New technical evidence arrives just before airtime from an American amateur radio astronomer with access to dishes up to 30 meters in diameter who reports detecting a hard analog signal at the reported frequency. Hoagland notes that plotting all detection data points produces a logarithmic curve consistent with a decelerating probe approaching from interstellar space. He also highlights the unusual appearance of an editorial about alien probes on the SETI League website and his own listing on Seth Shostak's official SETI Institute chronology of the story.
Art reads a listener fax proposing that the entire Pegasi scenario could be a staged prelude to a fabricated alien landing designed to justify one-world government. Hoagland discloses that his Pentagon source originally named Mountain View, California, home of the SETI Institute at NASA Ames, as the projected landing site. The two agree to pursue the story until the truth emerges.
Key Moments
Hoagland's two-level theory: real signal under a fake hoax: Hoagland lays out his core thesis - that there is a real radio signal coming from the direction of EQ Pegasi, deliberately covered by a proactive disinformation operation that puts the data out under fake names which are easy to debunk, so amateurs and the public will dismiss the whole story as a Halloween hoax and leave the field to professionals.
Logarithmic deceleration: the signal looks like a slowing probe: Hoagland reports that when the successive amateur detection points are plotted against time, the curve is logarithmic - a decelerating object - exactly what you would expect from an interstellar probe putting on the brakes as it approaches the solar system, not from a hoax or a fixed celestial source.
SETI Institute officially names Hoagland on its chronology: Hoagland reads from the official SETI Institute website, where Seth Shostak's chronology of the EQ Pegasi affair now lists him by name as a 'scientist/journalist who maintains that the EQ Peg signal announcement is a disinformation plot to hide a real detection' - a remarkable inclusion from an agency that he says has otherwise spent years trying to bury his work.
The Mountain View landing scenario from a Pentagon source: Hoagland recounts a listener's letter laying out the scenario he says he has been hearing privately since June from a Pentagon source: a long-planned secret-government staged alien landing meant to justify world government, and he reveals the specified location was Mountain View, California - across the street from NASA Ames and the SETI Institute.
Coordinates for any astronomer who wants to check: Hoagland gives the precise sky coordinates of EQ Pegasi - right ascension 23h 31m, declination plus 19 degrees 56 minutes - and asks any professional or graduate-student astronomer with a dish access to point at it tonight, arguing that with a degree or two of beam width the signal should be strong enough to confirm.