Original subtitles

GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: Many governments all of a sudden

are now involved in the search for extraterrestrial life.

You have to wonder why.

NICK REDFERN: Between 1948 and 1969,

the U.S. Air Force collected 12,618

UFO reports.

MIKE BARA: It was actually required

that all officers fill out a form if they saw anything

that might be regarded as a flying saucer.

And they were told not to discuss their sighting

with anyone.

WILLIAM HENRY: We have to be open

to the possibility that the U.S. government is absolutely aware

of extraterrestrial involvement in human affairs.

NARRATOR: Since the dawn of civilization,

mankind has credited its origins to gods

and other visitors from the stars.

What if it were true?

Did extraterrestrial beings

really help to shape our history?

And if so, could the truth be exposed by the alien hunters?

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NARRATOR: London, England.

July 20, 2015.

A consortium of the world's leading scientists,

including theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking

and SETI founder Frank Drake,

gather at London's Royal Society

as Russian billionaire and technology tycoon Yuri Milner

announces his ambitious initiative: Breakthrough Listen.

The scope of our search will be unprecedented.

NARRATOR: The project is a ten-year, $100 million search

for intelligent extraterrestrial life

that is widely regarded as the most comprehensive search

for alien communications in recorded history.

The endowment will fund thousands of hours yearly

on radio telescopes in North America and Australia,

as well as data processing to look for

radio signals in distant solar systems.

This Breakthrough Listen Project

is revolutionary because not only

are they going to survey a very long list of stars,

they're going to survey ten times more area

overall compared to previous surveys.

I think there's definitely been a turning point

regarding the overall consensus

about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Now that we're able to document

and scientifically see out in the universe

the possibility of planets that could sustain life,

it also allows us the opportunity to know the odds

that there is life out there is undoubtable.

NARRATOR: Breakthrough Listen marks the first time

that mainstream scientists have launched a major project

with the explicit purpose

of finding intelligent extraterrestrial life.

During the announcement, Stephen Hawking stated...

While this new initiative is monumental,

the hunt for the existence of life beyond Earth

has persisted for many decades.

Starting around 1947,

a series of events forced certain high-level members

within the United States government

to officially become alien hunters.

When you look at the year 1947,

the statistics are that there were at least 800 reports

to police and airports of people saying

that they were seeing something in the sky,

they didn't know what it was.

And probably the most important,

and the one that made worldwide headlines

was near Mt. Rainier, Washington.

On June 24, 1947, a businessman and pilot

named Kenneth Arnold was flying near Mt. Rainier

in Washington state.

As he was flying around the mountain,

he suddenly caught sight

of a squadron of strange-looking objects.

He could not figure out what they were.

JAN C. HARZAN: He was able to time them

as they went between two mountain peaks,

which he knew the exact distance of,

and calculated their speed at between 1,200

and 1,700 miles an hour.

Well, in that day, we didn't have aircraft

that could go faster than about 500 or 600 miles an hour,

so this was definitely something not of terrestrial origin.

REDFERN: He later described the objects

as being somewhat delta shaped

and flying as if you were to skip a saucer

across a body of water.

And this gave rise to the term

"flying saucer."

HARZAN: Within days of Arnold's report being published,

there were literally 20 other reports

of-of similar objects seen

in the sky around the northwest of the United States.

This opened the floodgates

for literally hundreds of reports to pour in.

NARRATOR: Just two weeks after this flurry of UFO sightings,

the infamous Roswell Incident occurred.

But it was actually a sighting that happened a day earlier

that thrust military officials into the hunt.

On July 7, 1947, at Edwards Air Force Base,

then called Muroc Air Base,

Major J.C. Wise was sitting in his XP-84 fighter jet,

experimental aircraft,

when he noticed that people on the ground

were watching an object off in the distance.

He looked and saw a bright, spinning, yellow object

about 10,000 feet in the air

that was a ball of about five to ten feet in diameter.

After the sighting, it was actually required

that all officers fill out a form if they saw anything

that might be regarded as a UFO or a flying saucer.

And in addition to that,

they were told not to discuss their sighting

or what was on their report with anyone.

In the wake of the incredible number of UFO reports

that reached the military in the summer of 1947,

Lieutenant General Nathan Twining at Wright Field

created a new order

to ensure that all UFO reports reached the military.

This led to the creation

of the first official UFO research program

on the part of the military known as Project Sign.

NARRATOR: On January 22, 1948,

the U.S. government authorized its first official study

of the UFO phenomenon.

The highly classified agenda was known as Project Sign.

WILLIAM HENRY: Project Sign officially argued

that these UFO sightings were authentic

and hinted that they were, in fact,

extraterrestrial in nature.

But the higher-ups in the military stepped in

and redacted those statements, canceled Project Sign,

turned it into Project Grudge,

which ultimately became Project Blue Book.

REDFERN: The Air Force closed down Blue Book

because essentially they said they didn't find any evidence

that UFOs were real

or represented a threat to national security.

Between 1948 and 1969,

the U.S. Air Force collected 12,618 UFO reports.

Of that number, 701 remained unexplained.

NARRATOR: While the Air Force's official stance was

that Project Blue Book produced no compelling evidence

that extraterrestrial craft occupied Earth's airspace,

one important contributor to the study strongly disagreed.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek,

a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy

at Ohio State University,

was appointed as scientific advisor for UFO studies

during Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book.

HARZAN: Dr. Hynek was a pure skeptic

at the very beginning of his career

as a consultant to the United States Air Force.

In fact, he considered these UFOs to be utterly ridiculous.

But as he got more and more involved

and began talking to more and more quality witnesses,

like military fighter pilots,

it became clear to him that there really was

something to this whole UFO question.

When asked in his later years what turned him around

on the whole UFO question, Dr. Hynek said two things.

The first is that the Air Force was dead set

on putting an answer on every single UFO report,

even if they had to force the answer.

The second is that he started talking

to very, very credible witnesses

that led him to believe that these objects

were, in fact, real.

NARRATOR: In the intervening years, UFO investigators

and scholars have attempted

to access Project Blue Book case files

utilizing the Freedom of Information Act.

But the names, details and other personal information

of all the witnesses and sightings have been blacked out

from the documents, preventing any further examination.

HENRY: Considering the way the U.S. government

has labeled UFOs "top secret," we have to at least be open

to the possibility that higher-ups

within the U.S. government,

or even those higher than U.S. government,

are absolutely aware

of extraterrestrial involvement in human affairs

and have sought to cover up this phenomena

for the past six decades.

NARRATOR: Considering the top-secret nature

of these projects, is it possible that

the incredible claims of Dr. J. Allen Hynek are true,

and that actual contact with extraterrestrial craft

has been concealed from the general population?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and claim

that mankind has had contact with aliens

since our earliest civilizations.

NARRATOR: Humboldt University.

Berlin, Germany.

January 28, 2016.

Astroarchaeologist Mathieu Ossendrijver

announces what he calls "a truly astonishing find."

He has discovered evidence that astronomers living

in the ancient city of Babylon

invented sophisticated mathematical equations

to track the movement of Jupiter some 2,000 years ago.

When modern astronomers think about the timing of events

in the solar system, we use very complicated computer programs

that take into account things like special relativity

and general relativity.

We didn't think that ancient astronomers would have had

the capacity to make the same calculations we do today.

We knew that the Babylonians were able to predict

when Venus would appear and which constellations would be up

at certain times of the year, but we never would have expected

that they were using one of the precursors to calculus

to figure out the motions of Jupiter in the sky.

When the Babylonians looked where Jupiter was in the sky,

they would record where it was one night,

and they would draw a point on a graph.

They would record the time on the bottom axis

and the position on the top axis.

They'd do this the next night.

They'd see Jupiter was over here.

And then the next night, it's over there and over there.

And they could then draw a corner down to the time axis,

and then they'd draw a line.

So you end up with a trapezoid in space.

NARRATOR: How did the ancient Babylonians understand

mathematical concepts that were thought to have been developed

by Isaac Newton in the 17th century?

And why were they mysteriously concerned

with the precise movements of Jupiter,

a planet that they associated

with one of their most important gods,

Marduk?

The principal deity of ancient Babylon was Marduk,

and he was associated with the planet Jupiter.

And there was a large mythology

around his departure and eventual return.

They were very interested in the return of their divinity,

so any sign that the planet Jupiter would give

would be of great interest.

DAVID WHITEHEAD: Why was Jupiter so important to this culture

that they actually conscribed it

as being one of their gods called Marduk?

Was it that they believed that Marduk came from this planet

and would eventually return one day?

Are they recounting an extraterrestrial visitation

from the past?

And were they given this advanced knowledge

as a way of knowing

of when this extraterrestrial being

would one day return?

It's quite compelling that many ancient cultures

went to great lengths to track these celestial bodies.

NARRATOR: Much like the Breakthrough Listen project

of today, many ancient cultures took great measures

to study the heavens.

All over the planet, there are stone observatories.

These are systems of stones arranged to line up

with the planets in celestial moments,

suggesting that the ancients were

really quite advanced in their study of the stars

to use these and use them well.

We are fascinated, our current scientists,

in the accuracy in the alignment that they have arranged

and how they are so similar, these observatories,

these configurations all over the planet.

It would be one thing if we found

one ancient megalithic stone observatory.

But the fact is that there are at least ten

all around the world that were fashioned

in megalithic structures.

The most popular one is Stonehenge.

Stone observatories,

oftentimes not only do they track the stars

but sometimes they track specific constellations.

First and foremost, Orion, Sirius and the Pleiades.

So I have to ask the question why.

Because in association with those observatories,

we have stories

of beings arriving from the Pleiades,

from Sirius and Orion,

imparting knowledge to our ancestors.

This whole idea of observing the stars

is something that is innate in our soul.

All of our ancient cultures were visited

by the same type of extraterrestrials.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the Babylonians,

as well as other ancient civilizations,

were watching the stars for signs of extraterrestrial life?

And if so, were they watching

because contact had already been made?

Why were they obsessed with tracking

the movements of stars and planets?

Was it just for orientation, so they could know

what direction they're traveling when they're navigating

on ships?

Or could it be that they were actually visited

by beings that came from these planets?

I think absolutely yes.

NARRATOR: Could our ancestors' near obsession

with the movement of the stars be proof that they were

in fact the first alien hunters?

If so, could it lead to proof of extraterrestrial contact

hundreds or even thousands of years ago?

And might these ancient stone observatories

be leading today's alien hunters towards the next big discovery?

NARRATOR: Barron, Wisconsin.

Summer 1934.

At the age of nine,

Coral Lorenzen spots a saucer-shaped object

floating across the sky.

It makes no sound as it moves slowly northwest,

before disappearing over the horizon.

The encounter lasts just 20 seconds

but will forever change the course

of UFO investigations.

One of the early important UFO researchers

in the United States is Coral Lorenzen.

She had a UFO sighting long before the flying saucer wave

of the '40s took place.

And it stayed with her her whole life.

HARZAN: In August of 1951,

Coral took on a role of being a reporter

for the Green Bay Press-Gazette

and wrote stories about UFOs.

She got lots of responses from other people

who had seen similar objects.

NARRATOR: In 1952,

Coral and her husband,

a former U.S. Army Air Corps officer,

Jim Lorenzen,

established the first independent UFO organization,

known as Aerial Phenomena Research Organization,

or APRO.

Coral was highly disappointed with how the Air Force

and the government was handling this whole UFO question.

She knew that these craft were real.

She felt there needed to be an investigative body

not beholden to the government

that could look into this question.

The Lorenzens decided the best way

to investigate the phenomenon

was essentially to set up an investigative group

with people in different disciplines and fields

who could look at reports, study them,

and determine what the witnesses had seen.

At the height of its success,

APRO actually had more than 3,000 members,

many of whom were out in the field

investigating things, compiling reports,

and really putting together a huge body

of highly credible data,

which far exceeded anything, really,

that Blue Book, Sign and Grudge were doing.

This was the first civilian organization

to go and investigate UFOs.

And once she broke the ice on this,

other organizations began coming and being created.

One of those organizations was called NICAP.

Admiral Fahrney, who was at the time in World War Two

considered the guided missile scientist of the Navy,

helped found and became the chairman of NICAP.

Even more interesting, the other member of NICAP

was the first head of the CIA,

Admiral Hillenkoetter.

If there was anyone who should know if UFOs were real or not,

you would think it would be the head

of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1960, Rear Admiral Hillenkoetter stated

the following three things:

one, that the UFO phenomenon was real;

two, that it was not Soviet;

and, three, that we had not adequately studied

scientifically the UFO phenomenon.

NARRATOR: A former director of the CIA

admitting that the UFO phenomenon is real?

Might Admiral Hillenkoetter have come across

definitive evidence of alien craft visiting Earth?

Despite his audacious statement,

the government maintained its position

that no UFO reports had proved credible.

But the number of public UFO societies continued to grow.

On May 31, 1969,

APRO member Walt Andrus created

his own volunteer-based organization

that combined Missouri, Iowa and Illinois.

What started as the Midwest UFO Network

would ultimately change its name to the Mutual UFO Network,

or MUFON, when it grew to become

the largest UFO investigation organization in the world.

POPE: MUFON now has thousands of members.

They have state directors and field investigators

covering the entire United States,

and indeed a number of other countries, too.

And unlike the way in which things were done in APRO days,

MUFON's model involves giving a lot of autonomy to the states.

They organize their own conferences.

They handle research projects,

and they literally get boots on the ground

and go out and investigate.

These organizations became very popular

because there was an overall change and shift

in the thinking of what these phenomena were.

People were now coming out and looking up to the skies

just to look for the possibility

that there could be something up there,

understanding the potential of what these objects could be.

NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists,

aliens have been visiting Earth throughout mankind's history.

So why is it that so many people in the mid 20th century

suddenly became obsessed with finding evidence

of extraterrestrial encounters?

Some suggest that the aliens themselves

may in fact be responsible for this increased awareness.

Coral Lorenzen's setting up of APRO,

and Walt Andrus's breakaway organization MUFON,

all of these were inspired by personal UFO encounters.

So could it be that there was

more than chance alone at work here?

Could it be that some force was somehow targeting people

like Coral Lorenzen and Walter Andrus?

Is there an overseeing presence

that lies behind these apparently chance encounters?

NARRATOR: Could it be that while extraterrestrials

have kept their presence

concealed from humanity at large,

they have chosen specific individuals as emissaries,

that will ultimately reveal a greater truth?

And if so, might their plan to reconnect with humanity

have been set in motion in 1934,

when nine-year-old Coral Lorenzen first spotted

a strange object in the sky?

Perhaps further answers can be found by examining efforts

to not only find evidence of extraterrestrials,

but to contact them.

NARRATOR: Delaware, Ohio.

August 15, 1977.

At Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope,

astronomer Jerry R. Ehman conducts research for SETI,

the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

While reviewing recorded data,

he detects a highly unusual signal

originating from the constellation Sagittarius.

They're looking for this bandwidth of 1,420 megahertz.

Specifically, they believed

that this bandwidth corresponds to water,

and that intelligent civilizations might encode

the electromagnetic frequency of water

with a detectable signal.

So there is Jerry Ehman, on the Big Ear telescope,

doing his SETI work, and a 72-second burst comes in

on the 1,420 megahertz signal.

72 seconds of very bizarre static

that does not look natural.

It looks artificial; it looks like something

that was intelligently built and sent.

So he writes "Wow!" next to this part of the readout,

and it is now known as the "Wow! signal."

And still to this day, the Wow! signal

has never been properly explained,

nor has it been deciphered.

NARRATOR: While there are various theories

as to what may have caused the now famous Wow! signal,

from terrestrial radio broadcasts to comet trails,

SETI has not ruled out the possibility

that it may represent modern man's first radio contact

with extraterrestrials.

And they have plans to reexamine the area where it originated

in the near future.

To get a firsthand look into this continued search

for extraterrestrial life, in March of 2016,

researcher and publisher Giorgio Tsoukalos

traveled to the Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek, California,

where he met with the director for SETI research, Seth Shostak.

This is truly amazing.

What can you tell me about this place?

Well, this place is, uh, an observatory.

But it's a radio observatory.

So these things around us, these 42 antennas,

they pick up radio waves.

And we're trying to pick up very special sort

of radio waves, namely some that would tell us

somebody's out there.

By having lots of these dishes here,

we can look at more of the sky at once.

We can look at multiple star systems at once.

Why radio waves?

What's so significant about radio waves?

SHOSTAK: Radio waves go at the speed of light,

and they also, by the way, go through all the gas and dust

that's between the stars.

So, you know, if you want to communite

from one part of the galaxy to another,

radio waves are a great way to do it.

So the way this works is actually kind of simple.

I mean, the cosmic radio static, it comes in from the sky,

and it bounces off that big reflector there,

that first one, okay?

- That's-that's a mirror for radio waves. -Mm-hmm.

And that redirects them to this secondary reflector,

on the end, on the nose there.

And then they're directed to the receiver,

and that's inside.

That information goes through a fiber optic

over to the control room.

So, this is where the, uh, data coming through the fiber optics

kind of ends up after it's been processed

in a display like this.

And what are we looking at right here?

So we're looking, in this case, at three star systems

at once, okay?

So that speeds up the search.

It also allows us to determine

whether we're really seeing E.T. or just interference.

The data from one of these star systems

is being displayed over on this part of the screen here.

This is called a waterfall plot.

That... can you see, can you see that line

- of brighter dots there? - This right here, yes. Mm-hmm.

SHOSTAK: Yeah, that's, uh, slightly more static

at that frequency slowly going down the dot.

That's the kind of thing we're looking for.

So then, if this here were an actual E.T. signal,

how would it differentiate itself?

Uh, would it be a bit thicker,

a bit more pronounced, a bit longer or...

What are you looking for?

It could be all of those things.

So what you do is, when you find a signal like this,

you make a test.

You'll just move the antennas a little bit,

and see if the signal goes away.

And then point it back at the star and see if it comes back.

You say, "Well, that's looking promising."

You do that again, go off, go on, go off, go on.

If you do that five or ten times, you start to get excited.

I hope that that day will come very soon.

SHOSTAK: The Wow! signal continues to intrigue people.

So we are going to use the Allen Telescope Array

to reobserve the Wow! signal,

look in the same spot on the sky,

look over a wider range of frequencies,

and-and if there's something up there

and it's still broadcasting, of course we would find it.

NARRATOR: While SETI has yet to find

an explanation for the Wow! signal,

NASA's Kepler Telescope team has continued to search

for signs of alien life in other solar systems,

despite the U.S. government's open denial

of extraterrestrial contact.

In September 2015, after more than five years of research,

members of the Kepler team revealed

some incredible findings

coming from the star KIC 8462852,

also known as Tabby's Star,

named for the astronomer who discovered it.

WILCOCK: What we see from Tabby's Star

is changes in light output

that are not attributable to comets, to planets,

to asteroids

or to other fragments that would orbit the star.

We're seeing quasi-periodic dimmings of the light

that can be as much as a 21% reduction in the luminosity

that's coming out of the star.

Now, we have the scientists who are publishing papers

in which they propose that one of the explanations

for what they are seeing

is a massive extraterrestrial construct

akin to something known as a Dyson sphere.

A Dyson sphere is actually a gigantic structure

built around a star,

which harnesses the energy of the star, and could in fact

be used to travel from one place to another

within the galaxy.

This story is a total game-changer,

because it suggests that a Type II civilization,

a civilization that can harness the power of an entire star,

actually does exist and we can see it with our telescopes.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that astronomers hunting

for habitable planets may have accidentally discovered

the first extrasolar civilization?

And if so, why does the U.S. government

continue to deny extraterrestrial contact?

While the true cause behind the light patterns

coming from Tabby's Star has yet to be discovered,

ancient astronaut theorists suggest

that world governments have ramped up the hunt

for extraterrestrial life

because they already know it exists.

NARRATOR: Toronto, Canada.

September 2005.

Paul Hellyer,

who served as the Canadian Minister of National Defence

from 1963 to 1967,

makes worldwide headlines

by announcing his belief in the existence of UFOs,

and that the United States government

has made great efforts to conceal knowledge

of their existence for decades.

To date, Mr. Hellyer remains

the highest-ranking government official

to ever publicly declare this information.

HELLYER: I came to the conclusion

that there are issues here so profound

for the future of the United States and the world,

that they have to be discussed...

openly and intelligently.

And one of them, of course, was the possibility

the U.S. could get us in an intergalactic war.

And so, I decided that I should speak out.

UFOs are as real as the airplanes flying overhead.

This is actually paralleling something that Edgar Mitchell--

the sixth man to walk on the surface of the moon--

suggested, that there were multiple alien races

visiting the Earth.

EDGAR MITCHELL: This is not unknown knowledge.

There are people that know

and there seems to be many different,

perhaps several different species of aliens visiting here.

And it looks like, likely they have been

for a long, long time.

(alarm blaring)

People in the military have witnessed UFO operations

around our military facilities.

And there's been quite a number of reports of attempts to

destroy some of our missile tests

and the missiles in flight.

They are not particularly pleased,

the alien visitors, with our warlike capabilities

and our nuclear capabilities.

UFO researchers have suggested

that the U.S. military has secretly built

an installation on the surface of the moon

to help combat an alien threat.

If there are extraterrestrials visiting the Earth,

and they're potentially hostile,

it would make a great deal of sense

that we would be prepared for this.

NARRATOR: A secret military installation on the moon?

Could such claims, along with those made

by former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer

and Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, really be true?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining recently declassified documents.

July 20, 2014.

The United States Army

declassifies and discloses one of its biggest secret missions:

Project Horizon.

Project Horizon's mandate was to create, by 1966,

three years before the first NASA landing of men on the moon,

a military base which could hold at least 20 individuals

and which would be expanded on over time as well.

It would be nuclear powered.

It would have its own water supply, oxygen.

And it really would be the moon equivalent

of a military installation.

The feeling was, from Wernher von Braun,

from NASA and indeed from-from the entire government,

that space would become an important battlefield.

We talk about conventional warfare

and how that would play out.

It's fairly clear that if there is another war,

that space will be a battlefield.

HELLYER: The United States has been working for a long time

in building new weapons

based on the technology that they've gained.

If you control one of the approaches

to the Earth, it gives you an advantage

that you wouldn't otherwise have.

Also, it's a launching pad

for anything you want to do on Earth.

NARRATOR: Could it be,

as some ancient astronaut theorists contend,

that the U.S. military

was successful in the construction of a military base

on the surface of the moon?

While the stated mission goal was to establish dominance

over the Soviet Union during the Cold War,

many believe the effort

was not against an antagonistic global super power,

but an unknown extraterrestrial force.

MARTELL: This is even further expanded upon

when we look at Reagan's legacy

and some of these things like the Star Wars initiative.

So, it's very possible that,

when we look at what was happening in the Cold War era,

maybe they were trying to divert attention

to what was really going on.

And that could have been some type of collaboration

between us and Russia,

of putting a space base on the moon,

or doing some other type of space platform

that currently now exists within our solar system.

There is no doubt in my mind that Star Wars,

initiated by President Reagan,

was more related to the possibility

of being able to take the extraterrestrials on for size

than it was against rogue states.

All of the best information available is that it was

more intended as a possible defense against UFOs

than it was against rogue missiles.

NARRATOR: Did the recent disclosure

of Project Horizon only serve to try to dissuade inquiry

into a real and escalating military presence in space?

And, if so, is the military preparing

to actively hunt out the aliens they've known about for decades?

Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,

and suggest that with a recent NASA project,

the U.S. government

has reportedly enlisted average citizens

in the hunt for extraterrestrial life.

NARRATOR: April 21, 2015.

NASA launches an unprecedented initiative

that creates a coalition of scientific experts

with a mandate to lead the search

for life in the universe.

This scientific endeavor,

known as the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science--

or "NExSS" for short--

is a game-changer in the discovery of alien life.

COURTNEY DRESSING: The NExSS is a multidiscipline,

multi-institute approach to try to answer the big question of:

are we alone in the galaxy?

The NExSS includes researchers

from multiple institutions in different subfields.

It includes astrophysicists, planetary scientists,

Earth scientists and even helio-physicists--

people who study the sun--

so we can put all of the different pieces together

and really learn what makes a planet tick

and what kind of planets might have life on them;

and if those planets do exist, whether they have life at all.

(steady beeping)

NARRATOR: Since the launch

of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope in 2009,

more than 2,000 exoplanets--

a planet that orbits around another star-- have been found,

with thousands of additional candidates

awaiting research and confirmation.

DRESSING: The Planet Hunters project

was the brainchild of NASA and Yale researchers.

The idea of the project is to allow average, everyday people--

citizen scientists, as we call them--

the opportunity to discover planets.

Citizen scientists have actually done a tremendous service

to the astrophysical community by looking at Kepler data

through the Planet Hunters portal.

Citizen scientists have really accelerated the pace

of exoplanet discoveries,

because that core of 260,000 people

has looked at 20 million light curves by eye.

It's really interesting that NASA is doing this,

because the fact is that they wouldn't be doing it

unless they believed that there were:

A, habitable exoplanets out there;

B, that the general public could help in finding them;

and C, that there might be alien life on those planets.

As the executive director of MUFON,

I can tell you this shift has already started.

We get calls from credible scientists, engineers,

politicians and their staff,

who want to know more about this phenomenon,

because they realize that it is in fact real.

So, as we look into this question

of who they are, why they're here

and where they're from,

I think we'll learn more about ourselves--

about who we are,

where we're from and why we're here.

In the search for extraterrestrial life,

there are a number of questions that need to be asked.

Where's this gonna lead to?

What are the implications?

If we find extraterrestrials are benevolent,

well, that's good news; it's gonna help us.

If we find out they're malevolent and hostile,

we could find ourselves in quite literally a world war.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that governments around the world

are now openly on the hunt for extraterrestrials

because they already have knowledge of their existence?

And if so, has the point finally come

when this truth can no longer be covered up?

Perhaps it will soon be revealed

that aliens have been visiting Earth for thousands of years,

and that we are not searching for proof of their existence,

but watching for their return.

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