Sep 24, 2026 · 14 min · 9 segments
In 1950, before Sputnik, before NASA, and before a single known artificial satellite was orbiting Earth… something appeared in the sky. Astronomer Dr Beatriz Villarroel and her team have been…
This is Dr. Beatrice Villarreal.
She's an astronomer.
She's a scientific rock star.
She's our royalty and I won't have a bad word said about her.
Now for years she's been poking around in a corner of astronomy that frankly deserves a lot more attention than it gets from podcasters and content creators.
looking to fill their next one hour slot for that ad revenue fix.
Because Viorel studies things in old photographs of the sky, in a lab coat, proper work.
And the things in these photos, well, they disappear.
There, then they're gone.
They're called transients.
And Viorel did something rather clever.
Instead of looking forwards, she went backwards.
Back before satellites, back before space junk, back before Elon Musk had half of the sky filled with his starlings, back before humanity had officially put anything into orbit at all she looked at the photographs taken before the space age and guess what they're there too which is inconvenient now if this was one little flash on one old photograph fine dust film defect cosmic ray whatever you fancy except some of these things these transients aren't turning up on their own they've brought friends and in some cases they appear aligned one flash fine two Interesting.
Several appearing together.
Now you've got my attention.
Because remember, what we're talking about here, this isn't some geezer in the desert pointing an iPhone at a fuzzy light in the sky shouting, Mate, are you seeing this?
Oh, shoot a star! Whoa! Whoa!
These are astronomical observations captured decades ago, stored away long before anybody knew Dr. V would come along and start asking awkward questions about them.
Nobody made these photographs to prove UFOs exist.
Nobody made them for disclosure.
The evidence came first.
The mystery turned up 70 years later, and this is where things wander very firmly into UAP files territory.
because researchers started looking at the dates and things got interesting some of these transients even appear around dates associated with historical reports of ufos previous research has reported statistical associations between the paloma transients historical uap reports and nuclear testing now think about what that potentially gives us two completely different sources of information.
On the ground, people are looking up and saying there's something up there.
This is Dr. Beatrice Villarreal.
She's an astronomer.
She's a scientific rock star.
She's our royalty and I won't have a bad word said about her.
Now for years she's been poking around in a corner of astronomy that frankly deserves a lot more attention than it gets from podcasters and content creators.
looking to fill their next one hour slot for that ad revenue fix.
Because Viorel studies things in old photographs of the sky, in a lab coat, proper work.
And the things in these photos, well, they disappear.
There, then they're gone.
They're called transients.
And Viorel did something rather clever.
Instead of looking forwards, she went backwards.
Back before satellites, back before space junk, back before Elon Musk had half of the sky filled with his starlings, back before humanity had officially put anything into orbit at all she looked at the photographs taken before the space age and guess what they're there too which is inconvenient now if this was one little flash on one old photograph fine dust film defect cosmic ray whatever you fancy except some of these things these transients aren't turning up on their own they've brought friends and in some cases they appear aligned one flash fine two Interesting.
Several appearing together.
Now you've got my attention.
Because remember, what we're talking about here, this isn't some geezer in the desert pointing an iPhone at a fuzzy light in the sky shouting, Mate, are you seeing this?
Oh, shoot a star! Whoa! Whoa!
These are astronomical observations captured decades ago, stored away long before anybody knew Dr. V would come along and start asking awkward questions about them.
Nobody made these photographs to prove UFOs exist.
Nobody made them for disclosure.
The evidence came first.
The mystery turned up 70 years later, and this is where things wander very firmly into UAP files territory.
because researchers started looking at the dates and things got interesting some of these transients even appear around dates associated with historical reports of ufos previous research has reported statistical associations between the paloma transients historical uap reports and nuclear testing now think about what that potentially gives us two completely different sources of information.
On the ground, people are looking up and saying there's something up there.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.