by Joseph Trainor
UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 10,
Number 24
June 15, 2005
from
UfoInfo Website
From the Japanese newspaper
Yomiuri Shimbun June 6, 2005
Many thanks to Angela Tarohachi
for this newspaper article
"Japanese scientists are to explore
the center of the Earth. Using a drill ship (subterrene or
tunneler-- J.T.) to be launched next month, the researchers want
to be the first to poke a hole through the rocky crust that
covers our planet and to reach the mantle."
"The team wants to return samples from the mantle, 10 kilometers
(6 miles) down, to learn more about what triggers undersea
earthquakes, such as the one off Sumatra that caused the
December 26, 2004 (Indian Ocean) tsunami. They hope to study the
deep rocks for records of past climate changes and to see if the
deepest regions of the Earth could harbor life."
"Asahiko Taira, director-general of the Center for Deep Earth
Exploration in Yokohama, said, ’One of the main purposes for
doing this is to find deep fractures within the oceanic crust
and upper mantle. We believe there to be life forms there. It’s
the same mission as searching for life on Mars.’"
"Material in the upper mantle produces compounds essential for
life when they interact with seawater. ’This is the system which
we believe created early life. There may be a chance we can
watch the origins of life still taking place today,’ Dr. Taira
said."
"The 57,500-ton drill ship Chikyu (Japanese for Earth--A.T.) is
being prepared at the southern port of Nagasaki. Two-thirds the
length of the R.M.S. Titanic, the ship is fitted with technology
borrowed from the oil industry that will allow it to bore
through 7,000 meters (23,100 feet) of crust below the seabed
while floating in 2,500 meters (8,250 feet) of water. The ship
requires a drill measuring 25 times the height of (New York
City’s) Empire State Building," i.e. 32,500 feet or 9,750
meters.
"The deepest hole drilled through the seabed so far has reached
2,111 meters (6,966 feet). After final sea trials this year, the
scientists will set sail for the deep Pacific, where the Earth’s
crust is the thinnest. Drilling is expected to begin next year."
"It could take more than a year to drill through kilometers of
crust and reach the mantle, so the ship is fitted with six
rotating thrusters controlled by GPS satellites to keep it
directly over the hole. The drill is surrounded by a sleeve that
contains a shock-absorbing chemical and a blowout valve that
will protect it should the drill strike oil or superheated rock
(magma--J.T.) within the crust."
(Editor’s Note: This may be Japan’s first subterrene,
but evidence exists showing that the USA already has a number
of these strange vehicles)
1972:
SUBTERRENE X-1
From the UFO Files...
The plans of Japanese scientists to send a drill ship to pierce the
Earth’s crust on the Pacific Ocean floor has called attention once
again to the subterrene debate. Namely, do Earth’s military powers,
particularly the USA, have subterrenes or "tunnelers" capable of
traveling through unconsolidated rock beneath the Earth’s surface?
There is interesting evidence that the USA worked on just such a
project during the 1970s and the 1980s.
On January 8, 1971, the U.S. Patent Office received a strange
application from "the Armstrong group," a bunch of scientists in New
Mexico. The group wanted to patent,
"a machine and method for
drilling bore holes and tunnels by melting in which a housing is
provided for a heat source and a heated end portion and in which the
necessary melting heat is delivered to the walls of the end portion
at a rate sufficient to melt rock and during operation of which the
molten material may be disposed adjacent to the boring zone in
cracks in the rock and in a vitreous (glass) wall lining of the
tunnel so formed."
(Editor’s Note: By a strange twist of fate, the patent application
was filed on Elvis Presley’s thirty-sixth birthday.)
The proposal, advanced by Dale E.
Armstrong of Santa Fe, N.M. and
-
Berthus B. McInteer
-
Robert L.
Mills
-
Robert M. Potter
-
Eugene S. Robinson
-
John C. Rowley
-
Morton C. Smith,
...all of Los Alamos, N.M., called for the
construction of a nuclear-powered tunneling machine, "designed to
convert the rock that it excavates into a molten liquid" that lines
the walls of its tunnel--a wheeled vehicle that could move under the
land the same way a submarine travels underwater.
The patent for the Armstrong group’s design was approved on
September 26, 1972. (See
U.S. Patent No. 3,693,731 dated Sept. 26, 1972)
In his classic book Underground Bases and Tunnels, Dr. Richard
Sauder gives a brief history of the mysterious "Subterrene
Affair."
"The nuclear subterrene (rhymes with
submarine--R.S.) was designed at Los Alamos National Laboratory,
in New Mexico. A number of patents were filed by scientists at
Los Alamos, a few federal technical documents were written--and
then the whole thing just sort of faded away."
"Or did it?"
"Nuclear subterrenes work by melting their way through the rock
and soil, actually vitrifying it as they go and leaving a neat,
solidly glass-lined tunnel behind them. The heat is supplied by
a compact nuclear reactor that circulates liquid lithium from
the reactor core to the tunnel face, when it melts the rock. In
the process of melting the rock, the lithium loses some of its
heat. It is then circulated back along the exterior of the
tunneling machine to help cool the vitrified rock as the
tunneling machine forces its way forward. The cooled lithium
then circulates back to the (nuclear) reactor where the whole
cycle starts over. In this way, the nuclear subterrene slices
through the rock like a nuclear-powered 2,000-degree
Fahrenheit earthworm, boring its way deep underground."
"The United States Atomic Energy Commission and the United
States Energy Research and Development Administration took out
the patents in the 1970s for the nuclear subterrenes. The first
patent, in 1972, went to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission."
(Editor’s Note: The second patent for subterrenes was issued on
May 6, 1975.)
Dr. Sauder wrote that the second patent,
"was for ’a tunneling machine for
producing large tunnels in soft rock or wet, clayey,
unconsolidated or bouldery earth by simultaneously detaching the
tunnel core by thermal melting a boundary kerf into the tunnel
face and forming a supporting excavation wall liner by
deflecting the molten materials against the excavation walls to
provide, when solidified, a continuous wall supporting liner,
and detaching the tunnel face circumscribed by the kerf with
powered mechanical earth detachment means and in which the heat
required for melting the kerf and liner material is provided by
a compact nuclear reactor.’"
"This 1975 patent further specifies that the machine is intended
to excavate tunnels up to 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter or
more."
"The kerf is the outside boundary of the tunnel wall that a
boring machine gouges out as it bores through the ground or
rock. So, in ordinary English, this machine will melt a circular
boundary into the tunnel face. The melted rock will be forced to
the outside of the tunnel by the tunnel machine, where it will
form a hard, glassy tunnel lining."
"And yet a third patent was issued to the United States Energy
Research and Development Administration just 21 days later, on
27 May 1975, for a machine remarkably similar to the machine
patented on 6 May 1975."
"The abstract describes,
’A tunneling machine for producing
large tunnels in rock by progressive detachment of the tunnel
core by thermal melting a boundary kerf into the tunnel face and
simultaneously forming an initial tunnel wall support by
deflecting the molten materials against the tunnel walls to
provide, when solidified, a continuous liner; and fragmenting the
tunnel core circumscribed by the kerf by thermal stress
fracturing and in which the heat required for such operations is
supplied by a compact nuclear reactor.’"
"This machine would also be capable of making a glass-lined
tunnel of 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter or more."
"Perhaps some of my readers have heard the same rumors that I
have heard swirling in the UFO literature or on the UFO
grapevine: stories of deep, secret, glass-walled tunnels
excavated by laser-powered tunneling machines. I do not know if
these stories are true. If they are, however, it may be that the
glass-walled tunnels are made by the nuclear subterrenes
described in these patents."
Apparently, sometime in February or
March of 1975, during President Gerald R. Ford’s administration, a
top-secret Request for Proposals (RFP) went out from the Defense
Department, inviting design teams to submit proposals for workable
subterrenes. Two proposals were accepted, and both were granted
patents in May of 1975.
Were the
prototype subterrenes ever built?
For years, your editor has heard rumors of strange glass-walled
tunnels found under private range lands in Monero, New Mexico, 10
miles (16 kilometers) east of
Dulce, a town that made its mark in
UFO history. Then there were the equally strange cases of
subterranean hums heard in Floyds Knobs and Kokomo, Indiana. Could
the people there have heard a subterrene passing beneath their
community?
It could be that the subterrene plans simply gathered dust on the
shelf.
Then again, perhaps at this very moment Subterrene X-1 is cruising
beneath the sands of Iraq’s Anbar province, hunting for insurgents.
(See
Underground Bases and Tunnels: What is the Government Trying to
Hide? by Richard Sauder, Ph.D., Adventures Unlimited Press,
Kempton, Illinois, 1995, pages 94 through 97.)
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