World governments and civilian associations have attempted to look at the UFO problem for over a quarter of a century. Most of those efforts have focused on trying to prove it is a genuine mystery, and not just a modern fantasy triggered by Cold War paranoia and hoaxers.
But in in our attempts to make UFO reports fit into our current scientific paradigm, we risk having a great portion of the phenomenon—possibly the most important one—fall by the wayside and thus leaving this giant jigsaw puzzle incomplete. These are the kind of ideas I wanted to discuss with Susan Demeter and Massimo Teodorani: two friends of mine who have spent many years (both together and separately) investigating UFOs, and whose particular expertise complement each other in a most unique way; since Massimo is a professional scientist and Susan is a practitioner of witchcraft.
(A scientist and a witch power couple?? Torquemada must be rolling in his grave)
Unfortunately, the gods of the Internet did not favor us during our scheduled interview, and Massimo was unable to join Susan and I this time around. While we try to arrange another interview with Massimo alone, in the meantime he was gracious enough to answer some questions of mine via email. Here are his responses:
RPJ: Have you been following the latest developments in ‘American Disclosure’? If so, what is your opinion on it?
MT: Yes, I have, but without expecting anything special or new than what I already heard in the past. They are always the same telltales, with just some additions compared to the past (now the “psionic thing” is very much in fashion, as I see). However, the modality is always the same: “someone told me that …”. This is not interesting at all to scientists, who only want to evaluate and carefully ponder real physical proofs, not simple stories or anecdotes. I believe there is a lot of disinformation here, maybe with the intent to distract the American public from much more important and serious issues of their society.
Instead, the case for the “drones” (which are a true physical evidence since at least one year) is much more interesting, both if they belong to some unidentified enemy entity and if they come from “elsewhere”. I am wondering how is it possible that any attempt to make them land (or take them down) was unsuccessful (as official authorities recently stated).
RPJ: What do you think are the main differences between the American approach to the study of UFOs vs the European approach?
MT: I am almost totally out of the ufological community, but my impression is that in Europe, the word “disclosure” is practically unknown, or at least I did not hear it here. Of course, there are many “believers” here too, as well as many skeptics. Nevertheless, I have never seen here in Europe people who carry out scientific investigations on alleged UAPs using reality shows. At the same time, I have the duty to admit that – apart from a lot of UFO naivety, circus-like manifestations and conspiracies in America – with no doubt, so far, the best scientific attempt remains in America through the Galileo Project [NOTE: Massimo was a consultant for the GP for a brief time].
RPJ: In recent public appearances, Dr. Hal Puthoff (former member of NIDS, BASS and AAWSAP) has repeatedly claimed the UFO problem is no longer beyond our theoretical physics’ understanding, but it simply remains beyond our engineering capabilities—hence the urgency to ensure the United States’ competitors don’t get ahead of them. ¿Do you agree?
MT: He is correct. We know quite well the mathematical bases of warpdrive or wormhole travel, for instance. However, we have no idea on how to produce the so-called “negative energy” from the quantum vacuum which is necessary to keep a wormhole’s mouth open for the time necessary to make a spacecraft pass through it. In fact, if we only wanted to make a mouse pass through a wormhole whose opening is of 20 cm of diameter we would need as much negative energy as the rest mass of planet Earth. I say this, unless some so-called “portals” are naturally located at several places of Earth: but there is no scientific proof of it yet. Not impossible, anyway.
I do not think that there is any “competitor” out of the USA able to do this kind of technology. Yet, in Europe, we think more of *collaboration* than of “competition” in making human science advance, especially in this field.
RPJ: You have scientifically studied UFOs for many years. What do you think it is you have managed to learn about the phenomenon?
MT: The most important thing I noticed in so many years of investigation (and measurement, sometimes), is that we have a confirmation that an anomalous plasma-like phenomenon does exist [NOTE: Massimo and Susan have investigated the famous Hessdalen lights in Norway]. Apparently, it looks natural, very similar to ball lightning, but much bigger and with longer duration. However, in some cases there seems to be some evidence of apparent “intentionality”, which we are not able to explain: that is the reason why I developed the “plasma life hypothesis”. In any fact, we now know how these plasma balls physically behave when their luminosity changes. However, we do not know yet the physical mechanism that animates them. Sometimes “structured phenomena” are overlapped: this is another evidence, and I was a witness of it. No explanation yet.
RPJ: What do you foresee to being in the near-future of UFO research, and what would you like to see being implemented in pursuit of a better understanding of this phenomenon?
MT: I have very clear ideas on how to obtain strong and unequivocal scientific answers. Unfortunately, the realization of these projects depends only on the available funding that is allocated, and the scientific establishment in Europe doesn’t seem to be willing to give – for instance – one million Euros (at least a factor 1000 less than what is spent at CERN for instance) in order to allow us physicists to carry out crucial tests using the most appropriate measurement instruments. Of course, I have planned tests fully ready, for which I already did all the preparatory calculations. The most important of them involves medium and high-resolution spectroscopy of UAP using Pan Zoom Tilt cameras, so that we can accurately track the phenomenon while doing an exposure. The phenomenon can be extremely luminous (this is well documented in important papers by several scientists, such as J. Vallee on JSE, 1998). In some situations this opportunity might allow us to carry out high-resolution spectroscopy, which typically requires long exposure times (assuming that the spectrograph is attached to the PZT camera via fiber optics). The test that I proposed is very simple: through the analysis of spectral lines, we want to verify if they are split in two due to the presence of a strong magnetic field inside the plasma; this is called “Zeeman Effect” in physics. From the separation we are able to measure directly the intrinsic magnetic field strength. Knowing that the magnetic field of ball lightning cannot be bigger than 0.01-0.1 Tesla, if we are able to measure something that is 1 Tesla or much more (such as 100 Tesla), this test would tell us definitively that the object is a flying machine of some kind and not a natural phenomenon: I mean a solid object with a strong electric field around its surface able to convert the surrounding air to the state of plasma. Otherwise, it could be a new kind of natural phenomenon, probably a scaled-up version of ball lightning. In both cases, we would learn a lot in terms of fundamental physics. In addition to that, assuming that our ideal observing station is monitoring simultaneously the phenomenon using several other instruments (such as radars, radio spectrometers, FLIRs, cameras, etc.), from the way in which physical parameters change with time we would be able to understand the physical mechanism that animates the phenomenon. It could be a propulsion system if the measured magnetic field strength is much above the threshold limit. But this would not be sufficient to tell us that we are seeing extraterrestrials visiting us. It could be some kind of perfectly human secret project from some skunk works. Certainly, if we were so lucky to find this, the value of the extraterrestrial hypothesis would increase of at least a factor 10.
In general, I do not think that a simple “surveillance system” is able to tell us much about the physics of the phenomenon. We need a much more dedicated analytical approach. In my opinion, the Galileo Project is doing an excellent work, in terms of rigor, precision and reliability, but so far, is lacking in this analytic and crucial capability. In reality, it is not important to know if the phenomenon is alien or not; it is important to know how that stuff works, namely what we can learn concretely from it for our physics knowledge. And, if true, propulsion comes directly from a form of physics. If not true, then we would understand how to produce energy learning directly from Nature.
I prepared also other tests such as using a high-speed camera in order to monitor fast movements in the sky and/or fast intrinsic luminosity/color variations of the phenomenon. Finally, I prepared a detailed test in order to measure a possible interaction between the phenomenon and the human brain, using videocameras, EEGs and Laser.
Much of this can be found here:
As you can see from both Susan’s video and Massimo’s written responses, the two of them show an understandable frustration with the persistence lack of evidence in the current UFO discourse catching the attention of the media—and a handful of politicians in Washington D.C.
It’s been almost eight years since the world learned about the oversea encounters with still-unexplained phenomena as reported by former US Navy personnel, and we still know very little about these events. And with a recent WSJ article reporting on how the Pentagon has actively disseminated disinformation, using UFOs as a smokescreen to cover up classified military technology—something that will not come as a surprise to our seasoned readers—it almost feels as if we are always taking one step forward and two steps back, and the answers to the UFO enigma are to remain forever out of our reach.
But that hasn’t stopped Massimo and Susan from seeking some of those answers for themselves, outside of the influence of the Pentagon bureaucracy and political lobbyists, and their approach of combining scientific knowledge and magical intuition could be imitated by anyone. The world is a vast place, and there are hotspots of UFO activity anywhere—maybe even near where you, dear reader, live.
(Just make sure to cast a protection circle before you visit them… just in case)
