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00:00Tonight on The Proof is Out There.
00:02Did this video capture something off-world in the Amazon?
00:07You start to see a face.
00:08It looks like its eyes and mouth are opening or changing.
00:12And is there a connection to a famous missing explorer?
00:15It's rumored that he actually believed this to be an outpost
00:19for some sort of extraterrestrial beings.
00:22Some people thought that this slab of meat was undead.
00:26It was speculated that the cow that this meat came from
00:29was a victim of one of these folkloric demons.
00:33Are these strange patterns discovered on a lake bed a message?
00:37A lot of people online believe you have these artificial patterns being dug
00:42for the purpose of communication with some otherworldly entity.
00:47And does the murderous tale told on this rock
00:50solve one of the greatest mysteries in American history?
00:53This stone, many believed, could provide a clue
00:56for what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke.
01:03Around the globe are videos...
01:08Photos...
01:09...and sounds that defy explanation.
01:17We don't know where they come from, who made them, or how they operate.
01:21What are they?
01:22Some sort of bizarre mutation.
01:24What's exciting is nobody really knows.
01:26Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
01:31I'm Tony Harris, and as a journalist for more than 30 years,
01:34I've followed the facts where they take me.
01:37Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation
01:39to the world's strangest sounds and images.
01:42It's coming towards us.
01:43We'll analyze each one with top experts.
01:46It's a credible case.
01:48It's a credible video.
01:49And pass a verdict on what it is.
01:51This video was clearly faked.
01:54The Proof starts now.
02:04Good evening and welcome to The Proof is Out There.
02:08We know the Amazon rainforest is home to some of the planet's most exotic creatures.
02:12But could it also be sheltering lifeforms not of this Earth?
02:18April 23rd, 2024.
02:21A group of conservationists flies a drone over an undisclosed location in the Amazon.
02:28Later, when the team reviews the footage, something odd appears.
02:33A spooky, alien-like creature seems to be hiding among the green canopy of the forest.
02:39Did you catch it?
02:40The footage is blurry, but when we enhance it,
02:44we see what appears to be a gray-colored being nestled between the trees.
02:48It looks to have a large, bulbous head, a long, thin body.
02:52And with these oversized, almond-shaped eyes,
02:55it immediately invites comparison to the classic gray aliens described by alleged abductees.
03:02The footage adds to a long pattern of strange Amazonian sightings.
03:06Brazilian researcher Roni Vernet recently documented UFOs near the villages of Amazonian indigenous tribes.
03:14Videos our experts still can't explain.
03:17The object starts to descend very, very low on the top three level,
03:22and start to go inside the forest and going out of the forest.
03:26After some minutes, I start to realize that, oh, okay, this is not something normal.
03:30This is something really anomalous.
03:32It makes sense that a hyper-intelligent alien species might use the Amazon to their advantage.
03:39If you were an alien species that didn't want to panic the local human beings living on the planet,
03:44I think that is a reasonable spot to hide out.
03:47Another theory is that this creature is returning to a place where aliens had prior contact with humans.
03:56In the early 1920s, there was a British explorer named Percy Fawcett,
04:01and he actually uncovered an ancient Portuguese manuscript that described an absolutely wondrous Amazonian city.
04:09The city supposedly had crazy advanced architecture and also very advanced knowledge of astronomy and mathematics.
04:16In his cryptic journals, Fawcett hinted that the city of Z was built by a long-lost advanced civilization of
04:25spiritually evolved entities.
04:28Some believe he was referring to beings, not of this Earth.
04:32It's rumored that he actually believed this to be an outpost for some sort of extraterrestrial beings
04:39that had visited Earth millions of years ago.
04:42Some people have speculated that perhaps that's why there are so many UFO sightings and such alien interests in the
04:51Amazon.
04:55After years of searching for the lost city of Z, Percy Fawcett and his son vanished deep in the Amazon.
05:02While many believe they were killed by hostile tribes or succumbed to disease,
05:07others speculate Fawcett may have made first contact with beings not of this world.
05:12Could this creature be connected?
05:14Let's see what our experts think.
05:21Are we just not seeing the forest for the trees?
05:24Some foliage can look like animals, like this supposed dogman creature that turned out to be a bush.
05:31As I rewatched it, I did see something move, and I do think that it is actually something living in
05:38the forest.
05:38This is what we're seeing.
05:40Here you can detect the creature's head turning to the left.
05:43But could this really be an incognito extraterrestrial?
05:47Before we run too far with that notion, we need to rule out some other potential explanations.
05:53Although I do see resemblance physically to an alien,
05:56I think there are much more plausible and logical answers as to what this is.
06:01There is a tremendous diversity of primates, from capuchins to howler monkeys.
06:09But they have very distinctive facial features that would differentiate the monkeys from what I'm seeing here.
06:19This could be a young bird perched high up in the canopy and perhaps a nest.
06:27Amazon has many bird species.
06:29One of them is the harpy eagle, which is a really large bird of prey.
06:35It looks like its eyes and mouth are opening or changing.
06:39But I think shadow effects from light, because remember, we're in the canopy here.
06:43There's sun going through leaves.
06:45So I think that's what we're seeing that's creating that appearance rather than an actual alien with a mouth and
06:52eyes.
06:57Our verdict?
06:59This is no alien, but a harpy eagle, one of the largest and most powerful eagles in the world.
07:05While it may not be extraterrestrial, the harpy eagle is a legend unto itself.
07:11Named after the harpies of Greek mythology, these birds can build nests about five feet wide
07:16and have talons as long as a grizzly bear's claws.
07:22Now let's head home to North America and one of the most important and secretive sites in the United States.
07:28The White Sands Missile Range provides the United States Armed Forces with the world's top research, testing, and training facilities.
07:36And some believe this next video proves that research, testing, and training has involved UFOs.
07:44In the mid-1990s in New Mexico, a cameraman is positioned in the desert outside the White Sands Missile Range
07:51when he aims his camera up at the sky and catches this.
07:56A bright white object plummets diagonally toward the ground, but when it strikes the earth, it doesn't explode.
08:04Instead, it bounces, shooting back up into the air.
08:08It almost looks like it's taking off into the sky, until finally it descends once more, this time exploding in
08:16a shower of debris.
08:17Take another look at that bounce and crash.
08:20This strange footage emerged at a 1997 UFO conference and has been raising questions ever since.
08:28Some people have now speculated that what we're seeing here is a UFO that has crashed on the White Sands
08:34Missile Range.
08:34One of the most mysterious, highly sensitive, and secretive U.S. military installations in the United States, and quite possibly
08:43the world.
08:44For this reason, people have speculated that whoever took this video worked for a secret government program.
08:51My colleague, who was a senior intelligence official, testified to the American people and to Congress under oath.
08:58I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering
09:07program.
09:08David Grush says it all started when the U.S. government came into possession of a craft that crashed in
09:131930s Italy.
09:15There's a memorandum by Mussolini himself threatening people with their life if they were to talk publicly about this crash.
09:21It wasn't until after World War II that the United States allegedly gained control of this crash material.
09:29Since then, Grush says the U.S. government has allegedly been attempting to reverse engineer that material.
09:36He actually testified that there's a secret arms race that we have with other nations to try to crack the
09:42code, if you will, on this technology before anybody else does.
09:46So is this bouncing UFO a failed test flight?
09:50Keep in mind, UFOs have been reported to bounce or skip.
09:55Pilot Kenneth Arnold, one of the earliest eyewitnesses of the UFO phenomenon, said the UFOs he saw moved like a
10:02saucer would if you skipped it across the water.
10:05But there's another theory that it's not a reverse engineered craft we've built, but an actual alien craft crash landing.
10:13Turns out there have been other sightings in this area.
10:17Believe it or not, there is documentation from the U.S. government where UFOs were seen so common in and
10:24around the White Sands Missile Range area that there was a huge investigation conducted.
10:30So, listen to this, December 1948 through May 1950, phenomena have continuously occurred in the New Mexico skies during the
10:41past 18 months and are continuing to occur.
10:46And these phenomena are occurring in the vicinity of sensitive military and government installations.
10:55Based on what Elizondo said, we found another 1950 memo, this one from the FBI.
11:02It says three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico, and it indicates that our own high
11:09-powered radar may have been what caused them to crash.
11:13It seems something was going on then.
11:15But what about this video?
11:22To keep this investigation grounded, we first ask if the video could be a hoax.
11:28It did come from some sort of tape, but it has been recompressed.
11:32It has been processed.
11:33When it gets to the last segment of the video, there is a stabilization that was applied.
11:38The danger with that is you are creating pixels throughout that area that may not originally have been in that
11:45evidence.
11:45We would need that original tape or that native file to be able to definitively confirm or deny authenticity.
11:52So, in this case, it's inconclusive.
11:55So, there's room for doubt.
11:57But a 2024 report from a Pentagon whistleblower may support the theory that this could be a reverse-engineered craft.
12:05It alleges that a government program called Immaculate Constellation collects and conceals UFO data in an effort so secret, the
12:15whistleblower fears execution for exposing it.
12:18But just because the government might be hiding UFO videos, it doesn't mean this is one of them.
12:24It doesn't quite match what we would consider to be a traditional UFO because it has what looks like some
12:30type of propellant coming out of the tail and that is pushing it forward.
12:34That matters because it's indicative of a combustion engine, which produces exhaust.
12:40By contrast, UFOs are thought to have more advanced methods of propulsion.
12:45I would say 99.9% of the UFOs that we know of don't leave any type of heat trail
12:52or heat signature behind it or around it.
12:55So, it's probably a conventional construct that was built to test out something at the White Sands Muscle Range.
13:02So, what might that something be?
13:06I think the luminous object that we see here is not an object at all.
13:10That's an artifact of the propulsion system of a missile that as it's entering a terminal phase, it skips off
13:18the ground and doesn't explode and then eventually comes back down and explodes.
13:23A missile test at a missile range makes sense.
13:27But is it consistent with the video?
13:30Look closely.
13:30The object appears to pull up as it careens toward the ground as if attempting to avoid an impact.
13:39I would not hope to hear anything about what was tested at White Sands anytime soon because if they're testing
13:45something unusual beyond the missile, we're not going to hear about it.
13:53Our verdict?
13:55Unexplained object.
13:56While we considered Macmillan's missile theory, this video is just lacking too much information to draw an informed conclusion.
14:04The video's inscrutability stands as a testament to the military's ability to keep something secret.
14:14Who doesn't love a good steak?
14:16In 2022, Americans ate more than 13 million tons of beef, followed closely by the Chinese, who consumed close to
14:2412 million.
14:25But the next time you're in China, you may want your beef cooked well done, especially after seeing our next
14:32story.
14:34December 2017, Fushan City, China.
14:37A shopper returns home from her trip to the local butcher.
14:40But when she throws her prized slab of meat on the cutting board, something unappetizing happens.
14:47The beef begins to twitch.
14:50First, a piece of the midsection moves slightly.
14:53But before long, the whole filet begins pulsating.
14:57The slab of mysterious meat even appears to be breathing.
15:01Many online speculated that this strange-acting meat could have been artificially grown inside a lab.
15:07There's a new technology called cellular agriculture, where you basically grow meat.
15:13They take real muscle tissue from an animal, and then they grow more muscle tissue in a petri dish.
15:19While others thought something admittedly far out could be at play.
15:24Chinese folklore has a demon called a chongxi.
15:28It's kind of a cross between a vampire and a zombie.
15:31Some people have speculated that the cow that this meat came from was a victim of one of these folkloric
15:38demons.
15:40Just like Western vampires, Xiangxi are said to feed on the life force of the living.
15:46According to some legends, they are corpses whose physical bodies were reanimated and puppeteered by a necromancer.
15:53Someone who can raise the dead.
15:55They can go after your pets.
15:56They can go after livestock, and it just really wreaks havoc upon the environment.
16:02You don't want one of these things in your neighborhood.
16:06Many people who watched this video were reminded of a mad cow disease outbreak from the 90s,
16:11where holes developed in the brains of infected animals, causing them to act nervous, uncoordinated, even violent.
16:19But in those cases, it was primarily the animal's brain and spinal cord that were affected,
16:24while the muscle tissue remained untouched.
16:28So why is this meat twitching?
16:30Let's check in with the experts.
16:37First, we checked to see if this meat could be infested with worms, like many online suggested.
16:43There is a worm called trichinella, which is a parasite that you can get from eating undercooked or raw meat.
16:51Now, what people should know and understand about trichinella is that they're actually microscopic parasites.
16:56So to think that something that small would have the strength to move the muscle of a piece of meat
17:02that big would be impossible.
17:04And as far as the reanimating legends of China's Jiangxi are concerned, even if those stories were true, in this
17:12case, that's not what's happening.
17:15The Chinese folklore showed sentience and communication, where the brain is still connected to the muscle and commanding it on
17:22what to do.
17:23That's not what we're seeing here.
17:25This is a piece of meat that's just spontaneously contracting.
17:28So could this be a strange side effect of meat manufactured in a lab?
17:34Now, lab-grown meat doesn't look like this.
17:36Lab-grown meat is mushy, it's slushy, it's minced, it looks like ground beef.
17:40It doesn't look like these beautiful, long muscle fibers.
17:43Then what exactly is going on here?
17:46This is really spooky, but the fact that it's still twitching actually indicates that the quality of meat is really
17:53good and that, indeed, it is really fresh.
17:55The animal must have been recently butchered, and it's likely that she put salt on it.
18:01Salt is actually sodium chloride, and these muscle cells have sodium channels on them.
18:06And if you douse them with salt, it's going to open up all those channels and fire off the contractions.
18:12But this won't happen for much longer.
18:15This only happens for a short period of time after the animal is butchered.
18:25Our verdict? Salted muscle spasms.
18:28Our experts agree, while it's very freaky, this is nothing more than meat from a recently butchered animal.
18:35So recently, its muscle cells are still able to react to sodium chloride.
18:39But if it's still twitching after a couple of days, we may have a whole new story on our hands.
18:48As we've seen, plenty of strange stories come out of China.
18:52Alleged dragon sightings, alien egg implants, and that mystery meat we investigated earlier.
18:59But if you think we dug deep on those stories, wait till you see what some are calling a sunken
19:05civilization.
19:07November 11th, 2022.
19:10Yuoyang, China.
19:11Extreme heat and low rainfall have caused a catastrophic drought in Dongting Lake.
19:17But when a local resident flies a drone over the lake bed, he wasn't expecting to find this.
19:24At the bottom of the dried-out lake, a pattern is revealed.
19:29Seen from above, it looks like an enormous maze has been carved into the lake bed's mudflats.
19:36Local residents say that each of these huge, strangely-shaped segments is roughly the size of a soccer field.
19:44The footage went viral on the Chinese social media app Douyin, where videos of the patterns exploded and received millions
19:53upon millions of views.
19:55We had a lot of speculation as to what caused these.
19:59Some wondered whether these exposed patterns are anything like the mysterious Nazca Lines of Peru.
20:05The Nazca Lines were built thousands of years ago.
20:08And when viewed from the sky, you had images of various animals and people and geometric patterns.
20:14And some speculated that these were essentially a sort of landing pad for alien spaceships.
20:21Another theory is that these remnants are connected to a lost continent called Moon, popularized by British writer James Churchward.
20:30The idea is very similar to the lost continent of Atlantis.
20:34Churchward did some traveling to India, where he began visiting various temples and monasteries.
20:40And he befriends this high priest in this temple, who shows him these strange tablets that allegedly show and describe
20:49this long-lost continent.
20:51Churchward became convinced Mu existed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
20:57This wouldn't be the first time that an ancient Chinese ruin was found underwater.
21:01In 2001, scuba divers stumbled upon an entire city from the 7th century submerged within the depths of a lake.
21:10The ancient underwater city of Xichen was declared a protected historical relic.
21:15Have we found another monument here?
21:18Let's ask the experts.
21:24First, is this an ancient astronaut landing site, similar to what some believe is the purpose of the Nazca Lines?
21:32This shows me no evidence that this was any kind of a runway whatsoever.
21:36And there's no evidence of any machinery or anything left behind.
21:40For example, when the Mars rovers leave tracks behind, they're actually shedding pieces of wire or pieces of insulation.
21:47But you see nothing like that in this region.
21:50Could there be some connection to the lost civilization of Mu?
21:53The evidence doesn't seem to suggest so.
21:56The problem with that is that Mu, like Atlantis, was supposed to be a fantastic, very advanced civilization.
22:05And what we see here on the ground, if it's a settlement at all, is a very humble and modest
22:11one.
22:12Mostly loose gravel.
22:15And that is no way to set a foundation not the kind of thing we would expect out of Mu.
22:21Is it possible that what we're seeing was caused by some natural underwater force?
22:27Like this artistic puffer fish that we featured in a previous episode, which sculpted sand on the seafloor into beguiling
22:36patterns.
22:36I cannot think of a process that would have created these elbow joints and the little spots and in a
22:44perfect rectangle or square like this.
22:48This is almost certainly the hands of man.
22:52If that's true, who's responsible for building these structures and why'd they do it?
22:57The official conclusion of the Chinese government is that these represent illegal fishing operations involving short fences that trap the
23:08fish during seasonal inundation.
23:11A fish trap works by using water currents to guide fish into a confined area where they become stuck.
23:18Then the fish can easily be harvested at low time.
23:22But could there be something, well, fishy about this explanation?
23:26I don't think the Chinese government has a great track record of properly publicly identifying unexplained things.
23:35The government's conclusion that something this geometrically complex is simply to capture fish seems lacking, in my opinion.
23:49Our verdict?
23:50Unexplained construction.
23:51While we agree with Anderson and Barnhart that this isn't Moo or an alien landing site, there's no concrete evidence
23:59telling us exactly what it is, who made it, or why.
24:05In 1587, about 120 English colonists founded a settlement on Roanoke Island off the coast of what is now North
24:14Carolina.
24:15Three years later, when a ship came to check on them, they had all disappeared.
24:20Can a stone found in the 1930s finally solve this enduring mystery?
24:27September 1937, Edenton, North Carolina.
24:31Tourist Lewis Hammond is taking a walk in the woods along the Chawan River when he suddenly comes across this.
24:39It's a stone with faded etchings.
24:42On one side, there's an inscription written by a woman with the initials E.W.D. saying her husband and
24:49child had passed away.
24:51On the back, she writes that all but seven of the Roanoke colonists were killed by Native Americans.
24:57Hammond brought the stone to experts at Emory University.
25:01Right off the bat, Emory made a faculty investigative team to examine this.
25:08And so you had English professors and history professors and scientists on the team.
25:14They spent five days with this guy, quizzing him.
25:17And at the end, the historian at Emory, he believed this is a real message from Eleanor Dare.
25:25The stone was signed E.W.D., which was assumed to be Eleanor Dare, John White's daughter.
25:30John White was the leader of the Roanoke Colony.
25:34Until Dare's stone came along, the only clue to what happened to colonists was an eerie message found later at
25:41the settlement.
25:42It said Croatoan, which was the name of a local tribe.
25:46One theory is that the colonists actually moved inland and were absorbed into local Native American tribes.
25:52Others believed that they moved inland and were actually killed by Native American tribes.
25:58Believe it or not, another theory comes to us from a clue scrawled in invisible ink.
26:05In 2012, researchers were working with the British Museum and they discovered this map that was apparently created by John
26:11White.
26:12The map had an invisible symbol on it that was created with some kind of liquid.
26:16And it's believed that this symbol indicated where the Roanoke Colony planned to make its capital.
26:23Experts say that this symbol is of a fort.
26:26It was about 50 miles inland from where the colonists originally settled.
26:31So possibly they believe that's where the members of the Roanoke Colony were headed when they left the island where
26:37they had been living.
26:39Could John White's map tell us what happened to the colonists?
26:42For now, the stone remains the one piece of archaeological evidence that spells out what might have happened to these
26:49lost souls.
26:53After the discovery of the Dairstone, a $500 reward was offered for anyone who found anything similar.
27:00A number of people came forward with their own stones like this one, but their discoveries were all deemed forgeries.
27:08So is the original Dairstone real?
27:10And can it help us figure out just what happened to these lost colonists once and for all?
27:21Is it possible that the Dairstone, like the forgeries that cropped up in its wake, is also just a hoax?
27:28People that have looked at the letters themselves are doubtful that they came from the time period of the colony.
27:36Because it's not the kind of script that the average person would write in during the late 1500s.
27:44People have suggested that maybe a chemical was used on the stone to make it look like it's weathered, but
27:51that's not readily available in the 1930s.
27:53Plus, you can't really fake having edges of etching worn down.
27:59When you carve into a rock, you want to leave behind something that you can easily read.
28:04But over time, those really sharp edges are going to show examples of weathering.
28:11It's going to start not being so sharp on the edges.
28:14So the stone may or may not be real.
28:17But what about its message?
28:19Was the colony wiped out in an attack or assimilated?
28:23I would think if I was a great chief that had decimated this colony of Europeans,
28:29that those artifacts would be highly prized and I'd be showing them off.
28:34Except those artifacts don't ever show up again.
28:38Or do they?
28:40In June 2025, archaeologists announced they discovered iron flakes in 16th and 17th century soil layers on Hatteras Island,
28:50near where the settlers disappeared.
28:52They say these flakes are evidence of blacksmithing, which wasn't known to Native Americans of that era,
28:58and believe it proves that the missing colonists were assimilated.
29:03But the discovery of a fort drawn in invisible ink on John White's map suggests yet another possible fate.
29:11The map was recently re-examined in the British Museum,
29:15and they found a fort-like structure about 50 miles inland.
29:20Recent excavations have also found artifacts at this location that are distinctly European.
29:27And so they haven't yet found anything that they can directly tie back to Roanoke,
29:32but it's an interesting possibility that really they just moved and he couldn't find them.
29:41Our verdict?
29:43Unexplained.
29:44Like our experts, we're not only stumped as to what happened to the colonists,
29:48but the question of the Dairstone's authenticity still appears to be uncertain.
29:53And there are no supporting artifacts to confirm its murderous narrative.
29:57In short, we're between a stone and a hard place on this one.
30:04Antarctica is a place of extremes.
30:07An ice sheet covers 98% of the continent.
30:10And it remains, arguably, one of the most unexplored places on the planet.
30:16So when we saw the weird iceberg in this next video, we had to ask,
30:20what does it mean?
30:22October 16th, 2018.
30:25The Larson Sea Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
30:28Operation Ice Bridge, NASA's longest-running aerial survey of polar ice,
30:34is flying over this 47,000-square-mile ice sheet.
30:39As the plane surveys the frozen coastline, something strange appears on the horizon.
30:44And the team captures this.
30:47A massive, perfectly-cut rectangular iceberg stands out in the surrounding sea ice.
30:54Let's take a closer look.
30:55It's 90-degree angles appear so precise, and the walls of the iceberg so smooth.
31:02It looks like nature is operating with such precision that this rectangle must have a meaning.
31:08Some believe that this is an example of something known as sacred geometry,
31:12which is the idea that geometric shapes in nature are sending some kind of message,
31:17or have some kind of symbolic meaning.
31:19Perhaps one of the most famous examples of sacred geometry is what's known as the golden rectangle.
31:27Its sides are in a mathematical proportion called the golden ratio.
31:31This ratio, roughly 1 to 1.618, is said to create a sense of visual balance.
31:38Is someone trying to tell us something through these shapes?
31:42Some even believe that they are the building blocks of the universe.
31:46And it's not just an earthly phenomenon.
31:49Beguiling rectangular shapes have even been found in the cosmos.
31:54There's the red rectangle nebula, HD 44179, which is a star 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Monteseros.
32:02This star is dying, and it is shedding material out into space.
32:08And that material creates a rectangular shape around the star.
32:13Or, if it's not nature, some are asking if the iceberg in Antarctica might be part of an unknown structure.
32:21In 2018, a journalist named Linda Howe interviewed someone who was a first lieutenant commander with Naval Special Operations.
32:29And he claimed that in August 2003, he and his team were sent out to the southeast coast of Antarctica
32:35to investigate a structure sticking up 18 feet out of the ice.
32:40When they went inside, they supposedly saw an illuminated space with walls that had a bunch of intricate symbols on
32:46them.
32:46But they didn't look like any hieroglyphics we would be familiar with.
32:53In the 1982 John Carpenter classic, The Thing, a team of scientists in Antarctica discover an alien spacecraft and encounter
33:02a fearsome extraterrestrial being that wreaks havoc on their research station.
33:07Whether or not what we're seeing on the Larson Sea ice shelf is something to be feared, it certainly merits
33:13more investigation.
33:18Is this remarkable rectangle just random or proof of sacred geometry?
33:24I tend to think that throughout the universe, you are going to find different kinds of geometries, but they're not
33:30sacred.
33:32So what does science say about our red rectangular nebula?
33:36Well, for one thing, despite its name, it's not a rectangle.
33:40It's an X.
33:43My personal point of view is that we're looking at a double star system, two neutron stars rotating around each
33:51other.
33:51Each star has a north pole and a south pole, and when they circulate around each other, it creates the
33:58illusion of an X.
33:59The star at the center could actually be two stars that orbit each other.
34:05Left to themselves, the forces of nature can randomly create some remarkable shapes the human mind interprets as intentional, especially
34:14with ice.
34:15Look at this iceberg that bears a striking resemblance to Batman, or this ice grim reaper created by a winter
34:23storm in Ontario.
34:25And as for our rectangle, in this case, we're looking at a tabular iceberg.
34:30It takes hundreds of years for this iceberg to become flat through wind and storms that have moved through the
34:37area.
34:37For that reason, when a rift happens, the rift will often create those rectangular cuts that we see.
34:46The rift probably happened two, three, maybe four years ago.
34:50The reason we have such sharp 90-degree angles is because it hasn't been weathered enough.
34:55In other words, this tabular iceberg is too young.
34:59Over time, wind and weather will reshape it into something less than perfect.
35:05The wind, the waves, the sea spray has not taken a toll on those sharp edges.
35:15Our verdict? Natural young iceberg.
35:19As for the geometry, it's certainly impressive.
35:22But sacred? That's up to you.
35:27Deep in the Himalayan mountains, more than 16,000 feet above sea level,
35:33is a secluded body of water that some call Skeleton Lake.
35:38Why Skeleton Lake?
35:39Well, that's the mystery.
35:421942.
35:44Chamoli, Utharakhand, India.
35:46A forest ranger is patrolling along Rupkund Lake in the Himalayan mountains
35:51when he discovers something disturbing.
35:54Photos from his moment of discovery aren't available, but here's something better.
36:00This is recent footage of skeletal remains scattered throughout the site.
36:05There are anywhere from 300 to 800 human skeletons here, and no one's quite sure why.
36:12Was it some ancient massacre?
36:15A bizarre disaster?
36:18When I saw the skeletal remains,
36:20it was a mystery to be solved.
36:23We wanted to know more about them, like, why these skeletons are lying out there in such a huge number.
36:31We do not exactly know how many individuals are there.
36:35The area around the lake has been excavated and studied by researchers for years.
36:40But no one has unlocked its secrets.
36:44One theory is that the skeletons at the lake actually belong to dead soldiers.
36:48And we've seen something similar in a different area of India.
36:52In 2014, literally hundreds of skeletons were discovered at the bottom of a well in Punjab.
36:58Experts found that those skeletons actually belonged to Indian soldiers
37:01who had been executed by British forces following a mutiny in 1857.
37:07Mass graves have been discovered around the world
37:10as murderous regimes have tried to cover up their war crimes.
37:14An act of war isn't the only theory.
37:17Some actually believe that the skeletons belong to people who are victims of a natural disaster,
37:22specifically a hailstorm.
37:25The deadliest hailstorm on record occurred in northern India in April 1888.
37:29Some 246 people died, and the hailstones were said to be as big as oranges.
37:35Could something similar have happened to the people who ended up at Skeleton Lake?
37:42There's a growing concern about theft at Rubekund Lake.
37:46Tourists have been swiping skeletal souvenirs from the site.
37:49Experts say that if the bones aren't protected,
37:52they may gradually vanish in the years to come.
37:55But how did these bones get there in the first place?
37:58Let's ask our experts.
38:03A 2019 forensic examination of the remains revealed even more mysteries.
38:09They did a study that included radiocarbon dating and DNA.
38:13And what they found was there were males, females,
38:17and some died just a few hundred years ago,
38:20and some died more than a thousand.
38:22Also, the vast majority come from South Asia.
38:25However, there is some DNA from people that originated in Crete,
38:30which is thousands of miles away.
38:32But what force could have taken so many lives
38:35from such wide-ranging locations and time periods?
38:39Most myths are born out of a fragment of truth.
38:42In this case, it may be that this area has a lot of hailstorms.
38:47And in 2004, an expedition went to this location,
38:51and they found deep fissures on their heads and their skulls
38:55and on their upper bodies,
38:57likely caused from a tremendous hailstorm,
39:00and that's probably what killed them.
39:03India is notorious for having very large hail,
39:06hail that spans from two to four inches in diameter.
39:10Imagine baseballs falling from the sky.
39:12That can create a lot of damage to someone's property
39:15or even lead to the loss of life.
39:18You can see the terrain is that it's very rugged.
39:21You've got ice on all four sides here,
39:23which means when it gets a little bit warmer,
39:25some of that ice melts,
39:27and then you'll get a lot of avalanches or landslide debris,
39:30all those people down below or up near the top,
39:33they'd all be just carried or buried instantly
39:36down in that area at the bottom of the lake.
39:39So the evidence points to this lake
39:41being a place that's killed people across different eras
39:45and from wildly different places,
39:47almost as though it carries a curse.
39:51When you have people from different places
39:54and different centuries,
39:56there's a possibility that there were different causes of death.
40:00So there's more research that needs to be done.
40:03As to why these bones have been arranged in piles,
40:06that's one part of this mystery we can solve.
40:09It's clear to me that people in the past
40:12have taken those bones together
40:14and just stacked them out of maybe reverence form.
40:25Our verdict, deadly hail.
40:28And by the way, some have wondered
40:30if the discovery of Greek DNA here
40:33comes from descendants of Alexander the Great's invasion of India,
40:37but the evidence doesn't support that.
40:39So for now, the research continues.
40:42But what do you think?
40:43Send us an email and let us know.
40:45That's our show for tonight.
40:47Thank you so much for watching.
40:48And as always, keep those cameras rolling.
41:04Transcription by CastingWords
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