The Apollo 11 Conspiracy; What Did NASA Really Find?
The Apollo missions, one of which led to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s iconic first landing, are some of the most profound accomplishments of mankind. The missions’ successes were heralded as a new era for space exploration and a harbinger of our civilization’s technological evolution. But there are several strange rumors and questionable transcripts of events that occurred during the missions, which NASA and its astronauts have responded to dismissively. This came to be known as the Apollo 11 conspiracy.
While many are still skeptical of the landings, there are other strange reports that have roused conspiracies about unexplained phenomena experienced by Apollo astronauts, including reports of a base on the dark side of the moon. These theories are fueled by transcripts that have only been declassified within the past decade, or from NASA having “lost” documents and recordings of the original lunar landing. Whether there is any validity to these theories is up for debate, but some are so intriguing they can’t be ignored.
What Did Neil Armstrong Discover on the Moon?
According to NASA, Armstrong and Aldrin wandered the moon for three hours, conducting experiments and collecting moon rocks. They also planted the U.S. flag and a sign to mark their landing, claiming their visit a peaceful mission for all mankind.
What’s on the Dark Side of the Moon?
According to NASA, the dark side of the moon is filled with significantly more craters and less of the smooth, dark mare we normally see. The terrain is rough chaotic compared to the side we’re familiar with, seen in images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
However, accounts from former military intelligence officials have claimed there is more on the dark side of the moon than NASA is letting on. Karl Wolfe, a technician at the Air Force Tactical Air Command headquarters in Langley, Virginia, analyzed data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, claiming he and his colleagues viewed artificial structures on the dark side of the moon, including radar antennas and structures made by intelligent beings.
Others have claimed to discover underground tunnels in images captured by India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter. These tunnels on the dark side were likely the product of tubes of lava flow that created a massive system of caves, potentially inhabited by living beings.
Apollo 11 UFO Sightings
There are a few bizarre accounts of the crew having potentially experienced UFOs and an extraterrestrial presence during the Apollo 11 mission. One of these instances occurred on the last day of approach to the moon, which Aldrin, Armstrong, and Michael Collins have recounted. The two astronauts spotted what they, at first, assumed to be a stage of the Saturn V rocket, called the S-IVB. When they called to Houston to ask if that was the case, Houston told them that the S-IVB had been detached a while ago and was 6,000 miles away.
Although Armstrong said it was just far enough away that he couldn’t make out the object’s shape, the other astronauts debated whether it was shaped like a cylinder or an L-shaped, open book.
Another strange report claims to be a transcript between Armstrong and Aldrin witnessing extraterrestrial spacecraft and structures once they exited the lunar module, Eagle. The transcript is as follows:
Apollo 11: “Those are giant things. No, no, no, this is not an optical illusion. No one is going to believe this.”
NASA: “What… what…. what? What the hell is happening?” “What’s wrong with you?”
Apollo 11: “They’re here, under the surface.”
NASA: “What’s there? (muffled noise) Emission interrupted; interference control calling Apollo 11.”
Apollo 11: “We saw some visitors. They were here for a while, observing the instruments.”
NASA: “Repeat your last information.”
Apollo 11: “I say that there were other spaceships. They’re lined up in the other side of the crater.”
Apollo 11: “Let us sound this orbita… in 625 to 5… automatic relay connected… my hands are shaking so badly I can’t do anything. Film it? God if these damned cameras have picked up anything – what then?”
NASA: “Have you picked up anything?”
Apollo 11: “I didn’t have any film at hand. Three shots of the saucers, or whatever they were that were ruining the film.”
NASA: “Control, control here. Are you on your way? What is the uproar with the UFOs over?
Apollo 11: “They’ve landed there. There they are and they’re watching us.
NASA: “The mirrors, the mirrors – have you set them up?”
Apollo 11: “Yes, they’re in the right place. But whoever made those spaceships surely can come tomorrow and remove them. Over and out.”
Apollo 11 Conspiracy
What makes this exchange seem like it could be fabricated is that in the official transcripts between NASA and the Apollo astronauts, NASA is always referred to as Houston, not Mission Control. Although, what is intriguing about this supposed account is that there were two minutes of video and radio silence when Armstrong and Aldrin left the lunar module. The cameras and recording that failed were some of the most expensive and highly advanced equipment, which produced reliable recordings throughout the rest of the mission. These two minutes were also purportedly censored to civilians on Earth who were tuned in with VHF radio equipment.
Neil Armstrong is said to have disclosed his account of what he and Aldrin saw to an unnamed professor during a NASA symposium.
Professor: What really happened out there with Apollo 11?
Armstrong: It was incredible … of course, we had always known there was a possibility … the fact is, we were warned off. There was never any questions then of a space station or a moon city.
Professor: How do you mean “warned off”?
Armstrong: I can’t go into details, except to say that their ships were far superior to ours both in size and technology – boy, where they big! … and menacing …. No, there is no question of a space station.
Professor: But NASA had other missions after Apollo 11?
Armstrong: Naturally – NASA was committed at that time, and couldn’t risk a panic on earth…. But it really was a quick scoop and back again.
Did the astronauts really encounter alien spacecraft or see a base on the dark side of the moon? Is there any legitimacy to these transcripts? While it’s difficult to tell whether these conversations actually happened with the anonymous sources and classified information, one thing that stands out is the fact that NASA “lost” a significant amount of high quality, slow-scan television footage that was made as backup for television broadcast. One might ask how the most technologically advanced space program in the world managed to launch a rocket, putting men on the moon and somehow just misplaced footage of it.
Eerie Whistling Music on The Dark Side of The Moon
During the Apollo 10 mission that was the antecedent to Aldrin and Armstrong’s moonwalk, two astronauts orbited the moon and reported hearing some odd sounds. While losing contact with Houston on the far side of the moon, a crew of astronauts aboard Apollo 10 reported hearing eerie whistling sounds that they referred to as space music. One astronaut, Eugene Cernan, even speculated as to whether they should tell Houston what they heard.
LMP: That music even sounds outer-spacey, doesn’t it? You hear that? That whistling sound?
CDR: Yes.
LMP: Whooooooo. Say your – –
CMP: Did you hear that whistling sound, too?
LMP: Yes. Sounds like – you know, outer-space-type music.
CMP: I wonder what it is.
LMP: Hey, Tom. Is your – is your insulation all burned off here, on the front side of your window over here? Right – –
CDR: Yes.
LMP: Mine’s all burned off. Isn’t that weird – eerie, John?
CMP: Yes, I got it, too …. and see who was outside.
LMP: Boy, that sure is weird music.
CMP: We’re going to have to find out about that. Nobody will believe us.
LMP: Yes. It’s a whistling, you know, like an outer- space-type thing.
One explanation that tries to shed some scientific light onto what the astronauts may have heard, is that it was the product of radio waves interacting with the magnetic field of the moon. A similar sound was picked up and recorded recently by the Cassini spacecraft when it was orbiting Saturn. The only problem is that the moon doesn’t have a magnetic field like planets do. The scientific retort was that if it wasn’t radio waves reacting with magnetic fields from the moon, then it was simply interference between VHF radios between the two Apollo 10 vehicles. But wouldn’t the astronauts have experienced that frequently before?
These transcripts are among several other accounts of astronauts in the Apollo program experiencing strange phenomena. And while NASA offers seemingly plausible explanations for many of them, there is an underlying perception that the whole story is not being told. With tapes of what’s arguably humanity’s most important moment being lost, transcripts being classified, and bizarre firsthand accounts from astronauts themselves, it seems that there could be much more to be disclosed.
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Nemesis Star Theory; Does the Sun Have an Evil Twin?
Many people remain anxious about the threat posed from a hidden nemesis planet, known as Nibiru, that has been prophesied to collide with Earth. Though many of the proposed dates for this collision have come and gone, there is another celestial body that may be more likely to lead to an apocalyptic event: The Nemesis Star.
The Nemesis Star Theory
Binary star systems occur frequently and are actually more common than single stars. At least that’s what we thought, until a recent hypothesis proposed the possibility that every star starts out as a binary pair or multi-pair system. While the theory hasn’t been confirmed, there is significant evidence that our Sun likely has a twin, an evil twin.
The majority of stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs, which are a fifth of the size of the sun and up to 50 times fainter. These types of stars are pretty commonly paired with another star in a binary system, leading astronomers to believe that Nemesis would be the Sun’s red dwarf star companion. But due to the small size and faintness of these stars, they can be hard to find, making Nemesis all the more elusive.
binary stars courtesy wired.com
This star is thought to be responsible for 12 cyclical extinction events on Earth, including the one that killed the dinosaurs. The Nemesis Star Theory’s roots can be traced to two paleontologists, David Raup and Jack Sepkoski, who noticed that there was a periodicity to major die-outs throughout Earth’s history, occurring in 26 million year intervals. This led to a number of astrophysicists and astronomers, postulating their own Nemesis Star hypotheses.
So how would the sun’s twin be responsible for mass extinctions? The Nemesis Star Theory proposed the idea that the Earth’s binary twin must be in a large 1.5 light-year orbit, retaining just enough gravitational pull between it and the Sun so as not to drift off. But the issue with the orbit of Nemesis is the possibility that it occasionally passes through a cloud of icy debris on the fringe of our solar system, known as the Oort Cloud.
Don’t Perturb the Oort
The Oort Cloud is a theoretical sphere that is believed to orbit our solar system, consisting of planetesimals, the small icy building blocks of planets, comets, and asteroids. These planetesimals are sticky and collide with each other until they become large enough to have a significant gravitational pull, eventually becoming as large as a moon or a planet. They also create asteroids and comets which can be knocked out of orbit and sent hurtling toward the center of the solar system, crashing into planets.
There is a binary star system that once passed close enough to nearly perturb the Oort, and it was likely visible from Earth. Scholz’s Star made a flyby some 70,000 years ago, at a distance of 50,000 astronomical units (AU), with one AU being the distance from Earth to the Sun. The Oort is thought to extend from anywhere between 5,000 and 100,000 AUs and is believed to contain up to two trillion celestial objects. Astronomers are 95% certain that Shulz’s star passed within half of a light-year of us, possibly perturbing the Oort, though apparently not enough to cause a mass extinction event.
Comets are believed to exist within the Oort and are the product of a thief model, a give-and-take of celestial bodies between stars when they’re formed. In this process, comets get pulled back and forth between the gravitational field of stars. It was for this reason that the Oort was theorized, due to the number of comets coming from it, there had to have been a sibling star that pulled them out to the Oort.
The Oort courtesy of space-facts.com
Astronomers also found a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, a region just before the Oort that also contains icy, celestial bodies. This planet, named Sedna, orbits the Sun in a long, drawn-out elliptical path and is one of potentially hundreds. Sedna may help to explain the Nemesis star theory, in that its far-flung orbit was likely caused by our Sun’s twin, pulling it out as it drifted off into the depths of space. Imagine if instead of 9 planets in our solar system, there were a few hundred?
So where is this Nemesis star? Several years ago, the E.U. launched the wonderfully named, Gaia satellite, to map out the stars in the Milky Way and look specifically at stars that have had a close encounter with our solar system or that might come close in the future. But whether or not Nemesis will be found is unknown; it’s possible that it could make a return for the next mass extinction, or it is possible that it drifted off, perturbing the Oort of another star.
