A Letter to Peter Sturrock - 1994

Editor's note:

This is a letter sent to Peter Sturrock twenty years ago (in  1994) concerning previously presented analysis of the EM effects which were originally reported in "Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports involving Vehicle Interference: A Catalogue and Data Analysis", Evanston, IL: Center For UFO Studies, 1981"

This letter explains in Mr. Crook's own words his intent in writing the paper previously presented here under the title "UFOs and Electromagnetic Effects" In this paper Mr. Crook points to a possible scientific basis for the mystery of the UFOs ability to disrupt or or otherwise effect electrical / electronic systems.

This letter was originally written in 1994 and is presented as a "historical document". Therefore, no effort has been made to update or correct subsequent discoveries, research, or investigations.

The letter was found among the "electronic documents" recovered after Mr. Crook's death in 2013. I have slightly reformatted the paragraphs for legibility. 

* * * * *

Gaines M. Crook
GMC Laboratories
XXXX Cozyccroft Ave.
Chatsworth, CA 91311
phone (818)998-XXXX
fax (818)998-XXXX

August 13, 1994

Professor Peter Sturrock
Center for Space Science and Astrophysics
Stanford University ERL 306
Stanford, CA 94305-4055

Dear Professor Sturrock:

I don't know if you will remember me or not but we met about 25 years ago while I was working at TRW with Fred Scarf, designing the plasma wave detectors for spacecraft. I left TRW about 22 years ago as conditions there changed and have been pursuing more mundane work since. I was, however, still interested in the progress of the plasma wave work and kept in touch with Fred until his untimely death in 1988. His death grieved me greatly as he was one of my closest friends and still grieves me each time I think about it. 

I have been interested in UFOs since I first heard about them in 1947 and only recently became aware that you had been instrumental in starting The Society for Scientific Exploration. I recently subscribed to the Journal of Scientific Exploration and find it very hopeful. I have subscribed to several of the UFO associations' publications and found that the people involved are anything but scientific.

As time went along, I kept seeing more and more references to "electromagnetic effects" which didn't at all fit my concept of electromagnetics. Everything that a person couldn't understand was routinely called an "electromagnetic effect" whether it was a beeping in the rear end of a car or levitation of the whole car. About three years ago I thought I would write a paper and submit it to the MUFON UFO JOURNAL to try to straighten a few things out.

There is a paper by Mark Rodeghier of the Center for UFO Studies entitled: "UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference" which lists over 400 cases where UFOs had interfered with the operation of vehicles. The data was derived from the data base of The Center for UFO Studies and seems pretty typical of UFO interference reports. I thought that I would use Rodeghier's report as a starting point to examine the content of the reports and see if I could judge how many of the reports in his study could credibly be classed as electromagnetic in origin.

My approach was to cross classify the occurrences in Rodeghier's report into 15 classifications by what was observed. Some of the classes were obviously not electromagnetic and I found that only a small portion of the events fit the category of what we know as electromagnetic. The vast majority of all the events in Rodeghier's report could be explained by some capability which could remotely interrupt DC or low frequency AC electric currents; which is not included in our present electromagnetic "bag of tricks".

The next problem was how could a credible paper be written so that it could be understood by the majority of people who read the MUTUAL UFO JOURNAL! There is nothing more frustrating that to attempt to explain something to someone who does not have a grasp of the technical principles involved. There had been little discussion of the "electromagnetic" aspects of UFO exposure in the MUFON UFO Journal and most of what appeared was written by James McCampbell. 

It appeared to me that his explanations were about as far fetched as the explanations the debunkers put forward! I expressed my opinions about his explanations frankly in the paper. The fact that we cannot explain some of the effects observed in association with UFOs within the framework of our present day science presents a problem. 

McCambell in his paper "UFO Interference with Vehicles and Self Starting Engines" (MUFON Symposium Proceedings, 1983) says " But there is no reason to assume that the mechanisms by which vehicle interference take place are beyond the capacity of contemporary science". I strongly disagree with this position. This is tantamount to saying that we presently understand everything we encounter.

When I completed the paper, I sent it to MUFON and in about a month I heard from Walt Andrus, very eager to print it. He wanted me to split it into two parts to print in two issues, as it was too long to print in one. I did this and sent it back to him and didn't hear from him for about eight months. Then I got word that the paper was rejected by James McCampbell, MUFON's "Director of Research"! This I thought was amusing.

About the same time as this happened, I bought a book by Professor Paul Nahin of the University of New Hampshire entitled, "Oliver Heaviside, Sage in Solitude". I am a great fan of scientific and technical history and it happened that Heaviside is one of my favorites. 

In a chapter on Heaviside's work in interpreting Maxwell's work in electromagnetics, Nahin discussed Heaviside's work in co-discovering the Poynting power theorem before Poynting did. In this discussion he pointed out that the Poynting theorem also applies to circuits where power is flowing in conductors as well as in propagating waves. The theory says that the power flow is not derived from the current but that the field in the dielectric, exterior to the conductor drives both the current and the power flow. I have been associated with electrical things for over fifty years and I had never heard of that before! 

I looked up almost twenty references and found the Poynting theory seldom mentioned in connection with currents flowing in conductors and when it was it was misunderstood! Two of the most erudite of references, "Fields and Waves in Modern Radio" by Ramo and Whinnery and "The Feynman Lectures in Physics" by Feynman, Leighton & Sands, both have it confused including showing the electric field and Poynting vectors exterior to the conductor in the wrong direction! The only reference which I have found (which Nahin recommended) which includes an excellent exposition of the subject is Professor H. H. Skilling's "Fundamentals of Electric Waves". He seems to be one of the few in the history of electromagnetic theory that thoroughly understood the power flow phenomenon. 

What is exciting about this to me is that it has within it a possible explanation of how UFOs might remotely interrupt electric power circuits. If the fields can be remotely interrupted then electric power can be remotely interrupted. I have no idea about how fields can be remotely interrupted. In my work with electric and magnetic field detectors we often nulled fields but nulling a field is merely a distortion of the field and for every place there is a reduction in field somewhere else the field is increased.

Now I want to be the first to admit that I am not a field theorist or a mathematician. My talent has always been in trying to visualize a phenomena in terms which make it easier for me to understand and measure. In all the confusion about UFOs in all the years I have been wondering about them, this is the first time I have found anything derived from observable data from UFOs which seems that it may be of use in lessening the mystery.

Rodeghier's paper covered over 400 cases of UFO interference with vehicles and incidentally included some references to interruption of commercial AC electric power. In my paper, I concluded that in only 22 of the events described could I credibly classify as having a definite electromagnetic origin. Another 24 could have perhaps been classed as electromagnetic if we had more data. The vast majority of those unexplained reports were under my classifications of "headlight failed or dimmed" of which there were 157 and "engine lost power or stalled and would not start" of which there were 307 cases.

 The totals do not tally because some cases included both phenomena. Oddly enough, some which had lights dimmed did not have the engine fail and some that had the engine fail did not have the lights dim or fail. I have not found any valid electromagnetic interactions for explaining these two classifications despite the machinations of writers like McCampbell and others. 

On the other hand, if the Poynting theory of electrical power transmission is correct and if it is possible to remotely interrupt a field, then this could account for all of the reports which can be explained by the remote interruption of electric power. Where levitation of objects, the bending of light beams at 90° and time distortions that have been reported, I can offer no explanation unless it is delusion on the part of the observer.

It occurred to me that you may even know Professor Skilling since he was at Stanford at least up until 1974 when his book was republished. Is he still alive? He would be 89 years old now. If he is perhaps you could discuss it with him. If not perhaps you could discuss it with some other colleague at Stanford.

In my opinion of UFOs, we are not dealing with the hardware of some intelligent extraterrestrial beings comparable to man except more advanced, as the common simplistic "ET" belief espouses, but some more subtle intelligence which is so far removed from our modus operandi until we would be hard pressed to understand them if they established a school for humans. What we observe may not and probably is not hardware at all but something we cannot yet conceive. In connection with whether hardware is involved, one of the other mysteries is that radio frequency signals have been reported to originate with UFOs, sometimes with great power without evidence of any directive antenna array. About the only "antennas" ever observed appear to be simple monopole types. 

In Case 1 discussed by James McDonald in "Science in Default: Twenty-two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations" in chapter 5 of "UFOs - A Scientific Debate", Ed, Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, Cornell University Press, we have a radar signal detected and recorded by an ECM crew in a RB-47 ECM aircraft that was said to be "similar to a CPS-6B ground radar". A CPS-6B was a 6 megawatt ground radar with a 30 db antenna which was about 30 feet in diameter. This magnitude of power without a visible antenna seems to me to indicate a generation and propagation process other than hardware. 

As an example, many physical phenomena such as plasma instabilities generate radio frequency energy, but we haven't observed any, short of what's going on in stars, that generates power in this magnitude. Regardless, my instinct tells me it isn't generated by hardware!

I thought these things may be interesting to you as they are to me. If they are I would appreciate hearing from you.

Yours truly,


Gaines Crook