What Happened at Trans-en-Provence in 1981?

Term: GEPAN: the study group on unidentified aerospace phenomena that France’s space agency, CNES, set up in 1977. It was later reorganized as SEPRA and then GEIPAN.

Term: Gendarmerie: the French military police force that responded to the farmer’s report.

Term: Physical trace case: a UFO report in which the object is said to have left evidence that can be measured, such as marks on the ground or damage to plants.

What Happened at Trans-en-Provence in 1981?

On the afternoon of January 8, 1981, a farmer named Renato Nicolaï told police that a gray, saucer-shaped object had landed on his terraced land near Trans-en-Provence, in southeastern France, and taken off seconds later. Police collected soil and plant samples the next day, and France’s space agency studied them. The investigators reported soil compression, heating, and changes in nearby alfalfa. The case has one witness, and critics say the laboratory analysis was flawed.

The witness’s account

Nicolaï, a 55-year-old farmer, was working near his house at about 5 p.m. He heard a whistle and saw a gray, saucer-shaped object descend onto a plot of land about 30 meters away. It stayed for a few seconds and then rose and left, according to his account. He thought it might be a military experiment. He reported it to the gendarmerie the next day.

The gendarmes interviewed him, photographed a circular mark on the ground about two meters across, and collected soil and plant samples within 24 hours. They notified GEPAN on January 12.

What the analysis found

GEPAN, working with the national agronomy institute and several university laboratories, examined the samples. It reported the following:

The ground had been compressed by a pressure of about four to five tons. The soil had been heated to between 300 and 600 degrees Celsius. Trace amounts of phosphate and zinc appeared in the samples. Alfalfa near the mark had chlorophyll levels 30 to 50 percent lower than expected, and the effect was graded by distance from the center.

GEPAN also found the witness credible. Its technical report, published in 1983, said an important event had occurred that involved mechanical stress, heating, and possible deposits of trace minerals. Botanist Michel Bounias, who studied the plants, wrote that something unusual had occurred that might be consistent with an electromagnetic source of stress. Investigator Jean-Jacques Velasco published a summary in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 1990.

The criticism

Several points count against the case. It has one witness and no photograph of the object. The analysis came from GEPAN and researchers close to it. French skeptics, including Éric Maillot and Jacques Scornaux, argued that GEPAN and Bounias were committed believers and that the plant analysis was flawed. A Belgian plant pathologist reviewed the work and concluded that the results were inconclusive.

What is solid and what is not

The gendarmerie’s collection of samples, the multi-laboratory analysis, and the published reports are solid. The link between the soil and plant changes and a landed object rests on one man’s testimony. The cause of the changes remains unknown. The case is unusual because it has an official paper trail, and it is disputed because the scientists who wrote it were open to an unusual explanation.

I present Trans-en-Provence in my book Disclosure: They Are Not Extraterrestrials as one of five cases with documented physical effects. This post adds the criticisms. Disclosure is available on Amazon. You can find more of my work at ckqbooks.com.

Sources

GEPAN, Note Technique 16, Enquête 81/01, Analyse d’une trace (1983). Jean-Jacques Velasco, Report on the Analysis of Anomalous Physical Traces, Journal of Scientific Exploration (1990). Michel Bounias, Journal of Scientific Exploration (1990). Wikipedia, Trans-en-Provence case. Skeptical Inquirer’s review of French official UFO studies.