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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating · 3 min · Nov 11, 2026
A JAL radar analysis found jumps near 10,000 Gs
Kevin Knuth walks through a 1986 JAL 747 encounter and radar jumps analyzed by a Niels Bohr Institute researcher.
In this episode
Full analysis- 7:54Extreme power estimates collide with waste-heat limits6 min
- 22:58Relativistic travel trades short trips for decades on EarthPro pick 4 min
- 27:44A reported underwater object implies extraordinary speedPro pick 3 min
- 13:39A JAL radar analysis found jumps near 10,000 Gs3 min
- 36:18UFO brightness estimates depend on the assumed light pattern5 min
- 17:54Knuth treats acceleration estimates as probability distributions3 min
- 4:07Oberth cited radar-measured UAP speeds in 19543 min
“john callahan actually made copies of the radar data and kept them in a box under his desk”
Takeaways
- Three radar jumps were estimated near 10,000 Gs.
- The pilot estimated the object was about four 747s in size.
- FAA official John Callahan kept copies of the radar data.
About this segment
Kevin Knuth walks through a 1986 JAL 747 encounter and radar jumps analyzed by a Niels Bohr Institute researcher. Three estimates approached 10,000 Gs, and an FAA official kept copies of the radar records.
Kevin Knuth is a physics professor at the University at Albany.
Led a multimodal UAP study combining optical, infrared, weather-radar and radiation data.

Brian Keating, Host · Host, Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
From “Physics Professor: How Much Power Does a UFO Really Need?”, Nov 11, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 13:47
plane of 747 was going from pairs to tokyo when it encountered several um ufos over alaska the event culminated with a large ufo that was shaped like a walnut there's a drawing on the right here from the pilot and the pilot estimated be about this size of four 747s so this thing's about the size of an aircraft carrier when the pilot had said when it was in front of the plane that was all he could see out the windscreen how wrong can a pilot be about this right so so the objects there i think that's pretty clear and um it followed him for 45 minutes they had military height finding radar had detected this and was collected by um the faa and the faa chief for accidents and investigations john callahan actually made copies of the radar data and kept them in a box under his desk until he retired,
- 14:43
at which point he made them public. But he kept copies because President Reagan's science team came and took all the data. They confiscated it. So he actually released the copies publicly. And Dr. Daniel Kumbay, who was at the Niels Bohr Institute, Here, for some time, had analyzed this radar data and looked at the acceleration made by several jumps. So this UFO basically stayed about seven kilometers away from the airplane and just, with every sweep of the, it basically moved around the plane.
- 15:19
And with every sweep of the radar, it would be on one side of the plane, and then the next sweep of the radar would be at the other side of the plane. So you can estimate the minimum accelerations here. And you can see here on this table, you've got the 11 jumps, the accelerations you're looking at. There are several, three cases where the acceleration's coming up on 10,000 Gs, which is really, really insane, right?
- 15:45
You've got something the size of an aircraft carrier accelerating at 10,000 Gs. the maximum speed would be Mach 350 and that's basically close to 2,000 or 269,000 miles an hour at that speed you can get to the moon in 53 minutes two questions before just continuing so one is there are error bars here which is very rare in this uh pseudo industry or you know kind