- [Tony] Tonight on "The Proof is Out There: Alien Edition."
This image of a metallic disc changed everything.
Is it the first flying saucer ever caught on camera?
- Of all the famous early UFO photographs,
this is perhaps the most famous.
Within months the country knew the term flying saucer.
- [Tony] This photo sparked a wave of reports.
Hundreds claimed that they saw the same disc-shaped craft.
What did they see?
- Yeah, I think the fact that hundreds of people
reported seeing something
means that something was actually there.
- [Tony] A metallic disc spotted near the Panama Canal.
Why do these strange objects
keep appearing in Central America?
- There are UFO sightings in Central America
pretty frequently, usually around volcanoes,
so it doesn't surprise me
that someone would think this is a UFO.
- [Tony] With UFO reports at an all-time high,
we're examining the most compelling evidence
caught on camera.
Tonight's focus, classic flying saucers.
Our experts will analyze the evidence.
- I was just mesmerized with what I was looking at.
- [Tony] And then we'll pass a verdict.
[man speaking in Spanish]
- [Tony] The proof starts now.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] Good evening everyone,
and welcome to "The Proof is Out There."
We're currently living in the second golden age of UFOs,
which obviously means there was a first golden age.
It happened in the 1940s and '50s
and one of the most compelling pieces of evidence
was a photo of a flying saucer
that fascinated and perplexed researchers for decades.
But was it a UFO or not?
- [Tony] It's around 7:30 PM on May 11th, 1950
in McMinnville, Oregon.
Evelyn Trent goes out to feed her animals
behind the farmhouse she and her husband Paul live in.
While attending to her chores,
she is astonished by what she sees in the sky.
She runs towards the house
yelling for Paul to grab their trusty folding camera.
They manage to snap two photographs.
[dramatic music continues]
Both photos show a large metallic-looking
disc-shaped object hovering in the sky.
In one shot, power lines can clearly be seen
above and below the object.
In another shot, the UFO appears to be trapezoidal in shape
with what looks like an antenna or a beacon.
- The 1950s were considered the golden age of UFOs
for a couple of reasons.
In June 1947, we have Kenneth Arnold, a pilot,
seeing some really strange UFOs over Mount Rainier.
And the media coverage of that
gave us the term flying saucer.
In July of 1947, we have the crash at Roswell,
which really kicked UFO mania into high gear
in the United States.
- [Tony] Then, in 1948,
a veteran combat pilot, George Gorman,
reports an altercation with a speeding glowing orb
from the cockpit of his P-51 Mustang
over Fargo, North Dakota.
By 1950 the floodgates were open.
- [Erin] So in the midst of all of these things,
you have the Trent case.
- [Tony] The Trent photos were first published in 1950.
They went on to be circulated and scrutinized
in newspapers across the country
for more than two decades.
But in 1981,
they would receive their most exhaustive analysis yet
when Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist for the U.S. Navy,
conducted his own examination of the negatives.
- [Erin] Bruce Maccabee determined
that they were not tampered with in any way.
And he also determined
that the line of sight for the two photos
converged behind the power lines,
which in his opinion meant that the object was genuine.
- [Tony] The story of what happened to the original
negatives is its own controversy.
For some reason, Bruce Maccabee held onto them for 25 years.
The family thought they'd been lost.
A newspaper later claimed ownership,
which prompted an ugly battle
between the paper and the family
over this incredible piece of UFO history.
You can only imagine
what the UFO community makes of all of this.
Let's see if our experts can shed any new light
on this age old mystery.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] First off, we take the photographs
to astrophotography expert Andrew McCarthy.
He has his doubts about the authenticity of the images.
- There's a few ways you can produce
this type of effect in-camera,
throwing a hubcap like a frisbee,
but I think that would produce motion blur
that would be very evident in the photos.
There is another way it could be done, however.
You could simply tie an object to the power lines
and have it dangle there.
Using nylon string it might not be visible
and it would look like the object was floating
some distance away.
I think the most likely answer here
is there was some small object that resembled a craft
that was hung from the power lines in this photo.
- [Tony] But what would the family have to gain
by staging such an elaborate hoax?
- [Rich] There was no intent on trying to make money
or selling a story.
In fact, their belief was that what they were seeing
was something that might have been from the U.S. government
and they were questioning
whether they should even talk about it at all.
- [Tony] Hoffman acknowledges
that our military, as well as others,
was experimenting with various exotic flight technologies
at the time, including VTOL vehicles,
which stands for vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
- [Rich] You have the Avro disc that was created
to build, like, a flying saucer kind of platform,
which had a jet engine that was pointing down
with a large blade that would help to lift the object up.
- [Tony] Hoffman also points out
that one examiner's careful scrutiny of the lines of sight
and the relative position of the power lines in each photo
eliminates the wire dangling theory.
- [Rich] Dr. Bruce Maccabee said,
"If I stood in this spot and I took this photo,"
and he drew a line to where that line of sight would be,
and then he moves over to the next plot
where the object is now seen in a different position
when it's tilted up,
where the lines would converge at
would be beyond the telephone wires,
which then indicates
that it was not connected to the telephone lines.
- [Tony] Maccabee's analysis proves the two lines of sight
don't converge directly under the wires,
which is what we'd expect in the case of a hanging model.
- [Rich] So I completely rule out that it's a hoax
or anything contrived,
and I go with this being a UFO.
[dramatic music]
[sparkling music]
- [Tony] Our verdict?
We're calling this a genuine UFO, at least for now.
The hard math in Hoffman
and Maccabee's line of sight analysis
seems to blow up McCarthy's power line theory.
And a lack of motion blur
contradicts any thrown disc theory.
The debate proves one thing.
While the photos can't be confirmed,
they are also quite hard to debunk.
[dramatic music]
You're about to see one of the most famous photos
ever taken of a flying saucer.
And decades later, it is still raising some big questions.
November 1951. Riverside, California.
Guy Marquand Jr. and a couple of friends
are taking in the scenic hillside
when something in the sky breaks the stillness.
- Marquand reported seeing this object
flying extremely fast overhead.
He ran to grab his camera, then took this snapshot.
- [Tony] The black and white photo
could hardly make it any clearer.
In the sky above a sloping hill soars a crisp-edged disc
with a domed top and a high contrast metallic sheen.
And while this image stunned Riverside,
it was part of a story already unfolding.
As we mentioned, four years earlier,
it was pilot Kenneth Arnold's eyewitness account
of saucer-like objects over Mount Rainier
that ignited the UFO craze.
- [Amy] In the months after Arnold's original sighting,
more eyewitnesses saw something similar
to what he described.
Within months, 90% of the country knew
and was familiar with the term flying saucer.
- [Tony] Among the many flying saucers
and depictions that followed Arnold's
came the Riverside UFO.
The big difference?
Unlike Arnold, Guy Marquand Jr.
had actual photographic evidence.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Tony] Flying saucers have kind of gone out of fashion.
In 2023,
the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
dubbed orbs the most common UFO shape among recent reports.
In contrast, discs or flying saucers comprised only 2%.
So were flying saucers ever real?
And if so, why are we seeing different UFOs now?
And the big question: is the photo legit?
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] We turn first to astronomer Marc D'Antonio to ask
could a flying saucer even fly?
- Here I am moving a UFO from one side to the other.
It went from here to here.
But what if I can make it disappear from here
and just appear right here?
Maybe they're disc-shaped
because they're particle accelerators
that allow them to pop out of our four dimensions
and then pop back in.
- [Tony] Particle accelerators produce beams
of electrically charged atomic or subatomic particles.
They're often circular
so the beams can travel in a continuous loop.
- [Andrew] The flying saucer shape could allow the craft
to function as a centrifuge.
So you could simulate whatever gravity your home planet had
by spinning it faster or slower as its traveling.
- [Tony] This is because a centrifuge
creates a sustained rotational force
that causes your body's inertia
to press you against the sides
effectively simulating gravity.
If you've ever ridden the Gravitron at an amusement park,
then you've experienced this firsthand.
-[Andrew] So the flying saucer may actually be
an ideal interstellar vehicle.
- [Tony] But then why has the ideal interstellar vehicle
apparently fallen out of favor?
- [Marc] It's possible that there are other types
of interstellar craft
that have reached us from various civilizations.
We're seeing flying saucers less often,
but it doesn't mean
that there aren't these types of UFOs out there.
- [Tony] So is this flying saucer a genuine UFO
or the result of some kind of trick photography?
- [Andrew] When I analyze this photo,
it actually appears to be reflecting it
exactly as one would expect
something metallic with that shape
to be behaving in the sky like that.
So whatever this is,
it was captured authentically in-camera.
- [Tony] Yet, while McCarthy believes it's a real object,
he's not so sure it can't be identified.
- [Andrew] If you take a look at car styles at the time,
you'll notice that they all had a common feature
called the hubcap.
- [Tony] Metal hubcaps are less common now,
but back when this photo was taken,
these shiny wheel protectors were everywhere.
They often had a raised part in the center
similar to the domed top we see on this alleged UFO.
- [Andrew] The shape very strongly resembles
this flying saucer.
So I think that's a much more plausible explanation
than saying we got visitors from outer space.
- [Tony] And D'Antonio sees that too.
-[Marc] When we look at this,
it's at an angle compared to the camera.
Usually things that are traveling in an arc
through the sky
are things that are say tossed.
It's like a hubcap being thrown like a frisbee
off of this rock right here
and someone took a picture of it.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] Our verdict? Thrown metal hubcap.
The light, the angle, and the car design of that era
just make it the most likely explanation.
We can't say for sure,
but we think these fun loving folks from the '50s
might have been pulling a fast one
in the heyday of the flying saucer craze.
- You know, often when we hear about a UFO sighting,
it involves a lone eyewitness,
so it's easy to be skeptical.
But our next encounter
has reportedly been seen by hundreds of people.
No wonder the story is considered
one of the biggest mass sightings in UFO history.
April 1966, it's midday in Westall,
a suburb of Melbourne, Australia.
- [Amy] Students and teachers from the Westall High school
and the Westall State School
went outside to enjoy a lovely day,
and they all saw something strange in the sky.
- [Tony] This black and white photo allegedly taken
by one of several hundred eyewitnesses,
depicts a crystal clear flying saucer
hanging in the sky over the trees.
It has a domed top, a large spotlight on the bottom,
and a rim of lights wrapping around it.
Some eyewitnesses recall multiple UFOs that day.
Others, just one.
Eyewitness Phyll Tierney, who was 15 at the time,
recalls three in total,
but this photo matches her recollection of them
almost exactly.
-[Phyll] They were very streamlined,
just silver with a rounded bottom, a middle platform,
and then rounded area on the top.
I was just mesmerized with what I was looking at.
- [Tony] Remember those claims come from hundreds of people,
students and teachers alike.
Joy Clarke, who was 12 at the time,
recounts what happened next.
- They went up in the sky
and they disappeared down over to the back of an area
called the Grange.
Now, the Grange was bush land, pine trees.
They disappeared down there for quite a while.
And some of the kids had actually jumped the fence
and taken off through the Grange to catch up with them.
- [Tony] One of the students
who follows the UFOs down to the Grange
is 11-year-old Terry Peck.
- [Terry] I ran through the Grange,
and I just stood and stared
because it was really only four, five meters in front of me.
- [Tony] After briefly hovering in the Grange,
eyewitnesses say the UFOs shot off into the sky
leaving hundreds of eyewitnesses on the ground perplexed.
As the story spreads, more eyewitnesses emerge.
- [Amy] This wasn't the only sighting in the area.
A second photo emerged in the wake of this incident
that was allegedly taken just days earlier
showing a very similar silver disc object flying in the sky.
- [Tony] Look odd?
We turned the photo on its side
and yet again we have a flying metallic dome-shaped object.
But despite the avalanche of eyewitness accounts,
some are quick to dismiss these sightings.
- [Joy] The principal told us it was a weather balloon,
and if we spoke to the media or anybody else,
we would get into big trouble.
- [Tony] It's been speculated
that the alleged balloon in question
was part of the secretive Project Hibal.
- [Amy] The Hibal program was a joint U.S.-Australian program
to test atmospheric radiation levels in the 1960s.
So the object might have been a high altitude balloon,
but the Hibal explanation doesn't totally fit
what the witnesses said they saw.
- [Joy] No way in hell do I think that was a Hibal balloon.
- [Terry] How could a balloon take off that fast
and turn on its side
and go like that straight up in the air?
- [Phyll] We know what we saw.
They were some sort of aircraft, but in saucer shape.
I would lay my life down it wasn't a balloon.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Tony] Take a look at these sketches.
This is what Phyll remembers
and this is what Terry remembers.
See the dome tops?
This one even has those lights around the rim.
They definitely look a lot more like flying saucers
than deflated balloons to me.
So let's give these eyewitnesses
the investigation this case deserves.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] Hundreds of witnesses
and two photos that might prove it all.
Does that mean something really did happen in Westall?
- [Mick] Yeah, I think the fact
that hundreds of people reported seeing something
means that something was actually there.
It doesn't mean that it was an alien spaceship,
but it means that there was something in the air.
- [Tony] So we don't think the sighting itself is a hoax.
However, the same can't be said
for that black and white photo.
- [Mick] The lighting itself seems weirdly inconsistent.
We have these very, very dark trees in the foreground.
We have some light on the grass here,
but that would be coming from above.
This looks like it's kind of lit from below.
It doesn't seem like something
that's actually there in this scene.
- [Tony] And that could be an important clue.
- [Marc] In the days of film, and even with cameras today,
you could take a single photo of a terrain like this
and then take a second photo and overlay it on top.
And that appears to be what's happened here.
It seems like a photo was taken of this,
maybe it was a model, maybe it was a lamp,
and overlaid into a photo of the ground.
- [Tony] Chances are whoever made this photo
heard the Westall eyewitness accounts
and simply matched their descriptions.
As for that other photo from four days earlier...
- [Mick] I think what we're actually looking at here
is probably something like a ball
being tossed up in the sky in front of this building,
and you can get very similar looking effects.
I've done essentially the same, replicated it,
and I just went and I took the ball,
tossed it up in the air.
And if we were to take this shot here
and just crop out the bottom half of this,
we'd get a UFO.
[dramatic music continues]
[sparkling music]
- [Tony] Our verdict?
These two photos are likely hoaxes,
but the Westall incident itself
with hundreds of credible witnesses,
that still remains unexplained.
We may never know with certainty what happened in Westall,
but we're pretty sure it wasn't a balloon.
- [Tony] In earlier episodes, we've featured videos from Italy
of oddities in the sky that couldn't be easily explained.
But this next clip may be one of the most compelling
to ever come out of that ancient land.
Take a look and you'll see what I mean.
In the early 2000s,
journalist Paola Harris is handed a mysterious videotape
with an alleged UFO sighting.
Paola isn't told any details about the recording,
including when it was filmed.
All she knows is that it took place
near the town of Aviano, Italy.
- We didn't get the name of the photographer.
There was no return address,
so I didn't know what I was getting until I got home.
- [Tony] And when Paola plays the cassette,
she is shocked by what she sees.
An aerial craft shaped like a saucer
flies gracefully along what appears to be a riverbed.
As the UFO gets closer to the camera, we see it appears
to have several vents flaps on its oval body.
- [Paola] It's a pretty big object
and it's very clear it's a classic disc.
And it almost had like lights
around the circumference of it.
- [Tony] Then, after hovering for a few seconds,
we see the craft start to move again
before quickly zooming off into the clouds.
Writer MJ Banias says
Italy has a long history of UFO sightings.
In fact, in June 2023,
former intelligence officer turned whistleblower,
David Grusch made a startling claim.
- [MJ] David Grusch believes that the Vatican
was responsible for the coverup of UFOs.
He makes the claim that in 1933
there was a UFO crash in Italy
and the Italian government as well as the Church
essentially attempted to hush it up
and secure the downed object.
- [Tony] And when it comes to UFOs near Aviano,
this wouldn't be the first.
-[MJ] There is a bit of history with Aviano and UFO encounters.
- [Tony] The area is home to a NATO air base.
And on July 1st, 1977,
an Air Force guard observed a strange craft
hovering over the base,
which housed two secret jet fighters in a large hangar.
- [MJ] This particular object had a sort of dome shaped top.
It was emitting multiple colored lights,
and it was 45 meter in diameter,
about the size of the Navy Pier Ferris wheel in Chicago.
- [Tony] A team of military guards and radar personnel
purportedly tried to capture that aerial object.
But when they did,
they were hit with a mysterious power outage.
The craft disappeared.
But what about this craft
seen hovering over the river near Aviano?
Is it an alien encounter with a military base?
-[Tony] To date, the Aviano footage has garnered
nearly 8.5 million views on YouTube.
A number of netizens have identified the location
as somewhere near this bridge
which crosses the Cellina Stream.
But let's see what our experts think
about what this thing really is.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] We begin
with military aviation expert Tim McMillan,
who points out this UFO flying over the river
may not be as alien as you think.
- That particular shape is not exclusive
to the UFO alien kind of lore.
And in fact, going back to the 1930s,
the flying disc or lenticular design was already identified
as really being an exceptional aerodynamic shape.
- [Tony] One of the most well-known
saucer shaped machines
is the Avrocar.
It was developed as part of a U.S. military project
carried out in the early years of the Cold War.
- [Tim] That particular program never got off the ground,
both figuratively and literally.
The Avrocar was only able to achieve
a few feet off the ground for just several moments.
And there's a more recent attempt at this
with a smaller drone called the ADIFO,
which integrates fans
and then also a rotating jet engine on it
to try to replicate this flying saucer flight.
- [Tony] As the footage was taken
so close to a military base,
could this be some sort of early 2000s military craft?
Well, hold on.
McMillan notices something off about the footage.
- [Tim] One of the major problems that I see is the fact
that this object is flying really close over the surface.
Just imagine a helicopter that's flying extremely low,
that should be generating significant displacement
on the ground.
We don't see that there.
How is it able to hover over
without having any type of external effect on the ground?
- You don't have an original video
and you don't have metadata or anything to go on.
Could I create CGI to look like this?
The answer is yes, I could.
- [Tony] For Hoffman,
the most suspicious parts of the video occur at the end.
- [Rich] When I saw the object become that indistinct
line or blur, to me that suggested
it was more like a CGI type of an artifact.
And I'm giving you the illusion
that it's taking off at a very fast clip.
- [Tony] With the red flags flying,
we head to our video forensics expert, Michael Primeau.
- We don't know where this file came from,
structural attributes to be able to say
whether or not it's a genuine recording.
With the reduction in the quality becomes challenging
because we can't see detail.
- [Tony] But surprise, unlike Hoffman,
Primeau doesn't detect the use of any special effects.
- [Michael] No evidence of CGI.
No evidence of third-party editing applications.
But again, those things can be stripped
and anti-forensic technology essentially can be introduced,
in which case the result
of this authentication is inconclusive.
Without more information about the chain of custody,
we can't opine as to whether or not this actually occurred.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Tony] So this thing remains unidentified,
and it is certainly flying,
but we're not certain if this is even an object
or just a video hoax.
And with the ongoing military presence at Aviano Air Base,
something tells me
we'll be seeing more anomalous incidents there
in the future.
- [Tony] The UFO in our next photograph
has been the subject of debate for almost 20 years.
And some even believe the photograph is evidence
that UFOs can bend the rules of space and time.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] November 7th, 2006,
it's a typical day at Chicago's O'Hare Airport
when just after 4:00 PM an airline employee
makes a surprising call to the control tower.
- [Tony] But here's the thing, it's not just one person.
Multiple airport employees also report seeing
a strange craft hovering over the gate.
And later an anonymous source claims
to have captured the UFO on his phone
and sends this image to investigators.
A gray seemingly saucer-shaped object
can be seen over the airport gate.
The various eyewitnesses differ on its size,
with estimates ranging from as little as 10 feet
to as large as 88 feet in diameter.
They claim it immediately accelerated at a steep angle
and punched through the 19,000 foot cloud ceiling,
leaving a hole.
- The FAA concluded
that airport employees
had confused a weather phenomenon with a UFO.
But needless to say,
UFO enthusiasts do not consider this case closed.
- [Tony] In fact, a team of scientists
from the privately-funded research group Applied Physics
has proposed that based on the eyewitness reports,
the O'Hare UFO shows signs of a propulsion system
called the Alcubierre Warp Drive.
- [Erin] It was theorized by Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.
It's a warp drive that would allow a craft
to travel faster than the speed of light
by bending space and time around it.
- [Tony] The theory is
to stretch the fabric of space-time in a wave
which would cause the space ahead of an object to contract
while the space behind it would expand.
The spaceship inside this wave
would then ride this warp bubble of flat space.
- [Erin] The chief researcher of Applied Physics said that
the ideal shape for a spacecraft like this would be a saucer
because it's the most efficient one.
- [Erin] So that kind of mimics
what was seen at O'Hare Airport.
- [Tony] Could warp drive just like we see on "Star Trek"
be a reality one day?
Believe it or not, scientists from NASA
have put their minds to it
and published papers examining the possibility.
But did eyewitnesses really see
the O'Hare UFO jump to light speed?
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] According to the FAA,
no airplanes were detected on radar over the gate
or seen by air traffic controllers.
They concluded what the eyewitnesses thought was a UFO
was naturally occurring
and something called a hole punch cloud.
- [Juan] A hole punch cloud develops
where an airplane traverses across a cloud
and causes an instantaneous condensation
of those water droplets.
But hole punch clouds are not normally seen this low.
They occur between 10 to 20,000 feet,
not at about 1,000 feet above the ground.
And for a hole punch cloud to develop,
you need subfreezing temperatures.
At the location and the height that this was reported,
there were no subfreezing temperatures at this time.
I don't think this is a weather event.
- [Tony] But eyewitnesses claim they saw an actual craft,
not just a hole in the cloud,
and that the craft instantaneously
accelerated upwards to disappear in a flash.
Is that burst of speed
what could have caused a hole in the cloud?
Could it be the signature
of a UFO engaging its Alcubierre Warp Drive?
-[Michio] I don't think so
because we're talking about incredible amounts of energy
to compress space in front of you.
It would be enough to flatten O'Hare Airport
and take a good chunk of Illinois with it.
- [Tony] And as for that image in the photo,
it's so small and low res, it's hard to authenticate.
In fact, NARCAP, the National Aviation Reporting Center
for Anomalous Phenomena
examined the photo as soon as it was anonymously submitted
during their investigation.
Their analysis determined the image was manipulated,
and that the disc-shaped object
was inserted into the picture.
The smoking gun?
The NARCAP team located online
the original source image of the airport gate
the UFO was cut and pasted onto.
[dramatic music continues]
[sparkling music]
- [Tony] Our verdict? Faked photo.
But while this picture isn't legit,
we still can't explain what we heard in that recording
and why so many people are certain
they saw not just a hole in the cloud,
but an actual physical object in the sky.
For now, that part of the story remains unexplained.
- [Tony] There are more objects flying in our skies
and orbiting in space than ever before.
At any given moment, there are as many as 20,000 planes
and nearly 5,000 satellites above our heads.
And that's not even counting the drones.
So it takes something pretty unusual to grab our attention.
And this next sighting
recorded near the Panama Canal no less did just that.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] It's October 9th, 2019 in Panama City, Panama.
Jose Angel Castro is strolling on a pedestrian bridge
when he suddenly notices something strange
floating in the sky.
[man speaking in Spanish]
- [Tony] Take a closer look.
A thin smooth white disc is simply floating in the sky.
Now if you've watched this before,
you may think this is just another case
of reflection or optical illusion.
But there's no doubt in Jose's mind what he's seeing.
[man speaking in Spanish]
[Jose speaking in Spanish]
- [Tony] Journalist Erin McCarthy
isn't surprised by Jose's reaction.
- There are UFO sightings
in Central America pretty frequently,
usually around volcanoes and things like that.
So it doesn't surprise me
that someone would think this is a UFO.
- [Tony] In fact, just this year
a recently resurfaced photo
of this flying saucer in neighboring Costa Rica
has been making headlines,
some calling it the best UFO photo ever taken.
The image was captured in September 1971
during a survey for a hydroelectric project,
and estimated to be between 120 and 220 feet in diameter.
The photograph was analyzed in France
and the United States by different organizations
and confirmed to not be faked.
But what it is remains a mystery to this day.
[dramatic music continues]
-[Tony] So we have a 50-year-old
UFO seen over Costa Rica.
Now this mysterious white disc seen near the Panama Canal.
What's going on here?
Is there something drawing extraterrestrials
to Latin America?
We asked our experts to take a look.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] In this footage the object is so flat and long,
it sure doesn't look like a plane or a drone.
And McMillan says it doesn't look
or move like a balloon either.
- [Tim] If it was a balloon,
we should be seeing more of a larger oval shape.
The lighter-than-air gasses that are inside of that
that would be causing it to fly
would be distributed in a manner
where it wouldn't stay level.
And we don't see that here.
- [Tony] But McMillan does observe
that whatever this craft is,
not everyone in the video is as excited as Jose.
- [Tim] We can see the gentlemen that are in the cherry picker,
but we can't help but notice
that they seem unaffected by whatever this is.
So that's kind of a red flag there to me.
- [Tony] Could this footage simply be a hoax?
- Quite often you see people use
a Gaussian blur defocusing technique
when they make fake videos,
but this looks more like a proper out-of-focus video.
I can't see anything that really stands out as fake.
- [Tony] So then is Jose right?
Could this be an actual UFO?
- [Mick] The thing about it being a UFO
is that it doesn't do anything particularly interesting.
It doesn't change direction.
It doesn't appear to hover without any means of propulsion.
It doesn't really meet
any of the interesting criteria of a UFO.
- [Tony] However, West does have a clue
that meets his criteria to solve the mystery.
- [Mick] We know it's a real video shot in a real place.
We can look it up.
So here we've got Panama City,
and we can zoom in and find the Albrook Mall right here.
And this is where the video was filmed.
He's on this bridge here, I believe,
and he's taking the video in this direction.
- [Tony] West says that Jose's location is the key.
- [Mick} Right behind there is an airport.
Now there'd be these buildings here,
which are obscuring the view of the airport.
We can see the plane would've started
down at this end of the runway.
- [Tony] Mick says the brightness is caused
by the angle of the sun reflecting off the wing.
It's the intense light rays
that obscure the rest of the plane.
- [Mick] And it's pretty consistent
with something like a Cessna
with a high wing and the fuselage underneath.
Some friends of mine on my website MetaBunk
actually tracked down an actual plane
that was taking off at that time.
It's Cessna 182,
which will be white and illuminated by the sun,
and that would give the appearance of a saucer.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Tony] Our verdict? Airplane.
The angle and the reflected sunlight
made it look like a flying saucer,
but as of now, the good people of Panama
and that crucial canal remains safe from alien invasion.
- [Tony] At over 70 years old,
this first story is an oldie, but a very goodie.
These images out of Brazil have been called
the most sensational sequence
of flying saucer photos ever seen,
and you're about to see them right here.
May 1952, Joao Martins, a journalist
from Brazilian weekly magazine, O Cruzeiro,
and his photographer Ed Keffel
are on a routine assignment
to the Barra Da Tijuca near Rio de Janeiro.
In the late afternoon, Martins spots
what he thinks is an airplane traveling at great speed.
But upon further inspection,
he realizes it was actually no airplane at all.
Martins screams, "Shoot it," and so Keffel does.
What they capture is astounding:
A saucer-shaped disc flying through the sky at great speed.
They describe the object as blue-gray in color
and completely silent.
Careful inspection of these historic photos
seems to reveal the object has three distinct layers:
A flat disc on the outside, a raised rim in the middle,
and a small bump on the top center.
Keffel is also able to photograph
the bottom of the craft,
which appears flat
except for a raised ring around the center.
The stunned men continue shooting for a full 60 seconds
before the object speeds out of sight,
cementing its place in UFO history.
According to journalist Eric Grundhauser,
when the reports are published in O Cruzeiro
they create a firestorm.
- [Eric] Issues just flew off the shelves.
It created a UFO craze in Brazil.
People still reference these photos
as some of the most credible evidence
of extraterrestrial visitation.
- [Tony] The photos get the attention
not only of the public,
but the Brazilian military,
which launches an immediate investigation.
- [Eric] The Brazilian Air Force determined
that they were in fact genuine.
One Brazilian investigator has even called them
the most sensational sequence of photos
of an extraterrestrial ever seen.
- [Tony] The O Cruzeiro photos are so groundbreaking,
they set off decades of Brazilian UFO sightings,
many investigated with zeal by the Brazilian Air Force.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Tony] 70 years ago, these photos may have been
credible enough to make the Brazilian Air Force take notice.
But can they stand up to modern scrutiny?
Our experts are on the case.
[dramatic music]
- [Tony] Some have speculated
the disc could have been superimposed on the background
using double exposure
where the same frame of film
is exposed to two separate images
without advancing the film role.
But astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy says
the sharpness of these images kills that theory.
- [Andrew] I'm not seeing any kind of ghosting in this image,
which would be very common from a double exposure.
This is also a very high contrast image,
which also suggests that it's not a double exposure
because the item in the sky would be washed out
by that relatively bright sky.
So I think this was captured with a single photograph.
- [Tony] So could it just be a model saucer
tossed in the air for the photo?
- It's hard to say for sure
because generally you'd see a little bit more motion blur
with an object that was thrown
moments before the photo was being taken.
- [Tony] A fast exposure speed
could correct for motion blur,
but according to McCarthy,
the deep depth of field in these photos
gives us critical info.
- The focal ratio used for the shot was f/2.8.
That actually lets a lot of light in
so they're able to shorten their exposures
so they would be able to reduce motion blur significantly.
However, it's actually really hard to get an object
that's in focus, both close to your camera
and far away like the landscape.
So I think what we're looking at
is actually much further away from the observer
than any disc that could have been thrown.
- [Tony] So if it's not double exposure
and it's not a model thrown in the air,
does that mean these photos are legit?
McCarthy would say not so fast in Portuguese,
if he spoke Portuguese.
- You can see the craft appears to be illuminated
from the left and behind the observer.
However, when you look at the trees,
they appear to be illuminated from the right.
So the shadows are actually inconsistent in this image.
- I don't think the shadow issue
that was raised is a concern.
- [Tony] Hoffman insists
the shadows thrown in the tree line can't be compared
to the shadowing in the clear air above the mountain.
- [Rich] The things that are up above that tree line
are gonna catch the sun
that are not being exposed by the shadow
from the tree on the left side.
- [Tony] But McCarthy sticks to his guns.
- In the days before Photoshop, film was actually doctored
through a technique called airbrushing.
They were essentially drawing directly on the film.
In this case,
they could have very easily drawn on these elements.
That may be what we're looking at here.
[dramatic music continues]
- [Tony] Our verdict?
We're going to call it an even split for now.
Hoffman says genuine UFO, McCarthy says hoax,
and we're left uncertain,
especially with the shady status of the lighting.
But even if it is a hoax,
if this incident inspired
a whole new field of study in Brazil,
then perhaps some hoaxes do some good after all.
Flying saucers have been reported for decades.
Just one of many UFO shapes.
For those that seem genuine,
who or what is at the controls?
Our experts will continue to search for answers.
Thank you so much for watching this special edition
of "The Proof is Out There."
Please send us any video, images or sound
that you think we should investigate.
And remember to keep those cameras rolling.
[dramatic music continues]