- Tonight on The Proof Is Out There.
It's been called Canada's Roswell.
Did this flying saucer leave a clue about alien tech?
- Maybe they're disc-shaped for a reason,
possibly because they're particle accelerators.
- [Tony] Is this haunting sound the heartbeat
of the Loch Ness Monster?
[unknown source thumping]
- It was so loud, it was so clear.
That's what gets me.
I'm really excited.
- [Tony] Could a volcano in Mexico be a secret base
for unidentified anomalous phenomena?
- There is a belief that these objects are indication
of an interdimensional portal.
- [Tony] Did snowmobilers stumble upon a corpse
from another world?
- This is one of the best alien specimens
that people have found in recent decades.
- [Tony] Is this a triangular UFO over Texas?
- It was floating around the sky.
It kinda felt like the thing was watching me.
- [Tony] And is there a glitch in the matrix?
What in the world is this bizarre weather phenomenon?
- It's very strange.
There's only rain on this car,
and everything else is totally dry.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] Around the globe are videos,
[witness screaming]
photos,
and sounds that defy explanation.
[electric buzzing]
- [Expert] We don't know where they come from,
who made them, or how they operate.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [MJ] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- [Marc] 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.
- [Witness] It's coming towards us.
- [Tony] We'll analyze each one with top experts.
- It's a credible case, it's a credible video.
- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.
- This video was clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
[dramatic music]
Good evening and welcome to The Proof Is Out There.
Some places have become synonymous with UFOs.
Roswell, New Mexico,
Rendlesham Forest in England,
and even Vancouver Island?
Yep, it's had several notable UFO sightings
over the decades.
Our first story is one of the most astounding.
Take a look.
October 8, 1981.
Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
It is a cool autumn morning,
and an amateur photographer is taking photos
of the beautiful mountain landscape
with her 35-millimeter camera.
But when she gets home and develops the film,
she says she's shocked by what she sees.
A shiny metallic saucer hovers above a picturesque mountain.
It appears to be silver in color
with what looks like a bubbled glass dome in the center.
This isn't your average light in the sky.
This looks like a real flying saucer.
- It's a fairly clear shot done on a film camera
back in the '80s of,
you know, a classic flying saucer,
- [Tony] But that saucer shape may not be pure science fiction.
Some theorize that it plays an integral part
in the flying saucer's capabilities.
- There's some theories out there,
one of which that I subscribe to,
that maybe they're disc-shaped for a reason,
possibly because they're particle accelerators,
and they're generating particles
that allow them to pop out of our four dimensions,
X, Y, and Z moving through time,
and go into a fifth dimension,
and then pop back in.
- [Tony] Could this be an interdimensional craft
popping by Vancouver Island?
It wouldn't be the first alleged appearance
of a flying saucer in the area.
- A nurse at the Cowichan District Hospital on the island
was doing her rounds, and on New Year's Day in 1970,
she opened the curtains in a patient's room
and all of a sudden saw
this strange disc-like object floating in the distance,
much like the object in the photograph.
And within UFO circles,
it became known as the Duncan incident.
- [Tony] That incident is now known to be a hoax,
perpetrated with a homemade balloon.
But is this photo the real deal?
Canadian officials certainly seem
to be taking the subject seriously.
- We know that in February of 2022,
the Pentagon's UFO Task Force
actually briefed the Canadian military
and the Canadian government
on this surge of UFO sightings all across North America.
- Now, when I first saw this photo,
I thought it was too good to be true,
but in 1987,
NASA scientist Dr. Richard F. Haines published
this report detailing his in-depth analysis of the photo.
His conclusion,
"The identity of the disc object remains unidentified."
So if he couldn't crack it,
can our experts?
[tense music]
We start by authenticating the photo for ourselves.
- The lighting conditions within the scene
and onto the object aid to legitimize the photo.
The shadows, highlights,
and midtones are all geometrically consistent
with lighting conditions coming from above.
From my perspective,
I don't see any concerns for the integrity of the photo.
- [Tony] Okay, so the lighting matches,
but an informed hoaxer could achieve that
simply by capturing two images on one negative,
a double exposure.
This works because film captures an image
by being briefly exposed to light.
So all it takes to capture two images in one
is to simply expose the same piece of film twice.
But that trick is easier said than done.
- This was taken with a Mamiya instamatic camera
that you have to depress the camera's button
to take the photo,
and then when you release the button,
you have to advance to the next negative
in order to have the button to work to take the next photo.
So it's impossible for me to create a double image
on the same negative. [camera clicks]
- [Tony] So the photo itself is real,
but we still don't know what it actually shows.
That saucer-like shape,
might it just be a Frisbee?
- You would have to mount a dome on the top of it,
which renders it not flyable.
- [Tony] Not only that, but a Frisbee, or a hub cap,
commonly used in early UFO hoaxes,
wouldn't look this crisp.
- 30 feet is what they call the hyperfocal distance,
which means that when you have your camera set on infinity,
the object has to be 30 feet away,
otherwise it'll be out of focus.
So now you're talking about an object
that's somewhere between 30 feet
and maybe that mountain peak
that is up in the air.
- [Tony] That means this thing is big.
How big?
Well, we ran the numbers.
- I did various calculations in terms of angular size
that basically says that, hypothetically,
if you get out to the distance right here that that peak is,
that I measured at 1 1/4 miles away,
and because it's not a crystal clear photograph of it,
it has some sort of distortion or distance to it,
then you get to the object being about 78 foot in diameter.
- [Tony] So it's a real photo
depicting a 78-foot saucer-shaped craft.
But then, how did the photographer miss it
when she actually took the photo?
[camera clicks]
That's perhaps the most compelling piece
of this mystery.
- UFOs are most commonly known as being fast,
so it may be that the UFO is moving so quickly
that she didn't have the ability to see it
but the camera still had the ability to capture it
and freeze it in time.
- It is a legitimate, real photograph of a daylight object
that doesn't conform to anything naturally we can explain
or conventional that we can explain.
It's an incredible case.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, we've got a genuine UFO.
There's a reason this photo is so famous
on Vancouver Island.
Like Haines, we verified the photo,
ruled out the explanations,
and ran the numbers,
all to reach the same conclusion.
This disc cannot be identified.
Now let's spend some time
with everyone's favorite legendary aquatic beast.
Over the years,
there have been numerous oalleged visual sightings
of Scotland's Loch Ness Monster.
However, one researcher recently revealed an audio recording
where we may actually be able to hear the creature.
Take a listen.
It's August 10, 2024,
in the Urquhart Bay section of Scotland's Loch Ness.
Investigator Alan McKenna is monitoring underwater sounds
using a hydrophone.
The device,
once used by the U.S. Navy to detect enemy submarines,
is nearly 100 feet below the water's surface
when it records something peculiar.
[unknown source thumping]
Take another listen.
You can hear a bizarre thumping sound
cut through the static.
It's rhythmic, hollow,
and unlike anything Alan has ever heard before.
[unknown source thumping]
- We all kind of freaked out a wee bit,
and were like, "Where's this coming from?
What noise is this?"
I always compare Loch Ness to space.
It's vast, it's dark,
it's difficult to comprehend now and again.
So anything could be down there.
- [Tony] McKenna and his researchers weren't saying
this was definitely Nessie,
but a lot of people felt it could be.
- This is literally the first time
that we've ever captured some really unusual sounds
in the depths of Loch Ness.
[unknown source thumping]
When we hear the rhythmic pulsing of this audio recording,
it's easy to compare it
to the sound of a heartbeat of an animal
that has a four-chambered heart very similar to ours.
- [Tony] In fact, all mammals have four-chambered hearts.
But aside from the occasional otter,
no confirmed warm-blooded species inhabit Loch Ness.
So what gives?
- For many years, there's been speculation
that the Loch Ness Monster might be a surviving plesiosaur,
which is an ancient type
of marine reptile from the Cretaceous.
Now, new evidence suggests
that plesiosaurs may have been warm-blooded or endothermic.
If so, they would most certainly possess
a four-chambered heart like ours,
and therefore the sound of a beating Nessie heart
might sound very similar to ours.
[unknown source thumping]
- In 2019,
scientists first recorded the heartbeat
of a blue whale swimming in the wild
with electrodes secured with suction cups
to the whale's left flipper.
They discovered that when the whale dove,
its heart rate decreased to a low of two beats per minute.
Have we also found a heartbeat in Loch Ness?
Let's ask the experts.
[tense music]
We first wanted to see
if the sounds picked up on the hydrophone
could have been made by other fish in the Loch.
- There are a number of fish species
that vocalize or make sounds using air sacs in their bodies.
That being said,
there are none of those species that inhabit this lake.
Mostly, what we would find here are trout
or landlocked salmon,
and none of those fish are known to vocalize.
- [Tony] So is it possible
that this is the heartbeat of a plesiosaur,
perhaps Nessie herself?
- A heartbeat is a very specific series
of electrical impulses
that's fairly universal throughout the animal kingdom,
and it has such a rhythm to it
because it is optimized
to efficiently move blood around the body.
It does sound like there's kind of a rhythm to it.
[unknown source thumping]
But if this were some kind of a heartbeat,
it wouldn't be healthy.
In fact, I would say this might be atrial fibrillation,
where the heartbeat electrical signal is struggling
to move along.
- [Tony] According to our forensic sound analysis,
if this is indeed a heartbeat,
it's an unusual one.
- One of the possible comparisons would be a sound
of a marine mammal, such as a manatee.
[heart thumping]
[unknown source thumping]
- The manatee heart rate is a slower and consistent rate.
The Nessie example is a much faster rate
and very kind of arrhythmic.
It's quite irregular
and quite fast compared to what we'd expect.
- [Tony] However,
there could be another explanation for the sounds
that has to do with the hydrophone itself.
- Signals from a hydrophone are very, very small
in amplitude,
and so we use a device called an amplifier
to boost that signal up to a level
that we can record it or process it.
And so if there's any noise
or any interference that's present,
the amplifier also boosts that.
So those sounds can be due to biological sources,
but it could also be due to waves,
due to wind blowing over the water.
Any cables
or mechanisms for the boat
that are causing vibration in the water,
the hydrophone will pick those up as well.
- [Tony] Whatever it is,
McKenna's ready to continue the search.
- This is what kinda keeps the mystery going.
We don't know.
We may never know,
but it's the only time we've heard that sound.
Just because I might not get that evidence,
it doesn't mean it doesn't exist,
it just means that I've had no luck
in pursuing the truth.
But I'll never give up,
we're still there every single month.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, we're calling this one unexplained.
While this may be artifact sounds from a hydrophone,
our experts couldn't rule out the possibility
that it's something biological,
even a heartbeat,
albeit a sickly one.
So until we have further evidence,
we'll keep up with these ongoing expeditions.
- Pentagon UFO whistleblowers have come forward
claiming the United States government has retrieved
crashed alien craft
and even what they call biologics.
But if aliens are crashing to Earth,
why haven't any civilians ever come across
their dead bodies?
Well, maybe they have.
Quebec, Canada, 1992.
Three snowmobilers are riding in the woods
an hour northwest of Montreal,
but everyone stops in their tracks
when they see something strange on the ground.
Somebody takes out a camera and photographs this.
Its mouth is ajar as it stares lifelessly
into the night sky.
The snowmobilers prop it up.
Now look closely,
and you'll see its bulbous eyes filled out
by pitch-black irises
along with a thin nose and that small rectangular mouth.
A story circulates about the person who took the video,
and the details are pretty murky.
- A man was living with his roommate,
and one of the roommate's friends came over
one night and said,
"My cousin and a couple of his friends were out snowmobiling
and they found an alien corpse by the side of the road."
The men who found the body didn't bring it back with them,
so they left it where it was
and decided that they'd come back the next day.
But by the time they got back, it was gone.
- [Tony] All we know for sure
is that the video circulated for years
in a mysterious corner of the internet
known as the dark web.
- The dark web is shrouded in mystery.
It makes up less than 1% of all of the unindexed websites
that make up the entire internet,
but it's somehow become that place
where people put things
that they don't think are ready to be released to the public
or they're trying to share but hide from the public.
The video circulated on the dark web pretty quickly,
but it didn't really reach the mainstream until 2008,
when it was uploaded to YouTube.
- [Tony] And since this alien sighting happened
not far from Montreal,
some wonder if there was a connection
to what may be that city's most famous UFO sighting
of all time.
- In 1990,
many people saw a series of 8 to 10 circular lights hovering
over a large metallic object
at the top of the Bonaventure Hotel.
That case has been investigated for years,
and no one's come up with a solid explanation.
Many people think there could be a link
to this alien corpse.
- While the dark web is often associated
with illegal activities
such as drug trafficking and hacking,
proponents say it can also be used for legitimate purposes,
such as investigative journalism,
human rights activism,
and, yes, legitimate UFO research.
Did someone upload alien corpse footage too explosive
for the regular internet?
Our experts are online and on the case.
[tense music]
- From what I can see,
as the video plays naturally,
it appears to be some sort of slideshow that's playing,
and the operator is capturing a playback
from another source.
The problem that we face here is,
because this was handled improperly,
we don't have the necessary information
to understand that chain of custody.
So the authenticity is inconclusive.
- [Tony] What can we learn from a closer look
at the creature's anatomy?
- It's hairless,
it's got kind of a grayish tinge to its skin color,
so it does take the traditional view
of what an alien's supposed to look like.
You can notice that it doesn't have any genitalia,
but it has an Adam's apple indicative of somebody male.
This alien has clear buttocks,
and that seems very odd for me,
because if it doesn't have any obvious genitalia,
why does it have a rectum?
That doesn't go together whatsoever.
- [Tony] But whether human, alien, or something else,
physically, things just don't add up.
- Its neck is super skinny, and the head size
with a neck that size doesn't work in reality.
And on its back you can see its shoulder muscles,
and those are not correct anatomically.
The muscle structure wouldn't support anything
that it's supposed to support.
So, whatever this is,
it's not possible for that to work together.
It's completely wrong.
- [Tony] And it's not just the creature itself
that raises a red flag.
- The setting is very well lit,
so you can see everything very well,
implying that there's another light source there.
I can't imagine that anybody would carry a bunch of lights
out in the snow.
- [Tony] The evidence, or lack thereof,
is more than we can take.
- All you have is this badly done video
that's probably been taped over
and taped over several times to make it even more grainy.
So, I don't put any stock in this.
What we are seeing here is a hoax.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, we think we're looking at a hoax.
But remember that in 2023,
one of those Pentagon whistleblowers claimed
the U.S. had retrieved several alien corpses,
although no evidence has been shared
with the public just yet.
- Since this show premiered in 2021,
we have seen some strange shapes in the skies over Texas.
Saucers, triangles, orbs,
and now an arrow?
Take a look and take your best shot at identifying it.
January 4, 2023, in Forney, Texas.
It's a clear night in the Lone Star State
when musician Mike Koehler decides to take five.
- I was in my studio working on some music,
and I stepped outside to have a smoke break,
and I noticed something was floating around the sky.
It kinda felt like the thing was, like, watching me.
- [Tony] Mike decides to watch it back
and takes out his phone to capture this.
- [Mike] That is not an airplane.
- [Tony] A V-shaped object covered in dim blue lights
hovers above his home.
As Mike records,
it stays within the center of the frame,
swaying back and forth.
Intrigued, Mike steps away for a minute
to photograph the craft with a better camera.
- [Mike] Go inside and grab my actual camera,
I go out my backyard, and the thing was gone.
Dammit.
- [Tony] But what is it?
This V shape is reminiscent
of one of Texas's most famous UFO cases.
- The Lubbock Lights was an incident in September of 1951,
where this sort of V shape of lights began moving
over the town of Lubbock.
A lot of people had witnessed it,
and it caught attention of media all over the world.
It really solidified this idea
that UFOs were the product of alien visitation.
- [Tony] In the decades
since people started seeing these UFOs,
aerospace engineers also began tinkering
with arrow-shaped craft.
- The use of a V shape
forms a fairly efficient type of aircraft.
Delft University of Technology
actually designed a large hydrogen aircraft
in the shape of a V,
and it's essentially being tested
to be a new type of passenger and cargo aircraft.
- [Tony] Pretty cool,
and perhaps something like that was flying over Texas,
but Mike is convinced what he saw came from another world.
- I used to be extremely skeptical about UFOs,
but after I got video of the incident,
it's kind of caused me to believe in them
a little bit more than I used to.
Now when I go outside and I look up and I say,
"Yeah, I wonder if there's anything weird up there."
- With aircraft like the new Flying-V looking
more and more like UFOs,
there has been rampant speculation
that new aviation tech is just the reverse engineering
of old UFOs,
supposedly recovered over the course
of a decades-long UFO retrieval program.
Could our mystery object be from outer space,
or is it space-inspired?
We asked the experts.
[tense music]
- The vehicle doesn't seem to match
any known vehicle aircraft that we have.
We have V-shaped vehicles such as the B-2,
the F-117,
the B-21, the new one that's coming out.
They're all triangular shape,
but they don't move like this.
They usually leave some type of contrails,
and they definitely do not have
this type of light configuration.
- [Tony] So if this Texas UFO isn't a terrestrial craft,
that means it must be extraterrestrial, right?
Not so fast.
- It's conjured up images of alien spaceships
that people have described,
but it's not doing anything amazing.
It's not otherworldly and it's maneuvering,
it's not zipping along.
It's something that appears to be almost hovering in the sky.
- [Tony] And we don't think it's CGI either.
- The way everything moves in the video looks very real.
So, I say this is a real video,
and this is a real thing of some type in the sky.
- [Tony] Looking closer,
we make one very important discovery.
- When we zoom in,
it looks like lights that can actually change color,
which to me definitely indicates something very artificial.
- [Tony] Something from Earth that floats in the air
and has lights?
Sounds like a drone.
We have seen drones hovering over residential areas before,
like the New Jersey swarms back in fall 2024.
Could this be similar?
- There are drones out there
that have a triangular configuration,
but they're not exactly this triangular configuration,
and they don't have these types of lights on them.
- [Tony] The FAA actually mandates
that night-flying drones have lights
that strobe between 40 to 100 cycles per minute
to avoid collision.
This object's lights may change color,
but they don't strobe.
So what could this be?
- I think what we're looking at is a kite
with LED lights on it.
LED lights are very low-power lights,
doesn't add very much weight to the kite.
The thing that really reveals it to be a kite
is that if we boost the levels,
we can actually see the tail of the kite.
You see lots of examples nowadays
of kites with LED lights,
and I've quite often seen them reported as UFOs
just because people don't recognize what they are.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, LED kite.
Now, presumably,
whoever was flying it reeled it back in
when Mike was inside the house getting another camera.
Our experts didn't find a UFO this time.
But if you like kites,
Texas is the place to be.
Austin's annual ABC Kite Festival,
founded in 1929, is the nation's oldest.
- Volcanoes are known to spew hot lava,
gasses, and volcanic ash.
But alien ships?
This next video might be proof of that
and maybe even a little more.
It all takes place around one perplexing peak in Mexico.
August 24, 2023.
It's nighttime in Central Mexico,
where a webcam monitors smoke rising
from an active volcano called Popocatepetl.
But around 8:30 PM,
the volcano, nicknamed El Popo,
appears to release more than just smoke.
As the mouth of the volcano begins to flash,
a trail of luminous, cigar-shaped objects seem
to exit the crater in an upward path into the night sky.
From head to tail,
there are roughly 20 individual objects.
The video sparks headlines
and draws the attention of documentarian Darcy Weir,
who has closely investigated this particular phenomenon.
- Believe it or not,
there's many videos recorded around volcanoes,
and I think the most commonly recorded place
is actually Popocatepetl.
There are a ton of videos
of what looks like UFOs
entering the crater of the volcano Popo
and sometimes exiting.
- [Tony] That's why some even speculate
that El Popo is more than just a volcano.
- Jaime Maussan is probably
the most popular UFO investigator in Latin America,
and he has a very strong belief
that the objects that are seen coming out of El Popo
are indication of something much, much bigger:
an interdimensional portal that UFOs can come through
and then they exit through the top of the volcano.
Maussan's claim is that the intense magnetic forces
that are inside of a volcano would lend itself
to opening up a wormhole
that would extend to other sides of the universe
or even other dimensions.
- [Tony] Wormholes happen, in theory,
when gravity folds spacetime so severely
that two distant points,
like, say, a location on a faraway planet
and the mouth of El Popo,
actually meet.
This would mean that even though they could be separated
by billions of light years,
a wormhole shortcut
would make it possible to travel between them.
The concept of wormholes is based
on Einstein's theory of general relativity,
but so far, scientists have no evidence they actually exist.
Could this video be proof of an interstellar shortcut?
Our experts give us the long and short of it.
[tense music]
Could there be a natural explanation
for what we're seeing?
- So if you think of it from a natural cause,
that would be most likely volcanic bombs.
Volcanic bombs are pieces of hot magma that get thrown out
because of the pressure inside the volcano.
What's uncommon is seeing objects
that are flying out in a straight line.
- [Tony] Since the formation is too perfect
for volcanic bombs,
could this be extraterrestrial travelers
using the volcano as a wormhole portal?
- I have no idea why,
if I were an advanced civilization,
I would put my wormhole next to something
as extremely dangerous as a volcano.
Some have speculated
that advanced civilizations need volcanoes to refuel,
but I don't understand why you would need to refuel
from something that is producing energy
in a very unusable form,
mostly as heat and friction.
So I'm extremely skeptical
about these portal or wormhole ideas,
I don't see any evidence of this.
- [Tony] But if these aren't UFOs harnessing the power
of a volcano,
could they be a string of manmade objects?
There is some familiar Earth-based tech
that might fit the bill.
As we speak,
Elon Musk's Starlink project is building
a global satellite-based internet network.
Starlink is launching thousands of satellites,
sometimes multiple times a week, to do it.
- This video does bear some similarity
to launches of Starlink,
which have been mistaken for UFOs many, many times.
However, a Starlink launch looks more
like a series of points or dots
than a series of streaks.
I think we're probably looking at
something very similar to earthquake lights.
- [Tony] Earthquake lights are mysterious balls of light
that have been reported for centuries.
One theory is that they're caused by tension in the ground
that creates charged gas and emits light.
But scientists still don't know for sure.
- I can't explain, though,
why that would create a series of lights in a line,
but I suspect it has something to do
with the flammable gases produced by the volcano
or ionization of the air caused by the seismic activity.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, unexplained natural phenomenon.
We like Professor Szydagis's theory
that these are earthquake lights,
even though they look a little different
than any we've seen before.
But until scientists agree on what causes earthquake lights,
this video still remains something of a mystery.
But until scientists agree on what causes earthquake light- ,
nearly 1,800 thunderstorms are soaking the Earth.
According to the National Weather Service,
the typical thunderstorm is about 15 miles wide
and lasts about 30 minutes.
But what you're about to see is not typical.
November 1, 2021.
West Java, Indonesia.
It's a humid and overcast afternoon.
As rain begins to fall,
a local man notices something very strange.
A single vertical column of rain falls
over a parked black SUV and nothing else.
The area around the SUV,
along with other parked cars,
is perfectly clear and dry.
Now, bizarrely, concentrated rains do happen.
Just check out this video in Italy,
where a narrow shower falls over a small spot on the road,
or this one from China,
featuring a downpour that abruptly stops
inches from a dry motorist.
However, in our Indonesian case,
some wondered if this wasn't more
than a freak of meteorology,
but an answer to prayers.
- In Indonesia,
the Banyuwangian people of East Java perform
what's called a Kebo-keboan ceremony,
in which they ask for protection from disasters,
a good harvest, and for rain.
In other areas of Indonesia,
people rely on rain shamans to control the weather
and delay rain until outdoor events are over.
- [Tony] If this rainfall is a prayer answered,
it wouldn't be the only time that's happened.
- In Sicily in 1956,
there was a year-long drought in the village of Caltabellotta.
When the villagers walked behind a statue
of the Virgin Mary, crying, "We went water and bread,"
there was a small storm that ranged just on them
that eventually grew into a bigger storm
and ended the drought.
- [Tony] Our Indonesian rain, however,
didn't grow into a torrent.
- It's very strange, obviously,
that there's only rain on this car
and everything else is totally dry.
- On a previous episode,
we featured what looked like a hyper-local torrent in Ghana.
That turned out to be an illusion,
just a burst of water shooting up from a broken pipe.
But can our experts make heads or tails
of what's causing these mini rainstorms?
[tense music]
Could our micro-shower be related
to a strange phenomenon called punch hole clouds?
- Punch hole clouds, or fallstreaks,
oftentimes develop when high clouds are in place
and an airplane flies through the clouds
and creates a punch hole.
- [Tony] When a passing aircraft disrupts
super-cooled water droplets in a cloud,
it causes them to freeze
and eventually fall to the ground
over a very concentrated area.
- The initial punch hole will be small.
However, that will spread radially,
and the size of that rain tends to fall
over much larger areas,
not just the width of a car.
In this case, we're looking at one car
that is being rained on.
- [Tony] So it's probably not a punch hole cloud.
In fact, this might not be a natural event at all.
- If water comes from the sky,
it comes from miles up, where we have winds
that can then change the direction of the rain.
Rain does not come in a column.
That defies the laws of meteorology,
defies the laws of physics.
And so I think that basically this is a fake,
and there's basically a hose someplace
that is shooting water on top of this car.
- [Tony] But hang on.
When the camera pans up,
we don't see a hose or an arc of water coming from one.
This might fly in the face of meteorology,
but in the end,
we're not sure what's causing this.
- I've seen upward lightning,
I've seen rain the color of blood,
but I've never seen anything like this.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, unidentified water source.
While we agree with Professor Kaku
that the video from Indonesia could well be a prank,
we just can't quite figure out how it was pulled off.
In the meantime,
if there is a secret micro-rain conspiracy
behind all of this,
let's hope for a leak.
- When the seasons change,
certain things feel inevitable.
Snow falls in the winter,
rain in the spring,
and leaves in the autumn.
But our next video captures foliage
that seems to defy the laws of Mother Nature
and the laws of gravity.
Are supernatural forces at play in the forest?
December 6, 2021.
Arkadelphia, Arkansas.
Kendra Raines and her husband, Tim,
are on their normal walk along a hiking trail
when they suddenly encounter something strange.
Tim pulls out his cell phone and records this.
A bright yellow leaf is twirling in midair.
The leaf appears to levitate
without drifting toward the ground.
As it hovers above Kendra,
she snatches it to see if it's caught on something,
like a spider web.
But surprisingly...
- You can see me on the video just standing there perplexed
at the way that this leaf is flying around.
The entire experience probably lasted five or six minutes.
A lot of people insisted it was a butterfly,
and it absolutely was not a butterfly.
We did go and thoroughly check it out,
but it definitely was just a plain yellow leaf.
I have no idea why that leaf chased me across the trail.
It did seem very supernatural to us.
- [Tony] Is something paranormal at play here?
- This took place in Arkansas in the Ouachita Mountains.
Scholars know that people have lived there
for about 14,000 years,
and the indigenous people there believed in an Above World
that had perfect spirit beings,
the souls of the ancestors,
and creative forces.
There was a Middle World,
and this is the place for people, plants,
and animal communities.
And there's a Below World,
and this has more destructive forces.
So the idea is that there has to be a balance
between all of these worlds,
and not only a balance
but a reciprocal relationship between animals,
plants, trees, and people.
And they communicate with each other.
- [Tony] Could a spirit be communicating with Kendra
in this video?
- I think that when you sometimes see something
that doesn't look natural,
that's maybe when something from another world
is entering this one.
- If the idea of trees communicating with us seems,
well, odd,
consider this:
a 2015 study proposed
that trees can communicate with each other
through chemical signals delivered
by an underground network of fungi.
But there's a difference between underground signals
and floating foliage.
So just what are we looking at here?
[tense music]
First, we examine the recording
to see if this magical leaf is simply a work
of digital animation.
- Throughout the analysis of the frame-by-frame,
looking at each of the individual pictures,
it's clear to see that this video has been compressed.
But it's unclear to me as to whether or not
it has been processed using something like CGI.
- [Tony] If it's not digital trickery,
could Mother Nature offer another explanation?
- Thermal updrafts could keep leaves suspended
in the air longer than normal.
A thermal updraft is a pocket of warm air
that is warmer than its surrounding,
so it's more buoyant.
This is exactly what birds use
to climb those high altitudes.
We don't have that in this case.
Looks like it already rained,
which would normally be the opposite of an updraft.
- [Tony] It may not be an updraft,
but some air movement could be involved.
- It kind of seems that there's no wind
if you look at the leaves,
but if you actually look at the trees in the background,
we can actually see, over here,
there's branches moving around quite a bit.
- [Tony] And the wind
isn't the only thing pulling the strings here.
Kendra might have just missed spotting
the elusive support line.
- It's probably suspended from a silkworm thread,
like, a spider thread,
or, like, an inchworm thread dangling from this tree.
We can't see the thread in this particular shot.
It very much depends on the lighting
whether you can see the thread or not.
But if you take some fine thread like I have here,
it actually can expand quite a lot.
It will be very elastic,
it'll be able to move around a lot,
and it'll also be very resistant to breaking.
- The elasticity of spider silk is so strong,
it can be stretched up to four times its length
without breaking.
- So when you were to take the leaf in your hand
and move it around,
it wouldn't break because of the elasticity
of the extra length.
[tense music]
- Our verdict, this floating leaf was animated
by an imperceptible wind
with assistance from a spider web.
Sometimes the elements line up in ways that seem mystical,
but we're confident that in this case,
the illusionist is actually just Mother Nature.
And that's our show for tonight.
As always, thank you so much for watching,
and remember to keep those cameras rolling.
[dramatic music]