Judia-Cordiglia Brothers

Two former radio amateurs gave 50 years worth of interest (and still ongoing) for space conspiracy enthusiasts. In the 1960’s they claimed they had recording that showed the Soviet Space program covered up the deaths of Cosmonauts. These claims have met with rebuttals and the interests continues but that’s why I think it’s a great one for this blog.

They claimed to have monitored transmissions from the Soviet Sputnik program and Explorer 1. They said this included other recordings, like the sounds of a lost cosmonaut who was dying. 28th November 1960, one of those was also an SOS signal that was moving away from the Earth’s orbit and their information was picked up by a Swiss-Italian radio station who took them on as their space experts.

They also made a further claim that they had heard of a female cosmonaut yelling “I am hot” amongst other parts of that transmission. They stated that this was the sounds of her transmitting before she burnt up.

In total they had released nine recordings over a course of years:

• May 1960, a manned spacecraft reporting its going off course.
• 28th November 1960 the faint sounds of an SOS transmission as a spacecraft left orbit.
• February 1961, the recorded sounds of a cosmonaut suffocating.
• April 1961, capsule recorded orbiting Earth three times before it entered Earth’s atmosphere and this was days before Yuri Gagarin took flight.
• October 1961, a cosmonaut looses control of his ship and goes into deep space.
• November 1962, a capsule misjudges re-entry bouncing off the Earth’s atmosphere it then goes out into space.
• November 1963, a female cosmonaut dies during re-entry.
• April 1964, another cosmonaut killed when their capsule burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

People that have analysed this have stated they are dubious that certain protocol appears to have been ignored during those transmissions, for instance that the cosmonauts had not identified themselves during those transmissions. You could of course argue that burning up in space is a pretty good reason to forget this right?

There seem to be a lot of grammatical errors, or errors in sentence construction when it was generally accepted that the Soviet’s would only use highly trained and educated native speakers but again you could argue that panic would ensue and even the most articulate of people are going to loose that.

The technology the Soviet’s were using may well have been sending dogs into space but there is no suggestion they had enough technology to be putting a manned craft out of the orbit by that stage.

Another factor that was given to consideration, and perhaps this is the one that might convince me – with all the other countries listening into the space race and monitoring these transmissions why hadn’t the professionals found them too? The other countries would have little to no reason to avoid giving up that information as they were all in the race so-to-speak. So why did it fall to two amateur radio enthusiasts who self-taught themselves to get such potentially controversial details out into the public?

I also listened to a brilliant podcast and presentation by Brian Dunning, Skeptoid about this and felt it was a great tale for the blog.

Numbers Stations

A numbers station is a short-wave radio station and is characterised by some unusual broadcasts. They are registered by those searching to be streaming out voices, numbers, words, tunes, morse codes or letters. They have been recorded in various languages and more commonly have female voices although male and children voices have been recorded in some situations. The Swedish Rhapsody broadcast features a child’s voice. They are not officially recognised by any government body, QSL responses have been received from these stations by short-wave listeners who sent reception reports to them. (A QSL is like a receipt of transmission from what I can understand).

An idea posed is that these stations are/were used to send out coded instructions. Encoded messages could be then used via a one time number pad system, e.g. a notebook with the relevant code break that could be destroyed one the transmission was done. It is safer than any other medium on the planet, even if you hear the code unless you know it you can’t decipher it. Theoretically anyone could pick up the code with access to short-wave radio and finding the frequency but knowing what it is, well that’s another story! Drug smugglers were another reason put forwards. The radio stations can be used but this might not be as effective as thought, after all the farms and outlying posts often associated with large scale drugs operations would not necessarily be able to receive the messages.

Another suggestion I had found leant more towards the paranormal, the idea that these are somehow messages that might have been an old broadcast some how replaying over the waves without anyone physically behind them. Perhaps the dead are using it to try and reach out, however if so why would they be so formulaic and not contain a direct message? Often with some of them you can hear background information too suggesting that even if it is not playing live it may well have been recorded as such.

Typically they seem to transmit on the hour or half hour, an introduction to identify the station will be heard and then the bulk of the message is heard.  This repeats for a set interlude and then the transmission will end, usually with an identifier such as a set of zero’s or perhaps music.  Listening to numerous ones quite often they seem heavy with interference, or background noise, some are overlapping with the regular broadcasts which means you can hear a second station on them.  A Florida radio station, WYFR from Okeechobee is a religious broadcasting station and reported that it was regularly affected by a Cuban/Spanish number station. Others have reported that they have encroached across their transmission too.

One thing I can be assured off, the Conet Project collects them and listening to them is both slightly creepy and mesmerising at the same time. Whatever they are used for (and I like the mystery so very much) they are a thrilling find if you haven’t heard of them before.

So if you want to hear them try the link: http://archive.org/details/ird059