50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True Part 3

Nickell, Joe. Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999.

Piattelli-Palmarini, Ma.s.simo. Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds. New York: Wiley, 1996.

I agree with Neil Armstrong, who gave one of the best responses to the ridiculous Moon-hoax claims when he said, "It would have been harder to fake it than to do it."

-Andrew Chaikin Have you ever looked up at the full Moon on a clear night and wondered how people ever managed to walk on that thing? At first glance it almost seems impossible, doesn't it? Well, maybe it was impossible back in the 1960s and 1970s, and n.o.body has walked on it. That's what some people believe. They say it was all a big hoax designed to show up the Soviet Union during the Cold War. America's political and military face-off with the Russians was high stakes, with the fate of the world possibly hanging in the balance. Therefore, it can be argued, it's not completely crazy to suggest that NASA and the US government might have faked the Apollo success in order to win a public relations battle and take the "Red menace" down a peg or two in the eyes of the world.

A journey to the Moon and back with twentieth-century technology was no easy feat by any stretch of the imagination, and no one should ever underestimate the ability of politicians and generals to lie and bamboozle the public. However, charges of a Moon-landing-hoax conspiracy are preposterous. In my experience, most of those who were personally involved or well educated about NASA's effort to reach the Moon find it difficult to take Moon-landing-hoax believers seriously. But while the believers may come across as comical in their denial of what was one of the most thoroughly doc.u.mented events of all time, laughing at them or dismissing their claims without comment may not be the best reaction. They have reasons for not believing, and those reasons can and should be dealt with. So let's investigate this amazing claim that history's greatest technological achievement never happened.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST LIARS?.

Neil Armstrong may have better name recognition, but my pick for the all-time greatest s.p.a.ceman is John Young. His resume reads like the history of human s.p.a.ce exploration: US Navy fighter pilot, test pilot, two Project Gemini missions in Earth orbit, two Apollo missions to the Moon (commander of the Apollo 16 mission), two s.p.a.ce shuttle missions (commander of the first-ever s.p.a.ce shuttle flight), and decades of service to NASA down on the ground, where he has worked on everything from the challenges of living in s.p.a.ce long-term to the threat supervolcanoes pose to life on Earth. His most spectacular achievement came when he commanded the 1972 Apollo 16 voyage to the Moon. Young spent approximately three days on the lunar surface, exploring, collecting rocks, and conducting experiments.

Or did he?

Was the Apollo program just another case of The Man sticking it to the naive peasants and making fools out of all of us? It is not difficult to imagine evil conspiracies lurking in the shadows during the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Moon landings took place. None other than "Tricky d.i.c.k" himself, Richard Nixon, was president. The American social scene during this period certainly was chaotic and disturbing. There was the Vietnam War, race riots, the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King a.s.sa.s.sinations, horrific pollution, the constant threat of nuclear war, disco music, and so on. But faked Moon landings? I don't think so. To go from Watergate to Moongate is a huge leap, one so enormous that it should not be taken seriously without very good evidence to back it up. And this, no surprise, is the key problem hoax believers have. There is no evidence to support the claim. All they have are baseless accusations and a series of questions that intrigue people who don't know much about the Moon landings.

THEY LOOKED ME IN THE EYE.

I have been fortunate in my career as a writer to have met and written about many key people from NASA's glory days when it successfully pulled off the greatest adventure in all of human history. Here's is a partial list of my close encounters: Scott Carpenter (Mercury Seven astronaut) Tom Stafford (Apollo 10 commander) Frank Borman (Apollo 8 commander) Rusty Sweickart (Apollo 9) Jim McDivitt (Apollo 9) Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) Alan Bean (Apollo 12) Gene Cernan (Apollo 10, Apollo 17 commander) Dave Scott (Apollo 9, Apollo 15) John Young (Apollo 10, Apollo 16 commander) Charlie Duke (Apollo 16) Gene Kranz (Mission Control Center flight director) James O'Kane (Apollo s.p.a.cesuit engineer) Jack Cherne (lunar module engineer) Walter Jacobi (engineer, member of Wernher von Braun's rocket team) After many hours of both formal interviews and casual conversations with these men, I never once felt a hint of suspicion that any one of them was lying to me. Keep in mind that I'm the sort of guy who clings to skepticism like it's a life raft at sea. My baloney detector is always switched on. If I picked up on the slightest hint that even one of these men was pushing a made-up story, I would jump all over it. But their detailed memories of the s.p.a.ce program and, specifically, the recollections of those who walked on the Moon were absolutely convincing to me. I have looked into their eyes and asked them about that "magnificent desolation" that orbits 240,000 miles away from Earth. Their responses were every bit as credible as they were fascinating. Isn't it unlikely that so many men could tell such a ma.s.sive lie in such great detail and with flawless delivery?

Another pertinent question is why many of the Moonwalkers would add personal and emotionally charged layers to a hoax. Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke lived on the Moon for three days in 1972. He told me how he left behind a photograph of his wife and children as a sort of eternal monument to his love for them. Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean explained to me that his memories of walking on the Moon inspired him to become an artist. Today he is a commercially successful painter of s.p.a.ce and lunar scenes. Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan told me how he felt humbled and spiritual as he stared up at Earth-his tiny, faraway home hanging all alone in the cold darkness of s.p.a.ce. He also recounted for me how he wrote "T D C," his daughter's initials, into the lunar dust. "I guess it will be there forever," he said, "however long 'forever' is."1 If these guys are all in on a big, fat hoax, then they sure are being excessive with the corroborating lies.

Cernan described to me how meaningful it was for him to have commanded the 1972 Apollo 17 mission that put the first scientist on the Moon (geologist Harrison Schmitt). "The Moon was my Camelot for three days. The science was exciting," Cernan said. "We saw things that no human had ever seen before."

After spending more time on the Moon than any astronaut had before, Cernan says he thought to himself, "Pinch yourself one more time and make sure this is real. You're going to be out of here soon, so appreciate it."

"When you look back at the Earth," Cernan added, "it is so overwhelming, so powerful and beautiful. You see no borders, no language differences, no color differences. You don't see terrorism. I just wish I could take every human being up there and tell them to take a look."2 It is not only the detailed and personal stories that stand out. Obvious pa.s.sion for s.p.a.ce exploration-past, present, and future-is evident in all these men decades later. There is enthusiasm and pride in their words and facial expressions. Yes, they really did go to the Moon. It's either that or NASA had to have a.s.sembled a team of actors far better at the craft than anything Hollywood's best casting agents could have managed.

In addition to the astronauts, thousands of people worked on the Apollo program. In my view, there simply are too many people describing the same story of a grand vision, hard work, and spectacular success. This is a critical problem with the Moon-landing-hoax claim: too many people and too many layers of detail. Literally hundreds of thousands of people worked on the project. Landing on the Moon was an extremely complex achievement, and if any one phase of it-the Saturn V design, the fuel, the command module, the lunar module, the computers, the navigation, the suits, life support-failed, then the landings could not have happened. Surely somebody-at least one honest person-would have spoken up and presented evidence by now if his or her little corner of the vast project were a sham.

The astronauts, Mission Control Center personnel, and engineers I have spoken with over the years certainly did not strike me as puppets in some Nixononian-NASA conspiracy. None of them seemed to me like the sort of personalities who would dedicate their entire lives to upholding a colossal lie. My sense is that these were honorable and proud people. If they took part in a hoax, isn't it likely that at least one of them would have come forward and confessed now that they are approaching their twilight years, if only to ease their conscience before dying?

We can't forget the Soviet Union in all of this. It is very unlikely that America's technologically advanced Cold War rival would have been fooled by such a daring and elaborate hoax. And, if the Soviets did know, it is difficult to imagine why they would have played along and not exposed the lie in order to claim a propaganda victory over the corrupt capitalists. Finally, if the United States had faked the Moon landings out of some perceived need during the Cold War, don't you think it likely that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the 1990s would have loosened up a few tongues? Surely someone would have come clean by now.

Another curious problem with the hoax claim is that NASA did not go to the Moon just once. They made the trip nine times! Apollo missions 8, 10, and 13 orbited the Moon without landing. The Apollo 13 mission was supposed to be a landing but was aborted due to a malfunction that nearly killed the crew. If the lunar landings were faked, why would NASA go to all the trouble of faking a failed landing too?

Apollo missions 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 landed on the Moon. The last two missions spent approximately three days each on the lunar surface. Why? If this was a NASA con job, why would they have repeated it so many times, increasing the risk of discovery with each mission? One faked landing followed by a big parade and an abrupt end to the program would have made more sense. Why would NASA stretch the fraud to include ten more Moonwalkers and five more command module pilots after the Apollo 11 mission? Why make so many more men responsible for pushing the lie for the rest of their lives when limiting it to one three-man crew would have been safer?

INTRIGUING CHALLENGES, SIMPLE ANSWERS.

I have written many newspaper and magazine articles relating to the Apollo program, including a few about Moon-landing-hoax claims. These have sparked many discussions (and a few arguments) with people who are convinced that men such as Armstrong and Young are among the greatest liars of all time. Over the years, I have learned that there are a few particular points that are most popular with hoax believers and always seem to come up. Each of them is easy to explain.

No Stars!

Look at photographs of Apollo astronauts on the surface of the Moon and you won't see any stars. There is only blackness behind and above them. I have several beautiful autographed photographs of astronauts on the Moon, and none of them have even one visible star. Hoax enthusiasts have seized on this as evidence that the photos were taken inside a movie set somewhere on Earth. This is a stunningly bad argument. Those who insist on believing that the landings were faked should not base their case on this one. There are better wrong arguments available.

Although writing has always been my primary gig, I'm an accomplished photographer as well. I'm no Ansel Adams, but I certainly have seen more of this world through a camera lens than most. Literally thousands of my photos have been published in newspapers and magazines. I once placed third in the British Broadcasting Union's Commonwealth Photographic Awards, an international compet.i.tion open to professional photographers in more than fifty nations. I won the Canada and Caribbean compet.i.tion section of that contest. I have taken photos of people, places, and animals in more than twenty-five countries across six continents. I have taken photos in just about every imaginable situation and environment. As a result, I find this specific hoax evidence particularly irritating because it is incredibly silly.

As a former sports photographer, I have taken countless photographs of athletes at night in lighted stadiums. Guess what? In every one I've taken of football players, soccer players, track athletes, and the like, no stars can be seen in the background of the photos. How can this be? Did I fake the sports photos? Did I really take them in a movie studio with a backdrop that was painted black? Where did the stars go?

The explanation is simple. To take a good photograph of a runner on a stadium track at night-or an astronaut on the Moon wearing a white suit-the camera's exposure must be set correctly according to the amount of light reflected by the primary subject. That means you have to make sure the camera will let in just the right amount of light for just the right amount of time. But here's the catch: If the exposure is correct for the person you are trying to photograph, it won't be correct for the faint light of stars in the sky behind them. Under routine photography conditions, it's one or the other. You can't get both the person and the stars in the same shot without making a special effort to do so. It works the same way on the Moon.

The Case of the Missing Crater Another popular issue with hoax believers is the missing blast crater that they say should be under the landed lunar module but isn't. Pictures show no noticeable craters under the s.p.a.cecraft that landed on the Moon. How, they ask, could a rocket ship with a powerful engine (ten thousand pounds of thrust) land on the dusty surface of the Moon and leave no visible crater? Again, this is an easy balloon to pop-embarra.s.singly easy. No conspiracy theorist worth his or her decoder ring should go anywhere near it.

The lunar module is one of the greatest technological achievements of all time. I believe it ranks up there with the Oldowan hand axe and the computer. It was built and used for s.p.a.ce flight exclusively. That's why it looks so weird. It didn't have to be aerodynamic, so it wasn't. It's a testament to engineering efficiency and creativity. On six occasions, a lunar module dropped down from orbit like some invading metallic arthropod and safely delivered two astronauts to the Moon's surface. It was a superb machine, one we should all be proud of. So why didn't it create a giant crater when it landed?

The lunar module's descent stage engine didn't blast a hole on landing because its ten-thousand-pound-thrust engine was throttled back, way back, on descent. It had to be, right? Otherwise it couldn't land! Look at it this way, why aren't there hideous skid marks all over your driveway? After all, your car is probably capable of going in excess of one hundred miles per hour. So when you pull into your driveway at one hundred miles per hour and stop suddenly, you must make a noisy, messy, and chaotic stop, right? But wait, you don't do that. Just like the Apollo astronauts who flew the lunar module, you ease off the power well in advance of the stopping point so that you can control your arrival onto the driveway and make a gentle stop. No skid marks in your driveway, no crater under the lunar module.

The Flag Was Waving!

One of the lowlights of Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? a terrible pseudodoc.u.mentary that aired on Fox network in 2001, was video of astronauts standing around what the narrator claims is an American flag waving in the wind. There is no wind on the Moon, of course, so the charge was that the flag's movement was caused by a gust of wind from a door left open on the film set or perhaps an untimely blast from some air conditioner vent. Could this be it? Is this the smoking gun that proves the Apollo Moonwalks were all faked here on Earth? Of course not. The flag does not wave in the wind.

First of all, there is a support arm that extends out from the flag pole at a ninety-degree angle. It's there so the flag can be spread out and displayed in an environment with no wind. Second, the flag is not moving as a result of wind. It moves because of the astronauts' contact with the flagpole. As they drove it into the ground, vibrations and twisting caused the flag to swing back and forth. It moves for a bit after they let go of the flagpole because of momentum.

Who Believes NASA Lied?

Fortunately, only 6 percent of Americans polled admitted to being Moon-conspiracy believers in a 1999 Gallup survey. Unfortunately, 6 percent of the US population equates to several million people. A Gallup spokesperson suggested that the Moon hoax is likely not a very popular belief because 6 percent of the population will say yes to just about anything that a pollster asks.3 I'm not convinced that this is a minor problem, however. I have encountered many Americans who may not qualify as committed hoax believers but are dedicated doubters nonetheless. Additionally, Moon-hoax belief rates are likely to be significantly higher in countries that have low rates of science and history literacy and/or a common mistrust of virtually anything the US government claims.

What does the future hold for the Moon-hoax belief? Will it fade away in time like most crackpot theories usually do? Or will it only get worse as the landings become "ancient history" in the minds of new generations? As the Apollo program recedes further into history, it may be easier for young people to fall for the hoax claim. A chilling warning of this may be a 20042005 survey that found 27 perent of Americans aged 1825 had at least "some doubt" that NASA went to the Moon, while 10 percent indicated that it was "highly unlikely" that anyone had ever landed there.4 America is by no means the only place where this bizarre belief exists. A 2009 survey commissioned by an engineering and technology magazine found that a quarter of British people think the landings were faked.5 Based on personal experience, I would estimate that the percentage of hoax believers in the Caribbean overall is closer to 50 percent at least. In Jamaica and Cuba specifically, random conversations I had with many local people led me to believe it could be beyond 75 percent there. It might be even higher than that in some Middle Eastern countries, where mistrust of anything to do with the United States is common.

The reasons for the strange idea that we never went to the Moon probably has a lot to do with the appallingly low levels of science literacy and historical knowledge that are common in the United States and throughout the world. For example, 47 percent of Americans don't even know how long it takes Earth to revolve around the Sun (one year).6 Worse, 18 percent of Americans don't even know that Earth revolves around the Sun! They think it's the other way around.7 It is not uncommon to hear about large numbers of high school students not knowing basic information such as whether the Civil War came before or after World War I or who the United States fought against in World War II. So is it really all that surprising that some people don't know that twelve men walked on the Moon more than forty years ago? As for the hardcore Moon-hoax believers, I suggest giving up on windblown flags, starless photos, and missing craters. Those are dead-end trails. While one certainly could argue that a large government conspiracy of this sort could have been attempted, it's difficult to imagine how it could have succeeded and never been exposed all these years later. Without evidence, this claim goes nowhere. It's nothing more than a wild story, no better than the Roswell s.p.a.ceship crash.

I always try my best to look for the bright side in things, and I managed to find something positive in this Moon-landing-hoax belief. I see it as understandable, maybe even appropriate, that some people refuse to believe that human beings have visited the Moon. Apollo was such a fantastic achievement in the 1960s and 1970s that it should be difficult to comprehend, at least at first glance. Everyone won't readily absorb something as profound as our first journey to somewhere beyond Earth. Sometimes I look up at the full Moon on a clear night and still shake my head in amazement. "Wow, twelve guys walked around up there!"

To have made it to the Moon less than one hundred years after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk was a stunning feat, apparently one too spectacular for some people to accept as real. That's how special the lunar landings were. Hoax believers are just one more indication of Apollo's greatness.

GO DEEPER...

Books Bean, Alan. Apollo. Shelton, CT: Greenich Workshop Press, 1998.

Cernan, Gene. The Last Man on the Moon. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000.

Chaikin, Andrew. Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. New York: Penguin Books, 2009.

Collins, Michael. Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009.

Kranz, Gene. Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009.

Plait, Phil. Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax." New York: Wiley, 2002.

Ottaviani, Jim, Zander Cannon, and Kevin Cannon. T-Minus: The Race to the Moon. New York: Aladdin, 2009.

Other Sources For All Mankind (DVD), Criterion.

From the Earth to the Moon (DVDs), HBO Films and Tom Hanks.

In the Shadow of the Moon (DVD), Velocity/Thinkfilm.

Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon (DVD), HBO and Playtone.

To the Moon (DVD), NOVA.

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (DVDs), the Discovery Channel.

What can be a.s.serted without proof can be dismissed without proof....

-Christopher Hitchens Iowe a huge debt of grat.i.tude to Chariots of the G.o.ds? author Erich von Daniken. His 1968 book was a bestseller and later sp.a.w.ned a doc.u.mentary in the 1970s that faithfully presented his case that advanced s.p.a.ce travelers visited Earth thousands of years ago and interacted with ancient humans. At some point along the way in my childhood, I saw the doc.u.mentary on TV and was amazed. I may have only been nine or ten years old at the time, but I was bright enough to recognize that this was a big deal. Aliens had influenced, maybe even started, human civilization! I was shocked and so impressed by how all the evidence converged on the same obvious conclusion: extraterrestrials were here! And the evidence is all over the place. Clearly, extraterrestrials helped build ma.s.sive structures all around the world and many cultures remember them in folklore and art.

Yes, like millions of others, Von Daniken fooled me. He reeled me in, hook, line, and sinker, and had me believing that extraterrestrials built the Egyptian pyramids, placed those giant statues on Easter Island, had a s.p.a.ceport with runways in Peru, and maybe even mated with us. The doc.u.mentary inspired me to find Von Daniken's book at the library. An interesting side note is that the original 1968 publication of Von Daniken's book was t.i.tled, Chariots of the G.o.ds? Today that question mark has been dropped, however, making the t.i.tle a declaration rather than a question. But this is a complete reversal of reality. As more people have looked into the ancient astronaut idea over the years, Von Daniken's claims have only become less convincing and his evidence exposed as obviously out of line with the facts. I found the book at the library but don't recall if I actually read it. I do remember seeing the photos inside of it and feeling convinced that there must be something to this story. I was particularly impressed by a photo of ancient artwork that seemed to show an astronaut at the controls of a s.p.a.ceship. Looking back, I can forgive myself for being a naive child, but why exactly did I fall for Von Daniken's fairy tale?

The reason is obvious: I was a bright and curious kid who knew what to think when it was test time in school but didn't yet know how to think in everyday life. No one at school or at home ever explained to me that it's necessary to challenge weird ideas, to react to unusual claims with skepticism, to ask for evidence, and to make the effort to separate science from pseudoscience. Like most kids, I was left on my own to stumble around in a world teeming with errors and lies and hope for the best. I was a defenseless, trusting child, and Von Daniken was targeting me with precision-guided nonsense designed to herd me straight to the conclusion he wanted. It wasn't a fair fight.

Fortunately, something happened on my way to a lifetime of playing the victim to con artists, quacks, and fools. NOVA, the excellent PBS science program, produced an episode that a.n.a.lyzed the claims made in Chariots of the G.o.ds. I happened to see The Case of the Ancient Astronauts sometime in the late 1970s, and it changed everything for me. The NOVA program did a brilliant job of showing how Von Daniken's claims were hollow and unscientific. Maybe extraterrestrials did land here thousands of years ago, but NOVA made it clear that Chariots of the G.o.ds fails to prove it. What struck me is how misleading and loose with the facts Von Daniken had been. It was like a light went off in my head, "Oh, now I get it, you can't trust everything you read and see on TV, even if it looks and sounds like real science." The NOVA show put real experts and real facts up against Von Daniken's story, and it all collapsed like a house of cards. Credible archaeologists said that ancient Egypt didn't spring up from nowhere, as Von Daniken claimed. They also explained that ancient Egyptians were intelligent and perfectly capable of building the pyramids without alien a.s.sistance. I heard reasonable interpretations of the artwork Von Daniken highlighted that didn't require aliens at all. The experience of being hoodwinked and then enlightened changed me forever. Never again would I believe something important without pausing to question it. Being in a book or a doc.u.mentary doesn't mean something is true. Post-Chariots of the G.o.ds, I was different. Now I would think for myself and use skepticism and critical thinking to defend myself against people who would have me believe unproven things. Thank you, Erich von Daniken. If you hadn't suckered me with that ridiculous book of yours and set me up to learn an invaluable life lesson in childhood, I'm scared to imagine where my mind would be today.

WHO NEEDS ALIENS?.

Let's explore some of the problems with the claim that ancient astronauts once visited Earth and left ample evidence. First of all, I have no problem admitting that it could have happened. Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old and anatomically modern humans have been around for more than one hundred thousand years. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old, plenty of time for intelligent life to have evolved on many other planets. Other civilizations could be out there. And somebody from somewhere could have dropped by for a visit in the past, a.s.suming they were patient travelers or figured out how to move around our very large universe at higher speeds than we think are possible. But an unusual and spectacular claim like this needs something more than "it's possible" to be worth believing. Good evidence and compelling arguments are not to be found in Chariots of the G.o.ds, however. For example, Von Daniken makes a big deal about old artwork depicting what he says look like astronauts wearing s.p.a.cesuits and helmets. But that's his interpretation. Another, more likely, interpretation is that these are nothing more than depictions of tribal people wearing clothes and headdresses. This explanation is simple and doesn't require going to extraordinary lengths to accept. But Von Daniken's claim is gargantuan and needs to be backed up by a mountain of supporting evidence, which he does not have.

Von Daniken and others who work so hard to push the ancient astronaut story on unsuspecting minds are at their most offensive when they claim that ancient people could not have built the things they built. In their view, humans who lived a few thousand years or so ago were too dumb to have engineered and constructed large, complex projects. Don't believe it. I have been inside a burial chamber deep in the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. I also have been in several tombs in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. While I admit to being thoroughly impressed by the scale, age, and effort behind these works, not once did I see anything that made me suspect it was beyond the capabilities of human beings-even those who lived a very long time ago. Yes, it was a mighty feat to work with an estimated two million stone blocks weighing more than a couple tons each. It's true that scholars do not know with absolute certainty exactly how it was done. Most likely it was accomplished with the clever use of cranes, ramps, and a huge labor force. However, what can be said for sure is that the reasonable idea that humans built the pyramids is much more likely to be accurate than the radical idea that aliens did. The former has evidence, logic, and common sense going for it, while the latter has none of those things.

University of South Florida archaeologist Nancy White's feelings about Von Daniken's claims are typical of most archaeologists who remain unconvinced. "I only read it once long ago, but the biggest problem is that it's not science," White said. "He was, by profession, a motel operator."1 White, the author of Archaeology for Dummies, strongly rejects the idea that ancient people were incapable of designing and building the impressive remains attributed to them.

"The ancient human mind of any prehistoric time period was just as complex as the modern mind, possibly more so before people had writing to help them remember things. Real archaeology should be exciting enough on its own."

The late Carl Sagan felt the same way: Fundamentally, what Von Daniken has done is to sell our ancestors short, to a.s.sume that people who lived a few thousand years ago or even a few hundred years ago were simply too stupid to figure anything out, certainly to work together for a long period of time to construct something of monumental dimensions. And yet people of a few hundred or a few thousand years ago where no less intelligent, no less capable, than we are. Perhaps in some ways they were better able to work together.2 It is shocking to me how many people believe that the pyramids in Egypt were built by extraterrestrials. I've encountered this belief all over the world-except in Egypt, interestingly. The Egyptians I met were all quite certain that their ancestors deserved the credit. I once encountered this weird belief while talking about one of my books, Race and Reality, on a radio talk show. A caller wanted to know why I hadn't included information about "who really built the pyramids" in my book. There I was, all geared up to talk about the concept of race and human diversity, but somehow the silly and unrelated idea of pyramid-building aliens took center stage. I politely explained to the caller that the world's leading archaeologists have no doubts about who built these structures, as well as every other ancient structure we know of. I added that human brains back then were virtually the same as ours, so there is no reason to think that ancient Egyptians were not capable of building them. He scoffed and insisted that it's impossible. Even today we couldn't build pyramids like that if we tried, he declared. Straight out of Chariots of the G.o.ds, I thought to myself. After all these years, Von Daniken still haunts me.

Donald Redford, professor of cla.s.sics and ancient Mediterranean studies at Penn State, says there is no big mystery about the Egyptian pyramids. He estimates that twenty to thirty thousand workers probably built the Great Pyramid at Giza in less than twenty-three years. No magic or extraterrestrials required. It was primarily just ropes, lubricated surfaces and a lot of pulling. Whenever someone challenges him about this, he says he simply shows "a picture of twenty of my workers at an archaeological dig site pulling up a two-and-a-half-ton granite block. I know it's possible because I was on the ropes too."3 There are still unanswered questions about how various aspects of the construction, but so what? The absence of an answer to something is not a reason to plug in miracles, magic, or aliens. Besides, the ancient Egyptians weren't the first people to do some heavy lifting. A site in Turkey called Gobekli Tepe may be the world's oldest religious temple. Dated at 11,600 years old, it includes ma.s.sive stone pillars that are eighteen feet tall and weigh sixteen tons. Ancient people were smart enough to cut these stones and move them into place without the use of wheels or large domesticated animals. And they did it some seven thousand years before the Egyptians built their pyramids at Giza.

I am baffled by Von Daniken and others who claim that the pyramids at Giza suddenly materialized in human history and that such large and challenging construction projects could not have sprung up without alien involvement. I visited Saqqara in Egypt, where I saw the large stepped pyramid of Djoser. It's older than the more famous pyramids at Giza and-guess what?-it looks just like the less sophisticated earlier version of those pyramids one would expect. I also saw even older tombs, called mastabas, which also seemed to me like clear points along a learning curve or engineering development for ancient Egyptian builders.

Von Daniken's claims were wildly popular in the 1970s and still resonate with millions of people today. This is unfortunate because it leads people away from a connection they could be feeling for the many fascinating and brilliant people who came before us. Here is a small sampling of Von Daniken's condescending-and thoroughly unjustified-att.i.tude toward ancient people as well as his odd underestimation of contemporary construction capabilities: If the Stone Age cavemen were primate and savage, they could not have produced the astounding paintings on the cave walls.4 The Great Pyramid is visible testimony of a technique that has never been understood. Today, in the twentieth century, no architect could build a copy of the pyramid of Cheops, even if the technical resources of every continent were at his disposal.5 Where did the narrators of The Thousand and One Nights get their staggering wealth of ideas? How did anyone come to describe a lamp from which a magician spoke when its owner wished?6 It is an embarra.s.sing story; in advanced cultures of the past we find buildings that we cannot copy today with the most modern technical means.7 All of this is incorrect. Even if extraterrestrials actually did visit Earth thousands of years ago, Von Daniken's arguments for it are wrong. Ancient people were obviously capable of brilliant and creative achievements. We know this because we have plenty of good evidence that proves it-including Gobekli Tepe, the pyramids in Egypt, stone statues on Easter Island, the Roman Colosseum, the Parthenon, and cave art left by prehistoric people. We also know that the human brain has been powerful, capable, and creative for many thousands of years. Finally, it is difficult to imagine any ancient structure anywhere being beyond the comprehension of today's engineers and builders. Von Daniken claims this repeatedly, but that doesn't make it true.

Sadly, the baseless claim of ancient s.p.a.ce travelers visiting Earth has not faded away. If anything, it may be stronger today as more and more people are taken in by it. There are numerous websites and copycat books out there, and the History Channel seems to be on a mission to create as many new believers as possible with its steady stream of pseudodoc.u.mentaries about ancient alien astronauts. As I write this chapter, Von Daniken's book Chariots of the G.o.ds is ranked number seven on Amazon in the "Astronomy and s.p.a.ce Science" category, right up there with Stephen Hawking's latest work. In the "Ancient History" category, Chariots of the G.o.ds is ranked number nine.

Sigh.

GO DEEPER...

Books Colavito, Jason. The Cult of Alien G.o.ds: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005.

Feder, Kenneth L. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Stiebing, William. Ancient Astronauts, Cosmic Collisions, and Other Popular Theories about Man's Past. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984.

Story, Ronald. The s.p.a.ce G.o.ds Revealed. New York: HarperCollins, 1986.

Wenke, Robert J. Patterns in Prehistory: Humankind's First Three Million Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

White, Nancy. Archaeology for Dummies. New York: For Dummies, 2008.

Other Sources Birth of Civilization (DVD), National Geographic.

If the evidence were good enough, my colleagues and I would abandon our antennas and begin crawling the countryside. It would be easier and cheaper. It would also offer the tantalizing possibility of communication that was up close and personal. But after more than sixty years of UFO sightings, we still seem unable to come up with the good stuff. Physical evidence-a taillight or k.n.o.b from an alien craft-is in short supply.

-Seth Shostak, senior astronomer

at the SETI Inst.i.tute

What we see is only what our brain tells us we see, and it's not 100 percent accurate.

-John Medina, Brain Rules Believing is seeing.

-John Slader n.o.body wants this one more than me. I even have the credentials. A heavy dose of The Twilight Zone and original Star Trek episodes in childhood primed me to think outside the sphere. While other kids played marbles and obsessed over baseball cards, I was busy contemplating ways to defend Earth against extraterrestrial invaders. In adulthood I once had a dream that involved the Drake equation.1 That's not normal. I've probably watched the films Contact and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 original) more times than any adult not currently living in his parents' bas.e.m.e.nt. I can't recall many song lyrics, but I have no problem reciting Charlton Heston's cla.s.sic line from Planet of the Apes : "I can't help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man." It's also very likely that I've read more books and watched more doc.u.mentaries about astrobiology and s.p.a.ce exploration than most astronauts.

A few years ago, I attended a lecture by SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak with the barely restrained enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. My pulse quickened when he announced that if any extraterrestrial signals are out there, fastimproving technology gives us a very good chance of detecting them within the next twenty or thirty years. I was far too dignified to ask Shostak for his autograph after the talk-but there's no denying that I wanted it. I don't pretend to know that intelligent extraterrestrials exist. However, the idea that they probably do excites me. I may not be an ET believer, but I am definitely an ET hoper. If they ever really do land, the UFO enthusiasts are going to have to get in line behind me. Some years ago I literally announced to my family that if a s.p.a.cecraft ever lands anywhere near our zip code, I'm going in to say h.e.l.lo, offer the first handshake, give the Vulcan salute, or whatever. My precocious children were quick to warn me about vaporization, enslavement, uncomfortable probing, radiation, and alien pathogens. But I don't care about their nagging over details. It would be a moment too big, too exciting, and too important to shrink from. First contact is mine; I'm going in.

I have always preferred to give UFO claims a fair hearing rather than dismiss them automatically. Maybe it's because I have the heart of a UFO believer, if not the mind. Or perhaps it is because I have seen weird things in the sky too-twice. The first time I was ten years old, cruising down some dreary Florida highway in the car with my father when I spotted several lights streaking across the sky at high speeds. They did this repeatedly and flew together in loose formation. I can't remember much detail, only that I was amazed by what I was seeing and pretty sure they couldn't be airplanes based on how sharply they turned. If someone had pressed me afterward to explain what I saw, I a.s.sume I would have said that what I saw was definitely something strange-probably alien s.p.a.ceships. Today, however, if I saw the same thing I would stop well short of suggesting that I saw alien s.p.a.ceships. I'm not ten years old anymore, and I now understand how easily the human mind can be misled, particularly when the eyes feed it unusual and unexpected images. Looking back, a more likely explanation for what I saw might be that it was nothing more than the reflected lights of pa.s.sing cars on the window of the car I was in. Then again, maybe it was an alien armada pa.s.sing through the solar system. I'll never know for sure, and I have to live with that.

A few years later, I was outside playing in my neighborhood and saw several tiny lights in the sky moving very fast. Again, I didn't think they moved like jets. Maybe it was a meteor shower. Or maybe it was squad of alien anthropologists observing the play habits of Earth boys from high alt.i.tude. What were they? What did I see on those two occasions? The only honest answer I can give for both events is "I don't know." Not everyone is willing to accept that kind of uncertainty, however.

People all around the world often see weird things in the sky that they cannot readily identify. But some are unwilling to admit that these things they see are unidentified and leave it at that. So they jump to the extraordinary conclusion that the objects must therefore be extraterrestrial s.p.a.ceships. The point that needs to be emphasized and repeated often when talking about UFOs is that seeing something that is an unidentified object is not the same as seeing an identified alien s.p.a.ceship. The jump from one to the other is not reasonable or logically defensible. The unidentified nature of such sightings means they could be labeled just about anything. If, for example, fairy belief was widespread today, then all these hovering and streaking lights in the night sky would likley be identified as fairies rather than s.p.a.cecraft from another planet. No matter how strange a light in the sky may seem, there can be no justification for pretending to know that it's a s.p.a.ceship unless one can clearly see the hull of a star cruiser with nonhuman beings waving from the portholes.

Since not everyone is aware of this, it's always worth stating the fact that no one has ever produced any scientifically confirmed evidence of a s.p.a.ceship having visited us. This absence of evidence is crucial to the issue and should be the focal point of every UFO discussion. Nothing, not one piece of a flying saucer has ever been found and pa.s.sed on to the world's scientists and skeptics so they could examine and verify its extraterrestrial origins. Nothing. We do not have a single piece of exotic metal that could not possibly have been crafted by humans, no devices that baffle the best engineers, and-despite what you may have heard-not even one alien body. Sure, it's possible that such evidence exists in Area 51 or some top-secret government vault in a hollowed-out mountain somewhere. But until somebody releases it, leaks it, or steals it and shows us, it's silly to pretend that we know it's there. All we have are eyewitness accounts of weird things in the sky and stories of people being abducted or interacting with aliens. Based on what we know about the reliability of eyewitness accounts, however, this is just not good enough for something so unusual and important. It is known beyond a shadow of doubt that sane, intelligent, honest human beings are capable of misinterpreting what they see and misremembering what they saw. Therefore, before coming to the conclusion that extraterrestrials are buzzing around our planet, we must have hard evidence that scientists can a.n.a.lyze, test, and confirm. Short of an alien s.p.a.cecraft landing in Times Square, nothing else will do for a claim this extraordinary and important. Tens of millions of people have decided not to wait for evidence, however.

According to a Gallup poll, 24 percent of Americans, 21 percent of Canadians, and 19 percent of Britons believe that "extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth at some time in the past."2 A study by the National Council on Science and Technology and the National Inst.i.tute of Statistics and Geography calculated that as much as one-third of the US population and 38 percent of Mexicans think that alien s.p.a.ceships visit us.3 Although UFO belief is embraced by many millions of people worldwide, this does not necessarily mean that there is something bizarre going on above us that involves intelligent beings from another world. One often hears the "where there's smoke, there's fire" reasoning applied to the UFO issue. But we know that millions of people can believe in things that are 100 percent wrong. For example, millions of American adults-nearly 20 percent of the US population-think that the Sun revolves around the Earth!4 It wouldn't matter if 100 percent of Americans believed that; the Earth would continue to orbit the Sun. Never allow yourself to be too impressed by a belief's popularity. Reality is not determined by a majority vote. If some people can be wrong about a claim, then it's possible everybody could be wrong about it. Even if everyone on Earth believed in alien visits, that alone would not prove it. Only good evidence can do that. And good evidence is the one thing missing in the UFO phenomenon. After more than five decades of enthusiastic interest and investigation, we have nothing more than stories. I am not suggesting that anyone should belittle believers or dismiss all claims without a second thought. But if we strip away the hype and unjustified a.s.sumptions, it turns out that the vast majority of UFO reports describe precisely what that abbreviation was supposed to mean in the first place: unidentified flying objects. The failure to identify something as a plane, a satellite, a cloud, a flare, a balloon, Venus, or a remote control toy blimp simply does not justify jumping to the fantastic conclusion that it therefore must be an alien s.p.a.cecraft. I think of most UFO belief as the intelligent design of the sky. Creationists/intelligent design believers point to the inability of today's biologists to answer every question about life and then draw extraordinary and wholly unwarranted conclusions. Many UFO believers duplicate the same error when they point to the fact that astronomers, the Air Force, the FAA, police, and so on cannot or will not identify every object in the sky to their satisfaction. The absence of readily available explanations is seen as evidence that an intelligent being created life or that unidentified objects must be s.p.a.ceships. But this is flawed thinking; not knowing means not knowing. It may be distasteful because everybody loves closure. But sometimes we just have to be grown-ups and swallow a bit of frustration. There will always be unanswered questions, and inventing fictional solutions is not the best way to react to them. Don't forget, I'm a guy who would sacrifice body parts in order to make first contact and hitch a ride with extraterrestrials for a sightseeing tour through the M16 Eagle Nebula and beyond. But I understand how important it is to keep my hopes and fantasies properly corralled so that they don't compromise my skepticism and critical thinking skills. I think fantasy is wonderful, but I still want to live in the real world. The urge to believe should never overwhelm the need to think. And the lack of satisfying answers to everything should never excuse us to swap reason for made-up answers.

Most people underestimate how easy it is to misinterpret "things" we see in the sky. For example, an airplane approaching you from a distance can appear to hover even though it may be traveling at a high rate of speed. This might lead to the incorrect conclusion that "it can't possibly be a plane." Furthermore, some large planes can hover and then fly away. The unique twin-engine V-22 Osprey, for example, is capable of flying at speeds of more than three hundred miles per hour as well as hovering in one spot. An Osprey flying at night might move in ways that confuse an unaware ground observer into thinking that it couldn't be a plane or a helicopter. In addition, many military aircraft can eject flares that float down slowly on small parachutes to illuminate the ground below. Many planes and helicopters also use flares as defensive countermeasures to confuse or redirect heatseeking missiles that may be targeting them. I have seen video of countermeasures on fixed-wing aircraft that rapidly spiral away from the aircraft on independent trajectories. Several flares launched rapidly from a jet at night at high alt.i.tude could be very difficult to correctly identify from the ground, especially if the supersonic jet that deployed them is already long gone. Many military planes and helicopters can also release chaff-numerous tiny bits of metal, plastic, or gla.s.s-as a countermeasure to defend against missiles that home in on targets using radar. Under some conditions, a cloud of these tiny objects might reflect light in ways that could mislead someone on the ground into thinking it is something it is not.

I proposed the possibility of flares from military aircraft being responsible for some UFO reports to Mark "Gunner" Lewis, a former US Marine avionics technician who spent many years in and around combat aircraft. He said he could easily imagine people who are already inclined toward UFO belief confusing countermeasures for starships. "[Countermeasure flares] make a distinct pattern," he explained.

From a distance, far enough for the engines and propellers not to be heard, they may appear as slightly elongated lines or ovals. But I am guessing at that. They can be fired in a more staggered pattern as well.

Although not a countermeasure, a field illumination flare might confuse civilians, and noninfantry related military, for that matter. This type of flare, when deployed, puts out enough candle power to rival an entire football stadium of lights. It is designed to illuminate a battlefield for several minutes and cause the enemy to lose their night vision. There are different colors for different applications. The unusual thing about these flares is that they are suspended by miniparachutes. The heat rising from the flare lifts the chute like a hotair balloon, keeping it aloft. This intense light could act in many odd ways. It could appear to hover in one place and then disappear as it extinguishes. It could spiral and or bounce around at alt.i.tude. Being carried by thermal drafts or shear winds can make it look as if it were moving under power. I have seen some "UFO" video and recognized them as these types of flares.

Do I believe that people can be misled or, if predisposed, confuse countermeasures for alien s.p.a.cecraft? My answer would be yes. With the intent to hoax and access to field flares, I think I could do a great job of making a "UFO sighting." I think anything from fireflies to the orbiting s.p.a.ce station can be an alien craft for those who look for it.5 IT'S RAINING UFOs Here's something else to think about: Every day some four thousand tons of rock and dust from s.p.a.ce burn up in our atmosphere.6 Sometimes this rain of debris creates brief displays of light that might be misinterpreted by whoever happens to be looking up at the time. And don't forget the way our minds work. When we see multiple points of light in the dark, it can be a natural and subconscious response to connect those dots and create a larger, solid object where there is none. Then we have all the celestial bodies that account for many UFO sightings. Venus, for example, can be very bright in the evening and has fooled people into thinking it's a close s.p.a.ceship rather than a faraway planet. When you don't know what you are looking at in the sky, size and distance are difficult, if not impossible, to determine. The reason we can accurately estimate the size of birds and planes when we see them is only because we already know the size of birds and planes. The next time someone tells you he or she saw a strange gigantic green and orange light in the sky, explain this to them.

I'm slightly embarra.s.sed to admit it, but I was fooled by the Moon. You may have noticed that a full Moon in the early evening can sometimes look extraordinarily large and dramatic when it's low and close to the horizon. Later, however, it seems to be back to normal full-Moon size when it's high in the night sky. Several years ago I actually chased this gigantic Moon with my camera and tripod in the hopes of capturing a spectacular image. Speeding around in my car, looking for the perfect spot to shoot from, I had high hopes for capturing the mother of all Moon photos. But I ended up frustrated, disappointed, and bewildered by pictures that showed nothing but a small Moon. I later learned that I had fallen victim to a well-doc.u.mented Moon illusion. It's just a trick of the mind and eye, one that cameras don't fall for. If I couldn't even get the size of the full Moon straight in my head-even though I knew exactly what I was looking at-then I know I have no business making confident estimates about the size of some unidentified object I might see in the sky. Finally, add to all this the fact that every now and then some mischievous person launches a balloon with lights or flares attached just to see how many people fall for it and think it's a s.p.a.ceship. Be on guard when you look up; it's an optical minefield up there.

DON'T FORGET HOW MEMORY WORKS.