- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There,"
the international mystery of these Mexican blackbirds...
- Birds are not known for smashing into the ground.
- [Tony] A trio of UFOs in formation over Texas...
- [Witness] Oh my God! (beep)
- [Tony] A potential Bigfoot photobombs
an eagle's nest cam...
- This is good Bigfoot habitat.
That's well established.
- [Tony] And the mystery of the split rock.
Who or what is responsible for this perfect cut?
- This object was simply unbelievable.
(dramatic music)
- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.
- [Witness] What the heck is this?
- [Witness] It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(electrical crackling)
(dramatic music)
- [Expert] Is it some kind of unidentified object?
What's exciting is nobody really knows.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [Expert] 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."
We begin tonight, as we often do,
with the story of strange flying objects.
But these aren't saucers, orbs or Tic Tacs.
They're just regular birds.
Or are they?
(mysterious music)
It's February 2022 in Chihuahua, Mexico.
Early in the morning a mounted CCTV camera is rolling
on a quiet residential street,
where a large flock of yellow-headed blackbirds
is seen flying overhead at the top of the screen.
Then suddenly things take a strange and deadly turn.
(dramatic music)
(birds chirping)
The security camera catches the shocking moment
the huge black mass of birds appears to fall like rain
from the sky to the pavement below.
As the footage continues to roll,
we see that many of the birds recover and fly off safely,
but the street and sidewalk are now littered
with nearly 100 avian corpses.
Science journalist Amy Teitel
says this footage is quite surprising.
- Birds are not known for smashing into the ground.
So what exactly is happening to make them act this way?
- [Tony] Though this strange incident
seems once in a lifetime,
it's not the only time small animals
have rained from the sky.
In this video from Virginia Beach, Virginia,
a fish is captured falling and hitting a car.
And footage from December 2021
shows a parking lot in Texarkana, Texas
filled with a dozen dead fish
that have seemingly come out of nowhere.
That turned out to be the result of a weather phenomenon
known as a water spout.
But the incident in Mexico remains mysterious.
And all this is nothing new.
In the Book of Exodus,
God sends down a reign of frogs on the Egyptians
because of their refusal to free the enslaved Israelites.
But while some wonder if these strange incidents
could be divine punishment,
others suggest they have a more technological source.
The alleged culprit?
- 5G is a relatively new technology
that we're using increasingly for cell phone reception.
One theory is that somehow 5G interfered
with the birds' natural navigation.
Birds create a protein called cryptochromes
that makes them very sensitive to blue light
and actually helps them see the Earth's magnetic field.
That's how birds know how to fly south
and migrate for the winter.
So could it be that this increase
of electromagnetic frequency
is somehow interfering with the bird's ability
to see where they're going?
- Recent research in the field of magneto reception
indicates that molecular fragments in the birds' eyes
enable them to see Earth's magnetic field lines
and use that information to chart a course
between their breeding and wintering grounds.
So what went wrong here?
Let's go to the experts for a bird's eye view.
(mysterious music)
The idea that 5G signals cause bodily harm
has been debunked, but biologist Dr. Floyd Hayes
considers whether some form of electromagnetic interference
could be to blame.
- There was a study published on the effects
of electromagnetic radiation
on the magnetic compass of European robins,
and it affected the direction in which they oriented.
But these birds aren't really migrating a long distance.
They're just probably trying to find food.
And they also have backup compasses,
migrating by the stars at night and the sun by day.
Furthermore, we wouldn't expect all of these birds
to fall suddenly like we're seeing in this video.
- [Tony] So if they're not being affected
by electromagnetic noise,
could these birds have been poisoned
by a lethal toxic cloud of pollution?
Wood burning stoves and agrochemicals
can cause high levels of air pollution in the region.
Meteorologists Juan Hernandez checks the weather conditions
to see if this could be the cause.
- If it's mountainous,
we're able to have a thermal inversion
where we have trapped gases
or trapped smoke near the ground.
But if we look at the video,
we don't really see much in the way of smoke chemicals.
Likely there was something else that occurred.
- [Tony] Hayes agrees pollution is not very likely.
- If they were exposed to some sort of a toxin,
we would see individuals gradually becoming sick
at different times, depending on the amount of the dose
that they were exposed to.
- [Tony] So did these small critters rain down
during an anomalous weather event like a microburst?
- We're able to see that it had rained earlier,
but by the time that the birds crashed into the ground,
it appeared that it had stopped raining,
ruling out the potential for a microburst or a downburst.
- [Tony] So since Hernandez says the birds
weren't blown into the ground
by a sudden downburst of wind and rain,
Hayes believes the real culprit
is a deadly presence we don't see on camera.
- I think there is a predatorial bird
such as a peregrine falcon
that rapidly dived onto that flock, and the birds panicked,
and some of them crashed into the ground.
When a large flock of birds form,
they call it a murmuration, and it's generally
to either provide protection for each other
or to find food.
- [Tony] This is what he's talking about.
Watch how this murmuration of western sandpipers
moves suddenly in unison
to avoid this swooping peregrine falcon.
- [Floyd] This is actually normal behavior
when a predatorial bird attacks flocks of birds.
We're not seeing the predator up above,
but it's probably just out of view.
- We're going with Hayes here.
Our verdict is the birds were flying in a murmuration,
so when an unknown predator we can't identify
came upon the flock, they made a sudden, drastic dive
that was too drastic for some.
That's the downside of flocking together.
Our next story also begins with birds, unhatched eagle eggs,
but it's really about something much bigger,
Bigfoot to be exact.
If you're in Michigan, you may already be familiar
with this next video captured on a trail camera.
329,000 trail cameras are sold globally each year.
So if Bigfoot really exists,
you'd think one of those cameras
would've documented the creature by now?
Well maybe one did. Watch this.
It's September 15th, 2016.
The Platte River state fish hatchery in northern Michigan
is live streaming a bald eagle's nest.
There, two baby eaglets
are waiting for their mother's return.
People keeping a keen eye on their safety from home
begin to notice something very strange
in the corner of the screen.
The video shows some sort of unidentified creature
roaming around the base of the nest.
It looks like the beast is foraging
back and forth beneath the trees.
The creature even turns its head up towards the eaglets.
We've pushed in so you can get a closer look.
It looks like a Sasquatch.
Field researcher Cliff Barackman
director of the National Bigfoot Museum,
says this might just be the legendary beast.
- Michigan has a long history of Bigfoot reports,
and that history continues to the present day.
This is good Bigfoot habitat.
That's well established.
It's near a fish hatchery, and fish hatcheries
have a lot of fish stacking up underneath it.
That's easy prey, not just for those eagles,
but for Sasquatches.
- [Tony] The Platte River state fish hatchery
is located in Beulah, Michigan,
with a population around 342.
This small town is not the most remote place in Michigan,
but it is not far from the Sleeping Bear Dunes
national lake shore, where the forested terrain
could be an ideal habitat for Bigfoot.
The state is also rich with shallow rivers,
which would serve as an optimal feeding ground
for these creatures.
So what might a Bigfoot be doing here?
- Could it be that that is a Sasquatch
and they want to exploit the nest for a food resource?
I have personally taken several Sasquatch sighting reports
of them in trees or jumping down out of trees.
Now, they're certainly up there for a reason,
and most likely that's food.
Human ancestors exploited eggs and nests for food.
Why wouldn't a Sasquatch?
I mean, Sasquatches are apes. They're made for climbing.
- [Tony] In fact, in 2020,
a researcher in New York's Hudson Valley
reported an account of a Bigfoot jumping into a tree
and then swinging from tree to tree,
grabbing branches with its arms like Tarzan.
So Sasquatch sightings and trees aren't uncommon.
But Bigfoot isn't the only creature
reported to be hiding in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
The area may also be home to a mysterious creature
known as the Dogman.
The Michigan Dogman is a folklore figure
described as a bipedal canine roughly seven feet in height
who walks like a human and let's loose
a blood-curdling howl.
(canine howls)
It was supposedly spotted in Wexford County, Michigan
in 1887.
- I have a very good Navajo friend
that told me that Dogman
is just the northern tribal version of the skin walker.
Who knows what to think about the Dogman?
But the phenomenon is real.
- More than three million people have watched this video,
trying to figure out what the creature
lurking on the ground is
and why he is looking up towards the hatchlings.
Let's see if our experts can make heads or tails of this.
(soft electronic music)
Wildlife biologist Dr. Stephanie Schuttler
explores whether this creature matches the alleged anatomy
of the famed Bigfoot,
a creature believed to stand between eight and 10 feet tall.
- Based on the way this being moves,
it doesn't match up with any primate that I know of.
When I think of gorillas, it doesn't look like this.
It doesn't seem abnormally large.
It just seems human size.
It seems to have regular arms.
Two Bigfoot arms are supposed to be longer,
like gorillas and chimpanzees.
I don't think there's anything here
to suggest that it is Bigfoot.
- [Tony] The average height of a man in the U.S.
is five feet nine.
If this isn't a Bigfoot,
could it be the smaller, famed Dogman of Michigan?
Anthropologist Kathy Strain takes a closer look.
- Michigan is well known for the Dogman.
There was a series of sightings.
Dogman, though, has a canine head.
He walks like a man with the upper appearance
is that of a dog.
And what you can see of the video,
even though it's a dark, bipedal creature walking through,
what you don't see is ears, you don't see a big snout,
you don't see anything that's characteristic of a Dogman.
- [Tony] The creature isn't Bigfoot or Dogman,
but strain has a theory of what it could be.
- One of the most compelling pieces of this video
is when the creature jumps up on top of a log
and then playfully jumps off.
That playing characteristic is more attuned
to what a human would do.
- [Tony] A person, perhaps wearing dark clothing,
easily mistaken for fur from this angle and great distance,
possibly the camouflage of a hunter or a hiker.
- What I think that we're seeing is a human
just out for a hike.
It was just happenstance that the camera caught that image.
- Our verdict: the experts agree
that this creature is native to these woods,
but it's not a wild animal; it's a person out for a hike.
The good news is that, as far as we know,
the baby eagles are alive and well,
regardless of what bipedal predators may be in the area.
- Our next video takes us to Texas
and a strange sighting in the sky
that alarmed a group of friends.
Was it proof of a UFO
or just a mystery the size of the Lone Star State?
September 2018.
It's a warm night in Tomball, Texas, just north of Houston.
Nick Daily and a group of his friends
have come home from dinner to their apartment complex,
when they are astounded by mysterious lights in the sky.
- [Witness] Oh my god! (beep)
(friends shouting) - What the (beep)?
- [Tony] Take a closer look.
Three teardrop-shaped glowing objects appear to hover
in a deliberate, coordinated motion.
Nick's friend also begins recording.
One thing is for sure,
Nick has never seen anything like it.
- They were circling around in formation
and then come back to a triangle formation.
It was incredible.
- [Tony] But as the crowd stands transfixed
by the mysterious lights,
the UFOs suddenly disappear and then reappear.
- [Witness] Look at 'em, look at 'em, look at 'em.
- [Tony] Nick is convinced whatever he witnessed,
it's not from this world.
- I am ex-military. I was in the United States Air Force.
I've never seen flares act like that.
I've never seen planes like that.
It looks like UFOs to me.
- [Tony] According to author and journalist Alexis Brooks,
this is far from the first time mysterious lights
have been spotted in the Lone Star State.
- These very strange UFO-type lights have been seen
as recently is April of 2022 in a town called Kyle, Texas.
These lights emanated a sort of orange glow,
and local officials came up with no explanation.
- [Tony] These eerie, shimmering lights
are similar to the the ones seen in Tomball,
but with one, even more mysterious difference.
- In the case of the Tomball UFO sequence,
we have something that has been referred to as phasing,
that some of these craft change their atomic structure
so that they appear to be dematerializing
and rematerializing.
So is Texas rife with UFOs?
- One of the first reported UFO incidents in Texas
was on April 17th, 1897,
when a UFO crashed on a farm near Aurora, Texas
with claims of an alien pilot found dead inside.
So have those aliens returned,
or is there another way to explain
what Nick and his friends saw?
Let's ask the experts.
(soft electronic music)
First, we ask video forensic expert Michael Primeau
to examine the footage.
Does what we see appear to be authentic?
- We examined the file to determine
if there were any original file signatures.
No known file signatures were identified.
And at this low of spatial resolution,
it's very difficult to make determinations
in reference to CGI.
However, when the videos are placed side by side
and synchronized, whatever occurred in the sky
appears to be consistent across both videos.
- [Tony] Next we go to aviation expert Tim McMillan.
Are we simply looking at conventional aircraft
like an airplane or helicopter?
- We're not seeing movements that are consistent
with fixed wing aircraft.
What we're looking at here, they're really close,
so they're violating how close you want to be
to another aircraft.
Close proximity becomes even more dangerous for a collision.
- [Tony] McMillan is also skeptical
these could be another common flying machine.
- Drone would match up best for what we've seen so far,
but if they're drones, we have to start taking into account
the amount of energy it takes.
And so for these to be bright lights,
they're not gonna be able to stay up for very long,
'cause they're just gonna drain that battery power.
- [Tony] We asked astronomer and video effects editor
Marc D'Antonio if the answer is in front of us all along.
Could they be sky lanterns?
- Sky lanterns are possible,
but they don't move the way these did.
Sky lanterns are very subject to the wind.
What they wouldn't do is sort of circle around each other.
And at certain points in the video,
they're leaving like a tail almost.
That is very telling information.
- [Tony] In fact, D'Antonio believes those streaks
are the final piece of the puzzle.
- I think that this actually was very likely
skydivers with flares.
- [Tony] But if these are nighttime skydivers,
why then would they be jumping over Tomball, Texas at night?
D'Antonio points to a similar event in Tomball
five years earlier, in 2013,
which also featured slowly drifting lights.
- [Marc] There was a high school game,
and they did in fact have skydivers with flares
skydive into the game.
They actually saw the three in the sky,
and they separated from each other,
and they actually left trails behind them,
and that trail could be illuminated smoke
from the flare brightness.
- While D'Antonio makes a strong case
for parachuters with flares,
our research hasn't been able to confirm
there was a parachute demonstration
that night in Tomball.
And without definitive visual proof,
we think many alternate possibilities
are still on the table.
Our verdict?
For now, we're gonna go with unexplained phenomenon.
But if you're in Texas, be sure to keep looking up,
and send us what you see.
People have always been surprised by stories
of creatures with human-like traits.
A dog singing or squirrel surfing will break the internet.
But can some animals with special powers
adopt human features intentionally?
November 7th, 2019. Miao Village in Kunming, China.
A visitor is wandering through a park near Cui Lake
when she takes this video.
The footage shows a fish, but there's something more here.
There are two dark dots that look like human eyes,
two vertical lines which resemble the sides of a nose,
and one horizontal one underneath
where a man's mouth would be.
It's uncanny. Take another look as we zoom in.
- What I'm seeing is obviously a large fish,
but as it swims closer to the camera,
it appears to have a human-like face
where you can actually make out
what appear to be eyes, a pronounced nose.
This is really creepy and disturbing.
- Field researcher Ken Gerhard
speaks of this fish's resemblance to a local legend.
- Dragons Gate represents
one of the most famous Chinese legends.
The story describes a carp in the China's Yangtze River
which began to swim upstream, slowly mutating as it went.
And when this carp finally reached the head
of the Yangtze River, the god's rewarded it
by transforming it into a golden dragon.
In modern depictions of Chinese dragons,
we often see these large scales,
which is almost a tribute to this carp fish.
Perhaps this carp or this coy type of fish
is in the process of transforming
into one of these golden dragons.
- [Tony] Gerhard explores another possibility,
that this creature could be the result
of covert government activity.
- [Ken] There have been many theories
that China have been conducting experimentation
with marine animals.
You have examples of porpoises and seals
that have been trained for military use.
Perhaps they are somehow trying to manipulate
the genetic makeup of different types of aquatic animals.
- Is this ringing any bells?
It certainly reminded our team of something.
The human-faced shark we previously investigated.
We decided that was a birth defect
caused by pollution in the ocean.
So what exactly is going on in the waters of China?
We'll turn it over to our experts to decide.
(light percussion music)
Biologist Dr. Floyd Hayes mulls the theory
that the Chinese government
might be trying to mutate fish with other species.
There have been cases of fish
undergoing gene editing techniques
that resulted in the development of limbs
with bones, joints, and musculature.
But Hayes says the morphology of this fish,
particularly the dorsal spines and the large, thick scales,
are in line with what we'd expect from a normal carp.
- I don't see any evidence that it has been mutated
with any kind of other animals
such as a reptile or a mammal.
- [Tony] Next, marine biologist Dr. Shea Conger
weighs in on how the fish got this way.
She compares the phenomenon in this video
to our previous case involving that bizarre shark.
- [Tony] The human-faced shark
had really severe developmental defects.
What I see here doesn't seem to have any structural issues.
Because fish hatch from eggs,
it really is survival of the fittest.
And for an animal to get this size,
it would have to be very healthy.
And what we see here are really distinct markings,
but I don't see anything biologically
wrong with this fish.
What we see appears to be a really healthy live carp.
- [Tony] We always have to consider the phenomenon
of pareidolia, the tendency of the human brain
to perceive meaningful images, especially faces,
in random objects like clouds and even electrical outlets.
But Conger says this isn't just our minds
pulling tricks on us.
The key here is that the carp
is known as the plastic species
with a marked tendency to produce varieties in races
in response to selective breeding
and environmental influences.
Conger says those markings are no coincidence.
- There have been other cases of carp
that looked like a human face.
Having markings is a really common technique
that we call mimicry.
- [Tony] And why would a fish wanna look like a human?
It's all about survival of a fittest.
- Having marks that look like eyes
is a really disconcerting thing for a predator,
because in that split second
where the predator has to decide
if it's going to go after a prey item or not,
having something that causes a little bit of uncertainty
is advantageous.
- Our verdict? Adaptive marking patterns.
Yes.
This species of carp has developed
these strange features over time
to help it survive in its environment.
And this specimen just happens to be
exceptionally well-adapted.
- We've shown you footage before
of an apparent superhuman
who seemed to have the dexterity
to dodge oncoming traffic with ease.
That clip turned out to be a cleverly-edited hoax.
But our next video takes walking through traffic
to the next level,
It's June 2018 in San Carlos City
in the Philippine province of Pangasinan.
a CCTV camera mounted outside a shop
is rolling on the busy street out front.
And now watch this.
(mysterious music)
Just after 2:00 p.m. the surveillance footage
seems to show a shadowy apparition
appear out of thin air
and walk slowly right through oncoming traffic.
He isn't hit by any of the speeding vehicles,
but instead simply walks right through them.
Then, 13 hours later, CCTV footage from the store
picks up what may be the same shadowy figure
reappearing and lurking ominously near a delivery driver
who does not seem to see him.
Amy Teitel says the shopkeepers and other locals
were terrified after watching the clips.
- Some people wonder if this footage
hasn't actually finally caught a ghost on camera,
that the way it's walking,
not interacting with the world at all,
is clear proof that it is a ghost.
(eerie music)
- [Tony] The source of many ghost stories in the Philippines
goes back to World War II.
- One theory ties into Filipino culture,
and that is the idea of pasatsats.
Pasatsats are the ghosts of people
who were killed during the Japanese occupation,
people whose family or loved ones
were too poor to bury them in proper graves.
Instead, these bodies were covered with mats.
But grave robbers at the time disturbed the bodies
to pillage anything of value.
These disturbed spirits then came back with a grudge.
- The word "pasatsat" comes from the local word for "stab."
If you come across one,
you're supposed to stab the burial net
to open it and release the ghost.
What's more, according to the legends,
the pasatsats have been known
to block the path of travelers.
So could that actually be what we're witnessing here
with these passing cars?
Let's see what our experts think.
(mysterious music)
We turn first to video analyst Mick West.
- You could certainly understand
when someone in the Philippines
might assume that it was perhaps the local ghost.
But the people in the cars can't actually see it.
If it was a ghost, it'd be more likely
that people could actually see it
than the camera could see it,
because ghosts don't exist in a technological realm;
they exist in a more spiritual realm in theory.
- [Tony] Then what explains why a ghostly figure
was spotted in the same location
very early the next morning?
- I think a bird flew down,
landed right in front of the camera.
Because it's so close to the camera, it's out of focus.
It flies in and does a few little twitches,
like a small bird or like a sparrow.
They move very rapidly, and it's just kind hopping along.
I don't think there's anything particularly ghostly
about this example.
- [Tony] Since this doesn't appear to be a ghost,
forensic video analyst Michael Primeau wonders
if the video of the man in traffic
has instead been manipulated.
- In the metadata of the file,
as well as on screen with the time code,
we have 25 frames
per second that transpire.
However, when counting the video frames
from the surveillance imagery,
we were only able to arrive at seven frames per second.
Very rarely is this timestamp different
than what's actually captured in the video imagery.
So based on frame timing analysis,
did a sufficient amount of evidence for me to opine
that this video is manufactured.
- [Tony] So since this video is most likely edited,
West explains how someone could do it easily.
- So they take one video of the street scene.
Then they need to add the ghost.
So they just need some footage
that looks like somebody crossing the road.
And then you blend the two.
Perhaps run that through some other software to blur it.
Then add on top of that the timestamp in the corner
to make it look like it's some kind of security camera.
- Our verdict: this is likely a hoax
created with editing software.
So this may not be the proof we've been looking for
that ghosts are real.
But we know plenty of the Filipinos killed in World War II
weren't given proper burials,
so it's a good place to keep looking.
If you study UFO footage the way we do,
you soon realize that quite a few videos
seem to show multiple unidentified objects
flying in a kind of formation.
Well, one eyewitness in Washington state
recently captured what looks like
a veritable armada of spacecraft.
The question we have is, where did they come from?
May 4th, 2020.
It's a clear night in Lynnwood, Washington,
just north of Seattle.
College student Daffa Azizan is out for an evening stroll
when he looks to the stars and sees this.
(dramatic music)
At first glance, it looks like a streaking comet
or maybe a shooting star.
- [Tony] But look closely.
It's not burning up in the atmosphere,
and it doesn't appear to be a single object.
Instead, it's mini and flying in formation.
- I started to panic,
because it looked like a string of stars moving together,
and immediately I thought this could be a spacecraft
from another part of our galaxy.
- [Tony] If this is a fleet of alien spacecraft
over the skies of Washington, it wouldn't be the first time.
In fact, journalist M.J. Banias says this area
is home to one of the most historic UFO sightings
of all time.
- In 1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying
over Mount Rainier in Washington,
and he reported nine sort of boomerang-shaped objects
flying through the mountains.
It was splashed across newspapers,
and it's the incident that allowed journalists
to coin the term "flying saucer".
- [Tony] Although there is a possibility
these are alien spaceships,
Banias also says the location of this video
may provide another,
not-so-out-of-this-world explanation.
- Washington State is home to several aircraft manufacturers
and the largest being Boeing.
And Phantom Works is Boeing's top secret,
experimental arm of the company.
Phantom Works is very much shrouded in secrecy.
- [Tony] Among the known programs at Phantom Works
are miniature satellites constructed for the government.
- Cube satellites are low-power, very small mini satellites
that are placed into a low Earth orbit.
It could be for telecommunications work,
it could be for surveillance, we don't really know.
But cube sat technology is pretty new,
and they often work together
as a sort of swarm or a collective.
Did this gentleman record it on video?
That remains to be seen.
- So what do we have here?
Aliens?
Experimental tech from Boeing like this X-45 combat drone?
If the Phantom Works program is engaged
in some sort of classified technology,
that could be very difficult to verify.
But our experts are up to the task.
(light percussion music)
Aviation expert Tim McMillan starts us off.
- So could it be commercial aircraft or military aircraft,
any type of fixed wing airplane?
We're looking at this perfectly straight line.
Military conventional wisdom, you don't do that.
I think a lot of people have seen aircraft
that are in V formations or they're offset,
they're spread out.
These are all going straight.
They're at near midair collision.
It's not a smart way that anybody's gonna fly.
- [Tony] If these aren't aircraft, could they be drones?
And not just any drones.
One of the latest weapons in military use
are loitering munitions,
otherwise known as suicide, or kamikaze, drones.
They're used to target both personnel and armor,
and, depending on size,
can hover for a few minutes or several hours.
So could this be a drone test?
McMillan isn't so sure.
- If there were a military testing drone swarm technology,
this would not be consistent with how you would employ them.
Also, classified testing is done in very secure locations.
You just don't fly your secret stuff over populated areas.
- [Tony] So what are we seeing?
Daffa Azizan's first thought was UFOs.
Could he be right?
We asked astronomer and video effects designer
Mark D'Antonio.
- The option that this is a UFO,
eh, these are always on the table.
But let's consider what we're looking at here.
One of the things you notice
is that they're moving in unison.
That means, from an astronomical point of view
and from an orbital mechanics point of view,
that these are all objects moving in earth orbit
at the same speed and relatively same altitude.
- [Tony] For D'Antonio, that relative motion is key
to solving this mystery.
He thinks they might be a brainchild of Elon Musk,
a project called Starlink.
It's a global network of satellites
providing internet coverage from space.
Much larger than cube satellites,
Starlinks are about the size of a table
and weigh about 575 pounds.
The network requires thousands of satellites
near enough to each other
to provide simultaneous global internet coverage.
They're launched 60 at a time
and form a line that appears like a streak
in the initial days after liftoff,
which is actually a parking orbit
at around 270 miles above the Earth.
Then their solar panels unfurl,
and, over the course of three to four months,
each one spreads out to an even higher orbit
of about 350 miles.
Today, there are more than 2,000 in low Earth orbit.
- The Starlink program is the only one
that actually does this type of launch behavior
that we see here.
You can figure out just from a quick search
which Starlink launch it was.
- [Tony] In fact, D'Antonio checked
the Starlink launch schedule
and confirmed that satellites were rocketed into orbit
12 days prior to the recording of this video.
- So when people look at this, they could be forgiven
for thinking that the aliens are now starting to land.
- Our verdict: Starlink satellites.
But while these orbiting objects
don't represent an alien menace,
they might be a threat nevertheless.
Astronomers have raised concerns
about their effect on ground-based astronomy
and how the satellites will add
to an already congested orbital environment.
Humans have been carving and drawing on rocks
for tens of thousands of years,
but we've never seen anything quite as precise
as this next formation.
Maybe it's a monument, maybe it's a message,
and it's definitely a mystery.
It's October 2021 near the Tayma Oasis
in northwest Saudi Arabia.
Photographer Satish Javali is trekking
through the remote desert area
to document a magnificent site.
His shots show a monumental rock formation
in the shape of a rounded rectangle.
It appears to be a monadnock,
which is an isolated mass of stone.
The 18-by-27-foot, ochre-colored slab
is covered in prehistoric petroglyphs
of horses, camels, and hunters,
shown in stark relief and detail.
But these 4,000-year-old drawings
are not the most notable feature of this formation.
That honor is reserved for a perfectly precise crevice
that divides the rock in two.
The crack is so straight and exact
that it seems impossible it could be natural
or even manmade without the most advanced precision tools.
What's even more remarkable is that each half
is balanced precariously on a pedestal,
yet the formation remains standing after millennia.
Satish says he's never seen anything quite like it.
- It is simply mind-blowing the way the rock has been split.
The archeological specialists have gone there,
but nobody has come up with the right answer.
- The large, solid boulder
looks as though it was split in half
with the aid of a precision laser.
It's hard to believe this perfect crack down the middle
could have been accidental.
So there are a couple of things I wanna show you
with the Al Nozzle rock.
First of all, this pedestal right here.
This pedestal right here.
Built for monuments to rest on, right?
Take a look at the line down the center.
How does this happen?
If you had a stone saw,
could you cut the stone that perfectly?
Again, there are petroglyphs all through this rock.
This rock was created hundreds of thousands of years ago,
and it has certainly spawned wild and amazing stories.
Journalist Eric Grundhauser says one theory
is that the people who drew the glyphs 4,000 years ago
also split the rock.
But did they have advanced enough technology at that time?
- The ancient cultures of the area
were working with much more rudimentary tools
than one would expect to be able to create something
with such precision.
It's almost as if someone would've had to have had a laser
or some sort of highly, highly precision saw
to create this sort of break.
- [Tony] There was a nomadic people
roaming the Arabian desert a few centuries later
who were known for their engineering skill.
- It could have been created
possibly by the Nabataean people,
same culture that created the Petra site in Jordan,
whose knowledge and expertise
would've possibly been advanced enough
to create something with such precision
as we see in the Al Naslaa formation.
- [Tony] But even the Nabataeans didn't have access
to high-tech tools like laser cutters and circular saws.
So the exactness of the cut has led some to speculate
it could have been made by advanced ancient visitors
from another planet.
- Is it possible that the Al Naslaa formation
was created by extraterrestrials?
Was it left as a gift,
not unlike the monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey,"
to push humanity forward, to inspire us?
- As early as the fifth century BC,
the Nabataeans began carving elaborate,
multi-story building facades
into the red sandstone cliff faces of Petra.
But that site is in Jordan,
450 miles away from the Al Naslaa rock,
and it involves more complex carvings
than a single straight line through one rock
in the middle of nowhere.
So that might be a stretch.
Let's see what our experts can dig up.
Physicist Matthew Szydagis investigates
to see if the rock and Al Naslaa
could actually have been made by man or aliens.
- So I've taken an image of the Al Naslaa rock,
and I've actually drawn two perfectly straight lines
from my computer.
And what you can see in several locations
is that actually the rock pokes past the straight lines,
so this gap is actually not perfectly straight.
Humans could create cuts in rocks,
and nearby civilizations here are known to have done that.
No need for ancient aliens.
- [Tony] Since the line isn't actually as perfectly straight
as it looks at first,
perhaps it was made by people from the region.
Archeologist. Dr. Ed Barnhart says
nearby ancient civilizations, like the Egyptians,
had special techniques for cutting into rock
without high-tech tools.
- The typical way that Egyptians
would split a stone like this
would be to get up on the top of it
and peck holes into it in a line.
Then, as they peck the holes deep,
they then put wooden stakes inside each one of the holes.
- [Tony] So the Egyptians would put the stakes
in a straight line, like the one scene at Al Naslaa.
- And then they would water those stakes
like you water a plant.
When the wood expanded together as a line of stakes,
they would pull the rock apart, and that split will travel
through the whole stone and split it.
- [Tony] But geologist Dr. Bob Anderson
says there aren't any telltale signs
of this construction technique
that you would expect to see on the top or sides of the rock
if the crack was manmade.
- There's no chip marks, there's no pieces.
You don't even see fragments on the ground around it
that would say if you're chipping and and breaking.
- [Tony] So could this crack be caused
by a natural disaster, like an earthquake?
- I realized that this monadnock,
or this isolated rock here, is not isolated.
There's almost a trail of boulders going back.
They're all cracked at the exact location.
You can see that the crack is a result
of regional tectonic features.
- [Tony] So Anderson believes the rock
may sit on a fault line,
and it's likely an earthquake or shifting tectonic plates
created the crack, not just in this boulder,
but in other rocks along the same fault line.
Or it could also be that the crack is a joint,
which in geological terms means
when a rock breaks naturally without displacement.
It's rare, but sometimes the fracture can divide the rock
in an unusually straight line.
Another possibility is that freeze-thaw weathering
may have caused the crack.
But no matter how it was split in two,
Anderson thinks erosion may have played a part
in its near perfect appearance.
- The reason it looks so clearly cut
is because it's been willowed out by the wind.
It's been almost sandblasted and polished,
which has opened up that crack more.
- The ground around and under the boulder
eroded so much that eventually it was left
just resting on these two natural pedestals.
Someday the forces of gravity
will likely cause it to collapse.
The Al Naslaa rock has baffled scientists for centuries,
but we think we finally found the true answer.
Our verdict: tectonic activity created a crack
thousands, or even millions, of years ago.
It was later perfected with erosion,
which also made those pedestals the rock now rests on.
And that's our show for tonight.
Thank you so much for watching,
and remember to keep those cameras rolling.
(dramatic music)