Flying Objects: A State Secret | Full Movie

Transcript

(cow mooing) (clanking) (pensive music) - [Narrator] On December 16th, 2017, footage shot by the U.S. Navy spread panic among the American population. Until then classified as a

top secret defense matter, three videos of unidentified flying objects filmed by F-18s were made public. They would be authenticated by the Pentagon in April 2020. The first video dates from November 2004.

It was filmed by a patrol flying near the U.S. aircraft carrier, Nimitz. In the footage, a capsule-shaped object is performing maneuvers that defy the laws of physics. On that same day, the radars of the missile

cruiser, USS Princeton, confirmed the presence of several flying objects. An F-18 patrol was immediately dispatched to the spot and filmed one of what are commonly known as UFOs, but what experts prefer

to refer to as UAPs, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Around the same time, the serious and respected New York Times revealed the existence of a secret program. - [Anchor] Tonight, CNN has learned the Pentagon had a secretive program to research UFOs like the one Fravor spotted.

The project was called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program run by an official named Luis Elizondo. Tens of millions of dollars for the project were pushed through by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. - I was a leader of

the Senate at the time, and I went and talked to Senator Inouye from Hawaii, Senator Stevens from Alaska. They were the two leading members of Corporations Committee that determined where money would be spent for defense.

They also controlled what is called the dark money, the black money, that didn't show up any place. It was secretive, it was classified. And so, I asked them to

meet in a secure room in the United States Capitol. And I said, "Give a little bit of background." I said, "I want to spend some money trying figure out what the hell is this all about." - [Narrative] the U.S. media

leapt on these revelations. The disclosure of the existence of a secret program to study UFOs at a cost of $22 million was taken very seriously. Alain Juillet is the former head of intelligence for the French Secret Service Overseas.

(speaks in foreign language) - [Interpreter] The fact that it was a US Senator who insisted on this inquiry shows that there was a very real problem. And the American authorities decided, due to the senator's request, to carry out this inquiry. And it did so because there were a certain number of phenomena about which American pilots, along with some others, were asking very serious questions due to the images they had filmed or seen.

- [Narrator] In the States, the story hit the headlines, and David Fravor, one of the F-18 pilots flying during the Nimitz case, gave his account on CNN at peak viewing time. - Well, the first thing is it had no wings, so you think, "Okay, it's a helicopter." But there's no rotor wash in the water.

There's no rotors. This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way, and change directions at will. And then the ability to

hover over the water, and then start a vertical climb from basically zero up towards about 12,000 feet, and then accelerate in less than two seconds and disappear is something I had never seen in my life. I believe, as do the other folks that were on the flight, when we visually saw it, that it was something not from this world.

- [Narrator] For the experts, this eyewitness account was mind-blowing, and legitimized the film. Until then, the military had rarely given its opinion. a massive shift had just taken place in the United States.

- The United States military has said, okay, there's no need trying to keep all this secret. So pilots can report these phenomenon without fear of not being promoted. They can report these to their superiors. They couldn't do that before.

- [Narrator] But the Americans aren't the only ones to study this subject seriously. Across the globe, a number of countries have established organizations or programs to carry out research into UAP. In France, the SIGMA 2 commission examines the most credible incidents like the Nimitz case.

- [Interpreter] So we tried to reconstruct what had been observed during the Naval exercises carried out around the Nimitz, the Princeton, et cetera, between November 10th and 13th, 2004. A certain number of repeated detections were picked up by the radars between eight and 20 miles to the South of Catalina

Island off California at 80,000 feet and moving at about 100 knots. Now, 100 knots is extremely slow for an aircraft flying at such an altitude. - [Narrator] Formed in 2013, SIGMA 2 was made up of fighter pilots, engineers, military officials, and even astronauts such as Jean-Francois Clervoy.

As for Pierre Bescond, he's a former director of the space center in Kourou French Guiana, where the famous Ariane rockets were launched. - [Interpreter 1] I don't

agree with scientists who immediately say it's baloney. No. If observations are made by those whose job it is to make observations, like fighter pilots, for example, then what they've seen isn't baloney. If you don't understand something, then you put it on a shelf and wait till there's a better scientific understanding of the physical phenomenon, until the correct study

of it can be carried out. But you don't just discard it as baloney. In my mind, that's nonsensical. - [Interpreter 2] It's not a question of believing in UFO's or UAPs or not.

Serious research is being carried on on the subject. This radar detected 14 echoes spread uniformly over a distance of about 100 miles at altitudes of between 28,000 feet and 500 feet.

And these readings correlate with those from other radars. - [Narrator] SIGMA 2 works closely with the CNES, the French National Center for Space Studies, and more precisely with one

of its branches, GEIPAN, Group for the Study of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. For more than 40 years, they've been trying to shed light on the origin of certain UAPs. - [Interpreter] GEIPAN is

tasked with collecting, examining and analyzing sightings made by eyewitnesses on French soil. - [Narrator] Indeed, it was one such incident in France, very similar to the case revealed by the U.S.

Navy, which was behind the founding of GEIPAN. A former head of the group Jean-Jacques Velasco in charge for 21 years and now an independent expert, clearly remembers the unsolved case at the origin of the group's creation. - [Interpreter 1] In

France one siting in 1951 involved the air force. Fighter pilots out on a patrolling mission observed over the town of Orange an object moving at the same speed as their own planes. when they flew alongside to intercept it, it suddenly accelerated and flew off at incredible speed. A report was submitted to

the air force chief of staff. And it went all the way up to the minister. And then recommendations were made to create a French agency to collect and analyze data on UAPs. And that's how Claude Poher,

the ufologist and astronomer at CNES was given the task of founding GEIPAN. - [Interpreter 2] It was a very brave move by the CNES at the time to decide to respond to such questions and create GEIPAN. It was very brave because it

was a scientific approach. Certain phenomena are cited that we don't understand, so we'll question the people who saw them, said about studying them and try to find some answers. It was a very scientific approach.

- [Interpreter 1] At first patrol was sent out to about 60 miles from the Nimitz. A trace of foam was observed at sea level. So one of the F-18s made a fast downward move towards this area of foam.

There was an object described as a big Tic Tac, which changed course and began to climb. So there was a maneuver which could be considered intelligent. A second patrol was sent out, but it wasn't until the third group of F-18s reached the area equipped with infrared cameras, that they could capture the famous images.

- [Narrator] And along with the images, the comments of the stupefied U.S. Navy pilots. - [Pilot] There's a whole fleet of them.

Look on the S.A. My gosh. They are going against the wind. The wind is 120 miles to the west. Look at that thing, dude.

That's not a (indistinct), is it? Look at that thing! It's rotating. - [Interpreter] Here was something undeniable as it were, the pilots saw it, the cameras filmed it, the control tower picked it up. Suddenly there was a real problem. - [Interpreter] A certain number of cases clearly show interaction with the planes.

And this was proven. When you take the number of aerial cases worldwide, officially recorded cases, there were about 2,000 of them, and 140 of these feature the same stereotypes that have been reported since 1947, objects with speeds that can go from zero up to 10,000, 20,000 kilometers

an hour recorded by radars. Absolutely phenomenal accelerations. Trajectories, which are totally impossible for our planes. Spinning around our planes,

climbing vertically, then zooming off horizontally. - What I say is this: we originally thought these were confined to the air, but that's not what we know now. There have been a very unusual occurrences in the water, in the ocean, not once, but numerous times now. people reporting strange

things happening to ships. Sometimes our communication is just terminated. So yes, I think it's extremely important that we do everything we can to find out what this is all about. (uneasy music) - [Interpreter] Periodically, Pentagon and the U.S.

air force chief of staff show interest in UFO's, because there are regular alerts that pose big questions. This is very worrying for the military, because soldiers like to know who they are facing. So if you're faced with

something you don't understand and therefore can't master, it's only natural for them to try to understand and set up commissions to find out what exactly was going on with some of the sightings. - [Narrator] And these worries aren't recent.

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. authorities have established several commissions to investigate such phenomena, notably project Blue Book, for which the famous astronomer J. Allen Hynek was the scientific consultant.

He didn't believe in UFO's, but after several years of study he began to have doubts and finally validated the reality of these unexplained phenomena. At the time, the U.S. military was already forced to communicate on these

very special cases. - I am here to discuss the so-called flying saucers. The air force interest in this problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and analyze

to the best of our ability anything in the air that may have the possibility of threat or menace to the United States. In pursuit of this obligation, since 1947, we have received and analyzed between one and 2,000 reports. However, there have been

a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible thing. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. - [Narrator] Today, the U.S. is still driven by the same preoccupations.

Nothing has changed. They fear for homeland security. They must protect their population from a potential attack.

Like in the 1950s, this concern motivated officials to analyze new footage shot by the U.S. Navy in recent years. This was the reason behind

the famous ATIP program. - There are scores and scores of occurrences that are reported. And not only that, our technology has gotten much better on airplanes, and they can take pictures of these things.

And we've got some stunningly good pictures of them. Are they a threat? I don't know. But I do know that we can't turn our heads and pretend they don't exist, because they do exist.

- [Pilot 1] (mumbling) object on the- - [Pilot 2] Oh my god, dude! (laughing) - [Pilot 1] Roger. - [Pilot 2] Look at this right here! You got to (indistinct). - [Pilot 1] No, I took (indistinct). - [Pilot 2] Oh, okay. - [Pilot 1] Oh my gosh, dude.

- [Pilot 2] Wow, what is that? (indistinct) - [Interpreter] After World War II, a lot of Americans believed that the Russians were behind UFO's. They thought the reds have discovered new technologies and they're using them to spy on us. If it were one of the

super powers behind UFO's, the U.S., Russia or China, since the beginning of these incidents, there would certainly have been a leak at some point to show that this was the case. But no intelligence has ever come out on this subject, neither confirming, nor refuting that it's the Russians, the Americans, or the Chinese.

So I don't believe that. I think it's something else. - [Narrator] Something else? Then what? While those in charge are asking questions, so too is the general public.

And that's the mission of Mufon. Since the 1950s, this network of scientists and engineers have collected piles of eyewitness accounts from across the United States. It even has branches in Europe.

It has a long reaching network with investigators in every state. Mufon is taken very seriously even by the American government. It was one of its reports that drew the interest of Senator Harry Reid and gave rise to the famous AATIP program. - Based on the information

in the Mufon database, that information was used to justify to Congress funding for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program, which is what was revealed in the December 16th, 2017 Times' front page article about the Pentagon secret UFO development. It was the Mufon data that was used to justify getting that program in place.

10 years later, when the story broke on the front page of New York Times, that was really the beginning of disclosure, in my opinion, for this being a real phenomenon and for people paying attention to it. - [Narrator] Disclosure, the key word. Was this revelation involuntary or organized? In effect, since December 16th, 2017, military officials and politicians have regularly appeared in the media.

- [Interpreter] There is undeniably a communication operation. It's hard to imagine, in the United States army offices, former Pentagon officials et cetera, are communicating like this in a totally free and unbridled way, without there being some kind of framework behind them. - [Interpreter] The moment that you have a communication campaign

with expert professionals explaining things, the least that you can say is that it's an awareness campaign for the American population. The least you can say. It could also be preparation for a new reality, with the authorities telling people, this is how it really is, so

that we're all ready for it. Imagine us simply being told, okay, we're now certain: our world is visited by beings from other worlds, or passages between several worlds have been opened up.

That would cause a huge problem and get a lot of people thinking, because humankind would be entering unchartered territory, territory where we're no longer in control of things. We think they're friendly, but we're not really sure.

That means being confronted with something we can't master. And human beings, today more than ever, hate being in situations where they have no control. - [Narrator] This is clearly

what the American experts inside Mufon think. Paul Hynek is well-placed to know it. He's the son of the scientific consultant of the famous project Blue Book in the '50s and '60s J. Allen Hynek.

He was raised amid piles of UFO reports and he now sees a shift in the recent communication policies of the American government. - The disclosure of the existence of the AATIP program, Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program, and their recent disclosures

about what the Navy has seen and admitted that they've been seeing for over nine month periods of UFOs every day almost. And they can't explain them, and to be frank, they need some help. That's rather startling. It's very candid confession

on the part of the government. So it certainly seems, and my friend Richard Dolan is very convincing in a presentation he makes of sort of the timeline of events leading up to what may be a grand disclosure.

There certainly seems to be activity by the U.S. government recently that's consistent with that of a government that's acclimating the populace to a potential grand disclosure. - [Narrator] Paul Hynek and the other members of Mufon are convinced: in 2018 they even invited the former head of AATIP, Luis

Elizondo, as a guest speaker. He confirmed their intuitions. - I think disclosure already occurred. I don't think necessarily disclosure is an event.

I think it's a process. And I think that process began. This is real. This is what your $22 million worth of tax money was spent on.

And there's a lot of it. - [Narrator] But what purpose did this $22 million serve? What light has been shed on unidentified aerial phenomena? What studies exactly did the Americans carry out within AATIP? Work was essentially overseen by Bigelow Aerospace, a company run by Robert Bigelow, a businessman with strong views who's convinced extra

terrestrial life exists. - I'm absolutely convinced. That's all there is to it. - Do you also believe that UFO's have come to earth? - There has been and is

an existing presence, an ET presence. - Where exactly? - It's just like right under people's noses. Oh my gosh. Wow.

- [Narrator] Why did Senator Reid decide to work with Bigelow Aerospace? A choice that may seem surprising and one that earned him a good deal of reproach. Today, he still backs his decision. - I wanted to spend this money.

I indicated $22 million. But we couldn't direct that money to someone. So we put it out for bid, and everybody had the opportunity that was interested to bid on it. Bigelow bid on it and the

United States military thought his bid was the best. And so that's why he undertook this. And he did it for a number of reasons. First of all, he's been interested in these objects for many, many years.

And because of that, he was willing to provide a lot more than any that of the bidders would do. I mean, office space and space for technology. He did a good job of appearing for his bid and he got the bid, and I'm glad he did.

- [Narrator] So what fields did Bigelow Aerospace work in? This document recently declassified by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reveals the research carried out by the company. In all 38 ultra complex fields of study covering futuristic technologies we've yet to master today.

For example, anti-gravity, nuclear propulsion in deep space, wormholes allowing us to pass into parallel universes, negative energy, and magnetohydrodynamics. It wasn't down to chance that this cutting edge research was carried out by Bigelow Aerospace.

In 1995, even before founding his company, Robert Bigelow had created the National Institute for Discovery Science with the aim of shedding light on a number of scientific mysteries, including UFOs. He invested millions

from his private fortune. It's simple to the experts: Robert Bigelow is a national hero. - Robert Bigelow has spent more money than any other individual in the world, his private money, to fund UFO research. So he's actually a hero

within the UFO community, in my opinion. And he's a stellar guy and he runs the Bigelow Aerospace out in Las Vegas, which builds inflatable habitats for space, right? So I think I'm happy to hear him being successful in his work with NASA and his

work with his space program. I thank him for the time we spent together. And I think it's all leading us in the right direction in terms of disclosure.

So I'm excited about it. - [Narrator] Over the years, serious unimpeachable figures have worked with Bigelow: Dr. John B.

Alexander, the pillar of the military research lab at Los Alamos, and Edgar D. Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon. And after years of research,

their verdict is unequivocal. - [Edgar] I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is real, although it's been covered up by our government for quite a long time. - [Interviewer] Whoa! Hang on a minute! Well, this is big. So, whoa, all of this

is quite a shock to me. - [Edgar] Well, I'm sorry. Have you not been reading the papers recently, it's starting to open up quite a bit. - [Interviewer] So you're

telling me, (chuckling) well, there's a lot of information to take on board. Hang on a minute. I mean, listen, I've heard like, you know, crazy UFO nuts tell me this kind of thing before.

I've never had Dr. Ed Mitchell, you know, the sixth man to walk on the moon, a respected scientist in his own right announce to me that we've been visited by aliens from other planets and that they definitely are out there, there's no debating it. - [Edgar] Well, that's your first time you've ever talked to me or I'd have told you about it before. (interviewer chuckling) - [Narrator] And for Edgar Mitchell, along with many other specialists, the nuclear industry has a

close link with the phenomenon. - [Interpreter] Nuclear nuclear testing was a very scary thing, because 540 nuclear or thermonuclear bombs have been exploded in the atmosphere, which is a lot. And that corresponds mainly

to the period 1960 to '61, when there was one explosion every three days carried out by the Americans or the Soviets. (dramatic music) (explosion booms) - [Commentator] This is atomic energy. - [Interpreter] In 1949,

there were already clues as to why these surprising phenomena were reported in certain geographical areas. Nuclear sites in particular were irregularly flown over. For two top secret commissions, since disclosed to the public, Edward Teller, the scientific

advisor to the White House, was a participant. He was the father of the hydrogen bomb. He claimed that UFO's had flown over several nucleus sites, notably Oak Ridge, where plutonium was manufactured.

A missile test range White Sands, Roswell were a nuclear bombers were once based, basically a whole host of things pointing to UFO's flying over these places. - For example, I learned that a number of our missile bases in the Midwest, Dakotas, up that way, that they had been shut down.

They would come out at night, almost always at nighttime, and they would look up and see these objects in the air, and they shut off all the communications in the missile site. It didn't happen once, it happens quite a few times.

- [Narrator] One of the most disturbing cases was in 1967, over Malmstrom air force base in Montana. We met with one of the last surviving eye witnesses of the events.

Like many others, he remained silent for 30 years before the case was finally divulged. Lieutenant Robert Salas was in charge of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles. - It was a underground facility,

about 60 feet underground. My commander's name was Fred Meiwald. We were taking turns staying on alert status. And sometime in the

evening, I get a phone call from my top side guard, we had six guards upstairs, and he said, they'd been seeing strange lights in the sky flying very fast, stopping in mid air and reversing course. He couldn't hear any engine noise, strictly lights in the sky, but they were very strange lights.

He didn't think they were airplanes. He was screaming into the phone, babbling, telling me that there was some orange reddish light hovering above the front gate. And he had all the guards out there with their weapons and asked me what he should do.

And of course, I was shocked by this report. He was obviously frightened. I told him, as I recall, "Just make sure nothing comes in the fenced area, use

whatever force necessary." And then he hung up. He said, "I had to go, because one of his guards was injured." I went to wake up my commander. And as I was telling him about the phone calls, our missiles shut down. We had a 10 missiles under our control and all 10 of them, what we call no-go, they couldn't be launched,

they couldn't be used. So that's basically the story. Of course, we reported to a command post. - Some would go even further, not hesitating to speak officially about extraterrestrial encounters on their missions.

For three years, Paul Hellyer was Canada's national defense minister. - During the Cold War, 1961, there were about 50 UFO's in formation, flying south from Russia across Europe. And the Supreme Allied

Commander was very concerned and about ready to press the panic button, when they turned around and went back over the North Pole. So they decided to do an investigation, and they investigated for three years and they decided with absolute certainty that four species, four different species, at least, had been visiting this planet for thousands of years.

So, we have a long history of UFO's, and of course, there's been a lot more activity on the last few decades, since we invented the atomic bomb. And they're very concerned about that and the fact that we might use it again, because the whole cosmos is a unity and it affects not just us, but other people in the cosmos.

They're very much afraid that we might be stupid enough to start using atomic weapons again. And this would be very bad for us and for them as well. - [Interpreter] He says

it clearly: aliens exist. They came here to stop us, et cetera. I'm not at that stage. I simply say there a phenomenon, controlled objects, which confront us with a

certain number of questions. Is that a signal? I'm simply saying that on a scientific level, to put things into perspective, our satellites are capable of detecting explosions of supernovas dozens of light years away. So why couldn't a civilization

more advanced than ours have the capacity to detect nuclear explosions on Earth? Because a nuclear explosion has all the elements of the electromagnetic spectrum and enters the field of the microwave spectrum via ultraviolets and infrareds. Consequently, this signal

is an artificial one that could be detected a long, long way away. And this could explain why there have been such a huge number of sightings over nuclear sites. The question remains.

- [Narrator] In France, Michael Vaillant, an expert data consultant for GEIPAN for more than 12 years, clearly links the sightings of UFO's and civil and military facilities in a study he published under the aegis of the University of Toulouse. - [Interpreter] When we worked with the Toulouse mathematics laboratory, we did a study in 2015, which showed there was a

large statistical significance in the breakdown of unexplained aerial phenomena data and nuclear facilities. But also polluted sites. So there are questions to be asked about the kind of intelligence observing these places, and why intelligent extraterrestrials are watching our nuclear

and polluted sites. I think it's pretty weird but pretty tasty at the same time. - [Narrator] Whether it's to monitor humans playing with nuclear fire

or for some other reason, the number of politicians, scientists, and engineers who dare to speak out about non-human intelligence is clearly growing. - My personal, I can't speak on behalf of the government, obviously, I'm not in the

U.S. government anymore, my personal belief is that there's very compelling evidence that we may not be alone. Whatever that means. - The reason we had so much secrecy is people acknowledged

they couldn't understand what it was all about. And rather than make people afraid, they just ignored it, hoping it would go away. But it hasn't gone away. And now they're being forced

to do something about it, because there are so many occurrences now, because people who are flying airplanes are no longer afraid of telling people what they saw. - [Interpreter 1] Those who take it most seriously today, are the scientists, because they're saying aliens do exist.

And asking where they're from, what makes them tick. And that's very interesting. - [Interpreter 2] It's only imaginable through the idea of technology that's far more advanced than ours. And as we're not able to do it, then it must come from

elsewhere, from space. - [Narrator] Intelligent life coming from space, what made the scientific community snicker for decades has now become a true subject, and for good reason: in just 25 years, astronomers

have discovered the existence of 4,000 exoplanets, some of which are similar to Earth and could therefore be home to forms of intelligent life. And why not a civilization more advanced than ours? (solemn music) Avi Loeb is the chair of

the astrophysics department at Harvard university. He's also head of two institutes working on mathematics and black holes with numerous eminent physicists, astronomers and mathematicians as their members, which goes to show that

he's one of the most serious and respected researchers in his field in the world. He and his teams has studied one of the most surprising phenomenon ever observed in our solar system: the arrival of an unidentified interstellar object with very unique properties. Its name Oumuamua, which in

Hawaiian means messenger. - Oumuamua was discovered on October 19th, 2017. It was the very first object that we identified near the Earth that originated from outside the solar system.

And it was clear that it's unbound to the Sun, because it moves too fast near the Earth. At first, the astronomers thought that it's a rock, an asteroid, or perhaps a comet. So it was monitored only for one week.

And then it was realized that it has some strange properties. For one thing, as it spun around every eight hours, it changed its brightness by a factor of 10. And that implies that its area on the sky changes by a factor of 10, because all we see is reflected sunlight.

And what it implies is that it's at least 10 times longer than it is wide, much more extreme in shape than any other object that we have seen from within the solar system before. And then astronomers looked at it a little more the following month, but they didn't much pay attention to it.

And by January it was too faint for us to look at. But the data that was taken earlier was analyzed, and then it was realized that in fact Oumuamua deviated from an orbit that is shaped just by the Sun's gravity.

And there was an extra force pushing it away from the Sun. This could have been the result of outgassing the way we see in comets, where water ice on the surface of the comet evaporates due to the illumination by sunlight.

But in the case of Oumuamua, we didn't see any evidence for a cometary tail. There was no gas that was traced around it. And there were very tight limits derived by the Spitzer space telescope

on carbon based molecules in the vicinity of this object. And so it was very puzzling, what gives it this extra push? And so in a paper that we wrote, we suggested that perhaps the push is given by sunlight, and in order for sunlight,

as it off the object, to give it enough push, the object needs to be very thin, less than a millimeter in thickness, similar to a sail that is being pushed by wind on a sailboat. And in fact, our civilization

is currently developing the technology of flight sales, where a push on a lightweight sail with light and as a result, as the light bounces off the sail, it gives it a push that can propel it to very high speeds, up to the speed of light potentially. And so it's possible, we

said, that this is some device that was sent, that was made artificially that was sent by an alien civilization. And we just mentioned that as a possibility, simply because the alternative, a comet, seem to be inconsistent with the data. - [Narrator] Although Avi Loeb's solar sail is still an exotic yet

possible hypothesis, the technologies that could explain the unparalleled performances of such objects are inspiring scientists, the military, and private companies. So are these research programs smoke screens for a fiercely competitive race for tomorrow's technology? - [Interpreter] The technology

used by these objects, apparently in the case, is one that we don't master, because clearly, if we could obtain the technology that enables a UFO to go from zero speed to staggering speeds, whilst performing complicated maneuvers, then everyone would be interested. Because it would change the fighter plane among other things. After all, if we discovered it, we could use it to defend France.

So the two things go hand in hand: it's great to understand the phenomenon and then, why not benefit from it? - [Narrator] So was the goal of Bigelow and the famous American $22 million project to discover the technology of these phenomena, so as to benefit from them? The Senator at the origin of the program seems to confirm it. - Do I believe that technologically the program we've spent money on has been helpful? The answer is yes.

Do we have any answers? Yes, we have answers, but not too many. I'm interested in science. I believe we have to know what causes these, where do they come from. And I think we also have

to do it to be competitive. Other countries, including France, have done work, trying to figure this out. And I'm confident China has, I'm confident that Russia which is run by former head of the KGB, I'm sure they're doing work on it.

That's why I think that we need to do work, we as the United States. - [Narrator] In the race the Americans seem to have gotten off to a good start. Looking again at the list of

Bigelow's fields of study, many of them are on things we're yet to master, but their applications would be revolutionary. Among the most sensitive: anti-gravity, or the ability to free ourselves from the laws of Newtonian physics, and notably weight, so as to fly an object

with no physical resistance and nothing pulling it downwards. These futuristic technologies require the designing of new materials called metamaterials. Recently, a private company signed a contract with the U.S.

armed forces for the research and development of these technologies. In June, 2018, dr. Hal Puthoff, co-founder of the company and a former AATIP member made some surprising

comments on the subject. - It was a multilayered bismuth and magnesium sample, bismuth layers of less than a human hair, magnesium samples, about 10 times the size of human hair, supposedly picked up in the crash retrieval of an advanced aerospace vehicle.

It looks like it's been in the crash. - [Narrator] In Las Vegas in June, 2018, physicist Hal Puthoff implied that this strange metamaterial object came from a crashed UFO, but he's not certain. Puthoff and his colleague, Dr. Eric Davis, are on the verge of identifying

a number of small parts, which appear to be beyond man's fabrication capacities. This sample was created with layers finer than microns using a process unknown on earth, and with an aim we can only guess at. - Nowhere could we find any evidence that anybody ever made one of these.

When we talked to people who, in the materials field, who should know, they said, "We don't know why anybody would want to make anything like this." - [Narrator] So it's no longer just a matter of understanding the origin of UFO's, but of benefiting from them. These metamaterials might

have exceptional properties which could prove useful and profitable. - They definitely have metamaterials. I've seen the photographs of it. I've talked to them about that. They're trying to figure

out how they operate. It appears that if you put a frequency into these materials, they actually can levitate. I mean, that's what I'm being told. I haven't seen it, I don't

know the details behind it, but they're trying to understand exactly how these are created, it's a bismuth kind of a material and it's stratified, so it's new stuff to us and we're trying to figure out how it works. - [Narrator] This know-how could also help us solve our ecological problems and

ward off global warming. - Energy and propulsion systems are two things right away, because there seems to be this sort of tantalizing promise of limitless free environmentally impact-free energy that we could tap into, whether it's anti-gravity or something beyond even

photonic propulsion, teleportation, or something of that nature, such that we could sort of master the physical universe in ways that we can't even dream so far, which would move us well past fossil fuels and solar energy and nuclear power to limitless abundant energy for all that can do things so far beyond what we're able to do now. - [Narrator] Mastering new technologies, bringing radical ecological solutions, genuine issues for all governments but the stakes are also

high for humankind. - The fundamental question is, are we alone? And the second question, if we find that we are not alone, are we the smartest kids on the block? There might be civilizations that are far more advanced than we are and they have the technologies that we could potentially develop, but over a very long time. And when we establish contact or see evidence for those civilizations, the evidence we shock us.

It would just be like a caveman looking at the cell phone and trying to interpret it as a piece of fraud. A very advanced technological civilization is a good approximation to God. It can do things that we cannot imagine.

And so we could learn a lot from such an encounter. We can also develop a sense of modesty, because right now we think that we are the smartest. And in fact, along human

history, we thought that we are at the center of the physical universe, that the sun revolves around the earth. And eventually we realized that we are not at the center of the physical universe. The Earth moves around the sun and the sun moves around the

center of the Milky Way galaxy and the Milky Way galaxy is moving in some random direction in a universe that is full of such galaxies. So we have no special position in the universe.

Nevertheless, many scientists still prefer to believe that we are at the center of the biological universe, the living universe, that life is unique to Earth. And in particular, intelligent

life is unique to Earth. And I think one way by which we can become modest is by collecting evidence about what is going on out there. - [Narrator] If such a reality exists, will we be able to grasp it correctly and really enter into contact with intelligent life from elsewhere? Michael Vaillant has worked

on the different waves of past UFO sightings. - [Interpreter 1] Waves of sightings haven't really been that numerous in the history of mankind. They pretty much started after World War II.

They've tended to occur in large regions of the earth, like the United States and Europe. And over a few days, hundreds of people report sightings of unexplained phenomenon. When usually in France, for example, you just get one sighting

every two days or so. That's already a lot, but during a wave, it skyrockets. Jacques Vallee and other scientists have posited what they call control theory.

Maybe since external intelligence could be behind these waves, controlling how they're organized, and behind this control theory is the notion of learning theory, where the phenomenon teaches humans about their presence. There are what we call spaced in time learning methods, which allow you to undergo a kind of apprenticeship on an individual rather

than a societal basis, during which you learn to save time and energy when learning something. For example, if I'm a lazy person who must learn a list of words, I want to save energy rather than senselessly repeating the list of words sequentially. So every day I'll space the

time between learning sessions, and this will follow a law of power, a law measured on a human scale, and generally a lot of the power of two. This means that time will double with each learning session. One, two, four, eight, 16, 32, et cetera. And we observed this same

law with waves of sightings. Only here these waves follow a law to the power of 2.04 to be very precise. This precision is extremely important, because it allows to anticipate the date of the next wave of sightings. And next one, following a period

of great inactivity today, should be in October, 2035. It's not tomorrow, but it isn't in the too distant future. - [Interpreter 2] This is an area that is very, very complicated and is rejected by many upholders of mathematical progress and rationalism. Will we have more surprises in the future? That's another question.

- [Interpreter 1] If the U.S. government still has things to disclose, it should do so now, because I think people may be ready to receive this information. - I believe, without any question that research scientifically on these uninvited flying objects is really good for humanity, not only for the United States, but the world.

I think if I had my druthers, what I would do is other countries who are doing work on this, let's meet together, let's share information, let the United States share with France, let United States share with China, Russia.

We should, because it's an issue we don't understand, we should work together and make it more public and share it, it's important not only to our country, but all civilization. - In the next year, we are gonna have a fundamentally different conversation than we're having today.

I think there's gonna be additional fidelity to a lot of the things that have come out recently, that are gonna help us have a better understanding of what it is we're actually seeing here. (audience applauds) - [Interpreter 1] It will

certainly bring upheavals to our biggest societies. You'll ask a lot of questions of philosophies, religions, and even science. - [Interpreter 2] In 2035, if man's understanding of the subject is stable, we might even enter into contact, contact that takes into account the idea behind these waves

and behind our apprenticeships, which is to avoid at all costs what we call cultural ethnocide, meaning to prevent humans from being at a total loss and in shock at the confirmation of extra terrestrial phenomenon or intelligence. But I think that in about 10 years time, and almost certainly before, we'll have discovered life in the solar system.

Not intelligent life, but life all the same. And that alone would enable us to lay the foundations of an intellectual edifice that will allow us to explore further.

That's certainly true for scientists who dare to believe that beyond simple life, intelligent life exists too. This will help mentalities to progress and eventually acceptance will become more mainstream.

- There are more Earth-like planets that are habitable in the observable volume of the universe than there are grains of sand on all beaches on earth. To me, it sounds very reasonable to search for other civilizations, not necessarily here on Earth, not necessarily in the solar system, but well beyond that, and make it a central

theme of future research, because the consequences of finding evidence for life out there would be tremendous. It would change our conception about our place in the universe. It could teach us about advanced technologies that we have never dreamt of developing, and it can also provide us

with an important lesson about how to behave as a civilization to make us feel as one team that is learning something together from another team that went through a similar process in there. (light airy music)