The real shock won’t come from alien craft—it will come from the collapse of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.

The recent publication of "A Cost-Effective Search for Extraterrestrial Probes in the Solar System" by Beatriz Villarroel and her team (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 04 August 2025) marks a groundbreaking moment in the field of SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence). Now, the private notes of Soviet aerospace engineer Valerijs Černohajev offer a provocative perspective, and a detailed engineering blueprint for observations of unconventional physical effects, and possible signatures, that align interestingly with Villarroel’s search for objects with intrinsic optical emission.