Nexus - 0403 - New Times Magazine-pages

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BRIGHT SKIES Top-Secret Weapons Testing? BRIGHT Testing? Top-Secret Weapons Strange fireball events have been witnessed in many remote parts of Australia recently. With the meteor theory ruled out, could these moving plasmoids be part of some military secret-weapons program, or even the work of UFOs? Part 1 early 1995. A colleague and friend, John Watts, of geological consultants Mackay & Schnellmann Pty Ltd, asked for my opinion on earthquake risk in an isolated area of the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia (WA). John knew of my long experi- ence in the Laverton region, conducting geological and geophysical field exploration sur- veys there for gold mineralisation—hence his approach to me for scientific advice concern- ing an odd series of events that occurred in this area of WA in May 1993. M: research into the subject of Australian fireballs began about two years ago in THE BAN/JAWARN FIREBALL EVENTS Whilst visiting a small underground gold-mine John had noticed a Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper article, dated 1 June 1993, attached to the barracks’ kitchen fridge door. This reported that on 28 May 1993 at 23.03 hrs a meteor fireball was seen by several observers to be flying from south to north between Leonora and Laverton. This was immediately fol- lowed by a significant 3.9 Richter-scale earthquake—picked up by 23 seismic receivers around WA and the Northern Territory (NT). Ed Paul, a geophysicist at the AGSO (Australian Geological Survey Organisation) Mundaring Seismic Observatory near Perth, had received several telephone calls from the public, as had the Laverton Police. Ed had reasoned that there was a possible connection between the meteor fireball and the quake due to an impact with the ground. The small gold-mine (the Alycia mine) experienced this quake event as underground three-inch steel pipes sheared clean in half and drives and shafts collapsed. My friend John has done a considerable amount of earthquake risk assessment during his consulting career and thought that this damage pattern was more like instantaneous blast damage, as is nor- mally caused by big explosions, rather than standard earthquake damage. The key to this was the underground damage, and the type of damage caused, in comparison to the more normal quake mine damage which is usually limited to surface building collapse caused by quake-induced seismic ground waves. Many observers reported that the fireball passed overhead making a pulsed roaring noise, similar to a very loud road-train diesel engine, and that after the seismic wave hit they heard a huge, long-drawn-out explosion—similar to a very major, but long-drawn-out mine blast, ut somehow peculiarly different. (Note: The seismic ground wave moves much faster than the speed of sound from an explosion). At the time we reasoned that Ed Paul was probably correct and that a meteor fireball (a lide) could have impacted explosively into the ground and caused the apparent "earth- quake" by impact or by airburst-explosion shock-wave induction. This area of WA has had no recorded quakes since seismographs were first installed in 1900, nor Aboriginal racial memory of any quakes. As such an impact event is a major geological curiosity, often observed in the Earth's geo- ogical record but rarely recorded as occurring in human history, we decided to embark upon a private research project to document the event—leading, we hoped, to scientific fame and glory. We did not then appreciate just where this research work and interest would lead... I visited the area in May and June 1995 and began to interview, by personal visit or tele- phone, the inhabitants of a 300-kilometre-radius area centred upon Laverton. This Eastern Goldfields region of WA is semi-desert and very isolated with an extremely low population density. It contains several very large sheep stations, a couple of small gold-mining towns (Leonora and Laverton), plus several isolated gold-mine sites, a few gravel or dirt roads, a lot of thick mulga bush and gum-tree scrub vegetation with some sand dune fields and spinifex-grass cover. by Harry Mason, B.Sc., M.Sc. ©1997 All Rights Reserved 1313 Armstrong Road Jarrahdale WA 6203, Australia Phone: +61 9 525 5999 Fax: +61 9 525 5944 E-mail: orbitx@ois.com.au 1313 Armstrong Road Jarrahdale WA 6203, Australia Phone: +61 9 525 5999 Fax: +61 9 525 5944 E-mail: orbitx@ois.com.au APRIL - MAY 1997 NEXUS - 53