Professor Avi Loeb (Host)

And so any supplementary information that supports the idea that there were things in the sky before Sputnik that were not U-2 test flights, but something else, you know, that would be very helpful.

And even before the 50s, why 50s?

I mean, astronomy started a long time ago.

It's just that the photographic plates were available for Vasco group to look into, but maybe the government has previous data.

So, yeah, definitely we should consider that.

But the problem with all the past reports, and that's really a limitation, is that you cannot go back in time and get better data.

We can't go to the pre-Sputnik era and then collect much better data.

Because whatever we have is what...

what we can use and the the way to make progress is actually getting new data of higher quality with the better sensors we have now so one thing i can tell you that if the world there was a fleet of satellites of the type that is being considered in the 1950s okay if the same type of satellites were in existence today they would have raised a big alarm within the intelligence agencies

Why?

Because we will not be able to associate them with a particular country.

And then immediately there would be the question of where do they come from?

Are they spying on us?

And nowadays we can take a lot of data that would reveal the nature of these satellites.

I'm sure, I mean, it sounds to me like common sense that if the intelligence agencies had information on hundreds or thousands of satellites, irrespective of what is the altitude, irrespective, they would have seen them in deep images that we are collecting these days.

And they would not need to rely on glints.

They would just be able to see them even if there are no glints.

And then they would immediately investigate who do they belong to, because I'm sure there is a list somewhere at ODNI, at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, of all the satellites that were employed ever by humans.

All of them are known.

And if there was a fleet of hundreds or thousands of satellites right now that are not recognized, there would be a lot of people studying them.