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- [Brian] UFOs. They're
not just in the skies.

They're in the newspaper.

They're on TV. They're in old books,

and they're what your
friends are talking about today.

They're in the stories
you heard growing up,

and they keep coming back into our lives.

They're in our lives right now.

Since 2017, the media has been cramming

UFOs and alien visitation down our throats.

It's the latest craze on
TV's pseudo-science

and pseudo-history networks.

The result is that between 2019 and 2021,

Americans' belief that some UFOs are aliens

has risen from 33% to 41%

according to a recent Gallup poll.

We can't help but think
about aliens and UFOs,

but how much of that thinking is informed

by the real sciences involved?

My name is Brian
Dunning, I'm a science writer

and I love coming out here to the desert

in the American west to
look up at our amazing skies.

I've personally been lucky
enough to see something,

three times in fact,

that I couldn't figure
out what it might be.

Now, I did soon learn what they were

but for a few minutes I had
a magical rush like no other.

There's something up there,

something we can't explain.

But we all have in the back of
our minds what we hope it is.

This observatory is one of the places

where we look deep into space

to peek into the most interesting stars.

It makes us wonder who's out there.

In any given patch of the sky,

how many life forms are there

in just that little field of view?

Now, that's a question
that should intrigue anyone,

but here's an even better one.

In that same patch of sky,

how many eyes are there looking back at us?

For me, personally,

that's about the most
exciting question there is.

Now, I work for an educational nonprofit.

Sometimes we make movies,

sometimes we make videos or podcasts.

But in that educational role,

we can't just tell you what we think

or what we wish was true.

We're limited to what's verifiable.

So we report on the latest

and the greatest state of our knowledge,

what scientists have learned so far,

how they learned it, what
they're still working on.

It's about our best
knowledge and the latest data.

That's what we're going to talk about here.

You already know that I love to wonder

about our neighbors in the universe.

You already know that
I'm fascinated by UFOs

and I want to learn more about them,

and you can't help but to have been exposed

to all the attention UFOs
have been getting in the media

these past few years.

Navy videos. TV series.

Congressional hearings. Personalities.

It's been everywhere.

So obviously a lot of
us are very interested

in these things.

So tonight I want to combine these,

I'm going to present a science-based report

free of any personal bias on this subject

that we all seem to
have a mutual interest in.

What are these things in our sky?

What do we know, and how do we know it?

Who is out there – or isn't
– and how do we know?

And of course, the million dollar question,

the one that really
overrides all the others:

Are they visiting us?

Now, spoiler alert, we don't
have all the answers yet,

but we do have a lot of them.

Are you ready?

I am.

Let's blast off.

One of the biggest questions
we face as human beings

on the planet Earth is
the possibility of alien life,

other worlds, maybe other civilizations,

other smart people who
are like us in some ways

and unlike us in many others.

So what do the folks who
study these questions think?

This is astrobiologist
Dr. Kaitlin Rasmussen.

I spoke with her at the 107 inch telescope

at the McDonald Observatory in Texas.

- [Kaitlin] So I think the general opinion

in the field of astrobiology

is that there is a lot of
life out there in the galaxy.

I really think that the galaxy

is absolutely teeming with life.

Whether that life is intelligent,

is really up for question,
but I have no doubt

and many of my peers have no doubt

that there is a lot of life out there.

- [Brian] And her colleague, Miles Currie,

also an astrobiologist.

- Right, yeah, so I would
say most astronomers

have come to the consensus that we think

there is some kind of life out there.

Now, whether that is intelligent life

or just microbes out there
is a totally different question.

- [Brian] And this is Dakotah Tyler.

He's an astrophysicist.

- So most astronomers
believe that there is life

in the universe, without a doubt.

- A lot, a little?

- A lot or a little could depend

upon exactly what you're talking about

in terms of intelligence
or advanced civilization,

but I would say a lot of life.

- That shouldn't come as a surprise.

In 1952, Miller and Urey put a sample

of the primordial Earth's
atmosphere into a test tube,

sparked it to simulate lightning,

and created more than 20 amino acids,

the basic building blocks of life.

But there was nothing about their mixture

unique to the Earth.

It was what the atmosphere would consist of

on any newly formed rocky volcanic planet.

The Miller-Urey experiment
gets replicated all the time.

Only now we've refined
it with better estimates

of the atmospheric composition

and we get even more amino acids produced.

Those same conditions have
been happening on rocky planets

throughout the universe
since the beginning of time.

So how many planets is that?

Well check this out.

It's a video from NASA
showing all the exoplanets

we've found so far.

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We've found over 5,000,

but that number's going
up so fast that 5,000

probably sounds comically low

by the time you're watching this.

And that super dense
patch of planets right there,

it's not that there are more planets there

than anywhere else,

that's just where we happen
to know about a lot of them

because it's where the Kepler
space telescope was pointed

for the duration of its initial mission,

which was to do a really deep study

of just one tiny patch of sky.

There are actually even more there,

a lot more, that Kepler
wasn't able to resolve;

and that's really what the
entire Milky Way looks like.

In fact, we figure there
are tens of billions of planets

and that's just right
here in our local galaxy.

That's more planets than
there are people on Earth.

Billions more.

On all those planets,

are there any civilizations right now?

Rich civilizations with
culture, arts, science,

history and space programs of their own?

I don't know what your math tells you

but my math says there are probably many

out there right now.

If there are alien
astrobiologists out there

and if they're asking these same questions,

then our Earth is going to be
about the most exciting target

in the sky.

Allow me to explain.

When we look for life on other planets,

we use spectroscopic analysis

to look at the chemical
makeup of their atmosphere.

By looking at the light spectrum,

we can see if that planet has water,

we can see if it has chlorophyll.

Astrobiologists have identified
many spectra we can look for

representing all the different types

of chemical basis for life,
not just carbon-based like us,

but all the other ways
elements might bond together

to form living matter.

Now even with James Webb,

our best space telescopes
almost have the ability,

but not quite.

But we're very close and
our next generation telescopes

will for sure, within a few decades.

This century, we will almost certainly

identify exoplanets that
have life of some kind.

So considering how many civilizations

are probably out there,

some of them must also
know these same things

and some of them have also
been looking at exoplanets.

Think of what Earth must look like to them.

71% water on its surface
and all the chemical signatures

of life in its atmosphere.

Carbon is the most
interactive element there is

and organic compounds are
everywhere in our spectrum.

Earth is an alien
astrobiologist's dream planet.

We are as enticing as any
exoplanet could possibly be.

- We are absolutely a planet that screams,

"There is intelligent life
here," not just life in general,

but life that is contributing
to its environment

in a technological way.

- Considering the laws of large numbers,

it's highly probable that someone,

maybe tens or hundreds
or thousands of them,

have already found
Earth's incredible spectrum.

Someone out there
probably knows we are here.

They know a few things about us.

That is an amazing,
astounding, mind blowing thought,

and it's very exciting for those of us

who hope that the children of Earth

will one day meet our neighbors.

So as we talk about this subject,

let's keep it in context
that there's a good chance

there are alien
civilizations interested in us

and the scientific basis for that is real.

They'd probably love to visit us

just as much as we'd love to visit them.

Now, all that is wonderful and amazing,

but it's also where we
bump into our first problem.

- The reason that, as astronomers,

we believe that life is so
abundant in the universe

is because of the vastness.

It's kind of a numbers game.

But that vastness is the same reason

that we don't believe that that life

will ever get here to us on Earth.

- They can't get here.

Remember, we're trying to stick to reality,

not the Star Trek universe.

That means asking
if it's possible to travel

faster than light; because civilizations

are going to be very, very far away.

- So as scientists, we are bound

by what we can test and observe.

And what we observe
is that nothing can travel

the speed of light except for light itself.

It would take an infinite amount of energy

to accelerate anything with any mass at all

to the speed of light.

- So faster than light
travel is not possible

because of the part of
physics called relativity.

And in relativity, the faster you move,

the heavier you get
and the shorter you get.

And so as you approach the speed of light,

you become infinitely
massive and infinitely flat.

- I hear terms like relativity,

like Einstein and laws of physics.

Are these just ideas that
human scientists made up?

- So you may naively
think that the laws of physics

are something that we
came up with as humans,

but these are not legislative laws.

These are really observations
that we have verified

time and time and time again to the point

that we really consider
them unbreakable laws.

- Is it possible that some
aliens might come to us

from a different part of the universe

that might have different laws of physics?

- No, it is not possible.

The laws of physics are
the same everywhere.

- How do you know?

- So we actually can use the
James Webb space telescope

to look back in time because
the farther away something is,

the longer light has been traveling to us.

And so when we look back in time,

we can see something called
the cosmic microwave background.

Now this is the leftover
light from the Big Bang

and this light dims like a dimmer switch

and we've been able to use
the laws of physics to say,

"OK, it should have been this bright

at this point in time,
and now it's this bright

at this point in time."

And those line up perfectly.

So we know that in
different parts of the universe

that we can see billions and
billions of light years away,

those laws of physics are exactly the same

as the laws of physics here on Earth.

- OK, so if the laws are
the same everywhere now,

have they always been the same?

- By looking at
gravitational lensing effects,

we've been able to determine that gravity

behaves the same today
as it did 5 billion years ago

and 5 billion light years away.

- The entire universe
obeys the laws of physics

as we know it.

We can look way back in the universe

and compare our observations
to some of the models

that we create based on the
laws of physics we know now

and we can see that these two things match.

So these laws of physics have
been the same laws of physics

ever since the beginning
as far as we can look back.

- [Brian] So that's disappointing.

These barriers to faster than
light travel are the same here

as they are for a civilization

on the other side of the universe.

And those problems we face today

were the same for
civilizations a billion years ago.

But the problems don't even end there.

I call this the Christmas tree problem,

and it has to do with the
time element of communicating

with our neighbors.

Do you think there
might be a radio greeting

from some alien
civilization winging its way

through space toward us right now?

- So there may be greetings
from alien civilizations

flying all over the place in the universe.

The problem is that you have to look

at the exact right place
at the exact right time

to receive it.

- It turns out time is just as
big a problem as distance.

Imagine a Christmas tree
with strings of blinking lights.

Imagine that tree is the
universe and each light

during that brief moment
when it's illuminated

is the duration of a
technological civilization,

from the moment they
first develop the capability

to interact with other civilizations

to the moment they meet their end,

they get hit with a gamma ray burst

or a planet killer asteroid

or a war or a pandemic or whatever.

Maybe they exist as a
technological civilization

for a million years or a hundred years,

and they're sprinkled
everywhere throughout the cosmos,

an unknowable number of such civilizations.

But they don't all exist at the same time.

The chances of two Christmas tree lights

that are really close together

being on at the same time is small.

Even if we developed
space travel at very close

to the speed of light,

for two civilizations to
have physical contact

they'd have to be extremely close together

and at the same time.

So it's possible, and it probably happens,

it's probably happening
some-where in the universe right now.

But the Christmas tree
problem makes it much less likely

that any technological civilization

will ever get to visit a neighbor,

and that's a problem that we hate.

So here's the thing that
almost always comes up

at this point in the conversations.

Aliens are more advanced than us.

They've probably figured
out the laws of physics

better than we have.

So they're not limited by time or distance.

They're not bound by special relativity.

By all we poor humans know,

special relativity is among
the most thoroughly tested

and proven of all the laws of physics.

But hey, maybe the
aliens are smarter than us.

Aliens, if they're smarter than us,

can't they get around those laws

and break the laws of physics?

- You cannot break the laws of physics.

- OK, it's nice to just declare
that like a proclamation,

but why can't the aliens know more than us?

- So any sufficiently
intelligent alien civilization

is going to invent math.

And their math is going to
tell them the exact same thing

that our math tells us,

and these are just the laws of physics.

- OK, let's say that we've
got the mathematics wrong

and that faster than
light travel is possible.

Now, obviously, not all
alien civilizations out there

would figure it out, but remember,

there might be a huge
number of them out there.

Enough of them would get it.

If distance doesn't matter
anymore, the problems go away.

Advanced aliens without
distance constraints

would be visiting civilizations everywhere.

Maybe some of them
would want to remain hidden

or just examine us, but
surely not all of them,

at least some of them would have jumped

onto the White House lawn
to say, "Hey, here we are."

And by the same logic,

at least some of them might
be hostile and destructive.

But look, we're here.

Nobody has destroyed us

and nobody has appeared
on the White House lawn.

So work it backwards. If there are no

hostile or sociable
long distance travelers,

that means there probably aren't any

long distance travelers.

Our lack of obvious
visitors is really the best

empirical evidence that we
have that nobody anywhere

has solved both the Christmas tree problem

and the problem of
faster than light travel.

Remember we did point out earlier,

special relativity is among
the most thoroughly tested

and proven of all the laws of physics.

Also, when we speculate that aliens

might not be bound by the
same laws of physics we are,

what are we really saying?

We're saying they can do anything like gods

or genies or leprechauns.

- So the aliens have to
abide by the same laws

of physics that we do, they aren't magic.

They're not Harry Potter.

They just can't do whatever they want.

- I think it's more likely
that advanced aliens

understand and work
with the laws of physics

the same as we do.

But again, I'm now just
speculating outside of science.

If we want to come up with reliable answers

to these big questions we're asking,

we need to stick to
reality and not speculate

about what we think gods and
genies and leprechauns could do.

Or Harry Potter.

In logic, we call that a special pleading.

We can't just say,

"Oh, the aliens don't have any limitations.

Us poor dumb humans are
just not able to comprehend

their superiority."

Well, that's not science,
that's wishful thinking.

It's convincing yourself something is true

because you want it to be true.

I want it to be true too

but I also want to understand what's real.

The way we do that is to
establish a very high bar

for the quality of evidence
that we're going to accept.

If we present bad evidence,
it weakens our case;

so we will only accept good evidence.

You might think this video

looks like excellent
quality evidence, but it's not.

It's terrible.

I know that, because I made it
myself using an app on my phone

to add a flying saucer to my video.

But you should have known
it was terrible evidence too

because all videos or pictures

are what we call anecdotal evidence.

That refers to anything

that can't be directly studied or tested.

I can directly study and test this rock

because I'm holding it,

but you can't because you're
just watching it on a video.

As far as you are able to prove

it might be nothing
more than a special effect.

Pictures or videos will
never meet that high bar

of evidence that we need.

Millions of people are better
than me at faking videos.

And more than half a century ago,

hoaxers were throwing hubcaps in the air

and absolutely persuading many

that they took authentic
photos of a flying saucer.

People accepted bad evidence

and the result was that they were wrong.

Verbal stories or stories
presented on UFO TV programs

are also completely anecdotal
and very untrustworthy.

They get more and more exaggerated

every time they're retold.

Even though the people on these shows

often seem trustworthy,

we have to force ourselves
to not simply believe

everything on television.

We have to force ourselves
to be open to information

that's not what we want to hear.

This is how we improve our knowledge.

Another way we scrutinize
evidence to make sure

it meets our high bar is
to try to falsify our theories.

What does the cancer
researcher want most of all?

She wants to find a cure
for the particular cancer

she's working on.

So if she gets the
slightest positive result,

the cancer responded slightly better

to this one candidate
drug than to the others,

she knows the most premature
and foolhardy thing she can do

is to immediately declare,

"Yay, I've found it.

This cancer has been cured."

Instead, she has to search for any possible

alternate explanation
for that positive result

so she can eliminate it.

Maybe it was caused by

residue from cleaning her test equipment.

The most important step she takes

is to find ways to
falsify any positive result.

That's how she makes sure she's left

with only the best evidence
that passes all scrutiny.

So if the UFO researcher
wants to convincingly show

that aliens are visiting us,

he has to apply that same extreme scrutiny

to his theory to find every possible way

that something else might
account for his evidence.

The video that looks like
a craft making movements

that airplanes can't,

might just be an optical illusion

from the way the camera's moving.

He has to absolutely
eliminate that possibility

and then he has to work just as hard

to find the next thing that
might explain the video.

So falsify, eliminate
every other possibility

if we want to make a strong case,

we have to make sure it stands up

to the scrutiny of falsification.

So to do that, let's start by looking

at the whole history of UFOs
that were eventually identified

and see what kinds of things
have fooled eyewitnesses

in the past.

Now, luckily we have lots of data for this.

A number of authors have
compiled great big data sets,

and even Wikipedia has an article

on the most common
explanations for UFO sightings

that were ultimately explained.

The #1 most common
cause of solved UFO cases

is misidentification of celestial objects,

basically planets and
stars, and mostly Venus,

but also satellites,
meteors, and orbital debris.

Every time SpaceX launches
a train of Starlink satellites,

which appear in the sky
as a giant long line of lights,

I get a ton of messages
from people asking me,

"Whoa, what the heck
was this?" Celestial objects

fool experienced sky watchers every day;

so they're the most important
phenomenon we have to try

and find a match for
in order to rule it out.

- With all of the artificial satellites

that are in orbit around the Earth,

it wouldn't be hard to imagine
a pilot seeing something

and not knowing exactly
what it was, and tagging it

as an unidentified flying object,

which for them it would be.

- And here's an air traffic controller.

You'll meet him soon.

- We've had pilots
report a line of aircrafts

a hundred miles across,
30 aircraft, what is it?

- And they're seeing a Starlink train?

- They're seeing, yes.

- The second most common
cause of solved UFO cases

is airborne clutter,
mostly weather balloons,

but also birds, party balloons,
and conventional aircraft

including planes, blimps,
especially advertising blimps,

drones, and helicopters.

All of these fool serious
UFO spotters every day.

And so we also have to try
and match these to our sighting

to eliminate them as the explanation.

Airborne clutter also includes hoaxes,

like knuckleheads launching
something on purpose

to trick people.

But hoaxing is such a minuscule
part of the UFO phenomenon

that we're really not even
going to spend any time on it.

Another common cause of solved UFO cases

is misidentification of lights
or objects on the ground.

Horizons can disappear
in a number of atmospheric

and lighting conditions,

and lights and other objects on the ground

can often appear to be in the air.

Sometimes it takes some
real outside the box thinking

to discover that your UFO
was actually something

on the ground.

But again, this fools
smart people every day.

The last potential ID for solved UFOs

is perhaps the most
important for our purposes

and that's an extraordinary craft.

By an extraordinary craft,

I mean an actual physical
vehicle of some kind

that is not an airplane or
any other previously known

and familiar type.

An extraordinary craft is
one that has capabilities

or characteristics never before seen.

If we had an actual alien spaceship,

that would be an extraordinary craft.

If we had some new kind of vehicle with

flight characteristics that
are apparently impossible,

maybe Chinese, maybe
Russian, maybe American,

but truly paradigm upending,

that would be an extraordinary craft.

The reason I say this is the most important

for our purposes is that in
the entire history of UFOlogy,

in not one single case ever

has an extraordinary craft been found

to be the explanation for a UFO.

Not once. Ever.

Not a single extraordinary
craft has ever been found,

at least not that meets our
high standard of evidence,

which means rejecting
the many anecdotal stories

of captured alien debris.

So if we go through and eliminate

all the more likely possibilities:

celestial objects, airborne clutter,

objects on the ground,

conventional aircraft,
and optical illusions,

and if we believe an extraordinary craft

must be responsible for the sighting,

this is where we become the ones

making the extraordinary claim,

and where we must present
extraordinary evidence.

To prove something
that's truly unprecedented,

our standard of evidence must be crazy high

and that's why it's so important

to go through the falsification process.

So now let's look at the evidence we have

through this filter of setting the bar high

and let's falsify everything we can.

I want to start with a couple
of really bad examples,

just to illustrate how easy it is

for a really amazing story to spread

when nobody subjects it to any scrutiny.

Where do we find these?

On television, of course.

People forget that TV
shows are entertainment.

Nobody at the network
cares how accurate it is.

They only care that you watch.

And so they let the stories get exaggerated

and completely distorted.

One of these is the Rendlesham
Forest case from 1980.

At a US Air Force base inside England,

airmen on duty saw some bright lights

flashing through the
trees of Rendlesham Forest

just outside the base perimeter.

They went to investigate
and found what they described

as a craft of unknown
origin landed inside the forest.

They approached it and
one of the men studied

and touched it for 45 minutes,

logging the details in a notebook.

But they were ordered never
to discuss what happened.

And so it's been called one
of the great UFO coverups

in history.

Something that nearly always
happens with stories like this

that get told and retold on TV shows

is that each network
has to outdo the last one.

And so the eyewitnesses' stories
get magnified and expanded

every time another network tells it.

When we go back to the
original documentation,

the actual records from that night,

they tell a very different story.

Now, the men did indeed
follow a flashing light

through the trees, and
suspecting that there might

have been a crash of
some kind in the forest,

they called the local constables, who,

being familiar with the area,

found the men were seeing nothing more

than the flashing light
of Orfordness Lighthouse

about six miles away

and they did not investigate further.

A colonel from the base accompanied the men

with an audio recorder
and recorded the following:

- [Brian] Now every lighthouse
has its own unique interval

for how often it flashes.

That way mariners can identify
which lighthouse they're seeing.

The Orfordness Lighthouse,

which is sadly gone now,

flashed at an interval
of exactly five seconds.

So let's hear that audio again,

but with a beep added every five seconds.

[beep]

[beep]

[beep]

- [Brian] What about the guy
who said he examined the craft

in the forest writing down
the details in his notebook?

That didn't become a
part of the story until 1996,

16 years after it happened.

He'd given other interviews on
TV shows as recently as 1994

and had never said
anything about seeing a craft.

And it wasn't until another TV show in 2003

that he first mentioned having a notebook.

Back in 1980 when this happened,

he had told the Air Force interviewer

that they followed the flashing light

but couldn't get very close to it.

And that's all.

Then every time a new TV
show came out about this story,

it got bigger and bigger,

and more story elements were invented.

Go back to the original accounts

and it's documented
that nothing interesting

happened at all.

There's no evidence that any of the events

added by the TV shows ever happened.

So Rendlesham Forest does not satisfy

our standard of evidence.

There's another story that
highlights the importance

of going back to original accounts.

This one comes from Zimbabwe in 1994.

At a rural school in Africa,

62 children reported that
a flying saucer came down

and landed in a field just
outside their playground,

and some small men in black came out

and gave them all a telepathic message

that they should take
better care of the Earth.

The 62 children drew pictures of the craft

and told the story of what happened.

Their stories and pictures
were all consistent.

Even a prominent Harvard
professor interviewed them

and reported their story
was absolutely authentic.

Moreover, these were said to
have been poor African children

who would've had no prior
exposure to science fiction

or pop culture, and wouldn't
even have known about UFOs

or flying saucers.

It's said to be one of the
most compelling cases

of proof of alien visitation.

The problem here is that we
don't have any original accounts

of what might have
happened there, if anything.

First of all, these were
not poor African children

from some village.

This school was among the
most expensive private schools

serving Harare, the capital of
Zimbabwe, 15 minutes away.

These were wealthy kids,

mostly South African and
British who had HBO at home

and went to the movies and watched TV.

And what they'd been
watching for the past few days

had been nothing but UFO hype.

A great fireball had broken
up in the night sky over Africa,

which we later learned
had been the re-entry

of the Zenit-2 rocket

from the Russian Cosmos
2290 satellite launch.

The TV and radio stations
were buzzing with calls

for photos and the best UFO stories.

The editor of UFO Afrinews
heard about the children's story

and went to the school.

She placed them into groups

and held group story sharing sessions.

They made and shared
their drawings together.

This is the exact opposite

of how witnesses are
supposed to be interviewed,

the most crucial step of
which is to separate them

completely as early as possible.

Because now, having influenced one another,

the children's stories were
hopelessly cross-contaminated

and so of course the stories were similar.

But the most destructive influencing

came from the Harvard
professor two months later.

This was John Mack, an
author who firmly believed

in alien abduction. He was
actually under investigation

by Harvard at the time

for telling people who
wondered if they'd been abducted

by aliens that that's exactly
what had happened to them.

His whole thing was persuading people

that they'd been visited by aliens,

to the point of breaking
Harvard's ethical standards.

That is not an impartial observer.

Whatever actually happened
at the school on that day

is impossible to know,
because of the sloppy way

the eyewitness accounts were handled.

We do know that 62 children
say they saw something,

but whatever they originally
reported was quickly lost

and the great majority of children present,

some 200 others, reported
seeing nothing at all.

We are looking for
extraordinary hard evidence,

but these two stories offer nothing

but horrible contaminated anecdotes.

Maybe we can find something better

if we look at some of the
official government reports.

Perhaps the most concerning

of all the government UFO accounts

is the story that you may have heard

about UFOs being found to have the ability

to disable United States nuclear missiles.

If anything would warrant
official investigation,

it would be that, right?

So here's Congressman Mike Gallagher

grilling representatives of
the US Navy's UAP task force

at a congressional hearing in May, 2022.

- [Gallagher] It's also been
reported that there have been

UAP observed and
interacting with and flying over

sensitive military facilities, particularly

and not just ranges, but
some facilities housing

our strategic nuclear forces.

One such incident allegedly occurred

at Malmstrom Air Force Base
in which 10 of our nuclear ICBMs

were rendered inoperable.

At the same time, a glowing
red orb was observed overhead.

I'm not commenting on the accuracy of this.

I'm simply asking you
whether you're aware of it

and whether you have any
comment on the accuracy

of that report.

- [Colleague] Let me pass that to Mr. Bray,

you've been looking at
UAPs over the last three years.

- [Bray] That data is
not within the holdings

of the UAP task force.

- OK, but are you aware of the the report

or that the data exists somewhere?

- I have heard stories.

I have not seen the official data on that.

- Well, I have, because
it's been publicly available

for a long time.

The event Gallagher is
referring to happened in 1967,

well over half a century ago,

at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana,

home to the 341st strategic
missile wing of Minuteman ICBMs.

The only reason anyone
knows about this incident

is this book, "Faded
Giant", co-written in 2005

by UFO author Robert Salas.

He's written at least
three books about UFOs,

and he was actually
one of the missile officers

on duty that day in 1967.

So to learn more about this,
I called up a friend of mine.

- My name is Hal Bidlack,

I'm a retired Lieutenant Colonel

in the United States Air Force.

In my career, I spent my first assignment

as a finger on the button
guy, an ICBM launch officer.

I ultimately earned a PhD and taught

at the Air Force Academy
for much of my career.

- Are there a lot of missileers out there?

- It's a relatively small
and tight community

within the military.

- So had you heard this story before?

- No, and frankly, that
makes me suspicious.

As I said, it's a small, tight community,

and odd things do happen

where missiles break from time to time,

and we know about those.

But the fact that I've
never heard of this story

is yet another reason to
suspect it's of doubtful origin.

- A lot of people have tried to find out

what really happened there,

including by filing Freedom
of Information Act requests.

In 2001, the Air Force
responded with 84 pages.

A lot of it consisted of
the reports of technicians

from Boeing, which built the Minuteman,

and these technicians were called in

to investigate and figure
out what went wrong.

Apparently an entire flight of 10 missiles

all did reboot themselves on that day.

The report focused on the
power to these launch facilities.

How do these launch
facilities get their power?

- Well just like any homeowner,
they plug into the grid,

that is the primary source of power.

There's also backups in terms of batteries

and diesel generators,
should that power fail

or be out of tolerance.

- So according to this now
declassified 1967 report

from Malmstrom Air Force Base,

Fergus Electric is the
company that supplied

the commercial power.

So it says here, a 7.2 kilovolt transformer

shorted in the line to
cite Echo three at 14:50,

March 16th, 1967.

This transformer is located
on a farm two miles south

of the Winifred substation.

Automatic reclosure
switches at Winifred substation

opened and were re-closed manually

after transformer
replacement later in the day.

This caused the brine
chiller problem at Echo 1.

Sites Echo 3, 5, 6, 9 and 10
transferred to standby power.

Site Echo 1 transferred
to direct current operation.

Then it goes on to talk about
the same thing happening

at sites 7 and 8.

But does that seem to make sense to you?

- Absolutely.

The ICBM sites are,
by design, in very rural

and distant locations,

and they rely on the local power grid.

They're also designed
to protect themselves.

So yes, if a current problem occurred,

they would cut themselves off from that,

they'd restart their electrical power,

and wait for the outside
current to stabilize.

- Could a power event
like this cause the missiles

to reboot themselves?

- Well, it certainly wouldn't
be a common event

but it's also not unheard of.

- So if the only thing that happened

was this power surge
from the blown transformer,

and that caused the
missiles to reboot normally,

how long were they actually down for?

The report goes on to say
that the exact time estimates

couldn't be established,

but it was approximately 10 to 40 seconds

that the missiles were offline.

- Seems reasonable.

- So in your experience,

an event like what we're talking about

would've been unremarkable enough

that you say you hadn't heard of it?

- Well in that time and place

it would be remarkable just
because it's very uncommon

to have anything out
of the ordinary happen.

Missiles have about a 99.9%
reliability in On Alert record.

So it would certainly be known at the time,

but it would not be passed
down through the years

as some kind of shocking event.

- In his books, Salas actually attributed

the missile restarts not to
the power outage, but to UFOs,

the glowing red orbs

that Congressman Gallagher asked about.

Well, the Air Force did check that out.

They found, quote, "Rumors
of unidentified flying objects"

around the area of Echo
flight during the time of fault

were disproven.

A mobile strike team,

which had checked all
November flight's launch facilities,

on the morning of March 16th, 1967,

were questioned and
stated that no unusual activity

"or sightings were observed."

Here is what actually happened.

That power outage caused all 10 missiles

to reboot themselves.

They were down for no more
than 10 to 40 seconds total.

Then, eight days later in
the town of Belt, Montana,

someone reported seeing
a UFO to the local paper.

There's no logical reason
to conclude one thing

had anything to do with the other.

38 years later, Salas writes a book

about what he thinks he remembers

and he's sure the UFO
and the missile reboots

were on the same day at the same place.

The records show he's wrong.

I think he's probably honestly mistaken;

38 years is a long time;
but regardless, he's wrong.

And now today we've got something

of a conspiracy theory
community who believe

it's impossible that he was mistaken,

and therefore the Air Force
must be covering up the truth,

a truth revealed in the book.

So Colonel Bidlack, you and
Salas both worked in a field

dealing with a lot of classified events.

- You bet.

- If the Air Force classified
something or covered it up,

would you be allowed to
freely write about it and reveal it?

- No, I could not.

If I chose to do that,

I'd be setting myself up
for significant problems

under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

- Publishing about
classified events is no joke.

Mark Owen was the pen
name of one of the Navy SEALs

who got Bin Laden, and he
wrote a 2012 book about it

called "No Easy Day".

To get the book out fast,

he and his publisher decided
to skip submitting the book

to the Department of Defense for review.

Owen never got charged with a crime,

but he had to turn over all
6.8 million dollars in royalties

that he'd made and
give it to the government.

Tom Clancy, author of the Jack Ryan novels,

famously got questioned
by the FBI after his book

"The Hunt for Red October" came out.

Apparently it did reveal
classified information,

but he showed them all the legal sources

where he got everything,

so there wasn't anything they could do.

So he went on to write freely about this.

He wrote about it in two more books.

He's spoken about it on podcasts,

and he's spoken about
it at UFO conferences;

What does that tell you?

- Well, it tells you the Air
Force just doesn't care,

which strongly suggests that it's fiction.

And as we know, fiction is not classified.

- So the only evidence
that UFOs can deactivate

our nuclear missiles is one
man's 38 year old memories

that contradict everything
that's in the record.

That's about as anecdotal as it gets.

The claim of UFOs having the ability

to disable nuclear arsenals does not meet

any reasonable standard of evidence.

Let's talk more about official
government UFO reports.

We have one from a
president of the United States,

and that's about as
official as you can get.

You may have heard that
President Jimmy Carter

once saw a UFO back in the 1960s

before he was the president.

It's a story he's told in
public any number of times,

but it wasn't until the
wide reach of podcasts

that we were actually able to solve it.

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast

is one that played a role.

To tell the story of what
happened, we're going to

begin by traveling down to Plains, Georgia,

to the private residence
of President Jimmy Carter.

- Hi, I'm Josh Carter, welcome to Plains.

I'm President Carter's grandson

and we're sitting in his office right now.

- So how did we come
to have President Carter

on the Skeptics Guide podcast?

- So Jay would have a question
at the end of every episode

that would, for audience engagement,

he would ask a question
about any given topic.

And one of the questions that he asked was.

- [Podcaster] Name the former world leader

that used to laugh at UFO believers

but later became a believer himself

when he himself witnessed one?

Think about that and be the
first one to answer correctly.

Good luck everyone.

- And I was like, "Man, I know exactly"

"who he's talking about." So I
emailed the Skeptics Guide.

- We got an email from a guy

who claimed to be President
Jimmy Carter's grandson.

And I have to say that I
was a little bit skeptical.

- So Steve emailed me back and he goes.

"OK, we believe your story
and we believe what you said,

but do you have any proof?

What proof can you give us

that you're Jimmy Carter's grandson?"

And so I sent him my wedding photo with me,

my wife and my grandparents
standing next to me.

Pretty definitive proof
that I am who I say I am.

- So I invited Josh to come on the show

and tell us the story of
President Carter's UFO sighting.

- And I said, "Well, I could,

but would you like to talk
to my grandfather instead?"

And he was like,

"Yes, sorry, I'd rather talk
to your grandfather than you.

No offense."

So I called my grandfather

and I asked if he would
be on the Skeptics Guide,

and he said, "Sure."

- So in 2007, episode 105 of our podcast,

we had on President Jimmy
Carter and he told us his story.

- [Steve] So he told that story,
and for several years anyway,

that was the end of it.

- Meanwhile, there's this
professor from Georgia Tech,

Jere Justus.

- Well, as a native Georgian,

I've always been
interested in Georgia history

and was one day reading
the book by Don Rhodes,

"Georgia Myth and Legends".

And it gives an account
of Carter seeing the UFO

and includes a replica
of his actual UFO report.

And when I read the details
of that description, I said,

"That sounds exactly
like someone describing

seeing a barium release cloud."

When I started graduate
school, I needed some support

so I got a job as a research assistant

on an Air Force project and
one of the things involved

was rocket launches
from Eglin Air Force Base.

- So what were these rockets doing?

- Well, the rockets
that released the barium

would take up a canister, if you will,

of barium chemical and release it out

at a point in the atmosphere.

And this would be in sunlight at altitude

but dark on the surface

so you could get good
pictures of this glowing release

of barium material.

- So the barium itself was in sunlight

and you're viewing it against a black sky?

- That's correct.

- So one day out of the blue,

I get an email from this guy Jere Justus.

He is a Georgia Tech
professor and he just sends me

an email saying,

"Hey, I think I figured out
your grandfather's UFO story."

- The sunlight would be
strong enough to actually ionize

part of the barium

and the neutral barium would
look greenish bluish color.

The ionized barium would
look sort of reddish color

and would stretch out along the field lines

of the Earth's magnetic field.

And so this was part of the studies

as to determine characteristics

of the Earth's magnetic
field at those altitudes.

- The Air Force was absolutely
launching sounding rockets

during that time and
continues to to this day

for a variety of purposes.

They would have had
different things in them

that they would have dumped
in the atmosphere, for example,

to test radio reflectability
and other aspects

of military operations.

So it's not unusual or
odd at all that a person

could have seen a
cloud like that in the sky.

- As it starts out as a
small little point of light

that glows and it expands

into a big giant orb
that turns red or blue,

depending on how the sun hits it

and how the barium gets
ionized and then it dissipates.

And I was like, "Wow, that
sounds exactly like the story

that I've heard my entire life

of my grandfather's UFO."

- So did you pass that on?

And what did the president think of that?

- He was excited about it.

He was excited to have an answer

and moving from unidentified to identified,

was very satisfactory for him.

To know what it was.

Because when my
grandfather told that story,

a lot of people assumed that he saw Venus.

He grew up looking at the sky,

he grew up interested in astronomy,

he grew up as a naval officer.

He knew what Venus looked
like and he was offended

that people thought that he
didn't know what Venus was.

- Professor Justus tracked down

the exact launch on the right day and time

that President Carter had
been outside the Lions Club,

and found that Carter's
estimates of direction

and elevation had been almost
exactly right on the money.

- Well, my initial findings,

I sent to the Carter Center
and heard back from them

that they had passed it
along to President Carter

for his analysis and he basically concurred

that it was plausible that that
was indeed what he had seen.

And so to the president's own satisfaction,

it turns out that his UFO
was a fairly exotic piece

of airborne clutter: an
artificial barium cloud.

OK, so the UFO stories that have gotten

by far the most attention
over the past few years

have been the videos that
came from the US Navy.

Originally there were three of
them called Gimbal, Go Fast,

and Nimitz, also called the Tic Tac video.

These videos are from the camera screens

in the F-18 fighters that
were there on the scene.

Now a lot of people feel that
what's shown in these videos

are extraordinary craft making movements

beyond the capability
of anything we know of.

And if you don't understand the meaning

of all the numbers and other
data shown on the screens,

it would be pretty easy to
get that same impression.

So I wanted to talk with
someone who does understand

all the stuff on the screens,

and who has an even deeper knowledge

of the entire scene being
presented in these videos.

Now it just so happens
that a friend of mine

by the name of Mick West
happens to be that guy.

Ever since these videos were released,

Mick has been making
appearances on TV and online

all around the world
explaining what we're seeing.

Before he fell into being
basically the world's foremost

UFO video analyst, Mick
did 3D physics simulations

in video game development.

He's also created a piece
of proprietary software

called Sitrec, which can combine data

from many different sources to recreate

what's in videos like these,

a recreation that's geospatially accurate.

- Sitrec is a tool I developed,

it's called the Situation Recreation Tool.

And the idea is that we
take a video of a UFO,

like this one here and then
make my own version of it

by creating a full 3D simulation

that's mathematically accurate.

- So what we've got here
is that's the original video

and that's your 3D recreation?

- That's right.

And as you can see, it's pretty much

the same in terms of
the way the cloud moves

and this little object here
moves the same way.

And I can zip through the video

and we can see it moving along.

Here's the plane moving
along that's taking the video

and here's the track of the object,

the potential track of the object.

- So how do you know where the plane was?

How do you know where the object was?

Where do you get all this data?

- Well, for the plane itself
down here we get all the data

from this screen here.

We know what the bank
angle is by extracting, by using

motion capture techniques
to extract the angle here.

We know the heading of the camera here,

53 degrees left, 2 degrees down.

And we can use that to
create these lines of sight here.

And so we've got the
little plane flying along here

and we have its targeting part

and we know what
direction it's pointing in.

So we know that the other object

is somewhere along
all of these lines of sight.

We don't know how far away it is though.

So I allow the user to
experiment with things like that

and we take this little slider here

and we can adjust how far away

the actual theoretical object is.

- So let's start with the
Navy video called Gimbal,

- Right. - What's up with that?

- So this is the Gimbal video.

It looks like a kind of saucer shaped craft

flying over a cloud base.

It's viewed in infrared.

And the claim is that
it's an actual flying saucer

and it's moving with no
visible means of propulsion.

And it's particularly interesting

because towards the end of the video

it does this little rotation here,

which isn't something that
a normal plane could do.

- So what do you think
is actually going on?

- We've got two possibilities here.

It could be something
that's close to the plane

in some kinda weird curvy path back here.

We could be doing this weird curve.

Or it's something that
could be further away

doing a straight line.

And I think the most likely
thing for this particular video

is that what we're looking at

is something that's actually quite far away

and it's perhaps another
plane moving in a straight line

and what we're seeing
is the back of the plane.

- It doesn't look like a distant jet.

- No, I think what we're actually seeing

isn't the shape of the object itself,

but the shape of the
infrared glare from this object,

like if you were to take a
flashlight like this one here

and you point it at the camera,

you get a glare around it
which is a certain shape

and because of the way the
camera on this jet is mounted,

when it traverse a certain angle,

it actually has to do this rotation

and it has to do it because
of the gimbal system,

which coincidentally is
the name of the video,

the official Navy name of
the video, the Gimbal video.

- Is there anything on the screen

that tells you the angle of the gimbal?

- There's nothing that tells
you the angle of the gimbal,

but what you do get is this azimuth angle

and this other angle here,
which is the elevation angle.

And you can use those to calculate

what the gimbal angle actually has to be.

- I see.

- So if you move this along,

you can see as you move
around a certain region,

it has to do a rotation
in order to keep pointing

in a certain direction.

- That one's a really interesting problem

because we only have video, just the image

of what the plane's cameras were seeing.

If it was a radar screen,

we would know how far away the object was

and how it was moving.

But that data doesn't exist so
that makes analysts like Mick

have to go the long way
around and reverse engineer

the entire situation.

- I think the most likely explanation

is that it's another military jet

that is just about 20 to 30 miles away,

just flying away and we're just looking

basically up its tailpipe,

at its jet engines and
that's creating the glare.

- There you have it.

Probably nothing out
of the ordinary at all.

- All right, let's look at
the video they call Go Fast.

- This is the Go Fast video.

It looks like something
is moving very fast,

hence the name Go Fast.

We see this little white
dot and it looks like

it's zipping over the surface of the ocean.

At the start of the video
you see them trying

to lock onto it and then
they finally do lock onto it

and now the the pod itself is tracking it.

So the claim here is that this is something

with no visible means
of propulsion, it's cold,

we see it's white, which
means cold in this mode

and it's moving very, very fast.

So people think, people get
very excited about this one.

- Yeah, I mean it looks
pretty exciting to me.

How could this be
something not moving fast?

- Well, the interesting
thing about this video

is that we get a lot of
information on screen.

We have here this 4.3 nautical miles range,

which is the distance from
the camera to the object.

And we have this angle we're
looking down, 27 degrees,

and we have the altitude of
the plane here, 25,000 feet.

So we can take this angle
here and this distance

and we can do 4.3 times the sin of 27

tells you how far below the plane it is.

Very simple high school trigonometry.

Turns out it's about 11,000 feet down.

Subtract that from 25,000
feet, you get 14,000 feet.

So it's actually 14,000
feet above the ocean.

It's not down by the ocean.

It's halfway between this
plane that's taking the video

and the ocean service itself,

which means that it's
actually moving very slowly.

- [Brian] I've heard people who should know

what they're talking
about, pilots, military pilots,

people in these government
hearings saying that

"No; what this video shows
is something going very fast."

- It looks like it's moving very fast

and it's a very compelling illusion.

Something that's far away moving fast

looks the same as something
that's close and moving slow.

But you've got to do the trigonometry,

you've got to take these
numbers into account

and they're simply not doing that.

If they do the math, they'll
get the same answer that I do.

- But even the pilots thought

that this was something extraordinary.

- Can pilots be wrong
about something like that?

Well, I asked another friend of mine,

remember we saw him earlier?

Jason Bush, who happens
to be an air traffic controller.

So do pilots ever make
mistakes like the rest of us?

- Absolutely.

They make big mistakes,
small mistakes every day.

- What are some common
mistakes you see pilots make?

- A pilot might read
back the wrong altitude,

obviously see it in the news sometimes

where a pilot might try to
land at the wrong airport.

Both civilian and military have done that.

- So you're saying pilots are human?

- Pilots are absolutely human.

- The error so many people
make with this particular video

is caused by one of the
most common optical illusions.

It's called the motion parallax illusion.

Mick shot this little video
in his yard to demonstrate it.

He hung this ping pong ball from a tree,

then walked past it with his camera.

When you zoom in, it looks like the ball

is moving at great speed,

but the ball's not moving
at all, only you are.

That's the motion parallax illusion.

It's why the object seems to
be moving relative to the ocean

in the Go Fast video.

And it's why the distant
plane seems to be moving

relative to the clouds in the Gimbal video.

So I wondered if pilots are trained

in this common optical illusion.

To find out, I took a
flight with another friend,

Chris Freeze, who's a highly
experienced flight instructor.

- I'm on the short list.

I've got over 3000 hours
of dual instruction given,

I've been a flight instructor
for about 15 years.

- Chris knows what gets
taught to pilots and what doesn't.

- Do pilots know what the
motion parallax illusion is?

- Probably not in said term.

I mean flight instructors
are trained in the idea

of parallax when it comes to the cockpit.

But in terms of motion,

I've never heard it in any of my training.

- It's just a common
thing that can fool anyone.

Do pilots make the same kind
of mistakes as other people?

- Absolutely.

Pilots are not perfect,
controllers are not perfect.

- Pilots are not sky gods,
they're regular people.

They put their pants on one leg at a time.

- What is it that makes
pilots, especially military pilots,

better observers than the rest of us?

- I mean, they have got
some unique equipment

that the civilian market doesn't have.

They've got faster equipment than the 182

that we're flying right here.

But at the end of the day,

they're just people flying airplanes.

- One of the leading
guesses for what that thing is

in the Go Fast video is, believe it or not,

a simple weather balloon floating along.

It could even be a Mylar party balloon.

How it looks in the video
is exactly how balloons look

on that same camera.

- I had a student the other
day, we were flying along,

he swore he saw a drone at 4,000 feet.

It could have been a Mylar balloon.

I think it probably was a Mylar balloon

given the altitude and the like

and especially where it was,

I mean over Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

- I understand that if you
are in the heat of flying,

you're not necessarily going
to do Mick's same calculations

to see how high that little dot is.

But these are military pilots.

Aren't professionals trained

to be able to tell how far away a dot is?

- Controllers are not
better at judging the size

or speed of a single dot.

Something could be up close moving slow

and it could match exactly
what something far away

moving fast is going.

You have no idea what the speed is

unless you know how far away something is.

- Is a trained pilot better
able than a layperson

to judge the size, speed
and distance of a single dot?

- No.

- So in short, all indications
are that this was nothing

more exotic than a balloon.

Alright, so now let's
look at the Nimitz video.

- Right, so the Nimitz
video, shot back in 2004.

Again, it shows a little
blob way off in the distance.

And the interesting thing about this video

is that this little blob appears

to make sudden movements now and again

and people have claimed
that the movements it's making

are inconsistent with a human craft,

like it's accelerating far too fast,

the G-forces will be far too
intense for a human pilot.

So they claim that it makes
these sudden movements

which are impossible.

- Wow.

It just went flying off the screen

at a billion miles an hour.

- Yeah.

It looks like it's actually moving.

It looks like there's
actual motion of the craft.

There's a couple of
movements in particular, right?

Right here you'll see it zip down

from the center to the outside.

It's just like hanging
out in the middle there.

Then all of a sudden it seems to disappear.

- Yeah.

Well it's on video. I mean, how do you?

- If you go back and you
analyze these in depth,

you'll see that every
time it does a movement,

it actually coincides with
some kind of camera motion.

We can see that the person taking the video

is actually switching between
modes, between zoom levels,

between types of camera
throughout the entire video.

And every time it does
that, the camera loses lock.

- Is there something on the screen

that tells us what the zoom
level is or the type of camera?

- Right here, it says here,

It says "NAR", in the
corner, it says, "1X zoom."

These combine to tell
you what the zoom level is.

This is the optical path that it's using,

narrow at the moment,
and this is digital zoom.

Right up here it says "IR"
and in some points in the video

that says "TV", right
here it's saying "TV".

And when it switches between TV and IR,

if you watch that here,

you saw that little movement
right there at the start?

- Yeah.

- When it switches from
one camera mode to another,

it loses lock on the
object and it very briefly

just keeps moving in the
way it was moving before.

So here we're changing modes.

It does a little movement to the side.

Same thing happened right there.

It just switched modes again,

it did a little movement to the side.

Where it gets interesting
is when it changes

between a narrow field of
view and a wide field of view.

Here we're in narrow field of view,

meaning we're really zoomed
in and we're going to change

to a medium or a wide field of view.

And we do that here,
and we see it's had to,

the object zips off.

Now the reason it's zipping off

is kind of similar to what
happens with a microscope.

When you're looking through a microscope

and you change from one
magnification to another,

you'll see it looks like the
whole image is moving.

- Yeah, because the lens
actually moves out of the way.

- Yeah, the lens,

you change from one lens to another

and that's what's happening here.

This object isn't moving off to the side.

All that's happening is one optical pathway

is rotating into position.

It's basically an internal
thing in the camera,

a little prism rotates
or a little mirror rotates.

Now, right at the end of the video,

the one that people talk
about the most is this one here.

We're in medium field of view,

but it's going to change
to narrow field of view,

means he's going to zoom in on it.

And that happens right about here.

So we change modes, as
this indicator lags a little bit,

and when the camera comes back up,

the object is just outside the bars

and it widens the bars,
tries to get it back in again,

it's just outside still, widens it,

for some reason it narrows it there

and now it's lost it, it's gone.

It's outside.

It tries to get it again.

It switches to 2X zoom at that point.

So this jump here isn't an actual motion.

- Oh...

- This is actually just
switching from one zoom level

to another zoom level, especially that one.

And then the object
basically just drifts off screen.

- So can we take a look at this in Sitrec

and see what that object is actually doing?

- Sure.

So here we have the plane flying along.

It's basically flying in a straight line

and it's looking up at
something off in the distance,

that's this yellow track
way off in the distance.

And we know that it's somewhere
along these lines of sight

because we have these angular lines.

So we — a good guess
as to where it might be

if we then look at this from above

is that it's just way off in the distance

and it's just flying
away and a bit to the left.

- I mean it looks like something moving,

it seems to move the
same, a similar distance

in a similar amount of time
as the plane taking the movie.

- Yes, you can tell by the fact

that these lines here
are about the same length

that it's moving at about the same speed

as the plane itself,

which suggests it's probably another plane.

- But if you notice, it's just
a weird Tic Tac blob shape.

It's not shaped like a plane.

Here's why.

- So here's some thermal
camera footage of some jets

and you can see more or
less the shape of the jet there.

But when the camera's
in a certain configuration

a little bit earlier, all
you see is this blob.

You can't see the actual
shape of the plane itself

because the heat of the
engine is creating this glare

which obscures the shape of the engine.

And I think that's what we're
seeing in the Gimbal video.

- So the other one I
wanted to ask you about

is this green pyramid video
where we seem to have

giant green pyramid shaped spaceships

flying around in the sky over Navy ships.

What's going on with that?

- Well, this was a
really interesting video.

It looks like this video
is shot with night vision.

So everything appears green.

It's not actually green.

And it looks like we are seeing some kind

of flying green triangle,
which is a very interesting thing.

- I should say so.

- And it is shot by a Navy
sailor on a Navy ship.

So we know it's the official thing

and we know that it was
looked at by the UAP task force

and they tried to figure out what it was.

Now we see a couple more.

We see a couple more triangles
and then there's some more

down here and they're not moving.

They're in a very particular configuration.

And the claim was that this
actually shows a whole bunch

of drones in the sky.

They said these were drones.

That's a drone, that was a drone,

all these were triangular shaped drones.

- So what else might they be?

- The odds of all these drones

being all exactly the same
size, shape, and orientation

are just ridiculous.

So I thought, you know,

perhaps it's just lights
and what we're seeing

is the aperture of the
camera is causing this effect.

- Do any of these night vision cameras

have that kind of aperture?

- And the interesting thing is that some

of the night vision cameras
do have this type of aperture.

Someone on Metabunk happened to look

at his night vision camera

and it had this triangular aperture.

So this is Jesse's camera,
it's a night vision camera.

And as you can see, the
aperture of the camera

is triangular.

And you can see it is actually
a proper night vision camera.

Third generation.

- Huh.

- So this is the video that he took

with that night vision camera.

- [Brian] It looks exactly the same.

- [Mick] It looks exactly the same.

We are seeing flickering lights,

which are just stars.

And if a plane was to
fly by, it was flashing,

we would see the exact same thing.

And what Jesse does is
he adjusts the focus slightly.

And when it's just very
slightly out of focus,

everything in the scene
that's a single bright light

turns into these green triangles.

- [Brian] So the same thing,

you've got some sort of scattered noise

and then the stars are all green triangles.

- It looks identical to the Navy video.

So right at the start of this video,

we see a number of lights
and somebody noticed

that there's a particular
configuration here.

We see a very bright one here,

one here and then two others here.

And someone figured out that this one here

is actually Jupiter.

And then from there you can figure out

exactly what these other stars are.

And it turns out that
pretty much every light

in this entire video, other than the one

that's moving along and
flashing, is a star or a planet.

So we take the fact that we
know where Jupiter is over here

and these other stars down here,

and we can just basically
trace the path across the sky.

We can see all these other stars.

This one right here just
popped in very briefly

is Rasalhague.

And we keep going.

Now we see it pass these...

two stars here,

which are the two dim things that we see

when it zooms all the
way in, that's the star Okab.

And we see it just pass by.

- Look at that.

Just an ordinary aircraft

with ordinary flashing navigation lights

flying along in front
of the stars that we see

in the sky every night,

but one well-meaning
guy on a Navy ship films it

with a night vision camera

that's just slightly out of focus

and suddenly we have
fleets of Chinese drones

and a national security threat

or aliens flying giant green pyramids.

This is what happens when we
have this whole cultural mania.

Everything is aliens
or everything is Chinese

or Russian national security threats.

We tend to forget all
about having that standard

for quality of evidence.

And we start to allow in garbage

coming from what Mick
calls the low information zone.

- The low information
zone is where UFOs exist.

It's the region or the distance

at which you can't quite
make something out.

And if you could zoom
in a little bit bit more,

if you could actually
get closer to the UFO,

you'd be able to tell what it was.

UFOs only exist because
they're in the low information zone.

- If there was enough information,

they'd be identified.

So Bigfoot is in the low information zone.

- Very much so, Bigfoot is
in the low information zone.

Anything that is naturally
blurry, I think you could say,

is something that's an example of something

in the low information zone.

- We need to keep our bar high

and we need to stop giving credibility

to anything from the low information zone,

which by definition does not
meet any standard of evidence.

And we also need something smarter

than one of the most popular
go-to generic explanations

for UFO sightings, a quote,
"secret military aircraft".

This is a special pet peeve of mine.

Saying a UFO that seems to display

incredible flight characteristics

might be a secret military aircraft

is something that my skeptic friends do

and it's something that
my UFOlogist friends do,

and they are both equally off base.

This is a terrible, terrible,
terrible explanation,

but give me a chance to explain why.

If I say, "Hey, that looks like a car."

It's because we know what
a car's characteristics are.

It's got wheels and windows
and it's about a certain size

and it's rolling along the road.

I was able to match
those up with what I saw

and car matches those characteristics.

So now imagine any UFO sighting,

something that's clearly
not behaving like an airplane

or a balloon or anything familiar.

It's maneuvering
impossibly fast, it's too big,

it has flames, whatever it might be

that clearly tells us it's not an airplane

and we believe it must
be an extraordinary craft.

Well then, how were we able to match it

to a secret military aircraft?

Let's go over the characteristics

of secret military aircraft,

because they all have at least two.

First is where they are.

While they're still classified,

they are never out where the
general public can see them.

They're at someplace
like the Nevada test range,

where nobody will see them.

They're not over a major population center.

Second is what they move and look like.

Now we don't know what classified aircraft

the military might be testing now,

but we have a century of history

of everything every
government has ever flown.

Every single aircraft that was ever secret,

without exception, has flight capabilities

in the same ballpark as other aircraft.

And this includes the very newest manned

and unmanned systems to go into service.

Some have been incrementally faster,

some have had low observability features,

some have had advanced electronics.

Not one has ever been
truly unlike any other aircraft.

They wouldn't need to be.

We've had flying figured
out pretty well for some time.

Has any government that you know of

ever tested an aircraft that
has truly radical capabilities?

- No, I know of no nation

that has ever tested an aircraft

that is radically beyond
any aviation capability

we've ever heard of.

- And that's really all we
know about classified aircraft.

The two things we know,
that they are not ever out

in plain view where someone

might have gotten iPhone video of them,

and that they look and
perform in the same ballpark

as other aircraft, tell us
that they absolutely do not

share any characteristics with
some UFO that we see and go,

"Whoa, that can't be a plane."

If we're going to be
consistent in our logic,

when we're not inside the Nevada test range

and we see something in the sky

that's obviously not an airplane,

one thing we can be sure of

is that it is almost certainly not

a secret military aircraft.

Look instead to the far
more likely explanations,

the ones that UFOs do
turn out to be all the time,

like celestial objects
and airborne clutter.

And this is a really timely point

because among the people suspecting

advanced enemy drones for
everything are congresspeople.

So in May of 2022, a US House subcommittee

held an open hearing on the UFO phenomenon.

Scott Bray, who we saw earlier,

was the Deputy Director of
the Office of Naval Intelligence

and he described the type
of expertise they brought in

to staff the UAP task force.

- Additionally, subject matter experts

from a wide variety of
fields including physics,

optics, metallurgy, meteorology,

just to name a few have been brought in

to expand our understanding in areas

where we may not have organic expertise.

In short, we've endeavored to bring

an all hands on deck approach

to better understand this phenomenon.

- Now I know he said there were others too,

but from what he listed,

it sounds like they've already got

an identification in mind.

It sounds like he's already decided

these are extraordinary craft.

People like physicists and metallurgists

are qualified to analyze
an actual physical object.

And that's a completely different skill set

than trying to identify a blob
in the low information zone.

- I think having a
metallurgist on the task force

would be a good idea if you
have some metal to study.

A lot of these samples that
we see being talked about

have a very dubious provenance.

Some of them were just sent in anonymously

with strange letters to
radio shows 20 years ago.

- Remember that in
every UFO case in history

that has been solved, in not one instance,

not a single one, has the
explanation turned out to be

an extraordinary craft.

So the UAP task force seems to be stacked

with people whose expertise

is the least likely to be needed.

So let's go back to the
explanations for UFOs

that were ultimately identified.

And since those will
explain most future UFOs too,

let's suggest some experts
more likely to be successful.

The #1 explanation of solved UFO cases

is misidentification of celestial objects.

Now the task force is in the ballpark

with their meteorologist,

but what they really need is an astronomer.

- The people who spend the most time

looking at the night sky,
astronomers, never report UFOs.

And that's because for the most part

we know what we're looking at.

- We understand that
a strange light in the sky

might be a comet, it
might be a satellite trail.

- And phenomena that
can go on in our cameras,

different camera aberrations
and lens reflections.

- It could be a sprite in the atmosphere.

There are a number of
things that astronomers

will be able to rule
out for the government.

- The #2 explanation of solved UFO cases

is airborne clutter.

Now, whenever one of these has been proven

to be the cause of a UFO,
the people who found it

have been UFO skeptics,

the people who've spent
their lives writing books

and debunking UFO cases.

Now, I know that sounds bad to some of you,

like they wouldn't be very impartial,

but they would be the
only task force members

with actual experience doing the job,

and they've done it for
decades, in many cases.

Scott Bray said he wanted
an all hands on deck approach?

Well, even if you don't like UFO skeptics,

their perspective is one

any truly objective
task force must include.

The #3 explanation of solved UFO cases

is misidentification of lights
or objects on the ground.

This suggests to me what I think

is the single most important expert

the task force should have

and that's an experienced
air crash investigator,

someone from the NTSB.

These are the best experts
in what kinds of things

confuse pilots or cause them to be fooled.

They have seen things like motion parallax

and other such illusions
fool experienced pilots

time and time again.

They know that stuff
better than the pilots do.

My bet is the air crash investigator

would solve more UFO cases
than anyone else on the team.

Or even better: crowdsource it.

- I actually have
basically a team of people

to help me with these things.

I think of myself as the curator

of a large number of talented people

who help me figure these things out.

And I put it all together
and I show it to the public

but it's very much a team effort.

It's very much a crowdsourcing effort.

- What sort of skill sets do
some of these people have?

- Some people are good at video analysis.

Some people are good
at mathematical analysis.

Some people are just really
good at recognizing things.

If you have people who, for
example, are experts in kites,

then when they see something that's a kite

that I wouldn't recognize, they can say,

"Oh, that's that particular type of kite."

Or a particular type of plane,

people are experts in aviation.

Some people excel in geolocating things,

tracking things down, where they are

and what time of day
it is and things like that.

And some people are just
good to bounce ideas off.

- Having physicists and metallurgists

on the task force might
sound impressive, but honestly,

it's the wrong skill set for the job.

We want experts with
skill sets that give them

a high chance of success,
not a near zero chance.

But now it's time to shift gears

and bring this conversation
back around to where we started.

We've now talked about the
problems with space travel.

We've talked about the
deep problems we have

in the kind of UFO evidence

that too many people are
putting too much faith in.

So let's talk now about where
the extraordinary evidence

is almost certainly going to come from,

because this is where we
get back to the good news.

So what is the most likely way

that we'll ultimately meet
some given alien civilization?

How will they reach out to us?

Of course, we don't know this,

but we can make some
very well educated guesses

going by the one data point that we have:

Ourselves.

We've reached out, how have we tried it?

Because probably someone
else with our same objectives

would try the same things.

So actual interstellar travel is a problem

that there really isn't
a practical solution to.

It's where we hit that
really big stumbling block.

You can't go faster than light.

So we've done the next best thing,

we've sent uncrewed
probes out into deep space,

Pioneer 10 and 11, and Voyager 1 and 2.

The energy requirements are much lower

with an uncrewed probe,

thus the chances of
success are much higher.

Now, a downside is these are only one way.

We can't store enough energy aboard them

to come back from far away.

So we sent simple
messages about who we are,

where we are, how to find us.

Since this is so much easier to do,

it's reasonable to assume

that other civilizations will also try

the easiest ways first.

Even if not all the
civilizations out there try it,

some of them probably would;

so we should probably look for simple,

dumb, low energy probes first.

But there's an even easier way that reaches

farther and faster: radio communication.

We've been deliberately
beaming high-powered signals

about ourselves toward
interesting targets since 1974.

Now we haven't made a very big effort.

We've really only done this
kind of thing a couple of times,

but what we've done reached
much farther than our probes,

and it did so at the speed of light.

Compared to sending probes,

sending targeted
electromagnetic communications

is immensely cheaper, with a fraction

of the energy requirements.

It has a farther reach

and has that much better chance of success.

Whatever civilizations out
there who might want to reach us,

this is probably what
most of them would try

and it's the first thing
that would get to us.

And we are listening.

So far, we've only ever
picked up one decent candidate.

The famous "Wow!" signal detected in 1977

on the Big Ear radio telescope
at Ohio State University.

Still to this day, the
best explanation for it

is a radio transmission
from a point in space

in the direction of Sagittarius.

How far out? Well, we don't know.

It could have been closer than the moon.

It could have been from
the other side of the galaxy.

But we never heard anything
again from that direction.

But here's the most exciting
thing about the "Wow!" signal,

and that's the frequency
it was received on.

If you want to reach intelligent
aliens with a radio signal,

there are going to be three things

to guide your choice of frequency.

First, you want a frequency

that will cut through atmospheres

and have the best chance of being received.

Second, you want a frequency

that's in a quiet band with no
competing background noise.

And third, you want a frequency

that's universally recognized,

like the frequency at which
interstellar hydrogen precesses,

to show the receiver that
you understand science

and are not just some random noise.

Well, guess what?

The "Wow!" signal's
frequency met all three of these.

1.42 gigahertz, which is a band

that astronomers call the waterhole.

They call it the waterhole

because it's like nature's gathering point

on the electromagnetic spectrum.

It's the obvious place

that intelligent interstellar communities

would come to meet and greet.

- Yeah, so I think we would choose

the waterhole frequency to reach out

to another intelligent species.

And that's because it
acts as sort of a window

like in a house.

You can't look through the walls of a house

but you can look through
the window of a house

and that's kind of how
this frequency works.

It's a window.

- An alien civilization might also choose

the waterhole frequency
to send a signal to us

because that is the frequency
that we would be listening to.

- So we actually know a lot

about how we are most likely to be visited.

For every one crewed alien spacecraft

that might ever come to Earth,

we'd expect visits from low
energy uncrewed probes first.

And for every un-crewed
alien probe that makes it here,

we'd expect many, many
radio telephone calls first.

So far we have exactly
one plausible candidate,

but it was very plausible.

And remember what an
incredibly inviting neighbor

Earth looks like.

On Earth only a few centuries ago,

everything was so far apart.

People hadn't even
heard of most other places,

let alone been able to visit them.

And when they did, just
as often it was with a sword

as it was with bread.

But today, we not only have jet planes,

we have the internet linking us all

into a single community in real time.

Anyone can go online and see

and speak to a human on
the other side of the planet.

Will we repeat this
model with other peoples

in the universe?

It's a possibility, but most
people in the history of Earth

have lived their lives and died

within just a few miles of the village

where they were born.

Physics tells us that
this is probably the fate

of most intelligent civilizations.

We don't have the power
to break the laws of physics,

but we do have the power
to keep our porch light on

and our welcome mat spread out.

[hopeful music]

So keep listening, keep sending,

keep hoping, and keep watching.

If we can do that, our
chances of eventually becoming

part of an interstellar
community of some kind are fair.

Friends we haven't met
yet are probably out there.

Some might well have their eye on us.

It might be 10,000 years from
now, or it might be tomorrow.

But that signal full of
data could come anytime.

I'm Brian Dunning.

Thank you for watching.

[hopeful music]

[energizing music]