Some Thoughts on Bob Lazar's Claims about UFOs
If you have read more than a few articles about UFOs in this country, you have almost certainly come across the name of Bob Lazar. Whether this semi-fame is a tribute to his talent for self-promotion or an existing audience for such material is something best left to the reader. I am also not going to talk about the veracity of his claims about educational credentials or employment history because, as you will see, they have no connection to his main claims being true of false. It is perfectly possible for Bob Lazar to be a pathological liar, mountebank or charlatan- without his claims about UFOs being false. Over the years he has made multiple sets of claims about UFOs- however some of them are highly conserved and consistently repeated. This post will, therefore, address the likely veracity of only such claims.
1] His most important and central claim about UFOs is that the American government is in physical possession of pieces or fragments of crashed UFOs. Curiously, this is the one claim which is most likely to to be true. Some of you might have read one of my previous post on this topic, in which I suggested that UFOs are “unmanned” space probes from other planetary systems. It is, therefore, within the realms of possibility for UFOs to be robotic probes optimized for atmospheric flight, after being released from larger probes in planetary or solar orbit. In fact, this is pretty much how humans would explore other stellar systems if they ever attained the technological ability to do so. It is also within the realms of possibility that, over many decades, a few of them crashed on earth and were discovered by somebody.
Hence the idea that American or other governments, were able to locate and scavenge such debris over the past seven decades is far more likely than many people want to believe. To be clear, this does not imply that they have been able to reverse engineer such spacecraft. In fact, the stagnation of technological progress in multiple areas over past two decades and sad state of aerospace technology strongly suggests that they haven’t been able to do so. Having said that, we also know from history that simply possessing physical evidence of something does not imply understanding it. People in the middle ages who found fossilized teeth of sharks such as Megalodon thought they were the petrified tongue of small dragons and or that fossilized ammonite shells were petrified snakes. We also know that ancient Romans, among others, did excavate and occasionally reassemble the fossils of large extinct animals without comprehending the full importance of their discoveries.
2] Bob Lazar also makes numerous claims about the technology found in such debris. While a few of his claims in this areas, such as UFOs containing uncommon metallic alloys and other composite materials is within the realms of possibility, many others are clearly not. For example, he often talks about these spacecraft using some exotic heavy elements for power and propulsion. The thing is.. the current state of knowledge about the properties of very heavy elements is much better than many people realize. This is not to say that we know everything about the every isotope of every element heavier than Uranium. But we know enough to see through obvious bullshit or claims about magical properties. While I do not rule out the use of such artificially made elements in some sub-systems of alien spacecrafts, it is clear that they are extremely unlikely to provide propulsion or power.
Having said that, the idea that the government might posses one or more partially functioning propulsion modules from a crashed alien probe is within the realms of possibility. But it is also clear that they cannot reverse engineer such technology on a scale where it could be used in manned aircraft or spacecraft. If they could, we would have far more UFO sightings- by many orders of magnitude. The ability to use such technology on a larger scale would be far too tempting for any country, even if only for “top secret” projects. As you can see, my treatment of Bob Lazar’s claims about UFOs is a bit more nuanced than simply dismissing everything or accepting everything. He could just be a lucky and clever fraudster, but we also have to acknowledge that some parts of his story are within the realms of possibility. The trouble, as often is the case in such matters, lies in separating the grain from chaff.
What do you think? Comments?