Original subtitles

- On October 4th, 1957,

the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite,

the first manmade object ever put in orbit.

But was it the only object up there?

At the dawn of the 20th century,

legendary scientist Nikola Tesla had discovered

strange radio waves coming from an object

in Earth's atmosphere

that may have been there for millennia.

Nicknamed the Black Knight,

its existence was seemingly confirmed

by astronauts en route to the International Space Station.

But even the most diehard skeptic couldn't argue

with the 2017 discovery of another interstellar visitor

to our neighborhood.

What could explain these discoveries?

Could it be that our little green rock had made enough noise

to attract the attention of other intelligent life?

These are the "Alien Disclosure Files."

(ominous music)

- [Speaker] Three, two, one.

We have booster ignition and liftoff

of the space shuttle Endeavor

with the first American element

of the International Space Station.

- [John] In one

of humanity's greatest technological achievements,

the International Space Station was born,

a permanent settlement orbiting the Earth

for humans to perform experiments or use as a launching pad

for destinations to other parts of the solar system.

In a joint effort from many countries across the globe,

the newly completed space station would get

its first American Space shuttle visit

in late December 1998.

The shuttle would be carrying American astronauts

as well as other payloads and upgrades

for the space station,

but for alien enthusiasts,

it will be remembered for something it brought back.

- I think because there was a photo taken by astronauts,

that made people take the Black Knight satellite

a lot more seriously

because this was an actual astronaut taken photo.

It wasn't just some farmer in a field

with a telescope taking the photo.

- [John] Pictures taken during a spacewalk show

an object floating in space on a polar Earth orbit.

Did the photos confirm a century old theory

about an alien messenger waiting millennia

to get our attention?

- When all of this started, it did come from Nikola Tesla,

one of the most respected scientists on the planet,

with the radio waves that he picked up.

So it was a very credible thing

as far as UFOs and contact with Earth.

- [John] The first development of anything on Earth

that may have interested extraterrestrial intelligence came

in 1894 when Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi developed

the first radio.

Legendary scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla was

also erecting antenna on the roof of his lab in Colorado

and conducting radio experiments.

It was during these experiments

that Tesla picked up the first evidence

of the object that later became known as the Black Knight.

His antenna began to receive a repeating signal

that, when its origin was determined,

appeared to be coming to him from space.

- Tesla thought the signals were coming from Mars

but then he figured out it was coming

from somewhere else in space.

- [John] "The feeling is constantly growing on me,"

Tesla wrote of receiving the transmissions,

"that I had been the first to hear the greeting

of one planet to another."

What was the source of the signal?

Had Tesla stumbled upon a piece

of alien technology orbiting the Earth?

In 1927, Norwegian radio engineer Jorgen Hals expanded

on Tesla's discovery.

When he sent signals at a certain wavelength,

they were sent back to him a few seconds later.

At first, he thought it could be an ordinary radio echo

but there was nothing ordinary about it.

In 1973, science fiction writer

and journalist Duncan Alistair Lunan looked further

into the radio signals Hals had recorded.

What he found was a message

that set the scientific world on fire.

- What Duncan Lunan thought he decoded wasn't some message

about advancing humanity

or the answer to life's greatest questions.

- [John] "Start here," the message appeared to read.

"Our home is Epsilon Bootis, which is a double star.

We live on the sixth planet of seven, coming from the sun,

which is the larger of the two."

- It was a message very similar

to what any explorer meeting a new world might say.

The message pointed to where the signal came from.

- [John] Lunan had stumbled upon a star map

to an alien civilization

but as incredible as the discovery was, there was a problem.

When Lunan plotted out the coordinates,

they didn't match the position of the stars.

Then Lunan thought of a solution.

Everything made sense

if the message was thousands of years old.

(ominous music)

In 1954, Marine Corps major Donald Keyhoe,

a former Navy pilot who later founded

the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon,

NICAP, claimed that the government scientists discovered

two satellites emitting strange radio signals.

And then in 1974, Duncan Lunan found the hidden message

in the recordings taken from the Black Knight.

"I tried plotting the delay times

against the order in which the echoes were received,"

Lunan said in 1998, "and at only the second attempt

I found what looked like a star map."

But the position of the constellation's brightest star,

Arcturus, was wrong.

Eventually, Lunan realized the solution.

What if the message was old?

Since stars and their systems move and rotate,

maybe the message had been correct in the past.

- And when Lunan plotted out the points

on a map of the universe, something didn't add up.

Epsilon Bootis wasn't where the message pointed.

- [John] If the message

and alien probe were sent 13,000 years ago

as Duncan had claimed, then it was evidence

of an alien race far more advanced than humans.

Duncan Lunan withdrew his original theory

about Epsilon Bootis in 1976

but updated and republished it two decades later.

And in those two decades,

stories about the Black Knight continued to thrive.

- One thing that's interesting about eyewitness accounts

of the Black Knight satellite is

that under further scrutiny,

many of these people are backing off their original stories.

Now that's indicative of one of two things.

They either, A, are not really sure what they saw

and upon thinking it through a little bit more

don't really want to go out and make that wild claim,

or B, somebody called 'em up on the phone

and said "You have to dial it back."

And there are such people and these things do happen.

- This wasn't some vague message.

It was highly detailed

and his claim got national attention in "Time Magazine"

and on the CBS evening news.

- [John] In 1960,

"The New York Times" reported the following.

"An unidentified, silent satellite has been

discovered circling the earth in a near polar orbit

by United States tracking stations."

In 1961, French scientist Jacques Vallee photographed

the Black Knight in polar orbit

where no manmade satellites were known to be.

He observed that it was the size of an oil tanker.

Mysteriously, all of his photos were destroyed

by the French government.

- Jacques Vallee,

one of the most foremost researchers on UFOs,

actually took pictures of this Black Knight satellite

and possibly videos of it,

which he then submitted to government

and they then confiscated and he never saw it again.

- More and more reports came out about satellites

in the 1950s and 1960s.

They relied a lot on amateur astronomers across the globe

to try and capture images of any phantom satellites.

- [John] But when the space shuttle Endeavor developed

images of the bizarre object floating in orbit

next to the Space Station,

there was a renewed interest in the Black Knight.

There was a reasonable amount

of skepticism surrounding the Black Knight theory,

but in 2017,

scientists discovered an extraterrestrial visitor

that absolutely everyone knew to be real.

(ominous music)

The Black Knight satellite theory has endured for decades

but while an orbiting satellite

of extraterrestrial origin has never been confirmed,

astronomers in 2017 delivered incontrovertible proof

that they had tracked an object not of this solar system.

- In 2017, the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope

in Hawaii detected an unusual object

with a trajectory suggesting it could have come

from somewhere beyond this solar system.

- [John] The object was called 'Oumuamua,

which in Hawaiian means scout or messenger from afar.

The name was an apt description of the object

but being from another solar system

wasn't the only unique thing about 'Oumuamua.

- Only over the past decade, we were able to detect objects,

you know, the size of a football field, quite big,

that came from outside the solar system.

And the first one that we identified was 'Oumuamua

that I talk about in the book "Extraterrestrial."

And it was really weird.

You know, it was most likely flat.

It was pushed away from the sun

without showing any evaporation, any cometary tail.

So I talk about the fact that I suggested it's artificial.

- [John] 'Oumuamua was described as cigar shaped,

an extreme oblong shape

whose dimensions are unlike anything we have discovered

in our solar system.

- The thing that makes this particular asteroid,

if you want to call it that, unique is that it appeared

to deliberately change course

and have some kind of intelligent control

as to where it was going

and how it was traversing the solar system.

This has sparked a lot of speculation

that 'Oumuamua might be some sort of an alien craft.

- Only over the past decade,

we had the instruments allowing us

to find equipment from other civilizations.

So it's a relatively new frontier

and what I'm saying is the first three objects didn't look

like the rocks we are used to in the solar system.

So there is a clear message there

that we should be open-minded

and try to figure out what these objects are,

that perhaps among them we will find technological relics

that we are not alone.

- [John] 'Oumuamua was difficult to study.

Astronomers had mere hours to scan it.

Scientists were able to lock telescopes on the object

and saw no telltale signs

that it was a comet or an asteroid.

Theories from alien truth seekers postulate

that 'Oumuamua is more like its name, a scout from afar,

an alien probe sent from another civilization.

If true, how did it find out about Earth?

Why was it sent to our little solar system?

- The problem with 'Oumuamua being an asteroid is

that it's sped up for no apparent reason.

Objects don't just start going faster

without any means of propulsion.

- Interesting because the public, if you ask the public,

about 60% of the public believes

in extraterrestrial life, believes that we are not alone.

And that's more than the fraction that believes in God,

which is slightly less than 50%.

- The idea that 'Oumuamua is some sort of alien probe,

it's not exactly being accepted widely

by the scientific community.

But this is a very anomalous object

and it deserves study and it deserves scrutiny

and it deserves people to have an open mind

as to what it is.

Avi Loeb may very well be correct

that it is some sort of an artificial craft.

- [John] A second interstellar visitor was discovered

in 2019 by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov.

Using a telescope he designed and built himself,

Borisov discovered the satellite that took his name

30 kilometers from Earth.

'Oumuamua is already on its way out of the solar system.

Its velocity was too great

to be captured by the sun's gravity.

The other objects we have found are similar

in that they are just passing through.

Will we ever be able to determine what 'Oumuamua was?

- When scientists hear the words alien life,

they cringe because it isn't an accepted field of study.

We've only had the tools to find things

that come from other solar systems in the last decade.

If it isn't a comet and it isn't an asteroid,

then what is it?

Perhaps it is a light sail, an artificially made sail

that uses solar wind for propulsion.

It's now speeding away from us

and there's a good chance we may never see it again.

- [John] 'Oumuamua wasn't the only satellite to depart,

leaving us with more questions than answers.

But while the messenger from afar slipped off

into the celestial sunset,

the Black Knight's demise was more abrupt

and much more dramatic.

(ominous music)

In 2017, vision surfaced on the internet

of what many believed to be the fiery end

of the Black Knight.

Speculation was rampant

about who was behind the famous satellite's destruction.

- Most people don't think, to my knowledge,

that it's still there.

From what I understand, most people think it was shot down

or just left.

The Black Knight satellite may have realized

that people of Earth are aware of it,

or if it is from Earth, since so many people are aware of it

it's no longer cloaked, no longer secret.

So maybe its purpose was no longer to to be around,

so maybe that's why it's not in orbit anymore.

- [John] But in the end, the potential destruction

of the Black Knight raises as many questions as it answers.

What was the object?

What was its purpose?

Who created it and why was it destroyed?

- If you're an alien species

and you're trying to keep tabs on what's happening

on planet Earth, where you want to get a closer look

or you wanna monitor communications or whatever,

the perfect way to do it would be to disguise this effort

as some sort of natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid.

Now, the reasons that they want to do this could be

that all over the road.

We don't really know what Earth means

to any galactic species, but it does stand to reason

that planets such as Earth, that are rich in biodiversity,

rich in DNA, uniquely positioned in the Goldilocks zone

next to their sun, are probably,

as far as galactic civilizations are concerned,

a pretty valuable piece of real estate.

- [John] Since Guglielmo Marconi first developed

radio communication in 1895,

the Earth has been making noise out in space.

In his groundbreaking book, "Contact,"

astronomer Carl Sagan depicted first contact

with alien life being opened

with a rebroadcast of our first TV transmission.

Ironically, this happens to be footage

of Adolf Hitler opening the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936.

Perhaps to outdo this embarrassing communication,

in 1974, we made our first deliberate attempt

to communicate with alien life.

A radio signal was broadcast

from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

It was a message in binary put together

by a group of scientists that included Carl Sagan himself.

It was a powerful broadcast too.

According to SETI, "The emission was equivalent

to a 20 trillion watt omnidirectional broadcast,

and would be detectable

by a SETI experiment just about anywhere in the galaxy."

- If only a fraction of those planets had life,

then maybe there is some world out there like ours.

They picked up what we've sent

and now they're just trying to figure out how

to send something back.

- [John] Less than a century

between Marconi's first radio and the Arecibo message,

and every year our planet has been getting noisier still.

- Our radio waves have been blasting out for a while

but as they travel and propagate the universe,

the intensity of the signals decrease,

making it not only harder

for an alien civilization to detect, but also to translate.

But it does make sense

that those waves might reach other planets.

- [John] If anyone out there is listening,

then it can be only a matter of time

before they finally hear the racket we continue to make.

However, given the distances between Earth

and other inhabitable planets, it is nearly impossible

that these communications have reached another species.

But would they need to?

If a civilization is capable

of building a satellite that lasts for thousands of years

or a cigar shaped probe

that can travel between solar systems,

wouldn't they also be able to detect life

on other planets without being asked?

- There's theories out there

that this is actually an alien probe

that might be spying on Earth.

In other words, they might be watching us from afar,

not necessarily interfering with us,

but seeing what we're doing secretly,

just as if we were observing gorillas in the wild.

We wouldn't necessarily go right in there,

we might watch from a distance secretly

to find out what exactly is going on.

- They might choose not to respond for various reasons,

such as not perceiving our signals

or a lack of interest or having a non-interference policy.

- [John] And if we are being watched,

why haven't we also been spoken to?

Is it just that we lack the capacity to understand

or are the people in communication keeping

their conversation secret?

- Another choice for an alien race is direct communication.

They might attempt to establish communication

using their own technology or visit our planet.

They could also try indirect communication

like initiating contact through robotic probes.

- [John] For now, we can only theorize and question.

Is there a Black Knight satellite watching us

or an alien probe that looks like 'Oumuamua?

These potential artificial machines have found us

out of the endless vastness of space.

How?

Have our radio waves reached them, a beacon in the darkness?

For now, we'll keep the airwaves open

and hope someone can hear us.

- Earth may not be ready for an encounter.

We can't even get public funding

to search the way we need to.

If other planets hear us and have the capability to respond,

they're already ahead of us.

Maybe their governments are more open to extraterrestrials.

(ominous music)

(keyboard clacking)