~Robertson Island case in Antarctica~
Note: The names of the witnesses have been changed upon request.
During the Second International Geophysical Year (1956 to 1958) - four Chileans - two prominent scientists, an aide and a nurse sergeant from the National Navy - were taken by helicopter to Robertson Island, and left there for a month, in a metal casemate. It can be disassembled, with a battery-powered radio transmitter and the necessary equipment to study the geology, fauna and flora of the region.
Robertson is located south of the 65th parallel and east of the 60th meridian, in the Wedell Sea. The island of volcanic origin, with an approximate area of 500 square kilometers, abounds in basalts.
At the beginning of January, in the midst of stormy weather, the expedition members verified a fact that the certainty of the rescue, set for January 20, played down importance: the radio equipment broke down, preventing them from communicating with the rest of the world.
Dr. Tagle (assumed names are used at the request of the protagonists of these events) used to get up during conventional nights to surprise some meteorological phenomenon. Professor Barros, who did not share this custom, had forbidden his colleague to wake him up, even if all the northern lights in the world floated over Robertson. But on January 8, Dr. Tagle risked breaking this prohibition and interrupted Barros' sleep. Seeing Dr. Tagle's expression, he proceeded to put on the necessary equipment to face the minus 21 degrees Celsius outside. The sun was shining to the southwest and the sky, now cloudless, covered the still ice with a deep, limpid blue. It is evident in the meteorological reports of the Navy that such a boom period has rarely been seen in the region.
Dr. Tagle pointed to the north sky, almost directly overhead, and the grumpy Barros could see two metal cigar-shaped devices, upright, perfectly still - one located almost on the meridian and the other separated from the first by a few 30 degrees - reflecting the sun's rays. Not without a secret unease accentuated by Tagle's excitement, Barros examined the devices with his long view the apparent size of the full Moon, their compact appearance of smooth metal surfaces, evidence of their artificial origin.
The teachers decided not to wake up their classmates to let them find out about the phenomenon "per se", there was the possibility, although remote, that both scientists were prey to a hallucination, which they could have communicated to their companions by preventing them. They then moved away a hundred meters from the camp, at about seven in the morning the nurse sergeant appeared, who used to leave the shelter in a T-shirt to do exercises and maintain his athletic state. Almost immediately both scientists heard him yell: "Professor, Professor, Flying Disks."
The assistant also rose, and soon the four men were contemplating the phenomenon, now convinced that it was not a mirage. The objects were still motionless, as if they had been part of the sky since time immemorial.
At about nine o'clock in the morning, object one, that is, the closest to the meridian, abruptly took a horizontal position and moved west with the speed of a flash, lost its metallic shine, turning to ultraviolet, change of course At an acute angle, without stopping, he traveled another stretch of the sky at the same speed to take a new direction again. He continued his dizzying maneuvers zigzagging, braking abruptly, accelerating with instantaneous speed, moving over the heads of the observers, always following tangential trajectories with respect to the Earth, all in absolute silence. After about five minutes of that display of energy, he went to park next to his companion, almost in his original position, although now separated from the other by about 50 degrees. The two, That it remained motionless while the One performed its dance, in turn broke the stillness and, heading east, made a dozen broken flights, with abrupt changes of course, offering the same color changes when accelerating or stopping. About three minutes later he went to stop next to his partner and retrieved his metallic-looking material.
The expedition possessed two highly sensitive Geiger-Miller detectors, one for audio and the other for scintillation. When the objects had returned to their original position, someone discovered that the scintillation detector revealed that ambient radioactivity had increased 40 times, that is, it could cause death to an organism subjected to it for a prolonged period. This discovery accentuated the fears of the expedition members.
The temperature was kept at about 15 to 20 degrees Celsius below zero, without a vapor altering the purity of the sky. No one was able to do anything during that day except to observe the objects. The sensation of having turned into microorganisms, placed on the stage of a microscope, coldly examined by untold eyes, did not allow the men to concentrate on their usual tasks, although they lacked a telephoto lens, they took numerous photos both in color and in black and white.
Barros did not fear an attack by objects, but his rigorously rational scientific mentality did not agree to the idea of finding himself in front of a phenomenon marginalized from all science, and as the hours ticked by, his conviction of being faced with a phenomenon of non-human origin, from being spied on by an intelligence that wished to remain anonymous for some reason, and whose next steps were unpredictable.
At dusk, in an attempt to ignore that presence, the four expedition members set out north along the coast, skirting the greenish Wedell Sea. The refuge located in a moraine - the bed of an ancient glacier - rose about sixty meters above sea level, so that when the men moved, it was not long before they were overlapped by the objects by a cliff cut to a peak. But suddenly a flash appeared, which disappeared again in a fraction of seconds on the cliff, as if that maneuver had been designed exclusively to warn them that there was nothing to gain by hiding. It was approximately nine o'clock at night, when the men returned to the camp, the objects were still in their same position.
During the night - always with the sun in sight - no one could sleep. Nothing special happened during the evening or in the early hours of the second day. The men, sleepless and without appetite, were reaching the limit of their physical endurance.
At dusk that day, cirrus trees appeared, which in Antarctica form at an altitude of seven to ten thousand meters and constitute the vanguard of storms. Using this level, Professor Barros determined with a theodolite the height of the objects to be around eight thousand meters and their length to something like one hundred and fifty meters. Its largest diameter was estimated at twenty-five meters. These data are quite reliable because one of the clouds cast a slight shadow on one of the objects. The discovery enlightened Professor Barros. Taking a polarizing lens, used to determine the composition of rocks and other substances by deflecting light, he directed the instrument screen toward objects, and turned on the spotlight. Almost instantly the One emitted an intense light and when it was extinguished again it had descended noticeably. Its apparent size was that of a small car, that is, something like three meters in length. Dr. Tagle, who was observing him with a long sight, thought he made out a kind of hatch in the upper part, he was right not corroborated by Barros.
That unusual descent, which seemed to be a reaction of the object to the signal made by Barros with the polarizing lens, produced a nervous breakdown in Tagle. With a kick I destroy the lens. The One rose again and began another series of evolutions. During one of these flights, Professor Barros, using the previously estimated altitude, determined his speed by angulation 40,000 kilometers per hour, that is, almost the land escape speed. Considering that objects started from zero and reached this speed instantaneously, and then braked abruptly, without a progressive deceleration, the inertia inside them should be deadly for any living creature, except that it had its own gravitational field, according to the Plantier's theories on the propulsion system of flying discs.
At around eleven o'clock at night the "blizzard" began to blow, an Antarctic wind capable of reaching speeds of 300 kilometers per hour and the sky was covered with clouds. Around two in the morning, in the midst of a raging storm, it was verified that the radioactivity had decreased. At the same time, the psychological tension in the men eased. Even before they could check it visually, they were certain that the objects were gone. The following day the radioactivity returned to its normal level. In the afternoon, during a lull in the storm, the sky cleared almost forty percent, the objects were no longer there.
On January 20, the helicopter rescued the four men. Although they did not dare to narrate their adventure, for fear of ridicule, they decided to open up to a high officer of the Chilean Navy, who was not altered with the story. The Officer was aware of many observations of unidentified flying objects, recorded in almost all expeditions to Antarctica, although none as lengthy or precise as those of Barros and Tagle. The ATIC (Air Technical Intelligent Center of the USA) also sent them a very extensive questionnaire that Barros and Tagle filled out and returned.
