One of the hypotheses about the alien origin of man says that in time immemorial the solar system was visited by an expedition of a race from the central region of the galaxy, where the stars and planets are much older, and therefore, life originated there much earlier.
First, space travelers settled on Phaeton, which was once located between Mars and Jupiter, but they unleashed a nuclear war there, and the planet died. The remnants of this civilization settled on Mars, but even there atomic energy destroyed most of the population. Then the remaining colonists arrived on Earth, becoming our distant ancestors.
Mysterious mine in Africa
This theory may be supported by an amazing discovery made 45 years ago in Africa. In 1972, a French corporation mined uranium ore at the Oklo mine in the Gabonese Republic. Then, during the standard analysis of ore samples, specialists discovered a relatively large shortage of uranium-235 - more than 200 kilograms of this isotope were missing. The French immediately sounded the alarm, since the missing radioactive substance would be enough to make more than one atomic bomb.
However, further investigation showed that the concentration of uranium-235 in the Gabonese mine is as low as in the spent fuel from a nuclear power plant. Is this a kind of nuclear reactor? Analysis of ore bodies in an unusual uranium deposit showed that nuclear fission took place in them as early as 1.8 billion years ago. But how is this possible without human intervention?
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Natural nuclear reactor?
Three years later, a scientific conference dedicated to the Oklo phenomenon was held in the Gabonese capital Libreville. The most daring scientists considered then that the mysterious nuclear reactor was the result of the activities of an ancient race, which was subject to nuclear power. Nevertheless, the majority of those present agreed that the mine is the only "natural nuclear reactor" on the planet. Like, it started for many millions of years by itself due to natural conditions.
People of official science assume that a layer of sandstone rich in radioactive ore has been deposited on a solid basalt bed in the river delta. Due to tectonic activity in this region, the basalt basement with uranium-bearing sandstone was submerged for several kilometers into the ground. The sandstone allegedly cracked, and groundwater penetrated into the cracks. Nuclear fuel was located in the mine in compact deposits inside a moderator, which served as water. In the clay "lenses" of the ore, the concentration of uranium has increased from 0.5 percent to 40 percent. The thickness and mass of the layers at a certain point reached a critical point, a chain reaction occurred, and the "natural reactor" started working.
Water, being a natural regulator, entered the core and started a chain reaction of uranium fission. The release of energy led to the evaporation of water, and the reaction was stopped. However, several hours later, when the core of the reactor created by nature cooled down, the cycle was repeated. Subsequently, presumably, a new natural cataclysm occurred, which raised this "installation" to its original level, or uranium-235 simply burned out. And the work of the reactor stopped.
Scientists calculated that although energy was being generated underground, its power was not high - no more than 100 kilowatts, which would be enough to operate several dozen toasters. However, the very fact that the production of atomic energy spontaneously occurred in nature is impressive.
Or is it a nuclear burial ground?
However, many experts do not believe in such fantastic coincidences. The pioneers of atomic energy have long proved that a nuclear reaction can be obtained exclusively by artificial means. The natural environment is too unstable and chaotic to sustain such a process for millions and millions of years.
Therefore, many experts are convinced that this is not a nuclear reactor in Oklo, but a nuclear repository. This place really looks more like a disposal of spent uranium fuel, and the disposal is ideally equipped. Uranium buried in a basalt "sarcophagus" was stored underground for hundreds of millions of years, and only human intervention caused its appearance on the surface.
But since there is a burial ground, it means that there was also a reactor that produced nuclear energy! That is, someone who inhabited our planet 1.8 billion years ago already possessed the technology of atomic energy. Where did all this go?
According to alternative historians, our technocratic civilization is by no means the first on Earth. There is every reason to believe that there were previously highly developed civilizations that used nuclear reactions to generate energy. However, like humanity now, our distant ancestors turned this technology into a weapon, and then destroyed themselves with it. It is possible that our future is also predetermined, and after a couple of billion years the descendants of the current civilization will come across the nuclear waste burials left by us and wonder: where did they come from?..