Old Sky Plates Show Flashes Clustered Before Atomic Tests, Reddit Poster Says

THE INTERNET — A Reddit user posting to r/HighStrangeness has drawn the attention of fellow forum members to a paper in the journal Scientific Reports, which examines curious points of light found on astronomical photographs from the 1950s.

According to the post, astronomers of that decade made many long-exposure photographs of the night sky. On certain plates, small star-like points appear that are absent from the next exposure taken shortly afterward and match no known star or object. The post says these have been termed "transients."

The author writes that researchers compared the dates of the flashes with the dates of American, Soviet and British nuclear tests. The flashes were reportedly significantly more common in the day or so before a test, especially around 24 hours ahead of one. The poster adds that researchers used machine learning to remove likely plate defects and scratches, and that the pattern grew stronger, which makes simple film flaws a less likely explanation.

A second finding is described as a "shadow deficit." The post says that fewer flashes appear in the portion of sky lying in Earth's shadow. If they were distant stars or random blemishes, the author reasons, they ought to be spread evenly. Their absence there suggests to the poster sunlight glinting off objects at roughly high or geosynchronous orbit, which vanish when they pass into the planet's shadow.

The poster's summary concludes that real objects near Earth may be producing the flashes and growing more active before tests, "almost as if something is silently watching us." The author concedes, however, that the paper is careful, reports only statistical patterns, and says they deserve further study. The post itself offers no mundane explanation beyond the plate defects the researchers sought to screen out, and the paper was not reviewed here beyond the poster's account.