For over a century, conspiracy theorists have claimed an ancient alien satellite has been orbiting Earth. It starts with Nikola Tesla and his mysterious signals from Colorado Springs.
It is one of the most enduring mysteries in the realm of unexplained phenomena: a supposed alien spacecraft that has been orbiting Earth for thousands of years, watching humanity evolve from the dawn of civilization. This is the story of the Black Knight Satellite — and how it all began with Nikola Tesla.
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It Started With Tesla
The origins of the Black Knight Satellite conspiracy theory trace back to 1899, when Nikola Tesla was working in his laboratory in Colorado Springs. While conducting experiments with his highly sensitive wireless radio receiver, Tesla received a series of unexpected electrical signals that he described as a series of numeric codes.
It was a series of three signals — one, two, three, Tesla later wrote. I was so struck by the regularity of them that I concluded that they must have originated from intelligent beings.
Tesla initially believed the signals came from Mars. But decades later, conspiracy theorists would reinterpret his discovery as the first communication from the Black Knight Satellite — an extraterrestrial craft that had been silently orbiting Earth for millennia.
As Space.com reports, believers often point to Tesla’s 1899 experiments as the earliest evidence of the Black Knight, arguing that the inventor unwitting intercepted transmissions from an alien source.
The Long Delayed Echoes
More evidence for the theory emerged in 1927, when Norwegian engineer Jørgen Hals made a startling discovery. While conducting experiments in radio transmission, Hals picked up a series of signal echoes that came back three seconds after his transmissions had ended. These became known as Long Delayed Echoes (LDEs).
While scientists have since proposed natural explanations for LDEs — such as ionospheric reflection — conspiracy theorists have suggested these echoes could be confirmation of an artificial object in orbit reflecting radio signals back to Earth.
