Follow-up to "Why UAP in 1933 Italy isn't as Bonkers as it Sounds"
Facing ascertainment bias head-on.
[This article is free of any AI content]
Appreciating the feedback so far on my previous article, I wanted to update it with further findings. Owing to experience in unrelated research activity, I’m very sensitive to identifying the role that ascertainment bias can play, so I wanted to expand on that.
To recap, according to Grusch, the UAP crash happened in Magenta, Italy in 1933. We do not have, (and I would love) further detail on the timing. Let’s generalize however, so we can try to make the fewest assumptions possible. Suppose the UAP were monitoring any and all experiments taking place leading up to the discovery of nuclear fission, using any surveillance technology (not necessarily neutrino —could be gamma emission, or something else), and for any purpose (not necessarily nonproliferation, e.g. anthropology, or again something else).
The 1930’s were a huge time for nuclear physics, which was geographically focused on Europe. We happen to have a crash in Magenta (near Milan) in 1933, but assuming that’s a rare circumstance in the activity of UAP, where all does that suggest we should anticipate that UAPs were observing during the early 1930’s? We proceed, with the help of ChatGPT4 (and my best efforts at sanity-checking it, recalling that I am not a physicist, rather am a technical generalist). With my prompts focusing on neutron bombardment work, induced radiation, and nuclear physics in general, I arrive at:
(For purposes of ChatGPT sanity-checking, most of these names and their contributions to the foundations of nuclear physics are pretty familiar by now from my background study. Several Nobel Prize winners in this list for example).
Therefore two weeks ago, suppose we had heard Grusch tell us that there had been a crash in Paris in 1932. Then, keeping the rest of my foundational reasoning as constant, I would have written an article describing the Joliot-Curie activity there at that time in the Radium Institute, instead of the Via Panisperna boys’ work in Rome. That’s why I feel it’s important to look at the bigger picture - - insead of pulling on just the elephant’s tail or its trunk, let’s look at the whole elephant.
So if UAP were zipping across Europe, whether monitoring radioactive material in transit between research sites (whether via rail/road/airmail) or monitoring the research sites themselves, where would they go (that they could risk crashing and/or being sighted along the way)?
Removing the Pasadena geographic outlier, and restricting to known and likely 1933 experimental activity, we map out:
In 1933, Cambridge (Cavendish lab/Chadwick), Berlin (Kaiser Wilhelm Inst. / Meitner, Hahn, Strassman), Paris (Radium Inst. / Joliot-Curie x2), and Rome (Via Panisperna boys / Fermi) are the primary locations with research activity in scope for experimental nuclear physics research. And Brussels is the site of the renowned Solvay conference series where nuclear physicists convened in 1933, likely with apparatus in tow for show-and-tell.
And if our observation had been a crash in a different year, like 1932? Well our radioactive technosignature analysis would still primarily be looking at/between these labs, although exceptions do pop up, such as Giessen, Germany in 1930.
With this in mind, let’s look at the map from the perspective of what Grusch did say - a crash in the Milan suburb of Magenta, Italy in 1933. Where does Milan sit on this map? From Great Circle Map, we have:
As you can see, Milan sits directly atop the great circle route between Rome and Cambridge, and not far removed from the great circle route from Rome to Paris or Brussels.
Therefore whether we’re talking about
the movement of radioactive research material such as radium, radon, or polonium through the parcel transportation means of the day (railroad, airmail)
the movement of researchers themselves (perhaps carrying radioactive research material with them)
the great circle (i.e. beeline) transits of the UAPs themselves between experimental research sites of interest
…we have a framework that our pre-Manhattan-Project UAP crash observation aligns with, given the context of UAP’s nuclear technology interest described in my previous article.
(Update 24-Jun) Starting to control for ascertainment bias
When we’re trying to determine whether ascertained data accords to a hypothesis (in this case the location of Milan along key 1930s nuclear physics great-circle routes), we also need to look at whether the data would be as or better explained by a control to that hypothesis. To accomplish this, I recognized that the cities of interest to the hypothesis - Rome, Paris, Cambridge (being next to London), and Brussels, are all capital cities of their respective countries. So I thought, well what if the UAP simply like to go between European capital cities, or are following traffic routes of anything between these cities? To test this, I looked at where Milan sits on great-circle routes for the other European capitals. For ease of viualization I break this up into two parts. A) Rome to hypothesis-nonconforming capitals, and B) non-Rome hypothesis-nonconconforming capitals
A) Rome to hypothesis-nonconforming capitals
and
B) non-conforming capitals to each other (abridged to show only routes that cross (even remotely) in the vicinity of Milan
We take A) and B) together: In the A) illustration, the only route of relevance is Rome to Bern. And in the B) illustration, we have Lisbon|Madrid to Vienna|Budapest (so 4 routes) , and Bern to Athens. Besides Rome, there is no experimental nuclear physics activity in the cities listed in 1933. If we try to hold onto the radioactive technosignature hypothesis with this control dataset, we would consider that there could be movement of radium around the continent for other purposes, that UAP might anyway follow. For example, there is indeed a history of use (and misuse) of radium for the purpose of medical treatment during this period.
Otherwise, we would have to think of another hypothesis why transiting along or observing routes between these cities is relevant to a UAP.
We can also consider a case C), where the UAP are interested in Milan, or population centers in general, i.e. independent of any traffic routes. At this time, Milan was a noted textiles producer. It’s hard to ascribe interest on the part of UAP to Milan on its own during this period, but we don’t really know.
Overall my interpretation that a UAP interest in following humanity’s developments in nuclear physics is better explained by a Milan observation (the crash) than random chance. And regarding the radium movement at this time for medical purposes, well, the production had increased due to Belgium’s colony Congo becoming newly prolific in exporting the radium. So the supply chain would likely see transit via a Belgian city to other European countries, which generally bypass Milan. So it seems unlikely that UAP were following general commercial radium movement, outside the context of nuclear study.
What next?
In addition to the next steps I suggested in my previous article, I recommend:
Forensically assemble the canonical corpus of early-1930s nuclear physics experiments, likely unpublished replications, their time periods, & their expected & anticipated emissions based on the full knowledge of nuclear physics that we have today.
Forensically assemble as canonical a list as possible of the movements of researchers during the early 1930s, as well as their shipments of radioactive material, with particular focus on 1933.
Trawl the historical record for records of UAP sightings in Europe, and compare
reported sightings along the spatiotemporal routes given by the above corpuses (call these ‘corpus-conforming’)
reported sightings that have nothing to do with the spatiotemporal route given by the above corpuses (call these ‘corpus-nonconforming’).
If ‘corpus-conforming’ sightings are significantly more than ‘corpus-nonconforming’ sightings, then that increases the likelihood that UAPs are both real and interested in observing nuclear technology. If reported sighting rates are roughly the same between ‘corpus-conforming’ and ‘corpus-nonconforming’, then we conclude there’s nothing to be contributed from this avenue of tracing.
Update 25-Jun - More precision available on dates
One of the most valuable aspects of Grusch’s testimony (now openly published essentially in full on NewsNation) is that he imbued credibility on at least a narrow set of UFOlogy & lore. I was pointed to further background out of Italy on the topic of the Magenta crash that he referred to. Evidently this crash has had a similar awareness in Italian culture as Roswell had in the anglosphere. Before his interview, I would have ignored this material (that much of it was in Italian didn’t help matters). Yet, “1933 was the first recovery in Europe, in Magenta, Italy.”, Grusch says. So I no longer mentally block out highlighted material out of hand (I hope this does not offend longtime UFO/UAP researchers, but I need to foreshadow the evolution of my approach to the next sources).
So I come across this piece (in Italian) from a journal called Il Messagero. I have no idea whether this journal is equivalent to the National Enquirer or to NYTimes in Italian popular discourse. And within the strict limits of the subject at and, the answer to that question is immaterial to me. What matters is that 1) I’ve decided Grusch is legit, and 2) he imbues credibility on the story thread at hand. The piece from Il Messagero references the National UFO Center (more on this in a moment) that the date of the crash was 13 June 1933.
Now, consider the back-and-forth in play here. An Italian journal refers to the NUC (which as a non-hitherto-UAP-researcher) I had not even heard of until some hour before writing this, but seems to be associated with Elizondo, who has credibility in my view. I believe the NUC itself is referring back to an Italian ufologist. Again the provenance from this point concerns me relatively little, what matters to me here is that this detailed background pre-dates Grusch’s interview, even by six years , so can’t have been formed to fit his narrative, only the other way around or a common source prior to them both.
Which is a long way of saying, I allow some trust to be imbued onto the 13 June 1933 crash date.
And that’s incredibly valuable, because it helps us eliminate avenues of onward research. Like the Solvay conference in Brussels, which wasn’t until October 1933. So I remove consideration of Brussels from the matter. This allows us to happily further restrict scope of analysis to movements of researchers & research material in the Rome-Paris, Rome-Cambridge corridors, and the experiments themselves in each of Rome, Paris, and Cambridge in approximately early June 1933. This is a much more tractable research problem, and a science historian specializing in the period could be called upon to to provide guidance in such a narrow scope. In other words, this is a win 🙂.
What is the value in accomplishing these onward research steps?
There are multiple executive outcomes that we can anticipate from such an effort
Contribute to updating our prior weights on whether or not UAPs exist.
Through this effort we might ascertain which nuclear reactions UAP are most sensitive to. This can help us determine, for example, what emissions they are capable of sensing.
The context (likely route, weather conditions) might help us determine what caused the UAP to crash.
All of the above is likely open source information - i.e. less likely to already be subjected to censorship than comparable conditions on nuclear power plants, missile silos & tests, or warhead storage areas which artificially distorts our perception of the evidence base.
Update 25-Jun
I wanted to see if I could find weather data for the date and location in question - in case there was similar kind of storm activity as is often associated with the Roswell crash. Well, you can see for yourself [archive of geographic.org]. 13 June 1933 was by far the rainiest calendar day in Milan that month. I haven’t seen references to a storm causing it to crash in the accounts I have read so far; also not impossible I could have missed a relevant account.
