NARRATOR: Unexplained transmissions
from the farthest reaches of the cosmos,
mysterious objects entering our solar system,
and mounting evidence we are not alone.
For nearly two decades,
Ancient Aliens has traveled the globe
exploring towering megalithic structures,
mysterious artifacts,
and stories of otherworldly beings,
in a quest for evidence that might reveal the truth
of our extraterrestrial origins.
Astronomers have been searching the universe for decades,
and personally, I think there's a really good chance
that soon we'll discover an inhabited planet.
NARRATOR: Now we take a look back
through the Ancient Aliens archives
to the show's very origins,
to examine the evidence that we are not alone.
We have never been alone.
♪ ♪
Since the beginning of humankind,
people have been wondering:
Is there other intelligent life in the cosmos?
And, of course, to people like the three of us, the answer is
a resounding yes.
And what's even more exciting is that
we now live in a time where we might find
- undeniable proof. - WILLIAM HENRY: Absolutely.
I mean, the James Webb telescope
can survey practically the entire universe,
and astronomers have detected these mysterious
interstellar objects
that are moving in ways they're not supposed to.
Yeah, right. And scientists
have been actively searching for extraterrestrial life
since the 1960s.
And we talked about this way back in season one
of Ancient Aliens in an episode called
"The Return."
NARRATOR: Throughout human history,
man has gazed up at the stars in awe and with wonder.
Our ancient ancestors charted their movements,
identified constellations,
and marked time by creating celestial-based calendars.
The stars also became the source of countless myths and legends.
Many of these describe visitors coming down to Earth
from somewhere out there.
Others speak of entire civilizations
existing out in the cosmos.
MICHAEL CREMO: The ancient Sanskrit writings of India
tell us, for example, there are
400,000 humanlike species
scattered throughout the cosmos
in different planets, different solar systems,
even different dimensions.
NARRATOR: But where are these alien beings?
Did they come to Earth in the past,
as the ancient astronaut theory suggests, and then leave?
If so, will they ever come back?
Today, scientists around the world
have stopped waiting around and are taking steps
to find intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Will technology finally be able to prove
what our ancient ancestors believed thousands of years ago?
In 1960, astronomer and physicist Frank Drake
set up an unusual telescope in the hills of West Virginia.
The strange device was made from
surplus World War II radar equipment.
But rather than containing a traditional optical lens,
it housed a directional radio antenna.
PAUL DAVIES: A few simple calculations showed
that radio telescopes have the power
to transmit and receive
across literally interstellar distances.
We're talking many light-years.
So, Frank Drake, uh, turned a radio telescope
on a couple of nearby stars
and tuned in to see if he could pick up
a message from the aliens.
So, this was a sort of crazy thing to do.
NARRATOR: Drake failed to pick up any sounds that day,
but the science of radio astronomy was born.
If we couldn't see aliens in space,
maybe we could hear them.
MICHAEL DENNIN: The things we focused on in the past
for searching for extraterrestrial life
is really passively trying to discover signals
on the basis that if they were
technologically advanced, they would have
some form of electricity like we do,
and all electricity generates radiation,
and it sends out the signals, and hopefully we detect it.
NARRATOR: In 1961, Frank Drake and a group of astronomers,
physicists and biologists
formed a privately-funded organization called SETI,
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Their goal was to focus massive radio telescopes
towards space and listen.
Drake estimated the probability
that intelligent life existed out in the universe
in a formula that became known as the Drake equation.
SARA SEAGER: The Drake equation is like a bridge between
scientists and nonscientists
because it explains what you would want to know
to give a number about how common alien life could be.
JENNIFER HELDMANN: There are multiple, uh, factors within the Drake equation,
like the fraction of stars that could have planets
and the fraction of those planets that could be habitable
and the fraction of those that might have liquid water
and how many could have evolved intelligent life.
And then one important factor
is the lifetime of those civilizations,
and that is a big unknown.
Uh, we only know of one. That's ourselves.
And, uh, how long are we gonna be around?
That's to be determined.
NARRATOR: Using his equation, Drake estimated
that over 100 million advanced civilizations
could exist in just the Milky Way galaxy.
BILL BIRNES: SETI presupposes
that if you've got an alien civilization
capable of traveling,
that's developed electronics, they have a fingerprint.
That fingerprint is a repetitive signal.
A repetitive signal will tell them
that it's not just noise, junk frequencies out there,
but a real attempt at communicating,
maybe not with us but with each other.
NARRATOR: But what if SETI intercepts
a transmission from another world?
What would happen next?
According to SETI's post-detection protocols,
once an extraterrestrial radio signal is confirmed,
news of the event should be kept secret
until the authorities have been notified.
The government will then decide
whether or not to try and make contact.
DAVIES: I think all bets are off, because
here is this message, it could contain
enormously important information that would
transform our society and maybe destabilize it.
What is it gonna mean for the future of our civilization?
These are momentous questions.
NARRATOR: Today, SETI continues to scan the vicinities
of nearby stars for artificially-produced signals
using several of the world's largest telescopes.
In the next several years,
when it becomes fully operational,
SETI's new Allen Telescope Array
will allow for the reconnaissance
of up to a million stars.
SEAGER: SETI has to search a huge, huge area.
They'll tell you that, now,
they have searched the equivalent of like
a glass of water compared to the entire ocean on Earth.
They have a long way to go.
NARRATOR: While SETI listens passively to signals from outer space,
NASA has attempted to contact alien life directly
through messages sent aboard its space probes.
DENNIN: It's a long shot,
but there's no reason in my mind
not to expect that life evolved elsewhere.
What's harder to predict or try and understand is:
How likely is it
that it happened close enough that there'd be someone
we could actually communicate with?
NARRATOR: In 1972, NASA agreed to attach small plaques
onto the outside of its twin Pioneer space probes,
the first human-built objects
destined to leave our solar system.
NASA contacted Cornell University professor
Dr. Carl Sagan to craft the message.
DENNIN: Carl Sagan was one of the most active astronomers
in the search for life outside our planet.
He was a very prominent scientist,
he was an excellent astronomer,
and he really did a lot to help us understand how we might
contact other life or detect life elsewhere in the universe.
NARRATOR: Sagan, along with SETI founder Frank Drake,
designed a gold-anodized aluminum plaque
measuring roughly six-by-nine inches
that contained a collection of symbolic images
representing humans and Earth.
ALBERT HARRISON: The man and a woman were nude.
And the gentleman was holding
one arm up like this, in what was intended to be
a sign of, uh, a sign of greeting.
NARRATOR: A schematic design of the solar system was also shown,
with the planned trajectory
of the Pioneer spacecraft marked on it,
and a diagram of 14 pulsar stars around the sun
made a chart that might help someone
work out where the craft originated.
DENNIN: We tried to give them an idea of where we're located,
and that's an interesting problem is to figure out
how you would tell someone where you're located
in space, 'cause you don't know where they're gonna find it.
And it was all in a very stylistic design,
but in an attempt to hopefully communicate
at least some of these ideas.
NARRATOR: Five years later, in 1977,
Dr. Sagan got a second chance
at designing an interstellar message
when NASA agreed to attach another one
to the Voyager space probes.
This time, Sagan created a record album
made of gold-plated copper,
along with a series of basic instructions
in how to make it work.
Sagan estimated that the metallic disc
could survive in space for at least a billion years.
DENNIN: At this point, we obviously haven't
learned anything yet about extraterrestrial life
'cause we haven't been contacted back.
Um, but I think, for our own purposes,
any time you try and go and figure out
how you want to communicate something,
it pushes your boundaries
and understanding of communication itself.
SEAGER: We all want to find aliens.
Whether it's the planetary scientists
looking for signs of life on another distant planet,
whether it's the ancient alien proponents,
who want to find signs of life of aliens
who visited in the past,
and whether it's people today
who want to have experiences with UFOs
and aliens that have visited them recently.
All of us are trying to do the same thing.
NARRATOR: While the search
for extraterrestrial beings continues,
a new space-based telescope
is hunting for planets that may contain life.
Are there other Earths out there?
And if so, how will we find them?
NARRATOR: On March 6th, 2009,
NASA launched a Delta II rocket into space.
On board was a new telescope
named in honor of German astronomer Johann Kepler.
The space-based telescope was designed specifically
to discover the existence of earthlike planets
located outside our own solar system.
The Kepler search is focused on a specific section
of the Milky Way known as Orion's Spur.
Kepler's job is to answer the question:
How common are other Earths?
And to do this, Kepler's looking at one part of the sky
for three and a half years.
Imagine, like, keeping your eyes open
and staring at just one part of the sky.
HELDMANN: And what they're doing is they're looking at stars,
and then, as a planet goes around that star,
when the planet gets in front of the star,
the starlight dims just a little bit from our vantage point,
because it's being blocked by the planet.
And so, you look for that dimming of those stars,
and then that's how you're able to detect these planets.
NARRATOR: So far, the Kepler telescope has confirmed the existence
of five planets outside our own solar system.
NASA officials expect to find several hundred more
exoplanets like these before their mission is completed.
Once a planet has been located,
scientists must then determine if it might contain water.
HELDMANN: We know from Earth
that all life on Earth requires liquid water.
So that is the approach that we've been taking
for looking for life elsewhere in the universe:
follow the water.
And so that is the step one.
DAVIES: On Earth, wherever we find liquid water, we find life.
And it's true.
Life on Earth can exist under
an extraordinary range of conditions.
There are extreme organisms
that live in the scalding effluent
coming out of the Earth's crust, deep beneath the ocean.
There are other remarkable organisms
living in the waste pools of nuclear reactors
and extreme radiation environments and so on.
But the one thing that seems to be
absolutely necessary for life as we know it is liquid water.
NARRATOR: To determine if a planet
contains water and possibly life,
scientists use special telescopes
to analyze its atmosphere.
SEAGER: We look at the light coming from the planet,
and we split that light up, like a rainbow.
Now, if you look at a rainbow in the sky
and you look really, really carefully,
you will see some dark lines.
You'll see some colors missing from the rainbow.
And those colors are missing
because of absorption by gases in Earth's atmosphere.
So, effectively, we're getting a rainbow
from another planet and we're looking for dark lines
that tell us what kind of gases are in the atmosphere.
NARRATOR: To better understand how life affects its atmosphere,
NASA scientists study microbial mats
at California's Moss Landing Wildlife Area.
BRAD BEBOUT: Microbial mats are important to NASA
for a-a whole bunch of reasons.
The organisms that are in microbial mats
have been on Earth just about longer
than any other kind of organism.
They make a number of things
which we call biomarkers, which are important
in our search for life on other planets.
So, there are textural biomarkers,
so when you pull up a piece of microbial mat
and look at the surface, what does that look like?
One of the things that we're doing with these microbial mats
is we're measuring the fluxes of methane.
Methane is a gas that's produced by certain kinds of organisms
that use the organic matter that's in these mats.
And when that methane goes into our atmosphere,
it can be detected by other missions
such as terrestrial planet finders,
is one of NASA's concept missions for looking for gases
that are produced by life on exoplanets.
DENNIN: We can look for the signature of oxygen
or water on a planet, and at least
that would give us an idea of life-forms like ourselves,
ones that are carbon-based and use oxygen
and carbon dioxide cycles.
Our atmosphere is not stable without living organisms.
It would've evaporated away by now.
And so, if you're looking out in space and you detect,
around a star, a signature of the chemicals
that we know exist for life,
that's very strong evidence that life is there.
That doesn't help you know if it's intelligent life,
but it does give you an evidence for life.
NARRATOR: With a universe literally full of possibilities,
planet hunters focus their search on an area
they call a Goldilocks zone.
SEAGER: The Goldilocks zone for planets
is the place where a planet is not too hot, not too cold,
but just the right temperature for life.
Right now,
we know of no planets like Earth in a Goldilocks zone.
One planet comes close. It's called Gliese 581D.
But we're not entirely sure if that planet is really
in the Goldilocks zone or not.
DAVIES: In recent years, it's been recognized
that there's more than one Goldilocks zone.
For example, there could be life, uh, inside
icy planetesimals, these, like, small planets or large moons.
The moon of Jupiter, Europa, is a very good example.
Europa is liquid beneath an ice cap.
It's liquid underneath because of
tidal heating and friction going on inside the planet.
So it could be that there is life,
uh, microbial probably only,
deep down under the ice on Europa.
HELDMANN: It's a very challenging question,
if there's life elsewhere in our solar system.
You have so many components that have to come together.
We have to have an understanding of the science.
We have to ask the right questions.
I wish I had a tricorder that I could just go
and, like, point and it would say "life"
or "no life," right? But we don't have that,
so we have to be smart and we have to be clever,
and we have to develop instruments that can
actually address the questions we're trying to answer.
SEAGER: It's inevitable.
There are so many planets out there, it's inevitable
that we'll find one in the Goldilocks zone any day.
NARRATOR: But while the Kepler telescope
has only just begun scanning the horizon,
NASA is already planning the next step
in its search for extraterrestrial life.
People always ask me, "Do you expect
to find an Earth in your lifetime?"
And I say, "Yes, absolutely."
DAVIES: When I was a student, there was almost
nobody prepared to argue that way.
The feeling back in the '60s and '70s was
that even if there were other earthlike planets,
life is such an improbable freak event
that it would never, ever happen anywhere else.
Now the prevailing view is,
yes, the universe is teeming with life.
Everybody wants to meet an alien,
but we have to start small.
We have to learn how to walk before we can run.
GEORGE NOORY: The fascinating thing for me
is that we're only four and a half billion years old
in a universe that's close to 14 billion years old.
What would happen with some of these earthlike planets
that had a five- or ten-billion-year
head start on us?
Gosh, you can only imagine.
NARRATOR: As we advance our technology
in the search for extraterrestrial life,
could we be getting closer
to finding definitive proof that we are not alone?
As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
we may have already detected
concrete evidence of an alien intelligence
in the form of strange signals coming from space.
You really have to respect mainstream scientists
who choose to be part of a group called
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
DAVID CHILDRESS: Yeah, and when it comes
to looking for advanced alien civilizations in the cosmos,
they've been leading the charge for over half a century.
Oh, absolutely. And in 2016,
I visited one of their largest observatories
in Northern California,
where they have dozens of satellite dishes
capturing radio waves from outer space.
And what's so exciting is that, over the years,
SETI has detected some really unusual signals.
NARRATOR: Delaware, Ohio.
August 15, 1977.
At Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope,
astronomer Jerry R. Ehman conducts research
for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
While reviewing recorded data,
he detects a highly unusual signal
originating from the constellation Sagittarius.
They're looking for this bandwidth of 1,420 megahertz.
And specifically, they believe that this bandwidth
corresponds to water
and that intelligent civilizations might encode
the electromagnetic frequency of water with a detectable signal.
So there's Jerry Ehman, on the Big Ear telescope,
doing his SETI work, and a 72-second burst comes in
on the 1,420-megahertz signal.
72 seconds of very bizarre static
that does not look natural.
It looks artificial.
It looks like something
that was intelligently built and sent.
So, he writes, "Wow!" next to this part of the readout,
and it is now known as the "Wow! signal."
And still, to this day, the Wow! signal has never
been properly explained, nor has it been deciphered.
NARRATOR: While there are various theories
as to what may have caused the now famous Wow! signal,
from terrestrial radio broadcasts to comet trails,
SETI has not ruled out the possibility
that it may represent modern man's
first radio contact with extraterrestrials,
and they have plans to reexamine the area
where it originated in the near future.
To get a firsthand look into this continued search
for extraterrestrial life, in March of 2016,
researcher and publisher Giorgio Tsoukalos
traveled to the Allen Telescope Array
in Hat Creek, California, where he met
with the director for SETI research, Seth Shostak.
This is truly amazing.
What can you tell me about this place?
Well, this place is, uh, an observatory,
but it's a radio observatory, so these things around us,
these 42 antennas, they pick up radio waves.
And we're trying to pick up very special sort of radio waves,
namely some that would tell us somebody's out there.
By having lots of these dishes here,
we can look at more of the sky at once.
We can look at multiple star systems at once.
Why radio waves?
What's so significant about radio waves?
SETH SHOSTAK: Radio waves go at the speed of light,
and they also, by the way, go through all the gas
and dust that's between the stars.
So, you know, if you want to communicate
from one part of the galaxy to another,
radio waves are a great way to do it.
So, the way this works is actually kind of simple.
I mean, the cosmic radio static,
it comes in from the sky and it bounces off
that big reflector there, that first one, okay?
- That's-that's a mirror for radio waves. - Mm-hmm.
And that redirects into this secondary reflector
on the end, on the nose there,
and then they're directed to the receiver,
and that's inside.
That information goes through
a fiber optic over to the control room.
So, this is where the data coming through
the fiber optics kind of ends up
after it's been processed in a display like this.
And what are we looking at right here?
So, we're looking, in this case, at three star systems
at once, okay? So that speeds up the search.
It also allows us to determine whether we're really
seeing E.T. or just interference.
The data from one of these star systems
is being displayed over on this part of the screen here.
This is called a waterfall plot.
And that-- Can you see? Can you see that line
- of brighter dots there? - This right here, yes. Mm-hmm.
SHOSTAK: Yeah, that's, uh, slightly more static at that frequency,
slowly going down the dial.
That's the kind of thing we're looking for.
So then, if this here were an actual E.T. signal,
how would it differentiate itself?
Uh, would it be a bit thicker, a bit more pronounced,
a bit longer, or... what are you looking for?
It could be all of those things.
So, what you do is, when you find
a signal like this, you make a test.
You'll just move the antennas a little bit
and see if the signal goes away.
And then point it back at the star
and see if it comes back.
You say, "Well, that's looking promising."
You do that again, go off, go on, go off, go on.
If you do that five or ten times, you start to get excited.
I hope that that day will come very soon.
SHOSTAK: The Wow! signal continues to intrigue people.
So we are going to use the Allen Telescope Array
to reobserve the Wow! signal,
look in the same spot on the sky,
look over a wider range of frequencies,
and-and if there's something up there
and it's still broadcasting, of course, we would find it.
NARRATOR: While SETI has yet to find
an explanation for the Wow! signal,
NASA's Kepler telescope team has continued to search
for signs of alien life in other solar systems,
despite the U.S. government's open denial
of extraterrestrial contact.
In September 2015, after more than five years of research,
members of the Kepler team revealed
some incredible findings
coming from the star KIC 8462852,
also known as "Tabby's star,"
named for the astronomer who discovered it.
WILCOCK: What we see from Tabby's star
is changes in light output
that are not attributable to comets, to planets,
to asteroids or to other fragments
that would orbit the star.
We're seeing quasiperiodic dimmings of the light
that can be as much as a 21% reduction
in the luminosity that's coming out of the star.
Now, we have the scientists who are publishing papers
in which they propose that one of the explanations
for what they're seeing
is a massive extraterrestrial construct
akin to something known as a "Dyson sphere."
MIKE BARA: The Dyson sphere
is actually a gigantic structure built around a star,
which harnesses the energy of the star, and could, in fact,
be used to travel
from one place to another within the galaxy.
This story is a total game changer,
because it suggests that a Type II civilization,
a civilization that can harness the power of an entire star,
actually does exist,
and we can see it with our telescopes.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that astronomers hunting for habitable planets
may have accidentally discovered
the first extrasolar civilization?
If so, why do government officials
remain reluctant to fully acknowledge
what the findings might suggest?
According to ancient astronaut theorists,
NASA's real fear isn't aliens.
It's how the public might react.
And for further proof,
they point to the agency's response
to possible signs of life on Mars.
You can't talk about the search for intelligent life
in the cosmos without discussing our exploration of Mars.
It is the most earthlike
of all the planets in our solar system.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: Right, and what's incredible
is that we've been photographing Mars
since 1965, which is before the Moon missions.
Yeah, and we even have evidence that NASA
may have found microbial life-forms
on Mars back in the 1970s.
We covered this in a 2014 episode called
"Aliens and the Red Planet."
NARRATOR: Cape Canaveral, Florida.
August 20, 1975.
LAUNCH DIRECTOR: Ignition. We have liftoff.
NARRATOR: The United States launches
a Titan rocket carrying the Viking spacecraft.
Viking is embarking on a 420-million-mile journey
to one of the most prominent sights in the night sky:
Mars.
If all goes well, in 11 months, the unmanned probe
will touch down on the Martian surface
and search for evidence of life.
Mainstream scientists say Mars is most likely a dead planet
because of its incredible temperature swings
and high levels of solar radiation.
So why is NASA spending a billion dollars to explore it?
JONATHAN YOUNG: The night sky is an astounding thing.
To the naked eye, the Red Planet could be seen
with its special colors.
After all, it's the biggest thing
you see up there past the Moon.
So it's been a special object of fascination
and reverence because
religious systems often were associated with the planets
and the stars, the sky in general.
Speculations about what's there.
Is intelligent life there? Are the gods there?
Th-That's gone on for a long time.
BOB FRISBEE: Our dream for life on Mars probably goes back
even to the ancient times, when we were just doing
naked eye observation.
It's the planet that really stands out,
that we now know is
very close to Earth, in terms of physical conditions.
Even though Venus is much more like Earth
in size and gravity,
it's a hellhole in the solar system.
But Mars, Mars is out there within our grasp.
NARRATOR: Among the first to record this fiery red ball
in the night sky were ancient Egyptian astronomers.
In 1534 BC,
they placed Mars on humanity's first chart
of the known cosmos, the Senenmut star map.
Two and a half centuries later,
the Egyptians painted the planet Mars
on the ceiling of the tomb of Seti I.
But while the Egyptians honored Mars,
many other ancient cultures feared it
because they associated the Red Planet
with death, destruction and war.
According to some anthropologists,
this is because the planet glows red
like the color of blood spilled on the battlefield.
From India to Rome, all of the ancient societies
had a reverence for Mars,
a great closeness to Mars.
Very important in their pantheon,
very important in the imagination of the people
that some kind of connection
with that red planet be maintained.
NARRATOR: But while many ancient societies felt a bond with Mars,
most did not identify it as a planet like Earth.
The ancients thought planets
were as uninhabitable as the Sun.
ROBERT BAUVAL: They saw them as
wandering stars. In fact, the word "planet"
means, in Greek, "wandering star," "planeta."
You have the fixed stars, the constellations,
but then you have these-these stars wandering about.
They seem to follow the Sun because
they appear to move against the background
of the fixed stars the same way the Sun does.
NARRATOR: It wasn't until the 17th and 18th centuries,
when astronomers finally had telescopes
powerful enough to make out features on the surface of Mars,
that we started to imagine life on the Red Planet
as a real possibility.
SHOSTAK: By the 1860s, an Italian astronomer
by the name of Angelo Secchi
thought he saw straight lines crisscrossing the surface
of our little ruddy buddy up there, Mars.
And he called them "canali."
The idea was picked up by an American astronomer
by the name of Percival Lowell.
And Percival Lowell built his own observatory
down in Flagstaff, Arizona.
He spent a lot of time looking through a telescope at Mars,
and he wrote books about this.
He was articulate, he was clever,
and he convinced a lot of the public,
and some of the scientific establishment,
that there really was a civilization on Mars
busy digging up their planet
because they needed to irrigate their crops.
NARRATOR: But why has Mars
fascinated humankind throughout history?
Is it simply due to the planet's proximity to Earth
and its striking red color in the night sky?
Or is it possible, as ancient astronaut theorists contend,
that Mars really was, at one time,
inhabited by intelligent life?
The Cydonia region of Mars.
July 20, 1976.
An alien spacecraft sent from Earth touches down
on the Red Planet.
After a ten-month journey,
Viking I has reached its destination.
- (people cheering) - NARRATOR: To NASA scientists,
it's a momentous event.
For the first time in its history,
the United States has a probe on another planet.
Viking was the first spacecraft to actually attempt
a soft landing on Mars,
and give us an actual feel,
a taste for what the conditions were on the surface.
We looked out at those pictures of the surface,
and they looked so much like the Pacific deserts here,
like Death Valley.
We all half expected to see a miner
and his burro come walking up over the nearest rise.
NARRATOR: Scientists knew that finding definitive
signs of life on Mars was a long shot.
But when the Viking lander performed four tests
on the Martian soil, looking for microbial life,
it returned surprising and controversial results.
Dr. Gil Levin designed
one of the tests that the Viking probe performed.
LEVIN: Microorganisms breathe, just like you or I
or anything else.
And then they give off carbon dioxide.
So we got a tiny sample, a thimbleful,
of the soil, put into a little container.
It was monitored for seven days continuously
to see if there are any bubbles forming in the tube.
Surprisingly, the tests
came up positive for life
by the criteria that had been approved by NASA.
NARRATOR: However, the result of another important test,
one looking for organic matter on the Martian surface,
was negative.
But Dr. Levin says the other test wasn't nearly
as sensitive as his experiment.
It needed three million bacteria in a thimbleful of Martian soil
to find signs of life,
while Dr. Levin's test only required 30 bacteria.
So, there was a vast discrepancy
in the sensitivity of the two experiments.
And I immediately said, "Well, you know,
"they both could be right.
"We detected life, but maybe there aren't
"enough bacteria per unit of soil
for the organic analysis instrument to find."
But NASA was very cautious, and they opted to say,
"no organic matter."
There goes the ball game. No life.
NARRATOR: Dr. Levin has fought NASA for almost 40 years
on whether the Viking probe found evidence of life on Mars.
If he was right about the results of his test,
this would be the first proof accepted by mainstream science
that life exists outside our planet.
But ancient astronaut theorists
say an even more profound discovery regarding
the Red Planet has been uncovered right here on Earth.
NARRATOR: Washington, D.C.
August 7th, 1996.
On the south lawn of the White House,
30 years after NASA announced the Viking mission
had not found evidence of life on Mars,
President Bill Clinton held an historic press conference
to announce some momentous news.
Microbial life may exist on the Red Planet after all.
Scientists had found what they believed
to be fossilized remains on a Martian meteorite
that crashed to Earth 12,000 years ago.
(explosion booming)
It must be confirmed by other scientists,
but clearly,
the fact that something of this magnitude is being explored
is another vindication
of America's space program and our continuing support for it,
even in these tough financial times.
FRISBEE: There was enormous excitement over this discovery.
Based on the chemical composition of the meteorite,
we could tell that it was from Mars.
Inside the rock, researchers found different chemicals,
and in particular, different physical shapes of objects
that looked extremely similar to microorganisms here on Earth.
NARRATOR: Soon after the president's press conference,
scientists began to backpedal
on whether the meteorite actually showed signs of life.
They said the original team of experts may have been wrong.
The image certainly looks like some kind of a microorganism.
But the opponents said the microorganism remains
are too small to have DNA to be inside it.
And therefore, it can't be a fossil.
Since then, microorganisms have been found that small
which have DNA in them.
But it has not been resolved.
NARRATOR: But given the controversy surrounding the possibility
that life may have been discovered on Mars,
starting with the Viking mission of the 1970s
and continuing to the present day...
LAUNCH DIRECTOR: Liftoff.
NARRATOR: ...some scientists say NASA
almost seems to be avoiding the issue.
The space agency has never retried Gil Levin's test
for signs of life on the Red Planet.
It is very puzzling as to why NASA has refused
to send life detection experiments back to Mars.
My experiment discovered
the most remarkable thing yet known about Mars:
that there's something highly reactive in the soil,
chemical or biological.
But we really should find out what it is.
It is startling that NASA has made no attempt
to determine that issue.
I truly think NASA knows there is life on Mars.
But for some reason unbeknownst to me,
it does not want that information out.
NARRATOR: Has NASA found definitive signs of life on Mars
that they're intentionally keeping from the public?
And if so, have they found evidence
that an advanced civilization once lived on the Red Planet?
Some ancient astronaut theorists believe they have
and, as evidence, point to a report
commissioned by NASA in 1960...
...that offers advice for how to reveal the news
if the American space program
should ever find proof of extraterrestrial life.
BARA: The so-called Brookings Report essentially said
that in your travels throughout the solar system,
there is a distinct possibility
that you will discover artifacts,
that you will actually discover evidence
of an ancient alien presence on Venus, on the Moon or on Mars.
And the implications of such an announcement, if it were made,
would be potentially devastating to the human race.
It could be catastrophic.
In fact, it used the word "disintegrate."
BAUVAL: I would imagine that it would be something
that would be kept secret for a while.
I don't think it's a bunch of men
sitting in a room and smoking cigarettes
and saying, "We're gonna keep this secret."
But it is a responsibility,
and I think that they would certainly be very, very careful
as to how to let out this knowledge.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that not just microbial life
but also intelligent beings
once called the Red Planet their home?
And if so, what would that mean
for the existence of life elsewhere in the cosmos?
If life used to exist on Mars,
particularly if it formed independently of Earth life...
...life in the universe is all over the place.
That means that of the billions of planets discovered now...
...similar to Earth, through our universe,
many of them would have life on them.
And if there is life different from life on Earth
that has evolved, there would be every reason to suspect
such evolution would have gone on, on countless other Earths
and that there would be intelligent life
out there as well.
♪ ♪
We want there to be life on Mars.
We want there to be life somewhere beyond here.
We want that transcendent connection to the heavens.
We don't want it to be invaders,
but we don't want to be alone in the universe.
NARRATOR: If signs of microbial life have been found on Mars,
is it really far-fetched to consider the possibility
of advanced life elsewhere in the cosmos?
According to ancient astronaut theorists,
evidence might be closer to home than we realize.
And they suggest further clues could be uncovered
by examining leaked transmissions
sent by NASA astronauts.
The discoveries we are making on Mars are incredible,
but we find equally intriguing discoveries
in our own Earth's orbit.
We have countless photos and videos
from NASA missions showing unidentified flying objects
that look like spacecraft.
Yeah, and astronauts have claimed
that they have seen things that they couldn't explain,
and this goes all the way back to the Apollo 11 Moon mission.
- Right. - Yeah, and it's not just
American astronauts, it's Russian cosmonauts, too.
So, when you have photos and videos,
multiple eyewitness accounts, you have to wonder:
Is there an alien presence right above our planet?
NARRATOR: NASA Ames Research Center.
Moffett Field, California.
On December 5th, 2011,
astronomers working with the Kepler Space Telescope
announced the discovery of a planet
they called Kepler-22b, orbiting within
what's known as the habitable zone of a distant star.
Today's discovery is a tantalizing indication
that, with time, Kepler may find true Earth analogs.
SHOSTAK: Kepler-22b is about 600 light-years away from Earth,
so that's a long way.
But it is, in fact, in an orbit
that means that the daytime temperatures on that planet
might be comparable to a summer in San Francisco.
So that's the first time we found a planet
that might have liquid oceans,
maybe a thick atmosphere, maybe even life.
What we'd ultimately like to do, first, is just...
just understand how other planetary systems are made up.
But then we really would like to find earthlike planets.
Planets in the habitable zone of sunlike stars.
NARRATOR: But is it possible that NASA scientists
have been searching for life they already know exists?
Some believe previous voyages into space
have uncovered evidence of an extraterrestrial presence.
CONTROL: Houston, Discovery. How do you read? Over.
ASTRONAUT: Discovery, Houston. Read you loud and clear.
LAUNCH DIRECTOR: Go for main engines start.
Main engines up and burning.
Three, two, one, zero and liftoff.
CONTROL: Roger roll, Discovery.
NARRATOR: On September 12th, 1991,
the Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-48,
flew nearly 350 miles above the surface of the Earth.
Its crew, led by Captain John Creighton,
performed several missions, including the deployment
of an Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite.
CONTROL: He is a go for free drift.
ASTRONAUT: Okay, we're in free drift.
NARRATOR: But while the astronauts occupied themselves
with various tasks,
a video camera at the rear cargo bay door...
...captured footage that NASA claims no longer exists.
But a number of amateurs
that were monitoring the transmission
produced what they allege is genuine footage from STS-48.
The video shows what appears to be
a series of unidentified glowing objects and flashing lights...
...that change direction and accelerate rapidly.
Apparently, the space shuttle was surrounded by some kind of,
uh, UFO, a flying saucer type of craft.
Some kind of a shield, at one point,
was supposedly put around the shuttle briefly.
And then the UFO and everything disappeared.
One of the astronauts openly states over an open channel,
"Hey, we're being tracked by an alien spacecraft."
And then all of a sudden, all the transmission just ceases.
And I think what happened was is that he must have realized
he was on the public channel, not the private channel,
and he probably very, very quickly
switched over to the private channel
to describe what it was he was seeing.
STORY MUSGRAVE: I knew everyone, and I heard stories from everyone.
Nobody brought me any evidence.
So, one side of the coin, it's everywhere out there.
Has it been here? I have no evidence.
NARRATOR: NASA officials claim the video images
show ice particles glinting in the sun.
But is it possible
that video transmissions from the space shuttle
captured more than what NASA officials want to admit?
Occasionally, uh, astronauts,
shuttle astronauts will report that they've seen
things or experienced things in space that they can't explain
and that might be due to an alien presence.
Ever since humankind launched itself into space,
there have been reports where astronauts describe something
that they saw while being up in the spaceship.
And we have to remind ourselves that those stories
are reported by astronauts
and not by insane people.
NARRATOR: In 1996,
video captured aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, STS-80...
...reportedly shows a number of fast-moving objects
just outside the craft.
These unidentified objects appear as bright streaks.
Analysis of their speeds and directions
have prompted some researchers to dismiss the claims
that the objects were shuttle debris or meteors.
BARA: There's space shuttle video of two very specific missions,
STS-48 and STS-80, which clearly show
what appear to be powered vehicles
operating in low Earth orbit, defying all the laws of physics
and clearly performing the way UFOs
or extraterrestrial spacecraft are supposedly able to perform.
NARRATOR: But American astronauts are not the only space travelers
reporting otherworldly encounters.
In 1985, Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Salyut 7
reported seeing seven celestial beings orbiting Earth.
CHILDRESS: Six cosmonauts
claimed that, as they looked out of the window
of the space station, they saw what they described
as winged angels surrounding their ship,
and that these were luminous beings
looking like people but also having, uh,
bizarrely, wings on them... and they're in space.
So you have to wonder: Uh, what's going on here?
And were these angels some kind of extraterrestrials
in special space suits or with fields around them
and they were investigating the Soviet, uh, space station?
And then suddenly, bang, they just vanished.
NARRATOR: If reports from trained scientists are true,
is this proof that extraterrestrial intelligence
has been trying to contact us?
SEAN-DAVID MORTON: Gordy Cooper approached the United Nations
about them actually setting up, uh, a-a bureau
at the United Nations for extraterrestrial contact.
EDGAR MITCHELL: This is not unknown knowledge.
There are people that know, and there seems to be
perhaps several different species of aliens visiting here.
And it looks like, likely they have been
for a long, long time.
NARRATOR: Might NASA really be withholding classified information
regarding the existence of extraterrestrial beings?
Could that explain why particular video
and communication feeds from space missions
have been withheld from the public?
And if the unexplained phenomena
astronauts have encountered in orbit
point to an alien intelligence, is it a new presence
or one that has been observing us
from the very beginning?
There have been a lot of strange things observed
above our planet,
but perhaps the most compelling of all
is the object they call "the Black Knight satellite."
Yeah, it's fascinating, because whatever this thing is,
there have been reports about it for over 50 years.
TSOUKALOS: Yeah, and, you know, there's a possibility
that we have a reference of this satellite
in an ancient text that's almost 2,000 years old.
We covered this in a 2016 episode called
"The Mysterious Nine."
NARRATOR: December 1998.
During the assembly of the International Space Station,
U.S. astronauts spot a large unidentified item
orbiting the Earth.
They take photographs of the mysterious object
and post them on the NASA website.
WILCOCK: When you actually look
at the photographs of the object,
it very obviously looks artificial.
This is not a meteor.
This is not a chunk of rock.
This is something that has a dark, streamlined,
technological appearance,
almost like some of the stealth aircraft that we've built,
with a kind of bent nose in the front, sort of like a hawk.
NARRATOR: Curiously, NASA officials quickly remove the photos
and claim the object was space debris.
Most likely, a thermal blanket
inadvertently released from the space station.
But some independent researchers are not convinced
and suggest that it might be the latest evidence
of the Black Knight satellite
that first made headlines three years before
the first man-made satellite was launched into orbit.
In 1954,
both the San Francisco Examiner and the Aviation Week journal
published articles detailing what appeared to be
artificial satellites orbiting the Earth.
It really shocked a lot of people,
because although the concept of satellites were known,
nobody on the planet was flying a satellite.
The story really takes off
with a man named Major Donald Keyhoe.
He was formerly with the U.S. military
and wrote a number of books on UFOs.
One of the things that Keyhoe wrote about
was how, supposedly, a number of military insiders
had told him that the U.S. military
was tracking one or two unknown satellites
of extraordinary size in Earth orbit.
Nobody knew what they were.
This was long before Sputnik,
the first satellite launched by the Russians,
and it gave rise to the idea that it was extraterrestrial.
NARRATOR: The United States Department of Defense
was said to have recruited the assistance
of astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh in 1953
to identify this strange object.
However, his conclusions were never made public.
Based on its appearance on radar in the 1960s,
scientists estimated that the mystery satellite
weighed over ten tons.
It was not only several times larger than anything
worldwide space programs were capable of launching
but it also seemed to be traveling
in an artificial orbit,
circling the Earth from pole to pole.
The Black Knight is said to be in a polar orbit,
which was what you would do if you wanted to cover
the entire planet Earth as it rotated underneath you.
Weather satellites, spy satellites
are commonly put into this polar orbit
in order to cover the entire surface of the Earth.
This implies that it is an unnatural object.
What's particularly intriguing about this satellite
is it's not one of ours.
In other words, the theory is that this is
an extraterrestrial satellite
that has perhaps been monitoring planet Earth
for thousands of years.
In the 1930s, ham radio operators claimed
they were picking up radio signals from outer space.
And Nikola Tesla himself
claimed that he was picking up radio signals from Mars.
So, you have to wonder: Were ham radio operators
and even Nikola Tesla somehow picking up signals
from this extraterrestrial ship orbiting our planet?
WILCOCK: A ham radio operator was able to decipher this signal
and create a matrix grid of individual dots
that were either white or black.
When he looked at this grid, he concluded that it was a map
of the Epsilon Boötis constellation,
positioned where it would have been 13,000 years ago.
NARRATOR: Might this mysterious object
actually have traveled to Earth 13,000 years ago?
And if so, was it put into orbit by extraterrestrials
in order to observe Earth?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes
and suggest that descriptions of an extraterrestrial satellite
can even be found thousands of years ago,
in the Hebrew text known as the Apocalypse of Baruch.
The Apocalypse of Baruch
is one of the best ancient astronaut stories in existence
because it describes an eyewitness account
of a satellite orbiting the Earth.
Baruch describes how he sees a magnificent bird
that watched the happenings on the planet.
And from time to time, this bird would extend its wings
to glean or to gather the power of the Sun,
And after flying around, that bird will be so exhausted,
it would retract its wings.
If we look at today's satellites in space, it's the same story.
We have solar cells on wings that can extend
and then they can retract at will.
So, what if Baruch witnessed something similar?
Baruch himself said that this is the "guardian of the earth."
NARRATOR: Might the mythological bird
described in the Apocalypse of Baruch
have actually been an observational satellite?
Could this be proof that extraterrestrials
have been keeping watch over our planet
for thousands of years,
as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest?
And if intelligent life-forms exist beyond Earth,
why haven't they made themselves known?
Perhaps additional clues can be uncovered
by exploring why and how
they may be deliberately avoiding detection.
You know, every year, we learn that there are more and more
habitable planets out there.
And it really makes you think that there must be dozens,
even hundreds of intelligent species out there.
Yeah, and scientists are now on board with the probability
of other life in the universe.
And you know, it's interesting, it's been suggested
that one of the reasons why we haven't
detected extraterrestrials
is because more advanced races
are seeking to evade detection by us.
Right. This is the so-called zoo hypothesis.
And believe it or not, it was proposed
by an astrophysicist from MIT.
NARRATOR: If extraterrestrial beings do exist in the universe,
where are they?
That was the question posed by Enrico Fermi,
one of the leading scientists of the 20th century.
(explosive booming)
DAVIES: Shortly after the Second World War,
the famous physicist Enrico Fermi,
who was taking part in the Manhattan Project
to build the atomic bomb,
was talking at Los Alamos with some friends
about the reports, uh, of flying saucers,
and Fermi, uh, suddenly said, uh,
in relation to extraterrestrial intelligent beings,
"Where are they?"
And he was simply making the point
that if there was a civilization somewhere in the galaxy,
uh, that had arisen, uh, say, a hundred million years ago,
then they had plenty of time
to have spread across the galaxy.
BALL: Fermi said,
"Gee, if there's all of these civilizations out there
on all of these planets out there, where is everybody?"
NARRATOR: The Fermi paradox, as it became known,
was an attempt to explain the lack of evidence of aliens
despite the mathematical probability of their existence.
But in the 1960s, MIT astrophysicist John Ball
rebutted Fermi's hypothesis
with a controversial one of his own:
the zoo hypothesis.
The zoo hypothesis says that, uh,
we are in a zoo or a wilderness area
that they have essentially left alone
and are going to leave alone
to allow us to develop in our own way and our own rate.
MICHAEL CROWE: Extraterrestrials have detected us on Earth
but have chosen not to come here, not to invade,
but rather to observe us
as we observe animals in the zoo.
They've thought, "We'll do a study of those Earthlings
and see what sort of people they are."
Now, why would they do this? Well, if, on the one hand,
we have nothing they want-- that's surely true--
and on the other hand, we aren't able to interfere
with whatever they're doing-- that's also surely true.
They're out there doing their own thing,
and they're not paying any attention to us,
and we're not clever enough
to eavesdrop on whatever they're doing.
That's the predicament we're in.
We have something that is looking down and monitoring us.
We are on the petri dish, and we can't get out far enough
to see what's behind those eyes behind that microscope?
NARRATOR: If aliens are watching us right now, where are they?
Some believe they are sitting out in space
in what are called Lagrange points,
named after mathematician and astronomer Joseph Lagrange,
who discovered them in 1772.
There are five of these points between the Sun,
the Earth and our Moon.
SEAGER: Lagrange points are points between two bodies
where the forces balance equally.
Think of, like, a seesaw when you have
one really heavy person and one really light person.
There's a kind of balance point in there,
and that's what a Lagrange point is.
DAVIES: Lagrange points is where we send some of our own satellites.
And that's a point in space
where you can just sort of sit there inert,
for millions of years if you had to,
without having to worry about in-course corrections.
If you go anywhere else in the solar system,
uh, then in order to keep pace with Earth as it orbits the Sun,
you've got to continually, uh, change your-your position.
SEAGER: So, people have talked about Lagrange points
as a place where a spacecraft might hide out.
Because you don't have to do a lot to stay in that spot.
It's sort of equally balanced and you just get carried along.
TSOUKALOS: If an extraterrestrial race
would've ever visited our solar system,
they could've placed a probe in those specific points
in order to observe us,
to record us, what have you.
So, I mean, this is not something,
uh, that the ancient astronaut theory has proposed.
This is, you know, university professors,
astrophysicists, who have proposed this.
NARRATOR: Some argue that another reason
alien beings have yet to reveal themselves
is because they don't yet consider us worthy.
This forms the basis of John Ball's jungle hypothesis.
BALL: The jungle hypothesis just means that,
if you have animals, such as ants,
that live in the jungle,
no matter how many of them you have, their chances
of ever having seen a human being are very slim.
Not because we're hiding or anything
but we just don't have a reason to go into the jungle
and step on anthills.
So, the idea is that we are probably related
to advanced extraterrestrial intelligence
similar to an anthill might be related to humans,
and the fact that we've never seen
any extraterrestrial intelligence
is just, we don't have anything they want.
HOWE: We could actually shake hands with something
that might have been coming and going on this planet,
for literally thousands, perhaps millions of years,
and has kept a distance during the last age of man,
for reasons unknown,
and maybe is waiting for us all to finally grow up.
CROWE: One thing that can be said
with a great deal of confidence
is that if the contact is initiated by them,
they are going to be not only superior to us
but greatly superior to us.
They won't be just beginners like we are.
They will be far more advanced than we are.
NARRATOR: Both the jungle and zoo hypotheses
propose that alien beings are watching us
but are, for the time being, keeping their distance.
But what if they're not?
What if, just as our search takes us deeper into the cosmos,
interstellar visitors are quietly making their way
into our solar system?
Astronomers have been searching the universe for decades,
and personally, I think there's a really good chance
that soon we'll discover
an inhabited planet,
because of all the new discoveries
we're making in outer space.
Like interstellar objects.
For years, we were told it was impossible
for an asteroid from another part of our universe
to enter our solar system,
but now astronomers have detected three
of these interstellar travelers,
beginning with 'Oumuamua in 2017.
Yeah, and scientists say that 'Oumuamua
is coming from the Pleiades star cluster.
And there are so many ancient stories
of beings from the Pleiades coming to Earth
that we dedicated an entire episode to this
in 2020 called "They Came from the Pleiades."
NARRATOR: Maui, Hawaii.
October 19th, 2017.
Scientists at the University of Hawai'i Haleakala Observatory
detect a strange object
traveling through our solar system.
They initially catalog it as an asteroid,
but after further examination,
researchers observe that the object accelerated
as it approached the Sun,
acting more like a comet
but without any other comet-like characteristics.
The find forces astronomers to reclassify it
as something entirely new: an interstellar object.
KAREN MEECH: We'd never seen anything like this
in the solar system before.
We get an estimate of its size
at about 800 meters, or half a kilometer in length.
Roughly a cigar-like shape.
It was moving very fast,
a little more than 195,000 miles per hour.
You get a chill sometimes
when you understand something is very important
or is really exciting,
and that's what I felt with this object.
NARRATOR: Our Milky Way galaxy
is estimated to consist of 100,000 million stars,
each indicating the presence of a solar system.
Because the distances between them are so vast,
astronomers believed it was impossible
for an object from another solar system
to reach our own, until now.
It just came from outside our solar system,
meaning it wasn't material from our star being created.
It's from a different star system, somewhere else.
That's historic, that we've actually seen it.
We now know objects can travel from one star system to another.
NARRATOR: Researchers dubbed the interstellar visitor
"'Oumuamua," a Hawaiian term
meaning "a messenger from afar arriving first."
Is it possible that the interstellar visitor
was, in fact, a messenger?
One sent on a mission to our solar system?
MICHAEL SALLA: Different scientists have analyzed the data
and deduced that it's something very different
to an asteroid or a comet.
So, the scientific data does point to it actually being
some artificial creation.
We've had open speculation about, uh,
how this thing might be an interstellar spacecraft,
a talk from-from a Harvard professor.
NARRATOR: The chair of Harvard's Astronomy Department,
Dr. Avi Loeb, noted that the object
seemed to follow the propulsion patterns
of a new technology that is currently being tested
for future space missions
known as "solar sail propulsion."
Large reflective sails capture sunlight
to propel a craft through the vacuum of space.
You can design, essentially, photon sails.
So, the idea has been to make a-a material
that reflects photons, which is light, very efficiently.
You deploy this, and you basically
accelerate under starlight.
And then you just cruise.
NARRATOR: Was similar alien technology
used to propel 'Oumuamua?
BRUCE FENTON: It makes you wonder:
You know, was that a targeted mission,
some sort of probe that has been sent in to look for life?
TRAVIS TAYLOR: Before man actually went
to the Moon and walked on it, we sent a lot of probes
around the Moon to look at it.
And it's quite likely
that some version of NASA from some other star system
could send a probe here to Earth.
NARRATOR: The trajectory of the interstellar object
took it past the Sun, where it made a turn
and then ran parallel to Earth's orbit.
It traveled between our planet and Mars
before it began its journey out of our solar system.
When 'Oumuamua arrived, nobody knew where it came from.
Then, in 2018,
an astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire
retraced its movements and discovered
that it came from the Pleiades.
We have to ask: Is it possible that it was actually sent
from the Pleiades?
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, the revelation
that 'Oumuamua traveled to our solar system
from the area of the Pleiades star cluster
is highly intriguing.
The Pleiades figures into the creation stories
of many ancient cultures from all around the world,
where it was taught that divine beings
came from these stars to seed life on Earth.
If we look at the mythologies
of the Pleiades around the world,
there's some indication that this star cluster
is, in some way, related to a visitation in ancient times.
NARRATOR: Located over 400 light-years from Earth,
near the constellation of Taurus,
the Pleiades is commonly recognized
as seven bright stars
but actually consists of thousands.
SHOSTAK: The Pleiades. Everybody's heard of the Pleiades.
They're also known as the Seven Sisters,
'cause if you have really good eyesight,
you can see seven stars in a very compact configuration
in the winter sky.
And, in fact, there are a lot more stars than seven.
There are actually 3,000 stars in the Pleiades.
MICHIO KAKU: So, the Pleiades is a star cluster.
They're not separated by huge distances,
but they occur in a small area.
That's different from a constellation,
where the stars could be moving in all sorts of directions
and are separated by huge distances.
NARRATOR: The importance of this massive star cluster to ancient peoples
is revealed not only by their creation stories
but also in how they oriented their most important structures.
FENTON: All around the world,
we find ancient structures
that have alignments that infer a relationship to the Pleiades.
Now, these can be found in places like Chaco Canyon,
in Mesoamerica, in various parts of the world.
It's clear that the ancient people
wanted to incorporate the rising of the Pleiades in some way,
uh, with the building of these megastructures.
NARRATOR: Additionally, ancient artwork and artifacts
pay homage to these same stars,
with one depiction dating back an incredible 18,000 years.
KAKU: Perhaps the earliest reference
to the Pleiades is in the Lascaux caves in France.
But these go back thousands of years into antiquity,
even before the written language.
The Pleiades constellation shows up in various artifacts,
one of them even being a Sumerian tablet relief
that shows what appears to be some type of a god
coming out of the Pleiades constellation.
An interesting artifact coming out of the 1600s
is the Nebra sky disc, depicting the constellation of Pleiades.
TSOUKALOS: Worldwide, we find hundreds of references
having to do with the Pleiades.
Not just on one continent, not just in one culture,
but in multiple continents, in multiple cultures worldwide.
That, to me, indicates
that something happened here on Earth
having to do with someone visiting from the Pleiades.
ANDREW COLLINS: The seven stars making up the star cluster of the Pleiades
are very often represented as human figures.
Uh, in Greek mythology,
they are seven sisters.
And in India, they are associated with the seven rishi.
These are wise benefactors to humanity
from some kind of astronomical place in the sky.
We have to wonder: Why are the Pleiades
being so specifically picked out of the night sky?
Is it possible that the Pleiades
are the place where our sky gods have come from?
NARRATOR: With thousands of stars in the Pleiades,
could it be a place that contains an earthlike planet,
one that could have been the home planet
for our extraterrestrial ancestors?
The Kepler space telescope
has found evidence of planets in the Pleiades.
So, Kepler works by finding dips of light
as a planet passes in front of the star
that it's orbiting relative to the Earth.
Astronomers were able to see that there is some dimming
of stars in the Pleiades,
which is likely caused by planets.
NARRATOR: Are we entering a new era of alien visitation?
One where we will see the return of the Pleiadians
and other extraterrestrial races?
Perhaps further evidence can be found
by examining a second interstellar object
that recently entered our solar system.
NARRATOR: Crimea. August 30th, 2019.
At the MARGO observatory,
amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov
detects a strange object traveling through the sky.
It is dubbed the Borisov Comet
and becomes the second interstellar object
ever discovered in our solar system...
...nearly two years after 'Oumuamua
traveled from the Pleiades star cluster.
AMY SHIRA TEITEL: The Borisov Comet is the second known object
we found that has interstellar origins.
It was traveling way too fast
to have come from our own outer solar system,
which means it has to have come from another solar system.
Whether we're just getting better
at detecting these objects
or whether we're seeing this new kind of thing
swinging by our Sun, it's a really exciting time
to be looking for things
that are coming from outside our solar system.
HENRY: This is kind of alarming to some astronomers
because we wonder: Are these cosmic messengers
coming here bringing us warnings?
Are they signaling something?
Is this just the start of more interstellar objects
entering into our solar system?
And if so, how many more of these objects
are we going to start seeing?
MEECH: In 2017, a paper was published
trying to estimate the number of interstellar objects
that we might have.
One estimate suggests
that at any one moment, we might have
one 'Oumuamua-like object
inside the orbit of Earth at any time.
It shows us new possibilities of what's out there.
We've had a piece of something
from another solar system delivered to us.
I think this is inching us closer
to the discovery of life elsewhere.
My personal belief is there is life out there.
NARRATOR: Now, after the historic discovery
of two interstellar objects
that were delivered to our solar system,
could a new age be upon us?
One that will soon see the arrival
of intelligent beings from another world?
HENRY: If 'Oumuamua is an interstellar probe,
we know now that it comes from the Pleiades.
Is the Borisov object also
some form of intelligently directed interstellar object?
And are there other species out there that are
also sending probes that we soon will discover?
TSOUKALOS: In the earliest of oral traditions
and the earliest of texts,
everybody is waiting for someone to return.
I hope that we will make official contact
within our lifetime, meaning in the next 50 or so years.
I've always said that the big secret will be,
when the hatch opens and they walk down the ramp,
that we'll look at each other in the mirror,
'cause they will look like you and me.
NARRATOR: Throughout human history,
we have looked to the stars to guide our ships,
to align our most sacred monuments,
and to search for our place in the universe.
But could we have a far more profound connection
with these distant suns?
And if so, are we on the verge
of recovering this lost knowledge?
Perhaps now that we are able to detect
the visitors coming to our solar system
from the far reaches of space,
we will soon discover the undeniable proof
that we are not alone,
we have never been alone.
I'm just blown away
by the profound new evidence from the Webb telescope,
from SETI, interstellar objects.
We're right on the cusp of something truly amazing.
Yeah, I mean, we've had so many interesting discoveries
over the last, say, 20 years that it's amazing.
I mean, scientists are really proving
that there's life out there in the universe.
TSOUKALOS: Right, and when you consider that
universities like Harvard are joining the discussion,
that is something that 30, 40 years ago
would've been, you know, wishful thinking,
but now it is happening.
You know, it's baked inside of us,
into our DNA, that we are not alone,
and, hey, we are from out there.
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