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Speaker 1: You're listening to the third and final part of Unexplained,

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Speaker 1: season seven, episode ten, Into the bad Lands. After the

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Speaker 1: discovery of the strangely mutilated calf, doctor Colum Kellerher and

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Speaker 1: the rest of the team from Robert Bigelow's National Institute

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Speaker 1: for Discovery Science are a little rattled. The next few

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Speaker 1: days are spent analyzing all the data they pulled from

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Speaker 1: the area, but nothing unusual is found. A few days later,

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Speaker 1: a light snow has fallen over the land. In the evening,

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Speaker 1: doctor Kellerher and a colleague are in the team's trailer

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Speaker 1: in the paddock at the front of the ranch house

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Speaker 1: when they hear the Sherman's dogs barking manically outside. The

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Speaker 1: men dash out of the trailer to find Terry Sherman,

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Speaker 1: tending to the nervous looking dogs as he stares off

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Speaker 1: into the distance. There's something out there, he says, nodding

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Speaker 1: towards the horizon. Moments later, keller Her and his colleague

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Speaker 1: are holding onto the back of Terry's pickup as it

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Speaker 1: tears off toward a herd of cattle nervously huddle together

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Speaker 1: at the foot of Skinwalker Ridge. The high powered beams

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Speaker 1: of the truck flash across the pasture as they roll

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Speaker 1: and bump over the rugged terrain. Having drawn close enough,

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Speaker 1: Terry picks out a silhouetted shape standing just off from

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Speaker 1: the hurt, sheltering by the trees. Believing it to be

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Speaker 1: just another one of the cows, Terry drives around in

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Speaker 1: an attempt to corral it back into the pack, but

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Speaker 1: when they look again, the shape has gone. Scanning the

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Speaker 1: darkness beyond, they see it again, only now it's sitting

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Speaker 1: high up in a tree. When they draw closer again,

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Speaker 1: they can see clearly that it is no cow. Terry

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Speaker 1: slams on the brakes and grabs his rifle from the back.

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Speaker 1: In seconds, he's leaning against the bonnet with his eye

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Speaker 1: peering down the gun sight. The others train torches on

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Speaker 1: the animal and its eyes light up. It's staring right

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Speaker 1: at them. Terry, convinced this is the creature that killed

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Speaker 1: his calf, lines up the shot and squeezes the trigger.

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Speaker 1: The gun kicks back and the thing falls to the ground.

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Speaker 1: Terry scrambles forward, scanning desperately for any sign of the creature,

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Speaker 1: but it's gone. Just then, he sends his movement to

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Speaker 1: the left and turns to see something huge crouching like

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Speaker 1: a dog, its thick trute muscles clearly visible under the moonlight.

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Speaker 1: It stares at Terry for a second before springing high

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Speaker 1: and away into the air. Terry fires two more shots

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Speaker 1: into the dark, then gives chase after it. Kelleher and

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Speaker 1: his colleagues find him a short time later, crouched over

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Speaker 1: a small patch of snow. He directs their torches to

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Speaker 1: the ground there, as they described it, later, they find

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Speaker 1: an enormous single footprint pressed into the snow. It's round

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Speaker 1: at the base and roughly six inches wide, with what

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Speaker 1: seems like two elongated claws coming off it. It looks

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Speaker 1: a little like the print of an eagle or a hawk,

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Speaker 1: but at this size, what it most resembles is a

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Speaker 1: large dinosaur. It's now June nineteen ninety seven, and doctor Kelleher,

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Speaker 1: along with three colleagues and two healer dogs, is setting

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Speaker 1: out to capture a mysterious light that was spotted a

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Speaker 1: week earlier by another of the Big Low Team's investigators

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Speaker 1: near the old ranch house. After setting up camp a

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Speaker 1: few hundred yards south of the old cabin, it isn't

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Speaker 1: long before the dogs begin to bristle seemingly alerted to

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Speaker 1: something invisible in the space between them and the house.

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Speaker 1: Kelliher switches on his night vision goggles and gives a

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Speaker 1: stifled cry. Barely a hundred yards in front of him,

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Speaker 1: invisible to the naked eye, but clearly visible through the

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Speaker 1: goggles is what he describes later as a bright ball

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Speaker 1: of light, offering four meters off the ground. Almost as

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Speaker 1: soon as he sees it, however, it disappears. Keller Her

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Speaker 1: flicks a switch and bathes the pasture in the bright

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Speaker 1: beams of industrial floodlights, something they'd set up specifically for

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Speaker 1: moments like these. There, shouts his colleague M, now also

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Speaker 1: looking through night vision binoculars. There's something in the trees

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Speaker 1: moving north. Kella Her fumbles with its camera and points

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Speaker 1: it toward the tree line. He hurriedly takes a snap,

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Speaker 1: holding the camera in place while he counts to twenty

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Speaker 1: under his breath to give the infrared film time to

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Speaker 1: pick up the image. The dogs, barking louder out turn

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Speaker 1: all their attention to whatever it is that's lurking beyond

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Speaker 1: the tree line, while M scans left to right with

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Speaker 1: the binoculars, tracking the shape through the trees. It's still moving,

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Speaker 1: he says. Keller Heer clicks and counts to twenty again.

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Speaker 1: We are watching you. Kellaher turns to his colleague and astonishment.

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Speaker 1: The words had come from M's mouth, but the voice

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Speaker 1: was not his. Jesus Christ, it took control of my mind,

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Speaker 1: says M, recoiling in horror. Then silence. The dogs cease

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Speaker 1: their barking, and all about is still Kellerher looks on,

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Speaker 1: incredulous as M struggles to come to terms with what

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Speaker 1: just occurred. The pair stay there for another hour in

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Speaker 1: the hope of recording any more activity, but they find nothing.

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Speaker 1: Bigelow's team will return to this location numerous times over

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Speaker 1: the next few weeks, only to be continually disappointed. That

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Speaker 1: is until one evening in August. It is while packing

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Speaker 1: up after yet another fruitless six hour shift under the stars,

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Speaker 1: that one of Bigelow's team notices something reflective on the

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Speaker 1: dirt track below. It wasn't uncommon for a well polished

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Speaker 1: surface or even a scrap of foil to pick up moonlight,

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Speaker 1: especially under the vast desert sky with a bright full

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Speaker 1: moon above. Only the moon was last full over a

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Speaker 1: week ago. What's more, whatever this is appears to be

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Speaker 1: getting bigger. Before long, they realize it isn't a reflective

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Speaker 1: substance at all, but some kind of light in and

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Speaker 1: of itself. One of the team grabs a camera and

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Speaker 1: hurriedly stuffs it with the role of infrared film, while

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Speaker 1: another colleague pulls out the night vision goggles and raises

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Speaker 1: them to his eyes. The pair struggle to focus on

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Speaker 1: the orb of light as it continues to grow steadily

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Speaker 1: in size, distorting and shifting as it expands, until it

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Speaker 1: suddenly becomes clear that it isn't an orb but all.

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Speaker 1: It's a tunnel to what appears to be some other

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Speaker 1: place where it is still daytime. All of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: as they later reported, one of the men catches sight

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Speaker 1: of something inside it, something moving. They watch in horror

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Speaker 1: as a faceless creature with seemingly distended limbs and dark

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Speaker 1: fur crawls forth from out of an unknown place. Small

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Speaker 1: at first, it appears to grow in size as it

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Speaker 1: pulls itself forward, inching closer and closer to the edge

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Speaker 1: of the tunnel, before finally slipping out of the light

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Speaker 1: and dropping onto the prairie. The men continue watching, utterly,

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Speaker 1: mesmerized as the creature stands up on two legs and

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Speaker 1: speeds off into the fields. A moment later, the light

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Speaker 1: is gone. The men, feeling suddenly exposed, pause for a

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Speaker 1: brief second before hurtling down to the bottom of the

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Speaker 1: ridge and back to the safety of the observation trailer.

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Speaker 1: The following day, when the whole role of infrared film

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Speaker 1: is developed, it reveals nothing as it happens. Despite a

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Speaker 1: number of supposedly startling observations. After almost a year of investigating,

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Speaker 1: Robert Bigelow's team have failed to capture anything on film.

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Speaker 1: All that time, they'd tried to be subtle due to

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Speaker 1: an earlier suggestion of Terry's, who felt that every time

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Speaker 1: he tried obviously to observe the anomalous activity, it would stop,

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Speaker 1: as if there was some kind of awareness that he

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Speaker 1: was trying to observe it. By the end of that

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Speaker 1: summer of nineteen ninety seven, however, the team decided to

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Speaker 1: change tact and promptly erect six twenty four hour surveillance

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Speaker 1: cameras around the property. All they had to do then

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Speaker 1: was wait a full year passes without incident. Then, finally,

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Speaker 1: in late July nineteen ninety eight, something peculiar happens. One morning. Terry,

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Speaker 1: in his continuing capacity as ranch manager, is making his

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Speaker 1: routine check of the cameras. When he approaches the primary unit,

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Speaker 1: a telegraph pole in the middle of the pasture with

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Speaker 1: three cameras attached to the top. A wry smile breaks

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Speaker 1: out across his face as he gazes up at the equipment.

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Speaker 1: The cables that had previously been threaded so carefully through

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Speaker 1: meters of PVC tubing and held in place with the

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Speaker 1: duct tape were now dangling freely in the breeze. The

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Speaker 1: tubing wrenched apart and discarded at the bottom of the pole.

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Speaker 1: As for the duct tape, it had completely vanished later

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Speaker 1: that afternoon, having flown straight in from Las Vegas as

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Speaker 1: soon as he heard the news. Doctor Colum Kellerher sits

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Speaker 1: in the team trailer working through the footage from the

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Speaker 1: damaged cameras. On the monitor, images of the pastures play out,

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Speaker 1: the cattle ambling back and forth, flicking their tails as

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Speaker 1: they chew on the grass. The images speed forward, flickering

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Speaker 1: and stretching, as Kelleher skips the tape onwards. Then releasing

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Speaker 1: the dial, he lets the last few minutes play out

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Speaker 1: When the timecode reaches eight thirty, the tape completely cuts out,

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Speaker 1: and all the other tapes are the same, each going

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Speaker 1: dark at precisely eight thirty. Doctor Kellerher realizes with some

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Speaker 1: excitement that whatever happened must have occurred at that precise time.

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Speaker 1: Some time later, one of the team returns to the

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Speaker 1: trailer holding another tape, this time taken from a camera

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Speaker 1: that had been pointed directly at the vandalized post. If

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Speaker 1: this tape works, they will see exactly what destroyed those cables.

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Speaker 1: Kellerher slips the tape in to the deck and runs

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Speaker 1: it back to shortly before eight thirty. Then hits play.

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Speaker 1: A scene flashes up on the screen, an image of

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Speaker 1: pastures and milling cattle, like before, only this time. Standing

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Speaker 1: right in the middle of the image is the telegraph

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Speaker 1: pole with the three cameras attached to the top. The

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Speaker 1: team watches, transfixed as the time edges ever closer to

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Speaker 1: the eight to thirty mark, until finally the moment arrives

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Speaker 1: eight twenty nine and fifty seven seconds, eight twenty nine

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Speaker 1: and fifty eight seconds, fifty nine seconds, and then finally

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Speaker 1: eight thirty, But there is nothing. The image remains just

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Speaker 1: as before, with no sign of anybody tampering with anything,

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Speaker 1: not even approaching the post. The team skips the footage

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Speaker 1: backwards and forwards, watching as daylight fades tonight, but still

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Speaker 1: there is nothing. The following morning, the footage is taken

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Speaker 1: to the investigation team's HQ in Las Vegas, where it

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Speaker 1: has cleaned up and sharpened, so much so that they

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Speaker 1: can even see the tiny red LEDs lit up on

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Speaker 1: the front of each camera as they record. As they

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Speaker 1: play the footage back again, they watch stunned as each

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Speaker 1: led light is inexplicably snuffed out at precisely eight point thirty,

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Speaker 1: while all around the pastures remain empty and still. For

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Speaker 1: the next two years, Terry continues to assist Robert Bigelow's team,

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Speaker 1: hoping desperately for any kind of explanation as to what

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Speaker 1: had terrorized his family and all the animals at the ranch,

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Speaker 1: but the answers don't come. By nineteen ninety nine, the phenomena,

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Speaker 1: whatever it was, had gradually abated to almost nonexistent. There

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Speaker 1: were still, apparently the occasional orb or light in places

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Speaker 1: it shouldn't be, but Terry and Gwen Sherman felt that

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Speaker 1: something fundamental had changed. Eventually, the Shermans make the decision

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Speaker 1: to leave Bigelow Ranch behind for good, and new caretakers

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Speaker 1: were installed with instructions to report on any strange activity

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Speaker 1: that might occur, though to date it is not known

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Speaker 1: if any such activity has taken place. Looking at the

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Speaker 1: various instants one at a time, the phenomena might have

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Speaker 1: been explained away as unusual but not necessarily paranormal. When

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Speaker 1: taken together, however, it was hard for Terry and Gwen

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Speaker 1: not to suspect that something extraordinary UKNN and organized had

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Speaker 1: either been observing them, examining them like zoologists to see

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Speaker 1: how they ticked, or had simply been using their cattle

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Speaker 1: as cannon fodder with devices beyond their knowledge. They could

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Speaker 1: only be thankful that whatever it was, or whoever they were,

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Speaker 1: the family had not been harmed. By the end of

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century, with the dissipation of activity on Bigelow Ranch,

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Speaker 1: Robert Bigelow turned his focus to a new company he

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Speaker 1: founded in nineteen ninety eight called Bigelow Aerospace. The company

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Speaker 1: was established to develop space destinations using the latest inexpandable technology,

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Speaker 1: with plans to launch the first hotel in space by

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Speaker 1: the year twenty twenty two, that idea has not yet

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Speaker 1: come to pass. With interest in Bigelow Ranch beginning to wane,

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Speaker 1: doctor Colin Kelleher and the rest of the investigative team

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Speaker 1: were forced to call it a day, and in two

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Speaker 1: thousand and four, the National Institute for Discovery Science, or NIDS,

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Speaker 1: was eventually wound down and disbanded. The NIDS team and

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Speaker 1: the Sherman family maintained to this day that they witnessed

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Speaker 1: up any of their claims. In twenty sixteen, the Adamantium

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Speaker 1: Real estate company, whose owners and provenance remained a mystery

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Speaker 1: As our understanding of the world and the space around

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Speaker 1: our tools of exploration. Where once our intrepid endeavors were

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Speaker 1: More recently, it is to below those oceans and above

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Speaker 1: is interesting, then, as our comprehension of spaces and dimensions evolve,

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Speaker 1: one day. Equally fascinating is how easily our prevailing notions

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Speaker 1: what its true properties might actually be. On May twenty ninth,

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Speaker 1: on the island of Principe, off the west coast of Africa,

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Speaker 1: occurring in the sky above them. It's shortly after thirteen

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Speaker 1: creeps until the light is all but extinguished, save for

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Speaker 1: strange bands of undulating shadows ripple over surfaces as a

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Speaker 1: moment of eerie silence gives way to a crescendo of

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Speaker 1: untimely cricket song. When the last of the solar crest

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Speaker 1: is finally extinguished, a blinding flash of white flares out

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Speaker 1: from behind, before receding to reveal the iris hue of

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Speaker 1: the Sun's majestic corona, and all around, a distant hazy

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Speaker 1: the most spectacular solar eclipses of the last five hundred years,

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Speaker 1: But remarkably, it is not the Sun that they've come

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Speaker 1: to observe. Instead, it is to the giant orange eye

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Speaker 1: out to us from one hundred and fifty three years

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Speaker 1: the gravitational warping of space predicted by Albert Einstein's general

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Speaker 1: universe will be changed forever. In nineteen oh five, Einstein's

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Speaker 1: With his General theory of relativity, Einstein had uncovered something

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Speaker 1: perhaps even more profound. Where Isaac Newton before him had

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Speaker 1: envisaged gravity as an attractive force operating within a three

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Speaker 1: of space time. He theorized that gravity wasn't a force

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Speaker 1: bringing objects together as such, but rather it was the

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Speaker 1: bending of space itself. Although the prevailing laws of Newtonian

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Speaker 1: physics had also predicted the gravitational warping of light as

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Speaker 1: recorded by Eddington's team, they were wrong by roughly a

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Speaker 1: half compared to Einstein's predictions. Prior to Einstein's calculations, Newton's

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Speaker 1: law of universal gravitation had remained unchallenged for over two

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Speaker 1: hundred years, primarily because for all intents and purposes it worked. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: Newton's laws do a great job predicting the motions of planets,

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Speaker 1: or rocket shooting for the moon, or the trajectory of

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Speaker 1: a ski jumper, even but when applied to the universe

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Speaker 1: that Einstein had uncovered, they fundamentally break down. Einstein's conviction

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Speaker 1: that the speed of light as a constant had lifted

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Speaker 1: a veil to reveal a new universe that had been

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Speaker 1: there all along. We'd just been too blinded by prevailing

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Speaker 1: ideas to see it. In nineteen twenty three, George Lemet,

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Speaker 1: a young priest from Belgium studying at Cambridge University under

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Speaker 1: Arthur Eddington's tutelage, found something unexpected in Einstein's calculations. At

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Speaker 1: infinitely old, that it had always existed, and the various

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Speaker 1: bodies within it were completely static. Yet when Lemet examined

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Speaker 1: Einstein's calculations, he discovered something quite different. The universe wasn't

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Speaker 1: static at all, It was expanding. Russian cosmologist and mathematician

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Speaker 1: Alexander Friedman had also hit upon this idea as early

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Speaker 1: as nineteen twenty two, when he provided calculations for both

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Speaker 1: an expansion and steady state model of the universe. Friedman

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Speaker 1: would never live to see the proof of his theory, however,

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Speaker 1: as he died tragically of typhoid in nineteen twenty five

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Speaker 1: at the age of just thirty seven. In any case,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven, la Mate published his findings with

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Speaker 1: great excitement. Unfortunately for him, however, nobody paid any attention

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Speaker 1: to it, except for Einstein, who reportedly met him later

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Speaker 1: that year and told him, your calculations are correct, but

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Speaker 1: your grasp of physics is abominable. What was most troubling

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Speaker 1: about the implications of Lemetra's idea, and what had so

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Speaker 1: upset Einstein, was that if everything was moving further away,

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Speaker 1: it must have at one point been a lot closer together.

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Speaker 1: Lemetre called his discovery his hypothesis of the primeval atom.

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Speaker 1: We might know this better to day as the Big

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Speaker 1: Bang theory. This theory was given greater credence when astronomer

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Speaker 1: Edwin Hubble announced in nineteen twenty nine that distant galaxies

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Speaker 1: were moving further away from us and faster than those

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Speaker 1: closest to us. Then, in nineteen sixty four, Arno Penzius

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Speaker 1: and Robert Wilson, with the guidance of Robert Dickie, uncovered

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Speaker 1: the existence of the cosmic microwave background residual radiation pervading

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Speaker 1: all of the known universe that many consider to be

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Speaker 1: the best evidence to date for the Big Bang. Realizing

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Speaker 1: his mistake in the end, Einstein proclaimed Lemetra's theory the

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Speaker 1: most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I

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Speaker 1: have ever listened, demonstrating that what counts ultimately is the data,

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Speaker 1: not the ideology. What can't be overlooked is the reason

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Speaker 1: that Einstein had missed what was already apparent in his calculations.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't because he didn't understand it, but rather because

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Speaker 1: he was effectively blind to it. Einstein was so convinced

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Speaker 1: that such a universe wasn't possible, even creating an additional

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Speaker 1: component to account for it that he called the cosmological

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Speaker 1: constant and that he later said was its greatest mistake,

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Speaker 1: that he missed the proof of expansion already inherent in

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Speaker 1: his own calculations. Just as Einstein had been prepared to

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Speaker 1: look beyond conventional wisdom to reassess the work of Isaac Newton,

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Speaker 1: so too had Lamet disregarded pervading convictions of the day

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Speaker 1: in order to see the universe anew Though it must

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Speaker 1: be added that with eye Einstein being the genius that

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Speaker 1: he was, it turns out his derided cosmological constant might

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Speaker 1: have a function after all, with some linking it to

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Speaker 1: the unknown quantity often referred to as dark energy. Although

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Speaker 1: it is of course one thing to reinterpret calculations that

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Speaker 1: have already been demonstrated to work, it is quite another

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Speaker 1: to speculate on something with no hard evidence whatsoever. Lest

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Speaker 1: we forget, it is less than one hundred years ago

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Speaker 1: since we thought the universe had no beginning, was static

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Speaker 1: in composition, composed of only three dimensions, and consisted entirely

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Speaker 1: of the Milky Way. Today, many leading scientists are beginning

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Speaker 1: to consider the possibility that our universe is only one

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Speaker 1: of many universes existing within a much broader region of

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Speaker 1: space time than we had previously imagined. With our ever

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Speaker 1: advancing understanding of the quantum realm, we find ourselves taking

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Speaker 1: seriously notions such as the many world's interpretation, first proposed

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Speaker 1: by physicist Hugh Everett i ID In the nineteen fifties,

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Speaker 1: for which he was widely ridiculed at the time. Everett's

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Speaker 1: idea poses the possibility of an infinite number of universes

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Speaker 1: branching out from ours, providing an alternative universe at every

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Speaker 1: conceivable moment. The idea has some startling implications, not least

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Speaker 1: the possibility that everything that could ever happen already has,

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Speaker 1: having barely had a moment to wrap our heads around

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Speaker 1: Einstein's four dimensional universe. Advocates of the branch of physics

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Speaker 1: known as string theory proposed that space might actually consist

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Speaker 1: of eleven or even twenty six dimensions. There are some, however,

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Speaker 1: who would discourage our intrepid ventures, who aren't so keen

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Speaker 1: on the prospect of uncovering new worlds and whatever else

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Speaker 1: we might find along the way. As Stephen Hawking pointed out,

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Speaker 1: the history of humankind is littered with the debris of

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Speaker 1: civilizations destroyed at the hands of those who considered themselves superior.

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Speaker 1: If we struggle to see the world in the same

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Speaker 1: way within our own species, let alone, how irrelevant we

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Speaker 1: consider the lives of the millions of other species with

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Speaker 1: whom we share the planet. What complications might arise should

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Speaker 1: we be confronted by a species more advanced than ours. If,

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Speaker 1: in our search for hidden worlds, we find a gateway

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Speaker 1: to access one, what price might we pay for opening it?

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Speaker 1: Perhaps sticking to our own patches best lest we suffer

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Speaker 1: the fate of Frank Cotton, for example, from Clive Barker's

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Speaker 1: darkly erotic pain to Human Flesh, The hell Bound Heart.

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Speaker 1: In Barker's novella The hedonistically Curious, Frank, in his quest

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Speaker 1: for ever more sensual pleasure, is introduced to a mystical

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Speaker 1: puzzle box known as the La Martian Configuration. It is

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Speaker 1: said that the box opens a portal to an extra

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Speaker 1: dimensional realm of unfathomable pleasure, administered by a race of

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Speaker 1: powerful entities known as Cenobytes. It is only when Frank

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Speaker 1: successfully unlocks the portal that he realizes, to his horror,

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Speaker 1: that the zadomasochistic cenobites demons to some angels to others

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Speaker 1: have an understanding of pleasure that is somewhat different to ours.

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Speaker 1: Frank's reward for accessing their world is to have his

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Speaker 1: skin ripped from his body before spending an eternity in torture.

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Speaker 1: From most human perspectives, the cenobites are monstrous. From theirs,

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Speaker 1: they are simply cenobites. For now, at least, we need

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Speaker 1: not worry about such horrors. But it's worth bearing in

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Speaker 1: mind just how often and significantly extraordinary theories drawn from

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Speaker 1: maths can predate our ability to physically prove them. Although

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Speaker 1: those multiverse and many world's interpretation theories are only presently speculation,

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Speaker 1: they might one day prove to be places we will

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Speaker 1: not only communicate with, but visit too. As unfathomable as

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Speaker 1: some ideas may at first appear, sometimes it isn't until

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Speaker 1: our perceptions of what is possible have shifted that previously

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Speaker 1: unseen layers of the universe or indeed universes, can be

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Speaker 1: peeled back to reveal their true nature underneath, even if

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Speaker 1: the evidence was in front of us all along. To

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Speaker 1: paraphrase philosopher Roger Scrutton, the consolation of the imagination often

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Speaker 1: turns out not to be imaginary consolation. Ultimately, no matter

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Speaker 1: how much further or deeper we look, perhaps there will

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Speaker 1: always be something that we don't know, hidden away from

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Speaker 1: the beaming light of human endeavor. But one thing seems certain.

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Speaker 1: As long as we are around to do so, we

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Speaker 1: will never stop searching for whatever that is. This episode

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Speaker 1: was written by Richard McLain Smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook,

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Speaker 1: with stories never before featured on the show, is now

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Speaker 1: available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes

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Speaker 1: and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and

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Speaker 1: rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel

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Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas

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Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you

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Speaker 1: have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.

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Speaker 1: You can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com

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Speaker 1: and reach us online through Twitter at Unexplained Pod and

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