Here, I'm not suggesting that ALL UFO activity is plasma phenomena. What's most interesting is that the M.o.D. is actually admitting the importance of plasma at all (considering it's supposedly not taken seriously by mainstream scientists)!!!!

Love Div
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Re: The Plasma Electric Universe and UFO Connection
British Ministry of Defence Condon Report
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Atmospheric Electricity and Plasma Interpretations of UFOs
Martin D. Altschuler

[link to www.ncas.org]

Research into atmospheric electricity is important and difficult. Although many aspects are now becoming clear, much remains controversial or unknown. Even common events, such as the thunderstorm and the lightning flash, continue to provide fascinating challenges to science.

Electric fields are produced by clouds, fog, rain, sleet, snow, tornadoes, dust devils, volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, and contaminants in air. On mountains, electrical activity often becomes intense. Experienced climbers can tell bizarre stories of mountaintop electricity. Researchers themselves have often been astonished at nature's complexity. Ball lightning, for example, although witnessed and reported many times in the past, has only with difficulty been established as a genuine scientific problem. Years of patient effort were required to distinguish ball lightning from retinal afterimages and optical illusions. In view of the numerous manifestations of atmospheric electricity, it is reasonable to try to determine whether or not some luminescent UFOs are indicative of yet another electrical phenomenon of nature.

Much research has been done theoretically, in the laboratory, and in the field that bears on the problems of atmospheric electricity and the plasma state of matter. Here we emphasize the more unusual (and often speculative) aspects of these subjects and their possible correlation with descriptions of UFO behavior. People who have witnessed unusual electrical phenomena of the types reviewed.


Plasma Theories for UFOs
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Two articles and one popular book have been written on plasma interpretations of UFOs by P. J. Klass. Klass was impressed by reports of UFOs in close association with high tension power lines near Exeter, New Hampshire. Many popular books assert that UFOs are extraterrestrial spaceships which hover over power lines to refuel. Klass believes that some UFOs are an unusual form of coronal discharge analogous to St. Elmo's fire.

In his first article, ball lightning is assumed to be a manifestation of extreme coronal discharge. Klass points out that ball lightning and the Exeter UFOs compare favorably with regard to color, shape, sound, dynamics, lifetime, and size. According to those reports, the diameters of the UFOs ranged from the size of a basketball to 60 meters. This size range may be due to the difficulty of making distance estimates at night without visible reference points.. Exeter is close enough to the sea for salt to form on high tension wires and had very little rainfall that summer to wash away the salt, thus providing points from which coronal discharge could occur.

Criticisms are

that other seacoast towns with high tension wires did not report UFO activity during the drought period, and
the luminosity, although near the wires, was occasionally some angular distance away.

Klass also examined other UFO reports including those seen at aircraft altitudes. In his second article, which is concerned with the general UFO problem he asserts that ball lightning may occur under many situations, and consequently may be the cause of many unusual UFO sightings. Various aspects of ball lightning and the laboratory creation of luminous plasma by microwaves and gas discharges are briefly discussed. Klass argues that plasma blobs would have the same characteristics and would cause the same effects as those occasionally attributed to UFOs, including the abrupt (sometimes explosive) disappearances, maneuvers near aircraft, rapid accelerations, stalled automobiles, heat, prickling sensations, irritated eyes, etc. He discusses one observation of an UFO seen through Polaroid sunglasses and one report of an agitated magnetic compass.

The book, UFOs Identified, is an expanded version of the two articles, and contains background of the author's investigation. He discusses ball lightning, the behavior and appearance of UFOs, radar and photographic evidence, the various reactions to his articles, and...

etc.
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Participants with a background in theoretical or experimental plasma physics felt that containment of plasma by magnetic fields is not likely under atmospheric conditions for more than a second or so. One participant listed the characteristics that would be expected to accompany a large plasma. These are

thermal emission,
production of ozone and odor of N2O
convective air motions,
electrical and acoustic noise,
unusual meteorological conditions.
Another plasma physicist noted that a plasma explanation of certain UFO reports would require an energy density large enough to cause an explosive decay. Atmospheric physicists, however, remarked that several reports of ball lightning do indicate unusually high energy densities.

All participants agreed that the UFO cases presented contained insufficient data for a definitive scientific conclusion.