Original subtitles

>> NARRATOR: Space ships over Los Angeles...

body snatchers controlling our minds... E.T.'s making contact.

These and other alien‐based scenarios have been the

plotlines of countless science‐fiction movies and

television shows. But what if extraterrestrial

beings came to Earth tomorrow? Would they signal the birth of

a new age of peace and prosperity, or trigger a war of

the worlds?

>> The day that it's announced we're not alone is the day that

this planet changes forever.

>> The very structures of government and the very

structures of religion will crumble.

>> Everybody wants to meet an alien.

But we have to start small. We have to learn how to walk

before we can run.

>> NARRATOR: Millions of people around the world believe we have

been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.

What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really help

to shape our history? And if so, what might happen...

when they return?

♪ ♪

Captioning sponsored by A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS

>> NARRATOR: Throughout human history, man has gazed up at the

stars in awe and with wonder. Our ancient ancestors charted

their movements, identified constellations, and marked time

by creating celestial‐based calendars.

The stars also became the source of countless myths and legends.

Many of these describe visitors coming down to Earth from

somewhere out there. Others speak of entire

civilizations existing out in the cosmos.

>> MICHAEL CREMO: The ancient Sanskrit writings of India tell

us, for example, there are 400,000 human‐like species

scattered throughout the cosmos in different planets, different

solar systems, even different dimensions.

>> NARRATOR: But where are these alien beings?

Did they come to Earth in the past, as the Ancient Astronaut

theory suggests, and then leave? If so, will they ever come back?

Today, scientists around the world have stopped waiting

around and are taking steps to find intelligent

extraterrestrial life. Will technology finally be able

to prove what our ancient ancestors believed thousands of

years ago? In 1960, astronomer and

physicist Frank Drake set up an unusual telescope in the hills

of West Virginia. The strange device was made

from surplus World War II radar equipment, but rather than

containing a traditional optical lens, it housed a

directional radio antenna.

>> PAUL DAVIES: A few simple calculations showed that radio

telescopes have the power to transmit and receive across

literally interstellar distances. We're talking many light‐years.

So Frank Drake turned a radio telescope on a couple of nearby

stars and tuned in to see if he could pick up a message from

the aliens. So this was a sort of crazy

thing to do.

>> NARRATOR: Drake failed to pick up any sounds that day, but

the science of radio astronomy was born.

If we couldn't see aliens in space, maybe we could hear them.

>> MICHAEL DENNIN: The things we've focused on in the past for

searching for extraterrestrial life is really passively trying

to discover signals on the basis that if they were

technologically advanced, they would have some form of

electricity like we do, and all electricity generates radiation.

And it sends out the signals, and hopefully we detect it.

>> NARRATOR: In 1961, Frank Drake and a group of

astronomers, physicists and biologists formed a privately

funded organization called SETI: the Search for

Extra‐Terrestrial Intelligence. Their goal was to focus massive

radio telescopes towards space and listen.

Drake estimated the probability that intelligent life existed

out in the universe in a formula that became known as

the Drake Equation.

>> SARA SEAGER: The Drake equation is like a bridge

between scientists and non‐scientists, because it

explains what you would want to know to give a number about how

common alien life could be.

>> JENNIFER HELDMAN: There are multiple factors within the

Drake equation. Like the fraction of stars that

could have planets; and the fraction of those planets that

could be habitable; and the fraction of those that might

have liquid water; and how many could have evolved intelligent

life? And then one important factor

is the lifetime of those civilizations, and that is a big

unknown. We only know of one‐‐ that's

ourselves. And how long are we gonna be

around? That's to be determined.

>> NARRATOR: Using his equation, Drake estimated that over one

hundred million advanced civilizations could exist in

just the Milky Way galaxy.

>> BILL BIRNES: SETI presupposes that if you've got an alien

civilization capable of traveling that's developed

electronics, they have a fingerprint.

That fingerprint is a repetitive signal.

A repetitive signal will tell them that it's not just noise,

junk frequencies out there, but a real attempt at communicating,

maybe not with us, but with each other.

>> NARRATOR: On August 15, 1977, astronomer Dr. Jerry Ehman

was working on a SETI project at Ohio State University when he

recorded an intermittent signal coming from the direction of the

constellation Sagittarius. The signal lasted 72 seconds

before being lost. Ehman believed that it was of

extraterrestrial origin. But despite repeated searches

and increasingly larger telescopes, the signal has

never again been detected. But what if SETI intercepts a

transmission from another world? What would happen next?

According to SETI's Post‐Detection Protocols, once

an extraterrestrial radio signal is confirmed, news of the event

should be kept secret until the authorities have been notified.

The government will then decide whether or not to try and make

contact.

>> DAVIES: I think all bets are off. Because here's this message.

It could contain enormously important information that

would transform our society and maybe destabilize it.

What is it gonna mean for the future of our civilization?

These are momentous questions.

>> NARRATOR: Today, SETI continues to scan the vicinities

of nearby stars for artificially produced signals

using several of the world's largest telescopes.

In the next several years, when it becomes fully operational,

SETI's new Allen Telescope Array will allow for the

reconnaissance of up to a million stars.

>> SEAGER: SETI has to search a huge, huge area.

They'll tell you that now they have searched the equivalent of,

like, a glass of water compared to the entire ocean on Earth.

They have a long way to go.

>> NARRATOR: While SETI listens passively to signals from outer

space, NASA has attempted to contact alien life directly,

through messages sent aboard its space probes.

>> DENNIN: It's a long shot, but there's no reason, in my

mind, not to expect that life evolved elsewhere.

What's harder to predict, or try and understand, is how

likely is it that it happened close enough that there'd be

someone we could actually communicate with.

>> NARRATOR: In 1972, NASA agreed to attach small plaques

onto the outside of its twin Pioneer space probes, the first

human‐built objects destined to leave our solar system.

NASA contacted Cornell University professor, Dr.

Carl Sagan, to craft the message.

>> DENNIN: Carl Sagan was one of the most active astronomers in

the search for life outside our planet. He was a very prominent

scientist, he was an excellent astronomer, and he really did a

lot to help us understand how we might contact other life or

detect life elsewhere in the universe.

>> NARRATOR: Sagan, along with SETI founder Frank Drake,

designed a gold‐anodized aluminum plaque, measuring

roughly six by nine inches, that contained a collection of

symbolic images representing humans and Earth.

>> AL HARRISON: The man and the woman were nude, and the

gentleman was holding one arm up like this in what was intended

to be a sign of, uh, a sign of greeting.

>> NARRATOR: A schematic design of the solar system was also

shown, with the planned trajectory of the Pioneer

spacecraft marked on it, and a diagram of 14 pulsar stars

around the sun made a chart that might help someone work out

where the craft originated.

>> DENNIN: We tried to give them an idea of where we're

located‐‐ and that's an interesting problem, is to

figure out how you would tell someone where you're located in

space, 'cause you don't know where they're gonna find it.

And it was all in a very stylistic design, but in an

attempt to hopefully communicate at least some of

these ideas.

>> NARRATOR: Five years later, in 1977, Dr. Sagan got a second

chance at designing an interstellar message when NASA

agreed to attach another one to the Voyager space probes.

This time, Sagan created a record album made of

gold‐plated copper, along with a series of basic instructions

in how to make it work. Sagan estimated that the

metallic disc could survive in space for at least a billion

years.

>> DENNIN: One of the challenges with technology is trying to

figure out one that can do what you want‐‐ so here you want to

encode audio, and even some video images, but do it in a way

that almost any other technologically advanced society

could figure out. And the advantage of a record

player is, it's both mechanical and electrical.

The grooves are obvious. And so, they actually put on the

cover instructions on how to play it.

>> NARRATOR: The recording included a wide variety of

sounds‐‐ a baby's cry... wind...

surf and rain, animal noises, as well as classical and

cultural music from around the world.

One interesting song selection was Chuck Berry's rock 'n roll

hit, "Johnny B. Goode."

>> DENNIN: Music is a good choice 'cause almost anything

vibrates and makes sound. So I would have bet that almost

any culture would develop music. I believe it's Bach who gets the

most time on the record. I don't know why they picked

that, to be honest, but he is one of the more mathematical

composers, and that might have been one of the reasons, because

math is a more universal language.

>> NARRATOR: Sagan also included a wide array of photographs of

well‐known man‐made structures and greetings in 55 different

languages.

>> GIORGIO TSOUKALOS:: I think the most important one is the

Sumerian language. Now, why would they include

Sumerian on that record? Well, according to the ancient

alien theory, ancient Sumeria is the first place where we made

contact with an extraterrestrial entity.

>> DENNIN: At this point, we obviously haven't learned

anything yet about extraterrestrial life, because

we haven't been contacted back. But I think for our own

purposes, any time you try and go and figure out how you want

to communicate something, it pushes your boundaries and

understanding of communication itself.

>> SEAGER: We all want to find aliens.

Whether it's the planetary scientists looking for signs of

life on another distant planet. Whether it's the ancient alien

proponents who want to find signs of life of aliens who

visited in the past. And whether it's people today

who want to have experiences with UFOs and aliens that have

visited them recently. All of us are trying to do the

same thing.

>> NARRATOR: While the search for extraterrestrial beings

continues, a new space‐based telescope is hunting for

planets that may contain life. Are there other earths out there?

And if so, how will we find them?

>> MISSION CONTROL: Ignition. Lift off. Lift off...

>> NARRATOR: On March 6, 2009, NASA launched a Delta II rocket

into space. On board was a new telescope

named in honor of German astronomer, Johannes Kepler.

The space‐based telescope was designed specifically to

discover the existence of Earth‐like planets located

outside our own solar system. The Kepler search is focused on

a specific section of the Milky Way known as Orion's Spur.

>> SEAGER: Kepler's job is to answer the question, how common

are other Earths? To do this, Kepler's looking at

one part of the sky for three‐ and‐a‐half years.

Imagine, like, keeping your eyes open and staring at just one

part of the sky.

>> HELDMAN: And what they're doing is they're looking at

stars. And then, as a planet goes around that star, when the

planet gets in front of the star, the starlight dims, just

a little bit, from our vantage point, 'cause it is being

blocked by the planet. And so, you look for that

dimming of those stars. And then that's how you're able

to detect these planets.

>> NARRATOR: So far, the Kepler telescope has confirmed the

existence of five planets outside our own solar system.

NASA officials expect to find several hundred more exoplanets

like these before their mission is completed.

Once a planet has been located, scientists must then determine

if it might contain water.

>> HELDMAN: We know from Earth that all life on Earth requires

liquid water.

(croaking)

(birds singing)

So that is the approach that we've been taking for looking

for life elsewhere in the universe‐‐ follow the water.

And so, that is the step one.

(crackling)

(bubbling)

>> DAVIES: On Earth, wherever we find liquid water, we find

life. And it's true. Life on Earth can exist under

an extraordinary range of conditions.

There are extreme organisms that live in the scalding effluent

coming out of the Earth's crust deep beneath the ocean.

There are other remarkable organisms living in the waste

pools of nuclear reactors of extreme radiation environments

and so on. But the one thing that seems to

be absolutely necessary for life as we know it is liquid water.

>> NARRATOR: To determine if a planet contains water and

possibly life, scientists use special telescopes to analyze

its atmosphere.

>> SEAGER: We look at the light coming from the planet.

And we split that light up, like a rainbow.

Now if you look at a rainbow in the sky, and you look really,

really carefully, you will see some dark lines.

You'll see some colors missing from the rainbow.

And those colors are missing because of absorption by gases

in Earth's atmosphere. So effectively, we're getting a

rainbow from another planet, and we're looking for dark lines

that tell us what kinds of gases are in the atmosphere.

>> NARRATOR: To better understand how life affects its

atmosphere, NASA scientists study microbial mats at

California's Moss Landing Wildlife Area.

>> BRAD BEBOUT: Microbial mats are important to NASA for a

whole bunch of reasons. The organisms that are in

microbial mats have been on Earth just about longer than

any other kind of organism. They make a number of things

which we call biomarkers which are important in our search for

life on other planets. So, there are textural

biomarkers, so when you pull up a piece of microbial mat and

look at the surface‐‐ what does that look like?

One of the things that we're doing with these microbial mats

is, we're measuring the fluxes of methane.

Methane is a gas that's produced by certain kinds of

organisms that use the organic matter that's in these mats.

And when that methane goes into our atmosphere, it can be

detected by other missions, such as terrestrial planet finder, is

one of NASA's concept missions for looking for gases that arere

produced by life on exoplanets.

>> DENNIN: We can look for the signature of oxygen or water on

a planet, and at least that would give us an idea of

life‐forms like ourselves‐‐ ones that are carbon‐based, and use

oxygen and carbon dioxide cycles. Our atmosphere is not stable

without living organisms. It would have evaporated away by

now. And so, if you're looking out in

space, and you detect around a star a signature of the

chemicals that we know exist for life, that's very strong

evidence that life is there. That doesn't help you know if

it's intelligent life, but it does give you an evidence for

life.

>> NARRATOR: With a universe literally full of possibilities,

planet hunters focus their search on an area they call a

Goldilocks Zone.

>> SEAGER: The Goldilocks Zone for planets is the place where

a planet is not too hot, not too cold, but just the right

temperature for life. Right now, we know of no planets

like Earth in a Goldilocks Zone. One planet comes close.

It's called Gliese 581D. But we're not entirely sure if

that planet is really in the Goldilocks Zone or not.

>> DAVIES: In recent years, it's been recognized that there's

more than one Goldilocks Zone. For example, there could be

life inside icy planetesimals, these like small planets or

large moons. The moon of Jupiter, Europa, is

a very good example. Europa is liquid beneath an ice

cap. It's liquid underneath because

of tidal heating and friction going on inside the planet.

So it could be that there is life, microbial probably only,

deep down under the ice on Europa.

>> HELDMAN: It's a very challenging question‐‐ if there

is life elsewhere in our solar system.

You have so many components that have to come together.

We have to have an understanding on the science.

We have to ask the right questions.

I wish I had a tricorder that I could just go and, like, point,

and it would say: life, or no life, right?

But we don't have that. So, we have to be smart, and we

have to be clever, and, we have to develop instruments that can

actually address the questions we're trying to answer.

>> SEAGER: It's inevitable. There are so many planets out

there, it's inevitable that we'll find one in the Goldilocks

Zone any day.

>> NARRATOR: But while the Kepler telescope has only just

begun scanning the horizon, NASA is already planning the next

step in its search for extraterrestrial life: the 2014

launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

>> SEAGER: People always ask me, "Do you expect to find an Earth

in your lifetime?" And I say, "Yes, absolutely."

>> DAVIES: When I was a student, there was almost nobody prepared

to argue that way. The feeling back in the '60s

and '70s was that even if there were other Earth‐like planets,

life is such an improbable freak event that it would never ever

happen anywhere else. Now the prevailing view is, yes,

the universe is teeming with life.

>> SEAGER: Everybody wants to meet an alien.

But we have to start small, we have to learn how to walk

before we can run.

>> GEORGE NOORY: The fascinating thing for me is that we're only

four‐and‐a‐half billion years old in a universe that's close

to 14 billion years old. What would happen with some of

these Earth‐like planets that had a five‐ or ten‐billion‐year

head start on us? Gosh, you can only imagine.

>> NARRATOR: But what if humans are not the only intelligent

creatures searching for life in the universe?

What if there are beings on other planets conducting a

search of their own? And what if, in their search,

they find us before we find them? Some believe they already have.

>> NARRATOR: On October 30, 1938, radio listeners across the

United States sat stunned as a series of news bulletins

described Martians invading Earth.

>> MAN (over radio): Martian cylinders are falling all over

the country. This is the end now.

>> NARRATOR: While the broadcast sounded real, it was a fictional

production, directed and narrated by Orson Welles.

Incredibly, many of those listening believed it to be

true, and panicked. Newspaper reports described

families fleeing their homes for the mountains, while others

armed themselves with weapons and prepared to fight off the

alien invaders.

>> LEVINSON: It was just presented, maybe, with a brief

introduction saying it was not really happening.

But from then on, it was played as if it was really

happening. Well, most people who heard

that thought that it was really happening.

>> HARRISON: People became upset.

Some of those literally headed for the hills.

They drove places to try to, uh, pick up other people, family

and friends. They reported to the army for

duty.

>> NARRATOR: The response to this fictional alien attack

resulted in many people preparing for the worst.

But if the public's reaction to a radio dramatization resulted

in a nationwide wave of terror, what would happen if they really

came?

Los Angeles, California. In the early months of 1942,

the city was on edge. The recent surprise attack on

Pearl Harbor had propelled America into World War II...

and the threat of a Japanese invasion, by sea or by air,

kept the military on full alert.

>> CHRIS PITTMAN: Pearl Harbor was a very recent memory for

people. People were in high alert.

There was a great deal of suspicion.

Japanese‐Americans were being put in internment camps.

There were German U‐boats in the Atlantic, Japanese

submarines in the Pacific, and people were very fearful.

>> NARRATOR: In a well‐organized defense operation, air‐raid

wardens and the coast guard were monitoring the Pacific

shoreline as never before.

>> ALBERT METZ: The war had started.

I was a 13‐year‐old kid, and this one night, which was

February 1942, the sirens started wailing in the middle

of the night.

(sirens wailing in distance)

Blackout. And we'd had several blackouts

before this.

>> NARRATOR: On February 25, between the hours of 3:12 and

4:15 a. m., the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade in Los Angeles

fired off a barrage of antiaircraft shells at an

unidentified flying object.

>> NEWSMAN: Watchers on the rooftop of the Columbia

Broadcasting Building in the heart of Hollywood could

plainly see the flashes of guns and searchlights sweeping the

skies in a wide arc along the coastal area.

>> SCOTT LITTLETON: I think what woke me up initially was the

sound of antiaircraft guns. I jumped out of bed, and my

parents were up. My father was an air‐raid warden.

He figured, this has to be the real thing. (chuckles)

>> DOROTHY MATICH: My mother was telling my brother and I, "Get

under the bed, get under the bed! Stay there!"

And, of course, we got out and we peeked.

There was all this firing. It was almost like a Fourth

of July.

>> METZ: I started hearing a lot of loud explosions.

My brother and I looked out the bedroom window, saw searchlights

twisting and turning in the sky.

>> NARRATOR: But what was the strange UFO that the

searchlights were focused on? Where had it come from? Japan?

Or somewhere from out of this world? Could this incredible

photograph, published the next morning in the Los Angeles

Times, provide the proof? Could Ancient Astronaut

theorists have been right all along?

>> LITTLETON: It was practically overhead‐‐ and I mean overhead.

>> NARRATOR: Retired anthropology professor C.

Scott Littleton, was nine years old and growing up in Hermosa

Beach when he spotted the strange object hovering right

over his house.

>> LITTLETON: We saw what my mother always called a "silver

bug." I'd characterize it today as a

lozenge, a long oval. It was something I'll never,

ever forget. It was caught in searchlight

beams, and antiaircraft shells were exploding all around it.

It gradually went like this,

and then began to lose altitude a little bit as it moved over

what had to have been Redondo Beach.

We lost track of it, but the banging continued.

And very quickly afterward, I saw‐‐ we all saw‐‐ a flight of

planes following the track of the object going overhead,

anywhere from three to five interceptors, clearly

piston‐driven U. S. planes. No one has ever admitted that

those planes were in the sky. Our first thought immediately

was a Japanese observation plane. Later, the Japanese records

definitively prove there were no Japanese planes over

Southern California that night, or indeed ever.

>> NARRATOR: After ruling out the possibility that a Japanese

plane had invaded American airspace, Secretary of the

Navy Frank Knox attributed the incident to "war nerves."

But Secretary of War Henry Stimson quickly refuted this

explanation, defensively declaring that an actual

aircraft had been the target of the assault.

To this day, no one seems to know just what‐‐ or who‐‐ was

hovering over Los Angeles that night.

Some claimed that the Los Angeles air raid was nothing

more than an elaborate training exercise, a show put on by the

military to keep citizens on the ready in case of a real

attack. Others alleged that the unidentified flying object was,

in fact, a barrage balloon that had broken loose from its tether.

But even that explanation doesn't seem credible to those

who witnessed the actual event.

>> LITTLETON: One place where there were barrage

balloons that were anchored above the aircraft plants in El

Segundo, Douglas North American. It would have to have slipped

its tether, floated north up to the Santa Monica Mountains,

and then back down this way. Barrage balloons don't maneuver

like that.

>> NARRATOR: Regardless of the controversy, one fact is

undisputed: an estimated 14,000 shells were fired at the

strange object, and shrapnel rained from the sky for over an

hour. But what were the guns aimed at?

Would the army really have put civilian lives in danger for a

drill?

>> TOM HORSFALL: Major panic. Six people got killed, uh, due

to car accidents and hit by falling shrapnel in all.

>> LITTLETON: A friend of mine said he witnessed a piece of

shrapnel go through his neighbor's garage roof.

So, oh, yeah, there were some damage from falling shrapnel.

>> MATICH: The next morning, there was something in our

backyard my mother told me to go roll up‐‐ it was, like, a

tarp or something. And when I bent down... or

kneeled down in the grass, I cut my knee, and I have my piece of

shrapnel. I've kept it all these years.

There's my shrapnel, and it's very sharp.

>> LITTLETON: By a process of elimination, the most

efficient‐‐ and I say this as a scholar‐‐ the most efficient

explanation is that it was what we would call today a UFO‐‐

something not of this world, something that belonged to

another technology. If that's true, then this event

was one of the largest mass UFO sightings in history.

Over a million people saw it.

>> NARRATOR: But whether it was a UFO or not, the memories

remain vivid for those who saw something in the sky that

night. So vivid, in fact, that many of

them gather each year at Fort MacArthur, in San Pedro,

California, to reenact this mysterious event.

>> HORSFALL: The city went crazy.

They thought it was we were being attacked by Japanese

planes. Some theories said weather

balloon. Others said, you know, "Oh, I

saw a plane, I know I saw a plane," and others say, "Nope,

no such plane."

>> MATICH: Back then it was a scary thing.

I think to this day they don't know what they were firing at.

If it was a weather balloon or a flying saucer.

>> NARRATOR: But for those who believe they saw an alien craft

that night, one important question remains:

What happened to it?

>> LITTLETON: The rumor is that it finally crashed in the water

and was recovered by navy divers. So maybe it was wounded, and it

crashed, and this might explain why the military was so quick to

react to Roswell five years later.

Because they may already have had at least some inkling of

what they would find there.

>> NARRATOR: Was Earth really visited by an alien spacecraft

on the morning of February 25, 1942?

And could the global threats posed by World War II have

provided a trigger? Perhaps the idea is not as

farfetched as some would think. Is it possible that alien

spacecraft could have been mistaken for enemy fighter

planes in Adolf Hitler's Germany?

(thunder crashing)

>> NARRATOR: In his 1993 book, The Gods of Eden, author

William Bramley theorized that extraterrestrials played a part

in nearly every catastrophe in human history, and have even

used war as a means to control the growth of the human

population. But while many are skeptical

about Bramley's claims, there is one thing on which they agree‐‐

that the number of reported UFO sightings always increases

during wartime.

>> BIRNES: In times of war, when vast civilizations are in

conflict, and in conflict so terrible that it seems as

though the civilizations will wipe themselves out, suddenly

out of nowhere, UFOs appear.

>> NARRATOR: While skeptics and military historians attribute

these alleged sightings to war nerves or stress, those who

believe in UFOs find the number of instances hard to dismiss.

(loud explosions)

When World War II broke out in September of 1939, there were

numerous reports of unidentified flying objects spotted over

Hitler's Germany. Although the term UFO had not

yet been coined, the Allies believed the bogeys, as they

were then known, were new fighter planes being developed

by the Nazis. But the first combat bomber

jets, the German Messerschmitt ME‐262, weren't deployed by the

German Air Force until 1943.

>> PITTMAN: It certainly doesn't escape notice just how advanced

the Nazi propulsion systems and their aeronautics technology

really was. They had the first operational

jet fighter to see combat. They were building and

test‐flying aircraft that look incredibly similar to UFOs that

are reported even today. They had greatly advanced

rocket technology. There have long been rumors

about Nazi projects to build aircraft using UFO technology.

>> BIRNES: At the end of the 19th century, there was Aleister

Crowley, H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, and

Jules Verne, who wrote From Earth to the Moon.

They were in a society called The Golden Dawn.

In that society, they actually believed in the existence, not

only of UFOs, but extraterrestrials.

That culture influenced Hitler in the late 1920s, early into

the 1930s. In looking for the origins of

the Aryan Race, they went all the way to India and the Vedic

texts, which talk about UFOs. So Hitler, in his own way, was a

UFO believer, and sought to develop his own version of a

UFO, based on the Vedic texts. To have a dramatic wunderwaffen,

a wonder weapon, that would end the war.

>> NARRATOR: Although the Nazis never developed this so‐called

wonder weapon, reports of strange flying machines in

German airspace continued throughout the war.

But just what was it that the Allied pilots were reporting?

>> BIRNES: In the 1940s, as waves of American bombers were

literally obliterating German cities‐‐ Dresden, Hamburg,

Berlin‐‐ in these raids, American fighter pilots saw

these balls of light coming at their planes.

They didn't know what they were. They thought they were German

secret weapons at first. So they called them Foo Fighters.

The word feu in French is fire, and these were balls of fire

coming out. So, instead of Feu Fighters,

they were Foo Fighters.

>> PITTMAN: They were seen in large numbers over Germany and

over Western Europe, where they were described variously as

structured craft, or simply, balls of light.

>> NOORY: It was so important at the time that the military began

to notice it, and they began to investigate these things.

There were hundreds of cases. None seemed to be very harmful

to planes. But they were all over the place.

>> NARRATOR: Curiously, when the Foo Fighters appeared, Allied

aircraft would sometimes experience mechanical failure.

And perhaps most mystifying of all was that some pilots

reported flying right through the UFOs, as if they had no

mass.

It was never discovered what the Foo Fighters were or where they

came from, but the theory that they were some sort of German

secret weapon was widely accepted among Allied pilots at

the time. But could the Third Reich have

possessed technology more advanced than even our most

modern aircraft? Some believe what the Nazis had

developed was an advanced mechanism that scientists are

still working on today‐‐ mercury‐powered anti‐gravity

technology.

>> DAVID CHILDRESS: This involves mercury being in a

closed system, like a glass bulb. Once that mercury becomes

spinning in a gyroscopic manner within a closed system, that

creates a lift. It's electrified lift, it's also

a very bright light. And in fact, many UFOs are

described as exactly that. Towards the end of World War II,

the Germans started producing massive amounts of mercury.

And in fact, a number of the U‐boats that were later sunk‐‐

one was sunk near Singapore, another in Norway‐‐ only a few

years ago, they actually found it, and its entire cargo was

mercury. What the few historians have

actually written about Foo Fighters, which is still

apparently a secret today, is they were a kind of mercury

plasma ball. And the purpose of the Foo

Fighters was to make a highly pulsed magnetic charge

and field around the bombers, which would then cut out the

engines and interfere with the electrical systems in the planes.

>> NARRATOR: Could Foo Fighters really have been based on

extraterrestrial technology? If so, where did the Germans

get it? UFO theorists point to the

discovery of a flying saucer that allegedly crashed in the

Black Forest, near Freiburg, Germany, in 1936.

Some believe, German scientists repaired the craft to test its

energy and propulsion systems, and through reverse engineering,

were able to replicate some of these so‐called alien

technologies.

>> L. A. MARZULLI: Did the Nazis take this craft, and was there

some sort of a pact that happened there?

Did the Nazis‐‐ did they retrieve bodies?

It's hard to pin down how much they had. Was there contact?

>> NOORY: There's always been that theory‐‐ that they had a

captured craft, and that they were reverse engineering it.

It's very possible. They were truly way more

advanced than any culture at the time.

Thank God for the American know‐how, because we were

combating them with our own kind of knowledge and technology, as

well.

>> BOB FRISBEE: After World War II, there was an exercise

mounted by the Americans called Operation Paperclip.

The Allies had been confronted with all this amazing technology

from Germany. The jet engines, airplanes, the

rocket engine airplanes, all these amazing devices.

To give you an example of some of the material that was

collected by Operation Paperclip, right at the end of

the war, Von Braun and his team had begun designing multistage

rockets capable of reaching the United States.

They also had plans for a space station, the classic circular

sci‐fi space station, and on this, they had a huge sunlight

collector, a mirror that was designed to focus sunlight down

on the Earth as a kind of death ray.

There were all these wild ideas coming out of that team that

turned it into a very valuable coup for the United States.

Ultimately, it was Von Braun who built the Saturn Five rocket

that took people to the moon.

>> NARRATOR: The story of the World War II Foo Fighters, much

like that of the Battle of Los Angeles, has been largely

forgotten or dismissed by traditional historians.

But an event that happened just two years after the war had even

the skeptics wondering. What if aliens really did exist?

And could one of their craft have crashed to Earth?

>> NARRATOR: Mainstream archeologists have long rejected

the notion that extraterrestrial beings had a hand in creating

the pyramids of Egypt. Theologians and religious

scholars refute the idea that stories of the Bible or the

Mahabharata could be describing alien encounters.

And governments throughout history have officially denied

reports that the Earth has been visited by flying saucers.

But on July 8, 1947, a UFO sighting was reported that even

the United States government had trouble denying. Why?

Because this time, the report was issued by the U. S. Army.

>> LINDA MOULTON HOWE: I'm walking on the Foster Ranch

between Corona and Roswell, New Mexico.

Not far from what is called the debris field right over that

hill. And that debris field refers to

headlines back in July of 1947 about a disc‐‐ one of those

mysterious UFOs‐‐ actually crashing right out here.

(thunder crashing)

>> NARRATOR: One night in early July, 1947, a major thunderstorm

rolled across New Mexico.

(thunder crashing)

The next morning, rancher Mac Brazel went out to check on the

damage.

>> JULIE SHUSTER: Mac Brazel went out to make sure everything

was where it was supposed to be. And he came across this really

extensive area of debris, stuff he had never seen before.

He brought it to the local sheriff's office.

In 1947, Roswell was home to Roswell Army Air Field.

The sheriff called the base, the base sent Major Jesse

Marcel, and at that point, it basically became a military site

as they gathered up every bit of debris they could find.

>> NARRATOR: In their initial report, army officials made a

vague claim of having started the recovery of the debris

"sometime last week." But why didn't the army report

their findings right away? And why were they so ambiguous

about the timeline?

>> SHUSTER: One of the biggest things we have is the newspaper

of July 8, 1947, where Colonel Blanchard issued an order to

Lieutenant Walter Haught, who was a public information

officer, saying basically, we have in our possession a flying

saucer, it's being taken to Fort Worth, to higher headquarters.

>> WILLIAM BRAMLEY: Roswell was a real turning point for UFOlogy.

I think that was because the military, for the first time,

admitted that they had a crashed disc.

And because it was admitted at the time, of course, it caused

a sensation.

>> SHUSTER: But then, July 9, General Ramey issued a press

release saying, no, it was a weather balloon.

And that started the best‐documented UFO cover‐up

ever.

>> NARRATOR: Army officials referred to the debris as being

part of a flying disc. Internal memos even referenced

the crash site as having victims. So why, less than 24 hours

later, did they suddenly decide that what they had retrieved

was nothing more than a weather balloon?

Although Blanchard and Ramey stuck by the revised story,

Lieutenant Haught stood by the contents of his initial report

his entire life. And those who believe him think

modern technology may have recently provided the

irrefutable evidence they have been looking for.

>> SHUSTER: When Major Marcel took the debris to Fort Worth,

and General Ramey spread it out to give this press conference

that it was a weather balloon, there was a picture taken, and

in his hand is a piece of paper. It's a very little piece of

paper. I mean, and this has been blown

up. And it is a memo. There is a leading researcher

in the field who is pulling the words out of this.

And they include things like "team at Fort Worth,"

"forwarded victims of the wreck," "pod or pan."

And so, every year that the technology improves, General

Ramey may be the one to solve it.

>> MOULTON HOWE: Bob Wood, a researcher in UFOs, had received

leaked documents in 1996, and shared them with me and a few

others. This document called the Interplanetary Phenomena Unit,

with a war department stamp

dated July 22nd, 1947. "The most disturbing aspect of

this investigation was that there were other bodies found

not far from landing zone one, the Mac Brazel site between

Corona and Roswell that looked as if they had been dissected

as you would a frog." It does not define, were those

bodies human? Were those bodies non‐human?

But suddenly, for me, this electric jolt that came into

holding that document and reading at the end of the '90s

what would explain finally that our government knew that

extraterrestrial biological entities from somewhere else in

the cosmos was interacting with our planet for a very long time.

>> NARRATOR: Five years after Roswell, the United States Air

Force coined the term Unidentified Flying Object or

UFO. In the decades since, thousands

of UFOs have been reported photographed and videotaped all

over the world.

>> MAN: Oh, my God.

>> BILL BIRNES: Perhaps one of the biggest, most revolutionary

pieces of technology to change our view of UFOs and flying

saucers is the videocam.

>> Whoa, I'm getting a series of lights right there.

I got it, I got it, I got it.

>> BIRNES: You only have to look at what happened in Phoenix,

Arizona, in March of 1997, when these huge flying boomerangs

went right across Phoenix, right through the whole valley,

heading south to the Mexico border. These were all caught on

cameras. Network news caught these;

local news caught these. You saw these on CNN; you saw

these on Larry King.

>> MAN: Oh, there it is, over to the left.

>> BIRNES: And yes, people called them flares‐‐ of course

they did. But, the fact is, when you see

something with your own eyes...

>> MAN: Look, dude. Pat, you got it?

>> PAT: I see it.

>> BIRNES: ...even if it's on a video camera, suddenly your

perspective changes.

>> MAN: And that middle one is moving quick.

It's only the beginning, you guys.

>> BIRNES: So now, according to recent polls‐‐ Gallup polls and

Roper polls‐‐ well over 50% of Americans believe that

flying saucers exist, and close to 50% believe that,

the government knows that flying saucers exist, and that

the government is hiding that fact.

>> NARRATOR: But why so many UFO sightings after Roswell?

Is it a coincidence? Or is the world's growing

belief in aliens providing cover for those who might

previously have been too afraid of ridicule to come forward?

Perhaps there is another reason. Perhaps there are more

sightings because there is a genuine increase in alien

visitations‐‐ ever since the dawn of the Space Age.

>> BRAMLEY: There had been plenty of stories of UFOs

and aliens, prior to that‐‐ a lot of sightings.

They weren't as widely reported, somewhat also because

World War II had been going on, prior to that.

But because now we had a crash and there was more room in the

newspaper, so to speak, I think that really helped the subject

take off.

>> NARRATOR: If, as some suggest aliens from other worlds truly

are among us and have done their best to keep themselves

hidden for thousands of years‐‐ will they ever reveal their

presence? More importantly, what happens

if they do? And what if it is already

happening?

>> NARRATOR: In March 2010, a mysterious pulsating light

floated over Cleveland, Ohio, for 11 consecutive nights.

>> MAN: We're having a sighting right now over the lake.

I'm going to say 270 degrees south. There are two objects.

One is coming up from the left. These are extremely close to

each other. There's absolutely no way these

are planes. Right now what's happening is

the initial object that came out‐‐ it's sitting there, it's

hovering, it's getting extremely bright.

It's illuminating different colors.

And the second object appeared from, I'm going to say the

top left of it. And now it looks like it's

moving around it. Wow! They just completely

just switched spots. Oh, my God, this is beautiful!

It knows we're watching! It knows we're watching!

>> NARRATOR: The Cleveland sighting is one of thousands

reported each year. And while many are proved to be

false alarms, others are not so easily discredited.

>> Right below it. A big bright white flash just

occurred.

>> NARRATOR: In 1991, Britain's Ministry of Defense assigned

author and journalist, Nick Pope, to track the hundreds of

sightings reported over England, Scotland and Wales

every year.

>> NICK POPE: The Ministry of Defence has been looking at the

UFO issue since the 1950s. And the whole reason for

looking at these UFO sightings is not necessarily because the

department corporately believes in extraterrestrial visitation.

It's more to do with keeping a watchful eye on any unusual

activity in British airspace. Clearly if there's something

there that's a little bit out of the ordinary, we want to

know about it.

My beliefs when I was given this job were, I think, what on

earth have I let myself in for here?

I had no particular knowledge or interest in the UFO

phenomenon. Certainly no belief in anything

unusual. But the more I looked back

through the archive of old files, and the more I began to

investigate the ones that were being reported to me on a daily

basis, I began to change my mind, and realized that some of

these UFO sightings couldn't be explained in conventional terms.

>> MAN: It's definitely moving.

>> NARRATOR: Many of the most intriguing cases Pope

researched involved eyewitness reports from pilots, police and

military officers‐‐ while others featured classified

radar, video or photographic evidence.

>> NICK POPE: One case that was a particular turning point for

me was the so‐called Cosford Incident.

Now, Cosford is a military base in the United Kingdom.

And on the particular night in question, which was 30th of

March, 1993, there was a wave of sightings over a period of

about six hours. And there were many police and

military witnesses. And two air force bases,

Cosford and Shawbury, were directly overflown by a vast

triangular shaped craft. Now, the meteorological officer

at one of these bases described this to me as the size of a

jumbo jet hovering, or moving very, very slowly, and then

accelerating away to the horizon at incredible speed.

He said many times faster than a military jet.

And this was a man with eight years experience in the air

force.

>> CHRIS PITTMAN: This sighting was thoroughly investigated

not only by private UFO investigators, but also by the

British government, who were unable to explain all of the

sightings reported during this incident.

>> NARRATOR: Another intriguing British UFO sighting took place

in December 1980. U.S. Air Force personnel

stationed in Suffolk, England, reported seeing a brilliantly

illuminated spaceship that landed in Rendlesham Forest on

two consecutive nights.

>> POPE: What made this case particularly unusual is that

this was not vague lights in the sky.

This was a landed metallic craft that some of the

witnesses claimed they got so close to, they could actually

touch the side of it. One witness saw strange symbols

on the hull, which he likened to Egyptian hieroglyphs.

He made a sketch of this in his police notebook and took some

photos, though he was subsequently told they didn't

come out. The Ministry of Defence looked

at this, and the Defence intelligence staff assessed

radiation readings that had been taken at the landing site

as being "significantly higher than background."

And that's a direct quote from the government's own assessment.

>> PITTMAN: The British government generated a massive

file of information about this sighting report.

But at this date, it's very unlikely that the actual truth

about the sighting will ever be known.

>> NARRATOR: But in spite of the compelling eyewitness

testimony, the Ministry of Defence soon declared the case

closed. 22 years later, when the government declassified

files on the Rendlesham incident, the evidence was

inconclusive. But what stood out was the

credibility of the main witnesses, who were trained

military personnel.

>> BIRNES: Obviously, as a UFO hunter, I've met a lot of people

who've encountered UFOs. Just flying on a plane for

example: You're on a plane, and suddenly the pilot comes out of

the cockpit, and this has happened on five separate

occasions. And he'll say to me, "I saw a

UFO over Phoenix, I saw a UFO over Texas, half my crew saw a

UFO. And you'll say to the pilot, "Well, well, do you report it?"

And they say when the flight controller says at the airport,

"Do you want to report a UFO sighting," and then bursts out

laughing, what you say is, "No." There are UFO sightings every

single day. Real people with real sightings

of real UFOs. It is very prevalent as more

and more people talk about it. Something is going on.

>> POPE: In terms of the government response to all

this, certainly in Britain, the Ministry of Defence policy for

many years has been to try and downplay this subject.

Not really in any great sinister attempt to cover up

the truth about UFOs, whatever that might be, but more out of

embarrassment. There are things in our

airspace, we don't know what they are, and that's not a good

place for the government and the military to be.

>> NARRATOR: On December 1, 2009, the British Ministry of

Defence quietly terminated its UFO project, citing that there

had been no credible evidence that UFOs posed "a potential

threat to the United Kingdom."

>> POPE: There are a number of aspects of this decision that

were particularly controversial. Firstly, UFO sightings are at a

ten‐year high in the United Kingdom. So, it seemed the most

inopportune moment to pull the plug on 50 years of research

and investigation into the UFO mystery.

The other point that made this particularly controversial was

the way in which the decision was announced.

There was no proactive statement issued on this.

It simply said: The department will not respond to any

inquiries on this subject and will no longer investigate

sightings.

>> NARRATOR: One hurdle confronting those in favor of

fully disclosing classified information related to UFOs is

the fact that most mainstream scientists believe that the

study of alien phenomena is little more than just fringe

science. It is this fear of dismissal or

ridicule that keeps many scientists hidden in the shadows.

>> TED PETERS: Our best scientists, who communicate with

one another, around the world, have rules of protocol, which

include‐‐ they cannot appear to be religious... (laughs), they

cannot believe in flying saucers, and they certainly

shouldn't hang around with anybody who believes in flying

saucers.

>> HARRISON: But it's all done, you might say, behind closed

doors, because nobody really wants to draw attention to it.

You know that they understand, you know, that there is a

penalty associated with this kind of research, and so

consequently, it's done, it's done "invisibly."

>> ROBERT BAUVAL: To be blockaded and stopped by

worries about peer reviews and so forth, to me, is wrong.

We can speculate whether there is life outside this planet.

We can speculate whether there has been a contact with, with

other civilizations. Why not?

>> NARRATOR: But as more scientists openly embrace the

probability that there is intelligent life existing

elsewhere in the universe, will the belief that alien beings are

visiting us also become more accepted?

>> NARRATOR: What might be the reaction today if

extraterrestrials were to actually arrive on Earth, and

make themselves known to us? Countless science fiction books

and films tend to portray aliens coming either to warn us

or destroy us.

>> BIRNES: Since the 1960s, people have been thinking

about: Well, what do we do? Do we have a Day the Earth

Stood Still scenario, if aliens come?

Do they warn us that our planet is facing disaster?

Do they attack us, the way the Martians did in War of the

Worlds? Well, the answer is more

complicated than it seems. It's not just somebody landing,

and saying, "Take me to your leader."

>> TSOUKALOS: The general consensus today is that if

extraterrestrials were to show up tomorrow, they'd be hostile,

and they would want to enslave us and, and battle us and, and

destroy us and all this crazy stuff.

In my opinion, that won't be the case because any

civilization that's mastered to travel interstellar space would

be benevolent to a lesser advanced society

technologically speaking.

>> DAVIES: A simple statistic shows that if we make contact

with extraterrestrial civilization, we are the new

kids on the block. We're the ones who are at the

back of the queue when it comes to intelligence.

So, they'll be teaching us stuff. We won't have a great deal to

teach them.

>> JEFF PECKMAN: There are a wide range of benefits that can

be derived from accepting that we have neighbors in the galaxy

that are visiting us. There are reports of medical

treatments that have been performed for the benefit of

several people who have had contact.

There are advanced energy technologies.

Reports are that some of these have been reverse‐engineered

already and are used in military craft.

There are communications technology.

So, really, any area of life that we have could be

beneficially impacted by acknowledging that there are

these other people out there that they have information,

knowledge that they can share with us that would benefit us.

>> HARRISON: It's going to depend how the discovery

comes about. If, in fact, it's a distant radio broadcast,

we might expect one thing. If in fact, there's, uh,

some type of visitations that fits in with beliefs about UFOs,

that might be something else. But on the whole, I think

people are much more prepared for, uh, shall we say "contact"?

>> NARRATOR: Many who believe contact with extraterrestrials

is inevitable suggest governments need to prepare

themselves. It's a field of study known as

"exopolitics."

>> POPE: Exopolitics poses the question: "What should our

response be to that situation at a societal level?"

Not necessarily at a governmental level, but

actually individuals‐‐ how can we reach out with the hand

of friendship?

>> STEVEN GREER: Exopolitics has really been a grassroots

movement of people concerned about this issue and want

disclosure on the UFO subject, and also want to help organize

people locally to get the information out to their

governments and make this big change happen.

>> NARRATOR: But if we reach out in friendship, what guarantee do

we have that it will be returned in kind?

Many scientists, including famed theoretical physicist

Stephen Hawking, believe alien beings could pose a threat and

suggest we do everything possible to prevent contact.

>> BIRNES: If extraterrestrials, or aliens, were aggressive, were

warlike, and they came here, is it a case where resistance

is futile? How do you wipe out life on

planet Earth? That's easy‐‐ a plague.

Simple‐‐ no UFOs, no zorching beams from the sky, no

explosions, no Empire State Building collapsing,

none of that. We can do that. Why can't aliens do that?

>> TSOUKALOS: To think that we would be able to come up

with some type of a defense mechanism or have defenses

against interstellar traveling society is ludicrous.

>> NARRARARARARARARATOR: Whethee as friend or foe, if

extraterrestrials did land somewhere in the United States,

it's possible the aliens would be greeted by government or

military personnel wearing Hazmat suits and testing for

harmful pathogens and radiation. Many conspiracy theorists

suspect the government's next step would be to cover up

the visitation. They cite as evidence a reputed

sighting that took place over Washington, D. C. in 1952.

>> BIRNES: In full view of the entire world, a squadron,

a formation of UFOs buzzed Washington and fought our own

F‐93 jet fighters. General Samford willingly and

deliberately‐‐ maybe on instructions from Harry Truman,

who was president‐‐ lied to the American people.

>> SAMFORD: We have received and analyzed between one and

two thousand reports. Of this great mass of reports,

we have been able, adequately, to explain the great bulk

of them.

>> BIRNES: His own Captain Ruppelt, in his own book on

flying saucers, says Samford was lying.

We have the letter from the air force to Dean Condon, saying

"Deep‐six UFOs." So, have UFOs come to planet

Earth in full view, have manifested themselves, have

shown themselves? Yes. Did we see it? Yes.

Was there a protocol for handling it? Yes.

That protocol was called "deny."

>> NARRATOR: But if an alien visitation proved undeniable,

who might be chosen to then speak to those inside the

spacecraft? Who could best represent all

the nations and interests of Earth?

>> SEAGER: If aliens do land on Earth, I think we should

send our best world leaders who are the most open‐minded

and reasonable, but who also have the ability to defend

themselves against those aliens.

>> BIRNES: In my opinion, that's one of the reasons we

have a United Nations. Yes, it prevents wars and

delivers food, but on the other hand, just imagine the Security

Council itself convening to deal with aliens‐‐ an image

on a big screen at the United Nations.

The answer is I think it all happened back in the 1940s,

and that was one of the reasons that Roosevelt and Eleanor

Roosevelt pushed so hard for the formation of a United

Nations to replace the League of Nations.

Somebody had to confront the aliens.

>> LEVINSON: The notion that our leaders‐‐ elected or

otherwise‐‐ should speak on our behalf, I don't necessarily

think that makes sense. There are a lot of people who

might have better ideas than the people who are in government.

I'd like to see a profoundly democratic‐‐ with a small d‐‐

unauthoritarian interaction with aliens.

>> NARRATOR: Currently, there are no known official protocols

in place for an alien visitation. But there are those

who think that contact with extraterrestrials is imminent,

and that our world leaders must plan for the event now.

>> PECKMAN: We are not alone in the universe.

We have friends and relatives out there in the galaxies.

And we need to take on this task, one way or the other, of

just getting the job done, and getting to the point where we're

considering the practical details of interacting with

these friends and neighbors out there.

>> GREER: Who is responsible for that relationship?

Well, the State Department isn't. The United Nations isn't.

And I think this is a very big problem. So where there needs to

be a diplomatic effort to make contact with these interstellar

civilizations in such a way that it puts wiser people in

charge of that.

>> POPE: Even if you don't corporately believe in

extraterrestrials, if you think the possibility of alien

visitation is vanishingly small, the consequences if it

does happen are immense, and therefore, it's prudent to have

something in place to deal with it.

>> DENNIN: Personally, I think it would be very, very exciting.

I mean, it would be just like the first time, you know, the

explorers came from Europe to the Americas and discovered a

whole new culture, and they had to interact.

Hopefully, it won't work out as some of the bad things that

occurred then, it would be a more positive experience, and

maybe we've learned from that and we can go forward.

>> NARRATOR: What would happen after any potential

extraterrestrial contact is open to much speculation.

But most people concede one thing: The world as we know it

would change dramatically.

>> GREER: The result would be that the fundamentalist

orthodox belief systems of every organized religion on

Earth would collapse. Meaning that it would really

bring into question the origins of the human race, uh, the

genesis stories and a whole lot of other issues.

>> BIRNES: The very structures of government and the very

structures of religion will crumble.

>> NARRATOR: But in 2008, a stunning announcement was made

from a very surprising source. Proof to some that miracles,

like aliens, do indeed exist.

>> NARRATOR: The Vatican, Rome. This walled enclave has been

the center of power for the Catholic Church since the

fifth century. It's not only the Pope's

residence, but a place of homage for one billion

Catholics, and represents nearly 2,000 years of Christian

teaching and tradition. But in 2008, the Vatican made an

announcement that some say might threaten its own existence.

The Chief Astronomer of the Vatican Observatory, Father

Gabriel Funes, acknowledged the possibility alien life exists

on other planets.

>> NOORY: They basically said that belief in planetary

life outside of Earth does not negate one's belief in God.

Now, 500 years ago, if the Vatican would have said that,

they would've burned everybody on the stake.

>> WILLIAM FULCO: The present Pope, Benedict, of course, has a

very scientific bent, and he respects intellectual life in,

in a way that is, is quite extraordinary.

He seemed quite open to entertain the idea: What if

there is life on other planets? It's certainly an interesting

question for a Christian to approach it scientifically, and

challenges your belief of how much of this you attribute

to God.

>> NARRATOR: Many wondered about the church's motives and timing.

Why, after centuries of belief in man as God's supreme

creation and the only intelligent life in the

universe, did the Vatican make an announcement that could turn

Christianity on its head? Did they know something the

rest of us did not?

>> TSOUKALOS: This is something that is completely

new in the history of the church that the

extraterrestrial question is not only addressed, but at the

same time, it's okay. I mean, that is a major change

in opinion. A major change in the status quo.

And I ask: Why? Would it have huge ramifications?

Of course. Does it change anything?

Of course. But at the same time, would

that change religion or belief in God? Not really.

>> POPE: Some people say, well, the Catholic Church must

know something. Maybe they're trying to get

ahead of the game here. On the other hand, it may just

be that they're being very clever and simply trying to

cover all the bases in case there is some great

announcement or discovery about alien life.

Because make no mistake about it, if it is announced that

alien life has been discovered, people are going to look to

their religious leaders for some sort of guidance about

this, whether it's Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus.

>> CHRIS CORBALLY: If extraterrestrial life was found,

then the church would react presumably as it does with any

data‐‐ see what there is. I don't think there would be

any conflict in the way that we look on our humanity.

What we would find is that God creates intelligent life

in a variety of ways. And I think what we would learn

from that is, we can't restrict God to any one mode of making

intelligent life.

>> NARRATOR: The idea that intelligent life exists

elsewhere in the universe has been debated by religious

leaders, historians and scientists, but not everyone

agrees how its proof would affect human spirituality or

the many religious institutions.

>> PETERS: What would happen to our interpretation of the Book

of Genesis? Well, the Book of Genesis looks

at the universe from the point of view of Earth.

We look at the sun, we look at the moon, we look at the stars.

So, to realize that the Earth is just one small, pale‐blue

dot in this immense universe, I think it would only expand

our interpretation of Genesis. I don't think it would change

it in any fundamental way.

>> FULCO: It's an interesting question for Christianity in

general, since Christianity would teach that salvation comes

through Jesus who was apparently an earthling.

Um, what do you do if there are people on Mars? Are they saved?

According to our viewpoint, I don't know.

>> DAVIES: Christians have always had this problem that if

there are aliens out there, are they not to be saved?

It's not a problem for Jews. It's certainly not a problem

for Buddhists or Hindus. But Christians are in a

particular fix. For a very simple reason that

Christianity alone among the world's religions has an

incarnation. What they mean by that is that

God became incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ in order

to be the savior. When you talk to Christians

they sort of say, oh, well, there isn't a problem really

because, you know, we have accommodated Galileo, we've

accommodated Darwin. Why can't we accommodate E. T.?

Well, I think there is a big difference.

>> PAUL LEVINSON: I think science and religion have more

in common than perhaps the popular perception suggests.

The one hand, we have science, which deals with reason and fact.

On the other hand, we have religion, which deals with faith.

Science is an evolving proposition, and what we know

today will almost certainly be reformed and maybe even

replaced at some point in the future. So, to think that science

somehow provides the truth in contrast to religion, I think

is a mistake.

>> NARRATOR: While scientists and religious leaders may still

ponder the notion of aliens visiting Earth, ancient

astronaut theorists claim that the evidence exists in plain

sight around the world. But if this theory was

accepted, would we have to change our beliefs about our

knowledge, our history and the very beginnings of human

civilization?

>> NARRATOR: For thousands of years, humans have recorded

events that seem to suggest other‐worldly beings came down

from the skies to visit Earth. These ancient visitations

represent the foundations of those who believe Earth was

visited in the past by advanced beings from other planets.

These sightings are also said to explain many mysteries

surrounding our past.

>> ERICH V. DANIKEN: The most important was religion.

The Gods have descended to our ancestors' time.

Now it enters into the holy books. Into mythology.

Now, later, people try, the reason the people try to

understand this, they make out religions of it. But the core is,

extraterrestrials have come here. That was the beginning of all

the big religions.

>> TSOUKALOS: There are two main components why we are who

we are today as a species. One, someone tampered with our

genetic make up and two, technology.

Because all of a sudden, we were doing and building things

that we would still have difficulties recreating today.

And the ancient texts are very clear that many of our

achievements in the past happened due to a direct

intervention of extraterrestrials that arrived

from the skies.

>> NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists also cite as evidence

the amazing similarities between isolated cultures all

over the planet. Why did different civilizations

build immense megalithic structures to honor

other‐worldly beings? Why do so many ancient texts

seem to reference men flying in the sky? And why do the ancient

Egyptians, Hopi Indians and the Dogon tribe of North Africa

all believe their ancestors came from what we know as the

constellation Sirius?

>> TSOUKALOS If the extraterrestrials wanted to

leave behind a message of where they came from, then it would

serve them very well to build those structures with a

reference to their location of origin.

So, if we have connections to the Sirius star system, well,

it would lend us to believe that here we have a reference

of where they might come from.

>> NARRATOR: The question of extraterrestrial life is as old

as civilization itself. Ancient astronaut theorists, as

well as many noted scientists, point to the immense size of

the universe and concede that other beings must exist

somewhere else besides Earth. But the question remains: Did

aliens visit us in the past? And is it happening again?

>> PHILLIP COPPENS: The way we look at history is very fragile.

Any discovery, which is made somewhere, can change the way

we look upon history. I think if we were to identify

that an alien presence has been here on Earth in the past, I

think there are two very important questions.

Did E. T. just come by and visit, and then disappear?

Or did E. T. come, stay and contribute to civilization?

I think the second one is far more important, because it

shows us far more. It actually rewrites mankind's

identity rather than just whether or not, you know, some

extraterrestrial being came here on a holiday and then

left without really leaving something behind.

>> TSOUKALOS: In all of the ancient texts, there is one

thing that is very clear, and that is that these gods one day

will return.

>> NARRATOR: But short of an alien spacecraft landing on the

White House lawn, ancient astronaut theorists know there

will always be skeptics.

>> PECKMAN: People are always looking for an ultimate proof

of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent

beings. But I think a more useful and

honest question is: how much and what kind of evidence would

be enough for you to believe that they are out there?

That they have been visiting us?

>> GRAHAM HANCOCK: I believe through the experiences that

shamans have been documenting and reporting for tens of

thousands of years, that we are in contact with entities and

beings that are not of this Earth. But precisely what those

entities and beings are, remains to be established.

>> CHRIS PITTMAN: There is evidence that indicates that

it's possible that humans were visited by extraterrestrials in

the distant past. And if we are too quick to

discard that possibility, then we might be shutting ourselves

out from something that might be really fascinating and might

take us to a next level that we can't even imagine.

>> DAVID CHILDRESS: It's very possible that those

extraterrestrials who've allegedly been coming here for

thousands of years, I mean, they are us. They look like us.

And, in fact, that's part again of the Bible in that the God,

or the Gods created us in their image.

I mean, we are to be like them. We are to look like them.

We are to have the technology they have.

We're to go into space just like they did.

>> ROBERT CARGILL: I think there is life, simple life, bacterial

life, microbial life on other planets.

I think we're going to find that. And who knows?

Maybe one day we'll find some other planet that's capable of

sustaining life that has evolved people over a long

period of time that are also looking up at the stars,

wondering: Is there anybody else out there? Are we the only ones?

>> TSOUKALOS: We are a species of explorers.

So, ultimately, we will come across some other type of

intelligence. And when that happens, if that

society, technologically speaking, is

primitive, we'll become ancient astronauts with that

culture.

>> HANCOCK: Human history has become too much a matter of

dogma taught by professionals in ivory towers as though it's

all fact. Actually, much of human history

is up for grabs. The further back you go, the

more that the history that's taught in the schools and

universities begins to look like some kind of fairy story.

>> BAUVAL: We have logic, we have intuition, we have our

senses. And to limit ourselves to the

scientific route is a mistake. We can send people on the moon,

we can plan journeys to Mars, we can make cell phones, but we

haven't explained the fundamental questions that we

should be dealing with. Where do we come from?

What are we supposed to do here? And where are we going?

We really have not come with the answers, and we know no

better than the ancients that we're trying to explain.

>> TSOUKALOS: Exploring the ancient astronaut theory is the

ultimate quest to find out where did we come from?

How did it all begin? And most importantly, who are we?

And the ancient astronaut theory has the capability of

answering all those questions. Captioning sponsored by

A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS Captioned by

Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org