Since NASA first went into space over 60 years ago, stories about alien abductions, and UFO sightings continue to surface. So-called “truth-seekers” claim NASA has been covering up the existence of alien life at our government’s request because of fears that the knowledge would lead to panic and anarchy. Welcome to The Finest, today we will be looking at “Is There Real Proof NASA is Hiding Aliens?”, let’s begin! First, let’s start with the basics. You might not know it but NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was founded in 1958 at the beginning of the Cold War in response to Russia’s launch of Sputnik 1: the world’s first artificial satellite. Since its inception, NASA has put more than 200 vessels successfully into space.
NASA’s overall mission centers on driving advances in science, technology, and the stewardship of earth. However, their exoplanet program is designed to explore planets beyond our solar system. According to NASA, their exoplanet program’s mission is to find unmistakable signs of current life. What all this means is that NASA as an organization believes there may be other life out there and is prepared to find it. The real question here is, have they already found it and if so, where’s the proof? When we look at some of NASA’s missions, statements, and reports over the years we can see instances where they’ve withheld some information from the public. First in 1969, what is arguably the most memorable moment in NASA history, the Apollo mission. Two men walked on the moon for the first time in the history of our world: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrich.
Their third companion, Michael Collins, stayed on board the command module, orbiting the moon until the two were ready to be picked up. The two astronauts transmitted their experience back to earth where NASA shared it with the world. However, the first two minutes of the official transmission are silent. Though NASA claims a TV camera malfunctioned, destroying the audio, others who were at mission control and radio operators who heard the transmission have asserted that the sound wasn’t obliterated but in fact covered up by NASA. Indeed, there are reports that Aldrich and Armstrong actually reported they saw other beings. This supposed conversation has been debated about for decades with no further conclusive evidence. Aside from the Apollo mission, there have been numerous sightings of reported UFOs – unidentified flying objects – throughout the years. We’ve highlighted some of the most well-known from each decade.
In 1959, pilots from 3 separate flights confirmed a UFO sighting of a large bright light surrounded by small lights moving at speeds not yet found on earth. In 1965 in Pennsylvania, there was a well-reported UFO crash in the woods. The area was blocked off and the public kept out. NASA has since refused to search for and release documents on what was found at the site until losing a lawsuit in court. The official report states it was a meteor though witnesses claim a flatbed truck left the scene bearing a metallic acorn-shaped object. In 1973, Duke Field radar tracked a UFO within the same area and timeframe that 10-15 witnesses reported seeing 4 objects flying in formation. The base reported a glowing ball of light was seen travelling parallel to an Airforce aircraft at a much higher altitude.
In 1986, 2 square-shaped, and then one much larger craft, were all witnessed by a flight crew for Japan Air flying alongside their airplane for nearly an hour. The large craft was picked up by military radar. In 1997, thousands of people reported seeing lights and a variety of UFOs flying between Nevada and Arizona. In 2004, while on a training mission, fighter pilots reported a “tic-tac” shaped object flying at 80,000 feet, and dropping to just 50 feet above the water, churning up the ocean. It charged towards the plane and then peeled away, the pilots losing track of it. The radar controller detected the object’s presence for a few minutes before it disappeared. Thinking about these reports and sightings by normal people you have to wonder what else NASA, with all their extra technology and research, might have encountered.
In more recent years there have been a number of reports from NASA and news outlets about extraterrestrial life. Scientists have been receiving radio signals from somewhere unknown for years. Known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), these signals last only milliseconds but emit more in those brief moments than the sun does in 24 hours. The only thing scientists know about their origin is that they come from outside the Milky Way. Another weird NASA secret revolves around NASA’s oldest unmanned spacecraft, which is still exploring deep space. The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft have been in space the longest, exploring for over 40 years. The Voyager 1 is the farthest spacecraft from earth and is now transmitting information from interstellar space, the region between the stars. Both of these vessels are equipped with scenes and sounds from earth as well as greetings and music in multiple languages in the event the spacecraft were to run into other life forms. Each vessel has enough fuel and power to operate until at least 2025.
Controversy has sprung up over why NASA hasn’t been more transparent with the data they are still collecting from the Voyager 1. 40 years’ worth of data collected from our solar system and now from interstellar space has not been shared with the public. Both Voyagers travel at more than 35,000 mph, with Voyager 1 crossing the outer most limit of our solar system in 2012, and Voyager 2 a few years behind. With one spacecraft now in deep space who knows what NASA may have uncovered. And the mysteries keep coming… NASA announced in 2015 they found evidence that Mars could support the simplest forms of life. They photographed dark red streaks across Mars that faded and darkened when temperatures rose and fell. NASA concluded that the streaks were formed by salt water flowing across the surface when temperatures warmed up. Unfortunately, in 2017 NASA released a new statement that basically stated the streaks aren’t caused by water but are in fact caused by grains of sand slipping down the slopes of Mars’ active dunes. How these flows of sand begin, grow, and ebb is still an unexplained mystery.
And speaking of Mars…. In October of 2018, there was a big controversy when NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) both snapped photos of a former volcano on the same day at the same time. The ESA images showed a red streak that looked like a smoke plume coming from the volcano, while in NASA’s images the plume was absent. ESA clarified that it was a giant cloud of evaporated water known as a lee cloud and didn’t indicate any signs of life. It still begs the question of why NASA’s images didn’t contain the cloud. Aside from the brief excitement over Mars’ potential for water, scientists now estimate one in five planets have the necessary ingredients to support life. Two general criteria determine this: planets need a rocky surface and they need to reside in a zone known as the “Goldilocks” zone where the temperatures are not too hot and not too cold but just right to allow liquid water to form on the surface.
Right now they estimate there are 20 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy. They have found 10 that are Earth-sized, are in the habitable zone, and can definitively allow for surface water. All of this begs the question: does NASA in fact have contact or evidence of aliens and are they hiding it from the public? Many conspiracy theorists have accused NASA of hiding evidence of alien contact over the fifty years since NASA’s inception. Despite all of the sightings, reports on unexplainable events, and ability for some planets to support life NASA remains firm that they haven’t found any evidence of actual lifeforms outside of Earth…yet. NASA’s mission is still ultimately to discover other life out in space and researchers have assured the public that NASA’s plan is to tell the public if and when that happens.
With scientific advances in space happening so rapidly, and our understanding of organisms and life as we know it evolving daily, would NASA even recognize aliens if they found them? Until about fifty years ago life was defined as beings that metabolize (eat nutrients and discharge excrement of some kind) and sexually reproduce. Now we know that life exists in much less complex forms: some organisms don’t even consume organic nutrients but electronic pulses and some don’t need sex to reproduce but fracture from the “parent” organism. In the past few decades, scientists have discovered life in places with extreme temperatures formerly thought to uninhabitable: superheated geysers, the deep ocean, the bottom of Antarctic glaciers. In reality, who’s to say NASA hasn’t already come across alien life forms but doesn’t have the technology yet to identify them?
One NASA scientist theorized in a recent paper that aliens may have already visited earth. Silvano Columbano, NASA scientist, pointed out that all intelligence may not be carbon-based and if so that would redefine and expand the parameters NASA uses to look for signs of life. For instance, our life-spans may no longer be a limitation, we may need multi-generational work. There could be super-tiny intelligent life, necessitating much smaller tools for exploration, or extraterrestrials may have technology we know nothing about such as interstellar travel. Scientists have offered up a number of explanations for why we haven’t yet found aliens, here are a few of the weirdest. Aliens are probably hiding in underground oceans.
Yes, really. A NASA physicist, Alan Stern has posited that the most likely places for alien life in our solar system are in the liquid water subsurface oceans running beneath the surface of many moons in our solar system. Unfortunately this means we’ll never be able to detect them via telescope. Another explanation is that we are being split apart by dark energy. All evidence points to the universe expanding. Galaxies are being pulled apart by a mysterious invisible force scientists have been calling dark matter. Within a few trillion years we will no longer be able to see the light of any galaxies beyond the closest cosmic neighbors and most certainly won’t be able to travel to any of them. This means NASA is on a deadline to find alien life before it all drifts too far away. The last one, and arguably the most mind-twisting, is that aliens are out there but imprisoned on their own planets.
There are planets with masses up to ten times that of Earth, known as super-Earths. All research concludes many of these super-Earths have the conditions necessary to support liquid water. This means there could be tons of planets out there supporting alien populations. The down side is that we probably would never meet them. With a mass ten times greater than the size of Earth, the gravitational pull would be almost two and a half times greater than Earth’s, making space travel from such planets nearly impossible. Even with all the advances in space technology and our rapidly evolving understanding of life as we know it, will we ever really know what’s out there? Also, check out our other cool stuff showing up on screen right now. See you next time!
