Monday, September 17, 2018
The problem of UFO artefacts, Part 2
“Art’s Parts”
Another such item, the bismuth sample, has been called
“Art’s Parts” because it was sent anonymously to radio host Art Bell in the
1990s.
This UFO artefact has a cloudy provenance, too, but it’s nevertheless
a very fascinating tale. UFO proponent Linda Moulton Howe described its
acquisition in a number of lectures and presentations:
The strange layered metal came
in a box through the United States Postal Service with a typed letter, and
we're going back 21 years to mid April 1996, when I was doing real X-Files news
reporting for a weekly broadcast called
Dreamland that was hosted by Art Bell. We received the first of four typed
letters each postmarked from South Carolina and signed only “A Friend.” Later,
the writer called me and explained that he was active Army, on route to the
Middle East and wanted me to know in case he did not come back alive. His first
letter was dated April 10th 1996, and included several pieces of square-cut
gray metal, not the bismuth magnesium, but allegedly other metal… odd shapes
cut from the same crashed UFO.
There are startling statements
that sound like science fiction, but as I read the entire first letter, no one
has ever heard this from me before. Keep in mind the Army man is allegedly
quoting from his now a deceased grandfather’s diary, a grandfather who said he
was in a security team that surrounded a wedge-shaped craft. Quote: “Granddad
spent a total of 26 weeks in the team that examined and debriefed the lone
survival of the Roswell crash.” Now this crash is not Roswell this crash. It is
on White Sands. The grandfather left the box with the various metal pieces in
it, along with his diary of an extraordinary time in his life, and in fact an
extraordinary time in the history of this world.
Now here is the first letter
from the Army guy with his grandfather’s diary content: “Dear Mr. Bell, I
followed your broadcast of it last year or so and have been considering whether
or not to share with you and your listeners some information related to the
Roswell UFO crash. My grandfather was a member of the retrieval team sent to
the crash site just after the incident was reported. He died in 1974, but not
before he had sat down with some of us and talked about the incident. I am currently
serving in the military and hold a security clearance and do not wish to go
public and risk losing my career and commission. Nonetheless, I would like to
briefly tell you what my own grandfather told me about Roswell. In fact I
enclose for your safekeeping samples that were in the possession of my
grandfather until he died and which I have had since. His own estate was
settled, as I understand it, they came from the UFO debris and were among a
large batch subsequently sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. From
New Mexico my grandfather was able to appropriate them.”
Furthermore, this person’s grandfather claimed:
…they had been ringing this
craft, shaped like a wedge of pie, for several hours and the military that were
the backup and surrounding the area had left, but they left the security team
around this craft that had been glowing with light for three hours from the
bottom, and when the light went out… he reached over to the craft and pulled
the six pieces off with his hand. They were brittle and he wanted to have some
kind of a souvenir from whatever this was.
This is certainly the same material that has been
described in TTSA materials and posts, and commented upon by Dr. Hal Puthoff
among others.
UFO proponent Linda Moulton Howe advocated the scientific
analysis of the artefact, but an expert in thin film technology who tested it
stated explicitly:
At the most basic of levels,
we would freely state that the artifact portion provided by LMH does NOT seem
to be composed of elements or compounds which are unknown. Nor is it composed
of alloys that appear to be of a purity or combination beyond the scope of
current material science. The artifact bears a strong resemblance to irregular
layered residue often found in large physical vapor deposition (PVD) coaters.
And debunker Jason Colavito noted:
A final piece of evidence
suggests that the Bigelow’s men are overstating their claims. In 1996, Linda
Moulton Howe commissioned technologist Nicholas A. Reiter, himself an
anti-gravity researcher and a fringe believer in UFOs and paranormal things, to
investigate the “Roswell sample”—i.e. the same piece that Puthoff is now
promoting. Reiter determined that it was earthly and, while unusual, was not
impossible. In 2001, he updated his findings with this information: “The
combination of bismuth and magnesium had eluded us for four years. But then one
day, we found a reference to an obscure industrial process used in the
refinement of lead. The process, called the Betterton-Krohl Process, uses
molten magnesium floated over the surface of liquid lead. The magnesium sucks
up, or pulls bismuth impurities out of the lead! Often, the magnesium is used
over and over again…” Presumably, this is the same process that was patented in
1938, producing a thin crust of layered magnesium and bismuth, which is removed
from the lead. When the magnesium is reused, new layers would form. (The Fortean Times endorsed this solution in
2016.) Remember that Vallée’s sample was specifically identified as slag—i.e.,
industrial debris. Howe refused to publicize Reiter’s results, preferring to string
along the “alien” mystery. Of course, we would need a known sample made by the
industrial process to test the “alien” versions against, but the distribution
of the slag in industrialized nations (Vallée claims examples from France,
Argentina, and America, for example) point in favor of this solution.
The new information here is
that To the Stars seems to be collecting more of the same industrial waste that
Linda Moulton Howe has been cycling through the UFO circuit for 22 years.
But recently, Dr. Harold E. Puthoff, co-founder and Vice
President of Science and Technology with TTSA, described this artefact thusly:
This is an open source sample.
It was sent anonymously to talk show host Art Bell. The fellow claimed to be in
the military. He said that this sample was picked up in a crash retrieval, and
so he sent it by email. So what does that mean? Chain of custody
non-existent. Provenance
questionable. Could be a hoax. Could be
some slag off of some foundry floor or whatever. However, it was an unusual
sample, so we decided to take a look at it.
It was a multilayered bismuth
and magnesium sample. Bismuth layers less than a human hair. Magnesium samples
about ten-times the size of a human hair. Supposedly picked up in the crash
retrieval of an Advanced Aerospace Vehicle. It looks like it’s been in a crash.
The white lines are the bismuth; the darker areas are the magnesium
separations. So the question was what about this material, so naturally we
looked in all the national labs, we talked to metallurgists, we combed the
entire structure of published papers. Nowhere could we find any evidence that
anybody ever made one of these.
Secondly, some attempts were
made to try to reproduce this material, but they couldn’t get the bismuth and
magnesium layers to bond.
Thirdly, when we talked to
people in the materials field who should know, they said we don’t know why
anybody would want to make anything like this. It’s not obvious that it has any
function.
The fact that the piece of layered material doesn’t have
any overt connection to alien technology and is of uncertain provenance has not
deterred hardcore believers. The suggestion that humans wouldn’t or couldn’t
possibly have used bismuth in such a way implied it might have been created by
aliens.
But anyway, it’s amazing we’ve
gone through this and this is the kind of structure we go through a lot. You
get a material sample with unusual characteristics to be evaluated, the method
of manufacture is difficult to assess or reproduce, the purpose of the function
is not readily apparent – as with our sample here, and then as our own
technical knowledge moves forward we finally see a possible purpose or function
comes to light.
It seems as though supporters of the TTSA approach are
saying that even if alleged UFO artefacts are not demonstrably from alien
spacecraft, they are nevertheless evidence that advanced research in composite
materials does lead to knowledge about possible developments in space travel.
And, if you can’t absolutely prove that a particular artefact was made on
Earth, then the possibility still exists it was made elsewhere.
This is also the case with the artefacts found and
promoted by Frank Kimbler, Assistant Professor of the Earth Science at the New
Mexico Military Institute. He spent time combing the area near the suggested
Roswell UFO crash site and discovered several very small pieces of metal that
are described as being “of possible extraterrestrial origin.”
Kimler’s pieces were tested by a laboratory and he announced
that the results indicated the magnesium isotope ratios in the sample were
different than those of terrestrial samples, proving extraterrestrial origin.
But a review of the results by another lab disagreed,
noting that the anomalous result was not as significant as stated, since error
bars of the analysis were not taken into account.
The data is presented and
plotted as isotopic ratios. Although AH-1 is shown as a point, it is really an
area on the chart extending from 0.120 to 0.135 on the horizontal axis and from
0.125 to 0.140 on the vertical axis. (These ranges are calculated from the
observed data.) It is clear that this range does in fact intersect the line and
is suggestive that the AH-1 sample is not extraterrestrial.
As I reviewed the confusing back-and-forth arguments
about “metamaterials” and UFOs, something jogged my memory. Colavito’s comment
about “industrial waste” and a “22 year” period of time made me think about
another alleged alien artefact that also caused quite a stir within ufology,
but quite some time ago, again demonstrating that many aspects of current
ufology are duplicating work that has been done and debated previously.
I’d read this all before: the debates over authenticity,
the competing analyses, the reluctance to release results, the involvement of
less-than-objective individuals, and a UFO fragment that was tested and thought
to be anomalous.
And it’s missing from Vallee’s list.
It started (we think) in 1960, in Quebec, Canada.
The 3,000-lb. UFO artefact
According to the most-cited story regarding the case, on June
12, 1960, between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. EDT, a sonic boom rocked the area around
Quebec City, Canada. At about the same time, a fiery object was said to fall
out of the sky and split into two pieces as it fell, one somewhat larger than
the other. The object was estimated to have been moving at an altitude of one
to two thousand feet. Both pieces were thought to have fallen into the St.
Lawrence River near Les Écureuils, about 20 miles upriver from Quebec City.
This account was said to come from a French language
newspaper in Quebec, although I have been unable to find any reference to this
in any of Le Devoir, La Presse, or Le Soleil, the major newspapers at the time.
Furthermore, a local UFO group investigated the report,
but
…were unable to find anyone in
the Les Ecureuils area who had actually heard or seen the metal fall - strange,
in such a small town. So the manner in which the metal arrived at the scene
still remains a mystery.
Topside, Number 20, Spring 1966, pp. 4-6
Nevertheless, the UFO and the objects that fell to Earth
were believed associated, and the story of the “Mysterious Chunk of Space
Hardware” began in earnest.
The UFO group in question was the Ottawa New Sciences
Club, which was founded by Wilbert B. Smith, the legendary and controversial
figure in Canadian ufology.
In its ufozine,
Topside, the Ottawa group described the provenance of the found objects:
A local resident, who
supplements his income by beachcombing, covered the area pretty thoroughly the
first day or two of June. Then came three days of rain during which he did not
work the area. When the weather cleared, he found the two pieces of metal on
the shale bed… The smaller piece was close to the shore and visible at low
tide; the larger one was further out into the river and was often completely
submerged.
Topside, Number 20, Spring 1966, pp. 4-6
This “beachcomber” tried to move the larger piece but
couldn’t, so he:
…loaded the small 800-lb.
piece and sold it for one cent a pound to a scrap metal dealer on Quebec City
where it was erroneously classified as non-ferrous metal. The large magnetic
crane used for handling the scrap would not lift the metal due to its low
magnetic permeability, so it was pushed into a pile of non-ferrous scrap and
eventually shipped to Japan.
Topside, Number 20, Spring 1966, pp. 4-6
That’s right; a possible alien artefact ended up in a
scrap heap somewhere in Japan, if it ever made it there at all.
But now the good news: the other piece was taken to a
major government facility where it was analysed. According to Topside: “…rumour
of the find reached the Canadian Arsenals Research and Development
Establishment (CARDE) in the area, who, thinking it might have been part of a
space capsule, picked it up for investigation.”
[NB: the name of the government division was consistently
cited erroneously in all Topside issues.
CARDE was actually the Canadian Armaments Research and Development
Establishment, now part of the Valcartier Research Centre of Defence Research
and Development Canada.]
And what did CARDE find? This is what the Ottawa New
Sciences Club told its members:
The Findings: After analysis, CARDE reached the following
conclusions: “The x-ray diffraction analysis indicated that the unidentified
object consisted of a metallic face-centred cubic compound, with a unit-cell
dimension agreeing with those of: 1) austenitic steel, and 2) meteoric iron.
The semi-quantitative spectrographic analysis showed, however, that there was
insufficient nickel present for the metal to be of meteoric origin. The amount
of manganese detected in the spectrographic analysis suggests that the metallic
material is best described as high-manganese austenitic steel. This is
consistent with the very weak ferro-magnetic nature of the metal. The iron
oxide and the hydrated iron oxides on the surface are normal results of the
exposure of steel to the atmosphere. The amounts of quartz and calcite detected
by x-ray diffraction are very small, and are common extraneous materials. The
low nickel and high manganese content are not consistent with a meteoric
origin, whereas they are consistent with common high-tensile steels. The object
is therefore considered to be of terrestrial origin.”
Another report states in part:
“The metal object proved to be a mass of high strength metal which had fallen,
or had been dropped, while in a plastic state, and had splattered like a ball
of mud. It was 6ft. in diameter and 2ft. thick at the centre. At the centre of
the body there was an outline of a tube about 10 inches in diameter which
protruded from the mass about 6 inches. A small electronic potting can was
embedded near one of the outer edges. By scratching away the potting plastic,
it was possible to identify an electronic component which appeared to be a
transistor. There was also the imprint of another electric can which appeared
to have been removed by curiosity seekers. It is not considered that the object
fell in the location it was found, because there was no crater or splattered
material in the vicinity. The tidal flats at this point are solid rock. An
analysis by CARDE revealed that the metal is an alloy with high manganese
content. CARDE personnel who are familiar with foundry operations consider it to
be a normal product of a foundry consisting of slag with semi-molten scrap
embedded. Their investigation did not reveal any electronic components.”
Topside, Number 20, Spring 1966, pp. 4-6
Well, that seemed to be rather straightforward.
Furthermore, it was pointed out that about 100 miles upstream was the Sorel
Iron Foundry, which produced material similar to the artefact. End of story.
Not.
A Smith and a foundry
Completely analogous to the Bob White artefact debate,
the Ottawa New Sciences Club rejected the CARDE findings.
Despite the findings of CARDE,
an element of doubt exists as to whether these are completely accurate.
Although they considered the object to be of terrestrial origin, laboratory
experiments on the metal carried out by the late Wilbert B. Smith and
co-workers resulted in a number of unusual reactions not consistent with the
normal behaviour of terrestrial metal. This was most evident when a small piece
of the metal was heated with an acetylene torch which caused it to blossom into
a miniature white cloud with extremely bright sparks in it - a sort of A-bomb
in miniature. WBS concluded that the magnesium went exothermic, reduced the
ferrite in the spinnel crystal structure, formed the cloud and left the iron
free to burn with 02 in the air. He warned that anyone attempting to heat a
larger chunk of the metal might very well fry himself! He also considered that
the intense heating should have burned the object worse than it did and he
therefore reached the conclusion that it could not have been a blast furnace
product. Further experiments revealed that some parts of the metal could not
stand too much heat thus limiting the possibilities as to why such a
manufactured item came to grief. In testing the metal with the acetylene torch,
it was noted that the resulting sphere, with its intensely brilliant shower of
sparks, burned until nothing remained- no residue or slag, as is common with
Earth metals. CARDE suggested that the metal may have been slag from a foundry,
brought to the area via an ice floe. The facts of the case, however, do not
bear this out. The nearest mills are many miles from Les Ecureuils, and it was
the month of June! The material is not a common foundry product, and even if it
had been, one wonders why the foundry would waste 3,000 pounds of metal!
Topside, Number 20, Spring 1966, pp. 4-6
Wilbert B. Smith was not a metallurgist, but an
electrical engineer with a Master’s degree, working for the Department of
Transport, and later the Department of Communications in the Canadian
government. He was responsible for broadcast standards and equipment design and
testing for radio in Canada, and helped set the frequencies used by radio and
TV stations across the nation.
Smith is most remembered as having been at a broadcasting
conference in Washington and made “discreet enquiries” at the Canadian Embassy
where he was told: “Flying saucers exist” and “The matter is the most highly
classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the
H-bomb.”
Later, Smith claimed he was in direct contact with
aliens, sometimes telepathically, sometimes visually. His information on aliens
included such facts as:
“There is much evidence that
people who build and fly flying saucers are people very much like us. They have
been seen on many occasions and there are many claims of personal contact
having been established with them. Communications with these people tell us
that they are our distant relatives; that we are descendants of their colonists
on this planet, and that they still regard us as brothers even though we don’t
often act like it. There is much evidence that the technology of these people
is quite a bit ahead of ours, and that through study of the behavior of the
saucers and from the alleged communications we have been able to piece together
some of this technology, and it is amazing to say the least. We are informed that
these people are really civilized, in that they regard all men as brothers;
that they do not have wars, and live under conditions of personal freedom of
which we cannot conceive.”
He also wrote articles about advanced quasi-scientific
concepts such as the “interdependence between Reality and Awareness,” and how:
“The application of the Quadrature Concept to the Third Parameter yields a
further parameter which we might describe as Density or gradient, and is really
an expression of how Reality is distributed in Space.” (http://www.rexresearch.com/smith/newsci~1.htm)
He also speculated there were 12 dimensions on Earth, and
that his research into gravity and higher consciousness was assisted by
“extraterrestrial helpers.”
That kind of thing.
Anyway, Smith and his contactee UFO group were convinced
that the CARDE results were wrong. I went in search of the original CARDE
report, and contacted DRDC directly. They replied that no such report on the
analysis of a large quantity of metal found in the St. Lawrence River existed
in their records. This could be because it simply was not an official research
study, but one taken on as a public courtesy.
In an interview with Smith in November 1961, he had
decided that the mysterious chunk of metal was part of an alien spacecraft:
Our Canadian Research Group
recovered one mass of very strange metal... it was found within a few days of
July 1, 1960. There is about three thousand pounds of it. We have done a tremendous amount of detective
work on this metal. We have found out the things that aren't so. We have
something that was not brought to this Earth by plane nor by boat nor by any
helicopter. We are speculating that what we have is a portion of a very large
device which came into this solar system... we don't know when… but it had been
in space a long time before it came to earth; we can tell that by the
micrometeorites embedded in the surface. But we don't know whether it was a few
years ago - or a few hundred years ago.
Wilbert B. Smith died in December 1962, at the age of 52.
Carol Halford-Watkins, the assistant editor of Topside, but effectively the president
of the Ottawa New Sciences Club, kept the group going in Smith’s memory after
he passed away. The ufozine continued publishing throughout the 1960s and into
the early 1970s, often devoting entire issues to things like channelled
messages from Nikola Tesla.
One discovery about the massive artefact that certainly
contributed to the Ottawa group’s persistence regarding its non-terrestrial
nature were a number of “inclusions” on its surface.
A further mystery, indicating
the possibility of exposure of the metal in outer space, is that the outer
surface, under powerful magnification, shows minute inclusions which may well
be micro-meteorites picked up during a long sojourn in space. The Club has in
its possession a series of photographs of the outer surface of the metal, taken
with the aid of microphotography, in which these inclusions can be observed
quite clearly. The density of these particles is about 30 per square
centimeter. Dr. Peter Millman of the Canada National Research Council estimated
that micrometeorites of this size would occur through a sq. cm. section at
about 10-6 second, so it would take about a year to accumulate such
a density.
Topside, Number 20, Spring 1966, pp. 4-6
The calculation was that because there are about 31 million seconds in a year, the accretion rate per centimeter works out to the stated value. However, there is no indication in any of the tests performed on the artefact that any of these alleged micrometeorites were tested and found to be such things.
Labels: artefact, artifact, Canada, metal, Ottawa, Roswell, UFO
# posted by rutkows @ 1:37 PM 
