Original subtitles

- Tonight, on "The Proof Is Out There."

The famous footage of the Mississippi Bigfoot.

Is this the real deal?

- It's not out of the question that

a Sasquatch would find a home there.

- [Tony] The White House ordered a UFO shot down

over Lake Huron.

- [Tony] What did the Air Force pilot really see?

- The military doesn't shoot things out of the sky

that it doesn't perceive as a possible threat.

- [Tony] Alleged alien corpses

presented to Mexico's government.

What will forensic testing reveal?

- X-rays revealed that one of these mummies

actually contained eggs.

- [Tony] What's causing these weird sky waves in a war zone?

- The patterns of these lines almost look like

rippling ocean waves.

- [Tony] And what's the secret of

the world's most mysterious book?

- Is the Voynich Manuscript proof of a civilization

that's lost to history?

(dramatic music)

- [Tony] Around the globe are videos...

- [Witness] What are those things?

- [Witness] It's moving.

- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.

(electric whirring)

- [Expert] We don't know where they come from,

who made them, or how they operate.

- [Tony] What are they?

- [MJ] Some sort of bizarre mutation.

- [Marc] What's exciting is nobody really knows.

- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.

- I'm Tony Harris.

And as a journalist for more than 30 years,

I've followed the facts where they take me.

Now, I'm bringing that spirit of investigation

to the world's strangest sounds and images.

We'll analyze each one with top experts.

- It's a credible case, it's a credible video.

- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.

- This video was clearly faked.

- The proof starts now.

(dramatic music)

Good evening, and welcome to "The Proof Is Out There."

By popular demand,

we've decided to look at a famous piece of Bigfoot footage.

It's got many online speculators

wondering if Bigfoot was born on the Bayou.

October 24th, 2013,

about nine miles west of Tunica, Mississippi.

It's 6:00 p.m. and a man who goes by the name Josh Highcliff

is supposedly in the swamp hunting hogs

when he hears a noise behind a tree.

He pulls out his phone and records this.

(tree creaking)

50 yards away, we see what appears to be

a dark-haired animal in the forest,

tearing apart a cypress tree.

After filming for a minute, the creature suddenly stands up,

doubling in size.

Josh drops his camera and runs away, absolutely terrified.

Field researcher Cliff Barackman,

along with many other Sasquatch enthusiasts,

believes this video could be the real deal.

- When this footage first came online,

the community was abuzz because it looked like very,

very promising footage.

The activity that the animal was engaged in

looked very normal,

it was tearing apart some sort of dead stump,

presumably looking for termites or some other food source.

The habitat was appropriate for a Skunk Ape.

- [Tony] The Skunk Ape is the local name for Bigfoot

in the South, a Sasquatch who can thrive in

the swampy marshes of southern states

like Florida and Louisiana.

Known to have a pronounced stench

far greater than alleged Bigfoots in other areas,

Barackman says Mississippi is a great place

for Skunk Ape sightings.

- Because there's almost 20 million acres

of forested land in Mississippi,

there's a ton of animals that live there as well.

But not a ton of Bigfoot researchers,

therefore, we don't hear about a lot of the reports

that happen there.

- [Tony] A similar sighting occurred by a pond

near Jackson, Mississippi.

- In October 1979, four young men were out in the woods

drinking in their truck by this pond

and they turned the lights on in the rig.

Then on the other side of this small pond

was a seven foot tall, shaggy, hairy creature

just staring at them in the moonlight.

Those guys threw their beer bottles out the window

and split.

- [Tony] Years later, those same men would describe

their encounter to a sketch artist,

who created this illustration.

- Could this video actually depict

a Sasquatch foraging in the swamps of Mississippi?

The fact that it does not hear the videographer

that's probably 50 or less feet behind them is concerning,

and the credibility of the footage itself

is going to come down to

the credibility of the videographer.

- According to several major newspapers,

the alleged videographer, Josh Highcliff,

swears his footage is real

and many have called it

the best Bigfoot footage ever recorded,

with almost one million views online.

We checked with our experts to see if that

unbridled enthusiasm is justified.

(tense music)

To check the authenticity of this footage,

we met with forensic video analyst Michael Primeau.

- Through frame by frame examination,

it appears that the camera is handheld

that's documenting this interaction,

and there's some rapid movement with motion blur.

Based on just general physical aspects

of the scene analysis, it does appear to be real.

- [Tony] With the footage appearing to be genuine,

we spoke with biologist Floyd Hayes

to check if this was maybe just some local fauna,

like a bear.

- My first thought was that this was a black bear.

Bears often rip apart tree trunks looking for grubs.

However, it didn't appear like a bear

once it stood straight up.

Bears would roll over onto all fours

before they would stand up.

- [Tony] We asked anatomist and Bigfoot expert Jeff Meldrum

for his take on this suspected Skunk Ape.

- When this creature stands up,

in limb proportion, more resembles that of a human

rather than of a gorilla.

The proportions against that tree trunk,

it gives the impression that it is seven

to eight feet in height, perhaps.

So if it is a hoax, it was very cleverly contrived hoax.

- [Tony] However, author and Bigfoot investigator

Steve Kulls does not share Meldrum's optimism.

- So the person who submitted this video

went by the name of Josh Highcliff.

Nobody seems to know who he is.

They've never yet come forward with a picture of him

or even record a statement from him.

- [Tony] Which prompted Kulls to dig even deeper.

- I did an internet search

in a private investigation database search,

and it turns out the only Josh Highcliff I was able to find

was a character in a television series called,

"Beasts of the Bayou,"

which premiered shortly after the video was released.

- [Tony] It would appear that Josh Highcliff

wasn't even a real person,

but possibly a fictitious character played by an actor.

- This was kind of a spoof type of documentary,

all staged for the TV program.

(tense music)

- Our verdict? We think this is a potential hoax.

Although no members of the television crew

have come forward to talk about this video's validity,

we agree with Kulls that something smells a bit off here.

Until the real Josh Highcliff steps forward,

we are left guessing at the true nature of this footage.

Now, let's move up north from the Mississippi Delta

to the Great Lakes and a mysterious object

seen in the sky.

We don't have any photos or video,

but a recorded verbal description of it

helped lead the US President

to order it shot out of the sky.

Have a listen.

It's February 12th, 2023,

above Lake Huron near the Canadian border.

The US military sends two F-16 fighter jets

to investigate a TOI, or Track of Interest.

That's pilot speak for an airborne object

that poses a potential threat to national security.

We obtained recordings of the cockpit conversations

that took place during this incident.

As the pilots make their way up to 20,000 feet,

they discuss the mission.

- [Tony] But once they arrive,

what they find is hard to describe.

- [Tony] Whatever it is,

after meeting with military experts,

President Biden orders the craft shot down.

Journalist MJ Banias recalls following the event

as it unfolded.

- The newsroom kind of erupted

as we were trying to figure out what was happening.

It was pretty chaotic.

Allegedly, the reason for shooting it down was because

it posed a hazard to flight safety.

- [Tony] And Banias says the speculation

immediately centered around one thing.

- This incident came off the back of a Chinese spy balloon

that was shot down,

so there was already heightened stress that

there could be other spy balloons.

- [Tony] But was it just a balloon?

Unlike other recent run-ins with military jets,

like the infamous Tic Tac and Gimbal UAPs,

the government hasn't released

any gun camera videos of this incident.

US officials are simply calling it an unidentified object.

- There were a lot of people kind of speculating online

that this was a coverup,

that these were actually UFOs.

There were a lot of people claiming that

this was some sort of alien invasion.

- [Tony] The US and Canada would join forces

to try and locate the wreckage,

but none was ever found.

- To this day,

no country or organization has claimed responsibility.

It still remains a bit of a mystery.

- At the time of this incident,

General Glen VanHerck was the head of NORAD.

That's the agency responsible

for overseeing North American airspace.

When the media first asked him about these events,

he refused to rule out extraterrestrial forces at play.

That was later walked back by officials,

but it hasn't prevented the UFO community

from suspecting a coverup.

What will our experts think?

(tense music)

We first asked military aviation expert Tim McMillan

if there are any clues in the pilot's audio.

Is it possible this object was another plane?

- Based on what the pilots are describing,

the object is not moving very fast at all.

It makes it incredibly difficult

to really get a handle on it.

Because anytime you get close to it,

it whizzes past you.

- A plane is gonna stall out at that speed.

It's not gonna be able to maintain

that type of slow speed,

so we can really just rule out plane easily.

- [Tony] Could this be some kind of drone?

- The pilots observed it at around 20,000 feet.

That is much higher than any commercial drones

would be able to achieve under normal circumstances.

And I mean, you're talking about

military grade or really professional grade drones.

And you see they have wings, they have control surfaces,

so those would be really easily identifiable.

- [Tony] So what could drift

about 20,000 feet in the air and isn't a plane?

- The first conclusion that I started leaning towards was,

is it possible this was another spy balloon of some kind?

- [Tony] Spy balloons, like the one from China,

have what's called a payload

attached to the bottom of the balloon

that contains the actual surveillance equipment.

But then D'Antonio says he hears a clue in the audio

that shuts down his theory.

- The pilot said it had strings hanging down.

What the pilot didn't see was the small payload.

It tells me that this was probably

a normal balloon of some type that was shot down.

- [Tony] So if it was octagonal,

was it a group of balloons tied together?

All we know is a National Security spokesman

says the object did not match the Chinese spy balloon

shot down over the Atlantic Coast.

And after that spy balloon shoot-down,

the radar used by NORAD,

the North American Aerospace Defense Command,

had been adjusted to detect these kinds of aerial objects.

(tense music)

Our verdict? Because the pilots mentioned strings,

we're going with balloon in this case.

Admittedly, it's impossible to determine that definitively

without the recovery of the object,

but we do know that it costs more than $400,000

to fire the missile that brought the thing down.

With that price tag for taxpayers,

you'd think we'd be able to know what we hit.

- Our next story was one of the biggest

and most controversial of 2023.

It's about alleged alien corpses,

and coincidentally, it went wide the same week

NASA released its first UFO report.

Mexico's government took this case seriously.

Should you? Take a look.

Mexico City, September 2023.

It's Mexico's first public congressional UFO hearing

and ufologist Jaime Maussan stands next to two boxes

purportedly retrieved from Cusco, Peru.

- [Tony] A closer look reveals the extraordinary.

Two tiny white corpses, roughly humanoid in shape,

beneath their ridged forehead appears two eyes,

a nose, and a mouth with no teeth.

The arms and legs are both elongated

with three fingers stretching out on both hands.

Field researcher Ken Gerhard

explains how Maussan says he found these bodies

in the first place.

- According to Maussan,

these two alien bodies were excavated from a mine

in 2017 near the ruins of Sacsayhuaman,

which is near Cusco, Peru,

which actually lies adjacent to many ancient

and mysterious Inca ruins.

In addition to presenting the bodies,

Maussan also brought along an expert to the hearings

who testified that the mummies had been X-rayed

and that one of the individuals actually contained eggs,

and that both of them had strange metal implants.

- [Tony] Maussan claims carbon dating

performed by Mexico's National Autonomous University

shows these corpses are nearly 1,000 years old.

And he says under oath that upon testing the body's DNA,

over 30% was of completely unknown origin

with no match to any living organism on Earth.

- After the hearing, CT scans like these

were performed on the alleged creatures.

The conclusion was the bodies belong to a single skeleton

and that there was no evidence of assembly

or manipulation of the skulls.

But are the remains extraterrestrial or not?

Our experts investigate.

(tense music)

Jaime Maussan makes the extraordinary claim that

30% of the DNA comes from a completely unknown source.

Could that mean it's something extraterrestrial?

We take that question to Dr. Hope.

- I don't think so.

If it had evolved from another planet,

we'd expect 100% of the DNA to be unknown,

even to the fact we perhaps have

completely different genetic building blocks.

So I think all of these things point

at something that has been created on Earth.

- [Tony] So can we then identify

the 70% of the remaining DNA?

If the bodies are at least partially human,

could they be mummified children from an Ancient Inca tribe?

- If we examine the X-ray,

there are lots of features that tell us

that this isn't a human baby.

The skull has a very prominent supraorbital ridge,

that's the bony eyebrow ridge,

which you wouldn't expect to see on a baby.

Even looks like there might be remnants of ribs

further down in the body,

whereas humans only have ribs in the thoracic spine.

- [Tony] We showed the data to anthropologist Kathy Strain

and she said, instead of a human,

certain features reminded her of

a different South American mammal.

- I believe that the skull is likely that of a llama

with just its brain case.

If you remove the frontal bones of the llama

and just use what is left of the brain case,

flip it around, and then you can create something

that has that brow ridge on what you see the alien.

- [Tony] But the rest of the X-ray, Strain says,

leaves us with far more questions than answers.

- Everything about it is biologically wrong.

These eggs, as an example, extraordinarily large,

and they're not even in where you would think

the uterus would be.

They're kind of scattered in the middle of the skeleton.

It's not natural to a human

or other animals that I am familiar with.

- I think the skeleton to me just doesn't look right.

If you look at the hip joint,

it looks like it'd be very prone to dislocation.

It doesn't look like it would be compatible with life.

Things like that make me believe that

this is not actually a true organism.

- [Tony] If this is truly a hoax,

Gerhard says it wouldn't be Maussan's first offense.

- My friends in the UFO community

were actually very skeptical when this all unfolded.

There have been multiple times in the past

when Jaime has presented what he described as

mummified alien bodies.

In a remarkable situation like this,

with remarkable claims being made,

there has to be peer review.

(tense music)

- Given the present circumstances

and what our experts have to say,

we are calling this case a probable hoax.

And since we first started investigating,

subsequent events confirm that conclusion.

In January 2024, authorities in Peru announced they stopped

a shipment headed to Mexico of similar looking creatures.

Forensic experts concluded

those were nothing more than dolls

made of materials including paper, glue,

animal and human bones.

So no aliens for now.

But when the next discovery is made,

we will be sure to investigate.

- 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.

November 7th, 2006.

It's a typical day at Chicago's O'Hare Airport

when just after 4:00 p.m.,

an airline employee makes a surprising call

to the control tower.

(phone rings)

- [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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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?

(tense music)

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.

- 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?

- 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.

(tense music)

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.

- Decoding the Rosetta Stone in the 1800s

opened the door for the understanding

of Ancient Egyptian.

But there's one old manuscript that is so bizarre

no one has been able to figure out what it says.

It's even been called the world's most mysterious book.

Take a look.

It's 1912, outside Rome, Italy.

A Polish-American book dealer named Wilfred Voynich

buys a text from a Jesuit college.

This late Medieval manuscript is made up of

roughly 240 pages bound in vellum made from calf skin.

Many pages feature colorful drawings of unusual plant life.

But then we come to this.

- This, some believe, seems to show the heliocentric theory,

which is the Sun is at the center of the solar system

and the planets and celestial bodies are orbiting around it.

- [Tony] This wouldn't be so odd if it weren't for the fact that

this codex was apparently created

a century before astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus

first modeled his theory that

planets revolve around the Sun.

And what's stranger still is this manuscript is written

in a language no one has ever heard of.

- So far, no one has been able to figure out

what the Voynich Manuscript says or what it even is.

It has six sections:

Botany, astronomy and astrology,

cosmology, biology, pharmacological,

and then a text section that appears to be recipes.

- [Tony] Cryptology researcher Elonka Dunin says

who wrote this manuscript is entirely unclear,

but we do know it passed through many hands.

- The general sense is that

it came from somewhere around the north of Italy.

Because if we zoom into the tiny pictures,

there's a castle with a swallow tail merlon,

and really the only place those kind of castles existed

was in Northern Italy.

- [Tony] But that still leaves the question of

its unknown language open to interpretation and speculation.

- Some people believe that the Voynich may be

a previously undiscovered language dialect of

a civilization that no longer exists.

We've found cities under sand

and wiped off the face of the Earth by flood,

so maybe this comes from a civilization like that.

- [Tony] Yet even that wouldn't explain

why this text seems to depict Earth orbiting the Sun

long before that theory was modeled.

- Some people think that the person who created the Voynich

had this extra cosmic knowledge

that people on Earth didn't have.

In other words, an extraterrestrial.

- The greatest crypt analyst in history,

including the first chief of cryptology at the NSA,

have tried to crack this code over the years.

Yet thus far, linguists, computer scientists,

and even computers themselves have failed.

So let's see if our experts can help

further our understanding of this centuries-old mystery.

(tense music)

Over the years, some have wondered if

Voynich actually wrote this cryptic book himself

just to make a quick buck.

So anthropologist Kathy Strain looks into

if this could all be just an elaborate hoax.

- This book was radiocarbon dated to be between

1404 and 1438.

So we know it's very old.

It's made of vellum,

and vellum was a more expensive kind of paper.

For someone 600 years ago to think to themselves,

"Well, I'm gonna spend all this money

and invest the time to make it look like language

just to pull off a hoax."

That seems like an awful lot of work

for something that person would never live to see

the benefit of.

- [Tony] Despite its peculiarities,

archeologist Dr. Ed Barnhart says,

"The book fits with the style of the time."

- Visually and structurally,

it looks like an alphabetic text.

It's got short words and long words,

there are words that repeat,

there are complete sentences,

it's organized in paragraphs.

But there's not a single pattern

that they can actually start to translate what it says.

- [Tony] So could this actually be

the work of intelligent beings from out of this world?

- It really doesn't evoke somebody

who is advanced in technology.

I doubt aliens even use cursive or pen to paper.

- [Tony] If it's not aliens,

then could this actually be from a lost civilization?

- Archeology's all about patterns.

So the fact that the best minds in the world

have tried to find things associated with it and failed,

there's no way that a book,

which is a fragile artifact,

remained and none of the other materials

of this ancient civilization remained whatsoever.

- [Tony] So then who did write this mysterious manuscript?

One key clue may be that at the time,

cutting-edge scientists proposing

controversial theories of the universe

were subject to punishment from the Church

for radical views.

- I think it's very possible that

it could be hiding information.

There were many things that scientists at the time

wouldn't want the Church to know, especially with alchemy,

and that would involve plants.

- [Tony] So were these scientists communicating in code

to avoid punishment?

- We think that maybe it was some kind of brilliant cipher

that these scientists were using

where they could share information in books like this,

but if the Church got ahold of it,

they would have no idea what they were talking about.

(tense music)

- Our verdict?

The person or persons who wrote this manuscript,

what it says and why, are still unknown.

It's possible scientists of the early Renaissance

created it to share controversial new theories,

like the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun.

But unless we crack the code, we'll never know for sure.

- Syria's Civil War has led to

some of the deadliest use of weapons of mass destruction

in the 21st century.

So when something strange started taking place

above one of its bloodiest battle zones,

it's no wonder people took notice.

It's February 2020 outside Aleppo,

one of the most war-torn cities in Syria.

People in the countryside spot something in the sky

that leaves them in a state of awe.

One witness starts recording a video

that shows an unusual pattern up in the sky.

It's made up of several long, thin,

almost pipe cleaner-like white lines

that move upward through the atmosphere.

The wave pattern continues for almost 30 seconds

and then disappears.

In the background, a man is heard yelling in Russian.

- [Tony] Investigative journalist MJ Banias

is convinced something bizarre is taking place here.

- We have reaction from people on the ground

as this event is happening.

- So it only lends to some of the credibility here

that these waves are being seen by people

and this is not some camera effect or some sort of hoax.

- [Tony] This isn't the first strange sighting

in the Middle East, so some think we're looking at

something that may not even be of this world.

- There was some speculation online that

this was an extraterrestrial craft,

that what people are seeing here is signs of a UFO,

essentially in Syrian airspace.

- Less than 400 miles from here,

the US military captured footage

which was later released by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell

as a still image.

It shows an unidentified silver metallic sphere

flying over the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2016.

And since then, other nearby incidents have made headlines.

- In July of 2022,

a metallic spherical object was spotted multiple times

in the region,

and this came out as a result of a US Senate hearing

on the topic of UAP.

So we have a lot of incidents

regarding UFOs in the Middle East

that are now coming to light.

- [Tony] One theory is that this is not a craft itself,

but waves induced by a sonic boom from an invisible,

manmade or alien aircraft.

Or is there some other explanation?

The bombings in Syria have slowed down

since the height of the war in the 2010s,

yet the residents of this brutalized region

still look to the sky with fear.

Our experts examine exactly what type of danger

may be lurking in the clouds above.

(tense music)

First, forensic video analyst Michael Primeau

authenticates the footage.

- Forensics, which has a known database of sample recordings

and can detect evidence of manipulation software,

did not identify any kind of particular software program

that was used to manipulate the recording.

And what's seen within the recordings is compelling.

- [Tony] Next, physicist Dr. Michio Kaku

considers if these could be contrails,

the trails left by jets as a result of engine exhaust.

- Contrails leave a distinct pattern,

not the pattern shown here.

We're talking about the pattern of hot gases

emitted from an airplane wing,

which looks totally different than the shape of these waves.

- [Tony] With all of these earthly explanations ruled out,

could these waves actually be coming from

an extraterrestrial source?

- This is not a characteristic of the UFO exhaust

that we've seen.

In fact, most UFOs have no exhaust at all.

- [Tony] Yet if this is in fact a terrestrial phenomenon,

then what exactly are we seeing?

- This could be a pressure wave.

A pressure wave develops when there is a large explosion

or a large change in temperature that causes molecules

to bump up against each other fairly rapidly.

That compression creates a lot of pressure

and it's exerted in all directions.

- [Tony] We know some suggested this could be a sonic boom,

but it may not actually be a jet plane

exceeding the speed of sound that's producing this pattern.

Highly compressed air moving outwards

from the source of high order explosives

can also move at supersonic speeds,

creating a strong pressure wave known as a blast

or shock wave.

So is that what we're witnessing here?

- We're talking about these videos taking place

during wartime in the Middle East when bombs were going off,

and these bombs in turn could have created waves,

which were then made visible

because these waves were moving along with water vapor.

(tense music)

- Our verdict?

This unusual cloud formation was likely a pressure wave

from a nearby explosion.

During the very month this video was filmed, there were

reported pro-government airstrikes in Aleppo.

So considering both the timing and location of this video,

we think it's likely

a side effect of the brutal conflict in the region.

- Finally tonight, how does China deal with UFOs?

It's been reported the People's Liberation Army

is using artificial intelligence

to help identify what they call,

"Unidentified Air Conditions."

So does our next video qualify as a potential candidate?

June 27th, 2023.

A man is admiring the panoramic view

from an observation deck in Anji County in Eastern China.

Suddenly he notices something rapidly descending

from the clouds.

He takes out his phone and captures this.

A black object traces a long gray tail across the heavens.

It looks like it's either speeding

or maybe even crashing towards the Earth.

- What I find interesting about this footage is

there's clearly something at the very tip of the object

that's more dense.

That's the focal point of whatever it is.

- [Tony] While there was speculation

this was some kind of crashing UFO,

an astronomy expert from Zhejiang Natural Museum

examined the video

and did come to one definitive conclusion.

It wasn't something natural or manmade from outer space.

- It wasn't an object that they could identify

because the speed and trajectory didn't seem to match

any type of meteorite or known space debris.

And there were also no reports of manned vessels

that had crashed in the area.

- [Tony] But this video was filmed

four months after the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon

over the United States,

and some see a similarity.

Did the United States retaliate against China

with their own spy balloon?

- Both of these objects seem to have

a stream coming behind them.

So could this be something similar of a spy device

that was shot down?

- [Tony] Others have speculated

the smoke trail indicates debris from something

much more solid than a balloon.

If the US was spying on China,

chances are they would've used one of their newest

and most secret pieces of technology.

- First launched in 2010,

the X-37B is a reusable robotic spacecraft

that is known to operate under the US Air Force.

- [Tony] The ship functions like a much smaller space shuttle,

at around 29 feet long and 10 feet tall.

The X-37B has a payload area

about the size of a pickup truck bed.

It can orbit at altitudes between 150 and 500 miles.

And being unmanned,

it has spent more than two years in space on one mission.

- Now, we don't understand

exactly what it's being used for.

It is labeled as a top secret project.

There's rumors that the X-37B was being used

to possibly spy on a Chinese space lab.

Did the Chinese shoot down the X-37B

possibly in retaliation?

- The concern over China militarizing space

isn't just fringe theory.

In 2007, China launched a ballistic missile into space

intentionally destroying one of its own satellites.

Another launch in 2014 was also believed to be

an antisatellite weapons test.

So what is this object plummeting to Earth?

And was it an accident or not?

(tense music)

First, we asked science writer and video analyst Mick West

if this could be the top secret X-37B.

- The X-37B is believed to be

basically a military spy space plane.

But we don't know what the X-37B actually does.

- [Tony] However, West notes,

according to reports at this time,

the X-37B would've been back on Earth

having ended a mission in November 2022,

more than six months before this sighting.

So could this have been a secret flight?

- I don't think this could be

some kind of secret launch of the X-37B

because we have a pretty good idea about its schedule,

when it departs and when it returns.

It's tracked by amateur astronomers.

And if the Chinese had shot that down,

I think that would've been

a rather major international incident.

- [Tony] Perhaps it's not the X-37B.

So then are the Chinese shooting down a US spy balloon?

The US has used high altitude spy balloons in the past,

including to monitor the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

But over the decades,

those were replaced by planes and satellites.

In fact, Rich Hoffman

of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies

doesn't think it's a balloon at all.

- It's not a weather or a spy balloon

that's being shot down.

- [Tony] But he believes

the footage from the Chinese spy balloon shot down by the US

provides a clue.

This alternate angle reveals that

what some thought was a trail of smoke from the spy balloon

is actually coming from the American military jet

that shot it down.

- If you look at the smoke layer,

you'll see that it has two trails that are moving along

with a split in the middle of it,

which would indicate that it's some sort of a contrail.

What can produce those two types of trails?

Most commonly, it's an aircraft.

So in this video, I think that this is nothing more than

an aircraft going across the sky creating a contrail.

- [Tony] Mick West explains

this is a fairly common optical illusion.

- What we're seeing here is actually a plane.

It looks like it's flying down

because eventually it has to get to the horizon,

but in fact, he's actually flying along

at exactly level altitude.

The trails we're seeing are actually

just regular airplane contrails.

If you compare them to other similar contrails of this type,

you will see this type of pattern.

(tense music)

- Our verdict? We are going to go

with this being an unidentified plane.

For us, the contrails are the dead giveaway.

But beyond that, our investigation is up in the air.

Let us know what you think.

And that's our show for tonight.

Thank you so much for watching,

and remember to keep those cameras rolling.

(dramatic music)