- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There."
Is this video proof of a legendary Alaskan sea creature?
- This may be one of the most important pieces of footage
in terms of undiscovered marine species.
- [Tony] What's the secret of these mysterious lights
over Lubbock, Texas?
- I can't think of a single rational explanation
for this photo.
- [Tony] A living mummy?
Has this ancient man found the key to eternal life?
- Could this be the oldest man that has ever lived?
- [Tony] And they call it Detroit's Area 51.
- It was like this X file that no one could solve.
- [Tony] What's being made on this top secret island?
(dramatic drumming music)
Around the globe are videos.
- [Videographer] What are those things?
- [Camera Operator] It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(air squealing)
- [Commentator] We don't know where they come from,
who made them, or how they operate.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [Scientist] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- [Commentator] What's exciting is nobody really knows.
- 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.
(car smashes)
- It's a credible case. It's a credible video.
- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.
- This video was clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
(dramatic upbeat music)
Good evening and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There."
As elusive as the Loch Ness Monster,
but maybe not as famous,
is a legendary sea serpent said to inhabit
the waters of the Pacific Northwest.
Today, there has been no actual hard evidence
that this sea monster exists,
but that might have just changed.
2009, Nushagak Bay, Alaska.
Salmon fisherman Kelly Nash is on a boat with his sons,
Jason and Kyle,
when suddenly they spot unusual movement in the water
next to them and start recording this video.
The shaky black and white footage shows what appears to be
a long, dark serpentine creature with humps on its back
moving rapidly through the water.
- [Kelly] Now watch. Its head's gonna pop up.
Check this out.
- [Son] It's blue.
- [Tony] Let's look at that again.
Kelly estimates the massive creature to be
about 20 to 30 feet long.
While this footage is curiously unique,
it may actually be showing us
a clearer view of a legendary creature,
a cryptid as they're known,
that's been widely reported before.
Field researcher Kim Gerhard explains.
- Cadborosaurus or Caddy
is a mysterious sea creature
that's been reported off the coast of Pacific North America.
The name is associated with
the location where it's most been seen,
which is Cadboro Bay, British Columbia.
Cadborosaurus is generally described as
an immense serpentine animal,
anywhere from 60 to 100 feet in length,
with a horse-like head, sharp, fish-like teeth,
giant forward-facing eyes.
- [Tony] There have been more than 300 sightings
of Caddy over the past 200 years,
including one case in the 1930s that may have produced
actual physical evidence of the creature.
- During the summer of 1937,
off the coast of British Columbia,
there was a strange animal that was found
in the stomach of a sperm whale.
This animal popped out that was snake-like in form,
had a horse-like head, two flippers and a fluke tail.
The man in charge actually
had these workers take some photographs of it.
Subsequently, this became known as
the Naden Harbour carcass.
In my opinion,
this is the same animal that we see in this video.
But there are other theories as well.
That perhaps we could be looking at
a primitive type of snake-like whale known as a Basilosaur.
- [Tony] The Basilosaur, or Basilosaurus,
was a fearsome predatory whale
which swam the oceans nearly 40 million years ago.
And while scientists first described this as
a giant reptile,
further research determined it to be a marine mammal,
one that could grow up to 65 feet in length.
Could this be the same creature?
- There have been hundreds, if not thousands,
of eyewitness accounts, so I think that we could build
a pretty strong case that this animal really does exist.
- Right after this video was revealed,
two Cadborosaurus researchers went to visit the Nash family
who shot this footage.
They claim the creature
fully lifted its head out of the water
and even turned to face their camcorder.
But of course,
that piece of evidence isn't on this recording.
Let's see what our experts have to say about
the evidence that remains.
(somber pulsing music)
We first wanted to check the authenticity of this tape,
so we brought it to forensic video analyst Michael Primeau.
- This video has indications that it was enhanced,
it has processing done to enlarge it
as well as stabilize it.
There's too many unknown variables here
to actually arrive at some sort of accurate conclusion
because the video has been enhanced.
- [Tony] So there's already a red flag.
But to be fair,
we spoke with marine biologist Shea Steingass.
She first looks at this creature's possible connection
with the prehistoric Basilosaurus.
- I don't think that's what we're looking at
because the body type of the Basilosaur
was actually pretty solid.
It wasn't a snake-like animal.
- [Tony] However, Steingass believes
this creature does have more in common
with the marine mammal Basilosaurus
than the supposed reptile corpse from Naden Harbour.
- Nushagak Bay is part of a polar arctic environment,
very cold environments to live in.
It's very unlikely that any kind of reptile-like animal,
especially this size, would be existing in Nushagak Bay.
The animals that thrive here are typically either fish,
invertebrates that live on the bottom, or marine mammals.
There's really no reptiles or snakes
that this could be mistaken for.
- [Tony] Many online critics claim
we are just looking at some piece of trash
or floating debris, but the dozens of tech people
and fishermen who have studied this video
can't explain how debris could move in such an organic way.
Other skeptics have suggested
this could be a formation of seals
or possibly a known giant animal like an oarfish
or a giant eel.
But surprisingly, Steingass is doubtful.
- The oarfish has these beautiful dorsal fins
that help them be more hydrodynamic as they swim,
and we don't see that here.
This animal doesn't really seem to have any clear anatomy.
Another really popular theory is that
this is some kind of a giant eel.
And frankly, there's no species of eel
that would be quite this size in Nushagak Bay.
- [Tony] And as far as seals go,
Steingass says it's unlikely
since seals don't typically swim in linear groups,
nor would they keep their heads submerged
while exposing other parts of their body.
So with all of these potential possibilities ruled out,
does Steingass have any idea what this is?
Unfortunately, like many who have chased Caddy's tail,
she's stumped.
- This is really interesting footage
and part of the charm of it for me is that
it's difficult to tell exactly what we're looking at.
So this might be one of those classic sea monster videos
that's gonna stick around for a long time.
- Our verdict?
Possible cryptid.
If the video is legit, and yes, that's an if,
whatever this thing is has stumped
our ace marine biologist.
People have been looking at this footage since 2009
and to this day it remains a mystery.
But you can be sure
if any more footage of Caddy comes our way,
you'll see it here first.
Now let's head south to Texas and back in time to the 1950s.
UFO mania is in high gear, especially in Lubbock,
the site of a peculiar phenomenon
that is still being debated today.
August 31st, 1951, 18-year-old Carl Hart, Jr.
has his bed pushed next to an open window
in his Lubbock, Texas home.
He's waiting for a strange recurring phenomenon
he'd read about in the papers.
Suddenly it appears.
Hart grabs his camera and runs out into the backyard
to capture the stunning sight.
A V-shaped formation of 15 to 30 lights
appears in the night sky.
Eyewitnesses say the lights were bluish-green in color,
traveling silently overhead from north to south.
The lights then disappeared,
only to reappear a few minutes later.
Writer Amy Teitel says Carl's sighting wasn't the first time
these lights were witnessed.
- Five days earlier on August 25th,
the same formation appeared in the sky
in view of three college professors,
one of which was an engineer, and another was a physicist.
If any group of people had the skills
to figure out what this was, it was that group.
- [Tony] After that first sighting,
the professors would often observe these lights
two or three times a night for the next few weeks
before they disappeared forever.
Despite no shortage of eyewitnesses,
Carl was the only one able to successfully capture
the lights on film.
- Carl Hart was ultimately interrogated by the US Air Force
and eventually the FBI as part of Project Blue Book.
- [Tony] Project Blue Book was the code name for
the systematic study of UFOs by the US Air Force
from 1947 to 1969.
- Lieutenant Edward Ruppelt,
who was the lead investigator on Project Blue Book,
also got in on Hart's story.
He looked at the negatives of the photographs
and determined they were authentic and untampered with.
- [Tony] Project Blue Book reviewed over 12,000 cases.
About 700 of them were determined to be genuine UFOs,
including the Lubbock Lights.
However, Lieutenant Ruppelt also conducted
his own investigation and later claimed to have learned
what caused the Lubbock Lights.
But don't get excited just yet.
- On the condition that he remain anonymous,
a scientist confided in Ruppelt that
these lights were actually consistent with
a naturally occurring phenomena.
Ruppelt kept the secret of what the natural phenomenon is
because he realized that any discussion or any information
would lead people back to the scientist.
- [Tony] So while Ruppelt may have had an answer,
as far as we're concerned,
the Lubbock Lights remain an unsolved mystery.
- No one knows exactly what these lights are
and many question that Ruppelt
ever had an anonymous scientific source.
Whatever this naturally occurring phenomena is,
it has alluded other scientists for decades.
- This isn't your typical UFO sighting.
This happened multiple times a night over two weeks
and hundreds of people saw it.
But we still don't have confirmation of what it was,
unless you believe Lieutenant Ruppelt
really did have an anonymous source who figured it out.
Let's see if our experts can shed some light
on this mystery.
(somber pulsing music)
First, we had astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy
analyze a popular theory that
the lights were actually plovers,
migrating birds local to Lubbock,
that were reflecting the street lights below them.
- Birds generally aren't going to be reflective enough
to shine this brightly at night.
I've photographed birds at night many times,
they never show up as brighter than the surrounding sky.
The birds are always silhouetted.
These lights were incredibly bright.
- [Tony] Others speculate that
these were secret military craft,
but military aviation expert Tim McMillan has his doubts.
- If we are to assume that each of the points of light
that are on the photograph are an individual aircraft
that would suggest that these would be aircraft
that are extremely densely packed together,
far more so than what would be safe
in conventional airborne operations.
And so it leads me to believe that
we're not looking at individual planes.
- [Tony] Perhaps then this was one aircraft
with several lights?
But according to Ruppelt's independent investigation,
the Lubbock Lights were thought to be flying at
an altitude of only 800 to 1,000 feet,
just a fraction of the height of
a standard commercial aircraft.
McMillan says, "Any plane at that altitude
should have been heard as well as seen."
- Eyewitnesses said that they didn't hear any noise.
The idea that you would be able to do that silently
is not consistent with the technology we have today,
much less in 1951.
- [Tony] What about Ruppelt's anonymous scientist?
He claimed the Lubbock Lights were, quote,
We asked meteorologist Juan Hernandez
what that could possibly refer to.
- I can confidently say this is not meteorological.
The reports say that this happened over
and over continuous days.
That is unlike weather.
The wind conditions, the temperature,
all that is gonna change on a day-to-day basis.
It's not astronomical either.
Whether we're talking about meteors or comets,
objects from outer space never fall in perfect formation.
- [Tony] Which of course leaves only one more option.
- Whether or not it's out of this world,
that's not for me to decide.
- Our verdict?
The same as Project Blue Book's.
We're calling this a genuine UFO,
at least until Lieutenant Ruppelt's anonymous source
is revealed along with his explanation.
- Okay, imagine being at home
and there's a massive diesel truck idling right next door.
The noise might bother you, but it'll be gone soon.
Well, to some Canadians, a similar idling sound
remained just that, idling for nearly a decade.
2011, Windsor, Ontario, Canada,
right across the river
from Detroit, Michigan.
Toronto-based filmmaker Adam Makarenko
has set out to document a mysterious phenomenon,
one you hear rather than see.
As Adam films the dark green foliage
in the Ojibwe Nature Reserve,
a persistent noise can be heard in the background.
Listen closely.
(air squealing)
That's what's known as the Windsor Hum,
a constant low frequency sound whose origin is unknown.
- It was like this X file that no one could solve.
No one knew where it was coming from.
You kind of feel it more than you hear it.
It was shaking people's houses, people were moving away.
So it had all these things to it that really intrigued me.
- [Tony] Adam starts investigating.
His first suspect? The two Windsor salt mines.
They produce millions of tons of salt each year,
85% of which goes to de-icing roads across Canada.
- So I went there
and I did a little bit of an investigation.
Salt mines said, "No, it's not us.
We're not creating the noise."
- [Tony] Canada's government is also on the case,
and in September of 2011,
the Ministry of Natural Resources
releases its readings from seismometers,
instruments that respond to ground noises.
- [Adam] When they did the test,
they determined that it was airborne
so that it wasn't coming from the ground.
- [Tony] The investigation then turns to a funky place
with a funky name,
It's an old steel
manufacturing site
on the US side of the Detroit River
that only became an island when car magnate Henry Ford
built a shipping canal around it in the 1920s.
- [Adam] No one can access it.
The police can't go on the island.
- [Tony] That's right.
Today access to Zug Island is restricted,
its activities undisclosed
and the entire compound is said to be under
Homeland Security protection.
Journalist Alexis Brooks says,
"This is why some call it Detroit's Area 51."
- When you have an area that's
a secret, Homeland Security involved,
you have to wonder if there was something defense oriented
going on there and there could have been a hum
that was emanating from that process.
(air squealing)
- What's even more mysterious is it's only the Canadians,
not the Americans who hear the hum.
Yet the US government
won't cooperate with its northern neighbor
on an investigation
and researchers have never been granted
access to Zug Island.
So the question still remains.
Where does the hum come from?
(somber music)
The salt mines deny it,
but could they unknowingly be the source of the sound?
The mining process involves drilling holes into salt walls
that are loaded with explosives to blast the rock salt,
which is then crushed on conveyors.
Audio analyst Rob Maher does a sound wave comparison.
- This sound is a very low frequency sound,
approximately 35 hertz, 35 cycles per second.
The strongest frequencies in the underground mining
is between 100 and 200 hertz.
(machine humming)
(air squealing)
So it's at a higher frequency range
and there's not a lot of energy down in the range where
we found the Windsor Hum signal to be located.
- [Tony] The Windsor area has seen
impressive growth in recent years,
including the construction of the Windsor Essex Parkway.
So Maher considers if ground construction equipment
could be emitting the hum.
- The heavy construction vibration
does have energy down in the 35 hertz range,
but construction equipment would not be operating
all the time all day long for 10 years.
And often the complaints about the hum
were most common at night.
- [Tony] So Maher looks back to Zug Island
to solve this rumbling riddle.
- [Rob] It seems most likely to me the sound is due to
vibrations of the ground.
So that the mechanical equipment across the river
is causing a layer in the geological formations
under the water to cause the ground to vibrate,
sort of like a mini earthquake.
- [Tony] Another report
from two Canadian universities in 2014
seems to point in that direction.
- They determined that a likely cause was
blast furnaces at the United States steel mills.
- [Tony] Though exactly what sort of steel
these furnaces were smelting on Zug Island
is still a mystery.
The researchers believe the furnaces had been running at
a higher than normal capacity,
that was causing intense reverberations
of the plant's metallic foundations,
which propagated across the river
until the mill was shut down.
- The reports of the hum then petered out.
- Our verdict?
The hum was likely caused by
now-decommissioned blast furnaces on Zug Island.
However, the occasional noise complaint still does pop up
from time to time on social media.
So maybe the hum is not quite so done after all.
- Eating honey, olive oil rubdowns,
a good cigar every week.
It seems like every elderly person has their own secret
for extending our lives,
but one man in Thailand may have actually cracked the code.
Let's take a look.
It's March 2022 in western Thailand.
A family is gathered around the bedside of a figure
that barely looks alive.
The man is a monk named Luang Pho Yai
and he is very much alive.
Look again.
His skeletal figure and desiccated skin
make it hard to believe this video is real, but it is.
- Some people who've seen
this video have wondered if
this is the oldest man
who has ever lived,
guessing that his age
is over 150 years old.
- [Tony] For the record,
the oldest documented person in history was Jeanne Calment,
who was born in 1875 and died in 1997
at an amazing 122 years old.
So 150 years old would be a huge jump,
but scientists say where a person lives
can have an effect on how long they live.
- Researchers are fascinated by so-called Blue Zones,
which are geographical areas
with a larger than average number of people
who are 100 years old.
By contrast,
the average life expectancy in the United States
is only 77 years old.
Could the man in this video be benefiting from
one of these so-called Blue Zones?
- [Tony] These Blue Zones don't share many similarities
when it comes to geography,
so their connection to longevity remains a mystery.
But there's another possible explanation,
a theory that some people can mummify themselves.
- What this video brings to mind is
the supposed Japanese practice of Sokushinbutsu,
which is the practice of self-mummification.
Self-mummification is meditating so deeply that
you pass away in that meditative state,
becoming a preserved body.
The practice is believed to have been
observed by Buddhist monks
who would practice a form of such extreme asceticism
that their bodies would simply mummify themselves.
- According to Atlas Obscura, between 1081 and 1903
at least 17 monks managed to mummify themselves.
Is that astonishing ability what we're seeing here?
The act of self-mummification was criminalized in Japan
during the late 1800s
as it was deemed inhumane by the government.
So has this man revived the practice?
Or is he mastering some other form of self-preservation?
We asked our experts.
Could this man be gaining extended life
by residing in one of the world's
seemingly magical Blue Zones?
Biologist Stephanie Manka says, "That's an easy no."
- Being in a Blue Zone is not a factor
that allows him to live this long.
This is in Thailand, it's not in one of the Blue Zone areas.
- [Tony] So could we be looking at
a real example of self-mummification in action?
Manka is doubtful.
- I don't think we're seeing self-mummification here.
You know that his skin has gone through a lot over time
and his muscles have broken down and he's just aged.
It appears he has plans to become cremated after he passes,
so he's not attempting to become a Sokushinbutsu.
- [Tony] Manka believes this may be nothing more than
a determined monk using a trained focused mind
to prolong the inevitable.
- Your mind can actually have
a great influence over your health.
There's studies where monks have been able to
actually change their internal core temperature
by several degrees of Fahrenheit
just through meditative states.
I definitely think that mind over matter
could have helped him live this long
because he's been able to keep his stress so low,
likely because of meditating.
- [Tony] Emergency physician Ed Hope thinks
Luang's appearance and his advanced age, whatever it is,
have to do with how much he eats.
- Luang probably has a very modest diet
and he probably avoids some of those other things
that might speed aging up,
such as smoking and drinking alcohol.
- [Tony] Research backs up the hypothesis that
calorie restriction slows down the aging process,
but it can't prevent inevitable muscle breakdown
known as sarcopenia.
- So sarco means muscle and penia means a reduction of.
So we're seeing a reduction of muscle mass.
The cells he produces now aren't as good
as the cells he's produced before,
and that's why he's got this very frail appearance.
- [Tony] However, Hope says another factor
might play an even bigger role here.
- A human can only live so long
and that's really gonna be defined by
your personal genetics.
He's certainly benefiting from good genetics as well.
Not everyone, even if you live a very healthy life,
will live as long as Luang here.
The woman that's lived the longest, Jeanne Calment,
a French woman who lived to the age of 122,
actually must have benefited from very good genetics
because she was smoking all the way up to age 117.
- [Tony] And as far as Luang being the oldest living man
at 150 years old, we dug into it.
Ends up,
that's just a rumor that caught fire on the internet.
- [Ed] Sadly, Luang passed away due to advanced age
at the age of 107.
- Our verdict?
We agree that what we are seeing is
a man who extended his lifespan
through disciplined eating
and who benefited from good genetics.
And while it ends up the rumors of Luang's life
were greatly exaggerated, his surprising success on TikTok
has in a way granted him a form of internet immortality.
- From Banshees to Nessie,
Scotland has no shortage of sightings of
the curious and fantastic.
But have you ever heard of a Scottish UFO?
You're about to.
It's November 2021
and a resident of the Maryhill's section of Glasgow Scotland
spots something curious in the sky.
It appears he uses some kind of telescope
to help him grab the image with his iPhone.
The object glides in a deliberate path
as the camera pans from gray clouds to orange skies.
Take a look at this thing's unusual shape.
It's vertically aligned.
You can see that right here with a narrow top
that sure looks like a head.
And then there's a larger middle section,
and beneath that section,
these two protrusions that look like legs or feet.
Author Amy Teitel is well acquainted
with Scottish UFO lore.
- Perhaps the most famous incident was
the Livingston Incident In 1979.
A forester was returning to his home
when he saw a 20 foot diameter floating dome
hovering above the ground in a clearing in the woods.
He described it as being very dark gray in color
with an outer flange
and arms extending from the side of the vehicle
that held propellers.
When he returned home with ripped clothing
and scratches over his body,
his wife called the police to report a criminal assault.
This remains the only UFO incident in the UK
that was also treated as a criminal investigation.
- [Tony] But this object looks nothing like a floating dome.
The vaguely humanoid appearance has some wondering if
it could be some kind of piloted military tech.
- The UK Royal Navy is responsible for
investigating some new technologies including jetpacks
that are allowing pilots to fly between boats at sea
using nothing but a jetpack scrapped on their bodies.
- [Tony] The jetpacks can put out 1000 horsepower,
pushing the pilot to speeds of 85 miles per hour
for 10 minutes.
- So some might ask,
"Is this one of these jetpacks being tested over Glasgow?"
- With such a long history of sightings,
it comes as no surprise that Scotland is home to
the SETI Post-Detection Hub at St. Andrew's University.
Its purpose is to ensure that
humanity will respond responsibly if and when
we make first contact.
Should these scientists roll out the welcome wagon?
Our experts take a further look.
(somber pulsing music)
First, does this object move like most UAPs?
Rich Hoffman of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies
has his doubts.
- There's no observable
means of propulsion.
It makes no speed changes.
You don't see any kind of control surfaces on it
that would make it maneuver in a different direction
or anything like that.
We have no reported UAP sightings
that would match anything like this right here.
- [Tony] Well then, does it move like a jetpack?
Video analyst Marc D'Antonio argues that
the limbs of a jetpack pilot constantly move and sway
due to the thrust of the engines.
- And we don't see that here at all,
so I would remove jet packs from contention here.
- [Tony] D'Antonio also argues that
the humanoid shape of the object isn't very humanoid at all,
if you look closely enough.
- This is a very good freeze frame
because we actually can count one, two, three, four, five.
There's five points on this.
And what do you know that has five points?
Five-pointed star.
So it's possible that we're looking at
one or more star balloons.
- [Tony] But how could a balloon of all things
maintain the steady flight?
- The air can be thought of as like a river.
If you're floating down the river,
you're just gonna float on the river
and you're not gonna do much spinning around
unless you reach a turbulent eddy
around a big rock or something.
In the same way when we look in the air,
an object flying through the air
is going to maintain its same position
unless it reaches a turbulent eddy of air.
And so that's why we see it just drifting
in the same exact position.
So my best guess is that it is a specialty Mylar balloon
that happens to be a five-pointed star.
- Our verdict? Mylar balloon.
This sighting may have turned out to be
a simple party favor,
but that doesn't mean the end of our UFO watch.
Scotland, we're not done with you yet.
but that doesn't mean actually traces its roots gal
back 7,000 years to a bocce-like game in Ancient Egypt.
It has been the subject of songs and movies,
but now pinball is the star of a viral video
all because of a physics-defying high score.
It's September 2022 near Austin, Texas.
Local Renaissance Faire fire performer Alton Gass
is celebrating his son's birthday at a pinball arcade
where he's playing some of the classics.
- I came across the Dr. Dude pinball machine
and I decided to give it a whirl.
The worst pinball game I have ever played.
I immediately tank the first two balls.
- [Tony] No need to cue The Who.
This guy's no pinball wizard.
But then Alton's lame game becomes so extraordinary
that he has to memorialize it on film.
- [Alton] I don't know if I should feel bad
or like I've done something fancy.
- [Tony] Check it out.
We can see that a silver pinball
seems to be ricocheting between a wall bumper
and a round bumper over and over again.
The ball shows no sign of slowing down
or changing direction
as the score tallies higher and higher.
- [Tony] Alton surpasses more than a million points
without even trying.
- I was just standing there minding my business
and next thing I knew it was just going and going
and it wouldn't stop.
And I was amazed.
- [Tony] We are too.
But it's just a pinball that got stuck, right?
On the other hand, we've never seen this before.
We've heard all kinds of wild theories
for why this is happening,
from telekinesis to magnets in the bumpers.
But the most intriguing idea is that
this man accidentally stumbled on
one of history's most elusive concepts, perpetual motion.
- [Tony] A perpetual motion machine
is a hypothetical machine
that once in motion stays in motion forever
with no external energy source required.
12th century Indian mathematician Bhaskara II
and 13th century French architect Villard de Honnecourt
were among the first to try to design
perpetual motion machines.
Their idea was to create a wheel
that would never stop moving.
In 1900 renowned inventor Nicola Tesla got in on the action,
proposing a self-acting device
that would turn thermal energy into mechanical movement.
- For hundreds of years,
the perpetual motion machine has been tested in many forms,
including the overbalanced wheel and closed-cycle watermill.
And yet to date, no one has succeeded,
but could we be looking at a situation where
perpetual motion has been proven?
- What really gets me is that these pinball machines
are designed specifically to avoid ball hangups
that prevent the game from moving forward.
But in this case,
the ball kept going until someone bumped the machine.
So how do you think Alton did it?
Let's see if our experts can engage in some game theory.
(somber pulsing music)
Theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku
analyzes if this could be the first successful,
if accidental, perpetual motion machine.
- In a closed system with no energy from the outside,
that would be a perpetual motion machine.
But here, energy comes from the outside.
It is an open system and that energy is from the plug.
You pull the plug and the whole thing shuts down.
- [Tony] The bumper is pushing the ball
because it has an external energy source.
In this case, electricity.
So there's no evidence this pinball is in perpetual motion.
In fact, the closest we've gotten so far
to an actual perpetual motion machine is the Atmos clock,
which is completely powered by atmospheric changes.
But if this hangup would eventually stop on its own,
or at least by pulling the plug,
then how did the ball end up in this strange situation?
- The fact that the pinball came in at
the exact angle that it did
is crucial for this whole thing to work.
In other words, I think it was an accident of engineering.
The engineers who designed this thing
did not realize that there was a sweet spot
where if the ball came in at exactly this angle,
the bumper would then create
this circular motion essentially forever,
as long as energy came in from the outside.
(laughing cheerfully)
- Our verdict? This isn't perpetual motion.
The pinball is accidentally hitting the bumpers
at a particular angle to keep it in play
and a design flaw in the machine
allowed this to happen in the first place.
andseen snow in various forms,ne
flakes, flurries, showers.
But have you ever seen snow in real life
that looks like, well, like this?
Like packing peanuts?
Check this out.
November 2021, we're in Canada again
in the little hamlet of Mirror, Alberta.
Some extreme weather is in the forecast
so Sheryl Martinez, a Philippine native living in Canada,
is getting ready.
As the storm begins, she opens the door to record,
but what she sees isn't anything like what she expected.
Little white pellets are pelting to the ground
like a cascade of vanilla jujubes.
As they build up,
they don't look like your regular snowflakes
or even hailstones.
- It's my first time to see it
and we don't have that in Asia, like a styrofoam rain.
And it's amazing. It's beautiful.
- [Tony] Sheryl says it only lasts a few minutes
and melts right away.
So what's going on?
- It looks like someone actually
just took a shipping box
and dumped all the styrofoam
all over their yard.
It's super strange.
- [Tony] So strange, in fact, that maybe this isn't natural,
but rather manmade snow.
- According to the world meteorological organization,
50 countries around the world practice cloud seeding,
including the United States.
- [Tony] Cloud seeding is a weather manipulation tactic
that involves seeding clouds with particles
that water droplets cluster around
to increase the chances the clouds will produce rain or snow
that falls to the ground.
- In the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the Chinese government
actually claimed to have used cloud seeding
to create rain in the days before the games,
so the weather would actually be clear
during the events themselves.
- [Tony] Another theory posits that
this strange snow comes from alleged chemtrails
sprayed down from the stratosphere.
- The theory goes that the government is using chemtrails
to release all kinds of chemicals
with the goals of decreasing life expectancy,
controlling minds, and controlling the weather.
And that has led some to theorize that
perhaps what we're looking at here are
the remnants of a chemtrail experiment.
- [Tony] Or could it be that
this styrofoam snow is actually styrofoam?
Sounds absurd, right?
Until you learn that it's actually happened.
- In 2015 in New York City,
there was an incident where tiny styrofoam pellets
were blowing all over midtown Manhattan.
They were ending up in people's hair, in their beards,
they were clogging gutters.
According to one theory about that incident,
the styrofoam pellets were coming from
construction on the roof of a hotel.
- Concerned New Yorkers called the mayor's office
and the Department of Environmental Protection
to try to get answers about this suspicious snow.
And while the government never responded,
the nearby Windham New Yorker Hotel denied any involvement.
Back in Canada, we're hoping our experts can clear the air.
(somber pulsing music)
Meteorologist Juan Hernandez
examines if this could be cloud seeding.
- With cloud seeding, we oftentimes see silver iodide
being released into the clouds.
The silver iodide acts as a cloud condensation nucleus
where water droplets attach to the silver iodide,
become heavy and fall to the ground.
It's used to bring rainfall to areas
that don't receive enough rainfall.
In this case, it's cold.
Growing season is unlikely to be ongoing,
therefore we just don't need weather manipulation
in this case.
- [Tony] Hernandez says,
"It's likely not hazardous chemtrail remnants either."
- There is no reason to think that
airplanes are indeed leaving behind chemtrails.
Similar to what you see whenever your car is running outside
and it's cold,
we can see that the same thing is coming out of airplanes.
It's exhaust.
There's water vapor in there
and that's what we see.
Water vapor condensing and there is no residue or no soot
that can be hazardous to any humans
or any living organisms on the ground.
- [Tony] Theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku
explains why these perplexing pellets are not styrofoam.
- Styrofoam is a plastic made out of chemicals like
vinyl benzene and polystyrene.
But it cannot be styrofoam because this object here melts
and therefore we're not seeing plastic
raining down from heaven.
- [Tony] So then what is going on here?
- What we're looking at here is
a type of frozen precipitation.
It's not hail, it's not snow, it's not sleet,
it's graupel.
Graupel forms whenever we have snowflakes
that are coated with water.
That water freezes onto the snowflake,
a process called riming.
If riming is particularly intense,
those precipitation balls or graupel is quite large,
about 2/10 of an inch.
- This riming process fills in the snowflake's star shape
so it becomes a sphere by the time it reaches the ground.
So our verdict?
This is indeed hail's cousin graupel.
It's pretty rare
and it's another quirky phenomenon of science
that makes investigating these videos so much fun.
That's our show for tonight.
If you have any strange videos we should analyze,
please let us know.
And regardless of rain, sleet, or snow,
keep those cameras rolling.
(dramatic upbeat music)