- Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There."
This guy says he not only recorded a UFO,
he tried to melt it down.
- This guy says
his parents' house was haunted,
and he caught the ghost on camera.
- I was scared to death cause I thought,
"What the hell is that?"
- [Tony Harris] This guy may have been using aliens
as a Cold War weapon.
- Was the KGB trying to send an intimidating message
to the US?
- [Tony Harris] And this guy may have superhuman reflexes,
and a super strange idea of fun.
(intense instrumental music)
Around the globe are videos.
- What are those things? - It's moving.
- [Tony Harris] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(static squeaking)
- [Newscaster] We don't know where they come from,
who made them, or how they operate.
- What are they? - Some sort of
bizarre mutation. - What's exciting is
nobody really knows.
- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
- I'm Tony Harris,
and as a journalist for more than 30 years,
I've followed the facts where they take me.
Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation
to the world's strangest sounds and images.
We'll analyze each one with top experts.
- It's a credible case. It's a credible video.
- [Tony Harris] And pass a verdict on what it is.
- This video was clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
(intense instrumental music)
Good evening and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There."
We start with a question,
what would you do if you saw a UFO,
and then found what looked like a piece of it on the ground?
Well, we found someone determined
to get to the bottom of a similar mystery,
and he took matters into his own hands.
July 27th, 2018, Jesus Morales,
a student from Ventura, California,
is out walking his dog,
when his beloved pooch begins acting erratically.
(dog barking) Jesus looks to the sky above,
where he spots something that would change his life forever.
- It was about eight o'clock in the morning,
and I saw the UFO.
It just was floating in the air, hovering,
and so when I got a little bit closer,
I decided to start filming it.
- [Tony Harris] Jesus watches the orb
for about five minutes,
then says it begins to approach him,
and that's when things get really weird.
- My phone just wasn't working so I couldn't record.
It looks like it's spinning, but it's mutating.
The closest it came was about five or 10 feet,
but then it took off into space and I never seen it again.
- [Tony Harris] The UFO may have disappeared
after making Jesus's phone go haywire,
but he believes it leaves something behind.
- [Jesus] And I came up on this piece
that was in the ground.
It looked like melted aluminum.
- [Tony Harris] Jesus decides
to put the alleged space debris to the test.
- I took it to a welder.
He tried to melt it down.
- And it didn't melt.
- And the welder had never seen any material like that.
I'm a hundred percent sure it was real,
what I saw and I believe.
- [Tony Harris] Did Jesus come face-to-face with a UFO?
According to journalist MJ Banias,
his is one of an increasing number of sphere sightings,
including one remarkable case caught on camera
and leaked to documentarian, Jeremy Corbell.
- One of the most famous spherical UFO encounters
occurred in 2019.
It was recorded by the USS Omaha,
and it was over the Pacific Ocean.
- [MJ] The Omaha witnessed a a large spherical object
descend down and go into the ocean.
- We still today don't know what they saw
and what that object was, it remains unidentified.
- [Tony Harris] The Omaha sphere seemed to track
and follow the navy ship,
much like Jesus claims his object tracked him.
- [MJ] So Jesus's story fits within the broader lore
and legend of UFO encounters.
- There have been numerous allegations
that the US government
has acquired so-called meta metals from UFOs,
going back as far as the infamous Roswell crash in 1947.
If that's true,
would the feds also be interested in Jesus's find?
Let's dispatch our experts to see what they can determine.
First, how can this object stand up to this kind of heat?
We asked video effects designer and astronomer,
Marc D'Antonio.
- You can take a torch like that and aim it at some steel,
and it won't melt, no matter how long you do it.
It might get it to look red hot,
but it won't actually melt it.
So metal like that doesn't have to be extraterrestrial.
- [Tony Harris] To be fair,
we don't know exactly how hot Jesus's torch was,
but we do know this,
there are bigger issues with his metal fragment,
because Jesus has no evidence
it actually came from the object.
- We didn't see anything falling.
So you can't say for sure where it came from,
especially here, where you have farmer's fields.
It could have been a piece of metal from a tractor.
- [Tony Harris] So if the fragment evidence isn't proof,
could that sphere shut down Jesus's phone
during his critical close encounter?
- These phones are pretty resilient,
but if you bombard them with electromagnetic force,
it's possible that you can cause the phone
to get scrambled a little bit.
But to do that, you need a lot of power.
- [Tony Harris] Okay, so that power source is a question.
NASA geologist, Bob Anderson,
sees another problem with Jesus's story.
- He said that when the object came close,
the camera and cell phone stopped working,
but there's no pictures of this object 20 feet from him.
So there's a lot of doubt in my mind
whether this is a true story.
- [Tony Harris] If Jesus's account is inaccurate,
what's the accurate explanation?
Anderson immediately rules out planes or drones.
- There's no control, there's no propellers,
there's no rudders or anything on that.
This object here is floating with the wind.
- [Tony Harris] D'Antonio agrees.
The way the object moves is the key clue to its identity.
- It hasn't demonstrated any behaviors
that would be considered classic UFO type behaviors.
However, Mylar balloons tend to move slower,
and tend to move more horizontal than vertical
for a period of time.
But then as it gets higher, it'll accelerate upwards.
So it acts like a balloon, it looks like a balloon,
maybe it is a balloon.
(intense instrumental music)
- Our verdict, Mylar balloon.
This object simply doesn't move with the speed
or focus of other unexplained sphere sightings,
like the Navy's Omaha incident.
But Jesus,
if you do any more analysis on your metal fragment,
hit us up. (intense instrumental music)
Now, let's get creepy.
The United Kingdom with its abandoned castles
and ancient cemeteries
has been called the most haunted country in the world.
But of all the spooky stories,
it's a 30 year old VHS tape
that recently captured the world's attention.
It's summer 1991 in Barmby Place, Bradford, UK.
15 year old Adam Mawson has been using a camcorder
to record his house when no one's home,
in an effort to document some strange recent happenings,
and on one of the tapes, Adam finds something frightening.
Nothing seems amiss until a shadowy figure
slowly begins to emerge from the chair.
Look closely.
It eventually rises and moves about the room,
passing behind the doorframe,
before returning
and seemingly disappearing through the wall.
Moments later,
a second figure appears from the right,
and follows closely behind the other into the wall.
- I'm scared to death 'cause I thought,
what the hell is that?
And that's when I showed my parents it and my mom said,
"Oh yeah, I've seen that before.
I've seen it with her own eyes."
- [Tony Harris] And to journalist Alexis Brooks,
it sounds like a classic haunted house tale.
- Barmby Place ranks among one of the most haunted places
that I have ever seen.
I mean you're talking about disembodied voices,
doors opening and closing on their own,
and even what I would call a shadow person phenomenon.
- [Tony Harris] Shadow people
are described as dark silhouettes with human shapes
and profiles.
These shadowy creatures are sometimes interpreted
as the presence of a spirit or other entity.
Others believe these figures to be negative beings
that can be repelled by various means,
including invoking the name of Jesus.
- I have seen and heard so many accounts
of what we call the shadow person phenomenon.
Many reports of shadow people
include harassing an individual in their bedroom.
So I would dare say,
that in addition to the more conventional haunting,
we have what I would call a shadow person phenomenon
going on in that home.
- [Tony Harris] A figure often associated with shadow people
is the hat man,
a famous urban legend who wears a dark coat, a hat,
and is unusually tall.
Sometimes the figure is thought to be the devil himself.
Adam's father still lives in the house on Barmby Place,
and says the activity has died down since he found religion.
But that only seems to confirm
that perhaps something spiritual was going on.
Our experts take a closer look.
(intense instrumental music)
First, we head to forensic video analyst, Michael Primeau,
for an authenticity check of this digitized copy.
- We're not able to identify it as an actual ghost
through forensic testing,
but it could be the product of when the video was processed,
between the time that it was produced on tape,
to this digital version,
as some sort of artifact that is concealed
as the object travels by, but is it CGI?
Less likely.
- [Tony Harris] So this footage
probably wasn't manipulated intentionally,
but how about accidentally?
- These shadowy figures don't appear to be something
that was introduced into the recording
based on the artifacts that are present
throughout its movement.
And because we see these shadowy figures
over several seconds in multiple instances,
it's more likely something that actually happened
in the video images.
- [Tony Harris] So this recording itself
may not have been manipulated,
but we are not ready to declare this a ghost.
We turn to physicist, Dr. Matthew Szydagis,
who suspects something shady.
- What we're seeing here is this dark figure of shadow
seeming to pass into the left wall and disappear,
which would favor the ghost explanation.
However, if you look very carefully over these few frames,
there is some pixel darkening on the left
that would seem to indicate
that the shadow goes over the wall,
as we'd expect for a normal shadow
being cast by someone off camera.
It does not fully explain all the subtle motions we see,
such as when the shape rises out of the chair,
but it's the most plausible non-ghost explanation
that I can come up with.
- [Tony Harris] Primeau disagrees,
and doesn't see any evidence
that the shadow was created by someone off camera.
- If the shadow was produced by the operator
that's standing behind the camera,
we would expect to see more of that cast off
on the regions surrounding the doorway,
but it's not produced over here
on the right side of the image.
These darker regions being some sort of shadow
is not really possible
with the way that we don't see that information
on the doorway.
- [Tony Harris] So if we're ruling out shadows
of someone off camera, could this truly be a ghost?
Some say physics itself
is all the proof you need of life after death,
because the law of conservation of energy states
that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
We bring that theory to Dr. Szydagis
- This is a misinterpretation
of what conservation of energy means.
The very notion of conservation of energy
comes from energy changing form,
and a great example of this energy exchange
occurs after we have passed away,
and our body decomposes.
Gases and other elements will feed the worms
after we've died.
Therefore, we cannot use an argument
like conservation of energy from physics
in order to prove or disprove life after death.
- So it seems current science still can't attest
to the existence of ghosts,
but as of now,
we can't explain this video any other way.
Our verdict,
this video is a bonafide case
of unexplained phenomena, over 30 years running.
rough,
US government agencies stockpiled information on UFOs.
Not surprisingly,
so did our counterparts behind the Iron Curtain,
but since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991,
many allegations have come out
about the once secret KGB UFO files,
including this next story,
which might be the strangest one yet.
In 2011, a mysterious YouTube user named Ivan 0135
uploads what he claims is leaked classified footage
from the KGB, shot between 1942 and 1969.
The first video posted on April 13th,
starts with a KGB logo and censored text above and below.
You can hear the audio clicking
of an old film projector.
Remember that.
Next, we see a house
and a mysterious flying saucer shaped object
hovering behind it.
Switching to an aerial view,
a saucer shaped UFO is seen, first from a distance,
and then zoomed in,
but the most shocking footage is yet to come.
Next, we're shown what looks like an alien autopsy
being performed.
Just weeks after the first video,
a second, even more stunning video is released.
It purports to put us face-to-face
with an actual live alien.
Notice how it blinks its huge expressive eyes,
and it moves its enormous round head and slim arms.
As the camera pans from the bottom
to the top of an alien's body,
it's obvious it fits the descriptions
of the infamous grays.
The alien culprit
blamed in almost three quarters of abduction reports.
Science writer and space flight historian Amy Teitel
says the footage was first uploaded to a YouTube channel,
created the same day the first video was shared.
- This video led to a lot of discussion online,
with people wondering if this footage was indeed real,
and if so, what did that mean?
One theory is that this is real video footage
of the aliens who landed in the Soviet Union in the 1940s.
- [Tony Harris] Teitel notes that some believe
the footage may have been faked
as part of an elaborate Cold War, Soviet psy-op,
designed to instill fear and paranoia
in the United States.
Would putting captured aliens on display strike panic
in the West?
- The idea was, this footage was designed
to scare the United States
into believing that the Soviets had this alien technology.
There's even a theory that the Roswell incident of 1947
was actually staged by Stalin
just to create this fear and doubt within the United States.
- [Tony Harris] Or could it possibly be real?
Teitel says given more recent events,
maybe aliens visiting Russia isn't so far fetched after all.
- There is a long history of alien encounters
within the Soviet Union.
The most notable event was in 1977 in Petrozavodsk.
A number of eyewitnesses
reported seeing an amethyst colored jellyfish
floating in the sky.
The Petrozavodsk incident
led to a meeting of the Soviet Ministry of Defense
in Moscow,
which in turn led to the creation of two new departments
designed especially to look into UFO phenomena.
They operated without interruption until 1990.
- The official Soviet UFO investigators
never released any definitive proof of alien contact.
Could this be it?
Our experts are here to get to the pravda,
that means the truth. (intense instrumental music)
We begin our analysis with our aviation and military expert,
Tim McMillan.
- In the first portion of the video,
the flying saucer shaped object
certainly has some characteristics
that are consistent with a blimp.
It appears kind of football shaped.
We have the darker bottom with a lighter top,
which is sunlight reflecting on it.
But in terms of exotic maneuvers, you don't see any.
And so could this be a balloon? Could this be a blimp?
Absolutely.
- [Tony Harris] Next we ask professor of anatomy
and anthropology, Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum,
to examine the figures seen in the footage.
- I don't think that we're looking at real aliens.
I think it's much more likely costumed children.
This impression stems from the body proportions,
as well as the movements.
A child has a fairly distinctive way of moving.
The biomechanics of their body movements
are dictated by their smaller mass
and lack of maturity of body control.
Same can be said for the movements I think, seen in here.
- [Tony Harris] Finally,
we take the footage to our forensic video analyst,
Michael Primeau.
He immediately notes that the time code
on the videos was embedded digitally after the fact.
- Devices like these projectors didn't have time code.
What's peculiar is the way that the time code is pulsing
at one point in the video,
and how at other points of the video,
there is no time code displayed.
Just doesn't make any sense.
- [Tony Harris] And here's the key discovery,
Primeau says that the film damage we see here
is identical to a film damage effect available
in some popular video editing software.
And finally, remember the sound of that projector click?
Primeau says that's an important clue too.
- One of the things that I detected
in the tonality of the projector clicking sound,
the tone or the pitch of that sound changes,
which is an indication that the speed of the video
was changed when it was being played back.
So that prompted me to measure a sample group of pictures
and the sample produced a result of 47 frames per second,
much higher than any kind of film photography
should have been digitized at,
because the standard for film was only 24 frames per second
back then.
(intense instrumental music)
- Our verdict, this is likely a hoax,
but we can't prove who made it or why.
Perhaps it's an individual prankster,
or perhaps it's someone working for Mr. Putin
to spread Russian disinformation.
Either way, comrade, you didn't fool us this time.
Okay, watch this.
That's about as fast as I can throw a punch.
How quickly could you move if your life depended on it?
This next video is proof
some people have nearly super human reflexes,
fast enough to escape a treacherous trap.
Check it out, but please, don't try this at home.
It's January, 2015 in Gilbert, Arizona.
People have gathered for a church talent show,
where 65 year old Gordon Ray
is getting ready to demonstrate
how to set off a bear trap with a stick.
- I was one of the youth leaders,
and you know I can't sing or dance,
but I said, "I can do this."
And so I just started out that routine with the mouse trap
and then I just worked up to the big grizzly bear trap.
- [Tony Harris] But at the last minute,
Gordon switches things up and tosses aside the wooden stake,
(crowd yelling) - [Onlooker] What are you doing?
ignoring terrified shrieks from the crowd,
he suddenly thrusts his hand downwards
and into the jaws of the trap.
He removes his hand in a split second,
right before the trap snaps shut.
It happened so fast,
I think we need to take another look in slow motion.
- You can hear the people screaming in the background,
but I had done the practice so many times
in the barn ahead of time,
that I was really confident that I could beat it.
- [Tony Harris] The left-handed Gordon claims
he's always been naturally quick.
- I'm real agile.
I'd say like instead of a big bear,
I'm more like a a squirrel.
- [Tony Harris] But journalist Erin McCarthy says
Gordon isn't alone in his feats of speed.
- Bob Munden Jr. was an exhibition shooter
who could un-holster his Colt 45,
shoot a target, and re-holster his gun in 0.0175 seconds.
- [Tony Harris] Munden is so fast.
Here he is in slow motion.
McCarthy says there's a strange science
behind fast reflexes like his.
- Your brain, your spinal cord,
your nervous system and your muscles,
all have to work together to make movement happen,
and it's almost instantaneous.
When we're talking about reflexes,
they're even faster,
because they cut the brain out of it entirely
and go directly to the spinal cord within milliseconds.
There are people who have super fast reflexes.
For example, Pekka Luodeslampi, from Finland
has the central nervous system condition Tourette syndrome,
and he has the fastest punch on record
at 0.186 seconds.
- [Tony Harris] Yet some suspect Gordon's speed
has to do with him being left-handed.
- I think it could be the lefty
or southpaw advantage that you see in sports.
Some studies have actually shown
that lefties are better at processing information
more quickly,
which allows them to master tasks like that.
- Even if there is a slight lefty advantage,
studies have shown human reaction time
peaks at 24 years old
and declines between four
and 10 milliseconds every year after that.
Amazingly, Gordon was 65 years old when he did this trick,
even though he should be 160 to 400 milliseconds slower
than his 25 year old self.
Let's see if our experts can figure out
how he pulled it off.
We don't think Gordon was on performance enhancing drugs,
but we checked in with theoretical physicist,
Dr. Michio Kaku, just to be sure.
- Now if he was on steroids, perhaps he would be bulked up.
And I think we can also rule out amphetamines,
because psychologically you think you're superman,
but the reality is,
you're limited by the speed at which muscles contract.
That's a law of physics.
- [Tony Harris] So, could being left-handed
give Gordon an advantage?
Dr. Ed Hope considers this theory.
- Left-handed people
make up 10% of the general population,
but in certain elite sports,
make up disproportionately more.
And they tend to be sports that involve one-on-one plays.
People who are left-handed,
their moves are more unfamiliar to most people,
so they have limited time to react.
For sports such as swimming,
or dare I say, escaping a bear trap,
there'd be no advantage in being left-handed.
- [Tony Harris] So could we have
a neurological condition like Pekka Luodeslampi's
Tourette syndrome?
- We think it's the basal ganglia
that causes Tourette syndrome.
And some neurologists agree with Pekka,
that his record breaking reaction times
and speed is likely due to excitation
in these area of the brain
as a result of his neurological condition.
But actually there's not enough evidence
to say that in general,
people with Tourette syndrome have improved motor abilities.
(bear trap clanging) (onlookers screaming)
- [Tony Harris] So then is Gordon actually superhuman?
Physicist, Dr. Matthew Szydagis says, not so fast.
- The total closure of the bear trap is about five frames,
so at 30 frames per second,
that means we can estimate
the time it takes for the bear trap to close
as being about 100 milliseconds.
Then if we look at
what is the maximum possible human reaction speed,
we see that this actually fits.
- [Tony Harris] Szydagis says Gordon's reflexes
are above average,
but that's likely helped by muscle memory,
which despite the misnomer,
actually takes place in your brain,
and there's only one way to get that.
- How do you go to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice.
I think he's been able to shave a few milliseconds here,
shave a few milliseconds there.
He's right at the edge of what is physically possible.
- Our verdict,
naturally fast reaction time plus muscle memory.
After the video went viral,
Gordon received offers to do the stunt on talk shows,
but he declined,
promising his wife that what we saw was his final attempt.
And remember, don't you go trying this at home,
or there could be severe or even severed consequences.
ries
and other sea monsters lurking beneath the water surface.
Looking at this next video,
we can understand why any Russian
might respond with a polite, "Nyet,"
when invited for a seaside swim.
August, 2018, Bering Sea, Russia,
two local residents take a leisurely stroll on the beach
when they discover something hideous and enormous.
They pull out their phones and record this.
(speaking Russian)
A mysterious sea creature washed up
on the eastern coast of Russia.
Now let's look at this thing.
The enormous beast looks like it has a tail.
It's white,
and it looks like it's covered
with some kind of fur hanging from the carcass.
It doesn't appear to have a prominent face or eyes.
It's about 20 feet long,
and according to the witnesses, it smelled horrid.
(speaking Russian)
Field researcher Ken Gerhard says,
Russian legend speaks of water spirits like the Vodyanoy,
a slimy bearded creature covered in scales
that can pull people and animals underwater,
break dams, drown crops, and wash away mills.
This creature vaguely fits the description,
but the Vodyanoy was traditionally found
in rivers and lakes, not the sea.
So Gerhard points to another theory.
- A story that surfaced on the internet
talks about organism 46-B,
and according to the accounts,
there was a Russian scientific expedition
that was exploring under thousands of feet of ice
in Siberia,
when they encountered this giant, intelligent,
octopus-like creature that attacked their team,
killing three of their members.
Now, whatever you may think of this story,
it's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility
that there are giant, unknown creatures
that live at very great depths under the ice.
For example, the colossal squid,
the largest invertebrate on earth.
- [Tony Harris] The colossal squid,
which can weigh over 1000 pounds,
was first discovered in 1925,
living beneath the icy waters of Antarctica.
And Gerhard suggests one final theory.
Perhaps this is not an aquatic creature at all,
but possibly a long lost remnant of the ice age.
- This thing could be the remains
of some ancient prehistoric Pleistocene mega faunal animal,
something like a wooly mammoth frozen in the permafrost
for thousands of years.
- A trend of rising temperatures
has led to long extinct creatures being unearthed,
and it's casting new light on prehistoric eras.
In 2018, a team in Siberia unearthed mummified lion cubs
that date back to the end of the Pleistocene epoch.
That's right, in case you didn't know,
Russia used to have lions.
Let's see what our experts can unearth about this creature.
Biologists Shea Steingass throws doubt on the idea
that this could be the Vodyanoy,
since it is known to have limbs,
which are out of place in the ocean.
- It's said to have kind of a humanoid shape to it,
with possibly even legs, and that to me doesn't make sense.
'Cause the ocean, especially the Antarctic ocean,
is very cold,
and water tends to actually suck body heat from you
faster than air,
which is why humans can become hypothermic even
in really warm water.
- [Tony Harris] So instead,
could it be some large predatory creature
from beneath the frozen caps, like organism 46-B.
- Organism 46-B.
That was purportedly brought up
from a scientific ice core expedition.
This is very unlikely,
because when you core ice for composition,
the holes that are drilled are only an inch
or two in diameter,
and we really just don't have the technology
to drag up a giant sea creature
from thousands of feet under the sea ice.
So I would say that 46-B is probably just a myth.
- [Tony Harris] Biologist Floyd Hayes takes an icy plunge
into the prehistoric animal theory.
- This looks a lot like a hairy creature,
and it could potentially be a mammoth.
Mammoths have melted out from permafrost
in different parts of the world.
- [Tony Harris] But after further observation,
Hayes realizes the fuzzy exterior of this creature
might not actually be here at all.
Hay says this rotting corpse
is the perfect example of something called a globster.
Say what?
- A globster is a large organic mass
that washes up on the beach of an ocean or river or lake.
Globsters have often been identified as giant octopuses,
and squids,
but usually they wind up being the blubber of a whale.
It doesn't resemble anything that is living,
and that's because it is the carcass of an animal
that is decomposing.
The decomposing blubber of a whale
has a fine shredded appearance similar to this.
I'm sure that's what it is.
- Our verdict, we're sold on Dr. Hayes's assessment
that this is in fact the globster of a whale carcass,
whose rotting blubber actually creates
the appearance of hair.
You know what they say?
The rising tide lifts all boats,
and well apparently, other creatures too.
We'll keep you posted on what else washes ashore.
of ancient wonders,d
but sadly, many of its architectural marvels
were either damaged or destroyed by invading barbarians.
The structure in our next video survived the acts,
perhaps not because of what it looks like,
but what it sounds like.
It's November, 2016,
and Sunil Krishnan has made a pilgrimage
to the ancient village of Hampi.
He is there to explore the beauty
and antiquity of the Vittala temple.
The temple's biggest attractions
are these mysterious 56 pillars made of solid granite,
that somehow produce musical notes when struck.
(pillar ringing)
- So I went there,
then I realized this is beyond my understanding.
You've heard about this pillar all your life.
Finally you get to play with it.
That is an amazing experience. (pillar ringing)
- [Tony Harris] Journalist Eric Grundhauser says
that visitors to the ancient site
have been fascinated by the musical pillars
for more than 500 years.
- The musical pillars of Hampi
consist of 56 granite pillars,
sometimes referred to as the Sa Re Ga Ma pillars,
Sa Re Ga Ma being the Indian version
of the tonal scale equivalent to Do Re Mi Fa.
So the sounds emitted will change
depending on which pillar you are tapping.
(pillar ringing) - According to legend,
the musical pillars may have been created
for the God Vishnu,
to celebrate his return,
and the reincarnation of Vishnu will destroy the wicked
and the unjust in this dawning of a new age.
- [Tony Harris] Grundhauser says foreign invaders
have long obsessed over the mystery
of how these stone columns
could produce such soothing music.
- The Mughals are said to have charred the pillars
for three months,
trying to unlock the secrets of their musical notes.
The English ended up carving off two of the pillars
just to see inside,
discovering that they are just granite pillars.
Many visitors to the site
still have trouble explaining
how the pillars could have been created
to emit such unique musical tones.
(pillar ringing)
- Although we have examples of resonance stones
in other parts of the world,
there's nothing quite like Hampi's pillars
in terms of historical significance.
For decades,
they have been the subject of numerous scientific studies,
and yet they still remain an enigma.
So let's see if our experts can solve this ancient riddle.
(intense instrumental music)
We start with forensic audio analyst,
Dr. Rob Maher,
who has a theory as to how these pillars made of solid rock
could make music.
- The mechanics of this particular rock
and the diameter of the pillars
are that it's a flexural vibration,
meaning the whole pillar itself is wiggling side to side
almost like a string.
And so that's the thing that is allowing it to vibrate
at a particular frequency.
- [Tony Harris] Sound crazy?
Well, you see examples of flexural vibration all the time,
like on a guitar string or a coiled door stopper.
To test his theory,
Maher creates a synthetic version
of a flexural vibration sound
and compares it to the columns.
- So I'll play the synthesized first.
(notes ringing)
(pillars ringing)
So it has the same characteristic pitch
and the general quality to it,
and so what we're hearing when the structure is struck
is just these flexural vibrations,
but the understanding of how they work is still emerging.
- [Tony Harris] So how could a giant piece of stone
be made to produce a sound the same way as a guitar string?
- Some theories have said
that it may be that the pillars are reconstituted granite,
and each one of the pillars
were purpose made for the tones.
Perhaps there's inclusions in the granite stones
that subtly produce these differences in tone,
but exactly what that inclusion would be,
and how Hindus of the 1500s figured that out,
these are all still unanswered questions.
- [Tony Harris] Barnhart also points out
that even if it was possible
for artisans from over 500 years ago
to wield the technology needed,
the surrounding evidence does not support that conclusion.
- The creation of a cement
that would be made of granite,
would involve heating up that granite
to thousands of degrees,
and there is no evidence of any kilns of that nature
being able to get that hot anywhere near the temple.
- [Tony Harris] And even then, the musical mystery remains.
- The kind of trial and error it would take
to make each one of them
consistently make a different tone,
it boggles the modern mind
how we would go about this process.
So the idea that scientists of the 1500s did this,
not once, but 56 times is really kind of amazing.
(pillars ringing)
- Okay people, we are genuinely stumped.
We don't know how these things were made.
So we have to conclude,
the musical pillars of Hampi
are the product of a lost technology forgotten over time.
Today the pillars are cordoned off to prevent further damage
to the stone instruments.
So if you go, look, but don't touch.
r episo,
we brought you a confounding story
about alleged UFOs caught on camera in Warminster, England.
After investigating this footage,
we came to the conclusion
that it was simply too good to be true.
The video must have been altered.
However, a new lead came in after we aired,
that reminded us that things may not always be
what they seem.
August, 2018,
Warminster, England, about a hundred miles west of London.
From the side of a highway,
the passenger in a parked car notices something
in the evening sky, two bright orbs moving separately.
At first it looks like it might be a couple of helicopters
or drones, but then look at this,
they split into five or six smaller objects.
The cluster continues to fly in unison,
illuminating the sky
and coordinating maneuvers for a full three minutes.
It's reminiscent of a series of UFO sightings
that occurred in the area in the 1960s.
These sightings characterized at times by explosions
and hissing flames in the sky,
came to be known as the Warminster Thing.
Could this video offer proof
of the Warminster Thing's return?
We considered UFOs and secret military tech,
but ultimately the answer seemed to come
from testing the validity of the video itself,
and a suspicious edit gave one of our experts pause.
- The transition out of the hill was removed from the video.
I think I have to label this one a hoax.
- At the time,
our original analysis led us to believe
that this video was doctored to deceive,
but then you, our beloved viewers got involved,
and that changed everything. (intense instrumental music)
When the original segment hit YouTube,
some viewers claim this wasn't faked footage after all.
- This video really needed a second look at,
because of this new information.
- [Tony Harris] So our ace video analyst, Mick West,
went back to check the authenticity of the video
and its suspicious edit.
- I think what actually happened in this location was,
the cameraman simply moved the camera down, lost the shot,
and then moved it back up again
as they came out from behind the hill.
And so they just did a little edit
to remove that little bit of dead air.
- [Tony Harris] Because of this,
West doesn't think trickery or CGI was involved,
which negates our old verdict.
- Everything else about the video seems very genuine to me.
The way the objects move seems very consistent.
- [Tony Harris] West also Xed out other hypotheses,
natural and technological.
- There was a bunch of different hypotheses,
one of which was a meteor shower,
and you can kind of rule that out,
because it changes direction.
Another possibility,
drones that were rigged with fireworks,
but you don't generally have drones with fireworks on,
because drones are quite small.
Also, military technology was kind of ruled out,
because they're not gonna be testing
some kind of secret military technology
by the side of a road where anyone can see it.
- [Tony Harris] Which to West only meant one thing.
- This is obviously something that isn't secretive,
something that's either is intended to be seen
or they don't care if people see it.
- [Tony Harris] But what other explanations
could have possibly fit the bill?
The answer almost flew past us,
that is, until we logged onto social media.
- We were contacted by a viewer
who recognized what he was seeing on screen,
and he suggested that what we might be looking at
was actually pyrotechnic planes.
- [Tony Harris] Pyrotechnic planes are aircraft
that use their wide wingspan
to slowly release fireworks from their wingtips.
They've been used in a variety of function,
from air shows or weddings,
to the deployment of destruction in war zones.
But if that's what we're seeing,
who was the responsible party?
All it took was a simple internet search
of the business located in the area of the sighting.
- I run a company called Airborne Pyrotechnics,
and we fly a couple of Grob motor gliders
with pyrotechnics and LEDs,
and this is my son Tom, he's my second pilot.
- [Tony Harris] Airborne Pyrotechnics is run by Tim
and Tom Dews,
who have flown all over the world.
And it's not the first time one of their displays
has been mistaken for a UFO.
They even have a warning on their website
for that very reason.
- It's funny, you know,
we can do a really nice display
and put half a dozen pictures up and get 50 views,
and somebody takes a shaky,
wobbly video of us from 10 miles away,
and you can't even make out what it is, says the word UFO,
and it gets thousands, hundreds of thousands of views.
I just can't understand it.
(intense instrumental music)
- Our new verdict, you guessed it,
airborne pyrotechnics.
The plane the Dews fly, the Grob 109B,
is a twin seat, self-launching motor glider.
It's been used by the Royal Air Force
to train cadets in basic flying,
and that's our show for tonight.
As you can see,
we are always open to suggestions,
so please let us know
what you think we should be investigating,
and keep those cameras rolling.
(intense instrumental music)