UFOs and Electromagnetic Detection

UFO sightings are often accompanied by disturbances in electromagnetic fields. Therefore, an appropriate indoor early warning device, if left 'on' day and night, would greatly improve the chances of seeing any given UFO event. Here I'll discuss some types of measurable electromagnetic disturbances associated with UFOs and how they might be produced.

A change in the DC (or natural) magnetic field is the most frequent type of electromagnetic disturbance reported with UFOs. Such changes, if strong enough, cause a compass needle to change direction or tip up or down. Also, anything made of steel becomes magnetized if the field is sufficiently strong. Although I don't pretend to know what UFOs really are (at least the most compelling cases), any heavier-than-air vehicle with the characteristics often ascribed to UFOs would likely need a strong internal magnetic field to produce thrust, as I'll explain.

For a heavy object to levitate itself without any visible exhaust (without a special magnet or super conducting platform placed on the ground directly below it), only one known class of particles --neutrinos-- would work. Neutrinos carry momentum and thus can produce thrust, but they have the almost magical property of travelling through matter with near zero probability of being absorbed or detected. Indeed, the type of neutrinos discussed here can travel through a wall of lead several hundred light-years thick before most are absorbed. Therefore, neutrinos could exit from the bottom of a vehicle just like rocket exhaust, but then travel at or near the speed of light, all the way through the Earth and back out into space on the other side without ever being seen or felt. Meanwhile, inside the vehicle, recoiling electrons and protons left over from the neutrino-producing reaction travel upward, hitting the upper inside shell of the vehicle, producing lift.

Any neutron, if removed from the nucleus of an atom, is unstable and has a half- life of 12 minutes. It decays into a proton and electron (that is, a hydrogen atom) and an anti-electron neutrino. The neutrino travels away, carrying with it a certain amount of momentum. The combined momentum of the remaining electron+proton is of the same magnitude but in the opposite direction as the neutrino's momentum. It is this electron+proton momentum that can push against solid objects to produce lift. In fact, a box of neutrons of any size can produce enough lift this way initially to accelerate at 300 times the Earth's gravity (of course, after 12 minutes the lift will have dropped to half as much because of the 12 minute half life). There's just one catch: under ordinary conditions the exiting neutrinos can't be steered or directed in the same way as a rocket nozzle steers hot gases. Therefore, neutrinos escape in all directions simultaneously and don't produce thrust in any particular direction.

There is, however, a way to steer neutrinos. In a classic experiment done by Drs. C.N. Yang and T.D. Lee at the University of Chicago (for which they won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics), it was demonstrated that in the presence of a strong introduced magnetic field, neutrinos are preferentially produced traveling either toward the north or south pole (depending on the type of reaction used to produce the neutrinos) of that magnetic field. This was quite a revelation at the time because it meant that a world made of matter was distinguishable from a world made of antimatter since the magnetic pole vs. neutrino direction would be reversed in an antimatter world. (Previously it was believed that no experiment could distinguish the two worlds). The Yang-Lee experiment is also a revelation in that it means a neutrino propulsion system is possible.

Although the magnetic field required to direct neutrinos efficiently is very high (a strength only achieved in laboratories for a small fraction of a second), there is no theoretical restriction that would prevent such a field strength (perhaps ten million times the Earth's field) from being sustained in the enclosed volume of a hypothetical neutrino reactor. Because magnetic field is difficult to shield, some would likely leak out, showing up as additional field parallel to the lift or acceleration of such a neutrino vehicle. This means that for a vehicle that is stationary over the ground, the extra magnetic field would be vertical, and this vertical field would increase in strength as the vehicle approached.

Granted, I've made a lot of assumptions, but it's almost certainly true that for neutrino propulsion a strong magnetic field is needed. However, many technical hurdles would have to be overcome to make a real neutrino vehicle. A one-ton vehicle would continuously require almost three trillion watts just to counteract gravity. This is a great deal of power (about 5000 times the power of a 747 jet taking off), but is not out of line with a "gas tank" that stores deuterium or hydrogen for fusion (or one that stores antimatter). A three trillion watt vehicle would also have to produce proportionately much less waste heat than a car engine or else it would vaporize itself almost instantly. Fortunately, high-energy reactions are intrinsically much more efficient than the low- temperature, low-energy chemical reactions such as in a car engine.

Besides magnetic field, the other electromagnetic manifestation of neutrino propulsion would be a faint bluish-white (and ultraviolet) glow under the vehicle in the shape of a column or cone (widest near the ground). The column would also produce slightly higher-than-normal levels of X- and gamma rays. The glow is produced by those few neutrinos which actually are absorbed by the air (between one million and one billion per second if a one ton vehicle is 100 feet off the ground). It would only be barely visible in a very dark environment or perhaps not visible at all, but it would brighten considerably during periods of rapid acceleration, with the column pointing in the opposite direction of the acceleration. Brightness would be proportional to the weight of the vehicle. Oddly, the glow would also occur inside a sealed, darkened container placed directly under the vehicle, and this effect could be the basis for a detector. Unfortunately, the sealed container would not glow internally unless placed directly under the vehicle.

Other fields that may be associated with UFO sightings include DC electric fields. Unfortunately, people and many commonplace things such as the atmosphere on a windy or cloudy day emit variable electric fields, so this type of field can't be used as a reliable detection scheme. AC electric and magnetic fields (and, at higher frequency, radio and microwaves) might also be reasonable indicators of UFO activity, but care should be taken to avoid false alarms in urban areas. This is especially a problem with AC magnetic fields, which are ubiquitous there. AC gaussmeters are sometimes used for UFO detection, but they usually detect only the magnetic field from household current, causing false alarms.

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