Original subtitles

I wanted to show you what we found inside the mesa.

This could be one of the most

miraculous finds here on the ranch.

I want to sit down with this

and get some quality time

with their scanning electron microscope.

I can see some clearly defined holes.

What if it's the electron beam

from the microscope that's causing this?

Let's turn it off.

This stuff is fixing itself.

It's putting itself back together.

- It's healing. - I want to pull the plug immediately

on any further drilling activity,

because we may damage

the very thing that we are trying to study.

I got something kind of curious over here.

U.S. nickel.

Archaeologically, when you do an excavation,

- Yeah. - You throw a new coin in there

so that you know when that was dug.

That suggests that somebody

did an archaeological excavation in 1964.

That gives us a period to look through records.

There is a ranch in Northern Utah.

It is considered the epicenter

of the strangest and most disturbing occurrences on Earth.

For two decades,

the federal government

investigated the property.

Their findings have never been made public.

Right there! We got something!

Now a new team

of independent scientists and researchers

are taking over.

They are uncovering evidence

that the countless stories...

It came right out of the mesa.

Of unidentified aerial phenomena...

UAP right there!

Bizarre energies...

It looks like there's a heat source right above them.

And portals that lead to other dimensions...

We're maybe looking at the anomaly

for the first time, guys.

Might actually be true.

They will stop at nothing to reveal...

The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.

Hey, fellas.

Ooh.

Looks like some aerial photos.

Believe it or not, this is an image

of the drill site from 1969.

Wow.

- Damn. - Yeah. Yeah.

So, why are we looking at old pictures?

Just days ago at the drill site,

we found that 1964 nickel.

Our investigation

of a massive, possibly metallic object

and a number of smaller anomalies buried

inside the mesa on Skinwalker Ranch

took a turn two weeks ago.

While searching through drilling spoils

that came from nearly 470 feet in our second borehole,

we found what could be an engineered ceramic material

related to some kind of highly advanced technology.

Things got even crazier a couple days ago,

when team archaeologist Chris Roberts

uncovered an encrusted 1964 nickel

in those same drilling spoils.

He explained that archaeologists will often bury a coin

to mark the year of an official dig.

The nickel could be evidence that an archaeological dig

happened right here back in 1964.

So, Erik and I scoured through records

from the state of Utah

and actually found some aerial photos

of the mesa drill site

that were taken during geological surveys

over the past 60 years.

So, we think wh... that maybe

somebody knew about something there

and it's possible that there was an excavation

or an archeological dig of some sort.

And so, we thought, well, if we go back and look

through archival images, maybe we could see

actual evidence of some kind of dig.

Yeah, so I've got the historic aerial photos

from the early '60s.

You know, 1961, 1963,

and then there's a gap until 1969.

Really? Wow.

Yeah, there's no available images

from '63 to '69.

Is that not fascinating?

That's a coincidence on the timing, isn't it?

Why would there be missing photos from 1964,

which is the same year as the nickel we found,

and then all the way up through 1968?

Was it a clerical error? Or was it done on purpose?

The photos of the mesa from 1961,

1963 and 1969

look almost identical to the naked eye,

but I wanted to make sure

they weren't doctored in some way.

So, I used an AI program to look for any evidence

of artificial changes in them.

Let me show you what happens when we compare

the '61 and '63 image to the '69 image.

Erik, you want to bring up my, analysis that I did?

Sure.

All right. So, this was

the 1961 image.

And you can look at the drill site there.

So that's the region that I'm focusing on,

just the data in that circle.

So, the AI said there were no potential

alterations to the picture.

Now, this is the '63 image.

There's nothing unusual.

'61 and '63 look almost identical to each other.

And, in fact, I overlayed them with each other.

They were, like, 99% each other.

So now, if you look at this one...

This is from 1969.

So, what I did was I started comparing them

to each other using an AI program,

and highlight any regions

that appears to have been altered, all right?

Now, Erik, go to the next slide.

So, here's all three of them beside each other,

and, you can see that there's a significant spot

that it thinks is... has been dithered

or smoothed with some sort of filter in the 1969 image

that's not in the other images.

Right? This spot right here,

it looks kind of like a leaf shape

that seems raised or brighter or blurrier or something?

- Yeah. - That right there means

someone altered this picture.

That's just incredible.

- But who? - That's the big question, man.

And why?

And why between 1963 and 1969?

Why are there no archival photos,

and why was this photo altered?

I mean, the fact that it was doctored indicates a cover-up.

If there's no cover-up, why doctor the photos?

Interesting.

You know, we don't know what's in the mesa,

how it got there, but the timing is really interesting

because in 1963 to '69,

NASA's transitioning to Apollo,

the three-man capsules that were going to the Moon.

And they were testing reentry vehicles

that had, different types of materials,

heat shields, different metals, ceramics.

Prior to sending men in space,

NASA had the Saturn I program

to test vehicle performance in a variety of ways.

For instance, between 1961 and 1965,

there were ten uncrewed Saturn missions.

After launch, some fell into the ocean,

some burned up on reentry

and some were just never recovered.

So, what if, you know, one of those reentry vehicles

got off track and crashed in there?

- Yeah. - Or...

while looking for a crashed vehicle,

did they find something else

and then covered it up?

Well, this has given me a lot to think about, yeah.

I think we need to run more lab tests

on the ceramic material

- at Utah Valley University. - Yeah.

And while we wait for that access,

let's try to get more data out of Borehole 2.

- Yeah. - I have that new camera

for the drillers to install into Borehole 2.

Definitely gonna dig in and... and see what else we can find

as-as we move forward up in the mesa.

All right, well, thanks, guys.

Let's get it and head out there.

That's the new one?

Yeah, so we've got two cameras in this and a light.

All summer long,

we've been working to drill our second,

approximately 600-foot-long borehole, up through the mesa,

so that we'd have two identical boreholes positioned

on either side of the massive object buried in there.

And once Borehole 2 was complete,

our plan was to insert scanning devices

into both boreholes

so we could study what all these anomalies inside there are.

But after finding those ceramic pieces in the spoils,

we've decided to stop drilling Borehole 2

so that we don't further damage whatever it is that's in there.

So today, working with our drilling team,

our new plan is to insert a specialized drill head,

equipped with cameras, to hopefully see something

that will help us figure out what the heck it is.

They built it so that the water will jet out there,

hopefully, to spray the cameras off.

- All right. - Yup.

We can get it put on the head and test it

in the hole before we go up.

Well, let's go get it set up

and start pushing up the hill.

- Sounds good. - All right.

It's worthwhile to think about what brought us

to the drill site.

Specifically, why are we drilling

where we've been drilling?

When we start finding metal, and of course, the ceramics

inside of a sandstone mesa,

we're all very interested.

Hey, Allan, go ahead and get that water fired up.

All right, I'm gonna start pushing.

It certainly bears revisiting

the question as to what is the best way

to find out what is inside the mesa.

I'm sitting at about 240.

We're gonna stop down right there.

10-4. Will do.

Once the drilling team made it about 240 feet

into Borehole 2 with the cameras, they stopped

so that we could retract the drill head

and check out the video data that was collected.

We got you some cameras.

Well, look at that.

Take that thing apart and let's get the video out of there.

On a scale of one to ten, I'd say

we were all at about 100,

hoping to finally get a look at whatever

those ceramic tiles came from inside the mesa.

Yeah, it's just dark artifact.

We should be seeing something from the camera lights.

Yeah, I'm seeing these random flashes.

- Are you picking up on that? - Yeah. I am seeing that.

I see 'em right there.

Yeah. There's one.

- There's another one. - There it is again.

What the hell?

What the hell?

We might be looking at energetic particles

- striking the detector. - Um...

That makes me think that

that it was, like, a gamma ray or something

and hit the...

- There's another one. - There it is again.

Yeah, there's quite a few of those.

- Yeah. - Yeah, I think

that's got to be gamma ray hits against the focal plane.

It was hard to tell exactly what we were seeing

in the Borehole 2 video that came

from about 240 feet inside the mesa.

It was almost completely dark,

except for several flashes of light

that looked to Erik and me like they could be gamma rays.

Now, gamma rays can occur naturally underground

due to the radioactivity of Earth,

but these flashes were happening more frequently

than you'd expect.

So, if that's what they were,

could they have come from the huge object buried in there?

I think we just got a kind of data we weren't anticipating.

I think we just discovered that there are

gamma rays in there.

That's interesting.

When we first pulled

the ceramic materials out of the mesa,

it showed elevated levels of radiation.

So we needed to figure out a way to investigate our boreholes

for more clues about what's in there.

Well, we may be limited on Hole number 2 as to what

-we can do right now. I mean, -Yeah.

We don't have an opening at the top.

We're gonna have to put PVC down

the other hole

to run instruments down that tube

- and see what we can find out. - That's a great idea.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

I'm already preparing a few sensors

to put down the pipe.

Because we weren't able to drill Borehole 2

all the way up through to the top of the mesa,

we're gonna have to go back to Borehole 1

to get more data about what's buried in there.

But first, we'll need to install some industrial PVC pipe

down through it

so that we can get our instruments safely deployed.

Well, I say we pack up, and

- let's call it a night. - Let's do it. -I think

- that's a great idea. - Yeah. -Yeah.

Let's get out of here.

We got a big day ahead of us?

- Yeah. - So, you guys are ready

to push back up the hole?

Yeah. If everything goes smooth, it shouldn't take us too long.

By the next afternoon,

Thomas got us the PVC pipe we needed

to start casing Borehole 1.

So, everybody was hoping like hell

that we could get it installed without any problems.

But in order to do that, the drillers first needed

to drive their six-inch bit all the way back up

through the borehole to the top of the mesa.

And then, they would attach the PVC piping

to the bit with a device called a "pulling eye,"

and pull it all the way back down through the hole.

While you guys are pushing rod

up the hill, we're gonna go get the spooler

and try to get working on getting the pipe up to the top

so that by the time you guys are up there,

hopefully, we can be ready

- to start pulling down. - Works for us.

Thanks, guys.

Push it.

As the guys from Mark Construction

drilled back up through Borehole 1...

Push in, push in.

Push in.

We hoped it would go smoothly

since it was previously drilled

and presumed to be completely open.

All right, we did it.

But then they reported a spot

around 450 feet in the borehole...

We're hung up.

Where they hit something that slowed their progress.

I'm stuck on something.

Hey, Thomas, you got a copy?

Yeah, go ahead.

We're hung up on something,

can't go forward.

How far in are you?

I'm 30 rods in.

So, you're, what, 450 feet into the mesa?

Yeah.

It's, like, the same section

that we were experiencing all the same issues

in this second borehole.

What's the game plan?

I'm trying to do what I can

to try and work my way around it and see if I can

keep moving forward.

Copy that. Well, keep us posted.

Will do.

Did you get past the hard spot?

Yeah, we got through it.

- Really? - Yup.

Thankfully, in less than a couple hours,

they were about to pop back up through the top of the mesa.

So, we couldn't wait to get the PVC hooked on

and then case the hole with it.

- Hey, hey, look at that. - Unbelievable.

Heck, yeah.

The side teeth on that bit are all tore up.

But it's chewed up, isn't it?

These were brand-new when we went in.

- No way. - Really? And it's chewed that up

- just in re-reaming the hole? - Yeah.

What the heck have we got inside this mesa?

- That's nuts. - Yeah, it is nuts.

We knew the drill hit that one hard spot,

but we couldn't believe how much damage was done to the bit.

It was very similar to what happened in Borehole 2

just before we found the strange ceramic material

in the drilling spoils.

Is that what we just hit in Borehole 1?

More than 40 feet to the east of Borehole 2?

We'll get the pulling eye on,

hook it up, and we're gonna start yanking her back in.

- All right. - Nice.

Whatever it was,

- daylight was burning. - Here we go.

So, we needed to pull that PVC casing

down through the hole as fast as possible.

All right.

So, there's no chance of this slipping off.

Tighten this down as tight as you can get it.

- Nice. - Okay.

- All right. - Okay.

All right, Allan, you got a copy?

- Yeah, I got a copy. - Get everything fired up.

We're getting ready to pull this in. We're all hooked up.

10-4.

We got water. Go ahead and start dead-pulling.

Fortunately, because this is only a four-inch pipe

going in a seven-inch hole,

this should go fairly easy.

Look at that!

- Down in the hole. - That's awesome.

Fruits of our labor.

It's just so imperative that we get this hole

cased and completed

so the scientists can finally

get instruments in there,

and hopefully, get us some answers

as to what lies inside the mesa.

Hey, they stopped. Is that a bad sign?

Are you rotating, Allan?

I'm trying.

I have to run down there and see what we got going on.

Okay.

Everything was going smooth originally

when we started pulling, and we hit a spot

in the mesa, and...

we weren't able to pull, really, anymore at that point.

Here. Let me see it, Allan.

I went down to operate the machine just to see

if I could get it freed up, or

if we could get past the spot we were in.

After drilling all day, well into the night,

we were all under a lot of stress

because we knew we had to get this pipe moving

and get it through.

We're stuck pulling back.

I'm gonna try and push back up.

Go ahead. I'll let you know if we see any movement.

We were definitely snagging on something hard.

We were unable to rotate and unable to pull.

We're stuck, boys. We're stuck-stuck.

We had gotten about 270 feet

of the PVC back down through the hole,

so it seemed like whatever damaged the bit

was now holding up the entire operation.

Back right up to the drill.

Yeah.

So, after spending more

than an hour trying to get past that spot,

and making no progress,

the drillers hooked their semitruck up

to the drill rig to try something pretty drastic.

What's the update?

My only option is

to crank this pressure to 60,000 pounds.

It wants to pull the drill forward,

so I chained the semi to the drill.

All right.

All right, guys.

This is the last-ditch effort here.

Something's gonna break or it's gonna move.

I'm giving her everything she's got.

I felt her pop for a second.

Still pretty hung up.

Okay. I'm going at it again.

Come on. Come on.

We were all holding our breath as the team

from Mark Construction used every bit of power

they could, between their semitruck and drill rig,

to pull the PVC casing down

through Borehole 1.

Whoa.

Because if this didn't work,

we didn't know how we were going to be able

to get our scanning devices in there

to help figure out what the heck is buried in the mesa.

Four inches.

You just pulled about four inches in.

Yeah, we're seeing some good movement on the pipe.

Keep her up.

Yeah, it loosened up there at the end.

Yeah. Keep going.

After all the problems we had with this operation,

seeing that pipe finally get pulled into place

all the way down through Borehole 1 was a huge relief.

Well, we're gonna wrap it up here

and we'll head back that way.

10-4.

Now, we'll have a great pathway

for our instruments to collect data on the buried objects,

and we have a good trouble spot to focus on

about 270 feet into the borehole.

There's your plug.

There's your plug right there. Look at that.

- And there's the pipe. - There it is.

Yeah, Alex, we're good.

We got pipe.

Well, looks like we did it.

Yup.

So, I'm going to go over to the table right now

and set up the radar.

Late the next afternoon, ground-penetrating radar expert

Jan Francke arrived at the ranch

with a new, specialized GPR device

to run down Borehole 1.

Jan, talk to me about what we're gonna be able

- to see as we go down that tube. - Right.

I think you said we can see out to about 20 feet.

- That's a radius, right? Okay. - That's a radius.

So, if there is something of a void,

or, I guess a metal object, right,

then we would definitely pick that up.

Okay.

Once Jan's scan is done,

Sam Deriso has put together an entire sled

of instruments to run a series

of other scans, including magnetometry,

which might confirm these objects are made of metal,

and a gamma ray detector

to show just how radioactive they might be.

Jan, let's start

- with your GPR device. - Yup.

- So, Kaleb and Jim are at the bottom of the hill. - Okay. Okay.

They're gonna be assisting us, making sure

that nothing gets caught up at the bottom.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, the GPR is in the pipe.

We're gonna start our slow, steady descent.

I'm gonna get my hand-held instrument

out of the Jeep, and I'm going to kind of walk up the mesa.

- Great. Sounds good. - All right, man.

While the GPR device was being run down Borehole 1...

One hundred and thirty.

I was hiking down the mesa along that line

with my handheld spectrum analyzer.

I wanted to look out for any strange energy spikes

or radio frequency signals that we've detected in the past

while we drilled both boreholes.

Here we go.

Look at that... bone dry.

- Awesome. - Awesome. Look how...

- Look how clean it is. - We just put an instrument

from the top of the mesa down to the bottom for the first time.

It worked perfectly.

We should get really good data out of this.

I'm gonna head down right now

and get started on that.

That sounds great.

Okay. See you guys.

All right, Sam, you're up.

Yeah. Just need to go, get it recording,

and then we'll send it down.

So, you're gonna be collecting the profile,

the magnetometry data and the radiation.

- Awesome. Let's do it. - Yeah.

What is inside of this mesa?

And might there have been a deliberate effort

to conceal something?

I want to get magnetometry information,

I want to get side-looking, ground-penetrating radar

measurements from Borehole 1.

I'm anxious to take a look at the data

and look for meaningful correlations.

The sensor's loaded into the pipe

and we're ready to start making a descent into the mesa.

Copy that. We're ready to go.

Hey, Jim. You copy?

Yeah. Go ahead, Travis.

Yeah. The spectrum analyzer was picking up

a 1.6 gigahertz signal, and then the signal went away.

It don't make any sense.

Yeah. That is crazy.

I wondered if I might see something during this scan,

because when we drilled both boreholes,

we detected numerous 1.6 gigahertz signals

that appeared to be coming from inside the mesa.

And when I picked this one up, it was very close

to where the drill was damaged the other day.

You're not gonna believe this, though, Erik.

Yeah, I put the spectrum analyzer literally on the dirt

on the ground, right where the anomalous area is.

And I started getting a 1.6 gigahertz signal

- when the sensor passed by. - That's strange.

And there's nothing in our devices that should cause that.

There's nothing. It makes no sense.

Well, Sam has just finished running his scans.

I say we pack it up and get back to the command center.

All right, guys, we'll see you at the command center.

- Hey, Jan. - Hey, Jan.

Hey, guys, good to see you.

I'm excited to show you what I've got.

Later that night, both Jan Francke and Sam Deriso

already had their data from Borehole 1 processed.

So, we couldn't wait to see what they might reveal

about the buried objects in the mesa.

So, before we jump into your data,

Sam's got the output of his instrument.

Sam, how about you take us into the data?

So, I'm gonna bring your screen up here.

So we took

the magnetometer, we started from the top of mesa,

and we sent it down Borehole 1.

So, as you're going through the data,

the leftmost side is the actual top.

There are several spikes, but I'm really interested

in these two large, magnetic data spikes.

As we're looking at this blue trace across the screen,

that represents the disturbance of the Earth's magnetic field.

So, if there's anything along the borehole

that we drilled, like big pieces of metal,

anything with magnetism,

if there's iron, it could explain

- that disturbance. - So that points

to the possibility of some actual feature

in the mesa that is causing this temporary elevation

of the magnitude of the magnetic field.

Could a large metal object

in Borehole 1 be responsible that?

Yeah.

Wow.

We have every reason to think

that there are, in fact, regions

of some very hard stuff,

possibly metal, that we're encountering

- in the mesa. - Right.

And this data says "yes."

Wow. Wow.

According to the magnetometry scans that Sam ran

in Borehole 1, between 240 and 280 feet,

he detected numerous potentially magnetic objects

buried in the mesa.

And that's a major corroboration

of the previous ground-penetrating radar data

we collected before our drilling operation began three years ago.

Very interesting.

- Yeah. - And I'm just seeing that is

right where we do have an artifact assemblage

- Yeah, yeah. - From the spoils, including metal

in that area, so...

Well, after seeing this, I'm really excited to see

how this correlates or does not correlate with what Jan found.

Well, let's get Jan to show us.

Hey, guys.

Gonna share my screen.

All right, does everybody see this?

- Yes. - Okay, great.

So this is the GPR scan that I took in Borehole 1.

Along the X axis,

we see the number of meters down the hole.

I'll move through the scan, going kind of deeper

into the borehole as I advance.

So let's go down, you know, 30, 40.

We're down 50 meters into the hole, which is about 165 feet.

Nothing to talk about until you get

to about 270 feet to this.

Wow. Look. I mean, look at that.

- Wow. - What is that?

That is something that is so distinct.

And it sits out

away from the hole, approximately,

12 feet, and this thing is

six feet thick.

That is just unbelievable.

- Wow. - And then we see

other little bits and pieces

further down.

So, this is

about 270 to 280 feet in.

- It's the same place. Same place. - The same place

that your data, Sam,

was picking up the anomalous data.

Right.

This bears evidence of a similar structure,

potentially to the large object we believe is in there.

- Yeah, it does. - Which means that what we encountered

at Borehole 2 may be continuous with

what's happening near Borehole 1.

Jan's new GPR scans have also confirmed

that there appears to be a central, massive object,

that could be made of metal,

between Borehole 1 and Borehole 2.

And now, he's given us data that suggests

it's at least six feet thick.

Is this what's covered in that ceramic material that we found?

Or what may have been emitting gamma rays when we put a camera

in Borehole 2 earlier this week?

If so, what the heck is it?

So, Jan, would it be fair to say

that we're looking at something potentially not natural?

- Yeah. - Possibly technological

- in the mesa? - I think it would be fair to say

"Yes, absolutely."

That is amazing.

Wow.

Well, guys,

this is... this is great.

Jan, thank you for jumping on with us.

Always a pleasure.

Take care, guys.

Okay, welcome to the lab.

A couple of days later,

Erik, Jim, Thomas and I went back to Utah Valley University.

- All right, well, let me get the samples out. - Okay.

There, we met with chemist Dr. Tammy Clark

to run a series of new tests

on samples of the ceramic materials

that we believe are related

to the massive object buried in the mesa.

For the first part of what we want to do, we need a sample

that's about, what, 200 milligrams?

- Yeah, that would be great. - Okay.

Our hope was to learn not only more

about the composition of these ceramics

but also if they really are related

to some kind of advanced technology.

- So I've got one selected. - Great, the first thing

we're gonna do is clean up the sample.

We'll use the gas chromatography mass spectrometer.

And that's gonna let us know

if there's organics in there and maybe identify

what they are, if they're known substances.

- Okay. - And then, with what remains,

we're gonna mortar and pestle that down,

and then we're gonna digest that with really strong acids.

And we'll be able to use

the atomic emission spectrometer

to be able to see what metals are present in the sample.

Okay, that makes sense.

So, this test should tell us

all of the elements that are making up the material.

Right.

Yeah, the tests we ran here

last time were crazy.

A couple weeks ago...

All right, I'll close this up.

We examined the ceramics

in a scanning electron microscope.

There we go.

And as the beam of electrons

hit the sample, its surface suddenly began

to open up with all kinds of holes.

But when we turned the beam off,

it went back to its original state.

So that does not look as porous

- No. - As it was.

This stuff is fixing itself.

Yes, it's healing.

Now, we don't know if there was

some kind of organic material on the surface of the ceramic

that might explain why it behaved that way.

So, this first process will clean the ceramic

so we can better analyze it with additional tests.

So, we're just gonna take this sample,

and we're gonna put it in the sonicating bath

to start cleaning up the ceramic piece.

And this is in the isopropanol.

And we're gonna put some sound waves through there.

There we go.

So, the tests that we're gonna run are going to be

the gas chromatogram and mass spec.

We first need to separate the organic components

and pull them out of the ceramic material.

Essentially cleaning it up.

Take a peek.

We're going to do that by putting them

into different types of solvents,

isopropanol and dichloromethane.

And we'll sonicate it. That'll hit it with some sound waves.

When you say you're adding sound to it,

we can't hear it, so it's at such a high frequency,

- in the ultrasonic range above what we can hear? - Yeah.

Yeah, I mean you can hear it buzz a little bit.

And then those sound waves are going

to essentially loosen up

any organic molecules

that might be embedded in the ceramic

and help dissolve it into the solvent.

So this is step one of stripping it down?

- Yeah. - Yes. Yes.

Okay, so, we're gonna transfer it to another flask,

and then we'll add dichloromethane to that one.

Look at this.

It's floating.

Wow.

A normal ceramic would not

be floating in a liquid.

Wow.

A normal ceramic would

- not be floating in a liquid. - Yeah.

It is sort of unusual to have something

that looks like a rock float in dichloromethane.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

Dr. Clark's analogy about the ceramic floating

in this liquid cleaning solution was spot-on.

There are rare, porous ceramics that do float, but we believe

that this ceramic could be part

of what destroyed multiple drill bits in the mesa.

So, how could it be light enough to float like that?

More and more, this stuff is proving

to be something very strange.

We're gonna dry that out, so we're gonna

dry off the solvent in preparation

for crushing the sample for subsequent analysis.

Okay. So, we've got a hot plate over here.

It's getting warm.

So, it's just forming bubbles underneath it.

After the cleaning process was done,

next, it was time to dry out the sample

and then pulverize it into tiny particles

for compositional analysis.

But the question was, would it break apart easily?

Okay, let's go use the mortar and pestle.

- The moment we've been waiting for. - Yes.

- Okay. - So now, you finally get to crush it up.

We have a whole series of moments of truth here.

So, it is crushing. It's crushing pretty easily.

Except there's one large piece in here

that is less happy

to get destroyed.

There was one piece in the middle

that took a little bit more.

You clearly didn't put 15,000 PSI

- No. - Pounds of pressure per square inch on that sample

- right there, like the drill did on the ranch. - No.

We were all stunned that most of the ceramic samples broke up

into dust very easily

when Dr. Clark started grinding it up in the lab.

When we found that stuff, it was right after

an industrial drill struggled for hours to break through it.

You look at it, and it looks so brittle, and I'm thinking,

there's no way that that is what's stopping the drill.

I would say "no" looking at this,

unless it was behaving somehow differently while in the mesa.

Right. Yeah.

We didn't know what to think. I mean,

during our previous lab test

with a scanning electron microscope,

we watched this stuff morph from having a smooth surface

to opening up with all kinds of holes,

and then literally going back to its original form.

So, does it really have the ability

to change physical characteristics?

What is this stuff?

Well, we're gonna dissolve this in acid

so we can do quantitative analysis.

- All right. - Okay.

After those strange results,

Dr. Clark prepped the ceramic materials

to run them through the atomic emission spectrometer, or AES.

It emits a plasma beam that excites the electrons

in the material to identify the elements in them.

We conducted a preliminary elemental analysis

back on the ranch,

but this equipment is much more sophisticated.

So, we absolutely wanted to confirm

just what's in this stuff

to figure out what it actually could be.

So, we have the results of the AES here.

And so, what we can see here is titanium

- and calcium. - Which comes as

- no surprise. - Right. Yup.

And it's so high here that it's actually

going off of our calibration curve.

- That's interesting. - Okay.

And next is iron. When we look at our sample,

we see that it has a lot of iron.

- It has a lot of iron. - Yes.

- Okay? - Got it.

And here we have aluminum, nice, solid aluminum,

- just like you would expect to see, so... - Yup.

So there's aluminum in the ceramic?

- Yup. - Yeah.

Now we go down... So this is vanadium.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

- Yup. - Vanadium is in it?

- That's what this is telling us. - Okay. -Remember?

- Yeah. Yes. - Those metal flakes

did have trace amounts of vanadium.

They sure did. So, the other pieces of metal

that we pulled out three years ago now...

they had vanadium on the surface.

So that must mean it's embedded in the material somewhere.

Which is even more interesting when you think about it.

- Yeah. - What makes

- vanadium interesting? - Well, I do know

that vanadium is very durable and used in the construction

of military vehicles and spacecraft.

Why in the world would that be in the mesa?

What are the properties of vanadium?

What makes it interesting?

Well, I do know that vanadium

is very durable and used in the construction

of military vehicles and spacecraft.

- This is pretty interesting. - Yeah.

Every test that we've performed on the ceramic materials

that came out of the mesa

only adds more evidence that something incredible

is buried on Skinwalker Ranch.

- Let's move on to our next test, right? - Yeah.

Last week, Erik got the idea to place a piece

of the ceramic on a magnet to see if it would stick to it.

At first, it did. But then,

the ceramic actually pushed itself away from the magnet.

That ability to repel a normal magnetic field

is what is known as the Meissner effect.

And it suggested that these ceramics

are highly-advanced materials called superconductors.

Want to try just for Meisner effect first?

Yeah.

So, you're gonna freeze the sample?

- Yes. - Yes.

In liquid nitrogen.

And what does freezing it accomplish?

So, in order for the materials that we know of today

that are superconducting, they don't become

superconducting until they get

to the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

- Okay. - And so, if we cool this down

to that temperature, about negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit,

and it shows superconductive properties, then we'll know

this material is a superconductor.

Okay.

Superconductors are cutting-edge materials

that scientists are researching and developing today

because they can transfer and store energy

without losing any of it, and some even believe

that they could be used to construct vehicles

and spacecraft that actually defy gravity.

What the hell is that in the sky?

Who knows?

Maybe this ceramic material

and whatever is in the mesa will get us closer

to some answers about all the UAPs we keep seeing

on Skinwalker Ranch.

So, we'll have a magnet, and then on top of that,

we'll put this chamber, we'll put the liquid nitrogen there,

and the sample.

Now, if the sample becomes superconducting

when it gets cool, and it's over this magnet,

this thing is gonna push the ceramic upward.

- Okay. - And so that's what we're looking for here.

All right. Well, let's do that.

Some of our observations on this ceramic material

are quite out of step with anything I've ever seen before.

We're dealing with something certainly unusual.

It is something that appears to be an engineered material.

It begs for an explanation.

It deepens the mystery of the drill site

and of the ranch overall.

At this point, I think it's too early to say anything

about the origins and the true design intent of this material.

That's probably enough to cool it.

Well, it'll evaporate pretty continuously.

So, we just want to make sure

there's enough in there to stabilize.

Notice how it's still boiling off?

That means

that the ceramic itself hasn't reached

the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

It's still warmer than the nitrogen,

so the nitrogen is boiling away.

So, when it quits bubbling, then

- it's the same temperature? - Yes.

It's still boiling away, man. Look at that.

We expected the liquid nitrogen to boil for a little while

as it cooled the ceramic down.

But it was crazy how it just kept boiling.

A normal ceramic should have cooled rapidly,

or even shattered from exposure to such a negative temperature.

I am reminded of the thermal mystery

- with the drilling. - Yes.

Yes, the fact that

that bit appears to have gotten so hot,

even to the point of fusing or welding itself,

and yet the temperature gauge

never registered any kind of climb in the temperatures.

Yeah.

Erik and Tom were right.

The drill bit was nearly welded to the drill rod

as it was grinding up against something

right at the spot where we found the ceramics in the mesa.

Which suggests whatever's in there

just absorbed the intense heat from all that friction.

It is taking longer

- than I would have expected. - Yeah.

It's taking a lot longer than I was expecting, right?

That's data by itself.

That is absolutely data.

That just makes no sense to me at all.

It does to me

if it's like a space shuttle tile.

Watching this makes me want to do follow-up.

We're gonna have to.

- Wow. - And I think we got out answer.

We've got a final experiment of the year.

So, we have several fuel mines.

That's gonna fully ignite,

and then you'll have the rolling smoke rings.

My God. Look.

Is it bumping into the bubble?

Wow!

Hey, Erik, take a look at this.

I saw something going from right to left.

This is really weird.

>>>>oakislandtk www.opensubtitles.org