Dr. Garry Nolan, a professor of pathology at Stanford University who has been working with people studying materials originating from alleged UAPs (the acronym stands for Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, as UFOs are often referred to nowadays), has shared some details about his work in an interview with Vice Motherboard.
As Nolan explained, some of the objects he looked at appear as nondescript lumps of metal, though almost none of the objects he examined “are uniform.”
"They're all these hodgepodge mixtures. Each individual case will be composed of a similar set of elements, but they will be inhomogeneous," he said.
One of the materials from the so called Ubatuba UAP event in Brazil, he said, has “extraordinarily altered isotope ratios of magnesium.”
"It was interesting because another piece from the same event was analyzed in the same instrument at the same time. This is an extraordinarily sensitive instrument called a nanoSIMS - Secondary Ion Mass Spec," he said. "It had perfectly correct isotope ratios for what you would expect for magnesium found anywhere on Earth. Meanwhile, the other one was just way off. Like 30 percent off the ratios."
The problem, Nolan explained, is that there is “no good reason humans have for altering the isotope ratios of a simple metal like magnesium,” as while such a feat is doable, there is simply no reason for performing it.
He added that two of the dozen or so objects he examined “seem to be not playing by our rules,” clarifying that it meant said objects had altered isotope ratios and not them exhibiting phenomena like levitation, for example.
In most cases, Nolan said, the materials from alleged UAPs are “leftovers of some sort of process that these objects spit out,” with witnesses of some instances saying that the observed objects initially appeared unstable, only to become stable and move away after spitting out “a bunch of stuff.”
"What are the circumstances in some of these cases? For instance, in some cases, the witnesses state that the observed objects appeared unstable, or in some kind of distress," he said. "Then, it spits out 'a bunch of stuff.' Now the object appears stable and it moves off. It looks like it fixed itself."
One hypothesis, Nolan said, is that the ejected material is part of the mechanism the flying object “uses for moving around, and when things get out of whack, the object has to offload it.”
"That begs the question (again assuming the things are real at all): what are they using it for? If there's altered isotope ratios, are they using the altered isotope ratios? Are the altered ratios the result of the propulsion mechanism?" he mused. "Again, pure speculation: When the ratios get that far out of whack, do they have to offload because it's no longer useful in propulsion?"
The researcher added that “smarter people” than him “will come up with better reasons,” and that this is what the “fun of science” is about.
"The data is there… the explanation is not," he concluded.