Transcript of the talk from Dr Beatriz Villaroel, where they talk about their discoveries (2021) and the subsequent push back they faced at the time of publication. Interesting quote:
Funnily enough, we did find two exciting examples that were statistically significant, one from the 6th of August, 1954, with a probability of 0.003, and another, even more beautiful where you see five along a narrow stripe happening on the 27th of July in 1952 and with a probability of one in 10,000
This means they detected flashes that could be explained by satellites orbiting the earth, in a time where Sputnik was not even launched.
This discovery was part of an effort to modelize new technosignatures in search of extra-terrestrial life.
In the ’50s the Palomar Observatory was taking lots of images of the sky. It was done on photographic plates. The author analyzed those plates in 2020 and found nine stars that appeared and vanished within a 50-minute exposure time.
But one day we found something really weird. We found something that shouldn’t be there. We found nine stars in a Palomar image on the 12th of April, 1950 and that you could never see again. They appear and vanished within the exposure time of the plates, so within 50 minutes.
I was interested in their methodology:
Examined photographic plates from the 1950s and compared them with modern images from Pan-STARRS. Engaged the public, including schools and amateur astronomers, to help identify vanishing objects in the images. Sought insights from Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, a renowned exoplanet researcher, to validate the findings.
Their hypothesis: the transient events could be due to non-human or extraterrestrial satellites, as they occurred seven years before the launch of Sputnik 1, the first human-made satellite.
They ruled out prosaic explanations:
No known phenomena could explain the simultaneous appearance and disappearance of the nine stars. Instrumental Issues were considered but none could be found. No atomic bomb tests were conducted on the date of the observation (April 12, 1950).
The weird part:
The paper was published in Scientific Reports in early June 2021, coinciding with heightened interest in UFOs and a Pentagon report on unexplained aerial phenomena. Dr. Marcy, written as co-author of the paper, faced sexual harassment allegations dating back to 2015. Despite these ongoing allegations, he had published numerous papers without problem.
Then, at the time of this paper’s publication, the collaboration with Marcy suddenly became a significant issue, leading to professional backlash.
Dr. Villarroel’s talk was rejected from a Penn State workshop due to her association with Marcy.
Faced accusations of supporting rape culture and received significant criticism on social media.
Informed that collaboration with Marcy would prevent her from applying for grants or publishing papers through the SETI Institute.
SETI.news would not accept to publish the paper due to Marcy being written as co-author.
Links
Tweet: https://x.com/DrBeaVillarroel/status/1800801354438656341 Transcript of the conference: https://psu.pb.unizin.org/hxlibraries24curiositycontroversycourage/chapter/my-personal-journey-through-the-unknown-navigating-vanishing-stars-uaps-stigma-and-controversies-in-the-astronomy-community/ Recording: https://psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Dr.+Beatriz+Villarroel+%7C+HxLibraries+Symposium+Spring+2024A+Curiosity%2C+Controversy%2C+and+Intellectual+Courage/1_s3u2emni
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