Original subtitles

It's an age-old question.

It's an age-old question.

Are we alone in the universe?

Some people believe aliens were here long ago,

and others say there could be countless advanced civilizations

just beyond our own solar system.

Then there are people, like mechanic Kyle Bond,

who believe aliens are making contact with humans today.

I was six when I saw my first UFO.

One night I was laying down on my bed,

and light started coming in the window.

I heard a buzzing noise. Bzzz.

I was too afraid to open my eyes, and I knew it was them.

It was like every other week, I was being taken out.

It's always when I'm least expecting it.

Now I can't get them out of my mind.

I think about them constantly.

They come to me at night,

and they take me.

If stories like Kyle's are true,

might it be possible to finally find evidence of alien life?

My search begins now.

My Name is Zachary Quinto.

As an actor, I've played many supernatural characters

that blurred the line between science and fiction.

I'm drawn to the unknown, the otherworldly,

and those experiences so beyond belief,

they call everything into question.

I'm exploring some of the most enduring mysteries

that continue to haunt mankind in search of the truth...

wherever it leads me.

Throughout history, mankind has always been fascinated

by the possibility of discovering alien life.

More recently, the 20th century gave us technology

that allowed for real-life space exploration.

I believe that this nation should commit itself to landing a man on the moon.

At the same time, our imaginations ran wild in movies,

television-- Hurry back to base.

...and on Earth.My mother and I have both had

close encounters of the fourth kind, also known as "abduction experiences."

BeyondClose Encounters andE.T.,

stories of Roswell and UFO sightings mixed in our minds

with scientific breakthroughs like the Space Shuttle--

...two, one. We have a liftoff!

...the Moon landing-- ...one giant leap for mankind.

...and exploration of Mars.

And while the US Government has denied investigating aliens in the past,

a 2017 bombshell report revealed

it was running a secret UFO program

investigating alien threats for years.

In addition to the government's admission

that it's investigating aliens and spending millions to do so,

there have been thousands of individual reports

of abductions and sightings in the last 70 years.

With all of this evidence mounting,

it's possible we may be at a tipping point

for finding out if aliens are really out there.

All right. Follow me. Watch your step.

To start my search, I wanna find out exactly

what it's like for someone claiming to have an encounter,

so I'm meeting with one of the thousands of Americans

who have come forward with a vivid alien abduction story.

So walk me through a little bit-- your first encounter.

I was six years old.Six.

Mm-hmm. And that's weird,

because I don't really remember anything when I was six years old.

But I do remember the UFO.

Thirty-eight-year-old mechanic Kyle Bond

has seen signs pointing to alien life

that he says are beyond any earthly explanation.

I was with my brother and my mother.

There was lights that started coming in the window.

So my mom went up and opened up the window,

and there was a UFO in our yard, and it was tilted, and it was hovering,

and it had lights all the way around it.

And then it just took off. Didn't make no noise or anything.

Just took off.

So, then, what happened three years ago?

Well, I went out on my balcony.

Off in the distance, I seen a strobing light.

Just kept getting closer and closer,

and when it was about half a block away,

I noticed that it wasn't making no noise.

I went in my place, and I heard this loud buzzing noise, like, zzzzz.

And I could feel a vibration.

And, for some reason, I knew it was them.

So I stood up, and I was gonna run towards the door,

and my legs folded in, and I fell to the ground.

I blacked out, woke up the next morning,

and I had puncture marks all over me.

Were they actually cuts? Yeah. Yeah.

I have three marks right here.Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. I see that.

It didn't stop there. I just kept getting taken, like, every other week.

It's real hard to go through, so I just started making pictures.

It's kind of like a therapy for me

to, you know, get my mind off of them,

'cause I'm always thinking of ET, constantly.

Kyle's story seems incredible, but it does match with details

from countless other alien abduction reports.

Like the feeling of levitation seeing a powerful bright light,

and being left with physical marks and wounds.

Do you feel like they are studying you? Is that what you--

It's almost like being an animal,

and someone tags you or checks you out.

I think the hardest part's not being taken by ET.

I think the hardest part's being alone, knowing that they exist.

What do you think would help people believe you?

Maybe I could take a polygraph test.

That's something that you're interested in. Okay.Yes.

I want people to know that I'm not lying,

and other people that's being taken by ET know that they're not alone.

I do believe that Kyle

is incredibly genuine about what he's going through,

but it doesn't leave me with an overwhelming sense of proof.

I'm skeptical.

But I don't want to dismiss anything that Kyle's saying

or anything that anybody's saying yet.

I think astronomers-- everybody--

I think even NASA are gonna find something. They're gonna capture something.

They don't have to go looking. They're already here.

Kyle is hardly alone in his belief

that aliens have visited us before.

The government program Project Blue Book

recorded 12,618 UFO sightings

from 1948 until 1969,

at which time it mysteriously shut down.

In the past decade, several US military personnel came forward

with their own stories of encounters with alien spacecraft.

Even today, UFO sightings

continue to be reported around the world.

Is there something to these claims?

And if so, is the government covering up the truth?

Former Navy contractor Marc D'antonio says

the government comes across unexplainable objects all the time--

in the air and in the sea.

And once incident haunts him to this day.

One day, I was sitting in the sonar suite,

and this kid next to me, he yelled that he had something on the sonar.

Something-- He called it a "fast mover."

Now, to me, a fast mover means a torpedo.

But it turned out to be something very different.

Executive officers said to him, "How fast is it moving?"

"Several hundred knots, sir."

And I'm like, "What?" You know? I was just stunned.

There's no biological objects that move several hundred knots underwater.

No country on this planet makes anything like this.

And the XO said, "Log it and dog it."

Basically, log it and then bury it.

There are very fast-moving objects that we don't know about.

We don't know whose technology it is. We don't know where they come from.

Several years later, I had to do a job for

a very, very high-ranking naval official down in Washington.

And I took him aside, and I said to him,

"What can you tell me about this Fast Mover Program?"

He looked at me, and he could've said,

"What program? But he didn't. He said,

"I'm not at liberty to talk about that program. I'm sorry."

You know, by saying nothing, he said everything.

Since Project Blue Book,

the government's official position has been

that they are not actively researching aliens.

But in 2017, leaked classified documents and video

revealed the existence of a 22 million-dollar government program

investigating UFO threats

that has been running in secret for over a decade.

From my background, and what happened on the boat,

I'm thinking that it's probably a case

where the US Government knows more than it's telling.

It makes me wonder and really think,

"Is it possible aliens are here?"

The fact that the government is no longer denying

its research into the existence of aliens,

it makes me wonder about Kyle's abduction story,

and if it can be proven.

Kyle asked to take a polygraph test to prove

that he is telling the truth about his alien encounters.

And while the results of polygraph tests are often debated,

and can even produce false positives if the subject is anxious,

I arranged for him to have the chance.

Polygraph expert Rachel Levy has administered

over 2,500 tests in her career.

Kyle, the four measurements that this instrument will be taking

is your upper and your lower respiratory,

your blood pressure,

and then the most important, which is your electrodermal activity,

which is the sweat at your fingertips.

Relax your arm, please.Okay.

I can feel my heart beating.

Kind of stressful for me, and I'm not even getting tested.

All right, Kyle. We're now gonna begin the test.

Is your name Kyle?

Yes.

Is today Monday?

No.

Did you see a UFO outside of your home as a child?

To prove he is telling the truth about his alien encounters,

Kyle has asked to take a polygraph test.

Will it finally confirm the accuracy of his story?

Is your name Kyle?Yes.

Is today Monday?

No.

Is this the month of July?No.

Did you see a UFO outside of your home as a child?

Yes.

Over the course of the last three years,

have you been visited by extraterrestrials?

Yes.

Have you ever been abducted by extraterrestrials?

Yes.

Are you being truthful regarding the origin

of the marks on your body?Yes.

Okay, Kyle. This test is over.

So, Rachel, what did you come up with?

It is my expert opinion that, um...

he is not being truthful--

Really?...in regards to his--

I'm just shocked...

Because I'm totally being truthful.

Can you tell which questions I failed?

I'm specifically talking about the things that you've discussed regarding extraterrestrials.

I'm not questioning your experiences.

I wasn't there, so I don't know what you've experienced.

I can't believe it. I'm sorry, guys.

I feel like I wasted your time.No, no, no. It's all right, Kyle.

Go have a moment to decompress.

I honestly feel like--

I didn't-- I didn't expect it to go that way.

I didn't expect it to--Oh, I didn't either.

Yeah.'Cause I was being a hundred percent truthful.

I don't want you to feel like anybody was here to try to--

Oh, I don't. I don't. You guys are just out looking for the truth.

I'm not gonna stop here, because I am telling the truth.

I feel conflicted now,

and I don't have enough to go on to say whether or not

Kyle just got caught in an elaborate

and seemingly uncharacteristic lie,

or he was really nervous, and that was picked up.

And I guess it is a difficult thing to believe,

but he makes me wanna believe it somehow.

Kyle is not alone in thinking there are other life-forms out there.

In addition to government programs, there are also ongoing efforts

by the world's leading independent scientists

to find intelligent life in space.

In 1984, a group of these scientists formed SETI--

the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

SETI is a multimillion-dollar operation

scouring the skies in hopes of finding alien life.

To learn more, I'm heading to a remote part of West Virginia

where SETI is utilizing the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world.

The telescope records

all radio signals from outer space,

looking for technology that could come

from another intelligent civilization

and offer definitive proof that aliens exist.

This is command central of the Green Bank telescope.

The telescope is taller than a lot of things you wouldn't expect it to be taller than.

Yeah, taller than the Statue of Liberty, taller than the Washington Monument.

All right. So tell me a little bit about this particular effort.

Ultimately, we're trying to answer a very human question--

"Is there anybody else out there?"

And, really, for the first time in history,

not only do we know that it's possible for there to be life out there,

we have the capacity to search for it.Wow.

So, shall we go take a look at how we use this thing?All right. Let's do it.

Mike, Zach. How are you?

Zach, good to meet you. Appreciate it.Nice to meet you too.

Thank you for having us.Glad you're here.

So, what's "GBT" stand for?

Well, it's the Green Bank Telescope.

It's fondly referred to as the "Great Big Thing."

Wow.Incredible.

I mean, to just be standing beneath it is unbelievable.

It's a pretty massive structure.

The reflector-- the mirror for the radio waves--

That reflector is 2.3 acres in size.

A football stadium would fit inside of that.

So how do you get to the top, Mike?Well, see that little white box?

Yeah.That's actually a manlift.

Not a big elevator.Right.

Whoo!

It's a little disorienting.

It's crazy.

It's pretty massive when you're able to get some scale to it.

This is the receiver, essentially, right?

Yeah, this is the mirror of the radio telescope.

What does a radio telescope allow you to gather that an optical telescope doesn't?

Radio waves can get through

the space between the stars very, very readily.

That signal could be emitted and would cut right through

all the stuff between the stars and arrive here at the telescope.

So at a hundred meters in diamete

this telescope could detect technology

if it existed around another star, on another planet,

all the way across the galaxy.

And so you're looking for

a tiny blip of communication over the range of a trillion stars.

Yeah, that's right.Basically, we're in the movie Contact.

Yeah, that's exactly right.Pretty much, right?

This is like Contact times a thousand, or like--

It's a needle in a haystack. Absolutely.Right. Right.

I don't think anybody's necessarily expecting long-fingered, big-eyed,

translucent-skinned creatures to come walking down the street,

but what are your thoughts about what's out there?

I wouldn't do this if I weren't an optimist.Right.

So I think that they are out there.

The universe is so vast, so unbelievably big.

For us to be the only intelligent civilization

in that entire vastness would--

to me, is a statistic improbability.

I absolutely believe that there's intelligent life out there.

The magnitude of what this telescope can do is staggering,

and it holds the potential to find real evidence

of the existence of aliens.

So, are we firing the telescope up?

We are. We're going to see if we can make a discovery.

Amazing.

I'm on a mission to find evidence of aliens.

So far, I've met with Kyle Bond who,

despite failing a polygraph test,

maintains he's been abducted by aliens for years.

And Kyle is not alone in his belief that there is life out there.

The scientists running the Green Bank Telescope here in West Virginia

are using the largest radio telescope in the world

to search the skies for signs of intelligent life in space.

If we were to make a detection, it would be the most important

scientific discovery in the history of science.

Mm-hmm. And how close do you think you've come?

So, about three years ago, a very mysterious radio source was detected

called FRB 121102.

FRB stands for "fast radio burst."

A very, very bright burst of radiation

that lasts only a few milliseconds, and it only happens once.

Well, that was the story until FRB 121102

was observed to repeat.

It was the first, and still the only,

repeating fast radio burst.

It's actually from a little, tiny galaxy

about three billion light years away from us.

Three billion light years away.

If you calculate how much energy

must be released by the source--

if it's emitting in all directions,

and we're just eavesdropping on it--

it's as much energy as the sun emits

in an entire year in less than a millisecond.

And you can listen to it if you want to.

Uh, yeah.

No one knows what causes any of that.

It's a complete mystery.

What could it be? Like, what--

It could be... natural?Yeah.

Well, maybe it's a neutron star.

And these sources are known to produce radio bursts.

But nothing like this.

Another explanation is that maybe this is not natural,

but is instead some kind of an artificial transmitter.

Perhaps there is a very advanced civilization

that is producing these radio pulses

for the purposes of propelling spacecraft into intergalactic space

at very, very high velocities.

I can't wrap my mind around it fully, if I'm being honest.

My mind is literally melting today.

There are many questions about this source,

but one of the key outstanding questions is,

is does it produce pulses at higher radio frequencies?

How high do they go?Uh-huh.

If we can learn how high in radio frequency they go,

that might help us to understand what, ultimately, is causing the pulses in the first place.

So, tonight, what we're going to do, is we're gonna try

to look at this source at even higher radio frequencies.

This is a brand-new part of the radio spectrum.

We've never observed it here before.

Once everything is set up and this source rises,

we're gonna see if we can make a discovery.Amazing.

We are looking in the far reaches of our galaxy and beyond

to see if we're able to make some kind of contact

with life-forms outside of our own planet, solar system, galaxy.

Who knows?

We may actually be able

to find new evidence.

So, Dave, do you wanna go ahead and run auto peak focus?

Uh, sure.Where are those guys?

That's our lab in Berkeley.Hi, guys.

Are we ready to launch? Good to go.

The telescope is ready to begin the data collection.

Would you like to launch these observations?Let me launch them.

All right.So I just click?

Just drag and click the "submit" button.

Done.

After they scan all possible signals coming from that source,

it will take some time before we know for sure

what the higher frequency search discovers.

While SETI is still on a quest

for proof of intelligent life beyond our solar system,

some people believe the proof is already here.

Kyle Bond was left with cuts from his encounter.

But others were left with even more tangible evidence.

I'm Zach.Hi. I'm Steve.

How are you doing?Nice to meet you.

Fifty-seven-year-old Steven Colbern

has vivid memories of being abducted.

You can tell sometimes if you've had an experience.

Sometimes you have fondest memories, sometimes you don't.

But it's not just the details of his story that I'm interested in.

It's what was left behind.

It was the night of February 28, 2008.

Went to bed, and when I woke up,

there was a little bit of blood on the sheets,

and I had a stinging pain in my left second toe.

And I checked it and found two puncture wounds,

as if a needle had been passed through the underside of the toe.

I found two bright green fluorescent spots

at the same sites as the puncture wounds.

Ordered an X-ray of the toe.

I knew I was gonna see something on the X-ray,

but when I did, that changed my life forever.

Found an implant.

The implant itself was about a millimeter in diameter

and about four millimeters long.

As shocking as his story may seem,

Steven is part of a growing number of Americans

who have discovered mysterious implants in their bodies.

And today, Steven has brought the evidence with him.

Here's a chunk of the sample in a vial.

I actually had it removed and analyzed.

Huh. Wow.I did most of the analysis myself.

You have a background in science?Yeah. I'm a chemist.

Wow. So what else did you discover about the implant itself?

I did a pretty thorough protocol of analysis on it

with light microscopy,

scanning electron microscopy, and trace element analysis.

The trace elements indicated that it was a meteoric iron.

There's a lot of cobalt and copper, and gallium, germanium.

That's characteristic of meteorites.

So it's not iron that you would find

naturally occurring on our planet. No, no.

It might not even be from this solar system.

So what do you feel like they're after?

I think it was a device that was put in to do physiological monitoring.

The shiny coating-- presumably, that contains chemicals

that allow the nerve cells to grow into the device.

So, ultimately, the goal is to have this device fused

in some way with your body.Yeah, and it's fused with the nervous system,

so it can gather information somehow.

There were a lot of strange structures-- bone or wire-looking things.

Might have something to do with transmitting radio waves.

And is there more proof like this out there?Yeah, I think there is.

It's easy to be in denial up until something like this happens,

with physical evidence.

Would you be willing to let our team

analyze this forensically

and get a better sense of where it came from?

Yeah. I think that it would potentially confirm that this is extraterrestrial.

Steve is a scientist, so the idea that I'm talking to an experiencer

who's also a scientist is a really interesting combination.

And he has this material

that, from his scientific perspective,

contain elements that don't occur readily on Earth.

It's weird, 'cause I never really thought that I'd be like,

"Maybe there's aliens here," you know?

But I'm like, "Maybe there's aliens here."

To hold something in your hand that is a physical piece of evidence

that's tied to all of this is remarkable.

Let's get this tested and see what it is.

As I continue on my search,

all of these unrelated alien encounters become even more intriguing.

But I'm still looking for tangible proof that aliens exist.

Like the implant from Steven Colbern.

Is there a way to know for sure it didn't come from Earth?

Hi, Dr. Kumar. How are you?

I'm setting up an independent laboratory test

to verify the origins of the mysterious object

Steven dislodged from his toe.

Would you be able to identify alien materials

if they're not known to this Earth?

Uh-huh.

Have you ever tested something that you couldn't identify or trace to the periodic table?

Yeah. Okay. That's good to know.

Well, the man's name is Steven Colbern,

and I'm gonna send him to you for an analysis.

If Dr. Kumar finds that the materials in the implant are not from Earth,

then it will be a lot harder to explain how that object ended up in Steven's body.

It's a very complex nanodevice that came out of my toe in 2008,

and I hope that we can find some more unexpected things today.

Hi, Steve. Arun Kumar.How are you?

Thanks for coming in.Yeah.

So you have brought a sample for analysis?

Yeah. It should be an interesting sample.

Initially, we look at the samples in the optical microscope,

under magnification, to look at the color, shape, size.

We should examine that structure pretty closely.

Zoom in.

And then we go to the electron microscope.

Sample goes on a stage, and then we turn the electron beam on.

She can magnify it up to 30, 40, 50 thousand times.

What does that look like to you? You ever seen anything like that before?

At the moment, I can't tell, because we need to do the chemistry on that.

As a scientist, I'm always curious to know material composition

and the source where it may have come from,

no matter what the source might be.

From the analysis we have done today,

it shows that the base material is iron,

containing some nickel in it.Right.

Which is the alloy steel.

The trace element pattern indicated that it was

a nickel-iron meteorite.

Meteorite do contain iron and nickel.

Yeah.That is correct.

There's a big variety of materials there.

On the surface, it has small trace amounts of

calcium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, and sulfur.

But most of the material that we see here is found in soils.

A lot of soil contains these kind of oxides,

which most probably is from surface contamination of that material.

This was never exposed to soil though.

It came directly out of my body and was put in blood plasma,

and then was put directly into these containers.

What I'm showing is elements which are typical in soil.

Yeah, it's typical in soil. That's true.

Other than that, I don't see any unusual element

that we haven't identified on the surface.

The results of the analysis were completely unexpected.

I disagree that the material was contamination.

I took the pieces directly out of my body,

put them on a piece of gauze, then put them directly from there into a vial.

And it was giving off fairly powerful radio signals before removal.

There's just no way it could be giving off radio signals

unless it was a lot more sophisticated than just a piece of metal.

Well, no. I mean, it's highly unlikely I stepped on a meteorite.

That's pretty difficult to explain. We need more data.

I'd like to get, like, a hundred of these objects

and prove to the world that they are devices,

and that this phenomenon is real.

Despite inconclusive results,

why do Steven and other experiencers like Kyle

remain convinced that their alien encounters are real?

There has to be something so visceral about these experiences

that they cannot be denied.

Meeting with alien experiencers and scientists alike,

I'm on a search for evidence that aliens really exist.

If they are out there, how do we find them?

Doug. How are you?Hey, Zach.

While many are waiting to receive a signal from life beyond Earth,

Doug Vakoch, and his organization, METI,

have a very different strategy.

What if the aliens are not assuming

that they're the ones who have to take contact?Right.

What if their motivation is to say, "We wanna hear"?Right.

So we're shifting the direction

and sending powerful intentional radio signals to other stars.

The hope is we get a reply back.

So, Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

How do you go about identifying where to put the signal?

So the first transmission we sent was to a star 12.4 light years from Earth.

It's called Luyten's Star.

It was the closest star that we could target

that has potentially habitable exoplanets.

When did that signal go out?

It went out in October, 2017.

It's 12.4 light years from here.

That means it'll take over 12 years for our message to get there.

And if they want to reply, we won't hear from them till 2043.

Right. Okay. So, how did you tell them that?

So, we wanted to make an all-purpose message,

so no matter how the alien encounters the world,

they'll be able to make sense of it.

Using radio signals,

METI has sent a message into space

to convey information about counting and telling time.

What we're telling the aliens, by sending signals,

is that not only are we interested in number,

but we're interested in creating something beautiful.

So we are turning the radio transmitter

to communicate melodies.Huh.

So this is one of the scales that we're sending to Luyten's Star.

You imagine what communication

with an alien race might sound like,

and that's a melody that seems to fit with it.

There's an alien quality to it, you know?And, interestingly,

it reflects the melody of our earliest music here on Earth.

So maybe without all of the trappings and all of the elaborations,

but music at its essence.

Doug has the context of how we will be able to communicate with extraterrestrials.

That's what we need, because that's a foundation that can be built upon

until we have some concrete tangible and sharable proof.

So you're sending this signal out.

Is there any controversy around this work?

I mean, I heard rumblings of people who feel like,

you know, you're kind of poking the beast.

We don't know what the extraterrestrials are like.

And some people are afraid that this could lead to an alien invasion.

Other people think it's going to be a salvation.

We're finally going to get solutions to all of our problems.

I don't expect either of those.Mm-hmm.

My hope is that if we can really encounter an alien intelligence,

there's probably going to be something unthinkable that we discover.

Who knows what Doug might find

in his quest to contact alien life,

or what message may come back.

Still, I can't help but wonder about the worst-case scenario.

And many of the brightest minds of our time,

including Stephen Hawking, have expressed serious concern

about the risks of making first contact.

METI is Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

And many of us involved in SETI are quite angry about this,

because there might be dangers.

If you look at the history of first contacts

between human civilizations,

this is a dangerous phase

when life meets life

and civilization meets civilization.

We may be the less technologically advanced civilization,

and we should exercise some caution.

There are many explanations

for why we seem,

until now, to be alone.

Now, the question is whether or not

we should be deliberately screaming

into a universe that's surprisingly quiet.

Maybe too quiet.

While experts debate the risks involved

in attempting to contact alien life-forms,

there are so many people around the world who believe

that contact has already occurred.

People like Kyle Bond and Steven Coburn.

Despite inconclusive test results,

their experiences are so detailed and physical

that they still believe.

But unless I actually feel what they felt,

I'll never really know why their beliefs are so strong.

So I'm meeting with someone who has a way to show me

what it might feel like to be abducted by aliens.

Thirty-eight-year-old April Malloy

has had over 20 encounters.

Hi. Hi, I'm April.I'm Zach.

It's great to meet you.Nice to meet you.

And she's convinced that if others

can feel what she's felt,

they would have to believe that aliens are out there.

Why don't we start with the first experience you had that you can remember?

How long ago was it?I was a young child, actually,

seeing something outside.

And how long between then and your next experience?

A couple years back,

the physical evidence started to show up.

Puncture marks in the abdomen.

Finding weird, abnormal things in my body.

Wow. So you discovered that there were actually foreign objects in your body.

Yes, through X-rays.

At that point, it became very real. Wow.

I'm really interested in what you go through, physically,

as you have one of these encounters.

It always begins-- you're sleepy in bed,

you're exhausted, you're tired.

And then you feel something really cold.

And then you feel yourself--

You're starting to drift up.

It's like you're levitating. All the atoms, or particles in your body,

somehow disperse, and you're physically going

through some type of vortex, through the roof somehow.

It's unexplainable. And then you see a bright light.

Wow. Do you have a sense of fear?

In the beginning, I did.Uh-huh.

I was very fearful. But now,

I'm gonna look at the positive aspects

of levitating and feeling calm.

It's one thing to describe these experiences,

but it's another to actually live through them.

April, and so many others, have reported the same physical sensations--

levitating, bright lights, a sense of weightlessness--

that make them absolutely certain that what they felt is real.

I know it's happening around the world.

And if it happens to me and it happens to a thousand other people,

then maybe sometimes be brave enough to talk about it.

When it happens, it's like transcending into another realm.

That's what I hope for you to be able to experience.

And now, April has asked me to participate in an experiment

mirroring the conditions of her abduction

so that I can personally feel the physical sensations

she and so many like her have experienced.

I'll be strapping into a harness, blindfolded, and lifted

to recreate what it's like to be taken.

I'm trying to understand

why thousands of people around the world believe so strongly

that they've been contacted by aliens.

What is the physical experience people go through

that makes them so certain aliens are here?

When it happens, sometimes it's like transcending into another realm.

And that's what I hope for you to be able to experience.

April Malloy has set up an experiment

to help me understand the profound physical nature of her abductions.

I'll be floating weightlessly, and strapping into a harness

that will slowly lift me into the air

to help me feel some of the physical sensations

April says she experiences

when she levitates out of her bed, into some other dimension.

All right.Thank you.

All right.

As you're laying there, you're floating off into deep sleep.

You're slowly beginning, inch by inch,

hovering very calmly, very quietly.

Inch by inch, you're going up.

And now you're floating up to the ceiling.

And your body just disappears in the air, through the roof.

And there's a bright light that greets you.

I've been lifted on wires before,

but never like this.

It gave me a better understanding

of what these people claim to go through.

The instinct, at first, is to be afraid,

and then to realize that you have no control.

It's an exercise of really surrendering to the experience.

The science of this is one exploration,

and the experience of this is another exploration.

And there are an infinite number of reasons

for someone feeling like they've had

an experience that could be classified as an extraterrestrial encounter.

I do really want to believe what April is saying.

Are aliens out there? I don't know.

But I'm certainly closer to believing than I was when I started.

Back when I was working with SETI,

we launched a test with the largest

fully steerable radio telescope in the world,

trying to capture a recording of a mysterious burst

that scientists believe could be alien technology in space,

and the proof we've all been hoping for.

Now, at SETI headquarters in California,

I'm reconnecting with the director of the program, Dr. Andrew Siemion,

to see what the telescope has found.

Andrew. Zach.

Now, the question is, did you find anything?

So, we've run the first stage of our analysis.

We detected about 380 pulses.

But, unfortunately, all of these look to be from our own technology

rather than from any distant astronomical source.

Mm.

And this is the main problem that we face

when we're trying to look for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence.

Our own technology produces signals that look exactly like this.

So, we found some things, but, unfortunately--

Not what we were--...not the things that we were looking for.

There's no conclusive proof on either side,

but the interesting thing is what you all are in pursuit of,

which is knowledge--

tangible, discernible knowledge.

I think I've had the same transformative experience

that all of us have when we look up at the night sky,

and we imagine what's out there.

Here, in this lab, we conceptualize that question

through the lens of science.

Other people conceptualize that question differently.

Like everybody else that works in this field,

I hope for the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence.

I think that would be an amazing discovery.

I think the more that we do it, the better the chances

of making that dream-- dream discovered.

Science is far from conclusive.

The search for life on other planets is propelled by optimism,

but met mostly with silence and darkness.

In all the time humans have lived on this planet,

we've yet to identify empirical proof of life elsewhere.

Whether you believe aliens have been here before and left their mark

or are still light years away,

thanks to technology,

the probability of us being alone

gets smaller every day.