006 - Doug Buettner on Identifying Truly Anomalous UAP, Debunking Balloons, and Investigations Near Skinwalker Ranch - The Anomalous Review

Episode Transcript
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(00:22):
Welcome to the Anomalous Review.My name is Michael Glawson.
I'm philosopher of science and technology, and I'm the host of
the show today. My guest is Doctor Doug Bentner.
Doug is a senior member of the American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics anda board member of the Scientific
Coalition for UAP Studies, whichis the host of this show.
He has his BS and Ms. degrees inphysics from Morgan State and

(00:43):
APHD in astronautical engineering from the University
of Southern California. He spent 30 years in the
aerospace industry, and he's hada crazy variety of experience.
He's been a consultant for NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, where
he helped build the very first machines for fabricating
aerogel. He worked on the support teams
for the 4th Discovery mission, the Mir Space Station, and the

(01:04):
Mars Sojourner Rover. He spent 20 years at the
Aerospace Corporation. He's one of the directors of
their space based Surveillance division.
And currently he's the deputy chief scientist of the
Acquisition Innovation Research Center.
And he teaches courses in space mission engineering at the
University of Utah. In his work on UAP, Dr. Bittner
is the chief technologist for Cider dot IO.

(01:26):
That's SIGHTER dot IO, which is an iPhone app that crowdsources
UAP sightings. He also owns property about a
mile and a half from Skinwalker Ranch for conducting his own
research on interesting anomalies.
Doug and I had a ton of fun talking to each other.
In fact, our conversation went over three hours, so we've
broken it up into multiple different parts.

(01:49):
This is probably the most granular, technical detail
focused conversation that I've had on this show.
So it's definitely one for the geeks.
And just a heads up, this first part especially is best enjoyed
on video because Doug brings a lot of visuals to the
conversation, especially when we're talking about how to
debunk UAP sightings of prosaic and mundane objects.

(02:11):
And you can watch those videos if you're not already on YouTube
or on Spotify's video feed for their podcasts.
So enough of me. Now, my conversation with Doctor
Doug Bentner. Welcome to the Anomalous Review,
the official podcast of the Scientific Coalition for UAP
Studies. My name is Michael Glawson.
I am a philosopher of science and technology, and my guest

(02:34):
today is Doctor Doug Bentner. Doug, welcome to the Anomalous.
Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, So you're out in Utah right now.
I'm in Charleston. Might have some Internet
difficulties, but the audio feedshould be good.
So viewers might see us freeze, but it'll be it'll be OK.
So I sent you a list of questions to again and you said,

(02:57):
let's just run them down. You, you're one of the most like
one of the easiest guests that I've had.
So before I talk about that, So tell us a little bit about your
background first, though, like where do you come from?
What did you do and what are youdoing right now?
Yeah, so where I came from, I actually born and raised in
Oregon. I came out of a little town

(03:19):
called Madras in Central Oregon,just north of Bend, if you know
where Bend is. And then basically went from
there to Boston University for acouple years, studying
astrophysics, but a little too expensive.
So transferred back to, for my family.
Anyway, transferred back to Oregon State, got a bachelor's,
master's in physics there. Part of it was the the master's

(03:44):
was funded partly by a NASA student research grant where I
was working on what became NASA Stardust mission.
Eventually, not only was I investigating the actual
hypervelocity intact phenomena where you got, you know,
basically a particle traveling about 6 kilometers per second.

(04:06):
We wanted to capture it intact. And so I did a lot of that
research for Doctor Peter. So down at the the Jeb
Propulsion Laboratory and he came up, he saw my lab and
invited me down to build his, his aerogel facility.
And so I went down there and slept on his lab floor and built
the capability where, you know, when we're all done and said we

(04:29):
had not only used that equipmentfor NASA Stardust mission, we
used it to insulate electronics on the Sojourner Mars Rover.
It's actually been Aerogel is now pretty much used on every
single Mars Rover to insulate different parts.
It's like the best insulator that we have right now in in
materials. Yeah, it's, it's in, it's in the

(04:51):
in the top two to three. You know, since since then
they've come up with some better, better capabilities.
But it's, I would just say enable to being able to make it.
And there's some stuff that the Doctor Steven Jones has done
there to make it a little bit better for, for different types

(05:12):
of Rovers that they're now putting up.
And so we also had aerogel on the space stations, both ISS and
Mirror. As information or to capture.
No, actually. Actually as a capture medium.
So we had it outside the space station.
When I say we, I mean NASA did to capture not only my

(05:35):
potentially micrometeoroids, butunderstand the debris
environment around the space station.
So just drop a block to it to the space station or.
How do you Well, what they did, what we did is we had aluminum
grids and you basically when you, you can push it into the
grid, it it's self-contained. And so you're just exposing it

(05:57):
to space and then when somethinghits it, it, it captures it.
If you get something that's a little too big, like say about
a, if you had something the sizeof a BB that would hit aerogel,
it would, it would not be captured if it's going low
velocity, but a super high velocity capture on, on micro,

(06:17):
you know, sub BB size, like, youknow, let's say a nanometer and
up would, would easily capture it.
And so they're basically trying to sample, trying to see what,
what that debris environment look like.
And then again for the after that, you know, I don't know all
the stuff they're using it for now, but I know, you know, the,

(06:41):
the chemist we had brought in set some world records on least
dense or lightest material for quite a while.
I mean, those, those records sell for a while.
I think it just got surplanted by something different.
So with that. Amazing accomplishment you've
got, you've got aerogel that I mean you built the autoclave,

(07:04):
right? Or at least one of the.
I I built the original autoclavethat was used, you know, for a
lot of the original work we did there with aerogel.
So stuff that you've made in your autoclave has has made it
to what orbit Mars? Above orbit Mars, a comet.
It's incredible. Well, see, you know, people say

(07:27):
you say that and I was just like, it was a job, right?
I mean, that's, that's the way everything is.
Every accomplishment feels sort of mundane.
Once you've you've, you're on the other.
Side if you're the guy living it, having to have to go do it.
Yeah, that's exactly right. It's, it's mundane.
It's, it's, you know, a lot of blood sweat and tears to get
there and, you know, but like I told you, I mean, doc, you know,

(07:47):
earlier we were just chatting Doctor Peter so and I, you know,
I would say we've had a love hate relationship for quite a
long time. But now it's, we both looked
back fondly on it. And I, I've got a text from him
now I need to respond to. But yeah, it's, you know, we
did, we did a lot and, and people don't understand on just
how cheaply we did it on too. He used to say I was his most

(08:11):
expensive piece of equipment andI had a a salary about $1200 a
month and that's before taxes. Yeah.
That is just and sleeping on thefloor at JPL and.
Yeah, sleeping on the floor nextto an autoplave at 3:00 in the
morning, you know, trying to trying to figure out how to make

(08:31):
her gel and, and make it work. I mean, Peter and I would be, I
mean, he would be in his office sleeping too.
We were both both dedicated to getting the getting the mission
done. And, you know, I I can tell you
stories about, you know, 2:00 inthe morning, we're sitting here
trying to come up with, OK, well, this didn't work.
What do you try next? And literally talking to him and
have him go like this. Yeah, just fall.

(08:54):
Fall asleep mid sentence. Well, you did it.
I mean, you had a really rigorous time tip.
Like there was no leeway on youron your timeline, right?
You had to get it done by a launch date.
So you just did it. You just packed.
It the shuttle, the shuttle willgo up whether or not your
payload's on it or not. That's all there is to it.
That's how it worked. But you did it.

(09:14):
That's man proud of you. So you moved on from that and
went to the Aerospace Corporation and 20?
Years. Spent 20 years at aerospace.
They paid for my PhD got my PHDUSC did it in astronautical
engineering, focusing on software intensive systems.
Fundamentally, I was helping theAir Force with some, I'll say

(09:37):
gnarly embedded system problems that we were having built a a
team that helped out on one of the satellite systems we have up
there. And now I mean we're going
through it. It had been through two
different non McCurdy breaches. A non McCurdy breach is when you
exceed 30% schedule and cost growth on a program versus the

(10:02):
original cost and schedule estimates for the program.
And so according to the Nunn McCurdy Act, what you got to do
is the Secretary of Defense needs to revalidate that
program. OK, so it trigger, you get this,
you get this bloat in the program and it triggers.
Some sort of it it it triggers avery a very nasty review and and

(10:23):
so I came out here to Utah to work on a program that's
actually going through to Nunn McCurdy now and I was.
Honor to fix that problem. They have not asked me to come
in and fix that problem and so that's the to their detriment.
But I know how to fix it and I have not been invited back to to
help help them fix it so. That's not surprising.

(10:46):
I mean, if, if problems are endemic, sometimes they are, you
know, are sort of cloning against asking for help or or
against us. Well, let's just say, let's just
say the the upper echelon there.And I did not agree exactly
agree in a few things. So I left aerospace and and I'm
now doing what I'm doing and they're going through Nun

(11:08):
Mccurry breach. That should tell you everything
you need to know. Well, maybe they'll, you know,
maybe they'll come to their senses and reach.
I'm I'm not holding my breath, OK?
I probably wouldn't either, so, but now in your current position
you have, well, you have severalpositions.
You're sort of a multi hyphenate, kind of.
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm what I call it an applied polymath.

(11:30):
So, so I'm currently the deputy chief scientist for the
Acquisition Innovation Research Center, which is run by Stevens
Institute Technology in New Jersey.
You know, I can live out here inUtah.
Basically, I spend lots of time on the computer doing analytical
work for them and supporting a kind of an liaison role between

(11:53):
office, Secretary of Defense anddifferent university
researchers. And so, you know, kind of help
help each each side understand the other side, if you will.
Yeah. And so, and I used to, I
developed a an engineering ethics curriculum for University
of South Carolina or their with their engineering school.

(12:15):
And one of the, the chief problems that we run into in
that world of sort of philosophers and engineers is
this need for like an engineer whisperer that exists between
the corporate side or the stateside and groups of
engineers. I can imagine a very similar
problem arises at the interface between, you know, government,

(12:36):
military industry world. So you're kind of situated in
that space whispering between all these are or doing the the
liaison work. That that is one way of looking
at it, yes. So.
You enjoy that work. You know what it's like anything
else. It's your job.
It's, it's, it's definitely interesting.
And the thing I really enjoy about it is I get exposed to all

(12:57):
different torps of torps, types of analytical approaches.
And so, you know, you sit there and you, you learn something new
on a weekly basis. You know, different different
approaches for different problems.
And that's just rewarding for you.
Like different ways of thinking and approaching for like problem
solving and analysis. Exactly, exactly.

(13:21):
That's that's a good way of looking at it.
I mean, right now, one of the things it's like, you know, most
of my career has been spent, youknow, down being the guy behind
the curtain making the crap work, right.
And so now I'm, I'm, you know, kind of elevated up to where I'm
more, more facing and, and, you know, some of the feedback I
get, I got to start acting like a deputy chief scientist, right?

(13:41):
Versus, you know, and so that's,it's a different mindset and,
and as our executive director calls it, a different mental
model, right? So, so, yeah, having to go
through it and learn it is for me, it's, it's enjoyable.
I get to learn things. I get to, you know, work with
some of the best minds the country has to offer and that,
and that's been fun. That has to be super

(14:03):
stimulating. I mean, I find myself the thing
that's most taxing and sort of soul destroying for me as being
in a place where I feel like I'mnot growing and intellectually
I'm not being able to engage in new things and like learn new
stuff and find out. Exactly.
To explore. In in my experience, at about

(14:24):
the five to seven-year mark, I'mpretty much exhausted.
Aerospace kept me busy for 20 years.
I will. I will give them that.
You know, there's a lot to learnand doing acquisitions now
you're working with, you were saying earlier that you work
with acquisitions on everything,anything that the military is
trying to. Is it military?

(14:45):
Government in general? Government in general?
Yeah, the data analysis on theirdata, you know basically how you
actually do requirements in the Jsib's process with the Joints
Chiefs. If you go look at the Eric's
website and you look under the PPBE, which stands for Planning,

(15:05):
programming, Budgeting and execution, fundamentally that
entire process, we were working with the Senate Commission on
that. And you go look at the reports
and you can see stuff that when you know, we, we wrote that
directly went into their final report.
And this is fundamentally changing how we build our

(15:27):
systems and how we acquire them.And so we were very, very
instrumental in some of that research too.
And one of those, so to move over into the UAP topic, one of
those sort of acquisition programs that you've written a
paper on, I'm not sure if it's just a white paper or if it's
actually published. I don't have it in front of me

(15:47):
was about how to how to help acquire better software systems
for analyzing and identifying anomalous, you know, aerospace
objects, right? Oh, so, yeah, OK, so the one
you're talking about is the OK, so going back a little, a little
bit in history, so last, not this past SCU conference, but

(16:08):
the prior conference, there was a UAP sighting by 5 different
pilots on, on 2 aircraft or the Pacific Ocean.
And it, it had a very cylindrical look, you know, from
from the pilot's viewpoint. And so they actually had some
photographs in a, in a short 16 second video of it.

(16:32):
And So what happened was I was just pretty much brand new to
the SCUI, think I'd only been a member for about 3 or 4 months.
And so when the conference came up, I listened and you know, I
was one of the guys is trying toask questions during the, during
it. And so when it, when it was
being provided, I, I fundamentally tried to ask the

(16:53):
question. Did you model it specifically
somebody to ask the question if it was Starlinks?
Well, apparently somebody lookedat it and the answer and it
wasn't Professor Griffiths, University of Iowa, somebody
else that they had looked at it and they, they didn't believe it
was Starlink's. Well, what happened was Mick W

(17:13):
came out pretty quickly and identified it as Starlink
satellites. And the, that Wednesday I said,
well, you know, I've got got thesoftware to model it.
I'd be happy to go in and and just kind of do an independent
book for you. And so as part of aerospace,
employees can have software that's called satellite Orbital

(17:34):
Analysis program. It's called SOAP and it's been
under development since the 80s.And it's a very sophisticated
piece of software that we use toanalyze constellations.
NASA uses it for for some of their missions.
And so you're able to actually, you know, put a 3D model of a

(17:56):
spacecraft up and you can watch its orbit.
You can, you know, you change its orbit from like leaving
Earth to going to Mars to, you know, whatever you want to do,
right? And you use just the videos and
and images to to create. Well, what I what I did is you,
I used the videos and images so that that identified when they

(18:17):
saw it, right. And Doctor Griffiths had taken
and analyzed the video to figureout what constellation the UAP
was in. And then what I did is from that
information, I was able to go off and, and we had ADSB data
from Doctor Little for the actual like two or two or three

(18:39):
of the flights. But I was more interested in the
flight with the actual photographs were taken.
And so we got that loaded into soap.
That was a little, little harderthan we had hoped, but we got
that in there. And then you have, we have to go
to another website to actually download the actual order called
TL ES, which stands for Two lineelements, Two Line elements of

(19:01):
format from NORAD used to characterize the orbit of
satellites. Think of it as a state vector,
but in circular or, you know, elliptical coordinates.
And So what you're able to do isyou can go to Celeste track and

(19:23):
you can download those TL ES fora specific time.
But when I was trying to download them, I wasn't getting
the time as close to the as the actual photograph as I as I
could. But I was able to initially tell
Professor Griffiths, yeah, no, it's Starlinks.
In fact, when I, when I finally had a chance to do it, it took,
you know, it took me a couple hours, but I was able to say,

(19:44):
OK, I got good news and bad news, good news.
I got the data in the so bad news, they're exactly in the
right place at the right time. So what I then recommended to
him is like, well, I've got my class starting up.
Why don't I have, you know, my students go off and model it?
Oh, interesting, but that was fun for them.

(20:04):
Say again, but. That was fun for them.
Yeah, yeah. No, they enjoyed it.
In fact, one of my students thatI actually had talking at the
conference when he interviewed for his internship, he told me
that they spent 10 minutes asking him about the paper and,
and you know what he learned using SDK and stuff.
So it helped helped him land a nice internship so.

(20:29):
With SCU. No, the internship was with the
company in Colorado Springs. Just one of the local defense
contractors there. So you identified it as as
Starlink, but using a very different methodology than Mick
W did. I mean you have totally.
Different. Well, I could tell Mick W had
also loaded up TL ES, but he hadthe same problem that I did

(20:54):
initially, IE you could have, you know, stuff all over the sky
and see it's in the right spot, but it didn't match exactly what
the the photograph showed. So TS Kelso is actually an
Academy grad. So I'd reached out to him.
I contacted him in the past. He, he probably vaguely
remembered me, but So what I didis I, I, I acted as the very

(21:17):
stupid scientist and, and rocketscientist and, and, and worked
with him to, I would say, improve the ability to download
these. And so he he literally changed
his query, some of his queries to make it a lot easier for
people to do this. Oh, interesting.
OK. So that's that's progress.
I mean, that's progress. Yeah, that's progress.

(21:37):
So what we did in the paper and the most recent paper that's out
on the actually in my URL from the, from the paper itself,
we've updated it to describe howyou actually utilize the new
method to, to download. And then at the SU conference,
that's, you know, what we talkedabout too, was, you know, a

(21:58):
couple of those approaches for downloading it and then trying
to align the time. So you're going to get a, you
want to get the UTC time off thephotograph.
And then with that UTC time whenyou download the Starlinx, then
you want to do is you want to, you know, basically do a one to
one mapping, right? And so if you want to get that
time as close as possible for all the different satellites and

(22:21):
that that specific payload launch.
So is this like close to ideallyhow you would want to do UAP
identification or? I would well, what I also tried
to do and and now you're going to get to my ideal situation is
I also had tried one of the students to do we call physics

(22:41):
based modelling. And to there you want to do the
rendering so you can actually have the same visual thing that
the pilot saw or the witness saw.
Because what I wanted to be at with, you know, my dithers and
in my perfect world, we have a group that would be off
modelling these as they happenedand maybe even come on up with,

(23:06):
I would say automated methods to, you know, basically put OK,
you said you saw something here.All right, well, you had the
ISS. I don't know if you watched the
new show the other the other night on Discovery Channel with
Chrissy, but have the ISS going overhead, right.
And being able to model that andand being able to show, you know

(23:29):
that witness, you know, this is what you what you saw.
Right. Oh, interesting.
And like reproduce a sort of, I mean a, a simulated model of
what they, they would have seen and see if they say, Oh yeah,
that's exactly it or not. Yeah, yeah.
And so, you know, we can we can get there.
It's just very computationally intensive.
And and one of the things we were able to do in the paper was
Shay. OK the the students selected

(23:54):
software called Blender. Blender is primarily used by the
animation movie industry, if youwill, for different projects.
And so it's, it's quite capable,but it, it couldn't do a good
job, didn't do a good job reproducing what we're trying to
reproduce. And part of the problem has to
do with how far the satellites were away from the, from the

(24:16):
aircraft at the time. And the problem is when they're
that far away, you know, it's only got so many pixels
dedicated to that part of the, you know, of the screen, if you
will. And so we, we tried a couple of
different methods. 1 was to put,move it a lot closer, which came
out OK, but I wanted to put it at the right distance, right?

(24:37):
And then try and visualize it and, and you can kind of see a
streak. And then I wanted to try, you
know, with the satellite solar arrays deployed, not not
deployed because the Starlinks basically have three different
deployments. 1 is not deployed. 1 is what they call a knife edge
and the other one's what they call a shark fin.

(24:57):
The knife edge is what they use when they're boosting it up to
the final orbit and then the shark fin.
So you can imagine the satellitelike this and you got the solar
ray coming up like this. Sort of orthogonal to the ground
or or perpendicular. Precisely.
Precisely. And so the shark fin for the
flaring situation that you see alot of people talk about, and I
know I've seen it even on the Quest website, that's that's the

(25:20):
orientation that the satellite is mostly in those flares.
And unfortunately, that was not the situation we were in at this
part of the orbit. It was in this knife edge.
So the other thing I was able topoint out is I don't know what
the actual orientation of those individual satellites was.
I had to assume. And anytime you have to assume,

(25:42):
you know, you can make an ass out of you and me, right?
So. So we did the best we could.
Right, you probably can't call Starlink up and ask them about
the orientation of their. Settle.
You know what we sent? We sent them emails and and and
like any other citizen asking them questions that you just
ignored us. I'm sure.
So going forward, like what's the how can we better identify

(26:07):
and separate a truly anomalous UAP from sort of prosaic mundane
objects? Like, I mean, not really.
You know what we, we can do, we can do what we can do with, I
would say the, the sensor systems we have out now, right?
Cameras, cell phone cameras, security cameras.

(26:28):
You know, I'm a big, big, big advocate for data integrity
methods. I would love to be able to have,
if I get a photograph, I want tohave the original photograph.
I want to have the original movie.
I want to get away from JPEG compression.
We're getting to where we can put terabytes in these little
embedded systems. Stop compressing videos.

(26:52):
Please stop compressing images because that, that takes away a
lot of fine detail. It makes it a lot harder to
analyze. I want to be able to tell if a
video or an image has been monkeyed with right, if it's
been falsified. So the data integrity, integrity
for me, and I'll bet you a lot of scientists is going to be one

(27:13):
of the one of the biggest issuesthat we need to resolve.
And you'd want to see them like cell phones and, and, you know,
doorbell cameras and everything.That would be where I'd want to
go. I mean, 'cause I get, I get
frustrated when, and there, there was a great case somebody
on Twitter had pointed or X or whatever you want to call it

(27:35):
now, posted some video where he's got a security camera and
you see these little orbs going around and he says, you know,
and on, on Skyfire News, he's saying, oh, I contacted
scientists and nobody's gotten back to me.
And I was like, like said, OK, great.
Submit your stuff to Enigma Labsor MUFON and then have them

(28:00):
reach out to me and I'd be happyto analyse it for you and
nothing. And so then I, I posted one of
my, my favorite videos of Spankydoing this right, You know, OK,
I'm waiting, you know, and he's like, well, what's that for?
He's like, OK, well, you know, here's the thing, you, you
submit it to one of those things.

(28:21):
So I've got the original video to analyze and I'd be happy to
analyze it and I'm still waiting.
OK. And that was a couple of weeks
ago. Yeah, I mean, and a lot of
people don't understand the, I mean, even in the the
intricacies of of issues like compression, a lot of people
don't understand that if you take a image with your cell
phone, it's trying to save space.

(28:43):
So it cuts out, you know, huge number of the pixels and then
later makes guesses about what those pixels should contain.
And if you want somebody to makea conclusive, you know,
conclusion about what the image is really of, it's it's almost
impossible when it. It becomes very difficult when
it's compressed. Yeah, You know, 1 great example.
I was working with Ben Hanson onthis UFO over in New York City.

(29:07):
And so, you know, he and I were working together a little bit on
the Starlink stuff. And so he found out I knew how
to do this analysis. So he started sending me all
this stuff to analyze. And what was funny is he sent,
sent this one to me and I lookedat it and the first thing I do
is I, I extract out, you know, cut, cut pixels around whatever

(29:27):
the object is and I do super resolution, right.
So the first thing I could tell is, well, it wasn't compressed,
which was great. At least it wasn't JPEG
compressed. The second thing is I could tell
it was an authentic video. And you know, I won't get into
all the details there because I don't want to be in an arms race
with people that want to falsifytheir videos or images.

(29:49):
And then the the second thing I could tell that was frustrating
as it wasn't the original. And So what I started doing was,
OK, first thing I did was not only did that do that cut out
looking at it, I wanted to figure out where it was, right?
So I took the, took the bridge, the Verrazano Narrows bridge.
I just took that and then shovedit through Google Lens and came

(30:13):
out with, OK, this is the bridge.
And then from the bridge image. And in fact, if I can share,
yeah. Can you share?
Your screen now I see it. OK, so you know one of the
things I could see is I had thisstuff down here in the bottom of
the video, right? This is the very first frame
this object showed up in. And this is from that
cylindrical object that turned out to be a Starling satellite.

(30:36):
No, this. This over New York City that.
Very low. I'll get back to what it is in a
second. Yeah.
OK. So, so fundamentally, what did I
have? I had, you know, this video.
I could tell it was probably NewYork somewhere.
You know, I've been in the Bay Area too, and I can tell that

(30:56):
wasn't the, you know, San Francisco Bridge.
But one of the things you see here is the shadow.
So we knew it was the video was taken on March 25th, according
to the Reddit poster. And So what you can do is you
can take that shadow and you canput it into this application
called Shadow Map. And when I did it, you can see I

(31:20):
did it on March 30th. It was five days after the video
was allegedly taken, right? And so I was able to come up
with a decent estimate on the time of day based on what that
shadow was. Yeah, just uses the bridges
support being like a a sundial basic.

(31:41):
You got it. That's it.
And exactly. So you're asking me what you
know, what is shadow analysis? And that's exactly it.
I'm looking at information available in the image, right,
to get more information about the image.
And so, you know, once I knew where it was and I knew when it
was, then we could start lookingat what flight she was on.

(32:05):
Now, one of the things that kindof flew us or threw us for a
loop in here, I'll stop the sharing now, was the fact that
the the Reddit poster had said it was a flight out of Florida.
Well, what ended up happening was Enigma Labs had contacted

(32:27):
Ben Hanson about some of the interesting stuff they were
seeing. And oh, by the way, there was
this video from the the lady that actually took it.
And Ben was like, you got the witness.
So he was able to go interview her, you know, confirm that in
fact, she did not post that video on Reddit, did not know

(32:48):
who that poster was. And so whoever did post it,
what's what's ironic? And, and both Ben and I had
reached out to him independentlytrying to find out who the
original witness was. So we'd get the original video.
So now that Ben had the originalvideo, we knew exactly what
flight she was on. We figured out that I was about

(33:09):
30 minutes off. I'm going to attribute part of
that to me, you know, do it on the 30th versus paying to do it
on the 25th. So five days removed, but then I
was able to come up and, and from the actual video and
knowing the actual flight. So I got the ADSB data, you
know, be able to create a KMZ file in Google Earth, able to

(33:33):
identify exactly where that image was taken utilizing the
the information in the video, knowing the frame rate.
And so you know, now I got a lotmore information.
I can do a lot more with it right?
And specifically if you look at the Reddit posted, you never see
the the wing tip of the Spirit Airlines that she was on.

(33:56):
We found out she was flying out of Myrtle Beach, SC.
She was not flying out of Florida.
We knew exactly what seat she was in.
You know that's amazing. So I'm able to now go get CAD
models of the actual aircraft. I can tell you how how far that
wing tip was off the, you know, off the side of the airplane.

(34:17):
I know about how far she was from the window.
That'll give you some sense of scale, maybe for the objects.
Yeah, I got a lot more information and so it's I
likened it to a game, a clue, right.
And and so fundamentally it's trying to go through and and
utilize the evidence that you have to try and and get to a

(34:38):
root cause. Now I will tell you when I first
saw this object I had two big candidates, 1 was a balloon and
the second one was a a UAV operating at a legal altitude.
OK, because I I could probably have my mechanical engineering
students build something like that.

(35:00):
That would go that high, that would go into like commercial
flights. I think so.
I think, I think we could. The one of the things I would be
doing though, is I'd probably bemaking it aerodynamic.
All my stuff would be on the inside.
I'd be using carbon composites. I'd be, you know, trying to make
it as light as possible. But I think we could probably
build that. But again, a balloon was my

(35:23):
number one candidate and UAV wasmy my second.
You mean like a a like a publicly available mylar balloon
that you get at a grocery store for birthdays?
Or some sort of weather balloon or hold.
Hold that, fox. OK.
Oh, no. OK, that looks.

(35:43):
So just to tell you how detailedI get, I went and bought some of
these bad boys. Wow.
OK. And if you got, if you got this
video, if you got this balloon at just the right angle, right,
see if I can rotate it here around.
Absolutely. Look familiar?
It looks yeah, it's only could keep the option.

(36:07):
This is I, I, I'm, I tell, I tell Ben Hanson.
I'll give him probabilities. If I'm, if I'm above 60%, I'm
confident. If I'm above 80%, I'm very
confident. If I say I'm above 90%, I'm
pretty damn sure, right? But I'll give myself 10% for

(36:28):
error. And I told him I'm probably
about 90% now. Yeah, OK.
Well. So what we did at the SCU, what
we did at the SCU conference is I actually bought multiple of
these. I took one with me and Nick Gold
and I went out during one of thebreaks after I'd talked.
And basically I brought a tape measure, a very long tape

(36:52):
measure, one of those big roll spool ones and went out of the
parking lot and literally he videotaped me going out there in
10 foot increments. And so the one of the last
pieces of analysis I did is using a phone, you know, an
iPhone 12, which she had, and then he had an iPhone 12 Pro.

(37:12):
We compared the optics, made sure that was good.
And then I was able to now tell you, OK, that balloon was at
about 94 feet from the camera. So you've, yeah, you've solved
it pretty well. I mean, there's still some
possibility that it was a UAV or?

(37:34):
Like I said, I'm, I'm it better than 90%, I will I will leave
10% for somebody to come up withsome other smoking gun and
evidence. But again, it'd have to be
evidence that would have to swayme off of off of 90%.
What would that evidence be? What would get you off of it?
Oh, you know, for for me to get even above 90%, you know, what I

(37:54):
did is I, I took the winds aloft.
That's something my quest did not take into account in the
winds aloft. I went to went to Iowa State
University, had it archived for that specific day from Kennedy,
which is actually a lot closer to the aircraft at that time.
The winds aloft at that time were about between 30 and 33

(38:17):
knots coming from 70°. So, you know, add 180° to that
and that tells you the directionit's going from north, right?
So 250° from north the aircraft,he and I agreed on this almost
exactly within about two miles, two mph or you know, within
about two feet per second, excuse me, cause the, the plane

(38:38):
was doing about 207 knots. And So what I do is I used
interpolation between the ADSB points, the frame rate of the
camera, right. So I'm able to tell you pretty
close where the five images showed up in our in our video.
And then from the time right I had I interpolate, you know, OK,

(39:02):
the last ADBADSB point, it was here going this fast and the the
next ADSB point is going here and going this fast.
ADSB is very accurate for XY position, it's less accurate for
altitude. And there were also some
additional things you need to dowith ADSB data because it's
based on barometric pressure, you have to convert that into an

(39:25):
orthometric height. So if you watch my SCU video, I
tell you how to do that or read the paper, I tell you how to do
that. And so there's, there's a lot of
analysis that goes in to make sure you've done it right.
And so, and, and I heck, when I do it the first time, sometimes
I make mistakes. That's why you have people
looking at it, peer reviews and scientific process, right?

(39:47):
So. This is a great just a great
case study to demonstrate the level of like rigor and the the
tools and. The level of rigor that needs to
happen, right? And so, you know, when I saw
this one guy's video online, I'dbe happy to go in and take a
look at it. But you know, here's here's my
take on what I saw. My take on what I saw is if I

(40:09):
took one of my mechanical engineering students and I told
him I said all right, I'm going to go take some security video
with my security camera outside.Your project by the end of the
term is go build me a CAD model.What what what you see in his
video, I want you to take that CAD model and I want you to run

(40:30):
it through like 3DS Max or some of the other visualization types
of software. And I want you to make it look
as realistic as possible. And I want you to inject it into
that video. I'll bet you money I can do
that. Yeah.
OK. So when I talk about, when I

(40:50):
talk about data integrity, when I talk about the integrity of
the images, when I talk about I wanted to see the original
video, that's what I'm talking about is because me as a
scientist, I'm not going to put my reputation on the line
analyzing something that I can'tbe fairly confident is original.
Yeah, you if you could fake it then.

(41:13):
If I can fake it, I ain't analyzing it.
Or if I am analyzing it, I'm just going to, you know, don't,
don't, don't be afraid if I comeout or don't be mad if I come
out and say it's fake, right? Or, or, or this is the
probability I have of being fake.
Like like I said, right? I told Ben I will always give
you a probability statement. So but that that puts the bar

(41:35):
pretty high for what it would take to produce really convince
evidence. Well, I mean, and it should be a
high bar, but like a lot of people will say, I mean, the
public perception, you'll, you'll hear people sometimes
say, well, we've got cameras everywhere.
There's like CCTV and people have like doorbell cameras and
cell phones. Why aren't we getting tons of
great footage of UAP? But the, the sort of framework

(42:01):
you're laying out for how these things should be analyzed
demonstrates that like our toolsjust aren't the right tools.
Like a, a doorbell camera is setto our tools.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and our design with that,
yeah. What would what would that look
like then? Like, all right, say that again.
You broke up. Oh, sorry.

(42:21):
Well, yeah, our our tools just aren't designed for for that
sort of thing. Like a doorbell camera shouldn't
be designed to capture UAP images.
No, it doesn't. But The thing is it's being used
for that, right Or your securitycams are being used for that.
So I'm just trying to say, if you want, if you want mean
analyze your, your security camera video, you need to
provide me with the original video.

(42:43):
And I'm going to go back to the camera makers and I'm going to,
you know, pull that video apart.I want to be looking at the
frame rate. I want to be looking at whatever
information is in their image format that will allude to
whether or not it's been faked or or tampered with.
Right. I'm going to go through and I'm
going to do all sorts of advanced image processing on it

(43:05):
that, you know, you'll have to, you know, pull up the, the, the
volume of books I got behind youright here to, to, to fool me.
That's the kind of stuff that I need to play with on a on a
original video. So how did you get convinced
that UAP or a genuine phenomena that that are truly anomalous.

(43:27):
I mean you have a very. So that's going to go back into
my background. OK.
So when I was, you know, growingup as a kid, my mom would always
tell us that, you know, she saw a UFOs when she was a kid.
And so she tells a story where she was young.
I don't know if she's 7 or 7th grade or something.
Anyway, she was out playing witha friend and she says she saw

(43:49):
two orbs in the sky. Make sure I get the orientation
right here for the camera. And she said they just like
she's like, what are those? And her friend looked up and
then she goes, they went and took off.
And then she also tells a story to where she thought it was
before she was born. I actually used Robert's UFO
government, you know, actually this UFO's in government book.

(44:12):
That's a great book. To to figure out and it was kind
of funny to talk to Rob. He goes don't drink it, just use
it as reference and I go OK that's what I've been using it
for good but figured out exactlywhich sighting it was that my
grandfather apparently saw and. My grandfather.
Like I he passed away before I was born but he tell he he would

(44:35):
apparently tell a story to wherehe saw an alien spacecraft in a
field and saw aliens running around it.
So I'm paraphrasing from what Mom says, but that's it in a
nutshell. And he reported, that's what.
For the second or third third kind did.
He. Report did that specific report
you can look it up for. I don't know if he reported it,

(44:58):
but I do know that's what he he sells.
My mom never gets here apparently.
So we figured out that she was probably about two years old at
the time. And unfortunately all my my
mom's brothers and sisters have passed away.
It's just us cousins now that are are left around.
And my mom is the last survivingmember of her family.

(45:23):
She was the youngest, the youngest of five, but I don't
know if he reported it, but I doknow if you read the the excerpt
in Roberts book, basically it was police were involved and
things of that nature. So.
Yeah, people would be amazed at how many case studies there are

(45:44):
like that. I mean, we just have credible, I
mean, we say, I'll say credible evidence like police reports,
but they're the question of whether they're credible or not.
And maybe it's an open question,but they're at least the exact
same sort of documents that are used to like prosecute people
for crimes and things. So we have to give them some

(46:04):
level of of credibility. That's amazing.
That's what that's what got you interested from the beginning.
You had these stories. Well, I would say that I would
say that intrigued my interest, right.
And so I mean, as a kid, I remember getting a book called
UFOs and reading it, you know, with some interesting stories in
it, you know, a lot of this, youknow, Betty and Barney Clark

(46:25):
type stories and and the other ones.
And then there was another situation where my ex
father-in-law, who was a chiropractor, had ties to the
Vatican. Apparently the the Pope's right
hand man was it was in the US stopped by to get an adjustment
from my ex father-in-law. And he reported that the reason

(46:47):
this guy said he was in the US was because he was checking up
on some aliens that he'd given, but the Vatican had given to the
to the US military. Alien bodies.
Aliens like live aliens. Would that have Pope Trump the
23rd or something? Or oh, I don't know what Pope it

(47:09):
would have been, but it you know, you know, there's some
story about after World War 2. I saw that just recently within
like the last year and when I heard that I was like, wow, Deja
vu, I remember right. So I mean, it's, you know, when
I hear that it's kind of stories, it's like, oh, OK,
interesting. Because I, I personally have
never seen anything. I couldn't, you know, with my

(47:31):
own eyeballs. I couldn't identify or, or come
of the logical explanation. Now in my property out near
Skinwalker Ranch, I've got, you know, some security cameras out
there, mainly just the trail cams.
I'm going to be moving towards better equipment here hopefully
shortly, but one of my trailer cams got something on it that I

(47:53):
can't explain. What is it?
How would you describe what it is?
I would just well, I'll tell youwhat Jay Stratton called it.
He called it Norm. Let's see.
Let me I'll pull that up here. You don't mind my doing my my
sharing again like I did before?OK, So I'm going to show you

(48:17):
first a normal night time image from the camera and again I'm
going to share and again, I justcall it a light anomaly at this
point, but so let me know when you can see it.

(48:38):
Yep, I got it. OK, so this is a normal night
time image. I'm going to zoom in a little
bit here. So what you're seeing here is
some tree branches we cut down here.
See part of the tree it's up in I've got some and these are
Russian olives. All of these.
I've got a a house across the the street here.

(48:58):
It's basically a a mobile home. And then you've got another
light from another mobile home that's off in that direction.
OK, this right here now I'm going to pop open a a daytime
shot, same image, so you can kind of see what you're looking

(49:20):
at. There's the branches, there's a
Russian olives. You can kind of see that mobile
home right there. You can kind you can't you can
kind of see maybe down in here there's another mobile home over
here, right? This right here is basically a
trailer that my neighbor has. This is a basketball hoop,
obviously, This right here. Here's a Cottonwood.

(49:42):
You can kind of see a pile of stuff right here.
I wish, I wish it was still there.
He's completely changed what's over here now.
But my recollection was this is just a a pile of junk if you
will. Look at an arrow or a grill or
something. Yeah, you know, one, one of the

(50:02):
things you can do is this kind of thing, right?
And so you can see the JPEG compression, you can see why I
hate JPEG. See what it does to the image,
right? Just completely pixelate, you
know, it's. Not.
Information. But this, there's literally a
pile right here. This right here is a a gate

(50:23):
that's jetting over to my property.
My property line goes right along here.
OK, now I'm going to show you the anomalous image what jumps
out at you. Oh well, there's definitely new
lights. Yeah, there's a new light right
there. Yeah, which would be sort of in

(50:46):
front of the Cottonwood, I thinkmaybe.
Yeah, the Cottonwood's right here.
And so the, the trailers right here.
The first time I thought saw this, I thought, well, maybe
because there's a road right here, I thought, well, maybe
what I have is a vehicle coming down this road and the light
just happens to be hitting the the tail light on this, on this

(51:06):
trailer, right? That's the first thing that came
to my mind. But one of the things you'll see
is there's a couple of reflection spots right here that
are being JPEG. So this is literally on the edge
of that fence or that gate, Excuse me, I was telling you
about and that I believe is being reflected off that pile in
the back. Which would put the light source

(51:28):
in front of. That pile, right?
And so I showed this to Jay. I showed him the other things.
He goes, I think he caught an orb.
I go, Jay, I'm not going to callit an orb.
I'm going to call it a light anomaly.
For example, I showed it to, I showed it to Rich and Rich goes,
well, you know, those trail camshave got issues.
And I said, I, I know, I said I'm with you.

(51:49):
I said this was a, a check in image for me to capture
something anomalous on a, on a check in image.
And a check in image is basically the trail Cam will
give you a daytime image and then a nighttime image basically
telling you the camera's still alive, nobody's ripped it off
right? And I'm still working.
But I I can tell you I've got lots and lots of images out

(52:09):
there. I've never seen anything
remotely like this ever again. I've got movies of trucks and
cars passing here and I never see anything.
Getting a flex or glints in the way that would produce this.
That's right. I can't.
I mean, you know, my light from the, from the camera, the IR

(52:31):
source never illuminates anything back there such that
it's reflecting that much. You know, I can go on and on,
but I, I can't. I, it's, it's for me, it's
something I can't answer. All I can say is it's a light on
my leg that I can't explain. What's interesting to me about
this is that I, you know, I havea, a completely different brain

(52:53):
than you. But when I look at an image like
this versus the image of the what is almost certainly a
balloon from that plane picture,they're about equally weird
looking to me. You know, my brain is sort of

(53:13):
like, yeah, it could be, maybe it's something weird, but also
maybe it's blah, blah, blah. But you, who have this vast sort
of array of technical knowledge and expertise at your hands, are
much more impressed by this image than the latter.
Because precisely because you know not only the terrain
itself, because you own the property, but because you know
what these tools are capable of and what should and shouldn't be

(53:38):
visible. Something and.
It's. And it shows that that what it
what mounts is good, what amounts to good evidence or
impressive evidence or anomalousevidence that isn't always
apparent just by looking at the image.
You have to have a lot of know how to be able to sort these
images in a way that says, well,this is what's strange and this
is what's probably a bone. You know, right, let's go, let's

(54:01):
go to the UFO over New York Cityexample with the with the
balloon, right? It was just absolutely from from
me looking at the Reddit posts. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's
a helicopter. And I'm like, Oh my God, people
really. And and so, you know, that's,

(54:23):
but you know, I've been doing this for a long time and that
and not specifically analyzing these images.
I mean, I used to do satellite imaging analysis for the Air
Force. And so I, you know, I just, you
know, having picked parts things, aparts.
Well, you know, the reason I tell you I hate, I hate JPEG is
because of this kind of stuff, right?
I'm, I'm getting data that is being corrupted because of the

(54:47):
image compression. And it's kind of funny with this
specific camera situation. I've got another an identical
camera out on that on that property facing north and when I
what I get is a a fisheye type appearance in the camera and.

(55:10):
Sort of globed, sort of globed out the the image itself or
something. So let's show you there we go.
Now you see daytime image from that camera looking N OK, you
can see how far the tree is away.
I mean, so just so you can go step back.
So this is from November 19th oflast year, slightly cloudy.

(55:32):
Now I'm going to show you what the night time image looks like.
Let me come over here and you'llsee the night time image.
Oh, that's very weird. Yeah.
OK, so you know, possible. Let's go through the
possibilities, right Fawn? OK, well, OK, but why is every

(55:57):
single image at night time look like this?
It's not foggy every single night out there.
Next, next possibility, moistureon the lens.
OK, so that was actually one of the their first hypothesis.
So they said, OK, get this, you know, stuff you put on and I

(56:17):
can't remember the name. It was like red frog or
something. Yeah, anti fog sort of solution.
Yeah, it's an anti fog. Like, you know what divers and,
and people with some glasses puton their, on their glasses,
right? And put that on there, no
effect. So then they said, OK, well, why
don't you send it back to us? We'll, we'll tear the camera
apart. We'll make sure that there isn't

(56:39):
any moisture on the inside of the lens, IE internal components
of the, of the camera. Sent it to him, got it back,
same exact problem, sent it backto him again.
They're like, all right, if we can't, if we can't figure it
out, we'll we'll replace. And they they did all their
stuff and said Nope, passes all the all the checks looks good,

(57:02):
you know, and so before I deployed it this time, what I
did is I deployed at my house here and and I was sort of Ogden
and I had a point N the images. I may have may have had a few
with like kind of like a rainboweffect over the top of it.
And so by that I mean over the top like this.
But what I correlated that to what was just the night time

(57:25):
image when it was being taken, the sun would still provide a
little bit of internal reflection off the camera and
the lenses in the camera. So I had just a little bit of
that kind of thing going on. And then specifically the the
other potential cause of that when I had it here in my home is

(57:45):
I have a light on a barn off to the left here.
And so I thought, OK, it's resolved.
I deployed the camera out there,same exact problem.
It's always centered in the sameway, like on the tree.
Always centered exactly the sameway.
Now the only thing I can think of at the moment that it might
be and so I've got a couple of experiments.

(58:07):
I told the the company obviouslyreveal here that I wanted to do.
And now they're now they're intrigued, right?
So I, I, I showed them this thing again, they're like, all
right, we're going to replace the camera.
I go, well, no, hold off. I go not done, you know,
verifying what causes what I'm going to do is I'm going to take
that other camera you saw, whichI know works fine out there.

(58:29):
I'm going to flip it with this camera.
So it's, you know, in the, in opposite locations.
The other thing is the tree it'sin, it's got a split split in
it. So I've got literally 2 very
large trunks coming up together and it's sitting kind of in a
location to where it's nestled up against one of them.

(58:51):
My current hypothesis is maybe the IR illuminator on it is
bouncing off that tree and it's being reflected back into the
lens. That's the only thing I can
think of at the moment. Yeah, these sort of Crescent
shapes. The fact that these Crescent
shapes kind of converge in a distance is making me wonder if
there are multiple lenses insidethat are somehow or.

(59:16):
Somehow that reflections going on.
Yeah, I, I, I can't answer the question, but when I told him,
you know, 'cause the reason they're intrigued as, as I said,
OK, guys, let me tell you where this camera is, right?
Because they can go log into it,but they really haven't paid
attention to where it's situated.
I go, have you watched Skinwalker Ranch series?

(59:37):
And they was like, well, no. And I said, OK, UAPSUF OS Oh,
OK, right. And then when I told him where
it was, he goes, OK, we're intrigued.
I said, now if you want to help me and work with me, I said, I
would love to tell you some of the things I'd like to have your
cameras do. And one of them is not use JPEG.
Oh, so you can't even modify thecamera system to not compress

(59:59):
and just run into a hard? Locked down, they got locked
down, but you know, when I told them where it was and what I'm
using it for, they're all of a sudden I've got I've got their I
piqued their interest if you. Good.
I'm glad that they're that they're piqued.
So I mean, so there is natural explanations that are offered
for places like Skinwalker whereyou have a lot of these
anomalies and some of them are like that, that they're, you

(01:00:21):
know, underwater, you know, waterways or underground
waterways that are channelling abunch of really mineral rich
water that's electromagnetic. Electric field, magnetic field,
Yeah, I mean, there's also. Plausible, yeah, but I'm not
sure how that would affect this sort of camera operation.
I mean, maybe if the sensors were mounted on some pieces.

(01:00:43):
You know what I until I'm done trying to get, we'll call it the
mundane reasons out of the way, I'm not going there right, other
than to say this is where it is and this is what I'm seeing.
So right now my, my leading hypothesis is IR reflecting off
of the the tree back into the camera.

(01:01:04):
And so the other thing I did is I actually bought a another
camera from a completely different company and I have it
out there. And So what I still need to do,
I've got it out there, but I just don't have it completely
rigged up yet. But I need to do is, is put it
such, it's got a, a very similaroptical problem, right, in terms
of that trunk and then switch, switch the one camera out.

(01:01:27):
So I got a, a good camera and then I'll put it there.
And if I can get that reproducedin both images.
And then what I want to do is just take it and rotate it
slightly so that I know the IR is not being reflected off that
tree trunk to my right. Or if the camera's right, which
should obviously both be over here back in.

(01:01:52):
So that's, I mean, that's reallyinteresting.
This is a great demonstration oflike how to think through this
stuff and how like in a way how boring it it is and, and
mentally taxing it is to try to think through like, I mean,
there's like 100 different things that could be going on to
make a, an image just weird. Yeah.
But you're convinced enough thatthere's something going on in

(01:02:14):
these locations that you, like, bought a piece of land
specifically to do this sort of research, Is that right?
That's correct. And you're not a crazy person
like from I, I hope. Not you know what.
I'm saying, but there's, well, I'm to be honest, like the
Skinwalker Ranch show has, I'm, I am not impressed so far it

(01:02:36):
seems. OK.
So yeah, don't, don't get me going on that.
So, so hopefully, hopefully OK, good.
Then let let's get going on that.
Hopefully. I, I know Travis, I've talked to
Travis a couple of times. I actually interviewed, I
interviewed at Radiance, both Jay and Jay Stratton and Travis
were there interviewing me. I decided to take this other

(01:02:59):
position and then, you know, right for the SCU conference,
Robert and I were invited over to Jay's house for, you know,
one of his, you know, I'll say pretty SCU conference party, if
you will. And you know I will.
I will tell you that prior to season last year, I had a, just

(01:03:22):
a, I'd say probably about 5 to 10 minutes just alone with
Travis. And I asked him a question.
I said, OK, so have you seen anytemporal anomalies out at your
out at the ranch out there? And he goes, I don't want to
talk about it. I go OK, so the answer is yes,
yes. Sounds like it.
I go now. Let me tell you why I'm asking
the question, right? And so I came to the conclusion

(01:03:44):
that a lot of what they're seeing could be explained by
temporal anomaly. And So what would be a temporal
anomaly? It would be a location in space
where time flows at a different rate than time around that
location. OK.
And so if you think about the LIDAR images and the Spire, you

(01:04:05):
know, the spike spiral of the, you know, coming out of the
LIDAR, I mean speed of light should be the same in every
direction, but if it's flowing slightly.
Differently, yeah. Right in one location that could
cause that and so, but but what's causing that temporal
anomaly is still, you know, up for debate, right.
But be be the be that as it may,fundamentally what I'm saying is

(01:04:29):
that path link is some some someway different, even though it's
not literally physically taking it or shouldn't be taking
different path. So you can say, well, maybe
space has worked. That's also a possibility.
Anything that's going to cause that the time for it to go
through that area, right? It's different.
And so why that's why I call it a temporal anomaly, the cause of

(01:04:50):
which we don't know what it is, right.
His hypothesis obviously is it'sa wormhole or inseam wormhole.
And I would say the the jury is still out on that as well.
But fundamentally, and I've I'vetried to politely poke at both
Brandon and a little bit on thisis when are you guys going to

(01:05:12):
start publishing? OK, I know I've seen Twitter
feeds where he's calling people pigs because he wants wants to
release the data. Well, great.
OK, I'm going to tell you from ascientist standpoint, you can go
look at all the big science science endeavors.
They hold the data close to close to vest until they're

(01:05:34):
ready to publish. OK.
My hope is at some point we start to see these guys
publishing and when they do publish, they are also releasing
the data that good science. Now we can argue that they're
not doing good science right nowbecause of, I would say, a lot
of the behaviors I see in the show.

(01:05:56):
Full disclosure, I emailed, started emailing Eric Bard and
Brandon like, you know, almost right after the first first
episode, as I'm out here in Utah, scientists found out
Brandon Fugle was actually our landlord for the building that
Aerospace was leasing. Underway.

(01:06:16):
So it was kind of funny. I found his e-mail through
Colliers, emailed him and I says, hey, I work for the
Aerospace Corporation out here at Falcon Hill.
And he goes, oh, I know all about Falcon Hill.
And so he put me in touch with Eric.
And so Eric and I emailed for, you know, literally almost two
years straight. We don't e-mail anymore.
I last season I said, OK, this will be my last e-mail.

(01:06:38):
I did send him a couple of feedbacks, but didn't receive a
response. But I don't expect to either.
Because you're sort of critical of the.
I'm, well, I was very, very, very supportive to start off
giving them ideas. I don't want to get into too
much detail about and kind of the kind of stuff I gave them,
but I will, I will tell you I, I, I know for a fact I had a

(01:07:00):
positive impact on the show in terms of things that they did or
things that they eventually did.And there were some ideas in
there that, you know, I would, Iwould give them the idea in the
next year. I'd see him doing it.
And I tell people I don't know whether I gave him the original
idea. I, I can't, I can't swear to
that. But I can tell you that I, you

(01:07:21):
know, had suggested the same thing, right?
There's a correlation, certainly.
Yeah, I would just say it's it was a a happy correlation.
Glad to see him do it. And in in a lot of the cases,
you know, they actually got information from it to, to help
him, lead him down the path right now.
But fundamentally, I would hope that they would say, OK, yes,

(01:07:43):
we're planning on publishing eventually at, you know, some
point in the future and, and this data will become public
data, right? That's my hope, my hope as they
go there right now. I, I still see it as them trying
to do a lot of poke in the hornet's nest type of
approaches. You know, Travis's the, you

(01:08:06):
know, Rocket City ribbon neck, let's say background, and so is,
is his approach is fire rocket at it, right?
There may be other approaches and maybe they're doing them,
maybe they're not. But I will tell you that Eric
told me, First off, you know, since the type of show it is, I,

(01:08:27):
I just get the feeling that their scientific hands are
really kind of tied because of the TV show approach, which
frustrates me from a scientist standpoint.
They may not have a say in it. It may be all about, you know,
trying to continue the production, right?
Well that's such a conflict of interest.

(01:08:47):
I mean I've watched both the 1stand 2nd season of the show but
almost in AI mean my my partner eventually started refusing to
watch it with me because I wouldget so angry every episode just
because it's. It's so why?
So why am I doing this? My my wife got tired of hearing

(01:09:08):
me yelling at the TV set. OK.
Oh, so you're going to go do it yourself?
OK, that's, I mean, that's a totally different approach.
I mean, yeah, if I had I had themoney, maybe I would do it
myself too. But but their their conflict is
like, OK, you've got Brandon Fugel bought a, a, a piece of
land where weird stuff happens and wanted to research it and

(01:09:30):
also wanted to make it a really entertaining, profitable
venture. Those two you, you sort of have
to choose one or the other. You can either like, rigorously
research something. Well, I, I, I disagree.
And, and so Ben Hanson and I have talked about this.
I told Ben. So the first time I talked to
Ben though, you know, Robert Maxwell, Robert Powell and I

(01:09:52):
were, were interviewing him for a podcast and you know, it
wasn't the first thing I asked him, but eventually I asked him.
I said, OK, you want some criticism and basically I, I,
you know, kind of tore him aparta little bit on the Geiger
counter example that, you know, they went and he said, OK,
there's this UFO in New Mexico. I can't remember the case, but
you know, it had an enormously high radiation readings.

(01:10:14):
Even I could hear it, you know, on the, on the TV.
But then I said, did you sample around it?
Did you go make sure that that wasn't just normal for that
area, right? You just happen to be sitting in
a hot spot in New Mexico where you had a uranium mine close to
it or whatever, right? And so he said, yeah, he goes, I
did. He goes, I, I've got additional

(01:10:36):
readings. He goes.
I wanted the production company to allow me to put into a
podcast or a YouTube some of theother stuff I did, but they
wouldn't let me. He he didn't have producer.
Yeah, he didn't ask for. The rights, right?
And so I, I told him, I go, you know, I'll tell you, my biggest

(01:10:57):
frustration is, is I see this kind of stuff and as a
scientist, when I see it, it's going to make me doubt the
field. That's what it does.
And I, there's ways to do it right.
And so I know I've been working with him, you know, to try and,
you know, hopefully, hopefully we can get a, a production
company that's willing to do it right.

(01:11:19):
And I, I told him there's a waysto do it.
There's ways you can get your drama and you can get the
science out too. So the scientists look at, OK,
they're doing good science, right?
And so that the goal is you go in with the with the knowledge
you're going to publish. Your goal is to publish papers
out of it. So you're going to do stuff
that's scientifically sound, right?

(01:11:39):
And then what you're going to dois you're going to just, OK,
this is this is the methodology.This is what I did.
Here's the data. Here's the paper.
Move on, right or or improve, right?
OK, I did this last time. This is the new approach I'm
taking. Decide you know remove this
possible. But if you're going in with a
production company, aren't you? Aren't you committed to finding

(01:12:01):
something interesting? And it just might not.
Reality might just not be on your side.
And, and I would say the new series, I mean, I gosh, I wish I
could remember that. Chrissy.
I just know Chris, he's the longest on.
Yeah, yeah. Chrissy.
Yeah. I met her at the SU conference.
Very nice lady and I can tell that, you know, when she's going
out there, she's pulling OK, Allthe experts looked at it right

(01:12:22):
And they're doing it in a way towhere they've had experts behind
the scenes going off and look atthese different cases and and
the person sitting across the table may not like the answer.
And I, I feel for the gentleman from from California.
If they said it was an ISSI mean, but I can tell you as as a
scientist, if I got I will use whatever information you give

(01:12:44):
me. You know, if all you're going to
give me is a a witness account, I will do my best to say, OK,
well, you said you did it at 7:15.
Well, I can tell you at 722 thatISS was going right over in
exactly the same location of thesky.
And that's that's perfectly reasonable.
But what's even better, right, is a camera that I know has got

(01:13:05):
an image like what I did for, you know, the UFO or New York
City or the UAP case with the the Starlinks.
So what convinced you then? That there's a?
There's a there there enough foryou to.
Put well, I would say that I can't I, I, I come down to, I've
got 3 conclusions or you know, mainly to a third, third one.

(01:13:29):
I won't talk. I won't talk about either
they're telling the truth or thelion.
And the only way I'm going to get at it based on the fact that
they're not publishing papers and giving me the data is to go
put my own equipment out there. So actually I started talking to
Ryan Barnes for Space full. He and I talked quite a bit

(01:13:51):
fundamentally when push came to shove, he backed out, which is
why I then turned around and bought my own property.
And now we've been talking againnow that I'm a, a local property
owner and now he's a little bit rich again for, for having me do
stuff. So.
Yourself. Well, at least.
Say again. You positioned yourself well.
I mean like as a property owner.Now you have some.

(01:14:12):
Yeah, well, in fact, it was kindof funny because when I was at
aerospace, I wanted to get into this and they they wouldn't let
me. I mean, I could do it behind the
scenes, you know, just emailing to Eric type thing or, or
others. But but I couldn't be public
like I am now. I couldn't be saying, hey, I'm
the guy doing this and, you know, be able to talk about it,

(01:14:36):
be able to do it just publicly out in the open, so.
So what's your your dream scenario for how to study this?
You've got us piece of land. What now if you have like
unlimited budget and resource? If I had, if I had an investor,
literally what I would do. And in fact, I, I, I've already
told Robert that I'll probably put together a proposal for the
SCU as a board member. I'll have to abstain from voting

(01:14:59):
on it. But the proposal would be to
start coming up with what I'll call test ranges and hotspots if
Ryan's on board. And what we can do is utilize my
property, his property, hopefully eventually additional
properties in the area. I've talked to a lot of the, a
lot of the property owners around me.

(01:15:20):
I would say right now they're, Iwould say conservative and, and
probably rightfully so, right? But I've at least got Ryan.
Ryan says he doesn't know othersthat maybe we'll need also
support. So, and he's got, for example,
UFO DAP, talk to Ronan Holtz. We're going to try and

(01:15:42):
potentially get some additional UFO Daps out there on my
property and I'll, you know, be doing a little bit more on the
security side to keep things secure there.
The goal this year is to get a fence on it and I'm probably
going to put an electrical boundary or electric boundary
around it as well. Primarily keep animals out.

(01:16:04):
Another reason. And then from that I've got
neighbors that are great. So hopefully the neighbors will,
you know, I'll pitch in on the the security as well and then
have the ability to have investigators come out there.
I talked to UAUAPX Matt and don't even ask me to pronounce

(01:16:25):
his last name. Yeah, so I talked to Matt.
He's he's game for coming out there again.
I got Ron. There's a a guy that was at the
SCU conference that also bought his UFO DAP equipment.
I talked to him. Maybe Kevin.
Kevin. I thought it was David.

(01:16:47):
He had it in the the backroom. Was it Kevin?
I thought it was. David, I wasn't.
I wasn't there. I wasn't actually at.
The oh, I thought you were thereOK, but no.
So somebody had UFO DAP system there.
And so one of the things I've talked to Ron about is start
making modifications and, and I'll say custom bills, right?

(01:17:07):
But my goal would be to come up with a hotspot test range.
And you know, for Brandon and all the criticism he's getting
now, you've got an independent source, right, that's also doing
stuff that could potentially be a corroboration.
My goal, though, is going to be the science aspect.
I'm not going to be shooting theRockets off.
I'm not going to be doing anything to prod.

(01:17:28):
All I'm going to be doing is taking data.
Their prod prodding approach seems to me in like
simultaneously a, a weird scientific sort of, I don't
know, impulse on their part and also like theatrics.
Like they'll get laser arrays and just shine a bunch of really
cool looking lasers. But I know, as you know, I know

(01:17:51):
enough science to know that that's really more spectacle
than. Yeah, it depends on what you're
after. I know Mick W was a little,
little hard on him of the the recent episode where they shined
it up, right. And and they saw an X and it
splits and he's like, well, it'sa cloud.
Yeah. Well, OK, great.
So you know, great, Mick. Thank you.
We. I love you, deaf man.

(01:18:13):
But OK now. OK.
Travis and Eric, what are you going to do to counter what he
said? All right now independence is
good. One of the things I I give them
AB plus and the fact they have others come in with their
equipment, right, that I give them AB plus only because I
don't give them an A is because they haven't released the data.

(01:18:33):
They haven't published any papers.
And so, you know, it's just trying to come up with, I'll
say, you know, a little little more removed from exactly on the
ranch, but we should be able to put equipment out there that we
should be able to corroborate, you know, some of what they're
saying or, or on the opposite side, if they're lying, which I,

(01:18:54):
I'll, I'm going to trust the scientific method that they're
not and that, you know, there's stuff going on out there.
Yeah, I mean, well, there's there's also a history, I mean
Rob Bigelow on the place beforehand and you know, there's
so there's some some reason to suspect that smart people who
who know how to do science. Think, yeah.

(01:19:14):
But everybody I talked to that'sa super critic about that says,
well, you know, there was a somebody lived out there for I
can't, you have to go to Wikipedia, right?
And they never had a single a report of anything.
That's not really a criticism. I mean like the the.
But that's what they use to criticize the fact that now it's
just being used for money makingventure.

(01:19:35):
That might, that might be true, but but the fact that some
people up there and didn't see anything doesn't compel me to
just as a a sort of analytic finger to think.
But that it, it's a criticism, right?
And so when I, when I hear thosecriticisms, great, let me go get
my own stuff out there. I'm going to pound on the data
integrity part. You know, I have others coming
out just like you know they are doing.

(01:19:55):
Put equipment out there and thensee if we catch anything.
I've shown you what I've got andall I can say is it's anonymous.
I can't. I'm trying to resolve it.
I'm trying to figure out why it's doing what it's doing.
I've got some suspicions on thisfisheye, but the other one I'm
all I can do is throw out my hand and say I don't know.
And this is just your initial system, some trail cams and.

(01:20:15):
Yeah, just trying to put something out there so I can see
what's going on in my property. Yeah.
Yeah, Well, I think it's fascinating.
I would not. You know, I think in the future
I'd love to here once you've gotthings set up and start
collecting some data, what you're, you're thinking about
it. So I want to shift back to the,
the UAP subject now. I, one of the questions I'm

(01:20:38):
trying to get everybody I interview to answer is like,
what's your dream UAP research project?
Like if you had unlimited resources, unlimited power and
unlimited, you know, access, what would you put together to
try to study and. Answer if actually I'm going to
be talking to the the individualthat was the Dean out here at

(01:20:59):
the University of Utah and I'm going to say, OK, what He just
retired as the Dean, his name isDean Dean Rich Brown.
Rich Brown or the engineering school.
I knew him when I was on their industry board.
So they have an industry Advisory Board and I was a
member of it for quite some timeuntil I left aerospace.

(01:21:23):
No, I'm not anymore. But fundamentally what I'd be
saying is how, how can we build a UADUAP center of excellence?
And so Utah is ideally situated.I would say there's a little bit
of angst between University of Utah and Utah State.

(01:21:45):
If you know Utah State, they have the Space Dynamics lab
there, which is New York. Apparently University of Utah
also tried to do it, but they didn't, they didn't win it, Utah
State did. And so I would say University of
Utah, we've already got Rich Medina, Doctor Medina and myself
publishing UAP related stuff outof here.
So it would be, you know, building a, a center of

(01:22:05):
excellence for UAP studies and then trying to come up with a
coalition of universities. And so that coalition in my
mind, would basically literally have experts in different fields
that you could tap into, right, to support whatever type of

(01:22:28):
analysis you wanted to do to thepoint where if there are
actually are biologics, you got biological experts on there, You
know, world, honest to God, world experts in different
aspects of everything you can imagine UAP study would be
involved in. You'd have Caltech with the, you
know, gravity, you'd have, you know, start, start picking your

(01:22:49):
who's who's. I think the reason University of
Utah is well situated is becauseof just where we're located and
the phenomena out there at Skinwalker, assuming it's
correct, right? And so that would be one thing.
I would say another thing would be like I'm saying, come up with

(01:23:09):
a, a test lab or a test range, if you will around different
hotspots. You know, I can kind of see them
doing that with the Beyond skin Walker, right?
Trying to identify them. Well, great, now that you've
identify them, let's get them properly instrumented to
research the phenomena, OK. And I would say the, the

(01:23:34):
identification of it is great. Now I'm going to call it the
proper utilization of that and I'm going to call it a natural
resource because it's a natural resource because it can, if it's
someplace where it can be, it's repeatable, it can be studied.
OK. And that's the first thing you
need as a scientist to be able to to study something.

(01:23:56):
You got to have some repeatability of it as a, as a
key aspect. Now I'm going to go down to
another one, being able to actually physically model these
things, right? The physics based modeling that
I was trying to do with the the Starlings right now, the
software is not there. One of the things University of
Utah has is one of the world's best physics and image imaging

(01:24:22):
labs and and center of excellence.
I don't know if you know much about image processing, but
there's something called the Utah teapot, 33 dimensional
teapot. That is it's, it's just a normal
teapot, right? But they call it the Utah Teapot
and, and basically it was just, we had a professor out here who
was doing, you know, image imageprocessing, image analysis,

(01:24:46):
Adobe came out of here. And so it's like you got that, I
would say richness and history that and, and expertise of
professors locally that we couldat least, you know, we locally
could take on that part of it. And I can go on and on.
I really could. But it just gives you like I
would say my top three right there.

(01:25:08):
I love it so. I mean, part of all you'd really
need is. Funding.
Coalition, Well, you need funding, but it's not like you
need to build a new physics lab.What you really need are a group
of people who are experts in their fields who are saying if
you give me something, that is. Study the data and study it

(01:25:28):
well, Yes and no. OK, you got people like me that
are freaking literally donating every spare moment of their time
doing this. I mean, I used to golf.
I haven't hit a golf ball in ages.
This is so much more interestingthan golf though.
Well, it's to a degree, yeah, But you know, I, I, I honestly
don't have much time for, I would say leisurely activities.

(01:25:51):
OK, but the, but the point is, is you got to have the funding.
I mean, if you really want to bring in those experts, if you
want to grow that next generation of grad student,
undergrad student, you got to have funding.
How much funding do you need forthis idea?
I'm going to say I'm going to use the, the Eric Uark and the

(01:26:13):
Cirque Uark as, as great examples.
I mean, we're talking easily a few million a year and we're
talking I, you know, I, I, I don't want to divulge our, our
exact numbers, but you know, it's going to be more than a
million in, in less than 100 million, right.
And so, but it's got to be consistent funding.

(01:26:36):
It's got to go from year to yearto year.
I would say there got to be research projects that you're
putting forward right now. You need to, like I said, data
integrity on the sensors you're going to have to have.
So you could have a working group on that.
You could be working with the SCU, you know, and through and
maybe the SCU helps organize those universities and pulls

(01:26:56):
that, that, that thing together,if you will, right and
identifying different researchers and different,
different parts of the country to, to research the problem.
How many years out would you want would you need funding for?
I you know, currently on these kinds of things, they do it for
like in five year increments. So you, you know, I would say a
good fall, solid five years. You have one base year and you

(01:27:19):
have four option years, right. And then so in that five year of
funding, you can do a lot of damage, right, because it's now
consistent and you can go after some very specific things.
And then the, the key point is you get professors at
universities with grad students,OK, So you got a cheap source of

(01:27:40):
Labor. You're, you're basically growing
that next generation that are interested in the topic you're
publishing. And so you, you, you know,
you're trying to come up with what we'll call it raising the
bar in the publications, right? I know I had one of the
individuals that actually reviewed my paper, he did what
we call a hatchet job on it, or at least he tried, right?

(01:28:00):
And so you know what I'm talkingabout a hatchet job.
No, no, yeah, I'm a reviewer andI'm.
I'm, it's, Yep, it's literally trying to tear it down and not
giving it any, you know, any credibility whatsoever.
And I, I literally went through and responded to every single
one of his, his criticisms in a,in a revision of the paper and
we got it accepted at the Space Situation Awareness Conference.

(01:28:20):
Awesome SO. You know, it's it's from my
standpoint, it's like great, go off and do that because you're
an old pogey stogie. But you know, I'm sorry, you
don't scare me. OK, I've I've had to deal with a
Colonel colonels and generals and and SES.
Is that right? So you know, some old curmudgeon

(01:28:43):
at some university with, you know, 3 letters doesn't doesn't
scare me so. I, I totally get it.
I mean, in philosophy, which is,you know, my discipline, every
reviewer is, does a hash a job. It's just it's blood sport.
Like there's no, there's no, no grace.
But it also means that the work that gets published is really,

(01:29:05):
really rigorous, which is, you know, good to to a.
Degree, yes, and that and, and you're exactly right.
I mean, I know when I was in theA-Team for software, I mean, we,
we would just literally do this.We'd go into the software peer
review, right? And we would bleed all over it.
I mean, it got to the point where the quality assurance team

(01:29:26):
was briefing everybody that was being hired by the company to
explain to them our process and said it's not a personal attack
on you, it's how we make the product better, right?
Oh yeah, it's never personal. I mean, nobody, nobody cares
about your your personal. It's not even on the radar,
which makes it kind of can can make it a toxic place.

(01:29:46):
But also, if you're trying to push really important forward,
that's what you have to do. Well, what we would do is we
would, we would tear each other's papers apart and we'd go
golf at noon for an hour, you know, the, the lunch break.
And then you know me from margaritas, you know, once every
two to three weeks after work. I mean, so we were good friends.
But, you know, there was, there was work and then there was

(01:30:07):
play. And so, you know, that's, I
think that's where you need to take the entire industry.
But for now, Doctor Doug Bentner, thanks for being here.
Oh, no problem, thank you for having me.
The Anomalous Review is a project of the Scientific
Coalition for UAP Studies. It's hosted and produced by me,
Michael Blossom and edited by Kelly Michelle.

(01:30:27):
Our theme song was written and performed by Thomas Chrisanti.
Communication and PR work is by Preston Dykes.
Our advisory team includes Jennifer Roche, Robert Powell,
Richard Hoffman, Joshua Pearson,and Larry Hancock.
To find out more about SCU, check out explorescu.org.

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006 - Doug Buettner on Identifying Truly Anomalous UAP, Debunking Balloons, and Investigations Near Skinwalker Ranch

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}006 - Doug Buettner on Identifying Truly Anomalous UAP, Debunking Balloons, and Investigations Near Skinwalker Ranch