Alien UFOs spotted?

Yes we should take Villarroel's findings seriously

Recently we've seen independent confirmation of Villarroel's findings, with the latest out yesterday. For those whom usually dismiss talk of UFOs as conspiratorial quackery (which I assume will be most of my readers), last year Beatriz Villarroel and coauthors parsed through the earliest astronomical images using modern algorithms optimising pattern spotting, and discovered transients in space observed pre-Sputnik, correlated with reported UFO sightings. Here's the abstract:

“Old, digitized astronomical images taken before the human spacefaring age offer a rare glimpse of the sky before the era of artificial satellites. In this paper, we present the first optical searches for artificial objects with high specular reflections near the Earth. We follow the method proposed in Villarroel et al. (2022) and use a transient sample drawn from Solano et al. (2022). We use images from the First Palomar Sky Survey to search for multiple (within a plate exposure) transients that, in addition to being point-like, are aligned along a narrow band. We provide a shortlist of the most promising candidate alignments, including one with 3.9 sigma statistical significance. These aligned transients remain difficult to explain with known phenomena, even if rare optical ghosting producing point-like sources cannot be fully excluded at present. We explore remaining possibilities, including fast reflections from highly reflective objects in geosynchronous orbit, or emissions from artificial sources high above Earth's atmosphere. We also find a highly significant (∼22σ) deficit of POSS-I transients within Earth's shadow when compared with the theoretical hemispheric shadow coverage at 42,164 km altitude. This deficit is still present though at reduced significance (~7.6 sigma) when a more realistic plate-based coverage is considered. This study should be viewed as an initial exploration into the potential of archival photographic surveys to reveal transient phenomena, and we hope it motivates more systematic searches across historical datasets.”

In particular, the novelty in these findings is in the methodology used to test for possible UFOs. Rather than simply count all pre-Sputnik transients (vulnerable to measurement errors and interference, or random noise in the atmosphere¹), they exploited the geosynchronous orbit and isolated the effects of Earth's shadow. For any given orbit, we can calculate whether the Earth blocks sunlight at a particular point. If transients arise from glints, we should see far more transients in regions exposed to sunlight relative to within the shadow.

This is indeed the case, using the rate at which we'd expect transients in the same spot in the absence of shadow. As Robin Hanson noted, the discrepancy between this rate and actual observations (around 2/3) is roughly the same for two orbits at different radiuses, so our findings are consistent with the constraints from math. This discrepancy, from our calculations, also gives the expected number of transients that are glints.

Moreover, Hanson calculates (adjusting for advances in telescopes) that these are likely to be flat objects:

“At GEO it would take an ideal ~22-35 cm diameter circle (perfectly flat, aligned, and reflective) to create a magnitude 15-16 image in these photos from a 0.04 sec glint. (Or so says ChatGPT5.) For magnitude 17-19, that changes to an ideal 6-14 cm circle. Objects less than perfectly flat, aligned, or reflective, or with shorter duration glints, would have to be larger. Objects close to Earth could have smaller areas due to that, but would also have to be larger due to closer objects orbiting faster.

Thus while today Earth sees ~1800 glints per hour off of the roughly ~1-2cm equivalent diameter ideal circle sized human satellites and debris, in the decade before Sputnik, the space around Earth generated ~340 glints per hour mostly from brief (<0.04s) glints of sunlight off of at least roughly 6-14cm equivalent ideal circles. While this makes the older glint distribution seem different from today’s, note that the older telescope couldn’t see the fainter glints that today’s telescopes can see. So the two distributions might actually be the same.”

Therefore we can plausibly rule out random atmospheric or measurement disturbances, at least at the distances involved. Whilst the possibility of these transients being cosmic ray flashes is very much alive, the correlation with nuclear tests is consistent with alien civilisations subtly² warning us about the existential risks involved for us and possibly extraterrestrial civilisation. On a more general note, it's useful to discipline our thinking by considering the incentives alien civilisations have to communicate with us in only a discreet manner - interpreted by (possibly) only top militaries. It seems odd that aliens wouldn't want to make themselves known right? Hanson³ arrives at similar conclusions to mine, with an added emphasis on our likelihood of casting them in the out-group should they attempt peaceful communication⁴.

Ergo if you accept these findings (it's worth noting that some have failed to replicate Villarroel's results, so admittedly the findings are noisy⁵), the very high likelihood of these transients being glints pre-Sputnik should update your priors. What are the odds that these glint observations are timed coincidentially with reports or nuclear tests⁶?

In any case, a reasonable base rate for our priors regarding the number of alien civilisations communication is possible with, is of course constrained by the Drake equation. Given the billions of stars and planets in the Milky Way, even tiny increases in the probability of extraterrestrial life (which nascent discoveries of biosignatures have confirmed⁷) massively increases this number. Assuming heterogeneity in technological development, surely at least some yield the ability to communicate across multiple light-years? So why should our priors be that the number of suspected reportings are in fact alien UFOs are zero? In my view, the burden of proof rests on those that discount this possibility.

1. The Palomar telescope used plates sensitive to both red and blue light, so electromagnetic dynamics could distort the observed findings).

2. Subtle as to not generate future retaliation nor to be interpreted as signs of aggression. This hypothesis would be consistent with the classic military conspiracy where knowledge of aliens is silenced with stark penalties for whistleblowing, in order to not “alarm” the world or countries outside the military frontier.

3. I dislike appeal to authority arguments, but with the “Great Filter” hypothesis, Hanson has made important advancements in astronomy as well as in economics. In this respect he's somewhat of a polymath, and an expert in this topic. Hence the existence of alien UFOs visible from Earth yields support from credible academic and scientific figures with the relevant credentials, not just the usual assortment of cranks and conspiracy theorists.

4. Read the history of European discovery of the new world, and they weren't welcomed by indigenous civilisations either, even with trading opportunities and without forced conquest or slavery. Arguably entrenched popular opposition to globalisation (freer trade and migration) is itself a relic of our aversion to other civilisations.

5. Notwithstanding the fact that σ rather than p-values is our test for significance here, which is a much higher bar.

6. One hypothesis noted in the last paper I cited suggests that, given that telescopes don't observe on all days, the correlation arises from the fact that the observation schedule was coincidentially aligned with the dates of nuclear tests. Yet there's independent replication of this correlation too, suggesting some level of invariance once normalising for observation days?

7. I forgot to hyperlink to my Substacks showing these findings. I can't seem to hyperlink on the edits, which requires going into the Chrome browser rather than the app. You can find the relevant links here: https://open.substack.com/pub/microfounded/p/what-i-have-been-reading-mid-september?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=56swa

https://open.substack.com/pub/microfounded/p/what-i-have-been-reading-october?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=56swa

https://open.substack.com/pub/microfounded/p/what-i-have-been-reading-mid-october?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=56swa

https://open.substack.com/pub/microfounded/p/mid-december-2025-links?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=56swa