Of all the mysterious balls that scientists have had a chance to explore, this one was the most incomprehensible - it moved by itself, as if controlled by a certain mind, and reacted to external stimuli.
On March 26, 1974, 21-year-old intern Terry Matthew Betz, his father, naval engineer Antoine, and Jerry's mother examined the damage left on their lands by the recent wildfire. The Betz farm was located near Jacksonville, Florida. During the inspection, they found a polished metal ball with a diameter of 20.22 cm and weighing 9.67 kg.
There were no seams or dents on it, except for a small triangular mark measuring 3 mm. If he fell from above, then at a very low speed, since he did not form a crater and did not burrow into the ground. The fire left no trace on it.
Terry decided to take the ball to the house, where he spent the next two weeks, like the most ordinary piece of iron. But when the young intern decided to entertain his girlfriend Teresa Fraser with guitar playing, the ball came to life! It began to vibrate like a tuning fork and make strange pulsating sounds in response to certain notes. The audible sound was accompanied by infrasound: the dog Bettsev, because of this, began to whine, covering its ears with its paws.
Betz soon discovered that the ball could roll on its own. If you push it on the floor, the ball can stop, then roll again, and so on several times - until it returns to the pushed one like a boomerang. He once skated for 12 minutes straight without a single stop!
It turned out that the ball reacts to weather conditions - on clear days it rolled more actively than on inclement days, and if put on the shady side of the room, it often rolled onto the sunny side. He did not react to artificial sources of heat, such as a heater or blowtorch. Periodically, the ball vibrated at a low frequency, as if a motor was running inside. On the steel surface, there was only one place with strong magnetic properties (later it turned out that the ball has three magnetic poles, and maybe all four).
If you put the ball on the table, it continued to roll, but it never fell off - as if it were being controlled by some mind, moving it away from the edge. When one of the family members lifted the edge of the table so that the ball finally fell, it continued to hold on, using a rapid rotation around its axis for this! If you shake the ball hard in your hands, and then put it on the surface, it would start running away, bouncing, in Terry's words, like "a giant Mexican jumping bob."
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After observing the ball, the Betz family decided to tell the public about it and find scientists who would solve the mystery. They first called the local Jacksonville Journal. The editors sent photographer Lon Anger to the farm. Lon told about what happened next:
“Mrs. Betz told me to put the ball on the floor and push it. He rolled a little and froze. What's next? She says: "Wait a little." The ball turned on its own, rolled to the right about 1.2 meters, stopped, then turned again and, rolling to the left for about 2.5 meters, described a large arc and returned straight to my feet."
Anger, returning to the editorial office, wrote a sensational article. Soon the whole country started talking about the ball in the Betz house. The farm was besieged by reporters. The military and ufologists, in turn, also paid tribute to this story. Navy spokesman Chris Berninger said that in his presence, the ball also rolled as he wanted.
At night, strange music began to be heard in the Betsev house, similar to an organ or something like that. The doors began to swing open and slam shut by themselves at any time of the day or night. The family decided that the balloon should be handed over to the Navy for more detailed research.
The military illuminated the ball on a powerful X-ray machine and found that its wall thickness ranges from 1.09 to 1.14 cm - this thickness allows the ball to withstand pressures of up to 120 thousand pounds per square inch. Of course, he could fall off the table without any harm to himself. The spectroscope showed that its body is made of stainless steel with an admixture of nickel. Its closest analogue is "alloy 431" for work in high temperature conditions, maximally resistant to corrosion.
Under this shell, which even under X-ray did not reveal any seams, there were two more round objects surrounded by their own shell of material of unusual density. The balloon was not radioactive. The military wanted to cut it, but Betz refused to agree to an autopsy and demanded the ball back. Since the find was not identified by the military, the Betzs decided that it might be an alien device.
Just at this time, the "yellow" newspaper "National Enquirer" announced that it would pay $ 10,000 for "the best scientific evidence for the existence of UFOs" and $ 50,000 for "proof that UFOs are of alien origin."
The committee, which was supposed to decide the fate of both awards, included prominent ufologists, including Allen Heineck. The Bettsev family decided to lend the balloon to the newspaper, hoping to win a good amount, and at the same time conduct additional research on the find at the expense of journalists from the largest circulation newspaper in the United States.
On April 20 and 21, 1974, the ball became the focus of the commission's attention, but the Betts were not given money - after all, they could not prove that the ball had anything to do with UFOs. But a member of the commission, Dr. James Harder, after carrying out some calculations of the density of the elements of the ball, came to the conclusion that there is something inside with an atomic number of 140 (recall that the heaviest element in nature is uranium with atomic number 92, and on accelerators and in elements with numbers up to 118 were synthesized in the reactor).
Three years later, at the International UFO Congress in Chicago on June 24, 1977, Harder intimidated everyone: if you just drill a hole in the ball, a chain reaction would occur inside and it would explode like an atomic bomb. In addition, maybe he is still under the supervision of aliens, and they can severely punish those who encroached on their device!
By this moment, the Bettsy disappeared somewhere along with the ball. We could not find them. Where the mysterious find now lies and what it really was, remains a mystery. And if Harder was right, won't we wait for some poor fellow to take a drill …