Original subtitles

- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out there,"

did a UFO buzz the 2024 solar eclipse?

- Now don't blink or you'll miss the coolest part.

- [Tony] What did this train passenger see

in a Canadian River?

- It's not every day you wake up to a sea monster.

- Archelon is the largest turtle that ever lived.

It was about 12 to 13-feet long,

and maybe as wide as 15-feet across.

- [Tony] Is this moving metallic sphere

a piece of alien technology?

- He would place it on the floor,

and it would follow members of the house around.

- [Tony] And does this medieval cathedral prove

it's possible for 300 years to simply vanish?

- According to this theory, Charlemagne never even existed.

[air whooshing] [pensive dramatic music]

- [Tony] Around the globe are videos...

- Oh my God! [witness shrieking]

- [Tony] Photos,

[enigmatic blaring] and sounds

that defy explanation.

[enigmatic screeching]

[pensive dramatic music]

- [Guest] We don't know where they come from,

who made them, or how they operate.

- [Tony] What are they?

- [Guest 2] Some sort of bizarre mutation.

- [Guest 3] What's exciting is nobody really knows.

- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.

- I'm Tony Harris,

and as a journalist for more than 30 years,

I've followed the facts where they take me.

Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation

to the world's strangest sounds and images.

- [Camera Operator] It's coming towards us.

- [Tony] We'll analyze each one with top experts.

[enigmatic shrieking] [car thudding]

- It's a credible case, it's a credible video.

- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.

- This video was clearly faked.

- The proof starts now.

[intriguing dramatic music]

Good evening, everyone,

and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There."

Total solar eclipses actually happen every 18 months or so,

but they usually go unseen

as they're only visible from the ocean.

April, 2024 was a rare exception.

Sky watchers put on special eclipse glasses

across North America to witness this cosmic event.

But did this eclipse also attract attention

from out of this world?

[air whooshing] [intriguing orchestral music]

April 8th, 2024, Arlington, Texas.

It's mid-afternoon, and all eyes are trained on the sky

as the eclipse makes its way across Texas.

Everyone in the neighborhood is watching and recording,

when all of a sudden this happens.

- This is so cool. [spectators chattering]

- What was that? [spectators chattering]

- What is that? - What was that?

- What was that? [air whooshing]

- [Tony] Did you see that?

Let's play it back in slow motion.

- What was that? [spectators chattering]

- What is that? - What was that?

- [Bystander] What was that?

- [Tony] As the sky watcher zooms in and out

to better capture the eclipse,

a cigar-shaped object emerges from the darkened clouds,

darts across the sky, and disappears just as quickly.

- What is that? - What was that?

- [Tony] These spectators weren't the only ones

asking that question.

- This video has gone viral

and been viewed over eight million times.

It's very exciting, it's a very close encounter.

- [Tony] News outlets around the world pick up the story,

leaving everyone astounded.

But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.

Legends of strange and supernatural events

tied to eclipses go back millennia.

- In ancient Mesopotamia

a solar eclipse was deep cause for concern.

Many people thought that a solar eclipse

meant great danger for their king.

So what they would do

is they would appoint a temporary king to rule

until their solar eclipse had subsided,

and then they would put their original king back in place.

- [Tony] There's a theory that UFOs

are more likely to appear during eclipses.

Take, for instance, a mass sighting in July, 1991,

when thousands of Mexico City residents

witnessed this UFO during the total eclipse.

Or, the July, 2009, eclipse,

when Chinese scientists recorded an unidentified object

behind the sun for more than 40 minutes.

Or, the earliest known recorded eclipse

carved 5,000 years ago in Ireland,

which appears to be surrounded by unidentified objects.

- I think aliens would be interested

in how we react to a solar eclipse.

We're no longer making sacrifices to our gods

because of the eclipse,

we're actually looking at it

as a scientific event of importance.

- What was that? [spectators chattering]

[static crackling]

- We won't see another total solar eclipse

over the contiguous United States until August, 2044.

Could this video be proof that eclipses are linked to UFOs,

or will we have to wait two more decades to find out?

Let's see what our experts think.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

First, we need to ask,

are there really more UFOs during eclipses,

or just more potential eyewitnesses?

- During an eclipse, what's everybody doing?

They're looking up.

So, the chances of seeing something

are higher, statistically,

when you've got hundreds of thousands or millions of people

looking up in the sky at once.

- They many times will see things

that they're not used to seeing in the sky,

but when we actually go and investigate,

we're usually able to explain all those reported UFOs.

- [Tony] Then what is this?

- You can make out the fact that it's fuselage shape,

and then if you get down into the pixel, the closer look,

you can actually see that it does have

some sort of wing structure to it.

This typically matches up with being an aircraft

flying above the cloud layer.

- Wait, wings?

We slow down and magnify the video,

and look for the wings in question.

And we're just not seeing them.

But that's not the only proof of a plane.

- [Rich] It's near an airport,

and so, there's gonna be a lot of aircraft activity.

- [Tony] And given these conditions,

a passing plane's shadow could look just like this.

- [Rich] These are cumulus clouds

that are roughly at 3000-feet altitude.

So somewhere above that,

you potentially have got something moving along,

and you would also have the sun in the background.

- [Tony] During an eclipse,

anything running parallel with the crescent sun,

like the plane's fuselage, will have sharp shadows,

while anything running perpendicular,

like the plane's wings, will have fuzzier shadows.

That could explain why the wings aren't visible here.

- Potentially, what you're seeing then

would be the shadow of an aircraft.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

- Our verdict;

this is likely a plane casting one ominous looking shadow

down on the clouds.

During the April, 2024, eclipse,

some airlines even offered special eclipse flights

that offered an extra-long view of this celestial sight.

[intriguing ominous music] [air whooshing]

But now, let's talk about a different kind of tourism:

train travel.

Recently, we profiled a couple of vacationers on a train

who thought they caught a passing glimpse of a Bigfoot.

Well, now, a couple of train passengers

think their video captured a real-life river monster.

[air whooshing] [suspenseful dramatic music]

July, 2022, Kamloops, British Columbia.

Arti Rani is taking a scenic

Canadian train ride with her family,

when she decides to capture some video

of the picturesque Thompson River.

And that's when she captures this.

[dramatic ominous music] [water murmuring]

Look at the waters churning

apparently because of something massive

just beneath the surface.

- I just opened the window and said

"Something is very big there, really big."

And when I saw that, I couldn't take off my eyes,

I said "It's something there."

And I was waiting,

because I thought "Maybe, I'll see something else too."

- [Tony] Unfortunately for Arti,

whatever it was never fully revealed itself.

But some believe that this could be evidence

of a creature we've covered in the past.

- Looking at this footage, I'm reminded

of one of the most famous sea monsters of all time:

the Cadborosaurus, also known as Caddy.

[dramatic ominous music]

- [Tony] Named after Cadboro Bay,

located just 200-miles from where Arti's video was shot,

the Cadborosaurus is thought to be

a massive serpentine-like creature

that can reach nearly 60-feet in length.

And according to some reports,

there could be more than one.

- There's a very famous sighting

that evolved two float plane pilots in the 1990s.

They were performing maneuvers off the coast,

and they suddenly saw these two 30-foot serpentine animals

swimming in unison through the surf,

and leaving giant wakes in the water with their bodies.

- [Tony] While normally spotted along the ocean,

some have theorized that Caddy could have made its way

up through the numerous connecting rivers.

Meanwhile, others have wondered

if the giant circular shell shape inside this wave

is reminiscent of something like a giant circular shell.

- We can kind of see the scutes, the plates

that we would expect to see on a turtle's shell.

There have been accounts of massive turtles

in the world's oceans,

often described as being up to 12-feet long.

[ominous whooshing]

- [Tony] And one such prehistoric monster

could be linked to this area.

- Archelon is the largest turtle that ever lived.

It was around about 65, 66 million years ago.

It lived in the shallow Cretaceous seas

that once covered North America,

it was about 12 to 13-feet long,

and maybe as wide as 15-feet across.

Certainly one could make an argument

that it's not impossible

that something like the Archelon still exists.

[dramatic thud] [static crackling]

- Now perhaps you're thinking

what many people on the internet thought

when they first saw this video;

this is just a rock or some object

creating, what looks like, a creature moving underwater,

because the video is shot from a moving train.

We've seen cases like that before.

But when we showed this to our experts,

they had another opinion.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

[water murmuring]

- Some people have proposed that what we see here

is just a stationary rock in the water.

I don't think that's the case,

because this wave is propagating at a fairly high velocity

with a lot of force

going towards the left side of the camera.

In fact, it looks like it could be some kind of animal.

- [Tony] If it's biological,

could this be Canada's infamous Cadborosaurus?

- What we see here doesn't match the Cadborosaurus.

If a long, sinuous body is moving through water,

you wouldn't expect very much disturbance at all.

Animals in the water are shaped in very specific ways

to preserve energy and retain body heat.

I don't think this is the wake

from a really long snake-like creature,

I would expect a much different wake pattern.

- When we're looking at reportings

of Caddy, or Cadborosaurus, in the wild,

typically people are misiding oarfish, seals.

So even if it was some sort of misidentification like that,

again, I would expect to see part of the animal

to be visible on the surface.

- And as far as it being an archaic turtle,

like the Archelon,

we're not buying that one either.

- There's a few reasons why I wouldn't lean that way.

One, turtles do have to surface to breathe.

So if we are looking at a big sea turtle like that,

you would see a nose coming up.

And also, in the lake Cretaceous,

temperatures in the seas over here

used to be a lot warmer than they are now.

Due to the changes in climate,

that sea turtle could no longer exist in this region today.

I've taken into account the location

and all the possible animals this could be,

and I think it's safe to say,

I don't actually know what this is,

or what's causing the wake,

but I know it's very large.

- What we're seeing is some kind of large animal

that is creating this wake.

That being said,

I don't see a lot of defining physical features

that would tell me what kind of animal this is.

So it's kind of a mystery.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

- Our verdict; unidentified creature.

Our experts agree

that whatever this thing is, it's biological,

and it's definitely large.

However, without further evidence,

our investigation is dead in the water.

- A question for you.

What's the wildest thing you found lying on the ground?

Maybe some money, some jewelry, a phone?

Well, one family came upon a curious sphere

that appeared to move on its own,

and then it vanished.

What was it?

A mystery that's lasted 50 years.

[air whooshing] [intriguing ominous music]

March 27th, 1974, Fort George Island, Florida,

Jerri and Antoine Betz, along with their son Terry,

are walking in a wooded area near their home

when they find something on the ground

that looks like it's from another planet.

It's a strange metallic sphere,

approximately eight-inches in diameter,

and weighing nearly 22-pounds.

As you can see in this local news footage from the time,

the shiny artifact has no seams or weld marks,

there's nothing to indicate its provenance.

- When the Betz family brought this round object home,

they realized it began to behave in some unusual ways.

They would place it on the table,

and it would just randomly roll around and not fall off,

or they would place it on the floor

and it would follow members of the house around.

- [Tony] As word about this sphere began to spread,

scientists conducted a series of tests.

- They made a few interesting discoveries.

First, the ball could withstand extreme heat.

It was made out of a stainless steel alloy,

so it was clearly designed to take on a lot of pressure,

about 120,000-pounds per square inch.

So we're dealing with a heavy industrial

piece of metal here.

- [Tony] Could we looking at something

as simple as a massive ball bearing?

A peek inside the sphere only deepens the mystery.

- [MJ] Scientists later performed X-ray of the sphere,

and they discovered that inside

were actually two smaller magnetic spheres

that had four magnetic poles total,

so two positives and two negatives.

[ominous whooshing]

- [Tony] Not long after its discovery,

the sphere was examined by a panel of experts,

including astronomer J. Allen Hynek,

the man who was Chief Scientific Advisor

for Project Blue Book,

the Air Force's top secret effort

to investigate suspected UFOs.

[ominous whooshing]

Hynek didn't observe anything unusual about the sphere,

but an engineer on the panel revealed

that its magnetic field is over 1000 times more powerful

than that of any known substance.

Could it be some kind of extraterrestrial probe?

If that sounds like a far-fetched theory,

consider a recent discovery

that some believe could be proof of alien tech.

- [MJ] In 2023, Harvard Professor Avi Loeb

went on an expedition to find and recover 50 or so pieces

of these very tiny round kind of granules of meteorite

that came from outer space.

Dr. Loeb's belief is that this meteorite

is perhaps a probe from an intelligent species

that made its way to Earth and crash landed.

[explosion booming] [water splashing]

[static crackling]

- According to the Betz family,

while examining the sphere,

a researcher discovered that it was emitting

some sort of radio signal.

This led some to theorize that the object

could be an alien listening device.

To find out if they were right,

we turn to our experts.

[intriguing dramatic music] [text clacking]

Why did this orb move erratically

when the Betz family placed it on a flat surface?

- We know that the Betz house was an older house,

and most old houses do have some corner that sunk

a little faster than the other, and the floors are uneven.

That would be a simple explanation

of why the Betz's ball rolled across their old floor.

[air whooshing]

- What about the idea that the Betz sphere

was either an alien probe or part of a spacecraft?

- If it had been part of a spacecraft,

you would expect to see some marks on it

from through the atmosphere,

and there's no marks on it.

There's no burn marks, or what's called a fusion crust

on meteorites when they come in.

We don't see anything like that.

Also, you can rule out the idea that it's extraterrestrial,

because most of the studies that have been done

shows that all the materials that make up the ball

are found on Earth.

But the question is why would you wanna make

something this big and out of stainless steel?

- [Tony] There could be one explanation.

- We know that tiny ball bearings

are in all sorts of machines today,

and larger machines need larger ball bearings.

So, you know, in terms of human technology,

balls made of metal of all sorts of diameters

are relatively common in the machine world.

- [Tony] And as for those strange radio signals

the sphere was emitting,

maybe they weren't so strange.

- The idea that it emitted radio signals,

that wouldn't surprise me

since it's really just a huge hunk of stainless steel.

If it had some impurities in that metal,

then it might be able to act like an antenna

and pick up some minor stuff once in a while.

Unfortunately, there's no way to be able to identify

and actually look inside and see what's there,

because the ball disappeared.

- [Tony] That's right.

For years, the sphere seen here

at a panel of UFO investigators

changed hands between different researchers

and institutions,

then it vanished without a trace.

- It's not available for study, which is a big red flag

from the scientific point of view.

As a person who looks into these kind of phenomenon,

its non-existence alone makes me suspicious of its origin.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

- Our verdict; unexplained.

The Betz sphere might just be an industrial ball bearing,

but why the mysterious magnetic charges inside it?

And where on Earth is this thing?

As of now, it's lost to history,

leaving us with more questions than answers.

In other words, this ball's up in the air.

- We've heard of moon truthers

who think the lunar landings were hoaxes,

but did you know there are also time truthers out there

who claim we're actually closer to the year 1725 than 2025?

What's their proof?

Take a look.

We're in Aachen, Germany, for this one,

specifically at the city's historic Cathedral

constructed around the late eighth century.

Its chapel is where the great King Charlemagne was buried.

He ruled much of the continent from 768 to 814 AD.

But for some, that last part about Charlemagne's rule

is a complete fiction.

- When some people look at this Cathedral,

they see the impossible

that it could not have been built in the year 800.

And they're trying to prove

that important historical figures like Charlemagne

never actually existed.

- [Tony] Excuse me?

We've heard of rewriting history,

but fabricating it, centuries worth?

The idea is known as the Phantom Time Hypothesis.

- The Phantom Time Hypothesis was first floated

by German historian, Heribert Illig, in 1991.

According to this theory,

the years between 614 and 911 simply didn't exist.

- [Tony] Okay, this is tricky,

so please pay attention as we explain.

The Phantom Time Hypothesis posits

that Pope Sylvester II and Emperor Otto III,

who ruled in about 1000 AD actually lived back in the 700s.

And they forged historical documents

to add 300 years to the timeline.

But why would they go to this trouble?

- The idea is they wanted to align their reigns

with the year 1000,

exactly one millennium after the birth of Jesus Christ,

which they believed would've made their reigns

more historically significant.

- [Tony] An interesting story.

Who doesn't love a good papal conspiracy?

But where's the proof?

Inter German Researcher, Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz,

he pointed to several forged documents from the era,

and believes the church faked these documents,

deeds for land and other trivial papers.

To make it look like things have been happening

in those years, they fast-forwarded over.

- And there are others who claim to have found

forged documents from that era,

including a professor at Exeter University.

He discovered 17 forged documents

by monks at a monastery

from the early 1000s.

- [Tony] How does Aachen Cathedral fit into all this?

Niemitz said it was another example

of the church fudging records to backfill missing centuries.

He said the church

was too architecturally advanced for the year 800,

and was built later.

- According to Dr. Niemitz,

there are no other cathedrals within 150 years

of when Aachen Cathedral was said to have been built

that have similar features.

The cupola was built of stone,

and the Franks at the time were building with wood.

There were also more than 20 other features

that he said he had not found in cathedrals

built immediately before or after this one.

[static crackling]

- Now, powerful people changing history to suit them

is nothing new.

In ancient Egypt, after the death of King Tutankhamun,

court officials tried their best

to erase any historical reference to the former pharaoh,

but did a powerful cabal really fast forward the calendar

and make up three centuries?

Putting it mildly, we need some proof.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

One part of the theory is fact.

Forgeries by clergy in the Middle Ages were widespread,

especially when it came to land deeds.

- The best conspiracy theories

always have at their heart a grain of truth.

And, in this case, it is absolutely true

that documents were being forged left and right

in the medieval times.

The priests were doing this for, sometimes, simple reasons,

these forgeries were kind of precautions

against the growingly powerful aristocracy

and their claims that they in fact owned the land,

not the church.

- The missing time theory is extremely flawed.

How can one pope in one country on one continent

convince the entire planet,

including people in Africa, Asia, and Australia,

to all just make up a few hundred years

in their history books and make up fictional people?

- The Phantom Time Hypothesis

uses purely European historical examples

to build its argument.

We have probably thousands of documents from China

that talk about a very verifiable narrative

of history happening at that time.

We also have Maya writing

that goes right through that time period,

and we connect those historical events

through carbon-14 dates.

- [Tony] So no other culture seems to be missing 300 years.

Then why did Aachen Cathedral look so advanced for its time?

- When we look at what it is and what it represented,

I think it makes sense in its context.

Charlemagne had resources from the entire area of Europe.

So even though there wasn't a tradition

of this kind of architecture here,

he took people from far, far away,

and ideas and architecture from far away,

and established his new kingdom there.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

- Our verdict; debunked theory.

Those three centuries

are staying right where they've always been.

So the old adage is true,

none of us is getting any younger.

- UFO cloaking.

The idea that UFOs can hide or disappear to avoid detection

has been a hot topic among believers for years.

Is alien tech lurking in plain sight?

And do two classic UFO photos provide the proof?

March 22nd, 1966.

It's a clear morning on Chalk Mountain in Climax, Colorado,

and technicians Robert Rinker and Wilbur Johnson

are taking the snowcat for a spin,

[camera shutter snapping] snapping photographs

around their weather station.

As far as they remember, it's an uneventful morning,

but when Rinker develops the film, he discovers this.

An enormous saucer-shaped object

appears to hover above the mountains.

It has two distinct parts,

a wide-domed top and a ridge wrapping around the bottom.

What's most peculiar about the object

is that it appears to be translucent.

- Coincidentally, this wasn't the only picture

that was taken that year

that showed some sort of translucent or transparent UFO.

In fact, in Hillsdale County, Michigan,

there's another photograph of something similar.

- [Tony] Just one day before the Colorado photo is snapped,

the Hillsdale County Civil Defense Director,

William van Horn, arrives at Hillsdale College

to investigate strange lights

spotted by a group of students.

Their sighting is just the latest

in a wave of sightings across Michigan.

And when William arrives,

he too sees the strange object in the sky.

After that, it doesn't take long

for the Air Force to get involved.

- The Air Force conducted its own investigation.

And surprise, surprise, they concluded it was swamp gas.

So Mr. William van Horn

decided to release this photograph

in order to challenge the Air Force's official position.

Van Horn's UFO picture was also translucent

and saucer-shaped.

[air whooshing] [enigmatic whirring]

- [Tony] Could these translucent saucers

be proof of a theory popular among UFO believers?

- There was discussion whether or not

this was evidence of cloaking,

whether an alien was using some technology

to camouflage itself within its surroundings.

- [Tony] The idea is that UFOs have the technology

to turn invisible, or cloak, to evade detection,

which would explain

why there are so few clear photos of them.

- Could this be evidence that aliens have been hiding

in plain sight this whole time?

[air whooshing]

- If aliens invisible to the human eye

really are living among us,

does that mean there could be one here or here?

And do these photos offer proof that they've arrived?

Our experts look into it.

[enigmatic whirring] [text clacking]

Before we stampede towards some exotic theory,

we ask if this UFO could just be a cloud.

- My first thought when I first saw this image

is that we're looking at a lenticular cloud.

Lenticular clouds often look like a contact lens,

a concave shape.

- [Tony] Lenticular clouds form

when wind pushes moist air up onto a mountaintop,

then, as the air cools, it forms a cloud.

- Interestingly enough, the weather on March 22nd, 1966,

showed that the lowest wind speeds across the country

were right over Chalk Mountain.

So I don't think the conditions were right

for a lenticular cloud to form.

- [Tony] Plus, a cloud would've been plain to see

for the two eyewitnesses.

So, could it be that an invisible UFO

was hiding right before their very eyes

only to be captured on film?

[camera shutter snapping]

- If a UFO is visible only in the UV,

the ultraviolet spectrum,

then we wouldn't see it with our eyes,

we would only see it with a camera

that can look at ultraviolet spectrum.

But this photo was taken with a Zeiss Ikon camera,

which wasn't any such type.

- [Tony] Then what the heck is that thing

hovering just outside the snowcat?

Well, maybe it was inside.

- This is very likely a reflection in the window

through which the photo was taken.

And if he's in a close-quarters cockpit

of a snowcat or something,

that dome light fixture is gonna be right over his head.

And so, he's gonna probably take that picture

through the window, lean toward the window,

and then you're gonna see the virtual image of the cockpit,

of light, in the background.

- And we think something similar happened

in the Michigan photo.

- One thing that tells you

that it's not something in the sky

is the fact that the sun is exactly as far away

from the center as this is away from the center.

That is one of the hallmarks of the photo artifact

we call a lens flare,

and that's what we're seeing here.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

- Our verdict; a reflection and a lens flare.

These weren't UFOs in hidden light spectrums,

they were tricks of light in the spectrum we do see.

We know whales are one of the smartest species

on the planet,

and they communicate with each other,

but are they also trying to talk to us?

And if so, are they doing it with math?

January, 2024,

wildlife photographer Piet van den Bemd

is flying a drone over the dark Antarctic waters

filming some humpback whales,

when he captures something stunning.

[intriguing dramatic music]

Two formations of a spiral pattern emerge in the water

made up of little bubbles,

slowly rising and then bursting at the surface.

Then, in the center, the two aquatic artists emerge,

breaching from the water and disrupting the pattern,

before moving on.

- I started to follow particular whales,

and you can see the dive sequences,

and then they blow bubbles.

So these bubbles, they created that spiral.

There were only two whales involved,

and they just synchronized perfectly.

And they did it only once,

and I was lucky enough to be there.

- Some have speculated

the whales were trying to communicate

using a mysterious mathematical formula

called the Fibonacci sequence.

It's named after the 13th century mathematician,

Leonardo Fibonacci, who first noticed it, well, everywhere.

[intriguing dramatic music]

- The sequence is often found in nature where each number

is the sum of the two digits proceeding it.

Imagine a tree branch splitting into two,

and then into three, and then into five.

- [Tony] And if you build a table

with all these numbers in sequence,

and draw a line through them, it forms a shape

you'll recognize.

- [Ken] The Fibonacci sequence

looks very much like a spiral.

These types of spirals are well represented

in the natural world.

We can see them in the shells of the nautilus,

in certain types of snails,

and most certainly in different types of plant life.

- [Tony] This has led people to speculate

that the Fibonacci sequence is a sign

that the universe is connected,

and that God or some other divine force is behind it.

Are the whales tapped into that,

and trying to tell us something?

- It really begs the question,

are these animals trying to communicate with us?

Perhaps they're trying to warn us

about pollution in the Earth's oceans

or other natural catastrophes.

Certainly, the Fibonacci sequence

would be recognized by all life forms

as a universal code or language.

[water splashing]

[static crackling]

- Right before the disastrous

Indian ocean tsunami hit in 2004,

several elephants in Sri Lanka refused to go near the shore,

and some even fled to higher ground.

Locals believe that they actually sensed

the devastation to come.

Could these whales be sensing something too?

And are they trying to warn us?

Let's see what our experts think.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

First things first, can whales actually talk to us?

The answer is, sort of.

- A recent study has shown

that there is potential for some kind of dialogue

between humans and whales.

That being said, we initiated that conversation...

- Hello. [orca whistling]

- [Orca] Hello.

- And they responded.

We don't know at what level

that was actually a conversation versus mimicry.

- [Tony] What about the idea

that they're using the Fibonacci sequence here

to communicate through math?

Well, it turns out

this may not be a Fibonacci spiral after all.

- The Fibonacci spiral is nonlinear,

it's a logarithmic spiral.

That means it keeps expanding more with each turn.

If we look at the spiral

that's being generated by these whales here,

the bubbles are approximately equally spaced.

While this is a beautiful spiral,

it is not a Fibonacci spiral.

- [Tony] So what are we looking at?

- What we're seeing here is known as bubble net feeding.

What the animals are doing

are creating an increasingly narrow set of circles

that herd a group of fish together

so that when they reach the surface of the water,

they can essentially engulf all of them at once,

multiple whales work together

to create a net out of bubbles.

And the net that they're creating looks like a spiral

on the surface.

This footage is pretty incredible

in the marine biology world.

It's only in the last decade or so

that our technology, like drones,

have been able to actually capture above ground shots

of these animals in doing these behaviors.

[water splashing]

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

- Our verdict; we agree with Shea Steingass.

What we are seeing here are bubble net formations.

One study found that humpbacks even tailor their nets

depending on the type of food they're eating.

And while not as extraordinary as sending a coded message,

this is a phenomenon that's extremely rare to see.

- What if there were an extraterrestrial technology

that could harness the power of a star?

In 1960, Physicist Freeman Dyson theorized

that advanced aliens might create mega structures

to surround stars and capture their energy.

Are a set of deep space photos proof it's already happened?

May, 2024, London, England,

an international team of scientists

releases a groundbreaking study

in the Royal Astronomical Journal

naming their endeavor Project Hephaistos.

They sifted through decades of research on millions of stars

in search of evidence to prove Dyson's theory.

And they found this.

You're looking at infrared readings

from deep space telescopes.

The dense black dots stand out,

because they are giving off massive amounts of infrared heat

from an unknown source.

The researchers say that heat

could be one of these Dyson spheres

harvesting the power of a star.

- Freeman Dyson initially proposed

that it was a large structure

that a very advanced civilization

could build around their host star.

But as his theory developed and progressed,

Dyson postulated that perhaps a Dyson sphere

doesn't necessarily need to be one structure,

but rather a series of smaller objects that surround the sun

that are connected via some sort of network,

and are able to collect energy from that sun.

- [Tony] Now the sun emits as much energy in 15 minutes

as the entire Earth consumes in a year.

And any technology that could harness such energy

would leave telltale clues in the infrared spectrum.

- These are what scientists call technosignatures.

They're not really sure what they are,

but the reason why they look

for these excessive infrared emissions

is because any Dyson sphere

is gonna start generating a lot of heat,

because it's soaking up solar energy.

Think of it like a car engine.

The harder you run a car engine,

it's gonna generate more heat.

[static crackling]

- Fresh off the groundbreaking discovery from England,

a second study from Italy found a whopping 53 stars

showing similar potential technosignatures.

Did this new research reveal definitive proof

of Dyson spheres and advanced alien life?

We turned to our experts to find out.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

First, is something natural heating up around these stars

that would explain this extreme heat signature?

- It's possible that we are observing

an excess infrared radiation

because of discs of dust and debris.

These discs form around stars

when stars are forming planetary systems.

And they're disc-shaped,

because they tend to get flattened

because of the angular momentum of stars as they rotate.

This can cause a heating that generates infrared radiation

that we can observe with our infrared telescopes.

- [Tony] But there's a problem with that theory,

because the stars in this study

are identified as red dwarf stars.

And that's key, because red dwarf stars

rarely exhibit the kind of debris discs.

Professor Szydagis described.

But there may be another explanation.

- Maybe we're looking at a galaxy

that is hiding behind this star,

and the infrared radiation that we're picking up

is from a galaxy.

It gets confusing because a picture is flat,

a picture is two-dimensional, reality is three-dimensional,

and therefore what could be masquerading as a Dyson sphere

is really a galaxy hiding behind your star.

- [Tony] Researchers

at the American Astronomical Society agree,

arguing that the heat in these images are a false positive

resulting from the star's alignment with distant galaxies.

In other words, it's all a matter of perspective.

The telescope that's picking up a so-called Dyson sphere

might actually be looking at a star

with a galaxy way out in the distance behind it.

When they're aligned,

the telescope reads it as just one very bright signature.

- And maybe this could explain

why we're seeing some excess amount of infrared radiation

in the data.

- [Tony] Does that mean that these aren't Dyson spheres?

- I think even from a theoretical perspective,

the concept of a Dyson sphere is very shaky.

If a Dyson sphere is going to be measurable at a distance,

because of its infrared signature

from the other side of the Dyson sphere,

that means it's probably not very efficient then

at holding all that energy.

And even if there are civilizations out there

millions and billions of years older than us,

I can think of a lot better ways of harnessing energy

than the construction of a Dyson sphere.

- [Tony] But despite some skepticism,

Dyson spheres remain on NASA's list

of potential technosignatures

to help identify extraterrestrial civilizations.

[enigmatic wailing] [text clacking]

Our verdict; galaxies.

Professor Szydagis and Kaku both say these infrared readings

are probably not catching a Dyson sphere in action.

So, for now, the search for intelligent life

and unlimited energy continues,

tonight's show, however, has come to an end.

Thank you so much for watching,

and remember to keep those cameras rolling.

[intriguing dramatic music]