Journalists may publish all or part of this summary as a news report so long as they preserve the essential meaning of what is stated here. (3/7/2006)

Amateur Claims Atom is a Living Crystal

John Manimas, of Westminster, Vermont, has posted a three-volume series of reports on his website presenting arguments that "The Message From the Ancients" tells us "Proportion is Everything" and this is a description of the real physical universe. Manimas states that the Great Pyramid has the value of Phi, 1.618033988... and the square root of Phi incorporated in its dimensions. He also presents a mathematical proof that the ancients knew the value of Pi to the same level of precision that we do, only they knew it at least 4,000 years ago. His final argument, a contribution to "New Age Physics," is that the atom is not a sphere, but is a kind of electromagnetic polyhedron, or crystal, that actually has a vibrational "hearbeat."

Mr. Manimas claims that the message that the ancients sent forward in time to us was sent by several means: by philosophy, by the Pharaoh or the Great Phi Pyramid, by the pentangle (the five pointed star), by the Eye of Ra (actually an arithmetical series), and the geometric construction procedure that is used to construct the pentagon and the pentangle, which Manimas calls "the hypotenuse-laid-down." Finally, he argues that all of the Pharaohs "tombs" in the Valley of the Kings are not tombs at all but time capsules carefully planned and constructed so that we would know that an advanced civilization existed on Earth in the distant past. Manimas admits that much of what he presents is not new, but the way that he puts it all together is definitely new.

The message sent by philosophy is: Proportion is everything, and this is a simple way of stating that Nature repeats the same patterns on a different scale, the basic principle of modern "Chaos Theory."

The message sent by the Great Pyramid is similar. The Pyramid incorporates the value of Phi, and Phi is the value that conveys the concept of proportion because (1/Phi) squared plus Phi equals 1 and Phi squared equals Phi plus 1.

The message sent by the pentangle and the hypotenuse-laid-down procedure and The Eye of Ra together is that using these procedures shows the steps that produce the best approximation of Pi, meaning the closest value to infinite Pi that can be constructed using only a compass and straightedge. Manimas says this is a new discovery, never before described anywhere. These geometric procedures, which Manimas describes in great detail, is presented as the correct solution to the ancient question about "squaring the circle" The purpose of the question was not, he says, to get a Yes or No answer, but to discover that the ancients knew the value of Pi exactly. He shows how to construct the line length of 3.14155655389944902222112102645257..., only 36 millionths of a unit shorter than infinite Pi: 3.1415926535897932384626433832795... . And the last step marks the point at which the term in the series changes from greater than Pi to less than Pi. Manimas poses a "Pi Lover's Challenge" on his website, challenging anyone to construct a better value for Pi than the one pointed to by The Eye of Ra.

On the Welcome Page of his website, Manimas says that everything he presents there can be understood by anyone who stayed awake through their high school classes in geometry and algebra. Nothing more is needed. He then argues that all of this material was meant to convey to us the reality that the dimension of infinite Pi, the value that some mathematicians worship, does not exist in the real physical world. He says that all objects in the universe that appear to be a circle or a sphere are a polygon or a polyhedron. And that, he says, is why we must determine whether or not he is right about the atom. Because if he is, then that is evidence that the universe is strictly proportional, and no mathematics at all is needed by Nature to do what it does. Manimas believes that mathematics is a "cultural artifact," such as fine arts, architecture and literature. Manimas is writing a book about what mathematics really is and is not. To get the details on these wild ideas, the website is www jmanimas dot com.

Link to: (Welcome) or (Geometry Alpha Index) .