TRAVIS: Why was it so hard to drill through
whatever this stuff is?
I think these ceramics might be covering the surface
of something pretty incredible.
-Ooh. That was warm. -Wow!
TRAVIS: Look at that weird figure eight it's making.
KEVIN: That definitely looks
more dispersed than what they normally look like.
Isn't that strange?
ERIK: Oh, wow.
It didn't do the ring, though, guys.
-I'm looking at it right now. -KEVIN: Nope, there's no ring.
ERIK: It could well be that that bubble
-is playing a role in the shaping of that cloud. -Yeah.
DAVE: What is that?
Look at that. There it goes.
That's what I'm talking about.
-It's something I cannot explain. -That's amazing.
NARRATOR: There is a ranch in Northern Utah.
It is considered the epicenter
of the strangest and most disturbing occurrences on Earth.
For two decades,
the federal government
investigated the property.
Their findings have never been made public.
TRAVIS: Right there! We got something!
NARRATOR: Now a new team
of independent scientists and researchers
are taking over.
They are uncovering evidence
that the countless stories...
It came right out of the mesa.
...of unidentified aerial phenomena...
UAP right there!
...bizarre energies...
It looks like there's a heat source right above 'em.
...and portals that lead to other dimensions...
We're maybe looking at the anomaly
for the first time, guys.
...might actually be true.
They will stop at nothing to reveal...
...The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.
BRANDON: I want to take a moment to thank everyone
for their engagement, for taking the time out of their busy lives
to come together today for this very critical briefing,
as we dive into, I think, the most compelling evidence
relative to the reality
of what is happening at Skinwalker Ranch.
Jay, I appreciate you pulling together a team
of esteemed experts to help us better understand
what we have documented at the ranch.
Well, I appreciate it.
I think this is gonna be a really good review
because the folks we've brought together.
We're trying to get the experts in their fields so that
we can solve Skinwalker Ranch.
TRAVIS: As the strangest year yet
in our team's investigation
on Skinwalker Ranch comes to an end,
Brandon Fugal gathered us
in Salt Lake City to review the results
of our latest experiment
and discuss all the incredible discoveries we've made.
And joining us were several high-profile guests,
including my former boss
from the UAP Task Force, Jay Stratton.
Jay is a retired army intelligence officer
who oversaw Robert Bigelow's investigation
of Skinwalker Ranch for the federal government
in the early 2000s.
A good leader brings and surrounds themselves
with the experts that can answer the questions, right?
And so, I brought in Dr. Eric Davis,
who was part of EarthTech
and part of the original DIA UFO program.
BRANDON: Your work, Dr. Davis,
laid the foundation, in many respects,
for what we are doing today.
Thank you.
Dr. Eric Davis is an astrophysicist
with 40 years of government and private sector experience
in space exploration and military intelligence.
He was also part of Robert Bigelow's ranch investigation.
JAY: Along with him,
I've got Dr. Garry Nolan, who participated
-through the DIA program years... -Yeah.
...and into the UAP Task Force.
TRAVIS: Dr. Garry Nolan
is a professor at Stanford University
and worked with me and Jay on the government's UAP Task Force
to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena
that many of our military members
have reported encountering in recent years
across the globe and even on Skinwalker Ranch.
JAY: And Mr. Eric Schrock, who is an aerospace expert and
one of those guys I call when I need some help
when it comes to advanced technologies.
ERIC: I have a 30-plus-year background
in the development of advanced aerospace systems.
And I'm really excited to be here today
and see what all we can find out.
-Well, we appreciate your insights. -Thank you.
ROYSTON: And to have General Lord here
from the Space Command side of it is,
-you know, it's just amazing. -LANCE: Thank you, Jim.
Lance Lord, former commander of Air Force Space Command.
My background as commander
of Air Force Space Command comes from
the intercontinental ballistic missile missions, uh,
nuclear strategy work in the Pentagon.
And my job as the chairman of OmniTeq and with support
of Brandon Fugal and the whole team is
to make sure we drive the resources
to help the investigative process.
So, uh, it's great to be here.
BRANDON: Appreciate that. I think
bringing together
a multidisciplinary team of experts
will help us carry the investigation forward.
Well, with that, Erik Bard,
I'm going to turn the time to you.
You know, just to set the stage for the discussion,
we're talking about particularly
interesting data where we're seeing things happen with
our instrumentation that has indicated
what I would say is a structure in the data itself.
We've been calling that "the bubble."
I've created a conceptual model of the bubble.
Let me bring it up.
This is derived from lidar data
from Pete Kelsey's terrestrial laser scanner.
GARRY: Wow.
-LANCE: Hmm. -GARRY: How big across?
And how far above the ranch?
610-meter radius.
It's about 2,000 feet.
Okay.
TRAVIS: Of all the crazy things we've discovered
over the past six years,
a massive, invisible bubble,
which we have repeatedly detected
with infrared lidar devices,
covering a huge area of the ranch
above and below the ground is at the top of the list.
It encompasses several hot spots
where we've seen tons of UAPs...
-You seeing this? -Yes.
...and detected strange radio frequency signals
that may actually be communication signals.
Whatever this thing is, it appears to have stopped
numerous instruments, including drones and rockets,
from entering its barriers to collect data.
And we've speculated that the area at its center,
which is right at the strange spot we call "the triangle,"
has prevented our devices from collecting GPS data
inside the bubble and even above it up to about 3,200 feet.
One of the questions that keeps coming up is,
what happens if we attempt to energize
the interior and the barriers of this bubble
with a lot of thermal energy?
Would it respond to something that we do?
Particularly, if it's very energetic?
Well, that was our target for the final experiment.
-KALEB: Holy crap. -TRAVIS: A few days ago,
we welcomed a team of pyrotechnic experts
to create massive fireballs
that produced mushroom clouds followed by perfect smoke rings
at the center of and along the bubble's barriers.
As the smoke rings rose from the ground
up to as much as 300 feet high,
thermal camera expert Dave Mason
used his specialized cameras
to see how the smoke rings were affected by the bubble.
KEVIN: The smoke rings are
completely different than what we normally see.
TRAVIS: During the experiment,
a number of the smoke rings seemed
to have been affected by strange things
we couldn't see with the naked eye.
So we were eager to share surveillance and drone videos
with our guest experts while we assessed other data
that we captured during the experiment.
So, I'm gonna show us one of those
detonations there at the triangle.
Let's watch what happens
to a detonation that should produce
a mushroom cloud
and a fully formed ring but does not.
-CAMERON: Wow. -ROYSTON: Look at that.
ERIK: Look at... look at the shape of this.
TRAVIS: It's really strange.
It should be a perfect circle,
but something turned it into a figure eight.
And this completely shocked the explosives crew.
ERIK: It's certainly suggestive that
that explosion, or that mushroom cloud,
was interacting with something on the way up.
-Yeah. -Right.
ERIC: So, did you notice
another type of phenomena somewhere else
at the same time these were going on?
Yes.
ERIK: This is a great segue because
I have an example of a surveillance camera positioned
east of the triangle that captured
something above the bubble.
Let's watch this.
-GARRY: That thing in the middle? -ERIK: Yes.
-BRANDON: There it is. -ERIC: Wow.
TRAVIS: Where did it go?
'Cause those are the only clouds
-in the sky right there. -ERIK: Right.
I'll play it again.
TRAVIS: Immediately after the fireball explosion,
a bright white UAP showed up out of thin air.
Is that what caused the smoke ring
to go from a perfect circle, as it normally should,
to an odd figure eight?
And if so, did it come from the bubble?
So we did some of this in the day
so we could watch the smoke ring easily
and then again at night
with, uh, you know, infrared instruments.
ERIK: Let's watch what happens.
Two simultaneous detonations.
TRAVIS: Now look how
they look completely different as they form.
CAMERON: Fascinating.
ERIK: And then here, during this moment, we saw something seeming
to sweep across the ridgeline of the mesa
in what we call a differential FLIR camera system.
And I want to put your eyes on this.
This is a thermographic system
that is looking at temperature changes
in the field of view of the camera.
And you'll see areas of brightness
moving across the ridgeline of the mesa.
TRAVIS: Yeah, you can see it.
-So, it's that yellow? -TRAVIS: Kind of snaking across?
It moves across, right?
ERIK: Yes. That yellow line indicates increased heat.
And just as curiously, it's moving from left to right.
This is really interesting.
It's-it's fascinating.
Uh, yeah, interestingly enough,
right before, we saw two UAPs
headed west towards Homestead Two.
DAVE: Hey, Erik, come here
-and take a look at this. -ERIK: Yeah, sure.
TRAVIS: Seconds before the thermal energy appeared
to sweep across the mesa,
two UAPs showed up in one of our thermal cameras
and flew west across the top of the mesa
and over the drill site towards Homestead Two.
They were stunning.
But they may have been connected to another even stranger event.
Okay, so, Sam, I'm going to bring up your data,
-and I want you to talk us through it. -Sure.
So, we have multiple data sensor locations throughout the ranch.
We call them the multiphysics boxes.
And if you see the map in the upper left-hand corner,
that shows you the positions of the fixed GPS sensors
set up at each of these locations.
What you're seeing in the upper left-hand corner
is Homestead Two.
Right now we're just talking about these GPS sensors.
-I see. -SAM: Now watch what appears
to happen to this GPS sensor
while we were experiencing that thermal anomaly.
-JIM: Oh, wow. -THOMAS: Wow.
ERIK: So, remember, these are stationary GPS trackers.
-What? -Look at that.
BRANDON: And this is happening
in tandem with this thermal anomaly?
Yes.
This is... That's-that's
-a couple miles. -THOMAS: That's at least
-three miles due north. -Yeah.
Oh. Oh, it keeps going, guys.
Just watch.
TRAVIS: Where is it taking us?
TRAVIS: Where's the GPS going?
ERIK: About 20 miles to the north.
JIM: Geez.
It looks like it was being pushed away
-from something. -Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
TRAVIS: Just after we set off two explosions last week
near the western boundary of the bubble,
one of our thermal cameras picked up two UAPs flying
over the mesa towards Homestead Two.
But then the data from a stationary GPS sensor
near Homestead Two inexplicably began moving north
for nearly 20 miles.
The sensor never actually moved.
So how did the GPS data think it was moving away?
Did the UAPs we saw heading that way
somehow move the GPS data?
Or was it the bubble or its boundary that caused this?
ERIK: Yeah, so, we're encountering these
exceptional events in and around this bubble structure.
Uh, let me just put it back up.
TRAVIS: When we take instruments through this bubble boundary,
the instruments act up.
Sometimes we get corrupted data.
Sometimes we get strange measurements
that the instrument shouldn't be giving us.
For example, with GPS,
it thinks it's miles away
-from where it is. -ERIK: Yeah, and we're talking
about something that is repeatable.
Yes.
ERIK: Every time we do
uh, any kind of experimentation,
we have our standard set of equipment, sensors and so forth.
And we've really been pressing drone platforms into service.
And, you know, Jim Royston is very often piloting the drone.
And in this region that you see here
colored in red in the western bubble boundary,
that being Homestead Two, you know, we've had
very strange things happen.
-Would you like to describe that, Jim? -Yeah, so,
I'll talk about one incident.
Flying the drone from the west side of Homestead Two
through the western side of the boundary,
the drone gets to this, you know,
boundary or this membrane,
and it was just like something stopped it.
KALEB: Yeah. It's as if it was caught
by something in midair.
Uh-oh.
TRAVIS: What happened to Jim's drone this year
when he tried to fly it through
the western boundary of the bubble
was one of the most bizarre events we've ever witnessed.
ROYSTON: You see that? Every time I try
to push through the barrier, look what happens.
THOMAS: It's like it's pushing you back.
TRAVIS: The drone stayed frozen there in the air.
But when we reviewed the video,
somehow it thought it got pushed more than 200 feet away,
just like what happened with the GPS data
from our smoke ring experiment.
That is not wind.
THOMAS: No. There's no way.
Okay, so now I want to show you another place
where our anomalies tend to cluster.
The location you see here
bordering on the Dry Gulch Creek
in the south field near the southern boundary of the bubble.
TRAVIS: The south field is one of the strangest places
on the ranch and is where we've encountered all kinds
of disturbing phenomena.
Whoa! What was that purple light over there?
TRAVIS: Like UAPs...
According to the GPS, you're 5,000 feet underground.
TRAVIS: That's crazy, man.
...erroneous GPS data...
THOMAS: Look at those fangs.
TRAVIS: We got a dead animal right here!
...and even the carcass of a mysterious wolflike creature
that we found in Dry Gulch Creek.
But this year,
when we investigated the southern boundary
of the bubble near the creek,
we were totally stunned by what we found.
ERIK: So, Travis, I think it would be appropriate
to talk about what we've experienced
-this year with the river walk. -TRAVIS: Yeah.
Well, you know, we started right there
where the bubble, uh, crosses Dry Gulch Creek.
We took kayaks and instrumented them with GPS,
gamma ray detection equipment, we had a sonar,
TriField meters, and as we moved down
the creek, those TriField meters went to zero
and maintained that measurement without fluctuating at all.
Guess what the dadgum TriField meter's reading right now.
-THOMAS: What? -Zero, zero.
As we approached the barrier of the bubble, first,
the gauges on our radiation detectors went to zero.
Any normal environment should yield small readings
for radiation.
It was like we were in some kind of dead zone.
And then the data
from our GPS sensors dove deep below the ground.
ERIK: Jim, I'd like to have you comment
about the experiences that you've had
in this part of the, uh, the ranch.
ROYSTON: Yeah, and in particular,
the day you were doing the river walk, I was
ten feet outside the bubble with my base station,
flying the drone just outside of it.
And we got just enormous amounts of anomalous activity.
(drone playing indistinct automated message)
TRAVIS: After what we experienced
with the instruments in our kayaks,
we had Jim see if he would be able
to fly his drone through the southern barrier of the bubble.
-(beeping) -Okay, this is an interesting one, everybody.
It thinks there's an aircraft approaching
and doesn't want to go do its flight plan.
TRAVIS: It was just unbelievable.
The drone was reporting a warning signal
that some kind of aircraft was nearby.
But there was nothing that we could see.
So, was it the bubble's barrier that the drone detected,
or maybe an invisible UAP that came from the bubble?
How many, uh, different instruments
have exhibited an anomalous response to the bubble?
-Lord. -(laughter)
-All of 'em. -Uh, every one we have.
Every single instrument we've got, I think.
ERIK: That's not an exaggeration.
Anything technological seems to respond
to this membrane or bubble boundary.
GARRY: So, how tight
-is the boundary? -TRAVIS: We don't know.
And we don't know that it's not fluctuating,
or it may be rippling irregularly.
So we really don't know.
BRANDON; Also, there is
some correlation, it appears,
between the bubble and the potential
unidentified aerial phenomena or UFO activity
that seems to appear above this ranch
simultaneous with experimental activity.
TRAVIS: Yes, like what we saw during
the laser experiments with Nu-Salt, right?
Absolutely. We've literally energized
the bubble with this laser beam current,
-and we see a reaction. -Wow.
ERIK: Okay, so let's take a look.
TRAVIS: This is from
the laser experiments with Nu-Salt, right?
Yes. We talked about energizing the bubble.
You know, dump some energy into this thing,
like we did with those explosive detonations.
And the idea is that we may see changes.
TRAVIS: We had six sets of
red, blue and green two-kilowatt lasers
that put beams up into the air from east to west,
beaming up through and across the bubble.
And we actually had something fly through
-one of the lasers. -That's right.
TRAVIS: In order to see how different colored laser beams
might be affected when they were projected through the bubble,
a team from Nu-Salt Lasers
set up 18 laser cannons all around the ranch.
We're going to turn the lasers on.
-Whoa. -TIM: Right there.
ROYSTON: Whoa. We got something moving.
TRAVIS: After a UAP appeared right
at the start of the experiment, a number of the laser cannons
started malfunctioning and shutting off
for no explainable reason.
But then a member of the Nu-Salt team,
who was stationed at the drill site, snapped
one of the most incredibly timed photos
we've ever seen on Skinwalker Ranch.
Oh, what is that?
A UAP actually flying through one of the lasers.
So, did the UAPs we saw that night come
from inside the bubble
and cause all those equipment malfunctions?
BRANDON: We are documenting
technology and
manipulation of our systems
that really has no easy explanation.
-Correct? -Right.
We better hope it's aliens, right?
-Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. -'Cause if it's our near peers,
then they've got a capability that we don't have.
LANCE: These are serious questions.
-TRAVIS: Yep. -I mean, really serious.
Even more reason why we need to do what we're doing.
ERIK: So, let's go
to the eastern boundary of this bubble structure
and talk about what we've experienced
in our engagement here.
So, we had a... what we call helikite.
It's a, a helium ballon
that's also affixed to a kitelike fixture.
DILLON: Little bit more.
TRAVIS: The helikite was an attempt
to take a sustained collection of data
in the barrier of the bubble.
Thomas towed it on a UTV and parked it
at an altitude of about 200 feet right in the eastern barrier.
There, it was collecting GPS data
and transmitting a radio frequency signal
at 1.2 gigahertz for us to monitor for interference.
ERIK: Oh, oh, oh. Oh.
TRAVIS: Well, first, our GPS data somehow got pushed
several hundred feet underground,
just like we've seen at other parts of the bubble's barrier.
And then we detected a second 1.2 gigahertz signal...
Wow. Look at that.
...as if something had cloned our signal
and sent it back at us.
Who or what could have done that?
That was unbelievable. You know, just...
The behavior was completely crazy.
TRAVIS: During this experiment,
we set rockets up there and launched them
due west to fly through the barrier.
ROYSTON: It really looked
like there is some kind of shield there.
TRAVIS: We could hardly believe it
when the bubble's barriers seemed
to stop Jim Royston's drone from entering it.
But during this helikite experiment,
it appeared to do the same thing to our rockets.
The first one that we launched at the bubble
turned and flew north around the perimeter.
Rocket's hot.
Oh, look out! It went the wrong way!
And the second rocket looked like it was deflected
in the opposite direction and flew to the south.
What is this thing?
ERIK: I got some interesting hits
in the high-speed cameras.
TRAVIS: We still don't know that answer.
But when we checked our high-speed camera video
taken during the experiment, once again
we captured images of something that may be connected to it.
That is just unbelievable.
The bubble-- it's bizarre. Extremely bizarre.
Let me tell you how I get my head around this.
I say, either there is something
about this bubble that is affecting the rocket,
or it is affecting the things, like, perhaps UAPs,
that affect the rocket.
I think poking the hornet's nest,
which we all kind of chuckled about initially,
has led us to having hard, actionable data...
-Yeah. -...documenting the reality
of what we're seeing.
TRAVIS: You know,
we've taken so many data points
around the periphery, inside, outside the bubble.
Uh, I can't wait till you guys really
see us start painting that more.
BRANDON: Well, we're using
some of the most advanced scientific equipment
in service to mapping this anomaly,
and something is happening.
GARRY: What's the next set
of preliminary data that needs to be created moving forward?
So, where the boundary crosses
the driveway on the east side here,
we started right there placing poles
every 42 and a half meters from each other.
We start at the driveway. That's post one.
And the idea,
at least for future reference,
is that each one of these posts
that are numbered has a sensor packet on it,
real time, always monitoring.
ERIK: Gentlemen, I mentioned at the outset of our meeting
that, you know, there were basically two kinds
of deliverables coming out of our work this year.
There is the measurement side of things,
the observational side of things,
but also a very physical side.
There is one location in particular
that we've been focusing on, as you know,
and this is what we refer to as the drill site.
BRANDON: The drilling activity
has been a key aspect of our investigation
and our focus, spanning years,
to unearth what really lies beneath the mesa.
We inherited a narrative
of all kinds of underground features below the ranch.
Everything from vast tunnel systems
to even as far as underground bases.
And we have gone exploring, looking for something
that might fit
this description.
And what happened instead was
our drill ended up hitting a hard object
that we didn't anticipate.
THOMAS: At the mesa drill site,
our drill ended up hitting
a hard object that we didn't anticipate.
ERIK: I could actually bring up a visual
of that ground-penetrating radar data.
So, if you look right at this picture
that Erik's got up here,
this is what the GPR data tells us is in the mesa.
ERIC: Hmm. Wow.
THOMAS: We determined the best route would be,
rather than trying to destroy the object that we're trying
to study, it would be better to go
up each side of it.
TRAVIS: For the last three years,
we've been drilling into the mesa,
where we detected what appears to be a massive object
that's surrounded by a number of smaller anomalies.
And after finding manufactured metal flakes
in the drilling spoils back in 2021,
we devised a plan to create two boreholes on either side
of the large object
that would run all the way up through the mesa.
Then we could insert scanning devices to better study
what these buried things actually are.
Check that out.
TRAVIS: Despite a lot of strange drilling malfunctions,
we were able to complete Borehole 1 last year.
But things got a lot crazier and even more amazing this year
as we drilled Borehole 2.
So it's great to be able to show other scientific experts
what we found this year and see what they think.
We ended up finding, uh, metal flakes in the spoils
that came out of the mesa.
ERIK: You know, the analysis of these flakes
suggests that they have some very interesting
trace elements in them.
TRAVIS: Yeah, the material
was mostly tellurium on one side and europium on the other.
Also, there's vanadium in it.
And what's interesting is,
the metals appeared to be
most likely manufactured in a blast furnace.
So how did those things get
hundreds of feet inside the mesa?
How far inside the mesa?
THOMAS: As best as we can gauge, somewhere between
200 and 300 feet into the mesa horizontally.
That's remarkable.
-Yeah. -Mm-hmm.
TRAVIS: And it's almost
like something crashed
there in the mesa
and created all these little debris chunks.
That's what this GPR data looks like.
ERIC: So, what you're finding
makes absolutely no sense. It is truly anomalous.
-Yeah. -THOMAS: Well,
as we continue those drilling exercises,
we hit something that actually broke the drill
-in Borehole 2. -That's right.
The drill rod hit something,
and they couldn't move forward,
and they put, like,
15,000 pounds of pressure
against it for 30 minutes
and it didn't move.
ERIK: Frankly, we don't know
what the heck it is that's turning this--
see, this is a brand-new drill bit--
into this, or I should say this.
Wow, that thing is damaged.
KYLE: Holy crap, dude.
Tooth is almost completely gone.
TRAVIS: As the team from Mark Construction Drilling
worked on Borehole 2,
at several different spots, they hit
obstructions that destroyed their drill bits.
These bits are designed to cut through steel and granite.
KYLE: It's completely
-welded shut. -It's friction-welded.
-Mm-hmm. -That's crazy.
And when Borehole 2 finally
reached almost 470 feet in,
the drill hit something
that actually caused the bit to wear down
and fuse to the drill rod
like they were welded together.
But the weird thing is, is the beacon
stayed at 73 degrees the whole time.
TRAVIS: But here's the really crazy thing.
The friction needed to cause that kind of damage
should have heated the drill bit
up to over 2,000 degrees,
but it came out completely cool to the touch.
Something very strange had absorbed all that heat.
Take a look at these.
The drillers have never seen anything like this.
They said they've never seen that, ever.
Did anything interesting
come out of the sludge of the drill when it was
impacting that at that point in time?
TRAVIS: Yes, it did. We hired
an archaeologist to set up professional
sifting areas.
And so, he actually, uh, can tell us all about it. Chris?
Uh, my name's Chris Roberts. I'm an archaeologist,
local archaeologist in the Uinta Basin area.
Right in the 472 mark,
they had hit a really hard spot,
and once I got those spoils cleaned up,
then I actually noticed
ceramics that are undeniable material evidence
that something is in the mesa that is not natural.
Wow.
Very interesting.
So, these are some of the specimens that we've collected.
Uh, some of the ceramic materials.
I've, I've enclosed them
in these coin holders,
and we'll just pass those down so you can have a look.
In certain respects, it appears to be
a rather normal
-ceramic composition. -TRAVIS: Yep.
BRANDON: What led you to believe that this material
is indeed manufactured?
TRAVIS: Well, when you measure
the thickness, it's almost exact
over the entire volume of the material,
which suggests it was machined,
molded, or pressed or something because it's very uniform.
-It's mind-blowing. -ERIK: Yes.
So, let me bring up an image.
This is, of course, a scanning electron microscope image
of the feature that I think stood out the most to us.
TRAVIS: So, if you look at the image,
you can see what appears to be a crosshatching pattern.
And under the scanning electron microscope,
there seems to be even more detail.
Now, this is the interesting thing.
ERIK: This is a live recording.
It's been accelerated a bit.
This area here was the area exposed
to the electron beam for an extended time.
TRAVIS: See how, with the exposure,
you see the change in the surface?
-ERIC: Wow. -TRAVIS: Almost instantly, you start seeing holes
open up.
It's almost like if you take a really dried sponge
and you put it in water.
It expands and opens up.
-JIM: Wow. -BRANDON: This is amazing.
Now, when we turned the electron beam
off and let it set for several minutes,
it goes back to the exact same state
that it is at the beginning before exposure.
ROYSTON: Look at that.
Oh, my gosh.
TRAVIS: Now, since this is a reversible process, it does suggest
it's a topology, a geometry that's changing
on its surface.
-It can transform. -BRANDON: Wow.
I have a great deal of experience
in materials characterization,
and I have never seen anything like this.
It's very unusual.
GARRY: Are there any
materials in the last
few hundred years that would
look like this, especially from the local basin?
No, there's nothing like this, uh,
in the area or anywhere that would match it.
ERIC: This is real, tangible evidence
of a physical thing, and you have
several pieces of it, right?
TRAVIS: Yes. There's even more.
ROYSTON: We're just scratching the surface
of the material, literally.
TRAVIS: We did a lot of
testing with this material, as you can guess.
Yes.
TRAVIS: After all the incredible results
our team has gotten
from testing the ceramic materials
that came out of the mesa on Skinwalker Ranch,
it was pretty validating to see the reactions
of other renowned scientists.
But we were just getting to the most fascinating part.
We still aren't sure what it means.
We ran some other experiments
which were even more surprising.
We dropped the ceramic
over a magnet after freezing it in liquid nitrogen,
and it did hover
like the Meissner effect.
That suggests this could be a superconductor.
So you're gonna freeze the sample?
-Yes. -Yes.
A couple weeks ago,
while running additional lab tests
on the ceramic material at Utah Valley University,
we placed a sample in a dish
of -320 degree Fahrenheit liquid nitrogen.
Notice how it's still boiling off?
TRAVIS: Now, a normal ceramic
would have cooled down almost immediately.
But this stuff wouldn't cool down at all,
and the liquid nitrogen kept boiling for several minutes.
It's still boiling away, man. Look at that.
We couldn't believe the heat capacity of this thing.
-BRIAN: Here we go. -TRAVIS: See it?
-Oh, wow. -TRAVIS: You see it?
-It did drift. -It did drift.
When it did finally cool down,
we put a magnet under another dish
and placed the ceramic right over the center of the magnet.
It literally pushed itself away,
meaning it repelled the magnetic field.
This is called the Meissner effect
and suggests that these ceramics could be superconductors.
Superconductors are cutting-edge materials
that scientists are researching and developing
because they have the ability to conduct energy
without any resistance.
Because of that and their ability to repel
a normal magnetic field,
some scientists believe that one day superconductors
could be used to make vehicles
and even spacecraft with advanced propulsion systems
that don't require rocket fuel.
Is it possible that the ceramics we found
in the drilling spoils are superconductors
and are covering whatever the objects are inside the mesa?
BRANDON: Gentlemen,
what would this mean for science?
It could have very, very wide-reaching implications.
It could possibly unlock new methods of propulsion
and energy that we haven't understood yet.
We get the majority of our energy
from burning things,
and something like this could really set us
on a completely different course for the future,
which I think is one of the things
that's so exciting about it.
Yeah.
I can't say that much better than he did,
but I can essentially say that this type of material would
contribute advancements to photonic
and electronic materials technologies and
take us into new directions
that we haven't imagined yet.
TRAVIS: Well, it's an amazing find.
When we took the samples
and had them analyzed,
we did a scanning electron microscope elemental analysis
and based on the materials that is in it,
it looks a lot like the ceramic tiles on the space shuttle.
That's remarkable.
ERIK: In fact,
whatever it is that's
concealed within that mesa,
all of our fragments that have been retrieved indicate
that they may once have been part of a structure.
TRAVIS: So, hopefully
we'll get to the bottom of it and we'll learn more
about what's-what's in the mesa.
I'm wanting to be cautious that we don't
damage that which may lie within the mesa.
Chris,
do you have any advice
or direction for us
as we protect the integrity of this dig site
and prepare for this next year?
Um, you know, preliminarily, I've been looking
at what I would propose for an excavation.
The actual artifacts
seem to start right about where
we get to that intact bedrock level.
So I propose we come from the top of the mesa...
...make it safe,
and then we can go and excavate that way
right in through the front of the mesa.
I do believe we'll find plenty more
ceramics in there and then we'll find
whatever else might be in the mesa as well.
BRANDON: We've not only seen physical,
tangible evidence of something unusual
going on inside the mesa, but we're also documenting
for the first time some of the anomalies that confirm
the existence of the bubble above the property.
Now we need to find the answers to why it exists
on Skinwalker Ranch.
Well, gentlemen, in light of the incredible discoveries
that have been made at Skinwalker Ranch most recently
and the direction that we're heading,
we have engaged
with a sister company to OmniTeq.
A sister company who is
a SpaceX integrator...
Oh, wow.
...that will aid us in our investigation
and take this research to the next level.
BRANDON: This coming year
we'll place a satellite in orbit.
A satellite that will specifically
focus on the ranch
and take our investigation
to the next level. So, with that,
I'd like to introduce
Chad Brinkley, the CEO of SEOPS, in.
-Hey, Chad. Welcome. -Thank you, Brandon.
CHAD: Thank you, Brandon, for having me.
Gentlemen.
TRAVIS: Now, this is pretty awesome.
Ranch owner Brandon Fugal, Jim Royston,
Sam Deriso, and their colleagues at OmniTeq
have arranged with a space exploration company
known as SEOPS
for a satellite to be launched into orbit
on one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets in the coming months.
And it's going to be dedicated to helping us
in our investigation on Skinwalker Ranch.
CHAD: I got the call from Brandon
and Jim on this exciting opportunity
to fly a satellite to space
under a very aggressive timeline.
ROYSTON: Yes. From space
to ground and air, we have a capability
to push data up, pull data down.
That's our goal.
CHAD: Yes. So, this is
a Skinwalker Ranch satellite.
This will be a 6U spacecraft.
While small, you can put a lot
of capability in a 6U spacecraft.
TRAVIS: A 6U CubeSat
is a class of miniaturized satellites.
These compact units are designed
to carry various instruments, cameras,
and other space-related technologies.
ROYSTON: Over the next several months,
we will put together
what each component we could squeeze onto this thing
and have mission success with.
ERIK: Pretty amazing.
TRAVIS: We've detected so many strange
energy signals, anomalies,
and even UAPs between 30 feet and 10,000 feet in the air.
But using rockets, drones and helicopters
to try and pinpoint where they're coming from
is very limited.
Having a 6U satellite in space
that will pass over Skinwalker Ranch once every day
will give our team incredible capabilities
to search for the source of all the phenomena
that we keep encountering on the ranch.
Now we can send all kinds of signals,
GPS data, and more from the ground to space and back,
scouring the entire range in an instant.
This could lead to major revelations about the bubble
and all the things we've seen across the ranch.
BRANDON: Well, we'll look forward
to the weeks ahead, planning
and making this a successful
addition to our
expanded scientific platform and effort.
CHAD: Yeah. Well, we appreciate you having us, Brandon.
-BRANDON: Thank you so much. -Yes, sir.
Really excited about how the next year's investigation
will come about, and when we're sitting around this table
a year from now,
I'm confident that we will
achieve some great things.
I'm excited. I look forward to it.
And it's going to be unfolding
some more information, and hopefully we'll have
some questions answered, and I know, in science,
we'll have more questions unanswered,
so...
I mean, this summer's investigation was amazing.
I'm thinking, okay, what's next, right?
What's the ranch going to show us?
ERIC: Well, I think we grow
as a society
from a technological standpoint
when we directly confront the unknown.
GARRY: What I find so fascinating about
Skinwalker Ranch is that
all of the people who are here
and the people before-- Bigelow, et cetera--
have created this environment where science has taken root.
What you guys-- Travis, Erik,
and everybody else-- uh, have done
is you've created data that allows us to start
to think about conclusions, and that really excites me.
Well, with that, let's open a new chapter,
look forward
to, uh, our future discussions
and collaboration in carrying this investigation forward.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
BRANDON: Onward.
ERIK: With each season, we see an evolution
of our understanding of the ranch phenomenon.
Our thoughts about what we're engaging with
change sometimes radically,
even with the results of just one experiment.
I think it would be an understatement to say
that our findings this year indicate that we have
a lot more ground and sky to cover.
TRAVIS: I've spent most of my life studying science
and theory around the kind of phenomena
that we keep encountering on Skinwalker Ranch.
Heck, I've even written a bunch of
science fiction novels about this crazy stuff.
So being a part of this team is absolutely a dream come true,
and I can't wait to see what the next chapter
of our investigation is going to reveal.
BRANDON: Skinwalker Ranch is different than any other investigation
in history, simply because we've
brought together a diverse group of experts
and scientists to aid
the investigation beyond
what anyone could have imagined in years past.
As we conclude this historic year,
more than ever before, the world's attention
is focused on Skinwalker Ranch.
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