Original subtitles

NARRATOR: A massive object of unknown origin

soars by the Earth.

ARI LOEB: It was moving faster

than all chemical rockets

produced in human history.

NARRATOR: A shooting star explodes over Mexico,

mysteriously altering the environment of an entire region.

TRAVIS TAYLOR: This area is completely devoid

of electromagnetic signals.

Your cell phone won’t work.

You won’t pick up satellite signals like GPS.

It’s a really odd place.

NARRATOR: And a meteorite that is believed

to be carrying unexpected cargo.

GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: This object may contain

some type of extraterrestrial technology

that points towards intelligence.

NARRATOR: Is it possible that certain objects in outer space

are not simply wonders of nature

but could contain alien technology

that is being deliberately sent to Earth?

WILLIAM HENRY: If you’re trying to think of a way

for an extraterrestrial civilization

to stimulate the evolution of a species,

you couldn’t think of a better way to do it

than through a meteorite.

NARRATOR: There is a doorway

in the universe.

Beyond it is the promise of truth.

It demands we question everything

we have ever been taught.

The evidence is all around us.

The future is right before our eyes.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

In the high-country desert,

just 35 miles southeast of the city of Flagstaff,

lies the Barringer Crater,

one of the largest and best-preserved impact craters

in North America.

DAVID CHILDRESS: The Barringer Crater is out in the desert.

You’re driving south on this small road

and then, suddenly, you see the crater rim.

And there’s a building there.

You take an elevator up to the top of the rim

and you’re looking down at this amazing crater.

It’s like you’re looking at something

that’s on another planet.

NARRATOR: According to scientists,

the Barringer Crater was formed roughly 50,000 years ago

when a massive asteroid measuring 150 feet in diameter

and weighing an incredible 300,000 tons

slammed into the Earth’s surface.

The resulting explosion was 150 times more powerful

than the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

However, it is only one of many examples

of how asteroid impacts

have caused massive devastation on Earth

and also shaped the world that we live in today.

MICHIO KAKU: Asteroids hitting the planet Earth

affect everything.

They’ve changed the climate.

They’ve created tremendous disasters on the planet.

The most famous taking place 66 million years ago,

when an object about six miles across

plowed into the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico...

...wiping out the dinosaurs.

(groaning)

LOEB: It created a whole new landscape on Earth,

and it allowed, perhaps, for...

creatures like ourselves to exist.

So, definitely,

rocks colliding with Earth had a huge impact

on the evolution of life on Earth.

NARRATOR: While a major life-altering asteroid impact

isn’t known to have occurred on Earth for thousands of years,

smaller fragments known as meteors

penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere on a regular basis.

TAYLOR: Statistically, we get hit by meteors all the time.

You can go out any night

and you can see shooting stars or falling stars,

which are objects outside of the Earth

entering the atmosphere and burning up.

Some of ’em actually make it to the ground.

KAKU: We sometimes forget that the world we see around us

originally came from outer space.

When you look at the history of the Earth,

4.6 billion years ago,

back then there was basically rubble.

Rubble, gas, particles circulating around the Sun,

and gravity began to coalesce much of this material,

which eventually became the planet Earth.

The Earth was molten for many billion years.

The elements like the platinum-based materials

and uranium tend to be heavy.

Much of the heavy metals drifted toward the center of the Earth

when the Earth was formed.

NARRATOR: But as the Earth’s surface cooled and solidified,

an extended period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment ensued,

wherein billions of comets,

asteroids and meteors made impact,

seeding our young planet with numerous resources,

including water and precious metals.

JOEL SERCEL: During that bombardment phase,

smaller impacts would hit the crust and be trapped.

So, many of the precious metals

that we really value on the Earth

actually came from the asteroids.

NARRATOR: Were it not for the metals that arrived on Earth from space

during its formation,

the development

of a technologically advanced human civilization

would not have been possible.

These asteroids and meteors,

they also contain not just ordinary chemicals

like carbon and iron

but also materials that are strong,

conduct electricity--

things like platinum.

Platinum that is used in the electronics industry.

HENRY: Meteorites are providing materials like iridium,

quasi-nanocrystals that are ultimately used

in our technology,

and also gold.

The meteorites bring the surface gold.

A lot of, particularly, the rare metals

that are critical in things like cell phone technologies

and other electronic devices

are often as likely to be here only because of meteor impacts

and that material coming from elsewhere in space

rather than having formed naturally

in just the Earth’s crust as part of its evolution.

NARRATOR: Although the evidence that cosmic impacts

have been critical to sustaining life on Earth is profound,

incredibly, scientists have recently discovered new evidence

that meteors may have seeded the Earth...

with DNA.

Researchers at Hokkaido University

make an extraordinary announcement.

After analyzing three meteorites

that were formed 4.6 billion years ago

at the very dawn of the solar system,

they discover that each object

contains all four components of DNA,

the central building block of life.

Could some of the origins of life come from space?

One idea you could imagine is,

an asteroid broke off from a planet

that had the right chemicals for life.

It traveled through space,

entered the Earth’s atmosphere as a meteorite,

and then those chemicals interact

with the chemistry of the Earth.

And perhaps that was the starting point

for life as we know it here.

NARRATOR: For decades,

mainstream scientists have studied the hypothesis

that life on Earth may have evolved

from a so-called primordial soup...

...meaning that organic compounds

formed into living cells in the planet’s primitive oceans.

TSOUKALOS: It’s still a question how life

originated on Earth.

And oftentimes you’re told

that this all happened due to a primordial soup.

But there needed to be certain ingredients,

and astronomers are now saying that the secret ingredients

were brought here through meteor impacts.

NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists,

the possibility that meteors carried

the building blocks for human life on Earth

raises an intriguing question.

Could it be that these ancient meteor impacts

did not happen by chance

but by design?

TSOUKALOS: Bioastronomers have coined a concept called panspermia.

Panspermia essentially means seeding...

"Pan" means "everything," "sperm" is "seeding."

So, "the-the seeding of everything."

Now, often meteor impacts are considered to be random.

But if you say "directed panspermia,"

that means that extraterrestrial intelligences

deliberately sent the building blocks of life

somewhere that they knew was going to be habitable.

Is it possible that meteors were sent to Earth deliberately

because extraterrestrials knew

that Earth can host life?

NARRATOR: Could it be that certain meteor strikes in Earth’s history

did not happen by chance

but were, in fact, directed here

by an extraterrestrial intelligence?

Perhaps further clues can be found

by examining ancient cultures

that believe meteorites possess an otherworldly connection.

AMIR HUSSAIN: Muslims believe that this stone

was sent down by God to Earth.

HENRY: They believe that, through meteorites, they can talk

with the gods.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

At the center of Islam’s holiest city stands the Grand Mosque,

the largest house of Islamic worship on Earth.

It is also the final destination of the hajj pilgrimage,

which every Muslim is required to complete once in their life

if they are physically able.

In the mosque’s central courtyard

stands an ancient structure called the Kaaba, or Cube.

And embedded in one corner of the Kaaba

is the most sacred object in Islam,

the Black Stone,

a mysterious rock that is believed

to have come from the heavens.

For the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims,

this stone is crucial.

When Muslims face, they face in the direction of Mecca.

They face in the direction of that stone.

The Black Stone of the Kaaba in Mecca

is some kind of fragment

that is held together by a silver band,

and the object is actually said to have fallen from heaven

and that is said to have landed in paradise,

where it was picked up by Adam and Eve.

HUSSAIN: The first human being, Adam,

in Islamic tradition, builds the first temple

out of this stone,

the first place to worship God.

(thunder rumbling)

Then the story is that that stone gets lost during the flood

and is then rediscovered by Abraham.

So Abraham, with his son Ishmael,

build in Mecca the first place of prayer.

That’s why Mecca is important to Muslims.

What survives of that original building

going back thousands of years earlier

is this black stone in the eastern corner of the Kaaba.

If we’re scientific, we may call that a meteorite.

JONATHAN YOUNG: If we take the scripture seriously,

this story tells us this stone

was the communication between the two dimensions

from the heaven to the Earth for Adam and Eve.

This was the first altar to communicate

with the celestial realm.

NARRATOR: The Black Stone of Mecca

is arguably the world’s most venerated meteorite,

but it is hardly alone.

Many other ancient cultures believe meteorites

and impact sites have a connection to a higher realm.

In Roman times, a very, uh, prominent meteorite

was found in Syria and was worshipped.

It was referred to as Helio Elagabalus,

which literally means "the Sun touching down to the Earth."

In Delphi, a meteorite was associated with Apollo

at his temple in Delphi.

So this is a constant theme that we have in the ancient world,

tying physical objects to the gods,

to the skies, to the heavens.

NARRATOR: Historians of religion agree

that people have venerated meteorites

and impact sites throughout history.

The question is why.

HENRY: Something that we find repeated over and over again

in these crater impact sites is that

they believe that, through these meteorites,

they can talk with the gods

and the gods can actually see them as well.

So the meteorite then becomes a way of connecting

with the divine beings.

NARRATOR: Is it possible

that numerous ancient cultures around the world

simply passed down similar mythological stories

that meteorites and earthly impact sites could allow them

to communicate with higher beings?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest

that these otherworldly encounters

may have actually happened.

And for further evidence,

they point to one of the most mysterious

and sacred sites in North America.

Sprawling across a large clearing

that divides a wooded landscape

sets a 1,370-foot-long monument in the shape of a coiling snake.

It is known as the Great Serpent Mound.

According to historians,

an Indigenous Native American culture called the Adena

built the mound in 320 BC.

And, curiously, it is positioned right on the edge

of an enormous crater.

HUGH NEWMAN: It actually sits

right on a 300 million-year-old meteor impact crater

which was so powerful that it even went down

to the mantle inside the Earth.

And this has created all sorts of gravitational

and magnetic anomalies in the area.

And it’s thought that the reason

the Adena people who built this site chose it

is because it has these kind of energetic,

almost spiritual qualities associated with it.

One of the great mysteries of Serpent Mound

is that this meteorite creates this impact site,

this impact crater, 250 million years ago.

Then, suddenly, 3,000 years ago,

the Adena people come along

and they’re somehow able to identify its significance

and they build an effigy,

and it becomes this very powerful place of reverence

for the Adena people for the next 2,000 years or so.

When you look at the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio,

you have to wonder if there was some energy there

that they were feeling.

And so they built the Serpent Mound there

as a testament to the extraterrestrial connection,

perhaps, that’s with this crater.

NEWMAN: Serpent Mound has long been talked about

as being, like, an otherworldly connection point.

And in traditions that go way, way back,

there’s talk of the star people.

They’re described in certain ways in myths,

which, in modern terms, we would see

as, like, UFOs landing

and interacting with these extraterrestrial beings.

So, is Serpent Mound part of this ancient tradition?

NARRATOR: As unique as the Great Serpent Mound is

against its forested landscape,

it is not the only asteroid impact site on Earth

where ancient cultures believed

there was an extraterrestrial connection.

HENRY: In Australia, we find an extraordinarily mysterious site,

the Wolfe Creek Crater.

The Indigenous people call it Kandimalal,

"the star that fell from the sky."

It’s a impact crater site that’s 3,000 feet in diameter.

But even more interesting than that

is the Indigenous legend that is attached to it.

They talk about two serpents that emerged from the dreamtime

and created this crater.

It suggests once again that these Indigenous cultures

were in contact with otherworldly beings

that either are connected with the crater, the impact site,

or somehow emerged from it.

NARRATOR: Did our ancestors bear witness to the proof

that asteroids and meteors could connect man

with otherworldly beings?

Perhaps further clues can be found by examining

two mysterious objects that have recently been detected

in outer space,

which some scientists believe

may be controlled by extraterrestrials.

KAREN MEECH: We have never seen an object like this ever.

This was really exciting.

TAYLOR: It came into our solar system,

went around the Sun and flew by Earth as if

it was a probe looking at us.

NARRATOR: The island of Maui.

Here, atop a dramatic 10,000-foot summit,

stands the Haleakala Observatory.

On October 19, 2017,

astronomers detect a mysterious object

traveling through our solar system.

It is unlike anything that has been seen before.

I was in charge of coordinating the observing

to characterize the object.

There were four images taken that showed

an object moving rapidly with respect to the stars.

The stars are individual dots of light,

and this object was a streak.

So they knew it was moving fast.

At that point, they started to compute an orbit

to try and understand what this object was.

Everything in the solar system’s either on a circular

or an elliptical orbit.

But once more data came in,

it was very clear that the orbit was hyperbolic,

meaning something coming from outside the solar system.

We have never seen an object on an orbit like this ever before.

And it’s an irregularly shaped object that’s about 800 meters,

or half a kilometer, in length.

This was really exciting.

NARRATOR: The landmark discovery is the first time an object

is officially recognized as interstellar.

To signify the importance of the finding,

the astronomers give it a fitting name.

MEECH: In honor of this object being discovered

by a telescope in Hawaii,

the team came up with the name Oumuamua,

which means "voyager from the distant past

reaching out to us."

NARRATOR: Astronomers were not only mystified

by where Oumuamua came from

but also by its strange oblong shape,

which was like no asteroid ever detected.

The interstellar object

moved steadily through the solar system,

and astronomers were taken by surprise once again

when, after passing by the Sun,

it appeared to accelerate.

MEECH: Oumuamua was moving rapidly away from the Sun.

When it made its closest pass to the Sun,

uh, inside the orbit of Mercury,

it was moving very fast--

a little more than 195,000 miles per hour.

So this is moving rapidly out of the solar system.

NARRATOR: To Harvard astronomer Dr. Avi Loeb,

the unusual behavior

indicated that the object wasn’t an asteroid or a comet.

Instead, he proposed an extraordinary hypothesis--

Oumuamua was an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Oumuamua was definitely an outlier.

And the question is, why would the first interstellar meteor

be so unusual?

There was a question as to what pushed Oumuamua away

from the Sun,

and my thought was,

that raises the possibility that it may have been

a spacecraft propelled artificially.

TAYLOR: Oumuamua could possibly have been a probe coming into

our solar system, the same way we send probes to Jupiter.

It came into our solar system, went around the Sun,

and flew by Earth as if, uh, it was a probe looking at us.

NARRATOR: Intrigued by the possibility that Oumuamua

might actually be a probe sent to our solar system

by an extraterrestrial civilization,

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb began searching for evidence

of other celestial objects moving in a similar fashion.

I came across a meteor catalog that the government

compiled using its missile warning system.

It’s called CNEOS,

and I asked my student to check if any

of those meteors came from outside the solar system.

He found that one of them was actually moving at

60 kilometers per second, clearly unbound to the Sun.

NARRATOR: Astronomers determined that this object, like Oumuamua,

did, in fact, originate outside the solar system.

This new discovery was first observed

by military satellites in January 2014,

three years before Oumuamua was identified.

But, unlike Oumuamua, this object did not pass

by the planet but actually entered

Earth’s atmosphere and exploded over the Pacific Ocean.

LOEB: The meteor burned up

about 100 miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea,

and it released a few percent of the energy

of the Hiroshima bomb when it exploded.

From that, we inferred it was about half a meter

in size when it exploded.

NARRATOR: Excited by the discovery, Dr. Loeb closely examined

the data captured by the military satellites,

and he noticed something extraordinary.

LOEB: The government released data

of the explosion, and from that we inferred

that the object must have been tougher than iron.

So, not only was this object

the first interstellar meteor but it was also tougher

than all other meteors detected

by the government in that catalog.

And that raises the possibility that it may

have been a spacecraft propelled artificially

and made of some alloy that is much tougher

than iron meteorites.

To find out, we need to find the material.

If we do end up concluding that it was artificial

in origin, perhaps a spacecraft,

that would have huge implications

for the future of humanity.

KAKU: Some people are saying this object

came from outside the solar system.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s a techno-signature

of intelligent life.

And that has created a sensation

because this is a new branch of science.

We’re not just looking at asteroids anymore.

We’re looking for remnants of intelligence.

HENRY: When you consider the vastness of space and just how tiny

our planet is-- it’s literally a tiny speck

within the Milky Way galaxy-- and then you factor in

direct hits by meteorites

that came from beyond our solar system,

you have to wonder, are these meteorites

somehow intelligently directed?

NARRATOR: Is it possible that the meteor

that exploded near Papua New Guinea in 2014

was carrying extraterrestrial technology?

If so, could an advanced civilization

be sending such objects to Earth deliberately?

Ancient astronaut theorists suggest,

further clues can be found

at an impact crater in northern Mexico

that some believe functions as a beacon for UFOs.

This area is completely devoid of electromagnetic signals.

Your cell phone won’t work, you won’t pick up GPS.

People see UFOs and mysterious lights.

NARRATOR: The U.S. Air Force launches

an Athena V-123-D missile

from the Green River Test Site.

The rocket is programmed to land 700 miles away

at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

But the missile veers hundreds of miles off course...

...and crashes in the remote Mapimí desert

in northern Mexico.

When workers arrive to clean up the crash site,

they notice something very unusual.

During the cleanup process it was noted that

radio communications didn’t work well,

compasses didn’t work right.

This area is completely devoid of electromagnetic signals.

Meaning your cell phone won’t work,

you won’t pick up satellite signals like GPS.

It’s a really odd place.

NARRATOR: The area quickly earned the nickname

La Zona del Silencio,

or the "Zone of Silence."

COLLINS: The Zone of Silence has become notorious,

um, in the last 50-odd years

through the fact that many mysterious events have occurred.

And the origins of this location

seem to be of a cosmic nature.

NARRATOR: The Athena rocket was just the latest object to fall

from the heavens and land in the Mapimí desert.

Prior to the crash, the Zone of Silence

had been bombarded by more meteor strikes

than any other spot on Earth.

The Zona del Silencio

was well-known for the numerous meteorite impacts,

over and over, over thousands of years hitting that one spot.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the most intriguing impact

occurred in February 1969.

BIRNES: The year before the Athena rocket,

there was a meteor crash in that Zone of Silence.

It was the Allende meteor.

And what that meteor brought to this planet

was the element curium.

We know what curium is,

and it doesn’t occur naturally on this planet.

TAYLOR: Now, curium is a material that we create

in nuclear reactors or in nuclear explosions or

it’s created inside the nuclear fire of the Sun.

So it doesn’t just occur randomly anywhere

and it’s not a decay product.

It has to be created.

So the question arose then,

was this meteor that impacted in Mexico

created in a reactor by some advanced civilization?

NARRATOR: Created in a reactor by an advanced civilization?

Is it possible that the Allende meteorite,

and perhaps others that struck the area before it,

contained extraterrestrial technology?

And if so, how did it get here?

Some researchers believe it was sent deliberately.

And as evidence they point to numerous UFOs

that have been reported in the area.

There’s no question that the Zone of Silence

is a very mysterious area.

In the last 50-odd years,

many mysterious events have occurred.

People see UFOs,

mysterious lights,

and experience other types of paranormal activity.

In 2008, I was filming in the Zone of Silence,

and the locals in the town of Coyame

talked about how strange beings came up out of the ground.

Whether these beings were extraterrestrials,

whether these things were something else, we don’t know.

NARRATOR: Is it more than mere coincidence that in the Zone of Silence,

where a high number of meteor impacts have occurred

and strange electromagnetic anomalies have been recorded,

there have also been reports of UFOs and otherworldly entities?

Could it be, as researchers have argued,

that the impacts over and over in that area

have created a whole anomalous area?

And that the Zone of Silence is so magnetically

and electronically potent, that it’s somehow attracted the ETs?

And you might ask yourself, why?

Do they need the magnetic energy from that spot?

Maybe they are terraforming our planet

for their own purposes, and we don’t know why.

TSOUKALOS: The idea that, through meteor impacts,

one could influence the development

and the evolution of a planet

is feasible to me, and many astronomers

and bioastronomers are looking at these ideas

as actual concepts in reality.

And so, has this potentially happened on Earth?

And the answer to that is a resounding yes.

NARRATOR: Are meteorite impacts responsible

for the mysterious phenomena in the Zone of Silence?

And if so, might they be connected

to UFO activity in the area?

Some researchers believe that further clues can be found

in similar anomalies that occur 1,500 miles away

in a mysterious area known...

...as Skinwalker Ranch.

BIRNES: Skinwalker Ranch is one of the most

anomalous areas on this planet.

TAYLOR: There are strange magnetic field anomalies.

Is it possible that this is from some extraterrestrial origin?

NARRATOR: Uintah County, Utah.

Located in the northeastern part of the state

is a 512-acre property known as Skinwalker Ranch,

one of the most intensely studied paranormal hot spots

in the world.

Skinwalker Ranch is one of the most

anomalous areas on this planet.

Here’s what people have seen in that ranch:

strange creatures suddenly appearing out of nowhere,

UFOs, instruments don’t work.

The people around the ranch

set up observation posts to see what’s going on.

And they’re the ones that are recording

all kinds of strange creatures.

NARRATOR: Astrophysicist and aerospace engineer

Dr. Travis Taylor has spent nearly 20 years

working on high-tech programs

for the Department of Defense and NASA.

It is going nuts.

NARRATOR: In 2019, he joined

a research team investigating

the strange phenomena at Skinwalker Ranch.

It just jumped to 18.

We need to get out of here, guys.

Let’s get out of here.

NARRATOR: Since that time, Dr. Taylor has come to believe

that the mysterious events are connected

to the unique geology of the Uintah Basin

where Skinwalker Ranch is located.

The Uintah Basin appears to be the epicenter

of some really unusual phenomena, including

UAP sightings,

strange energy measurements,

strange electric and magnetic field anomalies,

and even other anomalies that look like

something out of a science-fiction movie.

What is that solid light?

It’s got a black dot in the center of it.

What?

NARRATOR: As part of the investigation,

Dr. Taylor and the research team

drilled core samples of the soil in the area

around Skinwalker Ranch.

And what they found was unexpected.

TAYLOR: We made an immense amount

of measurements and taken an immense amount of data,

and from all those measurements, what we’ve discovered is,

there seems to be an interesting mix of things

underneath the ground here at Skinwalker Ranch

that are the makeup elements that you would need to create

computers, spacecraft, and so on.

The geology looks like

an ancient impact crater.

And there was an impact here maybe 50 million years ago.

Is it possible that this different phenomena

that happen at Skinwalker Ranch is from

some extraterrestrial origin, uh, an ancient impact site,

an ancient crash site?

Skinwalker Ranch, it appears to be similar to Mexico

where there is a Zone of Silence

right where there’s odd phenomena being seen that

could be potentially a side effect of a meteor impact.

NARRATOR: Could it be that meteorites

are responsible for the phenomena

at Skinwalker Ranch and the Zone of Silence?

Dr. Taylor believes not only that this is possible

but that the same might be true for other areas

across the globe where electromagnetic anomalies

are present.

TAYLOR: There are other similar places around the world,

like near Roosevelt in Utah.

There’s places in Iraq where this, uh, occurs.

There’s places in Australia where compasses

and other electromagnetic phenomena occur.

Where we have, uh, communications

that don’t function properly,

sort of like radio silent regions.

And all these seem to be near meteor impact sites.

And people that are near those, they see UFOs,

they-they think they see entities and things like that--

maybe they do.

Is it the impactor that created some kind of strange phenomena?

Or it might be some other technology

that we don’t understand at play here.

Could these impact sites be directed crashes

from an ancient or an advanced extraterrestrial civilization,

and that’s why we see these strange phenomena?

HENRY: Another facet of these impact crater sites is the materials

and the energy that is left behind,

and you have to wonder, well,

what is the role of those materials,

and is it possible that they are responsible

for altering the planet for an unknown purpose?

NARRATOR: Could it be that extraterrestrials

are intentionally depositing exotic materials on Earth

through meteor impacts

as part of an ongoing mission to transform the planet

and direct the future of humanity?

Perhaps further clues will be revealed

by an audacious new mission

designed to retrieve a piece of a meteor

that might contain extraterrestrial technology.

NARRATOR: Theoretical physicist Dr. Avi Loeb

announces an ambitious new expedition.

Its goal is to recover fragments

of the interstellar meteor that exploded

over the Pacific Ocean in February 2014.

LOEB: This meteor was roughly half a meter in size,

bigger than a basketball, and it burned up

about 100 miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea.

The ocean is very deep.

It’s about a mile deep there,

but we plan to use a sled

equipped with a magnet that will attract the small fragments

and collect them, and we will go back and forth

across the region of interest, just like mowing the lawn,

for a couple of weeks, and we hope to find those fragments.

We hope, just like detectives,

to collect enough evidence that will tell

us the origins of this object.

NARRATOR: If the project is successful,

it will mark the first time

humanity has recovered material from another solar system.

LOEB: Whatever we find will have a big impact

on our understanding of interstellar objects.

NARRATOR: But what excited Dr. Loeb the most

about the meteor isn’t where it came from

but what it might contain.

LOEB: The reason that the meteor is interesting

is because the possibility that it may have been

a spacecraft propelled artificially

and made of some alloy that is much tougher

than iron meteorites.

If we do end up concluding that it was

artificial in origin, perhaps a spacecraft,

that would be the first time that we found evidence

for an object that originated

from another civilization.

NARRATOR: Could the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft

really be lying at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?

While it may be a sensational notion,

the possibility has excited researchers around the world.

KAKU: So, there’s talk that maybe we should try to capture

this material that plunged into the Pacific.

Because who knows?

Maybe it was sent here

by an alien civilization in outer space.

Now, the probability of that happening

is very small, let’s face it.

It’s a long shot.

But, hey, science is based on long shots.

You never know where the next discovery is being made.

And so I think it’s worthwhile to try to see

whether we can retrieve this object.

TSOUKALOS: This object may contain

some type of extraterrestrial technology

or some type of an extraterrestrial signature

that points towards intelligence.

If they can find this object and study it,

it could potentially be one of the greatest discoveries

in human history.

NARRATOR: According to ancient astronaut theorists,

the findings may help answer an essential question.

Have alien civilizations from across the galaxy

been sending materials to Earth for eons,

with the deliberate intention of developing our planet,

altering evolution, and setting us

on a path to our future?

TAYLOR: Perhaps, out of all these things that crash

into the Earth’s atmosphere, some percentage of them

could be of extraterrestrial origin.

And if we go and look at all these,

as many as we can find, perhaps we’ll find

that one needle in the haystack

that tells us this is a device, or was a device

before it impacted the Earth, that came from outside

of our solar system and from some advanced civilization.

TSOUKALOS: Maybe we’ll find new DNA

or we’ll find new building blocks for life,

life that we didn’t even know could even exist.

And what implications

does that have for us?

NARRATOR: Were meteors deliberately sent to Earth

to terraform the planet,

enabling the development of intelligent life

and a technologically advanced civilization?

And if so, are extraterrestrials

continuing to direct the evolution of both the planet

and humanity through meteor impacts today?

Perhaps the proof lies not in the skies above

but in plain sight here on Earth.

And it is there we must look for the undeniable evidence

of our connection to the cosmos.

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