Robert
Scott Lazar or Bob Lazar (born January 26, 1959, in Coral
Gables, Florida, United States, to Albert Lazar and Phyllis
Berliner), has claimed to have
worked from 1988 until 1989 as a physicist
at an area called S-4
(Sector Four), allegedly located near Groom Lake, Nevada,
at the location also known as Area
51. According to Lazar, S-4
served as a hidden military location for the study and
possible reverse-engineering
of extraterrestrial flying saucers. Lazar says
he saw nine different discs there and provides details
on their mode of propulsion. However, his credibility
has come under fire after "schools he was supposed
to have attended had no record of him, while others in
the scientific community had no memory of ever meeting
him."
Education
Lazar
claims to hold degrees from the California Institute of
Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1993, the Los Angeles Times
looked into his background and found there was no evidence
to support those claims. Stanton
Friedman was only able to verify that Lazar
took electronics courses in
the late 1970s at Pierce Junior College. The
Times did discover that in 1990, Lazar had
pled guilty to felony pandering, when he installed a computer
system for a local brothel, declared bankruptcy and listed
his occupation as self-employed photo processor on documents.
A 1991 Times article
reported, Lazar was "on probation in Clark County,
Nevada, on a pandering charge. His educational and professional
background cannot be verified -- a fact he attributes
to government deletion of records." However military
officials claim Lazar never worked in any of their facilities,
German researcher Michael
Hesemann (see his book Beyond
Roswell) found an incoming
payment on Lazar's bank account. The number
of the sender's account refers to a salary payments from
military facility in Nevada.
Scientific
research
Lazar
first jumped on the media map in 1982 in the Los
Alamos Monitor. The article titled "LA
MAN JOINS THE JET SET - AT 200 MILES AN HOUR"
was about a jet car that Lazar had created and worked
on for years with help from a NASA researcher. The car
was built from a jet engine modified and placed on an
existing car model. It is also important to note that
the article noted Lazar as "a physicist at the
Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility", as it is
one media article that puts Robert on the map as a physicist.
In
November 1989, Lazar appeared in a special interview with
investigative reporter George
Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS to discuss
his purported employment at S-4.
When asked why he had decided to do the interview, he
said he wanted to share his work with the scientific community
and to do that, he felt the best way was to go public
to insure himself against any mysterious sudden demise
for exposing classified information.
In
his interview with Knapp, Lazar said he first thought
the saucers were secret terrestrial aircraft whose test
flights must have been responsible for many UFO reports.
Gradually, on closer examination and from having been
shown multiple briefing documents, Lazar came to the conclusion
that the discs were designed for space travel and were
not of human origin. In his filmed testimony, Lazar explains
how this impression first hit him after he boarded one
craft being studied and examined its interior.
For
the propulsion of the studied vehicles, Bob Lazar claims
that the atomic Element
115 served as a nuclear fuel. Element
115 (temporarily named "ununpentium"
(symbol Uup)) reportedly provided an energy source which
would produce anti-gravity effects under proton bombardment
along with antimatter for energy production. As the intense
strong nuclear force field of Element
115's nucleus would be properly amplified,
the resulting large-scale gravitational effect would be
a distortion of the surrounding space-time continuum that
would, in effect, greatly shorten the distance and travel
time to a charted destination.
Lazar
also claims that he was given introductory briefings describing
the historical involvement by extraterrestrial beings
with this planet for the past 100,000 years. The beings
originate from the Zeta
Reticuli 1 & 2 star system and are
therefore referred to as Zeta Reticulans, popularly called
'Greys'.
Fact
or Fiction
His
stories have garnered some rather interesting fanfare
and media attention. Some hold out for Bob's story, but
the majority of others remain skeptical. Including Stanton
Friedman, who looked into Lazar's claims
and did his own investigating on the matter. One may postulate,
however, that if Lazars claims were true, then our current
understanding of the laws of physics may be lacking, as
S-4 was allegedly
used for reverse-engineering purposes, a task inherent
with a desire for understanding.
Desert
Blast
Lazar
and long time friend, Gene Huff, 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, jet-powered vehicles,
and other pyrotechnics, with the intention of emphasizing
the fun aspect of physics.
United
Nuclear
In
the year 2000, Lazar started United
Nuclear, an amateur scientific supply company
formerly operated in Sandia Park, New Mexico and recently
moved to Laingsburg, MI. 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 300,000 satisfied
customers", including law-enforcement agencies,
schools and amateur scientists.
In
2006, Lazar and wife Joy White were charged with violating
the Federal
Hazardous Substances Act for shipping restricted
chemicals across state lines following a federal investigation
started in 2003. The charges stemmed from a 2003 raid
on Lazar's business where chemical sales records were
examined. The maximum penalty is 270 days in prison and
a $15,000 fine. Lazar claimed that he mistakenly concluded
that he could legally sell the chemicals after finding
incorrect information on the internet.
In
2007, Lazar/United
Nuclear were fined $7,500 for violating
a law against selling chemicals and components used to
make illegal fireworks. Lazar "pled guilty to
three criminal counts of introducing into interstate commerce
and aiding and abetting the introduction into interstate
commerce of banned hazardous substances." Lazar
also "entered into a consent decree that permanently
limits the amount of future sales of fireworks-related
chemicals", and United
Nuclear Scientific Equipment and Supplies
was placed on probation for three years.
Lazar
again gained attention in 2006 from news reports that
he sold small amounts of Polonium,
a radioactive element which was in the news because of
its role in fatally poisoning former Soviet intelligence
agent and whistleblower, Alexander Litvinenko.
Opinions
are divided as to the credibility of Lazar's account.
Some people believe that he does not have the scientific
knowledge to be asked to carry out such work.
Some
believe Lazar's knowledge of physics is credible. However,
many in the field of physics say he has a weak grasp of
the scientific principles involved, but to the uneducated
in the subject, he does appear to know what he is talking
about.
Documentary
& Media Appearances
• Weird Travels
(TV Series) - 2003
• Encounters With The Unexplained
(TV Series) - 2000
• Close Encounters: Proof
of Alien Contact (video) - 2000
• Area 51: The Alien Interview
(Video) - 1997
• Dreamland: Area 51
(TV Documentary) - 1996
• Future Fantastic
(TV Series) - 1996
• Yaoi Jun'ichi UFO shuzai
tokuhô dai 3 dan (TV Documentary) - 1990
Sources:
http://www.squidoo.com/boblazar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar
