences as two ways to seek out the origin of all things. The show debates whether God was responsible for the Big Bang, and the degree to which it is appropriate to attribute aspects of physics to divinity. Ariel Bar Tzadok, the ancient astronaut rabbi, claims that religion and science must come together, and science needs to assume religious claims (myths) are true so we can find the real origin of them. Next we describe the Large Hadron Collider and recite the old fears from 2011 and 2012 about whether its activities might have destroyed the earth. (It didn’t.) We then get a recap of the announcement in 2012 that the Higgs Boson had been discovered, and the implications for physics about the importance of the particle for understanding how particles gain mass. The show wants us to call it the “God Particle,” even though scientists themselves don’t use the term. Ten minutes into the show, and nothing alien or ancient has been discussed. Giorgio Tsoukalos in fact tells us that all of this—including the ancient astronaut theory—is all about discovering quasi-religious truths about cosmology and the origins of all things. It was a very strange ten minutes that tried to marry spirituality to physics in service of (presumably) aliens, who in theory ought not to be religious beings at all. After the first break, we go to Chandigarh, India to review the Vedas. Why? Subhash Khash, an Indian physicist, falsely claims that the Hindu Vedas have remained stable—to the letter—for more than five thousand years. They aren’t that old, or that stable. And Jonathan Young of the Joseph Campbell Archive claims that the Vedas are believed to be pre-human, which I believe he got from Blavatsky’s Books of Dzyan. The formation of the universe from a cosmic egg in the Rigveda is likened to the Big Bang Theory. Just for your amusement, here is the actual Rigveda creation hymn, from Hymn 129: 1. Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. Not exactly as advertised. So is the Higgs Boson “desire,” “breath,” or “warmth”? Then we lie about Genesis, claiming that Genesis 1 matches the Big Bang Theory and the Higgs Field! Young claims that in Genesis light emerged “first,” and the Higgs Field transformed it to matter. This is a lie. Genesis 1:1-2 clearly says that God created the heavens and the formless earth before light and that the cosmic waters already existed. Light doesn’t come until verse 3. Why lie about something so simple? Next we claim that the author of the Vedas was an alien who encoded the Higgs Boson into the text given above, which is ridiculous since no boson is in there. After the break we talk about the Greek scientist Democritus, who studied under the magi, and invented the atomic theory of matter. The show asks how Democritus could have known atoms exist just seconds after an expert explained that he didn’t know anything about atoms but rather did a thought experiment about how many times a piece of matter could be divided until reaching a fundamental unit that could not be split. Democritus also speculated about other worlds—as many ancients did—but the show wants us to think of his philosophical speculations as contact with other planets or dimensions. David Wilcock, whom we learned this week is a 9/11 truther who believes a cabal of international financiers is planning a global genocide—speculates that Near Eastern priests taught Democritus alien secrets. The narrator tells us that Democritus probably had nothing to do with his own discoveries but was merely a stenographer for aliens. As we go to commercial, the narrator tells us that this all has something to do with the Mayan calendar, which the show illustrates with a completely fake graphic based on the Aztec Sun Stone but with the central medallion replaced with a Maya royal relief. After the break, we travel to Palenque, Mexico, home of Lord Pacal’s rocket ship coffin lid. But this time we aren’t interested in that. We get another view of the fake Mayan calendar as we get an overview of the Mayan Long Count calendar. The show discusses the December 21, 2012 cycle change—but Ancient Aliens declines to explain its own role in the doomsday panic of that year. The show did a whole episode in 2012 on how the world would end, which everyone but Tsoukalos agreed with. Now they revise their doomsday position—and David Childress tells us that the Mayan calendar actually predicted the discovery of the Higgs Boson and its potential to explain “our place in the universe.” That’s a bit removed from his 2012 claim: “It’s hard to know the future—what’s going to happen at the end of 2012—but it seems that perhaps the Mayans had some glimpse into the future that we have yet to find out.” Somehow or another once the date passed Childress remarkably discovered just what that future was—right after it happened. Funny how predictions tend to work that way. It couldn’t be because he was trying to fit the facts into an ideological idea for which there never was an actual prediction, could it? Of course not. That said, the “experts” who are so confident about the real meaning of the Maya calendar only became confident after their last set of claims fizzled and prophecy failed. William Henry tells us that a Mayan carving of the World Tree shows sap, and this sap is the Higgs Boson, so therefore the tree shows we can make wormholes (branches) to other dimensions. After the next break, the show tells us that a statue of Shiva the Destroyer stands outside CERN’s headquarters in Switzerland. It depicts Shiva dancing within a circle of flames, representing the cosmos. It was installed in 2004. There is no conspiracy about it, however. The Indian government gave it to CERN to symbolize the close cooperation between CERN and India. The Nataraja, or dancing Shiva, statue was meant to symbolize the churning of the cosmos, which the Indian government saw as an appropriate representation of physics. Anyway, the show tells us that Shiva is an alien and his destruction of the universe refers to the Hadron Collider breaking apart subatomic particles. At least this episode was better than the last time Ancient Aliens discussed the Large Hadron Collider. In S4E09 “The Time Travelers” in 2012 Tsoukalos claimed that the Aztec calendar predicted its existence because both were sort of round. Oh wait: It isn’t. This time Jason Martell tells us that the circle of flame surrounding the Nataraja is the circle of the Large Hadron Collider when its long tube is viewed head-on, and Tsoukalos agrees! The show finishes by speculating about what improvements to the Large Hadron Collider will reveal. The show tells us that adding more energy to the collider could create a black hole or even destroy the entire universe, kind of like the claims made for the collider back in 2011. David Wilcock, New World Order believer, speculates that the collider might help humanity—which I guess for him is the evil cabal of financiers—build a new universe. Then everyone throws up their hands and says we don’t have any idea what the collider might cause to happen, good or bad. The narrator says that aliens might have planted the “seeds of knowledge” to invent the Large Hadron Collider, which seems like an awfully specific thing to have spent 10,000 years plotting for.
Couldn’t they have just run a school for Babylonians and trained some kids in physics to get this done faster? I will never understand the aliens’ plots, but it’s a good thing David Wilcock does. That’s how we know, as he told Russian television, that the good aliens use earthquake weapons to destroy the underground bases of the New World Order and their international financier allies to stick it to the evil aliens, who have a treaty with the U.S. government authorizing anal probing. You know, plot of the The X-Files.
76 Comments
spookyparadigm
8/8/2014 03:41:22 pm
"The show isn’t about ancient times anymore but rather cosmology"
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spookyparadigm
8/8/2014 03:43:14 pm
To add a caveat to the above question: straight-up exploitation artists who usually write about something else don't count.
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EP
8/8/2014 03:45:29 pm
I think the Soviet ancient astronauts theorists weren't explicitly critical of modernity, unless you count general criticism of religion implicit in their "materialistic" interpretations of mythology.
spookyparadigm
8/8/2014 04:13:30 pm
Thought about them, but wouldn't they just fall into "exploitation" except for propaganda rather than monetary ends?
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EP
8/8/2014 04:17:12 pm
Many of the Soviet ones totally believed in it. In fact, I cannot think of any certain propagandist/scammer until we get into the 80s. 8/8/2014 11:35:58 pm
Today? No, not today. But the early episodes of Ancient Aliens were focused on the aliens and ancient history, not so much to this quasi-spiritual cosmology. Going back a ways, Alan Landsburg (another TV producer) wrote books that were mostly about aliens rather than critiquing modernity. He seemed genuinely interested in aliens rather than sticking it to academics.
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spookyparadigm
8/9/2014 09:06:44 am
I've never read any books by Landsburg, but In Search of ... is probably a major reason I'm here commenting on these topics. You're right, that show did not portray itself as against mainstream science in the same way. But then, American spirituality wasn't as politicized the way it is today (what politicization existed was usually just a proxy for ethnic politics), yelling at scientists didn't have as much of a built-in mainstream audience.
.
8/10/2014 06:29:38 am
the Sputnik generation looked at Neil Armstrong stepping
Kevin oddy
8/23/2016 01:18:25 am
Jason and you guys that let it get under your skin it's just entertainment on the most trashiest of mediums chill before you guys have a coronary lol 8/8/2014 04:11:31 pm
Well, damn it. You are forcing me to watch this episode, Jason, so I can find all the science they screwed up--I used to work at CERN. There goes by weekend.
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EP
8/8/2014 04:14:52 pm
Moreover, "makin' stuff" in the sense of organizing it, as opposed to eh nihilo.
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EP
8/8/2014 04:15:10 pm
*ex nihilo 8/8/2014 04:31:01 pm
Right (with corrected typo as you noted): creating with pre-existing matter.
Gregor
8/8/2014 04:59:23 pm
I like "eh nihilo". Its nothingness, but without all the drive or intention.
EP
8/8/2014 05:10:04 pm
The only explanation for the way the universe is: a blind idiot god. 12/11/2014 09:46:35 am
"makin stuff" is actually separating the waters from the waters. 8/8/2014 11:31:20 pm
I know that's one way of reading it, Aaron, but however you read it the cosmic waters (or the deep, or however you translate it) are there first. Now, sure, you can say that those are symbolic, but once you do that you lose any right to claim the rest of Genesis 1 is an account of the Big Bang... unless you claim that the ancients knew what came before the Big Bang. But AA didn't say anything about that...
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Clint Knapp
8/9/2014 01:04:16 am
From the opening lines of the Enuma Elish:
Harry
8/9/2014 05:14:53 am
Aaron,
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Gregor
8/8/2014 04:58:14 pm
I'm convinced that H.L. Mencken was foretelling the effect of all this AA / Fringe bullshit when he quipped: "Every good man must, at times, be tempted to spit on his hands, raise the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
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EP
8/8/2014 05:08:50 pm
Isn't it "every *normal* man"?
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Gregor
8/8/2014 05:16:26 pm
-shrug- I've always seen it as "good man". If not, it needs to be updated, because normal men are busy doing this (Tsoukalos twitter feed):
EP
8/8/2014 05:59:19 pm
I do not always break through the space-time continuum, but when I do I use coils.
Only Me
8/8/2014 07:02:02 pm
One does not simply break through the space-time continuum.
EP
8/8/2014 07:13:42 pm
THIS. IS. TESLAAAAA!!!
Only Me
8/9/2014 03:14:21 pm
I used to attempt making wormholes until I took a proton to the knee.
Harry
8/8/2014 05:16:30 pm
I normally don't watch Ancient Aliens, because there is only so much nonsense I can take, but I did see what they said about Democritus. They falsely claimed that he anticipated the Standard Theory of Particle Physics. That is absolutely wrong! The Standard Theory deals entirely with subatomic particles, but Democritus, asJason points out, believed that atoms could not be split.
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Shane Sullivan
8/9/2014 07:47:48 am
To be fair, that's kind of modern physicists' fault assigning the word "atom" (from "atomos", which means "indivisible") to something that actually could be divided.
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EP
8/9/2014 07:58:09 am
Not their fault. When they named atoms that they thought they WERE indivisible. Subatomic particles were still controversial in the early 20th century. (Some of Tesla's more ignorant rants, for example, stem from his opposition to subatomic particles.)
Harry
8/9/2014 12:58:50 pm
If I recall correctly, Democritus thought that these "atomoi" were simply the smallest bits of the substances they composed.
EP
8/9/2014 01:00:28 pm
In old-timey terms, the Standard Model is corpuscularistic, not atomistic. The more you know :)
Shane Sullivan
8/11/2014 07:39:35 am
EP, I'm certainly not judging those physicists for thinking what they thought, but it was an error on their part. I would call that a fault, but, semantics.
EP
8/11/2014 08:28:06 am
Shane, I just wanted to stress that their error was about atoms, not about the etymology of the term they used. In fact, they picked the perfect terms for what they mistakenly believed these particles to be. You comment could have been read as saying the opposite... Just wanted to make sure we fault them for the right thing! :)
Shane Sullivan
8/11/2014 11:38:10 am
Oh, sorry--yes, we're on the same page.
Steve_in_SoDak
8/9/2014 06:05:08 am
Jason I just wanted to thank you for the reviews of this non-sense. I used to love nothing more than to watch AA and watch the bullshit unfold, then they switched to H2 which my cable provider doesn't offer in their cable packages, and I can't stream them online either since my cable company is also my ISP and if I want to stream any video between the hours of 5am and midnight i get about 15 secs of video and then 30 secs of buffering. I've been told the simplest way to describe their setup is that they have infrastructure for 5000 customers but they have 25,000. Again thanks for the reviews, now I know what I'm not missing, but I do miss watching the show to ridicule it myself, I kind of liken it to watching cheesy sci-fi from the 50's and 60's.
Reply
8/9/2014 08:24:40 am
The alleged Higgs bosons have the same mass as some Cs isotopes, so the "discovery" proves nothing. Existence = space-time plus non-space-time. Some of the non-space-time units converted to space-time units, thereby creating the universe; there was no "Big Bang."
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EP
8/9/2014 08:36:26 am
"Higgs bosons have the same mass as some Cs isotopes"
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Steve_in_SoDak
8/9/2014 10:49:50 am
Caesium (Cs) has 40 known isotopes. The atomic masses of these isotopes range from 112 to 151. The Higgs Boson has mass that is measured in fractions of an atomic number.
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Steve_in_SoDak
8/9/2014 11:29:01 am
the mass unit numbers used when dealing with particles is not the same mass unit when dealing with atoms and their isotopes.
EP
8/9/2014 11:40:22 am
That was the only sense I could make of the claim - that it's based on confusion analogous to confusing inches and AUs... Of course, that doesn't explain the rest of the comment... Existence = space-time + non-space-time... what? 8/9/2014 12:41:12 pm
The Higgs bosons are said to have masses of 123.5 GeV and 126.6 GeV. This translates to 132.582703 u and 135.910689 u. Therefore these are Cs isotopes. Mass = 2xZ + G, where G is the number of isotopic charges. Therefore, here, G=23 or 26. QED. Modern physics is full of holes like this.
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Steve_in_SoDak
8/9/2014 12:55:33 pm
you can copy and paste from wikipedia all you want, but since the Higgs Boson is a particle that makes up other particles that in turn make up atoms you are just plain wrong. It's like you are saying that 50 apple seeds have the same mass as 50 apples and thus are the same thing.
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EP
8/9/2014 12:57:33 pm
He can't even copy/paste from WIkipedia properly
EP
8/9/2014 12:56:34 pm
It's GeV/c2, not GeV. Kinda makes a big difference :)
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8/10/2014 02:26:48 am
Come on, the "/c2" is understood by all of us who work in particle physics. The so-called Higgs bosons are quite massive; they are NOT subatomic particles. The people at CERN are so enmeshed in the current conventional paradigm that they haven't realized that they have created Cs isotopes, not Higgs bosons. Conventional theoretical physics is as bizarre as Ancient Astronaut theory.
EP
8/10/2014 05:49:34 am
"Conventional theoretical physics is as bizarre as Ancient Astronaut theory."
Harry
8/11/2014 01:46:39 am
I am no physicist, but I think I have learned enough about physics from paying attention to real physicists to realize that Dr. Satz's claim that CERN must have confused a Cesium atom for a Higgs Boson sounds ignorant.
EP
8/11/2014 03:33:50 am
"Satz's work often features pages upon pages of badly formatted equations. This usually renders his work completely unreadable because of the ambiguity in what constants he's using and how these equations fit together" 8/10/2014 02:43:10 am
If you still don't believe me, go here: http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/higgs_mass_atomic_mass_units-88172
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EP
8/11/2014 04:20:07 am
Tell us about faster-than-light Cosmic Neutrinos, please!
Reply
8/11/2014 04:59:56 am
EP, you're just a little lap-dog for conventional physics. Jason applies critical thinking to history and the Ancient Astronaut Theory, whereas I apply critical thinking to "modern physics." I suggest you carefully study my paper "The Case Against Modern Physics." As for "rationalwiki.com", there is far more real science at my blog site than at that highly irrational site.
Only Me
8/11/2014 05:17:20 am
Ronald Satz, the Scott Wolter of physics.
EP
8/11/2014 06:07:04 am
I don't go to rationalwiki for "real science". I go there to have fun at the expense of hilarious specimen of pseudoscience. Like you, for example. 8/12/2014 05:10:01 am
EP, in the first series of experiments at CERN, the neutrinos were observed to go faster than the speed of light; according to my paper, these must be cosmic (or inverse) neutrinos. In the second series of experiments at CERN, the neutrinos were observed to go slightly lower than the speed of light; according to my paper, these must be material (normal) neutrinos. The scientific establishment cannot accept faster than light motion, so they've suppressed the results of the first series of experiments. What they don't understand is there is evidence for superluminal motion all around us. Many quasars have redshifts z > 1, which implies greater than c velocity. The relativistic expressions are not applicable to z, because it is a direct measurement. However, greater than c velocity means that the velocity equation, s/t, has been flipped to t/s. This results in motion in time, rather in space. Outward motion in time is equivalent to inward motion in space, meaning that every object with z > 1 should be compact--which is precisely what is observed. Study the Reciprocal System and prove it for yourself. www.reciprocalsystem.guru.
EP
8/12/2014 06:50:36 am
You have already proven yourself to be too dense to get it after real physicists spent years trying to explain it to you. I don't want to waste my time on you any further.
Duke of URL
8/12/2014 07:07:44 am
Ronald Satz: "The scientific establishment cannot accept faster than light motion, so they've suppressed the results of the first series of experiments."
Duke of URL
8/12/2014 07:07:53 am
Ronald Satz: "The scientific establishment cannot accept faster than light motion, so they've suppressed the results of the first series of experiments."
Duke of URL
8/12/2014 07:14:36 am
Ronald Satz: "The scientific establishment cannot accept faster than light motion, so they've suppressed the results of the first series of experiments."
Duke of URL
8/12/2014 07:15:59 am
Sorry about the triple post - apparently my computer has the hiccups.
EP
8/12/2014 07:19:06 am
@ Duke
olho
6/9/2015 01:33:20 pm
quantum physics offers no restriction to SUBATOMIC particles to be faster than light. actually, in some cases they should be. the problem is the impossibility to verify that.
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Jamie Eckles
8/10/2014 03:31:08 am
Did they bother to mention that it was called the "God" particle because publishers wouldn't let Peter Higgs call it the "Goddamned
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Duke of URL
8/10/2014 04:16:25 am
Sounds like they're really getting desperate, they must be losing viewer-share drastically. Now they're just randomly pulling lies out of their rectums.
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Only Me
8/10/2014 10:53:37 am
"Now they're just randomly pulling lies out of their rectums."
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BillUSA
8/10/2014 10:02:58 am
I wonder why these platinum, gold, silver and copper collecting aliens never lay claim to all the historic breakthroughs we dumb little humans think we've discovered on our own? They travel all this way to not only teach our ancestors how to stack rocks, but fail to capitalize on trademark rights that could make them rich.
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Paul Cargile
8/11/2014 02:45:54 am
Netflix has a documentary called "Particle Fever" that covers the discovery of the Higgs boson.
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Paul Cargile
8/11/2014 03:18:43 am
Or rather it spawned from the event horizon, not that it is the horizon.
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Kal
8/11/2014 10:00:43 am
First of all, these AA guys have never explained why 2012 didn't happen to turn out with a world shattering kaboom or something. We all know why, but I'd like for once have someone call them on it, on the show. The Mayans weren't ever talking about the end of the world. That was a western and wrong interpretation. Yes, but I want those guys that were so into it admitting they were wrong. It isn't gonna happen.
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CHF01
8/18/2014 03:48:11 pm
Another AA episode I really enjoyed. When they speak about the possibilities of what this new discovery could provide, I was completely engaged. Speculative? Sure. I'm glad they reviewed the topic and am looking forward to what comes next. maybe not the AA theories that get created, but the real scientific findings.
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CHF01
8/19/2014 07:57:34 am
I agree Jason with your comment here: "The more I think about it, the more telling it is that the show has permanently retired the old Ancient Aliens title card, which featured a faux-Egyptian tomb wall, in favor of the new blue one that shows the cosmos bathed in the blue light of God. The show isn’t about ancient times anymore but rather cosmology, in a bastardized sense."
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CHF01
8/19/2014 08:04:26 am
Slight revision: So that statement opens up many topic options for them to explore, in my opinion. If that question's answer is yes completely or even partially, it means looking at our past, present and future in a different perspective. Just my two cents...
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Jeremy
11/19/2014 12:50:49 pm
I didn't know David Wilcock believed that Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash were the heads of a secret cabal of bankers.
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Jen
5/28/2015 05:43:20 pm
Kind of a fun fact, the term god particle has nothing to do with creation. It's because when they were looking for it the scientists were saying something like "where is this god damn particle?" So it was called the god damn particle, but it was shortened.
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olho
6/9/2015 01:26:17 pm
i really don't why this term is used, when it actually removes god from universe origin's equation.
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olho
6/9/2015 01:22:08 pm
this episode made me throw up.
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Kelli
7/19/2015 11:21:28 pm
" I’m not at all familiar with the physics behind the Higgs Boson—though neither are ancient astronaut theorists."
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