Publications

Bruehl, S. & Villarroel, B. (2025)

Scientific Reports, Vol. 15, 15, 34125, 20. October 2025
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-21620-3
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(Open access)

Transient star-like objects of unknown origin have been identified in the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I) conducted prior to the first artificial satellite. We tested speculative hypotheses that some transients are related to nuclear weapons testing or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) reports. A dataset comprising daily data (11/19/49—4/28/57) regarding identified transients, nuclear testing, and UAP reports was created (n = 2,718 days). Results revealed significant (p = .008) associations between nuclear testing and observed transients, with transients 45% more likely on dates within + /- 1 day of nuclear testing. For days on which at least one transient was identified, significant associations were noted between total number of transients and total number of independent UAP reports per date (p = 0.015). For every additional UAP reported on a given date, there was an 8.5% increase in number of transients identified. Small but significant (p = .008) associations between nuclear testing and number of UAP reports were also noted. Findings suggest associations beyond chance between occurrence of transients and both nuclear testing and UAP reports. These findings may help elucidate the nature of POSS-I transients and strengthen empirical support for the UAP phenomenon.

Villarroel, B. et al. (2025)

Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 137, 104504, 17. October 2025
https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/ae0afe
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(Open access)

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. and use a transient sample drawn from Solano et al. 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 ∼3.9σ 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. The deficit is still present though at reduced significance (∼7.6σ) 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 data sets.

Powell, R. (2025)

World Futures, 14. June 2025
https://doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2025.2518485
(Not open access)

Our nascent search for advanced extraterrestrial life is driven by humanity’s anthropocentric tendencies. These tendencies must change to a more open-minded, multi-faceted, and scientifically rigorous approach to solve one of humanity’s most profound questions: Are we alone in the universe? This question is addressed from both a deductive and inductive perspective. Science’s approach to this question is changing, new paradigms will be needed, and an answer to this question may provide us with a new view of ourselves.

Vallée, J. F., L. Dini, G. Mestchersky (2025)

Progress in Aerospace Sciences Vol. 156, 101098
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paerosci.2025.101098
(Not open access)

An exceptional observation of an anomalous object, recorded as ‘unidentified’ by the US Air Force and in the 1969 final report of the University of Colorado (“Condon”) study of UAPs, has been re-examined by a Franco-American scientific team. The observation took place on the evening of December 30, 1966, on an isolated highway traversing a forest near Haynesville, Louisiana. Early in 1967 the main witness, a professor of atomic physics named Louie A. Galloway, reported the case to Project Blue Book of the USAF. Pro-active investigation by one of the authors (JV) brought it to the attention of Professor Edward Condon, himself a noted atomist who had worked under Project Manhattan. Dr. Condon and his team had just begun an official re-examination of UFO (UAP) phenomena under funding of the US Air Force. The case, which centered on a well-defined luminous object at ground level, led to energy estimates from 500 to 1400 MW, in the range of a small modern nuclear power plant. Significantly, it was one of a number of cases carried as ‘Unidentified’ in Dr. Condon’s final report to the National Academy of Sciences in 1969. Subsequent to that Academy report, significant work was continued at the site by civilian investigators who confirmed the data, augmented by night photography flights. The team returned to the area with the primary witness, located the exact place of observation and gathered new data, notably about the nature of burns evidenced on the trees, which had not been available to Dr. Condon and his assistants. Samples of the burned and intact bark were obtained by our own team, and they were preserved until it became possible to properly analyze the material. The burn analysis data presented here was obtained at the laboratories of the French Atomic Energy Commission in Saclay, France. We present our results with the understanding that the study will benefit from further discussion within the larger scientific community.

Domine, L., A. Biswas, R. Cloete, A. Delacroix, A. Fedorenko, L. Jacaruso, E. Kelderman, Eric Keto, S. Little, A. Loeb, E. Masson, M. Prior, F. Schultz, M. Szenher, W. A. Watters, and A. White (2025)

Sensors Vol. 25, No. 3, 783.
https://doi.org/10.3390/s25030783
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To date there is little publicly available scientific data on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) whose properties and kinematics purportedly reside outside the performance envelope of known phenomena. To address this deficiency, the Galileo Project is designing, building, and commissioning a multi-modal ground-based observatory to continuously monitor the sky and conduct a rigorous long-term aerial census of all aerial phenomena, including natural and human-made. One of the key instruments is an all-sky infrared camera array using eight uncooled long-wave infrared FLIR Boson 640 cameras. Their calibration includes a novel extrinsic calibration method using airplane positions from Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data. We establish a first baseline for the system performance over five months of field operation, using a real-world dataset derived from ADS-B data, synthetic 3-D trajectories, and a hand-labelled real-world dataset. We report acceptance rates (e.g. viewable airplanes that are recorded) and detection efficiencies (e.g. recorded airplanes which are successfully detected) for a variety of weather conditions, range and aircraft size. We reconstruct ∼500,000 trajectories of aerial objects from this commissioning period. A toy outlier search focused on large sinuosity of the 2-D reconstructed trajectories flags about 16% of trajectories as outliers. After manual review, 144 trajectories remain ambiguous: they are likely mundane objects but cannot be elucidated at this stage of development without distance and kinematics estimation or other sensor modalities. Our observed count of ambiguous outliers combined with systematic uncertainties yields an upper limit of 18,271 outliers count for the five-month interval at a 95% confidence level. This likelihood-based method to evaluate significance is applicable to all of our future outlier searches.

Knuth, K. H., et al. (2025)

Progress in Aerospace Sciences. Vol. 156.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paerosci.2025.101097

After decades of dismissal and secrecy, it has become clear that a significant number of the world’s governments take Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena (UAP), formerly known as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), seriously—yet still seem to know little about them. As a result, these phenomena are increasingly attracting the attention of scientists around the world, some of whom have recently formed research efforts to monitor and scientifically study UAP. In this paper, we review and summarize approximately 20 historical government studies dating from 1933 to the present (in Scandinavia, WWII, US, Canada, France, Russia, China), several historical private research studies (France, UK, US), and both recent and current scientific research efforts (Ireland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, US). In doing so, our objective is to clarify the existing global and historical scientific narrative around UAP. Studies range from field station development and deployment to the collection and analysis of witness reports from around the world. We dispel the common misconception that UAPs are an American phenomenon and show that UAP can be, and have been, scientifically investigated. Our aim here is to enable future studies to draw on the great depth of prior documented experience.

Grosvenor, S., L. J. Hancock, and I. M. Porritt (2025)

Limina – The Journal of UAP Studies Vol. 2, No. 1, 109-128.
https://doi.org/10.59661/001c.131854
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This paper provides an assessment of indicators associated with Unidentified
Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) reports included in the SCU Pattern Recognition Study (Hancock et al., 2023a) [SEE BELOW]. The Pattern Recognition study analyzed UAP incidents geographically proximal to US military installations between 1945 and 1975. A set of 590 comprehensively documented UAP reports from this period were collected from select sources, including Project Blue Book.
Study sites included: 1) atomic materials production, 2) atomic weapons assembly, 3) atomic weapons stockpiles, 4) atomic weapons deployment, and 5) rocket/missile testing and development. The Pattern Recognition Study concluded that intelligent and focused activity was associated with UAP at atomic facilities to a greater degree than conventional non-atomic military facilities. Further study of the UAP activity frequency, type and pattern indicated the need to assess possible intentions relating to information collection, obstruction of military activities, and aggressive engagement. An additional 284 incidents were examined based on relevant UAP activity, for a total of 874 incidents. A list of indicators was created and mapped to four major scenarios for assessment. Based on the analysis of indications for UAP incidents included for this study, an Atomic Weapons Survey was indicated as the most likely scenario. The less likely scenarios were General Military Survey, Atomic Warfare Prevention and Military Aggression respectively.

Guthrie, D. (2025)

Harvard National Security Journal. Vol. 16. No. 1. Download.

Once dismissed for decades, the topic of unidentified anomalous phenomena (“UAP”), previously labeled as unidentified aerial phenomena and unidentified flying objects (“UFOs”), now attracts the sustained attention of Congress. In the annual U.S. defense and intelligence authorization measure enacted in each of the last four years, lawmakers have included bipartisan provisions tightening oversight of this matter. One Senate-passed UAP bill would even have directed the federal government to exercise eminent domain over any “technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence.” Relenting to this pressure, the national security establishment has grudgingly acknowledged that UAP are not the “illusions” Secretary McNamara told Congress about but real—and that they may challenge national security. So, who knew what about UAP when? Meanwhile, researchers at Harvard University, Stanford University, and elsewhere have begun to study these phenomena in earnest. This Article cannot determine whether UAP are natural occurrences, drones, secret U.S. or foreign advanced technologies, something else entirely, or some combination of these possible explanations. But legal and policy analyses have not kept pace with these developments, leaving a chasm rather than a foundation upon which legislators, other policymakers, academia, and the business community may build.
This Article begins to fill that space by studying UAP statutes and related governmental actions in five areas. First, this Article surveys congressional efforts to refine the historically laden definitions of these phenomena, shaping governmental efforts that hinge on the overarching import of these terms. Second, the activities of a novel office within the Department of Defense created to gather, analyze, and report to Congress on UAP data are evaluated, together with other U.S. governmental and international actors. Third, requirements providing for the gradual, if uncertain, declassification and public disclosure of UAP governmental records are discussed. Fourth, this Article analyzes one mechanism Congress created for persons to allege without retaliation that the government or contractors may be conducting secret UAP retrieval, research, reverse-engineering, or similar activities. Fifth, implications for contractors and others of prior statutory prohibitions against federal funding of any such unauthorized UAP activities are assessed. What emerges does not paint a full picture given the secrecy, ridicule, and conspiracism that continue to pall any serious discussion of UAP. But, by charting the strange waters of these UAP laws, this Article hopes to indicate routes of passage along which future legislation, policy, and scholarship may be ventured—if not free from hazard, then at least with a map.

Szydagis, M., Knuth, K. H., Kugielsky, B. W., Levy, C. (2024)

Submitted.
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2312.00558
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In July 2021, faculty from the UAlbany Department of Physics participated in a week-long field expedition with the organization UAPx to collect data on UAPs in Avalon, California, located on Catalina Island, and nearby. This paper reviews both the hardware and software techniques which this collaboration employed, and contains a frank discussion of the successes and failures, with a section about how to apply lessons learned to future expeditions. Both observable-light and infrared cameras were deployed, as well as sensors for other (non-EM) emissions. A pixel-subtraction method was augmented with other similarly simple methods to provide initial identification of objects in the sky and/or the sea crossing the cameras’ fields of view. The first results will be presented based upon approximately one hour in total of triggered visible/night-vision-mode video and over 600 hours of un-triggered (far) IR video recorded, as well as 55 hours of (background) radiation measurements. Following multiple explanatory resolutions of several ambiguities that were potentially anomalous at first, we focus on the primary remaining ambiguity captured at approximately 4am Pacific Time on Friday, July 16: a dark spot in the visible/near-IR camera possibly coincident with ionizing radiation that has so far resisted prosaic explanation. We conclude with quantitative suggestions (3-5 sigma rules) for serious researchers in the still-maligned field of hard-science-based UAP studies, with an ultimate goal of identifying UAPs without confirmation bias toward mundane / speculative conclusions.

Bohlander, M. (2024)

Journal of Anomalistics, Vol. 24, No. 2. 427-468.
https://doi.org/10.23793/zfa.2024.427

The reluctance of the vast majority of SETI researchers to take non-repeatable personal alien encounter narratives into account is a staple trope in the alien encounter debate. However, the proof of the pudding would seem to lie in investigating the very practical consequences of the use of encounter testimony of all sorts in legal proceedings, for example, when examining how courts would react to a claim that somebody had a car accident because she was buzzed by a UFO or distracted by a sighting while driving etc. The German Federal Court of Justice in the famous “Sirius” case already had occasion to test the impact of a victim’s firmly held belief in the alien origin of a fraudster on the latter’s criminal liability. In the age of increasingly ubiquitous dashcam footage, for example, we might now even have new sources of evidence to complement the personal narrative. The paper will engage with the rules of the holistic evaluation of evidence in court proceedings and take a look at the principles of forensic witness psychology and how the interplay might influence the outcome of a case in real life. After an initial survey of past court cases involving alien encounters of any kind, it will focus on the German legal system, because trial judges there have to give extensive reasons for their judgment, and there is no “black box” of secret jury deliberations, and because the author will be able to draw on his own experience as a German trial and appellate judge..

Tedesco, J. J. and Tedesco, G. T. (2024)

Open Journal of Applied Sciences, Vol. 14, No. 8. 2267-2295.
https://doi.org/10.4236/ojapps.2024.148152

A ten-month field research study was meticulously conducted at Robert Moses State Park (RMSP) on the south shore of Long Island, NY. The objective was to determine if aerial phenomena of an unknown nature exist over a coastal location and to characterize their properties and behaviors. Primary and secondary field observation methods were utilized in this data-centric study. Forensic engineering principles and methodologies guided the study. The challenges set forward were object detection, observation, and characterization, where multispectral electro-optical devices and radar were employed due to limited visual acuity and intermittent presentation of the phenomena. The primary means of detection utilized a 3 cm X-band radar operating in two scan geometries, the X- and Y-axis. Multispectral electro-optical devices were utilized as a secondary means of detection and identification. Data was emphasized using HF and LF detectors and spectrum analyzers incorporating EM, ultrasonic, magnetic, and RF field transducers to record spectral data in these domains. Data collection concentrated on characterizing VIS, NIR, SWIR, LWIR, UVA, UVB, UVC, and the higher energy spectral range of ionizing radiation (alpha, beta, gamma, and X-ray) recorded by Geiger-Müller counters as well as special purpose semiconductor diode sensors.

Tedesco, J. J. and Tedesco, G. T. (2024)

Open Journal of Applied Sciences, Vol. 14, No. 12. 3618-3648.
https://doi.org/10.4236/ojapps.2024.1412238

This research study represents an ongoing research effort on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) with a focus on anomalous propagation of radar echo returns, mirroring established theoretical constructs of gravitational effects on light, which occur at higher frequencies and shorter wavelengths within the Electromagnetic Spectrum. These influences are also illustrated through other technologies, including Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and the chromatic effects captured by hyperspectral cameras. This research addresses the complexities of interpreting unusual propagation patterns, such as Long Delay Echoes (LDE) and unexpected Field Echoes (UFE), which disrupt the anticipated propagation and echo protocols, thereby challenging our understanding and comprehension of radio transmission norms that may be influenced by a form of quantum entanglement. The paper posits a significant and largely unexamined correlation between these phenomena in the context of UAP activity, highlighting the urgent need for further research and innovative strategies in navigation technology and environmental monitoring to investigate these potential occurrences, which have remained enigmatic for nearly a century. Radar signals are vulnerable to intricate dynamics that can lead to Unusual Field Echoes (UFE), resulting in emergent anomalies, such as Multiple echo returns and LDEs. This study employed a 3-centimeter marine-based X-band radar operating in two scan geometries and a portable short-range millimeter-wave Doppler radar system. An analysis of these radar echoes over a two-year study identified signal propagation that deviated from navigational standards on Plan Position Indicators (PPI). This paper explores and investigates the potential impacts of UAP on radar transmission routes. Examining these complexities makes a case for an enhanced understanding of the interactions between established technological factors and elusive aerial phenomena.