Beatriz Villarroel

Last week, the Beyond Institute held its first session in Stockholm, Sweden.

It was co-founded by astronomer Beatrice Villarroel and explorer Dennis Asperg.

Jake Barber joined by remote call and showed a video that wasn't really meant for public release.

According to Ross, Barber made a claim he had never made in public before.

I'm your host, Ross Coulthart, and today I'm, uh, very, very pleased to welcome two scientists who've been pursuing one of the strangest astronomical mysteries to emerge from the photographic record of the pre-Sputnik era.

Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, she's an old friend of the program, an astrophysicist and assistant professor at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, Nordita, in Stockholm.

She received her PhD in astronomy from Uppsala University and has held research positions at institutions including ETH Zurich and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

She's also the founder and leader of VASCO, Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations, which is a project that searches historical astronomic surveys for objects that appear, disappear, or otherwise behave in ways that merit further investigation.