Astro Hacker News - Unexpected patterns in historical astronomical observations

SubiculumCode |next [-]

Fascinating. "The second paper, published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP), specifically looks for signs of possible extraterrestrial artifacts in orbit around Earth, before the first human satellite launch in 1957. The researchers looked, among other things, for instances where multiple flashes of light were along a line or in a narrow band—something that indicates reflections from flat, reflective objects in motion. Two interesting examples were identified, one of which occurred on July 27, 1952, the same night as the notable sightings of UAP in Washington, D.C."

Info about July 27, 1952 UFO/UAP sighting in DC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Washington,_D.C._UFO_inci...

mikkupikku |root |parent [-]

I get Battle of Los Angeles vibes from this, tbqh.

sxp |next |previous [-]

Note that their paper includes p-hacking so this is proto-science rather than science. They didn't find data to match their hypothesis, but they were able to find a hypothesis to match their data.

> Follow-up secondary analyses were then conducted to examine in more granular fashion the timing of the association between nuclear testing and occurrence of transients. Table 2 summarizes the association between occurrence of transients and different time windows relative to nuclear testing, ranging from 2 days before a test until 2 days after a test. The only association that reached statistical significance was for the association in which transients occur 1 day after nuclear testing.

apeconmyth |next |previous [-]

After over a decade of knowing about it, I finally got a copy of Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events by Persinger/Lafrenière last week and was reading about this subject yesterday, but from a book published in 1977. It's blowing my mind to see this here today, but the ultimate source of me even knowing about the above book, Robert Anton Wilson, would not be surprised at all!

cluckindan |next |previous [-]

I’m just spitballing here, but could the objects in orbit be parts of the bomb casing? One would assume them to be tumbling and flashing either periodically or in a specific pattern corresponding to their rotation. Or maybe producing a short flash on re-entry.

Spitballing even further, could the objects be explained by a nuclear fireball pushing a mass of atmospheric humidity high enough to form a solid sheet of ice in orbit?

titzer |root |parent |next [-]

The bomb casing from a successful nuclear detonation would be entirely atomized and instantly vaporized. The exponential runaway of an atomic chain reaction produces so much radiation (read: light, heat, X-rays, and even gamma rays) in the first nanoseconds that literally every chemical bond is ripped apart, plus so many fast-moving neutrons that many nuclei (even not of the initial fissile material) are either fissioned themselves or altered to radioactive isotopes. Because so much EMR is produced so fast, there literally isn't even time for matter to be physically accelerated away before being absolutely soaked in EM. It's possible that some other matter in the vicinity might be intact and blasted away, but anything within the fireball radius of ~100m is absolute toast.

niwtsol |root |parent [-]

Thank you for this detailed explanation. Given the above, I find it absolutely wild that the closest survivor of Hiroshima was only 170m away (granted he was in a concrete basement). In my head, I always pictured a large area completely obliterated as you described.

"Eiso Nomura (1898-1982) miraculously survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, despite the fact that the explosion occurred in the air right above him.On August 6, 1945, Mr. Nomura was in the basement of the Fuel Hall (now, the Rest House in Peace Memorial Park), about 170 meters southwest of the hypocenter."

VonGuard |root |parent |next [-]

Furthering the original question: the myth says Plumbbob launched a manhole cover into orbit, but the truth is slightly less than that, and it wasn't really a manhole cover.

Still, this is what happens when you use a nuclear bonb as a detonating charge at the bottom of a tube...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob

mohaine |root |parent |next |previous [-]

He was 170m away from the location the bomb exploded over, not 170m away from the explosion.

That said, the bomb only exploded at roughly 600m in altitude so still pretty close.

Syzygies |root |parent |previous [-]

There is no single accepted definition of "fireball" like the Kármán line where outer space begins, and even that is just a convention.

The "artificial sun" created at Hiroshima, the early-stage plasma fireball at 1 ms, is estimated to have been 5 to 10 meters across.

rindalir |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Was wondering about that but then came across this passage in the paper: “ The last date on which a transient was observed within a nuclear testing window in this dataset was March 17, 1956, despite there being an additional 38 above-ground nuclear tests in the subsequent 13 months of the study period.” I would expect to see artifacts of the tests themselves continue under that hypothesis. Of course this raises a whole bunch of other questions…

keepamovin |root |parent |previous [-]

These things are i think around 400,000km out in space so no.

crystaln |next |previous [-]

A widespread theory among et believers is that nuclear explosions bring the attention of et intelligence around the universe as a sign of sufficiently advanced life to investigate, and that aliens are here to make sure we develop without self-destructing and join the intergalactic world peacefully.

cryptonector |root |parent [-]

In reality other advanced civilizations elsewhere and elsewhen in our galaxy are as constrained by the speed of light as we are, thus they can't come here as we can't go there.

anomaloustho |root |parent |next [-]

Isaac Arthur has put it in a way that resonated with me. If you live in a universe that has FTL, it’s scarier in a lot ways. It means the really dangerous bad guys in the other galaxy can reach you. If you live in a world without FTL, it makes things happen really slowly and over generations. That’s not as fun and exciting, but it also severely limits the amount of bad guys that can get to you.

And any bad guy that can even reach you basically means you’re already dead if they so choose.

arethuza |root |parent [-]

Doesn't FTL also imply time travel - which probably isn't a good thing?

GloamingNiblets |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Isn't this ruling out outlier observations given our model, rather than evaluating our model given outlier observations?

estimator7292 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

That's our best guess anyway. My bet is that superluminal travel will be possible once we resolve quantum gravity and break all of Einstein's rules.

At least that's what I tell myself. Hard to appreciate the majesty of the universe if we're forever locked into a single star system.

TrainedMonkey |root |parent |next [-]

It would be really cool if that was true, but I would estimate the odds of quantum gravity enabling superluminal travel or comms as low. Occam's razor and all that.

RajT88 |root |parent |previous [-]

None of this is falsifiable. It requires understandings of physics we don't have, and we have no way of knowing which hare-brained theories today are correct and useful in the future.

That goes as well for how aliens light-years away can detect nuclear explosions and show up within days to check it out.

Teever |root |parent |next |previous [-]

That doesn't stop hypothetical automated sentinel probes that alien races have seeded the galaxy with as a surveillance net from picking up the atomic blasts and investigating.

jansan |root |parent |previous [-]

Is Anyone here educated enough to tell if quantum entanglement could (hypothetically) be used to transmit information faster than light?

cryptonector |root |parent |next [-]

Quantum entanglement cannot transmit information. Full stop. Let alone FTL.

When you measure an entangled particle that tells you, the observer, the corresponding characteristic of the other particle in the pair, but it will tell no one who has access to the other particle anything at all about what you wanted to say.

This is like transmitting information from you to you about a faraway thing, but it's not useful because what you want to transmit information from you to someone else far away.

rtkwe |root |parent |next |previous [-]

As far as anyone can tell you can't use it transmit information. Their states are mirrored but you can't modify the state of on of the pairs to change the state of the other, that just breaks the entanglement. So all you really have are two particles that happen to be in the same random state at any given time.

I don't think you can even tell given only one of the particles in a pair if it is still entangled so you couldn't even destructively send small amounts of information either. It's a neat work around for semihard scifi but the universe is stubbornly resistant to any pathways for anything including information travelling faster than the speed of light.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem

namanyayg |root |parent |next |previous [-]

All of human knowledge and observation so far points to the fact that we can't break the light barrier

anomaloustho |root |parent |previous [-]

No, because you can only randomly measure the state of your particle and therefore the remote particle. (then lose the entanglement) But you can’t put the particle into a state.

Yizahi |next |previous [-]

This belongs at r/ufos, not on a HN. To anyone who is new to this - one scientist, Beatrice Villarroel, promotes a theory that old photoplates from mid 20th century, show multiple UFOs because there were discrepancies between two pictures taken 50 minutes apart. To prove this, she makes analysis of several pairs of pictures where this is indeed observed. So, she's right?

First of all, in every par she picks arbitrary a tiny fraction, like a few percentages of an area of the plate, without any explanation why the rest of the image is ignored. After looking at the full plates, one can see that there not dozens of suspicious lights but literally thousands of disappearing lights, uniformly spread out across the whole plate, without any pattern or localization. So thousands of alien saucers all across the Earth. You see where this is going? But it gets worse.

Second - in all pairs of plates the lights change one way only. On the first plate they are present and on the next plate 50 minutes later they disappear. Not a single light out of thousands is breaking the pattern and transitions from empty to light, no, all of them transition from light to nothingness only.

And finally third - these thousands of UFOs on the first plate appear because the first plate uses a brittle and unstable red pigment. I can't quickly find out the source, but one guy did analysis and found out the type of the emulsion used on the first plates in these sets in that decade and said that it was indeed a fragile compound, which is most likely the reason for these thousands of uniformly spread out image defects.

tl;dr - ufologists as usually failed at basic reasoning, logic and knowledge of history.

strenholme |root |parent [-]

>I can't quickly find out the source

Took me too long, but here’s one:

https://thefreaky.net/dr-beatriz-villarroel-and-the-mystery-...

From that source:

“Old photographic plates are notoriously temperamental. Dust specks, cosmic rays, emulsion scratches, and scanning artefacts can all mimic stars. Villarroel’s team applied careful filters and cross-checks, but some scientists argue the anomalies could still be defects rather than cosmic revelations.”

It’s not a real debunking — Rational Wiki (now down) was good at debunking things like this which weren’t notable enough to make the Wikipedia — but it’s what I’m able to find about the matter.

I’m of course still skeptical — extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — but I think a good debunking needs to be posted online, with footnotes and references.

lschueller |next |previous [-]

Would be interesting to know, what they've excluded as potential explanations. Some things like lense effect, changes of light wavelengths of such missing objects etc

RajT88 |next |previous [-]

I didn't realize it, but I saw something about this over the weekend.

The article cites the same papers that the author claims were rejected on ARXIV:

https://ovniologia.com.br/2025/10/astrophysicist-dr-beatriz-...

mcswell |next |previous [-]

Radioactive fallout?

AnimalMuppet |next |previous [-]

My unsupported hypothesis: Gamma radiation from the blast was reaching the film that was being used to take the astronomical observations.

For this to work, though, a few things would have to be true:

1. The film would have to be stored in bulk in a place that would be (mostly) protected from gamma rays from the tests.

2. The film for that night's observations would have to already be not with the rest of the film at the time of the test.

3. The observatory would have to be close enough to the location of the test that the gamma rays would have a chance to reach it.

But maybe it doesn't have to be direct. Maybe it could be gamma rays produced by the fallout, which drifts from the location of the test to at or near the observatory.

Then you have to wonder why no more were observed after March 17, 1956. A change in the character of the film? (Either a change in manufacturing process, or a change in what kind of film was used?)

jandrewrogers |root |parent |next [-]

That wouldn't explain why the effect only disappears for parts of the sky within Earth's shadow.

bigbuppo |root |parent |next |previous [-]

> "We also find a highly significant (∼22σ) deficit of POSS-I transients within Earth's shadow when compared with the theoretical hemispheric shadow coverage at 42,164 km altitude."

I'm not an statisastroscienticianist, so I have no idea what that means, but maybe it's significant.

That being said, Kodak discovered nuclear testing was a thing before the public for all the obvious reasons.

_alternator_ |root |parent [-]

The earths shadow effect lowered the transients by about 33%, which does provide evidence for physical reflection accounting for 1/3rd of the effect. To my mind, gamma ray-like exposure on the film is an extremely plausible explanation for the other 66%.

opwieurposiu |root |parent |previous [-]

https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/nuclea...

Kodak had this issue for sure.

rtkwe |root |parent [-]

It's also just a permanent issue for sensitive instruments for scientific experiments. The Cold War bomb testing spree contaminated so much there's a whole demand for metals produced before the first atomic test because of the increased presence of fallout from the tests.

The issue is relegated to only the most sensitive equipment these days but it's a funny little side issue for several years before the test ban had been in place long enough to reduce the elevated levels back to nearly background.

dvh |next |previous [-]

Do you really think it's ok to put trendline in Fig.2 ?

scellus |root |parent [-]

No. In general the statistics look a bit amateurish, which is normal for a scientific paper. I'd actually like reanalyze the data, just out of curiosity. (Those p-values and other things can still be on the right ballpark even if the models and analyses are not top notch. I'm not exactly doubting them, and the results are interesting even without any correlation to UAP sightings or nukes.)

myth_drannon |previous [-]

Weren't Nazis sending rockets into space by 1945? Soviets and Americans, probably as well. So why is it unexpected to have objects in orbit?

TheBlight |root |parent |next [-]

Try reading the article. You might enjoy it and it will answer your question.

myth_drannon |root |parent [-]

Beyond the date of the first artificial satellite, there is nothing in the article that mentions space debris.

mcswell |root |parent |next |previous [-]

None of those rockets attained anything like orbital speed.

mannyv |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Iron Sky is just a movie...as far as we can tell.

lutusp |root |parent |previous [-]

> Weren't Nazis sending rockets into space by 1945? Soviets and Americans, probably as well.

No to all, without reservation. The German V-2 didn't go into orbit, and the US and USSR weren't active in large missile activity at all, until long post-war.

michaelsbradley |root |parent [-]

Unless by the early 1950s the US and possibly others were launching objects into orbit, and their doing so has been a closely guarded secret even until now. The nuclear tests would have offered natural PR cover.

If we rule out ETs for the sake of argument, and if these weren’t atmospheric effects or artifacts from the nuclear tests themselves, then small objects were in orbit at the time and either they were launched from Earth or the planet happened to be crossing paths with them.