Bob Lazar
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| Robert Scott Lazar | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 January 1959 Coral Gables, Florida (disputed) |
Robert Scott Lazar (born 26 January 1959) is a highly controversial figure in discussions about UFOs. A former photography shop worker, Lazar claims to have worked at area S-4 of the Nevada Test Site (near Area 51).
Opinions are divided as to the reliability of Lazar's claims. Critics argue that he has made unsupported statements, and that Lazar has a weak grasp of the scientific principles he espouses, and that the entire affair is a hoax. Supporters argue that Lazar is the victim of a cover up,[citation needed] and that his claims are accurate and reliable.
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[edit] Area 51
In November 1989 Lazar made a special interview appearance with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS to talk about his supposed reverse engineering on an alleged extraterrestrial spacecraft. He said his public appearance was to share the information in scientific interest, and partly to insure himself against any mysterious sudden demise for exposing what Lazar described as classified information.
[edit] Claims
In 1995, Gene Huff, a friend of Lazar's, wrote at alt.conspiracy.area51, "At area 51, Bob had to sign a secrecy agreement and an agreement to waive his constitutional rights.".<ref name="GeneHuff">Huff, Gene. "The Lazar Synopsis", alt.conspiracy.area51, 12 Mar 1995. Retrieved on 2006-11-18.</ref> Gene continued, "The clearance he was now attaining would require perpetual monitoring of his activities and would never simply be attained and forgotten about until the next review date. After some abrupt suggestions that he honor his secrecy agreement and watch his general conduct, he and Mariani boarded a bus with blacked out windows and took a 20 to 30 minute ride down a bumpy dirt/gravel road. They arrived at a base near Papoose dry lake bed known as S4."<ref name="GeneHuff" />
Lazar said due to the potentially hazardous substances he might be required to use he took some allergy tests, and Lazar was informed that he would be "on call" as needed. He continued working at a photography shop, while making jaunts to S4 about once a week.
Eventually, Lazar says he was asked to examine the propulsion system of a disc-shaped aircraft (he insists he saw nine flying saucers in various states of disrepair, but was allowed to closely examine only one of them). Lazar claims that when he first saw disc-shaped craft at the base, he concluded they were secret — but decidedly terrestrial — aircraft, and that sightings of test flights were responsible for UFO reports. Only on closer examination of the craft did Lazar conclude it was designed by and for extraterrestrials.
Lazar claimed that the placeholder element ununpentium (Uup) was the fuel that enabled extraterrestrial craft to travel interstellar distances. Uup's, he claimed, provided an energy source which would step up to ununhexium under particulate bombardment, which would then decay making antimatter. Also in the intense Uup strong nuclear force field of its superheavy nucleus properly amplified to make "Gravity B" and could "shape" a craft's relation to the gravitized space around it.
He ascribed the element's absence on Earth to the fact that the supernovae in Earth's region of the galaxy were insufficiently massive to produce nuclei of this density, but other parts of the universe are richer in this element. These areas, according to Lazar, are inhabited by the adventurous (but to date comparatively reclusive) extraterrestrial visitors who could employ it. A significant supply, he claimed, was acquired through direct exchange by supersecret US government operations at Nevada Test Site Area 51.
Eventually, insists Lazar, he came to dislike his job at S4 citing secrecy, intimidation, the danger to his health, and he also thought that the evidence of extraterrestrials visiting earth should be exposed. After driving some friends to S4 to witness test flights of the craft, Lazar decided to alert the public to the goings on. He first appeared on Knapp's program under the pseudonym "Dennis" with his features hidden. His true identity was later revealed, and the story garnered some major attention.
[edit] Criticisms of Lazar's claims
Many of Lazar's statements have been criticised as inaccurate or unfounded. In interviews and public appearances he appears to be well-versed in physics — at least to a non-scientific audience. However, his actual understanding of the science has been questioned. Physicist Dr. David L. Morgan writes that "Mr. Lazar on many occasions demonstrates an obvious lack of understanding of current physical theories. On no occasion does he acknowledge that his scenario violates physical laws as we understand them, and on no occasion does he offer up any hints of new theories which would make his mechanism possible. Mr. Lazar has a propensity for re-defining scientific terms, and using scientific language in a confusing and careless way. For these reasons, I don’t feel that Lazar's pseudo-scientific ramblings are really worthy of any kind of serious consideration."<ref name="Friedman1">Morgan, Dr. David. "Lazar Critique", Bluefire, August 26, 1996, revised October 2005. Retrieved on 2006-11-18.</ref>
Lazar claims to hold advanced degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology, but does not appear on the alumni roll of either institution. Lazar's supporters allege this discrepancy is the result of a government cover-up, but there has yet to be a single alumnus of either MIT or Caltech that has backed Lazar's claims by remembering a class taken with Lazar, or having ever seen him at either campus. The yearbooks from that time period also contain no photos of or references to Lazar.
Stanton T. Friedman, a physicist and UFO researcher, said about Lazar's claims: "its all bunk."<ref name="Friedman1">Friedman, Stanton. "The Bob Lazar Fraud", VJ Enterprises, December 1997. Retrieved on 2006-11-18.</ref> Among Friedman's research on Lazar concerns his education. Friedman has said that Lazar's high school transcripts show that he finished "in the bottom third of his high school class", making him an unlikely MIT candidate, and Friedman also cites evidence that Lazar was registered at Los Angeles Pierce College (a community college), at the same time he claims to have been working on his degrees from MIT; the schools are 2500 miles apart.<ref name="Friedman2">Friedman, Stanton. "Does the U.S. government keep alien spaceships at Area 51?", United Kingdom UFO Network, 4th October 1997. Retrieved on 2006-11-18.</ref>
One objection to Lazar's report was that while the element Uup occurred in the atomic number range postulated for greater stability, the first terrestrial experiments to produce it indicated a half-life on the order of seconds rather than years. Defenders answer this criticism on the ground that different stabilities are attributable to different isotopic compositions: that an isotope achievable only under distant stellar formation may be more stable than forms resulting from collision of stable elements by conventional means.
On June 18, 1990 Lazar was convicted in Las Vegas, Nevada of pandering for an illegal prostitute, a felony.<ref name="Pandering">Adams, Cecil. "Does the U.S. government keep alien spaceships at Area 51", The Straight Dope, 23-Aug-1996. Retrieved on 2006-11-18.</ref> A friend of Lazar's, Gene Huff, explained that this occurred because, in a televised interview with George Knapp, Lazar had admitted developing a computerized system to increase the efficiency of the brothel.
[edit] Businesses
[edit] United Nuclear
Among those businesses Lazar has run is United Nuclear, a scientific supply company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. United Nuclear sells a variety of materials including radioactive ores, powerful magnets, scientific curiosities like aerogel, and a variety of lab chemicals. United Nuclear claims "over 250,000 satisfied customers", including law-enforcement agencies, schools, and amateur scientists. A 2006 report in Wired magazine says that Lazar and his wife and business partner Joy White were arrested in June 2003 for selling chemicals which could be used to make fireworks.<ref name="Wired">Silberman, Steve. "Don't Try This at Home", Wired magazine, June 2006. Retrieved on 2006-11-18.</ref> The article explains that the action was initiated at the request of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).<ref name="Wired" /> After a lengthy delay, the couple were charged in 2006 with felony violations of the Federal Hazardous Substances Act.<ref name="Wired" />
United Nuclear's site also advertizes a prototype kit for adapting normal road vehicles to run on hydrogen power—the site says the kits are "on hold", due to the actions of the CPSC.[1] As of November 2006, another product available through the United Nuclear website is the radioactive isotope Polonium-210<ref name="InfoWeekPolonium">Information Weekly, Poison Of Ex-Spy For Sale On The Web, Antone Gonsalves, November 28, 2006</ref>, made famous through the death of Alexander Litvinenko. However, United Nuclear is not suspected of any involvement in the case.
[edit] Desert Blast
Lazar and Gene Huff also run Desert Blast, an annual festival for "explodaholics" in the Nevada desert. Starting in 1987 (but only formally named in 1991, inspired by Desert Storm) the festival features home-made explosives, rockets, Lasar's and others' jet-powered vehicles, and other offbeat-science malarkey<ref>"Ka-Booom!!" Wired magazine, December 1994</ref>.
[edit] References
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[edit] External links
- VERY Detailed background on S4 and Bob Lazar
- The Bob Lazar Corner, by Tom Mahood (detailed page on Lazar; interviews, radio transcripts and essays)
- Bob Lazar Claims to have worked with alien craft at "Area S-4" in Nevada, Analysis by Glen Campbell (Campbell's discussion, frozen, with links)
- BobLazar.com (Lazar's homepage)
- United Nuclear (a company founded by Bob Lazar)
- Lazar Critique, by Dr. David L. Morgan
- Switch2Hydrogen, Lazar's hydrogen-powered vehicle effort
- United Nuclear's page on Desert Blastpl:Bob Lazar
