Critical Evaluation of Studies Alleging Evidence for Technosignatures in the POSS1-E Photographic Plates

TL;DR

This paper critically evaluates claims of potential technosignatures in historical photographic plates, finding no strong evidence for artificial origins and highlighting dataset inconsistencies and artifacts.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous reanalysis of previous datasets, demonstrating the lack of supporting evidence for technosignatures and exposing methodological issues in earlier studies.

Findings

No observed deficit of features within Earth's shadow.

Linear clusters are often indistinguishable from catalog stars.

Correlation with nuclear tests is explained by observation schedules.

Abstract

Recent studies by B. Villarroel and colleagues have assembled and analyzed datasets of unidentified features measured from digital scans of photographic plates captured by the first-epoch Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS1) in the pre-Sputnik era. These studies have called attention to (i) a purported deficit of features within Earth's shadow; (ii) the sporadic presence of linear clusters; and (iii) a positive correlation between the timing of feature observations and nuclear tests as well as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) sighting reports. These observations were cited as evidence that some fraction of the unidentified features represent glinting artificial objects near Earth. We have examined these claims using two related, previously published datasets. When analyzing the most vetted of these, we do not observe the reported deficit in the terrestrial shadow. We determine that a third of the features in the reported linear clusters were not confidently distinguished from catalog stars. We find that the reported correlation between the timing of feature observations and nuclear tests becomes insignificant after properly normalizing by the number of observation days, and is almost completely determined by the observation schedule of the Palomar telescope. We uncover important inconsistencies in the definitions of the datasets used in these studies, as well as the use of unvalidated datasets containing catalog stars, scan artifacts, and plate defects. It has not been shown that any of the features in these datasets represent optical transients. We examine the spatial distribution of the plate-derived features, finding an overall gradual increase in number density toward the corners and edges of plates, as well as examples of (i) empty north-south strips that span multiple plates; (ii) clusters and voids having geometric shapes; and (iii) amorphous clusters.