- Tonight on The Proof Is Out There,
a UFO spotter strikes gold using night-vision binoculars.
- [Jason] That is close to us.
That is real close to us. Holy (beep).
- [Tony] Legend speaks of a massive crocodile
that has killed 300 people.
Is this proof this legend is true?
- This is really a living dinosaur in many ways.
- [Tony] What made this strange crater
and why is it said to emit evil energy?
- The locals know to avoid this place at all costs.
- [Tony] And can dogs sense ghosts?
This one sure felt something.
- I pulled up our security cameras
and was like, 'That's really creepy.'
(suspenseful music)
- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.
- [Witness] What the heck is this?
- [Witness 2] It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(static squealing)
(tense music)
- [Marc] Is it some kind of unidentified object?
What's exciting is nobody really knows.
(plane engine roaring)
- [Tony] What are they?
- [MJ] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
(tense music)
- I'm Tony Harris
and as a journalist for more than 30 years,
I've followed the facts where they take me.
Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation
to the world's strangest sounds and images.
We'll analyze each one with top experts.
- 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.
To the naked eye, the night sky is decorated
with an array of shiny stars.
In fact, you can see an average of 10,000
just by looking up on a clear night.
But if you use a pair of night-vision binoculars
that can shoot video, you might see something else.
May 26th, 2021,
it's a crisp spring evening in Aurora, Colorado.
Jason Suraci and Fernando Medina are stargazing
in Jason's backyard when suddenly they both see this.
(tense music)
A long, cylindrical object appears in the night sky,
but take a closer look.
It also seems to grow in length.
Fernando is stunned by what he's seeing
and begins filming with his night vision binoculars.
There's no question.
Both he and Jason are capturing the exact same phenomenon.
They keep aiming skyward for almost two minutes,
but then the object fades away.
- 99% of the time we see satellites.
But this one was different
because it was a cigar and usually when you see a satellite
it will just keep going until it fades away.
This one just vanished.
- [Tony] What we do know is that tubular and cigar shaped
UFOs are not a new phenomenon.
In 1995, only 400 miles away,
airline pilots reported a cigar shaped UFO
over Tucumcari, New Mexico.
- [Tony] But is there any significance
to the tubular shape?
- There's no real consensus among UFOlogists
as to why this tube or cigar shape
would be ideal for a vehicle.
But some believe it's because UFOs are meant to travel
in different environments.
Some posit that these shapes are ideal to go from the air
into the water and back into the air again.
- It's not just cigars hovering over the centennial state.
In December 2019 and January 2020,
rural Colorado was hit with a barrage of accounts
of unidentified flying objects flying together.
Even though nothing conclusive was identified,
the media dubbed the event the Colorado Drone Swarm Mystery.
So what's going on?
Has Colorado become the new ground zero for UFOs?
We asked our experts to investigate.
(tense music)
We begin our analysis
with astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy.
Could the streak itself be a clue?
A meteor can hit Earth's atmosphere at speeds
between 25,000 and 160,000 miles per hour.
Is that what we're seeing?
- Meteors are breaking apart as they enter the atmosphere.
They put off flashes of light.
So I think we can safely rule out a meteor.
- [Tony] However, McCarthy does have a different theory.
- What this looks like to me is a constellation of satellites
that has not yet fully deployed.
- [Tony] Starlink is a company founded by Elon Musk
using satellites to bring internet access
around the world.
Up to 60 are sent into orbit at a time.
When they deploy, the satellites appear to be close together
in a straight line.
Then it takes approximately four months
for each satellite to reach its final position.
- They're all pretty compacted together
cause they have to fit in that rocket.
So what we could be looking at here
is simply that satellite constellation
that hasn't yet fully deployed.
- [Tony] But aviation expert Tim McMillan disagrees.
- [Tim] We can see the object going in front of clouds
and satellites are in the upper atmosphere above the clouds.
So that wouldn't make sense if it was a satellite.
- [Tony] However, McMillan does have a theory of his own.
- We have a lot of different private companies
that are launching satellites now all the time.
We have the military.
There are lots of things that aren't always disclosed
and we could have a secret satellite launch,
that type of thing.
- [Tony] McMillan says the visual clue
is what eventually happens to the cigar shaped object
after a couple of minutes.
- In the latter sections of the video,
we're definitely seeing the lower flickering.
It really looks like the burn off from a rocket booster
and as it disappears, it's tapering out.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, we're going to call this a genuine UFO
simply because we can't identify it conclusively.
While we think McMillan makes some really good points,
our research shows the most likely location
for a rocket launch is Vandenberg Air Force Base
over 1,000 miles away in California.
And while with clear conditions,
portions of a launch can sometimes be seen
from a distance of two or 300 miles,
Colorado seems a little out of reach.
Now admittedly, there are amateur rocket clubs
in Colorado, but until we get more definitive evidence,
we see too many other possibilities out there.
(tense music)
Now, from the skies over Colorado
to the waters of Africa.
Every culture has its monsters and most of them are myths.
But in Burundi, there's a legendary creature
which stands accused of killing hundreds of people.
And in this case,
the truth might be even stranger than fiction.
(suspenseful music)
In 2004, self-taught naturalist Gene Reno is in Burundi
on the banks of Lake Tanganyika
trying to capture evidence of a legendary crocodile
known in these waters as Gustave.
Could this footage be him?
The camera pushes in on an enormous crocodile.
It looks to be roughly 20 feet long.
The creature opens its enormous jaws, revealing its teeth.
There are certainly enough to kill you,
but several appear to be missing.
Let's watch that again, zoomed in
as he stares across the river.
We also see some kind of wounds in the animal's flesh
on its left side.
Field researcher, Ken Gerhart, says it's possible
this is that infamous crocodile whose description
closely matches the creature in this footage.
- Gustave is a massive Nile crocodile
that is estimated to be up to 20 feet long
and weigh as much as a ton.
- [Tony] But what's made Gustave the stuff of legend
isn't his size, it's his body count.
We're using this file footage of other big crocs
to give you a sense of his terrifying behavior.
But this is the only footage believed to be of Gustave.
- It's been estimated that Gustave
has killed and eaten at least 300 people,
including 17 over the course of one year.
(crocodile growls)
- [Tony] Gustav's first known kill occurred in 1987
when three fatal attacks occurred
around the perimeter of Lake Tanganyika.
Eyewitness accounts all pointed to the same massive croc.
- There's even allegedly a video of Gustave
killing an antelope and dragging into the water in 2015.
(suspenseful music)
- [Tony] But Gustav's favorite delicacy is mankind.
According to one legend,
Gustave once ate over a dozen people in a single ambush.
And at the end of it all,
he still seemed to have the taste for blood on his tongue.
- The largest Nile crocodile ever documented
was killed very nearby in Tanzania in 1905
and that specimen, allegedly,
was over 21 feet long and weighed well over a ton.
So in this particular region,
we do have a tradition and history of massive crocodiles.
I think crocodiles like this
are essentially the perfect evolutionary design
and the ultimate apex predator.
(suspenseful music)
- Now some people believe local warlords in the area
kidnap and killed their political enemies near the water
and just let Gustave take the blame for the deaths.
A body count of 300 for just one croc
sure seems way beyond the realm of possibility.
So, two questions.
Is this Gustave? And, is the legend of Gustave true?
Let's let our experts take a bite out of this one.
(tense music)
Kathy Strain examines the croc in the video,
focusing on the relationship between size and age.
- The description of Gustave
is about 18 feet long and 2,000 pounds.
That certainly matches what I'm seeing here
as well as he's said to be about a hundred years old
and this most certainly,
to grow this size and have teeth that large,
this has got to be an older crocodile.
- [Tony] Marine biologist Shea Conger says that's important
because for a croc to kill 300 people,
it would have to live a long time.
- A crocodile of this size that was 60 or 100 years old
really isn't that unlikely.
They're typically slow moving animals
with a really slow metabolism.
And whenever we see that life cycle in a creature,
those animals tend to live for decades.
And in some cases, like in the rockfish,
which is a very slow moving fish,
they can live 200 years or more.
- [Tony] Strain sees further evidence
that this just might be the beast of local legend.
- I can't imagine that there's another crocodile
that equals the size of the legend of Gustave
in this same location
because one would wanna be dominant.
- [Tony] But old big crocs still need enough teeth to kill.
so Conger examines the creature's mouth.
- There are certain animals like crocodiles and sharks
that have many sets of teeth
that grow through their lifetimes.
This is known as polyphyodont.
Polyphyodontism means that even if a predator
does lose a tooth, it won't starve to death the next time
because there'll be a new tooth to replace that.
When we look at Gustave,
we see that he's running out of teeth
to replace those that he's lost over time.
- Look at that, those gaps there.
The spaces here and here.
He's missing enough teeth to suggest he's quite old,
but he still has enough to keep killing.
Biologist Floyd Hayes agrees
the existence of a crocodile as deadly as Gustave
is within the realm of possibility for this region.
- Crocodiles are believed to be very intelligent animals
that learn effectively how to hunt food
and repeat their methods once they've perfected them.
- [Tony] According to experts,
certain predators can develop a taste for human flesh
after feasting upon it once.
They attribute this to the salt content in our blood
since salt is an important part
of maintaining proper nutrition for animals.
Plus crocodiles have dermal sensory organs
that let them detect motion with their skin
and track prey's movements in the water.
They also have the most advanced brains of any reptile
and can strategize attacks.
- I think it's possible that a crocodile
could kill 300 or more people
if they're routinely approaching the river
to wash their clothes.
- [Tony] And for anthropologist Kathy Strain,
it's the injuries seen on the creature's skin
that tell her this beast may be all he's croc'd up to be.
- You can see in the video that this crocodile's been shot.
There's multiple shotgun shell wounds
on one side of its body
and it also has a very bad injury to one of its shoulders.
- [Tony] That's key because according to one report,
Gustave did survive an earlier attempt
to hunt him down and kill him.
- So the description of the wounds
that Gustave is supposed to have,
it certainly appears to be the same crocodile in the video.
(tense music)
- So our verdict, we're going to say this is Gustave.
The strange combination of size, aged teeth,
and apparent bullet wounds
makes this crocodile special enough
to be the creature of local legend.
The good news is reports of his attacks
have declined in recent years.
Maybe he's changed his diet, maybe he's died,
but his legend lives on.
- You know, they say animals can detect paranormal activity
better than humans, but in our next video,
this dog didn't need a sixth sense
to know something strange was going down.
October 16th, 2021 in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona,
a security camera in Jason and Tara Doyle's living room
is monitoring the couple's two dogs, safely crated.
The clip records the dogs barking incessantly
at an unseen stimulant.
Then at the 22 second mark, they suddenly stop in unison
and remain perfectly still
almost as if listening for something.
Now just before the clip ends, watch Kira, the black dog.
Her collar suddenly unlatches itself
and then she either jumps back in fear
or observers have said was thrown back by some force.
Take another look as we slow down and zoom in.
The collar comes off and for whatever reason,
Kira hits the side of the cage.
Jason came home later that afternoon
and instantly knew something was wrong.
- I pulled up our home security, internal security cameras
and was like, 'Wow, that's uh, that's really creepy'.
And then immediately sent the video to Tara
had to be like, 'So, take a look at this honey.
Kind of weird.'
- [Tony] And this wasn't the first time Jason and Tara
experienced unexplained activity in their home.
- There were times where like, the dog would stare
at a blank wall in the corner of a room.
Like, nothing over there,
wasn't like, sniffing or licking or anything.
And then five, 10 minutes later walk away.
- [Tony] While the question of whether this dog
acted as a medium of sorts can be debated,
the idea that dogs can perceive things humans cannot
is a scientific fact.
- Dogs and cats will know when a natural disaster
is about to occur before we do.
Also, people who have cardiac disorders or seizures,
they will often have service animals with them
who can sense changes to their physiology
that allows them to help keep their owners safe.
- [Tony] There have also been stories of dogs howling
when a person is on their deathbed,
seemingly indicating an ability to sense the onset of death
or perhaps the presence of spirits.
In fact, their sense of smell is 50 times stronger than ours
with some 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses.
- Blood sugar levels, cancer, COVID-19, bedbugs,
these are all things that dogs can sense and identify.
- Does this sixth sense give dogs like Kira
the ability to see ghosts or spirits?
The American Kennel Club states,
so much of animal behavior is uncertain
that the possibilities of a dog sensing something
a human can't is not out of the question.
But what can our experts see?
(tense music)
First things first, could this video be a hoax?
Our resident video forensics expert, Michael Primeau,
says the video has been reprocessed several times
but not intentionally manipulated.
- We have the version that was uploaded to TikTok
and then put into Premiere Pro
and then extracted from Premiere Pro.
That's three potential encoding stages
that affected the original digital evidence integrity.
One particular indication is these interlacing artifacts
we see here on the animal as it begins to move.
This is a result of processing the video several times.
- [Tony] So how to explain the collar coming unfastened?
Theoretical physicist, professor Michio Kaku has a guess.
- It seems that the caller was connected to something
and so as soon as the dog moved,
the collar came off 'cause it was stuck.
Perhaps it was a string, a latch,
connecting it to one of the wires in that cage.
- [Tony] But looking again and blowing up the footage,
we can't see any evidence of this.
Though of course, the video quality is poor.
And Kaku acknowledges,
dogs do have something like a so-called sixth sense
that humans lack.
- We use eyesight in order to gain knowledge
of the environment.
Dogs use smell and sound.
And their nose is much more sophisticated than our nose.
And the amount of gray matter devoted to smell is huge.
They have a way to detect things
that we are just totally oblivious to.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, we're gonna call this one unexplained.
We can't say one way or another what went on in that cage.
If it was a loose thread that got caught,
how was it able to completely unlatch the collar?
And what was going on when Kira just froze?
The only one who will ever really know
what happened here is Kira.
- If I say UFO, you'll know immediately
what I'm talking about, an unidentified flying object.
Recently though we've been seeing more and more reports
of another kind of craft.
It's called USO, an unidentified submersible object.
But what are they? Aliens?
Secret government technology, or something else?
October, 2021, Cozumel, Mexico.
While it's typically sunshine and sandy beaches
that draw tourists to this island paradise,
a TikTok user who goes by the handle, @DontStayAtHomeDad,
says he came here after hearing rumors
that something strange is lurking in the waters
and that's when he captured this.
- [Witness] Here you can see at nighttime,
two lights that are moving in sync with one another,
slowly drifting away from shore
and kind of spinning in a slow circle.
- [Tony] Take another look.
As we zoom in and slow down,
we see a pair of glowing circles in the water.
- [Witness] I don't know how much more proof
I need to give people to convince you
that there's something suspicious going on
out there in the water.
- [Tony] The video goes viral on TikTok,
amassing 350,000 views
and multiple theories on what this is.
Journalist MJ Banias says The UFO community is fascinated
with phenomena known as USOs.
- Where A UFO is an unidentified flying object,
a USO is an unidentified submersible object,
unknown vehicles that operate
under the surface of the water, an underwater UFO.
- [Tony] Some are convinced
that Mexico's ancient Mayan civilization
may be connected to unknown craft in the water.
- Various researchers online do believe
that the gods of the Maya are connected
to the UFO phenomenon or to aliens visiting Earth.
The Mayans believed that to access the underworld
for some divine reason,
one would have to travel through La Cenotes
which was a underground water-filled pit.
- [Tony] Did that belief come from ancients
observing USOs rising out of the deep?
Today, one thing is certain,
USOs are an ongoing concern for the US government.
In fact, in May, 2022,
when government officials were asked specifically about USOs
during Congressional hearings.
- Do we have any sensors underwater
to detect on submerged UAPs?
Anything that is in the ocean or in the seas?
- So, I think that would be more appropriately addressed
in closed session, sir.
- Okay.
- [Tony] They declined to answer in public
and instead address the issue in a secret,
behind closed doors session.
(suspenseful music)
In our first season,
we brought you the story of the Aguadilla UFO,
an unidentified craft which was seen to submerge
in the waters off the coast of Puerto Rico,
but that was shot by a high grade military camera.
Did this dad's consumer video gear
capture something similar?
Let's turn to our experts for the deep dive.
(tense music)
We begin our examination
with forensic video analyst Michael Primeau.
- Upon initial review of the evidence,
minimal digital information accompanies the file,
but the lights do appear to be real.
There's no evidence of overlaying or anything
within the macro blocks that would suggest
that it's placed within the recording.
- [Tony] So if what we're seeing is real,
could it be secret military technology?
According to Rich Hoffman of the center for UAP studies,
the video offers a clue.
- The fact that it was in close proximity to the shoreline,
to me, would indicate that
that's probably relatively shallow.
And they're relatively slow,
so I don't think that it's gonna be anything
like a secret military type situation.
- [Tony] Could these lights be a natural phenomenon?
Bioluminescent sea life?
We take that question to marine biologist, Dr. Shea Conger.
- Bioluminescence happens when the chemical bonds are broken
and we call this an exothermic reaction
because energy is released
when chemical compounds are broken down.
- [Tony] Approximately 75% of creatures in the ocean
are capable of bioluminescence,
however, Conger notes, there's a catch.
- [Shea] Most of these species that would be bioluminescing
are actually deep sea animals
that live at extraordinarily high pressures.
- [Tony] And while bioluminescent algae
can be seen near beaches around the world,
it's often widespread
and doesn't typically form such a distinct circular pattern.
So where does that leave us?
Hoffman believes the underwater attractions
of Cozumel itself are key to the answer.
- I think that ultimately it's two people
that are moving through the water with a flashlight.
People go scuba diving at night all the time.
- [Tony] So we pressed our anonymous dad,
then he copped to it.
The post was a hoax, classic click bait.
- I watched with my own eyes.
Two human beings get loaded up with all their scuba gear,
go underwater, turn on their flashlights
and then I started filming.
I'm trying to gather information about
the way humans receive information
and how quick they are to believe it.
So when I saw this combination of a foreign environment
with an odd visual,
I knew that in this moment,
I had to put it right on my TikTok channel.
I knew that it was gonna blow up.
(tense music)
- So there you have it. It's a hoax.
The dad says he's compiling data
about how quickly people will believe what they see online.
Okay, if you had any doubts,
there's a lot of fake stuff on the internet,
there's your proof.
Now when it comes to USOs, that's another story.
We've seen plenty of evidence.
They are a very real phenomenon
and we'll keep investigating when we find them.
- Emerging 5,000 years ago, Ancient Egyptian
is one of the world's oldest writing systems,
consisting of about 1,000 hieroglyphs.
But one recently discovered hieroglyph in particular
feels bizarrely out of place.
In fact, it looks like it belongs right here, right now.
It's April, 2009 in Abydos, Egypt.
A French tourist is visiting the Great temple
built by Pharaoh Seti the first.
As he wanders through the site,
he photographs something high up on a stone wall
that seems quite out of place.
In the photos, we see a panel in the temple wall
covered with a series of hieroglyphs.
Some seem just like standard characters,
but above those appears a form that looks, to many,
less like something out of ancient Egypt
and more like a modern day helicopter.
And even more remarkable beside it
are what seem to be a tank and a spaceship.
- You can see it here with the rotors up top.
You have the back fin here and you have the body here.
Many believers see this as evidence
of an ancient alien intervention.
- [Tony] Journalist Eric Grunhauser explains,
there's a concept known as ancient astronaut theory,
which proposes that some extraterrestrial beings
visited Earth in centuries past.
- It sort of created this idea
that aliens helped build the pyramids,
gave us otherworldly technology.
- [Tony] The three great pyramids in Giza
are said to align with the stars in Orion's Belt,
which would indicate whoever made them
had advanced astronomical knowledge
and was able to view the site from above.
And Grundhauser says many believe
that the appearance of the other seemingly
modern conveyances on the temple wall
gives even more credence to this theory.
- Of course, you have the helicopter here,
but then you also have things described by some
to look like a tank or the land speeder from Star Wars.
Maybe they brought it through time from the modern day
to show them where humankind was headed.
(suspenseful music)
- Italian artist and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci,
made prototype drawings of an ornithopter
flying machine way back in the mid 1500s.
But the first successful helicopters
didn't actually lift off until the 1920s.
So is it possible that the ancient Egyptians
somehow foresaw our technology
either through their own genius or with alien help?
Or could they have actually seen a helicopter like craft
transported from another galaxy or from the future?
Let's consult the experts.
(tense music)
Archeologist, Ed Barnhart, examines the photos
to determine if the alien tech theory flies.
- Archeology uses this term called OOPA,
an Out Of Place Artifact.
Something that's out of place
in the time period you find it in.
Our OOPAs are these glyphs
that really do look like they're helicopters and spaceships.
- [Tony] Yet anthropologist Kathy Strain says
the placement of these glyphs
calls the alien theory into question.
- This is the only place that this symbol occurs
and it's actually up in the corner of the ceiling.
I would expect that if they had really seen a helicopter,
it would be prominent in that temple.
I would also suspect
that if they knew what helicopters were,
they would have them buried in the tombs of the kings.
And there's nothing like that that has ever been found.
Because space in a temple's very valuable,
when one Pharaoh dies
and another Pharaoh comes into power,
he likely went into the temple
and erased what was there before and then wrote over it.
And that overwriting caused this illusion
that that symbol is a helicopter.
- [Tony] So it just may be coincidental
for a helicopter to appear in this amalgamation,
which Barnhart concludes as created
with a well-known technique.
- This panel in its current state is a palimpsest,
and essentially you make plaster out of the same material.
So you can actually shape a new spot
on a flat piece of limestone
to look like the raised hieroglyph that you just erased.
But it doesn't hold through the test of time.
So it falls off and you end up getting things
that look like untranslatable blips.
(tense music)
- Because of its inconspicuous placement,
it's lack of appearance elsewhere in ancient Egypt,
and the experience Barnhart has
with the creation of hieroglyphs,
our verdict is this symbol is an example of a palimpsest.
The original material has been written over,
but traces of it remain.
And over time the deterioration of the carving leaves behind
an unintended shape that we recognize,
but not the pharaohs.
- We make it our business to investigate strange sounds.
Sometimes they're booms,
sometimes they're animal cries
and sometimes they sound like God is making music.
This is one of those times.
October 2021, Vancouver Canada,
a drizzly morning.
From outside the window of this house,
Kevin Yaro hears something peculiar
and decides to record this.
(harmonic droning)
- [Tony] It's like a harmonic hum,
maybe something mechanical and it seems to fade in and out.
Listen again with the volume up.
Notice the odd musical quality the noise possesses.
(harmonic droning)
What makes this sound so strange
is that Kevin claims there are no instruments
to be found nearby.
The sustained musical ringing
seems to be appearing out of thin air.
- [Tony] Kevin says this isn't the only time he's heard it
and he has posted this other video of a similar encounter
in a cemetery with a similar musical sound.
(harmonic droning)
Each video he posts receives a flood of comments.
(harmonic droning)
- [Tony] With that, we turn to journalist MJ Banias
to explore the theory the sound
could be something heavenly in nature.
- Within Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions,
we have a sort of a consistent representation of the divine,
especially around the imagery of an angel.
There is often a trumpetist sound
that that follows these angels around.
When they blow them, it's a sort of sign
that something divine is occurring.
(harmonic droning)
(suspenseful music)
- In 2010, a nurse reported that 20 years back,
she heard a beautiful melody emanate from the heavens
just after praying beside a devout Christian patient
as the woman passed away.
The nurse said, not only could she hear the melody clearly,
but she was able to sing along in harmony
with an alto voice she never knew she possessed.
Could a similar phenomenon be happening here?
Let's ask our experts.
(tense music)
Soundscape ecologist, Ben Gottesman says
there's another strange phenomenon
that might explain what we have here.
It's an unexplained low frequency sound
reported in hotspots around the world known as The Hum.
So Gottesman been compares this Canadian sound
(harmonic droning)
to a known recording of the hum captured in Bristol, England.
- So this sound is like these drawn out,
lower frequency, metallic, hollow vibrations.
(low frequency droning)
The frequency's going all the way down
between 100 and 200 hertz,
and that is very different than what we see
in our recording here.
(harmonic droning)
It's much more of a harmonically rich signal.
The one in Bristol is lower frequency
and the drones don't hold out for as long.
There are different sounds, different frequencies,
and different temporal patterns.
- [Tony] If not the hum, then what about another phenomenon?
(metallic echo)
- There's many videos that purportedly
document sky trumpets or, sort of, god's music.
And these British Columbia clips,
I would say fit very well into that family of phenomena.
- [Tony] But something about these recordings
seem to be less than sacred to Ben.
- This person captured these sounds twice.
And what are the chances that this sound manages
to find the exact same guy twice?
When we look at the acoustic characteristics
in both of these clips,
we can see the exact same sound event
is precisely the same, millisecond for millisecond.
(harmonic droning)
For it to be literally identical,
that's all the evidence I need to show
that this is an edited video.
(harmonic droning)
- [Tony] But that still doesn't answer the question
of what exactly we're hearing in Kevin's videos.
Gottesman has a hunch.
- It was really striking that there were
proper musical intervals in this clip.
And so I enlisted one of the people
who I grew up playing music with
and he was able to recreate the sounds
pretty well on synthesizer.
The British Columbia sounds.
(harmonic droning)
Here's the synth track.
(harmonic droning)
To me, it's a really good match.
(tense music)
- Our verdict, a fake.
Likely a digitally altered piano sound.
We may have been inclined to give Kevin
the benefit of the doubt,
but after the copy/paste job Dr. Gottesman found,
it's a bit of a stretch.
However, The Hum and other unexplained mysterious sounds
around the world still remain unsolved.
- Every year, tourists flock to snap photos
of natural wonders like Arizona's Grand Canyon.
But this next amazing marvel is so remote
and potentially dangerous
that it has very rarely been photographed,
much less visited,
and it's been confounding scientists for years.
It's summer 2006 in the Irkutsk region of Russia.
Geologists Sergey Yezhav and Dimitri Tsyganov
have set out to document their explorations of a remote site
that's baffled scientist to this day.
In their aerial footage, we can see a rock formation
protruding from the surrounding green forest.
The grayish rock looks otherworldly,
completely separate from its surroundings.
It rises 130 feet in the air with a diameter of 520 feet.
From above, it almost looks like a giant crater.
However, another spherical shape rests inside like a volcano
with a ball stuck in the center.
Journalist Amy Teitel says the infamous site
is known as the Patomskiy Crater.
- It sort of looks like a crater,
but there's this bolus looking thing in the middle.
It's unclear how it formed or what exactly it is.
And because it's in a remote location in Siberia,
it's incredibly hard to study.
- [Tony] Teitel says the site was first studied
by Russian scientists in 1949 when the local Yakut people
warned a young geologist about it.
- The local people in the area are the Yakut people
and they've been aware of this formation for a long time.
It's known as the Fire Eagle's Nest or the Devil Place.
The locals know to avoid this place at all costs,
and they say that anyone who gets too close to it
is immediately overcome with a sense of dread.
One expedition was forced to stop
when its leader died of a sudden heart attack
just three miles from the crater.
- [Tony] In 2010, the Patomskiy Crater conference
was held in St. Petersburg, Russia,
where scientists gathered to discuss its origin.
Their results, inconclusive.
But we have our own team of experts.
So let's see what they can unearth.
(tense music)
NASA geologist Dr. Bob Anderson considers one theory
that's gained some traction,
that the crater could have been created
by two consecutive meteorites.
- We've seen where impacts
have hit this area, especially Siberia.
My problem with the impact idea
is that you don't see an ejecta blanket.
- [Tony] Ejecta blanket is the blanket of debris
surrounding an impact crater.
There is typically a star shaped distribution of ejecta
around the crater rim because the debris
is ejected up and then out.
There's no ejecta blanket here,
so Anderson is able to rule out meteorites.
Then another theory. Could this be a volcano?
- [Bob] The problem is that this
is in a limestone sedimentary rock.
Limestones are developed at the bottom of oceans.
And sedimentary rocks don't form volcanoes.
- [Tony] Siberia is not known for its tectonic activity,
so that makes a volcanic eruption even less likely.
Volcanoes occur most frequently
at the boundaries of tectonic plates
where the plates are actively moving towards or away
from each other, which isn't happening here.
So could it be a different kind of explosion?
(loud blast)
Archeologist, Dr. Ed Barnhart says that scientists
have detected radiation in the area leading to theories
about possible undercover military operations.
- When they really started studying it,
it was the Cold War.
So, Americans were very worried
that maybe this was another Russian test site.
The trees around the crater are growing up taller
and had higher levels
of uranium and thorium.
Radiation does make certain plant life
grow bigger and stronger.
So now we have some hint
that there is radiation coming out of here,
but a bomb creates a completely different kind of crater
than we see here.
This crater is compact and it's high,
so it's coming up from the ground.
It's not an explosion that's sent things out to the outside.
- [Tony] Since it doesn't seem like a nuclear testing site,
Barnhart analyzes if it could have something to do
with an increase in magnetism.
- There's a high level of magnetic activity
in and around this crater.
Normally, magnetic activity
has to be about iron that gets super heated.
This is limestone, so the signature
further confuses the pattern geologically.
- [Tony] Those increased levels of radiation and magnetism
seem surprising and inexplicable,
but Barnhart thinks he might have an answer,
a buildup of heat from those radioactive elements.
- What we're seeing here likely is that the thorium and uranium
that they've detected in the trees,
decaying under the earth, making an exothermic reaction,
exploding up into this crater.
- [Tony] And Barnhart says that heat
could also explain the magnetism.
- We do know that iron is found in Siberia
and it doesn't take a huge quantity of iron
to become magnetic.
The exothermic reaction is the same heat
that took the surrounding iron and turned it magnetic.
- [Tony] Anderson believes this exothermic reaction
might have caused what's known as a mud volcano,
which differs from the traditional magma volcano
that we've already ruled out.
These natural formations are created
by the eruption of hot water, pressurized gases,
and mud as opposed to lava.
- There have been several mud volcanoes identified
in Greenland where you find the sediments on top
and they come up.
I've not heard of one being dominated by limestone,
but it's not impossible.
- [Tony] One problem though,
this theory doesn't explain why this site
instills such fear in the locals
or why the expedition leader suffered a heart attack.
So the true picture remains muddy, for now.
(tense music)
Our verdict, this is an unexplained geological anomaly
that still has us all stumped.
It's possible it was caused by a mud volcano,
but that doesn't explain
why the formation is made out of limestone.
Luckily, we feel like we're in good company
if the greatest minds on earth are also at a loss.
And that's our show for tonight.
Thank you so much for watching and as always,
keep those cameras rolling.
(dramatic theme music)