foofighters

[kymho...@gmail.com]

I was interested to see an article on foofighters:

University experts reveal what World War 2 'Foo Fighter' UFOs really were
The Telegraph, 05 Feb 2024
American scientists believe they have discovered what the strange, fast-
moving blobs that shaped alien conspiracy theories truly were.

The research from a group at Harvard-Smithsonian &ct is still to be
published in the Journal of Modern Physics, so details are presently lacking.

But the quotes in a couple papers seems to have the group explaining
various phenomena reported during WWII
(Foofighters have otherwise been reported by military pilots,
sometimes from "both sides", in WWII, Korea and Vietnam)
and even some objects reported during space missions as
"balls of plasma (that are not alive) are attracted to metallic objects
like aircraft and spacecraft".

I have looked at this kind of thing a couple years back and while we
cant re-create space weather or even upper atmospheric weather from
many decades in the past to see exactly what may have happened during the
1940s it seemed possible that some part of objects reported by
initially RAAF pilots during the early 40s *might* be something like
"plasma clouds descending from high altitudes to buzz aircraft as
strange lights or large dark objects".

But we can at least say the sightings reported 42-45 as collated by
e.g. Dom Weintein et al in "The Foofighters Files" 2009 have a very
significant statistical link with sunspot activity and therefore
possibly space weather of various kinds.

E.g. if you line up the ~150 sightings (only the sightings with at
least the month known are listed below) with sunspot counts month by
month from the 1940s you get:

Date Avg SSN Sightings Linear model
1942.62 46.2 2 4.88216*(model 1sd above obs)
1942.88 35.2 1 3.93869*
1942.96 34.2 1 3.85292*
1943.38 29.2 5 3.42407
1943.46 27.5 1 3.27826*
1943.54 26.6 1 3.20106
1943.71 20.9 2 2.71217
1943.79 18 1 2.46344
1943.88 15.4 1 2.24043
1943.96 14.4 2 2.15466
1944.04 13.6 3 2.08605
1944.12 12.9 4 2.02601
1944.21 13 2 2.03458
1944.29 13.9 4 2.11178
1944.46 15.3 1 2.23186
1944.62 18.9 5 2.54063*(1sd below obs)
1944.79 23.4 5 2.9266
1945.04 36.4 5 4.04161
1945.29 46.8 10 4.93363**(2sd below obs)
1945.38 52.8 7 5.44825
1945.46 55.2 3 5.6541*
1945.54 57.1 8 5.81706

MODEL:
y = 0.0857705*x + 0.919566
beta in 0.0857705 +- 0.0572501 (90% CI)
alpha in 0.919566 +- 1.832
T-test: P(beta>0) = 0.991134
Rank test: calculated Spearman corr = 0.381141
cv .359 2s at 5%; reject H0:not_connected
r2 = 0.25028164
Durbin-Watson d = 1.529264
d>du (1.285000) and d<4-du (2.715000): No auto-corr at 5%


So the stats is convinced in 2 ways there is some kind of link. And
given the recent research it may well be some of the sightings
reported by pilots are some kind of upper-atm phenomenon associated
with space weather and plasma clouds. But the R2 above also warns that most
of the reports are not explained by at least anything directly
associated with solar activity -- 75% may be something else entirely.

If you read though DW's doc many sightings certainly don't seem to
talk anything that sounds like inanimate glowing or dark clouds that
are attracted to aircraft. E.g. some early sightings talked about
flying objects with domes on top that reflected sunlight.

My current go-to for investigating these kinds of events
(i.e. we can apply them to things other than sightings of LITS :)
is a simple solar system nav model. We've looked at this a few times.
The program simulates the movement of "objects" around the solar system.
The objects are assumed to follow a simple computer-game type program.
They fly between a source and destination asteroid at a fixed speed.
When they reach the destination they "land" and hang around for a
number of days. Then they take off to a new designation selected from
a list of possibilities. Earth is always (in the model) one possibility
that could be chosen with a fixed probability. Otherwise the nearest
object on the list is chosen. While an object is hanging around earth
is may create UFO sightings day by day also with a fixed probability.

This simple model -- with the "right" collection of solar system
objects as possible destinations -- currently explains about 1/2 of UFO
sightings as reported in the NUFORC database 2006-2023. And the "right"
collection of objects has been narrowed down by a massive numbers
of runs using various methods to select the asteroids, comets
and planets in the target lists.

It turns out for "light" type UFO's (as classified by the folks at
NUFORC over the years) the best solar system objects seem to be
asteroids and comets between 1 and 10 AU from the sun and at
inclinations between 60 and 70 deg to the ecliptic. This was
based on data between 2006 and 2023 when the NUFORC
collected reports via web forms rather than telephone or letter.

Science is about making predictions. And following them. :)
So it seems we should look at what the nav program given the positions of
the asteroids and comets between 1-10 AU from the sun and orbital
inclination between 60 and 70 deg back in the 1940s says should be the
rise and fall of e.g. sightings of balls of light and domed objects
reported by pilots over Europe between 1942 and 1945.

If it matches better than a statistical "just lucky" we have made a
correct prediction. We have something.

As outlined before the simulation program hunts using some simple AI
methods to find the best parameters to make the simulation match the daily
sighting counts (only about 1/2 the DW reports are accurate to the day
-- the rest have to be ignored for now).

The best solution it finds is:

PEarth Speed PLeave PSeen R2
.054 .210 .001 .348 84.8%

Based on a list of 37 objects between 1-10 AU and incl 60-70 and
position data from the 1940s from JPL's Horizon's database we find that
a collection of approx 370 "foofighters" flying between those asteroids and
Earth explain around 85% of the foofighter sightings for which we have an
exact date. The foofighters (in space) fly toward their planetary target at
a fixed speed of around .2 AU/d, select earth with a prob about 5% and
otherwise go to another asteroid on the list next. When they arrive at their
destination they leave after approx 1000d and each day they happen to be
"on Earth" they have a chance of around 1/3 of being seen and reported.

It seems the kind of solar objects associated with "Light" UFO's
reported between 2006-2023 to the NUFORC -- mostly very high
inclination asteroids -- are the same ones that closely predict
"foofighter" reports by winding the asteroid movement data back to the
1940s. For those foofighter sightings with an exact date the simple
nav model predicts almost all sightings in the DW data-set.

Hard to say there is nothing to it.

While some segment the sightings may be related to space weather -- as
indicated by the sunspot numbers -- it seems another model
only related to the movement of asteroids around the solar system
is probably a better explanation.

--
Welcome to the very first official UFO hearing in American history
It's a historic day for everybody who has always wondered if we are alone in
the universe. Although there have already been multiple hearings on UFOs or
UAPs, this is the first hearing in which credible witnesses will testify
under oath in front of Congress. All representatives already offered their
initial remarks and gave all 3 witnesses the chance to make their oath
before the hearing starts. These witnesses are former Commander David Fravor,
former fighter jet operator Ryan Graves, and former Intelligence Official
David Grusch.
-- Marca.com, Wed Jul 26 10:48:24 EDT 2023

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