[music playing]
NARRATOR: Dendera, Egypt.
Roughly 1 and a 1/2 miles southeast of this ancient city
lies the Temple of Hathor, one of the most
impressive and well-preserved archaeological sites
in all of Egypt.
Among the vast hieroglyphs that cover the columns of the temple
are numerous depictions of pharaohs
standing on mysterious ships and purportedly
traveling through the stars.
WILLIAM HENRY: At the Temple of Hathor,
we see a remarkable depiction of a resurrected pharaoh
standing on what the ancient Egyptians
called the Ship of Eternity.
This is a craft that was created by Ptah,
the ancient Egyptian god of technology,
who the Egyptians connected with the star Sirius.
In ancient Egypt, we learn of pharaohs, gods who travel
the stars riding these craft.
NARRATOR: According to William Henry, who has spent decades
studying the ancient Egyptian iconography,
an important detail found in some of the depictions
at Dendera and elsewhere is that the pharaoh is shown
within a circle or bubble.
WILLIAM HENRY: In another remarkable example,
we see a pharaoh sitting on a throne with Isis and Nephthys
on either side of him.
And he's sitting in a blue bubble or a magic bubble.
NARRATOR: The so-called magic bubble imagery
is found in artwork throughout the ancient world,
and some researchers speculate that the repeated connection
between the bubble shape and ascension
may indicate that it represents a common experience
describing space travel.
Throughout the ancient world, we
find other very compelling examples of beings
surrounded by a bubble.
For example, in Tibet, we find Padmasambhava,
who sits on a lotus throne surrounded
by rainbow-colored light with a thin line symbolizing
some form of a bubble.
When you see the earliest examples of Jesus ascending
into the heavens, he's sitting on a throne
surrounded by concentric rings that
form a bubble around his body.
These are supposed to represent what the Book of Acts
says he ascended in and will return riding upon.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: There are countless paintings of saints
and other celestial beings that happen to be shown in some type
of an energetic bubble.
What if people saw something that
surpassed their technological intellect,
and thus, drew it in that way?
NARRATOR: Mainstream historians interpret
the bubble shape found in religious art
as simply symbols of divinity.
But could the repetition of this iconic imagery
across traditions suggest it was something
our ancestors witnessed?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes
and believe further evidence may be found by taking a closer
look at the recently released Gimbal video
captured by Navy jets in 2015.
NARRATOR: When aerospace engineer Dr. Travis
Taylor examined the Gimbal video,
he noticed a very curious anomaly--
a halo of light surrounding the craft.
TRAVIS TAYLOR: After further analysis of the video, what we
can see is there is a bubble region that
sort of surrounds this craft.
This is something that you don't see when you look
through the same instrument at, say,
an F-18 or an F-22 or an F-35.
Black is hot on their forward-looking
infrared camera.
And if black is hot and white is cooler-- so this is a colder
region around the vehicle.
So maybe this is a warp bubble or some sort
of propellant-less propulsion field
that someone has discovered.
NARRATOR: The concept of the warp bubble
was introduced in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel
Alcubierre as part of a hypothetical model
for traveling faster than the speed of light.
MICHIO KAKU: I once asked Miguel Alcubierre
how he came up with the idea of the Alcubierre drive.
He told me that he was watching "Star Trek."
And in "Star Trek," they, well, compressed the space
in front of them and expanded the space behind them
and would rocket faster than the speed of light.
And then he said, well, wait a minute.
I think I could duplicate that.
NARRATOR: In Alcubierre's theoretical model,
the warp drive vehicle is surrounded by an energy bubble
within space time.
MICHIO KAKU: You need energy to create
a bubble, what's called a warp bubble,
surrounding your starship.
Then you need what is called negative energy to drive it
faster than the speed of light, while inside,
you feel almost nothing.
WILLIAM HENRY: When we look at the idea of a warp bubble that
could surround a spacecraft, in the video,
engineers are seeing exactly that principle in action.
NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists
are concerned, warp bubble technology could be on display
not only in the Gimbal video, but also in artwork created
centuries ago, like the pharaoh's blue bubble,
the Tibetan lotus throne, the ascension of Christ,
and countless other sacred images that seemingly
show identical phenomena.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: So you have to wonder,
what is it that the artist tried to depict here?
It's just like Arthur C. Clark said.
"Any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."