Pre-Sputnik UFO Discovery: 0.01% Chance It's Natural

Show Transcript

Cristina Gomez : Scientists have discovered evidence of hundreds of thousands of technological objects orbiting Earth in the 1950s, seven years before humanity launched its first satellite. A Swedish researcher has uncovered data revealing objects with mirror-like surfaces positioned in geosynchronous orbit during some of the most significant moments in human history. The statistical evidence shows the probability of this being chance is virtually zero.

I'm Christina Gomez, and welcome to this episode of UFO News Updates. Today, we are specifically talking about Dr. Beatrice Velarol, discussing her research on NewsNation. Take a listen.

Dr. Beatriz Villarroel (NewsNation Clip): We have a paper now together. It's first author is Stephen Bruehl at Vanderbilt University. And he has used 100,000 of these transients. They are not visually vetted. And he has checked whether they correlate with nuclear tests and with nuclear bomb tests and with UFO events. And yes, he surprisingly finds correlation between my transients, these from before Sputnik, and the nuclear bomb tests and the UFO sightings.

Cristina Gomez: That was Dr. Villarol from the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics. And what she's discovered could actually rewrite our understanding of what is happening in Earth's orbit during the early space age. She leads the VASCO project, vanishing and appearing sources during a century of observation. That's what VASCO stands for, which searches through digitized astronomical photographs before humans launched satellites. She also leads the ExoProbe Project, which aims to find and locate an extraterrestrial probe in our solar system.

And here's what makes her research so extraordinary. Before 1957, our skies were completely free of thousands of satellites and millions of pieces of space debris that clutters today's observations. Old digitized astronomical images taken before the human spacefaring age offer a rare glimpse of the sky before the era of artificial satellites. This means any objects detected in those pre Sputnik photographs shouldn't exist according to our historical timeline.

The key breakthrough came from analyzing nearly 300,000 transient events from the first Palomar Sky Survey conducted between 1942 and 1957. These transient objects are what appear briefly on the photographic plate, but vanish from subsequent images taken just 30 minutes later.

Dr. Beatriz Villarroel (NewsNation Clip): For me, this looks technological. But I may be wrong. Maybe there's a new physical phenomenon that I haven't, that nobody knows about yet. To me, it looks very high tech.

Cristina Gomez: Dr. Villarroll's team discussed something unprecedented, multiple objects perfectly aligned along narrow bands, exhibiting what's called specular reflection, the kind of mirror-like flash you'd expect from flat, highly reflective technological surfaces. And the most significant candidate exhibits a 3.9 sigma statistical significance, meaning the probability of such an alignment occurring by chance is approximately 0.01%. To put that into perspective, that is a 1 in 10,000 chance of happening randomly.

But here's where it gets really interesting. Transients were 45% more likely to be observed on dates within nuclear test windows. The objects appeared to be at geosynchronous altitude, about 42,000 kilometers above Earth, the perfect position for surveillance of our planet.

And the most compelling evidence came when Dr. Villarol's team tested whether these objects appeared in Earth's shadow. Think about it logically. If these were just photographic plate defects, they would appear randomly anywhere on the plates. But if they were real reflective objects requiring sunlight, they shouldn't appear in Earth's shadows, right?

The results were really staggering. The shadow test suggests that hundreds of thousands of single non-aligned transients in the VASCO catalog may also represent artificial objects. The statistical significance reached 21.9 sigma, meaning the probability of this being coincidental is so small, it's essentially impossible.

Dr. Beatriz Villarroel (NewsNation Clip): I've learned that to have this deficit by chance is extremely low probability to happen by chance. I think it's a bigger probability that one gets eaten up by a supermassive black hole tomorrow than that this happens by chance. That's how unprobable it appears to be, if the analysis is sound.

Cristina Gomez: And that's a pretty extreme probability. What do you think could explain hundreds of thousands of objects in orbit before humans had space technology? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. If you enjoy UFO news, updates, case studies, and interviews, then you will like this channel, subscribe, and share this episode with those you want to keep in the know with the latest UFO news.

As Dr. Villarroll's discovery means that at the exact time UFOs were being reported in Washington airspace, back in 1952, there were potentially technological objects positioned in orbit right above Earth. Objects that shouldn't have existed according to our understanding of human space flight history.

There's an intriguing historical footnote that adds another layer to this story. Donald Menzel, the astronomer who provided the temperature inversion explanation for the Washington DC sightings became director of Harvard Observatory just two months after the 1952 incidents. In the early 1950s, Harvard University chose to destroy a portion of its own photographic plate collection under the directive of its director, who entered the office in 1952. And as Dr. Villarreal noted to News Nation, Mendel destroyed about one-third of Harvard's Sky Survey data and then stopped astronomers from continuing the survey for 15 years.

We may never know what data was lost, but decades later, the tide is turning and scientific interest in these phenomena is growing and the media has shifted dramatically. Reporters are now routinely asking government officials about UFOs and extraterrestrial visitation.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (Pod Force One Clip): UFOs, there's been a lot of... My husband is in the corner for the record, pumping his fist right now, but you're asking this question. So, I mean, is there anything? We've had some declassification of some very strange videos that look like they are, you know, unidentified flying objects. Is there anything in the files that you think you could find or you have found?

Nothing that I'm prepared to talk about today.

Cristina Gomez: That right there was the Director of National Intelligence. When asked directly about alien life, she responded, I have my own views and opinions. And in this role, I got to be careful with what I share.

And it's also worth noting that the host spoke about the New Jersey drones as well. And before I show that clip, I just want to add this. This is very important. When we were watching that in real time during Thanksgiving weekend of 2024 into January or February of 2025, it was really like watching the blueprint of the Roswell conclusion. Confirm, deny, confuse. And even though we got a direct answer from the White House of nothing to see here, they're not the enemy, that's actually FAA-authorized drones, the Director of National Intelligence still has questions like the majority of the public.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (Pod Force One Clip): And the New Jersey, the strange objects over New Jersey were drones. I still have a lot of questions around that. Oh, yeah. You know, I've heard what the public official line is. I just personally still have a lot of questions that are unanswered. Yeah. Because it wasn't just New Jersey. It was happening in different parts of the country. Oh, really? Yeah.

Cristina Gomez: On top of that, Dr. Villarroles believes government agencies likely know about these objects, stating, I think they do. They might not be aware of the full extent, but I expect that they have been aware of it for a while.

Dr. Beatriz Villarroel (NewsNation Clip): I believe that what we see is something real. I believe we see a real physical phenomenon that shows itself, let's say, like a deficit in the earth's shadow with correlations with these nuclear bomb tests. And I'm not sure how I'm supposed to present these results in a way where I feel that I'm honest to myself and honest to the audience.

Cristina Gomez: The VASCO team has identified thousands of star-like sources that appear on one photographic plate, but not on the next one taken within one hour, constituting sub-hour transients. Dr. Villarole establishes there may have been 70,000 to 200,000 such objects in Earth's orbits orbit in the early 1950s. And the research faces significant challenges in peer review, not because of the methodology issues, but due to stigma within the astronomical community, which really does not make that much sense, because if you're looking at space, you should have an open mind to UFOs, right? Or maybe I'm wrong here.

However, as noted in recent coverage, The researchers maintain scientific caution in their language, referring to techno-signatures and non-terrestrial artifacts. The data increasingly supports the hypotheses that these transients represent technology of non-human origin.

Dr. Beatriz Villarroel (NewsNation Clip): Let's be very clear. You are not saying for sure that these are alien spacecraft. I mean, what if what we see is some kind of probes from our past ancient civilization? I can't exclude that possibility. Maybe they aren't alien, maybe they are from here, but maybe there's just something very big that we don't know about the Earth or humanity.

Cristina Gomez (Closing): Dr. Villarol isn't claiming definitive proof of extraterrestrial visitors, but her research has uncovered compelling statistical evidence that something technological was operating in Earth's orbit 7 years before humans achieved spaceflight capabilities. As more data emerges and peer review continues, we may be on the verge of confirming that we've never been alone, or at least we weren't alone during one of the most pivotal periods in human history.

What do you think these objects could be? Are we looking at evidence of non-human technology, or could there be a conventional explanation we haven't considered yet? Let me know in the comments below. That is it for today. I will see you next time. Be safe, and remember, keep your eyes on the skies.

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