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SUNSPOT, MN – In a small solar observatory nestled in the woods of a national forest, scientists and other staffers were given orders last week to leave. A week later, the facility remains vacant and no one is willing to say why.
The mysterious and long evacuation, in a state known for its secret military tests and its eventual UFO crash, has sparked much speculation.
Did the researchers spot something extraterrestrial? Has the solar telescope been hacked by a foreign power and deployed to spy on, for example, the range of state missile tests? Or is there a harmless explanation, suppressed only because of corporate and government resistance to transparency?
On Friday, the entrance to the National Solar Observatory was blocked by a strip of yellow crime scenes and by two security guards, who said they had been kept in the dark. The guards of Red Rock Security & Patrol in Las Cruces, New Mexico, did not give their names, but said it was the first day the company guarded the entrance and that only "directors and assistants Were allowed to enter. It was not an obvious sign of police activity.
"We do not know anything, we are just as curious as anyone," said a guard.
A nonprofit group spokesperson who manages the facility said that the organization was addressing a "security problem" but would not offer any additional information, other than "I can tell you that it was certainly not extraterrestrials ". She said Friday that the facility "will remain closed until further notice". Neither the FBI – who was spotted in the premises at the time of the evacuation – nor those who worked at the facility told the local security forces what had happened, said Sheriff Benny House of Otero County.
"They would not give us any details," said House. "I have ideas, but I do not want to put them in. It's bad press or rumors that start, and that will cause paranoia, or I could satisfy the spirit." from everyone and I could be totally out of the grassroots. "
Unlike some other New Mexico research facilities, the Sunspot Solar Observatory is not usually surrounded by such secrecy.
James McAteer, a professor at the State University of New Mexico and director of the University of Mexico, said the facility, open to the public in the Lincoln National Forest, in the south of the state, offers guided tours of the site. Sunspot Solar Observatory Consortium. When they do not, they use a special telescope and other instruments to study the sun. There are houses on the site where the staff members live.
The sunspot observatory sits at over 9,000 feet and is part of a larger astronomy research facility on the site. The adjacent Apache Point Observatory, a collection of telescopes located about 800 meters away, was operating normally on Friday, with a dozen cars parked outside.
Sheriff House, said the Sunspot facility staff had announced, before September 6 at 10 am, that they "evacuated the building" and asked if the deputies could help. He stated that a sergeant and a deputy had been dispatched and informed upon their arrival that the FBI had been there earlier.
But neither the staff nor the office explain why the facility had to be vacated, House said. He said that a volunteer fire chief had claimed that the FBI had told him that there had been a "credible threat" but that he would not provide any details.
The sheriff's office, said House, saw no evidence of threat and left after a few hours.
"We tried to discover the threat and their concerns," said House. "They would not recognize anything, they were very calm about it."
McAteer said his consortium was assigning four researchers to the facility, although the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), another consortium, manages buildings and other infrastructure with four or five other people.
This consortium, said McAteer, had ordered that the site be released, providing no other reason than a "security" problem. He said the researchers had seen nothing in the sun to force them to leave, and that they had no scientific reason – such as an anomaly in the data they collected – to do so.
"My people, we have not evacuated, and we are doing science," McAteer said.
The building manager also arrived at the institution's post office and asked the woman who was working there to leave, but did not say why it was necessary, said Rod Spurgeon, spokesperson for the office. postal service. Spurgeon said post office operations continued at the nearby Cloudcroft facility.
Kinsey Featherston, spokesman for Representative Stevan Pearce, R-NM, said the Congressman's office had contacted the FBI and had been informed that "it was an ongoing investigation".
"We will continue to monitor the situation, but at the moment we have no information," she said.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, referring questions to the consortium that manages the buildings. Shari Lifson, a spokeswoman for AURA, said in a statement that her group "was addressing a security issue" and had "decided to temporarily leave the facility as a precautionary measure". She stated that they "worked with the relevant authorities on this issue", although she refused to specify who these authorities were.
Lifson also refused to spell out the security problem except to challenge the idea that strangers were involved.
The solar observatory is about two and a half hours drive from Roswell, New Mexico, the site of an accident now infamous in 1947. The incident sparked such interest that there is now a museum of UFOs in the city.
House said his deputies had spotted a Black Hawk helicopter in the area at the time the building was evacuated – though he noted that this is not uncommon.
Sunspot and Apache Point offer panoramic views of the Tularosa Basin, which includes two sensitive military sites, including Holloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile. A White Sands public affairs official said there were no beach-scale trials or other activities that would have caused the evacuation to Sunspot.
On Friday, the observatory was still closed, although McAteer said the researchers were ready to return "as quickly as possible". The observatory seemed even interested in the mysterious evacuation by writing on its website: "With the enthusiasm that this closure has given rise to, we hope that you will come to visit us and that you will see the services that we offer to the science. and public awareness in heliophysics. "
Zapotosky reported from Washington. Shane Harris and Joby Warrick of the Washington Post contributed to this report from Washington.
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