I get the sense that this topic is popular because "aliens y'all". It's much more likely to be radiation. It's possible that atomic tests kick luminous particles into the upper atmosphere. But it's not aliens.
But to me the biggest flag is that these images are from 50 minute exposures. The objects don't appear as streaks, so they are either very, very short flashes (much shorter than 50 min), or they are very far away. The authors interpret this to mean the objects should be in geosynchronous orbit, which doesn't make sense; objects in geosync would still appear to move relative to the star background over the course of 50 min. Yet this is the entire basis for their "shadow deficit" window calculation. You could constrain the duration vs distance by looking at the effect it would have on smearing the PSF, which would be interesting.
Overall it seems pretty unscientific. If you go looking through enough statistically noisy data for signals in enough places, you'll eventually find it.
There are other possiblities that are likely: Upper atmosphere tests resulting in transient luminous phenomena. This would be more likey in certain conditions where the sun could reflect off of specular matter (e.g., bits of metal). You would see this most likely within 1-2 hours of sunset or 1-2 hours of sunrise (source: I've used optical equipment to spot satellites professionally).
I'd note that thier pipeline for removing "plate defects" is not based on the PSF but on some vaguely defined "expert review" training. This can, and should, be a quantifiable step.
Couldn’t be aberrations in equipment, like lenses? Or film development?
I've heard "evidence" of aliens my entire life. Guess how many panned out. Zero. But that never seems to discourage anyone from believing that an artifact on a photo must have the most implausible explanation ever - aliens!
Where do you draw the line? Time travel? Teleportation? Astrology? Fortune tellers? Razor blade sharpening? Reincarnation?
Second, and perhaps more importantly, is that there's a detailed criticism of this line of research available, including evidence against the argument that these are more likely ±1 day of nuclear tests. See https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.21946, and also https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.00497 for a study of plate defect issues.
I think the current paper continuing this line of research should be read cautiously. I don't love discounting ideas out of hand, as these folks clearly have put effort into the analysis. But the rebuttals read as at least as high quality analysis, and "it's aliens" requires a lot of evidence for me to take it seriously.
another POV is the paper is sloppy in the parts that matter
Machine Learning goes both ways. A chatbot is not predisposed to ruin aliens enthusiast's days. It just does what it is told to do, like repro a paper, and it can tell you the problems in some limited, but globally important, objective way, and it did, and the paper has problems, and they're basic.
Oh.. uh hold on a second... removes anesthesia mask from patient
Wake up sheeple!
From Wikipedia: "During World War II, Menzel was commissioned as a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy and asked to head a division of intelligence, where he used his many-sided talents, including deciphering enemy codes. Even until 1955, he worked with the Navy improving radio-wave propagation by tracking the Sun's emissions and studying the effect of the aurora on radio propagation for the Department of Defense.[3][4] Returning to Harvard after the war, he was appointed acting director of the Harvard Observatory in 1952, and was the full director from 1954 to 1966. His colleague Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit recalls one of his first actions in the position was asking his secretary to destroy a third of the plates sight unseen, resulting in their permanent loss from the record."
A cost-effective search for extraterrestrial probes in the Solar system
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/546/2/staf1158/822188...
*Not an actual quote
Anyone who has read any amount of history from this time should know that this is very simply not possible.
This statment is unfalsifiable in the same way that "I'm a six-legged alien from Venus typing this message from orbit" is unfalsifiable. It's just flat nonsense.
On the papers, it doesn't mean that it must be aliens, but weird phenomena.
With an implied subtext: "We aren't going to show why it's aliens, but trust us, we're experts."
Assume for a moment their core hypothesis is correct, there were transient objects captured on film pre-Sputnik in LEO objects.
What might we say about their nature?
The authors' undisguised implication is "it's aliens" to be blunt; that's their motivation for this work.
Consequently they put effort (which may not be noted in the final published papers...) into the question of whether they could make any meaningful inference about the geometry and spectral properties of their "transients," their interest (of course) was that if they could make a meaningful argument for regular geometry, they had the story of the century in effect.
These efforts failed totally.
A natural inference might be, among the reasons this might be, is that the objects (remember we are assuming they exist) do not have such characteristics. The primary reason that would be true is if they were naturally occurring objects.
I looked this up and was surprised to learn that there are currently estimated to be on the order of a million small objects in the inner solar system.
So: the entire hypothesis hinges on "significant correlation with nuclear testing." Because otherwise, once can reasonably assume that transient traces of objects—when they are actually traces of objects—would in a quotidian way presumably be caused by some of these million objects.
Or so say I.
There is no end of peculiar and provacative history and data in UFOlogy, and even more murk; one needs to tread very carefully to not go down (or, be led down) to false conclusions, disinformation, and the like.
The authors of this paper seem singularly disinterested in that caution.
which regularly situates what they are willing to say in print, within unsupported and click-bait-worthy speculation.
Another example of bad faith: curve-fitting around what constitutes "nuclear testing."