Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClain smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, it
Speaker 1: Came from Above, we looked at the strange story involving
Speaker 1: a mysterious object said to have crashed near the town
Speaker 1: of Downa Gorsk in far eastern Russia in January nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six. The object is believed by some to be
Speaker 1: nothing less than an alien artifact, potential evidence of technology
Speaker 1: that is not of this world. Whether true or not,
Speaker 1: I find the idea of alien artifacts immense fun, and
Speaker 1: it would have been impossible to discuss the idea without
Speaker 1: mentioning the strange celestial body known as Omuamua. This classified
Speaker 1: vaguely as an interstellar object due to its unusual properties,
Speaker 1: is perhaps the closest we've come to seeing an object
Speaker 1: whose potential alien provenance remains an open discussion within the
Speaker 1: mainstream scientific community. Most, it should be said, are unconvinced
Speaker 1: by the idea, and in all likelihood there will be
Speaker 1: a fascinating but decidedly non intelligent design explanation for its existence. However,
Speaker 1: much like the roadside picnic analogy I made in the
Speaker 1: last episode. In a twenty nineteen interview with The New
Speaker 1: Yorker magazine, Abraham Loebe, who's written extensively about Amoamoor's potential
Speaker 1: alien origins, made the point that even if we saw
Speaker 1: evidence of an advanced technological civilization, there's no guarantee that
Speaker 1: we'd recognize it as such. As he said, if you
Speaker 1: were to show a smartphone to a prehistoric human, they
Speaker 1: would have absolutely no context or frames of reference to
Speaker 1: even begin to understand it as anything other than an
Speaker 1: unusual rock. In a November twenty eighteen article in Scientific American,
Speaker 1: Abraham Lobe summarized six unusual facts about O'mohamoah that make
Speaker 1: for compelling reading. One was that, due to the objects
Speaker 1: relatively slow speed of motion, rather than thinking of it
Speaker 1: as something that moved through the Solar System, it might
Speaker 1: be better to think of it as the other way round,
Speaker 1: that the Solar System was moving past it. In this sense,
Speaker 1: as Lobe suggests, we might imagine O'mooamuah like a boy
Speaker 1: on the surface of the ocean, moving slowly through space,
Speaker 1: and the Solar system, as a large ship moving toward
Speaker 1: it might o'mooamuah have in fact been some kind of
Speaker 1: data gathering beacon positioned in space as part of a
Speaker 1: wider network of similarly placed beacons. Another interesting point is
Speaker 1: that since astronomers weren't able to get a picture of
Speaker 1: the object, despite many artists impressions of it suggesting it
Speaker 1: looks not too dissimilar to a cigar shaped asteroid, there's
Speaker 1: no definitive answer and what it actually looks like. Lobe
Speaker 1: suggests it could just as easily be flat and round,
Speaker 1: like a pancake. The most unusual fact for Lobe was
Speaker 1: how the object, as he says, deviated from an orbit
Speaker 1: that is shaped purely by the gravitational force of the Sun,
Speaker 1: which is to say, with no evidence of ice evaporating
Speaker 1: from it as you might expect from a comet. Something
Speaker 1: extremely unusual must be propelling it. One theory proposed by
Speaker 1: Lobe is that the object is some kind of solas
Speaker 1: sale using the heat of the Sun to keep it
Speaker 1: in motion. In order for this to be the case,
Speaker 1: it would have to be comprised of a material only
Speaker 1: millimeters thick, something he believes only a technological civilization would
Speaker 1: be able to manufacture. Despite some ambitious plans to build
Speaker 1: a spacecraft to chase after Omuamua, it is likely this
Speaker 1: object will forever remain a mystery, with it expected to
Speaker 1: return to interstellar space at some point in the next
Speaker 1: twenty or so years. Some, however, like the scientists in
Speaker 1: Russia who examined the object that crashed near down a Gorsk,
Speaker 1: might argue there's no need to travel into space to
Speaker 1: find evidence of alien artifacts. In nineteen seventy five, in
Speaker 1: West Ukraine, a quarry worker was digging out a section
Speaker 1: of clay about eight meters below the surface when he
Speaker 1: noticed an unusually spherical object embedded in it. Rubbing the
Speaker 1: clay away with his hands exposed what appeared to be
Speaker 1: a black ball of glass, like a giant marble, unlike
Speaker 1: anything he'd seen before. After pulling it free, he struck
Speaker 1: it against a metal bucket, and sure enough, a small
Speaker 1: fragment of what appeared to be glass chipped off. The
Speaker 1: man took the mysterious sphere home as a gift for
Speaker 1: his son, who in turn took it to school, where
Speaker 1: his teacher offered to get it looked into more closely.
Speaker 1: Eventually lending it to a local museum, where it was
Speaker 1: kept for a further three years. In nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: that teacher's son, Boris Nowmenko, who was by then working
Speaker 1: for the Earth Physics Institute of the Soviet Union's Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences, took an interest in it. Not only was
Speaker 1: the object unusual in its shape, but since it was
Speaker 1: found in a seam of clay thought to be close
Speaker 1: to ten million years old, there was a good chance
Speaker 1: the object was also millions of years old. In October
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, now Menko lent the ball to a
Speaker 1: doctor Valentine Fomenko, a senior research fellow of the Sawyer's
Speaker 1: Scientific and Industrial Association, in an effort to determine its
Speaker 1: true age and physical make up. However, since now Menko
Speaker 1: didn't want to damage the object, doctor Fomenko was restricted
Speaker 1: to using only non destructive methods in his investigation. Despite
Speaker 1: the limited conditions, Formenko was nonetheless able to make some
Speaker 1: intriguing findings. Firstly, the ball was not actually a perfect sphere,
Speaker 1: but rather slightly ovoid by the finest of margins, with
Speaker 1: the longer axis measuring three millimeters more than its midsection.
Speaker 1: With the use of a halogen light held up to
Speaker 1: its surface, Formenko was also able to see it was
Speaker 1: made from a black glass like substance that was so
Speaker 1: dark the light was unable to penetrate it. Then, after
Speaker 1: X raying the object, Famenko made the startling discovery that
Speaker 1: there was in fact something else inside it and in
Speaker 1: a core shaped like half an egg that appeared to
Speaker 1: absorb X rays four times less intensely than the material
Speaker 1: surrounding it. And that wasn't all. If there's ever been
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Speaker 1: slash unexplained for ten dollars off. Having discovered the inner COREPS,
Speaker 1: a noninvasive test was carried out to determine the object's
Speaker 1: overall density, which left Famenko and his team dumbfounded. According
Speaker 1: to their calculations, the inner core appeared to have a
Speaker 1: negative mass. If this were true, the material that comprised
Speaker 1: it would be in complete violation of what most scientists
Speaker 1: consider to be one of the fundamental laws that govern
Speaker 1: all known matter in our universe, as recognized in all
Speaker 1: classical theories concerning gravity, including Einstein's theory of general relativity,
Speaker 1: all energy and by extension, matter exists in a positive state,
Speaker 1: in the sense that it is something that increases cumulatively
Speaker 1: as more and more energy or matter is added to it.
Speaker 1: Something with negative mass would do the opposite. Very crudely,
Speaker 1: that would be like putting a kilogram of material on
Speaker 1: a weighing scale, then adding another material that, despite looking solid,
Speaker 1: actually reduced the combined overall weight of the objects placed
Speaker 1: on the scale. Since weight is actually a measure of
Speaker 1: the force of gravity on an object, as opposed to mass,
Speaker 1: which is simply how much matter is in an object,
Speaker 1: this could theoretically be achieved by a substance that had
Speaker 1: anti gravitational properties, despite no conclusive evidence that such a
Speaker 1: thing exists in our universe. The concept of negative mass
Speaker 1: has been applied to numerous hypothetical technologies, such as time
Speaker 1: travel devices and machines that might one day be able
Speaker 1: to artificially construct a traversible wormhole. After a number of
Speaker 1: further tests, including one that revealed the dimensions of the
Speaker 1: object to be based on a base twenty four number system,
Speaker 1: as opposed to Base ten as we tend to use.
Speaker 1: Famenko was left in little doubt that the strange black
Speaker 1: sphere had been manufactured by an alien intelligence, possibly containing
Speaker 1: a material with anti gravitational properties or even antimatter. A
Speaker 1: week after receiving the object, however, just as Flemenko and
Speaker 1: his team were starting to make headway, Boris now Menko
Speaker 1: demanded the urgent return of the object, and the investigations
Speaker 1: were brought to a swift end. It would be another
Speaker 1: two years before doctor Farmenko heard of it again, as
Speaker 1: reported by Vladimir Rubsov in the March twenty fifteen edition
Speaker 1: of The Fourteen Times. In February nineteen eighty one, two
Speaker 1: years after doctor Farmenko's experiments, an article appeared in the
Speaker 1: popular Russian newspaper Izvestia titled A Mysterious Ball in the
Speaker 1: Lebyanka Sellers. The article, written by doctor Yuri Kolodny, alleged
Speaker 1: that shortly after Fermenko published his findings, his results made
Speaker 1: their way to the Military Industrial Commission of the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union's Council of Ministers. The Council in turn alert to
Speaker 1: the Committee for State Security also known as the KGB,
Speaker 1: and instructed them to find the object and confiscate it immediately,
Speaker 1: and if Fermenco's results were found to be correct, to
Speaker 1: neutralize it in an echo of the hexham head story
Speaker 1: that I covered in Season one. Since being returned to
Speaker 1: Boris Nowmenko, the ball had apparently been passed between a
Speaker 1: number of individuals and was eventually found in the possession
Speaker 1: of a man named mister d'ev dev, a parapsychologist, was
Speaker 1: convinced the ball possessed some kind of unknown energy that
Speaker 1: he'd been trying to harness. After being confronted by the KGB,
Speaker 1: he agreed to lend it to them on the condition
Speaker 1: that they returned it to him afterwards. The ball was
Speaker 1: then given to a team of scientists, including doctor Colodney,
Speaker 1: who wrote the nineteen eighty one article about it. Colodney
Speaker 1: claimed that on opening the sphere, they found it to
Speaker 1: be comprised of green glass with a brown colored core
Speaker 1: that was also little more than glass, although it was
Speaker 1: unusual for having virtually no sodium in it and a
Speaker 1: high concentration of strontium. The team also found a number
Speaker 1: of fine cracks on the sphere's surface, suggesting there was
Speaker 1: no way it could have contained antimatter, since it was
Speaker 1: not even airtight. Sadly, they found also that doctor Fermenko's
Speaker 1: negative mass calculations had been made in error due to
Speaker 1: a mistake in calculating the ball's center of gravity. Having
Speaker 1: had the object formally carbon dated, Colodney revealed it was
Speaker 1: not millions of years old at all, but something much
Speaker 1: closer to a few hundred years old. After consulting with
Speaker 1: a Ukrainian historian that specialized in the history of glass,
Speaker 1: doctor Colodney and the rest of the team concluded that
Speaker 1: the mysterious black sphere was nothing more than a gallow,
Speaker 1: a large glass ball often constructed from waist glass that
Speaker 1: in the past would be heated up and used as
Speaker 1: an iron for pressing clothes. The mystery then appeared to
Speaker 1: have been solved. After making a copy of the artifact,
Speaker 1: Colodney wrote that what was left of the original sphere
Speaker 1: was then returned to mister Diev to use however he pleased,
Speaker 1: and that was almost that. After the article was published,
Speaker 1: it soon came to the attention of doctor Famenko, who
Speaker 1: carried out the original analysis of the object. His confusion
Speaker 1: at what he read prompted him to write a letter
Speaker 1: to the newspaper's editor, as he went on to explain
Speaker 1: the sphere he'd examined had been undeniably black, not green
Speaker 1: as doctor Colodney stated, nor were there any cracks on
Speaker 1: it at all. Furthermore, he knew mister d'ev had enclosed
Speaker 1: the ball in a block of epoxy resin, from which
Speaker 1: it would have been virtually impossible to extract it without
Speaker 1: damaging it. It was also odd he thought that Colodney
Speaker 1: said it had been carbon dated, since if it was
Speaker 1: nothing but glass, there'd be no carbon in it with
Speaker 1: which to date it. There could only be one explanation,
Speaker 1: he argued, the ball that KGB had taken from mister
Speaker 1: d'ev had not been the original sphere, but rather a
Speaker 1: genuine glass gallow that he used to palm them off.
Speaker 1: Doctor Famenko left his contact details on the letter, hoping
Speaker 1: that doctor Colodney would write back to him to explain
Speaker 1: his findings further, but Colodney never replied. If you enjoy
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Speaker 1: how large or small, are greatly appreciated. Unexplained, the book
Speaker 1: and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been
Speaker 1: covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide.
Speaker 1: You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones,
Speaker 1: among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music,
Speaker 1: are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and
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Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
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