John J.
Senior Member.
This is a consideration of
"Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics."
Garry P. Nolan, Jacques F. Vallee, Sizun Jiang and Larry G. Lemke, published in Progress in Aerospace Sciences Vol. 128, 1 January 2022;
PDF attached below.
Professor Nolan was eager to get a paper dealing with reportedly "retrieved" or anomalous material into a peer-reviewed journal, and to the credit of him and his co-authors was successful . So I thought maybe we should have a look...
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1. Introduction
Garry P. Nolan is an immunologist holding a professorship at Stanford. He believes aliens are visiting Earth, and has been referred to on this forum.
Jacques Vallee is an astronomer and computer scientist, perhaps best-known as a Ufologist of many years standing. Vallee also believes that UFOs are an objectively real phenomenon representing either alien craft or visitors from "another dimension". Sizun Jiang is a molecular biologist and virologist, who at the time of the paper was a postdoctoral research fellow under Nolan at Stanford. Larry G. Lemke is a retired aerospace engineer with a long career at NASA's Ames Research Center.
Progress in Aerospace Sciences is a monthly peer-reviewed journal, published since 1961 in the UK, currently by Elsevier.
Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_in_Aerospace_Sciences
Elsevier webpage https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/progress-in-aerospace-sciences
The Elsevier site states that Nolan, Vallee et al. 2022 is the "most popular" (but not most downloaded) paper from the journal.
"Improved instrumental techniques" in the paper's title must mean "instrumental techniques which have been improved since the analysis of similar samples in 1977-78".
The authors do not claim or demonstrate that they have developed any new techniques, improved any existing techniques, or applied instrumental techniques in any novel way. They do not define what is "improved" in the techniques they review.
As a case study, they analyse samples of material purportedly taken from what had appeared to be a deposit of molten metal, approx. 6' x 4' (1.83 x 1.22 metres), found beside Gilbert's Pond in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Saturday December 17 1977. Witnesses claim to have seen a "reddish ball" plummet toward the ground in the direction of the find, or to have seen a hovering UFO behind tree-tops around the time of the find.
The authors' account of the reported sightings and find of material can be found in their paper, from page 7 para. 4, "2.1. Overview of the incident at Council Bluffs, Iowa" through to the end of page 9.
This is problematic; it is not demonstrated that the material was left by an aerial object. As described in the paper, no witnesses reported seeing anything drop from, or be ejected by, an aerial object. Those who claimed to see something fall from the sky did not directly observe an impact. See "4. The Council Bluffs incident, 17 December 1977" below.
The authors state, of the investigative techniques discussed (including Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, SIMS, which they use)
Frustratingly, what lessons were learned is not explicitly stated; it isn't apparent from this paper that the authors have demonstrated any new techniques or findings that might be applicable to "...reverse engineering of complex, esoteric materials, and forensics." The paper's summary (pg. 18, paras. 2, 3) has no discussion of methodological considerations.
The authors identify possible confounding factors relating to their spectroscopy findings, and make plausible interpretations of their data based on this.
For some who are sympathetic to Nolan and Vallee's widely stated views about UFOs, the author's prosaic interpretations might be disappointing- but it demonstrates scientific integrity on the part of the authors.
After the introduction, the paper is presented in four main sections:
(1) A discussion of techniques for investigating the composition of materials (pages 2-7).
Includes discussion of some current, proposed or speculative technologies utilising isotopic differences, pages 3 and 4.
(2) A description of claimed events, and the find of metallic material in a park, in Council Bluffs, 1977 (pages 7-9);
consideration of hypotheses attempting to account for the above claims and the found metallic debris (pages 10-12).
(3) Studies of samples of the Council Bluffs debris; two early studies (1977-78) and the author's own (pages 12-16).
(4) "Speculative Conclusions"; mention of a 1978 Soviet satellite crash in Canada (Cosmos 954); speculation about liquid metal use in magneto-hydrodynamic generators and nuclear reactor designs in relation to hypothetical flying vehicles (pages 16-18).
Below, the paper is reviewed in approximately this order, with the exception of the consideration of hypotheses in (2), in which I've included the Soviet satellite recovery; these are addressed last.
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2. Authors' discussion of investigative techniques
As per the title of the paper, the authors discuss some of the methods used for materials analysis.
Figure 1 (page 2) shows 19 techniques used for materials analysis. It is
...which is a diagram on the EAG Laboratories webpage "Our Techniques". There is no formal citation in Nolan, Vallee et al. for this source (which is clearly copyrighted- bottom left of table). There should be; the in-text URL the authors provide is insufficient. Nolan, Vallee et al. should be obliged to formally cite such sources as per convention.
Most of the 19 techniques in Fig. 1 are identified by abbreviations, but there is no key describing what they mean (on the EAG Laboratories online diagram, each technique name/ abbreviation is clickable, leading to a summary, including the unabbreviated name).
The use of technical abbreviations without explanation is usually considered something to be avoided in academic papers.
The authors provide brief summaries for five investigative technologies:
secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) including multiplexed ion beam imaging (MIBI-SIMS)- the technique(s) used by the authors in their case study; inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS); energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS); scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and Raman spectroscopy.
At no point do the authors state how these investigative techniques have specific relevance to aerospace forensics. They do not say if the 5 techniques that they summarize are more useful in this regard than the other 14 techniques in Figure 1.
No examples of past use of any of these methods in aerospace forensics are given. No protocols for applied use of these techniques in future aerospace forensics are suggested. How any of these techniques are "improved" is not stated.
Four of the references cited in the descriptions of the five summarized techniques, [1], [9], [24] and [26] are for Wikipedia articles. Citing Wikipedia content is often considered unacceptable in academic papers. Reference [1] is undated, meaning that the content being cited is uncertain.
It must be arguable that the (uncited) EAG Laboratories online source used by the authors, at https://www.eag.com/techniques/, is a more comprehensive and practically useful description of "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics" than Nolan, Vallee et al.s' discussion of investigative techniques. This section of their paper covers a narrower range of, and gives less technical information about, relevant investigative techniques than is freely available elsewhere.
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3. Authors' discussion of the utilisation of different isotopes
The authors do not cite any examples of valuable insights gained from isotopic analysis of anything "deposited...following an observation of an unknown phenomenon".
This (arguably extraordinary) claim is possibly subjective.
On page 3 of their paper the authors start a section titled "1.1 Materials analysis techniques using ICP-MS and SIMS".
For four paragraphs they discuss ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry) and SIMS (Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry), noting how these methods can identify ratios of isotopes of specific elements in samples, and how these ratios can identify geographical, or indicate extraterrestrial, origins (pg. 3, 6th/ penultimate para).
Having established that their investigative methods (SIMS in this paper) rely on isotopic ion counts, and that the isotopic composition of an unidentified material under investigation might be important, the authors then- from page 3's last para. to the first para. of page 5- discuss some other technologies and findings dependent on isotopic differences. Why is not clear.
The authors do not use, or find evidence of, any of these applications. They do not state how they might be used in forensic examination of aerospace artefacts. They do not suggest how evidence of these applications- some theoretical at present, e.g. spin physics-based processing, airborne quantum computers- might be found; isotopic ratios alone would be scant evidence in the absence of structural clues (e.g. in a sample resembling the one they analyze, "CB_JV-1", see below).
This is undoubtedly true, but the author's examples of isotopic exploitation have little objective relevance to their paper.
It is mentioned that the nursing behaviour of rats might be influenced by what isotope of lithium they are given (page 3 last paragraph).
This is utterly irrelevant. No lithium was found in any of the studies of the Council Bluffs material (and if it had been, the above citation would still be irrelevant- no rats or other nursing mammals are known to have been affected. And this is not aerospace science).
There is no reason whatsoever to believe that any part of the material had any novel biochemical / biophysical properties.
The authors state silicon-28 might have a role in quantum computing (last line pg. 3- first line pg. 4).
Silicon is the second-most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and 92% of it is silicon-28. And we refine silicon for higher "28" ratios, so we know that silicon with a higher proportion of silicon-28 can be of terrestrial origin:
"Spotlight: Silicon-28 in Quantum Computers", January 11 2020, National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA),
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2020/01/spotlight-silicon-28-quantum-computers
Finding silicon-28 in a specimen does not mean you've found a quantum computer, or the melted remains of one.
As it happens, the authors find significant amounts of silicon in their samples (Figs. 8A and 9, pg. 15). The isotopic composition of 3 subsamples are obtained, all have a slightly lower proportion of silicon-28 in their silicon content (90.7%, 89.9%, 91.4%) than the average natural incidence (92.23%); see Figure 8a, pg. 15.
So silicon found in the sample is not connected in any credible way with silicon use in quantum computing.
The use of isotopes in clinical imaging is referred to; this has no relevance to the paper. Clinical imaging technology is not used by the authors for their investigation (MIBI can be used in histopathology, as cited [23], but not for in vivo clinical imaging); nor do they propose any improvement or novel use of clinical imaging technologies for aerospace forensics purposes.
The authors continue; altering the isotopic composition of carbon in a boron-doped diamond changes the temperature at which it might display superconductivity
(pg. 4 para. 1). No boron (or diamond, presumably) was found in any of the studies. The authors do not investigate the electrical conductivity of CB_JV-1; from indications of its composition (discussed later) we can perhaps safely assume that it is not a manufactured superconductor.
After a mention of spin physics- which the authors do not use or investigate in this study- reference to the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP) is made;
The cited document for this claim is a list of papers (PDF attached below), available from
https://irp.fas.org/dia/aatip-list.pdf.
The cover letter accompanying the listed papers refers to the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program (AATIP), not AAWSAP, although the papers are believed to be of AAWSAP origin. The cover letter includes,
Note use of "foreign", not "unconventional" (the word used by Nolan, Vallee et al.)
The cited documents do not state
The AATIP /AAWSAP documents include a list of 38 papers of interest to/ commissioned by US defense staff, mostly concerning "blue sky" research and speculation about future and / or theoretical technologies. It is not a list of papers about, or resulting from, the examination of foreign aircraft or UAP.
All are in the public domain, except one paper about lasers.
Of the 38 papers, the only one devoted to spin physics is Maxim Tsoi's "Metallic Spintronics", 2010 (PDF attached below).
As well as an overview of spin physics, Tsoi's paper proposes (amongst other things) utilising electron spin to carry information instead of charge, in order to allow better heat dissipation from the expected increase in transistor density on semiconductor chips- a promising, hopefully practical idea yet to be realised by industry.
There is nothing in Tsoi's paper that could have been used in any practical sense to investigate "unconventional"/ foreign craft at that time (or in 2022).
Metallic Spintronics was written by a scientist with much experience of the field. It contains 97 checkable references. Just as that paper's proposals could not be used in an applied sense to investigate aerospace craft in 2022, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to suspect that any part of Metallic Spintronics was dependent on, or informed by, prior examination of aerospace artefacts. No part of that paper describes technology for use in the investigation of aerospace artefacts.
The authors already had the results of two earlier studies of the Council Bluffs material and their own before submitting their 2022 paper.
They would have known the (at best) tangential relevance of the above-mentioned isotopic subjects to their material, and to aerospace science in general.
From a 6-by-4 foot (1.83 x 1.22 m) find of melted metals, all readily available and all, where checked, with terrestrial norm isotope ratios (see "6. Findings, Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke" below), the authors extend their discussion to biological effects of different isotopes, quantum computing, clinical imaging, superconductivity, the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program and spin physics. In the case of the last subject the relevant paper (Tsoi, 2010) does not support the author's apparent interpretation of its purpose or meaning.
A cynical reader might suspect that the authors are attempting to associate their study of the Council Bluffs material (using SIMS, a technology that indicates the presence of different isotopes) with these "cutting edge", attention-grabbing subjects merely by raising them as examples of technologies/ projects that might be linked to isotopic variation.
But there is no aspect of the author's investigation, or their findings, that pragmatically connects them in any reasonable way to quantum computing, isotopic biological effects, superconductivity, clinical imaging, AAWSAP or spin physics.
The author's later discussion of liquid metal use in magneto-hydrodynamic generators- and, speculatively, in nuclear reactors- might raise similar concerns.
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4. The Council Bluffs incident, 17 December 1977
The authors tell us that their material was retrieved from near Gilbert's Pond in Big Lake Park, Council Bluffs, Iowa (pg. 7, last para). Council Bluffs is immediately across the Missouri from Omaha, Nebraska, with which it is connected by several bridges. Council Bluffs had 60,348 residents in 1970, 56,449 in 1980 (and an estimated 62,415 in 2021),
figures from Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_Bluffs,_Iowa
Gilbert's pond is just to the north of the (substantial) built-up area of Council Bluffs, in an area called Big Lake Park. Big Lake itself is to the north of Gilbert's Pond. The terrain is quite flat in the built-up area through to the pond and lake, and hillier to the east/ northeast.
The area of the find, to the north of Council Bluffs, and an aerial view:
Gilbert's Pond viewed from Big Lake Road, looking east (c. 2021)
Gilbert's Pond viewed from the turn-off from Big Lake Road to the pond itself, looking approx. NE (location a few tens of metres / yards south from the above photo).
On the day of the incident, the sun would have set at approximately 16:54, some two hours fifty minutes before the first report at 19:45
("timeanddate" website, https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@4860752?month=12&year=1977).
The authors describe the weather, overcast but unexceptional for the time of year. Temperature was 32°F (0° Celsius), last para. pg. 7, first line pg. 8.
At around 19:45, Kenny Drake, 17, 'phoned the fire department from a store payphone. He said he had been driving accompanied by his wife Carol, 16, and his 12 year-old nephew Randy James, when all three had seen a "reddish ball" at an estimated height of 500 or 600 feet, which fell "straight down" into Big Lake Park. There was a bright flash, and flames "8 to 10 feet high"
(pg. 4 para. 8).
The authors don't relate the Drake's purpose or direction of travel, but The Historical Society of Pottawattamie County article " "Close Encounter" at Big Lake Park" (Richard Warner, undated) states the trio were driving along North 16 Street on their way to the Richman Gordman store at 1800 North 16 Street.
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html
Nolan, Vallee et al.:
Strangely, Kenny Drake doesn't recount the four youths observing, making any remarks about, or showing any interest in the molten mass on the ground.
The young men drove to this relatively isolated spot to ask Kenny, Carol and Randy if they had seen something fall from the sky -presumably Kenny or Carol would have answered "Yes, we think this is it" or something similar- but didn't stop to have a look at the material.
Where 16 year-old Carol went isn't mentioned. Maybe she was dropped off at Gordman's store. One hopes she wasn't left by herself in the park.
The authors seem to claim that the fire department and police department each had an Assistant Chief Moore, who attended the incident.
Did fire department Assistant Chief Moore drive to the police station and request that a police officer return with him to the site to take photographs? Even if so, it might be unusual that the fireman drove the police car.
Other possibilities are that the authors are working with confused accounts; or have confused the accounts themselves, and this slipped through proof-reading.
Carol seems to be absent when the 'phone call was made, and when Kenny Drake and Randy James were asked to repeat their account.
Presumably "the officers" were Assistant Chief Moore of the fire department and Identification Section police officer Dennis Murphy -and possibly an Assistant Chief Moore of the police department, if he existed and isn't the result of author error.
Carol's status as a witness, from the facts given in the author's paper, must be questionable. What she saw (and her presence) appear to be reported by Kenny (and maybe young Randy). There is no mention in the paper of Carol herself ever being asked what she saw. In addition,
The four young men in the small car are only known from Kenny's (and maybe Randy's) account- they are part of Kenny Drake's claim, they cannot be considered corroborating witnesses; if they existed they have never come forward to support Kenny Drake's claims.
The Drakes and James must have been travelling northward on North 16 Street- had they been travelling south, Gilbert's Pond would have been behind them (see the 1st map above). Their claimed initial sighting must have occurred before (i.e. to the south of), or at, the turn-off from North 16 Street for Gordman's store (at 1800 North 16 Street, in a small retail/ business park on the west side of the road). This is something over 800 m (875 yards) "as the crow lies" from Gilbert's Pond.
Kenny Drake and Randy report flames "8 to ten feet high" at the time of "impact"- a transient event, seen while the witnesses were still on North 16 Street.
From any possible viewpoint on North 16 Street, Gilbert's Pond is on the far side of a modest railway embankment.
This is the present view approaching the North 16 St. junction for the retail park (a left turn). The bank at right is between 16th and 15th Streets- I don't know if it (or the foliage) was there in 1977. The aerial view shows the line of sight from the junction towards Gilbert's Pond:
The first photo below shows the railway embankment as seen from North 15 (Not 16) Street; behind the embankment is Big Lake Road, which is parallel to North 15th Street at this point; then Gilbert's Pond. The second photo shows the view north on Big Lake Road, the embankment is at left, the pond at right.
It's hard to estimate the embankment's height- the vehicle on the left of the first photo might give a clue; maybe [ITAL] approx. 5 or 6 feet (1.52 - 1.83 m).
Nevertheless, it must be questionable whether the Drakes and Randy James would have seen brief flames "...8 to 10 feet high" in Big Lake Park from their vantage point on North 16 Street, at least 800 m (875 yards) away on the other side of the embankment.
The short-lived flames sound more like something that would be described by someone who was closer to the event.
The material was deposited near the pond but I've been unable to find out where- it was described as
Aerial photo of Gilbert's Pond:
This was before cell phones. To make a 'phone call, you would have to use a landline- usually from your home, workplace or a public payphone.
At around the time we know Kenny Drake was in the vicinity of a payphone, "the authorities" received a call from "a middle-aged couple", who corroborate Kenny's report.
How the "authorities" (the authors don't state which agency) ascertained that the caller was middle-aged, and if they spoke to two people to determine that there was a couple, is not stated. The caller(s) did not give their name(s).
The claimed middle-aged couple have not subsequently come forward.
Co-author Jacques Vallee states in "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples" (1998, PDF attached below),
The authors describe accounts from another claimed pair of witnesses.
The road concerned is almost certainly West Broadway, not "Broadway Avenue".
We don't know in what direction(s) Criss and Mike Moore saw their "object" (or in Criss' case, at what elevation).
The immediate area (up to and including Gilbert's Pond and Big Lake) is relatively flat.
If Mike Moore was on the Broadway Viaduct he had a raised vantage point; looking left from near the viaduct's midpoint, approximately in line with 12 Street (running S to N under the viaduct) Mike would have had a line of sight over railroad yards towards Big Lake Park. He might have been able to see the light of the burning material at Gilbert's Pond through the trees of the copse immediately to its south. It seems unlikely that Criss Moore's reported sighting from the 16 Street-West Broadway intersection could have the same possible cause.
Criss, Mike Moore locations:
From the raised perspective of the viaduct, an object or lightsource below treetop height would probably be beneath the observer if it were in the Council Bluffs/ Big Lake Park area, so it might be difficult to tell if it were hovering or on the ground.
If Criss Moore had been looking over her left shoulder at the West Broadway/ North 16 Street intersection- or Mike from the Broadway Viaduct- each could have had a line of sight almost in line with runways at Eppley Airfield approx. 3 km (1.86 miles) to the north-northwest (NNW). Even from the viaduct it is unlikely that runway lights would be visible, but an aircraft taking off or landing at a shallow angle might- for a short duration- appear to hover.
If the Moores were familiar with the Council Bluffs area, it is perhaps unlikely that they misperceived aircraft lights in the direction of the airfield.
There were no other reports from drivers/ passengers on West Broadway or using the Broadway Viaduct (a major local thoroughfare) that we know of.
Even on a cool December evening at about 19:15, in a built-up area with at least 56,000 residents other people might have been about.
Nolan, Vallee et al. omit a possibly relevant fact: Mike Moore is the son of Assistant Chief Jack Moore of the fire department (see above);
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Purely supposition: Perhaps Jack Moore got a bit of moral support from son Mike and daughter-in-law Criss. On hearing of Jack Moore's evening, maybe they were "primed" to remember seeing something unusual (the same colour as, but otherwise different from, the Drake's sighting and the anonymous 'phone report).
It's not inconceivable that some Council Bluffs police officers might have questioned Jack Moore's call to attend a small area of burnt material, in a park, that hadn't hurt anyone and that hadn't required any additional attendance from Jack Moore's own fire department.
As discussed above, in what may be a confused interpretation Nolan, Vallee et al., last para pg. 8, say
The Historical and Preservation Society of Pottawattamie County website article "'Close Encounter' at Big Lake Park" (Dr Richard Warner, undated) states
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html
(However, the 2022 paper and the Historical Society article differ on several points).
A summary of claimed witnesses:
in Pg.8 para 3 the authors state
There are only 4 or 5 identified [ITAL] claimants, depending on Carol's status: 2 or 3 Drake/ James family, and 2 from the Moore family.
As far as we can tell from the paper, Kenny, 17, and nephew Randy, 12, are the only identified people who definitely reported seeing something fall in Big Lake Park and who spoke with "officers". They did not report seeing a flying or hovering object. Their 'phone call to the fire department was acted on by Jack Moore.
Only Mike Moore (Jack Moore's son) and Criss Moore claimed to see a flying or hovering object. They did not report seeing anything fall/ be ejected from it.
4a. Authors' map of northern and central Council Bluffs (Figure 5)
In Figure 5 (page 9), Nolan Vallee, Jiang and Lemke (2022) use a map to show where the relevant events occurred.
I've copied it here, assuming fair use and for purposes of legitimate examination of claims made:
The map has no scale displayed. A minor point- there is no red arrow as described in the map footnote.
The "...site of impact" -a rather leading term- is indicated on the map with an "X" by Big Lake, not Gilbert's Pond. This is incorrect.
Figure 5 is the only map used in the paper; Figure 6 (pg. 13) shows "Isotope abundances for (a) Titanium; (b) Iron; (c) Chromium".
There is no other explanation in the text stating what point #1 in Figure 5 might indicate.
It is clear from the Drake / James claim that the four young men were encountered at Gilbert's pond.
Point #1, Figure 5 is approximately at the junction of East Kanesvile Boulevard and Northern Broadway. The location has no obvious connection with the events in question, and is 2.4 km (1.5 miles) southeast of Gilbert's Pond.
If point #1, Figure 5 is meant to indicate where Kenny Drake/ Randy James claim four young men turned up in a car, it is incorrect.
Point #3, Figure 5, appears to be the east side of the Grenville Dodge Memorial Bridge (see the aerial view, discussion of Criss and Mike Moore's claims, above). This is incorrect.
This is over 4 km (approx. 2.5 miles) to the west of Broadway Viaduct (see aerial view, "Criss, Mike Moore locations", above).
The Broadway Viaduct passes over railroad lines, not the Missouri River.
Literally everything indicated by the authors on the map, Figure 5, is wrong. It is difficult to understand how this could have come about.
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5. Early studies of material found near Gilbert's Pond, Council Bluffs
The authors discuss the findings of two studies made soon after the material was found.
Summarising the findings of the two studies, they state
It's likely the conclusions about slag and ash were reached by Professor Frank Kayser, Study 2 below.
The authors do not report, or give an estimate, of the proportions of metal/slag/ash found. Possibly this wasn't ever documented.
It is not determined if the original (pre-melt) material included significant discrete metal objects, or if it was composed of a mixture of small items (e.g. swarf, metal dust/ filings, iron wool, scrap electronic components etc.) crudely intermixed through melting, or if it was originally a solid, either as a mixture of previously seperate (mainly) metallic components or as a homogenous alloy. The inhomogeneity later found by Nolan, Vallee et al.'s study of sub-samples suggests a mixture, not a true alloy.
5a. Study 1. Study by Jack Coan at Griffin Pipe Products Company, 1977
The percentages of elements comprising the remaining 98.22 % are not supplied by the authors.
It is stated that iron was a major constituent (see below) but no figure is given.
Nolan, Vallee et al. have told us that both studies found that the material was primarily iron with small amounts of nickel and chromium.
Study 2 (below)
Nolan, Vallee et al. do not present information from Coan/ the Griffin Pipe Products Company showing that this was their conclusion, but the percentage of carbon found might indicate a carbon steel.
The percentages of the main metal constituents, including nickel and chromium (which would be expected if the authors' assessment of the two earlier studies is correct, pg. 8 para. 1), are not given. Information from the Griffin Pipe Products investigation seems rather sparse; maybe not all the details were retained.
5b. Study 2. Study by Professor Frank Kayser, University of Iowa at Ames, metallurgy division (1977 or 1978?)
Kayser himself said
Kayser analysed 4 samples of metal, 2 samples of slag, and 1 of ash. How Kayser differentiated "metal" from "slag" is not recorded, although the slag samples returned somewhat higher non-metallic (silicon + calcium) counts than the metal samples; see pie charts below.
X-Ray fluorescence, electron beam microprobe, and emission spectroscopy were used
(pg. 8 para. 5).
Professor Kayser's results are shown in Table 1, pg. 12 of the paper:
I'm not confident that I understand the meanings of these results- the opinion of someone with appropriate knowledge would be helpful (to me, at least).
Nolan, Vallee et al. state that the results in Table 1
Each of the 4 metal samples returns a ">> 1.00" for iron -note the last explanatory line provided by Nolan et al., foot of Table 1 (a possible error in that text doesn't help our understanding).
If those samples are accurately described as
then it seems unlikely that the numbers in Table 1 represent the relative abundance of elements in the metal samples, as the tantalum content of each sample is given as 0.40, magnesium (in the metal samples) 0.30, which I initially took to mean tantalum had 40% the abundancy of iron in each sample, magnesium 30%, whereas nickel is only 0.04 in each sample, chromium only 0.01 or 0.02.
As well as iron, 8 or 9 other elements return higher values than nickel or chromium in each of the 4 metal samples.
You don't need to perform Bayesian analysis to notice that the returned values have some interesting characteristics; there isn't a 6, 7 or 9 amongst the 98 values (conveyed by 330 numerals) in the Kayser table. Maybe this is an artefact of the instrument/ process used by Kayser rather than a reflection of "true" physical characteristics of each element in the original samples. The 2022 authors do not comment on this.
I've made pie charts based on the figures returned by Kayser for the 7 samples, reduced in size for display here.
Again, it seems unlikely that these figures, translated here into percentages, are actually representative of the proportion of elements per sample. Rounding errors are present.
Kayser reported that the metal was "most likely" (Nolan, Vallee et al.) a carbon steel, although his studies did not reveal the carbon content.
Kayser thought it unlikely the material was of meteoritic origin,
and also thought an aerospace industry origin unlikely,
5c. Conjecture: Re-interpretation of some values reported by Kayser. -This is supposition on my part, and may be irrelevant/ wrong.
I'm unsure about the meanings of the values returned in Table 1 from Ames/ Kayser.
As an exercise, I made the assumption (which might well be wrong) that where a value on that table is preceeded by "<" or "<<", it represents a threshold detection value, i.e. it indicates that the element is probably present, but the number isn't indicative of the quantity of that element in the sample.
Using this assumption, I substituted 0.005, the lowest value returned on the table, for any "<" or "<<" values as an arbitrary (low) value representing a trace.
See "Modified Table 1 (A)" below left. In the original Table 1, tantalum appeared to be a major constituent of the samples tested by Kayser (or at least returned a strong signal). Strangely neither Kayser (as far as we know) or Nolan, Vallee et al. remark on this. Modifying the table as described, tantalum is reduced to a trace in all 5 metal (but not slag) samples.
If we substitute 0.005 for all "<" and "<<" values, and all values for a given element which are less than a returned "<"/"<<" value for that element, we get Modified Table 1 (B), above right. These (my) substitutions are certainly questionable, and might be completely misguided.
However, note that this results in much reduced tantalum, titanium and tungsten content (also cobalt, calcium), making the results more indicative of a majority iron/ steel content as described by Kayser (and Coan).
Perhaps coincidentally, but in line with the results above, Nolan, Vallee et al. question the detection of titanium and calcium in their later study due to possible confounding factors, discussed below, and they don't report finding cobalt (or tantalum, or tungsten: but Ta and W have higher atomic masses than 60, the upper limit of their detector).
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6. Findings, Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke (2021, published 2022)
The sample tested by the authors was provided by Jacques Vallee. It is referred to as CB_JV-1.
Why the sample is "claimed" to be from the Council Bluffs material- implying that this is not certain- is not explained.
Similarly, why sample CB_JV-1 is "distinct" from earlier-tested samples is not explained; whether this determination was made prior to the use of investigative technologies (e.g. by visual appearance), or after, is important but not clarified.
The authors have a sample whose characterisation might have "potential relevance to aerospace forensics", and they omit its dimensions and weight.
The mixing of US customary units and metric units (without their respective metric and US customary values) should not be expected in an academic paper.
No assessment of magnetic or conductive properties (either electrical or thermal) are mentioned. Such information might be relevant if the material might be from a technological- particularly an aerospacial- artefact. Sample density is not reported, nor is hardness. Ductility and melting point(s) are not reported, pehaps due to reluctance to damage the sample. In the context of the paper, all of these factors might be considered relevant to a forensic investigation of the sample. While the appropriate tests might not be examples of "improved instrumental techniques" as per the title of the paper, the information they might have provided could perhaps have informed the author's findings in ways that the instruments that they did use couldn't. It might be argued that the author's case study of CB_JV-1 demonstrates that reliance on a single (if improved) investigative technology alone is insufficient for a forensic analysis of a material sample.
A photograph of "a representative fragment" (pg. 8 first para.) is shown on pg. 7; it is very clearly two fragments. The authors do not state if this (or one of these) is CB_JV-1.
Considering the stated possible origin of CB_JV-1,
and the extraordinary significance that this would have if correct, the absence of professional-standard photographs, from multiple angles, of CB_JV-1 is regrettable.
There is no description of the visual appearance of CB_JV-1. The objects in the photo look very much like metallic slag.
Two sample grains from CB_JV-1 underwent Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS), and the isotope ratios for titanium, iron and chromium were found.
To examine a broader range of isotopes, a multiplexed ion beam imaging (MIBI) instrument was used. MIBI
https://www.ionpath.com/mibi-technology/
Although the authors have stated
MIBI indicated the presence of aluminium, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, silicon, sodium, titanium (see Figure 7, pg. 14).
Fig. 7 is reproduced here, invoking fair use for legitimate review and the difficulty in presenting the same information by other means:
Although not identified in Fig. 7 manganese ion counts are present in Figure 8A (pg. 15; see below), this is not explained. There are no returns for chromium or nickel in Fig. 7.
Reasons for chromium's presence in the author's preceding SIMS study, but absence here, are not discussed. Possible reasons for variance from the findings of the two earlier studies (e.g. absence of nickel, chromium) are not discussed.
The authors provide results for
Carbon, relative atomic mass (AKA standard atomic weight) 12.011 is omitted. If the Council Bluffs material had significant steel content as the 1970's studies indicated, an estimate of carbon content might have been useful in a technology forensics context. Coan's 1977 study quantified carbon at 0.7%.
Kayser's study (1977 or '78) indicated returns for tantalum and tungsten, relative mass 180.948 and 183.84 respectively, beyond the limits of Nolan, Vallee et al.s' investigative set-up.
There is no discussion of the forensics implications of using an investigative technology apparently incapable of detecting elements/ isotopes with less than mass 20, e.g. carbon (carbon composites are increasingly used in aerospace engineering, the Airbus A350-900 XWB airframe is 52% carbon composite) or heavier than mass 60 (from an aerospace artefact, plutonium 238 might indicate a small thermoelectric generator; plutonium 239, carriage of a nuclear weapon).
The only example that the authors provide in their paper of a known aerospace artefact which likely underwent systematic forensic examination using the most sophisticated means then available is Cosmos 954 (see "8a1. Discussion of Cosmos 954", below). That craft's nuclear reactor and fuel would have been of great interest- perhaps the primary interest- to American investigators; but the techniques used by Nolan, Vallee et al. would have been of little use in this regard.
It is for the authors to make the case that their spectroscopic studies provide examples of improved (since 1977-'78) instrumental techniques, they do not do so; the lower mass detection range of Coan's study, and higher mass detection range of Kayser's, return findings for elements that Nolan, Vallee et al.'s instruments cannot detect. On page 15, para. 2 Nolan, Vallee et al. state
-The authors exclude calcium, nickel, potassium and titanium from their subsequent figures. Note, like Mn (which is not excluded- yet-) Ni is absent from Figure 7, whereas Ca and K returns are labelled. Although Ni is excluded, it isn't clear that it was detected.
The author's earlier SIMS results measured four isotopes of Ti and two of Cr (alongside three of Fe, Figure 6, pg. 15) to inform the author's conclusion that the materials were consistent with terrestrial origin (para. 1, pg. 14), yet the authors now discard Ti, and do not comment on the absence of Cr returns in Figure 7.
Although the returns for some isotopes of Ca, K, Ni and Ti might be indistinguishable, the decision to omit these elements from later charts of the relative ratios of elements in subsamples 1-5 (i.e. Figure 9, pg. 15), even if only as a grouping (e.g. "Possible Ca, K, Ni, Ti") is questionable, as one or more of these elements must be present in CB_JV-1 (unless there are isotopes of other elements with the same atomic weight present-if I understand correctly).
Nevertheless the author's discussion of the possible confounding effects of oxidation, diatomics, and isotopes of different elements having indistinguishable weights, arguably gives confidence in their interpretation (if not presentation) of these results. It is interesting that the authors exclude titanium from this analysis; Ti has many aerospace engineering applications, and was apparently detected in all samples tested by Kayser (although not mentioned by him- and reduced to arbitrary trace values in all but 1 sample in the conjectural Modified Table 1 (B), above).
Similarly, where the returned values for Fe 57 slightly exceed the terrestrial norm in proportion to Fe 56, the authors state
[Figure 8B, pg. 15, shows "Ion counts for the masses around 57Fe..."; this is incorrectly referred to as Figure 9B in the text, pg. 15 para 3.]
The authors should be credited for prosaic interpretations of their data, resulting from an understanding of the underlying chemistry/ physics of their investigation and the returns of the MIBI instrument. Perhaps uncharitably, maybe I was anticipating more challenging interpretations: that the findings imply an aerospace artefact (due to Ti), or even extraterrestrial origin (raised Fe 57 returns).
Figure 8A, page 15, shows the (intra-elemental) proportions of isotopes found for aluminium (Al), iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), silicon (Si) and sodium (Na).
Note, like Ni (see above) Mn is not seen in Figure 7, pg. 14. The data in Figure 8A was obtained from the MIBI instrument as was the data represented in Figure 7. The authors do not explain the absence of a manganese ionization efficiency in Figure 7; in Figure 8A subsamples 1, 3 and 5 all return Mn ion counts.
Figure 8A does not contain values for subsamples 2 and 4;
The table below is from the information in Figure 8A. (Note; in the original table the isotopes are in order of atomic weight, placing Mg-55 between Fe-54 and Fe-56).
The authors note that the five subsamples of CB_JV-1 show marked inhomogeneity. They state,
One explanation for this inhomogeneity might be that the material is not in fact from a single manufactured (homogenous) alloy, but from a melt of mixed, varied metal components. This rather obvious possibility is only briefly alluded to by the authors,
The implications of this finding in terms of determining the possible origins and purpose of the material are not discussed by the authors.
The authors note that there are spectrographic indications of other trace elements, including germanium, but suggest this is due to diatomic spectra from other identified constituent elements (page 16, para. 3).
As an aside, in 1977 germanium would be found in many transistors, although silicon transistors -and integrated circuits- were rendering them obsolete. My subjective experience, late 70's on, was that Ge transistors would "blow" quite frequently (or simply fail to work from the outset), ending up in the waste bin.
In Figure 9, page 15, Nolan, Vallee et al. display the
The 2022 paper doesn't describe any other technique used to establish the relative amounts of constituent elements in the CB_JV-1 subsamples.
However, the authors have already stated, re. the MIBI instrument,
There seems to be a serious contradiction between the above statements (Figure 9 pg. 15 and pg. 6 para. 2), unless I have radically misunderstood the meanings of one or both of the above quotes.
The pie charts 1, 3 and 5 in Fig. 9 appear to be based on the counts presented in Fig. 8A; 8A appears to display the intra-elemental ratios of isotopes.
Using the data in 8A, I have constructed pie charts for subsamples 1, 3 and 5; they match those the authors provide in Fig. 9 of their paper, which are supposedly relative ratios of the elements in each subsample.
(as already noted, the counts for 2 and 4 are not given in Figure 8A).
Some of my remarks below are based on the assumption that the Figure 9 charts do portray the "[r]elative ratios of the elements" in each subsample as claimed by Nolan, Vallee et al; these are marked with an asterisk (*).
The pie charts below are reconstructions of those in the author's Figure 9. Charts 1, 3 and 5 are based on data from Figure 8A. Charts 2 and 4 are approximations of their graphic appearance in Fig. 9; any inaccuracies introduced are mine.
Charts as per Figure 9
In 4 out of 5 subsamples, including 2 of the 3 where ion counts are known, *both aluminium and silicon are present in greater quantity than iron.
The author's pie charts appear to be based on- at least they strongly correlate with- the data shown in Figure 8A, which does not contain values for subsamples 2 and 4 (due to low ion counts, above).
Nevertheless in Figure 9 the authors present pie charts for subsamples 2 and 4, which must be based on ion counts like those shown for subsamples 1, 3 and 5, Figure 8A.
Why the authors chose to portray pie charts for subsamples 2 and 4 in Figure 9, but not the data on which they are based in Figure 8A, seems an odd decision.
Equally, the author's omission of manganese from these charts seems arbitrary, and is puzzling. (Sodium is also omitted; although Na diatomics overlap with Ti peaks, Na ion counts are listed in Fig. 8A, unlike those for Ca, Ni, K, Ti).
For subsamples 1 and 3, manganese is a *minor constituent (0.2% and 0.7% respectively, from data in Figure 8A) but subsample 5 is *4.5% Mn, a greater proportion than that of magnesium in subsamples 1,3 and 5:
Chart for subsample 5 as per Figure 9, including manganese as per Figure 8A
It is implied that the author's investigation is an example of "...characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics", but it is hard to conceive of a forensic investigation into a sample's composition being improved by excluding a probable constituent (Mn) without explanation.
The table below shows elements indicated by spectroscopy by Nolan, Vallee et al., as mentioned in the 2022 paper, and reasons (if known) for any elements later excluded:
Comparing the Fig. 9 pie charts 1, 3 and 5, where the authors return ion counts, and 2 and 4, apparently based on ion counts which the authors do not provide, some differences are visible. For subsamples 2 and 4 the authors do not state what level of ion count was determined as their cut-off, if this was decided before results were obtained, or whether it is normal practice to discard such results. This might have been useful for the guidance of future investigators.
Below, a repeat of the pie charts corresponding to Figure 9 arranged for easier comparison of subsamples 1, 3 and 5 against 2 and 4.
Again, charts for 2 and 4 are based on their graphic appearance in the author's Figure 9, not numerical data like 1, 3 and 5; my representation is approximate.
(Click to enlarge)
The authors describe these charts as showing the relative ratios of elements in each of the 5 subsamples; it is difficult to decide what significance should be attached to the charts for 2 and 4.
Subsamples 2 and 4 show much smaller proportions of iron (and more aluminium) than 1, 3 and 5; the authors appear to link this with possibly greater oxidation of 2 and 4 (pg. 15 para. 1).
It is possible that retrieved aerospace artefacts undergoing analysis in the future might themselves have been substantially oxidised (or include oxidised components); the authors do not address this potential problem to the approach used in their case study. If the problematic oxidation occurred during spectroscopic processing (as can happen), the authors do not discuss how this risk- affecting 40% of their subsamples- might be minimized in future.
*Iron is not a majority component in any subsample; more aluminium than iron is present in subsamples 1, 2, 3, and 4, Al is >50% in 4 (iron is 46% of subsample 5).
*Silicon, like aluminium, is a larger component than iron in all subsamples except 5.
The possible origins of the silicon- whether a constituent of the material(s) deposited at the site, or incorporated into that melting material from the soil (or sand?) that the material was deposited on- are not discussed. If the Si is from the ground, a modest reduction of the estimates of the deposited material's mass is necessary (density of iron 7.874 g/cm3, silicon 2.329 g/cm3, Wikipedia (accessed 23/09/23) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon).
It is possible that the author's *finding of substantial quantities of silicon- not indicated by the earlier Coan, Kayser studies- indicates that CB_JV-1 originated from the underside of the find, in contact with (and incorporating some material from) the ground.
If the author's claim that the Figure 9 charts represent the relative ratios of elements in the subsamples is correct, then it is at odds with the two 1970's studies that conclude that the material is "...chiefly iron with small amounts of nickel and chromium" (pg. 8 para. 1).
The authors do not comment on this, other than
This is a significant difference in composition from that indicated by the 1977 Jack Coan / Griffin Pipe Products study (it seems unlikely that the Kayser study returned quantitative ratios, although Kayser described his sample as carbon steel). Coan failed to find significant aluminium; Al is a major component in all CB_JV-1 subsamples.
Remembering the author's line about CB_JV-1
If CB_JV-1 is from the Council Bluffs material, *and the relative ratios of elements in Figure 9 reflect its actual composition, then the level of difference with Coan's analysis indicates a very marked level of inhomogeneity, more than that found between the CB_JV-1 subsamples. It must be very unlikely that the metallic component of the material was a true alloy. The inhomogeneity strongly implies an uneven mixture of heterogenous metallic sources that vary in their elemental composition.
[My use of "*" as described above ends here.]
The authors make no attempt to combine the results of their initial SIMS study and the later SIMS-MIBI study in an attempt to describe the composition of CB_JV-1.
The authors do not offer any summary (other than, arguably, Figure 9) stating what they believe CB_JV-1 is actually composed of.
No conclusions are made, or new hypotheses advanced, about possible origins of CB_JV-1 based on the author's investigations- all the discussed hypotheses were extant long before the 2022 study, and the authors do not use their investigation results to test any of those hypotheses.
In "Speculative conclusions", pg. 16 para 4., the authors state
6a. Definitions of carbon steel
This might be a bit of a pedantic gripe on my part-
nevertheless, the author's definition of carbon steel is perhaps of interest in the context of their study and its title.
In the last line of pg. 13, para. 3., Kayser (who conducted the 2nd 1970s study) is quoted as saying
Although there isn't a universal consensus on how different proportions of carbon to iron in an alloy are described, both Kayser and Nolan, Vallee et al.'s values are questionable (Kayser's "...about 1.0 to 1.2 %" might be defended as an off-the-cuff median value. Or maybe terminology has shifted since 1977).
Generally though, "carbon steel" is used to describe iron alloyed with a carbon content of up to approximately 2 to 2.14 %; iron alloyed with a higher carbon content is usually called "cast iron".
Sources (all accessed Sept. 2023): Britannica https://www.britannica.com/technology/steel ,
The World Material https://www.theworldmaterial.com/low-medium-high-carbon-steel/, https://www.theworldmaterial.com/different-types-of-steel-classification/ ,
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_steel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_iron, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrought_iron
Not on this chart, TWI Limited's website gives carbon contents of low-carbon steel: < 0.25%, medium-carbon steel: 0.25-0.6%, high-carbon steel: 0.6-1.25%
https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/carbon-steel-vs-stainless-steel ,
and Wikipedia article "Steel" states
The author's definition of carbon steel is significantly different from those generally used. The two 1970's studies concluded the material was mainly carbon steel. Carbon steels of different grades, and other steels, have many applications in the aerospace industry. These two facts might lead us to expect the authors to have familiarized themselves with the properties of carbon steel (as widely defined) if their case study is characterised as a forensic investigation "with potential relevance to aerospace forensics".
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7. "Liquid metal, MHD and advanced flying vehicles." Page 17, first para. pg. 18.
The material found at Council Bluffs was found in a partially melted state, at least one edge behaving at first as a viscous fluid-
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html
When reading these near-apocalyptic descriptions, it should be remembered that the final maximum extent [ITAL] of the cooled material was approximately
6 feet by 4 feet; approx. 1.83 by 1.22 metres (pg.7 para. 5). This is a little less than the surface area of a modest double mattress.
Wikipedia, Bed size accessed 04/12/23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_size
Just for fun:
...so you could cover the Council Bluffs material with a duvet cover.
(Should you come across incandescent waste of similar dimensions, do not use it as a mattress).
The lack of homogeneity discovered in the material makes it unlikely that it was maintained in a dynamic fast-flowing liquid state for any significant time. The author's assessment of the material's composition (which they do not state in their text, but is apparently displayed in Figure 9) - aluminium, silicon, iron, magnesium, possibly manganese and some other elements- makes it a poor candidate for use as a liquid conductor, or in a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generator.
Nevertheless, the authors write,
Dr. Jim Bumby was a reader in electrical engineering for many years at the University of Durham, UK. Much of his work dealt with practical applications.
I think it unlikely that he meant (in the quote above) that all liquid metals- including mixtures of metals with substantial non-metallic inclusions- are "...an attractive means of current collection", and it might be a disservice to him to imply this.
Brief profile of Jim Bumby, and list of his publications at "IEEE Xplore",
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37270694200
At the time of Nolan, Vallee et al.'s study Dr. Bumby was no longer at the University of Durham. Under "Övrig [Other] information" for Power System Dynamics Stability and Control (2020, Machowski, Lubosny, Bialek, Bumby) on the Swedish website "bokus" (books), it says
"James R. Bumby, formerly Reader at Durham University, UK."
https://www.bokus.com/bok/9781119526346/power-system-dynamics/
(My emphasis); Nolan, Vallee et al.'s information about Bumby was out-of-date. Perhaps not surprising:
All the references cited in section 4.3 (refs. 39-46) cite work over 38 years old at the time of the author's study, bar reference (40), a 2021 Wikipedia (!) article, "Homopolar motor". Other than that, the references date from 1983, 1958, 1974, 1972, 1971, 1971, 1979.
Why are the references so dated? Because, except for the Wikipedia reference, they are the same references as used in the section "Liquid Metal Technology" in
(co-author) Jacques Vallee's 1998 paper "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples" (PDF attached, below).
In fact, most of section 4.1 in the author's 2022 paper is identical to "Physical Analyses..." in Vallee's 1998 paper.
I guess an author can't plagiarise themselves, but I wonder if the staff of Progress in Aerospace Sciences, publisher of the 2022 paper, were aware of this overlap.
Bizarrely, although the Vallee (1998) paper is cited in Nolan, Vallee et al. (reference 29), there is no such citation in section 4.1.
Here is a jpeg enabling a quick comparison of the similar texts; it is copied from a word document, "Comparison of Texts", attached below.
(Click to enlarge)
Speculating on possible uses of liquid metal, the authors write
"P-11" should be "P-31" as per Vallee 1998.
One has to question the design of a flying vehicle which occasionally needs to dump kilos of melted nuclear reactor housing.
The authors write,
This is a serious in-paper contradiction: Phosphorus (P) wasn't found, but aluminium-27 clearly was, as was magnesium, see Figs. 7, 8A, 9; sodium (Na) was indicated (Figs. 7, 8A) but later discarded for reasons already mentioned. In fact, Al-27 was the most abundant element in 2 of the 3 unoxidized samples (1 and 3) and both the more problematic oxidized samples (2 and 4) if Figure 9 displays "Relative ratios of the elements for each of the subsamples" as the authors claim (see Figure 9, pg. 15, and "Charts as per Figure 9", above).
Aluminium is not only present, it is the most common element detected by the authors. The error contained in the quote above is serious, and extraordinary.
The presence of aluminium and magnesium might indicate a plausible hypothesis for the material's purpose and composition that does not require the the presence of a nuclear reactor of highly speculative (and radiologically dirty) design carried by a selectively visible UFO.
Note; Roser's comments are near-identical to those made at least 23 years earlier in discussion of a material sample from Bogota, "1975 or 1976", (pg. 9 of PDF, Vallee 1998). See Vallee (1998), pg. 16 of PDF (marked pg. 374 on page).
The first sentence above, with minor differences, was originally in Vallee's 1998 paper; it refers to the Bogota sample (see text comparison).
Vallee would have been aware of Roser's criteria (for liquid metal to be associated with a nuclear power source) for some 23-plus years before the 2022 paper. The Council Bluffs material does not meet those criteria (and was found not to be radioactive in 1977), so why include Roser's speculations in the 2022 paper at all?
Nolan, Vallee et al. clearly imply that Roser corresponded with one of the 2022 authors about the Council Bluffs material.
Is this the case?
If not, it might be problematic. It is possible that Roser would have agreed that his speculation about the Bogota sample also applied to the Council Bluffs material, but the use of near-identical wording in the 2022 paper might indicate to an unsympathetic reader that Roser did not in fact correspond with Nolan, Vallee et al. about CB_JV-1, but that the authors have reproduced Roser's comments about the earlier Bogota find.
Along with the exciting conjecture about liquid metals in nuclear reactors, the authors write
That reference [46] on page 20 gives us,
46. Southall, H.L. and C.E. Oberly, "System Considerations for Airborne, High-power Superconducting Generators". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1979. 15(1): p. 711.
This paper is attached as a PDF below.
(1) The Southall and Oberly paper is not in any way about "superconducting airborne platforms". It is not about aircraft design or propulsion.
It is about superconducting airborne generators, i.e. generators for electricity production on board airborne platforms. A generator is not an "airborne platform", an aircraft is. Throughout the Southall/ Oberly paper it is assumed that the power source for the generator is a conventional (aero engine) turbine. Nolan, Vallee et al.'s use of the phrase "superconducting airborne platforms" is misleading, and their use of italics to imply significance unwarranted.
(2) There is nothing in Southall and Oberly's 1979 paper about liquid metal. Absolutely nothing at all. Throughout the paper it is assumed that windings of superconducting wire are to be used.
The paper is about relatively conventional late 1970's designs for superconducting generators, as this figure (pg. 1 of PDF, 711 of journal) shows:
Part of the description for the above figure reads,
Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke's representation of the 1979 Southall/ Oberly paper is wholly wrong. It is almost inconceivable that Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke all misunderstood the Southall/ Oberly paper.
And it isn't an administrative error, e.g. citing the wrong paper: Like much of the text in "4.1 Liquid metal, MHD and advanced flying vehicles", the text (and reference) about the Southall/ Oberly paper is identical to that used by Vallee (1998).
Apparently no-one, between 1998 and 2021, contacted Vallee to point out he was wrong to use the Southall/ Oberly paper as an example of proposed "liquid metal technology".
Nolan, Jiang and Lemke either didn't read the referenced paper, or comprehensively misunderstood it. Either possibility is troubling.
It is perhaps unlikely that the editors of "Progress in Aerospace Sciences", the publishers of Nolan, Vallee et al.s' paper, checked this reference.
The "Liquid Metal..." section of the paper concludes, referring to the Council Bluffs find,
That must be a highly speculative "should". The author's case study surely demonstrates that CB_JV-1 is not a superconductor, or nuclear drive waste as described by Roser. Instead of adopting these conclusions from their own research, the authors appear to imply that unknown physics might be a possible explanation for the material: the material might still have a "high-tech" origin or purpose, despite their own evidence to the contrary.
A sufficiently advanced technology might be able to transmute a discarded potato chip packet into a superconductor or an exotic fuel, but finding a potato chip packet of unknown origin is perhaps insufficient evidence that this is currently occurring. Arthur C. Clarke stated
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
8. Hypotheses for the Council Bluffs material
On pages 10, 11 and 12 of their paper the authors consider 5 hypotheses which might account for the find at Gilbert's Pond:
A satellite re-entry and crash; a meteorite; material dropped from an aircraft (of conventional type); a hoax using thermite; a hoax using poured molten metal.
(The hypothesis of a hoax using thermite is considered last here).
The authors use US customary units (quoting a USAF letter) discussing the satellite hypothesis, metric for the meteorite hypothesis, US customary for aircraft-dropped material and poured molten metal hypotheses, and both US customary and metric units for temperature- without their respective equivalents each time- when discussing the thermite hypothesis. This shouldn't occur in an academic paper.
Estimates of the material's weight, discussed below, vary from 30 to 55 pounds (approx. 13.64 to 25 kg) implying there was no serious attempt by any party- fire department, police, or anyone else involved- to study the material in situ or catalogue pieces removed from the site, despite it only covering approx. 2.233 m squared (2.671 square yards).
8a. Satellite re-entry
Already mentioned, Professor Frank Kayser commented on the possibility of the material being from an aerospace artefact in 1977 or 1978:
He requested USAF opinion on whether it could be debris from a [presumably uncontrolled] satellite re-entry (Vallee, 1998 states the department contacted was Air Force Space Systems; last para. pg. 13 of PDF, marked pg. 371).
USAF Colonel Charles Senn replied, but thought a satellite re-entry unlikely; the authors list his 4 points why in paras. 4-7, pg. 10.
They can be summarized as (a) such material would not be molten at impact, (b) no ground impression or spread of debris at Council Bluffs, (c) a satellite would not be glowing at the altitude seen [as reported by Kenny Drake and James] and (d),
The authors accept that the re-entering satellite hypothesis is unlikely, describing Senn's letter as "...helpful in dismissing" it (pg. 10 para. 8).
They report Col. Senn concluded (same para.)
8a1. Discussion of Cosmos 954, "Operation Morning Light", pg. 16.
Immediately after "Speculative Conclusions" (pg. 16 para. 4) the authors briefly discuss the break-up of the Soviet satellite Cosmos (or Kosmos) 954 over Canada, 24 January 1978, which scattered debris over a path of some 600 km (370 miles);
Wikipedia, accessed 04/12/23, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954
Some of the debris comprised nuclear fuel, mainly uranium 235, from an estimated 35-50 kg (77-110 pounds) payload in the craft's BES-5 fast fission reactor
(Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BES-5 , accessed 04/12/23).
The radiological clean-up by Canada and the USA was called "Operation Morning Light"; the title used by the authors for this section of the paper (pg. 16, paras. 5, 6, 7). They write that, because of the Cosmos 954 incident,
There were no doubts about the origin of Cosmos 954; North American Aerospace Defense Command had detected the satellite's erratic orbital changes in mid-December 1977, and Soviet officials advised American authorities about the craft's impending re-entry (Wikipedia, ibid).
The main concern was the radioactive fuel, but the chance to retrieve Soviet reconnaissance satellite technology must also have been a priority.
The reasons which USAF Col. Senn advanced for the Council Bluffs material not being satellite debris- which Nolan, Vallee et al. seem to accept- were just as valid post-Cosmos 954 as before; indeed, the actual satellite re-entry reaffirmed some of those points- debris over a wide area, not molten on the ground, with remaining structural features; all (as Senn predicted) in contrast to the Council Bluffs material.
The authors continue (pg. 16 para. 7)
If the authors are claiming that the agencies conducting those studies compared their results with the Coan/ Kayser results from Council Bluffs, then they provide no evidence. Given the USAF's lack of interest in the Iowa debris, any such comparison seems unlikely.
The presence of uranium 235 on Cosmos 954 was in the public domain from the outset. I am not aware of the results from spectroscopy (e.g. to determine the composition of structural alloys used, or reactor fission products) being made public at the time of Morning Light or any time soon after.
It must be extremely unlikely that anyone not officially involved in investigating Cosmos 954 used "...analytical results and the instrumental procedures described above" to determine that "there was no connection between the two events" (the Council Bluffs find and Cosmos 954) as they wouldn't have had access to the relevant findings about the satellite.
That the Council Bluffs material was not from a satellite re-entry would have been clear, to those with the appropriate practical knowledge, almost immediately as Col Senn's comments indicate. Nolan, Vallee et al. provide no evidence that "...the analytical results and the instrumental procedures described above" were used to demonstrate "...there was no connection between the two events", nor do they provide any evidence that the team(s) analyzing the Cosmos debris made any comparison with- or indeed had any interest in- the Council Bluffs find.
The examination of retrieved parts of Cosmos 954 may well have been a near-textbook example of "...instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics" albeit in the context of 1978.
Despite their "Operation Morning Light" section, the 2022 authors do not document any attempt on their part to find out what investigative techniques were used or to what effect.
As noted above, the author's own investigative set-up had a lower mass-detection threshold than Kayser's in 1978. They would have been unable to determine the composition of reactor fuel from a Cosmos 954-type incident, as was done in 1978, with their example of an improved instrumental technique in 2022.
8b. Meteorite impact
Nolan, Vallee et al. use an estimate of the Council Bluff material's mass to demonstrate that a similar mass meteorite would have insufficient kinetic energy to become molten (pg. 10 last para., pg. 11 first para).
They also state
The 2022 authors use a quote,
In light of the material evidence, the author's calculations and Colonel Senn's advice, this is entirely reasonable.
8c. Material dropped from an aircraft
Gilbert's Pond is approx. 2 km/ 1.24 miles to the southeast of Eppley Airfield on the other side of the Missouri, and approx. 10 km/ 6.21 miles from the smaller Council Bluffs Municipal Airport to the east-southeast (ESE).
Offhut Air Force Base is approx. 19.3 km/ 12 miles to the south-southwest (SSW) of Gilbert's Pond; in 1977 Strategic Air Command HQ was stationed at Offhut (as US Strategic Command is now). In Operation Looking Glass from February 1961 to July 1990, at least one EC-135 flying from Offhut AFB was in the air at any given time, providing an airborne command post in case of war
(Wikipedia, Offhut Air Force Base, accessed 10/12/23, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offutt_Air_Force_Base).
The hypothesis that the Council Bluffs material fell from an aircraft is considered by the authors,
No problems were reported by operators using Eppley Airfield on December 17. The authors point out that material falling from an aircraft would not reach a speed necessary to bring it to a high temperature. They do not consider the more prosaic (if dramatic) possibility of already-burning material being dropped, but this would probably represent a catastrophic failure of an aircraft and can be ruled out for that date. Illicit dumping of hot material from a small aircraft would seem to be a pointlessly hazardous and complex endeavour; and it's hard to think of a reason why sane aircrew would fly with such material on board.
As with the satellite hypothesis, the very constrained area in which the material was found also makes this possibility unlikely- there was very little scattering of debris. (This fact applies to any other hypothesis involving the material falling from a considerable height).
I once wondered if a military illumination or target-marking store might have been responsible, but this seems very unlikely (aircraft-dispensed flares are discussed elsewhere on this forum). The small number of claimed witnesses in the adjacent built-up area implies that the material, if dropped, wasn't widely seen; incidents such as the "Phoenix lights" of March 13 1997 (and others) demonstrate that where military aircraft flares are dropped, they can be seen (and misidentified) over a large area for a substantial duration, e.g. enough time for a witness to bring it to other people's attention.
8d. Hoax using poured molten metal
The possibility of the Council Bluffs material being transported in a molten state and tipped at the site (presumably from some sort of plant or industrial vehicle) is addressed by Nolan, Vallee et al. They state the only facility in Council Bluffs dealing with molten metal was the Griffen Pipe Products Company (workplace of Jack Coan who carried out the first analysis of the material in 1977).
Paxton-Mitchell Steel of Omaha advised on the practicalities- and substantial difficulties- of transporting metal in a molten state, requiring (at the least) a large truck containing a robust brick oven and means of maintaining the contents at the required temperature.
Note, like some other quotes in the paper, the opinions from Paxton-Mitchell Steel are not cited- or dated.
It seems the Omaha foundry stopped operating under the name of Paxton-Mitchell Steel around 2013 (Paxton-Mitchell continues as a production engineering company at Blair, Nevada);
https://www.foundry-planet.com/d/us...drys-rich-history-to-go-on-the-auction-block/
-meaning the 2022 authors couldn't have discussed the matter with Paxton-Mitchell representatives from an Omaha foundry.
The original source, who spoke with Omaha staff of Paxton-Mitchell, presumably some years earlier, is not identified or cited.
The 2022 authors write
Again, there is no citation for the quote. Who are "The investigators"? It seems unlikely that this refers to Nolan, Vallee et al.; their own views wouldn't require quotation marks in this paper.
A hoax perpetrated in this manner, though physically possible, might be very unlikely- considerable resources and effort would be needed for a very modest result (6-by-4 feet/ 1.83 x 1.22 metres of molten waste in a park, witnessed by a handful of people).
8e. A hoax using thermite
Thermite is a term used for various mixtures mainly composed of powdered elemental metal and powdered metal oxide. A simple example would be an aluminium: iron oxide mixture. When ignited, thermite undergoes an exothermic reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction, liberating intense heat (and light) in a compact area for a brief time. Modest amounts of thermite in a ceramic mould can be used to cut or weld steel rail tracks; even low-grade (or "improvised") thermite is capable of bringing smaller metal items to melting point very rapidly.
-Illustration from Wikipedia, Thermite (accessed 10/12/23), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite
Note the footnote; the reaction occurs (initially very vigorously), the metal is melted and then flows down. This may have relevance- the accounts of Drake/ James and Jack Moore, who arrived later, differ in a way that seems consistent with the observation of a thermite redox reaction (Drake, James) and its results (Jack Moore); see below.
On page 11, para. 6 the authors quote Professor Frank Kayser of the University of Iowa, talking about his sample of the Council Bluffs material (Kayser conducted the 2nd early study):
This isn't really an issue; material heated to a sufficiently high temperature can remain in a partly melted state after the redox reaction has ceased, it takes time to cool.
Kenny Drake's/ Randy James' accounts, first seeing a bright flash and (relatively modest) flames, then finding
Assistant Fire Chief Jack Moore didn't report seeing this pyrotechnic-like display when he arrived at Gilbert's Pond later, although the material was still incandescent and spreading- what would be expected if a redox reaction were finished, leaving the melted material to cool and settle into a final solid shape.
The authors note that the air temperature was 32°F (0° Celsius) and the ground frozen to a depth of 4 inches (10 cm); mindful of Kayser's hypothesis, they quote (pg. 11 para. 7),
This isn't a credible objection;
(1) water poured onto incandescent metal tends to evaporate as steam;
(2) water in the immediate vicinity of something hot might not freeze;
(3) from the description of the material,
(4) the results of Nolan, Vallee et al.'s own case study show that the material (or at least CB_JV-1) was not chiefly a carbon steel as Kayser concluded, but (probably) had greater quantities of aluminium and silicon than iron (see Figure 9 pg. 15); almost certainly it was an inhomogeneous mix (not an alloy).
It is unreasonable to expect such materials to behave in the same way, or require the same interventions (e.g. water cooling) as carbon steel in order to reach its end appearance. Kayser thought the microstructure of his sample resembled wrought iron and believed his specimen was mainly carbon steel; Nolan, Vallee et al.'s specimens are not primarily carbon steel and the authors don't investigate microstructure.
Again, this isn't a credible objection.
(1) Crude but effective thermites can be made relatively easily. (I don't advocate anyone trying, and in many jurisdictions it might be illegal to do so).
(2) There would have been many things in Omaha and Council Bluffs, 1977, that were not from the area: coffee; radios from Japan; cars from Detroit; gasoline, tinned tuna, bananas.
There are extensive railroads and rail marshalling yards in Council Bluffs, and very close to Gilbert's Pond:
I don't know if the relevant rail companies used thermite in the Council Bluffs area at that time, but it is perfectly possible. If commercial thermite were involved at Gilbert's Pond, it might have been sourced from surprisingly close to the site of the find.
As well as the rail yards to the immediate south, railroads pass north-to-south each side of Gilbert's Pond, the west side track is only a few tens of metres/ yards away. Conjecture: maybe a rail repair team craftily burned off surplus thermite rather than clerk it back in at the end of their work on that Saturday evening.
Or maybe a container of thermite ruptured or was spilled on the west railroad embankment, the contents abandoned but "scavenged" later; this might explain the silicon content (sand/ soil picked up with the thermite) and the location of the Council Bluffs material- possibly within forty metres (approx. 130 feet) of the embankment.
The author's final objection to the thermite hoax hypothesis:
This is an argument of questionable value. The authors seem unable to address the possibility that the claim of the material falling from the sky might itself be part of the hoax. It is a bit like saying, "If George Adamski was a hoaxer, how do you explain the meetings with the Venusian Orthon, and the scoutships, seen by multiple witnesses?"
The claimed falling material was described as bright red. While the composition of thermite affects the light emitted during its use, the initial, most energetic stage of thermite use is often characterised by an intense white-blue light (which can be injurious to the eyes, Helmenstine 2019; link below) and vigorous production of bright sparks.
This coincides with the description given by Drake/ James when they reportedly first encountered the material at Gilbert's Pond- but not with their report of the falling red object. If we take their accounts as accurate (which the authors appear inclined to do), it must be unlikely that the falling material represented metals "reacted in midair".
Only two, possibly three identified witnesses, young people from the same family, claimed to see anything fall; they were the first people known to be in the vicinity of the material.
The Council Bluffs material was molten. It is unlikely that there was no melting of earth or sand under it. The author's own results (Figure 9, page 15) show substantial presence of silicon, possibly incorporated from the ground. Liedenfrost effects would not persist long enough to prevent some ground melt.
No evidence from those who cleared up the bulk of the material (parks staff? City refuse disposal?) is presented to support the claim that it wasn't fused with soil/ sand underneath.
8f. More about thermite
If a Council Bluffs resident had access to thermite, or made a thermite analogue, would it be difficult to transport it and any other material used to Gilbert's Pond?
Page 7 para. 5 states that estimates of the material's weight ranged from 35-55 pounds (15.9-25.0 kg); Page 10 para. 5 says the weight was estimated at 35-40 pounds (15.9-18.18 Kg). The final paragraph, pg. 11, says
25 Kg (55 lb) of iron or steel makes a cube approximately 15 cm (5.91 inches) per side, a volume of 3.375 litres/ approx. 210 cubic inches.
The Council Bluffs material almost certainly had lower density and therefore larger volume, unless it resembled Coan's analysis and[ITAL] was originally a solid.
(Definitions of steel, wrought and cast iron vary a little as mentioned earlier).
Sources:
https://www.custompartnet.com/quick-tool/weight-calculator
https://www.gigacalculator.com/calculators/metal-weight-calculator.php
https://www.omnicalculator.com/construction/metal-weight
Nolan, Vallee et al.'s findings for CB_JV-1 (subsamples 1, 3, and 5) indicate, in total, broadly similar amounts of Fe, Al and Si, plus some Mg; the latter 3 all less dense than Fe, see Charts as per Figure 9, above.
A metal in the form of fine scrap/ swarf/ metallic ribbon/ filings/ powder (e.g. in thermite) takes up a larger volume than a solid of the same weight (Kayser hypothesized that the Council Bluffs material might originally have been composed of small components including thermite powder, pg. 11 para. 6).
If the Council Bluffs material had just one tenth the density of solid iron or steel, it would take up a volume of approx. 33.75 l (2100 cubic inches).
This is within the capacity of a medium-sized backpack: as an example, the ALICE LC-2 Medium Field Pack, in use with US forces in 1977, has a capacity of 2300 cu in. (37.69 l) and
(A robust large backpack, e.g. 80 litres capacity, could contain twice this volume and weight- a heavy load though!)
25 kg / 55 pounds of material with the composition indicated by Nolan, Vallee et al.'s findings could be carried by one person, on foot, using a medium backpack or something similar. It would easily fit into the trunk of pretty much any car.
What elements might be detected if the results of a thermite reaction underwent spectroscopy?
This depends on the type of thermite mixture used, and the materials it had been applied to or which were in very close proximity.
Nolan, Vallee et al. give the example of an iron oxide III/ aluminium blend
(last para. pg. 11).
ThoughtCo.Com states
https://www.thoughtco.com/thermite-reaction-instructions-and-chemistry-604261
-Helmenstine demonstrates that the thermite described by Nolan, Vallee et al. is relatively easy to produce, and the materials readily available. She suggests (for experimental purposes) using magnesium ribbon as a fuse.
Magnesium can also be used as the elemental metal in thermite,
Manganese oxides can be used to make thermite in conjunction with aluminium, and were studied in "Analysis of Thermochemical Properties of three typical Manganese based thermite", Rui Zhu, Tao Guo et al., IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science Volume 446, 2020
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/446/2/022024/meta (manganese was mentioned above as an element that featured in Nolan, Vallee et al.'s spectroscopy returns but which they didn't include in their charts of elements found in CB_JV-1 as per Figure 9, pg. 15).
If Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke had performed spectroscopy on a sample of a post-reaction thermite/ improvised thermite blend in 2022, they wouldn't have found oxygen. Oxygen is obviously essential in a redox reaction, but with a standard atomic weight of 15.999 it is too light to be detected by the MIBI-SIMS instrument used by the authors for their investigation.
They might have found approximately similar quantities (moles, not mass) of aluminium and iron. Alternatively, magnesium (or perhaps silicon) might be found in lieu of aluminium as the (pre-reaction) unoxidised elemental metal, or manganese in the role of (pre-reaction) oxide instead of iron. There are many potential ways to make thermite, including blends of different oxides and elementals.
Looking at the author's Figure 9 again:
The elements found by Nolan, Vallee et al. as shown in Figure 9, page 15, are all consistent with thermite components.
Subsamples 2 and 4 were excluded from Figure 8A by the authors due to low ion counts which the authors theorized might be due to oxidation of those samples.
If the composition of the CB+JV-1 subsamples reflect, at least in part, a thermite origin, subsamples 2 and 4 show the largest ratio of (pre-reaction) elemental fuels (Al, Mg, Si) to (pre-reaction) oxide metals (Fe; possibly Mn).
During thermitic reactions, the elemental fuels (e.g. Al, Mg and Si) form oxides.
Subsamples 2 and 4 might therefore have had the highest proportional content of oxygen post-reaction, locked into oxides with Al, Mg and possibly Si.
I wonder if this might have had a role in the suboptimal returns that the authors report for 2 and 4; but perhaps someone who understands this area could advise.
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9. Significant issues with "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics.", 2022; Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke.
9a. Title versus content:
The authors do not define "improved". Their own case study equipment has a narrower detection range than that used in 1977/ 1978, and would be incapable of detecting elements of essential interest in contemporary aerospace forensics. The results for two out of five subsamples investigated with MIBI-SIMS are possibly compromised; a 40% failure rate for, arguably, physically non-problematic solid samples.
No connection is made between the investigative techniques reviewed and aerospace science. The information provided by the authors is just as applicable to uses in archaeology as it is to aerospace forensics. And that information is modest; it is unlikely anyone presently involved in aerospace forensics would benefit from the summary of instrumental techniques.
In the only example given of an aerospace artefact which might have been subject to forensic materials analysis (Cosmos 954) the authors do not discuss or give any indication that they have attempted to find out what investigative techniques were used, or to what effect.
The authors do not demonstrate that the subject of their case study is connected with aerospace technology.
The authors do not define "unusual materials", their case study focuses on what appears to be a piece of slag. No unusual material properties are documented. The most abundant elements in this material (as per Figure 9 pg. 15) are Al, Si, Fe, Mg; the 3rd, 2nd, 4th and 7th most common elements in Earth's crust.
It seems likely that oxygen (most common element in Earth's crust) is present in the samples as a component of oxides pre-spectroscopy; the authors' spectroscope set-up is incapable of detecting it. Isotope ratios of elements from the samples indicate terrestrial norms.
9b. The citing of the Southall, H.L. and Oberly, C.E. paper "System Considerations for Airborne, High-power Superconducting Generators" (1979) in the context used.
This is grossly misleading; the Southall and Oberly paper has no reference whatsoever to liquid metal technology.
There is no discussion of "...superconducting airborne platforms" in the Southall and Oberly paper.
Southall and Oberly's paper is about superconducting generators for use in aircraft. The generators discussed use power from an aircraft engine to generate electricity.
To claim, or imply, that Southall and Oberly's 1979 paper said anything about liquid metal, or novel airborne platforms, or novel / future propulsion methods for airborne platforms, is as misleading and incorrect now as it was when Vallee first cited the paper in his own "Physical analyses in ten cases...", 1998.
9c. The authors claim that aluminium was not found in their study (page 18 first two sentences). This is an extraordinary error;
aluminium would appear to be the most abundant element found in their study (Figure 9, page 15).
9d. The use of an approximately 350 word piece of text, almost word-for-word, from co-author Jacques Vallee's 1998 paper "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples".
As a result, outdated biographical information for a cited researcher (Bumby) is used. An unidentified source, J. Roser, is quoted but not cited.
Roser's comments, implied by the authors as being about the Council Bluffs material, are word-identical to his comments about a specimen from Bogota, quoted by Vallee in his 1998 paper.
Although Nolan, Vallee et al. (2022) cite Vallee's 1998 paper, they do not do so for this approx. 350 word section, nor do they indicate that it isn't original text in the 2022 paper.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...Withdrawn_Articles_and_Their_Retraction_Notes
9e. Failure by the authors to consider their own case study findings in relation to the hypothesis of a hoax using thermite.
In contrast, because their sample was found in a molten state the authors discuss applications of molten metals in "high-tech" and speculative technologies even though the results of the author's study of CB_JV-1 effectively rules out any plausible role for that material in MHD generators or Roser's highly speculative nuclear reactor.
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10. Less significant issues
10a. Having stated that MIBI-SIMS "...cannot compare the molar ratios between different elements in an experimental sample... ...Therefore, the MIBI instrument used in this report is not quantitative between elements" (pg. 6 para. 2) the authors present a table, based on MIBI-SIMS results, showing "Relative ratios of the elements for each of the subsamples" (Fig. 9 pg. 15).
10b. The authors' map. Nothing marked by the authors is in the correct location.
10c. Figure 1 is based on a table from an EAG Laboratories' webpage; a link is given but there is no formal citation/ mention in references.
Unlike the EAG original, the authors do not give the meanings of abbreviations used.
10d. A discussion of experimental findings and speculative technologies dependent on isotopic differences, some of which have no direct relevance to the paper.
In the context given, the mention of the AAWSAP Program Documents and Maxim Tsoi's Metallic Spintronics (2010) is perhaps misleading.
10e. Using Wikipedia as a primary reference is (normally) considered unacceptable in academic papers. The authors do not use the same format for documenting their Wikipedia references. The first reference the authors give is for a Wikipedia article, but it is undated, meaning the content being referred to is uncertain.
"47. Pentagon UFO videos, in Wikipedia. 2021" is not an appropriate way of providing a reference (reference 49, for a Scientific American article, omits date and issue number).
[This review is not an academic paper!]
10f. Mixed use of metric and American customary units without their corresponding equivalents.
Something undergraduates are told to avoid. In an example of aerospace software forensics, it was found that the Mars Climate Orbiter was catastrophically lost because Lockheed Martin used software returning measurement values in American customary units, NASA processed those values as metric units:
"Mars Climate Orbiter Team Finds Likely Cause of Loss", Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, September 30 1999
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-climate-orbiter-team-finds-likely-cause-of-loss
Wikipedia article Mars Climate Orbiter, accessed 16/12/23
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
10g. Several quotes used without attribution, sometimes where the person being quoted isn't identifiable by context.
10h. The authors claim there were eleven witnesses. This includes four only known from Kenny Drake's account, and an anonymous phone call claiming to be from a couple. Carol Drake's testimony is conspicuously absent.
10i. Assistant Chief Moore gets to drive a fire chief car and a police cruiser on the same evening (unless there was an Assistant Chief Moore in both the Council Bluffs fire and police departments) on his way to investigate a mysterious case. He is very much living the dream of my 8-year-old self.
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11. Attached documents
(Left to Right) Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke, 2022, "Improved instrumental techniques..."; AATIP papers list 2018; Maxim Tsoi, 2010, "Metallic Spintronics"; Jacques Vallee, 1998, "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases..."; Comparison of Texts 1998, 2022 (word document); Southall, Oberly, 1979, "System Considerations for Airborne, High-power Superconducting Generators"
"Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics."
Garry P. Nolan, Jacques F. Vallee, Sizun Jiang and Larry G. Lemke, published in Progress in Aerospace Sciences Vol. 128, 1 January 2022;
PDF attached below.
Professor Nolan was eager to get a paper dealing with reportedly "retrieved" or anomalous material into a peer-reviewed journal, and to the credit of him and his co-authors was successful . So I thought maybe we should have a look...
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1. Introduction
Garry P. Nolan is an immunologist holding a professorship at Stanford. He believes aliens are visiting Earth, and has been referred to on this forum.
Jacques Vallee is an astronomer and computer scientist, perhaps best-known as a Ufologist of many years standing. Vallee also believes that UFOs are an objectively real phenomenon representing either alien craft or visitors from "another dimension". Sizun Jiang is a molecular biologist and virologist, who at the time of the paper was a postdoctoral research fellow under Nolan at Stanford. Larry G. Lemke is a retired aerospace engineer with a long career at NASA's Ames Research Center.
Progress in Aerospace Sciences is a monthly peer-reviewed journal, published since 1961 in the UK, currently by Elsevier.
Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_in_Aerospace_Sciences
Elsevier webpage https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/progress-in-aerospace-sciences
The Elsevier site states that Nolan, Vallee et al. 2022 is the "most popular" (but not most downloaded) paper from the journal.
"Improved instrumental techniques" in the paper's title must mean "instrumental techniques which have been improved since the analysis of similar samples in 1977-78".
The authors do not claim or demonstrate that they have developed any new techniques, improved any existing techniques, or applied instrumental techniques in any novel way. They do not define what is "improved" in the techniques they review.
As a case study, they analyse samples of material purportedly taken from what had appeared to be a deposit of molten metal, approx. 6' x 4' (1.83 x 1.22 metres), found beside Gilbert's Pond in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Saturday December 17 1977. Witnesses claim to have seen a "reddish ball" plummet toward the ground in the direction of the find, or to have seen a hovering UFO behind tree-tops around the time of the find.
The authors' account of the reported sightings and find of material can be found in their paper, from page 7 para. 4, "2.1. Overview of the incident at Council Bluffs, Iowa" through to the end of page 9.
Pg. 2, 1st para.External Quote:
This is problematic; it is not demonstrated that the material was left by an aerial object. As described in the paper, no witnesses reported seeing anything drop from, or be ejected by, an aerial object. Those who claimed to see something fall from the sky did not directly observe an impact. See "4. The Council Bluffs incident, 17 December 1977" below.
The authors state, of the investigative techniques discussed (including Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, SIMS, which they use)
(Pg. 3 para. 4), so their use of these techniques to analyse a (mainly) metallic sample is not in itself original.External Quote:
Pg.1, para 5.External Quote:
Frustratingly, what lessons were learned is not explicitly stated; it isn't apparent from this paper that the authors have demonstrated any new techniques or findings that might be applicable to "...reverse engineering of complex, esoteric materials, and forensics." The paper's summary (pg. 18, paras. 2, 3) has no discussion of methodological considerations.
The authors identify possible confounding factors relating to their spectroscopy findings, and make plausible interpretations of their data based on this.
For some who are sympathetic to Nolan and Vallee's widely stated views about UFOs, the author's prosaic interpretations might be disappointing- but it demonstrates scientific integrity on the part of the authors.
After the introduction, the paper is presented in four main sections:
(1) A discussion of techniques for investigating the composition of materials (pages 2-7).
Includes discussion of some current, proposed or speculative technologies utilising isotopic differences, pages 3 and 4.
(2) A description of claimed events, and the find of metallic material in a park, in Council Bluffs, 1977 (pages 7-9);
consideration of hypotheses attempting to account for the above claims and the found metallic debris (pages 10-12).
(3) Studies of samples of the Council Bluffs debris; two early studies (1977-78) and the author's own (pages 12-16).
(4) "Speculative Conclusions"; mention of a 1978 Soviet satellite crash in Canada (Cosmos 954); speculation about liquid metal use in magneto-hydrodynamic generators and nuclear reactor designs in relation to hypothetical flying vehicles (pages 16-18).
Below, the paper is reviewed in approximately this order, with the exception of the consideration of hypotheses in (2), in which I've included the Soviet satellite recovery; these are addressed last.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Authors' discussion of investigative techniques
As per the title of the paper, the authors discuss some of the methods used for materials analysis.
Figure 1 (page 2) shows 19 techniques used for materials analysis. It is
Link here https://www.eag.com/techniques/External Quote:
...which is a diagram on the EAG Laboratories webpage "Our Techniques". There is no formal citation in Nolan, Vallee et al. for this source (which is clearly copyrighted- bottom left of table). There should be; the in-text URL the authors provide is insufficient. Nolan, Vallee et al. should be obliged to formally cite such sources as per convention.
Most of the 19 techniques in Fig. 1 are identified by abbreviations, but there is no key describing what they mean (on the EAG Laboratories online diagram, each technique name/ abbreviation is clickable, leading to a summary, including the unabbreviated name).
The use of technical abbreviations without explanation is usually considered something to be avoided in academic papers.
The authors provide brief summaries for five investigative technologies:
secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) including multiplexed ion beam imaging (MIBI-SIMS)- the technique(s) used by the authors in their case study; inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS); energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS); scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and Raman spectroscopy.
At no point do the authors state how these investigative techniques have specific relevance to aerospace forensics. They do not say if the 5 techniques that they summarize are more useful in this regard than the other 14 techniques in Figure 1.
No examples of past use of any of these methods in aerospace forensics are given. No protocols for applied use of these techniques in future aerospace forensics are suggested. How any of these techniques are "improved" is not stated.
Four of the references cited in the descriptions of the five summarized techniques, [1], [9], [24] and [26] are for Wikipedia articles. Citing Wikipedia content is often considered unacceptable in academic papers. Reference [1] is undated, meaning that the content being cited is uncertain.
It must be arguable that the (uncited) EAG Laboratories online source used by the authors, at https://www.eag.com/techniques/, is a more comprehensive and practically useful description of "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics" than Nolan, Vallee et al.s' discussion of investigative techniques. This section of their paper covers a narrower range of, and gives less technical information about, relevant investigative techniques than is freely available elsewhere.
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3. Authors' discussion of the utilisation of different isotopes
Page 7, para. 2, my italics.External Quote:
The authors do not cite any examples of valuable insights gained from isotopic analysis of anything "deposited...following an observation of an unknown phenomenon".
This (arguably extraordinary) claim is possibly subjective.
On page 3 of their paper the authors start a section titled "1.1 Materials analysis techniques using ICP-MS and SIMS".
For four paragraphs they discuss ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry) and SIMS (Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry), noting how these methods can identify ratios of isotopes of specific elements in samples, and how these ratios can identify geographical, or indicate extraterrestrial, origins (pg. 3, 6th/ penultimate para).
Having established that their investigative methods (SIMS in this paper) rely on isotopic ion counts, and that the isotopic composition of an unidentified material under investigation might be important, the authors then- from page 3's last para. to the first para. of page 5- discuss some other technologies and findings dependent on isotopic differences. Why is not clear.
The authors do not use, or find evidence of, any of these applications. They do not state how they might be used in forensic examination of aerospace artefacts. They do not suggest how evidence of these applications- some theoretical at present, e.g. spin physics-based processing, airborne quantum computers- might be found; isotopic ratios alone would be scant evidence in the absence of structural clues (e.g. in a sample resembling the one they analyze, "CB_JV-1", see below).
(Pg. 3, para. 7).External Quote:
This is undoubtedly true, but the author's examples of isotopic exploitation have little objective relevance to their paper.
It is mentioned that the nursing behaviour of rats might be influenced by what isotope of lithium they are given (page 3 last paragraph).
This is utterly irrelevant. No lithium was found in any of the studies of the Council Bluffs material (and if it had been, the above citation would still be irrelevant- no rats or other nursing mammals are known to have been affected. And this is not aerospace science).
There is no reason whatsoever to believe that any part of the material had any novel biochemical / biophysical properties.
The authors state silicon-28 might have a role in quantum computing (last line pg. 3- first line pg. 4).
Silicon is the second-most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and 92% of it is silicon-28. And we refine silicon for higher "28" ratios, so we know that silicon with a higher proportion of silicon-28 can be of terrestrial origin:
"Spotlight: Silicon-28 in Quantum Computers", January 11 2020, National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA),
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2020/01/spotlight-silicon-28-quantum-computers
Finding silicon-28 in a specimen does not mean you've found a quantum computer, or the melted remains of one.
As it happens, the authors find significant amounts of silicon in their samples (Figs. 8A and 9, pg. 15). The isotopic composition of 3 subsamples are obtained, all have a slightly lower proportion of silicon-28 in their silicon content (90.7%, 89.9%, 91.4%) than the average natural incidence (92.23%); see Figure 8a, pg. 15.
So silicon found in the sample is not connected in any credible way with silicon use in quantum computing.
The use of isotopes in clinical imaging is referred to; this has no relevance to the paper. Clinical imaging technology is not used by the authors for their investigation (MIBI can be used in histopathology, as cited [23], but not for in vivo clinical imaging); nor do they propose any improvement or novel use of clinical imaging technologies for aerospace forensics purposes.
The authors continue; altering the isotopic composition of carbon in a boron-doped diamond changes the temperature at which it might display superconductivity
(pg. 4 para. 1). No boron (or diamond, presumably) was found in any of the studies. The authors do not investigate the electrical conductivity of CB_JV-1; from indications of its composition (discussed later) we can perhaps safely assume that it is not a manufactured superconductor.
After a mention of spin physics- which the authors do not use or investigate in this study- reference to the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP) is made;
(pg.4, para 4).External Quote:
The cited document for this claim is a list of papers (PDF attached below), available from
https://irp.fas.org/dia/aatip-list.pdf.
The cover letter accompanying the listed papers refers to the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program (AATIP), not AAWSAP, although the papers are believed to be of AAWSAP origin. The cover letter includes,
-response from Christine Kapnisi, Chief, DIA Congressional Relations Division to Senators John McCain and Jack Reed, dated 09 Jan 2018, in the cited material.External Quote:
Note use of "foreign", not "unconventional" (the word used by Nolan, Vallee et al.)
The cited documents do not state
as Nolan, Vallee et al. seem to claim, if we take that claim to mean spintronics technology or knowledge has been applied or found in the examination of actual hardware.External Quote:
The AATIP /AAWSAP documents include a list of 38 papers of interest to/ commissioned by US defense staff, mostly concerning "blue sky" research and speculation about future and / or theoretical technologies. It is not a list of papers about, or resulting from, the examination of foreign aircraft or UAP.
All are in the public domain, except one paper about lasers.
Of the 38 papers, the only one devoted to spin physics is Maxim Tsoi's "Metallic Spintronics", 2010 (PDF attached below).
As well as an overview of spin physics, Tsoi's paper proposes (amongst other things) utilising electron spin to carry information instead of charge, in order to allow better heat dissipation from the expected increase in transistor density on semiconductor chips- a promising, hopefully practical idea yet to be realised by industry.
There is nothing in Tsoi's paper that could have been used in any practical sense to investigate "unconventional"/ foreign craft at that time (or in 2022).
Metallic Spintronics was written by a scientist with much experience of the field. It contains 97 checkable references. Just as that paper's proposals could not be used in an applied sense to investigate aerospace craft in 2022, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to suspect that any part of Metallic Spintronics was dependent on, or informed by, prior examination of aerospace artefacts. No part of that paper describes technology for use in the investigation of aerospace artefacts.
The authors already had the results of two earlier studies of the Council Bluffs material and their own before submitting their 2022 paper.
They would have known the (at best) tangential relevance of the above-mentioned isotopic subjects to their material, and to aerospace science in general.
From a 6-by-4 foot (1.83 x 1.22 m) find of melted metals, all readily available and all, where checked, with terrestrial norm isotope ratios (see "6. Findings, Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke" below), the authors extend their discussion to biological effects of different isotopes, quantum computing, clinical imaging, superconductivity, the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program and spin physics. In the case of the last subject the relevant paper (Tsoi, 2010) does not support the author's apparent interpretation of its purpose or meaning.
A cynical reader might suspect that the authors are attempting to associate their study of the Council Bluffs material (using SIMS, a technology that indicates the presence of different isotopes) with these "cutting edge", attention-grabbing subjects merely by raising them as examples of technologies/ projects that might be linked to isotopic variation.
But there is no aspect of the author's investigation, or their findings, that pragmatically connects them in any reasonable way to quantum computing, isotopic biological effects, superconductivity, clinical imaging, AAWSAP or spin physics.
The author's later discussion of liquid metal use in magneto-hydrodynamic generators- and, speculatively, in nuclear reactors- might raise similar concerns.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. The Council Bluffs incident, 17 December 1977
The authors tell us that their material was retrieved from near Gilbert's Pond in Big Lake Park, Council Bluffs, Iowa (pg. 7, last para). Council Bluffs is immediately across the Missouri from Omaha, Nebraska, with which it is connected by several bridges. Council Bluffs had 60,348 residents in 1970, 56,449 in 1980 (and an estimated 62,415 in 2021),
figures from Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_Bluffs,_Iowa
Gilbert's pond is just to the north of the (substantial) built-up area of Council Bluffs, in an area called Big Lake Park. Big Lake itself is to the north of Gilbert's Pond. The terrain is quite flat in the built-up area through to the pond and lake, and hillier to the east/ northeast.
The area of the find, to the north of Council Bluffs, and an aerial view:
Gilbert's Pond viewed from Big Lake Road, looking east (c. 2021)
Gilbert's Pond viewed from the turn-off from Big Lake Road to the pond itself, looking approx. NE (location a few tens of metres / yards south from the above photo).
On the day of the incident, the sun would have set at approximately 16:54, some two hours fifty minutes before the first report at 19:45
("timeanddate" website, https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@4860752?month=12&year=1977).
The authors describe the weather, overcast but unexceptional for the time of year. Temperature was 32°F (0° Celsius), last para. pg. 7, first line pg. 8.
pg. 11 para. 7.External Quote:
At around 19:45, Kenny Drake, 17, 'phoned the fire department from a store payphone. He said he had been driving accompanied by his wife Carol, 16, and his 12 year-old nephew Randy James, when all three had seen a "reddish ball" at an estimated height of 500 or 600 feet, which fell "straight down" into Big Lake Park. There was a bright flash, and flames "8 to 10 feet high"
(pg. 4 para. 8).
The authors don't relate the Drake's purpose or direction of travel, but The Historical Society of Pottawattamie County article " "Close Encounter" at Big Lake Park" (Richard Warner, undated) states the trio were driving along North 16 Street on their way to the Richman Gordman store at 1800 North 16 Street.
3rd paragraph,External Quote:
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html
Nolan, Vallee et al.:
(pg. 9 para. 4, section "2.3. Corroborating witnesses"). The four young men didn't subsequently come forward; we know nothing else about them.External Quote:
Strangely, Kenny Drake doesn't recount the four youths observing, making any remarks about, or showing any interest in the molten mass on the ground.
Historical Society of Pottawattamie County, ibid.External Quote:
The young men drove to this relatively isolated spot to ask Kenny, Carol and Randy if they had seen something fall from the sky -presumably Kenny or Carol would have answered "Yes, we think this is it" or something similar- but didn't stop to have a look at the material.
(pg. 8 last para).External Quote:
Where 16 year-old Carol went isn't mentioned. Maybe she was dropped off at Gordman's store. One hopes she wasn't left by herself in the park.
(pg. 8, last para., my emphasis).External Quote:
The authors seem to claim that the fire department and police department each had an Assistant Chief Moore, who attended the incident.
Did fire department Assistant Chief Moore drive to the police station and request that a police officer return with him to the site to take photographs? Even if so, it might be unusual that the fireman drove the police car.
Other possibilities are that the authors are working with confused accounts; or have confused the accounts themselves, and this slipped through proof-reading.
Page 9, para. 2. It's unclear if Drake and James returned to the park or drove to a police station to meet the officers, or if they met at a later date.External Quote:
Carol seems to be absent when the 'phone call was made, and when Kenny Drake and Randy James were asked to repeat their account.
Presumably "the officers" were Assistant Chief Moore of the fire department and Identification Section police officer Dennis Murphy -and possibly an Assistant Chief Moore of the police department, if he existed and isn't the result of author error.
Carol's status as a witness, from the facts given in the author's paper, must be questionable. What she saw (and her presence) appear to be reported by Kenny (and maybe young Randy). There is no mention in the paper of Carol herself ever being asked what she saw. In addition,
my italics, pg. 7 para. 5; andExternal Quote:
Pg. 8, para.5.External Quote:
pg. 11 para. 4, my italics.External Quote:
The four young men in the small car are only known from Kenny's (and maybe Randy's) account- they are part of Kenny Drake's claim, they cannot be considered corroborating witnesses; if they existed they have never come forward to support Kenny Drake's claims.
The Drakes and James must have been travelling northward on North 16 Street- had they been travelling south, Gilbert's Pond would have been behind them (see the 1st map above). Their claimed initial sighting must have occurred before (i.e. to the south of), or at, the turn-off from North 16 Street for Gordman's store (at 1800 North 16 Street, in a small retail/ business park on the west side of the road). This is something over 800 m (875 yards) "as the crow lies" from Gilbert's Pond.
Kenny Drake and Randy report flames "8 to ten feet high" at the time of "impact"- a transient event, seen while the witnesses were still on North 16 Street.
From any possible viewpoint on North 16 Street, Gilbert's Pond is on the far side of a modest railway embankment.
This is the present view approaching the North 16 St. junction for the retail park (a left turn). The bank at right is between 16th and 15th Streets- I don't know if it (or the foliage) was there in 1977. The aerial view shows the line of sight from the junction towards Gilbert's Pond:
The first photo below shows the railway embankment as seen from North 15 (Not 16) Street; behind the embankment is Big Lake Road, which is parallel to North 15th Street at this point; then Gilbert's Pond. The second photo shows the view north on Big Lake Road, the embankment is at left, the pond at right.
It's hard to estimate the embankment's height- the vehicle on the left of the first photo might give a clue; maybe [ITAL] approx. 5 or 6 feet (1.52 - 1.83 m).
Nevertheless, it must be questionable whether the Drakes and Randy James would have seen brief flames "...8 to 10 feet high" in Big Lake Park from their vantage point on North 16 Street, at least 800 m (875 yards) away on the other side of the embankment.
The short-lived flames sound more like something that would be described by someone who was closer to the event.
The material was deposited near the pond but I've been unable to find out where- it was described as
pg. 7, para. 5. I don't know whether the levee referred to is the pond's edge, or a ditch on the east side of the railroad embankment that runs parallel to the west side of Gilbert's pond (and just to the west of Big Lake Road's southbound lane), or possibly the edge of an area of low ground to the east side of Gilbert's Pond (which is a little smaller than the pond itself, and sometimes appears inundated on maps/ photos), or elsewhere.External Quote:
Aerial photo of Gilbert's Pond:
(pg. 9 para. 4, Nolan, Vallee et al.)External Quote:
This was before cell phones. To make a 'phone call, you would have to use a landline- usually from your home, workplace or a public payphone.
At around the time we know Kenny Drake was in the vicinity of a payphone, "the authorities" received a call from "a middle-aged couple", who corroborate Kenny's report.
How the "authorities" (the authors don't state which agency) ascertained that the caller was middle-aged, and if they spoke to two people to determine that there was a couple, is not stated. The caller(s) did not give their name(s).
The claimed middle-aged couple have not subsequently come forward.
Co-author Jacques Vallee states in "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples" (1998, PDF attached below),
(PDF pg. 12, labelled pg. 370, Para. 2, my italics) but doesn't state when, leaving open the possibility -in that paper- that the couple spoke to Vallee himself, or a confederate, at a date after December 17. However, if this were the case, we could expect Vallee to remember and correct any misinterpretation of events by his 2022 co-authors.External Quote:
The authors describe accounts from another claimed pair of witnesses.
(Pg. 9 para. 6).External Quote:
The road concerned is almost certainly West Broadway, not "Broadway Avenue".
(Pg. 9 para. 6).External Quote:
We don't know in what direction(s) Criss and Mike Moore saw their "object" (or in Criss' case, at what elevation).
The immediate area (up to and including Gilbert's Pond and Big Lake) is relatively flat.
If Mike Moore was on the Broadway Viaduct he had a raised vantage point; looking left from near the viaduct's midpoint, approximately in line with 12 Street (running S to N under the viaduct) Mike would have had a line of sight over railroad yards towards Big Lake Park. He might have been able to see the light of the burning material at Gilbert's Pond through the trees of the copse immediately to its south. It seems unlikely that Criss Moore's reported sighting from the 16 Street-West Broadway intersection could have the same possible cause.
Criss, Mike Moore locations:
From the raised perspective of the viaduct, an object or lightsource below treetop height would probably be beneath the observer if it were in the Council Bluffs/ Big Lake Park area, so it might be difficult to tell if it were hovering or on the ground.
If Criss Moore had been looking over her left shoulder at the West Broadway/ North 16 Street intersection- or Mike from the Broadway Viaduct- each could have had a line of sight almost in line with runways at Eppley Airfield approx. 3 km (1.86 miles) to the north-northwest (NNW). Even from the viaduct it is unlikely that runway lights would be visible, but an aircraft taking off or landing at a shallow angle might- for a short duration- appear to hover.
If the Moores were familiar with the Council Bluffs area, it is perhaps unlikely that they misperceived aircraft lights in the direction of the airfield.
There were no other reports from drivers/ passengers on West Broadway or using the Broadway Viaduct (a major local thoroughfare) that we know of.
Even on a cool December evening at about 19:15, in a built-up area with at least 56,000 residents other people might have been about.
Nolan, Vallee et al. omit a possibly relevant fact: Mike Moore is the son of Assistant Chief Jack Moore of the fire department (see above);
-From (pg. 67) "When UFOs Land", Jim Wilson, Popular Mechanics May 2001 pages 64-67; text found via Google Books website (accessed 20/11/23),External Quote:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Purely supposition: Perhaps Jack Moore got a bit of moral support from son Mike and daughter-in-law Criss. On hearing of Jack Moore's evening, maybe they were "primed" to remember seeing something unusual (the same colour as, but otherwise different from, the Drake's sighting and the anonymous 'phone report).
It's not inconceivable that some Council Bluffs police officers might have questioned Jack Moore's call to attend a small area of burnt material, in a park, that hadn't hurt anyone and that hadn't required any additional attendance from Jack Moore's own fire department.
As discussed above, in what may be a confused interpretation Nolan, Vallee et al., last para pg. 8, say
(My emphasis).External Quote:
The Historical and Preservation Society of Pottawattamie County website article "'Close Encounter' at Big Lake Park" (Dr Richard Warner, undated) states
(my emphasis), not that the police sent a car because of Kenny Drake's call to the fire department.External Quote:
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html
(However, the 2022 paper and the Historical Society article differ on several points).
A summary of claimed witnesses:
in Pg.8 para 3 the authors state
This is incorrect. "Testimony" is limited to (a) Kenny Drake, Randy James, possibly Carol Drake, (b) an anonymous 'phone call supposedly from a couple, making a similar claim to Drake(s)/ James, (c) Mike and Criss Moore, whose sighting differs from Drake(s)/ James. Seven people maximum.External Quote:
There are only 4 or 5 identified [ITAL] claimants, depending on Carol's status: 2 or 3 Drake/ James family, and 2 from the Moore family.
As far as we can tell from the paper, Kenny, 17, and nephew Randy, 12, are the only identified people who definitely reported seeing something fall in Big Lake Park and who spoke with "officers". They did not report seeing a flying or hovering object. Their 'phone call to the fire department was acted on by Jack Moore.
Only Mike Moore (Jack Moore's son) and Criss Moore claimed to see a flying or hovering object. They did not report seeing anything fall/ be ejected from it.
4a. Authors' map of northern and central Council Bluffs (Figure 5)
In Figure 5 (page 9), Nolan Vallee, Jiang and Lemke (2022) use a map to show where the relevant events occurred.
I've copied it here, assuming fair use and for purposes of legitimate examination of claims made:
The map has no scale displayed. A minor point- there is no red arrow as described in the map footnote.
The "...site of impact" -a rather leading term- is indicated on the map with an "X" by Big Lake, not Gilbert's Pond. This is incorrect.
(Pg. 9, para. 4, my emphasis).External Quote:
Figure 5 is the only map used in the paper; Figure 6 (pg. 13) shows "Isotope abundances for (a) Titanium; (b) Iron; (c) Chromium".
There is no other explanation in the text stating what point #1 in Figure 5 might indicate.
It is clear from the Drake / James claim that the four young men were encountered at Gilbert's pond.
Point #1, Figure 5 is approximately at the junction of East Kanesvile Boulevard and Northern Broadway. The location has no obvious connection with the events in question, and is 2.4 km (1.5 miles) southeast of Gilbert's Pond.
If point #1, Figure 5 is meant to indicate where Kenny Drake/ Randy James claim four young men turned up in a car, it is incorrect.
(Pg. 9, para. 4). Point #2 on the map is on Interstate 29, not 16th Street. This is incorrect.External Quote:
(Pg. 9, para. 6). Already mentioned, Figure 6 is not a map. There is nothing else in the text to suggest what point #3 in Figure 5 might be, so presumably this is the point the authors are referring to.External Quote:
Point #3, Figure 5, appears to be the east side of the Grenville Dodge Memorial Bridge (see the aerial view, discussion of Criss and Mike Moore's claims, above). This is incorrect.
This is over 4 km (approx. 2.5 miles) to the west of Broadway Viaduct (see aerial view, "Criss, Mike Moore locations", above).
The Broadway Viaduct passes over railroad lines, not the Missouri River.
Literally everything indicated by the authors on the map, Figure 5, is wrong. It is difficult to understand how this could have come about.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5. Early studies of material found near Gilbert's Pond, Council Bluffs
The authors discuss the findings of two studies made soon after the material was found.
Summarising the findings of the two studies, they state
Pg. 12, para. 5.External Quote:
Pg. 8, para. 1External Quote:
Pg. 12, para. 6. It is not clear if both studies returned these results; there is no checkable reference.External Quote:
It's likely the conclusions about slag and ash were reached by Professor Frank Kayser, Study 2 below.
The authors do not report, or give an estimate, of the proportions of metal/slag/ash found. Possibly this wasn't ever documented.
It is not determined if the original (pre-melt) material included significant discrete metal objects, or if it was composed of a mixture of small items (e.g. swarf, metal dust/ filings, iron wool, scrap electronic components etc.) crudely intermixed through melting, or if it was originally a solid, either as a mixture of previously seperate (mainly) metallic components or as a homogenous alloy. The inhomogeneity later found by Nolan, Vallee et al.'s study of sub-samples suggests a mixture, not a true alloy.
5a. Study 1. Study by Jack Coan at Griffin Pipe Products Company, 1977
Pg. 12 para. 7 continuing onto pg. 13. So,External Quote:
The percentages of elements comprising the remaining 98.22 % are not supplied by the authors.
It is stated that iron was a major constituent (see below) but no figure is given.
Nolan, Vallee et al. have told us that both studies found that the material was primarily iron with small amounts of nickel and chromium.
Study 2 (below)
Pg. 13, para. 3, my italics.External Quote:
Nolan, Vallee et al. do not present information from Coan/ the Griffin Pipe Products Company showing that this was their conclusion, but the percentage of carbon found might indicate a carbon steel.
The percentages of the main metal constituents, including nickel and chromium (which would be expected if the authors' assessment of the two earlier studies is correct, pg. 8 para. 1), are not given. Information from the Griffin Pipe Products investigation seems rather sparse; maybe not all the details were retained.
5b. Study 2. Study by Professor Frank Kayser, University of Iowa at Ames, metallurgy division (1977 or 1978?)
Pg. 13 para. 3.External Quote:
Kayser himself said
Pg. 13 para. 2.External Quote:
Kayser analysed 4 samples of metal, 2 samples of slag, and 1 of ash. How Kayser differentiated "metal" from "slag" is not recorded, although the slag samples returned somewhat higher non-metallic (silicon + calcium) counts than the metal samples; see pie charts below.
X-Ray fluorescence, electron beam microprobe, and emission spectroscopy were used
(pg. 8 para. 5).
Professor Kayser's results are shown in Table 1, pg. 12 of the paper:
I'm not confident that I understand the meanings of these results- the opinion of someone with appropriate knowledge would be helpful (to me, at least).
Nolan, Vallee et al. state that the results in Table 1
(page 12, Table 1) which implies these are not quantitative results.External Quote:
Each of the 4 metal samples returns a ">> 1.00" for iron -note the last explanatory line provided by Nolan et al., foot of Table 1 (a possible error in that text doesn't help our understanding).
If those samples are accurately described as
(pg. 8 para. 1),External Quote:
(pg. 12 para. 6),External Quote:
then it seems unlikely that the numbers in Table 1 represent the relative abundance of elements in the metal samples, as the tantalum content of each sample is given as 0.40, magnesium (in the metal samples) 0.30, which I initially took to mean tantalum had 40% the abundancy of iron in each sample, magnesium 30%, whereas nickel is only 0.04 in each sample, chromium only 0.01 or 0.02.
As well as iron, 8 or 9 other elements return higher values than nickel or chromium in each of the 4 metal samples.
You don't need to perform Bayesian analysis to notice that the returned values have some interesting characteristics; there isn't a 6, 7 or 9 amongst the 98 values (conveyed by 330 numerals) in the Kayser table. Maybe this is an artefact of the instrument/ process used by Kayser rather than a reflection of "true" physical characteristics of each element in the original samples. The 2022 authors do not comment on this.
I've made pie charts based on the figures returned by Kayser for the 7 samples, reduced in size for display here.
Again, it seems unlikely that these figures, translated here into percentages, are actually representative of the proportion of elements per sample. Rounding errors are present.
Kayser reported that the metal was "most likely" (Nolan, Vallee et al.) a carbon steel, although his studies did not reveal the carbon content.
Kayser thought it unlikely the material was of meteoritic origin,
(implying that his study did produce quantitative information)External Quote:
and also thought an aerospace industry origin unlikely,
Both quotes, p.13 para. 2.External Quote:
5c. Conjecture: Re-interpretation of some values reported by Kayser. -This is supposition on my part, and may be irrelevant/ wrong.
I'm unsure about the meanings of the values returned in Table 1 from Ames/ Kayser.
As an exercise, I made the assumption (which might well be wrong) that where a value on that table is preceeded by "<" or "<<", it represents a threshold detection value, i.e. it indicates that the element is probably present, but the number isn't indicative of the quantity of that element in the sample.
Using this assumption, I substituted 0.005, the lowest value returned on the table, for any "<" or "<<" values as an arbitrary (low) value representing a trace.
See "Modified Table 1 (A)" below left. In the original Table 1, tantalum appeared to be a major constituent of the samples tested by Kayser (or at least returned a strong signal). Strangely neither Kayser (as far as we know) or Nolan, Vallee et al. remark on this. Modifying the table as described, tantalum is reduced to a trace in all 5 metal (but not slag) samples.
If we substitute 0.005 for all "<" and "<<" values, and all values for a given element which are less than a returned "<"/"<<" value for that element, we get Modified Table 1 (B), above right. These (my) substitutions are certainly questionable, and might be completely misguided.
However, note that this results in much reduced tantalum, titanium and tungsten content (also cobalt, calcium), making the results more indicative of a majority iron/ steel content as described by Kayser (and Coan).
Perhaps coincidentally, but in line with the results above, Nolan, Vallee et al. question the detection of titanium and calcium in their later study due to possible confounding factors, discussed below, and they don't report finding cobalt (or tantalum, or tungsten: but Ta and W have higher atomic masses than 60, the upper limit of their detector).
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Findings, Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke (2021, published 2022)
The sample tested by the authors was provided by Jacques Vallee. It is referred to as CB_JV-1.
(Pg. 13, last line).External Quote:
Why the sample is "claimed" to be from the Council Bluffs material- implying that this is not certain- is not explained.
Similarly, why sample CB_JV-1 is "distinct" from earlier-tested samples is not explained; whether this determination was made prior to the use of investigative technologies (e.g. by visual appearance), or after, is important but not clarified.
Pg. 6 para. 1, it is explained this was ascertained before the earlier (1977-78) studies.External Quote:
(Pg. 13 last para.)External Quote:
The authors have a sample whose characterisation might have "potential relevance to aerospace forensics", and they omit its dimensions and weight.
The mixing of US customary units and metric units (without their respective metric and US customary values) should not be expected in an academic paper.
No assessment of magnetic or conductive properties (either electrical or thermal) are mentioned. Such information might be relevant if the material might be from a technological- particularly an aerospacial- artefact. Sample density is not reported, nor is hardness. Ductility and melting point(s) are not reported, pehaps due to reluctance to damage the sample. In the context of the paper, all of these factors might be considered relevant to a forensic investigation of the sample. While the appropriate tests might not be examples of "improved instrumental techniques" as per the title of the paper, the information they might have provided could perhaps have informed the author's findings in ways that the instruments that they did use couldn't. It might be argued that the author's case study of CB_JV-1 demonstrates that reliance on a single (if improved) investigative technology alone is insufficient for a forensic analysis of a material sample.
A photograph of "a representative fragment" (pg. 8 first para.) is shown on pg. 7; it is very clearly two fragments. The authors do not state if this (or one of these) is CB_JV-1.
Considering the stated possible origin of CB_JV-1,
(pg. 2 first line),External Quote:
and the extraordinary significance that this would have if correct, the absence of professional-standard photographs, from multiple angles, of CB_JV-1 is regrettable.
There is no description of the visual appearance of CB_JV-1. The objects in the photo look very much like metallic slag.
Two sample grains from CB_JV-1 underwent Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS), and the isotope ratios for titanium, iron and chromium were found.
(Figure 6, pg. 13; 1st para., pg.14).External Quote:
Page 14, para. 3;External Quote:
1st para, pg.2.External Quote:
To examine a broader range of isotopes, a multiplexed ion beam imaging (MIBI) instrument was used. MIBI
-Ionpath, Inc., website; Ionpath make a MIBI-SIMS systemExternal Quote:
https://www.ionpath.com/mibi-technology/
Although the authors have stated
(pg. 3 2nd para.) this doesn't apply to the current study; only SIMS was used via two instruments, one being a MIBI device. There is no earlier published work co-authored by Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke collectively that uses ICP-MS that I am aware of.External Quote:
MIBI indicated the presence of aluminium, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, silicon, sodium, titanium (see Figure 7, pg. 14).
Fig. 7 is reproduced here, invoking fair use for legitimate review and the difficulty in presenting the same information by other means:
Although not identified in Fig. 7 manganese ion counts are present in Figure 8A (pg. 15; see below), this is not explained. There are no returns for chromium or nickel in Fig. 7.
Reasons for chromium's presence in the author's preceding SIMS study, but absence here, are not discussed. Possible reasons for variance from the findings of the two earlier studies (e.g. absence of nickel, chromium) are not discussed.
The authors provide results for
(pg. 15 para. 20); presumably this reflects the detection range of the author's MIBI set-up.External Quote:
Carbon, relative atomic mass (AKA standard atomic weight) 12.011 is omitted. If the Council Bluffs material had significant steel content as the 1970's studies indicated, an estimate of carbon content might have been useful in a technology forensics context. Coan's 1977 study quantified carbon at 0.7%.
Kayser's study (1977 or '78) indicated returns for tantalum and tungsten, relative mass 180.948 and 183.84 respectively, beyond the limits of Nolan, Vallee et al.s' investigative set-up.
There is no discussion of the forensics implications of using an investigative technology apparently incapable of detecting elements/ isotopes with less than mass 20, e.g. carbon (carbon composites are increasingly used in aerospace engineering, the Airbus A350-900 XWB airframe is 52% carbon composite) or heavier than mass 60 (from an aerospace artefact, plutonium 238 might indicate a small thermoelectric generator; plutonium 239, carriage of a nuclear weapon).
The only example that the authors provide in their paper of a known aerospace artefact which likely underwent systematic forensic examination using the most sophisticated means then available is Cosmos 954 (see "8a1. Discussion of Cosmos 954", below). That craft's nuclear reactor and fuel would have been of great interest- perhaps the primary interest- to American investigators; but the techniques used by Nolan, Vallee et al. would have been of little use in this regard.
It is for the authors to make the case that their spectroscopic studies provide examples of improved (since 1977-'78) instrumental techniques, they do not do so; the lower mass detection range of Coan's study, and higher mass detection range of Kayser's, return findings for elements that Nolan, Vallee et al.'s instruments cannot detect. On page 15, para. 2 Nolan, Vallee et al. state
and add that this would result in the destruction of the sample. Maybe Coan and/ or Kayser used ICP-MS spectroscopy which might have allowed a broader detection range but at the cost of destroying their samples, but the 2022 authors don't explicitly state this. If the authors chose an instrumental technique with a compromised detection range in order to preserve their sample as much as possible, that might be an understandable trade-off; it might be relevant to choices made by future investigators and it could be seen as a (necessary) limitation of the author's study, but there is no discussion of this.External Quote:
Pg. 15, para. 2.External Quote:
-The authors exclude calcium, nickel, potassium and titanium from their subsequent figures. Note, like Mn (which is not excluded- yet-) Ni is absent from Figure 7, whereas Ca and K returns are labelled. Although Ni is excluded, it isn't clear that it was detected.
The author's earlier SIMS results measured four isotopes of Ti and two of Cr (alongside three of Fe, Figure 6, pg. 15) to inform the author's conclusion that the materials were consistent with terrestrial origin (para. 1, pg. 14), yet the authors now discard Ti, and do not comment on the absence of Cr returns in Figure 7.
Although the returns for some isotopes of Ca, K, Ni and Ti might be indistinguishable, the decision to omit these elements from later charts of the relative ratios of elements in subsamples 1-5 (i.e. Figure 9, pg. 15), even if only as a grouping (e.g. "Possible Ca, K, Ni, Ti") is questionable, as one or more of these elements must be present in CB_JV-1 (unless there are isotopes of other elements with the same atomic weight present-if I understand correctly).
Nevertheless the author's discussion of the possible confounding effects of oxidation, diatomics, and isotopes of different elements having indistinguishable weights, arguably gives confidence in their interpretation (if not presentation) of these results. It is interesting that the authors exclude titanium from this analysis; Ti has many aerospace engineering applications, and was apparently detected in all samples tested by Kayser (although not mentioned by him- and reduced to arbitrary trace values in all but 1 sample in the conjectural Modified Table 1 (B), above).
Similarly, where the returned values for Fe 57 slightly exceed the terrestrial norm in proportion to Fe 56, the authors state
pg. 15 para. 3, in concordance with their interpretation of the isotopic ratios from their earlier SIMS study as being in line with terrestrial norms.External Quote:
[Figure 8B, pg. 15, shows "Ion counts for the masses around 57Fe..."; this is incorrectly referred to as Figure 9B in the text, pg. 15 para 3.]
The authors should be credited for prosaic interpretations of their data, resulting from an understanding of the underlying chemistry/ physics of their investigation and the returns of the MIBI instrument. Perhaps uncharitably, maybe I was anticipating more challenging interpretations: that the findings imply an aerospace artefact (due to Ti), or even extraterrestrial origin (raised Fe 57 returns).
Figure 8A, page 15, shows the (intra-elemental) proportions of isotopes found for aluminium (Al), iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), manganese (Mn), silicon (Si) and sodium (Na).
Note, like Ni (see above) Mn is not seen in Figure 7, pg. 14. The data in Figure 8A was obtained from the MIBI instrument as was the data represented in Figure 7. The authors do not explain the absence of a manganese ionization efficiency in Figure 7; in Figure 8A subsamples 1, 3 and 5 all return Mn ion counts.
Figure 8A does not contain values for subsamples 2 and 4;
pg. 15 para. 2. Samples 2 and 4External Quote:
pg. 15 para. 1.External Quote:
The table below is from the information in Figure 8A. (Note; in the original table the isotopes are in order of atomic weight, placing Mg-55 between Fe-54 and Fe-56).
The authors note that the five subsamples of CB_JV-1 show marked inhomogeneity. They state,
pg. 16 para. 2, also see Figure 9, pg. 15.External Quote:
pg. 2 para. 2.External Quote:
One explanation for this inhomogeneity might be that the material is not in fact from a single manufactured (homogenous) alloy, but from a melt of mixed, varied metal components. This rather obvious possibility is only briefly alluded to by the authors,
in para 2. pg. 18, and in reference to speculation by Kayser (who conducted the second early study), which will be considered in "8e. A hoax using thermite", below.External Quote:
The implications of this finding in terms of determining the possible origins and purpose of the material are not discussed by the authors.
The authors note that there are spectrographic indications of other trace elements, including germanium, but suggest this is due to diatomic spectra from other identified constituent elements (page 16, para. 3).
As an aside, in 1977 germanium would be found in many transistors, although silicon transistors -and integrated circuits- were rendering them obsolete. My subjective experience, late 70's on, was that Ge transistors would "blow" quite frequently (or simply fail to work from the outset), ending up in the waste bin.
In Figure 9, page 15, Nolan, Vallee et al. display the
(my italics), which I take to mean that the authors are stating these are the actual quantitative ratios of constituents.External Quote:
The 2022 paper doesn't describe any other technique used to establish the relative amounts of constituent elements in the CB_JV-1 subsamples.
However, the authors have already stated, re. the MIBI instrument,
Page 6, para. 2.External Quote:
There seems to be a serious contradiction between the above statements (Figure 9 pg. 15 and pg. 6 para. 2), unless I have radically misunderstood the meanings of one or both of the above quotes.
The pie charts 1, 3 and 5 in Fig. 9 appear to be based on the counts presented in Fig. 8A; 8A appears to display the intra-elemental ratios of isotopes.
Using the data in 8A, I have constructed pie charts for subsamples 1, 3 and 5; they match those the authors provide in Fig. 9 of their paper, which are supposedly relative ratios of the elements in each subsample.
(as already noted, the counts for 2 and 4 are not given in Figure 8A).
Some of my remarks below are based on the assumption that the Figure 9 charts do portray the "[r]elative ratios of the elements" in each subsample as claimed by Nolan, Vallee et al; these are marked with an asterisk (*).
The pie charts below are reconstructions of those in the author's Figure 9. Charts 1, 3 and 5 are based on data from Figure 8A. Charts 2 and 4 are approximations of their graphic appearance in Fig. 9; any inaccuracies introduced are mine.
Charts as per Figure 9
In 4 out of 5 subsamples, including 2 of the 3 where ion counts are known, *both aluminium and silicon are present in greater quantity than iron.
The author's pie charts appear to be based on- at least they strongly correlate with- the data shown in Figure 8A, which does not contain values for subsamples 2 and 4 (due to low ion counts, above).
Nevertheless in Figure 9 the authors present pie charts for subsamples 2 and 4, which must be based on ion counts like those shown for subsamples 1, 3 and 5, Figure 8A.
Why the authors chose to portray pie charts for subsamples 2 and 4 in Figure 9, but not the data on which they are based in Figure 8A, seems an odd decision.
Equally, the author's omission of manganese from these charts seems arbitrary, and is puzzling. (Sodium is also omitted; although Na diatomics overlap with Ti peaks, Na ion counts are listed in Fig. 8A, unlike those for Ca, Ni, K, Ti).
For subsamples 1 and 3, manganese is a *minor constituent (0.2% and 0.7% respectively, from data in Figure 8A) but subsample 5 is *4.5% Mn, a greater proportion than that of magnesium in subsamples 1,3 and 5:
Chart for subsample 5 as per Figure 9, including manganese as per Figure 8A
It is implied that the author's investigation is an example of "...characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics", but it is hard to conceive of a forensic investigation into a sample's composition being improved by excluding a probable constituent (Mn) without explanation.
The table below shows elements indicated by spectroscopy by Nolan, Vallee et al., as mentioned in the 2022 paper, and reasons (if known) for any elements later excluded:
Comparing the Fig. 9 pie charts 1, 3 and 5, where the authors return ion counts, and 2 and 4, apparently based on ion counts which the authors do not provide, some differences are visible. For subsamples 2 and 4 the authors do not state what level of ion count was determined as their cut-off, if this was decided before results were obtained, or whether it is normal practice to discard such results. This might have been useful for the guidance of future investigators.
Below, a repeat of the pie charts corresponding to Figure 9 arranged for easier comparison of subsamples 1, 3 and 5 against 2 and 4.
Again, charts for 2 and 4 are based on their graphic appearance in the author's Figure 9, not numerical data like 1, 3 and 5; my representation is approximate.
(Click to enlarge)
The authors describe these charts as showing the relative ratios of elements in each of the 5 subsamples; it is difficult to decide what significance should be attached to the charts for 2 and 4.
Subsamples 2 and 4 show much smaller proportions of iron (and more aluminium) than 1, 3 and 5; the authors appear to link this with possibly greater oxidation of 2 and 4 (pg. 15 para. 1).
It is possible that retrieved aerospace artefacts undergoing analysis in the future might themselves have been substantially oxidised (or include oxidised components); the authors do not address this potential problem to the approach used in their case study. If the problematic oxidation occurred during spectroscopic processing (as can happen), the authors do not discuss how this risk- affecting 40% of their subsamples- might be minimized in future.
*Iron is not a majority component in any subsample; more aluminium than iron is present in subsamples 1, 2, 3, and 4, Al is >50% in 4 (iron is 46% of subsample 5).
*Silicon, like aluminium, is a larger component than iron in all subsamples except 5.
The possible origins of the silicon- whether a constituent of the material(s) deposited at the site, or incorporated into that melting material from the soil (or sand?) that the material was deposited on- are not discussed. If the Si is from the ground, a modest reduction of the estimates of the deposited material's mass is necessary (density of iron 7.874 g/cm3, silicon 2.329 g/cm3, Wikipedia (accessed 23/09/23) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon).
It is possible that the author's *finding of substantial quantities of silicon- not indicated by the earlier Coan, Kayser studies- indicates that CB_JV-1 originated from the underside of the find, in contact with (and incorporating some material from) the ground.
If the author's claim that the Figure 9 charts represent the relative ratios of elements in the subsamples is correct, then it is at odds with the two 1970's studies that conclude that the material is "...chiefly iron with small amounts of nickel and chromium" (pg. 8 para. 1).
The authors do not comment on this, other than
in their summary (pg. 18 para. 2). This must be questionable if "composition" includes the relative ratios of elements; none of Nolan, Vallee et al.'s subsamples have a majority iron content and only in subsample 5 is iron the most abundant element.External Quote:
This is a significant difference in composition from that indicated by the 1977 Jack Coan / Griffin Pipe Products study (it seems unlikely that the Kayser study returned quantitative ratios, although Kayser described his sample as carbon steel). Coan failed to find significant aluminium; Al is a major component in all CB_JV-1 subsamples.
Remembering the author's line about CB_JV-1
(pg. 13 last line, my emphasis), maybe it's reasonable to question whether CB_JV-1 and the Coan/ Kayser samples had the same origin.External Quote:
If CB_JV-1 is from the Council Bluffs material, *and the relative ratios of elements in Figure 9 reflect its actual composition, then the level of difference with Coan's analysis indicates a very marked level of inhomogeneity, more than that found between the CB_JV-1 subsamples. It must be very unlikely that the metallic component of the material was a true alloy. The inhomogeneity strongly implies an uneven mixture of heterogenous metallic sources that vary in their elemental composition.
[My use of "*" as described above ends here.]
The authors make no attempt to combine the results of their initial SIMS study and the later SIMS-MIBI study in an attempt to describe the composition of CB_JV-1.
The authors do not offer any summary (other than, arguably, Figure 9) stating what they believe CB_JV-1 is actually composed of.
No conclusions are made, or new hypotheses advanced, about possible origins of CB_JV-1 based on the author's investigations- all the discussed hypotheses were extant long before the 2022 study, and the authors do not use their investigation results to test any of those hypotheses.
In "Speculative conclusions", pg. 16 para 4., the authors state
Despite the above quote, in "Speculative conclusions" the authors do not discuss, or draw any conclusions, about the nature, structure or potential purpose of the Council Bluffs material. There are no speculative conclusions in the paragraph "Speculative conclusions".External Quote:
6a. Definitions of carbon steel
This might be a bit of a pedantic gripe on my part-
nevertheless, the author's definition of carbon steel is perhaps of interest in the context of their study and its title.
In the last line of pg. 13, para. 3., Kayser (who conducted the 2nd 1970s study) is quoted as saying
In the preceding paragraph (2nd para pg. 13) Nolan, Vallee et al. stateExternal Quote:
but do not comment on the different values Kayser gives for carbon steels .External Quote:
Although there isn't a universal consensus on how different proportions of carbon to iron in an alloy are described, both Kayser and Nolan, Vallee et al.'s values are questionable (Kayser's "...about 1.0 to 1.2 %" might be defended as an off-the-cuff median value. Or maybe terminology has shifted since 1977).
Generally though, "carbon steel" is used to describe iron alloyed with a carbon content of up to approximately 2 to 2.14 %; iron alloyed with a higher carbon content is usually called "cast iron".
Sources (all accessed Sept. 2023): Britannica https://www.britannica.com/technology/steel ,
The World Material https://www.theworldmaterial.com/low-medium-high-carbon-steel/, https://www.theworldmaterial.com/different-types-of-steel-classification/ ,
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_steel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_iron, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrought_iron
Not on this chart, TWI Limited's website gives carbon contents of low-carbon steel: < 0.25%, medium-carbon steel: 0.25-0.6%, high-carbon steel: 0.6-1.25%
https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/carbon-steel-vs-stainless-steel ,
and Wikipedia article "Steel" states
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteelExternal Quote:
The author's definition of carbon steel is significantly different from those generally used. The two 1970's studies concluded the material was mainly carbon steel. Carbon steels of different grades, and other steels, have many applications in the aerospace industry. These two facts might lead us to expect the authors to have familiarized themselves with the properties of carbon steel (as widely defined) if their case study is characterised as a forensic investigation "with potential relevance to aerospace forensics".
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7. "Liquid metal, MHD and advanced flying vehicles." Page 17, first para. pg. 18.
The material found at Council Bluffs was found in a partially melted state, at least one edge behaving at first as a viscous fluid-
-pg.9 first/ second line; uncited by the authors, possibly fire officer Jack Moore.External Quote:
3rd paragraph, "Close Encounter" at Big Lake Park" (Richard Warner, undated) The Historical Society of Pottawattamie County websiteExternal Quote:
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html
When reading these near-apocalyptic descriptions, it should be remembered that the final maximum extent [ITAL] of the cooled material was approximately
6 feet by 4 feet; approx. 1.83 by 1.22 metres (pg.7 para. 5). This is a little less than the surface area of a modest double mattress.
Wikipedia, Bed size accessed 04/12/23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_size
Just for fun:
...so you could cover the Council Bluffs material with a duvet cover.
(Should you come across incandescent waste of similar dimensions, do not use it as a mattress).
The lack of homogeneity discovered in the material makes it unlikely that it was maintained in a dynamic fast-flowing liquid state for any significant time. The author's assessment of the material's composition (which they do not state in their text, but is apparently displayed in Figure 9) - aluminium, silicon, iron, magnesium, possibly manganese and some other elements- makes it a poor candidate for use as a liquid conductor, or in a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generator.
Nevertheless, the authors write,
Pg. 17 para. 4. Note; none of the claimed witnesses reported seeing any material drop from an aerial vehicle. The claim of material dropped from a flying vehicle is an extrapolation by others (including the authors, first two lines pg. 17), see "The Council Bluffs incident", above.External Quote:
Dr. Jim Bumby was a reader in electrical engineering for many years at the University of Durham, UK. Much of his work dealt with practical applications.
I think it unlikely that he meant (in the quote above) that all liquid metals- including mixtures of metals with substantial non-metallic inclusions- are "...an attractive means of current collection", and it might be a disservice to him to imply this.
Brief profile of Jim Bumby, and list of his publications at "IEEE Xplore",
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37270694200
At the time of Nolan, Vallee et al.'s study Dr. Bumby was no longer at the University of Durham. Under "Övrig [Other] information" for Power System Dynamics Stability and Control (2020, Machowski, Lubosny, Bialek, Bumby) on the Swedish website "bokus" (books), it says
"James R. Bumby, formerly Reader at Durham University, UK."
https://www.bokus.com/bok/9781119526346/power-system-dynamics/
(My emphasis); Nolan, Vallee et al.'s information about Bumby was out-of-date. Perhaps not surprising:
All the references cited in section 4.3 (refs. 39-46) cite work over 38 years old at the time of the author's study, bar reference (40), a 2021 Wikipedia (!) article, "Homopolar motor". Other than that, the references date from 1983, 1958, 1974, 1972, 1971, 1971, 1979.
Why are the references so dated? Because, except for the Wikipedia reference, they are the same references as used in the section "Liquid Metal Technology" in
(co-author) Jacques Vallee's 1998 paper "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples" (PDF attached, below).
In fact, most of section 4.1 in the author's 2022 paper is identical to "Physical Analyses..." in Vallee's 1998 paper.
I guess an author can't plagiarise themselves, but I wonder if the staff of Progress in Aerospace Sciences, publisher of the 2022 paper, were aware of this overlap.
Bizarrely, although the Vallee (1998) paper is cited in Nolan, Vallee et al. (reference 29), there is no such citation in section 4.1.
Here is a jpeg enabling a quick comparison of the similar texts; it is copied from a word document, "Comparison of Texts", attached below.
(Click to enlarge)
Speculating on possible uses of liquid metal, the authors write
Nolan, Vallee et al. pg. 17 para. 6 (compare with Vallee, 1998 2nd para. pg. 16 of PDF). Roser's highly hypothetical ideas are described, but there is no reference for him in either paper (a quick internet search returns several J. Rosers with backgrounds in physics etc.)External Quote:
(italicised by Nolan, Vallee et al.)External Quote:
Roser, quoted by the authors, pg. 17 para. 7, pg. 18 para 1.External Quote:
"P-11" should be "P-31" as per Vallee 1998.
One has to question the design of a flying vehicle which occasionally needs to dump kilos of melted nuclear reactor housing.
The authors write,
(pg. 18 para. 1).External Quote:
This is a serious in-paper contradiction: Phosphorus (P) wasn't found, but aluminium-27 clearly was, as was magnesium, see Figs. 7, 8A, 9; sodium (Na) was indicated (Figs. 7, 8A) but later discarded for reasons already mentioned. In fact, Al-27 was the most abundant element in 2 of the 3 unoxidized samples (1 and 3) and both the more problematic oxidized samples (2 and 4) if Figure 9 displays "Relative ratios of the elements for each of the subsamples" as the authors claim (see Figure 9, pg. 15, and "Charts as per Figure 9", above).
Aluminium is not only present, it is the most common element detected by the authors. The error contained in the quote above is serious, and extraordinary.
The presence of aluminium and magnesium might indicate a plausible hypothesis for the material's purpose and composition that does not require the the presence of a nuclear reactor of highly speculative (and radiologically dirty) design carried by a selectively visible UFO.
Note; Roser's comments are near-identical to those made at least 23 years earlier in discussion of a material sample from Bogota, "1975 or 1976", (pg. 9 of PDF, Vallee 1998). See Vallee (1998), pg. 16 of PDF (marked pg. 374 on page).
Pg. 18 para. 1, Nolan, Vallee et al.External Quote:
The first sentence above, with minor differences, was originally in Vallee's 1998 paper; it refers to the Bogota sample (see text comparison).
Vallee would have been aware of Roser's criteria (for liquid metal to be associated with a nuclear power source) for some 23-plus years before the 2022 paper. The Council Bluffs material does not meet those criteria (and was found not to be radioactive in 1977), so why include Roser's speculations in the 2022 paper at all?
Nolan, Vallee et al. clearly imply that Roser corresponded with one of the 2022 authors about the Council Bluffs material.
Is this the case?
If not, it might be problematic. It is possible that Roser would have agreed that his speculation about the Bogota sample also applied to the Council Bluffs material, but the use of near-identical wording in the 2022 paper might indicate to an unsympathetic reader that Roser did not in fact correspond with Nolan, Vallee et al. about CB_JV-1, but that the authors have reproduced Roser's comments about the earlier Bogota find.
Along with the exciting conjecture about liquid metals in nuclear reactors, the authors write
(Pg. 17 para. 5, author's italics).External Quote:
That reference [46] on page 20 gives us,
46. Southall, H.L. and C.E. Oberly, "System Considerations for Airborne, High-power Superconducting Generators". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1979. 15(1): p. 711.
This paper is attached as a PDF below.
(1) The Southall and Oberly paper is not in any way about "superconducting airborne platforms". It is not about aircraft design or propulsion.
It is about superconducting airborne generators, i.e. generators for electricity production on board airborne platforms. A generator is not an "airborne platform", an aircraft is. Throughout the Southall/ Oberly paper it is assumed that the power source for the generator is a conventional (aero engine) turbine. Nolan, Vallee et al.'s use of the phrase "superconducting airborne platforms" is misleading, and their use of italics to imply significance unwarranted.
(2) There is nothing in Southall and Oberly's 1979 paper about liquid metal. Absolutely nothing at all. Throughout the paper it is assumed that windings of superconducting wire are to be used.
(Abstract, pg. 1, Southall and Oberly 1979).External Quote:
The paper is about relatively conventional late 1970's designs for superconducting generators, as this figure (pg. 1 of PDF, 711 of journal) shows:
Part of the description for the above figure reads,
There is nothing in this paper that supports, in any way, its use as a reference in the context that Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke (2022) use it.External Quote:
Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke's representation of the 1979 Southall/ Oberly paper is wholly wrong. It is almost inconceivable that Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke all misunderstood the Southall/ Oberly paper.
And it isn't an administrative error, e.g. citing the wrong paper: Like much of the text in "4.1 Liquid metal, MHD and advanced flying vehicles", the text (and reference) about the Southall/ Oberly paper is identical to that used by Vallee (1998).
Apparently no-one, between 1998 and 2021, contacted Vallee to point out he was wrong to use the Southall/ Oberly paper as an example of proposed "liquid metal technology".
Nolan, Jiang and Lemke either didn't read the referenced paper, or comprehensively misunderstood it. Either possibility is troubling.
It is perhaps unlikely that the editors of "Progress in Aerospace Sciences", the publishers of Nolan, Vallee et al.s' paper, checked this reference.
The "Liquid Metal..." section of the paper concludes, referring to the Council Bluffs find,
(Pg. 18, 1st para.)External Quote:
That must be a highly speculative "should". The author's case study surely demonstrates that CB_JV-1 is not a superconductor, or nuclear drive waste as described by Roser. Instead of adopting these conclusions from their own research, the authors appear to imply that unknown physics might be a possible explanation for the material: the material might still have a "high-tech" origin or purpose, despite their own evidence to the contrary.
A sufficiently advanced technology might be able to transmute a discarded potato chip packet into a superconductor or an exotic fuel, but finding a potato chip packet of unknown origin is perhaps insufficient evidence that this is currently occurring. Arthur C. Clarke stated
(Profiles of the Future, 1962); to invoke such a technology- when more mundane explanations are available- might be seen as akin to magical thinking.External Quote:
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
8. Hypotheses for the Council Bluffs material
On pages 10, 11 and 12 of their paper the authors consider 5 hypotheses which might account for the find at Gilbert's Pond:
A satellite re-entry and crash; a meteorite; material dropped from an aircraft (of conventional type); a hoax using thermite; a hoax using poured molten metal.
(The hypothesis of a hoax using thermite is considered last here).
The authors use US customary units (quoting a USAF letter) discussing the satellite hypothesis, metric for the meteorite hypothesis, US customary for aircraft-dropped material and poured molten metal hypotheses, and both US customary and metric units for temperature- without their respective equivalents each time- when discussing the thermite hypothesis. This shouldn't occur in an academic paper.
Estimates of the material's weight, discussed below, vary from 30 to 55 pounds (approx. 13.64 to 25 kg) implying there was no serious attempt by any party- fire department, police, or anyone else involved- to study the material in situ or catalogue pieces removed from the site, despite it only covering approx. 2.233 m squared (2.671 square yards).
8a. Satellite re-entry
Already mentioned, Professor Frank Kayser commented on the possibility of the material being from an aerospace artefact in 1977 or 1978:
(Pg. 13 para. 2). The day after the find, local journalist and amateur astronomer Robert Allen (pg. 8 para. 6) retrieved some of the material.External Quote:
He requested USAF opinion on whether it could be debris from a [presumably uncontrolled] satellite re-entry (Vallee, 1998 states the department contacted was Air Force Space Systems; last para. pg. 13 of PDF, marked pg. 371).
USAF Colonel Charles Senn replied, but thought a satellite re-entry unlikely; the authors list his 4 points why in paras. 4-7, pg. 10.
They can be summarized as (a) such material would not be molten at impact, (b) no ground impression or spread of debris at Council Bluffs, (c) a satellite would not be glowing at the altitude seen [as reported by Kenny Drake and James] and (d),
Pg. 10 para. 7, quoting Colonel Senn.External Quote:
The authors accept that the re-entering satellite hypothesis is unlikely, describing Senn's letter as "...helpful in dismissing" it (pg. 10 para. 8).
They report Col. Senn concluded (same para.)
External Quote:
8a1. Discussion of Cosmos 954, "Operation Morning Light", pg. 16.
Immediately after "Speculative Conclusions" (pg. 16 para. 4) the authors briefly discuss the break-up of the Soviet satellite Cosmos (or Kosmos) 954 over Canada, 24 January 1978, which scattered debris over a path of some 600 km (370 miles);
Wikipedia, accessed 04/12/23, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954
Some of the debris comprised nuclear fuel, mainly uranium 235, from an estimated 35-50 kg (77-110 pounds) payload in the craft's BES-5 fast fission reactor
(Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BES-5 , accessed 04/12/23).
The radiological clean-up by Canada and the USA was called "Operation Morning Light"; the title used by the authors for this section of the paper (pg. 16, paras. 5, 6, 7). They write that, because of the Cosmos 954 incident,
(Pg. 16, para. 6). Nolan, Vallee et al. might think this, but provide no evidence that this was the case. Colonel Senn's letter suggests that the USAF had no ongoing interest in the Council Bluffs material.External Quote:
There were no doubts about the origin of Cosmos 954; North American Aerospace Defense Command had detected the satellite's erratic orbital changes in mid-December 1977, and Soviet officials advised American authorities about the craft's impending re-entry (Wikipedia, ibid).
The main concern was the radioactive fuel, but the chance to retrieve Soviet reconnaissance satellite technology must also have been a priority.
The reasons which USAF Col. Senn advanced for the Council Bluffs material not being satellite debris- which Nolan, Vallee et al. seem to accept- were just as valid post-Cosmos 954 as before; indeed, the actual satellite re-entry reaffirmed some of those points- debris over a wide area, not molten on the ground, with remaining structural features; all (as Senn predicted) in contrast to the Council Bluffs material.
The authors continue (pg. 16 para. 7)
It is highly probable that US agencies used whatever means were available- including spectroscopy- to examine recovered components from Cosmos 954.External Quote:
If the authors are claiming that the agencies conducting those studies compared their results with the Coan/ Kayser results from Council Bluffs, then they provide no evidence. Given the USAF's lack of interest in the Iowa debris, any such comparison seems unlikely.
The presence of uranium 235 on Cosmos 954 was in the public domain from the outset. I am not aware of the results from spectroscopy (e.g. to determine the composition of structural alloys used, or reactor fission products) being made public at the time of Morning Light or any time soon after.
It must be extremely unlikely that anyone not officially involved in investigating Cosmos 954 used "...analytical results and the instrumental procedures described above" to determine that "there was no connection between the two events" (the Council Bluffs find and Cosmos 954) as they wouldn't have had access to the relevant findings about the satellite.
That the Council Bluffs material was not from a satellite re-entry would have been clear, to those with the appropriate practical knowledge, almost immediately as Col Senn's comments indicate. Nolan, Vallee et al. provide no evidence that "...the analytical results and the instrumental procedures described above" were used to demonstrate "...there was no connection between the two events", nor do they provide any evidence that the team(s) analyzing the Cosmos debris made any comparison with- or indeed had any interest in- the Council Bluffs find.
The examination of retrieved parts of Cosmos 954 may well have been a near-textbook example of "...instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics" albeit in the context of 1978.
Despite their "Operation Morning Light" section, the 2022 authors do not document any attempt on their part to find out what investigative techniques were used or to what effect.
As noted above, the author's own investigative set-up had a lower mass-detection threshold than Kayser's in 1978. They would have been unable to determine the composition of reactor fuel from a Cosmos 954-type incident, as was done in 1978, with their example of an improved instrumental technique in 2022.
8b. Meteorite impact
Nolan, Vallee et al. use an estimate of the Council Bluff material's mass to demonstrate that a similar mass meteorite would have insufficient kinetic energy to become molten (pg. 10 last para., pg. 11 first para).
They also state
-pg. 11 para. 1; back in the '70s Professor Kayser's studyExternal Quote:
pg. 13 para. 2.External Quote:
The 2022 authors use a quote,
(pg. 11 para. 2; uncited; we don't know its origin) suggesting that they reject the meteor impact hypothesis.External Quote:
In light of the material evidence, the author's calculations and Colonel Senn's advice, this is entirely reasonable.
8c. Material dropped from an aircraft
Gilbert's Pond is approx. 2 km/ 1.24 miles to the southeast of Eppley Airfield on the other side of the Missouri, and approx. 10 km/ 6.21 miles from the smaller Council Bluffs Municipal Airport to the east-southeast (ESE).
Offhut Air Force Base is approx. 19.3 km/ 12 miles to the south-southwest (SSW) of Gilbert's Pond; in 1977 Strategic Air Command HQ was stationed at Offhut (as US Strategic Command is now). In Operation Looking Glass from February 1961 to July 1990, at least one EC-135 flying from Offhut AFB was in the air at any given time, providing an airborne command post in case of war
(Wikipedia, Offhut Air Force Base, accessed 10/12/23, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offutt_Air_Force_Base).
The hypothesis that the Council Bluffs material fell from an aircraft is considered by the authors,
(pg. 11 para. 3; again the authors use a quote without attribution/ citation).External Quote:
No problems were reported by operators using Eppley Airfield on December 17. The authors point out that material falling from an aircraft would not reach a speed necessary to bring it to a high temperature. They do not consider the more prosaic (if dramatic) possibility of already-burning material being dropped, but this would probably represent a catastrophic failure of an aircraft and can be ruled out for that date. Illicit dumping of hot material from a small aircraft would seem to be a pointlessly hazardous and complex endeavour; and it's hard to think of a reason why sane aircrew would fly with such material on board.
As with the satellite hypothesis, the very constrained area in which the material was found also makes this possibility unlikely- there was very little scattering of debris. (This fact applies to any other hypothesis involving the material falling from a considerable height).
(Pg. 11 para. 4). Conversely, it might be thought that all aircraft using Eppley Airfield are near the site of the find.External Quote:
I once wondered if a military illumination or target-marking store might have been responsible, but this seems very unlikely (aircraft-dispensed flares are discussed elsewhere on this forum). The small number of claimed witnesses in the adjacent built-up area implies that the material, if dropped, wasn't widely seen; incidents such as the "Phoenix lights" of March 13 1997 (and others) demonstrate that where military aircraft flares are dropped, they can be seen (and misidentified) over a large area for a substantial duration, e.g. enough time for a witness to bring it to other people's attention.
8d. Hoax using poured molten metal
The possibility of the Council Bluffs material being transported in a molten state and tipped at the site (presumably from some sort of plant or industrial vehicle) is addressed by Nolan, Vallee et al. They state the only facility in Council Bluffs dealing with molten metal was the Griffen Pipe Products Company (workplace of Jack Coan who carried out the first analysis of the material in 1977).
(Pg. 12 para. 2). I won't pretend to understand what this means, but accept that Mr. Stewart is saying the company didn't have accessable molten metal on its premises on Saturday 17 September 1977.External Quote:
Paxton-Mitchell Steel of Omaha advised on the practicalities- and substantial difficulties- of transporting metal in a molten state, requiring (at the least) a large truck containing a robust brick oven and means of maintaining the contents at the required temperature.
Note, like some other quotes in the paper, the opinions from Paxton-Mitchell Steel are not cited- or dated.
It seems the Omaha foundry stopped operating under the name of Paxton-Mitchell Steel around 2013 (Paxton-Mitchell continues as a production engineering company at Blair, Nevada);
From Foundry-Planet.Com, Foundry Daily News, "USA - Former Paxton-Mitchell Foundry's Rich History to go on the Auction Block", 11 October 2013External Quote:
https://www.foundry-planet.com/d/us...drys-rich-history-to-go-on-the-auction-block/
-meaning the 2022 authors couldn't have discussed the matter with Paxton-Mitchell representatives from an Omaha foundry.
The original source, who spoke with Omaha staff of Paxton-Mitchell, presumably some years earlier, is not identified or cited.
The 2022 authors write
-and continue with a quote essentially summarising that a hoax using poured molten metal was unlikely (pg. 12 para. 4).External Quote:
Again, there is no citation for the quote. Who are "The investigators"? It seems unlikely that this refers to Nolan, Vallee et al.; their own views wouldn't require quotation marks in this paper.
A hoax perpetrated in this manner, though physically possible, might be very unlikely- considerable resources and effort would be needed for a very modest result (6-by-4 feet/ 1.83 x 1.22 metres of molten waste in a park, witnessed by a handful of people).
8e. A hoax using thermite
Thermite is a term used for various mixtures mainly composed of powdered elemental metal and powdered metal oxide. A simple example would be an aluminium: iron oxide mixture. When ignited, thermite undergoes an exothermic reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction, liberating intense heat (and light) in a compact area for a brief time. Modest amounts of thermite in a ceramic mould can be used to cut or weld steel rail tracks; even low-grade (or "improvised") thermite is capable of bringing smaller metal items to melting point very rapidly.
-Illustration from Wikipedia, Thermite (accessed 10/12/23), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite
Note the footnote; the reaction occurs (initially very vigorously), the metal is melted and then flows down. This may have relevance- the accounts of Drake/ James and Jack Moore, who arrived later, differ in a way that seems consistent with the observation of a thermite redox reaction (Drake, James) and its results (Jack Moore); see below.
Wikipedia, ibid., my italics.External Quote:
On page 11, para. 6 the authors quote Professor Frank Kayser of the University of Iowa, talking about his sample of the Council Bluffs material (Kayser conducted the 2nd early study):
The authors are wary of this explanation:External Quote:
(Pg. 12 para. 7).External Quote:
This isn't really an issue; material heated to a sufficiently high temperature can remain in a partly melted state after the redox reaction has ceased, it takes time to cool.
Page 9, para. 1. -This might be expected; it had been a mass of at least 30 pounds (13.64 kg) of molten or semi-molten metal.External Quote:
Kenny Drake's/ Randy James' accounts, first seeing a bright flash and (relatively modest) flames, then finding
(The Historical Society of Pottawattamie County article "Close Encounter" at Big Lake Park", ibid.) might be a description of a dazzling thermite reaction.External Quote:
Assistant Fire Chief Jack Moore didn't report seeing this pyrotechnic-like display when he arrived at Gilbert's Pond later, although the material was still incandescent and spreading- what would be expected if a redox reaction were finished, leaving the melted material to cool and settle into a final solid shape.
The authors note that the air temperature was 32°F (0° Celsius) and the ground frozen to a depth of 4 inches (10 cm); mindful of Kayser's hypothesis, they quote (pg. 11 para. 7),
(The quote lacks attribution or citation).External Quote:
This isn't a credible objection;
(1) water poured onto incandescent metal tends to evaporate as steam;
(2) water in the immediate vicinity of something hot might not freeze;
(3) from the description of the material,
(pg.9 1st line, uncited but probably Jack Moore) [pg. 7 para. 5 states "running, boiling down to the edges of the levee] it seems the material was deposited on sloping ground. Any water, less viscous than (and heated by) the material might flow away;External Quote:
(4) the results of Nolan, Vallee et al.'s own case study show that the material (or at least CB_JV-1) was not chiefly a carbon steel as Kayser concluded, but (probably) had greater quantities of aluminium and silicon than iron (see Figure 9 pg. 15); almost certainly it was an inhomogeneous mix (not an alloy).
It is unreasonable to expect such materials to behave in the same way, or require the same interventions (e.g. water cooling) as carbon steel in order to reach its end appearance. Kayser thought the microstructure of his sample resembled wrought iron and believed his specimen was mainly carbon steel; Nolan, Vallee et al.'s specimens are not primarily carbon steel and the authors don't investigate microstructure.
Page 11, para. 8.External Quote:
Again, this isn't a credible objection.
(1) Crude but effective thermites can be made relatively easily. (I don't advocate anyone trying, and in many jurisdictions it might be illegal to do so).
(Nolan, Vallee et al., pg. 11 last para.) "Sparkler" fireworks or a pyrotechnic flare can be a source of ignition.External Quote:
(2) There would have been many things in Omaha and Council Bluffs, 1977, that were not from the area: coffee; radios from Japan; cars from Detroit; gasoline, tinned tuna, bananas.
Wikipedia, Thermite, ibid.External Quote:
There are extensive railroads and rail marshalling yards in Council Bluffs, and very close to Gilbert's Pond:
I don't know if the relevant rail companies used thermite in the Council Bluffs area at that time, but it is perfectly possible. If commercial thermite were involved at Gilbert's Pond, it might have been sourced from surprisingly close to the site of the find.
As well as the rail yards to the immediate south, railroads pass north-to-south each side of Gilbert's Pond, the west side track is only a few tens of metres/ yards away. Conjecture: maybe a rail repair team craftily burned off surplus thermite rather than clerk it back in at the end of their work on that Saturday evening.
Or maybe a container of thermite ruptured or was spilled on the west railroad embankment, the contents abandoned but "scavenged" later; this might explain the silicon content (sand/ soil picked up with the thermite) and the location of the Council Bluffs material- possibly within forty metres (approx. 130 feet) of the embankment.
The author's final objection to the thermite hoax hypothesis:
pg. 11, last para. (The authors didn't include titanium in Figure 9, pg. 15, "Relative ratios of the elements for each of the subsamples" for stated reasons).External Quote:
This is an argument of questionable value. The authors seem unable to address the possibility that the claim of the material falling from the sky might itself be part of the hoax. It is a bit like saying, "If George Adamski was a hoaxer, how do you explain the meetings with the Venusian Orthon, and the scoutships, seen by multiple witnesses?"
The claimed falling material was described as bright red. While the composition of thermite affects the light emitted during its use, the initial, most energetic stage of thermite use is often characterised by an intense white-blue light (which can be injurious to the eyes, Helmenstine 2019; link below) and vigorous production of bright sparks.
This coincides with the description given by Drake/ James when they reportedly first encountered the material at Gilbert's Pond- but not with their report of the falling red object. If we take their accounts as accurate (which the authors appear inclined to do), it must be unlikely that the falling material represented metals "reacted in midair".
Only two, possibly three identified witnesses, young people from the same family, claimed to see anything fall; they were the first people known to be in the vicinity of the material.
The Council Bluffs material was molten. It is unlikely that there was no melting of earth or sand under it. The author's own results (Figure 9, page 15) show substantial presence of silicon, possibly incorporated from the ground. Liedenfrost effects would not persist long enough to prevent some ground melt.
No evidence from those who cleared up the bulk of the material (parks staff? City refuse disposal?) is presented to support the claim that it wasn't fused with soil/ sand underneath.
8f. More about thermite
If a Council Bluffs resident had access to thermite, or made a thermite analogue, would it be difficult to transport it and any other material used to Gilbert's Pond?
Page 7 para. 5 states that estimates of the material's weight ranged from 35-55 pounds (15.9-25.0 kg); Page 10 para. 5 says the weight was estimated at 35-40 pounds (15.9-18.18 Kg). The final paragraph, pg. 11, says
A reasonably fit young person should be able to carry 25 kg (55 lbs) on foot for a substantial distance at walking pace.External Quote:
25 Kg (55 lb) of iron or steel makes a cube approximately 15 cm (5.91 inches) per side, a volume of 3.375 litres/ approx. 210 cubic inches.
The Council Bluffs material almost certainly had lower density and therefore larger volume, unless it resembled Coan's analysis and[ITAL] was originally a solid.
(Definitions of steel, wrought and cast iron vary a little as mentioned earlier).
Sources:
https://www.custompartnet.com/quick-tool/weight-calculator
https://www.gigacalculator.com/calculators/metal-weight-calculator.php
https://www.omnicalculator.com/construction/metal-weight
Nolan, Vallee et al.'s findings for CB_JV-1 (subsamples 1, 3, and 5) indicate, in total, broadly similar amounts of Fe, Al and Si, plus some Mg; the latter 3 all less dense than Fe, see Charts as per Figure 9, above.
A metal in the form of fine scrap/ swarf/ metallic ribbon/ filings/ powder (e.g. in thermite) takes up a larger volume than a solid of the same weight (Kayser hypothesized that the Council Bluffs material might originally have been composed of small components including thermite powder, pg. 11 para. 6).
If the Council Bluffs material had just one tenth the density of solid iron or steel, it would take up a volume of approx. 33.75 l (2100 cubic inches).
This is within the capacity of a medium-sized backpack: as an example, the ALICE LC-2 Medium Field Pack, in use with US forces in 1977, has a capacity of 2300 cu in. (37.69 l) and
https://www.thunderheadoutdoorresearch.org/wiki/ALICE_LC-2_Medium_Field_PackExternal Quote:
(A robust large backpack, e.g. 80 litres capacity, could contain twice this volume and weight- a heavy load though!)
25 kg / 55 pounds of material with the composition indicated by Nolan, Vallee et al.'s findings could be carried by one person, on foot, using a medium backpack or something similar. It would easily fit into the trunk of pretty much any car.
What elements might be detected if the results of a thermite reaction underwent spectroscopy?
This depends on the type of thermite mixture used, and the materials it had been applied to or which were in very close proximity.
Nolan, Vallee et al. give the example of an iron oxide III/ aluminium blend
(last para. pg. 11).
ThoughtCo.Com states
From ThoughtCo.Com, "What Is a Thermite Reaction in Chemistry?", Anne Marie Helmenstine, updated December 08, 2019External Quote:
https://www.thoughtco.com/thermite-reaction-instructions-and-chemistry-604261
-Helmenstine demonstrates that the thermite described by Nolan, Vallee et al. is relatively easy to produce, and the materials readily available. She suggests (for experimental purposes) using magnesium ribbon as a fuse.
Magnesium can also be used as the elemental metal in thermite,
Wikipedia, Thermite (ibid; also lists silicon).External Quote:
Manganese oxides can be used to make thermite in conjunction with aluminium, and were studied in "Analysis of Thermochemical Properties of three typical Manganese based thermite", Rui Zhu, Tao Guo et al., IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science Volume 446, 2020
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/446/2/022024/meta (manganese was mentioned above as an element that featured in Nolan, Vallee et al.'s spectroscopy returns but which they didn't include in their charts of elements found in CB_JV-1 as per Figure 9, pg. 15).
If Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke had performed spectroscopy on a sample of a post-reaction thermite/ improvised thermite blend in 2022, they wouldn't have found oxygen. Oxygen is obviously essential in a redox reaction, but with a standard atomic weight of 15.999 it is too light to be detected by the MIBI-SIMS instrument used by the authors for their investigation.
They might have found approximately similar quantities (moles, not mass) of aluminium and iron. Alternatively, magnesium (or perhaps silicon) might be found in lieu of aluminium as the (pre-reaction) unoxidised elemental metal, or manganese in the role of (pre-reaction) oxide instead of iron. There are many potential ways to make thermite, including blends of different oxides and elementals.
Looking at the author's Figure 9 again:
The elements found by Nolan, Vallee et al. as shown in Figure 9, page 15, are all consistent with thermite components.
Subsamples 2 and 4 were excluded from Figure 8A by the authors due to low ion counts which the authors theorized might be due to oxidation of those samples.
If the composition of the CB+JV-1 subsamples reflect, at least in part, a thermite origin, subsamples 2 and 4 show the largest ratio of (pre-reaction) elemental fuels (Al, Mg, Si) to (pre-reaction) oxide metals (Fe; possibly Mn).
During thermitic reactions, the elemental fuels (e.g. Al, Mg and Si) form oxides.
Subsamples 2 and 4 might therefore have had the highest proportional content of oxygen post-reaction, locked into oxides with Al, Mg and possibly Si.
I wonder if this might have had a role in the suboptimal returns that the authors report for 2 and 4; but perhaps someone who understands this area could advise.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
9. Significant issues with "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics.", 2022; Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke.
9a. Title versus content:
The authors do not define "improved". Their own case study equipment has a narrower detection range than that used in 1977/ 1978, and would be incapable of detecting elements of essential interest in contemporary aerospace forensics. The results for two out of five subsamples investigated with MIBI-SIMS are possibly compromised; a 40% failure rate for, arguably, physically non-problematic solid samples.
No connection is made between the investigative techniques reviewed and aerospace science. The information provided by the authors is just as applicable to uses in archaeology as it is to aerospace forensics. And that information is modest; it is unlikely anyone presently involved in aerospace forensics would benefit from the summary of instrumental techniques.
In the only example given of an aerospace artefact which might have been subject to forensic materials analysis (Cosmos 954) the authors do not discuss or give any indication that they have attempted to find out what investigative techniques were used, or to what effect.
The authors do not demonstrate that the subject of their case study is connected with aerospace technology.
The authors do not define "unusual materials", their case study focuses on what appears to be a piece of slag. No unusual material properties are documented. The most abundant elements in this material (as per Figure 9 pg. 15) are Al, Si, Fe, Mg; the 3rd, 2nd, 4th and 7th most common elements in Earth's crust.
It seems likely that oxygen (most common element in Earth's crust) is present in the samples as a component of oxides pre-spectroscopy; the authors' spectroscope set-up is incapable of detecting it. Isotope ratios of elements from the samples indicate terrestrial norms.
9b. The citing of the Southall, H.L. and Oberly, C.E. paper "System Considerations for Airborne, High-power Superconducting Generators" (1979) in the context used.
This is grossly misleading; the Southall and Oberly paper has no reference whatsoever to liquid metal technology.
There is no discussion of "...superconducting airborne platforms" in the Southall and Oberly paper.
Southall and Oberly's paper is about superconducting generators for use in aircraft. The generators discussed use power from an aircraft engine to generate electricity.
To claim, or imply, that Southall and Oberly's 1979 paper said anything about liquid metal, or novel airborne platforms, or novel / future propulsion methods for airborne platforms, is as misleading and incorrect now as it was when Vallee first cited the paper in his own "Physical analyses in ten cases...", 1998.
9c. The authors claim that aluminium was not found in their study (page 18 first two sentences). This is an extraordinary error;
aluminium would appear to be the most abundant element found in their study (Figure 9, page 15).
9d. The use of an approximately 350 word piece of text, almost word-for-word, from co-author Jacques Vallee's 1998 paper "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples".
As a result, outdated biographical information for a cited researcher (Bumby) is used. An unidentified source, J. Roser, is quoted but not cited.
Roser's comments, implied by the authors as being about the Council Bluffs material, are word-identical to his comments about a specimen from Bogota, quoted by Vallee in his 1998 paper.
Although Nolan, Vallee et al. (2022) cite Vallee's 1998 paper, they do not do so for this approx. 350 word section, nor do they indicate that it isn't original text in the 2022 paper.
Toma, C., Padureanu, L., "An Exploratory Analysis of 4844 Withdrawn Articles and Their Retraction Notes", 2021, Open Journal of Social Sciences 09 (11); my emphasis. Link to paper at ResearchGate,External Quote:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...Withdrawn_Articles_and_Their_Retraction_Notes
9e. Failure by the authors to consider their own case study findings in relation to the hypothesis of a hoax using thermite.
In contrast, because their sample was found in a molten state the authors discuss applications of molten metals in "high-tech" and speculative technologies even though the results of the author's study of CB_JV-1 effectively rules out any plausible role for that material in MHD generators or Roser's highly speculative nuclear reactor.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
10. Less significant issues
10a. Having stated that MIBI-SIMS "...cannot compare the molar ratios between different elements in an experimental sample... ...Therefore, the MIBI instrument used in this report is not quantitative between elements" (pg. 6 para. 2) the authors present a table, based on MIBI-SIMS results, showing "Relative ratios of the elements for each of the subsamples" (Fig. 9 pg. 15).
10b. The authors' map. Nothing marked by the authors is in the correct location.
10c. Figure 1 is based on a table from an EAG Laboratories' webpage; a link is given but there is no formal citation/ mention in references.
Unlike the EAG original, the authors do not give the meanings of abbreviations used.
10d. A discussion of experimental findings and speculative technologies dependent on isotopic differences, some of which have no direct relevance to the paper.
In the context given, the mention of the AAWSAP Program Documents and Maxim Tsoi's Metallic Spintronics (2010) is perhaps misleading.
10e. Using Wikipedia as a primary reference is (normally) considered unacceptable in academic papers. The authors do not use the same format for documenting their Wikipedia references. The first reference the authors give is for a Wikipedia article, but it is undated, meaning the content being referred to is uncertain.
"47. Pentagon UFO videos, in Wikipedia. 2021" is not an appropriate way of providing a reference (reference 49, for a Scientific American article, omits date and issue number).
[This review is not an academic paper!]
10f. Mixed use of metric and American customary units without their corresponding equivalents.
Something undergraduates are told to avoid. In an example of aerospace software forensics, it was found that the Mars Climate Orbiter was catastrophically lost because Lockheed Martin used software returning measurement values in American customary units, NASA processed those values as metric units:
"Mars Climate Orbiter Team Finds Likely Cause of Loss", Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, September 30 1999
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-climate-orbiter-team-finds-likely-cause-of-loss
Wikipedia article Mars Climate Orbiter, accessed 16/12/23
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
10g. Several quotes used without attribution, sometimes where the person being quoted isn't identifiable by context.
10h. The authors claim there were eleven witnesses. This includes four only known from Kenny Drake's account, and an anonymous phone call claiming to be from a couple. Carol Drake's testimony is conspicuously absent.
10i. Assistant Chief Moore gets to drive a fire chief car and a police cruiser on the same evening (unless there was an Assistant Chief Moore in both the Council Bluffs fire and police departments) on his way to investigate a mysterious case. He is very much living the dream of my 8-year-old self.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
11. Attached documents
(Left to Right) Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke, 2022, "Improved instrumental techniques..."; AATIP papers list 2018; Maxim Tsoi, 2010, "Metallic Spintronics"; Jacques Vallee, 1998, "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases..."; Comparison of Texts 1998, 2022 (word document); Southall, Oberly, 1979, "System Considerations for Airborne, High-power Superconducting Generators"
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