- Tonight, on The Proof Is Out There,
one of our own scientists captures an anomaly on camera.
What's the truth behind this hole in the sky?
- A lot of people believe UFOs open up portals.
- [Tony] What in the world is this serpentlike creature
with green hair?
- Snakes don't have fur.
- [Tony] These rocks have been moved.
You can see the tracks, but there are no footprints.
What's the force behind the sailing stones of Death Valley?
- They appear to have moved themselves.
- [Tony] And grab the dust pan.
What is this strange life form on the kitchen floor?
- Anybody finding something like this would be freaked out.
(dramatic music)
- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.
- [Witness] What the heck is this?
- [Witness] It's moving.
- Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(static squeaking)
- [Marc] Is it some kind of unidentified object?
What's exciting is nobody really knows.
(engine whirring)
- [Tony] What are they?
- [MJ] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
- I'm Tony Harris.
And as a journalist for more than 30 years,
I've followed the facts where they take me.
Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation to the world's
strangest sounds and images.
We'll analyze each one with top experts.
- It's a credible case. It's a credible video.
- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.
- This video is clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
(dramatic theme music)
Good evening, and welcome to The Proof Is Out There.
The launch of the brand-new James Webb Telescope
is a giant step forward as we try to determine
if we're not alone in the universe.
But it's not just big government organizations, like NASA,
that are scanning the skies.
Our next video is from a small team of researchers
who have banded together to try and answer that question.
And they were shocked by what they found.
Friday, July 16th, 2021.
It's a foggy night, and a team of scientists
from the research group, UAPx, is on a week-long expedition
near Catalina Island off the coast of California.
Then shortly before 4:00 a.m.,
one of their motion detector cameras
in night vision mode captures this.
(suspenseful music)
In the upper right-hand corner of the frame,
a black hole suddenly appears in the sky.
But take a closer look.
Do you see that?
A cluster of small dots begins to materialize inside
and researchers don't think they're mere stars.
Physicist, Dr. Matthew Szydagis,
is one of the researchers with the project.
- This is very strange because this timestamp of this video
does match with one of our most anomalous,
highest energy events that we recorded
in our radiation sensor.
- [Tony] Because UFO cases
have historically involved radiation,
the team came prepared with a radiation sensor.
In normal circumstances, the average reading
is about one to two megaelectron-volts,
but at the time of the anomaly,
it jumped to 43. (sensor crackling)
According to writer, MJ Banias, we shouldn't be surprised
that something mysterious appears
to be happening over Catalina Island.
- Catalina Island is home to a very long history
of strange and anomalous phenomena.
- [Tony] In fact, what may be one
of the most important UFO sightings in history
was documented only miles away in 2004.
- So as the story goes, on board the USS Princeton,
on their radar, they encountered some sort
of anomalous object between Catalina Island
and several other islands in the channel.
- [Tony] Two fighter jets are dispatched
from the aircraft carrier, USS Nimitz, to investigate.
- They approached what looked like
to be a 40-foot-long-shaped Tic Tac hovering,
making erratic maneuvers
just above the surface of the water.
Then the pilots played chase with this object back and forth
for several minutes before being ordered
to return back to their aircraft carrier.
- [Tony] But how did it get here?
Banias lays out one popular theory.
- There's a lot of people who believe
that UFOs open up wormholes or portals
between their world and travel through dimensions,
this idea that we can open a gateway between place X
and place Y and move between them.
The Catalina Islands would be a sort of entry point
for UFOs to use.
- When the scientists from UAPx filed a Freedom
of Information request to get either satellite imagery
or logs from any Navy ships in the area that night,
they were told those files either don't exist,
or if they do, they're classified.
That's only added to the mystery.
What exactly did they witness?
We take that question to our experts.
(tense music)
We begin with Rich Hoffman of the Coalition for UAP Studies.
- I've spent a lot of time looking at everything
from aircraft to clouds to helicopters
to birds to kites to you name it,
and it doesn't match anything like that.
- [Tony] But Hoffman does offer a possible explanation.
- It's within reason that it's a camera artifact.
You can have all kinds of interference
when you're working with electronics of any kind.
- [Tony] But physicist, Michio Kaku,
acknowledges another possibility exists, at least in theory.
We know these aren't known stars.
There's no constellation that matches,
but might they be stars from another universe?
Is it possible this is a wormhole?
- Think of a universe here
with another parallel universe right next to it.
You might be able to create a gateway
that connects two universes.
But the energy necessary to open a stable gateway
between universes is that of a black hole.
But there should be side effects,
and that would be the force of intense gravitational fields.
However, in this videotape,
we don't see any examples of that.
- [Tony] However,
Kaku notes there is a scientific phenomenon
which may explain what we're seeing.
- Fallstreak is when you have a mass of super cold air
in the sky and there's a sudden influx of ice crystals.
- [Tony] These ice crystals cause the water droplets
that compose clouds to freeze and fall.
- Which creates a hole.
In fact, many of the fallstreaks were created by airplanes
that went right by this mass of super cold air,
causing literally a hole in space.
- [Tony] Is this the result of a fallstreak hole?
Matthew Szydagis confirms it was one possibility
among many explored by the UAPx researchers.
- We considered fallstreak hole.
However, we checked the FAA records of this day and time.
There was no airplane at that location.
- [Tony] And the idea that it's a camera glitch,
Szydagis says no way.
- We find no evidence of a camera glitch in the entire week
of the expedition that looks like this.
How likely is it that this was a camera glitch
that by coincidence happens to align
with one of our most anomalous detections also
in our radiation sensor?
Is it alien? Is it extraterrestrial?
As a scientist, I've gotta see the evidence
or the proof of something.
But the flip side of that is I'm not so skeptical
that I refuse to listen to a crazy idea
just because there's no evidence for it yet.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, until we get more definitive evidence,
we have to go with unexplained phenomenon.
While our experts were able to come up
with some interesting theories, none can be confirmed.
And if the team of scientists at UAPx
isn't sure what's going on,
it's clear there is more work to be done.
When they do figure it out,
we'll be the first to bring it to you.
Now we move from physics to folklore.
Dragons have been prevalent in mythology for ages,
but many myths have roots in natural history.
For instance, it's now thought stories of giants derived
from the discovery of woolly mammoth fossils.
Could it be possible that dragons
also have roots in reality?
Watch this next clip and decide for yourself.
February 2022, Sakon Nakhon, Thailand.
A local man is on a Saturday stroll in his neighborhood
when he sees something strange moving slowly
in some dirty runoff.
Knowing no one would believe him without proof,
he reaches out to the creature with a jar and captures this.
(suspenseful music)
A long tubular creature sits in some shallow water
at the bottom of a barrel.
It's about two feet long and it sure appears serpentine,
but it's covered in what looks like an odd greenish fur.
Let's watch that again.
It rears its head and pokes a pair of tiny nostrils
above the surface and a tongue flicks out suddenly.
Field researcher, Ken Gerhard, fills us in
on what the internet made of this fuzzy creature.
- One theory is that we may be looking
at an example of a real genuine dragon.
Many of our dragons in mythologies
around the world are Chimeras.
That is, they combine different features
from different types of animals.
For example, a serpentine or reptilian body shape
but often adorned with mammal-like features,
like claws or hair,
a beard, sometimes wings.
- [Tony] But aren't dragons usually bigger?
This creature looks relatively small.
- We have a type of dragon known as the basilisk,
or the little king, which is a very tiny type of dragon
that comes out of the Middle East.
One could make an argument that this is representative
of one of these small dragon stories.
- One of the most compelling things about dragons
is that they've been documented in mythologies
around the world.
It's hypothesized this may be
because all cultures feared snakes.
But some say this collective consciousness about dragons
indicates our ancestors all actually encountered
the same fantastic creatures.
Let's turn to our experts for their thoughts
on the reality of this serpentine beast.
(tense music)
First, we turn to our veteran forensic analyst,
Michael Primeau, to determine whether this creature is real
or just a clever digital mock-up.
- Through physical aspects of the scene analysis,
lens flaring from the camera, as well as lighting
that was produced from behind the camera,
the verdict is that this is an authentic video.
- [Tony] An authentic furry serpent?
If we're gonna go there, let's talk about chimeras.
They don't all have to be dragons.
And in fact, there are some examples of chimeras in nature.
We have the narwhal, the famed sea unicorn,
a whale with a tusk
reaching up to 10 feet in length.
Some of these creatures are so unbelievable
that even scientists doubted their existence.
Take the duck-billed platypus, for example.
Initially, 19th-century naturalists were sure
that specimens sent from Australia
to Great Britain were hoaxed.
Could this be, like the platypus,
something entirely new?
Marine biologist, Shea Conger, weighs in.
- To me, this looks like a type of snake.
You can see that it's flicking its tongue in and out,
and that's one of the main ways
that snakes sense their environment
is by essentially tasting the air
or testing the chemicals in the water around it
to see if there's food or danger.
But there's something unusual going on
to where it's coated in this green fibrous material.
Snakes, because they're reptiles, don't have fur.
- [Tony] Conger says mammals need fur to keep them warm,
but reptiles don't.
- Reptiles actually use the heat of the environment
around them to warm their bodies.
- [Tony] We turn next
to wildlife biologist, Stephanie Schuttler.
If it's not fur, what is it?
- It really looks, to me, to be more plantlike.
- [Tony] Sounds wild, but animals with vegetation growing
on them are more common than you think.
- There are turtles that get algae on them
and other snake species that get algae on them.
Sloths have algae throughout their fur.
Polar bears, when it's warmer,
their fur will also turn a greenish color from the algae.
But the really remarkable thing
is that this snake is pretty much entirely covered.
- [Tony] So how, and more importantly,
why did this happen?
- The snake had to be moving very slowly
because the plant spores need to embed themselves
into the skin to grow onto it.
It protects them. Predators can't see them.
And it helps them catch more prey
because the prey can't see them as well.
It also makes them smell like the environment.
They're essentially carrying the environment on them.
It could be that this snake intentionally let the algae grow
on it as a survival strategy.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, algal growth.
This is one of those rare stories where the truth
is just as fascinating as any legend.
According to locals, this is a puffed-faced water snake.
The next time it sheds, the algae will go with it
and a new bloom will need to take root on his body.
- Now, when you and I picture Antarctica,
below-zero temperatures, lots of ice,
and penguins are probably the first things
that come to mind, right?
Well, if you didn't think of Nazis,
secret bases, and aliens,
well, our next story might just change that.
It's August 1964, the naval research vessel, Eltanin,
is on a scientific mission near the Antarctic coast,
conducting a survey of the ocean floor.
Then 13,000 feet below along the bleak and barren bottom,
scientists are stunned when their cameras capture this.
A strange object stands upright and alone on the seabed.
Take a closer look.
It has symmetrical nodules, spokes,
and protrusions ending in a spherical top.
According to field researcher, Ken Gerhard,
scientists were baffled.
- And this was about two feet long with a rod-like base,
and none of the researchers or scientists
at that time had any idea what they were looking at.
And this particular image has subsequently become known
as the Eltanin Antenna.
- [Tony] An antenna at the bottom of the ocean,
at the bottom of the world?
How did it get here?
Believe it or not, some wonder if this artifact
could be a remnant from a secret mission
of Hitler's Third Reich.
- There are claims that, in 1938,
the Nazis drove U-boats down to Antarctica
and formed a secret Nazi base known as New Berchtesgaden.
- [Tony] Were the Nazis trying to build a base
for Hitler in Antarctica?
Most historians are cold on the idea.
But Hitler wasn't the only one interested.
In 1946, the US military initiated Operation HIGHJUMP
with an armada of naval ships, including the USS Brownson,
deployed to establish their own Antarctic research base.
They didn't run into any Nazis,
but some say they found something else.
- Rumors are that the USS Brownson was approached by a UFO
that actually came very, very close to the ship's masthead
and created an electromagnetic disruption.
Is it possible that, in some way,
this antenna-like structure may be connected
to one of these stories that involve Operation HIGHJUMP,
secret Nazi bases, alien attacks, and so forth?
- Antarctica might look like one huge ice sheet,
but under that ice lie hundreds of lakes
and a huge canyon system that is as deep
as the Grand Canyon but longer.
So what is this strange underwater object?
Let's see what signals our experts pick up.
(tense music)
We begin with physicist, Michio Kaku,
who has some doubts about the Nazi antenna theory.
- It does really look like an antenna of some sort,
but the size of an antenna is roughly equivalent
to the wavelength of the energy being transmitted.
- [Tony] An antenna is a device made of metallic material
and used to transmit or absorb electromagnetic waves,
most typically, radio wave signals.
But Kaku notes that, with World War II technology,
there's a catch.
- However, if these objects can communicate
with headquarters, they would be quite large, I suspect,
'cause you're gonna be communicating
over vast distances.
Yet this object is only just about two feet across.
- [Tony] But could it just be a piece that's broken off?
Kaku says a clue with the picture speaks volumes.
- Usually, when you see metal,
objects that have been at the bottom
of the ocean for decades,
they're totally encrusted with different life forms.
Here, you see these objects pretty much bare
without the kinds of sea life
that you would normally expect to see.
And so this is unusual, it sticks out.
- [Tony] Next we go to NASA geologist, Bob Anderson.
He rules out that this object is artificial
or, despite its strange looks, even alien,
because Anderson says it's what he sees at the bottom
of the object that makes it clear this is natural.
- When I looked at the images and saw the attachment
to the soils to the ground, it does seem to represent roots,
which gave me the idea that this is definitely an animal
that's living down in these deep waters.
- [Tony] An animal? Shaped like that?
Sitting at the bottom of the ocean?
Believe it or not, marine biologist, Shea Conger,
says it's possible.
- It seems to be stuck in the bottom substrate,
which is really common for an underwater invertebrate.
And I believe this is a type of carnivorous sponge,
which is known as Cladorhiza concrescens.
And these carnivorous sponges evolved
in deep sea marine environments
where there isn't a lot of food.
Carnivorous sponges actually developed a really amazing way
to feed on larger prey, like fish
and crustaceans, that might swim by.
- [Tony] Conger says that those knobs
and protrusions that look so much like an antenna array
are actually a feeding mechanism
that evolved over millions of years.
- It developed barbed appendages.
They often have these really unique geometric designs
and they can look like antennas
or musical instruments, like harps.
And for that reason, they were mysterious
for quite a long while.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, we're going with carnivorous sponge.
This is another one of those stories
where the natural explanation
is even weirder than the wild theories.
Folks, we're talking about a sponge that eats meat,
and it's only been about 30 years
since scientists even discovered this ability.
- There is very little known
about the lost Olmec civilization,
though it's considered the mother culture
of Central America.
But a massive new discovery could change everything we know
or it might just deepen the mystery.
Summer 2020, in the state of Tabasco in Southern Mexico,
archeologists are surveying the land from above,
armed with a new technology called LiDAR.
It stands for light image detection and ranging.
Laser beam are sent to the ground and bounce back,
creating a digital map of areas hidden for centuries
by thick, dense vegetation.
The team is working in the remote jungles
when their LiDAR detectors uncover this.
It's a series of images which appear to be a city
containing rectangular plazas and platforms
with distinct lines and edges.
So remember, this isn't a photo.
It's a laser image of the jungle from above,
enabling us to see what's covered
by the canopy and underbrush.
So take a look at these rectangles here, here,
and then we've got a large one here.
Some of them are nearly a half-mile long.
And then take a look at these lines here.
I'm just wondering, I could be wrong about this,
could they be roads?
Dr. Takeshi Inomata led the team that made the discovery.
- It was really great,
particularly those perfect rectangular-shaped site.
That's something we were not expecting.
- [Tony] Writer, Eric Grundhauser, says some
have speculated it's a famous, legendary lost city.
- These structures and the mystery surrounding them
really harken back to some older legends of lost cities,
of the idea of El Dorado.
- [Tony] El Dorado was a legendary city filled with gold
that the Spanish conquistadors heard rumors about
while exploring the new world in the 1500s.
Many died in their unending quest to find it,
including the English Courtier, Sir Walter Raleigh,
who was beheaded for battling the Spaniards
during the fruitless search.
Yet another theory about this site is that it's evidence
of the oldest civilization known to Mesoamerica.
- These structures could possibly have been created
by the Olmec civilization.
There are only two other major sites
where we know the Olmec to have lived.
- [Tony] The Olmec date between 1600 and 350 BC,
hundreds of years before the more well-documented,
Inca, Mayan, and Aztec empires.
It's still unclear how and why their civilization vanished.
- [Takeshi] We thought we already knew
about many of those big sites.
Some of them are almost kilometer long,
and then they have perfect rectangular shape,
which was surprising.
- [Tony] So, who really made this large site, and why?
Based on the images and Olmec-style rock carvings
found recently in Morelos, Mexico,
some speculate this could've been used
for religious rituals, like human sacrifice.
These and similar artworks suggest Olmec leaders
ritually killed captives of war and other elites
to gain the favor of the gods.
Although the fate of the Olmec is unknown,
one thing is definitely clear,
LiDAR is the future of archeology.
In fact, another recent LiDAR find
uncovered this 1500-year-old urban settlement
in the Bolivian Amazon, more evidence
that cultures we've always thought of as undeveloped
were actually more sophisticated than we ever imagined.
But are these ruins in Mexico the remains
of the Olmec civilization or something else?
Let's see what our experts can dig up.
(tense music)
Archeologist, Dr. Ed Barnhart,
says it's unlikely this could be the ancient lost city
of El Dorado, as some have speculated,
since the Mexican state of Tabasco, where it's located,
is not known for gold deposits.
But maybe instead it has something to do with the search
for liquid gold.
- Mexico's national oil company, Pemex,
has been intensively working in there.
So it's possible that some of those things
that look ancient might be overgrown Pemex platforms.
- [Tony] But as he looks more closely,
Barnhart recognizes the pattern of these structures
as something familiar to archeologists.
- This entire thing was once a big platform with buildings
and probably big sculptures as well.
And we're talking about huge areas
upon which the Olmec put their cities.
- [Tony] Anthropologist, Kathy Strain, points
to another important clue.
- It looks like mounds that we already know about
that are at the two other complexes
that we know are associated with the Olmec.
The Mayans came along later
and they occupied a different place in that jungle.
And so we know this was exclusively Olmec
because of where it's located.
- [Tony] So we think it's Olmec,
but we still don't know exactly what we're looking at
or what purpose it served.
- [Kathy] It is possible
that this could represent a burial ground,
but burial mounds tend to be small.
What this could be is a platform for religious purposes.
You would have the ruler at one end
and a parade going up the middle.
Spectators on the sides.
- [Tony] A rendering of what this platform
may have looked like demonstrates that the Olmec
were likely the first Mesoamerican civilization
with the engineering know-how
to build such monumental stone structures.
- But we won't know that information
until we see what it looks like physically.
- [Tony] Now of course, it's long been suggested
that various Mesoamerican sites,
like the Nazca Lines in Peru,
were designed to communicate with
or even guide extraterrestrial visitors.
Mainstream archeologists usually dismiss these theories,
but even they remain mystified about this latest find.
- Honestly, we don't know what they are.
We don't know why they built this and what they mean.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, Olmec archeological site.
But what it's for and why this civilization collapsed
is still unknown.
We do know that the Olmec invented calendars,
created the system of mathematics,
and they even had toothpaste.
But the exact extent of their sophistication
remains a secret covered by the jungle.
Pet rocks were all the rage in 1975.
They were cute, silly,
and they didn't need to go for walks.
They couldn't die because they were never alive
in the first place.
But is there actually such a thing as living rocks?
Before you answer, take a look at this.
It's January 2014 in the hottest place in the entire world
in the driest desert in North America,
Death Valley, California.
Jim Norris is part of a scientific research team
that's investigating a particular patch
of wasteland known as Racetrack Playa,
which shows few signs of life except for this.
(pensive music)
The photos from Jim's team show side-by-side trails
of sand stretching for hundreds of feet,
all leading to a field of rocks?
That's right, the stones are completely motionless,
but the trail behind them suggests
they were moving at one time.
What's even more mysterious
is that these trails often appear overnight.
- No one had ever actually observed them moving.
It was a mystery that had yet to be solved
in the geologic circles.
And it seemed to me and some of my friends
to be an interesting problem to look at
to see if we can figure out how to solve it.
- And what's really interesting about these stones
is that they appeared to have moved themselves.
No one, as far as we know, has been down on the floor
of the playa moving these stones around.
- [Tony] In fact, these so-called sailing stones
have been studied for almost a century.
And some believe they might be proof
of something called animism.
- Animism is this concept that everything,
animate, inanimate, rocks, plants, animals, has a soul.
Some have wondered if this could actually mean
that these rocks are alive.
Have they evolved to actually be able to move on their own?
- [Tony] Other popular examples of animism
include this Mimosa pudica plant responding to human touch,
or this Venus flytrap, which is almost human,
the way its mouth opens and closes.
McCarthy also notes these sailing stones in Death Valley
aren't the only rocks said to rock and roll on their own.
- There are stones in Romania
called the living stones of Romania,
which are more officially known as trovants,
and they actually grow.
And some people even believe that they walk
and move on their own.
- Scientists say trovants grow after heavy rains
when the stones actually secrete cement.
This is because of a chemical reaction that happens
when the minerals in the stones come into contact
with large amounts of water.
But could our rocks actually be alive
and out for an evening stroll?
Or is there something more mysterious at play here?
Let's turn to our experts to find out.
(tense music)
First, NASA geologist, Dr. Bob Anderson,
analyzes whether the sailing stones
could be living rocks, like in Romania.
- Living rocks means the rock itself has life in it,
that it has bacteria or it has plant-like creatures,
and their sheer act of growing
and moving are moving the rocks.
But I do not believe that these rocks are living rocks
because it is in a desert area.
If these rocks are in a very hot area most of the time,
the bacteria would have a hard time to live.
- [Tony] But if these stones are not alive,
could someone or something just be dragging them
across the sand overnight?
- For a long time, people thought that they're aliens
because you don't see any footprints,
so they can't be man-made.
Also, some of these rocks that are moving are very large.
They're seven, 800-pound blocks that people could not move.
- [Tony] So if the rocks aren't living beings
and they're too heavy for humans to move,
then could their tracks be caused by extreme weather?
We turn to meteorologist, Juan Hernandez.
- We don't see any movement in the summer.
It's too hot. It's too dry.
The movement that we see with these stones
actually occurs mainly in the late winter
and into the early spring.
- [Tony] Hernandez thinks that observation
provides a key clue.
He suspects that under certain conditions,
the Racetrack Playa could turn into a slippery shallow pond
with moving sheets of ice.
- You've got four conditions that need to be met
for this to actually occur.
The first of which is the surface has to be wet,
so it had to have rained.
The second condition, it has to be cold,
cold enough to freeze.
The third condition, there has to be partial melting.
It has to warm up to maybe the upper 30s, lower 40s.
That's when the movement starts to happen.
And then it has to be windy to push the rocks
across that semi-frozen surface.
- [Tony] But can a breeze really move a 700-pound rock?
Hernandez explains that the uniqueness
of this location may have something to do with it.
- Death Valley is known for its extreme weather conditions,
so it's likely gonna take potentially 30, 40,
even 50-mile-an-hour winds to blow across Racetrack Playa.
- [Tony] It's an interesting theory,
but is there data to back it up?
That's what Jim's team is for.
They developed a cool way
to measure the sailing stones sailing.
- We figured out how to design a GPS system
that we could embed in a rock that would just sit
and wait for the rock to move.
And when the rock started to move,
it would start recording the change in position.
- The GPS data lined up
with the weather conditions Hernandez described.
And further proof, Morris' team even caught one
of the rocks moving over time in this time-lapse footage.
(tense music)
Our verdict, the sailing stones aren't moved
by ghosts, aliens, or animist spirits.
This is a rare natural phenomenon
caused by extreme weather conditions.
Death Valley is home to a menagerie of wildlife.
Slithering rocks are not among them.
But that doesn't mean there's not something hiding
under a rock still waiting to be discovered.
UFOs over Italy have been a thing for centuries.
with appearances in Roman myth,
Renaissance art, and present day.
It's no wonder the Italian Air Force
accepts civilian reports on UFOs
to be investigated by their general security department.
And while we appreciate their efforts,
we couldn't help but take on this next video for ourselves.
December 2018,
two German tourists are walking to the beach
in the Italian port city of Catania.
They're coming from a party, but it's what they see next
that makes this a night to remember.
The video starts with a large glowing diamond
in the middle of a black sky.
It then zooms out to reveal
what looks like two diamond-shaped UFOs.
Despite their apparent lack of flight features,
like wings, propellers, or means or propulsion,
these diamonds seem to hang steadily in the sky
as the video continues on for a whopping six minutes.
Investigative journalist, MJ Banias, says Italy
is no stranger to alien visitations.
- In 1978, a security guard
by the name of Pier Fortunato Zanfretta claimed
that he saw a strange UFO object
and was subsequently abducted by aliens.
He agreed to go on television
and to be hypnotized live in front of an audience.
(hypnotist speaking Italian)
- Zanfretta even offered to take Pentothal,
which is known as truth serum.
And he described strange encounters with triangular UFOs,
and alien abductions, and a whole array
of different strange alien encounters.
- Now the truth about truth serums
is they've never been officially proven effective,
much less ethical.
But can this video of inexplicable flying objects
over Italy finally prove the reality
of Zanfretta's experiences?
Our experts take a closer look.
(tense music)
First, we turn to our video forensic analyst,
Michael Primeau, to determine if the footage is even real.
- No evidence of digital alteration was detected,
no CGI was detected, and the operator
was essentially trying to record something
that didn't get recorded accurately, in my opinion.
So the result is inconclusive at this point.
(suspenseful music)
- [Tony] Next, we take them to astronomer
and visual effects designer, Marc D'Antonio,
to determine if we could be looking at a UFO
or some other flying vehicle.
- If this was an aircraft, then we would expect the aircraft
to change its position relative to the camera,
and most importantly, relative
to the other objects in the view.
They don't change.
They are stationary relative to each other.
So they're not aircraft.
They're not drones. They're not balloons.
They're not other strange military craft.
And we know these aren't satellites
because satellites move across the sky.
These are just locked stationary.
- [Tony] Under closer investigation,
D'Antonio determines that the diamond-shaped lights seen
in the video may not be what they appear to be at all.
- The diamond shape has to do with the shape
of the iris of the camera,
which is the actual shape inside the camera
of the little leaves that make the shutters stop down
or get smaller and get wider.
And when you go out of focus,
the light is spread across the entire sensor,
but it's eclipsed by the edges of that iris shape.
- [Tony] The effect is known as bokeh.
- And if the iris shape is a diamond, you'll see a diamond.
If it's a different shape, you'll see a different shape.
In this case, it's a diamond.
- [Tony] So if this alleged diamond-shaped UFO
isn't even diamond-shaped, what is it?
D'Antonio thinks he spotted a clue.
- So in this particular frame,
here are the lights in question here,
but if you look down further,
there's more lights going all the way down.
If you draw a line between them logically,
there is a slope here.
And I believe what we're looking at
are lights on the ground.
But the person taking the image doesn't understand
where the horizon is and where the local horizon is.
They don't realize that maybe there's a hill here
and that their lights are a little bit elevated on the hill.
They may think they're in the sky,
but they're actually ground lights.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, unidentified ground lights.
We looked but were unable to determine exactly where
in Catania, Italy, this footage was taken
to compare it to the landscape in the daytime.
But D'Antonio's analysis appears to fit the facts in our mind.
Most likely, we're looking at cars or street lights.
As for Zanfretta's experiences,
we're leaving that case open for further investigation.
In the movie "The Blob" Steve Mcqueen's character
warns authorities there's an alien mass
engulfing people alive, but no one listens.
As a result, a town is nearly destroyed
when the Blob becomes too big to handle.
Keep that in mind when viewing our next video.
2021, in an indiscernible location,
an anonymous TikTok user is sweeping up a tiled floor
when he comes across something unusual.
(ominous music)
A broomstick prods at an amorphous,
transparent blob on the ground.
It seems to slide across the floor
with little to no resistance,
fluid and dappled like the surface of a puddle.
- It's pretty weird.
I mean, anybody finding something like this
in their kitchen would be pretty freaked out.
- [Tony] Field researcher, Ken Gerhard,
points out there might be truth
behind the famous Blob so ingrained in pop culture.
- The iconic sci-fi movie, "The Blob," was actually based
on a real incident that occurred back in 1950.
Four Philadelphia police officers
encountered this weird blob-like creature
that was about six feet in diameter, about a foot thick.
It appeared to be alive.
And I'm wondering if this could be somehow related
to this weird thing that we're seeing
on this kitchen floor here.
- [Tony] Or perhaps this strange anomaly
is another more mythical substance.
- Star jelly is a clear gelatinous goo
that has been found on grass and plants.
And according to some mythology,
it's deposited on Earth following meteor showers.
Typically, the star jelly substance just disintegrates
and leaves behind no trace or residue.
- [Tony] Even if this gooey figure
is in no way related to star jelly,
Gerhard still thinks we might be looking
at something extraterrestrial in nature.
- Some alien theorists think that,
if we do find life elsewhere in the universe,
it would not have evolved on our planet.
So it might not even be carbon-based like we are.
It could be made out of silicon or some other substance.
There's a strong chance that it's gonna look more like this
as opposed to anything that we know of
from the fossil record.
- Some scientists believe the first aliens we encounter
will be simpler life forms or microorganisms.
That's because of the discovery of some bacteria here
on Earth that can survive in acidic lakes
or boiling hot springs, like this one in Yellowstone Park.
These so-called extremophile organisms might be found
on planets with harsher environments than Earth,
but was one found on this kitchen floor?
Let's ask the experts.
(tense music)
First, video analyst, Mick West, examines
whether this footage could've been faked.
- If we zoom in on bits of this,
we can see there's these kind of ridges in the object.
And when it goes over lines, like it does here,
you can see it's actually refracting the light
and causing these lines to break up.
And we see it interacting with the environment.
Like right here, we see it go up against these pipes.
There's a little wave where it goes over the pipes.
I think that this is actually a real object
that we're looking at.
- [Tony] Next, West points out that the substance,
star jelly, may be less mythical than it seems.
- One of the explanations for star jelly
is that it's animals vomiting frogs' born.
They eat the jelly with the frog eggs in it,
they partially digest it, and then they throw it up again.
- [Tony] Birds presumably eat frogs,
the mucus jelly expands in the bird's stomach
in contact with water, and the bird vomits it up.
But in this case,
he's not sure the star jelly theory holds together.
- Star jelly typically falls apart when you pick it up,
and this holds together very well
when he's pushing it around with the broom,
so I don't think it's star jelly.
- [Tony] Next, marine biologist, Shea Conger,
considers the alien theory.
She agrees the first aliens we meet
might be simpler life forms,
but she thinks that would mean us going to them,
not them coming to us.
- The technology needed to travel to earth from millions
of light-years away would be incredibly complex.
I don't see any evidence of anything like a complex brain
or a central nervous system.
So the idea that this is some kind
of advanced extraterrestrial life is pretty unlikely.
It would probably be a little more technologically
and anatomically defined.
- [Tony] We don't know where it happened,
but Conger thinks there's a clue to that and what this is.
- This object looks like a lot of decaying jellyfish
that I've seen on the shore.
And what we're seeing here
is part of the natural decomposition process
when a marine invertebrate ends up
in a dry environment, like the beach.
It's possible there could've been some sort
of high tide or a flood,
and this animal ended up in these people's house.
But either way, it somehow made its way from the ocean
into a populated area.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, this is a jellyfish,
a dead one who's in the process of decomposing.
How it made its way to this person's kitchen
is anyone's guess.
And that's our show for tonight.
Thank you so much for watching.
As always, we need you to keep those cameras rolling.
(dramatic theme music)