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Study Claims 1950s Photographs Show Unexplained Disappearing Objects

2025-08-27 Science & Technology
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Anton Petrov
Anton Petrov
1.6m subscribers

Mysterious Vanishing Stars Found in Pre-Sputnik Astronomical Data

Explore the puzzling discovery of celestial objects that appeared and vanished decades ago, long before modern satellite interference. Determine if this points to unknown astrophysics or merely artifacts in early photographic records.

Short Summary

  • Researchers analyzed decades-old sky surveys (like POSS) compared against modern data (Gaia/Pan Stars) to find transient events.
  • Initial findings yielded 5,400 unexplained transients, suggesting either new astrophysical phenomena or systematic errors in old plates.
  • The primary counterargument focused on sharp object profiles and a significant absence of events inside Earth's shadow, supporting a reflective, non-instrumental origin.
  • Major criticisms center on potential statistical flaws, confirmation bias from the originating team favoring "alien" conclusions, and the known unreliability of photographic plates.
  • The current scientific assessment leans toward instrument flaws (like nuclear fallout effects or plate imperfections) over exotic explanations, though the exact nature remains unknown.

This focused international project, VASCO, rigorously vets transient events captured before 1957 to eliminate modern contamination. While the data presents statistically striking patterns—like alignments and shadow effects—skeptics argue these signals suffer from confirmation bias and questionable statistical methodology regarding known plate quality challenges.

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Description

Support this channel on Patreon to help me make this a full time job: https://www.patreon.com/whatdamath (Unreleased videos, extra footage, DMs, no ads) Alternatively, PayPal donations can be sent here: http://paypal.me/whatdamath Get a Wonderful Person Tee: https://teespring.com/stores/whatdamath More cool designs are on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3QFIrFX Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394040040_Aligned_multiple-transient_events_in_the_First_Palomar_Sky_Survey https://skyserver.sdss.org/dr5/en/proj/advanced/skysurveys/poss.asp https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.15896 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.00907 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.09035 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ab570f/pdf https://vascoproject.org/ Part 2 video: https://youtu.be/qFGiDyAx0F4 Edwin Hubble and Andromeda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=NvNyU6ExSrA 0:00 Mystery of vanishing stars - VASCO project 1:15 POSS I survey timeline 2:45 What VASCO project is focusing on and what it found 5:40 Potential explanation - emulsion flaw? 7:45 Earth's shadow test 10:00 What could this be? ALIENS? 10:40 Skeptical explanations 11:40 Major criticisms and issues with the analysis 13:50 Conclusions and what's next Enjoy and please subscribe Bitcoin/Ethereum to spare? Donate them here to help this channel grow! bc1qnkl3nk0zt7w0xzrgur9pnkcduj7a3xxllcn7d4 or ETH: 0x60f088B10b03115405d313f964BeA93eF0Bd3DbF Thank you to all Patreon supporters of this channel Special thanks also goes to all the wonderful supporters of the channel through YouTube Memberships Credit: Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen Roy Boshi CC BY-SA 3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_and_restoration_of_photographic_plates#/media/File:Glass_plate_negative.jpg Licenses used: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ and relevant Creative Commons licenses

Top Comments (10)

@kenyonmoon3272 2025-08-28

She did a couple great interviews on the Event Horizon channel for anyone wanting to hear her talk about it from her perspective.

233 13 replies
@whatdamath 2025-08-27

Hello wonderful person! This is a 2 part video with the second part coming out real soon and mostly focusing on the critical analysis of the photographic plates used in this study. You can find it here: https://youtu.be/qFGiDyAx0F4 Still not aliens

199 65 replies
@Hirome_Satou 2025-08-27

The Universe ran out of memory, so it had to cull some objects.

151 8 replies
@tedantares2751 2025-08-27

That's why it makes sense to take the pictures of the night sky in pairs, using two cameras and maybe even two telescopes at the same time - to exclude noise and defects in the photographic emulsion or in the light sensor

85 28 replies
@TimesEnd 2025-10-21

Hello Anton, please can you provide an update on this case, it’s been peer reviewed twice. It’s looks very unusual

5
@amycollins8832 2025-08-27

Thank you, Anton. I was kind of disturbed their are certain parties trying to imply the transients are proof visiting ETs in the sky. There are multiple possibilities to be ruled out before we even get near this neighborhood of discussion. We could get into a deep dive about the plates that were discarded - the "Menzel Gap."

3
@romanreid8360 2025-08-28

I would have never expect Anton to even cover this story. It's a start

2
@GoEagles-n3v 2026-03-20

it's nice to see channels with integrity that do not jump on the ufo grift

1
@heepajunk 2025-08-28

Thanks for reviewing this fascinating work, even after my request to review this was deleted.

1
@cfrandre8319 2025-10-27

Thank you, Professor Petrov. Best regards!

0

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