- Tonight on "The Proof is Out There",
hikers come across bones in the woods all the time,
but nobody's ever seen this.
- Obviously, one theory about this thing
is that it is not of this world.
- [Tony] Caught on camera is a famed boogeyman on the hunt
in a Filipino village.
- [Cliff Barackman] After night falls, they shapeshift.
- [Tony] We investigate one of the most famous photos
of a mass UFO encounter ever.
- Almost 30 people saw this strange object in the sky.
- [Tony] And a giant wolf on the loose.
- There have long been legends
of monstrous, blood thirsty wolves.
- Could this prehistoric monster
still be on the hunt today?
(tense music)
Around the globe are videos.
- [Onlooker] What the heck is this?
- [Onlooker] It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(mechanical screeching)
(tense music)
- [Onlooker] Is it some kind of unidentified object?
What's exciting is nobody really knows.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [Onlooker] 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 was clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
(dramatic music)
- Good evening and welcome to "The Proof is Out There".
Usually on the show, when we talk about UFOs,
we're talking about unidentified flying objects.
Tonight, our first story is about another kind of UFO,
unidentified floating objects,
that have been appearing across Europe
for the past several years.
It's not just a phenomenon, it's a mystery
and it's tied to a single unpronounceable
word, "Tjipetir."
I'm pretty sure I said that wrong, but just watch.
France, November, 2012.
Louise Mamet is taking a stroll on a Brittany Beach
when the North Atlantic presents her with a bizarre gift.
It's not a message in a bottle, it's a message on a tablet.
- [Tony] It's a rubbery block
that could almost be mistaken for a baseball base
if it weren't for those perfect rectilinear letters
spelling a word that Louise
has never seen or heard before, "Tjipetir".
Now it gets stranger, because nearly 100 of these blocks
have popped up all over Europe,
including the UK, Netherlands and even Denmark.
What's going on?
Jose De Core found one of several
that washed up on the coast of Spain.
- [Tony] So where are all these blocks coming from?
Journalist Erin McCarthy has some theories.
- When I think about mysterious incidents
that involve a single word,
I often think of the Roanoke colony.
1587, the same year they set up that colony,
Their governor goes back to England
and by the time he gets back,
all of the citizens have disappeared and all that is left
is a single word carved into the defensive wall, "Croatoan."
- Croatoan was actually the name of a nearby island,
so some speculate the carving was a mysterious clue
to indicate a migration there, but no one was ever found.
Are these floating bricks another ominous message
from someone trying to tell us something?
Strange things have washed up on beaches before.
In the 1980s, Garfield telephones
were found along the coast of France.
So one theory is these blocks
are actually long lost cargo from a shipwreck,
but any theory has to take account of
that word, "Tjipetir."
It's not in our language, but it is in our alphabet
and what to make of that rubbery substance?
Let's ask our experts.
(soft music)
After examining the mysterious blocks,
physicists Matthew Szydagis
thinks he can identify that substance.
- These blocks are made of a type of rubber, actually,
known as gutta-percha.
It's from the gum of a tree in Indonesia.
In the early 20th century,
gutta-percha was used
as cable sheathing for telegraph wires.
So this could explain how it got from Indonesia to Europe
because it was actually a commercial product
decades ago from a plantation in Indonesia.
- [Tony] A plantation called Tjipetir.
It was located here
and since it was shipping the sheathing around the world,
the tablets may have come off a sunken ship.
- The density of gutta-percha
is about 0.3 grams per cubic centimeter.
The density of water is about one gram per cubic centimeter,
and so what that means is these blocks
can easily bob to the surface from a sunken wreck.
- [Tony] And there's a twist.
Gutta-percha was used as an insulator until about 1940
when synthetic materials began to replace it.
So if these blocks came from a sunken wreck,
when did it go down
and why did it take decades for them to wash up on shore?
Marine biologist Shea Conger looks for answers.
- It was hypothesized
that these could have been from the Titanic
which was shipwrecked in the North Atlantic.
The Titanic's manifest showed
that it did carry gutta-percha during its maiden voyage.
However, where the Titanic went under
was a far cry from where these blocks washed up.
- [Tony] And Conger notes the Atlantic's ocean currents
would likely move the blocks elsewhere,
so that theory's sunk.
But research shows these blocks
may actually originate from a lesser known ship
dating back to World War I.
- The Miyazaki Maru was a freighter
that was actually sunk by German U-boats
off the coast of Scillies,
which is an archipelago of Cornwall.
- [Tony] That ship was carrying gutta-percha,
and another thing, there's been a salvage operation
going on at the site of its wreck in recent years.
The operation could have pierced the hull
and dislodged the blocks from the ship,
and that would explain why, after decades,
the blocks have only recently
been washing up on coastlines around Europe.
- The location where the Miyazaki Maru
was actually shipwrecked
is right at the branch of the North Atlantic current,
so it makes sense that these would wash up
on a lot of different beaches.
- [Tony] Meteorologist Juan Hernandez agrees
the currents are capable
of delivering this word on a tablet.
- In the ocean there's shallow currents and deep currents
which contribute to the more widespread
transport of water across the world.
So obviously, there is a source
that these Tjipetir blocks are coming from,
although there is no exact pinpoint as to where.
It's quite possible that
they might make it around the world,
might show up along the American coastline as well.
- Our verdict is pretty clear.
The blocks are gutta-percha
from the Tjipetir plantation in Indonesia.
The wreck of the Miyazaki Maru is a good theory,
but there were many ships carrying such
cargo 100 years ago and more than one of them sank,
so we still can't say for sure how the blocks got to Europe.
The story may actually seem like an environmental disaster,
but the good news is that gutta-percha
is a natural product and unlike plastic,
it does degrade over time.
And now another wild story out of Asia.
Further north along the Pacific Rim,
the Philippines is a country rich in history and legend,
but by far its most famous and feared local creature
is an evil shapeshifter known as the Aswang.
Tales of the beast go back 500 years at least,
but sightings still happen.
Two of them occurred just last year
and fortunately for us, they were caught on camera.
Pavia Iloilo, Philippines.
A CCTV security camera
rolls on a warm July evening in 2021.
The camera captures a dimly lit street
where a woman later identified in the news as Mary Lou
sits in front of her home cleaning dishes.
Unbeknownst to Mary Lou,
a stranger approaches from behind,
then quickly and as quietly as she arrives,
the woman continues down the street, reaches a tree,
then she seemingly folds over, dropping to the ground.
The woman begins to crawl on all fours
back towards Mary Lou.
Terrified, Mary Lou stands up
and threatens to throw a bucket of water at her.
The woman turns and runs away.
Watch again.
This moment.
Some people say she doesn't just bend over, but transforms.
A week later, another alleged sighting in the same village
captured on a second CCTV camera.
This time the person or creature
switches between crawling and hopping.
As we push in, we see a woman exiting her home,
then jumping back in shock.
- It doesn't look like an earthly sort of creature.
The legs are are bent in weird directions
and there's this long neck right there.
- [Tony] Field researcher Cliff Barackman
says the sightings made local news,
with some believing the video
captured a famed Filipino creature known as the Aswang.
- One of the many stories about Aswangs
is that during the day, they're just like people.
They're people in your village that you may even know.
But after night falls, they shapeshift
and they have this proboscis tongue for lapping up blood,
they go down on all fours and change their shape
and turns their legs around in weird positions.
Aswangs are said to be responsible
for miscarriages in the community
or really anything bad,
like a child dies of some disease.
It's kind of the catchall boogeyman.
If you want your kids to behave,
it's like don't go out there, Aswangs are out there.
- The Aswang are believed to take the forms
of vampires, weardogs and witches.
It's said they can be warded off by salt, ash or urine
depending on whom you ask.
Is this mythical creature what we're seeing here?
We'll need to ask our experts.
(soft music)
Biology professor Floyd Hayes applies
what's known as kinematics to the second video,
the study of animal locomotion.
- This creature appears to be quite flexible
in its mode of locomotion.
It appears to be hopping and transitioning
between being quadrupedal and bipedal,
unlike what's been reported for the Aswang.
- [Tony] Next, he turns to the creature's anatomy.
- In my opinion, the body proportions
are very similar to a human.
The hind limbs appear to be much longer than the fore limbs
and the feet are pointing forward.
- [Tony] When we line up these proportions
with that of a human, that certainly looks like a match,
as for the head.
- The head is rather obscure in the image,
but it looks as though it actually removes a hat
as it exits the video.
- [Tony] Anthropologist Kathy Strain believes
some legends are legitimate sightings of real creatures,
but she's skeptical of this particular clip.
- This could be a hoax
because as the creature comes to this tree,
it pops up and it looks over to see
if this person is coming out of their door.
That is more human like
because they wanna make sure they're seen.
- [Tony] If it's a fake,
Strain thinks it might be serving a higher purpose.
- Folklore has a place in society
to teach certain skill sets or certain beliefs.
- [Tony] Mythology across all cultures
serves to reinforce cultural norms,
such as the imperative for children to
stay inside at night.
- They get them home on time,
to be generally afraid of strangers.
- [Tony] And indeed, we tracked down the guy
who made the second video
and he admitted he staged the stunt
after being inspired by the first Mary Lou video.
Not for fun, but to help with covid quarantine compliance
during the pandemic.
- After I saw that video,
I was thinking that it might be
a inspiration for me to do the hoax
and so I did the video for the community purposes,
just to force the children to stay inside of their home
because it was in the midst of pandemic.
This is actually the mask that I wear on that time.
- [Tony] So that may explain the second video,
but what about the first one that inspired it?
Is it possible that an actual Aswang
is responsible for terrifying Mary Lou in the alley?
- When this lady comes back towards her
and gets down on all fours,
she's behaving like a typical Aswang
according to Filipino folklore.
She's now gone into a different state
where she's no longer human
and her trying to get closer to her without being seen
indicates to me that she meant that lady harm.
But you don't have a clear view of what she looked like
once she was totally down on the ground.
It's kind of dark, she's behind a fence.
I'm willing to say that
I don't really know what happened there.
- So we have a split decision.
We know the second clip is a hoax,
but we can't say that for certain about the first.
Aswangs are traditionally women
and while we don't know this woman's
intent or state of mind, we do know she was crawling
and Mary Lou was genuinely frightened.
We'll stay on the lookout for any future Aswang sightings.
- Canada has a long UFO history
and its government keeps a public record of sightings.
In 2020, the number was 1,243,
a notable uptick from the previous year,
continuing a trend that goes back decades.
But of all those sightings over all those years,
there may be none as famous as this.
November 7th, 1990.
It's just after 7:00 PM in downtown Montreal, Canada.
A guest is enjoying an evening swim in the rooftop pool
at the Bonaventure Hotel,
when suddenly she looks up into the sky and sees this.
Look closely.
Four strange glowing green lights
seem to point outward from the center like spokes,
while two bright yellow lights
can clearly be seen in the center of the object.
The woman notifies management
and soon a group of people, including the police,
come to the hotel rooftop.
As the crowd gathers, initial estimates among witnesses
placed the lights at at least 1000 feet above the hotel.
Journalist MJ Banias explains why this event is famous
not only in Canadian history, but UFO lore.
- The Bonaventure UFO incident was very unique
because almost 30 people saw this strange object in the sky
hovering above this hotel,
and more bizarrely, this hovers above this hotel
for two or three hours
and you would assume people in the city would see it,
but the only people who were able to see this
were the people on the roof of the hotel
or on the sidewalk just outside it when they looked up.
- [Tony] Additionally, no aircraft was identified
in that location by military or commercial radar.
So what happened and why this specific hotel?
- Two UFO researchers were able to comprise a report
quite quickly after the encounter
and they were able to collect significant witness testimony.
- [Tony] The witnesses all described to investigators
a craft that matches what's seen in the photograph,
but most intriguing is after the craft disappears,
one witness later that night sees a boomerang shaped object
hovering over the Hydro-Quebec Long Point power station.
Is it the same craft that hovered over the hotel?
- This story has everything
and when you get a whole bunch of people
telling the same story,
it's gonna automatically draw a lot of attention.
- Montreal's Hotel Bonaventure
is nestled on the top two floors
of the sprawling 17 story plus Bonaventure.
When it first opened in 1967,
it was the world's largest commercial building
at 3.1 million square feet,
more than the Empire State Building.
So perhaps the reason the alleged UFO in 1990
selected the Hotel Bonaventure was it size,
but is it even a UFO?
We asked our experts to take a look.
(tense music)
We start with aviation expert Tim McMillan.
- Basing it on the image here,
possibly a helicopter that has a search light
or some type of bright lights attached to it,
but you would be able to see the warning lights
that are on helicopters.
Also, you can hear helicopters from miles away.
They're loud, especially one
that is hovering for three hours.
That's a long time.
But none of the eyewitnesses mentioned hearing a helicopter,
so we could be looking at a drone,
but this photograph was taken in 1990.
The military level drone technology
was still in its infancy
and frankly, if we were looking at
military testing drone technology,
you don't do that over civilian populated areas.
- [Tony] In fact, McMillan believes
if it's a flying machine, it's not one we know of.
- We're able to rule out fixed wing planes
because they can't hover.
I don't know of any good aerospace platform
that would be able to fit
both what we're seeing in the picture
and what eyewitnesses said.
- [Tony] Is it possible location plays a factor?
Meteorologist Juan Hernandez knows that Canada
is well known for one of the most
spectacular natural phenomena on earth.
- My initial thought was could it be the Aurora Borealis?
But Aurora Borealises often move
and are quiet transient.
In this case, the report was stationary light
that lasted for several hours.
- [Tony] But the hazy nature of the photo
does lead Hernandez to investigate
if Mother Nature could still be playing a role.
- I was able to track down
the weather observations from that day.
We do have temperatures that were actually
about 30 to 34 degrees while this was occurring,
but the relative humidity itself
was somewhat on the high side.
So whenever you have something like this,
you oftentimes develop either
some sort of fog or low clouds.
- [Tony] For astronomer
and video effects designer, Marc D'Antonio,
that may be the key to solving this mystery.
- I believe that we're seeing
a reflection back from the clouds, the fog,
that look like something else.
You've seen this every time you go out in your car
and you drive along on a foggy night.
So these lights could have been lights from the pool
and from some other lighting around the Bonaventure Hotel
reflecting up into the sky and then down to the pool again.
- [Tony] It's a plausible theory,
but if it was the reflected pool light,
wouldn't the guests and police there that night
have put two and two together?
Plus consider this.
It's been 30 years.
There have been many foggy nights in Montreal in that time,
and if it's a reflection,
it's one that's never been seen again.
- Whenever you're trying to form
a really good investigation,
you're testing different hypotheses,
but I'm inclined to believe that multiple,
potentially up to 80 witnesses,
someone would've been able to determine
if it was a light being reflected, categorically,
based on the image and what the eyewitnesses said,
it is a UFO.
- Our verdict?
We're going with genuine UFO.
As McMillan says, while there are plausible theories,
in our view, we still don't have a smoking gun.
The Hotel Bonaventure incident is still considered
one of the most famous UFO sightings in Canada,
so much so that in 2020,
it was depicted on a $20 silver glow in the dark coin.
Giant menacing canines
have been featured in literature for ages.
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
about a murder supposedly committed by a huge dog.
Stephen King's "Cujo" centers on a rabid St. Bernard,
all works of fiction or so we thought.
Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
Maybe you should be.
September, 2018, Saskatchewan, Canada.
A local fishing guide is going about
a normal day in his lodge
when he spies something strange out his window.
Something dark and hairy
is huddled on the ground amongst the trees.
At first it looks like a small bear
and then it stands and nearly triples in height.
It's a huge wolf and we only understand its scale
when it lunges at the regular size dog
who's defensively barking.
The animals quarrel until the man goes to intervene.
- [Fishing Guide] Hey, hey!
- [Tony] Let's see that again.
(dog barking)
- This large shape suddenly becomes animated
and springs up and charges at the dog
and much to my shock and horror,
it appears to be a wolf of mind boggling proportions.
It's truly monstrous.
- Field researcher Ken Gerhard tells us
of the giant wolf's prominent stature in folklore.
- There have long been legends
of monstrous, blood thirsty wolves.
In France, we have the Beast of Gévaudan.
In Alaska, there's something known
as the Amarok or demon wolf.
And nearby in the Nahanni Valley of Canada,
we have something known as the Waheela.
The Nahani Valley is also known as the Headless Valley
because the decapitated bodies of prospectors and trappers
have been found there and have been linked to the legend
of this giant wolf-like Waheela.
So we have these long enduring traditions of giant wolves
and we have to wonder if there might be
a grain of truth to this legend.
- [Tony] Some have speculated that this wolf
might be more familiar than we think,
a creature not from the realm of legend,
but from our own pre-history.
- The largest gray wolves, canis lupus,
have been known to achieve weights about about 200 pounds.
But if we go back over 10,000 years ago
to the Pleistocene epoch,
there were these monstrous bone-crushing wolves
known as dire wolves, canis dirus.
A relic population of dire wolves may have survived
as recently as 4,000 years ago in Arkansas's Ozarks.
We could be dealing with a dire wolf genetic code
that's been locked into modern wolves
and is now resurfacing in this remarkable individual.
- An interesting note about that French Beast of Gévaudan.
Though that monster wolf lived on and kept killing
after being driven off by a young boy,
that kid was rewarded for his bravery.
King Louis XV paid for his education.
Now let's get the educated opinion on this specimen.
(tense music)
Could there be something off about this wolf's genetics,
some sort of mutation?
There is a phenomenon called an atavism,
where a creature has traits from its ancestors
preserved in its genes.
However, it's unlikely in this case
as atavisms aren't likely to manifest
in the form of a canine's size.
An extra toe is more likely.
Then what's going on here?
Wildlife biologist Stephanie Schuttler isn't crying wolf.
She's crying hoax.
- To me it it didn't look like the dog was in danger.
That was really suspicious.
So that's what makes me think that it was a CGI.
- [Tony] When someone suspects a fake,
we call in Michael Primeau, our forensic video analyst.
- It's my conclusion that there is no additional information
that was introduced into these recordings
that would be similar to something
that was CGI'd or manufactured.
- [Tony] With the clip appearing to be legitimate,
biologist Floyd Hayes discusses
the creature's resemblance to the dire wolf.
- The dire wolf is a little bit larger than a wolf
with a larger head and smaller feet.
- [Tony] What's more, the dire wolf
had shorter, stockier legs to keep them warmer
during the cold winter months.
The wolf we see here is proportioned much more similarly
to our modern day canine.
So with all other possibilities unlikely,
Hayes says it's just a gray wolf, but there's a surprise.
He did a size calculation and found this specimen
to be one of the largest wolves ever documented.
Hayes says the dog looks like a type of husky
which tend to grow a little over two feet tall
and around 60 pounds,
and the wolf looks about
one and a half times larger than the dog here.
Hayes guesses this wolf is about three feet tall
and 6.5 feet from end to end.
That's longer than most men are tall.
And what's more, it's nearly a record.
Compared to the largest wolf ever recorded,
Hayes thinks this is only half an inch shorter.
So this wolf is truly a gargantuan.
Incredible.
(tense music)
Our verdict, an actual wolf
who just happens to be quite large for his species.
This is not a supernatural creature, but he is an outlier.
How he got that big is still a mystery,
but we know he's a loner who probably branched off
to form his own pack.
Coming uWe all wonr if there is othife
- We all wonder if there is other life
out there in the universe.
In fact, many believe aliens
have been observing our planet for thousands of years,
citing everything from the pyramids in Egypt
to the Nazca Lines in Peru as evidence of contact.
Now a strange discovery in a recent NASA photo
has some saying these visitors
haven't just been observing Earth.
Check out what we found on our nextdoor neighbor, Mars.
In March, 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
begins its mission of studying the atmosphere
and terrain of the Red Planet.
Since then, the orbiter has taken
almost seven million pictures of the Martian surface,
but it wasn't until 2021 that somebody noticed this.
It's a pair of long parallel lines with indentations
that lead to what appears to be a half buried disc,
and take a closer look.
See that perfectly shaped crescent edge?
George Haas, director of the Cydonia Institute,
explains what the buzz is all about.
- A South African researcher says
he found what appeared to be the remains of a UFO crash.
The object that he was looking at
was between 12 and 15 meters in diameter
and it could be the remains of a flying disc
that had crashed on the Red Planet.
- [Tony] If it was a flying saucer,
did it come from Mars or somewhere else in the galaxy?
And if so, was it observing Mars
because there was a civilization there?
Haas says many believe ancient civilizations,
including one called the Cydonians,
once thrived on the Red Planet.
- [George Haas] There's been lots of evidence
that there are pyramidal structures
and all types of mound formations on the planet
that do not look normal.
One formation in particular,
the famous Parratopia parrot that was taken by NASA
has over 22 points of anatomical correctness,
which goes way beyond any natural formation.
- [Tony] But Haas believes the Cydonians
vanished from Mars millions of years ago
after war that led to nuclear armageddon.
So who could this ship belong to?
- For people that believe this UFO crash on Mars
is a natural UFO, it may be connected
to the Grays that visit our planet.
They've been visiting our planet for millennia
and possibly visiting Mars also.
Some believe that the Gray aliens crashed at Roswell
and they may have also lost control
of one of their vehicles on Mars.
- Now we know people have been seeing
alleged signs of civilization on Mars
ever since this famous face was discovered
in a 1976 photograph taken by Viking 1.
Most of these images, including the face,
were revealed to be natural geological formations
once higher resolution images became available.
But what about this?
I mean, that clean, circular edge is pretty clear.
Couldn't that really be the back edge of a flying saucer?
Look at the outer edge.
This would be the crash path right here
and it sure doesn't look natural.
Let's find out what our experts think.
(tense music)
We start with astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy.
For billions of years, our solar system
has been bombarded with objects.
Could this be a meteor that streaked from out of the sky?
- Take a look at the moon.
On the surface of the moon,
there's a cradle called Messier A,
and what that is is a shallow meteor impact
that came in at a very shallow angle
and carved out elliptical shaped craters.
This is how a normal asteroid crash would look
that comes in at a shallow angle.
However, on this specific trail leading up to the object,
you don't see much of that.
This object itself is still intact.
- [Tony] So then how can we explain
the smooth crescent shape of the disc?
- There is speculation that it could potentially be
the heat shield off of a probe
that got ejected into the Martian surface.
- [Tony] Since 1960, there have been around 50 attempts
to send probes directly to Mars,
but only about half have been successful.
Is this disc the remnant of a failure?
- If you look at the trench this object crashed down,
it looks pretty wide and deep.
To me that rules out any kind of heat shield crash
because the heat shield from a probe
wouldn't necessarily have enough energy
to carve out such a trench.
- [Tony] So if it's not manmade,
could we be looking at the remains of an alien spaceship?
For that answer, we turn to NASA geologist Bob Anderson.
Anderson says the location of the formation
is an important clue to solving the mystery.
- This area is called Candor Chasm,
which is parallel to the Valles Marineris.
Valles Marineris is the Grand Canyon of Mars.
It's a huge rift, a crack that's seven miles down
and would go to distance of Los Angeles to New York.
Valles Marineris is covered by volcanic planes,
a combination of sedimentary layers and volcanic lava flows.
These long streaks that you see
going across the surface here,
those are common all over Mars.
- [Tony] What looks like the trail of a crashed UFO
is actually an ancient geologic crack
in the surface of Mars.
But if it's a natural crack,
how did the object at the end of the trail
get the perfect curve of a spaceship?
- If you look really closely,
you can see this one just happens to be
perfectly arcuate here,
most likely because the winds are coming over
and then they're falling into the crack.
And the only thing that's given everybody the idea
that it's a spaceship is those dunes
that are around the front
to make it look like there's a circular disc.
- [Tony] But McCarthy isn't convinced.
- To me this object doesn't seem to have
gotten here through natural processes.
Its shape and the way it seemed to settle into the landscape
is completely different than any other object
we've seen on the Martian surface.
But as to what this object is, I can only speculate.
(tense music)
- So it seems we have another split decision here.
While Dr. Anderson's theory checks all the boxes,
McCarthy's point that finding a naturally perfect curve
does seem too good to be true.
Our verdict, for now, until we can get a closer look
and confirm what's there,
we're gonna go with unexplained phenomenon
and if it is a crashed UFO,
we'll be the first to let you know.
- What goes up must come down.
It's a law of physics that seems immutable,
but what if under special circumstances,
this basic rule of the universe might bend or even break?
It's January, 2019 in the skies is over Czestochowa, Poland.
Pilot Lukasz Czepiela is building up a thirst
as he puts his stunt plane through its paces
in a series of acrobatic maneuvers
and then he does something
you've never seen before at an airshow.
As Lukasz goes into a barrel roll,
he picks up a can of energy drink
and begins pouring it into a stationary cup.
(exciting rock music)
He then places the can down and picks up the glass
to take a sip without spilling a drop.
(exciting rock music)
- This video is wild.
Look at him, he's just drinking his drink, living his life,
flying upside down in a plane.
- [Tony] Since it's hard enough pouring a glass
right side up on a commercial flight,
folks on the internet offered a wild explanation.
- Some have theorized that what's actually happening here
is that he's flying through an area
that has a gravitational anomaly of some kind.
- [Tony] Back in December, 1945,
five torpedo bombers known as Flight 19
vanished near the Bermuda Triangle
after the flight commander
reported his compass going haywire.
Perhaps gravitational fluctuations were at play
since we know that gravity
is not the same everywhere on earth or in the atmosphere.
But hang on a second.
We live in the age of deep fakes
and we've already debunked videos
like this commercial jet barrel roll.
Could this all be an elaborate hoax
or is this gravity acting in a brand new way?
Let's consult our experts.
(soft music)
Forensic video analyst Michael Primeau
examines the metadata to check
if there are any computer generated graphics involved.
- So the major light source
through the physical aspects of the scene analysis,
looking at shadow information,
looking at reflections as the user is moving around
in the shield of the cockpit,
are all indications that this was not CGI.
- [Tony] So if the video isn't faked,
is there something atypical about the design of the plane?
Aviation expert Tim McMillan
takes a closer look at the aircraft
to determine its capabilities.
- This plane, I would say is very likely
a Zivko Edge 540,
which is purpose built aerobatic aircraft.
The design is very similar to World War II planes
like the P51 Mustang.
When pilots engaged in dog fights,
they had to do a lot of aerobatic maneuvers.
Same principle.
The plane itself is not designed
to let you pour a drink upside down.
That's a whole other side of physics.
- [Tony] Then could this be some sort of anomaly
causing the laws of gravity to malfunction?
Theoretical physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku
confirmed that gravity is different around the world,
especially at the equator,
where it's grounding forces are weaker
due to the centrifugal forces
produced by the Earth's rotation.
- We know that the earth is a ball and it spins like this.
If you're sitting on the North Pole,
then for the most part, your radial velocity is zero.
If you're on the equator,
the earth is 8,000 miles in diameter,
so you're going around about 1000 miles an hour.
Gravity is gonna be slightly less as a consequence.
- [Tony] This gravitational variation
also means that you weigh five tenths of a percent more
at the pole than at the equator.
- But that's a very tiny effect,
too small to explain the fact that he can do a barrel roll
and have the liquid stay inside that cup.
So how does this work?
Let's say I get a pail of water on a string and I twirl it.
The centrifugal forest pushes the string out
and the water stays inside the bucket.
It doesn't fall out at all.
- [Tony] Kaku says that's because
though both the water and the bucket
are being pulled downward by gravity,
the force at the string redirects them
in a circular path,
keeping the water inside the bucket.
It's a similar effect in the plane
where the speed of the circular motion
counteracts the downward effects of gravity.
- This means that he's attained one G of centrifugal force.
That equals the G on the surface of the earth.
He is rotating fast enough,
32 feet per second squared,
to create artificial gravity inside that cockpit,
and that's why the liquid doesn't fall out of the cup.
- Our verdict, centrifugal force
created by this rapid rotation.
There's no need to fake this trick
because this fascinating property of physics
is all that's needed to create zero gravity
and prevent the drink from spilling.
It is not uncommon to find remains
of deceased animals on a walk in the woods.
What's weird is when those remains
don't look like anything we remember from biology class.
It's January 17th, 2019.
Art student, Kohei Kadowaki
says he is hiking through the dense woods
near his home in Chichibu City, Japan
when he comes upon a figure that is totally alien to him.
The footage and photos show what looks like
the skeletal remains of some creature, but what?
As we zoom in for a closer look,
we can see it has strange, long, twisted talons.
Its spine is severely bent
with a bone structure that looks almost birdlike,
but then there's the head which is more square shaped,
which conjures the image of Hollywood extraterrestrials.
And we see two rows of yellow humanoid like teeth.
It's no wonder Kohei was compelled to
post the video online.
- Obviously one theory about this thing
is that it is not of this world.
There are things about it that are very ET
by way of a giraffe.
It does sort of have the head shape
that a Gray alien might have.
- [Tony] As we mentioned earlier,
Gray aliens are the most frequently
cited extraterrestrials
in reports of close encounters and abductions,
such as the famous
Barney and Betty Hill abduction claim from 1961.
They described Grays as having small,
hairless humanoid bodies
with large heads and black eyeballs.
These remains fit that description somewhat,
but there are other possibilities as well.
- Maybe this creature is the result of radiation fallout.
Japan was the site of two nuclear detonations
in World War II and more recently,
there was the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster,
which was rated a number seven
on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale,
which was the same as Chernobyl.
- A lot of speculation on this one.
There was even buzz that it was
some kind of biological experiment gone wrong.
The obvious explanation is that it's a hoax,
but Gray alien sightings are always a hot topic,
so we'll give this figure its day in court.
(tense music)
First we take the footage to anthropologist Kathy Strain,
who has researched accounts of Gray aliens.
So how does this corpse compare?
- When people talk about the Grays,
they usually bring up
that there's little ones and there's big ones,
and the larger ones have very long necks
and they're very skinny.
And this doesn't really look like that
because the proportion with the long neck and the head
isn't correct for it to be one of the taller Grays.
The legs should be much, much longer.
The arms should be much longer.
Everything should be scaled upward in size.
- [Tony] What about the nuclear radiation theory?
- The chances that the skeletons
are still out in the wild is unlikely.
- [Tony] Raccoons eat dead animals
and they are so prevalent in Japan,
their overpopulation is causing a national hubbub.
In the past decade,
the country's raccoon population has tripled.
Strange says any corpse
decomposing in the woods outside Chichibu
since the 2011 Fukushima disaster
would've been picked apart by wildlife scavengers,
and she points out something else that bothers her.
- Its eye sockets are too small
to actually have an exterior eyeball.
You may be born without physical exterior eyes,
but you would still have
human sized eye sockets below the skin.
- [Tony] Microphthalmia is a phenomenon
in which someone's born with one or two eyes
that are very small.
The eye sockets on this creature are small,
but they appear too tiny
even for a creature with microphthalmia.
Biologist Floyd Hayes is also skeptical
that these remains ever belong to a living being.
- There are ways in which
we could change the morphology of an animal
typically by giving it an extra limb
or a digit or even a head.
But to get something to change so dramatically
like the entire head shape
so it's sticking out on both sides or a much longer neck,
that's much more difficult to do.
- [Tony] Hayes is left with one remaining possibility.
- I believe this is a hoax.
- [Tony] Given that none of the theories seem to hold up,
we tracked down Kohei in Japan and when pressed,
he admitted the alien corpse
is a project he created for his studies
at Tokyo University of the Arts.
(soft music)
- So mystery solved.
This was a clever hoax.
Exciting as it may be to imagine
stumbling upon an alien skeleton during a hike in the woods,
this figure just doesn't cut the mustard.
That's our show for tonight.
Make sure to enjoy our upcoming episodes
and please remember to keep those cameras rolling.
(dramatic music)