The alpha, twice a week
That was 3 min.
Get the best new moments in your inbox every Wednesday and Saturday. It's free.
Check your inbox
We sent a link to your address. Click it to finish signing up. Not there in a minute? Look in spam.
or
Into the Impossible With Brian Keating · 3 min · Nov 11, 2026
Oberth cited radar-measured UAP speeds in 1954
Kevin Knuth cites Hermann Oberth's 1954 lecture reporting radar-measured UAP speeds of 19 km/s and more than 50 measurements.
In this episode
Full analysis- 7:54Extreme power estimates collide with waste-heat limits6 min
- 22:58Relativistic travel trades short trips for decades on EarthPro pick 4 min
- 27:44A reported underwater object implies extraordinary speedPro pick 3 min
- 13:39A JAL radar analysis found jumps near 10,000 Gs3 min
- 36:18UFO brightness estimates depend on the assumed light pattern5 min
- 17:54Knuth treats acceleration estimates as probability distributions3 min
- 4:07Oberth cited radar-measured UAP speeds in 19543 min
“their speed is sometimes very high 19 kilometers a second has been measured with wireless measuring instruments radar”
Takeaways
- Oberth's lecture cited speeds of 19 km/s.
- He said more than 50 radar measurements existed.
- Knuth notes that the lecture provides no radar evidence.
About this segment
Kevin Knuth cites Hermann Oberth's 1954 lecture reporting radar-measured UAP speeds of 19 km/s and more than 50 measurements. The lecture does not provide the underlying radar records.
Kevin Knuth is a physics professor at the University at Albany.
Led a multimodal UAP study combining optical, infrared, weather-radar and radiation data.
Brian Keating, Host · Host, Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
From “Physics Professor: How Much Power Does a UFO Really Need?”, Nov 11, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 4:16
So I'm going to focus here first on speeds and accelerations. there are many cases where we can measure speeds and accelerations and sometimes with radar Herman Oberth this grumpy looking gentleman here at the bottom of the picture was a German father of modern rocketry he was a mentor to Wernher von Braun which is the guy just to the right Herman Oberth gave a lecture on flying saucers in 1954 and he notes in the lecture their speed is sometimes very high 19 kilometers a second has been measured with wireless measuring instruments radar this is 1954 radar was new and then accelerations are so high that no man could stand it now what comes up is an understatement actually it turns out he would be pressed to the wall and bruised. They'd be turning to jelly in some cases. The accuracy of such measurements
- 5:04
has been doubted. If there would be only three or four measurements, I would not rely upon them and would wait for further measurements. But there is existing more than 50 such measurements, 50 radar measurements of UAP existing in 1954. The wireless sets of the American Air Force and Navy, which are used in all fighters, cannot be so inaccurate that the information obtained with them can be doubted completely. So I find in this presentation, while he doesn't actually provide us with that radar evidence, he clearly notes it. 19 kilometers a second is extremely fast. That's about 42,000 miles an hour. That's approximately the speed of the New Horizons probe, which is currently flying through the Kuiper belt in the outer solar system. It flew past Pluto in 2015.
- 5:50
so these things are flying have been measured to fly at spacecraft speeds and this has been known since 1954 and i think this is a big deal and so where are these 50 radar measurements how is it that we're still going back to saying well what about the russians and the chinese well these things weren't russian and chinese back in 1954 that's for sure they weren't american either In 1954, the airspeed record was something like 760 miles an hour.
- 6:21
So you're looking at a huge difference in speeds. And he told people about this back in 1954, and I like to say this is why he's so grumpy, because nobody's listening to him or paying any attention.