by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
The history of UFOlogy is made up of stories that range from genuine mystery to outright fraud. The choice of what to take seriously and what to discard can be difficult for those in the early stages of exploring the subject. A good maxim to start with might be “consider the source,” and some good claims to examine with this in mind are those involving metals (lately referred to as “metamaterials”) said to have been recovered from flying saucers/UFOs.
Metamaterial is a word that popped up in UFO world thanks to To The Stars Academy announcing in a July 25, 2019, press release that it had “acquired multiple pieces of metamaterials and an archive of initial analysis and research for their controversial ADAM Research Project.” It is explained that ADAM stands for “Acquisition and Data Analysis of Materials” which is an “academic research program” for the purpose of “exploiting of exotic materials for technological innovation.”
It is revealed that the material was previously in the possession of cattle mutilation and UFO researcher, Linda Moulton Howe, and that it reportedly came “from an advanced aerospace vehicle of unknown origin” which seems like a roundabout way of saying it came from a UFO.
This certainly isn’t the first time someone has come forward with the claim of having mystery metal of possible unearthly origin. One of the most famous and long-standing claims involved metal said to have been recovered from a flying saucer that exploded over Ubatuba, Brazil, in 1957.
The initial analysis of one piece of what was described by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization’s man in Brazil, Dr. Olavo Fontes, as three pieces of dull, grey metal was performed at the Mineral Production Laboratory. The result of a mass spectrograph analysis showed it to be 100% pure magnesium and this was held up by Fontes and APRO as proof that it was extraterrestrial, as no one on Earth was capable of producing 100% pure magnesium.
It seems there was a flaw in the testing as an analysis at Dow chemical in 1961 showed the presence of calcium and barium. In 1964, Dr. Roy Craig examined a sample as part of the U.S. Air Force funded University of Colorado UFO study headed by Dr. Edward U. Condon, and they determined it was not 100% magnesium.
The above details come from a report by Peter A. Sturrock, who examined the metal himself and published the results in an article titled, “Compositional Analysis of the Brazilian Magnesium” in the Journal of Scientific Exploration Vol. 19, No. 1 pp. 69-95, 2001. He looked at the isotopic ratio of the magnesium and found it to be consistent with terrestrial magnesium.
So, after over 40 years of discussion and multiple lab tests, what was the source of the material? It turns out that the first person to receive the metal was El Globo Brazilian society columnist Ibrahim Sued who said he got it from an unnamed reader. He wrote an article in the paper headlined “Un Fragmento De Disco Voador!” published September 14, 1957, and this is what alerted Fontes to the case.
The situation with the TTSA/LMH metal is almost identical, and Howe’s time with the material is examined in the UFOWATCHDOG.COM article headlined “Is Alleged UFO Crash Site all it’s Cracked Up to be?” which is sub-headed “Report Compiled By Scientific Research Technologist Indicates Earthly Origin, Howe Says Material Is Still Anomaly.”
The article begins with a promotion for a DVD of a lecture Howe gave at an X-Conference titled “SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE: INVESTIGATIVE UFO SCIENCE AND BISMUTH/MAGNESIUM LAYERING OF ARTIFACT FROM WHITE SANDS, NEW MEXICO IN 1947.” The lecture is described as being “an amazing tale of a unique layered metal allegedly removed from a wedge-shaped aerial vehicle of unknown origin at White Sands, New Mexico, in 1947.” Travis Taylor, said to be a physicist working for the DIA, is quoted as saying he had “basically exhausted every resource” trying to find out what layered Mg and Bi might have been used for from 1940 on and found nothing. According to him, “This material didn’t just make itself. It had to come from somewhere. …And nobody’s told anyone about this material!”
The rest of the article is devoted to the report mentioned in the subheading which was written by Nicholas A. Reiter and submitted to Howe on August 7, 1996 (updated November 30, 2001), and titled “Summary of our Analysis of the Claimed Roswell Crash Artifact as Discussed on ‘The Art Bell Show’ – 1996.” Reiter describes the material as “a small chunk of lightweight metal, sawed or micro-tomed from a larger parent piece.” According to him (this can be seen in photos of the material as well) the material is “irregular in contour,” consists of silver and black layers, and is brittle.
The results of X-ray analysis showed the silver layers to be “relatively pure Mg” with 2-3% Zn, and the black layers said to be “primarily Bi.” He found it to be highly conductive, non-radioactive, and to have had no magnetic field.
In the section titled “Testing for Unusual Properties,” Reiter says he was told by Howe that “the artifact structure was possibly indicative of a hypothetical propulsion system, and that extremely high DC potentials applied to the metal structure would cause it to lose weight!” According to him, testing with a power supply providing about 15,000 Volts DC and a Van De Graff generator providing 30-50 KV caused no change in weight.
According to Reiter, the material is not made up of anything unknown and resembles residue found in physical vapor deposition chambers. He adds that he had worked cleaning residue from the world’s largest commercial E-beam coater in Ohio and that if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought someone had sent him a souvenir from his former place of work.
In his 2001 update, Reiter offers a solution to the mystery of why the material is made up of Mg and Bi. According to him, he found a reference to a process called the Betterton-Krohl Process whereby molten Mg is floated onto molten lead to pull the Bi impurities out of it, and the Mg is often reused repeatedly.
So, after all the discussion and testing, what was the source of the material? It turns out that it was received in the mail by late-night radio broadcaster Art Bell in 1996 along with a letter from an anonymous source. According to the source, his grandfather was part of a retrieval team that responded to the “Roswell crash” (the actual crash site is said to have been at White Sands, New Mexico) that involved two dead aliens and one live one. He wrote that his grandfather broke off some of the metal to keep as a souvenir.
The material became known in UFO world as “Art’s Parts” and it seems that some of it may be in the hands of the U.S. military, as in 2019, TTSA signed a five-year contract with the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command which involved their commitment to study metamaterials provided to them by TTSA. According to the contract, “Government shall: Perform assessments, testing, and characterization of Collaborator-provided technologies. The Government is interested in a variety of the Collaborator’s technologies, such as, but not limited to inertial mass reduction, mechanical/structural meta materials (no longer one word here), electromagnetic meta material wave guides, quantum physics, quantum communications, and beamed energy propulsion.” According to the October 21, 2019, Vice magazine article by M. J. Banias headlined “Tom DeLonge’s UFO Research Group Signs Contract With U.S. Army to Develop Far-Future Tech,” the Army committed to spending $750,000 (none paid to TTSA) over five years.