It has long been noticed that many writers and artists in their works foresee the future, for example, certain achievements of scientific and technological progress, or they talk about real things and events that could not be known to them in any way. Perhaps they have the ability to look into other dimensions, parapsychologists suggest.
Who among us in childhood has not read "Gulliver's Travels" by the famous English writer Jonathan Swift? The attention of researchers has long been attracted by the story about the flying island of Laputa, where the hero of the book supposedly happened to be by chance. The author seems to deliberately dwell on scientific and technical details, in general, not entirely appropriate in the fictional narration.
Thus, Swift writes: “A floating or floating island is in the form of a regular circle with a diameter of 1,837 yards, or about 4.5 miles: therefore, its surface is equal to ten thousand acres. The height of the island is three hundred yards. The bottom, or lower surface, visible only to observers on the ground, is a smooth, regular diamond slab about 200 yards thick.
There are various minerals on it in the usual order, all covered with a layer of rich black earth ten or twelve feet deep. The slope of the island's surface from the circumference to the center is the natural reason for the dew and rain falling on the island to collect in rivulets and flow towards the middle, where they flow into four large pools, each of which is about half a mile in circumference and is 200 yards from the center of the island."
Swift goes on to report that the island is able to fly in the air thanks to a huge magnet mounted on a diamond axis, and gives a detailed description of the engine's design. Then, in 1726, nothing like this had yet been invented. People knew practically nothing about the possibilities of the magnetic field.
Scientists residents of Laputa "could extract saltpeter and watery particles from the air." Meanwhile, only 30 years after the death of Swift, the French chemist Lavoisier determined the composition of the air. The novel also contains almost accurate information about the distance from Mars to its two satellites …
No less famous science fiction writer Jules Verne has repeatedly described in his books scientific inventions that took place in the future. One of them is the Columbiade projectile that went to the moon in the novel From Earth to the Moon (1865). Three people flew on it - Barbicane, Nicole and Ardan, it started in December from the Florida peninsula, reached a circumlunar orbit, and then went back and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
Many years later, the Americans sent the Apollo 8 space rocket to the Moon. Its crew also consisted of three people, launched in December from Florida. Apollo 8 followed exactly the route of the Columbiades. The mass and dimensions of both vehicles - fictional and real - were practically the same. The American astronauts were named Bormann, Lowell and Leader - the names of two of them are consonant with the names of the characters of Jules Verne.
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Another such example is the design of a submarine in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869). Then in the whole world no one had ever heard of submarines, and Captain Nemo's "Nautilus" seemed to the readers something incredible. And in the twentieth century, submarines became a reality. The same with lasers - "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin" was written by A. N. Tolstoy in 1927, and more than a quarter of a century later the first laser device appeared …
And with the famous American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, there was a completely curious incident. In 1941, in the story "Accidents Happen," he described the creation by the Americans of an atomic bomb from uranium-235. Soon after the publication of the work, he was summoned to the FBI: the special services were interested in how he became aware of the strictest state secrets, so exact were the details of the invention, which at that time was being developed in great secrecy by American scientists.
Astronomers have noticed that the landscape of the starry sky, recently photographed by the Hubble telescope near one of the distant stars, is very similar to that depicted in the painting by Vincent van Gogh "Starry Night". Both in the picture and in the photographs, celestial bodies of the same shape and swirling dust clouds are visible. True, the artist used blue paints, and red predominates in photographs.
But how would Van Gogh see all this? After all, the shooting was carried out in the constellation of the Unicorn, at a distance of about 20 thousand light years from Earth. The painter, according to one version, depicted the Big Dipper, according to the other - the constellation Aries, under which he was born, as well as Venus and the Moon. Now a new hypothesis has emerged. Did Van Gogh ever go on space travel? Was he clairvoyant or abducted by aliens? This sometimes happens to creators …
TRINITY MARGARITA