2023-11-03 07:00:14
Proof of extraterrestrial technology, Dyson sphere, bug in the simulation… or simply a photographic artifact? A mysterious phenomenon observed in 1952 resurfaces. At the time, the Palomar Observatory had photographed three stars which disappeared in less than an hour (The hour is a unit of measurement of time. The word also designates size…). An enigma that still intrigues scientists.
The mysterious disappearance of three stars. Credit: Palomar/Solano Observatory, et al.
On July 19, 1952, the Palomar Observatory conducted a photographic survey of the night sky. At 8:52 p.m., a photographic plate captured the light of three nearby stars. Less than an hour later, they had completely disappeared. Stars don’t disappear like that. They can explode or go out, but the total disappearance is unexplained.
Subsequent observations found no trace of stars up to magnitude 24. So they should have gone out by a factor of of 10,000 or more. A possible explanation is that it was not three stars, but just one. A stellar black hole might have passed between it and us, creating a gravitational lens effect (Gravitational lenses distort the image we receive from an astronomical object like…).
Are these points of light real or an artifact? Credit: Palomar/Solano Observatory, et al.
Another hypothesis suggests that they were not stars. The three bright spots were less than 10 arc seconds apart. They might therefore have been objects from the Oort belt, located less than 2 light years away. A final idea suggests that the phenomenon is due to radioactive contamination of photographic plates, following the nuclear tests in New Mexico.
For now, these theories are just guesses. Additional observations with modern means might help solve this mystery.
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