Original subtitles

- [Tony] Tonight on the Proof is Out There: Alien Edition.

It's the case that put Texas on the UFO map.

What were the mysterious Lubbock Lights?

- I can't think of a single

rational explanation for this photo.

- [Tony] Can this anomaly shed light

on why Southern California is a magnet for UFOs?

- There's a lot of people who believe

that UFOs open up wormholes or portals.

The Catalina Islands would be a sort of entry point

for UFOs to use.

- [Tony] And is Las Vegas' UFO spike tied to Area 51?

- They're only about 80 miles from the famed Area 51

where the US government has been going on retrieval missions

to collect crashed UFOs.

- [Tony] With UFO reports at an all time high,

we're examining the most compelling

evidence caught on camera.

Tonight's focus, UFO hotspots around the world.

Our experts will analyze the evidence

and then pass a verdict.

- [Matthew] Is it alien?

Is it extraterrestrial?

- Consensus was this is a UFO.

- [Brett] Oh my God.

- [Tony] The Proof starts now.

[uptempo music]

Good evening and welcome to The Proof is Out There.

UFO sightings happen all over the world,

but UFO hotspots,

those are the places they just keep coming back to.

Our first stop is Texas where everything is supersized,

including the UFO sightings.

We've analyzed video from across the state,

but we are zeroing in on Lubbock.

For more than seven decades,

it's been home to a phenomenon that has baffled experts.

Let's see if we can shed some light on the Texas-sized

mystery of the Lubbock Lights.

August 31st, 1951, 18-year-old Carl Hart Jr.

has his bed pushed next to an open window

in his Lubbock, Texas home.

He's waiting for a strange recurring phenomenon

he'd read about in the papers.

Suddenly it appears, Hart grabs his camera

and runs out into the backyard

to capture the stunning sight.

A V-shaped formation of 15 to 30 lights

appears in the night sky.

Eyewitnesses say the lights were bluish green in color,

traveling silently overhead from north to south.

The lights then disappeared

only to reappear a few minutes later.

- Five days earlier on August 25th,

the same formation appeared in the sky

in view of three college professors,

one of which was an engineer and another was a physicist.

If any group of people had the skills

to figure out what this was, it was that group.

- [Tony] After that first sighting,

the professors would often observe these lights

two or three times a night for the next few weeks

before they disappeared forever.

Despite no shortage of eyewitnesses,

Carl was the only one able

to successfully capture the lights on film.

- [Amy] Carl Hart was ultimately interrogated by the US Air Force

and eventually the FBI as part of Project Blue Book

- [Tony] Project Blue Book was the code name

for the systematic study of UFOs by the US Air Force

from 1947 to 1969,

- [Amy] Lieutenant Edward Ruppelt,

who was the lead investigator on Project Blue Book,

also got in on Hart's story.

He looked at the negatives of the photographs

and determined they were authentic and untempered with.

- [Tony] Project Blue Book reviewed over 12,000 cases.

About 700 of them were determined to be genuine UFOs,

including the Lubbock Lights.

However, Lieutenant Ruppelt also conducted

his own investigation and later claimed to have learned

what caused the Lubbock Lights.

But don't get excited just yet.

- [Amy] On the condition that he remain anonymous,

a scientist confided in Ruppelt

that these lights were actually consistent

with a naturally occurring phenomenon.

Ruppelt kept the secret of what the natural phenomenon is

because he realized that any discussion

or any information would lead people back to the scientist.

- [Tony] So while Ruppelt may have had an answer,

as far as we're concerned,

the Lubbock lights remain an unsolved mystery.

- [Amy] No one knows exactly what these lights are

and many question that Ruppelt ever had

an anonymous scientific source.

Whatever this naturally occurring phenomena is,

it has eluded other scientists for decades.

- [Tony] This isn't your typical UFO sighting.

This happened multiple times a night over two weeks

and hundreds of people saw it,

but we still don't have confirmation of what it was

unless you believe Lieutenant Ruppelt

really did have an anonymous source who figured it out.

Let's see if our experts can shed

some light on this mystery.

[intriguing music]

Could this be a flock of birds

reflecting the streetlights below them?

- Birds generally aren't going to be reflective enough

to shine this brightly at night.

I've photographed birds at night many times.

They never show up as brighter than the surrounding sky.

The birds are always silhouetted.

These lights were incredibly bright.

- [Tony] Others speculate that these

were secret military craft.

- If we are to assume that each of the points of light

that are on the photograph are an individual aircraft

that would suggest that these would be aircraft

that are extremely densely packed together,

far more so than what would be safe

in conventional airborne operations.

And so it leads me to believe

that we're not looking at individual planes.

- [Tony] Perhaps then this was one aircraft

with several lights?

But according to Ruppelt's independent investigation,

the Lubbock Lights were thought to be flying at an altitude

of only 800 to 1,000 feet,

just a fraction of the height

of a standard commercial aircraft.

McMillan says any plane at that altitude

should have been heard as well as seen.

- [LT. Tim] Eyewitnesses said that they didn't hear any noise.

The idea that you would be able to do that silently,

it's not consistent with the technology we have today,

much less in 1951.

- [Tony] What about Ruppelt's anonymous scientist?

He claimed the Lubbock Lights were quote,

"A very commonplace

and easily explainable natural phenomenon."

- I can confidently say this is not meteorological.

There are reports say that this happened

over and over continuous days.

That is unlike weather, the wind conditions,

the temperature, all that is gonna change

on a day-to-day basis.

It's not astronomical either.

Whether we're talking about meteors or comets.

Objects from outer space never fall in perfect formation.

- [Tony] Which of course leaves only one more option.

- [Juan] Whether or not it's out of this world,

that's not for me to decide.

[intriguing music]

- [Tony] Our verdict, the same as Project Blue Book's,

we're calling this a genuine UFO.

At least until Lieutenant Ruppelt's

anonymous source is revealed,

along with his explanation.

[mysterious music]

Lubbock has continued to be a hotspot

with over 60 reported sightings in the last two decades.

Take a look at our next sighting,

which has one loyal proof viewer seeing double.

Memorial Day 2022.

Lubbock, Texas Insurance agent Blake Bednarz

is lounging by the pool with his family

when he spots something odd,

or more specifically, two somethings

flying in the sky above his house.

It prompts him to begin recording on his smartphone.

- These were unlike anything I've ever seen before.

They made no sound whatsoever.

- [Tony] Look closely.

The objects appear to fly in perfect formation

at a very tight distance to one another.

They coordinate every turn,

seeming to anticipate one another's changes.

- [Blake] What's strange is no one said bird,

that never came to anyone's mind because of the sheer size.

In my opinion, the two objects were about the size

of a small Cessna aircraft.

- [Tony] As we saw in our first story,

the Lubbock Lights put this Texas town

on the UFO map in 1951.

- [Narrator] And down in Lubbock, Texas

reports of lights that streaked across the sky

on a clear dark night.

- [Tony] But before we call the Men in Black,

let's consider another reason why Lubbock

might have such busy skies.

- [Amy] Lubbock is very close to multiple military bases

in Clovis, Wichita Falls, and Abilene.

So it's very possible that this is something

that originated from one of those military bases.

- [Tony] Blake is clearly a dogged UFO investigator.

In fact, he said he later tried to search

for the objects he saw on public flight radar sites,

but he came up empty-handed.

Will our experts?

[intriguing music]

Let's start with the biggest question.

Could Blake have captured an alien spacecraft?

- [LT. Tim] You see wings on both objects.

What that tells us is A, we can rule out spacecraft.

Airplanes are designed to fly within the earth's atmosphere

by using gravity and using air currents to generate lift.

Now, in the vacuum of space, you don't need wings.

- [Tony] Could it be a military plane then?

Online speculation of Blake's footage

noted similarities to the T-6 Texan II.

It's a plane often used in air force training.

As you can see by this cockpit footage,

instructors use the T-6

to help new pilots get over the fear of flying

very close in combat formation.

But a T-6 should show up on radar

and remember, Blake's radar data research

turned up a whole lot of nada

and McMillan says something else is missing too.

- [LT. Tim] A T-6 is a World War II era propeller plane

that is still in use to this day.

That wouldn't be what we're looking at

because we don't see the tail stabilizers of that aircraft.

We're just missing that really key component.

- [Tony] So if it's not a spacecraft

and not a typical military fighter,

can it just be a pair of large birds soaring

as more than a few online critics insist?

- [LT. Tim] Large birds are very likely what we're seeing here.

If you look very closely throughout the video,

there are certain portions

where you can actually see what appears to be the wings

dip and flap slightly especially towards the corners.

- [Tony] Now consider this,

in this footage of soaring white pelicans,

you'll see that they do soar in a similar manner

to Blake's objects,

but notice how often they flap compared to Blake's footage

and when they do flap, it's never with just one wing

the way Blake's objects appear to.

Plus the wings on Blake's objects seem extremely rigid.

- If those wings don't move,

it's possible that we're looking

at a pair of Jones flying in formation.

There is a certain point when they turn to the side,

look where the wings are relative to the

back of the body.

The wings seem to be further back

and the front seems to be extended.

That reminds me of an aircraft rather than a bird.

These are definitely human made

and I know that the military experiments

with bird-shaped drones, I've seen them.

So, this is a possibility.

[intriguing music]

- [Tony] Our verdict, bird-shaped drones,

we're gonna go with D'Antonio.

The motion of the craft is what does it,

but did we witness some sort of brand new technology?

According to reports,

scientists are looking into transforming

the bodies of deceased birds

into actual flapping wing drones

that might enable new ways of spying for military purposes.

If you think you've seen one, let us know.

- [Tony] California ranks as one of the top spots

for UFO reports in the US

with more than 16,000 sightings in the last three decades

and in Southern California, they are so frequent

that as you're about to see even a normal day at the park

can turn into a UFO encounter.

January 30th, 2022. Laguna Niguel, California.

Steven Greenstreet and his family are spending the day

in Ocean Breeze Park

when his wife points out a mysterious object in the sky.

- [Steven] Man.

- [Tony] As Steven peers through the branches of a tree,

he begins to record this.

- [Steven] No idea what the heck this is.

- [Tony] Take a closer look.

Steven zooms into an elongated shiny object

hovering in the clear blue sky.

Now we've seen plenty of UFOs on this show,

but this one is kind of different.

Look here, it appears to be made up

of three different sections of circular

or possibly cylindrical parts on top of each other.

I'm not seeing any wings or visible means or propulsion,

at least not at this angle.

Steven shot it from multiple angles around the park

and he admits he has no idea what he's seeing.

- The longer I look at it, the less it makes any sense

because there was wind,

but this object was stuck in the sky.

I was just baffled as to what the heck this could be.

Yep.

I swear to God, it's been there 20 minutes.

- This isn't the first time a local in Laguna Niguel

has seen something strange in the sky.

Most of the sightings in Laguna Niguel

actually happened a decade ago

with residents seeing bright orange lights,

white lights, chasing red lights,

and even bright green fireballs.

- [Tony] In fact, some believe the evidence points

to an alien presence in southern California

dating back centuries.

- [Amy] Some caves that feature petroglyphs

that some say are evidence

of ancient civilizations visited by aliens.

The drawings on these cave walls depict shapes

and some figures that many believe hint at aliens.

- [Tony] Google UFO and Laguna Niguel

and you'll see multiple sightings

that have been reported in recent years.

But why all the sudden activity?

Well, many think Catalina Island

just across from Laguna Niguel might be a factor.

In 1967, two 12-year-old boys were allegedly

abducted by aliens from a boat docked near the island.

And even our own expert,

Matthew Szydagis has been studying strange phenomena

over Catalina Island with the research group UAPX.

But what do our experts think Steven saw?

Let's find out.

[intriguing music]

Could this floating object just be a balloon?

- Shape-wise, a balloon would be our best fit.

However, we should see it floating away.

So whatever we're looking at

is able to maintain a stationary position

far longer than a balloon would be able to.

- [Tony] On the other hand, there's no telltale signs

of UFO-like movement.

- We don't see any of the behaviors that seem impossible.

When we think of UFOs,

extreme acceleration, right angle turns.

Nothing that we see this object exhibiting

is something that couldn't technically be done.

- [Tony] Thanks to Steven's solid camera work,

we can rule out one possibility.

- [Mick] One of the gold standards of UFO videos

is to get multiple shots

of the same thing from different locations.

- [Steven] Again, using branches as reference.

- So this is definitely not a camera artifact

because it appears in the right position in multiple videos.

It's definitely something that's out there in the scene.

- [Tony] What about a drone?

We're not seeing the standard quadcopter rotors,

but West says, don't be fooled by the slim vertical shape.

- [Mick] The only thing that's is left is a coaxial drone.

Now a coaxial drone is a drone where all the propellers

are in line one above the other.

Some of them look like vertical cylinders.

- [Tony] Coaxial drones are designed

with two centrally positioned rotors,

which provide more lift,

allowing them to carry heavy payloads

and also fly within tight spaces.

And this object appears to have the same shape

and design seen in a coaxial drone.

McMillan likes that theory,

though he adds that if it's a coaxial drone

it would be something unusual to see in the sky.

- [LT. Tim] They're not extremely common.

But one of the things that coaxial drones

have been developed for

is the idea of delivery of goods or products.

- [Tony] However, drone delivery is only available

in a few test markets

and this one doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

So why else would a coaxial drone be hanging in the sky

above Laguna Niguel?

Mick West has an idea.

- [Mick] Traditionally, area surveillance

has been done with a helicopter,

but now police departments around the country

are increasingly using drones.

So I think that's the most likely explanation

based on what we see in these videos.

[intriguing music]

- [Tony] Our verdict, we think this is likely a coaxial drone.

Not only do the police use them to surveil,

but fire departments often use them

to aid in wildfire prevention.

However, the purpose of this apparent coaxial drone

remains a mystery because when we contacted

the town of Laguna Niguel,

they assured us they don't use any such drones.

- [Tony] Catalina Island is a key location

in California's hotspot UFO history

and some believe it holds clues

to whether we are alone in the universe.

Our next video is from a small team of researchers

who have banded together to try and answer that question,

and they were shocked by what they found.

Friday, July 16th, 2021.

It's a foggy night and a team of scientists

from the research group UAPX is on a week long expedition

near Catalina Island off the coast of California.

Then shortly before 4:00 AM,

one of their motion detector cameras

in night vision mode captures this.

[intriguing music]

In the upper right hand corner of the frame,

a black hole suddenly appears in the sky.

But take a closer look.

Do you see that?

A cluster of small dots begins to materialize inside

and researchers don't think they're mere stars?

Physicist, Dr. Matthew Szydagis

is one of the researchers with the project.

- [Matthew] This is very strange

because this timestamp of this video

does match with one of our most anomalous,

highest energy events that we recorded

in our radiation sensor.

- [Tony] Because UFO cases have historically

involved radiation,

the team came prepared with a radiation sensor.

In normal circumstances, the average reading

is about one to two mega electron volts,

but at the time of the anomaly, it jumped to 43.

This isn't surprising considering Catalina Island's

long history of strange and anomalous phenomena.

In fact, what may be one of the most important

UFO sightings in history

was documented only miles away in 2004.

- [MJ] So as the story goes, onboard the USS Princeton,

on their radar they encountered some sort

of anomalous object between Catalina Island

and several other islands in the channel.

- [Tony] Two fighter jets are dispatched

from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz to investigate.

- [MJ] They approached what looked like

to be a 40-foot long shaped tic tac hovering,

making erratic maneuvers

just above the surface of the water.

Then the pilots played chase with this object

back and forth for several minutes

before being ordered to return back

to their aircraft carrier.

- [Tony] But how did it get here?

Banias lays out one popular theory.

- [MJ] There's a lot of people who believe

that UFOs open up wormholes or portals

between their world and travel through dimensions.

This idea that we can open a gateway

between place X and place Y and move between them.

The Catalina Islands would be a sort of entry point

for UFOs to use.

- [Tony] When the scientists from UAPX filed

a freedom of information request

to get either satellite imagery

or logs from any navy ships in the area that night,

they were told files either don't exist,

or if they do, they're classified.

That's only added to the mystery.

What exactly did they witness?

We take that question to our experts.

[intriguing music]

- So I've spent a lot of time looking at

everything from aircraft to clouds,

to helicopters to birds, to kites,

to you name it

and it doesn't match anything like that.

It's within reason that it's a camera artifact.

You can have all kinds of interference

when you're working with electronics of any kind.

- [Tony] One thing is clear, these aren't known stars.

There's no constellation that matches.

But might they be stars from another universe?

Is it possible this is a wormhole?

- Think of a universe here

with another parallel universe right next to it.

You might be able to create a gateway

that connects two universes,

but the energy necessary to open a stable gateway

between universes is that of a black hole.

But there should be side effects

and that would be the force of intense gravitational fields.

However, in this videotape,

we don't see any examples of that.

- [Tony] However, Kaku notes

there is a scientific phenomenon

which may explain what we're seeing.

- [Dr. Michio] Fallstreak is when you have

a massive super cold air in the sky

and there's a sudden influx of ice crystals.

- [Tony] These ice crystals cause the water droplets

that compose clouds to freeze and fall,

- [Dr. Michio] Which creates a hole.

In fact, many of the fall streaks were

created by airplanes that went right by this massive super cold

air causing literally a hole in space.

- [Tony] Is this the result of a fallstreak hole?

Matthew Szydagis confirms it was one possibility

among many explored by the UAPX researchers.

- [Matthew] We considered fallstreak hole.

However, we checked the FAA records

of this day and time.

There was no airplane at that location.

- [Tony] And the idea that it's a camera glitch,

Szydagis says no way.

- [Matthew] We find no evidence of a camera glitch

in the entire week of the expedition that looks like this.

How likely is it that this was a camera glitch

that by coincidence happens to align

with one of our most anomalous detections

also in our radiation sensor?

Is it alien? Is it extraterrestrial?

As a scientist, I've gotta see the evidence

or the proof of something.

But the flip side of that is I'm not so skeptical

that I refuse to listen to a crazy idea

just because there's no evidence for it yet.

[intriguing music]

- Our verdict, until we get more definitive evidence,

we have to go with unexplained phenomenon.

While our experts were able to come up

with some interesting theories, none can be confirmed.

And if the team of scientists at UAPX

isn't sure what's going on,

it's clear there is more work to be done.

When they do figure it out,

we'll be the first to bring it to you.

- [Tony] The lights of Las Vegas attract more than

40 million earthly visitors each year.

So it should be no surprise

that it's also ranked third in the US for UFO sightings.

Some UFO sightings make the rounds on the internet.

Some hit the local news

and others make headlines around the world,

especially if the witnesses don't just report

seeing something in the sky,

but something on the ground too.

It's April 30th, 2023 at 11:49 PM in Las Vegas,

a police officer whose name has not been disclosed

is speaking with several individuals on a sidewalk

when his body camera captures something unexpected.

- [Passerby] I don't know.

- [Tony] Let's see that again zoomed in and slowed down.

- You see this green flash in the sky,

the people have been blurred out.

But the point of interest is this green object.

The video in itself isn't anything too remarkable,

but what happens next is really interesting.

- [Tony] At around 12:30 AM, a frantic call

comes into the Las Vegas Metro Police 911 Dispatch.

- [Amy] A Las Vegas resident made a 911 call

saying that there was some 100% not human being

staring at him from his backyard.

- [Tony] Dispatch takes the call seriously enough

that two officers respond.

Body cams rolling as they roll up.

- [Officer] What'd you see?

- [Officer] A big creature?

- [Tony] The officers are aware

of what happened in the sky an hour earlier.

- I'm not gonna BS you guys,

one of my partners said they saw

something fall out of the sky too.

So that's why I'm kinda curious.

Did you see anything land in your backyard?

- [Tony] The incident garnered national media attention,

especially because it coincided

with the biggest UFO news of 2023.

- [Amy] These two incidents tie into a recent report

from an Air Force official

saying that the US government

has been going on retrieval missions to collect crashed UFOs

to recover their bodies and study them.

It's also worth noting that they're only about

80 miles from the famed Area 51

where most people believe these alien autopsies

are taking place.

- Area 51 isn't the only secret base in Nevada.

Area 52 is said to be a vast underground complex

that can house up to 25,000 people.

Area 6, a mysterious mile long landing strip,

is believed to be related to a top secret fleet of drones.

So, could this nearby close encounter have anything to do

with yet another secret government program?

[intriguing music]

In an era of AI video and deep fakes,

we have to start with a basic question.

Is this body cam footage authentic?

- So the Axon system is the most common type

of surveillance camera that officers wear

to capture their perspective.

We noted no evidence of manipulation.

These recordings were unlikely CGI..

- [Tony] So what are we seeing in the video?

Could it be a satellite falling back to earth?

- Reentering satellites generally

seem to move a lot slower

because they burn up in the upper atmosphere

'cause that's what they're designed to do.

But this is something that's made it

through the Earth's atmosphere to a lower level.

And so, its apparent speed is actually quite a bit faster

than orbital debris.

- [Tony] So could this footage be a genuine

UFO crash landing?

- [Mick] UFOs generally maneuver in different ways.

They would hover in the sky,

they would make strange motions,

they would have flashing lights.

They generally don't leave trails like this

and they don't generally appear to be green.

- [Tony] Based on the color, speed,

and timing of this event,

West plays a hunch and thinks he's got the winning hand.

- [Mick] What we do know is that

this is very consistent with a meteor.

It's green, which it comes from the composition

of the nickel in the meteor.

It's leaving a slight trail

and it's moving at about the same speed

that we've seen other meteors fly across the sky.

- [Tony] West is also ready to double down

by saying not only is this not a UFO,

it didn't even land in a backyard in Vegas.

- [Mick] This event here was actually observed

by many, many people.

It was also seen by people as far away as in California,

Arizona, and even in Utah and in Northern California.

The most likely location of where this thing landed

is actually up here in Central Nevada,

approximately 200 miles away from Las Vegas.

- [Tony] So if this isn't a UFO

and it didn't land in Vegas,

what about the family's claims

of a close encounter with 10 foot aliens?

- [Mick] We have the eyewitness account,

but I think the most likely thing

is that they simply saw something in the backyard,

perhaps a raccoon standing on the fence or something

and it startled them

and then they ran back inside, called the cops,

and there was some giant being in the backyard.

And then we roll in the other story

of the fireball being seen and it becomes a thing.

[intriguing music]

- Our verdict, we believe that the green light in the video

is a meteor, which was later confirmed

by NASA's Planetary Defense Office.

As for the family's alleged backyard encounter with aliens,

the Las Vegas police ultimately closed

their investigation into those claims as unfounded.

- You know what they say.

What happens in Vegas,

yeah, stays in Vegas.

But what about what happens above Vegas?

It was two nights before Christmas 2022

and all through the Las Vegas strip,

every creature was stirring,

but the party atmosphere is broken

when club manager Brett Feinstein

spots a commotion outside his gentleman's club.

- I was walking through the club

and one of our security guards told me

that there was a UFO above the club.

- [Tony] As the club empties into the street

to see the spectacle,

Brett hits record on his smartphone.

- [Brett] I pointed the camera up into the sky.

There was a big red light, two long white lights

and then on each end of this thing were white lights.

And the consensus was this is a UFO.

- [Tony] With the Vegas city limits

only a hop from the legendary Area 51

and other remote military bases,

many wonder what kind of strange aircraft

populate the Vegas airspace.

- We know that more than a dozen miles from area 51

inside the Yucca Flats lays Area 6.

It's a lone landing strip, it has a handful of hangars.

It's still classified

by the Department of Defense and Homeland Security.

It's very possible that what we're seeing in this footage

is some type of a night test of drones

or some type of an advanced aircraft.

- [Tony] But in an age where billionaires

have their own rocket ships,

it's not just the military launching experimental aircraft.

- [Jason] We know that Kimbal Musk, the brother of Elon,

had started his own drone company called Nova Sky Stories

based out of Nevada.

In August of 2022, they had launched a series

of blue light drones over Vegas.

When the local community saw these lights in the sky,

they quickly thought that this was some type

of UFO activity.

- [Tony] It takes 12 million lights

to illuminate the Las Vegas strip,

making it the brightest city on earth

when viewed from space.

Could these lights serve as a beacon to ET visitors

or are they playing tricks on the eyes

of the city's hard partying humans?

I'd put pretty good odds on the experts

getting to the bottom of this one.

[intriguing music]

Given the already crowded skies above Las Vegas,

it's unlikely to be an alien spaceship

or experimental aircraft.

- Given that the Las Vegas airport is quite active,

we would've heard from air traffic control

if there was something

that was hovering atop of Las Vegas strip.

- [Tony] So could this be a different kind

of flying machine, like a drone?

- If it was a military drone it would be moving.

Military drones generally don't hover.

If it was a a smaller drone,

you would see the individual points of light.

Here we see things that look like big objects.

You could theoretically get a cluster of drones

very, very close together like 20,000 feet up

but that's something that's, you know,

technically extraordinarily difficult to pull off

and it doesn't seem very likely in this case.

- [Tony] Hernandez thinks the real clue may lie

in those clouds and the Christmas weather.

- [Juan] It was a chilly night in Las Vegas.

It was 39 degrees.

The clouds were at about 15,000 feet,

which is important because at 15,000 feet

it was just cold enough for these clouds

to have some ice particles,

which would then promote the development of light pillars.

- [Tony] Light pillars, you say?

Well yes.

- [Juan] We have ice crystals that are suspended in the air

that are acting as tiny mirrors.

Each tiny mirror reflecting a beam of light

towards the viewer.

Oftentimes people think they're UFOs,

in reality it's an optical illusion.

- [Tony] According to West,

to figure out the source of those reflections,

you first need a map of the strip.

- [Mick] Someone noticed that this light here and this light

here look kinda similar to two hotels,

the Wynn Hotel and the Encore Hotel.

And the red one here is the Hilton Hotel.

And we can kind of demonstrate this

by taking this particular image

and overlaying it on top of a map of Las Vegas.

Here are the hotels that Wynn and the Encore.

And over here we have the Hilton.

And if we take the photo that we were just looking at

and we overlay it,

we kinda see that they're in the same position.

This is a light pillar map.

It's a reflection of the lights on the Las Vegas strip

on the ice crystals in the cloud.

[intriguing music]

- [Tony] Our verdict, light pillars.

The odds of witnessing them

are longer than hitting blackjack.

So that Vegas Christmas crowd

should still feel pretty lucky.

- [Tony] Occasionally, reports of unidentified flying objects

emerge from the same geographic area for no apparent reason.

It turns out Medellin, Columbia

has become one of those places.

And our next video may be more proof that something strange

is happening in South America.

June 2020, Juan Morales is hanging out with his cousin

when a strange light in the sky

suddenly grabs his attention.

He rushes to the window and captures this.

A small string of light floats above the hills

in the night sky.

Zooming in reveals what appears to be a rectangular object

lit by four green orb-like lights.

Whatever it is, Juan and his cousin

can't contain their astonishment.

[Cousin speaking in foreign language].

[Juan speaking in foreign language]

- We really think that was really UFO

because it didn't move.

And when it disappeared, it disappeared in a second.

- [Tony] This sighting isn't just a random occurrence.

In fact, a more recent sighting over Medellin

that we plan to analyze on a future show

is now being touted as some of the best UFO footage ever.

- A pilot saw a strange object outside of his aircraft

and was able to film it with his cell phone.

- [Tony] The craft races passed at a stunning speed

what appears to be a metallic sphere

with a point on either end.

- [MJ] That particular video went viral

and people all over the internet were commenting about

whether this was some sort of alien spacecraft

because of its strange shape

and how it moved through the air.

- [Tony] So have the aliens reemerged over Columbia?

- [Juan] After this video, I'm certain that the UFO exists.

- [Tony] But others believe these aerial sightings

are connected to a far more earthly concern.

- [MJ] We know that within recent years

with the shift in drone technology to

becoming quite cheap.

drug cartels are utilizing drones

to essentially deliver or traffic drugs across borders

or into other countries or locally.

So there has been some speculation

that this particular video actually shows

a Colombian cartel's use of a drone

to traffic drugs into the area.

- A spike in UFO sightings in 2014 earned Medellin

the honor of UFO hotspot status.

But will our experts be able to identify

this strange object in the Colombian skies?

[intriguing music]

First, is this craft just something we see all the time?

Could our green disc simply be a passing airplane?

- There doesn't appear to be

any kind of motion whatsoever with the object.

And then the fact that it doesn't have

the navigations lights like you would expect on an aircraft

you would see some potentially other kinda colors

like white or red maybe on the object.

But there's nothing that makes me believe

that it's an aircraft.

- [Tony] But maybe it's a cartel drone.

Cartel drones seized by the Columbia military

had the ability to carry 22 pounds of cocaine

and could travel about 60 miles in a single trip.

But those drones were transporting drugs

over the border to Panama, not in cities,

which is one reason why Marc D'Antonio

doesn't think the theory makes sense.

- If you were a drug smuggler, would you have a drone

with big bright lights on it up in the sky?

Yeah probably not.

If so, the drug smugglers are pretty imbecilic.

- [Tony] He thinks the lights also rule out

any legitimate use.

- [Marc] Drones have mandated lighting,

so you would see some red lights and some green lights.

You have to have those lights in order to fly.

It doesn't look to me a drone

with known lighting configuration that I've seen.

- [Tony] So are we looking at something

from beyond our world?

In determining UFO activity,

experts look for traits called the five observables,

as seen in the UFOs recorded by the US military.

Anti-gravity capabilities,

instantaneous acceleration,

hypersonic velocity,

low observability,

and finally, the ability to move in space, air, and water.

- [Rich] Of the observables, it's very indistinct.

You can't make out anything in terms of

other than the lights to be able to determine

if it had any control surfaces on it.

The fact that it didn't make any kind of

things like hypersonic speed, it wasn't transmedium.

There's nothing that calls out that it's like, you know,

the big mothership from another planet that's coming down.

- [Tony] However, D'Antonio believes he sees a clue

to the object's identity not in the lights but its shape.

- [Marc] This could be a delta wing where we're missing

a couple of the lights

because they're sort of foreshortened in our view

along the line of the side here.

- [Tony] A delta wing is a triangular

swept back airplane wing named for its similarity

to the uppercase Greek letter delta.

- [Marc] And what kinda delta wing thing do we have

that we fly in the air and it's relatively stationary.

Well, a kite.

- [Tony] D'Antonio thinks the surrounding landscape

seals the deal.

- [Marc] This is bright green throughout,

so it's somewhat closer to us.

When they zoom out, there's some fields down here.

It would probably be close to 300 feet off the ground.

Based in the size of the details in this area down here

and looking at the size of street lamps and windows,

with a delta wing kite about four feet across,

it would actually fit this profile

if it was over that field down below.

[intriguing music]

- Our verdict, while we think D'Antonio's reasoning

that this is a lit up kite with green bulbs is sound,

in our minds, the image is just too far away

and indistinct to come to a definitive conclusion.

So we're going to say this is an unidentified object,

at least for now.

New UFO hotspots continue to light up all over the world.

And with each report, the same question still arises.

Are we alone or is the proof out there?

Thank you for watching this special episode

of The Proof is Out There.

Please send us any videos, images, or sound

that you think we should investigate

and remember to keep those cameras rolling.

[uptempo music]