Dr. Part One: Dangers from Space! No, Really!

What Is Space Weather?

While I worked as a USAF/NASA flight surgeon at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, I learned

that space weather matters. A lot!

Space weather refers to the conditions in space that are influenced by the Sun. It creates a

“solar wind” of ionized radiation particles that bombard our planet. It can also create dangers

like solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and geomagnetic storms. Unlike everyday

weather, which occurs in the Earth's atmosphere, space weather takes place in the region

between the Sun and Earth, as well as in Earth's upper atmosphere and magnetosphere. This is

why we have “northern and southern lights” at the poles. It is also where our satellites live!

Modern society relies very heavily on technology that is highly sensitive to space weather.

Powerful solar events can. For example, a terrible geomagnetic storm known as the Carrington

Event disrupted telegraphs across the entire nation in 1859. A similar event today would induce

electrical currents that would seriously damage transformers, disrupt satellite operations, disturb

our GPS navigation, radio and television communications, and even disrupt our electrical grids.

Airplanes flying at high altitudes and polar routes would experience communication blackouts

and increased radiation exposure. If perilous enough, this type of severe CME could affect the

entire planet!.

More to come next week! Gregory Rogers Blog Coming!

For decades, reports of strange lights in the night sky have captured the human imagination. From ancient sightings to modern military encounters, unidentified aerial phenomena  or UAP  have always danced at the edge of science and the unknown. But what if the story of UAPs didn’t begin in the modern era at all?

A recent analysis of century-old astronomical photographic plates has uncovered a series of unexplained light flashes that appear in patterns eerily similar to today’s UFO sightings. These historical records  long stored in observatories and research archives  were never meant to reveal mysteries of alien origin. They were part of early 20th-century sky surveys, capturing stars, comets, and other celestial bodies. Yet some plates show flashes, orbs, and moving lights that can’t be easily explained by known astronomical or atmospheric causes.

Researchers examining these plates noticed brief, point-like flashes appearing in clusters  not in the same spots night after night, but moving in ways that suggest transient objects, not distant stars. Many of these images predate satellites, aircraft, and weather balloons.

The study, published by the University of Stockholm’s Department of Astronomy, found that some of these “flashes” didn’t correspond to known meteors or instrument errors. Instead, they appeared in geometric groupings, sometimes triangular or linear reminiscent of modern reports by pilots and civilians of “light formations” in the sky.

If these old plates are genuine and the anomalies are real, it means UAP-like activity has been recorded for over a century  long before drones, radar, or social media amplified our awareness of the skies. It opens the possibility that whatever these phenomena are, they’ve been part of our planet’s visual history all along.

Skeptics suggest they could be early photographic artifacts or cosmic-ray hits on the emulsion. But others argue the consistent shapes and motion sequences point to something more organized  possibly natural plasma events, exotic atmospheric optics, or unknown aerial phenomena we still don’t understand.

Today’s AARO investigations and military UAP studies rely on radar, infrared, and satellite tracking. Yet, in many ways, those old glass plates might hold the first photographic evidence of the same mysteries. Comparing historical data to modern sightings could help researchers see if patterns repeat  by location, season, or even cosmic alignment.

It’s also a reminder that UAPs are not just a 21st-century obsession. They’ve been with us as long as humans have looked up and wondered. Whether these flashes were natural phenomena, experimental technology, or something beyond our current understanding, they remind us that the universe still holds secrets  and the sky keeps its own quiet record.

Sometimes the future of discovery lies in the past. As scientists digitize more of these historic sky surveys, who knows what else might emerge from the archives? Perhaps answers to some of our oldest UFO questions are already waiting  etched in the silver nitrate of a forgotten photograph.