S01 Episode 3: Do You See What I See

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Let us help you succeed. Here's al Go to beachbody dot com to claim your free membership and start feeling great as a species. Our ability to lie, embellish, and imagine is one of our most extraordinary traits. It is thanks to our human capacity for imagination that we have walked on the moon, built the great Pyramids of Egypt, and painted masterpieces such as the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel.

It is also this imagination that enables us to create and share stories, Stories that, although almost always bear some form of fabrication, can often reveal certain truths about ourselves. And yet the notion of truth is the most elusive of things. For some, it can be a cause for annoyance, the frustration at finding not everybody sees things the way they do. For others, it can be the difference between life and death. At times, the truth can be hard, a bit of pill that might force us to even

deceive ourselves in an attempt to escape from it. And sometimes this self deception can be so potent that sheer belief alone can serve as a satisfying substitute for the truth itself. The great physicist Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that we can never know both the momentum and the position of a particle at any one time. In other words, you might say, we can never know the

whole truth, but only an approximation of it. The concept of objective truth becomes even murkier if we also accept cannot understand anything without first taking into account the mechanism through which it is observed. Although the truth may well be out there, it begs the question does it even exist?

You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClain smith. Throughout history we have concocted stories of strange apparitions in the sky, of gods and monsters that might either threaten or protect us. In modern times, these stories are most commonly associated with the UFOs. Although the term had come into use early in the twentieth century, it wasn't until the summer of nineteen forty seven that the phrase really caught the public imagination.

In July of that year, an American recreational pilot named Kenneth Arnold claimed to have been followed by nine sourcerlike objects whilst flying his plane over Mount Rainier in Washington State. In a world still deeply traumatized by the Second World War, the United States Air Force were unwilling to take any chances and swiftly set about establishing two things, just what exactly were those strange objects, and more importantly, to what extent did they pose a threat to national security? On

this occasion, Arnold's story proved of little concern. However, the ensuing publicity led to an unprecedented influx of claims from hundreds of others citing similar experiences of their own. Although the Air Force were happy to ignore the civilian reports, it proved a little harder to dismiss those that had come from their own highly trained personnel. To this end, in nineteen forty eight, the US Air Force recruited a man named Joseph Allen Heineck to act as scientific consultant

on a newly established project called Operations sign. The purpose of the unit was to create a localized propository for all suspected UFO sightings, with the ultimate aim of generating rational and scientific explanations to explain the strange occurrencies. For Heineck, a doctor of physics and astronomy from Ohio State University, the committed man of science, the opportunity to dispel the emerging myths of little green men was too good to turn down, and for the first few years this is

exactly what he did. But then something changed. Heinick noticed a pattern creeping into his work. He had discovered that, although the majority of cases were fanciful and easily dismissed, for every twenty nonsense claims he received, there would be at least one that was impossible to explain. He termed

these cases his unknowns. What's more, Heineck realized that, in spite of operations signs initial intentions, the project had rarely followed his own strict principles of the scientific method, namely that every case should be approached with complete disinterest and without bias. It became clear that even if a UFO were to land on the road in front of his superiors, they would have refused to believe it. It soon dawned on Heineck that his job had not been about investigating

the UFO reports at all. It was purely to debunk them. On the night of July twenty third, nineteen ninety five, a group of amateur astronomers headed out into the Arizona Desert to a strip of land just south of Phoenix known as Pecola Ranch. After a few hours observing various galaxies and star clusters, one member of the group turned his attention to the constellation of Sagittarius. His name was

Thomas Bob. Peering into the lens as the desert air began to chill, Thomas spotted something strange far out in the depths of space. Approximately four hundred miles away in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, astronomer Alan Hale was recording the brightness of a series of comets he had been tracking for the past couple of months. After taking the measurements he needed, who turned his telescope to the constellation of Sagittarius, and sure enough, he also spotted something unexpected, something that did

not correlate with any of his established charts. Unbeknownst to each other, Allan and Thomas had simultaneously made the same discovery, a discovery that would change their lives forever. Roughly five hundred and seventy seven million miles from the two astronomers, a forty kilometer wide mass of rock, ice, and dust was hurtling through space at approximately one hundred thousand miles

per hour relative to the Earth. It was as if Sagittarius himself had launched an arrow straight through the heart of the Solar System. That arrow was soon to become known as the hail Bop Comet. By March nineteen ninety seven, any casual observer would have been able to see the comet blazing its trail for the previous forty months, But

the best was yet to come. As the earth spun into the evening of March twenty fourth, people all around the world turned their eyes to the sky and braced themselves for one of the most spectacular astronomical events in the history of mankind. For those of us watching in Great Britain, the occasion didn't disappoint. For those of us located around the border of Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, it was about to become a very memorable evening. Indeed, albeit

for a somewhat different reason. Just exactly what occurred that night over the dark, misty moors of the British Peak District has never fully been accounted for. It has become known as the Howda Moore Incident and as a mystery

that remains to this day unexplained. Howd and Moore, located in the aptly named Dark Peak region of Britain's Peak District, has long been associated with the strange and mysterious the wilder misty moors have played host to a number of peculiar sightings, ranging from the ghosts of plains, people and

even ufoes. With more than fifty aircraft believed to have crashed in the region over the years, at the cost of roughly two hundred lives, it is easy to see how such tragedy might weave its way into the local folklore. But nothing could have prepared the local community for what

was about to unfold. On the evening of Monday, March twenty fourth, nineteen ninety seven, with the hail Pop comet coming to its brightest and most prominent point, thousands had ventured out into the cold spring air to witness the spectacle, and the conditions could not have been more perfect with so many people preoccupied with the comet. For the officers manning the control room of Ecclesfield Police Station in the city of Sheffield, it was proving to be very quiet

evening indeed, but all that was about to change. The first call came in just after ten fifteen pm. Two farmers from near a town named Bolsterstone reported a low flying aircraft traveling in a southwesterly direction. Moments later, after the plane had appeared to hit the ground. An orange glow was seen, followed by several plumes of smoke rising

into the air. In the nearby village of Strides, local gamekeepers Mike and Barbara Ellison were watching TV when they heard a terrific explosion coming from the direction of the moors. After reporting the crash to the local police, mister Ellison was joined by community Officer PC Mick Hage as they attempted to find the location of the explosion. Although their search proved unsuccessful, they too reported seeing an eerie red glow in the sky just to the south of the moors.

At around the same time, Police Special Constable Marie Franz Tattersfield and her husband Steve were also driving near the town of Bolsterstone when suddenly what looked like a four seat aircraft flew directly across their path. Marie Franz noted the craft was unusually low and extremely bright, and later described the incident as the strangest thing she had ever seen.

As the aircraft continued on its path directly in front of them, it disappeared behind some trees and a tremendous boom was heard coming from the same direction as the phone calls flooded into the police control center. A bizarre picture was starting to emerge. Witnesses reported seeing a triangular object as wide as the street, passing overhead. Others recounted seeing strange pink and red lights hovering in the sky. Many reported hearing a loud bang or boom, followed by

an eerie orange light glowing in the distance. There were also reports, including one from a retired Royal Air Force officer, of two Tornado fighter jets flying extremely low, as if they had just been scrambled for an unexpected operation. His report also noted how unusual it was for them to be seen at that time of night. One lady, described by police as a clear headed, reliable witness who was familiar with the night sky, reported seeing an aircraft shaped

like a long cigar. The aircraft did not have wings, made no noise, and appeared to be glowing. Local businessman Dan Grayson recounted seeing a bright light that moved off before splitting into two and disappearing over the horizon. Shortly afterwards, a search and rescue helicopter flew over the exact same spot.

Perhaps strangest of all was the eleven PM reported sighting of an unknown man seen wandering the eight fifty seven road by the passengers of a mini After flagging down the bus, the man requested a lift back to Sheffield, but was refused on account of his strange behavior. The man, dressed in dark brown clothes, was described as being in

some distress and smelling strongly of diesel. The young man who reported the incident, a jet engineer in the Royal Air Force, later reported that the pungent smell of diesel was remarkably similar to the smell of aviator fluid. Whatever occurred that night was enough to convince the South Yorkshire Police to send over two hundred personnel to conduct a

fifty square mile search of the Pennine Moorland. The search, which cost over fifty thousand pounds of public money, lasted for over fifteen hours but failed to yield any significant findings. Seeking a rational explanation for the events, head of the police operation, Chief Inspector Christine Burbery, reached out to the

many Royal Air Force bases that operated in the area. However, they informed her that there had been no military aircraft flying that night that would have explained the reports of low flying planes and the explosions. The following day, a formal statement released by the Ministry of Defense declared unequivocally that no military exercise of any kind had taken place the previous night. The official South Yorkshire Police record categorize

the incident as unexplained. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself, to make time for you. You deserve it. Tele Adoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best, to feeling like yourself again. With tele adoc, you can speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video. Therapy appointments are available seven days a week from seven a m. To nine pm local time.

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get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. Due to the extortionate cost to the public of the seemingly needless rescue operation, it fell to local MP for Sheffield and Hillsborough, Helen Jackson, to seek some more concrete answers. More than a year after the event, her questions were finally put to then Defense Minister George Robinson and Home Secretary Jack Straw in the House of Commons, but her

questions were met with a familiar reply. The Ministry of Defense maintained their official stance that there had been no cover up over this incident and no aircraft were scrambled that night to intercept a UFO. Indeed, it is a court martial offense to break the sound barrier over land, an occurrence that might have explained the loud bangs described

by many of the witnesses. Although there is no photographic evidence of the night in question, two mysterious sounds were picked up by microphones located at the British Geological Society Research Post in Leeds. According to senior seismologist Glenn Ford, the two bangs had without doubt come from the direction of the moors. After further examination, the sound signal was found to be indicative of two separate sonic booms, sounds that could only have been caused by high speed aircraft.

More startling, however, is the claim allegedly made by a radar operator from the local Royal Air Force base in nearby Linton upon Ooze. The operator claimed to attract a UFO on the night of March twenty fourth for over ten minutes before it shot off his radar screen and disappeared. The claim was later retracted and an official statement put out by r F Linton upon Ouze declared, we are the only people in this area who would be flying above the region and we were not practicing last night.

We can confirm that nothing was picked up on radar either. It is not without exaggeration that the Hailbop comet is considered the most widely observed in our history. With the growth of the Internet in the nineties, as well as rapid improvements being made to devices of communication, never before had the planet been so interconnected in its awareness of

such an event. Also, taking into account the popularity of shows such as the X Files, it would be easy to classify the HOWD a more incident, not as evidence of an alien visitation, but rather little more than the workings of the human imagination, fueled by our collective excitement over the hail Bop comet the sightings of strange aircraft.

Perhaps nothing but the self deception of people who wanted such an event to be true, coupled with our insatiable desire to attach reason and purpose to a set of disparate and mundane events. Or is there something else entirely that might explain the events of that night, something far more unnerving. In nineteen ninety eight, two psychologists named Arian Mack and Irvin Rock published a paper the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology entitled Inattentive Blindness. Building on the earlier work of cognitive psychologists Ulrich Nisser and Robert Becklin, The paper included the results of a series of simple experiments that

highlighted a fundamental deficiency in our sense of perception. The study concluded that, due to our brain's natural tendency to band multitudes of objects and stimuli into single groups, we might often fail to notice even the most obvious of stimuli, even if it was occurring directly in front of us.

Is it possible the due to the public's hyper vigilance and heightened awareness of the sky above, that they were suddenly receptive to seeing an unusual object flying overhead, an object that might otherwise have passed them by completely unnoticed. Perhaps in the manner of the apocryphal story detailing the moment that Christopher Columbus approached the shores of what would later become known as the Caribbean, having never seen such

a thing before. It is said that the people of the island were completely oblivious to the huge ships approaching, and only registered them after noticing strange disturbances in the water. It is widely accepted that, in a physical sense, at least, the world we see around us is not a truthful depiction. Rather, it is the result of a combination of both the limitations of our brains and the extraordinary way in which

we have evolved to best suit our environment. Take, for example, the appearance of color, an extravagance that only exists because of the way our brains interpret variations in the wavelengths of light. And, although some may disagree, being able to see the world as a collection of solid and manageable materials as opposed to the vibrating mesh of subatomic particles that it really is, would seem superficially at least, to

be of much more use to us. To counter these deficiencies, we have developed technologies that enable us to detect and observe the things that we might otherwise be unable to see, things such as gravity waves and the Higgs boson. And yet for all our technological ingenuity, we are still unable to account for what makes up over eighty percent of the known universe. The answer to what exactly constitutes dark matter, the substance believed to be responsible for this deficit, remains

perhaps the biggest prize in physics. And if you take the view that technology is only an extension of the human experience and therefore susceptible to the same limits of perception, it's possible that some aspects of the universe might forever remain invisible to us. And if you consider the possibility that two species, having evolved in different ways, might look at the universe and see two completely different things, just

what exactly is it that we are looking at? It is a thought that brings to mind perhaps the biggest question of them all is the truth out there or is it merely in our heads? This episode of Unexplained was produced by me Richard McClane smith. Unexplained is on Twitter at Unexplained Pod, and you can find out more about me and the show at Unexplained podcast dot com. Now, it's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you, teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist

to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven a m. To nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained Podcast today to get started. That's t e l a d oc dot com Slash Unexplained podcast