Back in the late sixties and the seventies, when we stilled lived in Germany he would usually take the family out on Sunday for a short hike in the forests. Actually, for me these walks felt quite long, because they were every time accompanied by his tedious lectures on all kinds of scientific subjects - especially on math, physics and astronomy. And although my head was always spinning afterwards from sheer “information overload”, his attempts to teach me scientific laws and theories has helped me to see a much more interconnected picture of the physical world than any of my school teachers were able to convey.

My father is a very practical man, who has learned several trades. And sometimes I think that his ability to combine the knowledge and experience of someone trained in the world of mechanics, electronics and pneumatics makes him more an ‘inventor’ than anything else. He used simple models that made the most complex processes easy to grasp.

I still remember vividly, how dad used apples and oranges to explain how the Earth wobbles on its axis – of course that was many years before he made his own observations of Sirius, but I think at that time he sure would have made a good astronomy teacher!

His love for mathematical exactness and mechanical precision, and his tenacity to solve difficult problems, was not something I appreciated much as a boy. But luckily not all of our conversations were about scientific facts.

We also talked about the various mysteries that surround science, and which for the most part remain unexplained. And I do not exaggerate when I say that we “covered everything” from the space between the atom to the infinity of space itself. But our own senses cannot perceive these dimensions, and as a young adult I needed something more tangible, like Chemistry which you can experience at least with your own body.

The questions though of what we are made of, where we come from and who we really are, took our explorations into new directions.

We studied ancient history. While we were living in Europe, it was relatively easy to see and touch evidence of human history, practically all the way back to the “missing link”.

After an extensive experience in the Great Pyramid of Egypt in 1980, we began to wonder why is it that we seem to know more about Neanderthals and their caves than about the people who built the greatest and most precise monument on Earth.

My father was also intrigued with the so-called Pyramid Power, having been inspired by it during our prolonged stay inside the King’s chamber. As a scientifically-minded person, he can not accept many ideas and interpretations as facts - he has always needed to verify things for himself.

I remember how he built little pyramid models to “sharpen” razor blades and experimented with preserving food in them. Although the early experiments were not entirely successful, he continued to try to build bigger pyramids and also to develop methods to perform better experiments with water and other materials. His test results with water and ice crystals were truly amazing! But that is another story – perhaps some other time.

Another stimulus to his ongoing researches was Robert Temple’s book “The Sirius Mystery” which drew lots of attention in Germany in the late 1970’s.

Of course, my father was really fascinated by it, especially by the intriguing astronomical information about Sirius. By the way, let’s not forget that Temple was actually inspired by the brilliant thinker Arthur M. Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, who probably understood the real significance of the Dogon material.

The most obvious astronomical fact is that nowadays the culmination or Merdian transit of Sirius happens to occur around Midnight on January 1st, at the beginning of the "New Year".

After our trip to Egypt, in a strange way we felt sorry for the ancient Egyptians, who regarded the star Sirius as an important spiritual symbol in their religion. Yet they apparently built their Great Pyramid at a time when Sirius was extremely low in the sky. What a divine experience it would have been for them, if they could have seen what we see today - Sirius directly shining over the southern shaft of the King’s chamber.

But because of Earth’s precession this was impossible millennia ago, or was it?

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