Skinwalker Ranch Anomalies / Exoplanets & Venus

About the show

Travis Taylor is an engineer who holds PhDs in optical science and engineering, aerospace systems engineering, and master's degrees in physics and astronomy. In the first half, he discussed his role as an intrepid investigator at Skinwalker Ranch, one of the world's most mysterious hot spots for UFOs and 'high strangeness,' as the fourth season of "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" debuts this Tuesday on the History Channel. What is shown in the TV series, he explained, is part of a genuine long-term scientific investigation rather than something scripted or contrived. He has concluded that the anomalous phenomena at the Skinwalker site are authentic, though what they are specifically is difficult to determine. The effects are impossible to replicate and occur unexpectedly and in different ways, he detailed.

"A key thing we discovered last year...[is that] there is some sort of time-based anomaly that is occurring on the ranch very often-- whether it's something that's spoofing the clocks in all the equipment or time itself is actually being confused we can't determine yet," he reported. Taylor said he suffered from gamma-ray radiation exposure due to an incident working at the site, and a lot of equipment was also affected by the radiation. He also shared some of the curious results of drilling into part of the mesa on the property, where they hit something extremely hard. They discovered pieces of metal 100 feet in, and testing revealed they were a manufactured material that included tellurium and europium, rare earth compounds with conducting qualities that are not native to the area. Taylor also touched on his work for the US govt.'s secretive UAP Task Force, as well as his investigation back in the 1990s of "Art's Parts" (artifacts given to Art Bell that were said to be part of the Roswell crash).

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In the latter half, astrophysicist from UC- Riverside, Stephen Kane, talked about his study of exoplanets in relation to his research into the planet Venus. When new exoplanets are discovered, it is generally through indirect techniques, where scientists observe the planetary body's effect on its host star, rather than seeing the planet itself. That means we are inferring much of the information about the exoplanets based on what we know about planets in our own solar system, he explained. He pointed out how scientists drew incorrect conclusions about Venus, particularly because its surface can't be observed with a telescope. It turned out that Venus was far more inhospitable than was initially thought, though much is still unknown about its atmosphere, surface, and interior, he added.

While the Venusian surface is far too hot for life, recent research has pondered whether life forms might exist in its atmospheric clouds. Kane believes it is crucial for us to fully understand planets such as Venus and Mars in order to draw the right conclusions about exoplanets that appear similar in size to Earth. It's possible that Venus was not like it currently is and may have had a past when it had oceans like Earth-- which tells us that planets can change in very dramatic ways. He has proposed a concept called "The Venus Zone," which is akin to the idea of a habitable zone-- the region around a star where liquid surface water could exist. For more, view his scientific paper, "Venus as Nearby Exoplanetary Laboratory" (PDF).

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