Original subtitles

- Where is everybody?

It was this simple question

that inspired the brilliant physicist Enrico Fermi

to develop the famous paradox that bears his name.

As stated in the Fermi paradox,

the likelihood of intelligent life in the universe

is surprisingly high.

And if the universe is so old,

then why have we not made any contact

with extraterrestrial life?

Explanations abound from the vast distances of space,

to the self-destructive tendencies of intelligent life,

to the great filter theory.

But one explanation is increasingly gaining popularity.

And if it's true, then the Fermi paradox

is not a paradox at all.

What if we have already made contact?

What if the aliens are already here?

(eerie music)

These are the "Alien Disclosure Files."

(digital beeping)

(deep somber music)

- So let's begin with astronomy.

The Milky Way is merely our view of our own galaxy,

but ours is just one galaxy.

The total number of the stars in the universe

is probably something like the total number

of the grains of sand on all the seashores of all the world.

- [John] On December 2nd, 1942, Italian-American physicist,

Enrico Fermi and his team of scientists harness the atom,

opening the door to new scientific and technological realms.

His achievement allowed the US to produce the atomic bomb

that helped end World War II.

Fermi's work is evident today in so many modern miracles,

including nuclear energy, cancer therapy,

forensic investigation,

and even everyday items like microwave ovens.

(digital beeping)

(mysterious music)

In 1950, Enrico Fermi and coworkers, Emil Konopinski,

Edward Teller, and Herbert York were at lunch

at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Seemingly out of nowhere,

Fermi asked the question that spurred his famous paradox.

"Where is everybody?"

Fermi followed up with rough equations

about the high probability of advanced life in the universe.

Simply put, the paradox breaks down to,

if there are so many advanced civilizations in the universe

why haven't they made contact with us?

- I mean, they should have found Earth by now.

And that's the paradox.

They say that he kind of blurted that out during lunch.

"Where are they?"

And of course, here we are, we're talking about UFOs,

and I would say, well, they are here.

- The Fermi paradox is the puzzling question of why,

given the vast number of stars and planets in the universe,

we haven't yet detected any clear signs

of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.

- [John] Fermi died in 1954, so he didn't get to witness

today's high-tech sensors and modern radar systems

capturing UAPs.

His argument was about the vastness of space,

and the difficulty of any journey

traveling such great distances.

- Reconciling the vastness of the universe

with the apparent absence of extraterrestrial civilizations

is a complex challenge.

It's possible that life is rare,

or that civilizations often face obstacles

that prevent them from becoming space-bearing,

or communicating over interstellar distances.

- [John] One explanation for the paradox

is that we could be seeing the effects of a great filter,

a barrier preventing simple organisms

from evolving into more complex life forms,

thus limiting the amount of advanced civilizations

in the universe.

- I don't really recognize it so much as a paradox anymore.

Even if, you know, extraterrestrial life is rare,

there are different hypotheses

about where these UFOs are coming from.

- [John] 73 years later, after Fermi's question,

the GOP Oversight Committee heard some mind-bending updates

from David Grusch about the theoretical framework

of space travel.

If Grusch is correct,

it could lead to some serious revisions of Fermi's paradox.

(digital beeping)

(upbeat percussion music)

- You have mentioned that there's

interdimensional potential.

Could you expound on that?

- There's something called the holographic principle,

both, it derives itself from general relativity

and quantum mechanics, and that is,

if you wanna imagine 3D objects such as yourself

casting a shadow onto a 2D surface,

that's the holographic principle.

So you can be projected, quasi-projected

from higher dimensional space to lower dimensional.

It's a scientific trope that you can actually cross,

literally, as far as I understand.

But there's probably guys with PhDs

that we could probably argue about.

- [John] If any of David Grusch's testimony were true,

then Fermi's paradox collapses,

because they are already here.

It has become very clear

that there is an overwhelming public feeling

that we will make contact, soon.

- The Fermi paradox remains relevant today,

as it challenges us to think critically

about our assumptions regarding the prevalence in nature

of extraterrestrial life.

It encourages ongoing scientific exploration,

and fuels our imagination

about the possible explanations for the paradox.

- But if UAPs don't exist, then what do we keep seeing

and what are their intentions?

- There's other people that say we're like a zoo,

and we're, they're just observing us,

and this is just a game to them.

- [John] The question may not be, are we alone, but rather,

are we being watched?

And if that's the case, who is watching us,

and why haven't they made contact?

(haunting music)

(dramatic ominous music)

The Fermi paradox asks the question,

why, if intelligent extraterrestrial life

is likely to exist, we haven't yet observed

any real evidence or contact?

But since the idea was first posited in 1950,

there have been countless credible sightings

of the exact kinds of visitors Fermi was curious about.

- Pilot sightings and reports

from trained pilots and military personnel

who've witnessed unidentified aerial objects,

exhibiting flight behaviors beyond human capabilities.

For me personally, it's the US Navy Tic Tac,

caught on radar, which again, has radar data

that corresponds with visual sightings,

indicating both physical presence and movement.

- You know, what's convinced me the most that UAP, UFO,

alien contact, alien abduction phenomena is occurring

are the word of the people who are witnessing these things.

These people can stand in a court of law,

and put somebody in prison for life on their word alone.

- [John] Alien abduction is the ultimate case of contact.

Yet, despite the numerous firsthand accounts of it happening

it is almost always immediately dismissed.

- And it's a very frightening thing to know

that this can happen to you,

because I guess some people don't come back.

Some people come back traumatized.

Some people come back with radiation issues and die after.

So, there's a lot of bad things that can happen out of it.

(deep foreboding music)

- [John] Why is it that these alleged victims are ignored,

even as the evidence to support their claims

continues to grow?

- We stood up, turned around and looked,

and that's when the bright light happened.

And, that's where they came outta the craft,

and they come and picked us up then and took us back aboard.

- [John] The stories of abduction and attempted abductions

go back almost 100 years.

What did people have to gain for reporting their stories?

Most of the time they were only met with ridicule,

doubt, and intimidation.

(digital beeping)

(haunting music)

- [Reporter] This is no ordinary sighting

of an unidentified flying object.

These pictures taken over a six-month period

in Gulf Breeze, Florida are the most spectacular evidence

of UFOs ever gathered.

While some say the photos are fakes,

that would not explain the fact that more than 20 people

have reported seeing these objects on the very same night.

Charles Somerby describes what he saw in the skies.

- No sound.

There was no veering, it was a straight course.

And halfway out over the bay and I said,

"I've never seen anything like that."

(mysterious music)

- [John] On November 11th, 1987, Ed Walters,

also known as Jim, a contractor in Gulf Breeze, Florida

was allegedly immobilized briefly by a blue beam.

When he could move again, he took five photographs

of an object in the sky outside his home.

Walters reported seeing the object hover

about 200 feet above the ground.

He claimed to have had multiple subsequent visits

by the UFO.

- [Reporter] Jim says his most threatening encounter

with the UFOs occurred on this road.

He says an object swooped over his car

and sent out a beam of light.

- [Jim] And it came through the windshield,

hit my exposed arms, and turned my skin to,

like it was asleep, but even worse.

And then you don't have any feeling at all.

I proceeded to panic.

- [Reporter] Forced off the road, Jim fumbled with a camera,

managing to snap this one dramatic picture.

A noted optical physicist calculated the object

was hovering about three feet off the ground.

Photography experts say such a picture

would be virtually impossible to fake.

- [John] Dr. John Edward Mack was an American psychiatrist,

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, and professor of psychiatry.

He served as the head of the Department of Psychiatry

at Harvard Medical School from 1977 to 2004.

Mack was also a prolific interviewer

of alleged alien abductees.

- Then I had to see 30 or 40 of these people, each telling,

in different, slight differences,

highly detailed narratives, terrifying in many instances,

which they themselves doubted,

which when they would hear that another person

had had the same experience,

they would become very much disturbed

because it meant they couldn't dismiss it as a dream.

They couldn't dismiss it as their private mental illness

or fantasy.

And that, to a psychiatrist, at least to this psychiatrist,

was very powerful evidence that something extraordinary

was occurring.

- [John] Ralph Blumenthal is a journalist,

and the author of "The Believer: Alien Encounters,

Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack."

- The world is divided into people

who've had these experiences, and know that they're real,

and others who have not had these experiences

and can't believe them.

So, that's a problem.

Now, I have not ever had an abduction experience,

or I've never sighted a UFO, neither did John Mack,

but I have done enough research, and so did he,

to know that entirely credible people, ordinary people,

have had these experiences which cannot be explained

by anything we know.

- [John] The intimidation factor has long been a reason

why most abductees will not step forward.

In the public sphere, they become known as, that UFO person,

or just plain crazy.

(mysterious music)

But if alien abduction isn't enough to convince you,

there are other ways to collapse the Fermi paradox.

(haunting music)

(deep ominous music)

The Fermi paradox asks for an explanation of why,

if there are so many potential civilizations

in the universe, we haven't been contacted here on Earth.

But if we have been contacted,

then it really isn't a paradox at all.

So what would satisfy Enrico Fermi and his theory

in today's world?

Would government disclosure be enough?

(digital beeping)

(somber percussion music)

- Now we have incidents where sensors,

sometimes even multiple types of sensors,

detect things that we cannot explain.

UAPs, whatever they may be, may pose a serious threat

to our military or civilian aircraft,

and that must be understood.

- I've had conversations with many pilots

where they were in fear of coming forward

for retribution and/or being taken off flight status.

How do we know this?

Because the government has said nothing

to assure us otherwise.

They have also did nothing to calm the concerns

of over 20% of Americans who have reported

to have seen UFOs or UAPs.

We are simply told not to question the government,

and that the government has it under control.

- [John] The US government clearly knows something.

There were very specific statements

about secret locations and wanting full disclosure.

- If there's nothing to conceal,

let Congress go to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,

the Dugway Proving Ground, or even Groom Lake in Nevada.

We should have disclosure today.

We should have disclosure tomorrow.

The time has come.

- Two F-18 Super Hornets were split by a UAP.

The object, described as a dark gray or a black cube

inside of a clear sphere, came within 50 feet

of the lead aircraft,

and was estimated to be five to 15 feet in diameter.

The mission commander terminated the flight immediately

and returned to base.

Our squadron submitted a safety report,

but there was no official acknowledgement of the incident

and no further mechanism to report the sightings.

Soon these encounters became so frequent

that aircrew would discuss the risk of UAP

as part of their regular pre-flight briefs.

- [John] One 2020 study that analyzed Kepler data,

calculated that the Milky Way could harbor

as many as six billion Earth-like planets,

while another estimated the number

of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy

at about 300 million.

- The study of alien life has become far more complex,

and now more than ever,

there's a desire for science-based evidence,

or whistle blowing by credible government officials

like David Grusch.

- [John] Beyond our own solar system,

we have discovered thousands of planetary systems

orbiting other stars in the Milky Way.

- When I look out into the universe

and I'm looking at the stars and I'm like,

you know this is just kinda naive of us

and rather egotistical of us

to suspect that we are the only ones

that have any kind of common sense.

- [John] Perhaps the best attitude to take

is the one suggested by Harvard Professor Avi Loeb,

a theoretical physicist and author.

- There is the community of skeptics,

and that includes scientists that dismiss this subject.

But, I'm trying to do what seems to me like common sense.

Let's walk in the middle, collect the data,

and then make statements based on this data.

And unfortunately, common sense is not common.

- [John] Depictions of possible alien visitors

were found in cave art that can be traced back

as far as 10,000 years ago in Charama, India.

- While some artifacts might have alternative explanations,

exploring the possibility of a connection

to extraterrestrial light can spark curiosity,

and possibly open up new avenues for research.

- [John] Such research could be solely based

on how cave art more than 8,200 miles

from the caves of India,

in the caves of the Colorado Plateau,

show similar depictions carved in caves 5,000 years later.

- The interpretation of ancient texts

and religious scriptures in relation to alien encounters

is a topic of debate.

While some believe that alien references

to alien contact exists within these texts,

such interpretations are often subjective

and purely speculative.

It's important to approach this data

with a respectful understanding

of cultural and religious beliefs,

recognizing that alternative interpretations

might offer equally valid insights.

- [John] Does 10,000 years of disclosure

from the caves of India,

to the 2023 US GOP Oversight Committee meeting

meet the burden of proof

for the presence of extraterrestrial life?

The Fermi paradox appears to have discounted

a tremendous amount of data

in the search for proof of alien life.

It appears that the signs are all around us.

(deep ominous music)

The signs of extraterrestrial life are all around us

here in the Goldilocks Zone,

which currently is the only known solar system

with living beings.

- Some people believe that aliens are actually the gods.

And, a lot of these gods that are written about

also come out of water.

They're not just coming from the sky.

And some people, as I've heard Tom DeLonge even say,

that the gods of the Greek era were actually real.

They were actually aliens.

- [John] Tom DeLonge is the front man

for the rock band Blink-182,

and he is a serious researcher of alien life,

where he helmed an organization called

To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences.

DeLonge's beliefs skew towards zoo theory.

Quote, "I don't know if a major event that happens now

is a good thing or would scare people or what,

but I just think, in general,

that these things don't want to be seen, which makes me feel

they don't want us to know they're here."

- They're trying to have the world

fight their fights through people.

Each of these gods is like representing

of an alien civilization, according to that theory,

from what I understand.

- [John] Tom DeLonge's To the Stars organization

posted the US Navy Gimbal video on December 19th, 2017

to Instagram.

- [Man] Roger, they're still shooting

(speaker drown out by garbled, indistinct voice)

- [John] Long before this rockstar looked to the stars,

rock formations told the story of visitors

from the skies above.

- Evaluating the credibility of historical accounts

describing interactions with alien beings

requires a critical examination of, well, multiple factors.

Witness credibility, multiple independent accounts

or sources that support the same narrative,

and considering the cultural, societal,

and technological context of the time.

- [John] If these are depictions of visitors from beyond,

did they help prehistoric humanity with their technology?

- Between the years, like 3,000 and 7,000,

nothing much was happening.

And then suddenly we get the wheel, we get fire,

we get pottery.

Was there some type of connection there,

where we suddenly got all this, this extra knowledge

to invent fire, the wheel, and pottery, for instance,

that helped us technologically advance faster?

- [John] According to the SETI Institute,

one of the major setbacks in solving the Fermi paradox

is that interstellar travel is just too costly.

Consider sending a small rocket to our closest star,

four light years away.

Proxima Centauri, for example.

The craft would have to house a crew

and all the necessities for sustaining them in flight,

maybe something the size of the Mayflower.

To reach our nearest stellar neighbor in 50 years,

you'll require about 150 billion billion jewels of energy.

Meanwhile, we have some pretty big issues here at home.

Allocating major funding for space seems like a waste.

So for now, Fermi's paradox remains a paradox.

(deep ominous music)

(mysterious music)

(typewriter keys click)