- [Tony] Tonight on "The Proof Is Out There: Alien Edition."
A strange sphere hovers silently above a house.
Are extraterrestrials secretly watching us?
- Just kind of suspended up there in the air.
No propulsion, no engine, no noise.
- [Witness 1] Doesn't it look like it's flying with it?
- [Witness 2] Yeah, it's going weird, yeah.
- [Tony] Two bright orbs appear after a rocket launches.
Could aliens be following our spacecraft?
- Some might wonder whether extraterrestrials
are getting concerned
that we're starting to really encroach on their territory.
- [Tony] And are probes being sent from another world
disguised as something else?
- We thought, "Okay, this can't be like a normal drone."
This is a UFO of some sort.
- [Tony] With UFO reports at an all-time high,
we are examining the most compelling evidence
caught on camera.
Tonight's focus?
Alien surveillance.
Our experts will analyze the evidence
and then pass a verdict.
- Could it be some type of an extraterrestrial craft
and not just a meteorite?
- Intelligent life is visiting Earth,
and it's masquerading
or using meteors as a form of transportation.
- "The Proof" starts now.
[compelling music] [graphic whooshing]
- [Tony] Good evening, everyone,
and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There."
Under a clear night sky,
you can expect to see between two and seven streaks of light
go by each hour on any night of the year.
These flashes are meteorites
burning up in the Earth's atmosphere,
but there are some who believe that, in reality,
these meteorites are more than they seem to be.
[graphic whooshing]
August 31st, 2019,
it's 10:30 PM just outside the city of Edmonton, Canada.
Lincoln Ho is hanging out at a neighbor's house watching TV
when he sees a bright light flash outside the window.
Lincoln later goes home
and checks his driveway security footage,
and that's when he finds this.
An orb of light screams from the top of the frame,
plummeting toward the house before vanishing.
According to journalist MJ Banias,
while this phenomenon seems to have all of the hallmarks
of a meteor strike,
one thing is missing.
- There was no reported impact.
A meteor hitting the Earth is gonna make a big boom.
There was no sound, no explosion,
and no one on the news
had reported a meteor hitting Edmonton, Alberta.
- [Tony] But what if we have a meteor
that really isn't a meteor?
Banias says one man believes it may be possible.
- [MJ] A very famous Harvard physicist
and astronomer named Avi Loeb
has a theory that intelligent life is visiting Earth,
and it's masquerading
or using meteors as a form of transportation.
- [Tony] In 2017, Professor Avi Loeb and others
took notice of a quarter-mile long, cigar-shaped object
that passed through the solar system.
Its glow varied 10 times
more reflective than typical asteroids,
as if it was made of highly-polished metal.
It was dubbed 'Oumuamua, which means scout in Hawaiian.
Loeb suspected it could have been alien tech.
He also insists alien tech
hasn't just approached Earth via meteor.
It actually landed here.
- [MJ] He believes that there is evidence on this planet
that alien civilizations exist
and they've sent their technology here.
- [Tony] In July 2023,
Avi Loeb bled a $1.5 million expedition to Papua New Guinea
to retrieve meteor fragments
he believes came from outside the solar system.
- Loeb theorizes that pieces of the debris
will be found to be tougher than iron
and should raise questions.
Could it be some type of an extraterrestrial craft
and not just a meteorite?
- [Tony] Upon sifting microscopic metallic balls
from the volcanic material on the ocean floor,
Loeb declared them actual evidence of alien tech.
[graphic whooshing]
One recent study put the odds of other life in the universe
at 50-50.
But is this object an interstellar vehicle
disguised as a meteor,
or something else entirely?
We asked our team of experts to investigate.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
Could this bright light simply be something conventional
seen in the skies over cities every night,
like a helicopter or a plane?
- The only time that you would see an aircraft of any kind,
a helicopter that bright moving through the sky that fast
is if it's in serious trouble and about to crash.
- [Tony] No chopper crashes were reported in that area.
Instead, D'Antonio believes a clue in the video
leads to the answer.
- [Marc] The skies illuminated behind this house here,
which tells you something important,
that's saying that this is an object that's big enough
to be beyond these houses
'cause it's illuminating the sky behind them.
And what could possibly be natural that looks like that?
Something that we call, in astronomy, a fireball.
- [Tony] Fireballs refer to meteors so bright
they can be seen over great distances.
The intense atmospheric friction
causes gases around the meteor to compress and superheat,
often disintegrating the meteor
and leaving little evidence on ground.
- [Marc] The regular typical meteor you see in a night sky,
that quick flash, [mimicking meteor whooshing],
those are the size of a grain of sand.
And so, this is way bigger than a grain of sand.
So, you can imagine that the glow created by this
is gonna be absolutely colossal.
- [Tony] D'Antonio makes a convincing argument
and one that NASA geologist, Bob Anderson,
agrees seems likely at first.
- When I first looked at this video,
it was almost a dead giveaway
that it was a meteor that was coming down.
But it's weird to me that there was no sonic boom.
The size of this object, the brightness of this object,
would've created a sonic boom somewhere in the atmosphere.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- [Tony] Our verdict?
We're going with unexplained phenomenon.
While our experts have suggested
some very interesting and plausible candidates,
there seems to be a heated debate
about what we've really got.
So, without a smoking gun, we're going to say, for now,
this incident remains a mystery.
But what do you think?
Hit us up on social media and let us know.
[compelling music] [graphic beeping]
Since its first rocket achieved orbit in 2008,
SpaceX has continued to innovate
and push the boundary of space exploration.
And while CEO Elon Musk
hopes to bring humans to Mars as soon as 2029,
video from one SpaceX mission has raised concerns
about what might await us in the final frontier.
- [Speaker] Mission.
Commence liftoff.
- [Tony] It's April 23rd, 2021.
SpaceX's spacecraft Endeavour
is on its way to the International Space Station.
12 minutes after liftoff,
the capsule containing four astronauts
separates from the rocket's second stage.
But as the crew back at NASA
applauds the successful uncoupling,
the livestream camera captures something truly shocking.
A foreign object can be seen floating through the gap,
missing the craft by mere seconds.
The object is round, though not a perfect sphere,
and it appears to be black in color,
but it's details are shrouded in shadow.
- It looks like if they hadn't separated
in the nick of time,
it would've impacted the spacecraft.
And no one knows what it is.
It's not an object anyone was tracking in orbit,
so no one knew that it was going to be there.
- [Tony] One theory that gains traction
is that the object is some sort of scout UFO
that originally came from a larger UFO.
- [Amy] Basically, the idea is that alien craft
are exploring our planet.
And instead of landing with the mother ship,
they're launching these small reconnaissance vehicles,
which is not that dissimilar
to how we've explored our own solar system.
- [Tony] Think that's too out there?
Consider that Sean Kirkpatrick,
Former Head of the Pentagon's UFO Office,
and Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb
wrote a paper to support the theory.
But what could be drawing the interstellar attention?
- [Amy] Our use of space used to be just scientific exploration,
but now we've got space tourism,
we've got early militarization.
- [Tony] In fact, 2022 saw a record 180 rocket launches.
- [Amy] Some might wonder whether extraterrestrials
are getting concerned
that we're starting to really encroach on their territory.
[suspenseful music]
- [Tony] SpaceX is reportedly involved
in over half of all near misses in space,
many of all SpaceX's Starlink project,
an unmanned satellite internet network.
But a near miss with a spacecraft
carrying four astronauts?
Now we're talking about human lives.
So, is something targeting our spacecraft?
Our experts are on a collision course with the truth.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
Before we embrace an exotic theory like alien space probes,
could this be a hostile act from a rival human military?
- In the late 1970s,
the Soviet Union did experiment
with something called the Almaz,
which was putting a 23-millimeter cannon
on one of their satellite systems
to give it an offensive capability.
And in the 1980s,
as part of President Reagan's Star Wars Initiative,
was a classified program called Brilliant Pebbles.
And the idea behind it
was to place various missile systems in orbit
as a defensive and offensive capability.
[spacecraft exploding]
- [Tony] Could this foreign object be from a foreign power?
- [Lt. Tim] If someone had fired a weapon at the capsule,
we would know
because a satellite system
that's firing some type of projectiles
would certainly be noticeable
to the other space-based sensor systems
that are already in place.
- [Tony] What about another manmade object, a satellite?
- [Lt. Tim] It's got none of the physical characteristics
of a satellite,
like the large solar sail,
in addition to the fact that satellite systems
are on known trajectory paths.
And you certainly wouldn't have run the risk
of an impact from the satellite.
So, it's definitely not a satellite.
- [Tony] Taking into consideration
this object's organic shape,
we asked astronomer Marc D'Antonio
if it could be a meteor.
- This might actually be about the right size for a meteor.
The only problem is that meteors hit the Earth
at thousands and thousands of miles per hour,
and this thing is just lazily floating through the view.
So, that wouldn't be the case.
- [Tony] Then, could it simply be space junk?
Scientists estimate orbiting the Earth
are about 13,000 pieces of debris bigger than a softball,
100,000 bigger than a penny,
and tens of millions of pieces even smaller than that.
- [Marc] Space is cluttered.
There could come a time when it will be very dangerous
for us to try and leave our planet,
but in this particular case, probably not space junk.
And the reason comes down to the fact
that you can see it passing in front of this,
which is part of the rocket itself.
Whoo!
That means this is a small, tiny object that got loose,
probably from the inside of the rocket
during the staging process,
where this stage moves away from this stage
- [Tony] And McMillan says
this would explain the radar omission.
- [Lt. Tim] That's one reason that you wouldn't have picked it
up as any type of space junk
is because it actually traveled with the rocket into space.
[suspenseful music]
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- [Tony] Our verdict?
We are leaning toward rocket debris
that broke off from the second stage,
though we can't say for certain
which piece of the rocket it was.
It's sad to hear that pollution
is becoming a problem in space like it is on Earth.
Thankfully, NASA is well-equipped
to help spacecraft dodge most of the debris
with a meticulous catalog of 27,000 objects
in Earth's orbit.
- [Tony] We see UFOs in all shapes and sizes on this show,
but lately,
we've been noticing a real spike in spherical UFOs.
Many of these sightings
were captured by US military cameras,
and this next puzzling video
also purports the show something spherical interacting
with American jet fighters.
Should the Pentagon be alarmed?
January 10th, 2023.
A video clip captioned, "Nothing to see here,"
uploads to social media and goes viral.
The video appears to show a dark-colored,
low-flying spherical object
passing over a remote country road.
Suddenly, two fighter jets spring toward the object
in hot pursuit as the object disappears.
Let's see that again.
[pensive music]
The sphere looks to be only about 15
to 20 feet off the ground,
which would make it much smaller in size
than the fighter jets.
- The '50s had flying saucers, the '90s had black triangles.
We live in the era of the sphere UFO.
[pensive music]
There was a hearing in April of 2023,
where Sean Kirkpatrick presented to Senate a graph
between the dates of 1996 and 2023,
and 52% of all UFO sightings
that the AARO Office has been investigating
were made up of spherical or orb-like UFOs.
[pensive music]
- [Tony] While not every orb sighting is this dramatic,
they can still be quite puzzling.
Case in point, this footage from December 19th, 2022.
Rad Muradpejohi is in Mountain's Edge, Nevada
driving home from work,
when he spots something unusual in the sky.
He pulls over to record it.
The video shows a perfectly circular dark-colored object
hovering high up above a house.
- It was a pretty large spherical,
definitely spherical like black dot in the sky.
It didn't really have any gloss,
it didn't reflect any light.
- [Tony] Unlike the orb in the first video,
this sphere is completely eerily still.
- [Rad] Just kind of suspended up there in the air.
No propulsion, no engine, no noise.
- [Tony] So, what are these spheres?
Many seem too small to carry occupants.
So, are they perhaps some kind of alien probe?
If so, there may be a surprising reason
we're seeing so many.
- [MJ] With this uptick in spherical sightings,
there's been a lot of internet chatter
about this sort of science fiction object
called von Neumann probe.
- [Tony] John von Neumann was a mathematician and physicist
who speculated an advanced civilization could explore
by creating probes that build even more probes
from common materials found on moons and planets
throughout the galaxy.
- [MJ] von Neumann posited that if an interstellar species
wanted to essentially map out a star system
or distant planets,
one probe could replicate itself
as it traveled through space.
[suspenseful music]
- Now, while more than half of UFOs
are reported as round or spheres,
they don't all look or act the same.
We'll turn it over to our inner circle
to investigate these two very different sphere sightings.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- The sphere is located very close to the ground.
Usually, these encounters
take play high up in the atmosphere,
and so there's something suspicious here.
- [Lt. Tim] The object that is flying extremely low level,
it's flying underneath the kind of envelope
that radar would be operating at
because of how low-altitude it is,
it's small-sized, and it's relatively slow speed.
- [Tony] But it's that speed
that has astronomer and video effects designer,
Marc D'Antonio, crying foul.
- Let's watch that again
'cause see how it's moving through the sky?
Kind of slow, [aircraft whooshing]
and the jets are going way fast.
Now, hold on.
If they were going that fast,
they should have caught up to it very quickly.
[suspenseful music]
But, we didn't see them catch up to it.
[suspenseful music]
- [Tony] Not only can't the jets catch the orb,
but the orbs suddenly disappears from sight.
[jet whooshing]
- [Marc] There is one way it could happen,
and that is if this object wasn't there at all
and was generated later.
I have to say, unfortunately,
I don't believe it was a real video.
- [Tony] That first video may seem too good to be true,
but what about Rad's video?
D'Antonio thinks he's found the answer
by simply spotting what the seems to have missed.
- [Marc] Down the bottom here,
you can see there's this little protrusion sticking down,
okay, and it doesn't show,
until you actually run the video
and see the video in motion.
Then, you can see it,
like right there is a perfect shot of it,
you see this little tiny thing sticking down.
I think that we're looking at a tethered balloon.
[suspenseful music]
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- Our verdict.
The first video is a clever product of CGI.
In fact, when we did a little digging,
we were able to trace it back to a visual effects artist.
As for Rad's video, we agree with D'Antonio.
We're most likely looking at a balloon.
So, these two spheres weren't genuine UFOs,
but many others remain unexplained,
as does the recent uptick in sightings.
- [Tony] Now, for one of our favorite kind of stories,
the kind you send us.
History's first satellite, Sputnik,
was launched into orbit almost 70 years ago by the USSR.
But there's a group of UFO theorists
who insist there's a satellite up there that's older,
in fact ancient,
and one hardcore "Proof" fan thinks he caught it on camera.
[graphic whooshing]
It's November 2018.
Nicos Vouris is walking with his daughter Nika
along the beach in Cape Town, South Africa.
Around 7:00 PM Nicos spies something strange in the air,
something that may have been watching us for centuries.
[graphic whooshing]
- [Nicos] This is a UFO of some sort.
- [Tony] Look closely.
[graphic whooshing] [pensive music]
A strange malleable black shape
hovers high above Nicos and his family.
It seems to float without obvious direction,
silently holding position.
- We thought, "Okay, this can't be like a normal drone,"
and it's just hovering there.
It did weird, wonderful maneuvers like that,
like by going vertically, then horizontal,
then vertical again.
It was just amazing like to see.
- [Tony] But while many, at first sight,
would think this is a drone or possibly a spy balloon,
Nicos believes it's something much more extraordinary.
- I'm an untrained observer,
but in terms of what I saw,
it was very much the reminiscent
of the Black Knight satellite.
[suspenseful music]
- [Tony] What is the Black Knight satellite?
- The Black Knight satellite is a UFO theory
that's been bouncing around since before the internet.
- [Tony] Believers say the satellite
is an alien surveillance and communication device
that has been in a polar orbit for thousands of years,
inserting itself into human history when it sees fit.
- [Amy] Some people have even gone so far
as to say that this satellite
is what Nikola Tesla was communicating with
during his radio experiments in Colorado Springs in 1899.
He heard some kind of frequency.
And some people believed that he was actually speaking
to the Black Knight satellite
and it was communicating with him through math
using numbers as the universal language.
- [Tony] For years, this remained a science fiction
theory that was kind of cool,
kind of scary, but still just a theory,
until a strange object was spotted
about 200 miles above the Earth.
- [Amy] In 1998 during the STS-88 Mission,
astronauts photographed something
hovering above the Earth's horizon line.
[suspenseful music]
And this became a big mystery.
Some people have used this photograph as definitive proof
that there are aliens interacting with our planet.
[suspenseful music]
- [Tony] For many,
what makes the Black Knight satellite so compelling
is the logic behind it.
If an alien race wanted to study the Earth,
why wouldn't they send a probe,
the same way NASA sent Voyager 1
to explore other planets in our solar system?
So, what is this thing?
ET satellite, balloon, or something else?
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy
is a Black Knight skeptic.
He says the most famous piece of evidence
that 1998 NASA photo is more a visual trick
than proof of alien spacecraft.
- It's outside of the window of the space shuttle
that was not in direct sunlight,
so appears dark against the bright contrast of the Earth
and the surrounding space.
Seems to be just a normal piece of space debris.
- [Tony] Astronaut Jerry Ross,
who took part in the STS-88 Mission,
confirms the object from the 1998 photo
is a wayward thermal blanket that broke loose
while his team tried to attach an American module
to a Russian module on the ISS.
But just because the 1998 picture can be debunked,
we still have to ask:
Could Nicos' footage be of a genuine alien satellite?
- I don't think this is a satellite.
We simply wouldn't be able to see a satellite
at that distance.
But the closest satellites from Earth
are about 200 miles up.
The International Space Station
is the largest satellite that's up there,
and you can only really see that as a dot of light
and you can't see it at all during the daytime.
- [Tony] Could the object Nicos captured be a spy balloon?
- [Mick] It could be a spy balloon.
Typically, a spy balloon
would have something dangling underneath it,
but it could be a type of spy balloon,
where the payload is actually attached
to the balloon itself.
- [Tony] In February 2023,
US military jets shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
The 200-foot-tall balloon had multiple antennas
and a solar array that, government officials say,
was capable of capturing imagery and signals
from military sites
and sending them back to China in real time.
Did Nicos see one over South Africa?
- [Andrew] This object doesn't fit the profile of a spy balloon
because it's way too obvious.
Those balloons are much higher altitude
and usually white to blend in with the sky
and to reflect the sun's energy back out and not overheat.
[suspenseful music]
- [Tony] So, if it's not spying on us,
could it be another type of balloon?
- [Mick] A solar balloon,
it's a type of hot-air balloon
which uses the heat of the sun to warm up a balloon.
And they do that by making the balloon out of black plastic.
- [Tony] Because black absorbs heat,
the air trapped in the balloon expands, creating lift.
- [Andrew] But I think we can rule that out
because the shape of this object
would be consistent if it was,
as as the air heats,
the material around it becomes taut
and can no longer change its shape.
- [Tony] So while it might not be
a functioning inflated solar balloon,
couldn't Nicos' Black Knight satellite
simply be a deflated balloon
or even airborne trash caught in the air currents?
- [Mick] Pilots are always seeing things like balloons,
or wind-blown debris, things like plastic bags.
This is one of the big problems the UAP Task Force had,
which was dealing with airborne clutter.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- Our verdict.
A trash bag or balloon caught in air currents.
Sorry, Nicos.
This might not be the sexiest answer,
but because of its size, movement,
and through process of elimination,
that's what we have to conclude.
- [Tony] We've heard of malware and spyware,
but what about alienware?
Some scientists have actually raised concerns
that aliens could potentially hack our planet
by directing malicious signals
and messages to our electronic devices and telescopes.
Is that what happens in our next video?
Have a look. [graphic whooshing]
It's just past 8:00 PM on September 11th, 2020
in Whittier, California.
A man is working at home on his laptop when, suddenly,
his computer experiences electrical interference
as he hears a strange buzzing noise outside.
He decides to check the footage
from his surveillance system,
and that's when he sees this.
A bright light shoots up into the sky.
Let's see that again.
[pensive music]
Look behind the trees,
as a sudden flash is followed by a spherical light
shooting upward.
Then, suddenly, streaks of light and shadow
criss-crossed the neighborhood,
followed by a bright flash and car alarms going off.
Wait a minute, bright lights,
electrical interference, and buzzing noises?
According to journalist MJ Banias,
many believe these are all classic signs
of something from another world.
- [MJ] We have, in a lot of UFO stories,
that they use some sort of electromagnetic frequency
for their propulsion,
interfering with the electrical systems of automobiles,
or homes, or your cell phone.
And in this video,
we see the car alarm going off
and we see a disruption on camera.
- [Tony] If this was an electrical alien attack,
Banias says it might not be the first time.
- [MJ] There's a famous UFO case in 1957
from Levelland, Texas,
where a lot of people reported seeing strange UFOs
flying over the town and
causing issues with automobiles, electronic equipment,
and just electrical systems in general.
[electrical system buzzing]
- [Tony] Were there any telltale signs in this experience
of something more ominous than just a visiting UFO?
- [MJ] According to the witness, before this incident occurred,
he heard what he described as a buzzing noise.
We do have, within the UFO lore,
that people do hear strange noises
before an alien spaceship is able to somehow beam them up,
and buzzing is often one of them.
[suspenseful music]
- Energy bursts from outer space disrupting civilizations?
Oh, yes.
In fact, on March 13th, 1989,
the entire province of Quebec, Canada
suffered an electrical power blackout
caused by a solar storm.
And today, given our even greater dependence
on computers and technology,
another massive solar event could be catastrophic.
Let's let our experts do the threat assessment.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- It's theorized that UFOs have some kind of cloaking
or disruption technology
that would affect electronic devices,
and maybe that would explain
why there seems to be some kind of flickering
and disruption artifacts that we're seeing in the video.
[graphic whooshing]
- [Tony] However, McCarthy says
that what appears to be an electronic anomaly
may just be a product of the inner workings of the camera.
- [Andrew] As the light takes off into the sky,
you see some kind of rolling shutter artifact
coming from the camera,
but that's the way these cameras operate.
They scan one line at a time as they're recording.
So, if you get an object
that's producing light that's flickering,
it will show up as horizontal bars
that will move up a screen like this.
- [Tony] So, what could be the source
of these flickering lights?
- [Marc] One of the things to consider is those gray cans
that you see up on telephone poles.
Well, these gray cans sometimes go haywire
and when they do,
they melt down with a spectacular display
of sound and light,
and there's a loud
[Marc mimicking wires buzzing] buzzing,
and that's the sound of a transformer melting down.
But, the thing is,
they may drop molten pieces down to the ground,
but they don't actually travel through the air.
- [Tony] Okay, so we clearly have something
traveling through the air.
Could it be a drone?
- [Marc] The only kind of drone it could have been
would be a racing drone.
Those kind of drones can take off at such high speeds,
but they're small,
and you'd have to put a very, very, very bright light on it.
And let's say you did that, you sent it up into the air,
then what's the next step?
You have that concussive shock to set off car alarm.
Well, that would've meant the drone exploded like a bomb.
[drone exploding]
And so I was like, "No, that can't really be it."
When you look at the speed that it takes off
and the angle it takes off at,
I think it's a rocket of some kind.
There goes the launch and the trees light up.
- [Tony] D'Antonio points out two more important clues.
- [Marc] There's a pause as it reaches terminal velocity,
and then boom, bright flash.
What do we know that does that?
The speed is consistent
with the launching of a fireworks shell.
And the thing that kind of settled me on that
was the fact that car alarms are off
as soon as this thing exploded.
And those concussive shocks will set off car alarms.
- [Tony] Does the specific date this happened
explain fireworks?
- [Marc] It might have been somebody on September 11th
just expressing their patriotism toward America.
It seems like that would be the day
that somebody would play around with some fireworks.
[patriotic music]
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- [Tony] Our verdict.
We're going with fireworks.
So, for now, it's safe to say
that aliens aren't trying to hack our computers
and technology.
But, you may want to invest in some earplugs.
- [Tony] In 2022, a record 57 rocket launches
took place at Cape Canaveral, Florida,
carrying everything from satellites to astronauts
into space.
Every launch brings a crowd of local spectators,
but we found a pair of eyewitnesses
who think they may have captured launch spectators
from another planet.
[graphic whooshing]
January 31st, 2022.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida,
carrying an Italian Earth observation satellite.
200 miles south,
a couple watches the launch from Fort Lauderdale.
They're following the path of the Falcon 9
with their cell phones,
when they notice the rocket is not alone.
- [Witness 2] Yeah, you see those two things?
- [Tony] Two bright white dots of light
appear to be following the rocket
as it zooms through the atmosphere.
- [Witness 1] Doesn't it look like it's flying with it?
- [Witness 2] Yeah, it's going weird, yeah.
- [Tony] Let's zoom in on these things.
The lights appear to be orb-shaped,
and whether they're part of one craft
or two separate craft,
they appear to be tracking the rocket.
- There's been a lot of speculation online
that this is some sort of UFO
that is monitoring or surveilling the Falcon 9 launch.
- [Tony] But why would aliens be interested
in monitoring one of our rocket launches?
- [MJ] There's been some theories posted online
that perhaps they wanna keep tabs on our development.
- [Tony] The idea that alien observers
track human activity isn't new.
Ufologists point to the surge of sightings in the 1940s
that coincided with the birth of the atomic bomb.
It's estimated the year 1947 saw at least 1,000 UFOs
over the United States alone.
Now, with private companies like, SpaceX and Blue Origin,
stepping up their launch schedules,
could ETs be taking note?
- [MJ] Another incident was from 2021
on the crewed mission to the ISS
that was launched by SpaceX,
and people on online were pointing to pieces of footage,
where there was some sort of little object
following the main capsule.
- [Tony] As part of the Falcon 9 rocket
separated from the spacecraft,
a spherical object flew through the gap
and a close call heard round the internet.
- [MJ] People were saying that these are indications
of alien activity.
So, it's a big subculture within the UFO community at large
of people who kind of monitor live feeds
from rocket launches, and NASA missions, and whatnot,
and assert that this is evidence
of some sort of alien research or surveillance.
[pensive music]
- [Tony] So, is Earth just one of the exhibits on display
in some alien civilization's galactic zoo?
Well, scientists estimate
there could be about 100 billion other planets
in our galaxy alone.
So, it's reasonable to assume
we aren't alone in the universe.
But does this video prove we're being watched?
Let's see what our experts have to say.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- [Lt. Tim] They're looking at a rocket
as it leaves the Earth's atmosphere.
You would expect to see what we're seeing there.
However, you wouldn't expect
to see other bright objects appear in close proximity to it.
I could certainly see why that would look like a UFO.
- [Tony] But is it a UFO?
- [Lt. Tim] I think even though certain aspects look very odd,
they're all manmade objects,
and they're all associated
with the Falcon 9 rocket launches.
So, we're not looking at a UFO,
we're not looking at any alien technology
or anything like that.
- [Tony] McMillan thinks these two lights
may be rocket boosters,
which separate from the rocket
after their fuel has been depleted
to minimize dead weight.
- [Lt. Tim] That type of debris is gonna burn up
as it's coming down,
or you're just seeing the reflection off of it.
So it may look brighter or larger than it really is.
- These objects that we see here,
they're not physical objects in the rocket stream.
It's actually an artifact of the rocket plume
that's a low-pressure zone beneath that rocket exhaust,
and it's gonna be subject to atmosphere changes.
Those effects are the creation
of these little tiny shock waves right here
in the atmosphere.
- [Tony] D'Antonio shows us
that you don't need a rocket launch
to illustrate the same phenomenon in action.
Natural turbulence can create the same effect.
- [Marc] A tornado's a very violent place.
And as that funnel is twisting,
you see that little transient white thing that appeared?
What was that?
That was an atmospheric effect caused by the tornadoes.
Keep in mind that a rocket launch
is gonna produce similar effects.
Among them, these two little supersonic shock waves
that we see there from the location.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- [Tony] Our verdict.
Supersonic shockwaves.
D'Antonio's explanation of the atmospheric physics
seals the deal.
More and more rockets are being sent into space every year,
so it looks like for now,
we don't have to worry about being on display for aliens.
We just have to bone up on our rocket tech
and learn to recognize these shock waves when we see them.
- [Tony] In a previous episode,
we investigated instances of UFO sightings out of California
during an Independence Day fireworks celebration.
Our experts were unable to explain some of them.
And now, on the opposite side of the country,
we found a similar 4th of July phenomenon.
Could this new evidence help us finally solve the mystery?
[pensive music]
It's Independence Day, 2019.
Desiree Leanne is sitting at home
enjoying the holiday with her mother
in Port Richey, Florida.
- Everything was really normal,
just random fireworks around my neighborhood.
And then we saw the light that stood out,
and it kind of hovered a strange pattern.
- [Tony] Intrigued, Desiree heads to the backyard
for a better view,
and captures this.
- [Desiree] I'm pretty sure that those are not fireworks.
- [Tony] Three bright lights in a triangular formation
appear to be slowly moving in sync.
Desiree doesn't know what she's seeing,
but she does know what it isn't.
- It wasn't a plane.
If it was a helicopter, it would've made noise.
But they moved, I feel, with intention,
like it was doing something or going somewhere.
- [Tony] Could that intention mean that we're being watched?
Some believe that aliens have been gathering data
at observing humanity during times of cultural importance.
In fact, historian and author Amy Teitel
says one of those times
appears to be during Independence Day.
- [Amy] The National UFO Reporting Center
is more likely to receive a call on July 4th
than any other day of the year.
- [Tony] And Teitel notes the phenomenon goes back decades.
- [Amy] On July 4th, 1947,
United Airlines Flight 105 leaving Boise, Idaho.
Captain Emil Smith saw five disc-like objects,
one larger than the other four, heading towards the plane.
Then, they changed their course and flew parallel to him.
He said he flashed his landing lights
at whatever he was seeing,
and they responded intelligently by changing formation.
[pensive music]
- [Tony] The idea that aliens like watching us
for their own amusement or research
is sometimes called galactic zoo theory,
similar to the interests today's anthropologists have
in Neanderthals.
But before we go too far down those rabbit holes,
let's see what our experts say about this footage.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
On an average clear night away from a city,
a person can see between 2,000 and 3,000 stars.
So, are these just lights we see in the sky all the time?
- [Lt. Tim] Albeit subtle, we can see movement from them.
But stars appear to move with the Earth's orbit.
They don't move as fast as what we see here,
so definitely not stars.
[graphic whooshing]
- [Tony] What about Starlink satellites?
[graphic whooshing]
Starlink was established by Elon Musk
as a network of satellites that can provide internet access
anywhere on the Earth.
The plan is to ultimately have up to 42,000 of them
circling the globe.
Is that what we're seeing?
- [Lt. Tim] Starlink appears in the night sky
like a stream of lights,
almost like pearls in a long row
moving across the night sky.
You don't see that here at all, these objects.
Their movement is very subtle and slow
and not consistent with what we see as satellite.
- [Tony] So, are we looking at genuine UFOs?
- If there were strong evidence that indicated
that this was flying in some sort of an intelligent fashion,
I can maybe accept the fact that it is an unknown,
but I don't see it being into the world
of being an alien spacecraft.
You've got lack of significant movement
for a period of time.
You don't have anything instantaneous acceleration.
- [Tony] Instead, McMillan believes what we're seeing
is impressive technology,
just not the alien kind.
- [Lt. Marc] A couple of things that lead me to believe
we're possibly looking at drones here.
One is the height in terms of altitude.
We can see the horizon there.
We can see from the other houses.
These objects are relatively low to the ground
or within the ceiling cap
that commercial drones are allowed to operate on.
- [Tony] But why would drones fly in triangle formation?
- [Lt. Tim] Looking at this from a distance,
you can make out shapes
'cause our brains want to detect those patterns.
But in reality, we don't have an idea
of how far away the objects are from each other.
- [Tony] McMillan adds
that drones filming 4th of July fireworks
is not only a common event,
it's been done before over Port Richey,
like this celebration in 2016.
- [Lt. Tim] It's just very common nowadays
for people to film fireworks from the drones
and get a cool perspective that we hadn't seen before.
[pensive music] [graphic beeping]
- [Tony] Our verdict.
Drones.
So it looks like the aliens aren't studying us
as we celebrate our independence,
at least not in this case.
But maybe at the next Super Bowl, someone should look up.
[graphic whooshing]
Our skies could hold mysteries beyond our imagination.
The truth, it's out there,
hovering just above us, waiting to be discovered.
Thank you for watching this special episode
of "The Proof Is Out There."
Please send us any videos, images,
sound that you think we should investigate.
And remember to keep those cameras rolling.
[compelling music] [graphic whooshing]