Original subtitles

SHATNER: Unidentified flying objects

that break the laws of physics.

Bizarre encounters in outer space

that defy explanation.

And mysterious structures that may reveal the existence...

of an advanced Martian civilization.

Are human beings the only intelligent life

in the universe?

It's a question that we've asked ourselves for centuries,

and the mystery has inspired us

to look to the stars in search of answers.

If extraterrestrial life does exist,

how can we find evidence of it?

And if aliens are actually visiting our planet,

should we view them as friends

or foes?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

SHATNER: An opinion poll conducted

by the Gallup Organization

reveals two astonishing facts:

one-third of all Americans have not only seen a UFO,

they believe alien spaceships have visited the Earth.

In the last few years, there's been a historic,

dramatic shift in the entire debate over UFOs.

It used to be that the burden of proof was on the true believers.

They had to prove that they were from another planet.

Now, the burden has shifted. Before, it was hearsay.

Now, we have the videotapes.

And the fact that everyone has cell phones

has vastly increased the number of encounters.

And so now we're running out of excuses.

We're running out of natural phenomena

that can explain these UFO sightings.

PAUL HYNEK: MUFON is the Mutual UFO Network

and the largest UFO research group in the world.

There were 5,000 reported cases

to MUFON last year alone.

So, what that shows is that the UFO phenomenon

is not slowing down at all.

This is a real pointer that this subject

is now absolutely mainstream.

This is no longer a subject

of fringe belief and conspiracy blogs.

This is absolutely down the middle,

on your TV screens every evening.

This is real.

SHATNER: If the number of recent sightings is any indication,

then by all means, the UFO phenomenon is quite real.

But despite the compelling evidence

presented by true believers,

skeptics are still waiting for a smoking gun.

Intellectually, from history, we know

the sorts of things that people misidentify as UFOs.

Military aircraft activity, of course,

and commercial airlines.

We know that certain meteorological phenomena

can give rise to UFO reports.

We liaise with astronomers

and we find out whether there were any meteor showers,

or debris from a rocket launch.

All of these things we check.

And we essentially try to see

if the UFO has a conventional explanation.

BILL BIRNES: When the stealth fighter was being tested,

one of the things the Air Force would do

is have its pilots fly the stealth fighter

under the wing of commercial flights

from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

And the pilots would see this triangular craft,

and they would say,

"What is this thing? Is it a flying saucer?

"Or is it a UFO? We don't know,"

was actually the stealth fighter.

SHATNER: While some may be quick to say

that alien UFOs are figments of the imagination,

the truth is, sightings of strange things in the sky

are not a recent phenomenon.

According to both UFO-ologists

and ancient astronaut theorists,

they've been documented for thousands of years.

The idea of celestial visitors goes way back,

this is not just a modern phenomenon.

And it's not just things that seem like spaceships,

there are celestial visitors in the form of angels

and random characters that show up in mysterious ways.

The idea that we would have some kind of contact

with beings beyond ourselves is part of ancient cultures.

It varies from culture to culture,

but there is something universal about this,

something that seems persistent.

One of the most profound close encounters in the Bible

is recorded in the Book of Ezekiel.

The episode begins by saying that Ezekiel

had the hand of God upon him.

And then he witnessed this experience

of this profound apparatus,

which he tries to describe

but yet is described in the most bizarre ways,

talking about types of angels called wheels, ophanim,

and they have multiple faces and the like.

Many want to understand Ezekiel's vision

as either being some psychological

dream-like experience.

Others want to interpret it as being a spaceship.

But the reality is,

it was both and more.

SHATNER: Strange objects raining fire from the heavens,

celestial bodies streaking across the night skies

and floating balls of mesmerizing light.

But believe it or not, until the mid-19th century,

UFOs like these were often dismissed

as little more than delusional daydreams or hoaxes.

So, what changed?

A little invention called photography.

RICHARD DOLAN: The first known UFO photograph

is from a place called Mount Washington

in New Hampshire from 1870.

And what you see is, in the clouds,

is this horizontal cigar-shaped object.

Which is odd because airship technology

really didn't take off until the early 1900s.

There were attempts even then to create photographic illusions,

but this is clearly not that.

We don't really have an explanation for it to this day.

SHATNER: Despite photographic evidence

and thousands of credible eyewitness accounts,

there are many who still refuse to believe

that UFOs are real.

However, there is one incident

that continues to cast doubt in the minds

of even the most hardened UFO skeptics.

An incident so infamous

that many researchers believe it was a tipping point

when UFOs went from being science fiction

to science fact.

A radar operator with the 509th Operations Group

detects an unidentified craft approaching the base.

Moments later, the object drops from the sky

and crashes into the desert

outside a nearby cattle ranch.

A local rancher found debris,

contacted the local sheriff, who then

-contacted the air base. -(phone rings)

You have a couple of days pass

before the 509th Bomb Group

was able to get up to the site.

So it absolutely is clear

that the United States military

was not immediately on top of acquiring

whatever it was that came down there.

BIRNES: People in the city of Roswell thought it was an airline crash.

They saw a kind of a delta-shaped object

embedded into the arroyo that was split open.

DOLAN: The Roswell Daily Record

had the most famous headline of, you know, probably of the year,

which was the Army's recovered one of these flying discs.

That made national, international news.

After the crash, Roger Ramey,

who was general of the Eighth Air Force

flew to Roswell.

And Jesse Marcel, who was the base intelligence officer,

brought all the Army truck drivers out,

gave them gunny sacks,

and they said, "Look, just collect this stuff."

Meanwhile, Ramey says to Marcel,

"I want you to pose in front of this weather balloon."

Marcel is, like, in shock, but he poses with it with a smile,

and he becomes the poster boy for the cover-up.

PAUL HELLYER: The first press release was the truth

and the second one was a lie.

And that is an indication of the depth

of the withholding of information

and the truth embargo, as it has been called.

SHATNER: A truth embargo?

Is it possible that the rumors about Roswell are true

and the United States military was concealing

physical evidence that UFOs exist?

Despite the government's insistence to the contrary,

almost 75 years later,

UFO researchers are still searching for answers.

Because according to many firsthand accounts,

Roswell may have been

the government's first UFO cover-up.

But it wouldn't be the last.

SHATNER: Inside the International Space Station,

Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner

is recording a video of the southern lights,

when suddenly, his camera captures

what appears to be a formation

of unidentified spacecraft above the Earth.

MERA: It was an amazing piece of footage.

These objects come into frame,

which seems to be of five lights,

and then suddenly disappear.

It happens quite fast in the video.

One minute it's there, the next minute it's gone.

SHATNER: Vagner immediately posted the video on Twitter,

and many people claimed that the clip was evidence

of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

MERA: The video is very interesting

because when you look at the video,

it was speeded up.

It turns out that these lights

actually were visible by the astronaut

for about 50 seconds, which is quite long.

So, sometime later, he comes back with a second story,

saying, "Maybe I misidentified them," you know?

So, we don't know if, really, NASA leaned on

this astronaut to say, look, you know,

"Change your story a little bit."

Or that he genuinely did think he made a mistake.

SHATNER: A number of mainstream scientists

quickly dismissed the lights

as misidentified satellites.

Which would have seemed to put the matter to rest,

except for the fact that American astronaut Leroy Chiao

had a similar sighting back in 2005.

We were on a spacewalk to install navigation antennas

outside of the International Space Station.

We were in that transition zone part of the orbit

where we're going from night to day.

And right at that moment, I saw what looked like

five lights flying in formation

in kind of an inverted checkmark.

There was no time to take a picture of it.

It just happened in just a couple of seconds,

then we burst into sunrise, and everything was gone.

When I saw the lights, I knew they were unusual,

but I really didn't assign any big deal to them.

I just thought they were a satellite constellation.

And I really didn't give it any other thought.

And it wasn't till later that we got these reports

that people reporting, were reporting that I had

spotted UFOs and there were theories that

that might be an alien spacecraft.

SHATNER: Is it possible that the various recent sightings

of strange phenomena above Earth are evidence

that there is intelligent life in the universe,

and that extraterrestrials

are secretly monitoring our planet?

Many researchers claim that the answer is yes,

because astronauts are highly credible witnesses.

When you look at the number of sightings of UFOs

and anomalous phenomena by astronauts,

the possibilities are hugely exciting.

Because generally, astronauts are the sorts of people

who, as witnesses, are unimpeachable.

Astronauts are absolutely the best observers

of anything that's out there.

Their attention to detail is incredible,

and they make absolutely amazing observers.

So, when we do get reports of something strange being seen,

you can pretty much take that to the bank

because they've kind of looked at all

the possible rational explanations

and not come up with anything.

SHATNER: The recent sightings made by astronauts

are not the first time that mysterious objects

have been encountered above our planet.

In fact, there are similar reports

that date back to the beginning of the space age.

In 1965, during the Gemini 4 mission,

astronaut Jim McDivitt reported photographing

a mysterious object outside his capsule.

Jim McDivitt was one of the first astronauts

to see something unexplained in space.

He saw what looked like a cylindrical spacecraft

or a cylindrical object with antennas sticking out.

He didn't know what it was.

MERA: He said it was quite a large object

and was moving quite fast towards them.

He described it as a shape of a can of beer

with a prong sticking out of one end.

And he had absolutely no idea what this thing was.

So he grabs the nearest camera

and snaps it, but he's clever.

In case there's something wrong with this one,

grabs a second camera and takes another photograph.

And of course, he relays this information back to-to NASA.

SHATNER: Two days after McDivitt's encounter,

the Gemini 4 mission ended,

and the crew returned to Earth.

The film from McDivitt's camera

was then processed by NASA technicians.

But when McDivitt reviewed the images,

he didn't see a cylindrical object

with a large antenna sticking out.

MERA: James McDivitt was curious

what the hell was up there that was close to his craft?

So, sometime later he's looking through

the images of this camera, and he can't find it.

All he can find is some blur obscurity.

And he thinks to himself, well, is it because

the camera was out of focus?

So, he grabs the images of the second camera,

and he's looking at those photographs.

And lo and behold, it's not on there neither.

Just another obscurity.

POPE: The photos didn't come out really well.

So, what was it? We still don't know.

Now, a lot of people say, wait,

there was a cover-up about this,

that there was indeed a genuine photo

buried in a vault somewhere at NASA Headquarters.

SHATNER: Is it possible that NASA has photographic evidence

of a real extraterrestrial spacecraft,

that they have kept secret for more than 50 years?

Perhaps, but many researchers believe

that another orbital encounter provides even stronger evidence

of an extraterrestrial presence around our planet.

On the 155th day of their mission

aboard the Soviet space station Salyut 7,

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Atkov,

Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov,

witness an extraordinary event.

The Salyut 7 sighting is one of the most bizarre

and mysterious encounters that we've had in space.

These Russian cosmonauts are up there

and suddenly, they report

that the entire space station

is bathed in this mysterious light.

It's this orangey glow.

And they look out,

they see strange entities out in space.

POPE: There are theories that it was a hallucination

or something like that. But come on.

A shared hallucination where everyone sees the same thing?

That's not very likely.

So, it leaves you with the impression

maybe this isn't a hallucination.

Maybe this was real.

SHATNER: Astronomer Seth Shostak is at home,

getting ready to have dinner

when he receives an urgent phone call.

SETH SHOSTAK: The phone rings and it's my boss

at the SETI Institute.

And he says, "Seth, I think you ought

to get down to the office."

Now, he never calls me at home, and certainly not at dinnertime,

and he never, never, ever says, "Get down to the office."

So, I didn't know what was going on.

SHATNER: Moments later, Seth arrives at the SETI Institute,

a nonprofit organization

tasked with the search

for extraterrestrial intelligence.

I go in, and there are about a dozen

of my colleagues all looking at computer screens.

There was a signal that we had picked up.

(electronic screeching)

And it had the characteristics

that we look for when we're trying to find

whether ET is on the air somewhere else in the galaxy.

So, this was pretty darn exciting.

SHATNER: After attempting to pinpoint

the source of the signal for hours,

Seth and his colleagues' initial excitement

gave way to profound disappointment.

As it turned out, one of my colleagues

had been busily looking up the frequencies,

the telemetry frequencies

of known satellites,

and he found a European satellite

that sent data back to Earth

just at the frequencies that we were picking up,

and it was in the direction we were looking,

and he said, you know,

"Everybody can go back to bed now."

SHATNER: Despite the false alarm,

there are many leading scientists

who believe that SETI's work

is a key component

in the investigation of the UFO phenomenon.

Because if there are aliens visiting Earth,

programs like SETI may be able to tell us

where they came from.

SHOSTAK: The universe has been around a long time,

a lot longer than the Earth and our solar system.

There could be very advanced societies out there,

and maybe they've sent probes to our solar system.

You know, maybe they've sent probes to lots of solar systems,

and we just have one ourselves.

HYNEK: My father thought that SETI

was a tremendously important effort.

He felt that it was incumbent upon us as a civilization

to reach out, to try to find life elsewhere in the universe

as opposed to only waiting for it to land in our laps.

We know that there are planets around pretty much every star.

So now we have to look at those planets

and see if there are things called technosignatures.

These are signatures that civilization is occurring.

Are they creating what we call greenhouse gases?

Or outgassing materials, or properties

that we could detect with our instruments

using normal, natural,

astronomical technologies that we have?

One thing they might be producing is light.

Do they have cities that make light,

or radio waves, or whatever?

SETI has so far turned up empty-handed.

For all the millions of dollars, for all the stars

that they've analyzed, they have yet to pick up

a single signal indicating intelligence in outer space,

but maybe we're barking up the wrong tree.

After all, what do we do with SETI?

We analyze radio from outer space.

But the aliens out there may laugh at us, saying,

"What? You're looking for our civilization using radio?

"That's so 20th century.

We got rid of radio centuries ago."

SHATNER: Is it possible our current technology

is too primitive to detect advanced alien civilizations

throughout the galaxy?

Perhaps.

But if some UFO researchers

are to be believed, it hardly matters.

Because according to them,

astronomers already have the evidence they need

to confirm the existence of alien spaceships.

Evidence that is hiding in plain sight.

Scientists working at the Panoramic Survey Telescope

detect a mysterious, oblong object

that has wandered into our solar system.

Named Oumuamua,

which means "scout from a distant place" in Hawaiian,

it is the first interstellar asteroid

ever observed by astronomers.

And many believe its journey from across the galaxy

to our solar system is no accident.

SHOSTAK: It's just a little dot on a photograph.

You don't really know what it looks like up close.

We knew it was kind of cigar-shaped,

and beyond that, we didn't know.

It was about the size of a football stadium.

Well, Avi Loeb, who is the chair

of the Harvard Astronomy Department,

suggested that there was a good reason to think

that maybe this wasn't just a rock,

that maybe it was a spacecraft,

deliberately sent by aliens from some other solar system.

Astronomers were shocked to find

that it tracked backwards into outer space

from another solar system.

Not only that, but the trajectory

was acting irregularly.

This sent shockwaves through the community.

Even reputable astronomers said

we cannot rule out the fact

that this irregular trajectory

means that it's piloted.

It seems very, very unlikely

that a rock that's just randomly thrown out by nature

would so accurately get to the center of our solar system,

swing around the Sun, and leave.

That's pretty unlikely.

This may be a directed rock,

and maybe it's an alien spacecraft.

POPE: The fact that we're even having this debate

shows how much the landscape has changed

in the last two or three years.

I think previously this sort of theory

would have been just dismissed as nonsense.

Mainstream media would have not covered the story at all

and if they had, they would have simply ridiculed it.

But now, stories like this are treated very seriously

and it's reported in an absolute levelheaded way.

You're not shocking people by telling them

something they already believe.

Is Oumuamua just a giant rock flying across the galaxy?

Or could it really be a massive spacecraft,

hiding in plain sight?

Perhaps further evidence of extraterrestrial technology

can be found by investigating the planet Mars,

where there may be ruins

of massive alien structures.

SHATNER: The Cydonia Institute,

a group of researchers that investigate strange formations

on the surface of Mars, publishes a study

analyzing satellite photographs taken of the planet.

The images show what the researchers

claim look like four- and five-sided pyramids

and a series of curious mounds.

This whole idea for the Cydonia Institute

started when NASA announced in 1991

that they were gonna return to Mars with the Mars Observer.

And over the last 30-some years

of our group studying NASA photographs,

we have found an enormous amount of evidence

that led us to believe

there are artificial structures on Mars.

What we're trying to do

is get a preponderance of evidence together

so that we can prove the point

that there's ruins all over the planet.

And just as you would here on Earth,

you're going to look for straight lines,

parallel lines, circles,

squares, rectangles, things of this nature.

And when you find them,

then you can start to zoom in on areas

and look for even, uh, stronger details.

HAAS: When the Perseverance landed,

one of the first things that I noticed

was a conical pyramid in the distance.

The camera there took a beautiful couple pictures of it.

It doesn't make any sense to me geologically

how that could happen.

That was one of the biggest anomalies that was seen.

We're still gonna get better and better pictures,

we're going to have more to look at

as NASA releases all of these images from Perseverance.

But we haven't gotten there yet because the Perseverance,

they landed in the middle of a big lake.

And I think the only thing we're going to find there

is probably shells, things from an aquatic environment.

I think all of the ruins that people are looking for

are gonna be found once they drive

a little further in the perimeter.

SHATNER: Cities and ruins on the surface of Mars?

Could the remnants of an ancient Martian civilization

have really been hiding in plain sight?

It's a question that researchers

have pondered for more than four decades,

ever since NASA sent the first satellites

into orbit around the red planet.

Mars has piqued the curiosity of scientists

and the public for millennia,

but it really wasn't until the dawn of the space age

that we started getting

an idea of what the planet was really all about.

Mariner 4 in 1965 flies past the planet,

sends back 22 fuzzy photographs

and Mars looks just like the moon.

Then we sent two spacecraft, Viking 1 and Viking 2, in 1976

so we got tens of thousands of photographs from orbit.

Since then, as we get better resolution photographs

from the surface of Mars,

people have thought they saw all kinds of things there.

There is a not insignificant group of people

that think that we have already discovered life on Mars,

that there are structures there,

that there are buildings, obelisks,

some kind of indicator of ancient cultures

that is being covered up.

POPE: You look at images of this

and people are spotting

all sorts of strange shapes

and pyramids,

structures of some kind, on the Martian surface.

Is it something left by a lost civilization,

as maybe a monument to themselves

and their achievement?

SHATNER: For some, the most compelling evidence

that an ancient civilization once existed on Mars

can be found in a photograph

which shows what appears to be a large structure

that has come to be known as:

The Face on Mars.

In Viking lander photographs,

it was discovered that there was this

weird-looking structure that looks for all the world

in the Viking photos like a face.

MILLER: Everything is proportional.

The face is a mile and a half, two miles long.

The eyes are a quarter mile.

The nose about a half a mile.

So it's not small structure,

it's very large structure.

I believe that the Face on Mars

was created from possibly an existing mesa.

SCHOCH: It's not just the face,

but on top of that, people saw what they called

the D&M Pyramid, which is this weird

five-sided structure that looks like a five-sided pyramid.

People were claiming this had to be artificial structures.

HAAS: The D&M Pyramid is a five-sided structure.

The five faces have all this very symmetrical geometry

of 30 degrees, 60 degrees, and 90 degrees.

It's just a remarkable

out-of-place artifact on the surface of Mars.

What researchers looking at this found

is that because of its exquisite geometry,

there's no way that this could be created naturally.

SHATNER: Decades after the famous photograph was taken,

the Face on Mars continues to inspire

both fascination and debate.

Many researchers believe it,

and other curious formations on the red planet,

merit further study and discussion.

POPE: Some of this may just be a trick of the light,

funny-shaped rocks, that sort of thing.

But only one of these things has got to be the real deal

and we're in game-changing territory.

SHATNER: 100 miles off the coast of San Diego,

a group of U.S. warships

are conducting routine training exercises

when they detect a number

of unidentified flying objects near Catalina Island.

They were picking up multiple targets on the radar system,

but they had a new system they were testing.

So, the theory was that it was just glitches,

so they rebooted.

But sure enough, these targets showed up again.

And this goes on for a series of some days

and then they vectored jets to go and investigate.

SHATNER: As Navy F-18 fighter jets

approach the area where the UFOs

had been detected on radar,

the pilots see a white, oval-shaped object

that has no wings and resembles a giant Tic Tac.

But then suddenly, it rapidly descends 80,000 feet

in less than a second,

and hovers above the surface of the water.

Naval Officer Ryan Weigelt

was stationed on the nearby USS Princeton

on the day of the encounter.

I was called to the bridge by the CO

and when I got up to the bridge,

the whole office was much more crowded

and chaotic than normal.

People were raising their voice

on seeing some of the things that they were seeing.

It was a very excited atmosphere.

I noticed that to my left-hand side

was a video monitor where the FLIR footage

was being fed into the Princeton,

so I could see what the jets were seeing.

On my right-hand side,

I am watching them on a radar screen

that gives information on altitude and speed and heading.

And seeing what I saw, it's impossible for anything

that we own or have created

to withstand the g-forces

that would be created from doing any type of thrusts

like what this Tic Tac was doing.

Two of the pilots involved in the Tic Tac incident,

Commander David Fravor

and Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich

have stated that under the infamous Tic Tac,

there was an area of water that was roiling,

as if there was this object under the waves.

And this object was about

the size of a Boeing 737.

SHATNER: Navy eyewitnesses have reported that the Tic Tac

was moving erratically above the surface of the water,

as though it appeared to be interacting

with the unidentified object located beneath the waves.

Moments later, the Tic Tac made

a series of seemingly impossible maneuvers

to evade the Navy jets,

before accelerating away at thousands of miles per hour.

And the pilots claim that when they tried to get a second look

at the underwater object, it had somehow vanished.

I am a person who needs to see

to really believe.

And seeing what I saw during that timeframe,

I think any rational-minded person

would be somewhat alarmed

that there is this technology out there

that is far superior to us.

POPE: That technology isn't something we have.

So, if not us, who or what?

And what we're hearing about now is just the tip of the iceberg.

There have been, consistently,

a lot of reports of unidentified objects under the ocean.

People have seen them from the shore,

going into the sea and coming out of the sea.

KAKU: We've all heard of UFOs because they fly in our atmosphere,

but what happens if they can hit the oceans and go underwater?

These are USOs.

Unidentified submerged objects

are objects that have the ability

to plunge right into the ocean and disappear.

This is something that we cannot duplicate with our technology,

and so these objects are of very intense interest

because it means that a new technology

is being harnessed by some unknown party.

They could be, even, perhaps, extraterrestrial.

SHATNER: Extraterrestrial USOs?

Flying into and out of the world's oceans?

For some, that may sound

like something out of science fiction.

But curiously, more than a decade

after the Tic Tac incident,

the United States Navy continues to detect USOs

off the coast of Southern California.

In July of 2019, Navy aircraft flying in the same area

recorded video which appears to show

an unidentified flying object disappearing into the ocean.

POPE: What's really interesting about this

is that all this is happening

in a fairly small geographical area.

So, you've got a series of encounters happening

off the coast of San Diego.

To have all this going on

in one very concentrated spot,

one has to say,

is this just a coincidence or is there a connection?

SHATNER: If there are, in fact,

extraterrestrial USOs lurking in this area,

then where are they hiding when they go underwater?

Satellite imagery reveals a strange

underwater formation only six miles off the coast.

The three-mile-long anomaly lies 2,000 feet below the surface

of the Pacific Ocean, and the discovery led many

to wonder if this formation might actually be

an artificial structure.

A lot of people got very excited by this discovery.

It's really quite striking, and it really does look artificial.

It looks like the thing's got this huge flat roof.

It looks like it's got pillars or columns.

And it makes you wonder, is this

the remains of some ancient civilization

that's just hidden by rising sea level?

Or is it, as some believe, an extraterrestrial base?

KAKU: If all these objects are buzzing our aircraft,

they must have a base of operations.

But you see, if they have a base of operations

that's easily detected by us humans,

it would sort of defeat the purpose of observing us.

So perhaps there's an underwater base

that is away from prying eyes of humans

so that we don't interfere with their plans.

That cannot be ruled out.

SHATNER: In the early morning, a soldier is patrolling the grounds

of this highly guarded nuclear missile base

when he suddenly spots a glowing red light

hovering in the sky.

Malmstrom Air Force Base is where we have many

intercontinental nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

(alarm blaring)

And this red, glowing light showed up

right at the front gate.

The whole base was on red alert as this object

was reported to Captain Robert Salas,

who was underground monitoring this base.

At that point, Salas sees the controls

for 10 ICBMs that were right there in front of him,

and he sees them all go offline.

"Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing."

All ten of them. They could not find any

scientific explanation as to why those missiles

should have gone offline,

and they were concerned about it.

SHATNER: Reportedly, when Captain Salas dispatched

a team to investigate the UFO, it quickly departed.

And then the missile launch systems came back online.

Due to the alarming nature of the encounter,

the Air Force Office of Special Investigations

classified the Malmstrom incident

at the Top Secret level.

Our government has refused to acknowledge

that this event even happened,

though documents released

through the Freedom of Information Act show

that this incident did, in fact, take place,

and it's one of many in which UFOs have hovered over

nuclear power stations and nuclear missile sites.

If you scour the databases of various UFO organizations,

you will see that these UFOs are hovering over

nuclear power stations, nuclear missile sites,

nuclear-powered vehicles, ships, and submarines of all kinds.

SHATNER: For many, the idea that nuclear facilities are

hot spots for UFO visitation is alarming.

But on the other hand, some researchers suggest

that extraterrestrials do not intend

to attack these military bases.

Rather, they propose that otherworldly beings

simply want to protect us from ourselves.

DOLAN: From the end of World War II

until the end of the 20th century,

this world detonated over 2,000 nuclear devices

in the upper atmosphere.

It was incredible.

And so I don't think there's any surprise

why any alien

or extraterrestrial group would be interested in

our nuclear technology and wonder, like,

are these people gonna blow themselves up?

POPE: Frankly, there are different viewpoints.

Some people think that we're being visited,

and any day now it is possible we will have definitive,

smoking-gun proof of the nature of

what we're actually dealing with here.

Maybe something seen with a telescope,

maybe something buried in an old government file.

But I think we're closing in on the most

exciting discovery that humanity has ever made.

The evidence suggesting

that extraterrestrial beings not only exist,

but are also visiting Earth, is compelling.

Most scientists believe that it's only a matter of time

before we are finally able to prove, once and for all,

that we're not alone in the universe.

But until that day comes, we'll just have to continue

to seek out new life

and new civilizations

that, for the moment, remain...

unexplained.

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