- Tonight, on "The Proof is Out There."
Lasers in the Hawaiian sky.
Is this a secret space weapon?
- These lasers are very sinister.
They're part of a targeting system
that was targeting the state of Hawaii.
- [Tony] A mysterious claw.
Did a sea monster attack a navy ship?
- Really one of the most remarkable things
that has ever happened involving an unknown sea creature
of gigantic proportions.
- [Tony] Does a remarkable photo prove Bigfoot
or his cousin is after your dogs?
- You've heard of Bigfoot,
but have you heard of Gugwe?
- [Misty] That is weird.
- [Tony] And what's that ring of lights
near a historic government lab?
- This area has been a hotspot
for UFO sightings for 70 years.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.
- [Witness] What are those things?
- [Bystander] It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
[noise screeching]
[dramatic music]
- [Female Expert] We don't know where they come from,
who made them, or how they operate.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [Male Expert] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- [Enthusiast] What's exciting is nobody really knows.
- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
[dramatic music]
- 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.
[vehicle crashing]
- 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 music]
Good evening, everyone,
and welcome to "The Proof is Out There."
Since laser beams were first introduced in the 1960s,
they've been put to many good uses,
from lifesaving surgeries
to laser-triggered home alarms.
But this next video will leave you wondering
if lasers are also being used for more sinister purposes,
specifically in the sky.
It's January 2023, on the big island of Hawaii,
atop the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano,
a camera on the Subaru telescope
captures the early morning sky over the Pacific.
The camera is livestreaming
when from out of nowhere a series of green lasers
appears to sweep across the sky from left to right.
[mysterious music]
Take another look. It only lasts for about a second.
And when we freeze it,
we can clearly see the parallel green lines
beam down from above,
then flicker, and disappear as quickly as they came.
Astrophotography expert Andrew McCarthy says
some wonder if these beams of light
could be a directed energy weapon.
- Directed energy weapons use concentrated energy,
like from a laser, instead of projectiles,
to destroy a target.
This technology was first deployed
in 2014 on the USS Ponce.
- [Tony] The Ponce's 30-kilowatt infrared laser beam
is a defensive weapon that can fry sensors,
burn out motors, and detonate explosive materials.
[explosion]
It has demonstrated that it can down a small drone
in less than two seconds.
- Since then, the US has floated the idea
of using space-based DEWs
specifically to prevent missile attacks.
- [Tony] McCarthy adds that technically
the use of such weapons for offensive purposes
can be deemed illegal.
- The Outer Space Treaty in 1967
forbade the use of any weapons of mass destruction,
military bases, or other weapons in space.
However, many speculate the militarization
of space is already underway.
- [Tony] Still, others question if these strange lights
could have a more alien origin.
- What this video reminds me of is a story from 1969
in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
There were 40 eyewitnesses
that claimed to see UFOs in the sky
and that coincided with abduction stories
where people claimed tractor beams,
much like these green laser beams,
were used to abduct them.
[gentle dramatic music]
- The camera that captured this footage
is in a remote location,
giving us a great view of the skies.
So did it livestream something truly out of this world
or something that could alter the course of life
on the planet?
Our experts take a closer look.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
First, could this be something natural,
like the Northern Lights?
- This is a level of uniformity
that suggests this is a technology.
This is not a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Nature doesn't work with that much uniformity.
- [Tony] If this isn't natural,
could these green lights actually
be some sort of alien technology, like tractor beams?
- There's nothing that's characteristic of UFO sightings.
There's nothing I see here
that can't be accounted for by Earth technology.
- [Tony] So could this be a directed energy weapon
capable of shooting at Earth from space?
DEWs are meant to pinpoint a target.
So it's unlikely beams from a weapon
would've moved indiscriminately across the sky like this.
And these lasers didn't seem
to destroy anything in the process,
so astronomer and video effects designer
Marc D'Antonio has his doubts.
- At first glance, you would think
that this could potentially
have some type of military application,
and that's not untrue.
However, in-depth analysis shows
that this is probably a scientific endeavor.
- There was some speculation
that this was related to NASA's ICESat-2 satellite.
However, upon further investigation,
it turns out that the NASA ICESat-2 satellite
actually wasn't in the area at that time.
NASA did try to determine what satellite
may have been in that particular region.
And the satellite that NASA was able to pinpoint
based on trajectory measurements
was the Chinese Daqi-1.
- [Tony] The official purpose of the Daqi-1
is to use the laser-scanning technology, known as lidar,
to measure pollutants.
But security expert Richard Fisher worries
that's not the only data this device is gathering.
- China's space program is entirely dual use.
Everything the Chinese put into space
is designed to produce a military benefit.
The environmental monitoring satellite,
Daqi-1, also measures, very precisely,
the density of the atmosphere over the target,
and this is crucial information for China's latest
hypersonic glide vehicle armed missile.
- Having accurate maps is crucial in a warfare scenario.
So certainly it's not beyond the realm of possibility
that data that's being collected here
could be used in a military setting in the event of a war.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
- Our verdict, these green beams
are pollution-detecting lidar from a Chinese satellite,
though there is a chance these lasers
may also have had a more covert mission.
This unusual pattern was likely visible that day
because it was filmed with a special low-light camera,
and dense atmospheric conditions
caused the beams to expand and scatter.
[gentle dramatic music]
Now let's get deep, like deep underwater.
We've covered many incidents involving strange encounters
between US Navy warships
and unidentified objects in the air.
This story is about a famous encounter
with an unidentified object in the ocean,
and this one allegedly had teeth.
1978 on the Pacific Ocean, the USS Stein,
a US Navy destroyer escort, is conducting routine tests,
when suddenly the radar system
responsible for identifying submarine threats
becomes inoperable.
The Stein heads for land and reaches dry dock
where upon inspection of the sonar dome,
the engineers find this.
This vintage film shows the rubber no-foul coating
of the sonar dome is shredded,
with large tears as big as four feet long.
And what's more,
embedded at the bottom of the scratches are curved claws.
- The USS Stein incident has become
one of the most famous incidents
in the annals of cryptozoology
that have to deal with a possible unknown sea creature.
And, of course, what's really remarkable
is that we have this physical evidence
of whatever it was that damaged
this rubber no-foul coating.
- [Tony] The no-foul coating is specifically designed
to create a smooth nonstick surface
so barnacles and other sea creatures can't stick to it.
- The navy called in their top scientist,
a marine biologist by the name of F.G. Wood,
in order to investigate
and to examine these strange tooth-like
or claw-like structures
that were embedded in the rubber dome
in order to see if they could identify
and equate them to any type of known species.
He concluded that they most resembled the so-called teeth
that lined the suckers of squids.
[water gurgling]
- [Tony] The giant squid,
a terrifying tale amongst seafaring folk,
that was widely considered a myth.
But after corpses started to wash up on ocean shores,
and a Japanese science team
caught one on camera back in 2012,
it proved to be a real-life monster of the deep.
Scientists believe these colossal creatures
could grow up to 66 feet long.
- Giant squid, in addition to their eight tentacles,
they have these two incredibly long predatory arms
with hooks or teeth in its suckers
to grasp and tear prey apart.
Upon examination of these teeth,
F.G. Wood determined that the squid that left them behind
would be somewhere in the neighborhood
of 150 feet in length,
which essentially is about half the height
of the Statue of Liberty.
We know that invertebrates are pretty much unlimited
in terms of growth potential,
particularly in the deep ocean.
- [Tony] But there is another possibility,
very real and very ugly,
the frightful fish once thought to be extinct,
the frilled shark.
- Until recent years, it was safe to conclude
that the frilled shark had gone the way of the megalodon.
- [Tony] This was mainly due to the rarity
of sightings of the deep sea creature.
But new research is showing that this population
is alive and thriving,
and Gerhard says the teeth of these sharks
match the evidence.
- The frilled shark has 25 rows of teeth.
And the fact that we found
so many of these tooth-like structures
embedded in the no-foul dome of the USS Stein
would indicate that a frilled shark is one possibility.
[gentle dramatic music]
- In 2014, two Greenpeace submariners
had their own "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" experience
when a squad of red devil squid attacked their vessel.
So, we know they can get aggressive with
manmade sea craft.
Could a belligerent sea creature be responsible
for what happened to the USS Stein?
We let our experts dig their teeth in.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
Could the damage be from the frilled shark
as Gerhard suggests?
- I don't see the types of tooth marks
that I would expect to see from a frilled shark.
We would see evidence of serrated teeth.
The way that a shark bites
is by grabbing onto something with its mouth,
and then using the serrations in its teeth
to tear through the flesh of that animal or object.
- [Tony] And as for those claw-like fragments
found stuck in the sonar dome.
- This could be the claw of some kind of cephalopod.
It's absolutely possible
that this could have been a giant squid.
Giant squid and sperm whales are known enemies.
I wonder if this wasn't some sort of a giant squid
that thought this sonar device was actually a sperm whale
trying to echolocate and it attacked the boat.
- [Tony] So the giant squid theory is seaworthy.
But remember that by Wood's calculations,
this squid would have to be 150 feet long.
Impossible? Think again.
- The idea that there's a giant squid in our ocean
that is much larger than any other documented specimen
is totally possible.
We've only found a few of these animals
'cause they live in a deep ocean environment.
But when a large animal dies in the deep sea
because there's so much water pressure,
they almost immediately sink
and we probably would never see them.
So imagine how many unique animals
are living and dying in our oceans today
that we've just never encountered,
and this could be one of them.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
- Our verdict, we're going with a potential giant squid.
Our experts back up the navy scientist's original theory.
The damage left on the ship
seems to indicate a giant squid,
but one that would have to be on a monstrous scale
unlike any squid ever seen before.
- We are always talking about Bigfoot
potentially being the missing link between ape and man,
but we never consider if, over the millennia,
Bigfoot itself has evolved into a new subspecies.
Could this next story be proof of such an offshoot?
June 1st, 2005, the Parc des Sept-Chutes in Quebec, Canada.
Louie, a construction truck driver,
was taking photos while on a hike in the park.
When he gets home, he looks at the images he's captured,
when he sees this.
The figure is in the shadows.
But as we crop the image and lighten the area,
it sure looks like this thing has a snout
and is carrying something white.
Amazingly, the creature appears to be
staring at the photographer who doesn't notice it.
Field researcher Cliff Barackman
points out some key features of the creature in this image.
- I like the color of the figure in this photograph.
It turns out if you have a Sasquatch hair
and you backlight it,
they all shine red.
Under the forest canopy,
the sunlight is filtered by the leaves in the foliage above,
and the first wavelengths of light
to disappear are the red wavelengths.
Anything red under the canopy,
like a Sasquatch, would appear black.
- [Tony] And while some suggested
this could be a Bigfoot,
others believe this could be something new altogether.
- Some people in the Bigfoot community look at this picture
and say it's a more baboon-like species
with a more prominent prognathism,
a jutting forward of the jaw.
Maybe it's a new species of Sasquatch.
They've even put the name Gugwe on it,
which is a local term used in this part of the country.
- [Tony] Some say this Gugwe
is a much more ferocious Bigfoot,
and that this white object is actually a dog
about to become its next meal.
Supposedly, the day before the image was taken,
a woman's small dog had gone missing and was never found.
- Sasquatch would shift their diet over to meat eating
for probably most of the winter.
Frankly, if you're making your living out there
eating whatever moves, crawls, or slithers,
you can't be too picky.
[gentle dramatic music]
- Bigfoot made Canadian headlines,
when, in 2018, a believer's lawsuit
claiming that British Columbia failed in its duty
to recognize the legendary creature
was dismissed by the courts.
But now, could this picture prove
there is a large, aggressive apex creature
hunting in the woods in Quebec?
We turned to our experts to find out.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
Biologist Floyd Hayes looks into whether this
could be the misidentification of a Canadian bear.
- The only bear that lives in Quebec is the black bear.
But in this image, we're seeing something
that looks like there's too much white
in the middle of the body and up in the head.
And bears also don't carry an object
in a single arm like that.
The head looks more like a baboon.
- [Tony] A baboon in the Great White North?
- It doesn't make sense for it to be a monkey,
because this is in Canada.
There are no primates in this area.
Monkeys can't survive in the cold.
There's only one species of monkey
that can live in the cold,
and they are the ones that use the hot springs
to help them through the winter.
- [Tony] If it isn't a baboon,
could it be a large primate, like a Bigfoot?
- You cannot clearly make out a primate.
It's really pixelated.
And then, we also don't have other supporting evidence,
like tracks, scat, nests, things like that.
- [Tony] And according to Manka,
even if this were a primate of some kind,
it's highly unlikely that a dog would be its prey.
- Most primates feed on meat sporadically
or opportunistically,
and it makes up less than 1% of the diet
of almost all 89 primate species.
- [Tony] Dr. Manka believes
this could be an example of pareidolia,
people seeing patterns that resemble something familiar
to them and who want to believe that's what it is.
- I can see how people can make out an animal shape,
but it really doesn't have the level of detail
to be seen as a baboon-like animal.
That's really lending a lot to the imagination.
It looks a lot like a dead tree, a tree stump.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
- So our experts think this is just a piece of the forest,
like a tree stump.
And although we're not 100% certain,
we're inclined to agree.
Many in the Bigfoot community remain highly interested
in the possibility of more evidence from this area.
If you, or someone you know
has more images or videos of the Gugwe,
please contact us.
- A ring of strange lights in the sky
is an odd sight in itself,
but when it's seemingly buzzing
and not far from an infamous US government laboratory,
well, you just know we have to investigate.
August 3rd, 2015, just after 10:00 PM, Misty Strevel,
along with her daughter and another passenger,
are driving on a highway in Knoxville, Tennessee,
when Misty's daughter sees a strange sight in the night sky.
- She's like, "Mom, what are those red
and green lights in the sky?"
And, first thought, I'm like, "It's an airplane."
That is weird.
- [Daughter] Dude, it's buzzing. - [Misty] It sure is.
- [Tony] Misty captures a light
floating in a sea of darkness.
But as we zoom in,
something even more interesting can be seen.
It's not just one light, but, in fact, a ring of lights.
- [Misty] You know what the crazy thing?
The lights, on this, it's showing white,
but that's all red and green. - [Daughter] Yeah.
- It was maybe 50 feet above the used car lot sign.
It was just, I've never seen anything like it.
- [Passenger] A UFO, y'all.
- [Daughter] Holy...
- [Passenger] Space people coming to us.
- [Tony] If this is a UFO, writer Amy Teitel says
it wouldn't be the first to be seen
over this part of Eastern Tennessee.
- Knoxville has a really interesting history with UFOs
dating back to the Second World War,
when the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
was founded about half an hour outside the city.
- [Tony] During World War II,
Oak Ridge was cloaked in secrecy.
Its purpose was to enrich uranium
for the Manhattan Project
and Robert Oppenheimer's atomic bomb.
[explosion blasts]
- There were some strange phenomena
that happened in the area
a few years after it was established.
In October of 1950, William Fry,
who is the assistant chief of security at the lab,
saw a bright, glowing light over the movie theater in town.
It flashed red and green before finally disappearing.
10 minutes later,
U.S. Air Force Major Lawrence Ballweg
saw the same thing from his house.
Though both witnesses were extremely credible,
neither of these sightings was ever solved.
[suspenseful music]
- What's even more eerie?
Seven years after Misty's encounter,
a similar ring of lights appeared again in 2022.
So is what Misty saw a real-deal UFO?
Let's see what our experts think.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
We begin with physicist Matthew Szydagis.
Is it possible that taking into account
Oak Ridge's classified past,
this light is a secret craft connected to the base?
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory
is focused on nuclear physics, not aerospace.
Oak Ridge is not Area 51 or Groom Lake.
Moreover, you can't just fly secret craft anywhere.
These craft are going to be tested at specific ranges,
usually in the middle of nowhere.
- [Tony] If it's not secret US government technology,
is it possible these eyewitnesses
were right on target?
- [Passenger] A UFO, y'all. - [Daughter] Holy...
- [Passenger] Space people coming to us.
- Obviously something is flying,
but we don't see the extreme behaviors
that oftentime get attributed to UFOs.
Misty reports to have seen lights that are red and green,
in addition to the white light that we see.
- [Misty] The lights, on this, it's showing white,
but that's all red and green. - [Daughter] Yeah.
- [Tony] That matters,
because the FAA requires navigation lights
to be red on the left wing, green on the right,
and white on the tail.
Seems unlikely aliens would take pains
to comply with FAA regulations.
Still, Hernandez believes this isn't an airplane.
- It was a hot summer day across Knoxville.
The winds overall were calm,
which were excellent for flying drones this specific day.
We hear the noise of the propellers.
Very confident that what we're looking at here is a drone.
- [Tony] But Szydagis says
don't let your eyes and ears fool you.
- I can explain the noise
as simply background noise
of a noisy environment,
and it's impossible to judge the distance
to an object and its speed,
especially at night with no reference points.
An object that is small and close to a camera
will look the same size in the camera lens
as an object that is both larger and far away.
- [Tony] That's why Szydagis actually thinks
this could be a balloon.
- I think this is a very special kind of balloon.
I believe that what we are seeing here
is part of something called the Google Loon Project.
- [Tony] Loon was Google's experiment
to provide internet access
to rural and remote areas across the globe.
The company used high-altitude balloons
about 12 miles up in the stratosphere
to create an aerial wireless network.
It's a plausible theory, but Hernandez disagrees.
- Obviously, we can see this,
but Project Loon balloons are fairly hard to notice
given that they're about 65,000 feet above the surface,
much higher than a commercial jet liner,
and would be moving fairly fast with the jet stream.
We don't see that kind of motion here.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
- Wow, both of our experts make compelling arguments
for two completely different things.
So our verdict, for now, we're going with genuine UFO,
though we certainly can't say it's an alien craft.
- Over the years, we've investigated several recordings
of alleged Bigfoot sounds.
Some have turned out to be amateurish fakes.
We debunked those easily.
But not this one, give it a listen.
It's the night of July 2nd, 2022.
In Loudonville, Ohio,
Bigfoot Field Research Organization Member
Suzanne Ferencak is with friends
watching some early fireworks.
Around 10:00 PM, they hear something strange.
- When there was a quiet time,
all five of us heard some howls.
Immediately, we're quiet and looked at each other,
like, "What was that?"
You know, it was just kind of like,
"Okay, ears up, maybe there's something
to pay attention to."
- [Tony] Later that night,
Suzanne hears the same howls again,
but this time she's recording.
[creature howling]
A quiet howl, increasing in pitch,
is followed by another one.
[creature howling]
- This was at 3:42 AM, I heard these howls,
and they sounded similar to the ones
that we had heard about 10 o'clock that night.
I was excited that I finally got something decent.
At least, you know, I think I did.
[creature howling]
- Suzanne's hometown of Loudonville
is in a rural stretch of Ohio,
located right next to Mohican State Park,
home to thousands of wooden acres.
- Many, many sighting reports come out
of the immediate vicinity near Suzanne's property,
and for several miles in all directions.
There is corn here for much of the year.
And that corn not only gives Sasquatches and other animals
places to hide and a possible food source,
but it brings in the deer,
the key to why Sasquatches might be in this particular area.
- [Tony] That's because Barackman,
and other Sasquatch researchers,
believe the creatures are omnivores,
eating meat, as well as vegetables.
And Barackman vouches for Suzanne herself.
- Suzanne is a friend, I know her.
So we have a recording here
that I don't have to question the motivation of the witness.
So the only question left here is what makes that noise?
[creature howling]
[suspenseful music]
- This recording is the latest in the trove
of Ohio Bigfoot materials we've investigated,
including these famous 1994 Ohio howls,
recorded by Matt Moneymaker.
They didn't match any local animals.
[creature howling]
So Ohio's a hotspot for sure.
Let's see if our experts think this sound
could be the real deal.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
First, forensic audio analyst Rob Maher
authenticates the recording.
[creature howling]
- The background sounds are consistent throughout,
and the unknown sounds are very prominent
in the section of the recording where they're present.
So it seems to be an authentic recording.
- [Tony] So we know it's not a fake.
Could these be the howls of coyotes?
[coyote barking and howling]
Coyotes aren't native to Ohio,
but their population exploded in the early 20th century
when settlers exterminated their main predator,
the gray wolf.
- If we look at a recording of an actual coyote,
they have a very distinctive rising frequency to begin with,
and then continue on more of a sustained pitch.
[coyote howling]
The frequency is a little higher
than what we observed in the Ohio recording.
[coyote howling]
[creature howling]
So although this is similar,
there are some significant differences here.
- [Tony] So if it's not a coyote, could it be Bigfoot?
- To my ear, it's very reminiscent of the whoop
produced by gibbons and siamangs.
[siamang whooping]
They have this inflatable throat sac
that serves as a resonating chamber
for projecting these extremely loud whoops
that carry through the forest.
I have suggested that if Sasquatch nests
within this family of primates,
they may as well possess these extra laryngeal sacs.
- [Tony] Maher goes with the Bigfoot theory,
and decides to test this audio
against the 1971 Sierra Sounds from California,
believed by some to be a genuine Sasquatch.
- The Sierra Sound that's attributed to Bigfoot
has a rising sound and then sort of a whoop.
[creature howls and whoops]
The initial rise we see here
from the 300 or 400 hertz frequency range
is very similar to the Ohio Sound recording.
The last part of the utterance from this recording
that has the whoop at the end
is not present in the Ohio recording.
[creature howls and whoops]
[creature howling]
So although the first part of this is very similar
to what's observed,
the second part is different.
- [Tony] But how about that other famous Ohio howl
we told you about?
[creature howling]
- If we compare the Ohio recording
to the recordings from Matt Moneymaker,
we can see the fundamental frequencies here
are approximately in the same vicinity.
[creature howling]
So the characteristics here
seem to occupy the right frequency range
between this example recording and the Ohio recording.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
- Our verdict, we're going with possible Bigfoot sounds,
but that's as far as we feel comfortable going.
While Suzanne's recordings aren't a close match
with the famous Sierra Sounds,
they do possess many similarities
to Matt Moneymaker's 1994 howls, also recorded in Ohio.
So maybe she finally did capture the call of the big guy.
- Can spirits of the dead contact us from beyond?
One man in Texas says, "Yes."
And he says this next video from his home security camera
is what made him a believer.
November 2020, Cypress, Texas.
It's a quiet night in this community
about 30 miles outside Houston.
But then, an infrared security camera
alerts a slumbering Chip Byas-Ortega
that something unusual is going on outside his house.
- We have several motion-activated cameras
set up around our home.
This night, they started ringing
at about 3:30 in the morning,
and something told me, "Get up and look at this."
- [Tony] Chip checks out the footage and finds this.
At first glance, nothing seems out of the ordinary,
but look again.
On the right side of the video is a small ball of light.
It hovers swirling back and forth.
A smaller secondary orb appears above the main orb
for a split second, and then disappears.
- I am, first of all, blown away
that I have right in front of you on this video,
a dancing, huge orb.
It's unexplainable to me.
- [Tony] Chip believes this may have been an encounter
with the ghost of a loved one who's died.
- My Aunt Clara and I would always talk
about after we pass, I want a sign, do something for me.
Aunt Clara would say, "Oh, you'll know when I'm here."
So, Aunt Clara, hey.
- [Tony] Texas has its own mysterious history
with glowing orbs.
And as journalist Alexis Brooks tells us,
these ethereal balls of light have a name, spirit orbs.
- Spirit orbs are these balls of energy
that are intelligent.
In the 1900s,
there was another case
that plagued East Texas,
known as the Light of Saratoga.
Legend has it that this railman
was in a very, very horrible accident,
was actually decapitated.
And it's believed that the ghost of this brakeman
is actually searching for his decapitated head,
and it's his lantern that looks to be an orb
sort of traveling down the tracks.
[suspenseful music]
- You may remember when we covered
the Marfa Lights from West Texas,
bright orbs that have mystified eyewitnesses.
We weren't able to determine the cause for that light show.
Could this more intimate spirit orb
help explain what's lighting up the Lone Star State?
It's time to conjure our experts.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
We begin with forensic video analyst Michael Primeau
to answer our first question,
is this security camera footage even authentic?
- Through a structural analysis,
we were able to identify the signature
from the Blink camera app.
Through a manual comparison of that structural data
with other known Blink exhibits,
no editing signatures, no third-party signatures, no CGI.
So, yes, this video is real.
- [Tony] If what we're seeing is real,
could the glow of these orbs be from a nearby light source,
like the passing cars?
- When headlights appear, the orbs are still there.
When the headlights disappear, the orbs are still there.
They're also not in alignment with those headlights.
So it doesn't appear to be headlights.
- [Tony] Perhaps our lights aren't emitting
from an artificial source.
But what about a natural one, like fireflies?
- Fireflies that you see in some areas of the country,
flash, but they flash by flashing on and off.
They don't really flash in the way
that this appears to be flashing.
- [Tony] How about a moth?
- Typically you would see the wings moving if it was a moth.
I don't see any wings flapping here.
I think this is something we actually fairly often
on security camera footage, which is a spiderweb.
- [Tony] A thread of spiderweb
can be just three thousandths of a millimeter across,
that's thinner than a strand of human hair.
That's why we don't see the web,
just a byproduct left behind.
- If there's a spot on the strand,
which sometimes is a spot of the spider's glue,
that will reflect the light from the infrared camera.
- [Tony] Spider glue is a substance in the spider's glands
that makes the lines of the web sticky
by absorbing water from the atmosphere.
West says this orb isn't yards away from the camera,
merely inches.
- Here's the camera, here's the spider silk,
just like one or two inches in front of it.
So it's just kind of drifting around,
and it just gradually moves across the scene,
and then back again.
- [Tony] And take a look at another security cam video.
Here we see a spider actually weaving a web,
and leaving the same type of orbs behind.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
Our verdict, spiderweb.
Much as nature intended,
this near-invisible silk
has us caught in its phantom thread.
But we certainly hope the spirit of Aunt Clara
stays with Chip forever.
But we certainly hope thbeginning of flight,ra- e
we think of the Wright Brothers' success
with their twin-propeller plane
in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.
But five years earlier,
there was a discovery in North Africa
that has experts asking if the first flying machine
was invented thousands of years earlier.
Saqqara, Egypt, 1898, in a vast burial site
near the country's oldest step pyramid,
archaeologists make a unique and confounding find.
This 2,200-year-old carving
that looks like a model airplane
is known as the Saqqara Bird.
- The Saqqara Bird is a small figurine
that was excavated from the tomb of Pa-di-Imen.
It's about 5 1/2 inches long
with a wingspan almost over seven inches,
weighs in at about 1 1/2 ounces,
and it's made of sycamore and maple wood.
- [Tony] Most experts think it's a model of a bird.
And for years it was kept with other ancient bird art
in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
But when it was rediscovered in 1969
by Egyptologist Khalil Messiha in a box of old exhibits,
a new more radical theory emerged.
- All the characteristics of this model are more intrinsic
to a modern-day airplane than that of a bird.
Its aerodynamic precision, and shape of the wing,
and fuselage all seem to have similarities
to modern engineering.
- [Tony] Messiha also noted
that typical ancient Egyptian bird models
have their wings folded back,
and also have legs and painted feathers,
but the Saqqara Bird does not.
This led him to believe
that this was a scale model of a glider,
albeit, one that was lacking a key component.
- There seems to be a missing 90-degree tail
that has yet to be discovered.
And you can see that there's a notch
that may have contained that at some point.
Some researchers looked at the rear end of this craft
and said without that missing tail fin,
this wouldn't have the aerodynamics
to have capable flight.
- [Tony] Yet, Messiha claimed the back of the glider
could serve as a rudder to keep it going straight.
Still, how could the people of Egypt
have such advanced aeronautics
more than two millennia before the first plane?
Is it possible they learned it from extraterrestrials?
Well, British astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth
believed the Egyptians used the Great Pyramid of Cheops
as an astronomical observatory,
and there's evidence they charted
what they saw in the skies on their tombs.
So did the ancient Egyptians gain more knowledge
from their observations than we'll ever know?
- This is one of the many reasons
why the Saqqara Bird could be so controversial.
[dramatic music]
- The Egyptian Ministry of Culture
created an entire committee
to investigate Messiha's findings,
and agreed the Saqqara Bird does display
advanced principles of aircraft design.
So is the Saqqara Bird proof
of an ancient Egyptian technology lost to time
like its advanced pyramid building skills?
Let's see if our experts
can shake a tail feather on this one.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
So the big question here is can this thing really fly?
Aerodynamics expert Simon Sanderson
has long been fascinated by the Saqqara Bird.
In 2006, he built a replica five times larger
than the original carving to test its flight worthiness.
- I just made it in a combination
of balsa wood for the wings,
and polystyrene for the fuselage and tail.
The main thing we wanted to do
was to measure the aerodynamic properties.
So, we took them to the
Manchester University Wind Tunnel.
In the wind tunnel,
it showed that it had perfectly okay
aerodynamic characteristics,
not optimum but usable.
- [Tony] Sanderson continued his research
at Liverpool University,
where he programmed the bird's specifications
into a flight simulator and added a tailplane.
The simulation showed the design could have achieved flight,
but likely not for long given its glide angle,
the angle at which the flight path
intersects with the ground.
- [Simon] The properties are such
that the glide angle might not be very good.
But I would say, if anything,
it was something that was being used to explore flight.
- [Tony] So we might see this object
as a sort of paper airplane or cardboard glider,
toys we all put together when we were children.
And anthropologist Kathy Strain wonders,
if that's all this is.
- I would expect that if Egyptians understood
how to create flight,
that we would see hieroglyphs that depicted them flying,
and yet we don't have anything like that.
This, to me, is just something
that the person loved when they were a child,
and they buried it with them
for him to have it on the other side.
It's just simply a toy.
- [Tony] Archaeologist Dr. Ed Barnhart tends to agree.
- It is absolutely clear that the Egyptians had a love
for creating art depicting animals,
especially birds of prey.
Sometimes a bird is just a bird.
[suspenseful music] [letters clicking]
- Our verdict, this is likely a carved-bird toy
or ritual object.
Since it's unique, there's still a chance
it was an aircraft model,
but its poor aerodynamic characteristics
mean a full-size version
likely wouldn't have been able to glide for very long,
especially without a tail.
And that's our show for tonight.
Thank you so much for watching!
And, as always, keep those cameras rolling.
[gentle dramatic music]