115 Moscovium named 2016

Was Bob Lazar right?

In 1989, Bob Lazar went on Las Vegas TV and described a world the government said didn't exist. Thirty-five years later, people are still asking whether he told the truth.

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fig. 1.1

Nine discs, one hangar each.

Lazar says he saw nine craft at S-4, each in its own hangar cut into the mountain. No seams, no rivets, no engine anyone would recognize.

fig. 1.2

A reactor fueled by element 115.

At the center, he said, a reactor fed by element 115 made antimatter. No public periodic table listed 115 in 1989. It was named Moscovium in 2016.

fig. 1.3

Three gravity amplifiers.

Waveguides carry the effect to three amplifiers underneath. The craft bends spacetime around itself instead of pushing through it.

fig. 1.4

His account, not a verified object.

Everything above is Lazar’s description. Some details have aged well; none of it has been independently confirmed.

Unverified

The disclosure that wouldn't stay buried

Bob Lazar went on KLAS-TV in Las Vegas in 1989, first anonymously, then on the record. He described a world the U.S. government swore did not exist. A secret sub-base south of Area 51. Nine craft that looked nothing like ours. Engines that bend gravity. And a strange fuel, Element 115, that the periodic table did not list yet.

For most of the 1990s, people wrote him off. Nobody could verify his degrees. The base he named did not officially exist. Then the ground shifted, piece by piece. The government denied his Los Alamos job, then confirmed it. Element 115 was just theory, then scientists made it. The Pentagon called its UAP programs fiction, then declassified them.

So Lazar is one of two things. Either he is the most important government informant UAP disclosure has ever seen, or he is its most successful liar. Either way, you cannot tell the story of modern UAP policy without him. He shaped the questions Congress now asks about what governments know and hide.

The record so far

1989
The year it started George Knapp's KLAS-TV broadcasts put Lazar's claims on the record. Every development since still points back to that moment.
35+ yrs
Years the story has held Most fringe claims fall apart fast. Lazar's has held. Outside sources have backed up specific details, and the government's stance on UAP has shifted hard.
2023
Congress heard UAP testimony David Grusch testified under oath to the House Oversight Committee about secret reverse-engineering programs. It sounds a lot like what Lazar said 34 years earlier.

A story that never left the desert

One anonymous KLAS-TV broadcast grew into testimony before Congress. Here are the key moments across 35 years of claims, denials, and second looks.

Interview Key moment

Bob Lazar's First KLAS-TV Interview with George Knapp

Bob Lazar goes on camera with reporter George Knapp at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. He hides his name and uses the alias "Dennis." Lazar says he worked at a secret site called S-4, near Area 51 at Papoose Lake. His job, he claims, was to take apart the engines of alien craft. The interview hits the UFO research world hard. It starts a story that is still running today.

Interview Key moment

Full On-Camera Reveal: "UFOs: The Best Evidence" on KLAS-TV

Bob Lazar shows his face and gives his name on George Knapp's KLAS-TV broadcast. He describes nine disc-shaped craft at S-4. He says a fuel called Element 115 powers their gravity-wave engines. Lazar also says government pressure pushed him to speak out. No other witness has ever matched this level of technical detail about recovered non-human craft.

Cultural Key moment

IUPAC Verifies the Discovery of Element 115 (Later Named Moscovium)

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry verifies that scientists made element 115, and credits the discovery to the Dubna–Livermore–Oak Ridge collaboration. IUPAC approves the name Moscovium (Mc) in November 2016. The news pulls attention back to Lazar's claims. Twenty-six years earlier, he had named Element 115 as the fuel behind the anti-gravity engines at S-4. At the time, the element appeared in no public science record. Lazar had described its structure and energy in detail. Supporters point to this as one of the strongest reasons to take his account seriously.

Government Key moment

New York Times UAP Bombshell; DoD Acknowledges AATIP Program

The New York Times runs "Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program," by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean. The report exposes the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a secret DoD effort funded at $22 million. Declassified gun-camera footage from F/A-18 jets shows objects that move in ways known aircraft cannot. For the first time, the U.S. government admits it has been studying UAP. That is the same institutional secrecy Lazar described back in 1989.

See every dated event

Documentary archive

The 1989 KLAS broadcasts, the Corbell film, the congressional hearings. The essential footage, gathered in one place.

The Original KLAS-TV Interviews — George Knapp (1989)

Interview Featured 1989 45m

George Knapp's KLAS-TV broadcasts are the source all Bob Lazar coverage traces back to. They first aired with Lazar hidden as "Dennis," then grew into the five-part "UFOs: The Best Evidence" series with him on the record. These tapes are the foundation of his disclosure. He describes nine disc-shaped craft at S-4, gravity-wave propulsion fueled by Element 115, and his work under black-program secrecy south of Groom Lake.

Watch

Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers

Documentary Featured 2018 1h 36m

Director Jeremy Corbell spent years earning Lazar's trust to make this feature. The result is Lazar's most candid on-camera appearance since 1989. Mickey Rourke narrates, and George Knapp adds new investigative segments. The film landed just as the New York Times and Pentagon AATIP revelations gave the story fresh weight. It's one of the most-watched UAP documentaries ever made.

Watch

Joe Rogan Experience #1315 — Bob Lazar & Jeremy Corbell

Podcast Featured 2019 3h 4m

Lazar's three-hour sit-down on The Joe Rogan Experience may be the most important interview of his post-1989 career. It reached tens of millions of listeners with no editing between him and them. He walks through it all in detail: the physics of gravity-wave amplifiers, the layout of S-4, where he thinks the craft came from, and the toll of thirty years living with what he said. Rogan's questions are tough but fair, and they pull out technical and personal detail earlier formats never got.

Watch

Browse the media archive

The core claims

Lazar made five specific technical claims in 1989. They have shaped the UAP debate ever since. Some have aged far better than his critics expected.

  • 1989 S-4 claimed 1989

    S-4 facility

    Unverified

    Lazar says EG&G contracted him to work at a secret site called S-4. It sits near Papoose Lake in southern Nevada, about 15 miles south of the main Area 51/Groom Lake complex. No public record named the place at the time.

  • 9 Craft count, per Lazar

    Nine alien craft

    Unverified

    He says he saw nine disc-shaped craft, each in its own hangar cut into the base of a mountain. None looked man-made. He saw no seams, no fasteners, and no engine of any familiar kind.

  • 115 Moscovium named 2016

    Element 115 (ununpentium)

    Corroborated

    Lazar said the fuel was element 115, a superheavy element. No public periodic table listed it in 1989. IUPAC verified element 115 in December 2015 and named it Moscovium in 2016.

    Caveat. The element is confirmed; his specific claims about it are not. The stable isotope he described as fuel has never been made, and every isotope produced so far decays in under a second.

  • 1989 Gravity waves claimed 1989

    Gravity wave propulsion

    Unverified

    Lazar says the craft bombards Element 115 with protons to make antimatter. That reaction powers a gravity-wave amplifier. The craft then warps the spacetime around it instead of flying through space the normal way.

  • 1989 Looking Glass claimed 1989

    Project Galileo and Looking Glass

    Unverified

    Lazar names two secret programs, "Galileo" and "Looking Glass." He says Looking Glass tried to observe future or alternate timelines. Other whistleblowers have named the same programs since 2017.

Tile key Corroborated independently confirmed Unverified Lazar's account only. The corner number is the year he made the claim, a count, or an atomic number.

Credibility and controversy

The details that hold up, and the ones that don't. We lay out both sides and draw no conclusions. Nothing here is stated as proven fact.

Points of interest

Details that check out and verified facts

  • W-2 tax forms place Lazar at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The government first denied he worked there. George Knapp's reporting proved otherwise.
  • Knapp also found Lazar listed in a Los Alamos staff phone directory, which backs up his account of working there.
  • Element 115 was verified by IUPAC in 2015 and named Moscovium in 2016. Lazar described its properties in detail back in 1989, when no science paper had recorded it.
  • Lazar pinpointed the S-4 site years before any satellite image or public record confirmed the geography.
  • Several witnesses say Lazar drove them into the Nevada desert on Wednesday nights, where they watched strange lights move in ways aircraft cannot.
  • David Grusch told Congress in 2023 much the same thing Lazar did: reverse-engineering programs, threats against witnesses, and decades of cover-up.

Points of skepticism

Counterarguments and unproven claims

  • No records show Lazar attended MIT or Caltech. Neither school has any file on his enrollment.
  • Standard academic checks cannot confirm his claimed degrees in physics and electronics.
  • In 1990, Lazar pleaded guilty to a felony tied to running a Nevada brothel. Critics use that conviction to question his word.
  • Critics point out that much of his technical detail could come from the science fiction and physics papers of the day.
  • His account of the craft and the propulsion system has barely changed in 35 years. Skeptics read that as a rehearsed story, not real memory.
  • No one has produced physical proof: no Element 115 samples, no photos of S-4, no insider on record backing him up.

Follow the story from the beginning

New to the Lazar story, or back to check the latest news from Congress? Start with the biography and the full event timeline.

Read the biography Open the timeline
First broadcast
May 1989, KLAS-TV
Location claimed
37.10° N, 115.83° W
Status
Unresolved
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