Document · 21 March 1983
GEPAN Technical Note 17: the 'Amarante' case, 21 October 1982 (published 21 March 1983)
Also known as Note technique 17, GEPAN Note 17, NT17
GEPAN's Technical Note 17, dated Toulouse, 21 March 1983, is the official report on the "Amarante" case of 21 October 1982: a biologist's account of a small oval object hovering for twenty minutes over his garden in a suburb of a city in eastern France, followed by withered amaranth plants beside where it had been. It reproduces the gendarmerie statement and telex, and gives the reconstruction of the observation, a study of the witness, the sampling of the plants, weather, sky and air-traffic checks, military radar data, a physicist's note on the grass and the plant biochemistry.
The note keeps the witness anonymous ("Monsieur HENRI") and codes the place names. Its findings are mixed: the radar recordings show nothing notable, and the plant analyses could not tell the withered amaranths from the control, the analysts pointing to frost the day before and to poor sample keeping; on the other hand GEPAN found no reason to reject the testimony of a single, well-placed witness.
Sources: GEPAN (CNES), Note technique n° 17, 21 March 1983
Facts and claims
- documented The note reproduces the gendarmerie statement taken on 21 October 1982 at 18:00 from 'Monsieur HENRI', 30, a biologist, who said that around midday an oval object of about 1.5 m across and 0.8 m thick hovered about a metre above his small garden for twenty minutes, silent and emitting no heat, cold or radiation, that his camera jammed, and that it left vertically at great speed; he said it left no mark and that the grass stood up as it left. The gendarmerie telexed the report on 22 October; GEPAN was informed on 23 October. Source: doc-gepan-note-technique-17.pdf
- documented The note gives the witness's profession as researcher in cellular biology ("Chercheur en biologie cellulaire") and keeps him anonymous at his request; the place names are replaced by codes (V1, V2, V3). Source: doc-gepan-note-technique-17.pdf
- documented The air-defence operations centre (CODA) supplied radar video recordings for the sector for 12:33–12:55 on 21 October 1982; GEPAN reports that they show no notable anomaly, only five intermittent, unconfirmed plots between 12:40 and 12:55, too irregular to indicate real movement, which it calls a very common radar phenomenon. Source: doc-gepan-note-technique-17.pdf
- documented A physicist of the Université Paul Sabatier's atmospheric physics laboratory (M. Chauzy) estimated for GEPAN that grass standing up as the witness described would need an electric field of at least 30 kV/m at the moment of departure, and that such a field would have exceeded 200 kV/m at the amaranth bed about 16 cm away; he wrote that it was not possible to say that this caused the amaranths to dry out, "mais l'indice est a considérer" (but the clue is worth considering). Source: doc-gepan-note-technique-17.pdf
- documented Two researchers of the university's plant physiology centre (Abravanel and Just) analysed two samples taken by the gendarmerie on 22 October, a withered amaranth and a control. The only notable difference was a slightly higher level of hydroxyproline and proline, which they say probably reflects a stress from parasites, a wound or excess fertiliser. They note that the weather station had reported sub-zero temperatures and light mist on 20 October, so frost may explain the drying of the leaves, and that, given how the samples were kept, plant biochemistry could not explain the difference between the withered and the control plants. Source: doc-gepan-note-technique-17.pdf
- documented GEPAN's conclusion: the reported observing conditions were very good and the analysis of the witness's account and behaviour revealed nothing pointing to a distortion of perception or memory ("A ce stade, aucun indice raisonnable ne permet de rejeter le témoignage": at this stage no reasonable clue allows the testimony to be rejected); but the witness was alone, and the biochemical analyses gave no conclusion because the plants had been dug up soon after and the first samples were not kept cold enough. Source: doc-gepan-note-technique-17.pdf
Connected files
Organizations
- GEIPAN (CNES, France) (published by)
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