Just when you thought unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) stories had drifted into obscurity, think again. A Scientific Reports paper titled "Transients in the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I) may be associated with nuclear testing and reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena," published by Sweden's Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, provides intriguing statistical data. The research by Stephen Bruehl and Beatriz Villarroel posits that there were "transient star-like objects of unknown origin," or "transients," appearing coincidentally with UAP sightings and nuclear weapons testing before the first human deployment of a satellite, the Soviet Union's Sputnik in 1957.
Study Lends Credibility to UAP Sightings
Transients are shiny, reflective objects that appear singly or in groups and linger over locations on Earth for at least 50 minutes of photographic exposure time. The study found that the origin of the transients remains a mystery due to the historical nature (11/19/1949-4/28/1957) of the data. Congress has promised to provide greater transparency into UAP sightings, so legitimate scientific inquiries into the validity of UAP information, such as the Swedish study, are encouraged.
Analysis of the transients rules out photographic artifacts or mechanical defects in the telescopic lens. The study authors observe that these explanations "would also not account for the association of transients with UAP reports from multiple locations distant from the observatory." If the origin of the transients were the easily explained result of mechanical or photographic instances, one would expect them to be evenly distributed among the historical photographic evidence. Instead, transients appear at discrete times related to nuclear testing, suggesting they are not coincidental.
Additionally, the researchers point out: "Finally, the fact that transients were most likely to occur one day after a nuclear test (rather than the day of the test) argues against bomb debris ejected into the atmosphere as a plausible explanation." So, what do the researchers believe they are? According to the Daily Mail, "These transients are not believed to be a natural phenomenon, with [researcher] Villarroel saying they showed signs of being highly reflective, like a mirror, and even spinning like a flying saucer."
Two Hypotheses
The study points to two possible hypotheses. First is a theory that "involves an unexpected and previously undocumented atmospheric phenomenon triggered by nuclear detonations or related to nuclear fallout that may serve as a stimulus for some UAP reports and appear as transients on astronomical images." If this were true, the researchers believe there would be a streaked image on the photographic plates during a 50-minute exposure. Streaking was not observed.
The researchers have a second hypothesis, albeit more speculative, "drawing on a well-known strand of UAP lore suggesting that nuclear weapons may attract UAP." The study concludes that transients seem to be artificial, reflective objects "either in high-altitude orbits around Earth or at high altitudes within the atmosphere." Furthermore, the researchers conceded that "some transients may represent UAP events in orbit captured on photographic plates prior to the launch of the first artificial satellite."
From the beginning of nuclear weapon testing to the first man-made satellite launch, transients had been observed, and this Nordic study has provided historical evidence of mysterious objects appearing more often at the sites of atomic bomb testing. So, UAPs have been with us for more than 75 years. But what does that mean? The comprehensive UAP sightings database, Enigma, claims it "started receiving public sighting submissions via web in late 2022 and launched our iOS app in May 2023. So far, 30,618 sightings from the US have been published. Enigma also has the largest standardized, queryable historical sighting database with over 270k+ reports from other global sources." They're here, it seems. We just don't know what they are or where they come from.
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