Is "Improved Instrumental Techniques...", Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke 2022 a useful paper?

[NorCal Dave]

Bigelow! Postmortem Survival!

I seriously didn't cherry-pick the Journal. I just opened the contents for 2nd listed issue at random. I saw the mention of Roswell and screen shot the page. It was only after I had posted that I saw the Skinwalker Ranch alums Bigelow and Kelleher.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I've ordered a copy of The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence Hardcover – November 1, 1999. This reportedly has a section dealing with the Council Bluffs case. Maybe this will clear up some things.

Arrived, and it's no help at all. It uses the 1998 Vallee article as the sole source and just takes it literally. All the same info; including the street address and the false claim that the material was carbon steel.

The carbon steel claim is then included in a list of materials from other cases. Page 253 - Table 27-3 - Summary Of Sample Composition. This is sloppy, and I have no confidence that the evidence from other cases is based on anything real either.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Article - Time Magazine - Society for Scientific Exploration

Posted Tuesday, May. 24, 2005

Roger Nelson's formal credentials are in the respectable field of experimental psychology, but the project he has been working on since 1998 would make plenty of scientists cringe. Nelson heads the Global Consciousness Project, which is based on the theory that emotionally charged world events will cause blips in the output of random-number generators scattered around the globe. He and his colleagues believe they have already documented that effect in the aftermath of Princess Di's death, the 9/11 attacks and, more benignly, in the wave of international optimism that seems to settle over the world each New Year's Day. The simple electronic devices that generate the random numbers, he argues, may be picking up some sort of planet wide field of consciousness.

Nelson would have a tough time getting this stuff published in a major journal like Science or Nature. But he doesn't have to, thanks to an organization called the Society for Scientific Exploration, or S.S.E., which held its annual meeting outside Gainesville, Fla., last week. The location--a Best Western overlooking Interstate 75--wasn't quite so lavish as the conference centers where neurologists or physicists routinely meet. Yet that didn't seem to matter for the hundred or so researchers who came to hear learned talks on, among other things, consciousness physics, astrology and parapsychology. Here, and in the society's Journal of Scientific Exploration, such topics are standard fare, alongside research on reincarnation, UFOs and near-death experiences. Pretty much anything that might have shown up on The X-Files or in the National Enquirer shows up first here.

But what also shows up is a surprising attitude of skepticism. "We get plenty of nonsense," admits Charles Tolbert, an astronomer at the University of Virginia and the S.S.E.'s president. "Sometimes you know just five minutes into a talk that it's absurd. But you also hear things that make you think." Like Tolbert, many of the scientists here are on the faculty at major universities, and were doing fine at conventional research. But sometimes that gets boring. "I was plodding along, adding a little to a large body of knowledge," says Garret Moddel, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado. "Doing experiments on parapsychology is a lot more interesting and potentially much more important."

At the back of their minds, those researchers always remember that the scientific establishment has a long history of scoffing at big, implausible ideas that ultimately turned out to be correct: the assertion that the Earth orbits the sun, the idea that brain-wasting diseases are caused by misshapen proteins, the proposition that hand washing can prevent doctors from transmitting disease, the claim that continents can drift across the surface of the world--all these and more were scorned at first.

While S.S.E. members know that scorn doesn't prove that a controversial idea is right (people laughed at Darwin, after all, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown), it doesn't prove an idea is wrong, either. "What we do," says Nelson, "is give everyone a respectful hearing. If we think a speaker is doing bad science, we consider it our duty to criticize it. We get our share of lunatics, but they don't hang around long."

Given this remarkable mix of acceptance and skepticism, it's not so surprising, then, that Henry Bauer, the editor of S.S.E.'s journal and a dean emeritus at Virginia Tech, wrote the definitive treatise debunking Immanuel Velikovsky, whose best-selling books in the 1950s argued that Old Testament miracles were triggered by close encounters with Venus. But it's also not surprising that that same Henry Bauer has published papers arguing that scientists have ignored powerful evidence that the Loch Ness Monster is real.

A mixed bag. Anything from true eccentrics to guys who want to get some entertainment. I feel that the skepticism - or rigor - is situational and inconsistent. On the whole, not anything you can really hang your hat on.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Re: Peter A. Sturrock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_A._Sturrock

Sturrock has been a prominent contemporary scientist to express a keen interest in the subject of unidentified flying objects or UFOs.

Sturrock's interest traces back to the early 1970s when, seeking someone experienced with both computers and astrophysics, he hired Jacques Vallee for a research project. Upon learning that Vallee had written several books about UFOs, Sturrock—previously uninterested in UFOs—felt a professional obligation to at least peruse Vallee's books. Though still largely sceptical, Sturrock's interest was piqued by Vallee's books. Sturrock then turned to the Condon Report (1969), the result of a two-year UFO research project that had been touted as the answer to the UFO question. Sturrock commented that, "The upshot of this was that, far from supporting Condon's conclusions [that there was nothing extraordinary about UFOs], I thought the evidence presented in the report suggested that something was going on that needed study."

The book: The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence
According to the Preface to the book, it had its roots in a "workshop" held by members of The Society for Scientific Exploration.

Article from Journal of Exploration, Vol. 12, NO. pp. 179-229,1998
Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop
Held at the Pocantico Conference Center, Tarrytown, New York, September 29 - October 4, 1997
Article in Journal of Scientific Exploration · January 1998

It seems that this book grew out of that conference and Vallee's 1998 article is a part that process. The book also uses the Vallee article on the Lake Cote UFO Aerial Photo.

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/19...ote-ufo-aerial-photo.11729/page-7#post-289914

I'll talk about some failings of that Vallee report:
-The claim that he had access to the original camera negative is unsupported and I don't believe it. He had access to a negative, not the negative.
-His claim that the image could not be the result of dark room techniques only rules out the crudest kind of technique. Deliberately misleading, or the result of not knowing much about photography (and not bothering to educate himself)?
-He doesn't talk about the possibility that the image is the result of a physical flaw on the original camera negative.

I think Sturrock has relied too much on the honesty and competence of Vallee as an investigator. How can you analyze data that is so flawed and expect it to yield anything of value? His skepticism is inconsistent.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Re: Peter A. Sturrock

Just to review, Sturrock is a Stanford guy and college of Nolan. In the '80s Sturrock became the custodian of the "meta-material" (bits of magnesium) supposedly recovered from a 1957 UFO crash in Ubatuba Brazil. Sturrock, and others, spent decades trying to find any evidence of the Ubatuba crash besides one anonymous letter that accompanied the "meta-materials", all to no avail.

Nevertheless, he and Nolan have continued to conduct experiments on these bits of junk, with no known origin and tainted chains of custody, over the years because they MIGHT be from a UFO. Just like the in the paper being discussed here.

And to review the paper cited above once more:

Is followed up with:

Afte 7 investigators presented the panel with all kinds of evidence of UFOs, the panel concluded "there was no convincing evidence" for UFOs, but let's keep looking anyways.

You can't make this up.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

It seems like a kinky pleasure. It's wrong, but it feels so good to be bad once in awhile.

 

[F.Moon]

As far as I can tell, there's an interesting fact that hasn't been mentioned in this thread. In fact, it's also not mentioned in the Progress in Aerospace Sciences paper under discussion. Here's what Vallee wrote about it in his book Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact, published in 1990 (page 48):

In September 1978 I called the examining authorities in Council Bluffs again, and in the course of the conversation I learned a surprising fact: two similar falls had again been reported in the community, both in July 1978. A fall on July 5 was about one mile southwest of the 1977 incident and was followed five days later by another fall.

<https://archive.org/details/jacques...earch-for-alien-contact/page/48/mode/2up?q=48>

There are a few more details, though still limited, in the article What does this molten metal falling from the sky tell us? by journalist Randall Fitzgerald (www.examiner.com, July 12, 2010):

This wasn't the only molten metal to fall from the sky around Council Bluffs. The next summer, on the nights of July 5 and July10, two more molten metal falls occurred. One mass of metal three feet in diameter splattered on a street's storm sewer grating and welded itself to the iron cover. A second mass about the same size hit in a parking lot across from a public school. Firemen responding to emergency calls discovered both metal impact sites, which were still hot and smoking when they arrived. The second impact site was about one mile southwest of the original molten metal site on the lake levee, while the third site was about one mile south of the second impact.

Why were these three molten metal falls so closely bunched together, within a three mile radius of each other? There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. No other molten metal sightings were reported in or around Council Bluffs, located on the southeastern shore of the Missouri River, since those December 1977 and July 1978 incidents.

<https://web.archive.org/web/2014082...his-molten-metal-falling-from-the-sky-tell-us>

That last question is still very relevant!

 

[MapperGuy]

As far as I can tell, there's an interesting fact that hasn't been mentioned in this thread. In fact, it's also not mentioned in the Progress in Aerospace Sciences paper under discussion. Here's what Vallee wrote about it in his book Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact, published in 1990 (page 48):

<https://archive.org/details/jacques...earch-for-alien-contact/page/48/mode/2up?q=48>

There are a few more details, though still limited, in the article What does this molten metal falling from the sky tell us? by journalist Randall Fitzgerald (www.examiner.com, July 12, 2010):

<https://web.archive.org/web/2014082...his-molten-metal-falling-from-the-sky-tell-us>

That last question is still very relevant!

The most likely answer to why they were all found in a small radius is that the same person piled up some scrap metal and lit some thermite to melt it.

 

[John J.]

There are a few more details, though still limited, in the article What does this molten metal falling from the sky tell us?

This wasn't the only molten metal to fall from the sky around Council Bluffs. The next summer, on the nights of July 5 and July10, two more molten metal falls occurred. One mass of metal three feet in diameter splattered on a street's storm sewer grating and welded itself to the iron cover. A second mass about the same size hit in a parking lot across from a public school. Firemen responding to emergency calls discovered both metal impact sites, which were still hot and smoking when they arrived.

Does Vallee, writing years after the claimed events, provide any evidence? Did no-one think to photograph these finds?
He claims firemen responded to both (claimed) 1978 "impact sites".

We know a local assistant fire chief, Jack Moore, attended the 17 December 1977 find.

There were four identified people who claimed to see something unusual falling from or being in the sky at about the time of the burning material in the December 1977 "event", two pairs of people describing different things:
17 year-old Kenny Drake,
12 year-old Randy James (Kenny's Nephew)
Mike Moore, 24, son of assistant fire chief Jack Moore
Criss Moore, 24, wife of Mike, daughter-in-law of Jack Moore

What are the chances of that?
(Although 16 year-old Carol Drake, wife of Kenny is usually mentioned in accounts of this event, it is unclear whether she ever talked with, or was seen by, police or fire department staff, or if her presence was established independent of Kenny/ Randy's accounts.)

The metal mass was still glowing 15 minutes later when Mike Moore's father, assistant fire chief Jack Moore, arrived.

"When UFOs Land", Jim Wilson, Popular Mechanics pg.67, May 2001 pages 64-67; text found via Google Books website (accessed 20/11/23), https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

As mentioned in the OP, in "Improved instrumental techniques...", Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke, 2022, the authors (including Jacques Vallee) do not mention that Jack, Mike and Criss Moore are closely related.

I don't know if Jack Moore was still in post 7 months later, but it would be strange if there wasn't some recollection of the 17 December claims/ events amongst the Council Bluffs fire department. But, although they supposedly attended two further "incidents", no photos, no samples were taken as far as we know. Even Vallee fails to quote any witnesses who claim to have seen something falling, or any unusual aerial activity re. the July 1978 incidents, but chooses to use the term "impact sites".

The most likely answer to why they were all found in a small radius is that the same person piled up some scrap metal and lit some thermite to melt it.

Agreed.
The OP demonstrates, I believe, that the composition of Vallee's claimed sample from the December burn is entirely consistent with an improvised thermite. The main components were iron, aluminium and silicon, with some magnesium.
We know it was mixed, but highly inhomogeneous.
The melted material possibly contained a small amount of electrical/ electronic scrap (either incidental inclusions from wherever the metal was sourced, or perhaps deliberately added in the hope that the presence of materials from electronic components might make the melted material seem more "technological").

Even the highest estimates of mass and volume of material involved in the 17 December burn could be carried by one adult in a medium-sized backpack. When melted it covered an area about that of a modest duvet cover. Any fires/ fire hazards were dealt with by one man (Jack Moore) without specialist equipment.

 

[MapperGuy]

Does Vallee, writing years after the claimed events, provide any evidence? Did no-one think to photograph these finds?
He claims firemen responded to both (claimed) 1978 "impact sites".

We know a local assistant fire chief, Jack Moore, attended the 17 December 1977 find.

There were four identified people who claimed to see something unusual falling from or being in the sky at about the time of the burning material in the December 1977 "event", two pairs of people describing different things:
17 year-old Kenny Drake,
12 year-old Randy James (Kenny's Nephew)
Mike Moore, 24, son of assistant fire chief Jack Moore
Criss Moore, 24, wife of Mike, daughter-in-law of Jack Moore

What are the chances of that?
(Although 16 year-old Carol Drake, wife of Kenny is usually mentioned in accounts of this event, it is unclear whether she ever talked with, or was seen by, police or fire department staff, or if her presence was established independent of Kenny/ Randy's accounts.)

The metal mass was still glowing 15 minutes later when Mike Moore's father, assistant fire chief Jack Moore, arrived.

"When UFOs Land", Jim Wilson, Popular Mechanics pg.67, May 2001 pages 64-67; text found via Google Books website (accessed 20/11/23), https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

As mentioned in the OP, in "Improved instrumental techniques...", Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke, 2022, the authors (including Jacques Vallee) do not mention that Jack, Mike and Criss Moore are closely related.

I don't know if Jack Moore was still in post 7 months later, but it would be strange if there wasn't some recollection of the 17 December claims/ events amongst the Council Bluffs fire department. But, although they supposedly attended two further "incidents", no photos, no samples were taken as far as we know. Even Vallee fails to quote any witnesses who claim to have seen something falling, or any unusual aerial activity re. the July 1978 incidents, but chooses to use the term "impact sites".


Agreed.
The OP demonstrates, I believe, that the composition of Vallee's claimed sample from the December burn is entirely consistent with an improvised thermite. The main components were iron, aluminium and silicon, with some magnesium.
We know it was mixed, but highly inhomogeneous.
The melted material possibly contained a small amount of electrical/ electronic scrap (either incidental inclusions from wherever the metal was sourced, or perhaps deliberately added in the hope that the presence of materials from electronic components might make the melted material seem more "technological").

Even the highest estimates of mass and volume of material involved in the 17 December burn could be carried by one adult in a medium-sized backpack. When melted it covered an area about that of a modest duvet cover. Any fires/ fire hazards were dealt with by one man (Jack Moore) without specialist equipment.

So many questions...

Was the descent of the material observed visually or heard by people in the area?
Molten metal falling at terminal velocity should splatter quite a ways, I would suspect.
Was an impact crater seen, or damage to the manhole cover from a high speed impact?
If only a small puddle was found then the material likely did not descend at a high speed or very far.
Poured from a crucible maybe? If not melted on-site via thermite.

There are so many things you could infer from detailed photos of the material and the landing site immediately after the material was discovered.

Was organic material on the ground ignited by the molten metal?

You could go on and on, but good mysteries thrive on a lack of data.

 

[John J.]

So many questions...

In the absence of any contemporaneous corroborating evidence for the claimed July 1978 burns referred to by Vallee, I'm not sure they are questions that can be answered.

If there was a perception by the Council Bluffs fire department or police- or local newspapers- that there had been a number of unexplained "falls" of molten metal, I suspect the issue would have been taken a lot more seriously than it appears to have been.

We can't definitively rule out that alien spacecraft chose to dump small volumes of molten slag / improvised thermite, consisting of readily-available materials with terrestrial isotopic ratios (if the December 1977 find was representative), in Council Bluffs on three separate occasions.

But there might be a slightly greater possibility of someone local, for whatever reason, doing a bit of fire-setting or testing their improvised thermite. (That's assuming that there were two additional burns in 1978, and Vallee isn't misremembering).
Teenage "experimenters" carrying the necessary material might have less opportunity to travel than ETI interstellar craft.

In their 2022 paper, in the (deeply flawed, see OP) section "Liquid metal, MHD and advanced flying vehicles" Nolan, Vallee et al. write

Perhaps our physics are yet insufficient to explain the purpose of such material, should its origin be determined to be engineered for a function we don't currently understand.

Our physics is perfectly sufficient to explain a possible purpose for the December 1977 material as described by Nolan, Vallee et al., and it is possible that it was engineered for purposes which (while ill-advised and/ or irresponsible) are understandable: To hoax, to have a bit of adolescent fun, or to surreptitiously test some thermite-like mix that parents might disapprove of in their backyard.

Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke can't find a physics explanation for the material they examined in the context of "aerospace forensics", almost certainly because that material did not originate from a flying vehicle of any sort, and did not perform any aerospace (or other highly technological) purpose. Instead of realistically considering other alternatives*, by assuming that the material had an aerospace origin which they can't explain (because it makes no sense) they attempt to add to the mystery by using the line quoted above. -Which wouldn't be too out of place in a science fiction film from the 1950s onwards.

You could go on and on, but good mysteries thrive on a lack of data.

Absolutely- and by not giving adequate consideration to prosaic explanations.
It's almost as if Nolan, Vallee et al. would rather the mystery continue than draw more mundane conclusions based on their own findings...

*The authors do consider alternatives, including a hoax using thermite, but somehow entirely overlook that the structure and composition of their specimen, as they describe it from their investigation, is entirely compatible with appropriately chosen metal waste melted by/ intermixed with a thermite-like mixture. Instead, they raise highly questionable objections: The material was still warm two hours later (it was c. 15.9 - 25kg, 35 to 55 Ibs of molten metal); the authors couldn't find a thermite manufacturer in Council Bluffs (it might have been improvised; there is a sizeable rail marshalling yard in Council Bluffs and thermite is used in rail repair; not everything in 1977 Council Bluffs was made in Council Bluffs).

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

In short where's the evidence that these other incidents even happened? I suspect they reside in folklore, not in reality.

 

[F.Moon]

I just learned that a certain Darrell Livengood has recently claimed he and some friends were responsible for the hoax.
See, for example, Darrell Livengood: Where is the Alleged UFO Witness Now?, by Shivangi Sinha (https://thecinemaholic.com/darrell-livengood/, November 11, 2024):

…another resident, Darrell Livengood, shared a contrasting viewpoint, recalling how he'd returned from college for the holidays and gone out with three friends on December 17, 1977. Two of these worked for Union Pacific, and together, they decided to engage in some playful mischief.

Darrell recounted that his friends had two tools they called "chargers," which were actually similar to thermal welding devices. They decided to ignite them, and the resulting flame shot about 30 feet into the air, forming a smoke cloud that might have resembled a floating disc to onlookers. He added that the upward flame could have appeared to some as if it were moving downward. At the time, when people were collecting residue from the site, he and his friends remained silent, but over the years, he felt compelled to debunk the claims.

Darrell insisted that the residue found at the site was nothing more than phosphorus and powder, supporting his claim that there was no mysterious or otherworldly explanation. Yet, when UFO journalist George Knapp took samples of the material for testing, an explosives chemist reported that the composition didn't match Darrell's account. According to the chemist, the substance couldn't have come from a thermal welding tool, as Darrell suggested. Despite the test results, the latter remains firm in his version of events, convinced that nothing unusual occurred that day and that the incident was simply a misunderstanding rather than a supernatural encounter.

Netflix's Investigation Alien covered that case and Livengood's claims in episode 4 of season 1 (I haven't watched it, but have read the transcript at: https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=2385&t=71597), and possibly in a later episode as well.

 

[yoshy]

Regarding the title question of this post, is the paper useful? I looked the paper up on Google Scholar to see how many citations it has. After 3 years and 3ish months, it has 15 citations, and all but 1 are UAP related. (The other is Social work in space: Expanding policy and practice into the cosmos which I unfortunately couldn't find the full text of; I really want to see how they fit that citation in!)

If the paper had actually useful science in it, you would expect it to be cited by people in fields like materials science. One possible context, and possibly quite lucrative, would of course be military related. Like Russian drones crashing in Ukraine for example. Determining the materials used would be very important! (This is just an example; you probably wouldn't see something that sensitive reported in an open journal anytime soon.)

 

[John J.]

Social work in space: Expanding policy and practice into the cosmos

-Probably accompanied by the most optimistic funding application ever.

 

[MapperGuy]

In short where's the evidence that these other incidents even happened? I suspect they reside in folklore, not in reality.

Reading the description of the incident I can think of questions that should have been asked at the time.

Now is much too late, memories have changed, people have moved or died, life has moved on,

One of the things Skeptics can do, that would help in the long run, is to immediately ask those questions, while the event is still recent. Before time erases the potential for asking them and gathering more information. Sometimes there are elements of a story, like this one, that could have been challenged in the immediate aftermath. Wait a decade or two and your reasonable questions just sound like naysaying.

 

[F.Moon]

I mentioned that Netflix's Investigation Alien covered Council Bluffs case and Livengood's claims in episode 4 of season 1, and possibly in a later episode as well. I must add that it was just the next one (episode 5).
It turns out that the expert to whom George Knapp sent some of Mike Moore's samples for analysis was… Garry Nolan.
His objection to the thermite hypothesis was (https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=2385&t=71598):

But, you know, one of the things that had always bothered me was this notion that this was thermite.
Right.
The most common thermite is actually a mixture of rust and aluminum.
Uh, the rust is the oxide.
It provides the energy for burning the aluminum.
But there were no aluminum oxides in the material.
So that basically completely blows out of the water any idea that this was thermite.
You know, we're still left with a mystery.
We don't know what it is.

I am not an expert in chemistry. Any thoughts on Nolan's argument?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I am not an expert in chemistry. Any thoughts on Nolan's argument?

That's already been addressed in this thread. I'll let someone else talk about the thermite question. I've always found the thermite explanation too contrived.

The stuff was identified at the time as smelter slag.

https://www.savannahnow.com/story/lifestyle/2011/02/09/offutt-mass-molten-metal-leaves/45409349007/

Samples of the metal were taken to nearby Griffin Pipe Products Company and to the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University. The metal turned out to be disappointingly ordinary.

"I recall the examination," Francis Laabs of the Ames Laboratory, said. Laabs did the initial testing and was less than enthused by the results. "We found the debris we received to examine to be consistent with smelter slag, very similar to that from a few operations in eastern Nebraska where they were using auto scrap to make manhole covers, etc."

I've argued that it was a spill from a slag car. A railroad spill. I'm not going to rehash my arguments. Just go to the first page and start reading.

 

[purpleivan]

I mentioned that Netflix's Investigation Alien covered Council Bluffs case and Livengood's claims in episode 4 of season 1, and possibly in a later episode as well. I must add that it was just the next one (episode 5).
It turns out that the expert to whom George Knapp sent some of Mike Moore's samples for analysis was… Garry Nolan.
His objection to the thermite hypothesis was (https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=2385&t=71598):

But, you know, one of the things that had always bothered me was this notion that this was thermite.
Right.
The most common thermite is actually a mixture of rust and aluminum.
Uh, the rust is the oxide.
It provides the energy for burning the aluminum.
But there were no aluminum oxides in the material.
So that basically completely blows out of the water any idea that this was thermite.
You know, we're still left with a mystery.
We don't know what it is.

I am not an expert in chemistry. Any thoughts on Nolan's argument?

Even without knowing chemistry (my knowledge is very limited and er... rusty) the argument by Nolan that if one of the components of the most common form of thermite wasn't present, proves it wasn't thermite, is a false one, as it could have been some other formulation of thermite that was used, e.g. one which used magnesium instead of aluminium.

 

[Eburacum]

One 'railroad spill' hypothesis that I haven't seen mentioned is residue from a rail welding machine. This uses thermite to heat steel to liquid form, which is then poured over the tracks and shaped when cool by grinding machines. If someone accidentally spilled the molten metal onto the side of the railroad a considerable conflagration and a pool of hot metal would result.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttJet5WkTk&t=115s

 

[John J.]

His objection to the thermite hypothesis was

...The most common thermite is actually a mixture of rust and aluminum.
Uh, the rust is the oxide.
It provides the energy for burning the aluminum.
But there were no aluminum oxides in the material.
So that basically completely blows out of the water any idea that this was thermite.
You know, we're still left with a mystery.
We don't know what it is.

I am not an expert in chemistry. Any thoughts on Nolan's argument?

Don't worry, the authors of the 2022 paper weren't experts in chemistry either, and nor am I.
Edited to add: none of the "shouting" below is aimed at you @F.Moon or anyone else here- it's just Nolan, Vallee and co.'s dreadful 2022 paper makes me so angry...

It is clear from the results reported by Nolan, Vallee, Jiang and Lemke (2022) that their spectroscopy set-up returned results for individual elements, not compounds.
See "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, Larry G. Lemke, Progress in Aerospace Sciences Vol. 128, 1 January 2022, PDF attached.

The authors provide results for

...the principal isotope counts for the most abundant elements between mass 20 and mass 60 for samples 1, 3, and 5 (samples 2 and 4 are not presented here due to the low ion counts). These principal elements were Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ti, Fe, and Mn.

Page 10, paragraph 2 as published [i.e. PDF below, the OP here was based on a pre-publication text draft of the same paper].

They had earlier written (page 10, 1st para.)

The measurements for each of the ten depths for each of the grains (subsamples) 1 through 5 were summed and are shown in Fig. 7 as raw values between 20 and 60 mass units.

So, nothing with less than 20 or more than 60 units of atomic mass.
Carbon, and Oxygen, were below their detection threshold.
And they could detect elements- not compounds.
That is why there were no aluminium oxides- indeed, oxides of any sort, 44 years after the event- found in their sample.

Earlier studies (1977-1978) by Coan and Kayser appear to have had lower and higher detection ranges respectively, which must cast some doubt on Nolan, Vallee et al.'s apparent claim (in their paper's title) of their using "improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics"...

From the OP:

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.

A brief summary of Coan's findings are under "4.1", page 8; a table of Kayser's findings, "Table 1", page 9.
Although Nolan, Vallee et al.'s phrasing is ambiguous, they quote Coan's findings:

The slag was a foam material containing metallic iron and aluminum with smaller amounts of magnesium, silicon, and titanium, "probably present as their oxides." The white ash inclusions were "principally calcium with some magnesium, again probably as oxides."

The authors provide pie-charts of their 5 subsamples, Figure 9, page 11:

(The authors have not included manganese, which they detected, in these charts, they do not state why; discussed in OP).
NB the authors believe subsamples 2 and 4, which appear to have significantly less iron, were partially oxidised and not well ionized during analysis.

So, predominantly iron, aluminium, silicon. We do not know if silicon was present in the pre-melt materials or combined from the sand/soil the burning material was on, or possibly both.

Even without knowing chemistry (my knowledge is very limited and er... rusty) the argument by Nolan that if one of the components of the most common form of thermite wasn't present, proves it wasn't thermite, is a false one, as it could have been some other formulation of thermite that was used, e.g. one which used magnesium instead of aluminium.

I think you're right, as far as I understand these things.

All of Nolan, Vallee et al.'s 5 subsamples contain iron, and potential fuels aluminium, silicon and magnesium (if the iron was originally present as iron (III) oxide, remembering the authors could not detect oxygen);

Thermites have diverse compositions. Fuels include aluminum, magnesium, titanium, zinc, silicon... Oxidizers include bismuth(III) oxide, boron(III) oxide, silicon(IV) oxide, chromium(III) oxide, manganese(IV) oxide, iron(III) oxide, iron(II,III) oxide...

Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite (Oops, nearly forgot myself, the samples also included manganese, another potential oxidizer if present initially as manganese (IV) oxide).

Nolan, Vallee et al. don't raise the supposed lack of aluminium oxides as a reason to challenge the thermite hypothesis in their 2022 paper. Instead they found it somehow inexplicable that 15.9 to 25 kg of molten metal was still warm 2 hours later.

The material composition of the samples tested by Nolan, Vallee et al. is entirely consistent with appropriately-chosen swarf/ fine metal scrap melted by an improvised thermite, which might have been sourced from those same materials.
The estimated maximum mass could easily be carried by a fit person on foot, in one 33.75 l (2100 cubic inch) backpack (and perhaps a much smaller one, my estimate was based on the material having 10% the density of iron).

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

One 'railroad spill' hypothesis that I haven't seen mentioned is residue from a rail welding machine. This uses thermite to heat steel to liquid form, which is then poured over the tracks and shaped when cool by grinding machines. If someone accidentally spilled the molten metal onto the side of the railroad a considerable conflagration and a pool of hot metal would result.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttJet5WkTk&t=115s

You've got to account for everything all together.
-where it was found
-how much there was
-what it is
-what it did (throw red hot material 20 to 100 feet into the air)
-witnesses showed up at the scene within minutes
-there was no person injured by a reaction violent enough to throw material in the air that high, there was no work crew

The residue from a rail welding machine scenario is consistent with where it was found but not consistent with how much there was or the most likely explanation of what it is. There was no work crew at the scene when the witnesses arrived.

-The best estimate is 35 to 55 pounds of material.
-The one guy who was the real expert in metallurgy and also the guy without the psychological need to nudge it toward Mystery said it looks like smelter slag. And he also identified a local source of just that type of smelter slag.

Lastly, this case happened in 1977. Did this technique exist then?



I think I've shown that the railroad spill idea is consistent with all factors:

-The material was identified by an actual (and disinterested) local expert as looking like a specific type of locally produced smelter slag.
-It was found on a railroad embankment just feet below the track.
-There was a local source of just this type of smelter slag a few miles up that specific line.
-There is a commonly used method of transporting hot slag - slag cars.
-It was in an amount that could reasonably slop over the side of slag car due to hunting oscillation.
-A spill of hot slag on pooled water or snow would produce a violent steam expansion (not a chemical reaction) which would throw red glowing material in the air.
-There was no person injured by a reaction violent enough to throw material so high in the sky that distant witnesses could see it above trees and ground clutter.


And I think that the story was changed, due to cognitive bias, to safely move it away from the mundane reality of an accidental spill and nudge it toward Mystery.

How the story changed:
-The location where it was found was changed from just feet below the tracks to a "half a football field" from the tracks.
-The amount of material was greatly exaggerated.
-The "molten state" of the material when first found was greatly exaggerated.
-The hardness of the solidified material was exaggerated to the point that it was described as indestructible and mysterious.


The UFOniks have assumed:
-The slag would have to be produced within the city limits
-It was within the boundaries of the park and not on a railroad embankment near the park
-The slag would have to be placed there on purpose
-There's no way they can think of to transport molten slag

So because there was no active smelter in town that could have produced the slag at that time, and they can't think of a way that it could be transported by a hoaxter, they just give up... and expect their audience to give up too I suspect. It's impossible for it to have been smelter slag. This seems very contrived and self-serving, if not manipulative.


More subtle lying?
The UFOniks identify the material as carbon steel rather than as what it really is - slag derived from carbon steel.


They also concentrate on disproving the thermite hoax idea and neglect thinking about how a spill of slag could occur.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Why I think the thermite hoax idea is contrived and doesn't fit.

We should give weight to the opinion of the metallurgist -Francis Laabs of the Ames Laboratory - who described the submitted samples of material as looking like a specific kind of locally produced smelter slag and identified the possible source of just such slag. The rest of us are just laymen making guesses. That includes both us here at Metabunk and the UFOniks Vallee, Nolan and so on.

The thermite hoax idea might explain the material found on the ground, but I wonder about several things...

Could you really do this on the bare ground and melt 35 to 55 pounds of scrap steel with no crucible? That's a lot of heat. It seems to me the ground would absorb heat pretty quickly.

Without containment the result would be pretty uneven. You'd find some fused material here, some pretty untouched there.

A pit with a fire brick lining might work but no such thing was found.

A portable crucible that was used, dumped out, and then packed up before the witnesses showed up? Hot. Maybe on wheels? Expensive.

A steel tub that was itself consumed? That doesn't seem credible.

A demonstration of an uncontained thermite reaction of the sort proposed should be shown.

And the light show/violent reaction.
There was material thrown in the air high enough so that distant witnesses could see it above trees and other ground clutter. What happened to the guy pulling the hoax? No one was injured by the violent reaction? Maybe he just lit the thing and ran? Well, maybe.

The lights the witnesses describe don't seem consistent with a long lasting reaction fizzing away. It sounds like a sudden and singular violent event.

Also
Would a thermite reaction even cause such a violent reaction? Maybe the molten metal hit standing water? But would that be anticipated by a random hoaxter? Or would he just stand there?


Also...
The proposed scenarios explaining why the hoax was perpetrated seem unlikely to me. A lot of work for little reward.

And...
Just the general principle of the thing. I'm wary of a good story.

We tend to gravitate toward an explanation that involves people and a story, over random events. In this case the random event seems more likely to me.

The Boring World Hypothesis: The most boring explanation is the most likely explanation. The most exciting explanation is a flying saucer dumping molten metal. The most entertaining skeptical explanation is a spectacular hoax. The most boring explanation is an accidental spill.

 

[John J.]

-The one guy who was the real expert in metallurgy and also the guy without the psychological need to nudge it toward Mystery said it looks like smelter slag. And he also identified a local source of just that type of smelter slag.

I think that's right, the material resembled /was slag. Though I prefer a deliberate thermite/ scrap burn theory, the composition of the found material could be smelter slag.

What little we do know about the two sets of identified witnesses*, where they were, what they claimed to see, and the lack of any other supposed witnesses ever coming forward, has always suggested a hoax to me, as has the limited amount of material in a relatively discrete area, with very little splatter. (The time and place- early Saturday evening in a fairly compact town, almost a suburb of Omaha and with a population in the tens of thousands also makes me wonder re. lack of other witnesses).

*Prior to Darrell Livengood's more recent claim, shared by @F.Moon in post #53

**Fun bit of trivia: The "incident" happened on Saturday 17 December 1977 at approx. 19:45;

Close Encounters was released in a limited number of cities on November 16 and 23, 1977, and expanded into wide release the following month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Encounters_of_the_Third_Kind

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

If it were a straight out hoax perpetuated by the supposed witnesses, then all of the details could have been made up.

Let's clarify again. Who actually saw the stuff on the ground?

The only person placed at the scene in the contemporary news stories was Jack Moore.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/lifestyle/2011/02/09/offutt-mass-molten-metal-leaves/45409349007/

An anonymous couple told computer programmer-turned UFO investigator Dr. Jacques Vallee they had seen, "a bright red object rocket to the ground near Big Lake." The Drakes told Jack Moore they'd seen, "something red fall out of the sky to the southeast, hit the ground and explode into flames."

Who are the "anonymous couple"?

Were the Drakes ever at the scene of the impact according to contemporary primary sources?

Let's examine the possibility that this was a straight out hoax perpetuated by Jack and Mike Moore.

After all, they have both told the same lie about the material. It's indestructible.

The center of the metal was so hot it looked like "blue flash bulbs," Mike Moore said.

After the metal cooled, the fire department loaded most of it onto a truck and took it to the station.

"When they left I kind of hung around and picked up a few pieces that were left," Mike Moore said. "I still have boxes of it in my shed. I've got torches. All the torch did was heat it up. A grinder won't cut it. You can't even bend them."

Mike Moore's words echoed those of his father from more than 30 years ago.

"I have the pieces in my office," Jack Moore told The Daily Nonpareil in 1977. "You can't break it and you can't bend it. I know it's metal, period. It's got me beat."

This is ridiculous. No one else claims anything of the sort. Kind of blows their credibility about anything.

In that case neither spill nor thermite would be necessary. They could have scattered a few pieces of cold slag on the ground and made everything else up. And kept back a few samples.

Another scenario that I think is more likely. A few people reported seeing something in the sky. What they saw was a bolide. They assumed that it was much closer than it really was. And they thought it hit the ground not far from where they were. Common stuff. But they never saw it actually hit the ground nor did they ever go to the "crash site."

The Moores then went looking around and found some pieces of cold slag on the embankment and embellished the story. The slag could have come from anywhere. It could have fallen off a hopper car. It could have been used as ballast. Whatever. There are smelters all over the area. It must be a common waste material. What I'm saying is that it was waste material that had been there for a long time. The whole bit about the molten stuff running down the embankment and the rest was all applesauce.

Greg Hoskins of Omaha is a long-time UFO enthusiast and visited the site shortly after the incident. He picked up small pieces of metal still on the ground and took them to a laboratory, but their findings were the same – the metal was slag. "I had physical material, but it's not worth anything," Hoskins said. "It was just common. You can get slag from anywhere."

Nothing remarkable.

Mike Moore claims that there was a 1,000 pounds of metal and that the fire department picked it up. Why would they do that? How would they do that? By hand?

This is just another outrageous claim.

From post #1

"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.
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.

From the 1998 Vallee article

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=ff12dbcb7692a1f9c92a78454497b2beda66ac87#:~:text=scattering debris over several acres,ny.

The initial witnesses were Kenny Drake and his wife Carol, and Kenny's 12-
year old nephew Randy James. Two other witnesses, Mike Moore and his wife Criss, reported seeing a hovering red object with lights as they crossed 16th street on their way downtown along Broadway avenue. Criss reported ª a big round thing hovering in the sky below the tree tops. It was hovering. It wasn't moving.º She added that she saw red lights around the perimeter of the object, blinking in sequence. A middle-aged couple who saw the event spoke to the investigators by telephone, stating that they had seen ª a bright red object rocket to the ground near Big Lakeº but refused to be identified. Four teenagers in a small foreign car spoke to the Drakes at the time of the incident but did not make a report.

Vallee does not place the Drakes at the supposed spill site. Is there any primary source that does?

Robert Allen's account is ambiguous.

In short, what primary source backs up the story told by Jack and Mike Moore about the still molten metal running down the embankment? What primary source places anyone else at the site on that night?

 

[Ann K]

@Z.W. Wolf

An anonymous couple told computer programmer-turned UFO investigator Dr. Jacques Vallee they had seen, "a bright red object rocket to the ground near Big Lake." The Drakes told Jack Moore they'd seen, "something red fall out of the sky to the southeast, hit the ground and explode into flames."

Might "fall out of the sky" merely mean "came from some unspecified height above its resting place", i.e. fell from a railroad embankment and ran down a slope? Molten metal / slag might be bright enough that it could attract attention without the railroad car that spilled it showing up in the dark.

 

[John J.]

The only person placed at the scene in the contemporary news stories was Jack Moore. https://www.dispatch.com/story/lifestyle/2011/02/09/offutt-mass-molten-metal-leaves/45409349007/

One of the problems with this "case" is the overlapping claims and accounts, and lack of reliable sources.
I don't think we have any contemporary newspaper reports.

The linked-to Columbus Dispatch article says

Mike Moore, 58, of Council Bluffs was 24 in 1977

-that is, it was written c. 2011, thirty-four years after the event.

Some accounts have 17 year-old Kenny Drake, his 16 year-old wife Carol and 12 year-old nephew Randy James driving north along North 16th Street towards the Richman Gordman store, seeing something falling to the ground, driving to Big Lake Park, finding the burning patch and then returning to the store to 'phone the fire department.

As the molten material formed a large hot mass about four by six feet wide (Fig. 4 and Supplementary Fig. 3 for 4 original Polaroids), igniting the nearby grass, Drake and James drove to a local store and called 911. The call was given to Jack Moore, Assistant fire chief for the Council Bluffs fire department, who responded in his personal fire car.

This would put the Drakes/James "on the scene" first and there is some potentially corroborating detail;

Mr. Robert Allen, who had served in the Air Force and wrote a regular astronomy column for a local paper, investigated the site the next day and confirmed "there was a clear line of sight from the impact point to (their) location."

Nolan, Vallee et al. 2022
IIRC I mentioned in the OP that when Kenny Drake and James drive back to the store, there is no mention of the whereabouts of Carol Drake. There is no account of her meeting police/ firefighters. We might only have Kenny and Randy's word for her presence...

I don't know if it's relevant, because I don't know how common the name is in the US, but the author of the Columbus Dispatch article is "Jason Offutt":

Eppley Airfield and Offutt Air Force Base were contacted but knew nothing about it, denying that any aircraft crash had occurred; "Offutt officials didn't seem terribly interested."

"Close Encounter" at Big Lake Park, Historical and Preservation Society of Pottawattamie County (undated),
https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/h/ufo.html
-Just one of those coincidences maybe.

Let's examine the possibility that this was a straight out hoax perpetuated by Jack and Mike Moore.

After all, they have both told the same lie about the material. It's indestructible.

It's clearly a ridiculous claim, particularly when pieces are going off for analysis. It sort of echoes some of the claims made for the balloon material recovered at Corona (Roswell), New Mexico in 1947.

An omission made in the Nolan. Vallee et al. 2022 paper is a lack of any systematic investigation into the mechanical (and electromagnetic, and thermal) properties of their sample.
"Improved instrumental techniques... ...with potential relevance to aerospace forensics" my foot.
2270 years post-Archimedes, they don't even tell us the density of their sample.
But they didn't report any problems in taking the subsamples, using a drill.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Vallee cites a newspaper article in his 1998 article, so I bit the bullet and got a subscription to Newspaper.com

(The yellow hi-lites are just the search words I used)

Mystery Flaming Object "Definitely Not Meteorite"

Council Bluffs.

The flaming object that reportedly struck the earth just north of Council Bluffs Saturday night "definitely was not a meteorite," Bluffs amateur astronomer Robert Allen said Monday.

Allen said he is sending a sample of the object to the Iowa State University metallurgical laboratory for analysis.

Allen theorized the object which landed in a molten form and spread to an area about four feet in diameter and three inches thick, may have been "a piece of space junk" that re-entered the atmosphere.

"There are plenty of missile casings and parts of satellites floating around out there," Allen said.

The possibility of a hoax was all but ruled out by Allen, who said there would be great difficulty in heating the substance to its molten state.

Two witnesses told authorities they saw the object land in an area about a half-mile east of N. 16th Street near Big Lake Park about 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

"Meteorites do not hit the earth in a molten state," Allen said.

Assistant Fire Chief Jack Moore said the object remained too hot to handle for about an hour after firemen arrived.

Moore said the material was very hard, noting that when he attempted to polish a fragment with a grinder wheel, the wheel wore away rapidly.

Allen said he anticipated a report back from the laboratory sometime after Christmas.

I consider Robert Allen a credible witness. Sadly we don't have a description of the crash site from him.

Allen theorized the object which landed in a molten form and spread to an area about four feet in diameter and three inches thick, may have been "a piece of space junk" that re-entered the atmosphere.

The unwary might think that description in bold letters came from Allen, but I doubt it as it is not in quotations. Where the author got that description is unknown. I suspect it came from Jack Moore.

Two witnesses told authorities they saw the object land in an area about a half-mile east of N. 16th Street near Big Lake Park about 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Two things to note here.

They saw it land near Big Lake Park, not in Big Lake Park.
No claim that they were ever at the crash site.

 

[John J.]

Might "fall out of the sky" merely mean "came from some unspecified height above its resting place", i.e. fell from a railroad embankment and ran down a slope? Molten metal / slag might be bright enough that it could attract attention without the railroad car that spilled it showing up in the dark.

It might, but what we have in the way of claimed witness accounts doesn't really support that interpretation:

The first report came at 7:45 p.m. from 17-year-old Kenny Drake and his nephew, 12-year-old Randy James, who were driving on North 16th street. Kenny's wife Carol, 16 years old, was also in the car. All three saw a "reddish ball" at an estimated altitude of 500–600 feet. It fell "straight down" and impacted within Big Lake Park

Nolan, Vallee et al., 2022, pg. 5.

Even allowing for poor estimates or a "wow" factor, it would be hard for a local to confuse a spill of molten metal from a railroad car* on a modest embankment which is perhaps part of his everyday scenery, with something falling 100 feet, let alone 500.
If, as most accounts seem to state, this event happened near Gibson's Pond, that is, the burning material were flowing towards Gibson's Pond, the hypothetical spill would be on the far side of the wagon, from the Drakes.

I feel that if strange burning material were found in the railyard, people would say it was in the railyard. Not at a pond in the nearby recreation park.
If the burn actually occurred within the railyard, it's harder to understand (1) why there weren't a number of immediate witnesses- it's only 19:45, on a Saturday night; (2) even if there weren't immediate witnesses- which seems very odd indeed if it can get the attraction of a teenage driver heading north c. 300 metres away- wouldn't it be fairly obvious what had happened?
This isn't some hick town in the middle of nowhere.
Isn't the local fire department conversant with potentially dangerous loads travelling through their town?

Of course, there's a possibility that Kenny and Randy might not be giving an exactly accurate account of events, even as they understand them.

A few minutes later, when Kenny Drake was making the 911 phone call, authorities were also contacted by a middle- aged couple who were travelling north on 16th street. They reported seeing a bright red mass "rocket to the ground near Big Lake".

We don't know how "the authorities" ascertained it was a couple (e.g. whether both were spoken to) or what their ages were. They refused to give names and never came forward. Presumably they would have to have used a public payphone.
At about the time that we know 17 year-old Kenny, accompanied by his 12 year-old nephew, was using a public phone.

Below: Railroad embankment at left, Gibson's Pond at right, looking approximately northward.
Any spill from the railroad would have to travel some distance to reach the levy, and would presumably require the road to be at least cleared. But even Nolan, Vallee et al.'s estimates of the burnt area make it about the size of a duvet cover.

*Accidents happen- but wouldn't a railcar travelling pretty much through the centre of a town and then through a recreation area, sloshing molten metal about, be newsworthy? You have these things open-topped for some reason?

 

[John J.]

They saw it land near Big Lake Park, not in Big Lake Park

And

...just north of Council Bluffs... ...about a half-mile east of N. 16th Street

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

It might, but what we have in the way of claimed witness accounts doesn't really support that interpretation:

The first report came at 7:45 p.m. from 17-year-old Kenny Drake and his nephew, 12-year-old Randy James, who were driving on North 16th street. Kenny's wife Carol, 16 years old, was also in the car. All three saw a "reddish ball" at an estimated altitude of 500–600 feet. It fell "straight down" and impacted within Big Lake Park

Nolan, Vallee et al., 2022, pg. 5.

Even allowing for poor estimates or a "wow" factor, it would be hard for a local to confuse a spill of molten metal from a railroad car* on a modest embankment which is perhaps part of his everyday scenery, with something falling 100 feet, let alone 500.
If, as most accounts seem to state, this event happened near Gibson's Pond, that is, the burning material were flowing towards Gibson's Pond, the hypothetical spill would be on the far side of the wagon, from the Drakes.

I feel that if strange burning material were found in the railyard, people would say it was in the railyard. Not at a pond in the nearby recreation park.
If the burn actually occurred within the railyard, it's harder to understand (1) why there weren't a number of immediate witnesses- it's only 19:45, on a Saturday night; (2) even if there weren't immediate witnesses- which seems very odd indeed if it can get the attraction of a teenage driver heading north c. 300 metres away- wouldn't it be fairly obvious what had happened?
This isn't some hick town in the middle of nowhere.
Isn't the local fire department conversant with potentially dangerous loads travelling through their town?

Of course, there's a possibility that Kenny and Randy might not be giving an exactly accurate account of events, even as they understand them.

A few minutes later, when Kenny Drake was making the 911 phone call, authorities were also contacted by a middle- aged couple who were travelling north on 16th street. They reported seeing a bright red mass "rocket to the ground near Big Lake".

We don't know how "the authorities" ascertained it was a couple (e.g. whether both were spoken to) or what their ages were. They refused to give names and never came forward. Presumably they would have to have used a public payphone.
At about the time that we know 17 year-old Kenny, accompanied by his 12 year-old nephew, was using a public phone.


View attachment 82679


Below: Railroad embankment at left, Gibson's Pond at right, looking approximately northward.
Any spill from the railroad would have to travel some distance to reach the levy, and would presumably require the road to be at least cleared. But even Nolan, Vallee et al.'s estimates of the burnt area make it about the size of a duvet cover.

View attachment 82680


*Accidents happen- but wouldn't a railcar travelling pretty much through the centre of a town and then through a recreation area, sloshing molten metal about, be newsworthy? You have these things open-topped for some reason?

You should review what I said. This is the wrong embankment, the light show was caused by a violent steam expansion when hot slag hit standing water, etc. Look a my posts on page one. Kind of frustrating to get strawman arguments.

 

[Eburacum]

Lastly, this case happened in 1977. Did this technique exist then?

Thermite rail welding has been available for over a hundred years. It was commonplace on tramcar railroads, and was in use on other railroads by the 1970s. Perhaps this was a variant of the process that used a lot of thermite, which could produce a spectacular vertical 'fountain' if spilled. Any observer might see the 'fountain' out of the corner of their eye, then see the hot material falling back down to earth and misidentify it as something falling out of the sky.

I have seen hot metal rail-borne container wagons in use, in Sheffield back in the 1970s; these wagons were large enough to carry several tons, and a spill would have been much more spectacular and produced many tons of white hot metal. Perhaps it was just a minor splash rather than a spill.

But these hot metal cars generally remained within the confines of the steel mills and rarely went on the main line.

 

[Gary C]

Q: the various estimates about the timing of events vs the temperature of the material encountered have me wondering if we have enough data to estimate how long it would take an initially molten mass of predominantly iron to cool to roughly ambient temperature.
If we could in fact produce a reasonable estimate on the time needed for the sample to cool we might be able to accept/reject some of the contradictory estimates or assumptions in the versions of the event under discussion.

I've found a calculator that might allow us to make such an estimate but I'm uncertain which parameters should be considered.
Omni Calculator - Newton's Law of Cooling
1. Do we know the maximum thickness of the solidified material?
2. Do we know the approximate diameter of the largest intact mass?

 

[John J.]

You should review what I said. This is the wrong embankment

You have theorised that the "event" happened away from Gilbert's Pond, and Jacques Vallee gave an address for the event that supports this.

From the 1998 Vallee report:

[The object hit the ground in the vicinity of ª Gilbert's Pondº in Big Lake Park, across the Missouri from Eppley airport. The exact street address is 1900 N. Eighth street. It fell at a point 16 feet from the paved road and 6 feet from the top of the levee, burning an area 4feet wide by 9 feet long. There was a secondary burn area 27 feet away on theside of the dike, measuring about 2 by 4 feet./EX]

It's a decent theory, and might be correct given the vague and sometimes contradictory location information.

-Location of 1900 North Eighth Street, posted by @Z.W.Wolf:

Annoyingly, Vallee also provides a map in the same 1998 paper that contradicts the address information.

"Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples", Jacques Vallee, 1998 Journal of Scientific Exploration 12, 3., PDF attached below.
(The Nolan, Vallee et al. 2022 paper manages to have a map where everything they indicate contradicts the information in the text of that paper).

Nolan, Vallee et al. (2022) write

The first report came at 7:45 p.m. from 17-year-old Kenny Drake and his nephew, 12-year-old Randy James, who were driving on North 16th street. Kenny's wife Carol, 16 years old, was also in the car. All three saw a "reddish ball" at an estimated altitude of 500–600 feet. It fell "straight down" and impacted within Big Lake Park

(Pg. 5 second column para. 2).
-although the value of the paper is questionable (which is the contention of the OP).

There are references to a levee and/ or a dyke in some of the Council Bluffs 1977 accounts/ retellings.

...the police, who had intercepted the call, dispatched a cruiser car to the scene, driven by Assistant chief Moore. He requested an officer from the Identification section to join him with a camera to photograph the material that was "running, boiling down the edges of the levee..."

Nolan, Vallee et al. again; in one of their errors they claim the attending policeman is Assistant chief Moore (like the firefighter), however officer Dennis Murphy attended.

At 7:45 p.m. Saturday evening three young people on their way to the Richman Gordman store on North 16 Street noticed a reddish object about 500-600 feet in the air falling straight down. It disappeared behind the trees of Big Lake Park followed by a flash of bluish-white light and two "arms of fire" shooting over ten feet in the air suggesting an impact. The three drove to the park and got out to investigate, arriving to see a glowing orange blob with a bluish crystalline substance in its center on a dike about sixteen feet from the road. One of them noted it "looked like a great big sparkler." Lava-like material was running down the dike appearing to slow as it cooled.

"Close Encounter at Big Lake", The Historical Society of Pottawattamie County website, Richard Warner (undated), https://sites.google.com/thehistoricalsociety.org/ufo/ufo

Other than the almost useless 1977 polaroid photo of the scene included in Nolan Vallee et al. 2022, this is the only photo I've seen that claims to be of the approximate location of the 1977 burn (albeit probably taken many years later).
The author of the article, Richard Warner of the Historical Society of Pottawattamie County, might be familiar with the Council Bluffs area, its landmarks and stories. (And he could be mistaken).

Council Bluffs Levee Program, Matt Cox (Director of Public Works / City Engineer), date not known but dates for planned and completed works on the map indicate c. 2022-2023; (link).

The levee system would appear to be important to Council Bluffs, and there have been several floods.

I now think it is unlikely that a Council Bluffs assistant fire chief would refer to a levee, or something being near a levee, that wasn't this levee. (I'm guessing the local firefighters are major first responders during floods and have an increased awareness of flood risks and existing flood defences).

The levee passes west to east immediately to the north of Gilbert's Pond, ending just over 100m to the east of the pond.
It is (I think) traceable on Google Maps.

The nearest levee to 1900 N. Eighth St., in a town where levees are important, is adjacent to the north shore of Gilbert's pond or maybe running parallel with the banks of the Missouri in the west.

 

[F.Moon]

Regarding the location of the recovered material, Netflix's Investigation Alien (S1 E4) features an interview with Mike Moore at the site where it was found, at least according to his current account. I wasn't able to identify the exact location on my first attempt. There are some distinctive clues, but I couldn't find matching views on Street View, which uses imagery that's about three years older than the documentary. Also, it's unclear to me which road Moore is driving on when he explains how his sighting began.
In case you don't have access to the documentary and want to take a look yourself, you can download two short video clips (about 1.5 minutes each) from this temporary link, valid for three days: https://we.tl/t-CAieHawOyJ . I hope this doesn't violate any policies from Metabunk or cause any issues. The relevant video is the one featuring Mike Moore (366 MB). The other clip (302 MB) shows an interview with Darrell Livengood, recorded in the same area but at a different location. The image quality isn't ideal, as it's not a direct recording.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I haven't nailed it down to the foot yet. But they're just about here.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/1900+N+8th+St,+Council+Bluffs,+IA+51503/@41.2882202,-95.8639143,3a,33.9y,209.13h,90.51t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sYq_zKslVyC5vQa8RLWcjPw!2e0!6shttps://streetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com/v1/thumbnail?cb_client=maps_sv.tactile&w=900&h=600&pitch=-0.511654764637484&panoid=Yq_zKslVyC5vQa8RLWcjPw&yaw=209.13123440605835!7i16384!8i8192!4m5!3m4!1s0x87938526efad8ea3:0xfdc1a6efd88b20e2!8m2!3d41.2789175!4d-95.8604629?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDcyOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==

The truck is parked next to that gate. They're walking down toward the tracks.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

My first estimate is that they are standing somewhere within this circle.

Half a football field away from the tracks, my ass. Maybe it was supposed to be half a foosball field.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Some more screenshots

This seems to be a drone shot

The power line and the pole with the microwave antennas are key landmarks.

Vallee's info is completely unreliable. He gave the address as 1900 N 8th St, which is on the other side of the park.

His map was also wrong.

Assuming Mike Moore went to the right place, of course.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

A wider view.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

After watching Moore on the video, the impression I'm getting is someone of modest intellect. I don't think he pulled a hoax. I can't speak for Jack Moore. But I have to take into account the fact that he told that whopper about the slag being indestructible. So maybe he liked to spin a yarn or two. Pull a leg. It's an American tradition.

The story is that they saw a grass fire and another burned spot some feet away. The contemporary news stories don't say anything about who put out the fire. Mike Moore talks about the fire dept. showing up at the scene. Which makes sense.

So - in line with the Boring World Hypothesis - I'm going to go with the simplest, least entertaining scenario I can think of.

Someone dumped about 40 pounds of cold smelter slag down the slope off the end of a pickup truck just to get rid of it. Like you'd dump a refrigerator or box springs. There it lay for who knows how long. One night there's an ordinary grass fire, maybe set off by a passing locomotive spitting out more sparks than it should because of a bad turbocharger seal. It happens all the time. Or someone threw a butt out the window. Doesn't matter. A good sized clump of bushes or a tree flares up and sends sparks and embers upwards. The column of hot air collapses and the embers fall back down. A few people see the sparks rotating in a vortex and the embers falling back down. They are nonplussed.

Jack and Mike Moore show up at the grass fire site. Together or one at a time. The slag is sitting there in the grass fire. They make a cause and effect mistake. The hot slag didn't set the fire, the fire made the cold slag hot. Not all that hot, but it would be uncomfortable to a bare hand. It wasn't running down the embankment. It was dark and they were looking at the stuff with flashlights and some imagination. A fire chief who shows up in an official fire dept. car is going to have a flashlight or two. Quite probably a U-C Lite Big Beam. Or maybe a spotlight on the car. Doesn't matter. Mike's blue flashes like flash bulbs going off were specular reflections of a flashlight when the beam hit an angle on the shiny metallic slag just right. Like sparkles on wavelets.

In the dark with a bright light casting dark shadows and waving about, it would be easy to imagine movement.

Mike talks about the fire dept. carting away most of the slag, but I think that's an honest mistake. That night, in the dark, and with some excited imagination he honestly thought there was 1,000 pounds of the stuff. Later, in the cold light of day, there's a few pounds lying there. He assumes the rest got taken away. And who would take it away? The only reasonable answer is the fire dept. So it became a reportable fact.

That's my story and it's mundane enough to be likely.





I had to show a Big Beam...