Documents declassified after more than three decades reveal how a supposed UFO encounter near the South Pole was concealed. Records released this year by the Argentine Foreign Ministry corroborate an eyewitness account from 1991, when military personnel and civilian researchers in Antarctica discovered and subsequently observed a large “flying saucer” hovering above their base.
Miguel Amaya, a retired Argentine Air Force serviceman, informed UFO investigators in the early 2000s that in April 1991, he was stationed at San Martín Base, a small scientific and military outpost on a tiny Antarctic island, according to the Daily Mail.
At the onset of the polar night, when the sun remains below the horizon for months, the station’s riometer—an instrument measuring fluctuations in the upper atmosphere—triggered an alarm. Despite the fact that three stylus recorders were monitoring different altitudes within the ionosphere (the atmospheric layer where solar radiation ionizes atoms), all needles began tracing the identical pattern, something scientifically improbable.
Amaya stated that base personnel reasoned the bizarre readings could only be caused by something emitting energy comparable to a nuclear aircraft carrier or a major city positioned above Antarctica. Several hours later, another staff member went outside during a snowstorm and allegedly saw a “huge circle of light,” moving slowly and silently directly over the building.
The 1991 incident finally came to light after Amaya revealed that he and other personnel at San Martín Base were strictly ordered by their superiors never to disclose what they witnessed, the Daily Mail continues.
It is reported that over 36 meters of paper were used during the four-and-a-half-hour event at the base, and Amaya mentioned that the recorder needles moved with such force that they jumped off the paper multiple times.
“The equipment started recording normally, but within five minutes, the three indicator needles began making identical marks, which, as the engineer explained, was impossible,” Amaya recounted in his interview with CEFORA.
“Periodically, these ‘signals’ would cease, and everything would return to normal. Then, within ten to fifteen minutes, it would start again, sometimes so powerfully that the needles would fly off the chart.”
The recording of the incredible data began around 1 a.m. local time and persisted throughout the night. Approximately 16 hours later, at 10 p.m., Amaya reported that an Argentine Army radio operator sighted the mysterious craft while taking a walk from the base. “He noticed a huge circle of light, quite faint due to the cloud cover overhead, passing above the base but still visible, moving very slowly and silently toward the sea,” Amaya alleged in his testimony.
The meteorological observer noted that by the time the individual who saw the UFO managed to call the other base staff outside to look, the craft had already vanished.
Antarctica lost eight times the ice of a massive metropolis
The three pens on the riometer’s graphical recorder were expected to provide independent readings, as they measured distinct aspects of radio wave absorption in the ionosphere, located between 30 and 600 miles above the Earth’s surface.
Normally, natural occurrences such as solar flares or auroras produce unique patterns on each pen because absorption varies by frequency—lower frequencies are absorbed more or at different altitudes than higher ones, the Daily Mail writes. This implies that on the night the UFO was supposedly sighted, the needles should have traced distinct patterns. For instance, a normal event might show stronger bursts on one pen and gentler variations on another. Such synchronization, it is noted, could only happen if a powerful external energy source was directly overhead, overriding the individual riometer signals, the Daily Mail points out.
The civilian Argentine UFO research group, known as CEFORA, persistently demanded the records be released under the national public information law. The Foreign Ministry confirmed that the original paper rolls capturing the strange readings over Antarctica still exist and are stored at the Argentine Antarctic Institute.
CEFORA Director Andrea Simondini had campaigned for over 15 years for the official reports concerning this UFO encounter and other similar events to be made public. Now that the records have been unveiled, images proving that something inexplicable impacted the base’s riometer have been published for the first time.
“We are going to investigate other cases related to Antarctica,” Simondini told Uno Entre Ríos. “This is just the first test case we can verify using this method, and it raises hopes for further declassification of other files,” she emphasized.
In the United States as well, the disclosure regarding UFOs has reached a peak, with President Trump ordering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon to release all documents related to government investigations concerning UFOs and extraterrestrial life, the Daily Mail recalls. However, the US has consistently maintained until now that no physical evidence of aliens or non-human spacecraft has ever been found.
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