The Truth Is Out There
With the rise of social media, conspiracy theories have become so common that the classics — the Moon landing was faked; LBJ killed JFK; Paul McCartney died in 1966 — seem tame, almost sweet, by comparison. Of course, one of the most captivating conspiracy theories is that an alien spaceship crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, and the US government is hiding the bodies of dead aliens at a government installation called Area 51.
The interesting thing about that particular hoax is that while the stories of the crashed alien ship and the dead bodies are utter hogwash, it turned out that the government was hiding something. It just wasn’t alien invaders. It was a secret Cold War program called Project Mogul, an attempt to develop aircraft that could spot and track Soviet missiles. You can see why the government was willing to put up with a bit of alien fever if it helped keep that project under wraps.
Then in 2015, very credible sources — US Navy pilots — began spotting flying objects that they couldn’t identify. In other words, UFOs. This time, the government came clean, admitting that there were things out there they couldn’t identify. They began recruiting scientists to help them figure out what’s going on. We still don’t know, but with the best minds in the field — both in and out of the military — teaming up to get at the truth, we may soon find out.
I write about all this in my latest story for Science News Explores. I hope you will give it a read and let me know what you think. The Truth Is Out There.
’til next time,
Avery
Image courtesy of the very nice woman whose family still owns the Roswell Daily Record.