Dear Friends,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdGHMz_nqis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNuSy5dU1Bk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z65ehxj6Ixg&feature=related
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xee8ut_morphing-ufo-s-at-sunset-08-08-2010_news
Be Well.
David
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
August 10 - UFO/ORBS
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Aug. 8 - ROSWELL, BATTELLE & MEMORY METAL
Dear Friends,
Click/paste the link to read the whole article.
http://ufocon.blogspot.com/2010/08/roswell-battelle-memory-metal-new.html
Be Well.
David
Sunday, August 08, 2010
ROSWELL, BATTELLE & MEMORY METAL: The New Revelations by Anthony Bragalia
Copyright 2010, InterAmerica, Inc. [Permission needed to reproduce this material verbatim. Fair Use excerpts allowed, of course, but link to piece is preferred.]
Recent discoveries confirm the connection between the esteemed Battelle Memorial Institute and the study of extraterrestrial material. This new information helps to substantiate the astonishing truth: In the late 1940s Battelle was contracted by Wright Patterson Air Force Base to study "memory metal" like the debris that was found at the site of a crashed UFO at Roswell, NM. This was first detailed in a widely-read series of articles appearing last year [in this blog, which you can find in the archives here]:
Roswell Debris Confirmed as ET: Lab Located, Scientists Named Roswell Metal Scientist: The Curious Dr. Cross
The Final Secrets of Roswell's Memory Metal Revealed
Scientist Admits to Study of Roswell Debris
Some of this information was also related as a concluding chapter in the revised edition of " Witness to Roswell" by authors Tom Carey and Don Schmitt released in 2009.
It is a remarkable but complex story that continues to unfold. In the intervening year, work by a team of individuals has continued to pursue additional leads on the Roswell-Battelle connection. The results are revealed here for the first time. Critics of the Roswell-Battelle premise will be answered and their concerns about previously-published information will be addressed.
New findings that help to corroborate the Battelle analysis of ET debris are provided in telling interviews with those who directly knew the involved Battelle scientists. Additional clues are uncovered by a careful examination of the two previously "missing" Battelle Progress Reports from the late 1940s on novel metal systems that were finally uncovered through FOIA. Other findings are made by an investigation of Battelle's Executive Director at the time of the Roswell crash and on Battelle's continuing work on memory metal.
A MEMORY METAL REDUX
The intense interest in this aspect of the crash incident is because it speaks to Roswell's "Holy Grail"- physical evidence. If the crash occurred, the debris had to have been studied. It is likely that the "materials of construction" (i.e. the metal-like debris) would have been more easily studied than an entire craft or system. Though we may not now be able to fully comprehend their transport systems, we may be able to more easily understand - and try to replicate - the materials that comprise them.
Some of the Roswell crash material was reported by several credible witnesses to have had the ability to "morph" or change back to its original shape (shape recovery). This "intelligent metal" material is today known as Shape Memory Alloy. The best example of this is a material is comprised of Titanium and Nickel and is called "Nitinol." The concept of engineered shape recovery is a thoroughly "post-Roswell" concept. All major work in creating products with "material memory" was performed post-Roswell. And all of this work was initially directed by the US Government. Shape Memory Alloy is distinctly "Roswellian" and mimics in many respects some of the debris at Roswell.
And consider this: On the face of it, why would elderly witnesses ever even mention such a bizarre thing as "memory metal" in the first place? How many of these rural New Mexicans would have ever heard of "Nitinol" back when the crash happened - or even in later years - when they recounted their stories? What would give these independent witnesses - who were separated by distance and time- the idea to all simultaneously tell the bizarre story of having seen "morphing metal" debris at Roswell? The very fact that they describe shape-memory metal - without having likely ever been aware that such a thing as Nitinol - is in itself very telling.
In summary form, the story about Battelle, Nitinol and Roswell is this:
* In the months immediately following the Roswell crash, the Air Force contracted Battelle Memorial Institute to perform first-ever work on novel Titanium alloys. This included work on development of Titanium and Nickel alloy- the basis for "memory metal" today, and similar to some of the debris reported at Roswell.
* Four Wright-Patterson sponsored technical studies on "memory metal" in later decades cited a 1949 Battelle report on Nickel and Titanium (NiTi) alloy. Nickel and Titanium are used to create "Nitinol" - the premiere "memory metal" on the planet. The fact that the 1949 report was referenced in shape-recovery alloy research years later shows that somehow the Battelle report had a direct application and association to the memory metal subject. An earlier 1948 report was also uncovered that dealt with similar materials issues.
* The Battelle study was conducted under secret contract and was directed by Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Wright Patterson is the very base to which the Roswell debris was reportedly flown.
* The Battelle study was co-authored by a Battelle scientist who later confessed that he had personally analyzed ET debris from a fallen UFO while at the Institute. That he was a co-author of the Battelle 1949 study was discovered many years after the scientist's confession, when the Battelle reports were obtained under FOIA.
* Wright Patterson General Arthur Exon confirmed that he understood that some of the Roswell debris included an alloy comprised of "specially processed Titanium" and another metal. Exon said that a battery of tests was performed and that the reports on this are "still around." This mirrors the Battelle work. Another USAF General, George Schulgen, wrote a secret draft memo four months after the Roswell crash on UFOs - including a section on their "Items of Construction." Schulgen mentions "composite construction" using a "combination of metals" using "unusual fabrication methods." Schulgen is speaking of what we today call "intermetallics" - and Nitinol is a perfect example of intermetallics.
* The Battelle scientist who worked on this late 1940's report (who later had confessed that he had analyzed ET debris) was supervised by one Dr. Howard Cross. Dr. Cross (a metallurgist and Titanium expert who worked closely with the Navy where Nitinol was "officially" discovered) was also a secret UFO researcher for the Air Force's Project Blue Book and a secret UFO document called the "Pentacle Memo." He was also called upon to investigate other cases of unknown fallen debris and had unusual access to the heads of the CIA, the Air Force and the predecessor organization to NASA.
* Nitinol's "official" history is false. The year of its discovery is unclear; different reasons were offered as to why it was developed; and there are different explanations given for the circumstances surrounding its discovery at the US Naval Lab. The official "co-inventor" of Nitinol was interviewed by this author and was cagey about several matters related to the development of the material. This co-inventor was found to have been involved in bizarre "Mind over Matter" tests in which a key Naval scientist had recruited psychic Uri Geller to try to get Geller to "bend the metal with his mind." The elderly Nitinol scientist was silent when I mentioned the Roswell -impetus for his work and said "I have no comment on that. I am not going to discuss it." He may not have direct knowledge, but he must surely have wondered. He agreed that he was given a Battelle 1949 report with a phase diagram for use in the study of Nitinol, but would not disclose who in military or intelligence gave it to him. It has recently been learned that through theoretical physicist Dr. Jack Sarfatti that Eldon Byrd, the scientist who did the Nitinol Mind-over-Matter experiments with the co-inventor of Nitinol, "got into trouble and nearly got his ass handed to him on a platter by the administration of the Naval Surface Warfare Center for publicizing the laboratory connection with the experiments." Sarfatti made this incredible statement in an e-mail to researcher Bruce Maccabbee found archived on the Net dated March 15, 2006.
* Battelle seemed to control the fate of Nitinol after its "discovery" at the US Naval Labs. NASA -working with Battelle - also has been shown to have immediately taken over direction of further "characterization" studies of the material (a fact that Wang's Nitinol co-inventor, William Buehler, complained about in an oral history.) Uri Geller himself told me that NASA personnel were also present at the laboratory when the Navy was testing him on Nitinol mind-bending.
NEW REVELATIONS ABOUT AN INVOLVED BATTELLE SCIENTIST
Battelle scientist Elroy John Center was a preeminent materials scientist and engineer. His contributions to the field are now known to have been major. His work is distinguished by over twenty years of discovery in materials and alloys, including breakthough work in developing analysis techniques. But Center is also distinguished for two other things:
Elroy Center confessed to having analyzed material from another world while at Battelle. Then incredibly, decades later, he was learned to have co-authored the very Battelle Progress Reports found through FOIA that were suspected to relate to the Roswell crash!
As a Chemical Engineer and Research Chemist, Center knew that (as General Exon said) the material had "special processing." It was engineered metal that was not from Earth. Center's focus was on developing new techniques for the micro-analysis of novel Titanium alloys which could be the basis for "memory metal." He contributed to an extended phase diagram of Nickel-Titanium. Center's story is told more completely in "Scientist Admits to Study of Roswell Debris" [in the archive files here].
Several new things have recently been learned about Elroy Center, and they are told here publicly for the first time:
As reported previously, Dr. Irena Scott (formerly of Battelle) had been told by a friend of Center's in 1991 that he had decades earlier been related the story of UFO debris analysis by Center. We can now reveal that this friend has been identified, located and interviewed. The name of the individual who told Dr. Scott the Center story is "Nick" Nickerson. Incredibly we find that Nickerson was himself a Battelle scientist for nearly twenty years, specializing in physics and electronics practice areas. He held Top Secret Clearance, holds several U.S. Patents for novel laser and other designs, and has achieved high recognition for his technical achievements. Though Nickerson was a very young man when Center told him that he had been tasked to undertake the debris analysis - Nickerson's credibility cannot be questioned. He was himself later employed by the same organization that Elroy Center was - and was himself highly awarded. He speaks calmly and with no embellishment. He has nothing to gain from this whatsoever. In fact, Nickerson was sought out by me. He did not "come forward." Understandably, his friend Dr. Irena Scott did not wish to reveal his name to me. Herculean efforts were used to deduce just who the man was who had talked to Elroy Center those decades ago.
Additionally, Nickerson (who had become interested in UFO study in part due to his talk with Center) later associated himself as an investigator with the civilian research group NICAP. Nickerson exposed the famous Zanesville, Ohio "Barber's Photo" UFO hoax, obtaining a confession from the barber that he had faked the pictures. Nickerson detests falsehood and worked to expose such in the world of UFOs. He is telling the truth about Center. When interviewed by this author, he added much additional information:
* Nickerson confirmed the details of what he had told Dr. Irena Scott nearly two decades ago: Center had directly and privately told him that he had analyzed a strange metal piece that he did not believe to be earthly and that he understood was from a downed UFO. Center did mention hieroglyphic-like markings.
* Dr. Irena Scott, formerly of Battelle,who first related the Center story (and with whom I have talked) also believes that Nickerson is telling the truth.
* A current and decades-long Battelle executive, William Jones, the Senior Contracting Officer for Federal Projects at the Institute, was told the same story by Nickerson many years ago. Jones also believes that Nickerson is telling the truth.
* Nickerson was a very curious young man who had interest in cosmic science. He had engaged Center (who had by then already left Battelle) in a talk outside the house that led to a discussion of the possibiity of the extraterrestrial. This is when Center cryptically related the details of his encounter with ET debris at Battelle. It is probable that Center - in a weak moment- privately told a young man the ET story because he knew that Nickerson would never be believed if ever he repeated it because of his youth. Center also probably believed that the young Nickerson would never jeopardize Center as he was his daughter's close friend. He was sure that Nickerson would keep the story related private. And Nickerson did in fact keep it private until the year after Center died.
* Center said that the material was kept is a secure safe with limited access
* Center seemed lucid and truthful, but was cryptic and brief. Nickerson had no reason to disbelieve him.
* Nickerson (himself a former Battelle "insider") believes that it is most likely that Battelle was engaged in such ET debris analysis. He knows the Insitute had a deep relationship with the US Government. It had the proximity to Wright and it had the talent, equipment and resources needed to study the Roswell debris.
* He says that there were other indications of Battelle having been contracted to study UFOs- even into the 1970s. He maintains that a Battelle superior told him that the CIA was still, at that time. involved in secret UFO studies - as was the Institute.
* One elderly Battelle Project Manager, who worked on Blue Book who was still at the Institute when Nickerson was employed there, refused to discuss his work on Project Blue Book, even though it was many years later and Nickerson had security clearances.
A SCIENTIST'S DAUGHTER IN WONDER
I have also communicated directly with family of Elroy John Center. Out of respect for privacy I will say that Center's daughter is highly-regarded within a major religious organization and I am loath to question her veracity. She did not come forward, but she was sought out and approached. What she says is stunning and helps to confirm the truth:
* Her father John ("Elroy" was rarely used in the home) did indeed have a very strong interest in UFOs and in things ET.
* Center's interest was so strong that he apparently went out on UFO hunts and even took a black and white photo of a UFO.
* The photo her father took appeared to be like a strange "domed disk" and was snapped by Center over a dam on the Scoto River in Ohio.
* Center had studied Battelle's UFO work on Project Blue Book at the time it was being conducted (although Battelle had not yet been publicly named at time as a contributor to the Project.) Center's daughter said that the Battelle UFO reports - or copies - were brought to her home and that her father had reviewed them. She strengthens the idea that (like Battelle's Dr. Howard Cross, Center's boss) select metallurgical scientists were simultaneously involved in UFO study at the Institute.
* Center was visited often at their home by an FBI agent whom she recalls was named "Jack." The subject of their deep discussions: UFOs.
* She was not aware of her father's private communication with her friend Nickerson until many years later. She is disappointed that her father had never told her the same story and wonders why - but does not discount that Nickerson is genuinely relating what he was told by her father.
* She does however recall overhearing one evening what might have provided the explanation as to why she herself was not told. Her father was overheard to say to her mother, while discussing UFO studies: "Whatever you do, don't tell her. She is too curious and excitable."
* After his time at Battelle, Center continued in an emotional and physical "downward spiral" and became a shell of what he once had been.
* Center's daughter, a highly-educated woman herself. holds out the distinct possibility that we are not alone in the Universe and does not find the Battelle scenario improbable, though she still expresses wonder at how it all could be.
MORE ON THE CURIOUS DR. CROSS - BATTELLE'S UFO METAL MAN
Elroy Center reported to Dr. Lynn Eastwood, who in turn reported to one Dr. Howard Clinton Cross. The HC Cross story is told more fully here: Roswell Metal Scientist: The Curious Dr. Cross [in the archive files here].
Cross was a research expert at Battelle and employed there just a few years after the Institute's inception until the mid-1960s. He was a recognized expert in novel alloy development, had a special interest in advanced Titanium alloys and worked closely with the Office of Naval Research (where Nitinol was developed).
But Cross was no "mere metallurgist." In his strange "dual life" he was also secretly engaged by the US Government to conduct UFO studies for Project Blue Book and other studies. He even offered suggestions to the USAF Air Materiel Command on how to deal with the phenomena in his famous "Pentacle Memo." Cross had close working relationships with the CIA's Marshall Chadwell and Fred Durant, NACA/NASA and Wright Patterson's Chief of Analysis on UFO matters. Cross was once called upon to give his expert opinion on a fallen piece of debris from an unknown object at the request of a US Naval Commander. All the while he was working with people like Elroy Center on alloy development at Battelle.
Cross was also insistent on secrecy and privacy. He did not favor Battelle's name being mentioned in the Blue Book report, developing a code-word for it. He even physically snatched his "Pentacle Memo" on UFOs out of the hands of stunned USAF Investigator, Dr. J. Allen Hynek. (Apparently Cross was also a very intimidating man.)
This author interviewed someone who would confirm that fact, someone who actually knew Howard Cross while she was employed at Battelle herself: Ms. Jennie Ziedman. Ziedman was also for some years the personal assistant to Dr. J. Allen Hynek - the Air Force's UFO expert. She was also a CUFOs Board Member. Jennie - a delightful and highly knowledgeable woman - herself provided support to Project Blue Book in the 1950s. She knew many of the involved scientists.
Jennie characterized Dr. Cross to me as "frightful." People were actually afraid of him and many got nervous in the presence of Dr. Cross. Cross was known to be physically imposing and this would even show expansively in his actions. He would often bang tables, instilling fear in those around him. This parallels the way that Cross was reported to have physically accosted Dr. Hynek in lunging and grabbing back from him the Pentacle Memo on UFOs that Cross had authored to Wright Patterson. Dr. Cross gave meaning to the term "mad scientist."
And Cross was not someone of whom you would "ask too many questions" because of his authoritative firmness. Cross was brilliant and respected - but alarming and not well-liked. Such a tough and ruthless man would be an ideal asset to the US military and intelligence in pursuit of insight into the crashed craft materials at Roswell. Cross could be assured to control and brow-beat those who worked on the project, keeping everything in line. You did not get a "warm and fuzzy" feeling from HC Cross. He was a man not to get too close to - a man who could be entrusted with many secrets.
Phil Klass, the infamous and now deceased UFO arch-skeptic, was aware of Jennie Zeidman's work at Battelle. Incredibly, even he theorized that Battelle would have been an extremely likely place to which such crash debris would be taken. He commented on it in the 1990s in his SUN newsletter: "If Battelle scientists did analyze the Roswell debris, their reports might still be classified "Top Secret" and Zeidman could not be told due to lack of the required security clearances." Klass perceptively continued, "SUN suggests that the General Accounting Office (GAO) which is investigating the Roswell crashed saucer claims pursue Battelle." The GAO never did.
Zeidman, who was at Battelle in the early 1950s, believes that it is possible that certain individuals were involved in ET analysis at Battelle. She stated: "During the 1940s and 1950s Battelle was surely one of the premier metallurgy research facilities in the world. Battelle was well established as a trusted and respected facility for Top Secret work including the Manhattan Project. Its staff included top metallurgists, welding technology experts, physical chemists and fuel application specialists. The supposition that Battelle analyzed Roswell UFO artifacts is a simple and obvious theory. William of Occam would have approved." Many years later Jennie conducted interviews with some elderly Battelle scientists from the time period. She said that to her surprise, though, none would admit to such ET analysis and seemed sincere. But Klass himself answers this with his comment that some were not told "due to lack of required security clearances." And perhaps Jeannie did not consider the obvious: maybe the scientists she talked to simply lied to her.
It is likely that only a very few at Battelle were engaged in such ET debris work. The "core group" (which included HC Cross) may have had it confirmed to them by Wright that the material was from a UFO crash. Others may have been told it was of Soviet origin - and only suspected its off-earth origin. Still others may never have had any actual exposure to the material, but only "picked up" on the work of those that did. They executed work (in areas like memory metal) even though they did not even realize the real impetus for their research.
CLUES FROM BATELLE'S PROGRESS REPORTS
The Battelle reports (Progress Reports I and II) were initially believed to have been "missing" due to Battelle, Wright and the Defense Technical Information Center not being able to find them despite repeated attempts. In 2009, reporter Billy Cox initiated a request for both reports. After many months and reminder inquiries, the 60 year-old "DOD Restricted" documents were located, reviewed for release and sent to Billy. Some of the report content was incomplete and illegible. In addition to the stunning fact that both of the previously missing Battelle reports were co-authored by Elroy Center (who confessed to ET debris analysis) several other things were distilled from the reports:
From Battelle's "Second Progress Report" (Contract AF No. 33 (038)-3736) we learned:
1) Battelle had suddenly - after the Roswell crash - undertaken to perfect melting and "metal mixing" techniques and to create purity-levels for Titanium never before attempted. (Ultra-high purity Titanium is required to make memory metal).
2) Elroy Center was applying his new techniques for micro-analysis of novel Titanium alloys.
3) First-ever attempts at alloying Titanium with Nickel and other metals were made, including an expanded Titanium-Nickel "Phase Diagram" - the recipe for memory metal.
4) The report examines other Ti alloys that were later investigated by Wright Patterson for shape-recovery potential (including TiZr)
5) "Elongation" and "Minimum Bend Radius" tests were performed, indicating possible interest in morph-potential. Wright's General Exon recounted to author Kevin Randle similar tests being conducted on the Roswell material.
6) One of the report's authors (Lynn Eastwood) had as his boss Battelle's UFO-involved Dr. Howard Cross. Eastwood supervised Elroy Center confessor to the crash.
Some months later Billy Cox also obtained Battelle's previously missing "First Progress Report" through FOIA requests:
From Battelle's "First Progress Report" on "Research and Development of Titanium Alloys" (Contract AF 33 (038) 3736) we learned:
1) The work of the First Progress Report was similar to that of the Second. First-time ever work on characterization, melting, purification and diagramming of novel Ti alloys were conducted.
2) The report's cover letter is signed by LW (Lynn) Eastwood, whose direct superior was UFO-involved Dr. Howard Cross. Eastwood supervised Elroy Center, who confessed to debris analysis.
3) The report was done at the request of one J.B. Johnson, Chief of the Metallurgy Division at Wright Field in 1947. J.B. Johnson was supervised by Major General LC Craigie, Director of USAF R&D and the Engineering Division. Craigie's personal pilot (Ben Games) was interviewed by this author and by reporter Billy Cox in 2008. Games states that he had personally flown Craigie to Roswell Army Air Field immediately after the crash and then flew him to visit with President Truman.
4) Johnson appears to have facilitated the delivery of the metal ingots for the Battelle study and to have directed the submission and order of the Progress Reports. Johnson's behind the scenes involvement indicates that these studies were of high priority and urgency.
5) Elroy Center's work on Titanium purity (essential to make memory metal) is amplified on by scientists Mallett, Thomas and Griffith. They cite the work of one EJ Chapin of the Metallurgy Division of the Naval Research Laboratories where Nitinol was later said to have been developed.
6) A major discrepancy is found in the report and appears in the following, "The present data do not justify further investigation of binary Titanium-Germanium or Titanium Nickel alloys." However, this was not the case. In Battelle's Second Progress Report, we find that work was indeed continued on Titanium-Nickel alloy, to include feverish work on an extended "phase diagram," methods for melting Titanium, developing purification and micro-analysis techniques, etc. This is more than curious and it seems to indicate that Wright Patterson in fact was hell-bent on having the work continued. In fact results of these continued studies appeared in its next report for Wright under Wright's direction and insistence.
WHY NO MENTION OF ET?
I have been taken to task by some who naively believe that such reports would have a direct mention of ET artifacts. That is not the way such science would ever work. Science reports that directly mention ET would never fall into civilian hands. And the Battelle studies that have been discussed here are not ones that were done on the actual debris itself. They are 'extrapolated studies' that were performed based on what was learned prior about the material.
Somehow it was learned from the Roswell debris that specially-processed, highly-purified Titanium - in composite with other metal like Nickel and Zirconium - could exhibit the observed and desired Memory Metal effect. Its use would be applied in our flying machines, just as it was with ET. Wright's General Exon said very similar things.
And of course they would hide and parse out this work in secret, folding it into existing R&D at places like Battelle. Some working on this would know a little, some a lot, some nothing at all. Some would wonder. Over the decades, institutional memories would fade and wink out. Those originally involved passed on.
They were using terrestrial materials and techniques to understand new alloy dynamics. These Battelle Progress Reports represent the beginnings of study on how to translate what was learned prior about the Roswell memory material into applications for defense and aerospace. The information was artfully "folded into" existing aero-metals research to obfuscate and confuse the real impetus of these studies - Roswell. Boring technical reports would serve as the perfect guise - they would "blend in" the ET research with ongoing development of our own avionic and aeronautic materials work. Later the application of memory metal was extended to civilian applications (as found in bendable eyeglasses and in medical devices).
BATTELLE'S DIRECTOR PROVIDES UFO INSIGHT?
Clyde Williams was the Executive Director of Battelle at the time of the Roswell crash and also during Battelle's participation with the USAF on the Project Blue Book UFO study. Williams was very close to Dr. Howard Cross, Battelle's exotic alloy metallurgist and secret UFO researcher. Clyde Williams was also very interesting for several reasons:
* Williams had to have given the ultimate approval for Battelle participation in government UFO studies, as they had conducted for Project Blue Book. As Cross's boss, he had to have been aware of Cross' continued involvement in working with various US military and intelligence agencies (as Cross did) on the UFO phenomenon.
* Williams sat on the Board of Directors of the RAND Corporation in the 1940s and 50s while simultaneously serving as the Executive Director of Battelle. RAND is a government think-tank that, like Battelle, was at the time highly involved in the UFO research. See "Deep Secrets of a UFO Think Tank Revealed" [in the archive files here] to learn more about RAND's deep association with UFO study.
* Williams was very close with Nobel Laureate Dr. Linus Pauling. In a private letter it was discovered that Williams beseeched Pauling in the early 1950s (during the very time of Battelle's involvement in Government UFO studies) to lend his expertise on the subject of "Intermetallics." Williams wanted Pauling to visit him to discuss how Pauling could apply his breakthrough analytical techniques to novel intermetallics development. Nitinol and Shape Memory Alloys are the best examples of the "intermetallic" system. (Again, General Schulgen referred to such composite metal systems when discussing the "Items of Construction" of UFOs.) It was discovered by this author that Pauling was also a secret UFO investigator and had performed private analysis and research of the UFO phenomena. More on this can be learned by reading "UFOs and Vitamin C: Linus Pauling's Flying Saucer Secret" [in the archive files here].
* Williams had a personal interest in Intermetallics as well as other Roswell-relevant materials. A January 28, 1949 shows sudden and urgent interest in Titanium Optimization, Super High Temperature Heat Resistant Materials, Super-Tough Lightweight Alloys, Titanium Zirconium (a potential shape memory alloy) and on Nickel manipulation at high temperatures (Nickel combined with Titanium can create Nitinol). Of course such interests may well be resultant from "normal" aeronautical research - but the areas of interest - and the timing 18 months after the crash - also sound distinctly "Roswellian." But it of course also makes complete sense that any work on the Roswell debris would be skillfully "folded into" existing military research on "traditional" aeronautical or naval engineering projects of the time.
* Williams was especially close to Major General Harold E. Watson, the Commanding Officer of the USAF ATIC. A 1950 document shows that Watson retained Williams to assist on a Russian intelligence-gathering project of grave import to National Security. The seminal "Project Grudge" USAF study was prepared for General Watson, which he reviewed and approved. Just a little later, Battelle itself was retained by the USAF to contribute to Project Blue Book and other UFO studies.
BATTELLE'S MEMORY METAL WORK CONTINUES
Though today Battelle has expanded its suite of services beyond metallurgy, they remain active in the discipline. Battelle operates six of our United States National Laboratories and they remain very close to US military and intelligence agencies. Battelle often works through these National Labs, or through Universities, to continue work on novel alloy development, including on Nitinol and other memory metals. Battelle has published on Shape Memory throughout the intervening decades. Treatise titles have included: "The Development of Melting and Casting Procedures for Nitinol"; "NASA Special Report: 55-Nitinol Properties and Applications" and "The Preparation of Modified Nitinol Alloys." Nitinol co-inventor William Buehler complained in an oral history that right after they did their work on the material at the Naval Lab, "Battelle took it back" and worked with NASA on "further characterization studies."
Some of this memory metal work is done off-shore in less-visible Battelle labs located in places like Geneva, Switzerland. In the following document, we see the Institute is still working on novel binary Titanium alloys - six decades after Elroy Center's Progress Reports. Interestingly, in this study, they are seen trying to optimize alloyed Titanium without the use of Nickel (as found in Nitinol) to achieve a shape-memory effect:
BATTELLE IN GENEVA
ANSWERING THE CRITICS
Some of the critics of the Roswell-Battelle connection show that their "knowledge" of materials engineering - and the history of science - go about as far as consulting Wikipedia. Others, however, have brought up specific technical and historical issues about memory metal work that I am happy to address. Some of the criticisms - and their answers - appear below:
Work on "Memory Metal" Material Was Being Conducted Well Before Roswell, As Early as the 1930s
This is probably the most common objection leveled against my thesis. It is also fundamentally incorrect. Critics point out that such metal systems as AuCd and CuZn were observed as early as the 1930s to have transition or elasticity properties. But truth is that there was no "memory metal" in the 1930s. There are fundamental things that these critics do not seem to understand:
1) The simple fact is that since man began forging metal by fire, the state of metal was known to be "changeable" or "pliable." That however, is not "Shape Recovery" or "Shape Memory." These critics often have a problem comprehending technical meaning.
2) Critics also mistake metal "elasticity" "malleability" and "flex" with true "Shape Memory." The terms are not interchangeable. These other alloy examples offered by skeptics are simply not reflective of Nitinol's properties and characteristics. They do not represent - then or now - "memory metal" technology. Only Nitinol (and its newer relatives) return to its original shape as an "intelligent" or "adaptable" metal. It is the "Cadillac" of Shape Memory Alloys. Any prior observation of psuedo-elasticity, transition or malleability in other materials has no relation whatsoever to Nitinol. Such material features were at the time ignored or merely viewed as a by-product or lab curiosity.
3) Additionally, Nitinol requires the introduction of energy to create the morphing effect. Other examples offered of earlier metals systems do not work in this way.
4) Comparing such materials as AuCd to Nitinol is like comparing a stone tablet to a computer - they are frankly not even within the same universe. And the proof of this is that only Nitinol and post-Nitinol like alloys are today used in aero, medical and other applications. The examples offered by critics never found any major future use, as did Nitinol. And these inferior metal systems mentioned by critics never received the continued and intense scientific attention within research circles as does Nitinol (and its alloy relatives) today.
5) Only the Nickel-Titanium metal systems ever got the attention of US military
6) Only the Nickel-Titanium system explored by Battelle was seminal to Shape Memory work - and was later even cited in Wright-sponsored research on memory metal.
7) And I challenge the critics to demonstrate where earlier metal systems such as AuCd or CuZn could ever do (or were ever intended to do) what real shape-recovery does: Bend, twist or batter the material into any shape and make it return with tremendous force instantly to its original shape - remembering its original form. Because that is what Nitinol does. That, my critic friends, is the definition of Shape Memory Alloy. The sorry examples offered up by skeptics such as 1930s AuCd or CuZn metal systems that were fallen upon by Europeans become laughable relative to what true "memory metal" means. And the skeptics do not like this:
8) The fact remains that Shape Memory Alloy research is a distinctly post-Roswell development. Subsequent memory metal work by the US Government cited the late 1940s Battelle Progress Report to Wright Patterson that Elroy Center helped author. It is as simple as that.
9) Shape Memory Alloy research is a formalized discipline within Materials Science and Engineering. The metal systems mentioned by critics have nothing to do with that discipline. They bear no relation to the subject. By contrast, Nickel and Titanium (Nitinol) have everything to do with the discipline of Shape Memory research.
10) The very concept of shape-recovery, the understanding of its potential value and the application of such material came only after 1947 - not before. The history of science confirms this, despite what skeptics would like to maintain. There is simply no way of getting around it.
I will make my point graphically for them. Such examples of material systems offered by skeptics will never be able to do this:
"NASA MORPHING METAL PROJECT" VIDEO
Titanium is Not a "Mystery Metal" and Work on it Was for "Normal" Aeronautical Metals Applications
Some have suggested that I "overplay" and "mystify" the metal Titanium. What they fail to realize is this: Titanium was specifically mentioned by Wright Patterson's General Arthur Exon as a specially processed alloy found within some of the Roswell debris. And not coincidentally, specially melted and ultra-highly purified and alloyed Titanium is required to make Nitinol. Exon likely did not know that "specially processed Titanium alloy" is needed to create Nitinol, and his mention of it is telling.
Secondly, Titanium is an extraordinarily expensive metal even today. Prior to 1948, high-performance steels and aluminum were the preferred defense metals. An Air Force report in the Spring of 1947 stated that Titanium could be useful for aerospace applications- but its cost was considered prohibitive. But still, for some reason, the military interest in Titanium spiked in the years immediately following 1947. Technical papers on the metal spiked as well, according to the Industrial Arts Index. As Encyclopedia Britannica noted, "After 1947, Titanium changed from a laboratory curiosity into an important structural metal."
I am obviously well-aware that Titanium was used "terrestrially" for many years prior. It is of course not (in and of itself) a "mystical" material. But when it is specially processed (as General Exon said) and "fabricated in an unusual composite" (as General Schulgen said of some UFO metals) it can do some amazing things. The sudden and urgent interest in Titanium - purifying it, melting it, diagramming it, alloying it, testing it - and pouring $2.5 Billion into its development and application in one decade (1948-1958) is remarkable. It is frankly unprecedented in the history of materials science. The mention by Exon of the material, the timing of its sudden and intense study by Battelle so close after the crash and the amount of money expended on its exploitation in the 10 years after the crash are things that simply cannot be ignored.
Skeptic Tom Printy says that my mention of Battelle's UFO-involved metallurgist Dr. Howard Cross and his early "feeding" Titanium information to the Navy (where Nitinol was "officially" created) was overstated. Printy points out that the "Titanium Symposium" sponsored by the Office of Naval Research in December of 1948 (and which Cross helped to organize) was an open symposium whose proceedings became public - and that there was no "covert" agenda. Printy is right. Titanium - or symposiums on it - were not in and of themselves by any means "unusual."
But what Printy does not know - and what is "unusual" - is that the Opening Letter of that very Titanium Symposium was signed by a very revealing individual - Rear Admiral Thorwald Solberg. TA Solberg was the Chief of Naval Research in the late 1940s. This is where Nitinol was to be invented. But - like his friend Battelle's Dr. Cross - he was a metallurgist who was also a secret UFO investigator.
We see, in an April 1949 US Navy document, the report of a sighting near White Sands Proving Ground. The document came via the "Chief of Naval Research" who was Thorwald Solberg. In the very year that they were holding a Titanium Symposium, Solberg was working on the UFO mystery. Here is the document:
SOLBERG DOCUMENT
Incredibly, the document details the sighting of a UFO at White Sands that year by none other that CB Moore, the very Charles Moore who decades later became a shrill Roswell debunker for the Air Force declaring it was a Mogul balloon!
Why did metallurgists employed in Top Secret capacities like Cross and Solberg also have such deep involvement with UFOs? Skeptics do not wish to answer this fundamental question: what the hell are metallurgists doing deep-study of Flying Saucers? The answer is of course because there had to be those "in the know" with top clearances who studied the materials of construction of the craft.
The Ratio of the Nickel-To-Titanium Found in Nitinol is Not the Same as Found in the Battelle Report
I have never claimed that Nitinol itself it the Roswell debris. What I maintain is that the military development of the concept of Shape Recovery Alloys resulted from the discovery of the memory metal found at Roswell.
Nitinol represents our best attempt at replicating the debris at Roswell - and some of that debris contained novel Titanium alloys that were specially processed, as found in Nitinol. It is a distinction that I have made that has been consistently ignored by such skeptics.
Critics say that the approximate 50/50 ratio of Titanium to Nickel that is found in Nitinol is not the same as the ratio of the Titanium and Nickel system used in the Battelle Progress Report studies of the late 1940s. But again, I am not maintaining that the material at Roswell was identical to Nitinol.
That said, critics would do well to note that the latest advances in Nitinol-related research are in fact using Titanium and Nickel in widely varying percentages and sometimes include the addition of varying ratios of other elements to achieve the memory metal effect. An excellent example of this is shown in a 2008 paper by Dr. Glen Bigelow of NASA Glenn Research Center: "Effects of Palladium Content on Shape Memory Alloys." Shape memory is being achieved with Nickel, Titianium and the addition of Palladium at a level of 15% to 60%. A combination of as low as 34% Nickel and as high as 60% Titanium (with the inclusion of a rare earth element) achieved shape recovery. This was demonstrated by a recently filed Patent Application "NiTi Alloy Composed of Nickel, Titanium and at Least One Rare Earth Element" (J Carlson, et al.).
The Battelle-Roswell Connection is a Conspiratorial Case of "Connecting the Dots"
The critics say that I "connect dots" where none should be drawn. They say that all of this information offered reflect individual data points that have been mixed together to paint a picture of a conspiracy. Unto them I quote Shakepeare: "While you here do snoring lie, open-eyed conspiracy doth take."
You must be sharp to discern the tangled web that has been woven. No document you will ever see will outright declare that ET metal is here. Instead, one must carefully examine the contracts, connections and context of Shape Recovery research to understand its relation to Roswell. Like a sleuth, one must "back-track" the emergence of shape-memory metal. If one does this by studying its history, the documents that are available to us and the testimony of those involved - the truth becomes evident. It was astronaut Edgar Mitchell that said that the material had been in the hands of a quasi-public think tank of former military that had the required expertise and resources. Does he speak of a place like Battelle?
THE MEANING OF THE METAL
The Universe is not carved in stone. Existence can be shaped. The morph requires composite construction. It needs something to "morph with." It also requires the introduction of energy. Matter then has the potential to change state. The lesson of the ET metal - and the morphing UFO - is that our world is less rigid than we know. Things like space, time and matter are infinitely more flexible than we can yet imagine.
There is a "plasticity" to reality that shows that matter is not immutable. This is necessary for interstellar flight. The Morphing Metals demonstrate this fluidity. And the psychic experiments that were performed by the Navy on Nitinol show that there is also a relationship to be discovered about the mind and its interface with such adaptable, intelligent material. What Roswell's "changing metal" means is that we must change our understanding of energy and the states of matter.
Recent discoveries confirm the connection between the esteemed Battelle Memorial Institute and the study of extraterrestrial material. This new information helps to substantiate the astonishing truth: In the late 1940s Battelle was contracted by Wright Patterson Air Force Base to study "memory metal" like the debris that was found at the site of a crashed UFO at Roswell, NM. This was first detailed in a widely-read series of articles appearing last year [in this blog, which you can find in the archives here]:
Roswell Debris Confirmed as ET: Lab Located, Scientists Named Roswell Metal Scientist: The Curious Dr. Cross
The Final Secrets of Roswell's Memory Metal Revealed
Scientist Admits to Study of Roswell Debris
Some of this information was also related as a concluding chapter in the revised edition of " Witness to Roswell" by authors Tom Carey and Don Schmitt released in 2009.
It is a remarkable but complex story that continues to unfold. In the intervening year, work by a team of individuals has continued to pursue additional leads on the Roswell-Battelle connection. The results are revealed here for the first time. Critics of the Roswell-Battelle premise will be answered and their concerns about previously-published information will be addressed.
New findings that help to corroborate the Battelle analysis of ET debris are provided in telling interviews with those who directly knew the involved Battelle scientists. Additional clues are uncovered by a careful examination of the two previously "missing" Battelle Progress Reports from the late 1940s on novel metal systems that were finally uncovered through FOIA. Other findings are made by an investigation of Battelle's Executive Director at the time of the Roswell crash and on Battelle's continuing work on memory metal.
A MEMORY METAL REDUX
The intense interest in this aspect of the crash incident is because it speaks to Roswell's "Holy Grail"- physical evidence. If the crash occurred, the debris had to have been studied. It is likely that the "materials of construction" (i.e. the metal-like debris) would have been more easily studied than an entire craft or system. Though we may not now be able to fully comprehend their transport systems, we may be able to more easily understand - and try to replicate - the materials that comprise them.
Some of the Roswell crash material was reported by several credible witnesses to have had the ability to "morph" or change back to its original shape (shape recovery). This "intelligent metal" material is today known as Shape Memory Alloy. The best example of this is a material is comprised of Titanium and Nickel and is called "Nitinol." The concept of engineered shape recovery is a thoroughly "post-Roswell" concept. All major work in creating products with "material memory" was performed post-Roswell. And all of this work was initially directed by the US Government. Shape Memory Alloy is distinctly "Roswellian" and mimics in many respects some of the debris at Roswell.
And consider this: On the face of it, why would elderly witnesses ever even mention such a bizarre thing as "memory metal" in the first place? How many of these rural New Mexicans would have ever heard of "Nitinol" back when the crash happened - or even in later years - when they recounted their stories? What would give these independent witnesses - who were separated by distance and time- the idea to all simultaneously tell the bizarre story of having seen "morphing metal" debris at Roswell? The very fact that they describe shape-memory metal - without having likely ever been aware that such a thing as Nitinol - is in itself very telling.
In summary form, the story about Battelle, Nitinol and Roswell is this:
* In the months immediately following the Roswell crash, the Air Force contracted Battelle Memorial Institute to perform first-ever work on novel Titanium alloys. This included work on development of Titanium and Nickel alloy- the basis for "memory metal" today, and similar to some of the debris reported at Roswell.
* Four Wright-Patterson sponsored technical studies on "memory metal" in later decades cited a 1949 Battelle report on Nickel and Titanium (NiTi) alloy. Nickel and Titanium are used to create "Nitinol" - the premiere "memory metal" on the planet. The fact that the 1949 report was referenced in shape-recovery alloy research years later shows that somehow the Battelle report had a direct application and association to the memory metal subject. An earlier 1948 report was also uncovered that dealt with similar materials issues.
* The Battelle study was conducted under secret contract and was directed by Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Wright Patterson is the very base to which the Roswell debris was reportedly flown.
* The Battelle study was co-authored by a Battelle scientist who later confessed that he had personally analyzed ET debris from a fallen UFO while at the Institute. That he was a co-author of the Battelle 1949 study was discovered many years after the scientist's confession, when the Battelle reports were obtained under FOIA.
* Wright Patterson General Arthur Exon confirmed that he understood that some of the Roswell debris included an alloy comprised of "specially processed Titanium" and another metal. Exon said that a battery of tests was performed and that the reports on this are "still around." This mirrors the Battelle work. Another USAF General, George Schulgen, wrote a secret draft memo four months after the Roswell crash on UFOs - including a section on their "Items of Construction." Schulgen mentions "composite construction" using a "combination of metals" using "unusual fabrication methods." Schulgen is speaking of what we today call "intermetallics" - and Nitinol is a perfect example of intermetallics.
* The Battelle scientist who worked on this late 1940's report (who later had confessed that he had analyzed ET debris) was supervised by one Dr. Howard Cross. Dr. Cross (a metallurgist and Titanium expert who worked closely with the Navy where Nitinol was "officially" discovered) was also a secret UFO researcher for the Air Force's Project Blue Book and a secret UFO document called the "Pentacle Memo." He was also called upon to investigate other cases of unknown fallen debris and had unusual access to the heads of the CIA, the Air Force and the predecessor organization to NASA.
* Nitinol's "official" history is false. The year of its discovery is unclear; different reasons were offered as to why it was developed; and there are different explanations given for the circumstances surrounding its discovery at the US Naval Lab. The official "co-inventor" of Nitinol was interviewed by this author and was cagey about several matters related to the development of the material. This co-inventor was found to have been involved in bizarre "Mind over Matter" tests in which a key Naval scientist had recruited psychic Uri Geller to try to get Geller to "bend the metal with his mind." The elderly Nitinol scientist was silent when I mentioned the Roswell -impetus for his work and said "I have no comment on that. I am not going to discuss it." He may not have direct knowledge, but he must surely have wondered. He agreed that he was given a Battelle 1949 report with a phase diagram for use in the study of Nitinol, but would not disclose who in military or intelligence gave it to him. It has recently been learned that through theoretical physicist Dr. Jack Sarfatti that Eldon Byrd, the scientist who did the Nitinol Mind-over-Matter experiments with the co-inventor of Nitinol, "got into trouble and nearly got his ass handed to him on a platter by the administration of the Naval Surface Warfare Center for publicizing the laboratory connection with the experiments." Sarfatti made this incredible statement in an e-mail to researcher Bruce Maccabbee found archived on the Net dated March 15, 2006.
* Battelle seemed to control the fate of Nitinol after its "discovery" at the US Naval Labs. NASA -working with Battelle - also has been shown to have immediately taken over direction of further "characterization" studies of the material (a fact that Wang's Nitinol co-inventor, William Buehler, complained about in an oral history.) Uri Geller himself told me that NASA personnel were also present at the laboratory when the Navy was testing him on Nitinol mind-bending.
NEW REVELATIONS ABOUT AN INVOLVED BATTELLE SCIENTIST
Battelle scientist Elroy John Center was a preeminent materials scientist and engineer. His contributions to the field are now known to have been major. His work is distinguished by over twenty years of discovery in materials and alloys, including breakthough work in developing analysis techniques. But Center is also distinguished for two other things:
Elroy Center confessed to having analyzed material from another world while at Battelle. Then incredibly, decades later, he was learned to have co-authored the very Battelle Progress Reports found through FOIA that were suspected to relate to the Roswell crash!
As a Chemical Engineer and Research Chemist, Center knew that (as General Exon said) the material had "special processing." It was engineered metal that was not from Earth. Center's focus was on developing new techniques for the micro-analysis of novel Titanium alloys which could be the basis for "memory metal." He contributed to an extended phase diagram of Nickel-Titanium. Center's story is told more completely in "Scientist Admits to Study of Roswell Debris" [in the archive files here].
Several new things have recently been learned about Elroy Center, and they are told here publicly for the first time:
As reported previously, Dr. Irena Scott (formerly of Battelle) had been told by a friend of Center's in 1991 that he had decades earlier been related the story of UFO debris analysis by Center. We can now reveal that this friend has been identified, located and interviewed. The name of the individual who told Dr. Scott the Center story is "Nick" Nickerson. Incredibly we find that Nickerson was himself a Battelle scientist for nearly twenty years, specializing in physics and electronics practice areas. He held Top Secret Clearance, holds several U.S. Patents for novel laser and other designs, and has achieved high recognition for his technical achievements. Though Nickerson was a very young man when Center told him that he had been tasked to undertake the debris analysis - Nickerson's credibility cannot be questioned. He was himself later employed by the same organization that Elroy Center was - and was himself highly awarded. He speaks calmly and with no embellishment. He has nothing to gain from this whatsoever. In fact, Nickerson was sought out by me. He did not "come forward." Understandably, his friend Dr. Irena Scott did not wish to reveal his name to me. Herculean efforts were used to deduce just who the man was who had talked to Elroy Center those decades ago.
Additionally, Nickerson (who had become interested in UFO study in part due to his talk with Center) later associated himself as an investigator with the civilian research group NICAP. Nickerson exposed the famous Zanesville, Ohio "Barber's Photo" UFO hoax, obtaining a confession from the barber that he had faked the pictures. Nickerson detests falsehood and worked to expose such in the world of UFOs. He is telling the truth about Center. When interviewed by this author, he added much additional information:
* Nickerson confirmed the details of what he had told Dr. Irena Scott nearly two decades ago: Center had directly and privately told him that he had analyzed a strange metal piece that he did not believe to be earthly and that he understood was from a downed UFO. Center did mention hieroglyphic-like markings.
* Dr. Irena Scott, formerly of Battelle,who first related the Center story (and with whom I have talked) also believes that Nickerson is telling the truth.
* A current and decades-long Battelle executive, William Jones, the Senior Contracting Officer for Federal Projects at the Institute, was told the same story by Nickerson many years ago. Jones also believes that Nickerson is telling the truth.
* Nickerson was a very curious young man who had interest in cosmic science. He had engaged Center (who had by then already left Battelle) in a talk outside the house that led to a discussion of the possibiity of the extraterrestrial. This is when Center cryptically related the details of his encounter with ET debris at Battelle. It is probable that Center - in a weak moment- privately told a young man the ET story because he knew that Nickerson would never be believed if ever he repeated it because of his youth. Center also probably believed that the young Nickerson would never jeopardize Center as he was his daughter's close friend. He was sure that Nickerson would keep the story related private. And Nickerson did in fact keep it private until the year after Center died.
* Center said that the material was kept is a secure safe with limited access
* Center seemed lucid and truthful, but was cryptic and brief. Nickerson had no reason to disbelieve him.
* Nickerson (himself a former Battelle "insider") believes that it is most likely that Battelle was engaged in such ET debris analysis. He knows the Insitute had a deep relationship with the US Government. It had the proximity to Wright and it had the talent, equipment and resources needed to study the Roswell debris.
* He says that there were other indications of Battelle having been contracted to study UFOs- even into the 1970s. He maintains that a Battelle superior told him that the CIA was still, at that time. involved in secret UFO studies - as was the Institute.
* One elderly Battelle Project Manager, who worked on Blue Book who was still at the Institute when Nickerson was employed there, refused to discuss his work on Project Blue Book, even though it was many years later and Nickerson had security clearances.
A SCIENTIST'S DAUGHTER IN WONDER
I have also communicated directly with family of Elroy John Center. Out of respect for privacy I will say that Center's daughter is highly-regarded within a major religious organization and I am loath to question her veracity. She did not come forward, but she was sought out and approached. What she says is stunning and helps to confirm the truth:
* Her father John ("Elroy" was rarely used in the home) did indeed have a very strong interest in UFOs and in things ET.
* Center's interest was so strong that he apparently went out on UFO hunts and even took a black and white photo of a UFO.
* The photo her father took appeared to be like a strange "domed disk" and was snapped by Center over a dam on the Scoto River in Ohio.
* Center had studied Battelle's UFO work on Project Blue Book at the time it was being conducted (although Battelle had not yet been publicly named at time as a contributor to the Project.) Center's daughter said that the Battelle UFO reports - or copies - were brought to her home and that her father had reviewed them. She strengthens the idea that (like Battelle's Dr. Howard Cross, Center's boss) select metallurgical scientists were simultaneously involved in UFO study at the Institute.
* Center was visited often at their home by an FBI agent whom she recalls was named "Jack." The subject of their deep discussions: UFOs.
* She was not aware of her father's private communication with her friend Nickerson until many years later. She is disappointed that her father had never told her the same story and wonders why - but does not discount that Nickerson is genuinely relating what he was told by her father.
* She does however recall overhearing one evening what might have provided the explanation as to why she herself was not told. Her father was overheard to say to her mother, while discussing UFO studies: "Whatever you do, don't tell her. She is too curious and excitable."
* After his time at Battelle, Center continued in an emotional and physical "downward spiral" and became a shell of what he once had been.
* Center's daughter, a highly-educated woman herself. holds out the distinct possibility that we are not alone in the Universe and does not find the Battelle scenario improbable, though she still expresses wonder at how it all could be.
MORE ON THE CURIOUS DR. CROSS - BATTELLE'S UFO METAL MAN
Elroy Center reported to Dr. Lynn Eastwood, who in turn reported to one Dr. Howard Clinton Cross. The HC Cross story is told more fully here: Roswell Metal Scientist: The Curious Dr. Cross [in the archive files here].
Cross was a research expert at Battelle and employed there just a few years after the Institute's inception until the mid-1960s. He was a recognized expert in novel alloy development, had a special interest in advanced Titanium alloys and worked closely with the Office of Naval Research (where Nitinol was developed).
But Cross was no "mere metallurgist." In his strange "dual life" he was also secretly engaged by the US Government to conduct UFO studies for Project Blue Book and other studies. He even offered suggestions to the USAF Air Materiel Command on how to deal with the phenomena in his famous "Pentacle Memo." Cross had close working relationships with the CIA's Marshall Chadwell and Fred Durant, NACA/NASA and Wright Patterson's Chief of Analysis on UFO matters. Cross was once called upon to give his expert opinion on a fallen piece of debris from an unknown object at the request of a US Naval Commander. All the while he was working with people like Elroy Center on alloy development at Battelle.
Cross was also insistent on secrecy and privacy. He did not favor Battelle's name being mentioned in the Blue Book report, developing a code-word for it. He even physically snatched his "Pentacle Memo" on UFOs out of the hands of stunned USAF Investigator, Dr. J. Allen Hynek. (Apparently Cross was also a very intimidating man.)
This author interviewed someone who would confirm that fact, someone who actually knew Howard Cross while she was employed at Battelle herself: Ms. Jennie Ziedman. Ziedman was also for some years the personal assistant to Dr. J. Allen Hynek - the Air Force's UFO expert. She was also a CUFOs Board Member. Jennie - a delightful and highly knowledgeable woman - herself provided support to Project Blue Book in the 1950s. She knew many of the involved scientists.
Jennie characterized Dr. Cross to me as "frightful." People were actually afraid of him and many got nervous in the presence of Dr. Cross. Cross was known to be physically imposing and this would even show expansively in his actions. He would often bang tables, instilling fear in those around him. This parallels the way that Cross was reported to have physically accosted Dr. Hynek in lunging and grabbing back from him the Pentacle Memo on UFOs that Cross had authored to Wright Patterson. Dr. Cross gave meaning to the term "mad scientist."
And Cross was not someone of whom you would "ask too many questions" because of his authoritative firmness. Cross was brilliant and respected - but alarming and not well-liked. Such a tough and ruthless man would be an ideal asset to the US military and intelligence in pursuit of insight into the crashed craft materials at Roswell. Cross could be assured to control and brow-beat those who worked on the project, keeping everything in line. You did not get a "warm and fuzzy" feeling from HC Cross. He was a man not to get too close to - a man who could be entrusted with many secrets.
Phil Klass, the infamous and now deceased UFO arch-skeptic, was aware of Jennie Zeidman's work at Battelle. Incredibly, even he theorized that Battelle would have been an extremely likely place to which such crash debris would be taken. He commented on it in the 1990s in his SUN newsletter: "If Battelle scientists did analyze the Roswell debris, their reports might still be classified "Top Secret" and Zeidman could not be told due to lack of the required security clearances." Klass perceptively continued, "SUN suggests that the General Accounting Office (GAO) which is investigating the Roswell crashed saucer claims pursue Battelle." The GAO never did.
Zeidman, who was at Battelle in the early 1950s, believes that it is possible that certain individuals were involved in ET analysis at Battelle. She stated: "During the 1940s and 1950s Battelle was surely one of the premier metallurgy research facilities in the world. Battelle was well established as a trusted and respected facility for Top Secret work including the Manhattan Project. Its staff included top metallurgists, welding technology experts, physical chemists and fuel application specialists. The supposition that Battelle analyzed Roswell UFO artifacts is a simple and obvious theory. William of Occam would have approved." Many years later Jennie conducted interviews with some elderly Battelle scientists from the time period. She said that to her surprise, though, none would admit to such ET analysis and seemed sincere. But Klass himself answers this with his comment that some were not told "due to lack of required security clearances." And perhaps Jeannie did not consider the obvious: maybe the scientists she talked to simply lied to her.
It is likely that only a very few at Battelle were engaged in such ET debris work. The "core group" (which included HC Cross) may have had it confirmed to them by Wright that the material was from a UFO crash. Others may have been told it was of Soviet origin - and only suspected its off-earth origin. Still others may never have had any actual exposure to the material, but only "picked up" on the work of those that did. They executed work (in areas like memory metal) even though they did not even realize the real impetus for their research.
CLUES FROM BATELLE'S PROGRESS REPORTS
The Battelle reports (Progress Reports I and II) were initially believed to have been "missing" due to Battelle, Wright and the Defense Technical Information Center not being able to find them despite repeated attempts. In 2009, reporter Billy Cox initiated a request for both reports. After many months and reminder inquiries, the 60 year-old "DOD Restricted" documents were located, reviewed for release and sent to Billy. Some of the report content was incomplete and illegible. In addition to the stunning fact that both of the previously missing Battelle reports were co-authored by Elroy Center (who confessed to ET debris analysis) several other things were distilled from the reports:
From Battelle's "Second Progress Report" (Contract AF No. 33 (038)-3736) we learned:
1) Battelle had suddenly - after the Roswell crash - undertaken to perfect melting and "metal mixing" techniques and to create purity-levels for Titanium never before attempted. (Ultra-high purity Titanium is required to make memory metal).
2) Elroy Center was applying his new techniques for micro-analysis of novel Titanium alloys.
3) First-ever attempts at alloying Titanium with Nickel and other metals were made, including an expanded Titanium-Nickel "Phase Diagram" - the recipe for memory metal.
4) The report examines other Ti alloys that were later investigated by Wright Patterson for shape-recovery potential (including TiZr)
5) "Elongation" and "Minimum Bend Radius" tests were performed, indicating possible interest in morph-potential. Wright's General Exon recounted to author Kevin Randle similar tests being conducted on the Roswell material.
6) One of the report's authors (Lynn Eastwood) had as his boss Battelle's UFO-involved Dr. Howard Cross. Eastwood supervised Elroy Center confessor to the crash.
Some months later Billy Cox also obtained Battelle's previously missing "First Progress Report" through FOIA requests:
From Battelle's "First Progress Report" on "Research and Development of Titanium Alloys" (Contract AF 33 (038) 3736) we learned:
1) The work of the First Progress Report was similar to that of the Second. First-time ever work on characterization, melting, purification and diagramming of novel Ti alloys were conducted.
2) The report's cover letter is signed by LW (Lynn) Eastwood, whose direct superior was UFO-involved Dr. Howard Cross. Eastwood supervised Elroy Center, who confessed to debris analysis.
3) The report was done at the request of one J.B. Johnson, Chief of the Metallurgy Division at Wright Field in 1947. J.B. Johnson was supervised by Major General LC Craigie, Director of USAF R&D and the Engineering Division. Craigie's personal pilot (Ben Games) was interviewed by this author and by reporter Billy Cox in 2008. Games states that he had personally flown Craigie to Roswell Army Air Field immediately after the crash and then flew him to visit with President Truman.
4) Johnson appears to have facilitated the delivery of the metal ingots for the Battelle study and to have directed the submission and order of the Progress Reports. Johnson's behind the scenes involvement indicates that these studies were of high priority and urgency.
5) Elroy Center's work on Titanium purity (essential to make memory metal) is amplified on by scientists Mallett, Thomas and Griffith. They cite the work of one EJ Chapin of the Metallurgy Division of the Naval Research Laboratories where Nitinol was later said to have been developed.
6) A major discrepancy is found in the report and appears in the following, "The present data do not justify further investigation of binary Titanium-Germanium or Titanium Nickel alloys." However, this was not the case. In Battelle's Second Progress Report, we find that work was indeed continued on Titanium-Nickel alloy, to include feverish work on an extended "phase diagram," methods for melting Titanium, developing purification and micro-analysis techniques, etc. This is more than curious and it seems to indicate that Wright Patterson in fact was hell-bent on having the work continued. In fact results of these continued studies appeared in its next report for Wright under Wright's direction and insistence.
WHY NO MENTION OF ET?
I have been taken to task by some who naively believe that such reports would have a direct mention of ET artifacts. That is not the way such science would ever work. Science reports that directly mention ET would never fall into civilian hands. And the Battelle studies that have been discussed here are not ones that were done on the actual debris itself. They are 'extrapolated studies' that were performed based on what was learned prior about the material.
Somehow it was learned from the Roswell debris that specially-processed, highly-purified Titanium - in composite with other metal like Nickel and Zirconium - could exhibit the observed and desired Memory Metal effect. Its use would be applied in our flying machines, just as it was with ET. Wright's General Exon said very similar things.
And of course they would hide and parse out this work in secret, folding it into existing R&D at places like Battelle. Some working on this would know a little, some a lot, some nothing at all. Some would wonder. Over the decades, institutional memories would fade and wink out. Those originally involved passed on.
They were using terrestrial materials and techniques to understand new alloy dynamics. These Battelle Progress Reports represent the beginnings of study on how to translate what was learned prior about the Roswell memory material into applications for defense and aerospace. The information was artfully "folded into" existing aero-metals research to obfuscate and confuse the real impetus of these studies - Roswell. Boring technical reports would serve as the perfect guise - they would "blend in" the ET research with ongoing development of our own avionic and aeronautic materials work. Later the application of memory metal was extended to civilian applications (as found in bendable eyeglasses and in medical devices).
BATTELLE'S DIRECTOR PROVIDES UFO INSIGHT?
Clyde Williams was the Executive Director of Battelle at the time of the Roswell crash and also during Battelle's participation with the USAF on the Project Blue Book UFO study. Williams was very close to Dr. Howard Cross, Battelle's exotic alloy metallurgist and secret UFO researcher. Clyde Williams was also very interesting for several reasons:
* Williams had to have given the ultimate approval for Battelle participation in government UFO studies, as they had conducted for Project Blue Book. As Cross's boss, he had to have been aware of Cross' continued involvement in working with various US military and intelligence agencies (as Cross did) on the UFO phenomenon.
* Williams sat on the Board of Directors of the RAND Corporation in the 1940s and 50s while simultaneously serving as the Executive Director of Battelle. RAND is a government think-tank that, like Battelle, was at the time highly involved in the UFO research. See "Deep Secrets of a UFO Think Tank Revealed" [in the archive files here] to learn more about RAND's deep association with UFO study.
* Williams was very close with Nobel Laureate Dr. Linus Pauling. In a private letter it was discovered that Williams beseeched Pauling in the early 1950s (during the very time of Battelle's involvement in Government UFO studies) to lend his expertise on the subject of "Intermetallics." Williams wanted Pauling to visit him to discuss how Pauling could apply his breakthrough analytical techniques to novel intermetallics development. Nitinol and Shape Memory Alloys are the best examples of the "intermetallic" system. (Again, General Schulgen referred to such composite metal systems when discussing the "Items of Construction" of UFOs.) It was discovered by this author that Pauling was also a secret UFO investigator and had performed private analysis and research of the UFO phenomena. More on this can be learned by reading "UFOs and Vitamin C: Linus Pauling's Flying Saucer Secret" [in the archive files here].
* Williams had a personal interest in Intermetallics as well as other Roswell-relevant materials. A January 28, 1949 shows sudden and urgent interest in Titanium Optimization, Super High Temperature Heat Resistant Materials, Super-Tough Lightweight Alloys, Titanium Zirconium (a potential shape memory alloy) and on Nickel manipulation at high temperatures (Nickel combined with Titanium can create Nitinol). Of course such interests may well be resultant from "normal" aeronautical research - but the areas of interest - and the timing 18 months after the crash - also sound distinctly "Roswellian." But it of course also makes complete sense that any work on the Roswell debris would be skillfully "folded into" existing military research on "traditional" aeronautical or naval engineering projects of the time.
* Williams was especially close to Major General Harold E. Watson, the Commanding Officer of the USAF ATIC. A 1950 document shows that Watson retained Williams to assist on a Russian intelligence-gathering project of grave import to National Security. The seminal "Project Grudge" USAF study was prepared for General Watson, which he reviewed and approved. Just a little later, Battelle itself was retained by the USAF to contribute to Project Blue Book and other UFO studies.
BATTELLE'S MEMORY METAL WORK CONTINUES
Though today Battelle has expanded its suite of services beyond metallurgy, they remain active in the discipline. Battelle operates six of our United States National Laboratories and they remain very close to US military and intelligence agencies. Battelle often works through these National Labs, or through Universities, to continue work on novel alloy development, including on Nitinol and other memory metals. Battelle has published on Shape Memory throughout the intervening decades. Treatise titles have included: "The Development of Melting and Casting Procedures for Nitinol"; "NASA Special Report: 55-Nitinol Properties and Applications" and "The Preparation of Modified Nitinol Alloys." Nitinol co-inventor William Buehler complained in an oral history that right after they did their work on the material at the Naval Lab, "Battelle took it back" and worked with NASA on "further characterization studies."
Some of this memory metal work is done off-shore in less-visible Battelle labs located in places like Geneva, Switzerland. In the following document, we see the Institute is still working on novel binary Titanium alloys - six decades after Elroy Center's Progress Reports. Interestingly, in this study, they are seen trying to optimize alloyed Titanium without the use of Nickel (as found in Nitinol) to achieve a shape-memory effect:
BATTELLE IN GENEVA
ANSWERING THE CRITICS
Some of the critics of the Roswell-Battelle connection show that their "knowledge" of materials engineering - and the history of science - go about as far as consulting Wikipedia. Others, however, have brought up specific technical and historical issues about memory metal work that I am happy to address. Some of the criticisms - and their answers - appear below:
Work on "Memory Metal" Material Was Being Conducted Well Before Roswell, As Early as the 1930s
This is probably the most common objection leveled against my thesis. It is also fundamentally incorrect. Critics point out that such metal systems as AuCd and CuZn were observed as early as the 1930s to have transition or elasticity properties. But truth is that there was no "memory metal" in the 1930s. There are fundamental things that these critics do not seem to understand:
1) The simple fact is that since man began forging metal by fire, the state of metal was known to be "changeable" or "pliable." That however, is not "Shape Recovery" or "Shape Memory." These critics often have a problem comprehending technical meaning.
2) Critics also mistake metal "elasticity" "malleability" and "flex" with true "Shape Memory." The terms are not interchangeable. These other alloy examples offered by skeptics are simply not reflective of Nitinol's properties and characteristics. They do not represent - then or now - "memory metal" technology. Only Nitinol (and its newer relatives) return to its original shape as an "intelligent" or "adaptable" metal. It is the "Cadillac" of Shape Memory Alloys. Any prior observation of psuedo-elasticity, transition or malleability in other materials has no relation whatsoever to Nitinol. Such material features were at the time ignored or merely viewed as a by-product or lab curiosity.
3) Additionally, Nitinol requires the introduction of energy to create the morphing effect. Other examples offered of earlier metals systems do not work in this way.
4) Comparing such materials as AuCd to Nitinol is like comparing a stone tablet to a computer - they are frankly not even within the same universe. And the proof of this is that only Nitinol and post-Nitinol like alloys are today used in aero, medical and other applications. The examples offered by critics never found any major future use, as did Nitinol. And these inferior metal systems mentioned by critics never received the continued and intense scientific attention within research circles as does Nitinol (and its alloy relatives) today.
5) Only the Nickel-Titanium metal systems ever got the attention of US military
6) Only the Nickel-Titanium system explored by Battelle was seminal to Shape Memory work - and was later even cited in Wright-sponsored research on memory metal.
7) And I challenge the critics to demonstrate where earlier metal systems such as AuCd or CuZn could ever do (or were ever intended to do) what real shape-recovery does: Bend, twist or batter the material into any shape and make it return with tremendous force instantly to its original shape - remembering its original form. Because that is what Nitinol does. That, my critic friends, is the definition of Shape Memory Alloy. The sorry examples offered up by skeptics such as 1930s AuCd or CuZn metal systems that were fallen upon by Europeans become laughable relative to what true "memory metal" means. And the skeptics do not like this:
8) The fact remains that Shape Memory Alloy research is a distinctly post-Roswell development. Subsequent memory metal work by the US Government cited the late 1940s Battelle Progress Report to Wright Patterson that Elroy Center helped author. It is as simple as that.
9) Shape Memory Alloy research is a formalized discipline within Materials Science and Engineering. The metal systems mentioned by critics have nothing to do with that discipline. They bear no relation to the subject. By contrast, Nickel and Titanium (Nitinol) have everything to do with the discipline of Shape Memory research.
10) The very concept of shape-recovery, the understanding of its potential value and the application of such material came only after 1947 - not before. The history of science confirms this, despite what skeptics would like to maintain. There is simply no way of getting around it.
I will make my point graphically for them. Such examples of material systems offered by skeptics will never be able to do this:
"NASA MORPHING METAL PROJECT" VIDEO
Titanium is Not a "Mystery Metal" and Work on it Was for "Normal" Aeronautical Metals Applications
Some have suggested that I "overplay" and "mystify" the metal Titanium. What they fail to realize is this: Titanium was specifically mentioned by Wright Patterson's General Arthur Exon as a specially processed alloy found within some of the Roswell debris. And not coincidentally, specially melted and ultra-highly purified and alloyed Titanium is required to make Nitinol. Exon likely did not know that "specially processed Titanium alloy" is needed to create Nitinol, and his mention of it is telling.
Secondly, Titanium is an extraordinarily expensive metal even today. Prior to 1948, high-performance steels and aluminum were the preferred defense metals. An Air Force report in the Spring of 1947 stated that Titanium could be useful for aerospace applications- but its cost was considered prohibitive. But still, for some reason, the military interest in Titanium spiked in the years immediately following 1947. Technical papers on the metal spiked as well, according to the Industrial Arts Index. As Encyclopedia Britannica noted, "After 1947, Titanium changed from a laboratory curiosity into an important structural metal."
I am obviously well-aware that Titanium was used "terrestrially" for many years prior. It is of course not (in and of itself) a "mystical" material. But when it is specially processed (as General Exon said) and "fabricated in an unusual composite" (as General Schulgen said of some UFO metals) it can do some amazing things. The sudden and urgent interest in Titanium - purifying it, melting it, diagramming it, alloying it, testing it - and pouring $2.5 Billion into its development and application in one decade (1948-1958) is remarkable. It is frankly unprecedented in the history of materials science. The mention by Exon of the material, the timing of its sudden and intense study by Battelle so close after the crash and the amount of money expended on its exploitation in the 10 years after the crash are things that simply cannot be ignored.
Skeptic Tom Printy says that my mention of Battelle's UFO-involved metallurgist Dr. Howard Cross and his early "feeding" Titanium information to the Navy (where Nitinol was "officially" created) was overstated. Printy points out that the "Titanium Symposium" sponsored by the Office of Naval Research in December of 1948 (and which Cross helped to organize) was an open symposium whose proceedings became public - and that there was no "covert" agenda. Printy is right. Titanium - or symposiums on it - were not in and of themselves by any means "unusual."
But what Printy does not know - and what is "unusual" - is that the Opening Letter of that very Titanium Symposium was signed by a very revealing individual - Rear Admiral Thorwald Solberg. TA Solberg was the Chief of Naval Research in the late 1940s. This is where Nitinol was to be invented. But - like his friend Battelle's Dr. Cross - he was a metallurgist who was also a secret UFO investigator.
We see, in an April 1949 US Navy document, the report of a sighting near White Sands Proving Ground. The document came via the "Chief of Naval Research" who was Thorwald Solberg. In the very year that they were holding a Titanium Symposium, Solberg was working on the UFO mystery. Here is the document:
SOLBERG DOCUMENT
Incredibly, the document details the sighting of a UFO at White Sands that year by none other that CB Moore, the very Charles Moore who decades later became a shrill Roswell debunker for the Air Force declaring it was a Mogul balloon!
Why did metallurgists employed in Top Secret capacities like Cross and Solberg also have such deep involvement with UFOs? Skeptics do not wish to answer this fundamental question: what the hell are metallurgists doing deep-study of Flying Saucers? The answer is of course because there had to be those "in the know" with top clearances who studied the materials of construction of the craft.
The Ratio of the Nickel-To-Titanium Found in Nitinol is Not the Same as Found in the Battelle Report
I have never claimed that Nitinol itself it the Roswell debris. What I maintain is that the military development of the concept of Shape Recovery Alloys resulted from the discovery of the memory metal found at Roswell.
Nitinol represents our best attempt at replicating the debris at Roswell - and some of that debris contained novel Titanium alloys that were specially processed, as found in Nitinol. It is a distinction that I have made that has been consistently ignored by such skeptics.
Critics say that the approximate 50/50 ratio of Titanium to Nickel that is found in Nitinol is not the same as the ratio of the Titanium and Nickel system used in the Battelle Progress Report studies of the late 1940s. But again, I am not maintaining that the material at Roswell was identical to Nitinol.
That said, critics would do well to note that the latest advances in Nitinol-related research are in fact using Titanium and Nickel in widely varying percentages and sometimes include the addition of varying ratios of other elements to achieve the memory metal effect. An excellent example of this is shown in a 2008 paper by Dr. Glen Bigelow of NASA Glenn Research Center: "Effects of Palladium Content on Shape Memory Alloys." Shape memory is being achieved with Nickel, Titianium and the addition of Palladium at a level of 15% to 60%. A combination of as low as 34% Nickel and as high as 60% Titanium (with the inclusion of a rare earth element) achieved shape recovery. This was demonstrated by a recently filed Patent Application "NiTi Alloy Composed of Nickel, Titanium and at Least One Rare Earth Element" (J Carlson, et al.).
The Battelle-Roswell Connection is a Conspiratorial Case of "Connecting the Dots"
The critics say that I "connect dots" where none should be drawn. They say that all of this information offered reflect individual data points that have been mixed together to paint a picture of a conspiracy. Unto them I quote Shakepeare: "While you here do snoring lie, open-eyed conspiracy doth take."
You must be sharp to discern the tangled web that has been woven. No document you will ever see will outright declare that ET metal is here. Instead, one must carefully examine the contracts, connections and context of Shape Recovery research to understand its relation to Roswell. Like a sleuth, one must "back-track" the emergence of shape-memory metal. If one does this by studying its history, the documents that are available to us and the testimony of those involved - the truth becomes evident. It was astronaut Edgar Mitchell that said that the material had been in the hands of a quasi-public think tank of former military that had the required expertise and resources. Does he speak of a place like Battelle?
THE MEANING OF THE METAL
The Universe is not carved in stone. Existence can be shaped. The morph requires composite construction. It needs something to "morph with." It also requires the introduction of energy. Matter then has the potential to change state. The lesson of the ET metal - and the morphing UFO - is that our world is less rigid than we know. Things like space, time and matter are infinitely more flexible than we can yet imagine.
There is a "plasticity" to reality that shows that matter is not immutable. This is necessary for interstellar flight. The Morphing Metals demonstrate this fluidity. And the psychic experiments that were performed by the Navy on Nitinol show that there is also a relationship to be discovered about the mind and its interface with such adaptable, intelligent material. What Roswell's "changing metal" means is that we must change our understanding of energy and the states of matter.
Aug. 8 - September 11: planes that hit WTC were not Boeing 767s
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http://www.voltairenet.org/article166661.html
Be Well.
David
September 11: planes that hit WTC were not Boeing 767s
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Be Well.
David
September 11: planes that hit WTC were not Boeing 767s
The official report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) relating to the two planes that crashed into WTC on September 11, 2001 shows that they were traveling at a speed of 945 km/h and 796 km/h respectively.
Pilots for 9/11 Truth, an international organization of pilots and aviation professionals, has pointed out that, according to the manufacturer, the Boeing 767 develops structural failure and dismembers at a speed surpassing 660 km/h when flying at near sea level in thick air. This has also been certified by a former senior NASA executive, Dwain Deets.
It necessarily follows that the aircraft that slammed into the World Trade Center could not have been the planes corresponding to commercial flights United 175 and American 11.
In his book The Big Lie, Thierry Meyssan had entertained the possibility that the two aircraft had actually been substituted by military planes according to the procedure contemplated in Operation Northwoods (p. 168).
The NTSB report, which was declassified at the request of Pilots for 9/11 Truth, had already revealed that the cockpit door of flight American 77 had remained locked from the time of take-off until it disappeared from radar screens and allegedly crashed at the Pentagon site. The logical conclusion is that it would have been materially impossible to highjack the flight.
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7 August 2010  | | 7 August 2010  | | 7 August 2010  |
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Ag. 8 - Stanton Bridge, nr Honey Street, Wiltshire. Reported 8th August
Dear Friends,
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Be Well.
David
Wow! What a great little circle.
This has got to be one of the most delightful small circles ever created. The precision within this statement is something to marvel at.
Images John Montgomery Copyright 2010
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David
Wow! What a great little circle.
This has got to be one of the most delightful small circles ever created. The precision within this statement is something to marvel at.
Images John Montgomery Copyright 2010
August 8 - Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden
Dear Friends,
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David
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-gulf-oil-spill-cement-static-kill-bp-science-environment/Be Well.
David
Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden and Under Beaches
New U.S. Gulf oil spill report called "ludicrous."
Oil in a core sample taken from Pensacola Beach, Florida, in early July.
Photograph by Chris Combs, National Geographic
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Published August 5, 2010
Part of an ongoing series on the environmental impacts of the Gulf oil spill.
As BP finishes pumping cement into the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead Thursday, some scientists are taking issue with a new U.S. government report that says the "vast majority" of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been taken care of by nature and "robust" cleanup efforts.
In addition, experts warn, much of the toxic oil from the worst spill in U.S. history may be trapped under Gulf beaches—where it could linger for years—or still migrating into the ocean depths, where it's a "3-D catastrophe," one scientist said.
The U.S. government estimated Monday that the Deepwater Horizon spill had yielded about 4.9 million barrels' worth of crude.
On Wednesday a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report said that about 33 percent of the spilled oil in the water has been burned, skimmed, dispersed, or directly recovered by cleanup operations. (See "Gulf Oil Cleanup Crews Trample Nesting Birds.")
Another 25 percent has evaporated into the atmosphere or dissolved in the ocean, and 16 percent has been dispersed via natural breakup of the oil into microscopic droplets, the study says. (Read more about how nature is fighting the oil spill.)
The remaining 26 percent, the report says, is still either on or just below the surface, has washed ashore or been collected from shores, or is buried along the coasts.
Oil Spill Report "Almost Comical"?
For all their specificity, such figures are "notorious" for being uncertain, said Robert Carney, a biological oceanographer at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.
That's in part because the fluid nature of the ocean means that it's "exceedingly hard" to track oil.
"Water is always moving—if I go out to the spill site tomorrow and look for hydrocarbons, I might not find much, because the oiled water is already gone."
But to accurately figure out how much oil is left, you need to know how much went into the Gulf to begin with, he said.
"Once you start off with that fundamental measure"—the total amount of oil spilled—"being an educated guess, then things aren't that great."
To University of South Florida chemical oceanographer David Hollander, the NOAA estimates are "ludicrous."
"It's almost comical."
According to Hollander, the government can account for only about 25 percent of the spilled Gulf oil—the portion that's been skimmed, burned off, directly collected, and so on.
The remaining 75 percent is still unaccounted for, he said.
For instance, the report considers all submerged oil to be dispersed and therefore not harmful, Hollander said. But, given the unknown effects of oil and dispersants at great depths, that's not necessarily the case, he added.
"There are enormous blanket assumptions."
Oil Trapped Deep in Gulf Beaches
The new report comes after days of speculation about where the Gulf oil has gone. After the damaged well had been capped July 19, U.S. Coast Guard flyovers didn't spot any big patches of crude on the water.
But oil cleanup is mostly getting rid of what's on the surface, Carney said. There's a common perception that "as long as you keep it off the beach, everything's hunky dory," he added.
In fact, scientists are still finding plenty of spilled Gulf oil—whether it's bubbling up from under Louisiana's islands, trapped underneath Florida's sugar-white beaches, or in the ocean's unseen reaches. (See pictures of spilled Gulf oil found just under Florida beaches.)
This week, biological oceanographer Markus Huettel and colleague Joel Kostka dug trenches on a cleaned Pensacola beach and discovered large swaths of oil up to two feet (nearly a meter) deep.
Oil gets trapped underground when tiny oil droplets penetrate porous sand or when waves deposit tarballs and then cover them with sand, said Huettel, of Florida State University in Tallahassee.
(Read more about oil found under "clean" Florida beaches earlier this month.)
Whether microbes munch the oil—the most common way oil breaks down—depends on how much oxygen is available for the tiny organisms to do their work. (See marine-microbe pictures.)
"So far, we haven't seen any rapid degradation in these deep layers," Huettel said, though he noted oil at the top of the sand has been disappearing within days.
With little oxygen, the buried oil may stay for years, until a storm or hurricane wipes away the upper sand layers.
Previous oil spills suggest that the buried beach oil may continuously migrate not only out to sea but also into groundwater, where it can harm wildlife, Huettel said.
Oil-laden groundwater in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez spill, for instance, led to "significantly elevated" death in pink salmon embryos between 1989 and 1993, he said. (Related: "Exxon Valdez Pictures: 20 Years on, Spilled Oil Remains.")
Gulf Oil Microbe Cleanup "Total Bull"
Microbes are not an oil-cleanup panacea either, LSU's Carney cautioned.
For instance, oil-eating bacteria can't stomach asphalt, the heaviest part of an oil molecule and the same material used to pave roads, he said.
The leftover asphalt falls to the seafloor, where another kind of microbe may chew on it—making the molecule shorter and thus more toxic, according to Carney.
"The sentimentality that bacteria turn everything into fish food and CO2 is total bull," he said.
What's more, microbes cherry-pick whatever piece of oil is easiest to process—and on their own time, said Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Counting on microbes to quickly clean up an oil spill is "like asking a teenager to do a chore. You tell them to do it on a Friday, to do it when it's most advantageous, and they do it on a Saturday," Reddy said.
"It can be frustrating that you can't constrain the role of microbes and overall natural cleanup."
Deep-Sea Oil Spills are "Unchartered Territory"
Another "open question" remains, FSU's Huettel noted: What is happening to the oil deep in the Gulf?
For the first time during an oil-spill response, officials used chemical dispersants to break up oil at ocean depths between 4,000 and 5,000 feet (1,200 and 1,500 meters). The dispersant-treated oil bits may have sunk to the seafloor, Huettel said.
In the cold, dark ocean, this mixture of oil and chemical dispersants may be suspended and preserved, causing long-term problems for deep-sea animals, Texas Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendall said during August 4 testimony before the U.S. Congress.
"We have very limited information on the environmental fate and transport of the mixture of dispersant and oil, particularly in the deep ocean," Kendall said.
Some oil fragments are so tiny they can't be seen with the human eye, said the University of South Florida's Hollander. Others are big enough to be gobbled up by baby fish that mistake the oil for food. (See pictures of ten animals at risk from the Gulf oil spill.)
Predicting what will happen to the deep-sea ecosystem is "uncharted territory," said Hollander, who's studying what the oil is doing to deep-sea creatures during a series of research cruises this summer and fall.
"Could be a bottom-up collapse, could be nothing happens," he said. But he suspects a "real large chunk of food chain is being disrupted."
"We're getting into something different than the 2-D petroleum spill" on the Gulf's surface, he added. "All of the sudden you've taken this 2-D disaster and turned it into a 3-D catastrophe."
New U.S. Gulf oil spill report called "ludicrous."
Oil in a core sample taken from Pensacola Beach, Florida, in early July.
Photograph by Chris Combs, National Geographic
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Published August 5, 2010
Part of an ongoing series on the environmental impacts of the Gulf oil spill.
As BP finishes pumping cement into the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead Thursday, some scientists are taking issue with a new U.S. government report that says the "vast majority" of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been taken care of by nature and "robust" cleanup efforts.
In addition, experts warn, much of the toxic oil from the worst spill in U.S. history may be trapped under Gulf beaches—where it could linger for years—or still migrating into the ocean depths, where it's a "3-D catastrophe," one scientist said.
The U.S. government estimated Monday that the Deepwater Horizon spill had yielded about 4.9 million barrels' worth of crude.
On Wednesday a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report said that about 33 percent of the spilled oil in the water has been burned, skimmed, dispersed, or directly recovered by cleanup operations. (See "Gulf Oil Cleanup Crews Trample Nesting Birds.")
Another 25 percent has evaporated into the atmosphere or dissolved in the ocean, and 16 percent has been dispersed via natural breakup of the oil into microscopic droplets, the study says. (Read more about how nature is fighting the oil spill.)
The remaining 26 percent, the report says, is still either on or just below the surface, has washed ashore or been collected from shores, or is buried along the coasts.
Oil Spill Report "Almost Comical"?
For all their specificity, such figures are "notorious" for being uncertain, said Robert Carney, a biological oceanographer at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.
That's in part because the fluid nature of the ocean means that it's "exceedingly hard" to track oil.
"Water is always moving—if I go out to the spill site tomorrow and look for hydrocarbons, I might not find much, because the oiled water is already gone."
But to accurately figure out how much oil is left, you need to know how much went into the Gulf to begin with, he said.
"Once you start off with that fundamental measure"—the total amount of oil spilled—"being an educated guess, then things aren't that great."
To University of South Florida chemical oceanographer David Hollander, the NOAA estimates are "ludicrous."
"It's almost comical."
According to Hollander, the government can account for only about 25 percent of the spilled Gulf oil—the portion that's been skimmed, burned off, directly collected, and so on.
The remaining 75 percent is still unaccounted for, he said.
For instance, the report considers all submerged oil to be dispersed and therefore not harmful, Hollander said. But, given the unknown effects of oil and dispersants at great depths, that's not necessarily the case, he added.
"There are enormous blanket assumptions."
Oil Trapped Deep in Gulf Beaches
The new report comes after days of speculation about where the Gulf oil has gone. After the damaged well had been capped July 19, U.S. Coast Guard flyovers didn't spot any big patches of crude on the water.
But oil cleanup is mostly getting rid of what's on the surface, Carney said. There's a common perception that "as long as you keep it off the beach, everything's hunky dory," he added.
In fact, scientists are still finding plenty of spilled Gulf oil—whether it's bubbling up from under Louisiana's islands, trapped underneath Florida's sugar-white beaches, or in the ocean's unseen reaches. (See pictures of spilled Gulf oil found just under Florida beaches.)
This week, biological oceanographer Markus Huettel and colleague Joel Kostka dug trenches on a cleaned Pensacola beach and discovered large swaths of oil up to two feet (nearly a meter) deep.
Oil gets trapped underground when tiny oil droplets penetrate porous sand or when waves deposit tarballs and then cover them with sand, said Huettel, of Florida State University in Tallahassee.
(Read more about oil found under "clean" Florida beaches earlier this month.)
Whether microbes munch the oil—the most common way oil breaks down—depends on how much oxygen is available for the tiny organisms to do their work. (See marine-microbe pictures.)
"So far, we haven't seen any rapid degradation in these deep layers," Huettel said, though he noted oil at the top of the sand has been disappearing within days.
With little oxygen, the buried oil may stay for years, until a storm or hurricane wipes away the upper sand layers.
Previous oil spills suggest that the buried beach oil may continuously migrate not only out to sea but also into groundwater, where it can harm wildlife, Huettel said.
Oil-laden groundwater in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez spill, for instance, led to "significantly elevated" death in pink salmon embryos between 1989 and 1993, he said. (Related: "Exxon Valdez Pictures: 20 Years on, Spilled Oil Remains.")
Gulf Oil Microbe Cleanup "Total Bull"
Microbes are not an oil-cleanup panacea either, LSU's Carney cautioned.
For instance, oil-eating bacteria can't stomach asphalt, the heaviest part of an oil molecule and the same material used to pave roads, he said.
The leftover asphalt falls to the seafloor, where another kind of microbe may chew on it—making the molecule shorter and thus more toxic, according to Carney.
"The sentimentality that bacteria turn everything into fish food and CO2 is total bull," he said.
What's more, microbes cherry-pick whatever piece of oil is easiest to process—and on their own time, said Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Counting on microbes to quickly clean up an oil spill is "like asking a teenager to do a chore. You tell them to do it on a Friday, to do it when it's most advantageous, and they do it on a Saturday," Reddy said.
"It can be frustrating that you can't constrain the role of microbes and overall natural cleanup."
Deep-Sea Oil Spills are "Unchartered Territory"
Another "open question" remains, FSU's Huettel noted: What is happening to the oil deep in the Gulf?
For the first time during an oil-spill response, officials used chemical dispersants to break up oil at ocean depths between 4,000 and 5,000 feet (1,200 and 1,500 meters). The dispersant-treated oil bits may have sunk to the seafloor, Huettel said.
In the cold, dark ocean, this mixture of oil and chemical dispersants may be suspended and preserved, causing long-term problems for deep-sea animals, Texas Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendall said during August 4 testimony before the U.S. Congress.
"We have very limited information on the environmental fate and transport of the mixture of dispersant and oil, particularly in the deep ocean," Kendall said.
Some oil fragments are so tiny they can't be seen with the human eye, said the University of South Florida's Hollander. Others are big enough to be gobbled up by baby fish that mistake the oil for food. (See pictures of ten animals at risk from the Gulf oil spill.)
Predicting what will happen to the deep-sea ecosystem is "uncharted territory," said Hollander, who's studying what the oil is doing to deep-sea creatures during a series of research cruises this summer and fall.
"Could be a bottom-up collapse, could be nothing happens," he said. But he suspects a "real large chunk of food chain is being disrupted."
"We're getting into something different than the 2-D petroleum spill" on the Gulf's surface, he added. "All of the sudden you've taken this 2-D disaster and turned it into a 3-D catastrophe."
August 8 - Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden
Dear Friends,
Paste/click the link if you can't access the links/don't receive the image.
Be Well.
David
Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden and Under Beaches
New U.S. Gulf oil spill report called "ludicrous."
Oil in a core sample taken from Pensacola Beach, Florida, in early July.
Photograph by Chris Combs, National Geographic
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Published August 5, 2010
Part of an ongoing series on the environmental impacts of the Gulf oil spill.
As BP finishes pumping cement into the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead Thursday, some scientists are taking issue with a new U.S. government report that says the "vast majority" of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been taken care of by nature and "robust" cleanup efforts.
In addition, experts warn, much of the toxic oil from the worst spill in U.S. history may be trapped under Gulf beaches—where it could linger for years—or still migrating into the ocean depths, where it's a "3-D catastrophe," one scientist said.
The U.S. government estimated Monday that the Deepwater Horizon spill had yielded about 4.9 million barrels' worth of crude.
On Wednesday a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report said that about 33 percent of the spilled oil in the water has been burned, skimmed, dispersed, or directly recovered by cleanup operations. (See "Gulf Oil Cleanup Crews Trample Nesting Birds.")
Another 25 percent has evaporated into the atmosphere or dissolved in the ocean, and 16 percent has been dispersed via natural breakup of the oil into microscopic droplets, the study says. (Read more about how nature is fighting the oil spill.)
The remaining 26 percent, the report says, is still either on or just below the surface, has washed ashore or been collected from shores, or is buried along the coasts.
Oil Spill Report "Almost Comical"?
For all their specificity, such figures are "notorious" for being uncertain, said Robert Carney, a biological oceanographer at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.
That's in part because the fluid nature of the ocean means that it's "exceedingly hard" to track oil.
"Water is always moving—if I go out to the spill site tomorrow and look for hydrocarbons, I might not find much, because the oiled water is already gone."
But to accurately figure out how much oil is left, you need to know how much went into the Gulf to begin with, he said.
"Once you start off with that fundamental measure"—the total amount of oil spilled—"being an educated guess, then things aren't that great."
To University of South Florida chemical oceanographer David Hollander, the NOAA estimates are "ludicrous."
"It's almost comical."
According to Hollander, the government can account for only about 25 percent of the spilled Gulf oil—the portion that's been skimmed, burned off, directly collected, and so on.
The remaining 75 percent is still unaccounted for, he said.
For instance, the report considers all submerged oil to be dispersed and therefore not harmful, Hollander said. But, given the unknown effects of oil and dispersants at great depths, that's not necessarily the case, he added.
"There are enormous blanket assumptions."
Oil Trapped Deep in Gulf Beaches
The new report comes after days of speculation about where the Gulf oil has gone. After the damaged well had been capped July 19, U.S. Coast Guard flyovers didn't spot any big patches of crude on the water.
But oil cleanup is mostly getting rid of what's on the surface, Carney said. There's a common perception that "as long as you keep it off the beach, everything's hunky dory," he added.
In fact, scientists are still finding plenty of spilled Gulf oil—whether it's bubbling up from under Louisiana's islands, trapped underneath Florida's sugar-white beaches, or in the ocean's unseen reaches. (See pictures of spilled Gulf oil found just under Florida beaches.)
This week, biological oceanographer Markus Huettel and colleague Joel Kostka dug trenches on a cleaned Pensacola beach and discovered large swaths of oil up to two feet (nearly a meter) deep.
Oil gets trapped underground when tiny oil droplets penetrate porous sand or when waves deposit tarballs and then cover them with sand, said Huettel, of Florida State University in Tallahassee.
(Read more about oil found under "clean" Florida beaches earlier this month.)
Whether microbes munch the oil—the most common way oil breaks down—depends on how much oxygen is available for the tiny organisms to do their work. (See marine-microbe pictures.)
"So far, we haven't seen any rapid degradation in these deep layers," Huettel said, though he noted oil at the top of the sand has been disappearing within days.
With little oxygen, the buried oil may stay for years, until a storm or hurricane wipes away the upper sand layers.
Previous oil spills suggest that the buried beach oil may continuously migrate not only out to sea but also into groundwater, where it can harm wildlife, Huettel said.
Oil-laden groundwater in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez spill, for instance, led to "significantly elevated" death in pink salmon embryos between 1989 and 1993, he said. (Related: "Exxon Valdez Pictures: 20 Years on, Spilled Oil Remains.")
Gulf Oil Microbe Cleanup "Total Bull"
Microbes are not an oil-cleanup panacea either, LSU's Carney cautioned.
For instance, oil-eating bacteria can't stomach asphalt, the heaviest part of an oil molecule and the same material used to pave roads, he said.
The leftover asphalt falls to the seafloor, where another kind of microbe may chew on it—making the molecule shorter and thus more toxic, according to Carney.
"The sentimentality that bacteria turn everything into fish food and CO2 is total bull," he said.
What's more, microbes cherry-pick whatever piece of oil is easiest to process—and on their own time, said Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Counting on microbes to quickly clean up an oil spill is "like asking a teenager to do a chore. You tell them to do it on a Friday, to do it when it's most advantageous, and they do it on a Saturday," Reddy said.
"It can be frustrating that you can't constrain the role of microbes and overall natural cleanup."
Deep-Sea Oil Spills are "Unchartered Territory"
Another "open question" remains, FSU's Huettel noted: What is happening to the oil deep in the Gulf?
For the first time during an oil-spill response, officials used chemical dispersants to break up oil at ocean depths between 4,000 and 5,000 feet (1,200 and 1,500 meters). The dispersant-treated oil bits may have sunk to the seafloor, Huettel said.
In the cold, dark ocean, this mixture of oil and chemical dispersants may be suspended and preserved, causing long-term problems for deep-sea animals, Texas Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendall said during August 4 testimony before the U.S. Congress.
"We have very limited information on the environmental fate and transport of the mixture of dispersant and oil, particularly in the deep ocean," Kendall said.
Some oil fragments are so tiny they can't be seen with the human eye, said the University of South Florida's Hollander. Others are big enough to be gobbled up by baby fish that mistake the oil for food. (See pictures of ten animals at risk from the Gulf oil spill.)
Predicting what will happen to the deep-sea ecosystem is "uncharted territory," said Hollander, who's studying what the oil is doing to deep-sea creatures during a series of research cruises this summer and fall.
"Could be a bottom-up collapse, could be nothing happens," he said. But he suspects a "real large chunk of food chain is being disrupted."
"We're getting into something different than the 2-D petroleum spill" on the Gulf's surface, he added. "All of the sudden you've taken this 2-D disaster and turned it into a 3-D catastrophe."
Paste/click the link if you can't access the links/don't receive the image.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100805
-gulf-oil-spill-cement-static-kill-bp-science-environment/Be Well.
David
Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden and Under Beaches
New U.S. Gulf oil spill report called "ludicrous."
Oil in a core sample taken from Pensacola Beach, Florida, in early July.
Photograph by Chris Combs, National Geographic
Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
Published August 5, 2010
Part of an ongoing series on the environmental impacts of the Gulf oil spill.
As BP finishes pumping cement into the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead Thursday, some scientists are taking issue with a new U.S. government report that says the "vast majority" of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been taken care of by nature and "robust" cleanup efforts.
In addition, experts warn, much of the toxic oil from the worst spill in U.S. history may be trapped under Gulf beaches—where it could linger for years—or still migrating into the ocean depths, where it's a "3-D catastrophe," one scientist said.
The U.S. government estimated Monday that the Deepwater Horizon spill had yielded about 4.9 million barrels' worth of crude.
On Wednesday a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report said that about 33 percent of the spilled oil in the water has been burned, skimmed, dispersed, or directly recovered by cleanup operations. (See "Gulf Oil Cleanup Crews Trample Nesting Birds.")
Another 25 percent has evaporated into the atmosphere or dissolved in the ocean, and 16 percent has been dispersed via natural breakup of the oil into microscopic droplets, the study says. (Read more about how nature is fighting the oil spill.)
The remaining 26 percent, the report says, is still either on or just below the surface, has washed ashore or been collected from shores, or is buried along the coasts.
Oil Spill Report "Almost Comical"?
For all their specificity, such figures are "notorious" for being uncertain, said Robert Carney, a biological oceanographer at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.
That's in part because the fluid nature of the ocean means that it's "exceedingly hard" to track oil.
"Water is always moving—if I go out to the spill site tomorrow and look for hydrocarbons, I might not find much, because the oiled water is already gone."
But to accurately figure out how much oil is left, you need to know how much went into the Gulf to begin with, he said.
"Once you start off with that fundamental measure"—the total amount of oil spilled—"being an educated guess, then things aren't that great."
To University of South Florida chemical oceanographer David Hollander, the NOAA estimates are "ludicrous."
"It's almost comical."
According to Hollander, the government can account for only about 25 percent of the spilled Gulf oil—the portion that's been skimmed, burned off, directly collected, and so on.
The remaining 75 percent is still unaccounted for, he said.
For instance, the report considers all submerged oil to be dispersed and therefore not harmful, Hollander said. But, given the unknown effects of oil and dispersants at great depths, that's not necessarily the case, he added.
"There are enormous blanket assumptions."
Oil Trapped Deep in Gulf Beaches
The new report comes after days of speculation about where the Gulf oil has gone. After the damaged well had been capped July 19, U.S. Coast Guard flyovers didn't spot any big patches of crude on the water.
But oil cleanup is mostly getting rid of what's on the surface, Carney said. There's a common perception that "as long as you keep it off the beach, everything's hunky dory," he added.
In fact, scientists are still finding plenty of spilled Gulf oil—whether it's bubbling up from under Louisiana's islands, trapped underneath Florida's sugar-white beaches, or in the ocean's unseen reaches. (See pictures of spilled Gulf oil found just under Florida beaches.)
This week, biological oceanographer Markus Huettel and colleague Joel Kostka dug trenches on a cleaned Pensacola beach and discovered large swaths of oil up to two feet (nearly a meter) deep.
Oil gets trapped underground when tiny oil droplets penetrate porous sand or when waves deposit tarballs and then cover them with sand, said Huettel, of Florida State University in Tallahassee.
(Read more about oil found under "clean" Florida beaches earlier this month.)
Whether microbes munch the oil—the most common way oil breaks down—depends on how much oxygen is available for the tiny organisms to do their work. (See marine-microbe pictures.)
"So far, we haven't seen any rapid degradation in these deep layers," Huettel said, though he noted oil at the top of the sand has been disappearing within days.
With little oxygen, the buried oil may stay for years, until a storm or hurricane wipes away the upper sand layers.
Previous oil spills suggest that the buried beach oil may continuously migrate not only out to sea but also into groundwater, where it can harm wildlife, Huettel said.
Oil-laden groundwater in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez spill, for instance, led to "significantly elevated" death in pink salmon embryos between 1989 and 1993, he said. (Related: "Exxon Valdez Pictures: 20 Years on, Spilled Oil Remains.")
Gulf Oil Microbe Cleanup "Total Bull"
Microbes are not an oil-cleanup panacea either, LSU's Carney cautioned.
For instance, oil-eating bacteria can't stomach asphalt, the heaviest part of an oil molecule and the same material used to pave roads, he said.
The leftover asphalt falls to the seafloor, where another kind of microbe may chew on it—making the molecule shorter and thus more toxic, according to Carney.
"The sentimentality that bacteria turn everything into fish food and CO2 is total bull," he said.
What's more, microbes cherry-pick whatever piece of oil is easiest to process—and on their own time, said Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Counting on microbes to quickly clean up an oil spill is "like asking a teenager to do a chore. You tell them to do it on a Friday, to do it when it's most advantageous, and they do it on a Saturday," Reddy said.
"It can be frustrating that you can't constrain the role of microbes and overall natural cleanup."
Deep-Sea Oil Spills are "Unchartered Territory"
Another "open question" remains, FSU's Huettel noted: What is happening to the oil deep in the Gulf?
For the first time during an oil-spill response, officials used chemical dispersants to break up oil at ocean depths between 4,000 and 5,000 feet (1,200 and 1,500 meters). The dispersant-treated oil bits may have sunk to the seafloor, Huettel said.
In the cold, dark ocean, this mixture of oil and chemical dispersants may be suspended and preserved, causing long-term problems for deep-sea animals, Texas Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendall said during August 4 testimony before the U.S. Congress.
"We have very limited information on the environmental fate and transport of the mixture of dispersant and oil, particularly in the deep ocean," Kendall said.
Some oil fragments are so tiny they can't be seen with the human eye, said the University of South Florida's Hollander. Others are big enough to be gobbled up by baby fish that mistake the oil for food. (See pictures of ten animals at risk from the Gulf oil spill.)
Predicting what will happen to the deep-sea ecosystem is "uncharted territory," said Hollander, who's studying what the oil is doing to deep-sea creatures during a series of research cruises this summer and fall.
"Could be a bottom-up collapse, could be nothing happens," he said. But he suspects a "real large chunk of food chain is being disrupted."
"We're getting into something different than the 2-D petroleum spill" on the Gulf's surface, he added. "All of the sudden you've taken this 2-D disaster and turned it into a 3-D catastrophe."
Agost 8 - The 2010 Crop Circle Season
Dear Friends,
Paste/click the link if you don't receive the images.
Be Well.
David
Paste/click the link if you don't receive the images.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/2010_crop_circle_season
Be Well.
David
The 2010 Crop Circle Season
Red Collie
crop5croppedbig-CleyHill.jpg
"What is a book without pictures?" saidAlice.
Thevast majority of humans living on Earth today probably do not believe thatmodern crop circles are any more than what the multinational media tells them:just pranks made by two old geezers from the pub, late at night like SantaClaus, all across southern England while no one is watching (see video here).
Other people believe that crop pictures may be no more than field art,planked out by groups such as the Circlemakers (here),to help companies sell their commercial goods. For example, there was anadvertisement shown all across north America recently for Pringle's potatochips, where a group of healthy young people dance out into some farmer'sfield, in order to make a "potato chip" crop picture using rope and boards (here).
In addition to the Pringle potato chip company, who else keeps telling us thatmodern crop pictures are human-made? We have Wikipedia (here), the BBC (here), the Guardian (here), National Geographic (here), or the Discovery Channel (here).
Yet public opinion on this controversial issue may be changing rapidly! Forexample during the week of July 23, 2010, Yahoo News showed a disinformationalmovie about crop circles that immediately generated 2300, mostly vitriolic,reader responses (here).
The current situation appears to be as follows: a great many "authorities" onEarth have been telling people for over twenty years from 1990 to 2010, that nothingstrange or mysterious is happening each summer in the fields ofsouthern England, or elsewhere across Europe. Yet a small but ever-growingproportion of people have begun to rebel. They are defying peer pressure andgroup opinion, as if to say: "Yes,something strange is indeed happening there, and you are refusing to tell usthe truth about it, Why is that? Are some of the people in power on Earthtoday, afraid of what might happen if everyone learned the truth?"
If the viewers of this article would like to read an independent assessmentof crop circles, current to the end of 2008, please see "What Do Modern CropPictures Mean?" by Harold Stryderight and Charles Reed. Those are two of my various pseudonyms. As a professional scientist with aPh.D. from Caltech, and having worked in research for 35 years at places suchas UCLA, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge, or the nationalAustralian science laboratory, I find that I need to protect myself from asmall proportion of people who follow crop pictures, but do not adhere to theusual rules of human social conduct.
Daniel Pinchbeck and his famous book "2012:the Return of Quetzalcoatl" are certainly mentioned in that long review,because: (a) the entire crop circle phenomenon often seems to be focused on ayear 2012; and (b) symbols for Quetzalcoatl sometimes appear in crops, mostspectacularly perhaps on July 5, 2009 near Silbury Hill (here).
So begins my progress report on new crop pictureswhich have appeared during the summer of 2010. It has certainly been a seasonof socialturmoil, among the small band of dedicated individuals who research ortake photographs of crop pictures. But more on that later.
The 2010 season began spectacularly at Wilton Windmill in southern England onMay 22 with a crop picture made in yellow oilseed rape, which is a plant withthick celery-like stems that is almost impossible to bend smoothly (rather thanbreak) with rope and boards. Nevertheless, many plant stems in that remarkablecrop picture were found to be bent smoothly, something like an iron barsubjected to high temperatures, then re-cooled into another shape (here). What did the new crop picture at Wilton Windmill tell us?
It showed a famous mathematical formula known as "Euler's Identity", using abinary form of computer ASCII code (here). Even British newspapers could not ignore this (here). Then a few weeks later on June 13 at Poirino in Italy (here), we saw the image of a six-month lunar calendar, in which all of the small "stars"coded for another famous equation "E = mc2", this time using a decimal form ofASCII:
Eight days after that on June 21 at Pewsey in southern England, we saw acleverly coded version of the "golden ratio phi to ten digits", or 1.61803399(here).
Whatever anyone chooses to believe about this controversial subject, it wouldhave to be said that the "crop artists" (whomever they might be) are greatmathematicians, and also great graphic designers!
Then in July of 2010 we saw three "cubic" crop pictures at Danebury Hill (here), Cley Hill (here), or Fosbury (here).
The Danebury crop picture showed a clever version of "Metatron's Cube",which is a famous shape in what is called "sacred geometry":
Cley Hill showed us another cubic art motif, which was made famous by Leonardoda Vinci:
Fosbury showed us a third cubic art motif, which was made famous by Archimedes:
Let us see now: Metatron, Leonardo da Vinci, or Archimedes, None of those "cubic"crop pictures look alien to me! Could the skeptics be right? Could all threehave been made by local human fakers with rope and boards? Or might there besomething wrong with our intellectual presumptions regarding this subject?
All three of those "cubic" crop pictures showed spectacular, highly elaboratefield details, or what most researchers call the "lay of fallen crop." Thusfrom a purely technical point of view, they would have been hard to fake. Wehave a known fake from 2010 with which to compare, that was made with rope andboards in East Field on July 29-30, 2010 (here). It shows considerably less field detail than any of those three "cubic" croppictures, while close-up photographs taken on the ground reveal a stomped-outmess (here).
Still, one cannot really be sure whether any or all of those "cubic" croppictures might be paranormally authentic. That issue has driven a small (butvocal) minority of crop circle researchers into social turmoil this year. Someof them have argued (without any evidence) that all crop pictures from2010 have been human-made fakes, and that there exists a huge "secretconspiracy" among mainstream crop circle researchers, who have been studyingthe subject since 1990, to commission large teams of workers to go out into thefields at night, in order to make fake crop pictures that can later be shown oncalendars or jewelry, simply for the purposes of making money!
No doubt a little of this goes on. Yet one can only note here that thelong-term researchers in question (who sell calendars or jewelry) are relativelypoor by normal human standards, and would hardly have enough funds topay for such large-scale efforts! And those crop pictures which are known to be"fake" usually seem quite obvious, and hence are not visited or regarded wellby serious researchers, only by tourists. Finally, the intellectual content ofmodern crop pictures can sometimes be quite high, as shown above for Euler'sIdentity, E = mc2 or the golden ratio. "Are we really talkingabout the same people here, who would not have received an education in highermathematics?"
Now in order to close this progress report, let us delve into the heart of thesubject. Three crop pictures at Woolaston Grange on July 18, Beggar's Knoll onJuly 27, or Windmill Hill on July 27, seemed to show the first and secondstages of a "proton-proton nuclear fusion reaction" which powers our Sun, or isused in man-made hydrogen bombs (here):
Are they advising us to develop new methods for energy generation, or mightthey be warning us about an upcoming nuclear war? There is little doubt in mymind that the real "paranormal crop artists" can somehow predict the future:see for example the first two slides here, which show how several crop pictures from 2007 anticipated the BP oil spillin 2010.
Finally, just a few days ago on July 30, 2010 at Wickham Green in Berkshire, wesaw two circular crop pictures which showed apparently the "face of Jesus" asit appears on the Turin Shroud, along with a complex, unsolved message inbinary code for everyone on Earth (here):
Does anyone seriously believe that those two highly-elaborate crop pictureswere locally human-made? And what might their underlying binary code have totell us?
This summary diagram was prepared by CMM Research on August 8, 2010, based on original work done by George Costanza and Marius Zemaitis on the ‘Circle Chasers’ Facebook website.
In summary, the 2010 crop circle season has been an exciting time (so far). Ithas included many new crop pictures of a mathematical or geometrical nature,along with several other pictures which show nuclear fusion from subatomicphysics, plus a recent pair of pictures which purports to show a "message fromabove" that is intended for everyone on Earth, if we can figure out what itmeans.
Where do modern crop pictures come from, if they are not made by local human fakerswith rope and boards? There is no current consensus on this point, nor have thecrop artists clearly revealed their identities in their pictures (except maybeon July 30). Some people believe that they are being made by extra-terrestrialvisitors to Earth, while other people believe that they may come from someother spacetime dimension, whether physical or spiritual, which overlaps withour own.
One thing seems certain however: our current way of thinking about "consensusNewtonian reality" must be fundamentally in error, in order for those beautifulfield pictures to keep appearing year after year in diverse places, almost asif by magic, never showing any mistakes, never being found half-finished, andtheir perpetrators almost never being caught, despite intense surveillance ofthe fields in England where they most commonly appear.
Red Collie
crop5croppedbig-CleyHill.jpg
"What is a book without pictures?" saidAlice.
Thevast majority of humans living on Earth today probably do not believe thatmodern crop circles are any more than what the multinational media tells them:just pranks made by two old geezers from the pub, late at night like SantaClaus, all across southern England while no one is watching (see video here).
Other people believe that crop pictures may be no more than field art,planked out by groups such as the Circlemakers (here),to help companies sell their commercial goods. For example, there was anadvertisement shown all across north America recently for Pringle's potatochips, where a group of healthy young people dance out into some farmer'sfield, in order to make a "potato chip" crop picture using rope and boards (here).
In addition to the Pringle potato chip company, who else keeps telling us thatmodern crop pictures are human-made? We have Wikipedia (here), the BBC (here), the Guardian (here), National Geographic (here), or the Discovery Channel (here).
Yet public opinion on this controversial issue may be changing rapidly! Forexample during the week of July 23, 2010, Yahoo News showed a disinformationalmovie about crop circles that immediately generated 2300, mostly vitriolic,reader responses (here).
The current situation appears to be as follows: a great many "authorities" onEarth have been telling people for over twenty years from 1990 to 2010, that nothingstrange or mysterious is happening each summer in the fields ofsouthern England, or elsewhere across Europe. Yet a small but ever-growingproportion of people have begun to rebel. They are defying peer pressure andgroup opinion, as if to say: "Yes,something strange is indeed happening there, and you are refusing to tell usthe truth about it, Why is that? Are some of the people in power on Earthtoday, afraid of what might happen if everyone learned the truth?"
If the viewers of this article would like to read an independent assessmentof crop circles, current to the end of 2008, please see "What Do Modern CropPictures Mean?" by Harold Stryderight and Charles Reed. Those are two of my various pseudonyms. As a professional scientist with aPh.D. from Caltech, and having worked in research for 35 years at places suchas UCLA, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge, or the nationalAustralian science laboratory, I find that I need to protect myself from asmall proportion of people who follow crop pictures, but do not adhere to theusual rules of human social conduct.
Daniel Pinchbeck and his famous book "2012:the Return of Quetzalcoatl" are certainly mentioned in that long review,because: (a) the entire crop circle phenomenon often seems to be focused on ayear 2012; and (b) symbols for Quetzalcoatl sometimes appear in crops, mostspectacularly perhaps on July 5, 2009 near Silbury Hill (here).
So begins my progress report on new crop pictureswhich have appeared during the summer of 2010. It has certainly been a seasonof socialturmoil, among the small band of dedicated individuals who research ortake photographs of crop pictures. But more on that later.
The 2010 season began spectacularly at Wilton Windmill in southern England onMay 22 with a crop picture made in yellow oilseed rape, which is a plant withthick celery-like stems that is almost impossible to bend smoothly (rather thanbreak) with rope and boards. Nevertheless, many plant stems in that remarkablecrop picture were found to be bent smoothly, something like an iron barsubjected to high temperatures, then re-cooled into another shape (here). What did the new crop picture at Wilton Windmill tell us?
It showed a famous mathematical formula known as "Euler's Identity", using abinary form of computer ASCII code (here). Even British newspapers could not ignore this (here). Then a few weeks later on June 13 at Poirino in Italy (here), we saw the image of a six-month lunar calendar, in which all of the small "stars"coded for another famous equation "E = mc2", this time using a decimal form ofASCII:
Eight days after that on June 21 at Pewsey in southern England, we saw acleverly coded version of the "golden ratio phi to ten digits", or 1.61803399(here).
Whatever anyone chooses to believe about this controversial subject, it wouldhave to be said that the "crop artists" (whomever they might be) are greatmathematicians, and also great graphic designers!
Then in July of 2010 we saw three "cubic" crop pictures at Danebury Hill (here), Cley Hill (here), or Fosbury (here).
The Danebury crop picture showed a clever version of "Metatron's Cube",which is a famous shape in what is called "sacred geometry":
Cley Hill showed us another cubic art motif, which was made famous by Leonardoda Vinci:
Fosbury showed us a third cubic art motif, which was made famous by Archimedes:
Let us see now: Metatron, Leonardo da Vinci, or Archimedes, None of those "cubic"crop pictures look alien to me! Could the skeptics be right? Could all threehave been made by local human fakers with rope and boards? Or might there besomething wrong with our intellectual presumptions regarding this subject?
All three of those "cubic" crop pictures showed spectacular, highly elaboratefield details, or what most researchers call the "lay of fallen crop." Thusfrom a purely technical point of view, they would have been hard to fake. Wehave a known fake from 2010 with which to compare, that was made with rope andboards in East Field on July 29-30, 2010 (here). It shows considerably less field detail than any of those three "cubic" croppictures, while close-up photographs taken on the ground reveal a stomped-outmess (here).
Still, one cannot really be sure whether any or all of those "cubic" croppictures might be paranormally authentic. That issue has driven a small (butvocal) minority of crop circle researchers into social turmoil this year. Someof them have argued (without any evidence) that all crop pictures from2010 have been human-made fakes, and that there exists a huge "secretconspiracy" among mainstream crop circle researchers, who have been studyingthe subject since 1990, to commission large teams of workers to go out into thefields at night, in order to make fake crop pictures that can later be shown oncalendars or jewelry, simply for the purposes of making money!
No doubt a little of this goes on. Yet one can only note here that thelong-term researchers in question (who sell calendars or jewelry) are relativelypoor by normal human standards, and would hardly have enough funds topay for such large-scale efforts! And those crop pictures which are known to be"fake" usually seem quite obvious, and hence are not visited or regarded wellby serious researchers, only by tourists. Finally, the intellectual content ofmodern crop pictures can sometimes be quite high, as shown above for Euler'sIdentity, E = mc2 or the golden ratio. "Are we really talkingabout the same people here, who would not have received an education in highermathematics?"
Now in order to close this progress report, let us delve into the heart of thesubject. Three crop pictures at Woolaston Grange on July 18, Beggar's Knoll onJuly 27, or Windmill Hill on July 27, seemed to show the first and secondstages of a "proton-proton nuclear fusion reaction" which powers our Sun, or isused in man-made hydrogen bombs (here):
Are they advising us to develop new methods for energy generation, or mightthey be warning us about an upcoming nuclear war? There is little doubt in mymind that the real "paranormal crop artists" can somehow predict the future:see for example the first two slides here, which show how several crop pictures from 2007 anticipated the BP oil spillin 2010.
Finally, just a few days ago on July 30, 2010 at Wickham Green in Berkshire, wesaw two circular crop pictures which showed apparently the "face of Jesus" asit appears on the Turin Shroud, along with a complex, unsolved message inbinary code for everyone on Earth (here):
Does anyone seriously believe that those two highly-elaborate crop pictureswere locally human-made? And what might their underlying binary code have totell us?
This summary diagram was prepared by CMM Research on August 8, 2010, based on original work done by George Costanza and Marius Zemaitis on the ‘Circle Chasers’ Facebook website.
In summary, the 2010 crop circle season has been an exciting time (so far). Ithas included many new crop pictures of a mathematical or geometrical nature,along with several other pictures which show nuclear fusion from subatomicphysics, plus a recent pair of pictures which purports to show a "message fromabove" that is intended for everyone on Earth, if we can figure out what itmeans.
Where do modern crop pictures come from, if they are not made by local human fakerswith rope and boards? There is no current consensus on this point, nor have thecrop artists clearly revealed their identities in their pictures (except maybeon July 30). Some people believe that they are being made by extra-terrestrialvisitors to Earth, while other people believe that they may come from someother spacetime dimension, whether physical or spiritual, which overlaps withour own.
One thing seems certain however: our current way of thinking about "consensusNewtonian reality" must be fundamentally in error, in order for those beautifulfield pictures to keep appearing year after year in diverse places, almost asif by magic, never showing any mistakes, never being found half-finished, andtheir perpetrators almost never being caught, despite intense surveillance ofthe fields in England where they most commonly appear.
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