Ubatuba [was: Michael Wolf's Samples in Italy]
From: Gildas Bourdais <GBourdais@aol.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 12:37:40 EDT
Fwd Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 01:34:00 -0400




>Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 14:41:22 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) 
>From: Nick Balaskas <nikolaos@YorkU.CA> 
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net> 
>Subject: Re: Michael Wolf's Samples in Italy 
 

Gildas Bourdais:
To Nick Balaskas, and the List : 
In a message dated 7 April, you made a very interesting announcement regarding the Ubatuba fragments : 
 

There is an erroneous belief, even among some ufologists, that the Ubatuba UFO samples no longer exist. 

Back in 1957 Dr. Fontes acquired three small samples of a UFO which allegedly exploded over Brazil in 1957. 

Sample #1 was divided into several pieces and was distributed to researchers Dr. Luisa Maria A. Barbosa and Mr. Elson Teixeira and >also to Major Roberto Caminha of the Brazilian Army and Commander J.G. Brandao of the Brazilian Navy. 

The reports from Dr. Barbosa and Mr. Teixeira are on record but the reports from the Brazilian Army and Navy and their pieces were never forwarded back to Dr. Fontes. They may still exist if anyone cares to make a search for them. 
 

Samples #2 and #3 were transferred to APRO, the U.S. based UFO organization run by the late James and Coral Lorenzen. 

Tests were done on these two samples, which still exist, and their reports are on record too. 

In 1997 Dr. Peter A. Sturrock of Stanford University arranged for Dr. Sam Wang of Vancouver, Canada to determine the isotopic ratios of Magnesium in a piece of one of these samples. 

The results of this test showed that the Magnesium isotope Mg24 (which makes up nearly 80 percent of terrestrial Magnesium) was nearly absent in the Ubatuba UFO piece that was tested. 

Although it is believed that isotopic ratios for a given element are the same anywhere on Earth, they do in fact vary by up to a few percentage points, especially for the lighter elements. 

The surprising, different isotopic ratios found in the Ubatuba UFO piece (certainly much larger than the alleged 0.01 or 0.1 percent in the Dr. Wolf's sample), would be impossible to account through natural causes alone. 

We are now waiting for other researchers using different forms of testing to confirm Dr. Wang's test results. 
 

These findings are in accordance with the observations made by Paul Hill in his book Unconventional Flying Objects, published in 1995. Paul Hill noted that the density found for the first fragment, in Brazil by the Mineral Production Laboratory, was 1.866 instead of the expected density of 1.741, for Earth magnesium. But it was very close (0.005 higher) to the density of the pure isotope Mg 26, strongly suggesting its production by separation of isotopes, a process which has been achieved only for  Uranium so far (see pages 226 to 234). It would also explain the high purity of the sample. 

Paul Hill was very sorry that this fragment had not been tested in a mass spectrometer for confirmation. But we learn now that Dr Sturrock had an isotopic analysis made in 1997 on one of the samples, showing that the most abundant isotope on Earth, Mg 24, is nearly absent. 

This is an extremely important finding, it seems to me, and I am surprised to learn this almost by chance, on the occasion of a debate over Michael Wolf's samples. We are in 1999 - why so much delay for such announcing a finding? 

BTW, why did the report of the Pocantino workshop deal with the Ubatuba fragments in the form of a "brief mention" (page 209) by Jacques Vallee? (the man who lost one of the precious fragments in a Paris gutter, and who is a skeptic on the case). This report was made public in June 1998, and that's about three years after the book of Paul Hill ! 

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