Area 51's mysteries finally solved?

Every few years, there's another news story revealing the supposed "truth" of Area 51, the Nevada military base beloved by UFO conspiracy theorists. The latest one appears today in an LA Times article by Annie Jacobsen. Jacobsen interviewed a group of former base workers, who say that while there's nothing to the legends of alien flying saucers held on the base, there has been plenty of top-secret work done there - including nuclear experimentation and spy plane missions.

As for the myths of reverse engineering of flying saucers, Barnes offers some insight: "We did reverse engineer a lot of foreign technology, including the Soviet MiG fighter jet out at the Area"—even though the MiG wasn't shaped like a flying saucer. As for the underground-tunnel talk, that, too, was born of truth. Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program called Project NERVA, inside underground chambers at Jackass Flats, in Area 51's backyard. "Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but everything else was underground," he says.

Frankly, we suspect the full story is a bit more interesting than that. Are there frozen aliens on the base? Highly unlikely. Is the government covering up other weird things that have happened there? Quite probably. Keep watching the skies...