Peertube The second analysis was published in the publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and is dedicated to the points of light themselves. The significantly larger research group led by Villarroel determined whether and how often the lights appear in a row, which would indicate an object in motion. One example accordingly fits a particularly high-profile UFO sighting in Washington, D.C. The group also found that the light signals occurred noticeably less frequently when objects potentially responsible for them were in Earth's shadow in orbit. Thus, they could not have reflected sunlight there. No natural explanation Continue after ad Stockholm University now further explains that individual points of light in old images were long dismissed as defects, even if they looked like real stars. Villarroel now also admits that in many cases it is likely to be noise. However, there seems to be “a real population of phenomena that correlate with nuclear weapons tests or UFO sightings and are absent in Earth's shadow.” Such reflections could not be attributed to asteroids or dust. These would leave long streaks in images with 50 minutes of exposure time. Points of light, on the other hand, must originate from flat objects that briefly reflect sunlight as a flash. Villarroel has been searching for points of light in old images for years , for which there is no equivalent in modern star catalogs. Right from the beginning, the aim was to identify possible traces of extraterrestrial intelligence, in line with the so-called third law of Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So far, however, the astronomer has focused on classifying the points as vanished stars. The idea that they are instead artificial satellites that were orbiting the Earth before the dawn of the space age is new. It remains to be seen what her colleagues will find out now when reviewing the spectacular claims. Read also ( mho ) Don't miss any news – follow us on Facebook , LinkedIn or Mastodon . This article was originally published in German . It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication. Dieser Link ist leider nicht mehr gültig. Links zu verschenkten Artikeln werden ungültig, wenn diese älter als 7 Tage sind oder zu oft aufgerufen wurden. Sie benötigen ein heise+ Paket, um diesen Artikel zu lesen. Jetzt eine Woche unverbindlich testen – ohne Verpflichtung! Source: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Historical-Star-Catalogs-Clues-to-Artificial-Satellites-Before-Sputnik-10902969.html