The foil considered unburnable mentioned in Meditation Along Meteor Crater Rim is thought to have been a remnant piece of the mysterious late-forties so-called memory foil. Memory foil is said to be a thin metal-like material with unusual properties reported showing up in association with a crash of an unknown object in New Mexico in 1947 and considered by many as being of extraterrestrial origin.(see) All of the known foil connected with the incident was confiscated and it's whereabouts or existence since kept under wraps by authorities. Over the years rumors have surfaced on and off that bits and pieces of the material, unbeknownst to authorities, had come into the hands of others. Below is an excerpt removed from a much larger source, that gives example to such a happenstance:
"Years later, in a meeting unrelated to any of the above (i.e., Coronal Mass Ejections in the orginal source), a discussion between La Paz and the bio-searcher turns to the events at Roswell. The bio-searcher retrieves a small wooden box much smaller than a cigar box and hands it to La Paz. La Paz opens it and inside is a piece of the foil-like material folded to about the size of a matchbook. The bio-searcher informs La Paz that unknown to Rickett (i.e., Master Sgt. Lewis "Bill" Rickett, Roswell Army Air Field Counter Intelligence Corps) or anybody else that day, the young boy had found and stuck the piece of material in his pocket, the piece eventually ending up in the hands of the bio-searcher. La Paz, who had seen similar material under very strictly controlled circumstances, is visibly surprised that the bio-searcher has such material. He sets the box down and redirects the conversation to another subject. With the lid open the foil mysteriously unfolds itself out of the container to its full extent, about the size of a small handkerchief, completely covering the box, the paper-thin foil displaying no sign of folds, creases, or wrinkles. With no visible interest one way or the other by La Paz except the initial surprise, the bio-searcher returns the foil to the box with no further discussion. What happened to that piece of foil or where it is now is not known. Some speculation has it that following the bio-searcher's demise, because of a perceived relationship to Sarira, that it was possibly co-joined into the fate of the feather mentioned in Meditation Along Meteor Crater Rim. Others suggest that once it became known that a piece of the material was in private hands it was appropriated by authorities."(source)
The scene as it transpires in the paragraph above comes from the source so cited. However, as the meeting unfolds, albeit not stated, it takes on all of the characteristics of --- or at least almost exactly duplicates --- a similar meeting written about in The Great 1947 Sunspot, Roswell, and Coronal Mass Ejections. That meeting is said to have occurred late one afternoon or evening between the famed astronomer and meteorite hunter, Dr. Lincoln La Paz and his friend, a mysterious bio-searcher at Clines Corners near the intersection of Route 285 and old Route 66 (now I-40) some 60 miles east of Albuquerque, New Mexico --- circa 1957-58 --- ten years after the crash.
In 1955, eight years after the Roswell crash a meeting between the biosearcher and famed radio broadcaster Frank Edwards, a known UFO advocate, occurred. Two years later the biosearcher met with famed astronomer Dr. Lincoln La Paz. Sometime after the meeting with Edwards, but before the meeting with La Paz, the biosearcher, who was known to have visited the debris field within days of the crash, went back to an area in the hills directly up and beyond the debris field to obtain 'something' he buried there ten years previously, as found in a footnote to the Edwards article linked above. What that something was is fully elaborated on elsewhere, however, it is known the biosearcher went to the debris field in the first place because he was interested in looking into what he heard were hieroglyphs on some pieces of the debris. If La Paz saw more than just Memory Foil that day in Clines Corner is not known.[1]
Col. Philip J. Corso, in his book The Day After Roswell, in regards to his seeing a military convoy composed of several duce-and-a-half trucks loaded with huge boxes as well as low boy trailers with tarps covering some sort of large objects arriving at Fort Riley, Kansas in the summer of 1947, writes the following of the same or similar type foil:
"There was a dull, greyish-silvery foil-like swatch of cloth among these artifacts that you could not fold, bend, tear, or wad up but that bounded right back into its original shape without any creases. It was a metallic fibre with physical characteristics that would later be called “supertenacity,” but when I tried to cut it with scissors, the arms just slid right off without even making a nick in the fibres. If you tried to stretch it, it bounced back, but I noticed that all the threads seemed to be going in one direction. When I tried to stretch it width-wise instead of length-wise, it looked like the fibres had re-orientated themselves to the direction I was pulling in. This couldn’t be cloth, but it obviously wasn’t metal. It was a combination, to my unscientific eye, of a cloth woven with metal strands that had the drape and malleability of a fabric and the strength and resistance of a metal. I was on top of some of the most secret weapons projects at the Pentagon, and we had nothing like this, even under the wish-list category."
At the same time Corso was doing his 'thing' at Fort Riley, in a basically unknown laboratory inside a large but low-profile organization named Battelle Memorial Institute, a scientist by the name of Elroy John Center was said to be working with material later reported to have been obtained from a crash of an airborne craft of an unknown nature.
Battelle, again, although a low profile organization, is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company that operates its own research facilities and manages or co-manages on behalf of the United States Department of Energy a whole host of national laboratories such as Brookhaven, Lawrence Livermore, and Oak Ridge.
In May of 1992, Dr. Irena McCammon Scott, who worked for both Battelle and the Defense Intelligence Agency had known of Center's work for years and came across an intriguing story involving Center which she, in conjunction with William E. Jones (of the William E. Jones UFO Collection - Ohio State University Libraries), revealed in an article titled The Ohio UFO Crash Connection and Other Stories as follows:
"In May of 1992 one of us was approached by an informant who told an intriguing story. For the record, he was not a Battelle employee. He had attended North High School in Columbus, Ohio, graduating in June of 1960. Between January and April of 1958, he dated a classmate named Cathy Center. One evening while he was visiting her home, Cathy's father, Mr. Elroy John Center, told them that while working at Battelle (he had left their employment in 1957) he was responsible for a project which required him to study 'parts' retrieved from a flying saucer. The parts had some sort of writing on them and his job was to 'find out what the characters meant.' He told them that there was 'lots more I can't go into. It's been bothering me since I saw it.' Given that some of the material (actually described as small 'I beams' retrieved from the pre-crash debris field near Roswell, New Mexico in July, 1947 has been described as having some sort of writing on it, the obvious question is did the 'parts' Mr. Center study come from the same crash event? The fact that Mr. Center's story was told long before the details of the Roswell debris were known publicly, the possible confirmation of his story by the later descriptions of that debris cannot be ignored."
(source)
Even though it is alluded to in the above quote when it says Center was responsible for a project which required him to study 'parts' retrieved from a flying saucer, speaking more toward the I-beam aspect, what is not stated is his work on memory foil that came out later.[2] As it was Battelle Institute ended up being responsible for was is called Nitinol, metal that has all the properties of the late 1940s memory foil. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act supports such a view. For a complete analysis please see:
BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE'S FIRST PROGRESS REPORT: AUGUST 31,1949
WRITTEN UNDER CONTRACT FOR THE USAF: AF 33(038)-3736
In an online search on Nitinol you don't have to go any farther than Wikipedia to get a clear picture of what Nitinol is as the following shows:
"Nitinol alloys exhibit two closely related and unique properties: shape memory and superelasticity (also called pseudoelasticity). Shape memory is the ability of nitinol to undergo deformation at one temperature, then recover its original, undeformed shape upon heating above its "transformation temperature". Superelasticity occurs at a narrow temperature range just above its transformation temperature; in this case, no heating is necessary to cause the undeformed shape to recover, and the material exhibits enormous elasticity, some 10-30 times that of ordinary metal."
Although nowhere does Discover Magazine mention the word Nitinol, in Vol. 25 No. 04, April 2004, a full 57 years after the mysterious crash at Roswell, Brad Lemley writes of a present day actual in reality known metal strip 8 inches long, 1 inch wide, and as thin as aluminum foil he saw that acts very similar to the late 1940s era memory-foil. In the article Lemley writes that William Johnson, a materials science professor at Caltech in Pasadena asks him "Try to tear it." Lemley first pulls it gently, then with all his might, with no results. "See if you can cut it," Johnson's postgraduate assistant Jason Kang says to Lemley, handing him a one inch long, quarter inch wide, thinner than a dime piece of the same metal. Lemley squeezes down as hard as he can with heavy-duty wire cutters, but the metal will not cut. He tries again with both hands still nothing. A steel sphere dropped on a rigid plate of the stuff bounces like a rubber Super Ball. Conventional metal would dent as the crystals that compose them were dislocated by the impact. But the plate --- an alloy made of zirconium, titanium, nickel, copper, and beryllium --- has no crystals. Any atoms that are displaced quickly snap all the way back, enabling the sphere to continue bouncing with little loss of energy. To see a fully updated description and current applications of present day technology that is in use right now, every day, please see: Liquidmetal Technologies, where they state, and I quote, "Another unique property of Liquidmetal alloys is the superior elastic limit; i.e., the ability to retain its original shape (memory) after undergoing very high loads and stress." They go on to say: "Liquidmetal alloys possess an 'amorphous' atomic structure, which is truly unique. By contrast to the crystalline structure (of conventional metals), no discernable patterns exist in the atomic structure of the unique Liquidmetal alloys. As such, properties superior to the limits of conventional metals can be achieved."
On or about Tuesday, July 8, 1947, Sergeant Robert Earl Smith, reportedly of the First Air Transport Unit, was a select member of a team assembled to load crates onto various transport planes allegedly carrying Roswell debris. According to Smith, during the loading operation, although it is not known how, one of the loading teams or a member thereof somehow came across a foil-like fragment, between two and three inches square. The unusual material was said to be jagged along the edges and could not be permanently folded or creased. Even after crumpling it up, it unfolded itself back to its former shape. Since then Smith has been reported as saying that despite the armed guards one of his colleagues was able to stash a piece of the strange fragment into his pocket. In a sworn and signed affidavit dated 10/10/91 Smith states:
"In July 1947, I was stationed at the Roswell Army Air Field as a member of the 1st Air Transport Unit. I worked in the cargo outfit with C-54s. My involvement in the Roswell incident was to help load crates of debris on to the aircraft. We all became aware of the event when we went to the hangar on the east side of the ramp. Our people had to re-measure the aircraft on the inside to accommodate the crates they were making for this material. All I saw was a little piece of material. The piece of debris I saw was two-to-three inches square. It was jagged. When you crumpled it up, it then laid back out; and when it did, it kind of crackled, making a sound like cellophane, and it crackled when it was let out. There were no creases. One of our people put it in his pocket."
C. Scott Littleton, former Professor of Anthropology and former Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California --- with strong research interest in the folkloric and mythological implications of the UFO phenomenon, primarily because of his own personal experience as a young boy observing the giant Zeppelin-sized object seen by thousands during the war years over Los Angeles, the so-called BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES: 1942 UFO, related to the the six or eight hour nighttime over flight of a giant object of unknown nature --- in a question-answer interview regarding his knowledge of various aspects of the Roswell Incident, was queried on his opinion of Memory Foil. The interlocutor asked:
"I have read that the material the UFO was made of was thin aluminum-like foil and able to be crumpled, but not ripped or torn and always reformed back to its original shape. Is this your understanding?"
Littleton responds: " --- this has been claimed, especially by Brazel's son (Brazel was W.W. Mac Mack Brazel, the father, and the person who originally stumbled across the material on his ranch near Corona, New Mexico). It is entirely possible. We have since invented such substances, though I sometimes wonder just how 'independent' that invention really was."
ROSWELL 1947 AND DR. LINCOLN LA PAZ: WAS HE THERE?
ROSWELL I-BEAM HIEROGLYPHS
ROSWELL UFO
ROSWELL ARCHAEOLOGISTS
THE ROSWELL RAY GUN
(please click image)
ROSWELL CRASH DEBRIS, 1947.
SOLAR SAIL:-- I-BEAM LIKE BRACING,
FOIL SAIL MATERIAL, CIRCA 2005, U.S.
UFO OVER LOS ANGELES
(click)
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
FOOTNOTE [1]
Although Memory Foil has long been part of the history and lore of Roswell because some of it apparently fell into the hands of civilians much to the dismay of the authorities, what is being hinted at here relative to La Paz and the meeting at Clines Corner is the potential existence of a weapon of sorts, a pistol like hand-held device or otherwise, that has never come to light on an official basis --- and, if or if not one fell into the hands of authorities (i.e., the government) or IF they confiscated one. See:
THE ROSWELL RAY GUN
FOOTNOTE [2]
The original published source for the quote, the Ohio UFO Notebook, Summer, 1994 no longer shows up, but an online reprint of the same article is offered by the organization that initially published it, albeit in a secondary format. The last I saw, an original hard copy of the Summer 1994 issue of the Ohio UFO Notebook was selling for thirty bucks.
For some reason, that very same issue, the Summer of 1994, of the now no-longer published and hard to find periodical Ohio UFO Notebook, in conjunction with the Elroy John Center article previously mentioned, carried one of the most interesting yet under-reported articles on Roswell related reverse engineering ever published. Please see:
RALPH A. MULTER
GUNNER'S MATE 3rd CLASS, U.S. NAVY
