Two newly released peer-reviewed studies suggest that unidentified flying objects may have inadvertently been telescope-photographed in Earth’s orbit prior to the development of satellites and space exploration. The studies by Dr. Beatriz Villarroel and her colleagues have identified bright “transient” objects that appeared in photographs but were not present in photographs taken soon thereafter. The transient nature of these lights strongly suggests they are not stars.
Unlike many researchers who find alien UFOs in flares and balloons, Villarroel and her colleagues do not conclude that the transient objects are truly exotic UFOs. They simply offer their scientific research in the suggestion that the transient objects may be truly exotic UFOs and that more study is prudent.
The first study notes, “One plausible explanation is that they are caused by brief light emissions from artificial objects in orbit or by objects with anomalous movements in Earth’s atmosphere — emissions so brief that they appear as point sources rather than streaks, despite the telescope tracking the stars. Alternatively, they could arise from solar reflections off flat, highly reflective surfaces at geosynchronous altitudes.”
The study explains, “As in the earlier case with the nine transients, the objects appeared and vanished within a single 50 minutes exposure. Their brightness (r ∼ 15–16 mag) makes contamination less likely. Notably, this particular event coincides in time with one of the most extensively documented aerial anomalies in historical records: the Washington D.C. “UFO flap” of 1952 July, which unfolded over two consecutive weekends (July 18–19 and 26–27).… [Telescope photographic] plate defects or scanning artifacts are expected to occur randomly in time; the fact that these transient alignments appear preferentially within a day of reported [unidentified aerial phenomena] events strongly disfavors instrumental or spurious origins.”
The D.C. UFO flap saw multiple radar and visual reports by military personnel of apparently fast-moving, bright objects flying in and around the capital region. Fighter jets were repeatedly deployed to intercept the objects, but could not maintain pace with them.
The study also offers compelling consideration that the highly reflective objects appeared on photographs after being reflected by sunlight. As Villarroel puts it, “We find a strong deficit of transient detections, at the ∼22σ statistical significance level, within the Earth’s umbral shadow. This is consistent with the idea that sunlight is required to produce the observed flashes. If these events are sunlight reflections off orbiting objects, they should vanish in the shadow cone of the Earth — exactly what we observe. This lends substantial support to the interpretation that the transients are real astrophysical or near-Earth events, and not plate defects or optical ghosts. The disappearance of the population in Earth’s shadow would not be expected for emulsion flaws or chemical irregularities. The same holds true for optical ghosts.”
Villarroel further asserts, “No matter how asymmetric or irregular the distributions of plate defects may be, they have no plausible reason to avoid the Earth’s shadow. In contrast, transients associated with solar reflections would. This shadow test provides a crucial empirical lever to distinguish between physical reflections and random defects—and remains an essential part of any validation framework moving forward.”
A second study published in Nature indicated, “Findings suggest associations beyond chance between occurrence of transients and both nuclear testing and UAP reports.” The first study references these findings by noting that “the temporal correlations between the 1950s transients and both the Washington 1952 UFO events and 124 U.S., Soviet, and British nuclear weapons tests deserve serious attention. Even if individual events remain uncertain, Bruehl & Villarroel (2025) shows statistically significant correlations between subsets of the transient sample in Solano et al. (2022) and historical nuclear activity and aerial anomalies. This alone contradicts the idea that the entire sample consists of plate defects.”
As the Washington Examiner has previously reported, and Robert Hastings has extensively documented, there is compelling evidence to suggest an unknown correlation between nuclear systems and a small subset of UFOs that manifest intelligent control and technologies far beyond those of any Earth nation.
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Villarroel deserves praise for her work. As with other academics, such as Harvard professor Avi Loeb and Stanford professor Garry Nolan, Villarroel may sometimes offer personal opinions unsupported by fact. Still, the central approach of these academics to this topic is that of the scientific method. This stands them in stark contrast to other prominent figures in the UFO community who leverage wildly unsubstantiated claims to make money via lucrative TV shows.
The UFO community has been frustrated by its inability to lobby for greater Congressional and government action. A good place to start in remedying this situation would be to focus attention away from entertainers and toward others, such as Villarroel, who choose the harder but more forensic approach of bold science. As here, the patient scientific approach bears fruitful dividends.