Original subtitles

♪♪

Narrator: A strange sight in the skies

above a Chicago airport has left both airline crews

and passengers alike scratching their heads.

This was an actual event.

Hundreds of people were there.

Safety of flight is very important.

Narrator: Was it a trick of the eye

or something else entirely?

Chris Rutkowski: Chicago O'Hare Airport is one of the largest

and busiest in all of North America.

There are many, many planes going in and out of there,

thousands of passengers.

If a UFO was seen over an airport,

it would be spectacular.

Narrator: The powers that be would rather you forget

what was seen above O'Hare,

because what pierced that sky wasn't supposed to be seen.

♪♪

The day that happened, there was a few things coming together

that itself could just be, like, of interest to study,

to observe, or just to be attracted

by some unknown forms of life or intelligence.

There's a whole cascade of things that happened after that,

where people's cameras were taken away, allegedly.

or they were told not to talk about it.

Narrator: The airport returned to business as usual.

But for those who saw it,

the sky was never the same again.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Narrator: On an unremarkable Tuesday, November 7th, 2006,

travellers at Chicago O'Hare Airport are busy

coming and going.

No one is really looking at the sky.

Below the clouds, flying objects are an unexpected sight.

After all, there are around 2,000 separate

aircraft movements a day at O'Hare.

Around 4:00, some of the airport personnel,

including a couple

that were working on ramp duty,

they were pushing and pulling planes away

from various gates, looked up

and saw something remarkable in the sky,

something that shouldn't have been over an airport.

Narrator: Chicago O'Hare airport had an unexpected arrival.

People got a chance to see something truly unusual

below a ceiling of clouds.

And that cloud layer was about 6000 feet thick

at about 1900 feet in the air.

Now, one would not expect there to be unidentified aircraft

over an airport.

Sam Maranto: What we know today is that object

was sitting over Gate C17.

At Gate C17, an individual that was loading up the plane

that was going to be leaving to the Carolina

noticed the object directly over them.

So did the pilot and co-pilot.

They were concerned about what it was

and the fact that it was a security breach.

Narrator: This is suddenly a potential

life-and-death situation.

The tower, that's what it's designed for,

is observing the airport

and all of the air traffic coming in and leaving.

Narrator: But they soon realize this is not two planes.

No plane looks or acts like this.

Murray Toews: Fairly large metal, dull aluminum,

flattened, football-shaped or even disc-shaped,

depending on the perspective of the witness,

hovering over the airport.

Chris: It was grey in colour, seemed to be a little diffuse

in nature in some way, but was definitely there.

The airport personnel actually radioed, you know,

asking other airport personnel, including the tower,

if they had also seen this object

that was over an airport.

Eyewitness: It was very obviously not cloud.

It was very obviously a solid object.

Chris: There was a person with management,

as part of the airport authority,

who had heard some discussion and went outside

and also saw an object.

Ashley Kircher: Well, what I love about the Chicago sighting

is that there were so many witnesses.

It was a mass sighting.

It wasn't just, like, a few people.

The fact that it incurred into airspace

onto a runway is quite amazing.

Narrator: And airport staff are not the only witnesses

from another view.

Spectators have a whole new perspective

of the object in the sky.

Nearby, two witnesses are driving.

Sam: My witness came in on Mannheim Road.

They noticed this object below the ceiling of clouds.

This object seemed to be stationary,

and it had some dull but yet reflective

quality to it.

She didn't know where it was stationed over,

but she knew it was below the clouds,

and it was fairly obvious.

She came into the international parking.

♪♪

Narrator: They all realize this is not business as usual,

but exactly what they see in the sky,

no one knows.

Sam: All these people were just doing their normal routine.

They weren't looking for it; it found them at that point.

So my witness, she stated that when they pulled into the lot,

there were other people looking at it.

It was obvious.

They got out and they had reading glasses,

and they were tilting their reading glasses

to get a better idea.

They noticed that the object was moving

in a counterclockwise direction.

Chris: Some of the witnesses were pilots.

And I think the assumption most people have is that pilots

are very good, very reliable observers

of objects in the sky.

Some have tens of thousands of hours flying in the sky,

and you would think that they would know the difference

between balloons and other aircraft

and other atmospheric phenomena.

Eyewitness: It obviously wasn't a balloon

that was subject to the wind.

It didn't move with the wind.

You know, this was very obvious.

I mean, this was a daytime thing.

And it was seen for a considerable period of time,

not just a few seconds, but in some cases,

up to 10 minutes.

United Airlines employees who swear

it was something otherworldly

in the skies above Chicago's O'Hare Airport

on November 7th, but neither the FAA,

nor indeed their own employer,

appears to be taking them seriously.

♪♪

Murray: Daytime sightings of this quality of witnesses

and diversity of witnesses is fascinating to me.

I'm very inclined to believe what people have seen.

Dr. Michael P. Masters: I love these types of cases

where you have numerous individuals

from different vantage points

seeing and describing the same thing.

It lends more validity and credibility to the case.

But then it also, when they happen around places

like Chicago O'Hare, raises even more questions.

This isn't just a UFO hovering over someone on a tractor

in a field.

I think instances where you have UFO cases like this

are some of the most informative.

Narrator: Witnesses report that it is a completely silent object

somewhere between 22 to 88 feet in diameter.

For me, what's so compelling about it is that it's possible,

because so many people saw the same thing.

It was a consistent sighting.

They saw it from different angles.

It was all across the board, the same behaviour.

They had no way of communicating simultaneously to each other.

Sam: So my witness, JH, in the international concourse,

is watching it,

and she's trying to make sense of it.

As far as the construction, what it is.

There's no propellers,

there's no form of foils or fins.

Nothing that would be consistent with anything that we know

is an airplane.

Dr. Masters: It's really fascinating that you can have

an object just hover at a major international airport.

Obviously, we can't know without asking them

why they were hovering above Gate C17 at Chicago O'Hare,

but there must have been something going on

that was interesting and important to them

to sit in one of the busiest airspaces

in the nation.

So why? The question is always why?

What are they doing?

What are they trying to garner

from these types of interactions?

It does get us thinking about not just who's inside,

but also what they're doing,

what they're trying to get out of this,

why they're here.

With all of these cases, those are the biggest questions.

News Anchor: United Airlines claims it had no record

of the sighting, even though employees say

they filled out reports.

Narrator: So one has to wonder,

is there a conspiracy to cover up this sighting?

And why would something like this be covered up so quickly?

Ashley Kircher: I've heard that,

where they want to just sweep it away.

United Airlines had just come out of bankruptcy,

and so they were just restarting, you know,

the flights, the business.

And did they want this sort of woo-woo thing happening

on their one of their runways?

No.

Sam: The tower, on the other hand,

when the manager, again back to Gate C17,

stated that they were not able to see it,

also in that statement they said if they did see it,

they would not say so.

Narrator: One of the more haunting aspects

of this occurrence is that spectators felt

compelled to look.

Sam: Yet it's amazing how many of them, for some reason,

they said, .We don't know why, but we looked up.

We didn't even know why we looked up. /

I find that interesting in itself.

Ashley: Nobody's looking up in the sky during the day.

I mean, if a plane goes up by--or a helicopter, you know,

you might glance up,

but you're not going to see anything too much

unless you're really, really looking.

Neil Lavoie: The fact that the tower didn't know

that this was supposed to be taking place

is the biggest part of the mystery for me.

Narrator: This UAP nearly flew under the radar,

quite literally, draws yet more attention

and suggests a mission may have been accomplished.

Narrator: On November 7, 2006, Chicago O'Hare Airport

is silently observed from above

by a disc-like object seen by several witnesses

from a variety of different vantage points.

Chris: The saucer shape is one that has been described

as dynamic, appropriate for travelling in our atmosphere,

and relatively stable.

Narrator: Until the UAP makes a sudden exit.

Which leaves a big question: why was it there

at one of the busiest airports in the world?

It's, like, energy output in terms of, like,

the amount of people going through.

In terms of, like, the density or frequency of air traffic.

That itself could just be, like, of interest to study,

to observe, or just to be attracted

by some unknown forms of life or intelligence.

Ashley: I think it could be just a matter of observation

and also just a show of maybe a little bit of power,

because they do seem to congregate over nuclear sites.

And if you believe the stories, which I do,

they have shut down some nuclear sites

for 10, 15 seconds.

So I think it could also be just a show of power

and just saying, .Behave. /

Narrator: With the enhanced footage,

we can see that the aircraft is indeed wingless,

and there also doesn't appear to be any kind of known form

of propulsion around it, leaving us to wonder,

how is it up there?

Murray: So you have an object that appears

virtually out of nowhere.

In fact, I don't believe that there was any account

of how it got there,

I don't think people saw that particular one arrive,

only to sit there for five minutes

and then go.

If I were an alien from the alien perspective

and I was concerned that I would be discovered,

if you look at humans from space,

we don't have a great track record.

We commit wars, we drop bombs,

we pollute the environment, genocide.

We're not very friendly creatures.

I've taken my technology and I fashioned it

so that I could get in and out

as fast as possible at incredible speeds.

Narrator: To go from hovering

to vanishing into cloud cover in an instant

means G-forces that would crush a human pilot.

That hints at either an uncrewed craft,

or beings adapted to extreme physics.

♪♪

Dr. Masters: We're communicating over something

that projects out, using what to them would be

a more primitive form of technology.

Narrator: Their technology isn't just advanced,

it's incomprehensible.

To them, we're still playing with fire,

while they're bending space like paper.

The Alcubierre warp drive

is a theoretical propulsion concept

conceived by the Mexican theoretical physicist

Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.

In 2023, a roundtable of 30 PhD physicists,

working for a privately funded research group,

speculate the O'Hare incident shows a UAP

bending the fabric of time.

♪♪

Neil: That's a very confusing part for me

because you'd actually hear some air distortion

of some kind.

There should be noise to this.

Apparently this object was silent.

So that's a little disturbing for me

because I have no idea what could actually do that.

Narrator: From a theoretical perspective,

the Alcubierre warp drive

wouldn't appear as a conventional spacecraft.

Instead, it is a warp bubble of distorted space-time,

and the ship inside remains motionless.

An observer would see the ship travelling at warp speed,

blurry at the edges due to the manipulation of space-time.

Everybody around there, when that thing took off,

they gasped.

This thing was, in an instant, gone.

Narrator: When the UAP punches through the cloud layer,

it leaves a sharply defined circular shape.

Neil: Suddenly shot up and went to about 6000 ft.

In that case, what it did was it made a punch-hole cloud.

Chris: And the idea is that there are

very, very fine particles,

and there are a couple of layers of particles,

water droplets in the atmosphere,

and they can all condense very, very suddenly,

prompted by some objects

moving through them or an intense burst of heat.

Neil: As they fall, they disturb more water droplets

and cascading.

It's a big domino effect.

And it starts to form this hole,

and it keeps falling and falling and falling

until you get this big oval or roundish hole

in this cloud.

So it's something that does happen.

Narrator: Temperature inversions are frequently used

to explain UFO sightings.

When a layer of warm air sits on top of cooler air

near the surface, it can bend light waves

in ways that create optical illusions.

Government officials are quick to downplay

the O'Hare phenomenon

and describe it to a naturally occurring one,

such as temperature inversion.

♪♪

I'm going to bring up a 1952 scenario:

the mass sightings over Washington, DC in July.

Now, they were saying that that was temperature inversion.

Now, these ATC individuals know temperature inversion.

They see it quite common.

And this wasn't the case in point.

They had very, very good visuals,

ground, air;

I mean, it doesn't get better than that.

There was something there

and it wasn't temperature inversion.

I think this would be the case in point here.

These were not weather-related phenomena.

A lenticular cloud?

The object was there before the hole was there.

How do you account for that?

It would be a good explanation if the hole was seen first,

then all of a sudden they're saying there is

some sort of anomalous object below it.

That could be, to some degree, rational,

but that wasn't the case in point.

Narrator: If the O'Hare UAP were merely an optical illusion

or atmospheric misperception, what reason could explain

a localized hole in the cloud layer?

I would like to think, you know, that the technology aspect

at an airport, again, no pun intended,

is out of this world, you know?

And it probably involves some technology

that the public isn't even necessarily aware of.

I think there is levels of government or military

that are utilizing an infrastructure

like an airport environment for defence

or development point of view.

So who knows?

There may be radar technologies that are being utilized

or developed that we're not aware of.

It may be the breeding ground for some experimental things.

It may be a whole social experiment that's going on

at a place like O'Hare International Airport

that could be of interest to other forms of intelligence.

Narrator: Environmentally, airport spaces act

as focal points for the urban heat-island effect,

often generating heat equivalent to a city's downtown core.

Christian Bohm: Because the airport itself is quite an

unnatural environment, because of all the energy,

electricity that's being released

in an environment like this,

and that's obviously extreme in an airport environment.

All the air traffic, you know, there's extreme amounts

of fuel being burned both on the ground

and during its travel,

especially during departure of airplanes.

So I think all these things together with, like,

electromagnetic currents, radar,

all of the other type of physical output

that's being created in an environment

like an airport could also play a role

when it comes to how vapour, like in a cloud

and so on, can form or break down.

It's not only the surface and the air traffic,

it's also the subsurface.

Geologically, it allows for extensive

underground infrastructure like the tunnel systems,

the pathways, the cables,

the energy pathways, the transit pathways.

It's an extensive labyrinth

of underground infrastructure as well.

♪♪

Narrator: The Earth has a rare mix of life,

energy and resources.

And it seems like UAPs are interested, but why?

They might live in a system where their goals

are very different from ours.

Christian: They maybe feel drawn to such a level of activity,

of energy of a dynamic environment.

Maybe there is energy forms that are being created or released

in a high-density area like the airport in Chicago

that can be accessed or plugged into by foreign objects.

So there is heat energy, there is electrical energy,

there is electromagnetic energy that could be attractive

or of interest to objects that may want to come close by

to study, to be drawn,

and possibly recharge in some ways that we may not understand

their methods of propulsion, travel.

They may be able to utilize energy forms

that we are currently not able to utilize,

for their transportation

or to recharge their systems, to maintain their life forms.

Narrator: And just who would be tapping into that energy?

Direct contact with other intelligent beings

no longer seems to be a matter of if, but when.

As our understanding of the universe has grown,

so too does our knowledge of just how big

the universe really is.

Enrico Fermi, the Nobel Prize winning physicist,

questioned the probability of extraterrestrial life.

This theory may hold an important key

in the O'Hare incident.

♪♪

So, in a nutshell, Fermi Paradox just says,

.Where are the aliens? /

There are billions and billions of planets,

lots of Earth-like ones.

We haven't heard anything.

We haven't heard any coherent signal that we can't explain.

It hasn't been a pulsar or some kind of natural phenomenon

that at first seems like it's intelligent,

but in fact, it's just something

that occurs in nature.

Pulsar is an excellent example because as a pulsar spins,

a dying star, it throws off a regular burst of energy.

It looks and sounds like a marker, a beacon.

In fact, it's just a natural phenomenon.

So there's really no evidence to support

that we're hearing anything.

♪♪

So the Fermi Paradox is essentially looking

at the statistics and looking at how abundant

exoplanets are in our galaxy,

and how likely it would seem that life would somehow,

at some point, evolve.

And just looking at the history, the length of time

that has passed in the history of the universe,

there must have been at least a few forms of life

at this point that would have developed the technology

to explore some amount of our galaxy

and leave traces here and there.

And we haven't found any concrete evidence of that yet.

So it's this paradox where we should be finding signs

of alien life, but we are not.

♪♪

Narrator: But the witnesses

at Chicago O'Hare International Airport saw something,

and it doesn't appear to have come from Earth.

Dr. Masters: Where or when did they come from,

and what are their intentions?

What are they trying to do?

Narrator: Producers have asked our experts to speculate

that these visitors have come from the planet TRAPPIST-1e.

TRAPPIST-1e is in the super interesting system TRAPPIST-1,

which has seven exoplanets in it,

three of which are in the habitable zone.

So it's a really interesting target.

TRAPPIST-1e is the most interesting in terms

of finding alien life.

It's right in the habitable zone,

and it is very, very Earth-like.

A very similar size and mass to the Earth.

Narrator: Is it possible that these visitors

could have travelled to Chicago O'Hare,

all the way from TRAPPIST-1?

And if they did, are they friend or foe?

Narrator: UAPs arrive without warning,

leave without trace, and their purpose is hidden.

But perhaps there are actually some clues as to who they are,

if we know where to look.

♪♪

I gotta admit, I like TRAPPIST-1e

for a couple reasons.

We're not gonna have to deal with the issues of high gravity

and all the problems that are associated

with humans walking on two limbs.

If we could get anything similar to a human on another planet,

which I find highly doubtful because of all the unique things

that have gone into our evolutionary transition

and our phylogenetic evolution.

Narrator: A mere 41 light years away from Earth, a similar size,

rocky, and sitting squarely in its star's habitable zone,

it could hold oceans and it could hold life.

So we need to do a lot more studying to figure out

if there's an atmosphere, maybe liquid water.

But it's a very promising target.

Narrator: If UAPs are using something like warp drives,

taking shortcuts through space-time,

41 light years might just be a jump to them.

♪♪

Nathalie Ouellette: So it's an interesting system, TRAPPIST 1,

because it's sort of like a sardine can.

If you take all the seven exoplanets,

it could actually fit within the orbit of Mercury

in our solar system.

But because the star is a lot cooler and a lot smaller,

it's not as hot as our sun.

So you need to be closer in, really,

to get enough sunlight, starlight,

and heat to be habitable and to have liquid water.

And all of these planets are what we call tidally locked.

That means they're so close to their star

that the gravitational effect on the planet

makes it such that always the same face of the planet

is facing the star, just like our moon.

Our moon is tidally locked with the Earth.

That's why we always see the same face of the moon.

So what happens in TRAPPIST-1e, we think,

is that one side of the planet is always under the starlight.

It's always daytime, so it's always quite hot.

And on the other side you always have nighttime,

so it's always quite cold.

This could be an issue,

because that means you have these extreme temperatures.

If you have an atmosphere, heat can be more equally distributed.

Like if you have the Earth, it doesn't, like,

dip down 100 degrees during night

and then shoot up 100 degrees during the day.

The atmosphere kind of softens things,

evens things out.

If there is a very thin atmosphere

that's not doing its job,

it could be that the only place that's comfortably livable

for life is along that sort of sunrise sunset border

called the terminator.

Dr. Masters: It would sort of spread out that hot and cold

on either side of this horizon line, if you will,

sort of the sunrise-sunset line that's always the same

because it never spins.

So it's interesting to think about in the context

of life evolving,

and especially intelligent life,

if it went through something similar

to what we experienced here on Earth,

where over time we start to sort of make tools

and interact with each other socially and build cities

and have agriculture that was instrumental

to the rise of civilizations

and complex cities and technology here on Earth,

what that might look like if it all existed just on one band

right in the middle along this horizon line.

So it's interesting.

I don't know.

They wouldn't really be able to expand.

They would want to.

And maybe there's ways that they could make solar shielding

on the side closest to their star,

or create heated cities farther away from it.

And if they got to the point

where their technology allowed it, why couldn't they?

Why couldn't they feed an atmosphere?

Why couldn't they--in the same way we do cloud seeding,

perhaps they could make enough water vapour

and enough CO2 to create a bigger atmosphere,

thick enough that it would allow them

to sort of spread out and have the safety in these high solar

and low solar environments.

Narrator: The planet TRAPPIST-1e orbits the red dwarf star

called TRAPPIST 1.

These red dwarfs can live for essentially trillions of years,

whereas for our sun, we only have

an expected lifetime for about 10 billion years.

Narrator: Our Sun's days are numbered.

Nathalie: So our sun is a star, sort of like any other star.

It's what we call a G dwarf.

And it's pretty average sized.

We're about halfway through its life.

At the end of its life, the sun is going to puff up,

swallow Mercury and Venus,

probably boil off all our oceans,

and then sort of have one last tremor

shoot out all of its envelope

into what we call a planetary nebula.

So that's not really good for planets.

Narrator: Red dwarfs burn cooler and dimmer

than stars like our own.

And that makes them far more long-lived

and potentially a far greater benefit

to the evolution of life on the planets they heat.

Nathalie: So what you really want is a quiet red dwarf

that has passed its flare stage.

Then we start getting interesting results

for habitable exoplanets.

They don't have this issue.

That means that life could take its time to develop.

If it doesn't happen at the start,

because it's very active with flares and everything,

life just needs to wait and bide its time.

And once the star calms down, it'll still have hundreds

of billions of years to develop.

And then all kinds of things can happen, potentially.

Narrator: In the long arc of the centuries,

TRAPPIST-1e might transform from a harsh,

unstable world into a strange mirror of Earth.

Familiar, yet utterly alien.

Nathalie: Potentially, you can have impacts from comets

that could have water.

That's one of the theories of how Earth came to have life.

So lots of things can happen in trillions of years,

and these red dwarfs give the planets the time

for those things to happen.

♪♪

Dr. Masters: If we think about complex, social,

intelligent life forms evolving on this planet,

because they're circumscribed

by this terminator zone initially

until they got to the point where they might be able to

expand beyond it using their technology,

we have to wonder if they would be forced

to get along.

Narrator: Forced to get along, not just with beings

on their own planet,

but perhaps also with other civilizations

who have advanced technology.

Perhaps the reason why the universe appears so quiet

is more out of necessity than anything else.

The idea that any other presence out in the universe

is not benign, but hostile, and relying for their survival

on the element of surprise.

♪♪

Murray: Which then leads to the dark forest hypothesis.

The dark forest hypothesis is the idea

that there's a forest and it's quiet.

And it's quiet for a reason,

because predators are looking for us.

And I'm suggesting that the O'Hare UFO's behaviour

reflects a prey-like behaviour: fight or flight.

In this particular case, flight.

It wanted to get in quickly as possible

and scooch away as quickly as possible

using all the means in its survival.

This ship has the ability to manipulate gravity

and space-time to move away fast and seamlessly.

It had metamaterials likely on it,

because there was no recorded indication

that there was actually an object there.

These metamaterials actually exist where they can take radar

or light and they can bend it around objects.

All of these things are survival strategies for a species

that does not want to be caught, that wants to flee

as quickly as possible.

So this forest I'm talking about,

we have no idea what the predator is, okay?

The UFO behaviour that we're seeing,

they're effectively the prey in that dark forest.

The predator activity is potentially very pervasive

enough for a technologically advanced civilization

on the scale of things is effectively prey

and has learned to survive

in a very, very dangerous and dark forest-like galaxy.

Sadly, we are very noisy, so it would be easy to find us, right?

We have transmissions from military facilities

that are going on for a great number of years.

More specifically, airports regularly send off signals.

And there was a study done that showed that perspective

of Barnard's Star, which isn't too far away,

as the Earth rotates,

we just send a barrage of signals out that direction.

So if there's someone hanging out around Barnard's Star,

they'll know we're there.

Hopefully, it's not a predator, but certainly it may have

and most certainly has gotten the attention of other species

or other alien races.

Narrator: Barnard's Star is six light years away,

one of Earth's closest neighbours.

It's possibly twice as old as the sun.

Any hypothetical civilization there would have billions

of extra years to develop technology far beyond Earth's,

as was on display over O'Hare airport.

But they still may have things to learn from us

and they may still covet our resources

and wonder about our infrastructure.

Dr. Masters: As one of the largest airports,

there's a lot of movement of people

using the most sophisticated technology of our time.

Even beyond the potential intention of trying to just see

how people in our time in this space move themselves around,

maybe they were drawn there by our radio signals

to try to understand how we communicate.

Obviously we're not just talking to each other face-to-face.

That may be fascinating to study.

That may be something that could be a model

for other environments to try to imitate or try to avoid.

Because it may have caused demise elsewhere.

Narrator: The staging ground theory suggests UFOs

may not come straight from distant stars,

but operate from hidden bases nearby on the moon,

Mars, the oceans, or asteroids,

allowing them to conduct their business with less travel.

Chris: Another reason that Earth might be attractive

to civilizations observing us is that we radiate

very, very brightly in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Not from light, but from radar

and microwaves in some cases.

As a matter of fact, the development of radar

in World War II started announcing our presence

to the universe.

The radar that was broadcast in all directions made us glow

very, very brightly.

We would be a shining beacon in the sky,

and we're only getting brighter.

And when they got to Earth,

they would see that some of the sources were airports,

more likely to be military installations

rather than civilian airports.

But civilian airports would be one of the locations

to check out.

So if there are indications that perhaps Earth

might have a companion, in our case Venus or Mars,

that might harbour life,

the possibility of civilizations and other alien creatures on

distant planets coming to visit us might be very appealing

and might be very much an incentive

for travelling between the stars.

Astronomers are fairly convinced that planets

similar to our own may exist around other stars,

and some of those planets may exist in multiples.

Whether the planets have some dynamic geology,

magnetic fields, and so forth,

one can envision that in a planetary system

where there's more than one planet with life,

let's say two, travel between the two planets

might have been a natural occurrence.

They may have developed space travel

long before we did here on Earth,

because we only have the one planet with life

that we know of.

♪♪

Narrator: The TRAPPIST star system Is a perfect example

of several potentially life-bearing planets

that could have developed in this way.

It's possible that this has made inhabitants curious

of other places, planets like our planet, Earth.

If UAPS represent a visiting intelligence,

Earth and TRAPPIST-1e would naturally invite comparison.

For them, Earth isn't just another planet.

It's a beacon of familiarity in the vastness of space.

Rather than watching humans, UAPs could be comparing Earth

as a living, evolving biosphere against TRAPPIST-1e,

a planet similar in size and position,

and studying the differences between the two.

♪♪

Narrator: And they may have an ultimate goal in mind.

♪♪

Narrator: If life arose on TRAPPIST-1e,

its inhabitants might view Earth as a kind of mirror experiment

in evolution, a chance to compare

how two similar environments gave rise

to two very different life forms.

If we take the O'Hare UFO at face value,

a disc hovering in total silence before blasting skyward

and tearing a hole through the clouds,

then we're left with one unavoidable truth:

this was no accident.

It moved with purpose, precision,

as if whoever was behind it

knew exactly what they were doing.

As much as they might be ahead of us in propulsion

and materials science,

we don't know if they're biologically hardier,

socially more advanced, or ethically wiser.

So what kind of creature might inhabit TRAPPIST-1e?

Dr. Masters: In the context of TRAPPIST-1e,

maybe that happened where we have this extremely benevolent,

peaceful society that arises

simply because they have to work together

in this limited zone.

And once they do, it's like a key

that unlocks a door and allows them

to sort of spread out into these other areas

with more extreme environments, because they can conquer those

with their technology.

I don't think we're going to find upright walking hominins

on any other planet anywhere in the universe

anytime soon, if ever,

simply because of all of the unique things

that went into making us just how we are on this planet.

We wouldn't even see anything like primates, most likely,

but maybe there would be eutherian mammals.

Maybe there would be egg-laying mammals like the platypus,

the monotremes.

Maybe there'd be something like marsupials.

So it might--just given the law of large numbers,

it's possible that with enough time

and with a stable environment, you would eventually

run through this cycle where you would get

pretty much everything possible,

that it would just branch off in all of these different ways.

In my opinion, I think we would start to find things

that we could equate to life on Earth

and possibly even things like mammals.

Again, we have a sample size of one, here on Earth,

so we don't know what would happen on other planets.

But TRAPPIST-1e seems to have conditions similar enough,

especially around that terminator zone,

where I think there would be at least a few hundred

to a thousand cases,

given the diversity of life on this planet

over 3.7 billion years,

where we would start to get complex organisms

and possibly even intelligent life.

So it's close to the same size as the Earth,

a little bit lighter than the Earth,

so the gravity would be a little bit lower.

You'd feel a little bit lighter walking around.

♪♪

Narrator: Using TRAPPIST-1e's low gravity to extend each step

into a floating hop,

the creature's movement feels almost liquid,

more like flowing across the terrain

than walking over it.

Walking on TRAPPIST-1e and then on Earth would be exhausting

for an alien, their body straining

under the heavier pull of Earth's gravity,

a weight of a world not their own.

Not only would they feel different,

on TRAPPIST-1e their home would look dim, red,

and locked in the eternal balance

of day and night.

To look at Earth, they might feel awe

at the sheer brightness of our sun

and the shifting colours of dawn.

And they might even feel a kind of envy of us,

not for our technology far beneath theirs,

but our planet; warm, bright,

and endlessly fertile.

And they might see humanity as a young species

still in its adolescence.

If they are watching us closely, are they seeing

what they imagine as themselves in forgotten eons past?

♪♪

Narrator: When imagining the UFO's POV

from TRAPPIST-1e, we naturally think of whales,

a being that lives in the low-gravity conditions

of the Earth underwater.

Perhaps the way inhabitants of low-gravity TRAPPIST-1e see

is their own adapted form of echolocation,

a sonar-like way of seeing.

The sonar wave would sweep over our landscapes,

in this case Chicago O'Hare International Airport,

and the information rebounding back would help them build

their point of view.

♪♪

Now, an alien POV would be fun.

This is a fun thought experiment.

You're hovering around, minding your own business,

being virtually invisible to the inhabitants.

But you see these long cylindrical,

these tube-like silvery things

with little blades landing by these boxes

and these tiny little people or creatures go in and out of them

and they take off and they fly again.

They go away to another place.

So what are they doing?

I can only, as an alien, I guess they have these little tubes,

these are eggs, and they have little legs

and they land and then they deposit them

and they put more new ones in there

and they move them and they grow into these other little boxes

and they travel from different parts of the earth

for whatever reason.

They don't absolutely know, because they can't know,

because they can't relate to the why.

They can only observe and draw their own conclusions

about what they're seeing.

Narrator: But are we a neighbour, rival,

or future partner?

You know, they must be related to this form of transportation.

Let's take a closer look.

Lots of reports playing with fighter jets,

UFOs dodging them, flying around them.

You know?

During the war there was the &foo fighters', you know,

there's these little glowy objects used to follow aircraft.

Second World War would have been a fascinating thing

for an alien civilization to witness.

So if you were curious,

but you didn't want to get hurt

because there's no evidence to suggest,

to my understanding of it, of aggressive UFO attacks,

which is a horrible thing to put on them

because they, by and large, seem benign.

They observe.

They're in and out as fast as possible.

♪♪

Narrator: Some say nothing happened over O'Hare

that winter afternoon.

No radar trace, questionable photographs,

just a trick of weather and weary eyes.

Officials dismissed it in a heartbeat.

Ice crystals.

A cloud illusion.

Forget it and move on.

But why, then, did veteran pilots,

ground crews, random passersby and passengers alike

all tell the same story?

♪♪

Chris: Astronomers that suggest this is a real case

that's deserving of scientific study.

And I think it's one of the all time

best cases in ufology.

♪♪

Sam: The 20-year anniversary is coming up.

I have a sneaking suspicion we're probably going to get

some people coming forward and that may turn the tide

as far as at least bringing more evidence to the forefront.

♪♪

Narrator: When you look at everything together,

the witness accounts, the sudden vertical climb,

the complete silence, you don't get a clear answer.

You get a pattern.

The O'Hare incident isn't unique.

It's one of many cases where trained observers saw something

that defied explanation, then watched it disappear

without a trace.

Our detection systems couldn't fully capture what happened.

This matters because we already know the universe offers

plenty of possibilities we haven't explored yet.

Planets like TRAPPIST-1e show us that worlds capable

of supporting life aren't incredibly rare.

♪♪

Narrator: Some are billions of years old,

ancient enough that entire civilizations

could have risen and vanished before Earth even existed.

If intelligence emerged elsewhere,

those beings may have had far more time

to develop than we have.

♪♪

Narrator: UAPs might not be messages or accidents.

They might not involve us at all.

They could simply be moments when our limited perception

briefly intersects with something much larger

that's been happening all along.

♪♪

Narrator: The O'Hare incident raises more questions

than it answers,

but it reminds us the sky still holds mysteries

we haven't solved.

♪♪

Narrator: In science, we often detect things

before we understand them, and discovery happens in the gap

between what we observe and what we can explain.

♪♪

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