NARRATOR: Maui, Hawaii, October 19, 2017--
scientists at the University of Hawaii Haleakala Observatory
detect a strange object traveling
through our solar system.
They initially catalog it as an asteroid.
But after further examination, researchers
observe that the object accelerated as it approached
the sun, acting more like a comet,
but without any other comet-like characteristics.
The find forces astronomers to reclassify
it as something entirely new, an interstellar object.
We'd never seen anything like this in the solar system
before.
We get an estimate of its size at about 800 meters
or half a kilometer in length, roughly a cigar-like shape.
It was moving very fast, a little more
than 195,000 miles per hour.
You get a chill sometimes when you
understand something is very important
or is really exciting.
And that's what I felt with this object.
NARRATOR: Our Milky Way galaxy is
estimated to consist of 100,000 million stars,
each indicating the presence of a solar system.
Because the distances between them are so vast,
astronomers believed it was impossible for an object
from another solar system to reach our own--
until now.
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It just came from outside our solar system,
meaning it wasn't material from our star being created.
It's from a different star system somewhere else.
That's historic that we've actually seen it.
We now know objects can travel from one star system
to another.
NARRATOR: Researchers dubbed the interstellar visitor
Oumuamua, a Hawaiian term meaning a messenger
from afar arriving first.
Is it possible that the interstellar visitor was,
in fact, a messenger, one sent on a mission
to our solar system?
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Different scientists have analyzed the data
and deduce that it's something very different to an asteroid
or comet.
So the scientific data does point to it actually
being some artificial creation.
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We've had open speculation about how this thing
might be an interstellar spacecraft,
talk from a Harvard professor.
The chair of Harvard's astronomy department, Dr. Avi Loeb,
noted that the object seemed to follow the propulsion patterns
of a new technology that is currently being
tested for future space missions,
known as solar sail propulsion.
Large reflective sails capture sunlight to propel a craft
through the vacuum of space.
You can design, essentially, photon sails.
So the idea has been to make a material
that reflects photons, which is light, very efficiently.
You deploy this.
And you basically accelerate under starlight.
And then you just cruise.
NARRATOR: Was similar alien technology
used to propel Oumuamua?
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It makes you wonder, was that a targeted mission,
some sort of probe that is being sent in to look for life?
Before man actually went to the moon and walked on it,
we sent a lot of probes around the moon to look at it.
And it's quite likely that some version
of NASA from some other star system
could send a probe here to Earth.
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NARRATOR: The trajectory of the interstellar object
took it past the sun, where it made a turn
and then ran parallel to Earth's orbit.
It traveled between our planet and Mars
before it began its journey out of our solar system.
When Oumuamua arrived, nobody knew where it came from.
Then in 2018, an astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire
retraced its movements and discovered
that it came from the Pleiades.
We have to ask, is it possible that it was actually
sent from the Pleiades?
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists,
the revelation that Oumuamua traveled to our solar system
from the area of the Pleiades star cluster
is highly intriguing.
The Pleiades figures into the creation stories
of many ancient cultures from all around the world, where it
was taught that divine beings came from these stars
to see life on Earth.
If we look at the mythologies of the Pleiades
around the world, there is some indication
that this star cluster is, in some way,
related to a visitation in ancient times.
NARRATOR: Located over 400 light-years
from Earth near the constellation of Taurus,
the Pleiades is commonly recognized
as seven bright stars, but actually consists of thousands.
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The Pleiades-- everybody's heard of the Pleiades.
They're also known as the Seven Sisters
because if you have really good eyesight,
you can see seven stars in a very compact configuration
in the winter sky.
And in fact, there are a lot more stars than seven.
There are actually 3,000 stars in the Pleiades.
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So the Pleiades is a star cluster.
They're not separated by huge distances.
But they occur in a small area.
That's different from a constellation, where the stars
could be moving in all sorts of directions
and are separated by huge distances.
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NARRATOR: The importance of this massive star cluster
to ancient peoples is revealed, not only by their creation
stories, but also in how they oriented their most
important structures.
All around the world, we find ancient structures
that have alignments that infer a relationship to the Pleiades.
Now these can be found at places like Chaco Canyon,
in Mesoamerica, in various parts of the world.
It's clear that the ancient people wanted to incorporate
the rising of the Pleiades in some way with the building
of these megastructures.
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NARRATOR: Additionally, ancient artwork and artifacts
pay homage to these same stars, with one depiction dating back
an incredible 18,000 years.
Perhaps the earliest reference to the Pleiades
is in the Lascaux caves in France.
But these go back thousands of years
into antiquity, even before the written language.
The Pleiades constellation shows up in various artifacts,
one of them even being a Sumerian tablet relief that
shows what appears to be some type of a god coming out
of the Pleiades constellation.
An interesting artifact coming out of the 1600s
is the Nebra sky disk depicting the constellation of Pleiades.
Worldwide, we find hundreds of references
having to do with the Pleiades--
not just on one continent, not just in one culture,
but in multiple continents, in multiple cultures worldwide.
That, to me, indicates that something happened
here on Earth having to do with someone
visiting from the Pleiades.