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But what of the scientists' acceptance of his description of the planet? According to Hynek, Swann's "impressions... cannot be dismissed," and the Stanford Research Institute was "very pleased." Best of all, if Swann was in another planetary system, where was poor Sherman? Does he know?

Does anyone care?

We are fortunate in the United States to have an excellent buffer against pseudoscience as well as an informative and fascinating TV entertainment: the "Nova" program. We see it in the United States on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network. This program is sufficient reason for the public to support PBS efforts. In England the program is known as "Horizon" and is a joint effort of WGBS/Boston and the BBC. There is no finer, more productive alliance in the communications business.

The "Nova/Horizon" expose of Erich von Daniken's "mysteries" was typical of the program's usual high standards, providing the viewer with ample, authoritative refutation of von Daniken's claims. But at the end of the program, when it came time to handle the "Sirius Mystery," their efforts seemed rather deficient. Although sufficient information was presented to demolish the theory, it was not definitive, and the conclusions were rather weak.

This subject was expounded by writer Robert Temple in his 1976 book The Sirius Mystery, which tells of the Dogon tribe in western Africa and its superior knowledge concerning the star Sirius. According to Temple, the Dogon have long known of this star's recently discovered "companion star," Sirius B (1862 is "recent" in astronomical terms), and of its orbit around the main star every fifty years. The technology used by modern astronomers to determine this obscure but scientifically exciting fact was so sophisticated that it was argued by Temple that the Dogon must have had extraterrestrial assistance to have known about it. The Dogon religion (like that of the ancient Egyptians) is very much concerned with this particular star, a bright and prominent object in this tribe's night sky.

Anthropologists have made extensive studies of the Dogon people of Mali. To begin a discussion of this tribe with the usual primitive-standing-around-naked image that is unfortunately brought to mind concerning an obscure African tribe is entirely unwarranted. The Dogon have been exposed to Western "civilization" since the late nineteenth century, and it is not at all unlikely that people living, as they do, along important avenues of travel and trade came into contact with Europeans many times. In fact, for decades their children have been attending a local French-founded school and going on to university education elsewhere. The folks at home would have no problem at all incorporating newfound facts into their religion and cosmogony.

But do the Dogon really postulate Sirius B, and do they really know about its fifty-year orbit? If they developed the idea of a small, dense "companion star," and determined the duration of its orbit, this must be attributed to superior scientific ability, psychic powers, extraterrestrial help, or sheer luck of very great magnitude.

Let us refer to Temple's book. One of his great finds is a sand picture made by the Dogon to explain their claims. The orbit, as rendered in the picture, has a roughly elliptical shape, and within that curve are two signs that are said to represent Sirius A and Sirius B. But when we consult an original source—in this case, a study by French anthropologists Griaule and Dieterlen—we find a somewhat more complex diagram containing nine signs. None of the nine rests on the circumference of the curve, as a properly drawn orbital diagram would require, but are inside the ellipse. And what of that supposed ellipse? It is more egg-shaped than not and, indeed, we are told by the two French scientists that the Dogon describe it as "the egg of the world," rather than an orbit, and that they frequently represent mythical objects within this egg-like shape.

The Dogon diagram is purely and inarguably symbolic in nature;