A close encounter of the 4th kind ... he thinks he is a UFO.
FWIW, I read
Chariots, back in 1972. It was mostly a cobbling together of unconnected curiosities (e.g. the Nazca lines, which remain without explanation, as the people group was, as far as is currently known, not a literate society). His claim that Israel's Ark of the Covenant was a radio transceiver is patently absurd:
* The ark could not have been a capacitor, as the chest was covered inside and out with gold, and the mercy seat (the lid) was solid gold. A capacitor consists of two plates, with an insulator between, and the ark was just one "plate".
* Further, a radio needs a tuned resonant circuit, a capacitor and an inductor (a conductive wire wound around a ferrous core). Nothing about the ark's construction was a winding, nor was there anything resembling a ferrous core.
* Further, a radio needs vacuum tubes or semiconductors in multiple stages to amplify the transmitted and received signals.
* Trying to summarize, to transmit just to Earth orbit requires large amounts of power; the necessary power source was lacking, and the necessary very large antenna was similarly missing (sorry guys, the cherubim could not be an antenna, as they were shorted together by the second best known conductor, the gold of the mercy seat).
Even as a first trimester student at DeVry I knew enough about electronics to recognize the absurdity of von Daniken's claim. He also added an, "I seem to remember ...," claim that anyone who had actually read the Pentateuch knew was a silly fabrication.
So, yeah, his ideas don't get respect for me. Sadly, his real close encounter of the eternal kind may have been less than pleasant.
