- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There".
Spooky stuff.
Is that a witch's broomstick hovering in mid-air?
- [Lucca] Look, it's just floating.
- [Tony] We continue our investigation
into the connection between UFOs and volcanoes.
- Some people believe they use the volcano
as a sort of base of operations.
- [Tony] A strange sound over Slovakia.
(otherworldly echoing)
- [Amy] One theory was that it was the sound
of the earth's heartbeat.
- [Tony] And dinosaur tracks and human tracks
literally crossing paths.
Did the two walk the earth together?
(dramatic music)
Around the globe are videos.
- [Witness] What the heck is this?
- [Witness] It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(electric buzzing)
- [Marc] Is it some kind of unidentified object?
What's exciting is nobody really knows.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [MJ] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
- I'm Tony Harris,
and as a journalist for more than 30 years,
I've followed the facts where they take me.
Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation
to the world's strangest sounds and images.
We'll analyze each one with top experts.
- It's a credible case, it's a credible video.
- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.
- This video was clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
(dramatic theme music)
Good evening and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There".
Do you believe in witches?
Let's take it a step farther.
Do you believe in witches riding brooms?
What about witches riding brooms in Tennessee?
No?
Well, considering the time of year
this next video was recorded,
you have permission to suspend your disbelief.
It's November 2nd, 2021, two days after Halloween.
Lucca Botta is driving his delivery truck
down a residential street in the suburbs
of Nashville, Tennessee.
Suddenly he sees something that makes him pump the brakes,
take out his smartphone, and film this.
- Hey, so, out making deliveries and what is this?
Look, it's just floating.
- [Tony] Something appears to be floating 30 feet
in the air all by itself.
And take a closer look.
Is that a broom?
Lucca gets out of his car to investigate.
- [Lucca] Seriously, it's just floating.
- [Tony] What could this be?
Lucca soon uploads his video to TikTok searching for answers.
And according to author Alexis Brooks,
everybody has an opinion.
- There were plenty of comments.
Everything from amazement to, "This was a hoax",
but Lucca maintains that this was an authentic video.
It had no Photoshopping or whatever.
- [Tony] Could it be the time of year
that explains this strange phenomenon?
- There are many people who believe very strongly
in ritualistic practices.
And this is right around Halloween.
It wouldn't surprise me necessarily
if maybe there was some, let's just call them experiments
going on with those that practice witchcraft.
- [Tony] The earliest known image of a witch on a broom
dates to 1451 in a French manuscript
and some anthropologists theorized
the link between witches and brooms
could be rooted in Pagan fertility ritual.
- So this is something that is quite common,
though it's not talked about,
that doesn't mean it's not practiced.
- In the Wiccan religion, a besom,
which is a broom made out of twigs tied around a stick,
is said to be used as an instrument of purification
to cleanse a space for rituals.
Now whether or not any spells were used
to keep this broomstick in our video afloat,
that's for our experts to decide.
(tense music)
We begin with forensic video analyst Michael Primeau.
Though Lucca denies it, could this video be faked?
- When the user zooms into this object
from inside of his vehicle, the depth
of field between the smudging on the windshield
and the object is significantly different
and thus is not a result of some sort of camera artifacting.
So the object is there, no evidence of any kind
of Photoshopping or CGI was detected.
- [Tony] Next, we take the video to meteorologist Juan Hernandez.
Perhaps the weather is a key factor.
Are we really looking at a kite?
- The way that the solar radiation
comes into the earth drives a lot of the processes
in the atmosphere that could potentially lead
to some minor changes in weather.
Potential geomagnetic storms
that can create enough electromagnetism
to cause power outages.
So the sun does cause different kinds of phenomena
but not this floating broomstick.
Taking a look at the wind observations from Nashville
that day, winds generally were between 5 to 10 miles an hour.
- [Tony] The average kite can take flight in winds
of at least five miles per hour.
But Hernandez says despite the optimal conditions,
he sees a problem.
- When we look at a flying kite,
you'll see that kite move to the left, move to the right,
descend or ascend.
The witch's broomstick is stationary.
There's no movement which rules out the presence of a kite.
- [Tony] But wait, is it possible for an object
to float by itself in midair?
Believe it or not, physicist Matthew Szydagis says it is.
- So, levitation does exist in real life.
It relies on something called superconductivity
and we do it all the time in laboratories.
And you can find all kinds of videos online.
People using superconductors
and levitating them over a track.
- [Tony] But Szydagis also says there's a catch.
- Superconductors need to be near the magnetic surface.
We're talking a few inches away,
not tens of feet as in this video.
And it only works at cold temperatures.
Liquid nitrogen temperatures.
It's definitely not more than a hundred degrees below zero
in this video.
- [Tony] So what do we have here?
Szydagis has a theory.
- The fact that Lucca drove under the broom
and it continued to float tells me it's not supported
then, from below, but probably horizontal.
- [Tony] And Szydagis believes that support
came from a fishing line.
- A fishing line is very thin and very hard to see,
especially from a great distance.
You can use fishing line to suspend objects
and that's how special effects in fact
were done in Hollywood movies before we had CGI
and it was only a few days after Halloween.
Therefore I imagine this was just a Halloween prank
and a very good one at that I would say.
(tense music)
- Now interestingly, we called Lucca
and he told us there were trees around but none of them
were tall enough to attach a fishing line to
and he didn't see any light or telephone poles either.
So, our verdict, we're gonna say hoax.
But a pretty clever one.
In fact, Lucca said the broom later disappeared
suggesting someone moved on to Thanksgiving decorations.
Now for another video with a touch of the supernatural.
We often search for signs and symbols
that loved ones are still with us after they pass away.
But can spirits really return from beyond the grave?
This next video made one mother a believer.
How about you?
It's September 2016 in Legazpi City in the Philippines.
Grieving mother, Joy Alamares is attending the wake
of her seven-year-old son Trevi, who has just died.
Suddenly a white balloon starts moving towards her
from behind the coffin as if it has a life of its own.
You can see from the video that the balloon
gets all the way to Joy and then
rather than moving past her, it suddenly stops.
Now watch.
It starts rubbing up against her as if in a caress,
leaving the bereaved mother even more emotional.
- I felt that he was there to comfort me
'cause I was really crying that night.
It's like he hugged me and that's what I felt.
I had goosebumps and I kept on crying out loud more
'cause I felt him and I know that's him
'cause he's like that when he's alive.
- [Tony] Joy believes this is a miraculous sign
her son is sending from the other side,
since he always had a special connection with balloons.
- He really loved balloons since he was really small.
Since it's a funeral, I thought it would be good if it's white.
I thought of him as angel.
- The idea that the mother feels intently
that this child was communicating with her
is known to research in parapsychology, there's a term
called after-death communication or ADC.
There are a variety of ways in which these ADCs can occur,
not the least of which are physical or symbolic ADCs.
- [Tony] According to psychology today,
up to three-quarters of people grieving a loss
report some form of after-death communication.
This communication can include seeing the presence
of a deceased person,
smelling or hearing something associated with them,
or more indirectly, encountering a symbol or animal
with some significance to their lives.
One-fifth of these ADCs are backed by some sort of evidence
such as sensing a death before knowing it's happened
or multiple people sharing
the same experience independently.
So is this balloon really a sign from beyond
or is there some earthly explanation
for what's happening?
Let's ask the experts.
(tense music)
Visual engineer and Catholic miracle historian
Michael O'Neill has examined the video
to assess its authenticity.
- We selected this image because we have a variety
of backgrounds so we can see any kind of surface effects,
edge effects where we might see a blend
if it was done imprecisely.
We don't see a lot.
Of course, a balloon is a three-dimensional object,
so, easy in a 3D modeling software to
pick the light source of being off to the left-hand corner.
- [Tony] O'Neill detects no surface or edge effects
indicating the balloon was digitally added,
but has it been physically manipulated?
- One other possibility is that if this balloon
were being dragged around the room, perhaps
by strings at the top, strings at the side,
strings to the back, strings out this way
and the pixels would be duplicated
or drop down to cover that string.
We see no reflections here of any strings,
so we assume that there are no strings.
- [Tony] Then could it simply be air currents
that are moving the balloon through the room?
Astrophysicist, Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi admits
that the balloon does seem to move somewhat erratically.
- For what's visible, it doesn't seem like there
is a really strong source of air current anyway
because if you look at the mother, you look at hair,
you look at things other than the balloon,
you don't see the effect of a wind
that would make the balloon move at that velocity
in that very directed way.
- [Tony] If it's not air movement,
could static electricity be causing this effect?
- You can imagine someone thinking
if I'm on the opposite side of a room from a balloon
and my hair has the opposite electric charge,
could I pull that balloon across the room to my hair?
And the answer is a definite no.
If there was that much static electricity built up
between you and the balloon,
you'd probably have a big lightning bolt
between the two of you.
- [Tony] Oluseyi adds that larger objects
store more energy during a buildup of static electricity,
so a balloon's charge would be relatively weak.
So we certainly can't rule out coincidence.
A barely perceptible movement of air
plus some level of static attraction
as the balloon gets closer to the mother
but it's open to interpretation.
- The balloon is moving in a way that we would not expect.
So that implies something is going on.
My natural explanation would be,
of course it's a fake, of course, but I can't prove it.
Is it divine intervention?
Is it somehow the soul hanging on
for some extra time before going to heaven?
Anything's possible.
- [Tony] And as for Joy.
- That made me believe that there's so much more
in this world.
There's really spirits and they're just here with us.
(tense music)
- Our verdict here,
this is an unexplained phenomenon.
Though there is a chance this is all staged,
there is no proof of that from the forensics
and if a balloon can ease the suffering
of a grieving mother, that just might be
a miracle in itself.
- You've heard about it raining cats and dogs,
but what about blobs?
Our next story is probably the weirdest weather report
you've ever seen.
August 7th, 1994.
A storm unlike any other descends upon the small city
of Oakville, Washington.
But hold up, this is no conventional rainstorm.
Instead of pouring down raindrops,
something else falls from the sky.
(uneasy music)
Oakville resident Sunny Barclift takes these photos
of what can only be described as blobbering.
It's not water.
The blobs appear to be comprised
of a translucent gelatinous substance
and in some photos, wait for it,
they're accompanied by dead frogs.
Can it get any stranger?
Yes it can.
Just after the blob rain, Sunny's mother falls ill,
prompting Sunny to send a sample of the blobs
to Dr. Dave Little and the lab findings
only add to the mystery.
- The specimen was like fresh gelatin.
It was handed over to our laboratory
and viewed under a microscope,
but my laboratory was not equipped
to ascertain the exact chemical nature.
- [Tony] This rain of blobs blankets a 20-square-mile area
and falls a total of six times over three weeks.
It falls on trees, grass, cars, and of course people.
- Within days people were reporting vomiting, nausea,
disorientation, trouble thinking.
It was almost like they had the flu,
but symptoms persisted for two to three months.
And animals like cats and dogs that came into contact
with the goo ended up getting sick and dying.
- [Tony] But further lab tests of the blobs
do reveal a clue.
- They found that the blobs contained cells
with nuclei saying that they were biological material
and found two very harmful types of bacteria.
One is a food spoiler and the other
is found in the human gut.
- [Tony] So what could have caused
such an inexplicable form of precipitation?
- [Amy] The Bible talks a lot about rains and storms.
Sometimes it's a prophecy
bringing something deeply negative.
One Bible verse, in particular, Ezekiel 38:22
talks about a plague of blood by torrents of rain and hail.
- [Tony] Another theory goes that this may have been
the doing of a more earthly power.
- Some thought that weather over the ocean
had somehow stirred up enough living beings
like jellyfish that were shot out of the water
and sucked up into clouds where they were able
to rain back down on residents.
But no one's been able to figure out
exactly what happened in Oakville.
- Prior to the blob storm, Oakville residents noticed
that there were military aircraft
in their skies almost daily.
Many began to wonder if the U.S. Government
had anything to do with what happened.
The Air Force denied knowledge of the incident,
so the townspeople had to explore other explanations.
Our experts are here to help.
(tense music)
First, we turn to physicist Matthew Szydagis.
Is it possible these are jellyfish brought
to land by some freak event?
- Oakville is not that far from the ocean.
Maybe a water spout could have picked up some material
from the ocean and deposited it as precipitation.
- [Tony] Water spouts are tornado-like vortices
that occur over bodies of water.
In theory, they can bring sea life like jellyfish, ashore
but the evidence doesn't harmonize with that theory.
- I don't believe anyone found any pieces of jellyfish
and that wouldn't explain why the particular cells
and bacteria were found in the blobs.
- [Tony] Okay, now for a grosser theory,
and it may explain the human gut bacteria
that was found in the blobs.
Could it be from an airplane restroom?
Don't think it hasn't happened.
As recently as 2021, a man standing in his garden
in Windsor, England was accidentally splattered
in human waste as an airplane approached Heathrow airport.
But in Oakville, the evidence doesn't line up
with that theory.
- The FAA has tremendously denied that we had human waste
that had been dropped from airplanes.
Furthermore, airlines will have the bluish tint
to the fluid used in the waste system.
- [Tony] Blue dye is routinely added
to airplane toilets as a disinfectant,
but no blue was seen in the Oakville blobs.
- [Matthew] We saw white in the photos.
So not only would it have been unethical, illegal,
it's the wrong color.
- [Tony] So could this be a weather phenomenon?
Not exactly, according to meteorologist Juan Hernandez.
But he thinks it's related.
- Before there was any research done on this substance,
this was actually called star jelly.
When any animal eats a spawn of a toad or a frog,
there's always some sort of jelly
that is attached to those eggs.
- [Tony] The next part of the puzzle is moisture.
When enough rainfall combines with the jelly attached
to the eggs, it expands.
- [Juan] There was about a quarter of an inch of rain
in this specific location.
A quarter of an inch of rain should be enough
to allow for the jelly to expand.
- [Tony] So the theory is that animals ate frog eggs,
vomited them up, and then the rain expanded them.
Though that would explain the frogs, Szydagis isn't sold.
- We have numerous witnesses including credible witnesses
like police officers from Oakville saying
that this rained down from the sky,
hitting their windshields.
- [Tony] And Szydagis also notes that frogs don't explain
the human connection found in the samples.
- I would also like to know how animals manage
to swallow human gut bacteria.
And if that was the case, how do you get
so many animals sick at the same time,
multiple times in the same area?
(tense music)
- Our verdict, unidentified living substance.
We explored theories like jellyfish, star jelly,
and airplane waste, but that doesn't explain
what eyewitnesses saw coming directly out of the sky.
- Of our five senses, hearing is the fastest.
While it takes the human brain at least one-quarter
of a second to process visual recognition,
we can perceive a sound five times quicker than that.
But identifying strange sounds is another matter.
That's what makes our next story so intriguing.
April 3rd, 2020 in Bratislava, Slovakia.
A local man is on his balcony overlooking a park
with the skyline in the distance
when he records this mysterious sound.
(otherworldly echoing)
It's a menacing noise coming from off in the distance.
It almost sounds like a deep, raspy, mechanical breathing.
(otherworldly echoing)
It's repetitive and each breath
is approximately two seconds long.
(otherworldly echoing)
Science journalist Amy Teitel says the sound
may come from Earth's electromagnetic fields.
First discovered in 1820, we know these fields proliferate
at the speed of light and interact with charges
and currents in a way that distributes energy.
But Teitel sets a theory that they do more than that.
- Some people believe that the electromagnetic fields
that occur on the earth naturally interact
and cycle and that these cycles ultimately
produce thunderstorms, lightning strikes,
and the big weather that we experience.
- [Tony] The theory is known as Schumann resonances
and Teitel cites an even more out-there theory.
- One theory was that it was the sound
of the earth's heartbeat.
(otherworldly echoing)
This video is those electromagnetic fields
oscillating and crossing over the planet's surface.
- [Tony] Investigative journalist MJ Banias
says the idea that earth is a living being
is something humans have long pondered.
- A lot of cultures believe that the earth itself
is somehow alive and at times it attempts
to communicate with us.
There are sort of weird occurrences.
In 2018, scientific instruments
picked up this bizarre seismic activity.
Associated with the seismic activity were testimonies
that the earth rang like a bell as if signaling something.
Some people believe the planet is trying
to communicate on its own behalf to tell us
to pollute less, to be less destructive.
- [Tony] Or on a more practical note,
perhaps the phenomenon was caused by some mechanical force
like an aircraft.
- Some aircraft fly at incredibly high altitudes,
80,000 feet in the air and could travel at speeds
as high as Mach 3.
What occurs is this phenomenon known as the sonic boom.
As the aircraft goes faster than the speed of sound,
it's breaking literally the barrier of sound.
- What makes this event even more anomalous
is that it was a clear sunny day with no signs of extreme weather
or strange activity in the skies above.
So what could be causing these sounds?
Is the earth really breathing audibly?
Let's listen to our experts.
(tense music)
Soundscape ecologist Ben Gottesman starts
by addressing the sonic boom theory.
(sonic static)
- We have energy up to five kilohertz,
but really most of that energy is below 300 hertz.
So, low-frequency.
Contrast that with what we have in Slovakia.
(otherworldly echoing)
You have a slightly longer signal.
It doesn't have that double boom.
- [Tony] The reason for the double boom
is that aircraft generate two shockwaves called cones,
one at its nose and another at its tail.
This can sometimes result in a slight time lapse
occurring between the two cone sounds
as the noise reaches the human ear.
(sonic boom static)
- And with the sonic boom as a plane passes,
you've got that one low-frequency boom.
(sonic boom crackling)
(otherworldly echoing)
But here we see this sound repeated five times.
So for those reasons, we can say that the Slovakia sound
is not a sonic boom.
- [Tony] Gottesman then digs into the idea
of the planet having some sort of heartbeat.
- We have thousands of lightning storms
happening all around us that bounce from the earth's surface
to some part of the ionosphere and back again.
Those sound waves create this low-frequency resonance
that's coined the Schumann resonance.
While that is a really interesting phenomenon,
it doesn't really come into play here
because the sounds in Slovakia are much too high
and have very different characteristics
in terms of their temporal patterns.
- [Tony] Gottesman then uses sonic comparisons
to explore the possibility that this sound
came from inside the earth,
not in the form of a mystical heartbeat,
but rather as seismic activity.
- There's earthquakes.
(ground rumbling)
Almost all the energy is below 200 hertz.
This is a low-frequency rumble continuous.
That is very different than what we see here.
(otherworldly echoing)
- [Tony] What could this be then?
Gottesman tries a number of comparisons
until he comes upon something that works.
He runs an experiment comparing the Slovakia sound
to this recording of a metal bowl being struck
with a hammer.
(hammer and metal clanging)
- What I'm going to do is speed down the sound
and we can see how that changes the frequency
of the sound and also the temporal aspects.
(hammer clanging)
And now it's low-frequency dominated.
We lost all the high-frequency stuff.
But what if we take that and speed it up?
(hammer clanging)
That sounds remarkably similar
to somebody just hitting something with a hammer.
(hammer clanging)
(otherworldly echoing)
I think it's a fake video.
This person created some sound by hitting a hammer
on a piece of metal and then slowed it down.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, this video was faked.
The strange sounds heard in Bratislava had less
to do with Schumann resonances and more
to do with slowing down a recording of a hammer
or other object to make it sound otherworldly.
But there are still plenty of sounds on the planet
that remain a complete mystery
and we'll keep searching for clues.
- In a previous episode, we explored the phenomenon
of UFO sightings near active volcanoes.
In that instance, it was this volcano in Iceland,
but the real hotspot for such sightings
is over here in North America, just south of the Rio Grande.
And this latest video caused an internet eruption
of its own.
January 24th, 2017.
It's early evening in the skies over Mexico City.
Webcams around the country livestream images
of Mexico's national monuments and cultural treasures.
But no one ever expected them to capture this.
A small light appears to launch
from the top of Popocatepetl volcano
known locally as El Popo.
But look closely, the light flies closer
and closer to the camera when suddenly,
it explodes into a glowing orb
and climbs up into the atmosphere.
(intense music)
And look at this.
The second camera facing El Popo on a different day.
What are these glowing orbs we're seeing
at different times around the volcano?
And are they related?
Paty Contreras, director of digital strategy
for webcams in Mexico, says she wasn't even sure
what was going on.
what is happening here?
This is not a plane, this is not a drone,
what is this thing exploding in the sky?
- [Tony] In fact, Mexico is seventh in the world
when it comes to UFO sightings
with several reported near El Popo each year.
But why do these unidentified objects seem
to be attracted to volcanoes?
According to journalist MJ Banias, it may be
because UFOs need volcanoes for camouflage and energy.
- [MJ] Some people believe that the UFOs are attracted
because of all the heat it emits.
- [Tony] Banias says some believe UFOs are using cracks
in the volcano to hide and refuel.
- On one side of the volcano is a large vent
that often is spewing hot ash and lava
and some people believe this is
the point of entry and exit for UFOs.
They use the volcano as a sort of base of operations.
- From March to May 2021, state cameras
over El Popo captured at least five instances
of lights flashing above the volcano.
Are the lights a product of Mother Earth
or are they from mother someplace else?
We turn the footage over to our experts to decide.
(tense music)
First, we ask Rich Hoffman to examine the video
of the bright light seen over Mexico City.
Could it be a real UFO?
In this case, Hoffman is skeptical.
- The brilliance of this light
going over a major city should have yielded all kinds
of reports about this huge ball of light.
But then you look to see if there's any evidence
for any kind of an indication of UFO reports
or sightings on that given day and there are none.
It was a big ball of light that came from the volcano
and none of the geologists are talking about it
and none of the people in the city?
- [Tony] So what are we looking at?
Hoffman says the location and the light itself
yields a clue.
- It just so happens that a little bit to the right
of that camera over in the distance,
there is Puebla International Airport.
The aircraft are supposed to turn on their landing lights
when they're below 10,000 feet.
They don't use landing lights when they just are landing,
they use 'em when they're also taking off
or if they're also gonna be changing their altitude.
- [Tony] By looking at a map of the city
and using a little math, Hoffman
has more evidence for his theory.
- I also did a thing to compute the speed.
If it would be coming from the airport,
it would be about six and a half miles away.
You put that in terms of the fact that it took 55 seconds
before it came just directly above the web camera
and you come up with the fact
that it's within about 425 miles per hour,
which is typically about the speed of a commercial aircraft.
I also used flight radar to be able to see the air traffic
coming out of that particular airport
and I was able to actually look at the actual type of aircraft.
It's an Airbus 321 that takes off from there,
that heads over to Cancun.
- [Tony] But what about the video
with the floating, glowing orbs?
Next, we go to astronomer and video effects designer,
Marc D'Antonio.
Could the objects have come from the volcano itself?
- One of the things that I thought about when trying
to look at these objects, I was trying to say,
are those embers?
And the problem is if they're embers,
they seem to stay the same brightness
for quite a long period of time,
and that's the problem I have with it.
- [Tony] What if the camera is simply capturing
a light source from the natural world up close?
Namely the insect variety.
- One would think that these
could also be fireflies except that fireflies,
they're not like a constant light flying around.
They actually flash their light and then that's it.
You see a bright dot followed by a trail
and that's not what we see here.
So I don't think they're fireflies at all.
- [Tony] In fact, D'Antonio isn't sure
if they're from the natural world at all.
- [Marc] If they're real,
they're acting unlike anything I've seen.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, we're going with a mixed decision here.
While Hoffman makes a solid case for the exploding light
being an airplane, we're still not sure what we're seeing
in the other video.
But one thing is for sure, strange objects
near volcanoes appear to be a real phenomenon
around the world.
So while some strange sightings near El Popo
can be explained, we're still on the lookout
and you should be too.
- Have you ever woken up from a deep slumber
and not known where you were for a second or two?
Well, the woman in our next clip certainly had cause
for confusion after she woke up in what appeared
to be a completely different dimension.
(tense music)
It's late September 2019 in the coastal town
of Weston-Super-Mare in England.
One morning, a local woman wakes up bewildered
at what's taking place in her bedroom.
She grabs her phone and starts recording.
- [Witness] I'm in my bedroom and I'm looking at the wall.
What is this sorcery that is happening?
- [Tony] The woman holds up her hand in front of the wall
in a state of utter shock.
The image is blurry, but you can clearly see her pan
the camera as a red car dries past a block of buildings.
- [Witness] I am confused at how this is happening.
- [Tony] It appears a row of white houses
is being projected onto her bedroom wall.
They look like perfectly normal residential buildings
except for one thing, they are all upside down.
Journalist Amy Teitel wonders if it's all an illusion.
- What's really interesting is her curtains
are pretty much completely closed,
so it could just be a trick of the light.
- [Tony] When the video gets posted and goes viral,
some suggest the buildings are not of our world,
but a nearly identical one.
A glimpse into another dimension.
Is such a portal even possible?
Consider that other dimensions might exist
according to something called string theory.
- String theory is a theory whereas instead
of having atoms as kind of the base layer
that creates everything, that everything in the universe
is created by one-dimensional strings.
- [Tony] These one-dimensional strings or filaments
of energy are the smallest objects in the universe
and they're said to vibrate in different patterns.
- [Amy] And these strings can vibrate against each other
and create multiple dimensions.
- Now, string theory tells us there could be up
to 10 or 11 dimensions.
So has this woman discovered something big
or is it just another example of other freaky physics?
Our experts untangle what's going on.
(tense music)
- We have a scene from another universe
right in someone's bedroom.
How is that possible?
- Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku says something
kind of like this is possible theoretically with a wormhole,
where two black holes in different universes connect,
establishing a doorway between them.
But the proof wouldn't look like this.
- Now of course, if a black hole or wormhole
would open up in somebody's bedroom,
the energy is so great that anyone's bedroom
would be sucked inside, never to be seen again.
- [Tony] If it's not a bedroom black hole,
maybe there's a projector hidden in the room.
Video analyst Mick West takes a look.
- [Mick] These images are a bit blurry.
I think if someone was trying to fake some kind
of alternate reality, they would've used a clearer image.
We can see that it is actually a projection
because she waves her hand and leaves a shadow.
So it's not actually something that's added
to the video afterwards.
- [Tony] So it's not CGI.
But could it be a bit of movie magic
coming from an electronic projector?
That doesn't explain why the image appears upside down
and West says it doesn't match
what he sees from the woman's shadow.
- The projector would have to be behind her
for her to cast a shadow on the wall.
And what's behind her from that perspective is the window.
So the projector would have to be
basically where the window is.
- [Tony] In the clip, we don't see a projector,
but we do see tiny gaps in the curtain.
- There's just this one small thin rectangle,
a hole, an aperture.
And because this is the only way that light can get in,
it's acting as what's called a pinhole camera.
The term we use for that is camera obscura.
- [Tony] As light rays hit an object
and then travel through the aperture of a pinhole camera,
they project the image of an object upside down.
This creates the camera obscura effect.
And just to prove it conclusively,
West has been able to recreate it.
- I took this plastic sheet here, I put it over the window
and it has this little hole in here.
And then when I turned the camera around,
I could see that there was a projection of my backyard
onto the back wall of my garage.
And like in the video we saw, I can cast a shadow on it.
And here's an image of me walking around
waving this umbrella around,
projected onto the back wall of my garage.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, this is an example of camera obscura
from a pinhole camera
accidentally made by the window shade.
The buildings we see in the image
are actually the neighbor's houses
from right across the street.
We might not have traveled to a new universe,
but we got a good lesson in the science of optics.
You passed.
Class dismissed.
- Remember the most terrifying scenes in "Jurassic Park"
when the dinosaurs were chasing people down?
Well, there are some who believe
that idea isn't just made for Hollywood
and that the proof lies deep in the heart of Texas.
It's 1980 by the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas.
Amateur paleontologist, Glen Kuban is on a mission
to document a site that became famous
since it was first discovered in 1908.
This is why.
(tense music)
Take a closer look.
These are two trails of fossilized footprints
that cross each other in the riverbank.
But while one set of prints belongs to a dinosaur,
Glen says some believe the others are human.
- They didn't find any distinct human toes
but did find these oblong tracks in striding sequences
that were larger than normal human feet
but were not obviously typical dinosaur tracks.
And they roughly resemble human tracks.
- [Tony] Wait a minute, humans and dinosaurs side by side?
Author Eric Grundhauser says, according to believers
of the Young Earth Theory, the answer is yes.
- They believe in a biblical foundation
that the earth was only created
between four and 10,000 years ago.
Now, many people who have observed this site
have taken this as evidence that humans
and dinosaurs actually lived at the same time.
And in a very literal sense, they crossed paths.
- [Tony] Young Earthers or Creationists also point
to depictions in other cultures around the world
that supposedly confirm their beliefs
like this prehistoric cave drawing in Kutaisi, Georgia
that supposedly shows men hunting next to a dinosaur.
But take a look at the size of these prints.
They're huge!
- They are much, much larger than any recorded human
that we know of.
Could they point to a lost species of human?
A giant?
- [Tony] The mystery is complicated by this other set
of prints found nearby.
They seem to have normal human shape in size, don't they?
How did those get here?
In 2020, evidence of stone tools found in Mexico
led anthropologists to theorize that the first humans
may have come to North America 30,000 years ago,
almost 20,000 years earlier than previously thought.
So our natural history is continuously changing
when new facts come to light.
But what are the facts when it comes
to these alleged human footprints?
We let our experts dip their feet in for answers.
(tense music)
Archeologist Ed Barnhart says these prints
aren't just too big to be human, they're size 35.
And even if there were giant humans in our ancient history,
they didn't make these prints.
- Humans have an arch and toes and we have a heel.
When you really look at this footprint in the way
that a scientific investigation does,
it lacks those basic elements.
- [Tony] Humans have five metatarsal foot bones
that connect to their toes.
On the other hand, the reptile foot
has three metatarsal foot bones
characteristically splayed out from the base.
So these are the footprints of a reptile
and NASA geologist, Dr. Bob Anderson thinks he knows
what made these mysterious fossilized impressions.
- What we have here is an ancient stream channel
where multiple dinosaurs have walked through.
- [Tony] But if both sets of tracks are dinosaurs,
why does one look so human?
- It's just the way the dinosaur itself
was walking across the ground.
- [Tony] Anderson says it's likely one of the dinosaurs
was walking with its weight on the back of its feet,
so the toes didn't have much contact with the mud.
That's why it's less clear the feet only had three toes
and in some cases, erosion wore away
the toe imprints even further,
making the track look almost like it was made
by a person wearing a shoe.
That still leaves these other photos of prints from nearby
where the human toe, arch, and heel markings
are clearly delineated.
What about them?
- There have been people who have an agenda supporting
the idea of creationism and carved the tracks
to look like human tracks.
- [Tony] Turns out Barnhart's right.
Research reveals that most of the fake prints
were carved by a man named George Adams in the 1930s,
as his family later acknowledged.
Adams decided to create better examples
of the alleged giant human tracks in order
to sell tickets to tourists during the Great Depression.
(tense music)
The verdict, none of these are prehistoric human tracks.
Our experts have laid out explanations
for all three types of phenomena seen in Glen's photos.
Dinosaur metatarsal tracks, erosion,
and intentional carvings.
There's no evidence that humans ever walked with dinosaurs.
So keep enjoying "The Flintstones",
just take them with a grain of salt.
And that's our show for tonight.
If you have any videos you think we should investigate,
please reach out to us
and remember to keep those cameras rolling.