The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planet Earth’s foremost space agency.
It’s the best-funded and has conducted the most impressive research and ground-breaking
experiments. But there are people who believe that NASA doesn’t operate for the public good,
and more than that, that the agency is keeping plenty of secrets.
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question: what is NASA hiding?
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Skepticism about science is growing in the modern age, despite the greater availability
of education and information today. This may not be helped by the fact that NASA has yet
to unravel the secrets to cosmic mysteries that its scientists have been looking into for years.
One such great enigma is the source of FRBs, or “fast radio bursts”. These repeating radio bursts
come from very distant radio sources and repeat at regular or seemingly irregular intervals,
depending on the source. For example, one FRB known as 180916, located in a spiral galaxy
500 million light years away, is dormant for 12 days, then pulses for about four.
The most immediate explanation for strange radio sources is, of course,
aliens trying to communicate with us. And that’s not impossible; after all, we’ve sent radio
messages into the stars hoping somebody will receive them, so it’s easy to imagine an alien
civilization doing the same. Unfortunately for believers, FRBs probably aren’t the product of an
intelligent mind; all the current evidence points to neutron stars, specifically a type of neutron
star called a “magnetar”, as the likely source. Unless, of course, they are alien communications,
and astronomers around the world are all coordinating to cover it up, because the planet’s
population can’t handle the truth about FRBs… But if there are aliens, many believe they’re much
closer to home than these distant radio sources – specifically, on the International Space Station.
There are many conspiracy theories floating around that NASA is hiding something about the ISS,
with theorists pointing to photos that have allegedly been doctored or show
unidentified objects, and to video feeds that mysteriously cut out when something strange
appears. More than once ISS live feeds have cut out midway through a broadcast,
leading many to believe that this is intentional; however, NASA says that the ISS simply moves too
far away from the receiving satellites sometimes which causes the failure. The ISS moves at around
15,500 miles per hour, so it definitely can move in and out of the range of Earth’s many
satellites. But it’s still claimed that astronauts on the ISS know about aliens, are hiding aliens,
and that NASA is purposely editing images to get rid of anomalies that might be alien artifacts.
Of course, though, as has been pointed out before, the irrefutable existence of aliens would only be
good news for NASA, which would certainly be able to secure more funding if aliens were
public knowledge. And more countries would have to be in on the cover-up: the ISS is shared by NASA
and the space agencies of four other countries, namely Russia, Japan, Europe, and Canada.
It’s not just the ISS that people think holds secrets, either. One notable ufologist,
Scott Waring, is convinced that NASA is up to no good; he’s publicly come out
more than once to say he believes there is an alien city on the far side of the moon,
and that he’s got the photographs to prove it. It’s true that from Earth, we’ve never been
able to see the far side of the moon because it’s tidally locked to us; only a few space probes and
landers have ever taken photos of it, and humans didn’t see it in person until Apollo 8 in 1968.
Only in 2019 did Earth land our first rover there, courtesy of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.
So, is it reasonable to suggest that aliens might be hiding out there, watching us? Is the presence
of dangerous and hostile aliens the reason humans haven’t gone to the moon since 1972?
Well, for now we simply have no evidence of this. The objects in Waring’s photos,
which he claims are alien structures, really just look like cliffs and craters – which is
almost certainly what they are. On top of that, NASA is part of the United States;
it doesn’t seem plausible that the US would know the moon is full of angry,
dangerous aliens and wouldn’t have tried to do something about it. Similar stories have been
told about Mars for years, too, including the famous “face on Mars”, which has been proven
to be a natural rock formation that only looks like a face under very specific conditions.
Another popular conspiracy isn’t focused on a planet that exists, but rather one that almost
certainly does not: Planet X, also known as Nibiru. For years, people have been claiming
there’s an additional planet hiding at the edge of the solar system on a slow-but-sure collision
course with Earth. One day – one day very soon, if you believe the rumors – Planet X will crash into
Earth and wipe us all out. And according to some, the reason we haven’t been told of an enormous
planet barrelling towards us is that NASA doesn’t want us to know. It’s long been theorized that
there might be additional planets beyond Neptune, which is why Pluto, despite its small size,
was categorized as this “ninth planet” for a long time. The simple truth is that Pluto was the first
TNO, or “trans-Neptunian object”, anybody ever discovered, back in 1930. When we discovered
more TNOs, like Eris and Sedna, Pluto’s status as a planet was ultimately rescinded; as much
as people like Pluto, it’s just not unique. Planet X, on the other hand, is an enormous, hypothetical
planet that could pose great danger to us – it’s just that there’s no real evidence it exists.
There were calculations that seemed to show anomalies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune,
which is why people began searching for a ninth planet in the first place. But it was later found
that those calculations were simply wrong, and the anomalies don’t actually exist. Despite credible
searches for a ninth planet, there’s still no evidence – unless, of course, for some unknown
and inscrutable purpose, NASA is burying it. Of course, NASA-related conspiracy theories don’t
only originate from outer space – people think NASA might be hiding all sorts of things about
our own planet too. In fact, NASA’s collusion in a worldwide conspiracy is a core part of modern
Flat Earth beliefs. NASA is supposed to be the organization responsible for creating all those
“doctored” images of the spherical Earth, and for creating the ISS in a “Hollywood studio” to trick
us all. Without NASA – and every space agency to have released photographs of Earth from orbit,
for that matter – the illusion that the Earth is a globe couldn’t persist,
according to Flat Earthers. One major piece of “evidence” for this wildly popular idea
is the Antarctic Treaty, which supposedly prohibits anybody from going to Antarctica.
This isn’t entirely true; Antarctica is part of an international agreement to preserve the continent
for science, and people do actually work there on science bases. Tourists can even go on cruises
around Antarctica to look at the penguins. But Flat Earthers say that Antarctica is actually
an enormous “ice wall”, and that’s why access there is restricted. However, the one question
Flat Earthers can’t seem to be able to answer is why this conspiracy would need to exist at all,
and why it is that people wouldn’t be allowed to know the Earth is flat if that was the case.
Could Antarctica be hiding something even stranger than a Flat Earth, though? In 2020, a
news story saying NASA had discovered a “parallel universe where time runs backward” went viral,
focused on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the South Pole. Again, though, the truth isn’t
what the headlines would have you believe. What was actually discovered were high-energy neutrinos
traveling at an unusual trajectory, which could mean they come from a parallel universe.
Or, far more likely, the Antarctic ice sheet simply has properties that affect neutrinos in
ways we don’t yet understand. Neutrinos are nicknamed “ghost particles” for a reason,
after all, that reason being that they’re incredibly elusive and difficult to study;
that’s why we had to build an enormous array in the South Pole in the first place.
Ultimately, NASA is a publicly funded, civilian organization that isn’t really in a position to
carry out grand conspiracy theories that harm the planet – especially not when those theories
could end up benefiting NASA if they were true. But, still, that’s what NASA might be hiding.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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