Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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The Vela Incident
https://www.damninteresting.com/the-vela-incident/
On 22 September 1979, sometime around 3:00am local time, a US Atomic Energy Detection System satellite recorded a pattern of intense flashes in a remote portion of the Indian Ocean. Moments later an unusual, fast-moving ionospheric disturbance was detected by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and at about the same time a distant, muffled thud was overheard by the US Navy’s undersea Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). Evidently something violent and explosive had transpired in the ocean off the southern tip of Africa.
Examination of the data gathered by satellite Vela 6911 strongly suggested that the cause of these disturbances was a nuclear device. The pattern of flashes exactly matched that of prior nuclear detections, and no other phenomenon was known to produce the same millisecond-scale signature. Unfortunately, US intelligence agencies were uncertain who was responsible for the detonation, and the US government was conspicuously reluctant to acknowledge it at all.
[snip]
The panel declined to address the Arecebo and SOSUS observations, executing a nimble leap of logic whose subtlety and elegance was second only to sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and going “la la la la.”
Panel member Luis Alvarez, a distinguished physicist, later defended the panel’s reasoning in discarding data that corroborated a nuclear bomb:
“…a scientific detective’s main stock-in-trade is his ability to decide which evidence to ignore. In our [Defense Intelligence Agency] briefings we were shown, and quickly discarded, confirming evidence from a wild assemblage of sensors: radioactive Australian sheep thyroids, radiotelescopic ionospheric wind analyses, recording from the Navy’s sonic submarine-detection arrays that supposedly precisely located the blast from patterns of sound reflected from bays and promontories on the coast of Antarctica.”
As is often true when a committee is urged toward a particular outcome, it seems that the investigators may have exaggerated the evidence that supported their goal and ignored all else, an unfortunate human shortcoming known as confirmation bias. Subsequent analysis by Stanford Research Institute scientists found that the probability of a meteoroid impact mimicking a nuclear bomb flash pattern was roughly one in one hundred billion. In short, the president’s committee had reached a conclusion that was about as credible as the notion that a passing alien spacecraft had triggered the bhangmeter.
[snip]
In 1994, convicted Soviet spy Dieter Gerhardt claimed that the flashes were the result of “Operation Phenix,” a joint Israeli/South African weapons test conducted under the cover of bad weather. “The explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected,” Gerhardt claimed, “but they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed – so the Americans were able to pick it up.” He did not claim to be directly involved with the operation, stating instead that he had learned of it though unofficial channels. Gerhardt’s description of the explosion as “clean” suggests that, if his account is accurate, the device may have been a neutron bomb: an atomic device with increased neutron radiation and decreased fallout.
Today a mountain of Vela-incident intelligence remains classified, but a few heavily redacted reports have been released by the US government. Although these documents indicate considerable internal disagreement regarding the cause of the double-flash signal, they offer little new evidence.
[snip]
Perhaps one day, when the redactions have receded and declassified documents are disseminated, further light will be shed on the Vela incident of 1979. If the distinct double-flash pattern was not a nuclear detonation, the Vela event would represent the only instance in history where a Vela satellite incorrectly identified an atomic blast— in which case the true cause may forever remain unknown and/or irrelevant. In any case, the flurry of falsifications and artificial investigations churned up in the wake of the incident clearly demonstrated governments’ unwavering willingness to renegotiate reality for political purposes, even in the shadow of a mushroom cloud.
https://www.damninteresting.com/the-vela-incident/
On 22 September 1979, sometime around 3:00am local time, a US Atomic Energy Detection System satellite recorded a pattern of intense flashes in a remote portion of the Indian Ocean. Moments later an unusual, fast-moving ionospheric disturbance was detected by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and at about the same time a distant, muffled thud was overheard by the US Navy’s undersea Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). Evidently something violent and explosive had transpired in the ocean off the southern tip of Africa.
Examination of the data gathered by satellite Vela 6911 strongly suggested that the cause of these disturbances was a nuclear device. The pattern of flashes exactly matched that of prior nuclear detections, and no other phenomenon was known to produce the same millisecond-scale signature. Unfortunately, US intelligence agencies were uncertain who was responsible for the detonation, and the US government was conspicuously reluctant to acknowledge it at all.
[snip]
The panel declined to address the Arecebo and SOSUS observations, executing a nimble leap of logic whose subtlety and elegance was second only to sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and going “la la la la.”
Panel member Luis Alvarez, a distinguished physicist, later defended the panel’s reasoning in discarding data that corroborated a nuclear bomb:
“…a scientific detective’s main stock-in-trade is his ability to decide which evidence to ignore. In our [Defense Intelligence Agency] briefings we were shown, and quickly discarded, confirming evidence from a wild assemblage of sensors: radioactive Australian sheep thyroids, radiotelescopic ionospheric wind analyses, recording from the Navy’s sonic submarine-detection arrays that supposedly precisely located the blast from patterns of sound reflected from bays and promontories on the coast of Antarctica.”
As is often true when a committee is urged toward a particular outcome, it seems that the investigators may have exaggerated the evidence that supported their goal and ignored all else, an unfortunate human shortcoming known as confirmation bias. Subsequent analysis by Stanford Research Institute scientists found that the probability of a meteoroid impact mimicking a nuclear bomb flash pattern was roughly one in one hundred billion. In short, the president’s committee had reached a conclusion that was about as credible as the notion that a passing alien spacecraft had triggered the bhangmeter.
[snip]
In 1994, convicted Soviet spy Dieter Gerhardt claimed that the flashes were the result of “Operation Phenix,” a joint Israeli/South African weapons test conducted under the cover of bad weather. “The explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected,” Gerhardt claimed, “but they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed – so the Americans were able to pick it up.” He did not claim to be directly involved with the operation, stating instead that he had learned of it though unofficial channels. Gerhardt’s description of the explosion as “clean” suggests that, if his account is accurate, the device may have been a neutron bomb: an atomic device with increased neutron radiation and decreased fallout.
Today a mountain of Vela-incident intelligence remains classified, but a few heavily redacted reports have been released by the US government. Although these documents indicate considerable internal disagreement regarding the cause of the double-flash signal, they offer little new evidence.
[snip]
Perhaps one day, when the redactions have receded and declassified documents are disseminated, further light will be shed on the Vela incident of 1979. If the distinct double-flash pattern was not a nuclear detonation, the Vela event would represent the only instance in history where a Vela satellite incorrectly identified an atomic blast— in which case the true cause may forever remain unknown and/or irrelevant. In any case, the flurry of falsifications and artificial investigations churned up in the wake of the incident clearly demonstrated governments’ unwavering willingness to renegotiate reality for political purposes, even in the shadow of a mushroom cloud.
