Thursday, July 31, 2008

Argentina: A UFO Fleet Over Rosario

Source: Planeta UFO
Date: 30 July 2008


ARGENTINA: A UFO FLEET OVER ROSARIO

Date of Sighting: July 27, 2008
Time: 12:12
Location: Rosario
Place: 3 de Febrero and Cafferata Streets



[A report from witness Horacio Roberto]: I was driving in my car along Calle 3 de Febrero in a westbound direction, paying attention to the traffic, when something in the sky drew my attention. Upon looking upward, I saw several objects floating some 60 degrees over the horizon. They seemed very distant and very high in the air.

The most outstanding thing was a "sort of dirigible balloon suspended in the air" - it was shiny, white, did not make any erratic movements and remained static. To its right, and beneath it, was a lens-shaped object; above this one, was another lens-shaped object, and still another one to the right of the "balloon" - it was clear that these were parallel to the surface, all of them reflecting the sun's light on their surfaces, as if metallic. To the far right of this cluster of objects were six objects, keeping distance between each other. No apparent movement was discernible among these either.

I continued to drive, asking one of my daughters to notice what a strange display this was. She was able to see it clearly.

Time went by. When I turned on Calle Constitucion, the objects remained in sight; I headed toward Calle Zeballos, where we met my other daughter, who was also able to observe them.

All of the objects were in the same position. The three of us kept watching this display of objects suspended in the air. When we made a turn on Castellanos and Zeballos, I pulled over at the corner (we had an excellent view) and the three of us were able to see that the group of objects was vanishing into the cloudless blue sky. We remained a few minutes until were saw them all disappear, with the balloon-shaped object being the last to do so. All of them seemed to be far away, much farther than the city limits of Rosario, perhaps hundreds of kilometers away and very high up, yet below the [air corridors] used by international aviation as they come in from the north or west, when they use Rosario as a vector to follow the Parana River toward Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires.

The phenomenon was visible between 5 and 8 minutes from its start at 12:12 to its very end.
If someone else saw this phenomenon please contact me.

(signed)
Horacio Roberto


(Translation (c) 2008, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Martha Nuñez and Luis Burgos)

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Argentina: Mutilations in Rosario del Tala

A report received from Daniel Ubaldo Padilla:

"I am advising you of the mutilations that occurred in Rosario del Tala approximately between July 12-13. Two cows are involved; the mutilations took place in 2do Cuartel (area) at Rosario del Tala, Entre Rios Province, at "Campito Chanar I" belonging to ASEBEL, S.A. The dead animals were found by the foreman, Mr. Juan Ramon Carballo, 61, and were approximately 30 meters away from each other. The discovery was made last Monday and the event probably occured on Saturday night. The Aberdeen Angus specimen displayed mutilations to its tongue, ears and cervical tissue; the Black Pampa specimen exhibited a mutilated anus and sexual organs; also missing were the left eye, udders, tongue, left side of the jaw and chin.
"I visited the site on Tuesday the 15th and on the 16th it was possible to reconnoiter the property. Photographs and video recordings were made. Possible deterioration of the solar panels that feed the "Boyeros" system was in evidence, but this should be left to the expertise of persons knowledgeable about said systems. My apologies for the delay [in reporting this].

Daniel Ubaldo Padilla

(Translation (c) 2008, S. Corrales, IHU)

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Peru: UFOs Cause Alarm in La Norteñita

Source: Planeta UFO and Diario Regional Pro y Contra (Peru)
http://www.proycontra.com.pe/
Date: 07.22.08


Peru: UFOs Cause Alarm in La Nortenita
(Submitted Jun. 19 08 - Newsroom)

Locals claim seeing strange objects. Residents of the La Nortenita district were stunned on the morning of June 18, 2008 when the saw a series of intermittent lights glowing in the sky in a limited radius. Only three of them appeared to be close to each other while the others were dispersed. Residents of Manco Capac, Las Delicias, Santa Rosa and other streets were startled by the lights overhead. Some pedestrians and drivers passing through the area, upon seeing the crowd that had gathered to see the movement of the lights, stopped for a look and increased the numbers of the congregation.

After the lights united fully, they began moving toward the southwest in an orderly fashion, vanishing from view. This presence of strange lights alarmed the locals, who claimed having never seen the combination of yellow lights and blue and green ones before. They added that it had been impossible to determine if there was a larger object behind the lights, keeping them aloft.

However, other residents state that the lights were adhered to a very strange platform, corresponding to an extraterrestrial craft, and when all of [the lights] joined, they simply vanished from sight.

(Translation (c) 2008. S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Alex Sender, http://astroufo.tripod.com.pe)

Friday, July 18, 2008

Target Acquired: The Armed Response to UFOs

Target Acquired: The Armed Response to UFOs
By Scott Corrales


On Wednesday, November 27, 2002, a flight of Lockheed F?16 interceptors was launched to investigate what was described by a NORAD spokesman as "a trail of condensation" moving from the Caribbean Sea toward the United Stated. This contrail apparently alerted the Air Space Command, located in Colorado Springs, that a rogue aircraft or missile may have been fired toward a target in the continental U.S. The fighters reached the indicated coordinates, but were unable to find the source of the contrail.
Only a few months earlier, in July 2002, reports of an unexplained object zooming low over suburban Washington D.C. caused yet another "scramble" ? one of hundreds since the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The military, fearing any possible aerial attack, was taking no chances against the possibility of another similar incident?this time in the nation's capital. The media did not mention that 50 years previous, almost to the day, fighters had unsuccessfully tried to reach the UFOs that sailed leisurely past the dome of the U.S. Capitol.
The experience appears to have repeated itself six months later: according to the late Ohio-based researcher Kenny Young, a D.C. area witness reported hearing two fighter jets chasing an object over that city at 10:50 a.m. on December 16, 2002. Describing the object as "bright silver and reflecting the sun" and much larger than an airplane, the witness added that it was as swift as any interceptor. The fact that she did not report seeing interceptors in pursuit led her to believe that the F-15's "had just missed it." (http://www.rense.com/general33/restrict.htm).
It is almost inevitable: in a world as thoroughly militarized as our own, with openly declared wars and high- and low-intensity conflicts raging over five continents, jet fighters--the pride and first line of defense of a country's sovereign airspace--are also the first official committee to deal with the unknown. Since the development of high-speed interceptors in WWII, aircraft of many nations have had brushes with the still-unexplained aerial phenomena known as UFOs. In some cases, the prudent response has been to shadow the intruders and photograph their movements with the interceptor's gun camera (the source of many intriguing stills and movies dealing with the phenomenon. In others, authorization to open fire has been granted, prompting a wide range of responses from the intruder. Sometimes the unknown object simply zooms out of reach, sometimes it disappears. Upon occasion, the "uncorrelated target" shoots back with devastating results.
The history of encounters between the U.S. military and unidentified objects forms a major component of ufological study, yet the brave men and women of the USAF are hardly alone in their efforts, as their counterparts in other countries have also been called upon to square off against the unknown: UFO researcher Kevin Randle mentions a 1972 article written by Jean Thoraval, a correspondent for two major U.S. newspapers, regarding the luminous orange sphere seen over Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Citing the correspondent's article, Randle states that North Vietnamese SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) were launched against the intruder. Thoraval claims having seen how the projectiles "flamed out" short of their mysterious target, a sign that the orange sphere was at a very high altitude but large enough to be clearly seen from the surface. In 1960, the French Air Force scrambled Mystere fighters in 1960 to intercept two disk-shaped objects that appeared over Paris. The pursuit lasted less than a half hour, and the unknown craft darted out away from the jets, vanishing into the horizon.

Mexico Reacts to the UFO Issue

In October 1995, in the initial rush of excitement over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a U.S. military delegation visited Mexico City for a low-key but highly important opportunity: changing the Mexican military's perception of the U.S. from that of an aggressor to more of a partner. William Perry, Secretary of Defense under the Clinton Administration, and General Barry McCaffrey, met with their Mexican counterparts and proposed "bringing together the mechanisms for a joint struggle...and a better exchange of both equipment and armaments."
Secretary Perry took advantage of a ceremony at a Mexican military base to state that one of the crucial components of this new joint struggle--ostensibly in the war against drugs--included improved air defenses, something that had never been stressed before. Like most Latin American air forces, Mexico had relied heavily on T-33 fighters (used for training purposes by the USAF) and some newer purchases from Europe. Might it be too bold to suppose that the Pentagon's request that our southern neighbor "beef up" its air defenses have something to do with the UFO activity experienced earlier in the decade?
Given its long history of animosity toward the U.S. military (a result of the wars of 1845-47 and the early 20th century incursions into Northern Mexico by Gen. Sam Pershing, not to mention the siege of Veracruz), the Mexican military establishment had never been worked intimately with the Pentagon.
Mexico's history of encounters between unidentified flying objects and aircraft begins only a few years after Kenneth Arnold's historic 1947 sighting over Mount Rainier: on March 3, 1950, a Mexican aviation official engaged in a routine tour of inspection of the airports in the northern regions of the country when he saw a curious yellowish disk suspended at an estimated altitude of 15,000 feet over the city of Chihuahua's airport. A press report indicated that two airplanes--whether military or civilian--tried to intercept the object but were unable to reach it.
By mid-March, the saucers were over Mexico City itself. On the 14th, many hundreds of witnesses reported seeing four flying saucers over Mexico's international airport, creating a sensation across the city. Activity reached its peak on March 21, when the El Nacional newspaper reported that an unidentified object was seen so clearly over Mexico City that movie camera operators were allegedly able to capture it on film. Sensational claims continued to emerge, such as the supposed collision of a saucer in the Sierra de Moronesa mountains of Zacatecas--an impact that caused the earth to shake.
In 1957, the Mexican newspaper El Universal Gráfico published a comprehensive account on the alleged landing of a disk-shaped object in the community farms of San Juan de Aragón, an event witnessed by farmer Gilberto Espinoza. Although the incident had taken place in November of the preceding year, the newspaper ran its story in January 1958. An early UFO pursuit occurred on December 12, 1957, when a Douglas DC-3 belonging to Aerolíneas Mexicanas was intercepted by a "speeding saucer" over San Luis Potosí. Passengers aboard the aircraft were apparently petrified with fright as the pilot, Capt. Gilberto Alba, cooly put the DC-3 through a series of evasive maneuvers.
In August 1997, while ufologists worldwide were distracted by the hoaxed UFO over the Mexican neighborhood of Polanco, Mexico's prestigious El Financiero concerned itself with another matter: the possibility that unidentified flying objects had collided somewhere in the Chiapas 7th Military Region, the region which had attained global prominence due to the struggles of the Tzetzil natives and the Zapatista movement. UFOs had been reported over small populations in the vast rural state, but workers at Red Cross infirmary in the village of Cintalapa had managed to see a large round object giving off tongues of fire which disappeared behind the Sierra Madre. Some believed that the object fell into the el Sumidero Canyon while others said it had fallen into the Pacific Ocean. The Mexican armed forces initiated a thorough search of the region.
Mexican author and ufologist Carlos Alberto Guzmán Rojas has collected a wealth of encounters between aviators and UFOs in his book Los OVNIS y la Aviación Mexicana (Mexico:TM, 2001). While focusing mainly on civilian airliner encounters, Guzmán also includes some notable military encounters, some of them dating back to the early 1960s, when a Douglas C-54 belonging to the FAM (acronym for Fuerza Aérea Mexicana, the Mexican air force) had a mid-air UFO encounter during a cross-border flight to Texas on a mission to secure matériel: a silver saucer flew alongside the cargo plane over the Gulf of Mexico, less than two thousand feet off the starboard wing. The intruder finally peeled off when the C-54 was about to land at a U.S. base. The crew was so unnerved by the experience, and so fearful of reprisals if the matter was broached either at the U.S. base or back in Mexico, that it was years before anyone discussed the encounter openly.
In November 1978, a spectacular UFO incident occurred over Mexico City: thousands looked on as subsonic T-33's launched from the Santa Lucía AFB, home of the 202nd Fighter Wing, the one nearest to the Aztec capital, tried to catch up with a disk-shaped, multi-hued and windowed craft at around 7:45 p.m.. Nine Lockheed T-33 did their level best to intercept the intruder, which seemed to remain at a safe distance from the fighters' twenty-millimeter guns. Two years later, a squadron of Rockwell Turbocommanders participating in the Independence Day celebrations on September 16, 1980 were stalked by a black discoidal UFO which remained hidden in the cloud banks over Mexico City. According to Carlos Guzmán, photos of the concealed intruder were taken by Alejandro Guízar and his friends from the rooftop of their house as they observed the aerial maneuvers.
Although no clear-cut connection can be made, the protracted Mexican UFO wave of the mid-1970s may have caused the government to see the need to upgrade its hardware. In 1982, the FAM ordered the creation of the Escuadrón Aéreo 401 (401st Fighter Wing), charging it with safeguarding the integrity of the nation's airspace. Delivery of the first of several Northrop F-5 E/F jet fighters took place on the very same year as Mexico went on a buying spree: Antonov heavy cargo planes, Israeli-built Arava aircraft and Swiss Pilatus C-7 trainers. While these military expenditures could be seen as a result of the country's oil boom in the late '70s and early '80s, it is still interesting that a country with no clear-cut adversaries should behave thus. None of Mexico's neighbors to the south (Guatemala and Belize) have long-range air power; to the north it faces the air supremacy of the United States and to the east, Cuba's Soviet-era MIGs. But if the hypothesis presented in this article has any truth to it, the Mexican government has not succeeded in inspiring confidence among people who work in aviation.
Carlos Guzmán and Alfonzo Salazar interviewed Enrique Kolbeck, a senior air traffic controller at Mexico City's Benito Juarez airport. When asked his opinion on the FAM's record of UFO interception, Kolbeck was skeptical. "Without being pejorative, our air force is not developed, it isn't the type of air force able to make interceptions, as do other air forces. The priorities of the persons in charge do not extend to UFOs, I think. Perhaps there is an arrangement between governments so that every time a strange object falls in our Mexico, another country can take it away to engage in research on it."
Events such as the one which occurred on March 23, 1999 clearly indicate why any country would want to avail itself of some means of "credible response" to unknown forces. Between 6:15 and 6:30 that evening, an elongated flying object measuring an astounding 2 kilometers in length and shaped like an office building was reported to the Benito Juarez airport tower. Enshrouded in clouds, the flying behemoth remained over the Texcoco Dry Lake and was clearly seen by nearly two dozen airport mechanics who were waiting to service a flight arriving from Acapulco.
This story, which appeared in Mexico's La Prensa newspaper, was never officially confirmed. However, air traffic controller Enrique Kolbeck made reference to a similar case which occurred some years earlier to the north of Mexico City and involving an object so large to be classified as "hair-raising" by the controller. The object matched the description of a UFO "mothership" and appeared to be surrounded by a swarm of lesser craft.

A Showdown in Spain

In October 1976, Spanish journalist Juan José Benítez's research into the subject of UFOs took a sudden and utterly unexpected turn when a general of the Ejército del Aire (the Spanish Air Force) handed him a dossier of a dozen UFO cases marked "top secret". This unexpected windfall gave Benítez a leg-up over other UFO investigators, particularly when the general -- who had demanded anonymity -- seemed to hint that his superiors in the government had given tacit approval to this handing over of information to a prominent journalist.
The twelve cases included in the dossier, which were published two years later in book form under the title OVNIS: Documentos Oficiales del Gobierno Español (UFOs: Official Documents of the Spanish Government) would have softened the most hardened skeptic and pleased the most scientifically-minded UFO researcher. Each case was thoroughly substantiated with affidavits, photographs, and 8mm movie film from witnesses. Some of them were gun-camera films taken by Spanish fighter pilots who had flown missions to intercept unidentified flying objects venturing into their country's airspace.
Benítez's one-on-one interview with General Carlos Castro Cavero constituted the lengthiest interview granted by a high-ranking officer of Spain's air force on the subject of UFO's, and never before had a general been so outspoken: "Of course they exist." Castro declared at one point "What is more, I believe that they are extraterrestrial spacecraft." He went on to explain that in his opinion, any vehicle that could not be identified as an airplane, a weather balloon, or a natural phenomenon, yet was clearly a solid object, must be, perforce, a vehicle originating from a place outside our planet's atmosphere.
Yet in his wildest dreams, the journalist could not have expected the general to admit -- for the record, anyway -- to having actually seen a UFO. Yet General Castro smiled and stated: "Yes, I have seen one [...] At a farm I own in the province of Zaragoza, at Sádaba. I witnessed a shining object there. It hung motionless in the sky and at an altitude which was hard to determine, since I was unable to determine its size...I summoned my relatives and all the farmhands, and they all saw it. I recall that all of Sádaba saw it...it lasted for over an hour."
The general answered many other questions, some of a more practical nature, such as the mechanisms that went into effect when the Spanish Air Force was alerted to a UFO sighting: first, an arbiter was appointed, more often than not a chief aviator familiar with all the different phenomena to be found in the skies at different altitudes. The arbiter contacts the witnesses, asking them direct questions in order to assess their degree of education as well as other details pertaining to the sighting, such as place, time, flight path followed by the object or objects, luminosity, and other particulars. A meteorological report for the location where the sighting occurred is added to the official record. The arbiter then interviews air traffic control operators to see if any airplanes or weather balloons were over the area.
Perhaps General Castro's willingness to express his views on UFOs constituted the preamble to the twelve cases delivered to Benítez months later.
The most outstanding among these cases included a sighting made by the officers and crew of the destroyer Atrevida, belonging to the Spanish Navy, which was stationed off the island of Fuerteventura (one of the Canary Islands, and by far the most mysterious) in June 1976. At 9:27 p.m. on the evening of June 22, a yellowish light was seen to move off Fuerteventura's shores in a direct line toward the warship. The enigmatic sphere of light halted its progress half-way toward the vessel, and gyrating beam of light issuing from the sphere became visible for a number of minutes. Spellbound by the unknown phenomenon, those on the ship noticed a halo of bluish-yellow light envelop the object, which later split into two distinct components, one of which made a spiral ascent into the night sky before disappearing. The bluish-yellow halo of light remained in place for over half an hour after the object itself had disappeared.
Rivers of ink have flown over another one of these cases, the landing of a UFO in the gunnery range of the Zaragoza Air Force Base in Bardenas Reales. A number of expurgated versions of the account had made the rounds, omitting any mention of UFOs. However, the declassified files more than compensated for the omission.
At eleven o' clock on the evening of January 2, 1975, a corporal and four soldiers on watch in one of the gunnery range's buildings suddenly became aware of a red light on the ground about a mile away from their position. At first, they believed that the light issued from a tractor, but realized upon closer inspection that such a vehicle was in the middle of the gunnery range at an ungodly hour. The guards kept a careful eye on the unexplained light source from their perch on the highest level of the installation's watchtower. Their monotonous routine was about to go down in history.
After half an hour, the red light rose gently into the sky to a height of about a hundred feet. It flew toward an auxiliary watchtower directly across from the one occupied by the alarmed soldiers. After flying a loop around the auxiliary tower, it headed straight for them, flying over their position and changing in color from red to orange before flying off into the night sky. It was then that the alarmed soldiers (most of them just conscripts fulfilling Spain's two-year compulsory military service requirement) realized that another object -- a glowing, unearthly white rather than red -- occupied the same location where the red object had been.
This was too much for the corporal, who phoned the gunnery range barracks, containing about 30 soldiers and commanded by a sergeant, who was told that the guards in the main watchtower were reporting a UFO within the base perimeter. The sergeant stepped out of the barracks carrying binoculars and followed by the other soldiers. Through his binoculars, he saw that the light was, in his own words, "as round as a beret". It gave off bright flashes against the ground before rising into the air, following the same trajectory as the red object, and vanishing.
An encore performance took place a few nights later, on January 5th: this time four white lights were seen side by side at the same spot where the original incident had transpired. A vehicle with armed soldiers was quickly dispatched across the gunnery range to challenge the four intruders, which flew off as the vehicle approached them. Nonetheless, enough "ground effects" were found to substantiate the fact that something had indeed been there. The soldiers found burning vegetation and an entirely scorched circle some thirty feet in diameter. Nonetheless, a wedge-shaped section of terrain was left completely unscathed. Official investigators inspected the damaged on the next day, determining that the burning had been caused by poachers operating in the area.
The debate over another case remains strong to this day: the "Manises Incident", an encounter between an airliner and a UFO on November 11, 1979.
A Super Caravelle bearing tourists from Barcelona to the Canary Islands was engaged at an altitude of 23,000 feet by a huge object with two powerful red lights on its front and rear. To the crew's alarm, the "thing" came within some 70 feet of the Super Caravelle's left wing. Unable to shake the unwelcome escort, the airliner radioed the Manises Control Tower in Valencia, advising the traffic controllers that it was coming in for an emergency landing. The news hit the wire services within minutes of the plane's arrival: an airliner with 109 passengers had been forced out of the sky by a UFO.
A Mirage F-1 fighter was scrambled from the Los Llanos Air Facility in Albacete to intercept not one, but three UFOs hovering over the area. At speeds of five hundred knots an hour, the F-1 pursued one of the contacts--a mysterious red light--toward the African shore before being recalled to pursue another unidentified object flying over Valencia and headed toward the city of Teruel. Unsure of what to do, the pilot radioed to his base: "Well, so what should I do? Throw him out of Spain?"
But before approval the option to removing the unwelcome visitor from his nation's airspace was given, the pilot was ordered to pursue a third contact over the Mediterranean--a luminous white disk. But the realities of a low fuel situation prompted the F-1 to return to Albacete, with the enigmatic object flying behind it until it landed at Los Llanos.


South America Faces the Unknown

Although it may come a surprise to some, in the few years following World War II, Argentina stood on the verge of becoming a world superpower.
According to Spanish aerospace expert Francisco Mañez, a number former Luftwaffe pilots--renowned air aces such as Adolf Galland and Hans Ulrich Rudel--joined the exodus of military talent from post-war Germany to Argentina. Flying wing designer Reimar Horten took his genius along with him, and so did Kurt Tank, director of Focke-Wulf Aviation. They soon found a dictator willing to employ their services: the charismatic and ambitious Juan Perón.
Perón's dream was to harness the newly disclosed secrets of the atom to air power. To achieve this, he hired exiled physicist Ronald Richter and set him up in a nuclear laboratory on the island of Huemul, located in the middle of Nahuel Huapi, the lake known to cryptozoologists for its mysterious marine monster. Richter's efforts were aimed at achieving what is now termed "cold fusion", and in 1951, Perón announced a breakthrough to the world. Under U.S. pressure, Richter was detained and his work stopped, but there were other things at work in the mysterious island of Huemul, such as an atomic engine to power the Argentinean submarine fleet and advanced aircraft such as the IA-38 flying wing, the IA-48 interceptor and the IA-36 transport -- streamlined futuristic aircraft decades ahead of their time. "The winds of silence," writes Máñez in his book Historias Aeronáuticas (Spain: Tetragrammaton, 2000) "still blow over Huemul. One can play the tourist and visit the facilities which sheltered the Axis scientists and their mysterious work, but we cannot even cast a glance at the classified papers of Richter or his collaborators--Beck, Haffke, Ehrenberg, Seelman-Eggebert, Greinel, Abele and Pinardi..."
Argentina's "brief, shining moment" as budding superpower ended with the fall of the Perón regime. The new government scrapped all of the Buck Rogerish prototypes and dutifully purchased U.S. made Sabres and DC-3s. Máñez argues that the UFO reports stemming from that part of the Andean range (the cities of Mendoza and Córdoba) are due to the fact that secret testing of these advanced aircraft is still taking place, now under the watchful eyes of the Pentagon. In 1974, a UFO reported by ground crews and controllers at the Bariloche Airport, and photographed by a witness, bears a strong resemblance to the controversial AVZ-9 Avrocar--a project terminated in 1961--but alive and well and being flown south of the U.S. border.
Whether man-made circular craft are being tested in South America is a subject for another article; the fact remains that the Argentinean military establishment, perhaps much less sophisticated than it might have been unless Juan Perón's dreams come true, has had close encounters of its own with unexplained intruders.
Journalist Alejandro Agostinelli, one of his country's most respected and controversial investigators of the UFO scene, notes that it was in 1952 that the Argentinean Navy, not its Air Force, created its first UFO inquiry agency at the Puerto Belgrano Naval Facility. Three years later, Capt. Jorge Milberg, would translate Maj. Donald Keyhoe's Flying Saucers from Outer Space. On July 3, 1960, Capt. Hugo Niotti, seconded to the Underofficer's Training Academy in Cordoba, photographed a conical object flying parallel to the ground that traveled at an estimated 200 kilometers per hour near the vicinity of Yacanto.
At 7:20 p.m. on May 22, 1962 a squadron of fighters in the vicinity of Bahía Blanca's Comandante Espora Naval Base, reported the presence of UFOs along its flight path. The interception lasted 35 minutes. Direct eyewitnesses to this incident were Lt. Rodolfo César Galdós and his student, Roberto Wilkinson. This was the first official acknowledgement of the phenomenon and would lead to the
Argentinean Navy's inception of its first Permanent Commission for the Study of the UFO Phenomenon (COPEFO, in Spanish), headed by a team composed of naval officers and journalists. Not to be outdone, the Air Force promptly created its own saucer study group.
In August 1965, the Navy's COPEFO decided to track UFOs using a combination of radar and chase planes from the Punta Indio Aeronaval Base: during one incident, a strange echo was picked up on the radar screen. A Navy interceptor was scrambled after the radar contact, but the UFO repeatedly managed to elude its pursuer. The pilot reported that the object had an "ellipsoid" configuration, having a diameter of some twelve diameter and at one point, coming within two hundred meters of his fighter.
Despite its highly auspicious start, the Navy's UFO panel ran aground in 1967, possibly due to a statement made by one of its directors supporting the existence of unidentified flying objects. A hasty retraction was issued by a spokesman, making it clear that the director's opinions did not reflect the Navy's official stance on the matter. Another contrast between the Air and Navy services became evident when the commander in chief of the Argentine Air Force, Brig. Gen. Adolfo Alvarez embraced the existence of "flying saucers" in July 1968, cryptically adding "Otherwise, I wouldn't be an aviator."
On May 29, 1978, Marcelo Pérez, then 17 years old, was a high school student lodging in the dormitories of the Puerto Belgrano Naval Facility (a military installation bedeviled by UFO and paranormal events, as is the case with certain U.S. military facilities). Shortly after ten o'clock at night, the student was enjoying the refreshingly cold air when his gaze happened to wander upward: less than twenty meters over his head he could see two bluish-white lights that darted around at considerable speed over the base. One of the lights zoomed over the base hospital and chapel before vanishing from sight.
According to author Gustavo Fernández, Argentina has never opted to declassify its UFO files in the way that Spain and the United Kingdom have chosen to, nor has there ever been what he terms "a sincere dialogue between civilian and military personnel aimed at dusting off the cases filed in some government office."
While there is no disputing this assertion, members of the military establishment of some other South American countries can be surprisingly candid about their involvement with unknown aerial craft. In December 2002, journalist Cristián Riffo of OVNIVISION managed to interview Hernán Gabrielli Rojas, a retired Chilean brigadier general, regarding a colossal UFO over the deserts of northern Chile.
General Gabrielli recalls that in 1978, while conducting a training flight involving a pair of Northrop F-5E Tiger IIs not far from Antofagasta, their radars alerted them to the presence of a mammoth intruder.
"It was noon and I was flying with captain Danilo Catalán??we were both flight instructors," Gabrielli told the journalist." Accompanying us were avionics tech Fernando Gómez and another trainee. The F?5 is radar?equipped, and a line appeared from side to side??in other words, a trace throughout the bottom side of the screen. A trace for a surface ship, a cruiser, is approximately one centimeter long, but this line went from one side [of the screen] to another. I assumed the radar scope had failed, and I said as much to Danilo Catalán, but his radar also "failed". I then advised the ground radar at Antofagasta and they also picked up the line. We were engaged with these details when we looked toward the east: we were flying from north to south in the vicinity of Mejillones, and saw a deformed cigar?shaped object. Deformed, like a plantain banana. It was swathed in smoke."
The general estimated the size of the craft as being comparable to that of a dozen aircraft carriers. "It was large and must have been some 15 to 20 miles away. It moved in the same direction as us. We had no missiles, guns or anything. As you can imagine, the fright was more or less considerable. We could see a large thing surrounded in smoke, and from which a vapor issued. All of this situation must have lasted some five minutes. We approached the UFO but it was motionless. It neither approached nor retreated??it merely sailed parallel to us. It was quite impressive, because it was truly something strange, and something could be seen in concealment behind the smoke," he recalled.
Although the F-5E's are equipped with gun cameras, the general did not say if any footage had been obtained. The UFO "mothership" eventually vanished, heading toward Easter Island. "The sky cleared and the lines on the radar vanished," he informed Riffo. "However, there had been an object physically flying there. It's not a yarn, let me tell you. It's my only experience with UFOs."
It may be General Gabrielli's only experience, but not the Chilean Air Force (FACh)'s only instance of dealing with the UFO phenomenon. A newswire from Agence France Presse in February 2001 reported that the FACh had turned over classified information regarding UFO sightings to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). This information would have included sightings in the cities of Arica, Antofagasta and Charanal in Chile's northern regions as well as other cases in the Chilean Antarctic. A stern denial by the military followed--Gen. Ricardo Bermúdez, director of the Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos, was quoted as saying during the last International Air and Space Fair held in Santiago de Chile: "The Chilean Air Force has repeatedly stated, to the point of exhaustion, that there are no UFO files."
Uruguay, the smallest of the nations comprising the Southern Cone, puts both of its larger neighbors to shame in this regard. Not only does the country's military establishment manifest its concern over the UFO phenomenon, it has investigated hundreds of reports dating back to the 1930s. Even more surprisingly, Uruguay's CRIDOVNI (which translates as Receiving and Investigating Commission on UFO Claims) agency is a branch of the nation's air force.
The UFO research branch of the Uruguayan Air Force (FAU) can trace its beginnings to an incident which occurred on September 13, 1994, when residents of Paso de las Velas, some 150 km. from Montevideo, allegedly witnessed a UFO crashing into the ground. The event, which occurred after an electrical storm, caused witnesses to became aware of a solid rectangular object crossing the sky noiselessly. The orange rectangle suddenly plummeted to the ground, setting off an explosion which was heard for many kilometers around. Large plumes of smoke filled the air, but no traces of the object at the putative crash site.
In the light of this case, the Uruguayan Air Force decided to accept all UFO-related information and investigate each case directly. In March 2000, Col. Bernabé Gadea, CRIDOVNI's director, discussed the agency's research methods with Cesar Bianchi, a correspondent for Spain's El País newspaper. The setup is in some ways reminiscent of the early Project Blue Book: a three man operation, consisting of Gadea himself, psychologist Carlos Cantonet, and Lt. Col. Ariel Sánchez. UFO reports are dubbed "statements" and the CRIDOVNI troika is quick to state that "There are no UFO investigations taking place anywhere in the world, because we cannot investigate something we cannot identify. For this reason we research
claims??the events narrated by the eyewitnesses."
Ancillary to CRIDOVNI's core staff are meteorologists, aeronautical meteorologists, engineers, air traffic controllers, upper atmosphere physicists, psychologists and physicians. "We are Latin America's first official and public commission on the subject," Colonel Gadea informed the El País correspondent with certain pride, "and we have advised others, such as Chile's Comision de Estudios de Fenomenos Aereos Anomalos (CEFAA) in 1998." Procedure for the Uruguayan research organization is exacting: should physical evidence of an unknown object be left behind following a collision, for example, the "operations department" is responsible for reaching the point of impact and collecting evidence to be submitted to government ministries dealing with agronomy, mining and nuclear energy.
"We are one of the few countries," said psychologist Cantonet,"where the authorities issue an official reply to the phenomenon, whether we label it as "conventional" when we can explain it through our scientific evaluation methods to answer the public's questions, or "unconventional" when scientific
advances do not allow us to provide an answer."

Costa Rica: UFO Over Grecia







Source: www.analuisacid.com and Diario Extra
Date: 18 Jul. 2008


COSTA RICA: UFO OVER GRECIA

Perhaps they came down to Earth to see the All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium over in the Big Apple, but when the game went into extra innings, they decided to take a trip to Tiquicia.

So it was that on Tuesday, at around 10:00 pm, beings from another planet flew at full throttle over the nation's skies and stopped for a moment upon reaching Grecia, just in time for Ricardo Nunez and his neighbor to draw their video cameras and record the UFO that swung over their heads.

"I saw a very bright light in the horizon. The light began to get closer. I saw it wasn't a plane, as it lacked the corresponding lights. That's when I summoned my neighbor...the light got even closer and we recorded it with his video camera," said Nunez, who is still shaken.

After the event, this resident of Invu Dos in Grecia, Alajuela, went off searching for books on UFOs to see if what he had seen was indeed a visitor from another planet.

The owner of the camcorder was also very excited by what he had seen. "It floated in the air in a circular fashion. Its center was illuminated. My neighbor told me and I took out the camcorder. We felt that it was something out of the ordinary. It looked like a nut seed."

(Translation (c) 2008. S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Ana Luisa Cid)

Costa Rica: Satanists or Chupacabras?

Source: Diario Extra (Costa Rica)
Date: July 12, 2008

Costa Rica: Satanists or Chupacabras?
By Adolfo Ruiz

The owner of a horse was left startled and frightened when he found his animal lifeless and with a deep hole between its trachea and chest -- a hole through which the heart and liver were removed in an "excessively technical" manner.

"It's a tubular hole between the trachea and the pectoral, very deep, and it was through there, as thought a huge hand with powerful claws had gone inside, [the horse's] heart was removed," said Saul Ramirez, the nephew of the owner of the animal found dead in this mysterious and bizarre fashion, the first incident of its kind in the area.

Satanists or Goatsuckers?

The story that has spread among residents of Lilan is that the animal was slaughtered to remove its heart and liver for a traditional satanic ritual, one performed by the Devil's followers after consuming marijuana and alcohol, feeling the urge to indulge in "black masses" at night in certain regions of the hidden beaches of Cahuita. However, the still-recent manifestation of the Chupacabras was also brought to bear, and all of this because the animal was exsanguinated, barely leaving a small trace of blood.

"What's odd is that if an animal had been involved, it would have bitten it or caused external damage. The only injury it has is internal," added Saul.

The discovery was made yesterday morning. They were looking for the dapple grey horse they use to pull the cart filled with organic fertilizer around the area of Lilan de Cahuita, Talamanca (Limon). The farm is located 6 kilometers from Lilan toward San Rafael. The horse is always left in a pasture behind the Ramirez family's home. To bury the animal, it was necessary to bury it in an enormous ditch after cutting its legs off. Uncle and nephew did quite a bit of shoveling.

For more information: http://senalesdelostiempos.blogspot.com/2008/07/costa-rica-satnicos-o-chupacabras.html

(Translation (c) 2008, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Liliana Nuñez)

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Mexico: Santa Cecilia UFO was a Balloon











UFO at the Santa Cecilia Pyramid was a Balloon
by Ana Luisa Cid

The Santa Cecilia pyramid is a small Aztec structure located in the State of Mexico (Tlalnepantla).

It was consecrated to the Sun god (Tonatiuh) and the Rain god (Tlaloc), two important pre-Hispanic deities of Mesoamerica. It has a stairway located between two ramps and a sanctuary on its upper section. It is considered the only entire pyramid in Mexico. It was in this beautiful location that performer Jorge Reyes held a concert for the Equinoccio 2008 event, aside from other cultural activities.

At 20:45 hours and during the aforementioned Equinoccio 2008 celebrations, a number of spectators were startled to see a flying object moving at low altitude. Jose Antonio Perez Romero was able to obtain video footage of the alleged UFO.

During the course of the investigation, we found that the images have a considerable resemblance to Cantoya balloons, and I made this known to Jose Antonio, remarking that I had the opportunity to record this type of balloon in Tepoztlan. The author of the video replied the following:

"Hello again, Ana Luisa. I'm Jose Antonio, who took the Santa Cecilia video. Thanks for your willingness to analyze the video. I received a message from the event organizer clarifying the matter. It was, in fact, a balloon that was crafted for the event. It couldn't be any clearer, and I feel more tranquil now."

Ing. Humberto Villafuerte and Jesus Gonzalez delved deeper into the investigation: "The object was recorded toward the end of the event on July 10, 2008. It moves from south to north and flies behind the pyramid at an altitude of 150 meters approximately. It turns out that Jose Antonio Perez's video has gone viral and many opinions have been circulated since the month of April. Here in the municipality, the majority believes that it was a genuine UFO, but after a chat with Luis Alfonso Almarza (head of cultural events in Tlalnepantla)I mentioned the video and he told me it was a paper balloon, one of several launched during the closing of the event.

Curiously, despite being in circulation among people and having created great expectations, no one has reported this object nor its true nature. Young researcher Jesus Gonzalez was a witness of the sighting. He lives in the Santa Cecilia area and that night he attended the closing of the Equinoccio 2008 event. He studied the object's trajectory to create graphics and also interviewed the event organizer in Tlalnepantla, making the following determinations: a) The balloon was launched from the Tenayo II Public Housing building; b) it was a paper balloon with four luminaries on the ends of two crossed sticks, symbolizing the four pre-Hispanic horizons; c) several balloons were used in the decorations and pyrotechnics of the event; d) These were launched from various locations in the municipality of Tlalnepantla.

Due to the foregoing, we conclude that the Santa Cecilia "UFO" is a paper balloon that caused confusion among onlookers. Thanks to teamwork, an explanation was found. The honesty of videographer Jose Antonio Perez should be highlighted, and his willingness to cooperate with this research. Jose Antonio has allowed me to disseminate his recording in the hopes that this will help dispel some doubts regarding UFOs.

(Translation (c)2008,S.Corrales, IHU)

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Spain:Crop Circle Was a Rum Ad

Source: Planeta UFO
Date: July 9,2008


SPAIN: Crop Circle Was a Rum Ad

A new brand of rum commissioned the creation of circles in the Vacarisses harvests for a marketing campaign, leading residents of this Barcelona community to think they had been chosen by aliens.

"We had no idea that we were in the cosmic center of the universe and suddenly they chose us!" Carles Canongia felt chosen by a superior or at least alien force when he learned that some strange propeller-shaped marks had appeared in his township.

His hopes turned to dust when he realized that the crop circles had been created by human hands. He then resigned himself to being chosen not by mischievous space beings, but by the residents of Vacarisses.

Canongia has been at the head of this Barcelonan township since 2007 since he headed the PSC ticket and won at the polls, bring four legislative cycles controlled by a local independent party to a close. Up to recently, he could boast a magnificent location (in the community of Valles Occidental, bordering on Bages and the Baix Llobregat) as well as a calm atmosphere whose peace was disrupted when [crop circles] drawn by an unknown hand appeared in the fields of Ignasi Gibert, one of the local residents.

"As mayor, I'm disappointed to learn that the signs were not alien in origin," admits the Catalonian magistrate, who had become accustomed to welcoming strangers to his town who sought for proof of a greater god, who turned instead, to the disgust of paranormal aficionados, to be the result of a production company hoping to shoot a commercial in the area.

Rumor in the town suggested a brand of beer, although bartenders professed having no knowledge of circles or aliens. Not even the bar at Estacion de Amores knew anything about it, although the mayor states that "many outsiders have come here because they believed it."

A newswire story claimed that the circle was real, when in fact [the alleged author] was Bacardi, a rum distillery endeavoring to promote its new beverage Seven Fiki, related to the Fiji Islands and the aforementioned crop circles. It has achieved its goal, given the repercussions that the story has had in the media and in weblogs.

Crop Circles are circular shapes that appear from one day to another and are not visible in plain sight. The first discoveries occurred in the mid 1990s in Southern England. Much like the one in Vacarisses, they are only visible from the air.

"In fact, we thought it was a prank by someone in the township," explains Canongia, who would like the not-so-mysterious circles to remain where they are to attract curiosity-seekers and tourists, although he suspects that owner of the field will remove them soon.

"We've dealt with the matter with certain merriment and good cheer," acknowledges the socialist mayor. It isn't the first time, he says, that commercials have been filmed in the area, since "we have a landscape and unique vistas of Montserrat." Furthermore, it isn't just circles that have drawn the interest of countless fans of the paranormal -- they have been visited for a long time by ufologists and skywatchers looking for unidentified flying objects.

"There is a legend that causes outsiders to gather in Montserrat once a month to see the UFOs that appear," admits Canongia, aware of the commotion that these abnormal revelations have caused in the town. "And we hope that the crop-circle-making aliens come back next year." A glass of rum in hand, one would think.

(Translation (c) 2008, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez and Juan B.)

Friday, July 04, 2008

Argentina: First Cattle Mutilation in Bs.As. 2008






Source: Planeta UFO and Diario Inforcosta
Date: 07.04.08


ARGENTINA: First Cattle Mutilation of 2008 in Buenos Aires

(Inforcosta) As reported by a Pehuajo veterinarian. This would be the year's first case in the province of Buenos Aires. Sixe years after the Servicio Nacional de Sanidad y Calidad Agroalimentaria (SENASA) reported that the controversial and bizarre mutilations of cattle reported at the time throughout the country were the handiwork of the "Oxymycterus Rufus" rodent, better known as the red-muzzled mouse, a new case was reported on Monday in the Buenosairean locality of Mones Cazon, district of Pehuajo.

This was the information given by Alejandro Napuri, the Pehuajo veterinarian who came into contact with a dead, mutilated yearling at the "El Martillo" farm near the aforementioned town. "The incisions were irregular but not serrated. They were similar to the ones detected a few years ago in this area. Furthermore, there wasn't a single drop of blood at the site," explained the vet, adding: "Its tongue had been ripped out and the bone was exposed. This isn't an easy thing to achieve."

The event occured on Monday, exactly six years to the date of July 1, 2002, when Bernardo Cane, the head of SENASA, tried to extinguish the animal mutilation stories by pinning the slayings on "natural causes and subsequent carrion animal action." That was the end of the story, which was repeated by the national media. An official body had ruled on the subject, a fact that left hundreds of veterinarians stunned, as in most cases, they were unable to offer a certain and unequivocal explanation. In this regard, Napuri said that "the incisions observed have nothing to do with any mouse or predator."

At the time, some of the cases described were reported by cattlemen themselves, who also claimed "seeing lights" prior to coming accross the mutilated bovine.

(Translation (c) 2008, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO and Diario Inforcosta)

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Chile: The Dying Days of Ufology

Chile: The Dying Days of Ufology
By Raul Núñez, IIEE

Last month was a truly bad one. Patricio Varela died, Luis Altamirano was hospitalized, in short...a month best forgotten, focusing instead on what lies ahead. There is nothing else one can do in the brief space and time that have been allotted to us to live and experience life as sentient beings.

I honestly believe that a generation of ufologists is gradually disappearing in Chile. There will be no replacement in its quality, and I don’t even get the impression that it will endure very long. In brief, I get the feeling that ufology, as many of us originally interpreted it, is slowly dying. Just like that. Ufology is in its dying days and it is necessary to acknowledge this. This thought applies not only within the confines of Chile, but to many other countries as well. What are the reasons for this? One of the main reasons, without any doubt, is the development of the Internet, which has revolutionized the world of communications, causing news to reach us in a matter of seconds. This is fantastic, but it has also brought about the demise of the researcher of yesteryear, the one who kept his hopes burning and incurred the sacrifice of traveling to feel the essence of the events that transpired. Today, we are faced by the hundreds of names of “on-screen researchers” who dub themselves “great searchers” and become “deans” or senseless communicators. Many of them have never gone out of their way to learn the facts of a case and parade their egos across Internet-based mailing lists and groups.

This occurs not only in ufology, but in the world of journalism as well. Countless cases are reported, “as told to...” through “phone interviews” and a series of similar situations. Many of these stories are published without ever visiting the scene of the events. Why do we mention this? Only because between the years 2004 and 2006 we discovered a few dozen UFO cases that received a good deal of attention in their time, and that important Southern Chilean tabloids had not visited the sites where the cases occurred. These “professionals” had written everything from their desks, without getting their feet wet, without experiencing the cold, yet nonetheless took pleasure in dismissing the eyewitnesses when we visited their newsrooms to ask for more information, in an effort to revisit the cases. We were able to confirm this with the protagonists of these cases, who told us that they were never visited by a newsman who asked them questions directly.

These cases shall be published on this website (www.iiee.com) soon, and we regret having to say that these journalists are very famous today and well known in these circles. They have refused to acknowledge this serious omission, which has created a sense of mistrust in this professional guild, a negative image of [Chilean] ufology, among those who are truly interested in getting to the bottom of things.

If the Internet, according to our line of thought, has represented a significant breakdown in ufology, there are other reasons for this crisis that we shall analyze little by little. We shall also remark on the renewal and endurance of the “Contactee” phenomenon, which is ongoing and has replenished itself with new characters that are utterly ignorant of the overall history of this complex and controversial discipline. All of them, of course, are in direct contact with extraterrestrials that invariably endow them with healing properties, various powers, and many photos of their spacecraft – levels of achievement that long-suffering ufologists have never reached in so short a period of time.

Not to be tiresome, but last month was exhausting and only a personal, non-transferable reflection by each of us can lead to an understanding of those persons who have devoted ourselves to this way of life – called ufology – for so long. It has brought us much heartache, but great joy as well, and it is a shame that UFOs, which can still be seen and let themselves be seen, still lack a serious, scientific explanation, or at least one that justifies so many years of involvement. For this reason, we know that the last romantics of the 21st century face an uphill climb; yet we respect them and appreciate all of their efforts.

It is for this reason we believe that those who are taken away from us, or are experiencing serious health concerns, deserve to be remembered. A humanitarian regard toward them is indispensable, if we wish to maintain our status as “civilized human beings.”

Yet we will keep discussing ufology...while it lasts.

(Translation (c) 2008, S.Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Raul Núñez)

Argentina: Impact at Quijano (1995)

The considerable amount of UFO activity taking place in Argentina in 2008 has caused writers and researchers to recall older cases that occurred during similar high activity phases. Guillermo Gimenez, a contributing editor to Inexplicata and director (with Christian Quintero) of the Planeta UFO site, reminds us of the year 1995 with an article written by our friend and Inexplicata contributor, Mercedes Casas, about a little-known ancillary event to the famous "Metán UFO Crash" that occurred this year. Even though thirteen years now separate us from the events described below, the case is no less interesting.

Argentina: Impact at Quijano (1995)
By Mercedes Casas

This took place in 1995, forgotten among the newspaper clippings I preserve from that time. I recovered it when a Brazilian researcher with the CEUFO group brought up the subject, asking if there had been any developments in the case. The fact of the matter is that I do not know if someone actually followed up on the story, which did not cause as much of a stir as others. The curious detail is that it occurred only a week after the strange case involving Joaquin V. Gonzalez, assumed by many to involve the collision of an unidentified flying object. Here then is a transcript of the article that appeared in El Tribuno de Salta on August 24, 1995:

Salta, August 25, Diario El Tribuno

CAUSED LANDSLIDES IN A MOUNTAIN AND SPREAD PANIC AMONG RESIDENTS AND BEASTS

ALLEGED METEORITE CRASHES INTO QUEBRADA DEL TORO

On Friday, August 24, around 22:30 hours. Residents of bucolic Quebrada del Toro in the department of Rosario de Lerma were shaken by a violent dry explosion that shook local homes. The detonation, followed by landslides, spread panic among residents and their animals, which reacted with unaccustomed nervousness. Dogs and cats refused to leave their homes, while horses whinnied and stampeded away from the place.

The impact's greatest force was felt on the Incamayo Farm, as the explosion and subsequent landslides occurred on the mountain located behind the main dwelling, located some 55 km. from the city of Salta. The next morning, a group of locals led by Juan Lazarte, the farm's owner, tried to reach the source of the explosion, where landslides continued to occur. Despite the difficulties posed by the rough landscape, which makes approaching the mountain nearly impossible, the expedition succeeded in reaching the site. However, the continued landslides and the fear that space junk or radioactive elements could be present prompted the group to return when it was within in reach of the point of impact.

Subsequently, through Atilio Lazarte, Juan's brother, contact was made with the School of Natural Sciences of the National University of Salta (UNSA), which organized an expedition to ground zero. The UNSA group was led by geology professors Ricardo Alonso (a columnist for El Tribuno) and Ricardo Sureda, guided by Antonio Cruz. After claming a tortuous defile and reaching the top of a nearby mountain, the experts were able to ascertain that a spectacular landslide had occurred -- one which practically caused the slope to disappear.

"The available information leads us to suppose that a foreign body violently crashed against the site," Alonso told this newspaper. The object would have come in along a SW to NE path, and could have been a meteorite. It is possible that the body would have been completely disintegrated, as there are no remains to be seen, although the possibility that this visitor from space has been buried under the debris has not been ruled out."

According to Alonso, "there is no reason that justifies a landslide" like the one on the supposedly impacted hill. He therefore considers the meteorite theory to be the most reasonable. However, the expert explained that "the only way to determine if a heavenly body actually collided would be to find its remains, which will require new expeditions to the location, outfitted with proper equipment."

(Translation (c) 2008, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Mercedes Casas and Guillermo Gimenez)