Comment on the SITU Archive

Nothing profound here, folks. This post is just something pragmatic so as to head off possible future internet rumors and hysteria. I'm going to toss out some of the books which came to me in the huge SITU library shipment a few years ago. BUT DON'T PANIC!! The only things which will go are books which shouldn't have been there [as an anomalies library] in the first place.

Why the culling?: I'm moving to a new place in around October, and it doesn't have the luxury of an empty two-car garage. Even though the place is large, I won't have the linear feet to swallow non-essentials and random inclusions. I'm tossing a bunch of my non-anomalistic library too [so far 40 Banker Boxes of my stuff have disappeared.]

What's going to be culled?: The boxes which came to me had a lot of irrelevancies in them. There were many books merely owned by Robert Warth, for instance, which were way outside any SITU interests. Some similar things of Sanderson's were, no doubt, of interest to him sometime in his life, but hardly belonging in an anomalies archive --- ex. an ordinary textbook on microbiology. Nevertheless, I shelved almost all of that simply because I had the space --- against my better judgement at the time. Those sorts of things, and there are plenty, are now going to go.

I'm mentioning this because some of them had the SITU library stamp inside the covers somewhere. What I don't want to encourage is someone obtaining such a book, reading the stamp, and promulgating another internet rumor like the old "The SITU Library was raped clean" falsity. It wasn't and it won't be. For near-hysterical purists, there are rather long library listings which will be kept if anyone honestly thinks that anyone in the future would want to know if there was a microbiology text on the shelves.

What I will NOT, nor never, discard: Ivan's three-ring notebook files [THE Sacred Objects here]; the SITU organization minutes and other administrational materials [in case someone wants to write a history someday]; ALL of the anomalistic books, monographs, journals, and newsletters [even the stuff I believe to be pure crap]; materials which in themselves do not contain anomalistic information, but which rather closely can be seen to be of use to the anomalistic researcher [ ex. books on early civilization; lightning phenomena; animals often mistaken for crypto-forms; etc.]; I will also keep any book wherein Ivan signed his name --- just for nostalgia.

What I will toss: ordinary textbooks if there is no sign that Ivan used them by writing in marginalia or the like --- most of these things are "clean" of anything but text; journals which might have something which Ivan was involved with, but which do not directly or strongly indirectly relate to anomalies, and do not have Sanderson notations nor articles; and, you get the idea. If things seem at all "gray", I'll keep them.

So that's the boring news. I felt that I needed to make it public, however. This culling allows me to continue to protect the collection for future researchers of anomalies.

.... don't know when I'll get out another true anomalies post... chaos reigns here.

Peace.

Digging to the Core, last time this season.

One last time on this theme ... I have to stop this line of blog preparation. It takes WAY too much effort to plow through several hundred UFO case files per entry, and people probably aren't overly fired up about the "research thing" anyway. I leave it behind though with some definite regret, as the work has forced me deep into the phenomenon, and it gets a little clearer all the time.

Still, this "hundreds of cases per post" is nuts, and I have to get more time efficient with packing up the research collection for the end-of-summer move. So.... this one took equal work, but I'm going to be short and sweet with the post.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind: Electromagnetic Effects cases.

Here's what I did: A). Go through the CE2em case files and try to select ones which, as far as my own files were concerned, seemed fairly strongly credible and to clearly involved an E&M effect. 94 of those case files survived that cut. B). Out of those, I looked for the anchoring core of the phenomenon --- translation: the best cases. I picked 27 of the 94 for special "honors". C). to supplement my own files, serendipity led me to Dick Haines' study of effects in cases involving aircraft --- dropping a few which were duplicates of my own [surprisingly few, Dick is a VERY fine researcher in this aircraft incident area which in my opinion is his greatest strength], and added 133 more cases to the clump. Thus, the graph above.

I am tempted to say that the graph feels like it's telling me that the UFOs emphasized messing about in aircraft situations before they began to more intently turn their attention to the ground, but I should resist that sort of thing as the amount of data, and the unknown of exactly how Dick searched out his case pile, puts too big a question mark in this to make such a weighty comment. Still.... the front end of that graph is mighty funny.

I'm now just going to repost the other two mass data graphs from the previous posts so that they are easy for you to look at and compare.

Again, I should just shut up and behave conservatively, but the front end of the E&M graph seems to have the same "attitude" as the radar cases graph, and the middle of the E&M graph the same "attitude" as the CE1 graph. It's like the phenomenon in more than one way got itself established distantly and technologically first, then turned on the Variety Circus Show. ... lots of "dancing" and wildly "showing off" during the Condon Study era [makes you wonder, doesn't it?] and the 1970s decade, before turning the Music way down. 

That turn-down of the Close Encounters [and almost ANYTHING which is really good as a case from the eighties on] MIGHT just be my unconscious fault as far as these graphs are concerned, but I don't think so, and the fact that Dick wasn't finding many good cases of his type either is just one more example that it's not simply some bias I have, consciously or not. {Other examples of these drop-offs come from long-term statistics of the stable-and-able Tasmanian investigating group TUFOIC, from MUFONs case receiving website, from CUFOS, from perusing Fran Ridge's NICAP site, from the fact that GEPAN could find very little after the late 70s despite having national cooperation, etc etc etc.} Sure there have been tons of low-grade hit-and-run reports to NUFORC or things like Filer's Files, but even in the rare instance of a follow-up these cases are almost entirely mediocre. 

So, I believe that the turn-down of quality cases is real. That does not mean it will remain so, or that we should just pack it in as far as new investigations are concerned. 

But I am at least actually going to turn it down as far as these massive data ploughing posts are concerned, so this is probably the last of this type. But I should soften this painful blow by showing you one more great revelation about the UFOs....

At least some of the UFOnauts are made of ....

IRON!!!!

Just Kidding!! [Lord, only on the Internet would anyone have to say that.] 

Peace and good times, friends.

Digging for the Core: Close Encounters.

Soldiering on with the case file reconstruction and case category appraisals.

Today: Close Encounters of the First Kind [sightings with details at about 500 feet or so.]

Once again, a tougher job than either of the last two. Why? because every case has to be read to determine if the proximity criterion is met, or there is some mitigating circumstance whereby it's rational to expand the criterion in some case [example: the witness used a telescope or binoculars.] Because of this re-read issue, it was harder to just sweep up cases which weren't already in my CE1 files to make a larger pile.
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So, OK, enough whining by me: what did I do? CE1s are a large file drawer --- over 300 incidents. So, it was a good base to work with. I added Allen Hynek's select CE1s from his UFO Experience, as I trust him, and he defined the darn category afterall. Going through the file folders and making credibility judgements about which cases seemed to be strongly founded, I chose 45 foundationstone cases [33 of "mine" and Hynek's 12], plus enough other good ones to get to just over 150. That was pretty good but still felt a little light for something as well-observed as CE1s. I went to Fran Ridge's NICAP site, which has a CE1 category page, and picked out those cases listed there which someone thought were important enough to create a documentation directory rather than a simple listing. With those as a supplement with some confidence to them, the total numbers of promising cases went to just over 230. Since that was, weirdly, almost the exact number of the previous radar file, I accepted the synchronicity and went with it.

Here's the yearly occurrence graph. My select best cases are in RED. The rest of my cases files judged to be good ones are in PINK. The supplements from Fran's NICAP site are in BLUE. To give you the potential fun of imagining all sorts of correlations [WARNING!! Don't take me or you too seriously while doing so!!], I'm going to re-post the radar graph from the previous post.

They are sort-of-the-same and sort-of-different aren't they?? The accumulations and deficits tend to fall in similar areas, and that must mean something either about the phenomenon or about the blogger. I'll plead some guilt in the issue, but I honestly do not believe that I am entirely the causal agent here. I've seen this pattern too often elsewhere in this field. And THAT has, in its strange way, convinced me even further of the objective reality of what's going on.

On the other hand, there is at least one big difference in these graphs for me: the phenomenon got closer. Between WWII and about 1958, the phenomenon seemed happy to display itself as extremely advanced aerial technology to, perhaps, boggle the engineering and military mind. From the mid-1960s through at least the decade of the 1970s, it seemed to preferably "move in" a little closer. Maybe it enjoyed the "personal" individuality of the "60s" as much as we did {Just Joking!! --- don't start another internet rumor!!} Whereas the bulk of the best radar cases are early, the bulk of the best CE1s come in the "middle." Of course the "end" of the graph is a UFO desert in both.

One might speculate upon what this possible shift in display means --- and go and have the fun doing that. Just keep a VERY open mind to be healthy about what any of this might really mean.

I've put these pages on the blog already in the past, but it doesn't hurt to re-publish them in this context. Obviously what they're doing is giving you a group of illustrations from CE1 witnesses, or polished up versions of cruder sketches that they made. They, as is usual in UFOlogy, demonstrate the bewildering variety of detail that we're constantly presented with. I have said before that I believe [always with a willingness to be flat wrong] that this variation is much more deliberate on the part of the Agency-behind-the-UFOs than either foggy observation by witnesses or every UFO driver having his private hot-rod.

I believe that this is just very clever deliberate pattern-breaking which allows the individual impact of the encounter without our cultural aura of uncertainty being threatened.

I don't know if a listing of the better cases in this first "draft" would be useful to anyone, but as briefly as possible, here they are: {the first twelve are Allen's cases} Parshall, ND [1967], Meyerstown, PA [1966], Nederland, TX [1966], Rocky, OK [1965], Beverly, MA [1966], Freemont, IN [1966], Jefferson, MO [1967], Kenora, ONT [1955], Monticello, WI [1964], Mt. Airy, MD [1965], Weymouth, MA [1963], Mendota, CA [1967]. ... and my additions ... Red Bluff, CA [1960], Springfield, PA [1962], Millersport, OH [1963], St. Albans, WV [1958], Exeter, NH [1965], Mackay, Qnsld [1965], Portage County, OH [1966], Sheffield, OH [1958], Seville, SP [1961], Newton, IL [1966], Warren, OH [1968], Lowell, MA [1976], btw Willard//Greenwich, OH [1971], Colby, KS [1972], Willow Grove, PA [1966], Brunflo, SWE [1986], Bainbridge, MD [1952], East Peru, ME [1962], Vicksburg, MI [1966], Weston, MO [1967], Milledgeville, GA [1967], Gilroy, CA [1975], Camp Delaware, CT [1976], Kansas City, KS [1961], btw Handen//Tungelsta, SWE [early 70s], Waipukurau, NZ [1969], Baytown, TX [1966], Juniata, PA [1956], Hampton, VA [1965], Mannum, SAus, [1972], Woodbury Twnsp, MN [1976], Colusa, CA [1976].

... and again just for fun, here's some of the CE1 art:

Some UFOs showing themselves, even one giving a little peek at its "driver."

...chasing a train, and half-way hiding.

Making an electrical nuisance of itself, and being downright harassing of some car drivers....

...showing that they can be the shape they want to be.

...putting on a good show down under, and maybe even leaving a trace...

... really showing off ...

... and bye-bye? 

Mysteries, wonderful mysteries.

Till next ... watch the skies, friends. Even in this UFO desert, we might get lucky.

Peace.

Digging for the Core, Radar.

Today I'm going to do something simpler with a different Hynekian category of UFO cases {radar involved incidents}. This difference is because I'm too lazy to do more, and I'm a profound ignoramus about the vagaries of radar equipment and atmospheric false propagation tricks. This reduces me to serious faith in my past UFO "brothers" who analyzed these matters.

In a vain attempt to save face, and show that SOME work was done at least, I've attempted to plot a list of [hopefully] good UFO radar-involved cases, as you see above. My own case files have around 120 folders/individual cases. Of these I could flash-determine that I could be somewhat "proud" of 43 of them... I am sure that many more of the 120 are in this "good case" category, but I was too lazy to re-read and evaluate the other files.

43 was a "nice" group, but it seemed smallish for the whole radar category. So I went to the Sparks/ Berliner/ McDonald "BlueBook unidentifieds" list and added in the non-duplicated cases there. Then I went to Dick Hall's UFO Evidence Two and added his radar cases. Lastly Jan Aldrich had sent me a first pass copy of his and Martin Shough's RADCAT listing, and I added those. This got the pile up to 232, and I thought that was OK.

The 232 number has a lot of bias in it. First and most obviously, there is the great lump of cases, mainly military, from the Project BlueBook era. They are shown on the graph in blue. Then there is the prejudice, whatever it is, that happens in my own mind when I decide to make a case file and then evaluate the case as "good". These are shown in the graph as red. Hall's UFOE two is biased by time period{ post-1965 mainly, through c.2000}. The draft RADCAT is only biased in that I started looking at the entries post BlueBook's close.

So, make of that what you will. For me, even with all the biases, I'm boggled once again by the desert which follows 1980 that we've seen in other case instances. The main "muscular" UFO waves [around 1952, around 1957, around 1967 (( "up yours Ed Condon; where are you??")), and around 1975], are all standing out. 1954 doesn't. Why?? With 1954 I believe everything goes out the window except weirdness. To put it another way, all these others look like Core UFOlogy, but '54 is like a freak hybrid --- check that, never use the word "hybrid" when talking about UFOs --- uhhh, '54 is more like a strange combination of different things.

... but given the earlier theme of searching for the UFO Core, it seems to me that we've found it again in the better radar cases. Advanced aerial technology that can easily outfly us.

I could have specifically listed a lot of cases, but I had a template for 14 cases and, being a do-nothing goof went with it. I think that I chose some good ones, though --- cases #1,2,&4 are universal favorites and you'll have to fight Jim McDonald if you want to argue with them --- I'd suggest not. #3 was Colorado administrator Bob Low's favorite unknown, and it's one of mine too. There's so much corroboration in this case that it's an evidence mountain should people really want to find the truth. ... and down the list, there are Hynek favorites, a Bill Chalker favorite, a Claude Poher favorite, a Dick Haines favorite, a Jean-Jacques Velasco favorite, plus BlueBook unknowns. ... and the thing that I got to work on, Holland Michigan.

Since radar cases are notorious for having zero or lousy visuals to wow the spectators, here area a few things I made from my work on the Holland case to amuse you.

This is a drawing I did using the commentary in the never-published MUFON field reports interviewing the Graves family about how a circular thing with cycling colored lights moved from across the street from their house and away.

The above two diagrams are two of several that I made from the narration that the radar operator gave me and Dave Ford while we were there with him and his boss at the station. He did not see any color, of course; I just added that to make the blips stand out.

As to what these creme-de-la-creme may be telling us: 

1). The object shapes, as usual, are very different. Disk, cigar, oval and generally radially-symmetric shapes dominate [also as usual] and there are some cases where all you could see were lights. But at Mainbrace one of those nuisance triangles even snuck in there for a while. 

2). These things are fast and maneuverable. They can hover, or they can cruise at 2000-4000 mph. A case from Kirksville, MO [one of the notorious "case missing" incidents] estimated the speed at 6000 mph. Good old-fashioned Top Gun Alien Technology.

3). There are two size-monsters here, both later year ones. Rather than being weaker cases, their provenance is extremely strong. The JAL case said: "Two Aircraft Carriers." The '94 French case said : Disk 1000 metres in diameter.  Yep. No doubt the planet Jupiter. 

4). Some extra weirdness creeps in as well. The RB-47 object instantly vanished. And Hynek's Winslow, AZ case would show on radar when the lights were visually seeable, but when they would suddenly switch off, the ground radar would lose the object's blip. Do these things flip in and out of normal space, or do they just have a fantastic stealthiness which they switch on and off? 

So, there's another chapter. What does it tell us?

UFOs are real, baby, just ask the Air Force...... or practically anyone else.

And as to what's next?

"It was a dark and stormy night...."

Taking a small break with a small Dragon

Life trying to log UFO files has become impossible from an interest standpoint just now, so I'll give both of us a break. Let's chase, VERY briefly, a Dragon.

You regulars might remember that I tried (almost unsuccessfully) to range the world looking for a "proper" dragon almost exactly two years ago in this blog. We searched over five postings for the critters, the last being May 31, 2012. It was interesting to me, for sure, but finding "evidence" for the ancient proper dragon {reptilian, winged, fire-breathing, huge} was hard to come by. I sort of decided that [for my tastes] the only thing which clearly had the characteristics was the "third" monster of Beowulf --- not the more famous Grendel, but a truly described Dragon, who kills our hero [so I refer to it as Beowulf's Bane.]

I was going through hardcopy resources three days ago [throwing much out in anticipation of my great intracity home move at the end of the summer.] I came across an old Smithsonian Bulletin wherein a scholar was discussing the contents of "recently" found Mesopotamian cylinder seals. I'd looked at a few dozen cylinder seals while trying to become smart about the history of dragons, but never saw one which was particularly convincing. This scholar printed one which changes my mind.

This is a thing from Lagash, claiming to be of the reign of Gudaea, which, if true, puts it at around 2100 BC --- well before Beowulf obviously. The mini-carved "cartoon" has, at first glance anyway, all the right qualities: reptilian, winged, and maybe even something fiery coming out of its nose or mouth. This drawing takes it well beyond the famous Sirrush of the Ishtar Gates, in my opinion, and seems quite dragonish more than, say, griffinish.

The contents of this seal are, of course, debated. The scene however seems to represent Gudaea being taken into the heavenly throneroom of one of the Anunnaki or Seven High Gods of Sumer. That god on the throne might be Anu or might be Enki. Gudaea is the plainly clothed petitioner. The gods front and back of him are one of the well-known high seven and one called "Ningishzida", which is translated by some as "The Great Dragon of Heaven", supposedly memorialized by the constellation Hydra. The cartoon miniature of Ningishzida resides therefore at the extreme left in dragon form.

This then gives me a bit more confidence that the representations of certain other cylinder seals are actually meant to portray dragons rather than "just" griffins or some other such legendary anomaly.

But so what?

Well, if one likes the concept of the Dragon, I suppose that anything about it is interesting, especially if the ancients were using this imagery in important contexts. The romance of the moment might even inspire some belief in the possibility of physical reality. I don't go there, because the six-limbed dragon is evolutionarily a loser of a structure [i.e. it cannot evolve]. But I AM quite the fan of at least imagining the possibility that encounter anomalies might involve paranormal or faerie-based entities, at least "once-upon-a-time."

For me, the main intrigue in this is more of a baby-step. If the concept of a proper dragon was alive in 3rd millennium Mesopotamia, and if such origins could have inspired Beowulf's dragon 2000+ years later, what was the root/route of contact? Did these "dark" myths travel with Celts or Cymmerians or even more mythological peoples across lower central Europe, much as did the first glimmerings of the druidical style of life? Or did the imagery of Beowulf survive because there was some actual encounter knowledge of such beings?

So what if this is Out Proctor and close to going All-the-way-fool? Let's keep the ideas alive and the pathways unfenced as we walk these forbidden forests with eyes wide open.

Peace.

You never know who's watching out there......

Digging To The Core, four

Distant object UFO cases... last set of thumbnails on these, though if you worked at it there could be plenty more incidents both believable and intriguing. As we get up towards modern times, my files become shallower and weaker as to both numbers and the levels of confidence that I had in those reports. Some of this is The Internet which facilitates non-discipline in both reporting and investigation. Some of this is just a drop-off of striking cases, as has been discussed several times here. Some of it was probably me just getting too tired to keep running after the fox.

Anyway, here are a few more....

This is an adventurous fascinating lot. A few remarks:

1). The level of strangeness is higher [smack-in-the-face-odd] for more of these incidents than the "simple" flying technology core of the early days;
2). This set contains two examples of what you know is one of my favorite types of cases: astro-alignment. [you will see that one of them was posted fairly recently]. When you consider the extremely tight geometry of these cases to achieve the "privileged viewing positions" necessary for the effect to take place, arguments that these are not directed displays demand a level of faith in coincidence that reduces those odds to the microscopic [even given the number of total UFOs ever reported]. I've heard enough casual wave-off debunking on stuff like this that it is clear that if one decides to buy coincidence, adding a dash of incompetence, one might as well stop thinking about any of this at all; {if I sound a bit irritated by this sort of "analysis", well, yeh, I am};
3). We still are fortunate enough to get a pilot case here and there, or the superb Ludington Coast Guard case, but "official" involvement is mostly connected with policemen;
4). Scandinavia shows up with some very good cases, a tribute to less impact on those cultures giving them prejudicial hang-ups, plus some well-organized investigative bodies. The Navelsjo case is an instance of what is to my intuition one of the most significant elements of the total mystery: a tremendous "OZ" or entering-into-a-changed-state-of-the-environment effect, manifest by cancellation of sounds;
5). The famous "Yukon Giant" case has been included because the debunking, which could be correct, is something that I need to see critiqued by someone not in the debunking community and who also knows what he or she is talking about. There needs to be a LOT of remanufacturing of the witness testimonies and some forcing of the time and placing of the satellite decay in the sky to make this work. Because the Giant is potentially an important case [it could say something about control of mass and huge air displacement effects] I'll not just throw this into the trashbin until I hear more and better analysis;
6). I include the Timmerman files cases because I knew John so well, and his friendly unthreatening demeanor got people to talk very frankly to him. Of the two cases above, the doctor's case seems strong, the other maybe not as much. But if that second case were true, it would be a mindblower;
7). Lastly Father Hesburgh's case: I graduated from Notre Dame and Hesburgh is one of the great men of the last 100 years. The only issue in the case can be if the reporter made the whole thing up, since, if he did not, Hesburgh and the two witnesses were of highest credibility. I must go with some "faith" here, as the article contained not only direct quotes, but a picture of the other two witnesses recreating the fishing scene [with drawing of the craft] at the lake. "On paper" I wouldn't normally include such a poorly documented thing, but my intuition says differently on this one.

So, we can move on from the distant object cases, What I believe that I found from them is a clear strongly documented core of advanced aerial technology, beyond our abilities at the time and even yet to manufacture and fly. Layered onto that core, I find clusters of cases demonstrating directed display behavior, as well as creepy control effects like "OZ". None of the "simple" distant object cases are by definition CE2s, so no such physical effects can be expected in this case cabinet. But we know that such cases exist in abundance in file drawers with different labels.

But, for now, advanced aerial technology beyond our means, which demonstrates a desire to display "locally" and control environments locally seems a large harvest of credible information to me.

I don't know how much of this "best cases in categories" I'll do, as it's more work than I thought, but sooner or later I'll get back to it and we can walk through the Forbidden Portal together to see what's on the other side.

Till then, peace friends. Kenneth Arnold, the General Mills balloon experts, and Kelly Johnson didn't see satellites decaying.

Digging To The Core, three.

Part three of these "distant object" selections. One of the things which has happened here is that, since I'm posting these thumbnails roughly in yearly order, we are now past the infamous Robertson Panel by over a year and it has had time to permeate its "dumb-down UFOs" message through the many military services locations. The good solid military cases become scarcer [there will still be some now and then which slip out, but the Robertson Panel has changed the game.]

Well, here are the next set:

Much to contemplate there, but before making my usual few brief comments, I thought that some of you might like to see the original art [in color] from the Homer, NY case. I showed this on the blog some time ago, but other than that almost no one has seen the colored originals, so we can share a secret wonder moment.

.... would that all our witnesses were artists.

Well, to the cases....

It's pretty obvious that for at least my files, and specifically my "distant object" files, that the emphasis has shifted away from the United States. This is due, in my opinion, to two main factors: a). The aforementioned Robertson Panel influence, and b). the rising in several non-US nations of excellent researchers [of whom I could get enough information upon to trust.] As we will see if I can continue these postings, there will be MANY more good non-UFO cases, and could be far more so if I could read foreign languages --- the French and the Scandinavians, and the modern Italians have been loaded with fine investigators. This language barrier, by the way, is a major deficit in almost all US researchers, and frankly we could always, and even now, have used good translators.

The next thing that this set of cases seems hinting to me is that the time has come for more "strangeness." There was always strangeness aplenty as I said last time, but it was mainly a subtle technologically-hip sort of strangeness --- i.e. you had to think a bit about what you were seeing with these things do to get the Wow impact. But now, the Wow is beginning to hit you smack in the face.

We're getting displays of impossible dancing in the skies, and programmed activities with several disks. We're getting wild non-inertial showing off, uninterpretable color effects, and one particularly intriguing possibility: instant vanishment.

Unless we get the UFOs under extremely good instrumental observation, we're never going to be able to say that any one of them actually instantaneously vanished. You're one of the more sophisticated audiences on the Internet. You know that the human brain doesn't get continuous flow input, but rather a rapid set of "snapshots" taken by the eye's mechanism, which our cortex pieces together mysteriously to create the motion picture of consciousness. If any change in the external world takes place in, say, less than a sixth or an eighth of a second, our consciousness will register that change as "instantaneous." In plain English, anything moving out of sight quicker than that will not be seen to have moved but just disappeared.

Note however that any technology able to disappear from "frame" in less than a sixth of a second should be quite "advanced-ly alien" for anyone. Maybe not absolutely "non-inertial" but "close enough for government work. "

But it is the possibility that the technology REALLY DID vanish that is the big deal here. We can't claim that this happened, but if it did.... there---right there---is the shadow of the hyperspatial entry/exit technology which would change the entire game about deepspace travel. All of a sudden, maybe, Tau Ceti is just a blink away.

Much to meditate upon...

I'll try to get to more --- one more D-objects type posting, and later digging into the other categories in their turns. Till then, peace, and a bit of fun in this great Creation.