A bizarre report is going around claiming that Buzz Aldrin and three other astronauts took a lie detector test to prove they saw aliens while on their various missions.
All this comes from tabloid newspaper The Daily Star in the UK, and unfortunately, it’s a bit light on details. Like, for example, what?
The Institute of BioAcoustic Biology in Albany, Ohio said they carried out the tests to confirm what the astronauts said they saw when they were up there. The “top-secret” technology involved studying audio from Aldrin, Al Worden, Edgar Mitchell, and Gordon Cooper – the latter two of whom are now dead. The Institute's results showed their quotes were indeed genuine.
Now, a caveat. The astronauts did not actually conduct the "test" themselves. Instead, the Institute appears to have “analyzed” recordings from the astronauts to prove their veracity. Mitchell and Cooper both sadly started spouting alien conspiracy theories when they returned from the Moon, while Worden has some pretty weird views on aliens bringing life to Earth.
Considering those three actually believed their own stories, it’s not surprising they pass a “lie detector test”. Although note that lie detectors haven't been considered as reliable, evidence-based, or even able to show if someone is lying or not for quite some time. But still.
The Aldrin story is a bit more complicated. During the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in July 1969, Aldrin did say he saw something unusual out of the spacecraft’s window.
"There was something out there that was close enough to be observed… and what could it be?” said Aldrin in a documentary called First on the Moon: The Untold Story, adding it was “sort of L-shaped”.
“Obviously the three of us were not going to blurt out ‘Hey Houston, we’ve got something moving alongside of us, we don’t know what it is, you know, can you tell us what it is?’ We weren’t about to do that! ‘Cause we know that those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people, and who knows what somebody would have demanded that we turn back because of aliens or whatever the reason is.”
Aldrin later clarified these comments in an AMA on Reddit, noting this was very likely sunlight reflecting off some panels that had come from the rocket.
“And the UFO people in the United States were very very angry with me, that I had not given them the information,” he said. “It was not an alien. Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence. That's what Carl Sagan said.”
So, again, Aldrin hasn’t told any lies. He just also, you know, didn’t see any aliens. And those other guys just went a little bit odd I’m afraid. Or it’s all true and the aliens are here now.
