aliens

Secrets of Area 51: History, technology, and controversy

Area 51 is one of the most enduring mysteries and sources of speculation in American history.

Located inside the Nevada Test and Training Range, the flat, dry lake bed known as Groom Lake has been the home to some of the nation's most advanced espionage and weapons technology, hair-raising tales of Cold War brinksmanship, and possibly much worse, according to a new book about the top-secret military base.

In writing "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base," Annie Jacobsen combed through thousands of pages of declassified material on American spy plane development, nuclear testing at Area 51, and the history of the CIA and Air Force's control of the base.

In the course of her research, she interviewed dozens of men who worked or lived at Area 51 and are only now talking to one another and the public about their time there. She also interviewed one anonymous source who suggested a deeply dark side of the research conducted at Area 51: human experimentation and psychological warfare (and, of course, a high-level cover-up).

I interviewed Jacobsen, along with Jim Friedman, who was a senior field administrator at Area 51 for 13 years, and TD Barnes, a radar specialist who lived and worked at Area 51, in Nevada near the edge of the enormous testing range and base. We drove up to the gate at Area 51, talked at length about the planes and other technologies developed there and dug into the controversy surrounding the most shocking parts of Jacobsen's book.

The interviews and footage originally aired on CBS' "The Early Show," and these three videos are extra footage and longer interviews about the topics covered in the book. First, a journey down the long Nevada highway and desolate dirt road that leads to the back gate at Area 51: the most intimidating gate you've ever seen. When we got there, there was broken glass on the ground, an ominous camera gazing down at us, and absolutely no one in sight. But I could feel the weight of eyes on me with every moment we were there (and I expected a blow-dart in the back at any second!). … Read more

Give digital photos a retro look with Lo-Fi

People take a lot of bad and/or boring photos (myself included). Do it with a smartphone, though, and you've got a bunch of apps, such as Hipstamatic for iPhone and Vignette for Android, to make things more interesting or cover up flaws. However, things are a little more complicated for people who still use a regular camera, and that's where Lo-Fi comes in.

The software--available for Mac and Windows--lets you do what those apps do by quickly applying different effects based on film types, flashes, and lenses. What's nice about using Lo-Fi is that it doesn'… Read more

Roswell 'was plane full of alienlike children sent by Stalin'

I'm about to disappoint a few hardened alienists here, though I'm trying to do it with the finest of intentions.

For I've just learned of a new book called "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base." It offers a radically different theory as to what happened that strange, stormy day in Roswell, N.M., in 1947.

Stories of the hush-hushedness of America's reaction have created legends that will live forever. That these were aliens crash-landing into our lives is, perhaps, the most beloved explanation of a strange phenomenon in … Read more

SETI silences alien-seeking telescope array

Now more than ever, one imagines that we should intensify our search for life out there.

Life down here has become difficult. And how else can we maintain American supremacy, if not by muscling in on outer space?

It seems, though, that economics is putting a difficult hue on our quest. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the SETI (Search For Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute has announced that it is setting aside some of its telescopes, as it cannot afford to run them.

Indeed, 42 radio dishes, named the Allen Telescope Array, are being silenced until someone can come up … Read more

Roswell rumor offers boon day for FBI Web site traffic

For conspiracy theorists, it sounded like a giant step closer to their "Eureka" moment.

Earlier, the British publication The Sun set the ticker hopping with a report that "real-life FBI X-Files have emerged sensationally claiming flying saucers piloted by aliens did crash on Earth." The Telegraph published a similar piece and the Internet did the rest. It wasn't long before their lead was followed by dozens of other publications around the world.

A call to the FBI may have helped, where the only news at the agency's Washington headquarters was that traffic to its … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1422: Gamer-cising is good for you! (podcast)

Facebook is going to start showing movies (and making you buy credits), Microsoft is staking Nokia $1 billion to distribute Windows Phone 7/Nokia love children, and Sprint may buy T-Mobile USA and create a massive mobile carrier third head. Plus, in data porn, Android tops the U.S. smart phone market, AT&T dominates on downloads, and the iPad 2's dual-core processor is apparently not all that. But iOS 4.3 is! Also: vote for Asian Usher! --Molly

Buzz Out Loud 1421: Alien life or comet scum? (podcast)

On today's show, the increasingly scary security battleground that is our mobile phones (and how carriers could be making it worse), Sony's war against jailbreaking the PS3 goes nuclear, and Microsoft announces that IE6 needs to die. Plus, RIM's roadmap for 2011 doesn't inspire that much confidence, and the reason we're so tired on Monday (and every other) mornings. --Molly

NASA scientist: Fossils of alien life on meteorite

Living in the Bay Area, one often wonders where certain beings really came from.

And it seems that the pressure for authorities to admit that everything down here isn't exactly human increases every day.

Now an astrobiologist with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Dr. Richard B. Hoover, has added to the excitement.

Hoover has spent considerable years traveling to remote places like Alaska and Siberia. There, he's collected meteorites, which he's taken back to his lab and examined.

He published his conclusions yesterday in the Journal of Cosmology, and one can only describe his findings as … Read more

U.K.'s real-life version of the 'X-Files'

The British government has released 8,500 pages of previously classified documents detailing its decades-long effort to respond to the public's insistence that UFOs exist.

Among other disclosures, the files reveal that the House of Lords held the only full debate on UFOs in the history of the British Parliament and that the country thought it was possibly facing an alien invasion in 1967. The papers also include messages from the British government to the prime minister of Grenada responding to that nation's attempts to sponsor a debate on UFOs at the United Nations in 1977-78.

The documents … Read more

Canada's ex-defense minister: U.S. knows how aliens can make us greener

Somehow, freaky sci-fi movies don't seem to be favored by Oscar voters.

However, I think I may have found some subject matter that Peter Guber, the great Golden State Warriors owner and producer of "The Kids Are Alright," might want to get a budget behind.

Apparently, the United States already knows quite a lot about UFO technology. Apparently, there are secret "black ops" installations somewhere in--oh, I'm guessing Arizona--where new forms of energy have been created using technology that has been gleaned from those up there, rather than us down here.

Please, you know … Read more