a heads up some of you might find the following footage hard to watch and viewer discretion is advised the good news is the story may have a terrifying beginning but it has a happy ending it's the middle part we are still trying to figure out in july of 2017 in juhai china it's a typical day as a motorist drives through a quiet parking lot there's nothing to indicate that a potentially deadly tragedy is seconds away watch close on the right of the security footage as the car seems to hit a bump and suddenly we see a child emerge from under its wheel the car stops but incredibly the child seems to walk away unharmed a similar miraculous video emerged from nanjing china in 2016 and yet another in mumbai india in 2018 [Music] author alexis brooks says there have been actual documented cases of humans born with nearly indestructible bones including a man in 1994 who walked away from a near-fatal car crash virtually unharmed the x-ray showed that he had negligible injuries and the doctors of course scratched their head they discovered that he had a very rare uh bone mutation his bone density was actually eight times more dense than the average human beings when the doctors told the man of what they found he said that doesn't surprise me at all it's no wonder i've never been able to stay afloat when i try to swim researchers at the yale bone center later discover the man wasn't the only one with these near indestructible bones do these kids have the same condition there are a few open questions here first are these videos real or hoaxes and if they are real how did these kids survive let's turn to our experts video forensic expert michael primo runs tests on the video from zhuhai comparing it to what another camera recorded from an overhead angle from these two different perspectives uh there is a consistency between how the vehicle travels from its passenger front side tire and its passenger rear side tire as it travels over the subject would that be difficult to manufacture the vehicle's movements over the subject yes so we're going to say this video is real but physics professor michio kaku says in a small almost miraculous number of cases it may not require super human bones for children to walk away we think of the kid as like a small adult you realize that the laws of physics apply differently to the child the child has a much smaller height off the ground this car goes over the child very quickly minimizing the energy transfer to the child while an adult would have sustained maximum damage dr kaku explains this in terms most drivers can understand when a car goes over a twig the twig hardly notices at all doesn't necessarily break because the time of impact is so tiny and the energy transfer to the twig is almost minimal but think of a car going over a log the log is much taller than the twig and thus creates much more sudden vertical force between the car and the log the energy transfer is much greater there's much more damage so our verdict the videos are real and these children were likely spared by physics and tremendous good fortune however the vast majority of children in this situation would not survive so always always drive carefully and keep your kids out of traffic get a lump in the throat when they stand on the edge of a cliff or skyscraper yet there's another breed of people who appear to use these same spots as their playgrounds the stunts they pull are potentially deadly don't try them still we can't help but wonder do these individuals have some kind of special gift it's february 2017 in hong kong a professional stunt biker carries his bmx bike up flights of stairs to the top of a skyscraper he comes out onto the rooftop pool deck of a building we've decided not to reveal cameras are rolling as the stunt guy lifts his bike over low railing places it on a narrow ledge and mounts it he pops a wheelie with the front tire hanging over the edge then goes for a ride this is ridiculous he's riding his bike on the ledge of a skyscraper um and now he's back to the nice pool he should stay near the pool area it's very unsafe what he's doing this isn't the only example of him braving the heights to get the perfect shot in this clip from dubai he does acrobatics on a ledge and stretches his body between two edges of the structure and check this out in a drone video showing a tall snow-covered building under construction another stuntman uses a crane like a set of monkey bars going out across the narrow beam and back these acts are illegal so it's little surprise our requests for interviews were declined but the videos alone suggest these people seem to share an immunity to a fear of heights i think humans naturally do have a tendency to be afraid of heights that makes sense from a darwinian perspective humans with a genetic aversion to depth from falling are more likely to live long enough to reproduce some people can overcome this anxiety or this fear or this biological necessity to stay alive and can place themselves into these situations where they are obviously one minor slip away from certain death the mohawk indians do this thing called walking iron which they've done since 1886. they have built many of the most iconic buildings in new york city the chrysler building the empire state building the twin towers people have said that they have an innate ability to manage heights of course others have famously used hair-raising heights as sites for stunts you have the flying willendas doing these incredible stunts stringing wires between buildings or over niagara falls or the grand canyon so what special ability do these folks have that most lack our experts want to see if these clips are even real if so how can this be possible forensic video analyst michael primo does a macro block analysis of the pixels and the clips from hong kong and dubai this is a still frame from the macro block that's reporting red and purple like tones then we move on to other areas of movement where the operator is moving his extremities his arms and we see this similar pixel information this red and purple color that the encoder is saying this is new information now typically when a video is processed these pixels will be multi-colored across the screen from this macro block analysis i was able to determine that the encoder was a trustworthy witness all of these natural details would have had to have been carefully manufactured and recreated in this environment to be able to fool the viewer in other words this doesn't appear to be faked so if all these videos are real do these stuntmen have some unique biological makeup that enables them to perform these daring moves so high off the ground some studies have been done that have looked at the genome and you can pretty accurately look at over 200 different genetic factors and have a highly reliable way of predicting whether someone has the fear of heights still no fear of heights is only part of the picture you also need a good sense of balance and proprioception the ability to tell where your body is in 3d space for example the guy with the bicycle he's looking down at his handlebars that's giving him a horizontal axis to inform his reference point of where he is in 3d space there are people with greater sense of balance and coordination but then once you add training to it now you're talking about a person that can do things that really does look extraordinary it doesn't look like what a normal person can do so the age-old question is this an inatability or something learned the human brain is plastic we can rewire it so these people have either been born with brains that are wired differently or they've rewired them themselves because instead of being fearful of the heights they are actually enjoying the heights they get a rush out of it our verdict like the famous mohawk iron workers and flying walendas these high-flying stuntmen have learned to control or even feed off their natural fear of heights still there's a degree of luck involved with all these tricks please do not try this at home do not attempt what you're about to see but hypothetically what would you do if a race car was coming straight at you at full speed for some the answer is to jump right over it impressive certainly for real well let's see it's august 2011 in west allis wisconsin and dozens of people are watching a seemingly unassuming acrobat flip over some of those gathered to watch and his grand finale is eye-popping watch that again in slow motion the stunt man runs full speed towards an oncoming black sports car just as it seems he will be hit he takes a flying leap and flips right over it cleanly and he's not the only one who appears to be pulling off such a potentially deadly stunt in november 2020 a michigan man was filmed flipping over a red sports car accelerating towards him oh my god in another viral video a british gymnast backflips over a speeding formula one race car like it's nothing these situations would end in disaster for most humans here's a memorable failure makes you wonder if this isn't another cgi prank like we've seen before you may remember the guy dodging traffic in colombia and if it's not a hoax exactly how are these men pulling this off there is this ability in some individuals to shift the rules of reality or the physics of one's self there have been yogis who while in the process of deep prayer were seen floating literally levitating above the ground however some of those claims of levitation like that of yogi sabaya pulvar supposedly observed by 150 people in 1936 turned out to be a clever hoax involving a concealed pole so are these modern displays of gravity defiance also fakes or the real deal the current guinness world record for standing vertical leap is 67 inches and that's without a flip and a car careening towards someone so is this really possible and what to make of those failed attempts whoa we asked the experts first mick west looks for signs any of these videos were faked check out this example here the effect was achieved by combining a shot of the flip and one of a driving car taken later but the wisconsin flipper is different there's nothing that leaps out to me as being a particularly fake video we see his reflection in the windscreen when he jumps over it here we see the reaction of the crowd the shadows also line up in this video from the parking lot but the video on the racetrack raises a flag you'll see right here there's a large chunk of the rear spoiler missing and not only just in that frame but in other frames as well there's a chunk missing right here he's obviously very capable of doing backflips i think they've taken two shots identically with the camera perhaps synchronized and composited them together and they've unfortunately not done a perfect job of it as for the other two videos professor michio kaku says these stunts are certainly possible for certain humans with the right physical traits the key physical characteristics that these people have to have is coordination of their lower body weight you want to be able to have strong leg muscles it's the vertical lift from a dead stop that allows you to perform these gyrations in the air you can think of it like a spring the amount of force that a spring exerts is directly correlated to how far you push the spring down and then how far the spring then expands back up it's the same with muscles it also requires a certain mental acuity you have to overcome the tendency to tense up as the car is coming at you you want to approach it in a loosened and relaxed state you want your muscles to start out maximally lengthened so that you get the most force that you possibly can out of that contraction the single most important characteristic that you have to master is timing if you take off too late the car hits you you take off too early you land on top of the car so our verdict these stunts can be faked as in the case of the racetrack video but there are certainly people out there capable of leaping over a moving car in the authentic videos the talented stuntmen got lucky with the timing but it could have still ended badly so don't go trying this at home you've heard of the incredible hulk but tonight we're going to introduce you to the incredible tulk he appears to be capable of superhuman feats of strength how does he do it just watch october 2017 it's a seemingly typical day in luton england a nearby security camera is recording as a determined man approaches a small blue car parked on the street he reaches under the front bumper and after a few seconds proceeds to not only lift the vehicle up but actually push it backwards look again the car is parked but he's able to push it out of the way in his bare feet the man performing this incredible feat of strength is hakan akar aka the incredible talk i couldn't go anywhere because someone blocked my driveway so my full process was i'm going to go to the car i'm going to see how heavy it is decided to lift it i started just pushing and pushing and pushing until the car was actually veering off into the road hakan isn't the only modern day hercules caught on camera treating a car like a children's toy this video from russia in 2016 shows a man overpowering this vehicle's acceleration so how are these guys doing this some have speculated that there might be a genetic mutation behind super strength there's a protein called myostatin which typically inhibits the growth of muscles but if you have this condition that limits myostatin your muscles will actually grow bigger artificial substances can also be involved pushing the limits of human strength steroids are the modern method of course but the practice goes back ages we know that warriors in south america from aztec and mayan cultures would often ingest plants that contained what we would sort of call narcotics today for the purpose of getting ready for combat mescaline which naturally occurs in cacti such as peyote were common sources of such drugs it reduces fear but it also opens up blood vessels it opens up how much oxygen the body can take in hakan assures us that's not what's giving him his strength i've never took anything in my life i've always been naturally quite strong and then once i started actually going to the gym and training i realized that my strength levels were quite high so hakan's superior strength really is the result of nature and regular trips to the gym but is his ability to move an entire car as impressive as it looks to the rest of us or is there something else at work here let's have our experts do the heavy lifting [Music] dr hakeem alushihi says hakan's physical strength is part of the equation but he is also getting a big assist from an age-old scientific principle we know cars are heavy on average around 3 000 pounds but he's using one of the six simple machines and that is the lever the front tires are where the fulcrum is located and he's basically just lifting it off the ground a little bit one end of it and that's very different than just picking up a car and lifting it above your head hakan has essentially turned the car into one big resistance arm that redistributes its own weight toward the back wheels similar to how you can move a bunch of heavy rocks in a wheelbarrow professor michio kaku also says it's not the muscles you may think that are at work here we're not talking about upper body muscular strength we're talking about his feet helping to push the car and the car in turn is designed to minimize friction in the horizontal direction that explains why those bare feet seem to help as well my crocs ended up getting flung off at the same time i thought get a bit more traction with my feet ha khan built up a greater coefficient of friction with the road allowing for even more horizontal force and as for the guy in russia battling the accelerating car look at the wheels he's lifted the car off the ground so most of the energy of the gasoline is being used to simply spin wheels because this is a front-wheel drive vehicle the back tires on the ground aren't powered by the accelerator he appears to be able to take a car's forward motion and stop it when actually that energy is being wasted our verdict a blend of strength and proportional mass there's no doubt that hakan has above average strength but a variety of outside conditions are making the incredible talks astounding feat slightly easier than it looks this little white ball may seem ordinary to you and well it is anyone who plays ping pong knows how to control its movement at least a little bit but that control pales in comparison to what you are about to see january 2021 with the covet pandemic raging many people around the world including canadian acrobat adam grondin have been hoarding toilet paper and looking for novel ways to occupy themselves at home it was a during a snowstorm we got stuck inside and i had nothing to do and i had some crazy ideas the idea involves adam's skills as an acrobat a roll of toilet paper and a ping pong ball watch from a perfect handstand adam launches the ping-pong ball directly from his mouth through the rotating roll look again that's even more nuts in slow-mo his timing here has to be absolutely perfect even if he wasn't already blindfolded and upside down [Music] of course adam posted the video and of course it instantly went viral when i saw the tape after it just looked unreal and i got so many comments on the videos that oh it's fake you know but no it's real and this way it's so impressive and cool adam isn't the only internet famous ping pong stunt man it's kind of become a thing so how are these people able to pull off the impossible journalist erin mccarthy says it may be similar to the performance of elite athletes for some people time does seem to slow down when they're trying to pull off some stunt or make some shot so for example a baseball player who's at bat time might seem to slow down as he's swinging studies have shown that gifted athletes often have more gray matter in at least five brain regions that handle perception and motor skills but it's not just athletes there are some people who have claimed that time slows enough for them that they can actually catch bullets out of the air with their hands or with their mouths this was a claim that magicians made for hundreds of years it actually escalated to the point where at least 12 people died attempting this trick harry houdini himself removed the bullet catch trick from his act out of safety concerns so don't get any ideas as for ping-pong balls before we can determine just how impressive this feat of physics really is we first need our experts to make sure it's not a fake [Music] yeah my first thought with this is that is it fake it's pretty easy to create a little 3d model of a ping pong ball and add it to the scene but i don't see any clues that indicate that it is fake it looks very very realistic the way it comes out of his mouth the way it comes out of this role the way it changes in trajectory is very realistic we're confident the video isn't doctored so astrophysicist hakeem olusehi examines whether adam has some heightened ability to bend space and time the physics of this is really interesting so the first thing is is that the toilet paper roll is swinging back and forth so that's a pendulum motion if you get the timing of when it's going to be at that lowest point then it is always going to be there you can predict it these people aren't bending the rules of physics they're mastering physics but remember the role isn't just swinging it's also rotating that suggests some of that extra gray matter in athletes could be at work here but physics professor michio kaku isn't so sure when you first see these videotapes you say to yourself no way these guys must be geniuses at this this kind of activity but then you realize the law of averages is still against you you cannot do this every single time and so when these feats are performed on videotape you know that there was a lot of mistrials that were conveniently deleted we asked adam how many takes it took to get this shot and he admitted he didn't get it the first time not by a long shot i probably tried a thousand times because the toilet paper was turning pretty fast i couldn't really see it there's a specific sound when the ball goes in and i heard it and i was like shook our verdict well these trick shots are real they aren't proof of some superhuman ability beyond extreme persistence which is a characteristic that i for one do consider heroic you
2022-06-14