WEBVTT - S01 Episode 3: Do You See What I See 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:02.760 Membership, peace, apply after free trial, cancel anytime. Can I 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:04.920 be real with you for a second. That goal you 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:08.280 have to exercise and eat better? You really can do it, 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:11.200 but nobody is going to do it for you. Nobody 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:13.280 is going to push you out of bed to work out, 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.239 Nobody is going to make you eat better. But here's 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:19.800 the thing. Nobody has to because you can do it 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:22.440 if you have the right tools and a community that 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:26.120 cares about helping you get results. 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Our ability to lie, embellish, and 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:18.840 imagine is one of our most extraordinary traits. It is 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:22.000 thanks to our human capacity for imagination that we have 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:24.880 walked on the moon, built the great Pyramids of Egypt, 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:28.600 and painted masterpieces such as the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:33.360 It is also this imagination that enables us to create 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:37.320 and share stories, Stories that, although almost always bear some 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:41.440 form of fabrication, can often reveal certain truths about ourselves. 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.720 And yet the notion of truth is the most elusive 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:52.200 of things. For some, it can be a cause for annoyance, 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.720 the frustration at finding not everybody sees things the way 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.360 they do. For others, it can be the difference between 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:04.360 life and death. At times, the truth can be hard, 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:07.200 a bit of pill that might force us to even 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:11.000 deceive ourselves in an attempt to escape from it. And 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:15.200 sometimes this self deception can be so potent that sheer 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:18.320 belief alone can serve as a satisfying substitute for the 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:27.680 truth itself. The great physicist Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.120 us that we can never know both the momentum and 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.360 the position of a particle at any one time. In 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.160 other words, you might say, we can never know the 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:41.359 whole truth, but only an approximation of it. The concept 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.000 of objective truth becomes even murkier if we also accept 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:49.160 cannot understand anything without first taking into account the mechanism 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:53.519 through which it is observed. Although the truth may well 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.480 be out there, it begs the question does it even exist? 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:14.880 You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClain smith. Throughout 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:18.440 history we have concocted stories of strange apparitions in the sky, 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:22.680 of gods and monsters that might either threaten or protect us. 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:27.640 In modern times, these stories are most commonly associated with 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.960 the UFOs. Although the term had come into use early 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.400 in the twentieth century, it wasn't until the summer of 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:37.839 nineteen forty seven that the phrase really caught the public imagination. 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:42.280 In July of that year, an American recreational pilot named 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:45.840 Kenneth Arnold claimed to have been followed by nine sourcerlike 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.480 objects whilst flying his plane over Mount Rainier in Washington State. 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.440 In a world still deeply traumatized by the Second World War, 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:57.160 the United States Air Force were unwilling to take any 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.160 chances and swiftly set about establishing two things, just what 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.960 exactly were those strange objects, and more importantly, to what 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:09.960 extent did they pose a threat to national security? On 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:14.040 this occasion, Arnold's story proved of little concern. However, the 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:17.480 ensuing publicity led to an unprecedented influx of claims from 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:22.920 hundreds of others citing similar experiences of their own. Although 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:25.440 the Air Force were happy to ignore the civilian reports, 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:28.280 it proved a little harder to dismiss those that had 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:33.360 come from their own highly trained personnel. To this end, 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.240 in nineteen forty eight, the US Air Force recruited a 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.040 man named Joseph Allen Heineck to act as scientific consultant 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:44.640 on a newly established project called Operations sign. The purpose 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:47.279 of the unit was to create a localized propository for 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.880 all suspected UFO sightings, with the ultimate aim of generating 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:56.120 rational and scientific explanations to explain the strange occurrencies. For Heineck, 0:04:56.279 --> 0:05:00.000 a doctor of physics and astronomy from Ohio State University, 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.880 the committed man of science, the opportunity to dispel the 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:05.560 emerging myths of little green men was too good to 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.440 turn down, and for the first few years this is 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:14.599 exactly what he did. But then something changed. Heinick noticed 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.240 a pattern creeping into his work. He had discovered that, 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:21.800 although the majority of cases were fanciful and easily dismissed, 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.120 for every twenty nonsense claims he received, there would be 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.960 at least one that was impossible to explain. He termed 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:34.200 these cases his unknowns. What's more, Heineck realized that, in 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:38.080 spite of operations signs initial intentions, the project had rarely 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:41.799 followed his own strict principles of the scientific method, namely 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:44.880 that every case should be approached with complete disinterest and 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:50.520 without bias. It became clear that even if a UFO 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.039 were to land on the road in front of his superiors, 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.679 they would have refused to believe it. It soon dawned 0:05:56.720 --> 0:05:59.440 on Heineck that his job had not been about investigating 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:13.880 the UFO reports at all. It was purely to debunk them. 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:16.680 On the night of July twenty third, nineteen ninety five, 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:20.400 a group of amateur astronomers headed out into the Arizona 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:22.920 Desert to a strip of land just south of Phoenix 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:27.840 known as Pecola Ranch. After a few hours observing various 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.200 galaxies and star clusters, one member of the group turned 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:35.279 his attention to the constellation of Sagittarius. His name was 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:39.479 Thomas Bob. Peering into the lens as the desert air 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:43.039 began to chill, Thomas spotted something strange far out in 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:49.800 the depths of space. Approximately four hundred miles away in Cloudcroft, 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:53.719 New Mexico, astronomer Alan Hale was recording the brightness of 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:55.640 a series of comets he had been tracking for the 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:59.440 past couple of months. After taking the measurements he needed, 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.880 who turned his telescope to the constellation of Sagittarius, and 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:07.880 sure enough, he also spotted something unexpected, something that did 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:12.760 not correlate with any of his established charts. Unbeknownst to 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:17.040 each other, Allan and Thomas had simultaneously made the same discovery, 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:25.600 a discovery that would change their lives forever. Roughly five 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:28.520 hundred and seventy seven million miles from the two astronomers, 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.600 a forty kilometer wide mass of rock, ice, and dust 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.520 was hurtling through space at approximately one hundred thousand miles 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:39.240 per hour relative to the Earth. It was as if 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.600 Sagittarius himself had launched an arrow straight through the heart 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:46.679 of the Solar System. That arrow was soon to become 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:53.960 known as the hail Bop Comet. By March nineteen ninety seven, 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:56.400 any casual observer would have been able to see the 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:59.680 comet blazing its trail for the previous forty months, But 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.840 the best was yet to come. As the earth spun 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.080 into the evening of March twenty fourth, people all around 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:09.840 the world turned their eyes to the sky and braced 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.440 themselves for one of the most spectacular astronomical events in 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:17.640 the history of mankind. For those of us watching in 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:22.440 Great Britain, the occasion didn't disappoint. For those of us 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:25.920 located around the border of Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, it 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.680 was about to become a very memorable evening. Indeed, albeit 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:35.680 for a somewhat different reason. Just exactly what occurred that 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.320 night over the dark, misty moors of the British Peak 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:42.959 District has never fully been accounted for. It has become 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:46.120 known as the Howda Moore Incident and as a mystery 0:08:46.240 --> 0:09:01.360 that remains to this day unexplained. Howd and Moore, located 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:04.400 in the aptly named Dark Peak region of Britain's Peak District, 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:08.320 has long been associated with the strange and mysterious the 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:10.960 wilder misty moors have played host to a number of 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.560 peculiar sightings, ranging from the ghosts of plains, people and 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.920 even ufoes. With more than fifty aircraft believed to have 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:21.319 crashed in the region over the years, at the cost 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.920 of roughly two hundred lives, it is easy to see 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:28.160 how such tragedy might weave its way into the local folklore. 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.560 But nothing could have prepared the local community for what 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.640 was about to unfold. On the evening of Monday, March 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:40.840 twenty fourth, nineteen ninety seven, with the hail Pop comet 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.200 coming to its brightest and most prominent point, thousands had 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:46.960 ventured out into the cold spring air to witness the spectacle, 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:51.800 and the conditions could not have been more perfect with 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:55.079 so many people preoccupied with the comet. For the officers 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.680 manning the control room of Ecclesfield Police Station in the 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.600 city of Sheffield, it was proving to be very quiet 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:08.360 evening indeed, but all that was about to change. The 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:12.280 first call came in just after ten fifteen pm. Two 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.760 farmers from near a town named Bolsterstone reported a low 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:20.679 flying aircraft traveling in a southwesterly direction. Moments later, after 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.400 the plane had appeared to hit the ground. An orange 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:26.800 glow was seen, followed by several plumes of smoke rising 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:31.800 into the air. In the nearby village of Strides, local 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:35.719 gamekeepers Mike and Barbara Ellison were watching TV when they 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:39.000 heard a terrific explosion coming from the direction of the moors. 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.480 After reporting the crash to the local police, mister Ellison 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:46.520 was joined by community Officer PC Mick Hage as they 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:50.760 attempted to find the location of the explosion. Although their 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.760 search proved unsuccessful, they too reported seeing an eerie red 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.440 glow in the sky just to the south of the moors. 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.480 At around the same time, Police Special Constable Marie Franz 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:07.960 Tattersfield and her husband Steve were also driving near the 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.160 town of Bolsterstone when suddenly what looked like a four 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:16.280 seat aircraft flew directly across their path. Marie Franz noted 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:19.920 the craft was unusually low and extremely bright, and later 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.040 described the incident as the strangest thing she had ever seen. 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:27.000 As the aircraft continued on its path directly in front 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:30.600 of them, it disappeared behind some trees and a tremendous 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:35.640 boom was heard coming from the same direction as the 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.040 phone calls flooded into the police control center. A bizarre 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:47.840 picture was starting to emerge. Witnesses reported seeing a triangular 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:52.160 object as wide as the street, passing overhead. Others recounted 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:54.880 seeing strange pink and red lights hovering in the sky. 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:59.840 Many reported hearing a loud bang or boom, followed by 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:03.320 an eerie orange light glowing in the distance. There were 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:07.040 also reports, including one from a retired Royal Air Force officer, 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.560 of two Tornado fighter jets flying extremely low, as if 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:14.040 they had just been scrambled for an unexpected operation. His 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:16.920 report also noted how unusual it was for them to 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:21.840 be seen at that time of night. One lady, described 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:24.760 by police as a clear headed, reliable witness who was 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.520 familiar with the night sky, reported seeing an aircraft shaped 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:33.000 like a long cigar. The aircraft did not have wings, 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:39.120 made no noise, and appeared to be glowing. Local businessman 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.400 Dan Grayson recounted seeing a bright light that moved off 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:46.920 before splitting into two and disappearing over the horizon. Shortly afterwards, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.280 a search and rescue helicopter flew over the exact same spot. 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:55.400 Perhaps strangest of all was the eleven PM reported sighting 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:58.199 of an unknown man seen wandering the eight fifty seven 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:01.640 road by the passengers of a mini After flagging down 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:04.439 the bus, the man requested a lift back to Sheffield, 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:08.520 but was refused on account of his strange behavior. The man, 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:11.680 dressed in dark brown clothes, was described as being in 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:15.760 some distress and smelling strongly of diesel. The young man 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:18.640 who reported the incident, a jet engineer in the Royal 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:21.920 Air Force, later reported that the pungent smell of diesel 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:29.760 was remarkably similar to the smell of aviator fluid. Whatever 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.640 occurred that night was enough to convince the South Yorkshire 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:35.920 Police to send over two hundred personnel to conduct a 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.640 fifty square mile search of the Pennine Moorland. The search, 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:43.400 which cost over fifty thousand pounds of public money, lasted 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:47.439 for over fifteen hours but failed to yield any significant findings. 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.559 Seeking a rational explanation for the events, head of the 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:55.720 police operation, Chief Inspector Christine Burbery, reached out to the 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:59.920 many Royal Air Force bases that operated in the area. However, 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:03.400 they informed her that there had been no military aircraft 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.000 flying that night that would have explained the reports of 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:11.439 low flying planes and the explosions. The following day, a 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:15.600 formal statement released by the Ministry of Defense declared unequivocally 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:19.240 that no military exercise of any kind had taken place 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:24.560 the previous night. The official South Yorkshire Police record categorize 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:35.000 the incident as unexplained. Are you always taking care of 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:37.520 your family? Do you often take care of others and 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.800 not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself, 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.680 to make time for you. You deserve it. Tele Adoc 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:47.520 gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:51.000 get back to feeling your best, to feeling like yourself again. 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.680 With tele adoc, you can speak to a licensed therapist 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.480 by phone or video. 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Due 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:50.160 to the extortionate cost to the public of the seemingly 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.960 needless rescue operation, it fell to local MP for Sheffield 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:57.880 and Hillsborough, Helen Jackson, to seek some more concrete answers. 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:02.720 More than a year after the event, her questions were 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.840 finally put to then Defense Minister George Robinson and Home 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.640 Secretary Jack Straw in the House of Commons, but her 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:14.000 questions were met with a familiar reply. The Ministry of 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.000 Defense maintained their official stance that there had been no 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.520 cover up over this incident and no aircraft were scrambled 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:24.480 that night to intercept a UFO. Indeed, it is a 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:27.520 court martial offense to break the sound barrier over land, 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:31.320 an occurrence that might have explained the loud bangs described 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:37.880 by many of the witnesses. Although there is no photographic 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.640 evidence of the night in question, two mysterious sounds were 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:45.280 picked up by microphones located at the British Geological Society 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:50.280 Research Post in Leeds. According to senior seismologist Glenn Ford, 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:53.200 the two bangs had without doubt come from the direction 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:57.440 of the moors. After further examination, the sound signal was 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:01.480 found to be indicative of two separate sonic booms, sounds 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:04.280 that could only have been caused by high speed aircraft. 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.919 More startling, however, is the claim allegedly made by a 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.840 radar operator from the local Royal Air Force base in 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:16.800 nearby Linton upon Ooze. The operator claimed to attract a 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.680 UFO on the night of March twenty fourth for over 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:23.360 ten minutes before it shot off his radar screen and disappeared. 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:28.720 The claim was later retracted and an official statement put 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.959 out by r F Linton upon Ouze declared, we are 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:34.160 the only people in this area who would be flying 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.320 above the region and we were not practicing last night. 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:41.280 We can confirm that nothing was picked up on radar either. 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:56.440 It is not without exaggeration that the Hailbop comet is 0:17:56.480 --> 0:18:00.480 considered the most widely observed in our history. With the 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:02.840 growth of the Internet in the nineties, as well as 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:06.760 rapid improvements being made to devices of communication, never before 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.600 had the planet been so interconnected in its awareness of 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:13.600 such an event. Also, taking into account the popularity of 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:16.160 shows such as the X Files, it would be easy 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:19.000 to classify the HOWD a more incident, not as evidence 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.919 of an alien visitation, but rather little more than the 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.480 workings of the human imagination, fueled by our collective excitement 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:30.320 over the hail Bop comet the sightings of strange aircraft. 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.600 Perhaps nothing but the self deception of people who wanted 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:36.439 such an event to be true, coupled with our insatiable 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:38.960 desire to attach reason and purpose to a set of 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:45.439 disparate and mundane events. Or is there something else entirely 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.280 that might explain the events of that night, something far 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:57.439 more unnerving. In nineteen ninety eight, two psychologists named Arian 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:01.360 Mack and Irvin Rock published a paper the Massachusetts Institute 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:06.160 of Technology entitled Inattentive Blindness. Building on the earlier work 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:10.879 of cognitive psychologists Ulrich Nisser and Robert Becklin, The paper 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.159 included the results of a series of simple experiments that 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.720 highlighted a fundamental deficiency in our sense of perception. The 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.320 study concluded that, due to our brain's natural tendency to 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.679 band multitudes of objects and stimuli into single groups, we 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.160 might often fail to notice even the most obvious of stimuli, 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:33.000 even if it was occurring directly in front of us. 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:37.280 Is it possible the due to the public's hyper vigilance 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.199 and heightened awareness of the sky above, that they were 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:44.440 suddenly receptive to seeing an unusual object flying overhead, an 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.280 object that might otherwise have passed them by completely unnoticed. 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:52.159 Perhaps in the manner of the apocryphal story detailing the 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.400 moment that Christopher Columbus approached the shores of what would 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:59.560 later become known as the Caribbean, having never seen such 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:01.920 a thing before. It is said that the people of 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:05.399 the island were completely oblivious to the huge ships approaching, 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:09.720 and only registered them after noticing strange disturbances in the water. 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:23.760 It is widely accepted that, in a physical sense, at least, 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:28.040 the world we see around us is not a truthful depiction. Rather, 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:30.240 it is the result of a combination of both the 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:33.680 limitations of our brains and the extraordinary way in which 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:38.080 we have evolved to best suit our environment. Take, for example, 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:42.080 the appearance of color, an extravagance that only exists because 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.520 of the way our brains interpret variations in the wavelengths 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:51.439 of light. And, although some may disagree, being able to 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:54.080 see the world as a collection of solid and manageable 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:58.280 materials as opposed to the vibrating mesh of subatomic particles 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:01.760 that it really is, would seem superficially at least, to 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:08.240 be of much more use to us. To counter these deficiencies, 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.679 we have developed technologies that enable us to detect and 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:14.880 observe the things that we might otherwise be unable to see, 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:21.120 things such as gravity waves and the Higgs boson. And 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:24.679 yet for all our technological ingenuity, we are still unable 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.159 to account for what makes up over eighty percent of 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:33.160 the known universe. The answer to what exactly constitutes dark matter, 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.960 the substance believed to be responsible for this deficit, remains 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:43.840 perhaps the biggest prize in physics. And if you take 0:21:43.880 --> 0:21:46.359 the view that technology is only an extension of the 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:50.639 human experience and therefore susceptible to the same limits of perception, 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:54.800 it's possible that some aspects of the universe might forever 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:59.560 remain invisible to us. And if you consider the possibility 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:03.440 that two species, having evolved in different ways, might look 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:06.800 at the universe and see two completely different things, just 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:12.080 what exactly is it that we are looking at? It 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:14.960 is a thought that brings to mind perhaps the biggest 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:20.399 question of them all is the truth out there or 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:29.800 is it merely in our heads? This episode of Unexplained 0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:34.040 was produced by me Richard McClane smith. Unexplained is on 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:36.879 Twitter at Unexplained Pod, and you can find out more 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:56.320 about me and the show at Unexplained podcast dot com. Now, 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:59.359 it's time to take care of yourself. To make time 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:03.560 for you, teledoc gives you access to a licensed therapist 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:06.960 to help you get back to feeling your best. Speak 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:10.879 to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:14.240 seven a m. To nine pm local time, seven days 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:18.800 a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. 0:23:19.520 --> 0:23:23.040 Download the app or visit teledoc dot com Forward slash 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:27.600 Unexplained Podcast today to get started. That's t e l 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:31.440 a d oc dot com Slash Unexplained podcast