this evening we're going to explore the
story that almost everyone gets wrong
there are hundreds of feature-length
documentaries on the subject and all of
them are a waste of your time because
this is the true story of the Roswell
incident
the story begins before the crash in
1947 it begins with a scientist
professor Maurice Ewing who is helping
the US military develop new weapons and
tools in the Second World War so he
discovers one thing and he invents
another his specialization is an
oceanography important to the military
because they won't be able to detect
submarines and local waters and develop
more sophisticated versions of their own
the discovery is the sound Channel
I'll explain why this is important to
stay with me it turns out that is the
spot at about a thousand feet deep in
the ocean with the salinity temperature
and density of the water prevents sound
waves from being able to easily carry
either up or down so instead they travel
much further horizontally without
dissipating why is this important or
interesting well it means that large
disturbances underwater at this precise
depth can be heard for thousands of
miles away if using the right equipment
so Emory starts thinking about the
practical applications and he comes up
with an invention he calls it a so far
sphere here's an example of how it works
they say you're a pilot fighting the
Japanese over the Pacific Ocean you're
momentarily distracted and your plane
goes down well now you're bobbing around
in the middle of the ocean and nobody
knows where you are
what do well you reach into your
survival kit and drop a so far sphere
think of it like a pocket-sized depth
charge except without the explosives it
has no moving parts no electronics
instead is very precisely calibrated so
that when it sinks to 1,000 feet it
implodes the sound waves carry a couple
of thousand miles to the shoreline where
they've installed a bunch of underwater
microphones then using some basic
trigonometry you can compare the time it
takes for the sound hit one mic from
another to triangulate where the sound
came from and like that we suddenly know
where your downed pilot is but before it
was able to be used the war ended and
the device was shelved although
professor Ewing was kept on the military
payroll because a whole new conflict was
ramping up the Cold War the concern here
was missiles and nuclear weapons so
attention shifted from the ocean to the
atmosphere so thanks wait a minute if
there's a sound channel in the ocean
maybe there's one in the sky too turns
out there is at a hundred and fifty five
thousand feet so if there's a large
sound let's say a nuclear explosion in
Russia you should be able to hear that
all the way in the United States if you
have a bunch of microphones set up at
this height that means you know the
exact location time and potential power
of every single above-ground nuclear
test being conducted by your enemy well
before you had anything like satellite
technology they call this project mogul
it was a series of high-altitude weather
balloons with sensitive microphones
attached in 1947 one of them fell from
the sky and crashed down in a ranchers
backyard and some people with large
imaginations said it was aliens the
military said it was a weather balloon
then there were some conflicting reports
and people said it was a cover-up well
of course there was a sure beats having
the Russians find out about this
technology in the following decades
better ways of detecting nuclear tests
were invented primarily seismograph
fence and the sound channel fell out of
use in 1992 following the fall of the
Berlin Wall all of this information
became Declassified and since it has
been totally available for the public to
read and that is the story of Roswell no
aliens just a weather balloon and a
bunch of microphones
goodnight by the way you can find a
longer version of the story from a
lecture by dr. Richard Muller from UC
Berkeley he does a really interesting
lecture series that you can still find
online and the link will be in the
description