Bob Lazar: Conspiracy Theorist or Whistleblower?

Explore the man who rocked the scientific community with his outlandish claims.

In the conversation surrounding the potential for alien life in the stars, no name has been as controversial as Bob Lazar. The fascinating thing about his story is that it seemingly continues today as well.

Ever since he released his claims back in 1989, the scientific community has been divided over what to think. Some of Lazar’s claims are so outlandish they seem impossible, yet as the years have gone by, there appear to be small amounts of vindication.

It is almost as if every time you want to write him off as a hoax and whacky conspiracy theorist, something he said existed back in 1989 suddenly exists today in the exact form he mentioned.

This was a small reactor, a hemisphere, about the size of a basketball on a metal plate. When it was running it produced a gravitation field. A gravitational field of its own. -Bob Lazar

The above quote is just a small example of the numerous claims Lazar has made following his time supposedly working at a secret base. Netflix created a new documentary on Lazar in the last few years that revamped the conversation around his claims. Though, before we get too far ahead of ourselves…

P.S. if you want to watch the Netflix documentary, it’s called: Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.

Who is Bob Lazar?

Bob Lazar was born on January 26th, 1959 in Coral Gables. From a young age, he had an affinity for technology. Prior to all his controversial claims, he built a jet car that was capable of going up to 200 miles per hour.

Clearly an innovative mind, Lazar claimed to have worked as a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in his 20s, where he helped to work on a particle accelerator. From there, he was supposedly recruited to a secretive government base known as S4, near Area 51, via a third-party company.

This is where the controversy begins…

What Did He Claim?

Lazar claims to have been hired to work at S4 for the purpose of developing advanced propulsion engines. He recalls being stunned when, on his first few days, he is given a briefing book that outlines extraterrestrial spaceships and bodies.

Sound crazy yet? Just wait, there’s more.

Bob Lazar’s biggest claims were the method by which these alien ships worked and the use of an, at the time, undiscovered element known as Element 115.

Essentially, he claimed that these spaceships used three anti-gravity cylinders underneath the ship that could swivel in 180-degree or 360-degree patterns depending on the direction. These cylinders supposedly acted as gravity amplifiers.

At the top of the ship, Lazar recalls a reactor on the top of the ship flanked by three gravity emitters. When the spaceship is powered on, an anti-gravity wave is formed via the reactor, amplified, and then emitted from the bottom of the ship. The rotation of the cylinders on the bottom then allows the ship to move in any direction.

What makes Bob Lazar compelling in some ways is that he is different from other conspiracy theorists who come up with outlandish claims. He openly admits that he did not have access to every part of the ship and only knows what he does because he was reverse-engineering the propulsion.

A unique claim of his is that the typical disc-shaped UFO that is seen in science fiction actually flies wrong. He states that they fly belly up with those three cylinders pointed in the direction of wherever the ship wanted to fly.

Now, the science of his claim is actually fairly sound. We can’t control gravity with our technology, but if we could it would probably not look too dissimilar to what he says.

Does that mean he’s telling the truth? No, but it isn’t as wild a claim as some.

The other half of his claims was Element 115. This unknown element was, in his words, responsible for powering the craft and was capable of manipulating gravity.

He predicted its existence back in 1989. Russian scientists created the element back in 2004 and then Swedish scientists recreated the element in 2013. Now, it is worth noting that we don’t suddenly have the ability to control gravity. No stable form of Element 115 exists yet, which is what he claimed powers the craft.

Bob Lazar had a myriad of other claims but the above two are the biggest and most controversial. Speaking of controversy…

Reasons For Controversy

Besides the fact that Bob Lazar is claiming he worked on engine propulsion of alien crafts at a secret government base, there are a few discrepancies in his story that raise an eyebrow.

First of all, there is no record of him working at a government base known as S4. Now, that’s understandable if its truly a secretive base, but the company he went through supposedly has no record of him either. Odd, but again, no one had even heard of S4 before 1989 but he put it on the map (yes, it is a real place).

So we look further back into his history. If we can’t verify he worked at the lab, surely his previous accolades will help validate him. Except there is no record of him working as a psychist for Los Alamos National Laboratory. The newspaper referenced earlier refers to him as a psychist but people have come out stating that it was printed in error.

Come on Bob, throw us a bone or something.

He claimed he attended both CalTech and MIT. Guess what? That’s right, neither institution has a record of him attending.

However, members of the Netflix documentary supposedly got in contact with old friends of Lazar who claimed to have dropped him off for classes at CalTech. They namedropped the people they talked to but never interviewed them.

I swear I spent over an hour trying to find the person on Google that they mentioned to no avail.

So we cannot verify anything in his life during and after his college years. That is a massive gap of time. Now, wiping out someone's entire history would have been easy for the government at that time. With that said, it would have been equally easy to lie about your education back then.

Once more, the Netflix documentary apparently got in contact with the guy who recruited Lazar to work at S4 but he refused to come on camera. I tried looking his name up and found nothing as well.

The reason for the controversy with Lazar is mainly because there doesn’t seem to be one definitively verifiable fact about his past.

You have people on one side claiming to have recruited him, claiming to have dropped him off at school, and even an apparently falsely written newspaper clipping.

On the other side, there is no evidence he attended the schools (not even a former roommate or any friends?), and no evidence he worked at any labs. I will say, there is a claim that he worked under contract at Los Alamos as a janitor or something like that, but I’m not too familiar with it.

His mysterious past seems to mark him as a mere conspiracy theorist, yet the Pentagon's recent videos of an unidentified flying object seem to fly eerily similar to his predictions, even defying the wind and moving belly up.

Almost 20 years after he predicts it, Element 115 becomes reality. Granted it isn’t stabilized, but it still exists. He also predicted a hand scanner used at S4 that measured bone density to ensure you were really you. That also was apparently invented in the last few years.

Bob Lazar is an incredibly controversial name. What do you do when you have a man making outlandish claims that slowly appear to be checking out, but you can’t verify anything about his background or story?

In my mind, you have to be cautious not to fall down the rabbit hole. There is nothing to validate his claims. At the same time, weird things keep popping up that seem to vindicate him.

What do you all think? Is Bob Lazar full of it or has his past been altered by the government? It’s a huge head-scratcher that has you jumping from one side to the other. Let me know what you think down below.