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(pensive music)

- [Narrator] On December 16th, 2017,

footage shot by the U.S. Navy

spread panic among the American population.

Until then classified as a top secret defense matter,

three videos of unidentified flying objects

filmed by F-18s were made public.

They would be authenticated by the Pentagon in April 2020.

The first video dates from November 2004.

It was filmed by a patrol

flying near the U.S. aircraft carrier, Nimitz.

In the footage, a capsule-shaped object

is performing maneuvers that defy the laws of physics.

On that same day,

the radars of the missile cruiser, USS Princeton,

confirmed the presence of several flying objects.

An F-18 patrol was immediately dispatched to the spot

and filmed one of what are commonly known as UFOs,

but what experts prefer to refer to as UAPs,

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

Around the same time,

the serious and respected New York Times

revealed the existence of a secret program.

- [Anchor] Tonight, CNN has learned

the Pentagon had a secretive program to research UFOs

like the one Fravor spotted.

The project was called

the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program

run by an official named Luis Elizondo.

Tens of millions of dollars

for the project were pushed through

by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

- I was a leader of the Senate at the time,

and I went and talked to Senator Inouye from Hawaii,

Senator Stevens from Alaska.

They were the two leading members of Corporations Committee

that determined where money would be spent for defense.

They also controlled what is called the dark money,

the black money, that didn't show up any place.

It was secretive, it was classified.

And so, I asked them to meet in a secure room

in the United States Capitol.

And I said, "Give a little bit of background."

I said, "I want to spend some money trying figure out

what the hell is this all about."

- [Narrative] the U.S. media leapt on these revelations.

The disclosure of the existence of a secret program

to study UFOs at a cost of $22 million

was taken very seriously.

Alain Juillet is the former head of intelligence

for the French Secret Service Overseas.

(speaks in foreign language)

- [Interpreter] The fact that it was a US Senator

who insisted on this inquiry

shows that there was a very real problem.

And the American authorities decided,

due to the senator's request,

to carry out this inquiry.

And it did so because there were

a certain number of phenomena

about which American pilots, along with some others,

were asking very serious questions

due to the images they had filmed or seen.

- [Narrator] In the States, the story hit the headlines,

and David Fravor, one of the F-18 pilots

flying during the Nimitz case,

gave his account on CNN at peak viewing time.

- Well, the first thing is it had no wings,

so you think, "Okay, it's a helicopter."

But there's no rotor wash in the water.

There's no rotors.

This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball

bouncing off a wall.

It would hit and go the other way,

and change directions at will.

And then the ability to hover over the water,

and then start a vertical climb from basically zero

up towards about 12,000 feet,

and then accelerate in less than two seconds and disappear

is something I had never seen in my life.

I believe, as do the other folks

that were on the flight, when we visually saw it,

that it was something not from this world.

- [Narrator] For the experts,

this eyewitness account was mind-blowing,

and legitimized the film.

Until then, the military had rarely given its opinion.

a massive shift had just taken place in the United States.

- The United States military has said,

okay, there's no need trying to keep all this secret.

So pilots can report these phenomenon

without fear of not being promoted.

They can report these to their superiors.

They couldn't do that before.

- [Narrator] But the Americans aren't the only ones

to study this subject seriously.

Across the globe, a number of countries

have established organizations or programs

to carry out research into UAP.

In France, the SIGMA 2 commission

examines the most credible incidents like the Nimitz case.

- [Interpreter] So we tried to reconstruct

what had been observed during the Naval exercises

carried out around the Nimitz, the Princeton, et cetera,

between November 10th and 13th, 2004.

A certain number of repeated detections

were picked up by the radars between eight and 20 miles

to the South of Catalina Island off California

at 80,000 feet and moving at about 100 knots.

Now, 100 knots is extremely slow

for an aircraft flying at such an altitude.

- [Narrator] Formed in 2013, SIGMA 2

was made up of fighter pilots, engineers,

military officials, and even astronauts

such as Jean-Francois Clervoy.

As for Pierre Bescond, he's a former director

of the space center in Kourou French Guiana,

where the famous Ariane rockets were launched.

- [Interpreter 1] I don't agree with scientists

who immediately say it's baloney.

No.

If observations are made by those

whose job it is to make observations,

like fighter pilots, for example,

then what they've seen isn't baloney.

If you don't understand something,

then you put it on a shelf

and wait till there's a better scientific understanding

of the physical phenomenon,

until the correct study of it can be carried out.

But you don't just discard it as baloney.

In my mind, that's nonsensical.

- [Interpreter 2] It's not a question of believing

in UFO's or UAPs or not.

Serious research is being carried on on the subject.

This radar detected 14 echoes

spread uniformly over a distance of about 100 miles

at altitudes of between 28,000 feet and 500 feet.

And these readings correlate with those from other radars.

- [Narrator] SIGMA 2 works closely with the CNES,

the French National Center for Space Studies,

and more precisely with one of its branches, GEIPAN,

Group for the Study of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

For more than 40 years, they've been trying to shed light

on the origin of certain UAPs.

- [Interpreter] GEIPAN is tasked with collecting,

examining and analyzing sightings made by eyewitnesses

on French soil.

- [Narrator] Indeed, it was one such incident in France,

very similar to the case revealed by the U.S. Navy,

which was behind the founding of GEIPAN.

A former head of the group Jean-Jacques Velasco

in charge for 21 years and now an independent expert,

clearly remembers the unsolved case

at the origin of the group's creation.

- [Interpreter 1] In France one siting in 1951

involved the air force.

Fighter pilots out on a patrolling mission

observed over the town of Orange

an object moving at the same speed as their own planes.

when they flew alongside to intercept it,

it suddenly accelerated

and flew off at incredible speed.

A report was submitted to the air force chief of staff.

And it went all the way up to the minister.

And then recommendations were made

to create a French agency

to collect and analyze data on UAPs.

And that's how Claude Poher, the ufologist and astronomer

at CNES was given the task of founding GEIPAN.

- [Interpreter 2] It was a very brave move

by the CNES at the time

to decide to respond to such questions and create GEIPAN.

It was very brave because it was a scientific approach.

Certain phenomena are cited that we don't understand,

so we'll question the people who saw them,

said about studying them and try to find some answers.

It was a very scientific approach.

- [Interpreter 1] At first patrol was sent out

to about 60 miles from the Nimitz.

A trace of foam was observed at sea level.

So one of the F-18s made a fast downward move

towards this area of foam.

There was an object described as a big Tic Tac,

which changed course and began to climb.

So there was a maneuver

which could be considered intelligent.

A second patrol was sent out,

but it wasn't until the third group

of F-18s reached the area equipped with infrared cameras,

that they could capture the famous images.

- [Narrator] And along with the images,

the comments of the stupefied U.S. Navy pilots.

- [Pilot] There's a whole fleet of them. Look on the S.A.

My gosh.

They are going against the wind.

The wind is 120 miles to the west.

Look at that thing, dude.

That's not a (indistinct), is it?

Look at that thing!

It's rotating.

- [Interpreter] Here was something undeniable as it were,

the pilots saw it, the cameras filmed it,

the control tower picked it up.

Suddenly there was a real problem.

- [Interpreter] A certain number of cases

clearly show interaction with the planes.

And this was proven.

When you take the number of aerial cases worldwide,

officially recorded cases, there were about 2,000 of them,

and 140 of these feature the same stereotypes

that have been reported since 1947,

objects with speeds that can go from zero

up to 10,000, 20,000 kilometers an hour recorded by radars.

Absolutely phenomenal accelerations.

Trajectories, which are totally impossible for our planes.

Spinning around our planes, climbing vertically,

then zooming off horizontally.

- What I say is this:

we originally thought these were confined to the air,

but that's not what we know now.

There have been a very unusual occurrences

in the water, in the ocean,

not once, but numerous times now.

people reporting strange things happening to ships.

Sometimes our communication is just terminated.

So yes, I think it's extremely important

that we do everything we can

to find out what this is all about.

(uneasy music)

- [Interpreter] Periodically, Pentagon

and the U.S. air force chief of staff

show interest in UFO's,

because there are regular alerts that pose big questions.

This is very worrying for the military,

because soldiers like to know who they are facing.

So if you're faced with something you don't understand

and therefore can't master, it's only natural for them

to try to understand and set up commissions

to find out what exactly was going on

with some of the sightings.

- [Narrator] And these worries aren't recent.

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. authorities

have established several commissions

to investigate such phenomena,

notably project Blue Book,

for which the famous astronomer J. Allen Hynek

was the scientific consultant.

He didn't believe in UFO's, but after several years of study

he began to have doubts and finally validated the reality

of these unexplained phenomena.

At the time, the U.S. military was already forced

to communicate on these very special cases.

- I am here to discuss the so-called flying saucers.

The air force interest in this problem

has been due to our feeling of an obligation

to identify and analyze to the best of our ability

anything in the air that may have the possibility of threat

or menace to the United States.

In pursuit of this obligation, since 1947,

we have received and analyzed between one and 2,000 reports.

However, there have been a certain percentage

of this volume of reports

that have been made by credible observers

of relatively incredible thing.

It is this group of observations

that we now are attempting to resolve.

- [Narrator] Today, the U.S. is still driven

by the same preoccupations.

Nothing has changed. They fear for homeland security.

They must protect their population from a potential attack.

Like in the 1950s, this concern motivated officials

to analyze new footage shot by the U.S. Navy

in recent years.

This was the reason behind the famous ATIP program.

- There are scores and scores of occurrences

that are reported.

And not only that, our technology

has gotten much better on airplanes,

and they can take pictures of these things.

And we've got some stunningly good pictures of them.

Are they a threat? I don't know.

But I do know that we can't turn our heads

and pretend they don't exist, because they do exist.

- [Pilot 1] (mumbling) object on the-

- [Pilot 2] Oh my god, dude! (laughing)

- [Pilot 1] Roger.

- [Pilot 2] Look at this right here!

You got to (indistinct).

- [Pilot 1] No, I took (indistinct).

- [Pilot 2] Oh, okay.

- [Pilot 1] Oh my gosh, dude.

- [Pilot 2] Wow, what is that? (indistinct)

- [Interpreter] After World War II,

a lot of Americans believed

that the Russians were behind UFO's.

They thought the reds have discovered new technologies

and they're using them to spy on us.

If it were one of the super powers behind UFO's,

the U.S., Russia or China,

since the beginning of these incidents,

there would certainly have been a leak at some point

to show that this was the case.

But no intelligence has ever come out on this subject,

neither confirming, nor refuting

that it's the Russians, the Americans, or the Chinese.

So I don't believe that. I think it's something else.

- [Narrator] Something else? Then what?

While those in charge are asking questions,

so too is the general public.

And that's the mission of Mufon.

Since the 1950s, this network of scientists and engineers

have collected piles of eyewitness accounts

from across the United States.

It even has branches in Europe.

It has a long reaching network

with investigators in every state.

Mufon is taken very seriously

even by the American government.

It was one of its reports that drew the interest

of Senator Harry Reid

and gave rise to the famous AATIP program.

- Based on the information in the Mufon database,

that information was used to justify to Congress funding

for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program,

which is what was revealed

in the December 16th, 2017 Times' front page article

about the Pentagon secret UFO development.

It was the Mufon data that was used

to justify getting that program in place.

10 years later, when the story broke

on the front page of New York Times,

that was really the beginning of disclosure, in my opinion,

for this being a real phenomenon

and for people paying attention to it.

- [Narrator] Disclosure, the key word.

Was this revelation involuntary or organized?

In effect, since December 16th, 2017,

military officials and politicians

have regularly appeared in the media.

- [Interpreter] There is undeniably

a communication operation.

It's hard to imagine, in the United States army offices,

former Pentagon officials et cetera,

are communicating like this in a totally free

and unbridled way, without there being

some kind of framework behind them.

- [Interpreter] The moment that you have

a communication campaign with expert professionals

explaining things, the least that you can say

is that it's an awareness campaign

for the American population.

The least you can say.

It could also be preparation for a new reality,

with the authorities telling people,

this is how it really is, so that we're all ready for it.

Imagine us simply being told, okay, we're now certain:

our world is visited by beings from other worlds,

or passages between several worlds have been opened up.

That would cause a huge problem

and get a lot of people thinking,

because humankind would be entering unchartered territory,

territory where we're no longer in control of things.

We think they're friendly, but we're not really sure.

That means being confronted with something we can't master.

And human beings, today more than ever,

hate being in situations where they have no control.

- [Narrator] This is clearly what the American experts

inside Mufon think.

Paul Hynek is well-placed to know it.

He's the son of the scientific consultant

of the famous project Blue Book in the '50s and '60s

J. Allen Hynek.

He was raised amid piles of UFO reports

and he now sees a shift in the recent communication policies

of the American government.

- The disclosure of the existence of the AATIP program,

Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program,

and their recent disclosures about what the Navy has seen

and admitted that they've been seeing

for over nine month periods of UFOs every day almost.

And they can't explain them,

and to be frank, they need some help.

That's rather startling.

It's very candid confession on the part of the government.

So it certainly seems, and my friend Richard Dolan

is very convincing in a presentation he makes

of sort of the timeline of events leading up

to what may be a grand disclosure.

There certainly seems to be activity

by the U.S. government recently

that's consistent with that of a government

that's acclimating the populace

to a potential grand disclosure.

- [Narrator] Paul Hynek and the other members of Mufon

are convinced: in 2018 they even invited

the former head of AATIP, Luis Elizondo, as a guest speaker.

He confirmed their intuitions.

- I think disclosure already occurred.

I don't think necessarily disclosure is an event.

I think it's a process.

And I think that process began.

This is real.

This is what your $22 million worth of tax money

was spent on.

And there's a lot of it.

- [Narrator] But what purpose did this $22 million serve?

What light has been shed on unidentified aerial phenomena?

What studies exactly

did the Americans carry out within AATIP?

Work was essentially overseen by Bigelow Aerospace,

a company run by Robert Bigelow,

a businessman with strong views

who's convinced extra terrestrial life exists.

- I'm absolutely convinced. That's all there is to it.

- Do you also believe that UFO's have come to earth?

- There has been and is an existing presence,

an ET presence.

- Where exactly?

- It's just like right under people's noses.

Oh my gosh. Wow.

- [Narrator] Why did Senator Reid decide to work

with Bigelow Aerospace?

A choice that may seem surprising

and one that earned him a good deal of reproach.

Today, he still backs his decision.

- I wanted to spend this money.

I indicated $22 million.

But we couldn't direct that money to someone.

So we put it out for bid,

and everybody had the opportunity

that was interested to bid on it.

Bigelow bid on it and the United States military thought

his bid was the best.

And so that's why he undertook this.

And he did it for a number of reasons.

First of all, he's been interested in these objects

for many, many years.

And because of that, he was willing

to provide a lot more than any that of the bidders would do.

I mean, office space and space for technology.

He did a good job of appearing for his bid

and he got the bid, and I'm glad he did.

- [Narrator] So what fields did Bigelow Aerospace work in?

This document recently declassified

by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency

reveals the research carried out by the company.

In all 38 ultra complex fields of study

covering futuristic technologies

we've yet to master today.

For example, anti-gravity, nuclear propulsion in deep space,

wormholes allowing us to pass into parallel universes,

negative energy, and magnetohydrodynamics.

It wasn't down to chance that this cutting edge research

was carried out by Bigelow Aerospace.

In 1995, even before founding his company,

Robert Bigelow had created the National Institute

for Discovery Science with the aim of shedding light

on a number of scientific mysteries, including UFOs.

He invested millions from his private fortune.

It's simple to the experts:

Robert Bigelow is a national hero.

- Robert Bigelow has spent more money

than any other individual in the world, his private money,

to fund UFO research.

So he's actually a hero within the UFO community,

in my opinion.

And he's a stellar guy and he runs the Bigelow Aerospace

out in Las Vegas,

which builds inflatable habitats for space, right?

So I think I'm happy to hear him being successful

in his work with NASA and his work with his space program.

I thank him for the time we spent together.

And I think it's all leading us in the right direction

in terms of disclosure.

So I'm excited about it.

- [Narrator] Over the years, serious unimpeachable figures

have worked with Bigelow: Dr. John B. Alexander,

the pillar of the military research lab at Los Alamos,

and Edgar D. Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon.

And after years of research, their verdict is unequivocal.

- [Edgar] I happen to be privileged enough

to be in on the fact

that we have been visited on this planet,

and the UFO phenomenon is real,

although it's been covered up by our government

for quite a long time.

- [Interviewer] Whoa! Hang on a minute!

Well, this is big.

So, whoa, all of this is quite a shock to me.

- [Edgar] Well, I'm sorry.

Have you not been reading the papers recently,

it's starting to open up quite a bit.

- [Interviewer] So you're telling me, (chuckling)

well, there's a lot of information to take on board.

Hang on a minute.

I mean, listen, I've heard like, you know, crazy UFO nuts

tell me this kind of thing before.

I've never had Dr. Ed Mitchell,

you know, the sixth man to walk on the moon,

a respected scientist in his own right

announce to me that we've been visited

by aliens from other planets

and that they definitely are out there,

there's no debating it.

- [Edgar] Well, that's your first time

you've ever talked to me

or I'd have told you about it before.

(interviewer chuckling)

- [Narrator] And for Edgar Mitchell,

along with many other specialists,

the nuclear industry has a close link with the phenomenon.

- [Interpreter] Nuclear nuclear testing

was a very scary thing, because 540 nuclear

or thermonuclear bombs have been exploded in the atmosphere,

which is a lot.

And that corresponds mainly to the period 1960 to '61,

when there was one explosion every three days

carried out by the Americans or the Soviets.

(dramatic music)

(explosion booms)

- [Commentator] This is atomic energy.

- [Interpreter] In 1949, there were already clues

as to why these surprising phenomena were reported

in certain geographical areas.

Nuclear sites in particular were irregularly flown over.

For two top secret commissions,

since disclosed to the public,

Edward Teller, the scientific advisor to the White House,

was a participant.

He was the father of the hydrogen bomb.

He claimed that UFO's had flown over several nucleus sites,

notably Oak Ridge, where plutonium was manufactured.

A missile test range White Sands,

Roswell were a nuclear bombers were once based,

basically a whole host of things

pointing to UFO's flying over these places.

- For example, I learned that a number of our missile bases

in the Midwest, Dakotas, up that way,

that they had been shut down.

They would come out at night, almost always at nighttime,

and they would look up and see these objects in the air,

and they shut off all the communications

in the missile site.

It didn't happen once, it happens quite a few times.

- [Narrator] One of the most disturbing cases

was in 1967, over Malmstrom air force base in Montana.

We met with one of the last surviving eye witnesses

of the events.

Like many others, he remained silent for 30 years

before the case was finally divulged.

Lieutenant Robert Salas was in charge of launching

intercontinental ballistic missiles.

- It was a underground facility, about 60 feet underground.

My commander's name was Fred Meiwald.

We were taking turns staying on alert status.

And sometime in the evening, I get a phone call

from my top side guard, we had six guards upstairs,

and he said, they'd been seeing strange lights in the sky

flying very fast, stopping in mid air and reversing course.

He couldn't hear any engine noise,

strictly lights in the sky,

but they were very strange lights.

He didn't think they were airplanes.

He was screaming into the phone, babbling,

telling me that there was some orange reddish light

hovering above the front gate.

And he had all the guards out there with their weapons

and asked me what he should do.

And of course, I was shocked by this report.

He was obviously frightened.

I told him, as I recall, "Just make sure nothing comes in

the fenced area, use whatever force necessary."

And then he hung up. He said, "I had to go,

because one of his guards was injured."

I went to wake up my commander.

And as I was telling him about the phone calls,

our missiles shut down.

We had a 10 missiles under our control

and all 10 of them, what we call no-go,

they couldn't be launched, they couldn't be used.

So that's basically the story.

Of course, we reported to a command post.

- Some would go even further,

not hesitating to speak officially

about extraterrestrial encounters on their missions.

For three years, Paul Hellyer

was Canada's national defense minister.

- During the Cold War, 1961, there were about 50 UFO's

in formation, flying south from Russia across Europe.

And the Supreme Allied Commander was very concerned

and about ready to press the panic button,

when they turned around and went back over the North Pole.

So they decided to do an investigation,

and they investigated for three years

and they decided with absolute certainty

that four species, four different species, at least,

had been visiting this planet for thousands of years.

So, we have a long history of UFO's,

and of course, there's been a lot more activity

on the last few decades, since we invented the atomic bomb.

And they're very concerned about that

and the fact that we might use it again,

because the whole cosmos is a unity

and it affects not just us, but other people in the cosmos.

They're very much afraid that we might be stupid enough

to start using atomic weapons again.

And this would be very bad for us and for them as well.

- [Interpreter] He says it clearly: aliens exist.

They came here to stop us, et cetera.

I'm not at that stage.

I simply say there a phenomenon, controlled objects,

which confront us with a certain number of questions.

Is that a signal?

I'm simply saying that on a scientific level,

to put things into perspective,

our satellites are capable of detecting explosions

of supernovas dozens of light years away.

So why couldn't a civilization more advanced than ours

have the capacity to detect nuclear explosions on Earth?

Because a nuclear explosion has all the elements

of the electromagnetic spectrum

and enters the field of the microwave spectrum

via ultraviolets and infrareds.

Consequently, this signal is an artificial one

that could be detected a long, long way away.

And this could explain why there have been

such a huge number of sightings over nuclear sites.

The question remains.

- [Narrator] In France, Michael Vaillant,

an expert data consultant for GEIPAN for more than 12 years,

clearly links the sightings of UFO's

and civil and military facilities in a study

he published under the aegis of the University of Toulouse.

- [Interpreter] When we worked

with the Toulouse mathematics laboratory,

we did a study in 2015,

which showed there was a large statistical significance

in the breakdown of unexplained aerial phenomena data

and nuclear facilities.

But also polluted sites.

So there are questions to be asked

about the kind of intelligence observing these places,

and why intelligent extraterrestrials

are watching our nuclear and polluted sites.

I think it's pretty weird but pretty tasty at the same time.

- [Narrator] Whether it's to monitor humans

playing with nuclear fire or for some other reason,

the number of politicians, scientists, and engineers

who dare to speak out about non-human intelligence

is clearly growing.

- My personal, I can't speak on behalf of the government,

obviously, I'm not in the U.S. government anymore,

my personal belief is that there's very compelling evidence

that we may not be alone.

Whatever that means.

- The reason we had so much secrecy

is people acknowledged they couldn't understand

what it was all about.

And rather than make people afraid,

they just ignored it, hoping it would go away.

But it hasn't gone away.

And now they're being forced to do something about it,

because there are so many occurrences now,

because people who are flying airplanes

are no longer afraid of telling people what they saw.

- [Interpreter 1] Those who take it most seriously today,

are the scientists, because they're saying aliens do exist.

And asking where they're from, what makes them tick.

And that's very interesting.

- [Interpreter 2] It's only imaginable

through the idea of technology

that's far more advanced than ours.

And as we're not able to do it,

then it must come from elsewhere, from space.

- [Narrator] Intelligent life coming from space,

what made the scientific community snicker for decades

has now become a true subject, and for good reason:

in just 25 years, astronomers have discovered the existence

of 4,000 exoplanets, some of which are similar to Earth

and could therefore be home to forms of intelligent life.

And why not a civilization more advanced than ours?

(solemn music)

Avi Loeb is the chair of the astrophysics department

at Harvard university.

He's also head of two institutes working on mathematics

and black holes with numerous eminent physicists,

astronomers and mathematicians as their members,

which goes to show that he's one of the most serious

and respected researchers in his field in the world.

He and his teams has studied

one of the most surprising phenomenon

ever observed in our solar system:

the arrival of an unidentified interstellar object

with very unique properties.

Its name Oumuamua, which in Hawaiian means messenger.

- Oumuamua was discovered on October 19th, 2017.

It was the very first object that we identified

near the Earth that originated

from outside the solar system.

And it was clear that it's unbound to the Sun,

because it moves too fast near the Earth.

At first, the astronomers thought

that it's a rock, an asteroid, or perhaps a comet.

So it was monitored only for one week.

And then it was realized

that it has some strange properties.

For one thing, as it spun around every eight hours,

it changed its brightness by a factor of 10.

And that implies that its area on the sky

changes by a factor of 10,

because all we see is reflected sunlight.

And what it implies is that it's at least 10 times longer

than it is wide, much more extreme in shape

than any other object that we have seen

from within the solar system before.

And then astronomers looked at it a little more

the following month,

but they didn't much pay attention to it.

And by January it was too faint for us to look at.

But the data that was taken earlier was analyzed,

and then it was realized that in fact Oumuamua

deviated from an orbit

that is shaped just by the Sun's gravity.

And there was an extra force pushing it away from the Sun.

This could have been the result of outgassing

the way we see in comets,

where water ice on the surface of the comet evaporates

due to the illumination by sunlight.

But in the case of Oumuamua, we didn't see any evidence

for a cometary tail.

There was no gas that was traced around it.

And there were very tight limits derived

by the Spitzer space telescope on carbon based molecules

in the vicinity of this object.

And so it was very puzzling, what gives it this extra push?

And so in a paper that we wrote, we suggested

that perhaps the push is given by sunlight,

and in order for sunlight, as it off the object,

to give it enough push, the object needs to be very thin,

less than a millimeter in thickness, similar to a sail

that is being pushed by wind on a sailboat.

And in fact, our civilization is currently developing

the technology of flight sales,

where a push on a lightweight sail with light

and as a result, as the light bounces off the sail,

it gives it a push that can propel it to very high speeds,

up to the speed of light potentially.

And so it's possible, we said, that this is some device

that was sent, that was made artificially

that was sent by an alien civilization.

And we just mentioned that as a possibility,

simply because the alternative, a comet,

seem to be inconsistent with the data.

- [Narrator] Although Avi Loeb's solar sail

is still an exotic yet possible hypothesis,

the technologies that could explain

the unparalleled performances of such objects

are inspiring scientists, the military,

and private companies.

So are these research programs smoke screens

for a fiercely competitive race for tomorrow's technology?

- [Interpreter] The technology used by these objects,

apparently in the case, is one that we don't master,

because clearly, if we could obtain the technology

that enables a UFO to go from zero speed

to staggering speeds,

whilst performing complicated maneuvers,

then everyone would be interested.

Because it would change the fighter plane

among other things.

After all, if we discovered it,

we could use it to defend France.

So the two things go hand in hand:

it's great to understand the phenomenon

and then, why not benefit from it?

- [Narrator] So was the goal of Bigelow

and the famous American $22 million project

to discover the technology of these phenomena,

so as to benefit from them?

The Senator at the origin of the program

seems to confirm it.

- Do I believe that technologically

the program we've spent money on has been helpful?

The answer is yes.

Do we have any answers?

Yes, we have answers, but not too many.

I'm interested in science.

I believe we have to know what causes these,

where do they come from.

And I think we also have to do it to be competitive.

Other countries, including France, have done work,

trying to figure this out.

And I'm confident China has, I'm confident that Russia

which is run by former head of the KGB,

I'm sure they're doing work on it.

That's why I think that we need to do work,

we as the United States.

- [Narrator] In the race the Americans seem

to have gotten off to a good start.

Looking again at the list of Bigelow's fields of study,

many of them are on things we're yet to master,

but their applications would be revolutionary.

Among the most sensitive: anti-gravity,

or the ability to free ourselves

from the laws of Newtonian physics, and notably weight,

so as to fly an object with no physical resistance

and nothing pulling it downwards.

These futuristic technologies require the designing

of new materials called metamaterials.

Recently, a private company signed a contract

with the U.S. armed forces for the research

and development of these technologies.

In June, 2018, dr. Hal Puthoff, co-founder of the company

and a former AATIP member

made some surprising comments on the subject.

- It was a multilayered bismuth and magnesium sample,

bismuth layers of less than a human hair,

magnesium samples, about 10 times the size of human hair,

supposedly picked up in the crash retrieval

of an advanced aerospace vehicle.

It looks like it's been in the crash.

- [Narrator] In Las Vegas in June, 2018,

physicist Hal Puthoff implied

that this strange metamaterial object

came from a crashed UFO, but he's not certain.

Puthoff and his colleague, Dr. Eric Davis,

are on the verge of identifying a number of small parts,

which appear to be beyond man's fabrication capacities.

This sample was created with layers finer than microns

using a process unknown on earth,

and with an aim we can only guess at.

- Nowhere could we find any evidence

that anybody ever made one of these.

When we talked to people who, in the materials field,

who should know, they said, "We don't know why anybody

would want to make anything like this."

- [Narrator] So it's no longer

just a matter of understanding the origin of UFO's,

but of benefiting from them.

These metamaterials might have exceptional properties

which could prove useful and profitable.

- They definitely have metamaterials.

I've seen the photographs of it.

I've talked to them about that.

They're trying to figure out how they operate.

It appears that if you put a frequency into these materials,

they actually can levitate.

I mean, that's what I'm being told.

I haven't seen it, I don't know the details behind it,

but they're trying to understand

exactly how these are created,

it's a bismuth kind of a material

and it's stratified, so it's new stuff to us

and we're trying to figure out how it works.

- [Narrator] This know-how could also help us solve

our ecological problems and ward off global warming.

- Energy and propulsion systems are two things right away,

because there seems to be this sort of tantalizing promise

of limitless free environmentally impact-free energy

that we could tap into,

whether it's anti-gravity

or something beyond even photonic propulsion,

teleportation, or something of that nature,

such that we could sort of master the physical universe

in ways that we can't even dream so far,

which would move us well past fossil fuels

and solar energy and nuclear power

to limitless abundant energy for all

that can do things so far beyond what we're able to do now.

- [Narrator] Mastering new technologies,

bringing radical ecological solutions,

genuine issues for all governments

but the stakes are also high for humankind.

- The fundamental question is, are we alone?

And the second question, if we find that we are not alone,

are we the smartest kids on the block?

There might be civilizations

that are far more advanced than we are

and they have the technologies

that we could potentially develop,

but over a very long time.

And when we establish contact

or see evidence for those civilizations,

the evidence we shock us.

It would just be like a caveman looking at the cell phone

and trying to interpret it as a piece of fraud.

A very advanced technological civilization

is a good approximation to God.

It can do things that we cannot imagine.

And so we could learn a lot from such an encounter.

We can also develop a sense of modesty,

because right now we think that we are the smartest.

And in fact, along human history, we thought

that we are at the center of the physical universe,

that the sun revolves around the earth.

And eventually we realized that we are not at the center

of the physical universe.

The Earth moves around the sun

and the sun moves around the center of the Milky Way galaxy

and the Milky Way galaxy is moving in some random direction

in a universe that is full of such galaxies.

So we have no special position in the universe.

Nevertheless, many scientists still prefer to believe

that we are at the center of the biological universe,

the living universe, that life is unique to Earth.

And in particular, intelligent life is unique to Earth.

And I think one way by which we can become modest

is by collecting evidence about what is going on out there.

- [Narrator] If such a reality exists,

will we be able to grasp it correctly

and really enter into contact

with intelligent life from elsewhere?

Michael Vaillant has worked on the different waves

of past UFO sightings.

- [Interpreter 1] Waves of sightings haven't really been

that numerous in the history of mankind.

They pretty much started after World War II.

They've tended to occur in large regions of the earth,

like the United States and Europe.

And over a few days, hundreds of people report sightings

of unexplained phenomenon.

When usually in France, for example,

you just get one sighting every two days or so.

That's already a lot, but during a wave, it skyrockets.

Jacques Vallee and other scientists have posited

what they call control theory.

Maybe since external intelligence

could be behind these waves,

controlling how they're organized,

and behind this control theory

is the notion of learning theory,

where the phenomenon teaches humans about their presence.

There are what we call spaced in time learning methods,

which allow you to undergo a kind of apprenticeship

on an individual rather than a societal basis,

during which you learn to save time and energy

when learning something.

For example, if I'm a lazy person

who must learn a list of words,

I want to save energy rather than senselessly repeating

the list of words sequentially.

So every day I'll space the time between learning sessions,

and this will follow a law of power,

a law measured on a human scale,

and generally a lot of the power of two.

This means that time will double with each learning session.

One, two, four, eight, 16, 32, et cetera.

And we observed this same law with waves of sightings.

Only here these waves follow a law to the power of 2.04

to be very precise.

This precision is extremely important,

because it allows to anticipate

the date of the next wave of sightings.

And next one, following a period of great inactivity today,

should be in October, 2035.

It's not tomorrow, but it isn't in the too distant future.

- [Interpreter 2] This is an area

that is very, very complicated

and is rejected by many upholders

of mathematical progress and rationalism.

Will we have more surprises in the future?

That's another question.

- [Interpreter 1] If the U.S. government

still has things to disclose, it should do so now,

because I think people may be ready

to receive this information.

- I believe, without any question

that research scientifically

on these uninvited flying objects

is really good for humanity,

not only for the United States, but the world.

I think if I had my druthers, what I would do

is other countries who are doing work on this,

let's meet together, let's share information,

let the United States share with France,

let United States share with China, Russia.

We should, because it's an issue we don't understand,

we should work together and make it more public

and share it, it's important not only to our country,

but all civilization.

- In the next year, we are gonna have

a fundamentally different conversation

than we're having today.

I think there's gonna be additional fidelity

to a lot of the things that have come out recently,

that are gonna help us have a better understanding

of what it is we're actually seeing here.

(audience applauds)

- [Interpreter 1] It will certainly bring upheavals

to our biggest societies.

You'll ask a lot of questions of philosophies,

religions, and even science.

- [Interpreter 2] In 2035, if man's understanding

of the subject is stable,

we might even enter into contact,

contact that takes into account

the idea behind these waves and behind our apprenticeships,

which is to avoid at all costs

what we call cultural ethnocide,

meaning to prevent humans from being at a total loss

and in shock at the confirmation

of extra terrestrial phenomenon or intelligence.

But I think that in about 10 years time,

and almost certainly before, we'll have discovered life

in the solar system.

Not intelligent life, but life all the same.

And that alone would enable us to lay the foundations

of an intellectual edifice that will allow us

to explore further.

That's certainly true for scientists who dare to believe

that beyond simple life, intelligent life exists too.

This will help mentalities to progress

and eventually acceptance will become more mainstream.

- There are more Earth-like planets that are habitable

in the observable volume of the universe

than there are grains of sand on all beaches on earth.

To me, it sounds very reasonable

to search for other civilizations,

not necessarily here on Earth,

not necessarily in the solar system, but well beyond that,

and make it a central theme of future research,

because the consequences of finding evidence

for life out there would be tremendous.

It would change our conception

about our place in the universe.

It could teach us about advanced technologies

that we have never dreamt of developing,

and it can also provide us with an important lesson

about how to behave as a civilization to make us feel

as one team that is learning something together

from another team

that went through a similar process in there.

(light airy music)