The research in question involved scientists who examined the glass photographic plates from the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I) conducted prior to the first artificial satellite--from 1949 to 1957. Basically, they were looking for "stars" in the plates that appeared in one photograph of a section of sky, but were absent in subsequent photographs of the same area. After weeding out artifacts due to poor quality scans or dust, "[t]hey found a total of five such transients and they aren't single dots. They are configurations of four, five, and in one case six dots in a row. And one of those with five in a row is dated to July 27th, 1952." The significance of that date is because it was at the height of the Washington D.C. "UFO Flap" where numerous UFOs were spotted on radar or by pilots in the D.C. area.
In addition, the scientists found that the transients were "less likely" to show up in the Earth's shadow, meaning that they were objects that were reflecting sunlight. They also found a strong correlation between the appearance of the transients and nuclear weapon tests. However, the fact that they didn't show up in the Earth's shadow means that it couldn't have been from radioactive fallout.
A couple of the comments were also interesting. One comment read: "Donald Menzel destroyed so many of Harvard Observatory's glass plates and put an embargo on observation in the early 60s." And a follow up comment further explained that the Menzel destroyed the plates dating from the very time period that these researchers were studying. Wikipedia notes on this point:
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. 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. The term "Menzel Gap" was used to refer to the 1953–1968 absence of astronomical photographic plates when plate-making operations were temporarily halted by Menzel as a cost-cutting measure.
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This goes back a few months. Note: a Harvard astronomy department head ordered all the old plates destroyed. Why?
ReplyDeleteHe had been with Naval intelligence, so perhaps that provides an answer to the question.
DeleteAnything to keep the public from seeing Foo Fighters. The more educated ones might just decide that guys like Tesla were right about this whole "aether" thing.
ReplyDelete