Was the Hassdalen Project and Its Findings Debunked??? Vehicle Headlights???

The reason for this thread is that a couple of papers by Matteo Leone aimed at rebuttals one of the projects scientific consultants called Massimo Teodorani ,his paper that concluded that these light sources where a self generating radiation unknowns was challenged by Leone , Leone has gone into great detail and effort to debunk Massimo Teodorani conclusions by way of attacking the scientific protocols and measurements used by Massimo Teodorani.Leone then goes on to outline his scientific conclusions that these lights where nothing more than a vehicles headlights.

Now Matteo Leone rebuttals makes a convincing case against Massimo Teodorani conclusions of unknown self generating radiation unknowns.Could so many scientific academics and witnesses be really fooled by a vehicles headlights,Below are links to the papers produced by both Matteo Leone on his rebuttals and Massimo Teodorani on his PHYSICAL STUDY OF ATMOSPHERIC LUMINOUS ANOMALIES AND THE SETV HYPOTHESIS, thoughts anyone.


A rebuttal of EMBLA 2002 report on the optical survey in Hessdalen: Part Three, by Matteo Leone (2004);
link to paper.
A rebuttal of EMBLA 2002 report on the optical survey in Hessdalen: Part Three, by Matteo Leone (2004)

THE PHYSICAL STUDY OF ATMOSPHERIC LUMINOUS ANOMALIES AND THE SETV HYPOTHESIS Massimo Teodorani, Ph.D. ASTROPHYSICIST CNR - Istituto di Radioastronomia / Radiotelescopi di Medicina Via Gobetti 101 - 40129 Bologna (Italia) / E-mail : [email protected]

link; www.zeitlin.net...

Just to bring some background on this phenomenon. Hessdalen is a special area in Norway with lots of UFO sightings. At least one time each year students go up there to look at the strange stuff going on in the sky there. There is a webcam that people can see online. This area has had some form of video-surveillance for many decades. Many experts has been visiting the area.

So, somebody makes an armchair-hypothesis that it's headlights from cars. I think that should be an easy claim to either verify or dismiss. When the persons behind it back that statement up with hard data, it will be interesting to read it. Before that, we have to remember that there has been many experts and many observers watching this stuff for decades. I'm still not convinced this is a satisfactory explanation.

reply to post by K-PAX-PROT

I think if it was headlights they would have discovered that long ago. The hessdalen lights vary too much and can even hover only meters above ground, so dont understand how it can be headlights from a car.
Sometimes they are far up in the sky as well and the shape and movement varies as well.
If it was headlights then it would have showed up in same spot and behaved in similar ways.

Hessdalen lights are very different from for example the paulding light.

reply to post by K-PAX-PROT


There is a bit more information on these lights here - specifically case #14............

They are not vehicle headlights.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The Hessdalen lights. The eerie display of brilliant bursts of lights in the sky that has plagued Norway since the 19th century has the scientific world scratching their heads. For centuries, people around the world have witnessed a strange phenomenon - orbs of light hovering in the night sky. Some say the lights chased after them as they drove away in their cars, and military pilots have reported spotting the lights on secret missions. Many wonder if the lights could be ghosts, or visitors from outer space.

reply to post by K-PAX-PROT


The link to the paper doesn't work , looks like you didn't put the url in the tags

They're not headlights

Link to Matteo Leone paper ..pdf

2002 paper versus 2004 paper?

The Leone paper does make some interesting points in terms of ensuring quality witness reports and standardised protocols for recording the alleged phenomenon. In the conclusion, he puts it better than me...

These foundations require a careful attention to both the methodology of collection of eyewitness testimony and the issue of “objective” evidence. As regards the first issue, it is absolutely necessary to follow some minimal guidelines to avoid the risks of leading the witness, misunderstanding his words, doing wrong inferences from his testimony and so on. Since several years such guidelines are followed by the most serious civilian groups devoted to the study of unidentified flying object reports (Randles, 1976; SOBEPS, 1979; Fowler, 1983; Russo, 1993).

Leone: Rebuttal

These are fair points and should apply to the study and research of all potentially exotic/unknown phenomena. I've read quite a lot of Teodorani's work and referred to his UFO studies in a couple of threads and several posts. He's a qualified scientist who knows how to conduct research so it raises a question of whether he applied the scientific rigour to the Hessdalen research? Was he fooled by passing traffic and then misled by witnesses who had also been misled by their senses into believing the car headlights were an anomalous phenomenon?

Luckily, Teodorani can speak for himself and offered a rebuttal of the rebuttal...

Leone's claimed observation of a light-phenomenon caused by car headlights on a hill is no more than a personal anecdote since his telescope was not equipped with a camera. My collaborators and I could distinguish car headlights from the true phenomenon as a result of expertise acquired during 2 months of non-stop sky-watching at several spots in the area in 1994,2000,2001 and 2002. The road in the area was well known to me, thanks to prompt and precise information from our Norwegian collaborators (Teodorani, 2004a). Leone's observing experience in the area was limited to a few hours over several days, and he may well have confused the lights of a car with the true phenomenon that, by chance, was close in direction though not in distance. Therefore, his data analysis and interpretation are not well grounded.

Journal of Scientific Exploration Vol 20; pp 72-74

This is referring to Leone's Section 6 - Estimate of Optical Power Output whereby he makes a comparative analysis of photographic evidence in various reports as they relate to the optical output of vehicle headlights. For example, Leone points out that vehicle headlights are regulated for luminosity/brightness by law:

The motor vehicle headlamps illumination is regulated by rigid international regulations issued by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. In case of a single headlamp designed to provide a driving beam and a passing beam, the maximum illuminance (EM) – measured on a vertical screen set at a distance of 25 m in front of the headlamp – “shall in no case exceed 240 lux”4 (ECE Regulation, 2002, p. 18).

Rebuttal: p 29

Teodorani is pointing out that Leone only saw vehicle headlights and didn't record them. Therefore his experience of seeing headlights remains anecdotal and the *evidence* of the experience wasn't there to compare the two. If Leone had recorded the headlights on film, he would have been able to compare apples to apples.

He goes on to note that...

Reliance on eyewitness testimony is fallible (Persinger, 2000). Leone quotes witnesses in Hessdalen but does not reveal where their statements are published.

p73

This suggests Leone had fallen short of the rigorous scientific method in the same way levelled at Teodorani. This combined with Leone's short visit raises questions of his investigation being adequate enough to dismiss the work of the Hessdalen research team. In his own words:

Leone collected no documented photometric and spectroscopic data of his own that could be compared with mine.

For all these reasons, his critique fails to serve a constructive purpose.

Personally, I'm not qualified to make a judgement on the Hessdalen Lights. It seems that a body of scientists conducting research over a lengthy period of time would have the edge over a single scientist who hadn't 'put in the time.' One more opinion...if these lights do represent an unknown phenomenon (or phenomena), they've been conscripted to the field of UFOs and seem to me something else entirely.

Would like to say a big thanks to all who have replied to this thread, cheers and to Kandinsky very good summary of the break down of the two papers.Yes i agree that a body of scientists conducting research over a lengthy period of time would have the edge.UFOs or something entirely different, i am teetering on the edge of some kind of occult,(hidden),manifestation source of these lights.

I really dont see how a bunch of scientist over period of years would mistake car headlights for anomalous phenomena

If anyone in any doubt that Hassdalen lights is a genuine phenomenon i recommend watching the documentary below :



By the way great post S&F.

The suggestion that the Hessdalen lights were nothing more than "vehicle headlights" is laughable. As the saying goes, "I wasn't born yesterday".

thanks for the tip, will be watching that documentary later

The problem with the car headlights theory is that multiple people are seeing this phenomena. Often standing right next to each other.

People from all over the world are extremely familiar with car headlights. From a distance they can be deceiving in certain atmospheric conditions and may at first appear to be something other than car headlights. But after a while one of the observers is going to make the connection that they are observing car headlights. I don't see how 100 percent of the people can be fooled by car headlights.

I reject this scientists theory of car headlights outright.

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
The problem with the car headlights theory is that multiple people are seeing this phenomena. Often standing right next to each other.

People from all over the world are extremely familiar with car headlights. From a distance they can be deceiving in certain atmospheric conditions and may at first appear to be something other than car headlights. But after a while one of the observers is going to make the connection that they are observing car headlights. I don't see how 100 percent of the people can be fooled by car headlights.

I reject this scientists theory of car headlights outright.

The scientists theory isn't very scientific- if they are going to say they are car headlights, they must say exactly how the image would be reflected & amplified into the sky from the ground, otherwise it's a lazy, convienient explanation, potentially meant to say "Go away, nothing to see here!..." etc.

A better explanation would be something related to the lightning storm sprites phenomenon.


That said, I have had more then my fair share of "ufo" sightings, some just phenomenally wierd, & one in particular that made me want to respond to this thread.

Questions:

1) Are there any cellphone towers in the area of Hassdalen?
2)Have any, what you would describe as "ufos" been seen in conjunction w/the lights? What type? (eg-boomerang, oval, etc)
3)Was there any seemingly telepathic contact (mental massages telling you when to be outside to see the lights, for example).


I've seen what many be interpreted as looking kind of like vehicle headlights, but the were lights approx the size of an apartment building, varying in size & brightness very, very rapidly. They lit up an entire mountain top.

Ok, NOW it gets wierd: I knew EXACTLY when to be outside, although I knew not where to look. I opened the door to go outside at the specified time, & I saw an oval craft in the distance (they were early-otherwise I would've seen it fly directly over my head! ). It was pulsing between yellow on the left side, & red on the right, the pusling defining the shape of the craft. I half jokingly took out a tiny led flashlight I got at a dollar store, & flashed it at the oval craft.
a few seconds later, a large cellphone tower near town about 10 miles or so away, on top of a mountain starts emitting incredibly powerful light, in very rapid pulses. It lit up the entire mountain top in rapidly pulsing yellow light for aboput 30 seconds. I hear neighbors say "Oh wow!". The light on the mountaintop stops. Yellow & red pulsing craft is still there in the distance. I flash my flashlight at it. The mountaintop cellphone tower again begins to emit apartment building sized pulses of yellow light.

I've lived here for 10 years. I'm a lifelong skywatcher. I've never seen the mountaintop cellphone towers do that before. There is one red light on the tower, so that planes do not fly into it, but these lights made it look absolutely tiny. I even had a cellphone on me- I could've filmed this entire event, but I was so surprised & bewildered by what was happenning that I forgot I even had it! This was the first sighting after I got my cellphone.


& the thing is- If I were to have filmed it, my garbage cell camera would probably make those gigantic lights from the cellphone tower look sort of like vehicle headlights-like a hoax. But it absolutely happened. October 27th 2011.

There's a huge amount of evidence, and car headlights is not a very credible theory. There's even spectral analysis of the lights in published papers.

One curious thing about Hassdalen is that it's an old mining town, and there are veins of rare earth minerals around it. There is one theory about it being plasma emissions. In fact, there is a correlation between seismic activity and later recordings of the lights. I find this theory highly plausible.

reply to post by K-PAX-PROT


to finally put the hessdalen enigma to rest, I'll tell you what it is...

no, it's too old for the drone excuse to fly.

it's a temperature inversion produced inside a swamp gas filled weather Chinese Lantern balloon refracting venus.

...or mineral deposit induced electrical discharge

Originally posted by reject
...or mineral deposit induced electrical discharge

Is this a well known property of mineral rich areas?
Whenever Hessdalen comes up I hear that explanation, and it might very well be true, I don't know.
But if this would be such a common occurance over mineral deposits, why would those "experts" pretend to have no clue at all?

reply to post by derpif


I think it is currently the most plausible theory.

Though hessdalen is probably the most spectacular, it is by no means unique. There are:

1. brown mountain lights
   
2. marfa lights
   
3. etc
   

they also are referred to as:

1. ghost lights
   
2. will o' the wisp
   
3. jack o' lanterns
   

For non vehicle and vehicle lights the mechanism is the same for a lighted
atmosphere comes from excitation waves of some sort.
Something in the land sets up the vibrations and if a vehicle then they
also light the atmosphere by their suspension waves.

reply to post by reject

Thank you for the link, very much appreciated.

Originally posted by reject
I think it is currently

the most plausible theory.

Come on, clearly Portal is the most plausible

The original question was one of debunking. I would say, it's not debunked. There is ample photographic evidence, it is a phenomenon that repeats itself and has been captured on many occasions. If Hessdalen were shown to not be aliens, this doesn't mean other ufo reports are in the same category. Another poster above showed evidence of "mountain lights" being a common phenomenon.

I have personally witnessed a "ufo". It was a crazy orange glowing ball that hovered and looked ephemeral. All the while, it hovered over Watts Barr Nuclear plant, finally spasmodically jerking about and vanishing. As later I worked in nearby Oak Ridge, I discovered that uranium gas leaks had occurred during the period I saw it. Having been in a plasma lab, I've had the personal theory that it was simply some atmospheric plasma.

Hessdalen has rich veins of iron and polonium. The idea of ionizing plasma is quite possible. See scientificexploration.org... , for more evidence of the plasma theory. It's a wonderful curiosity which has been studied quite intensely.

I think the foo fighters are another good example of a potential plasma event. WWII, using prop planes (light rubbing a ballon on your head x1000) in an atmosphere full of bomb chemistry, suddenly strange balls of lights are following planes. Since then we use jets and different chemistry.

So one category of UFO events can potentially be explained as plasma events. However, other categories of UFO events defy such explanations, e.g. Phoenix lights.