Area 51 sits on the southern shore of Groom Lake in the Nevada desert and it is easily the most famous military base in the world. It must also be the least secret base in the world and it has long been suspected by UFO enthusiasts to be the location that alien spaceships are whisked away to.

The US military have always rubbished claims that there are any aliens or alien technology at the base insisting that it is a location for aircraft and weapons development and testing. They tested the B-2 stealth bomber here amongst others and unsurprisingly they denied the existence of the base for years. They eventually admitted there was an “operating site” there but added that “the work is classified”. Aerial shots of the base taken by a Russian satellite were released back in 2000 and revealed little beyond some buildings, a hangar and a runway.

Area 51 has spawned countless conspiracy theories about alien technology, spaceships, aliens, teleportation and time travel devices. Some people claimed the wreckage from the Roswell incident was taken there and that fake tape of the alien autopsy was supposedly smuggled out of Area 51. Of course there is no evidence that it has anything to do with aliens and UFO sightings could more easily be explained by the testing of new experimental fighter jets. In fact back in 2006 there were rumours about an Aurora aircraft; supposedly an unmanned fighter capable of incredibly high speeds and sharp manoeuvres because it could operate without a pilot onboard.

The US Air Force is certainly doing something there and they’ve spent a lot of money on the area over the years leading to speculation about a massive underground base. Of course once again it is far more likely that they are working on new spy planes or fighter aircraft than alien technology so why do people think otherwise? Well the main reason is that several people have come into the public eye with claims that they worked at Area 51. The most famous was Robert Lazar who came forward in 1989 and claimed to have worked on reverse engineering a flying saucer. He’s not the only one to claim strange things are going on there, in 1996 a mechanical engineer claimed to have worked with an alien on a similar project and in 2004 Dan Burisch claimed to have worked on cloning alien viruses at Area 51.

Plenty of people believe the base is used for alien investigations and there are countless websites on the subject. The idea has definitely filtered through to the public with a number of references in popular books, movies and TV programmes. In the USA the majority of people believe alien life is likely according to polls but there is still no hard evidence that they ever visited our planet. A poll in the UK just last year found that 48% of Brits believe that Area 51 exists to investigate aliens. Despite the lack of hard evidence the idea that Area 51 has some connection to aliens won’t go away and theorists discount faked evidence and daft stories as disinformation or merely attempts by individuals to make a quick buck. We may never know what is really going on at Area 51.

The idea that the US Government has managed to cover up alien contact seems extremely unlikely to me but what do you think? Post a comment and let us know.