In October 2025, a group of researchers published a paper in a well-regarded, peer-reviewed astronomical journal claiming the extraordinary: They’d found evidence of objects orbiting the Earth years before the launch of any human-made artificial satellites. In another paper, they also claimed links between when these objects appeared in the sky and the dates of nuclear tests in the 1950s. If any of these results were correct, it’d represent evidence of orbiting _non-human technological artifacts_ and an indication that whatever “piloted” these artifacts was interested in our nuclear capabilities.
It’s easy to see why the papers grabbed headlines and interest. So, the big question hovering around these works is — like all newly published scientific papers — can their conclusions hold up to scrutiny? The first step in answering that question has now been taken.
In June, a paper, soon to be published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, appeared online and offered an in-depth critique of those explosive claims. Given the importance of the story for UAP/UFO studies, I want to walk you through some details of the original papers and this recent response. Understanding the details is, of course, important on its own.
Were we being visited by alien spacecraft in the 1950s? That seems like an important question. There are, however, important lessons in this story concerning how science can, and should, explore the contentious UAP topic.
It also raises issues about the difficulties that come when science encounters UAP/UFO culture in general. Let’s start with the originalpapers that set the story in motion. Both were published by astronomer Dr.
Beatriz Villarroel (a researcher at the Nordita in Stockholm) and her collaborators. For a number of years, Villarroel has spearheaded a project called VASCO (Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations), which is based on a really good idea. The central method is to use old photographic observations of the sky to look for signatures of advanced technology (now generally called “technosignatures”).
Extract — continue reading at the source.
