by In the 1940s, Allied pilots during World War II reported being powered by fast blogs, which they called “foo fighters”.
Resembling clouds, donuts, balls and spheres, and often glowing or translucent, the strange entities inspired conspiracy theories that an advanced civilization was visiting Earth.
Now a paper suggests that the phenomena are actually plasmas, or ionized gases, which are attracted to the electrical charges of aircraft, spacecraft and satellites.
Plasmas behave like living organisms
Experts from the universities of California, Arizona and the Harvard-Smithsonian argue that the strange properties of plasmas seem to behave like living organisms, although they are not alive.
Plasmas can grow in size and replicate, touch each other and can “live” off the electromagnetic radiation of satellites and spacecraft, they say.
10 NASA space shuttle missions have filmed giant glowing masses up to a mile wide, which behave like knives for living organisms, and strange phenomena have been reported by astronauts since the 1960s.
Astronauts Ed White and James McDivitt saw a huge “metallic object” approaching the Gemini 4 orbiter, in June 1965, and James Lovell reported a “Bogey at 10 o’clock high” on a mission six months later.
Strange ‘L-shaped’ object
Buzz Aldrin also said he and his colleagues saw a strange, L-shaped object that was “very large and coming closer” during the Apollo 11 moon landing, although he later said it was a booster panel .
The team believes that plasmas in the thermosphere – between 66 and 372 miles high – could slip into the lower atmosphere, taking into account reports from pilots.
Co-author Dr Rudolph Schild, from the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian: “These plasmas are electromagnetic entities of a variety of shapes and sizes. They have repeatedly come into contact with spacecraft and space shuttles and are attracted to electromagnetic activity including thunderstorms.
“They are filmed from space, down into the lower atmosphere and seem to be attracted to airplanes, fighter jets, nuclear power plants, and radiation “hot spots”, such as Hiroshima, which were destroyed by an atomic bomb.
“Based on video, photographic and computer analysis, including reports from military officers and astronauts, we believe these plasmas are at least some of the many reports of UFOs and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena over the past several thousand years including the ‘foo fighters’ observed. by German, Japanese and Allied pilots during the Second World War.”
“Foo Fighters” were first reported by Royal Air Force personnel in March 1942, and a number of United States pilots saw lights flashing over Germany during the war.
A new type of weather phenomenon
The sightings were largely dismissed as German weapons or flight fatigue, although some speculated at the time that they could be a new type of weather phenomenon, such as St Elmo’s Fire, a plasma effect that causes aircraft wings to glow.
Plasma represents the fourth state of matter distinct from solid, liquid and gas, but its properties are still being revealed. It is responsible for lightning and phenomena such as the Northern Lights, when plasma from the Sun interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field.
Plasma-like entities have been filmed converging in hundreds, particularly around satellite strings that generate electromagnetic activity.
They have many shapes, they travel in different directions, some moving fast and others maneuvering in place. They even seem to point or follow each other and sometimes collide, leaving what looks like a trail of plasma dust in their wake.
Co-author Dr Christopher Impey, from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, said: “This does not mean that these plasmas are alive, or engaged in intelligent, purposeful behaviour.
“Instead, as experimentally documented, these upper atmospheric electromagnetic plasmas may engage in ‘energy cannibalism’ and so-called ‘collision’ behaviors in which they turn, follow, collide they, where they cross, and, perhaps they exchange energy.”
Plasma may represent ‘another form of life’
Some of the authors believe that the plasmas could even represent an alternative form of life that is not based on carbon, while others are skeptical.
The team has called for more research studying the plasmas, including sending up satellites that generate electromagnetic pulses equipped with infrared and X-ray cameras to capture the phenomena.
Commenting on the research, Daniel Mitchard, a lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Engineering, said: “It is not surprising that there are previously unknown charge-based phenomena at this altitude, and that they show behavior that we do not fully understand yet.
“They are also likely to be attracted to, or repelled by, satellites and the Space Shuttle, which can increase their fixed charges.
“Even at ground level, odd-behaving thunderballs are reported from time to time, often called Ball Lightning, and no one knows what these are either – they may be ‘ foo fighters’. It’s certainly interesting research.”
‘Unbeknownst to the public’
He added: “There’s a whole world of lightning science that the public doesn’t know much about, even though we try to get to it.
“There are giant structures called Sprites, which look like jellyfish 25 miles (40km) high, elves, which are huge discs that can spread 250 miles (400km) across, and lightning bolts rising from clouds called Jets are three or four times. beyond anything we can see from the ground.”
The new research will be published in the Journal of Modern Physics.
