The Black Ball: a Few Words in Addition

THE BLACK BALL: A FEW WORDS IN ADDITION

In the last RB issue we published a paper by Dr. Valentin N. Fomenko presenting the results of an investigation of the so-called Black Ball—an enigmatic object, found in 1975 in West Ukraine.¹ The author reported that a team of researchers had discovered that the Ball had possessed a number of anomalous properties. In particular, there was a strange "core" inside it that, judging from the results of an experiment, had a negative mass (that is, had in fact the property of antigravity). The researchers assumed the Ball to have been part of the propulsion system of an extraterrestrial spacecraft containing a quantity of antimatter. Unfortunately, they could neither confirm the "negative mass" result with another method, nor completely investigate the Black Ball, since its owner has strongly demanded its return. Which has naturally been done. But the story of the Black Ball did not ended with this...

In September of 1994 one of the largest Russian newspapers —Izvestiya—has published a long article, entitled "A Mysterious Ball in the Lubianka cellars" and authored by Yuriy Kholodniy, a Ph.D. in psychology.² According to him, in February of 1981 two leading officials of the scientific and technical department of the Committee for State Security (the almighty KGB) were summoned to the Kremlin, to the no-less-almighty Military-Industrial Commission (VPK) of the USSR Council of Ministers. There they were informed about the results of Dr. Fomenko's investigations. (The author designated the researcher just as "F.") The Commission asked the KGB authorities to find out who was holding the Ball and to withdraw it immediately. The 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was approaching and therefore the Ball had to be "neutralized" by no later than February 20. A few days later the VPK sent to the KGB a copy of Dr. Fomenko's Report.

The KGB set up a special working group meant to solve this question. One of its participants was Dr. Y. Kholodniy.

Soon they sought out a Moscow parapsychologist (called by the first letter of his name—"D.") who had apparently obtained the Black Ball from its owner, Mr. B.N.Naumenko. Mr. D. used the Ball as the active element of his "generator of biological field" (or "biofield") that, according to his words, could influence living beings with beneficial or not-so-much beneficial effect.

KGB officials withdrew the "generator" from Mr. D.'s hands and the working group disassembled it, discovering a brown ball. Over two months they investigated the Ball with great thoroughness. Their main conclusions were:

1) The Black Ball is composed of glass, even if somewhat unusual (bearing practically no sodium and a great deal of strontium).

2) In the shell of the Ball there are microcracks, through which water can percolate into it. So, the shell of the Ball is even not water-proof, let alone air-tight. Therefore it cannot be a container of antimatter.

3) The "negative mass" result was due to a ten-percent error in detecting coordinates of the Ball's center of gravity.

As for the age of the Black Ball, Dr. Kholodniy was somewhat vague about it: "By carbon 14 dating, specialists from the Geological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences determined that, although the age of the "Ball" was not 10 million years, it was nonetheless a centuries-old antique, being, most likely, of artificial origin."

Judging from the contents of the article, in the process of the investigation the Ball was broken. This is not directly asserted, but the author mentions its fragments that were shown to Mrs. Faina S. Petryakova, a prominent Ukrainian specialist in the history of glass. Mrs. Petryakova concluded that the Ball was a gallo, that is a primitive "device" for ironing the sleeves of shirts and blouses that had been in use in the Ukraine in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The thickness of the leached layer on its surface indicates that its age is some 150 years.

Usually gallos were manufactured from trashy glass that remained in the glass furnace after it had worked continuously for several days. Sodium, being a light element, left the furnace with good glass, and the heavy strontium accumulated in the remains.

Since Mr. D. insisted that the Ball be returned to him, the KGB specialists made a mould of it and installed it into the "biogenerator". When returned to Mr. D., the device did not arouse any suspicion on his part. It continued working, emitting the "biological field"...

Such was the contents of the article by Dr. Yuriy Kholodniy... Although it looked as if everything was said and done, some points in the article gave rise to doubts... That's why Dr. Valentin Fomenko sent to Izvestiya the following letter:

        "To: Mr. Leonid M. Mlechin, Editor
        Izvestiya
        Pushkin Square, 5
        Moscow

October 4, 1994

Dear Mr. Mlechin,

In your newspaper of September 24, this year, you published an article "A Mysterious Ball in the Lubianka cellars" by Y.Kholodniy, a research worker of a KGB Scientific-Research Institute, who had taken part in an investigation of the so-called "Black Ball". He describes an attempt of the KGB to verify the hypothesis that the Black Ball is a container of antimatter.

I, Valentin Nikolayevich Fomenko, am the author of the report on the results of preliminary study of the Black Ball that is referred to in that paper. That is why I would like to meet with Mr. Kholodniy and to discuss with him some questions dealing with this matter.

<...> As far back as 1981, there appeared some data, according to which not only had the KGB palmed off a forged "gallo" on Mr. Deev³, but also Mr. Deev had palmed off a mould of his generator on the KGB.

Apart from a statement by a co-worker of Mr. Deev who has made this "device" and with his own hands encapsulated the Black Ball into a block of epoxy resin (to free the Ball from the latter would be certainly impossible), there are the following points in the article that confirm this assumption:

1. The color of the ball, found in the "device", was brown. But the real Black Ball consisted of a black glass-like substance, covered with a yellow-grey leached layer. There were no brown spots on it.

2. The color of the Ball's shell was deep black, which was clearly visible at those places on the Ball's surface, where the leached layer was chipped off. The shell was opaque even to the light of a powerful halogen lamp. But Y.Kholodniy describes its fragments as bottle-green in color.

3. The Black Ball had no microcracks in its shell, through which water could have percolated into it.

4. Inside the Black Ball there was not a void, but a core, whose density was only four times less than that of the Ball's shell. It was established by an X-ray study of the Ball and photometric scanning of its X-ray photographs.

5. In the process of our investigation of the Black Ball there was also considered—and rejected—the hypothesis that it was a gallo.⁴ In particular, the leached layer up to 1.5 mm thick certainly could not form over a period of 150 years. <...>

The only possible conclusion is that the KGB specialists did investigate a real gallo (with a void inside it), but not the real Black Ball.

There are in the article some internal inconsistencies as well. In particular, according to it, "by carbon 14 dating, specialists from the Geological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences determined that, although the age of the "Ball" was not 10 million years, it was nonetheless a centuries-old antique, being, most likely, of artificial origin." On the one hand, this statement contradicts the declared age of the gallo, which is supposed to be 150 years. On the other hand, it is just absurd, since there cannot be any carbon at all, let alone carbon 14 in the "bottle" glass of a gallo. <...>

In this connection, I would be glad to meet with the author of the paper, or with you personally, and to discuss the matter in detail. If you cannot give me Mr. Kholodniy's telephone number, please let him know my own number (attached). Please ask Mr. Kholodniy to call me at any time that suits him.

Sincerely yours, V. N. Fomenko, Ph.D., Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Information Science."

Any reply? NIL.

Notes and references

        ¹ See: Fomenko V.N. Information on the Results of Preliminary Study of the Black Ball as a Possible Extraterrestrial Artifact.—RIAP Bulletin, 1997, Vol. 3, No. 1.
        ² Kholodniy Y. A Mysterious Ball in the Lubianka cellars.— Izvestiya, 1994, September 24, No. 184, p. 5.
        ³ "D." in the article by Y.Kholodniy.
⁴ For details, see: Fomenko V.N. Op. cit., p. 9.

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