Ettore Majorana and The Ark of The Covenant

Adwa, March 1, 1896.

Italian troops, divided into several columns, advance through the valleys without a clear view of the battlefield. Suddenly, a thunderous sound of drums and horns fills the air. From every direction, the Ethiopian army emerges like a raging river. The Battle of Adwa is chaotic: the Italians, with their advanced technology, try to resist, but are quickly overwhelmed by the huge number of Ethiopian soldiers.

Menelik personally leads his troops, demonstrating courage and tactical astuteness. The Italian soldiers realize that they are not fighting against a “backward army,” but against a people who have everything to lose and are fighting with the strength of desperation. The Ascari (indigenous soldiers in the service of the Italians), torn between loyalty and survival, face a difficult choice: some desert, others fight to the end.

General Baratieri, convinced of Italy’s technological and military superiority, organized an advance towards Adwa, a strategic city in the mountains of Abyssinia. Meanwhile, in the Ethiopian plains, the great emperor Menelik II united the fragmented tribes and kingdoms of his country, gathering a huge army. Shrewd and diplomatic, Menelik is a visionary leader and commander who has made independence his goal. His court is a crossroads of cultures, and his queen, the proud Taytu Betul, is an equally astute strategist whose advice will be crucial in the upcoming battle. Late 19th-century Italy is hungry for power, dreaming of a colonial empire that can rival the great European powers. Prime Minister Francesco Crispi’s government is pushing for expansion in Africa, and General Oreste Baratieri, a veteran of colonial campaigns, is sent to lead the mission. The goal is clear: to conquer Ethiopia, a country considered backward and divided, but the result is exactly the opposite.

When the sun sets on Adwa, the battlefield is a sea of bodies and debris. The Italian army is annihilated, with thousands dead and taken prisoner. Baratieri’s forces are forced to retreat in disorder, while Menelik celebrates a victory that will echo through the centuries. Queen Taytu watches proudly: Ethiopia is saved, and her people have rewritten history.

The meeting with Rolando

Rome, December 20, 2019

- “Do you know the story of Ettore Majorana?”

- “Of course I do, he was one of the physicists from Via Panisperna and disappeared in the 1930s. No one ever heard from him again.”

- “No, Valentina, I mean the real story.”

- “What do you mean?”

- “You mean you don’t know anything?”

- “No, Pasquale, I don’t know anything! What are you talking about?”

That’s how I learned about Ettore Majorana and Rolando Pelizza: standing in the middle of a hallway at a friend’s house. Pasquale spent the rest of the afternoon telling me everything: about the convent, the escape, the Machine, Spain, Rolando. I left there stunned by his words. I had never seen or heard anything like it in my life. I, with a degree in engineering and a high school diploma in classical studies, knew nothing about anything.

So, I started studying, watching films, reading books, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know.

I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know Rolando Pelizza.

Fair complexion, blue, lively eyes, quick but delicate movements, a disposition that seemed shaped by speed: this is how I would describe Rolando in a few words. One of my university professors once said, “If you want to build a house well and quickly, call two people from Brescia.” Now I had before me the material proof that my professor was right.

He rarely took off his hat because his sensitive skin couldn’t stand the sun. The first time I saw him, he struck me as a physically worn man, but at the same time tireless, with an irrepressible energy that seemed to boil inside him, like that “spirto guerrier ch’entro mi rugge” (warrior spirit that roars within me).

Our meetings always took place in Milan, at the Bar Napoli, at the station, at least once a year. It was the only way to have a really ‘serious’ conversation with him; phone calls were short, just a greeting, a quick exchange to find out how we were, to comment on the weather or to exchange greetings on holidays. Sometimes, when he was lost in his thoughts and not paying full attention to what I was saying, he would get confused and answer me in Spanish, which made me laugh a lot, even though his story was quite tragic.

Rolando Pelizza, born in 1938 in Chiari, Lombardy, came from a wealthy family involved in the footwear trade. He began his career in the footwear industry, then diversified his business activities, opening offices in Rome and establishing business relationships in Europe, particularly in Spain and Switzerland. In 1958, at the age of twenty, Pelizza claimed to have met the physicist Ettore Majorana, who had officially disappeared in 1938. Rolando claimed that Majorana taught him advanced principles of mathematics and physics, guiding him in the construction of a machine capable of annihilating matter, generating energy at zero cost, and transmuting elements.

In 1976, Pelizza was arrested on charges of aiding and abetting kidnapping, an event that caused his business to collapse. After his release that same year, he demonstrated his device, claiming to have destroyed a rock using ‘antimatter’. This and other demonstrations aroused the interest of various governments, including the United States, Italy, Belgium, and NATO. However, Pelizza refused exceptional financial offers, fearing that his invention would be used for military purposes. In 1982, following an international arrest warrant for the construction of an unlicensed weapon, he fled abroad (to Spain) for almost twelve years. Returning to Italy in 1993, he continued his research despite financial difficulties and external pressure.

Rolando lived in Spain for several years and regularly telephoned his family, so everyone knew where Rolando was; it was certainly no mystery.

Despite various attempts by a certain fringe of the establishment, Rolando was never convicted of any crime: there was no fraud, no victim, and therefore no fraudster. He was never even charged with attempted fraud, and his criminal record remained clean. Everything Rolando did, he did in a spirit of benevolence and brotherhood, as demonstrated by the fact that he tried until the end to donate his Machine. Unfortunately, however, there have always been people around him who, for one reason or another, have always been a hindrance and, consciously or unconsciously, a source of problems.

Rolando wrote [taken from “Il segreto di Majorana – due uomini e una macchina” (The Secret of Majorana – Two Men and a Machine) by Alfredo Ravelli, pp. 429, 430]:

There is a technology, a machine, that can improve the existence of humanity, as my Master wanted and as I want, who am the only one capable of making it work. I do not want funding, but protection, so that the machine can be made public and made available for all possible peaceful uses for the benefit of Italy and, if Italy refuses as it has always done, for the whole world.

Otherwise, worn down and embittered by many years of blackmail and battles with the major power groups that have already had and continue to want only for themselves the benefits of using this machine, I am ready to abandon the project completely and destroy the formulas that allow the machine to function, so that I can devote myself solely to the development of my sponge and all the other potential inventions that can finally bring me and my family the economic benefits we have always lacked.

Chiari, 09/04/2015

Pelizza claimed to have collaborated with Majorana to build a machine designed to experimentally verify a theory of physics developed by the Sicilian physicist. Their first meeting, as far as we know, took place in a convent in southern Italy, while Rolando was working in the footwear supply business, on May 1, 1958. Majorana did not immediately reveal his identity, but only after several meetings. He also gave Rolando a “mathematical problem” to solve, telling him to try to solve it by their next meeting, but Rolando solved it on the spot.

The letters we have, written by Majorana, mainly talk about the Machine and the various problems to be faced, but between the lines, you can sense the affection Ettore felt for Rolando: there was an age difference of about thirty years between the two, and Ettore often addressed Rolando with paternal affection, delicacy, and kindness. Ettore repeatedly urged Rolando to give up because it was too dangerous, but Rolando always refused. Their bond was personal even before it was ‘professional’, and their friendship lasted until the end, withstanding all of life’s trials. The affection and trust that bound the two men was total and mutual, and this is clearly evident in their letters.

We said goodbye to Rolando in January 2022 due to COVID-19.

Majorana’s Machine

From the outside, the machine looks like an aluminum cube with sides measuring 520 mm.

On the south side, there is a square opening measuring 40x40 mm, from which the antiparticle emerges.

It consists of three boxes, one inside the other: the small box, the medium box, and the large box. Between the small and medium boxes there is a glass membrane, and between the medium and large boxes there is a magnetic membrane.

The core consists of various Plexiglas and stainless-steel supports that hold gold/magnetic/platinum discs, ceramic discs, and two hollow stainless-steel spheres containing one cubic centimeter of mercury. In the center, on a vertical axis, there is an aluminum cylinder wrapped in silver wire to form a coil. The parts are then connected by five small motors.

The guide, on the other hand, consists of six cells connected in series to form the magnetic guide for ejecting the antiparticle. [For a more precise and detailed description, please refer to the various sources on the web].

The Majorana Machine is a device that, through the combined use of three fields, is capable of producing and radiating antimatter particles “in the desired quality and quantity.”

The antimatter generated by the machine is capable of:

1) Annihilating the matter with which it comes into contact, causing its total destruction without producing waste.

2) Overheating matter with the production of clean energy in almost infinite quantities.

3) Transmuting matter by transforming one chemical element into another at will.

4) Transfer matter to another dimension with a “rejuvenating” effect.

Other subsequent functions of the machine are unknown to us, but there appear to be at least three more.

The page from the book

At the time I met Rolando, I was studying the potential of water in depth and came across a book, Il Sogno dei Filosofi (The Dream of Philosophers) by Cardella - Costa. The text presented Severi-Pannaria’s theory and addressed the topic of the first and most basic particle of matter. I found it extremely interesting and, in some ways, very close to Rolando’s theory.

During one of our meetings, I decided to bring him the book and showed him a particular page, the one dedicated to the structure of the atom. To my great surprise, after glancing at it, he exclaimed without hesitation, “I’ll keep this, may I?” I was speechless. If his reaction was so immediate, then it meant that the theory on the structure of the atom was indeed correct!

Then he told me I had to read the Bible. I was baffled.

“Rolando, what do you mean?” I asked, confused.

He said nothing more.

Years later, returning to that page of the book and looking again at the structure of the atom, I understood.

Rolando had not been impressed by the formulas, but by the Star of David or Seal of King Solomon.