Quirky 1947: Roswell, Rhodes, Arnold, and Solar Flares?

Copyright 2011, InterAmerica, Inc.

Looking for a perturbation in the “force” for 1947, I stumbled upon an internet item by The Wanderling at the site of Anna Jones that states the Roswell “crash” was caused by solar flares:

Click HERE for that site and “article.”

It seems to me that solar flares are as good of an explanation as any for the 1947 upshot in flying saucer incidents, actual and fraudulent.

But it is only one explanation for the epidemic of flying saucer sightings and hoaxes.

What I am proposing is that the electrically charged bursts from the Sun caused some persons to conflate their observations of mundane things in the sky for concrete objects of an esoteric kind.

This is what happened to Kenneth Arnold; he saw a flight of pelicans, a flight of prototypical Navy jets, or a mirage and thought it was a bevy of “saucer skipping aircraft.”

The Maury Island episode was either a product of a misperception or the creation of addled minds that were afflicted by the 1947 solar flare anomaly. I prefer the latter.

William Rhodes (or Rhoades) either saw and photographed a strange object in the sky over his Phoenix house in 1947 or he contrived a photo because he was made mentally disturbed by the influx of electrical impulses caused by the excessive solar flare activity of 1947.

Ah, you scoff, but here are two passages on the affect of sun spots and solar flares on the mental capacity of humans:

International Journal of Biometeorology
Volume 43, Number 1, 31-37, DOI: 10.1007/s004840050113
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The effects of extra-low-frequency atmospheric pressure oscillations on human mental activity
A. A. Delyukov and L. Didyk

Slight atmospheric pressure oscillations (APO) in the extra-low-frequency range below 0.1 Hz, which frequently occur naturally, can influence human mental activity. This phenomenon has been observed in experiments with a group of 12 healthy volunteers exposed to experimentally created APO with amplitudes 30–50 Pa in the frequency band 0.011–0.17 Hz. Exposure of the subjects to APO for 15–30 min caused significant changes in attention and short-term memory functions, performance rate, and mental processing flexibility. The character of the response depended on the APO frequency and coherence. Periodic APO promoted purposeful mental activity, accompanied by an increase in breath-holding duration and a slower heart rate. On the other hand, quasi-chaotic APO, similar to the natural perturbations of atmospheric pressure, disrupted mental activity. These observations suggest that APO could be partly responsible for meteorosensitivity in humans.

Chaotic solar cycles modulate the incidence and severity of mental illness
George E Davis Jr.a, , , Walter E Lowellb, 1,

Purchase a Augusta Mental Health Institute, Hospital Street, P.O. Box 724, Augusta, ME 04332, USA
b State of Maine, Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services, Augusta, ME 04332, USA

Received 18 August 2003; Accepted 10 November 2003. Available online 21 January 2004.
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Abstract:

This paper hypothesizes that the intensity of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) from the Sun predisposes humans to polygenic mutation fostering major mental illness (MMI) and other disorders of neurodevelopment. In addition, the variation in the intensity of this radiation acts to stress immune systems, possibly mediated by cytokines, resulting in variable clinical expressions of mental illness and autoimmune disorders. Organisms can adapt to chronic high-intensity UVR by producing melanin and by retaining various pigments. We found that 28% of 11-year solar cycles produce particularly severe solar flares during which UVR is 300% more intense and hence more damaging than normal. Out of a total of six severe cycles in the past 250 years, four have occurred in the past 55 years, possibly explaining the apparent increase in the incidence of MMI in recent decades. UVR is 10 times more mutagenic than ionizing radiation to nuclear DNA, and especially damaging to mitochondrial DNA. However, variable light as manifested by seasons stresses adaptability to UVR, possibly through an immune mechanism. We show that the region of the Earth having the most UVR, relative to the most variation in that light, is at 54±~10° (N or S) latitude. Therefore, the most potential damage from sunlight occurs between the Equator and the Poles, not at the Equator itself. The human brain, our most important organ of adaptability, must be able to survive environmental variation, with successful matching to the environment resulting in adaptation. Unsuccessful adaptation to UVR (and possibly other types of radiation) results in mutation, which can produce neuro-chemical abnormalities manifested by MMI. We postulate that the combination of intensity and variation in UVR serves as a global modulator of MMI.

Copyright © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Medical Hypotheses
Volume 62, Issue 2, February 2004, Pages 207-214
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As for Roswell, it seems that something happened near that town in 1947, something not other-worldly necessarily, but something concrete – a military accident of some kind – or a confluence of mental disturbances caused by solar flare activity, mental disturbances that caused some Roswellians to act out and act upon the mental constructs and aberrations that were created by solar flare activity supported by the backdrop of an almost prosaic accident of some kind.

That is, some Roswell witness, overly stimulated by solar flare activity, ended up doing things and experiencing things that were not real in any objective sense. That, along with the mass hysteria or “group hallucinatory” possibilities, can account for the extrapolation that is now known as The Roswell Incident – a mythical meme based wholly on aberrant mental configurations and disturbances, underscored by a military incident that had nothing to do with an extraterrestrial intrusion or crashed flying disk.

One can take the data of solar flare activity for 1947 and other time-frames to see if solar flares or sun-busts might account for other hallucinated UFO episodes: The Hill abduction, the Pascagoula event, or the Travis Walton kidnapping.

Also, intrusions of hoaxed materials or confabulated videos, photographs, and stories might be traced to an influx of solar flare activity during the time such contrivances are conceived.

Two recommended reports/books on solar flares and two papers on solar flares:

Click here for Paper One – a PDF

Click here for Paper Two – also a PDF

RR