00x05 - Behind the Gates: The Scientific Method

[bunniefuu]

- [excited chatter]
- ERIK: You got it?

MATTY:
Season Five

ofThe Secret of Skinwalker Ranch

continues to reveal
strange happenings,

- both high...
- TRAVIS: What is it?

There is absolutely electricity

- built up on this thing.
- MATTY: and low.

- There shouldn't be any, should there?
- TRAVIS: No.

MATTY: So tonight,

I'm meeting with principal
investigator Erik Bard

and astrophysicist
Dr. Travis Taylor...

about how they are
applying hard science...

TRAVIS: It's a
very difficult task.

We just start trying
everything we can think of.

MATTY: to solve a mystery

that defies everything
we thought we knew...

TRAVIS: UAP right there!

ERIK: The very
active observation may

have stimulated the
appearance of these things.

MATTY: about
the laws of nature.

It's completely unknown.

TRAVIS: Holy cow! Look at that.

♪

Guys, thank you for meeting
me here at Homestead Two.

It's great to be back.

Season Five has been incredible.

You know, we've seen with
each year of the investigation,

new manifestations of what
we've been calling the phenomenon,

which, frankly,

I'm uncomfortable
referring to it in the singular

because there are, in
fact, many phenomena

that play out here
on the property.

- Travis?
- TRAVIS: We've looked across

different physics,
chemistry, math, sciences,

everything you can think
of. Engineering technologies.

And we seem to find

some aspect of
whatever this phenomenon

is or are, across every
measurement we make.

So that suggests that

if it's a singular phenomenon,

then it's extremely
encompassing.

And if it's multiple phenomena,

then what in the world
are we dealing with?

Because there's many of them.

- Right.
- ERIK: I was initially

coming into this thinking
that we might be dealing

with some kind of geophysics

or atmospheric physics that
might be easily explained.

But we find that
the deeper we dig,

or the higher we
look, for that matter,

the more we find.

KALEB: Oh,
right there. I see it.

BRYANT: Oh, yeah.

Is that something
walking on the ground?

What is that thing
that flew into the mesa?

Wow, it's unbelievable.

Holy crap. Look at this.

We've got a signal
right now that's pulsing.

I think it's two things
talking to each other.

That is crazy.

What is that?

Straight up, it's right there.

BRYANT: Right here.
It's right above our heads.

TRAVIS: Right there!

Are you both confident
that the scientific method

could potentially solve

something that's so
ethereal and strange?

The scientific method tells us,

do your homework,
study everything you can

about whatever it
is you're looking into.

Then form a hypothesis

that you can actually
test and falsify,

or verify

through a measurement
or an experiment."

Conduct that experiment,
collect the data,

then report on the data
after you do some analysis.

And we're making
measurements and experiments

- to test that hypothesis.
- Got it.

Let's talk about the kinds of
things we're measuring here.

- Please.
- ERIK: We've seen

microwave radiation,

- gamma rays, even neutrons.
- Even neutrons.

ERIK: And, Matty,
we've all been advised

that we may be

sitting on top of
something artificial,

technological.

In other words, you know,
there is in the narrative

the idea of something
underground.

- Yeah.
- Like an alien base

- or something crazy like that.
- Right.

- Right.
- ERIK: But the fact is,

we're dealing with a transient
phenomenon, which means

something that can be,

absent most of the time
and present in an instant.

That is fascinating.

When we first got out
here, the very first day,

we measured radiation
signals that were disturbing.

And so, we had a
sweep done for safety

to make sure that
there's not a continuous,

always-on, uh, source
of something dangerous.

And there was nothing here.

But then, we were picking
up a-a microwave signal,

at 1.6 gigahertz.

And so, to put
that in perspective,

your microwave oven that you

pop popcorn with
is at 2.45 gigahertz.

And so is your Wi-Fi router.

- All right.
- So we're at about half that frequency.

But we can't figure out
where it's coming from.

I'm not sure when we're holding

these meters any particular way,

which direction the
signal's coming from.

TRAVIS: So we developed

a high school science
project level experiment

where you use coffee cans,

and you put a
detector inside the can

so that the only way
that a signal can get

to the detector
is if it's coming

from the direction

of inside the
opening in the can.

[detector squealing]

So I get my biggest readings
when I'm like this looking up.

It's coming from up there.

Well, the strongest
signal's coming

from this spot roughly


And it turned out to
be right over the triangle

where this signal
seemed to be coming from.

And that's when I
talked with Erik and said,

"Erik, we really need
a way to map this."

So I took the initiative
to-to create a map,

not only of the ranch...

where the radiation
is coming from...

but in fact, of the
entire Uinta Basin.

This is a three-dimensional
model of the Uinta Basin.

We're basically talking
about a very shallow bowl.

And of interest
to us, of course, is

what's the origin of that bowl,

and the kinds of things
we're measuring here?

Well, one of my PhD
dissertation topics was actually

on impact crater sites.

And it got us to
looking at this,

and I realized the Uinta
Basin looks a lot like it was

a, uh, impact site

sometime in the distant past.

So it's possible that there's
something impacted here in Utah.

Uh, it could have been
a comet, an asteroid

or even a crashing
alien spacecraft,

UAP, who knows?

We don't know what it
was, but it does look like

something impacted here,
created this bowl shape

that is causing these
reflected energy signals

that we're measuring.

Incredible. The notion of
a impact site from a UAP.

And that's exactly what I
want to talk about next...

aerial phenomena, and
how you might use science

to track, categorize,

and maybe even stimulate them.

And I want to do that next.

What could possibly explain

all the incredible
aerial phenomena

that's being experienced here

on Skinwalker Ranch?

Well, here to tell
us once and for all

exactly what UAPs are,

are Erik Bard and Travis Taylor.

- That's a tall order.
- Yeah.

You're not asking for much.

I'm kind of kidding, of course.

But maybe you two are closer
than anyone ever has been

to using science to explain

- what it might be.
- TRAVIS: Yeah.

UAP originally coined as, uh,

"unidentified aerial phenomena,"

then "aerospace phenomena,"

and now it's
"anomalous phenomena."

Indeed, you know, obviously,

the "U" part of UAP
plays a big role here.

There's a lot of stuff we
see that we cannot identify.

Things that appear to
be at very high altitude,

and in some cases,
only a few hundred feet

above the earth here.

In some cases,
actually inside the Earth.

[exhales]

ERIK: Recently, as you've seen,

something that may, in fact,

be what we call a
transmedium phenomenon.

Something passing
through the earth itself

and emerging
here on the property

not far from the triangle.

Watch what happens in the sky

just above the mesa.

TRAVIS: Whoa.

- Okay, look, look.
- TRAVIS: Look at that.

ERIK: Right there. This
is the feature of interest.

BRANDON: Right. I'm seeing it.

TRAVIS: It went behind the mesa.

BRYANT: Where'd
it go? Where'd it go?

Did it go right behind the mesa?

Yes. And on closer inspection,

it appears as if there's
a corresponding light

and illuminated area
on the mesa itself.

- Right there. Right there.
- TRAVIS: Yeah.

Now, watch what happens
as we play through.

- TRAVIS: Oh! Right there. Look.
- BRANDON: Oh, my gosh.

- Oh, my gosh.
- There it goes. Oh, my gosh.

We ask ourselves
all the time, why here?

Why in the middle of Utah?

Why in the middle of
nowhere are we seeing

so many of these phenomena
that we can't determine

what they are and
why they're here?

ERIK: Matty, when I
came into this work,

I was searching for what we
would call a prosaic answer,

- a mundane answer.
- Sure.

Maybe something
out of nature and ideas

like ball lightning or
so-called earthquake lights.

Things that could have
geophysical causes

were high on the
list of possibilities.

- Sure.
- ERIK: But as we've continued,

what I would call the
observational science,

which includes things like

surveillance cameras,

monitoring and
measurement systems,

we've seen that we've got

more than just meets
the eye going on here.

We have things that,
right here where we sit,

I captured something
that appeared to be

- undergoing a kind of searching behavior.
- Yeah.

Right over this road.

TRAVIS: We would
call it an orb, probably.

ERIK: I think, I
think it would've been

categorized as an orb.

We've seen all sorts of things
that could range from possibly

a nuts-and-bolts craft
that we saw last year

over the east canyon field

to energy manifestations, like
flying into and out of the mesa.

It was hard to tell if that had
any physical structure to it.

And even UAP that seemed to have

some sort of energy field
or bubble around them.

Like, I'm thinking of the one,

unfortunately,
where the cow died.

In this case, I was studying
what was happening

with this cow that passed
away there at the fence line...

The surveillance cameras
captured the ordeal

that this animal went through
over a period of several hours.

TOM: Is that black
object the cow?

ERIK: Yeah, that's it, Tom.

The cow is right here.

What we'll do is

go forward very slowly and
watch what happens with her.

Now, you see the
cow starts to get up.

So here,

I can't help but also notice

that there's something
happening here.

- TRAVIS: Oh, whoa, look at that.
- TOM: Right there.

TRAVIS: Look at that.

The moment that
that object appeared

above the cow, the
cow was reacting.

Yes.

ERIK: At that moment,
as the cow raises her head

in what were probably
the last moments of her life,

we see something
moving at very high velocity,

over that fence line.

Potentially very fast.
Hypersonic, even.

- Incredible.
- You know, that particular thing

we saw there, Erik,
hovering over the cow,

and then, that darted off,
when we do analysis into it,

it's not unlike the Gimbal
video that everybody's aware of.

There seems to be an artifact
around whatever this object is

that looks like sort of a
halo or a bubble around it.

Now, it's unclear,

with the one that we
measured over the cow,

if it was an artifact of
encoding in the camera

or if it was real.

But since it looks very
similar to what we saw,

we can't say 100% that there
is some kind of halo or bubble

around what we
saw, but it is possible.

And if it is, that
could be a telltale sign

of whatever its propulsion
mechanism could be,

like the warp bubbles
from science fiction.

Incredible.

We've talked about
aerial phenomena

that you happen to catch,

but I'd like to talk about
the ones that maybe

you've perhaps stimulated
using science and experiments.

And it's that I want to
focus on, coming up.

Yeah, let's do it.

Captured

on film unexpectedly,
and they're incredible.

But there's many times,
following your journey,

that you have used experiments
to maybe draw these things out.

Yeah, so that's
called a-a dog whistle.

You know, you
blow the dog whistle

and the dogs come running.

- Right.
- Well, we kind of also

refer to it in a vernacular

that my, uh,
grandmother gave us,

and it was "poking
the hornet's nest."

- Mm.
- And so, we often poke the hornet's nest

to see what flies out.

I suppose one scientific
question would be,

are those UAPs always there

or are your experiments
directly causing them to appear?

That is really the
question for me.

You know, we often
say to each other,

- "correlation is not causation."
- Absolutely.

- Ah, right. Right.
- ERIK: We don't know

the answer to your question.

But there's so many ways in
which we may have stimulated

the appearance of these things.

We've seen things
as if stimulated,

above the ranch when we've
launched swarms of drones.

- Drones are armed.
- TRAVIS: All right, drones are going,

the drones are going.

Wow, look at that.

ERIK: Oh, wow.

TRAVIS: You did see
something in the FLIR?

ERIK: Yep, moving
up here from the center

up towards the upper
left-hand corner of the screen.

Oh, what is that?

ERIK: And when we have directed

very powerful
lasers into the space

directly above the triangle...

Travis, you-you got to see this.

- Okay...
- Well, there's the lasers.

Yeah, I'm doing
an instant playback.

- You see this?
- Oh. Yeah.

TRAVIS: Wow. It's moving

way too fast for
it to be a satellite.

ERIK: This thing's
really clipping along.

BRANDON: Oh, my gosh.

It disappeared. That's insane.

We've heard people
say, "Oh, when you launch

the rockets, the UFOs show up."

Well, we don't know
that for 100% accuracy.

- What we do know...
- Smoke's hot.

is that a lot of times,
when we fire rockets,

that correlates

with the sighting of
some sort of phenomena.

- Hey, look! UAP right there!
- KALEB: Yep,

- I see it.
- BRYANT: Yep, there it is, you got one.

Now, we fire the rockets
for scientific purposes.

They're a-a cheap way

to put a sensor


You've seen these things,
you've done the experiments,

you've seen them appear.

What does your scientific
gut tell you if that's a thing?

You've both been
doing this a long time.

I-I think right
now, you could say

we have so much, uh, data

that there's certainly something
strange occurring here.

Right now, we're
trying to overlay,

does it occur more
when we poke the nest

- than it does just at random?
- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, I'd agree with that.
- You have described

various types of
aerial phenomena,

but there's also something
in the mesa behind me.

Can you speak
to that possibility,

and what science might
be telling you about that?

- Well, I can begin to speak to it.
- Okay.

You see us drilling
into the mesa

looking for these anomalies
that we see coming out

in ground-penetrating
radar, or GPR.

This is something that
is without precedent.

Here's what we know.

The profile of the drill bit
that went in got pushed down,

and then came up
on the backside of it...

Yeah, I'm up against
something pretty hard right now.

TRAVIS: making an
arc shape or a dome shape

or the bottom of a saucer.

What's going on, Thomas?

The drill has
encountered a hard object

- that it cannot penetrate.
- Wow.

TRAVIS: We came
back and drilled higher up,

and something pushed it
up and then it went over.

What if it does turn out to be
something fantastic and amazing?

We don't want to destroy it
by just blowing up the mesa.

- Right.
- ERIK: Now famously,

we've brought these shards

of material out
that have all kinds

of interesting layering.

We're talking about
iron and aluminum,

but also some other
interesting elements like

vanadium and tellurium.

TRAVIS: And when we took that

to the University of Utah,

and had the, uh, metallurgy
department look into it there,

they assured us that this
was a manufactured material,

there is no natural
phenomena that could create it

and that it is centered
like a ceramic material,

just like the materials

that are the reentry tiles
on the Space Shuttle.

Uh, so, what on earth
is that, and why is it


here at Skinwalker Ranch?

- Awesome.
- ERIK: And when you put that

in the context of things we've
been told about the mesa

and things flying into it,

I mean, all of that together
tells a fascinating story.

Well, the mesa
continues to astound.

I don't know if you've
mentally allowed yourself

the possibility of pulling a
craft out of the mesa, but...

we can't wait to see
what happens next.

Everything you've done
scientifically might be pointing

to exactly where this
phenomena is coming from,

and I want to talk
about that next.

All right.

Is there an explanation
for all the high strangeness

on Skinwalker Ranch or maybe

a virtual doorway
to the answers?

Erik Bard, Dr. Travis Taylor.

You're talking about
the idea of all of this

originating from an elsewhere

or a point of origin
that is, if you will,

outside of our space.

That may be something's
coming through as we've been told,

through portals,
wormholes, that kind of thing.

Travis and I share a fascination
with the Indigenous record

about things affecting
space and time,

potentially in the same ways
that we're observing today

with our exquisitely
sensitive instruments.

In fact, we've found evidence

that could possibly
support the idea.

I'm not saying we have
the-the smoking g*n yet,

but we actually have
lidar data that vanished.

And the way a lidar works, it's
a laser with a spinning mirror,

so it's sending laser beams
out all over in a hemisphere.

And when the lidar beam
went to a certain spot

here on the ranch
near the triangle,

the data vanished,

like it went somewhere
else, through a doorway

- and it didn't come back.
- Wow.

Uh, so, so, is this just

missing data or are... do we
find the data somewhere else?

- Where it wouldn't normally be expected to be found...
- ROYSTON: The only data we see

in this area, you
know, it's pretty dense.

So you go from, like,
really dense scan to nothing.

Wow.

It's like it absorbed

the lidar lasers.

TRAVIS: Can you zoom way out?

Whoa.

- ERIK: Look at that.
- That's interesting.

ERIK: Yeah.

What is that red circle?

It's a, it's a shadow
of something.

What did... what
are we looking at?

-THOMAS: Black hole?
[chuckles] -Could be...

- well, that could be...
- I mean...

a shadow of a wormhole.

We have that data
repeated now multiple times.

And we have even
more significant data

that we found
this summer that...

w-we can't explain,
'cause here's the problem.

Our current
understanding of physics

is that if there were a
traversable wormhole,

some sort of portal or doorway,

it would've ripped us
apart, being that close to it.

It would've destroyed a
big chunk of the planet,

- if not the whole planet.
- Right.

So, we need to
understand physics better.

If this truly is some sort
of magic portal or doorway,

it's gonna be within
the laws of physics.

Mm. How about when
GPS data, for example,

goes wonky when
it shows you being...

underground, wildly off
what you think it would be?

What... could that
fit into this theory?

- Absolutely.
- Absolutely does.

You know, GPS is really
quite straightforward.

We've got these constellations

of satellites in
middle Earth orbit

broadcasting signals down
to receivers at our level.

- Right.
- And if we plant receivers

at fixed locations

on the property and
we see them undergoing

some kind of phantom movement,

it invites speculation
as to what could be

in that space between the
satellites and the ground

that is warping space and time.

Well, the one thing
I would add to it

is that we continue to
make measurements

that suggest there's
something real

to these ancient
legends and myths.

And we are going to continue
to make measurements,

and we don't know right
now if this is a portal,

is it going to somewhere
else or some whenelse?

Mm. [chuckles]

Wow. Amazing.

I just want to thank you guys,
and thank you on behalf of fans,

'cause I hear from people
that say, "I've learned so much

about science,"
which is very exciting.

And I think you two

are a credit to the
scientific community

because of your
open-mindedness to this topic.

- Thank you.
- Thank you.

- Keep going.
- We will.

So, are we getting closer to the
answers on Skinwalker Ranch?

Only time will tell.

Stay tuned as
this team continues

to poke that hornet's nest
with incredible operations.

Thank you so much for watching,

and as always,
have a great night.