NOVA

PILOT: Look at this thing!

PILOT 2: It's rotating.

PILOT 1: Whoa, got it!

(laughs) Woo-hoo!

(men talking, laughing on radios) What the (bleep) is that thing?

NARRATOR: Disturbing videos of U.F.Os.

have been taken by some of the best-trained pilots on the planet.

We actually have military pilots who are saying, "I saw something that I don't understand."

PILOT: Course unknown and speed unknown.

MICK WEST: We don't know what they actually saw.

We only have their interpretation of it.

So this is the helmet that I was wearing.

(interview): It would be really irresponsible to suggest that all of these things are of the same origin, that they're of the same technology, that they're of the same phenomenon.

We can't say it's aliens, but we can't say it's not aliens.

People in New Jersey are concerned.

NARRATOR: And what about the explosion of news reports of strange objects flying over New Jersey?

Upwards of 49-plus drone sightings.

SHELLEY WRIGHT: As scientists, we also want to get to the bottom of this.

There's an aircraft-- there we go.

Ah, there we go.

NARRATOR: "What Are U.F.Os.?"

Right now, on "NOVA."

ANNOUNCER: Major funding for "NOVA" is provided by the following: NARRATOR: In the halls of Congress, Navy pilots are speaking out.

This object remained for about 45 seconds or so before darting off over the mountains.

We were seeing objects with our radars, with our cameras, and even with our eyes flying on an almost daily basis.

DIETRICH: We're very sensitive to how things turn and how things accelerate and how things move, and this didn't follow any of those laws of physics.

NARRATOR: As of 2023, military and commercial pilots have reported seeing 801 objects they couldn't identify.

DIETRICH: When we're talking about having an unidentified thing in our airspace, whether it's directly overhead or in our coastal waters, we need to figure out, is this an issue of flight safety?

Is this an issue of national security?

Is this an adversary spying on us?

NARRATOR: Or could it be top-secret tech developed right here at home?

ALEX HOLLINGS: I can tell you unequivocally that the government does keep secrets when it comes to aerospace technology.

The Pentagon has what we often call a black budget, which can sometimes exceed $65 billion in a year.

ALEJANDRO ROJAS: Even within the military, there's never been a consensus, really, that it's this or that or that it's not extraterrestrial.

We cannot rule out extraterrestrials, but you have no evidence for it.

It comes back to the evidence.

HAKEEM OLUSEYI: Regular citizens have been reporting things for decades, and yet we hear nothing from the government about what this may be.

SHELLEY WRIGHT: And now that we have more observations, more cameras, more cell phones that are taking pictures of phenomenon in our atmosphere, scientists need to come forward and talk about how we can identify these objects.

MICHAEL WONG: In science, we encounter anomalies all the time.

And it's our job to try to figure out what those anomalies are telling us about the universe.

NARRATOR: This isn't the first time unidentified flying objects have captured our imagination and startled the world.

It was back in the 1940s that sightings started piling up.

June 24, 1947.

As he flew near Mt.

Rainier in Washington State, pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted something strange.

ROJAS: As he was flying around, he said he saw these objects glinting off of the sun.

Because they moved like they were skipping off of water, the term "flying saucer" came about.

At the time, there were other people having sightings, but this is the one that just really kind of ignite this interest in the public about U.F.Os.

NARRATOR: From New York to California, people started to report seeing flying saucers just about everywhere.

Sightings were spreading like wildfire.

HOLLINGS: Culture informs our understanding of the world around us.

If you expect to see a U.F.O.

that looks like a pie tin, well, when you see something unusual in the sky that you have trouble discerning what it was, your brain may be more apt to say, "That looked like a pie tin."

NARRATOR: It may seem strange that in the 1940s and '50s, so many Americans were suddenly spotting objects in the sky.

(explosion roars) But with the Cold War in full swing, it was a time of heightened anxiety and worry about new threats overhead.

This was a time period in which there was a lot of military technology development.

Coming out of World War II, we have developed radar.

SEAN KIRKPATRICK: This was the first major war where air power was a huge player, and there was a lot of unknown tech emerging.

All of these things kind of came together.

And then, of course, you had the Roswell incident.

NARRATOR: Roswell, New Mexico.

A rancher came across another piece of the flying saucer puzzle.

ROJAS: Essentially, this ranch hand comes in, says, "I found this material."

They send a couple of Air Force people from Roswell Army Airfield out to take a look.

One of them says, "Hey, I think this stuff was weird."

They take the material to Fort Worth.

Fort Worth says it was obviously a weather balloon.

Story's over.

NARRATOR: But the public wasn't buying it.

And Hollywood saw an opportunity to run with a captivating story: aliens-- sometimes friendly and sometimes not-- were visiting planet Earth.

HAQQ-MISRA: The lack of answers by the government did leave a void, and Hollywood and, and entertainment certainly filled that void.

FILM NARRATOR: "Earth vs.

The Flying Saucers."

HAQQ-MISRA: And we are left with a wide assortment of scenarios imagining contact with aliens, with saucers, or aliens on the moon or Mars, or alien invasions that are quite dramatic.

FILM NARRATOR: What are they?

Where do they come from?

Certainly, this can instill a lot of fear in people.

(screaming) In the absence of scientists or other authoritative voices filling the gap and, and explaining what's going on, all we heard from the authorities was, "There's nothing to see here."

NARRATOR: But behind the scenes, the military was investigating.

HAQQ-MISRA: Probably the most significant historical investigation of U.F.Os.

by the government was Project Blue Book.

It investigated thousands and thousands of U.F.O.

sightings.

NARRATOR: For more than 20 years, military investigators and scientists scrutinized the data, looking for answers.

What are all these objects?

Do any of them present a clear and present danger?

Scientists like astronomer J. Allen Hynek were brought in to help the Air Force connect the dots.

ROJAS: Dr.

J. Allen Hynek was the consultant for the Air Force from 1947 all the way to 1969, the entire time they were investigating this topic.

He was a skeptic himself because of that early association with aliens and little green men.

So when they approached him, he's, like, "I'll do this, but I'm going to easily "be able to debunk this in no time, because this is just silliness."

NARRATOR: Project Blue Book ended in 1969, when the Air Force released the Condon Report.

After investigating more than 12,000 U.F.O.

sightings, 701 remained unidentified.

When you've not explained that much of your data, as a scientist, that's not acceptable.

NARRATOR: And it wasn't acceptable for Hynek.

He'd had a change of heart that would last a lifetime.

ROJAS: He started to see that there was data there that indicates that not all of these are easily solvable, and that they do deserve investigation.

But he would stay away from the alien side of things.

He would try to focus on, you know, "This is a mystery we don't understand."

But it's just too difficult to do, because the media and the public just can't disassociate those things, the aliens and the U.F.Os.

OLUSEYI: This created an environment that scientists and any serious person did not want to go near it.

So aliens were right in there with ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot-- it was all part of this, the unknown, spooky stuff that probably ain't true.

NARRATOR: Because of this stigma, today, the Department of Defense refers to these Unidentified Flying Objects, U.F.Os., as U.A.Ps.-- Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.

DIETRICH: They changed it from U.F.O.

to U.A.P.

to try to reduce that stigma, to try to get away from that history, that historical trigger that happens in our brains.

WRIGHT: The word U.F.O., unfortunately, has become a taboo word within the scientific community.

It's actually been a disservice to our community and our society for not trying to teach and communicate about what actually is in the night sky.

NARRATOR: There's no shortage of things in the night sky that can seem strange.

Some are natural, like the colors of the Northern Lights, the beauty of a meteor shower, planet Venus in the night sky.

Even clouds that form strange saucer-like shapes.

And plenty that are not-so-natural wonders.

KENNETH HARRIS II: Right now above my head are planes.

You can hear a helicopter flying over.

(helicopter flying past) There's probably some drones up there, too.

And if you're in the right place at the right time, you can probably even see some satellites up there, because there's a lot of stuff out there that might not be as strange as you think it is.

VIDEOGRAPHER 1: So weird, that's not a plane.

KIRKPATRICK: The number of things that are in our sky today are thousands.

VIDEOGRAPHER 2: Oh, my God.

VIDEOGRAPHER 3: Now it's not moving at all.

It's hovering right there.

WRIGHT: We have weather balloons.

1,800 of them are launched daily around the world.

You can actually see things in Earth's orbit from the ground.

You can see, for instance, the International Space Station at night, flying overhead.

NARRATOR: And if you see a cluster of lights traveling across the night sky, they're probably part of a satellite system called Starlink.

KIRKPATRICK: When Starlink launches a 60-satellite string, people look at that and go, "I don't know what that is."

And it looks really weird and concerning.

Technology, I think, has created much more clutter in the sky and an ability for us to misinterpret things.

HAQQ-MISRA: There's a lot in our sky, and if we're studying U.F.Os., of course, you have to know what's in the sky that is known before you can identify what's unknown.

NARRATOR: That's especially difficult when it comes to some of the strangest sightings ever made... (man speaking on radio) NARRATOR: ...those videos taken by Navy pilots.

One of the most famous is nicknamed "the Gimbal."

We recorded the Gimbal object when we were down off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, aboard the U.S.S.

Theodore Roosevelt in 2015.

NARRATOR: Former F/A-18 pilot Ryan Graves will never forget what some pilots in his squadron told him about their bizarre U.A.P.

experience.

The event unfolded during a night training mission.

PILOT: This is a (bleep) drone, bro.

They see something strange.

They've been closing on it for a couple of minutes as they fly towards it to better understand it.

It has to be a drone-- that's the logical thing.

No one's out there saying it's U.F.Os.

or aliens or whatever.

It's just an unknown thing.

And what is it?

NARRATOR: While their camera only captures the image of one object, their radar tells a more complex story.

PILOT 2: There's a whole fleet of them-- look on the S.A.

PILOT 1: My gosh.

GRAVES: As they gather more information, and they see a, a whole fleet of them on their radar, it's harder to understand what they're seeing.

And you can hear that in their voices.

PILOT 2: They're all going against the wind.

The wind's 120 knots from the west.

PILOT 1: Look at that thing, dude.

NARRATOR: Then the object does something downright bizarre.

PILOT 1: Look at this thing!

PILOT 2: It's rotating.

GRAVES: You see the object appears to rotate, and then the video cuts out at that point.

(sighs): You know, so, I don't know what the Gimbal is.

We still don't know what it is.

NARRATOR: There's no doubt many of the recordings of U.F.Os.

made by Navy pilots look very strange.

To try to decode them, it's crucial to understand the kinds of sensors and cameras being used.

So the vast majority of the evidence that's excited the public imagination about these videos comes in the form of infrared imagery.

NARRATOR: Imagery taken with an onboard infrared camera system called ATFLIR.

Sean Kirkpatrick, former director of the government's department in charge of investigating U.A.Ps... What is it reflecting... NARRATOR: ...and engineer Josh Semeter explore how the world looks in infrared light with the help of Teledyne engineer Donnell Lago.

So what you have here is, you got the visible on this side here, it's a 4K visible image, and then the thermal on this side.

NARRATOR: On the right side of the screen, the camera is capturing visible light: light the human eye can see.

But on the left side, the Boston skyline looks radically different, because this is a thermal image, taken with an infrared camera that detects variations in temperature.

The cars on the bridge are emitting more heat than the background.

The more heat an object emits, the whiter it appears.

The less, the darker it gets.

And can you switch that?

Yes, we can invert it.

We can make everything that's black hot and everything that's white cold.

And that's exactly what we see our pilots doing.

Pilots, when they see things, they will toggle back and forth so that they can try to get the best contrast... Mm.

...to try to figure out what they're looking at, you know.

So why don't we try and see if we can see any aircraft?

NARRATOR: Even on a hazy day like this... There's an aircraft, there we go.

Ah, there we go.

NARRATOR: ...it doesn't take long to spot one.

KIRKPATRICK: There is an aircraft that you can't tell, in the infrared, is an aircraft.

Mm-mm.

But in the visible, I sure can.

Yep.

Exactly.

All right?

And now, why don't we switch it to black is hot?

Play the same game, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Play the same game and see what it looks like.

LAGO: There's a plane there.

SEMETER: Mm-hmm, oh, there we go.

There's a plane, there's a plane, there's a plane.

Okay, yep.

There we go.

KIRKPATRICK: There you go.

SEMETER: I saw this just little dot tripping through the field.

And I was only looking at the infrared camera.

And Sean, who was watching the visual camera next door, said, "There's an airplane."

And I looked over and this enormous aircraft was moving through the scene.

KIRKPATRICK: It's just a blob.

LAGO: Just a little blob, yeah.

So that was an image of the engine.

KIRKPATRICK: Yeah.

LAGO: Yeah.

KIRKPATRICK: That's basically all you saw-- you didn't see the rest of the fuselage.

The world looks very different in the infrared versus the visible.

NARRATOR: Exploring the deceptive nature of infrared light provides scientists with valuable clues to why a plane could take on an otherworldly shape.

But it doesn't explain why the Gimbal seems to move in ways that defy physics.

The Gimbal video is one of the most famous U.F.O.

videos, and with good reason, I think, because it looks like a flying saucer.

NARRATOR: U.F.O.

investigator and conspiracy debunker Mick West spent years analyzing the Gimbal video frame by frame, clue by clue.

The interesting thing about the Gimbal video, besides it being a flying saucer, is this rotation it does.

And this was very puzzling.

It took a long time to figure out what might be going on there.

NARRATOR: Mick brings a unique set of skills to this challenge.

(characters exclaiming and grunting) WEST: I used to program video games many years ago.

I really enjoy the process of solving puzzles, and I use my 3D geometry and trigonometry and algebra and all the skills that I use in games programming to analyze the U.F.Os.

NARRATOR: Mick starts his investigation of the Gimbal by combing through publicly available information.

The plane that captured the Gimbal video is an F/A-18, equipped with an infrared camera mounted beneath the wing in a targeting pod.

Next, he builds a simulation of the plane and the camera, which is on a device called a gimbal.

The gimbal enables the camera to rotate as it tracks a target.

But the camera isn't the only thing in motion.

The pilot's display reveals that the object is also moving, from the left side of the plane to the right.

WEST: To track something going from left to right, which is what we're seeing here, the camera actually has to rotate, and it has to rotate a specific amount as it traverses over from one side to the other.

NARRATOR: Using the simulation he's created, Mick makes a surprising discovery.

WEST: The amount the gimbal rotates and the time it rotates is exactly what would be needed for the camera to track this object.

NARRATOR: He's come up with a theory about why the object appears to rotate, and sets up an experiment to demonstrate how it works, using his cell phone and his desk lamp.

WEST: Take your cell phone and point the camera at a, a bright light, a single light.

And then rotate your cell phone.

So you've got a rotating camera, but nothing is rotating, except the artifacts of the camera.

So if you have a glare, like an artifact of the camera, when the camera rotates, the scene itself doesn't rotate, but the glare rotates.

And I think that's what we're seeing in the Gimbal video.

It's possibly something like a distant plane, something that's hot off in the distance.

The heat of the engine was kind of pointing towards the camera, and that kind of bloomed in the camera and created this glare that was so big, it obscured the entire plane.

NARRATOR: But not everyone agrees with this theory.

I want to be clear that that's entirely possible, but I personally don't find that particularly likely.

The reason for that is strictly, this FLIR system is something that military personnel are trained to use to identify adversary and friendly aircraft.

NARRATOR: Pilots are well aware of how the gimbal system works, as well as the nature of common camera artifacts, like glare.

GRAVES: I don't think this was a distant plane.

I do believe it was an object that was about four to six miles away from the fighter aircraft, not a distant jet at 30 nautical miles away.

If it was a distant jet, where would it come from?

Why were we not receiving any indications that it was or was not part of our strike group?

NARRATOR: In 2021, the Department of Defense formed AARO, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, to investigate U.A.Ps.

like the Gimbal.

To date, AARO considers this case "unresolved."

So for us, anything that remains unidentified is a severe threat that we should be paying attention to as tactical aviators, because that's exactly what we're training to identify.

NARRATOR: The Gimbal isn't the only U.A.P.

that appears to defy the laws of physics.

2013, just after dark at the airport in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.

U.S.

Customs and Border Control captured this video of an oddly behaving object.

KIRKPATRICK: It looks like the object is traveling quickly.

It looks like it's disappearing into the water and coming out of the water, and disappearing again, coming out, and it's splitting into two, and kind of disappearing completely.

Enthusiasts will point to that and say that is evidence of warp drives or interdimensional drives and that it's transmedium because it's going in and out of the water.

Let me see.

NARRATOR: But could there be another reason that's more down to Earth?

So let's do this as a controlled experiment.

NARRATOR: Engineer Josh Semeter enlists the help of Sean Kirkpatrick, former director of AARO, to cook up an idea: can they recreate this disappearing act in the lab with a knife, spoon, and fork and two surrogate U.F.Os.?

What I thought we'd try to use to do this is a infrared sensor.

It just clips on like so.

NARRATOR: They set it up on a tripod, take a look, and see absolutely nothing.

SEMETER: We're not seeing anything at all in these objects.

NARRATOR: Sean takes the spoon and fork, along with one of the U.A.P.

surrogates, and puts them in a cooler.

For just about-- what do you think, Josh?

A second?

Ten seconds?

Yeah.

It doesn't take long-- I'd say ten seconds.

It's more than enough.

NARRATOR: About ten seconds later, give or take... KIRKPATRICK: All right, let's take them out and see what they look like.

Put that right back where they were.

And what do we got?

SEMETER: Well, there's three objects there.

Wow, that's pretty stark.

NARRATOR: We can see the fork and spoon, along with one of the U.F.O.

surrogates.

SEMETER: And... KIRKPATRICK: I don't see the other two.

Cannot find the other two.

But they are clearly there.

NARRATOR: But over the next few minutes, they gradually disappear again.

The question is, why?

SEMETER: There is a tendency for objects that are at different temperatures, when they're in contact, to eventually reach the same temperature as one another.

NARRATOR: It's not a magic trick.

For an object to show up in infrared light, it must be a different temperature than objects it is in contact with.

So, when the fork and spoon exchanged thermal energy with the table, thermal equilibrium is reached, making them invisible in infrared light.

And that brings us back to the disappearing objects in the Puerto Rico video, which were also captured with an infrared sensor.

As the object becomes the same either temperature or irradiance as the background, you won't be able to see it.

It'll become nearly invisible, and it looks like it disappears.

NARRATOR: After months of carefully analyzing the video, scientists think they have an answer.

KIRKPATRICK: We think they're two birds, and when they get close to the water, the effect on the sensor kicks in, where it's having a hard time distinguishing the contrast between the background and the birds, and they look like they disappear, and then they reappear because the reflectance changes, and then they separate, and then it looks like they land in the water.

NARRATOR: This demo doesn't capture all the conditions of this sighting, but Sean and Josh believe that shifts in temperature and reflection might explain the apparent disappearing act.

SEMETER: I'm satisfied with that explanation, because that's how a scientist speaks with respect to some phenomenon that's not known.

We don't speak in certainty.

So, for instance, if one were to say, "That is either "two birds flying over the ocean "or it is a alien anti-gravity technology exhibiting transmedium characteristics," I choose the bird explanation.

NARRATOR: The sighting in Puerto Rico might simply be two birds, and the Gimbal video might be a distant plane, but one of the most famous U.F.O.

sightings has been even more challenging for investigators.

DIETRICH: I was an eyewitness to what is considered one of the most important U.F.O.

or U.A.P.

encounters, and that's the U.S.S.

Nimitz- Tic Tac encounter.

NARRATOR: November 14, 2004.

About a hundred miles southwest of San Diego, Alex Dietrich, then a young aviator-in-training, along with her commanding officer, David Fravor, a seasoned pilot with more than a decade of flying under his belt, set out on a routine training exercise.

DIETRICH: It was clear blue skies, calm waters, when we get a call by this controller, kind of like an air traffic controller for our military exercise, and they say, "Hey, we need you to go and check out this contact over here."

NARRATOR: The radar on one of the ships in the strike group had detected an unknown object.

And this is 2004, just a few years after 9/11.

The hair on the back of our neck stands up, and we go, "Hm, okay."

And we divert and we head towards it.

And we don't see anything initially.

But somebody sees a disturbance in the water, and this strange thing is flying very fast but erratically over the, this area of, of water.

It was off-white.

You know, sort of a, a white, creamish color.

We didn't see a cockpit, we didn't see windows, and it moved in ways that we didn't understand.

NARRATOR: Dietrich and Fravor returned to the Nimitz without taking video of the object, so another aircraft went in pursuit and captured this.

DIETRICH: We call it affectionately a Tic Tac, because it looks like the little breath mint.

NARRATOR: Mick West decides to take on the challenge, to see if he can make sense of the movement of the Tic Tac.

WEST: It's a very blurry video.

I think it's actually out of focus, and it's not actually doing anything.

It's just basically flying away and a bit to the left in more or less a straightish line.

But the thing is, David Fravor's description is very dramatic.

NARRATOR: In fact, when Commander David Fravor testified before Congress in 2023, he described an object that, in his 18 years of flying, traveled at speeds he'd never seen before.

FRAVOR: As we looked around, we saw a white Tic Tac object with a longitudinal axis pointing north-south and moving very abruptly over the water, like a Ping-Pong ball.

WEST: He talks about the object kind of Ping-Ponging around close to the ocean, and then doing this very difficult synchronized movement up towards the top.

I'm going to tie it off over here.

NARRATOR: Mick conducts an experiment based solely on the pilots' eyewitness reports, using his backyard swimming pool and his version of the Tic Tac.

WEST: Yeah, I made the Tic Tac out of a piece of wood and some bits of white wire and painted it white.

NARRATOR: He suspends his Tic Tac over the swimming pool... WEST: About there.

NARRATOR: ...climbs up a ladder with his phone, and starts recording.

WEST: So, what I set up with the pool demo is just a good illustration of what might have happened to try to figure out, what's actually moving here?

Is this object moving or is the camera moving?

Because we don't have any frame of reference, we've just got the pool behind it, and so you kind of zoom in a little bit, so all you see is the pool, it really looks like the object is moving.

NARRATOR: Even though it's not.

It's only the camera that's moving.

WEST: It's a good illustration of parallax, which, as we know, is one of the big causes of optical illusions.

NARRATOR: You may have experienced this illusion looking out the window of a train.

The trees just outside the window appear to be moving in relation to the landscape in the background, but the only thing that's actually moving is you.

OLUSEYI: We're not reliable-- our eyes are not reliable.

If you're going to court, and you're the accused, and it's a eyewitness testimony that's going to, you know, the big evidence against you, good luck.

HOLLINGS: So, when a military aviator, especially someone like Commander Fravor, with combat experience, says that they saw something in the sky that they can't quite explain, that operated in a way that seemed to contradict what they understand the laws of physics would dictate, I tend to give those witness testimonies a great deal of credence, because these aviators are not just highly trained pilots, they're highly trained combatants.

The pilot observation is, "I see something."

The data we need is what the sensor is gathering.

And that's the numbers we actually need.

KIRKPATRICK: In the case of the Tic Tac, the pilot did see something, but some of the key technical questions hadn't been investigated at the time, and trying to investigate those now is not going to give us a whole lot, because there's nothing to really examine.

The farther back in time you go, the less data there is for every one of these cases.

And back in 2004, there was no data retention policy for these kinds of events.

Side... Yeah.

SEMETER: This one?

Yeah, so, we're looking... NARRATOR: According to Sean Kirkpatrick, the radar data from the incident no longer exists, so we'll never know if it would support or rule out Mick's parallax theory.

DIETRICH: I don't know what we saw, and I refuse to speculate, because I think it would be irresponsible of me to say, you know, "Well, it was definitely an adversary spying on us," or, "It was definitely an alien visiting from outer space," because I don't know.

NARRATOR: For Alex, that was the end of the Tic Tac story.

DIETRICH: And then I went on with my life, my career, and I didn't really think about it.

NARRATOR: That is, until 13 years later, when "The New York Times" published this article with links to the Tic Tac and Gimbal videos.

When "The New York Times" released this story, it really gave the whole topic a bit of credibility, where a lot of people saw it as taboo and sort of silly, but if the U.S.

government has been investing tens of millions of dollars into investigating these reports, there seems like there could be something to it.

HAQQ-MISRA: People are interested in this topic of U.F.Os., and Congress has begun to get involved.

There's been a couple of congressional hearings calling expert witnesses to try and figure out what's going on here.

NICK LANGWORTHY: In your belief, is this, this flying Tic Tac, I mean, is this, is it capable of being the product of any other nation on the Earth?

No, I, actually, I think it defies current material science and the ability to develop that much propulsion.

And I know there's been some physicists who have done calculations, which is beyond anything that we have.

NARRATOR: Should we be concerned that some U.F.Os.

are advanced technologies from out of this world?

Or secret technologies developed by our adversaries?

Or could there be another reason U.F.Os.

have remained so elusive for decades?

Remember, back in 1947, in Roswell, New Mexico, when a rancher found strange debris in his pasture?

The Air Force said it was from a weather balloon.

But, as it turns out, it was part of a classified U.S.

military program called Project Mogul.

ROJAS: The Air Force launched these balloons, and they had these sensors on them where they can measure vibrations in the air to be able to monitor Russian nuclear testing.

The general in Fort Worth, Texas, decided, "I'm going to cover up this classified project, "and I'm going to show the public that what we recovered was a weather balloon."

NARRATOR: It would take half a century for the Air Force to admit exactly what had crashed in Roswell.

So there was a cover-up, but it was a cover-up of a classified project, not, you know, an alien spacecraft.

The secrecy led to the conspiracy, and certainly the Air Force did not help themselves by being secret and dismissive of the topic.

NARRATOR: When it comes to government cover-ups, perhaps the most infamous is Area 51.

Tales of alien spacecraft hidden inside this remote Air Force base about 83 miles northwest of Las Vegas have persisted for decades.

It turns out, the military has been secretly developing cutting-edge technology here since the 1950s, but did not even acknowledge the existence of the base until 2013.

HOLLINGS: There are lots of aircraft we know have been tested at Area 51 entirely in secret at the time, including the F-117, the SR-71, the B-2 Spirit, and many more.

Right around the same time the B-2 Spirit was in development, common sightings of U.F.Os.

around the United States tended to transition away from the pie saucer shape we were familiar with in earlier decades and toward a more triangular shape.

This is a model of what people claim was the TR-3B, which is a legendary aircraft that people allege was built using reverse-engineered alien technology.

NARRATOR: By the 1990s, rumors of triangular-shaped spacecraft became so widespread, they became part of popular culture.

Blockbusters like "The X-Files" featured a triangular-shaped alien spacecraft hovering over Agent Fox Mulder's head.

HOLLINGS: I think the government should and does expect that the public is going to fill in the blanks as they see fit.

As long as people are talking about aliens operating out of Area 51, well, then, they're not revealing anything about the legitimate military platforms that are being tested there.

It creates a bit of a smokescreen.

OLUSEYI: There's always advanced technological programs going on that are on a need-to-know basis.

If you don't need to know, even if you are a member of the government or the military, you're not going to know.

And that's the way it should be.

KIRKPATRICK: This is all about spy versus spy or military versus military to maintain technical superiority.

We don't want other people to learn what we're building, where we might employ it, because then they can defeat it.

There are reasons to do that.

None of it is alien.

None of it.

MOUNTAIN: I think we are in an era where conspiracy theories are popular.

Is this another one?

NARRATOR: When it comes to sightings by military pilots and the public, how can science help separate unfounded conspiracy theories from reality, fact from fiction?

MOUNTAIN: From the very days that Galileo first lifted his telescope to the sky and made measurements of the moons going around Jupiter, everybody else could then reproduce those measurements and go, "Oh, yeah, he's right."

And that confirmation is what has made the scientific method so powerful over the last 400 years.

The thing we need is data, and we need real data, and we don't have it.

We at NASA are... NARRATOR: In 2022, NASA brought together a group of experts to explore ways to collect that data.

NASA should lead the scientific discourse.

We need to elevate this conversation.

SEMETER: The NASA U.A.P.

panel was formed to bring that science perspective into this.

That analysis has not been done.

A lot of people argue that we have data, but the vast majority of that data is anecdotal, and that's just not going to cut it.

NARRATOR: The panel recommended several ways to collect more data, including repurposing existing technology, like the National Weather Service's radar system, called NEXRAD-- radar stations that are found throughout the U.S.

SEMETER: So those same sensors should be able to see if an object comes whizzing through at an extraordinary velocity.

It should be able to pick up that type of thing.

That's just one example of the type of networks that we could repurpose for U.A.P.

research.

NARRATOR: Astronomer Avi Loeb is taking a different approach, collecting more data in a novel way.

We just constructed an observatory at Harvard University.

We are monitoring objects that fly overhead and trying to make sense of them.

NARRATOR: This collection of instruments is part of Harvard's Galileo Project.

The Galileo Project is developing several sites that are spread across a geographical region, where each site has an array of sensors-- optical cameras, infrared images.

There's audio from infrasound to ultrasound.

There's radar.

It's a wide array of instruments to basically look at the sky all the time to, to see if you find any anomalies.

NARRATOR: Some instruments have otherworldly names, like this one called Dalek, after the cyborg aliens featured in the "Doctor Who" series.

Inside Dalek, there are eight infrared cameras.

LOEB: Behind the window, there is a camera.

They overlap.

And so, they get the full picture of the entire sky at all times, in the infrared.

When something of interest is identified by the main set of cameras, we zoom on it in the sky, and this is the camera that can move around and look at the object of interest, automatically, based on the computer system that we develop.

You can imagine, if you have a camera pointing overhead, you're going to see a lot of things that are identifiable.

So they use machine learning, what people call artificial intelligence, that can recognize the knowns, recognize the birds, the airplanes, the balloons, leaves, all the known things, and sort of reject those, filter them out, and then what you're left with is the anomalies.

You're left with the things that you cannot understand, the things you can't identify.

And as we speak right now, we are being recorded.

(chuckles) So far, we have been operating this observatory for several months, and we saw hundreds of thousands of objects in the sky.

None of them appears to be anomalous.

But even if one in a million came from outside of this Earth, that would be big news to humanity and will change our future.

And that's what drives my science.

GRAVES: One way or another, the more data we're, we're able to bring into this conversation, the more we're going to be able to get to the truth.

(keyboard clacking) NARRATOR: Ryan Graves is trying to collect data from a different source: his fellow pilots, military and commercial.

But there's a problem.

They're hesitant to share their experiences because of the taboo surrounding U.F.Os.

GRAVES: They don't feel comfortable reporting because of that fear that there could be professional repercussions at their employer, social repercussions with their peers at the airline, because the conversation immediately jumps to, "Well, there's no proof there's extraterrestrials.

You couldn't travel across the universe to get here."

And it's, like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa."

(chuckles) Pilots are seeing things that are in the sky that they don't understand what they are and are posing safety risks.

That's where the conversation needs to stop.

And hey, is this not only an aviation safety risk, but is this a potential national security risk?

IYA WHITELEY: So, I was asking pilots whether they have encountered the U.A.P., and they were very cagey about it.

NARRATOR: Aviation and space psychologist Iya Whiteley is working with Ryan, conducting research to find out if this reluctance to talk about U.A.P.

sightings also impacts a pilot's ability to focus on the job, creating a safety issue.

WHITELEY: When the pilot's seeing something, I want to make sure that they're comfortable speaking about it, because it then occupies their capacity and focus and attention, and takes them away from actually flying.

If you're trying to ignore something unidentified in the distance, your mind is still thinking, "I'm not thinking about it, I'm not thinking about it.

(chuckling): I'm not thinking about it, I'm not thinking about it."

And now they don't see what they need to be seeing.

You were just asking about visual cues... Yes.

...and what attracts your attention.

Movement is what attracts your attention.

GRAVES: Commercial pilots have been seeing objects that have been causing them some serious consternation.

I don't think anyone would like their pilot flying their aircraft to have an existential crisis as they're flying their aircraft and coming in for a landing.

WEST: The more cases we can explain, the less distraction there's going to be.

And if there is actually any real threat or any real issue out there, then we can focus in on that without all this extra noise.

NARRATOR: And there's another way we can collect more data-- with a little help from the public.

So, it would seem like they're going sideways.

NARRATOR: In the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at Enigma Labs, a staff of software designers and U.F.O.

enthusiasts are developing a first-of-its-kind crowdsourcing app.

LAUREN BUTLER: The goal is really to bring people together to share their U.A.P.

experiences and their sightings.

You know, if people don't have a place to talk about this or report what they're seeing, I think they can feel really lonely, and, and feel very isolated, when, in reality, this is a huge community of people who should be able to come somewhere and talk about what they're seeing.

ROJAS: So, we're collecting sighting reports.

We get a lot of Starlink and Space X rocket videos.

But at the same time, people are submitting things that cannot be explained.

This time, I've got one that I can't figure out.

Maybe you can help me out.

This is really cool.

Just this light comes floating in, and then it hovers, but wait.

But what is, what is this blob of light here?

It came down slowly, right?

Yeah.

BUTLER: Those are fireworks, I'd say, right?

ROJAS: Those are probably fireworks.

ADAM: Probably smoke rising up from... Mm-hmm.

ROJAS: And smoke rising up.

ADAM: Mm-hmm.

(fireworks popping in video) ROJAS: But in just a second, it will get weirder.

ADAM: What?

ROJAS: Isn't that weird?

Oh, it's getting brighter.

MAN: It gets brighter and brighter, yeah.

ROJAS: Yeah, it keeps getting brighter.

And it's a broad beam of light.

ADAM: So it's not a star.

ROJAS: So what do you think about, maybe, drone?

But, I mean, look how still it is.

It doesn't have blinking lights.

I mean, it doesn't look like a drone.

So let's fast-forward a little.

MAN: Oh, it went up a little bit, okay.

ADAM: It's rising up, it's rising up.

ROJAS: Yeah.

So it kind of gets dimmer.

And I'm watching the cam-- the camera's not moving.

And it rises up-- the camera's... And it's rising back up.

Yeah, it... This is a good one.

I don't know, I don't know what that is.

NARRATOR: Apps like this provide the public with a place to share their sightings, but could one day be a source of data for scientists to study.

MOUNTAIN: We're not relying just on, "Did you see something?"

We're asking your cell phone to make a measurement.

It's going to record the position of the phone on the planet, because we all have GPSes in it, and, because it has a little compass in it, it will also tell us what direction we're looking at.

So we can actually do scientific experiments with actual data, because our modern cell phones are so good now at recording numbers.

ADAM: The more data, the better.

The more sightings, the more eyes we get on, on something that's truly anomalous, the closer we get to maybe answering that question: "What is it?"

NARRATOR: Alex Dietrich has learned from firsthand experience that for many people, data alone is not enough.

DIETRICH: The topic is so charged, because there are so many conspiracies, and it's such a... You know, it does something to people's brains when you say "U.F.O."

NARRATOR: At the University of Colorado Boulder, Alex is trying to change that.

So, this is the helmet that I was wearing.

You're welcome to try to put it... NARRATOR: ...using her experience as a way to teach students how to separate fact from fiction.

What is it about U.F.Os.?

What do we know?

And how do we know it?

What I find is that some of my students have been going down those Reddit thread rabbit holes, working themselves up into a lather with salacious headlines for content and clickbait.

If you're reading an article about U.F.Os., what do we look for when we are looking at our sources?

I hope they will be more discerning when they consume media going forward, that they will question where the information that they're getting comes from.

Because I want to advocate for us to all take a deep breath and to come to this subject with a lens of critical thinking.

Critical thinking, people.

(chuckles): Let's all... Let's all apply critical thinking.

NARRATOR: And that brings us back to the million-dollar questions-- could this be extraterrestrial technology?

What would it take for a spacecraft to come from a distant world?

HOLLINGS: A very important question that we need to be asking today when investigating U.A.P.

is whether or not, even if there are advanced alien civilizations out there, if they have the means to actually reach us.

MAN: Three, two, one... NARRATOR: Consider this.

One of the fastest spacecrafts ever launched, NASA's New Horizons, took nine years and five months to reach Pluto, three billion miles away.

Getting to the closest star system with a planet that might harbor life would take that tiny spacecraft a whopping 80,000 years.

WRIGHT: The universe is so unfathomably large.

There's a hundred billion stars in our Milky Way, and there's a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.

That's ten to the 22-- one with 22 zeros on it-- with the number of stars, and the distances between stars is incredibly vast.

HAQQ-MISRA: I have not seen any evidence that we have been visited.

I think it's still worth looking for evidence, because we can't conclusively demonstrate that we have not been visited.

Half of the timescale the galaxy has, has existed, there was no planet Earth.

So that's plenty of time for life to have evolved and technological life to have developed on another planet.

OLUSEYI: The answer is, get more data.

We need much, much more data.

And the way you're going to get more data is that you're going to have more eyes on the sky.

NARRATOR: U.F.Os.

have been a part of our culture for decades.

They've been the subject of curiosity, but rarely the subject of serious scientific investigation.

But that is changing.

GRAVES: I think it's critical to be open-minded, don't be dismissive, and search for the data, like any good scientist.

What I think is important is that we are collecting more than just the eyewitness accounts, but that we also have the right hardware in place for things that will be seen today, tomorrow, so that we don't sit here and... (laughing): ...bicker about, about what happened 20 years ago.

ANNOUNCER: This program is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.