No, Aldrin didn’t pass an alien on moon trip
Yes, astronaut Buzz Aldrin saw something outside his ship en route to the moon in 1969, but it wasn’t an alien, despite claims from a British tabloid and a “scientific” organization.
On Sunday, the Daily Star posted an “exclusive” story claiming Aldrin recently “passed a lie detector test” that somehow confirmed he encountered an alien during Apollo 11.
But in an e-mail to USA TODAY, NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said that what Aldrin probably saw were four panels that had separated from the spacecraft in flight.
“The panels would have had the same momentum as the rest of the spacecraft and would have followed them along (generally) toward the moon,” she said.
What Aldrin saw also might have been the rocket the astronauts had separated from. “It was not an alien,” Aldrin said in 2015.
Schierholz said the word “unidentified” in UFO can also be problematic, because it doesn’t have to mean “of alien origin.”
“While engineers and scientists can be reasonably confident what was seen was one of the panels, to an engineer/scientist, it is still technically ‘unidentified’ — hence the use of the terminology,” Schierholz said.
The Daily Star claimed the results of the test prove the astronauts were “completely convinced” that signs of alien life they had witnessed during their mission were genuine. The “test” reportedly performed by the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology and Sound Health, a tiny organization in Ohio, used decades-old recordings of Aldrin and his fellow astronauts, not interviews with the astronauts.
According to the Daily Star, the institute’s “top secret” test was able to find some hidden truth in Aldrin’s tone that overruled his conscious claims that he didn’t see an alien.
BioAcoustic’s Sharry Edwards said tests reveal Aldrin is sure he saw the UFO even though his logical mind “cannot explain it,” the Star said.
The Independent cast doubt on BioAcoustic’s claims to be able to determine if a person is being honest using voice recordings, saying the work has not been tested and appear to be impossible according to modern science.