What is most likely going on in Area 51? – Griffin, age 10, South Lyon, Michigan
One of the reasons people can never be entirely sure about what is going on at Area 51 is that it is a highly classified secret military facility. It was not until 2013 that the U.S. government even acknowledged the existence and name “Area 51.”
This information came out as part of a broader set of documents released through a Freedom of Information Act request, which is something regular citizens and groups can do to ask the U.S. government to provide details about government activities. In this case, the request made public formerly classified CIA information regarding the historical development and testing of the U-2 spy plane. The information also revealed where it was tested: Area 51!
As a national security historian, I know there’s a long history of secrets at Area 51. I also know that none of those secrets have anything to do with space aliens.
The place
The base commonly referred to as Area 51 is located in a remote area of southern Nevada, roughly 100 miles (161 kilometers) from Las Vegas. It is in the middle of a federally protected area of the U.S. Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range, now known as the Nevada National Security Site, which is inside the larger Nellis Air Force Range.Area 51, the yellow rectangle in the center of the map, is tucked in the middle of the much larger Nellis Air Force Range. DEMIS BV via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Area 51 is the name on maps for the area within the Nevada National Security Site where the government carried out secret operations. The airfield at Area 51 is called Homey Airport, and the overall facility is often referred to as Groom Lake. Groom Lake is a salt flat, or dried-out lake, adjacent to the airport.
The history
In the early years of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, both nations sought new technological developments that might give one country more power than the other. A great amount of information about scientific achievements, such as on rockets or weapons – but also even on ways to grow more food or make fuel more efficient – was kept secret as an issue of national security.
A key part of not fighting another world war was, and still is, developing technologies to see what the other side is doing – that is, surveillance technologies that can spy on the enemy. The information gathered by new and improved surveillance technologies about new innovations with planes and weapons was very important to governments.
This meant that both the surveillance information and the technology to get it were closely held national security secrets. Very few people in the governments of the U.S. and Soviet Union knew about the secrets from the 1940s all the way up until the end of the Cold War in 1991.The U-2 spy plane was the first of many secrets kept at Area 51. U.S. Air Force
Central to all this was the U.S.’s U-2 spy plane. It could fly higher than other airplanes and was made to travel over targets all around the world to take high-resolution photographs and measurements. Area 51 was selected in 1955 to test the U-2 in part because its remote location could help keep the plane secret.
Area 51 became the test site for other secret new aircraft. This included the A-12, which, like the U-2, was a fast-flying reconnaissance plane. The A-12 was first test flown at Homey Airport in 1962. It had a bulging disc-like center to carry additional fuel. Its shape and shiny titanium body could well have been responsible for some people’s reports about seeing spherical ships, also known as flying saucers.
Another important – and odd-shaped – aircraft first tested at Area 51 was the stealth fighter known as the F-117. It first flew at Homey Airport in 1981.The F-117 stealth fighter looks like it could have come from another world but was made right here on Earth. U.S. Air Force
Secrets and speculation
“More Flying Objects Seen in Clark Sky,” read the June 17, 1959, headline in the Reno Evening Gazette newspaper. Reports like this of unidentified flying objects in the 1950s and 1960s fueled controversy and attention for Area 51. This was for three main reasons:
Area 51 was highly secret and not publicly accessible.
The area was home to test flights of secret new airplanes that moved fast and in different ways than expected.
The Cold War was an era of political tension, and there were many movies and TV shows about space aliens at the time.
When the government does not tell the public the full truth, no matter the reasons, secrets can lead to wild speculation. Secrecy can leave room for conspiracy theories to develop.
Area 51 remains off-limits to civilian and regular military air traffic, a decade after the government acknowledged its existence. The 68 years of government secrecy has helped to amplify suspicions, speculation and conspiracy theories. These conspiracy theories include crashed alien spaceships, space aliens being experimented on, and even space aliens working at Area 51.
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Speculation about space aliens at Area 51 has been part of popular culture for more than half a century. Airwolfhound/Flickr, CC BY-SA
There are much simpler explanations for what witnesses have seen near Area 51. After all, the public now knows about what was being tested at Area 51, and when. For example, as U-2 and A-12 flights increased in the 1950s and 1960s, so did local sightings of UFOs. As balloons and planes crashed, and secret testing of new technologies as well as captured Soviet equipment continued, so did reports of UFO crashes and landings.
In fact, many UFO sightings match almost exactly with dates and times of flights of then-classified experimental aircraft. We also know that prototype drones and more recent versions have been tested at the site.
In the end, there is no reason to think that anything other than earthly technologies have been behind the strange sights and sounds at Area 51.
This article has been updated to correct the descriptions of the name Area 51 and the U2 spy plane’s capabilities.
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NASA’s “Flying Swordfish” Takes Flight: The X-59 QueSST Begins Its Quiet Supersonic Journey
NASA’s X-59 QueSST “flying swordfish” made its first test flight from Palmdale, California, marking a breakthrough in quiet supersonic technology designed to reduce the sonic boom and reshape the future of air travel.
NASA’s X-59 QueSST quiet supersonic research aircraft sits on the ramp at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California during sunrise, shortly after completion of painting. With its unique design, including a 38-foot-long nose, the X-59 was built to demonstrate the ability to fly supersonic, or faster than the speed of sound, while reducing the typically loud sonic boom produced by aircraft at such speeds to a quieter sonic “thump”. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land, currently banned in the United States, by making sonic booms quieter. Image Credit: NASA
NASA’s experimental X-59 QueSST, also known as the “flying swordfish,” has officially made its first test flight, marking a major milestone in the future of quiet supersonic travel. Developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin, the sleek, needle-nosed aircraft lifted off from Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, on October 28, 2025, and safely landed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.
While the maiden flight was subsonic, reaching speeds of around 230 miles per hour at 12,000 feet, it successfully demonstrated the aircraft’s fundamental systems and stability. Future test flights will push the X-59 to supersonic speeds, where NASA will evaluate its ability to drastically reduce the loud “sonic boom” to a soft “sonic thump.” The ultimate goal of the Quesst program is to pave the way for regulations that could one day allow commercial supersonic flights over land, revolutionizing air travel as we know it.
The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/
Gender is not an ideology – but conservative groups know learning about it empowers people to think for themselves
Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Wesleyan University and Elizabeth Anne Wood, Nassau Community College Political attacks on teaching about gender in colleges and universities are about more than just gender: They are part of agrander projectof eroding civil and human rights, limiting personal freedoms and undermining democracy in the name of “traditional” values. On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring there are two sexes determined solely by the kind of reproductive cells the body makes, and that the federal government would recognize nothing else. The order claims to protect the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex” and bans the use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” Legal experts have criticized the directive as unconstitutional and are challenging it in the courts. Yet the order has provided fuel for conservatives, right-wing politicians and activists trying to remove so-called gender ideology from many places in American society, including classrooms. Right-wing activists are pushing for censorship of educational curricula in K-12 schools and in colleges and universities, and they have succeeded in Texas, Florida and other red states. Why are conservative politicians so determined to control how Americans define sex and understand gender? As sociologistswho research and teach about gender, we know that gender across disciplines is understood to be a complex topic of study, not an ideology. The study of gender represents the kind of free inquiry that allows people to decide for themselves how to live, free of coercion or government control.
What is ‘gender ideology’?
“Gender ideology” is a catch-all term conservative Catholics initially promoted in the 1990s in response to the United Nations’ promotion of women’s equality. In 2004, pushing back on the global women’s and gay rights movements, the Vatican declared in a letter to bishops that men and women are different by nature “not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and spiritual.” The letter stated that the idea of gender “inspired ideologies” that sanction alternatives to the traditional two-parent family headed by men and treated homosexuality on par with heterosexuality. Over the following decades, evangelical groups and far-right parties across the globe – from Hungary and Russia to Peru, Brazil and Ghana – have used the language of combating “gender ideology” to counter a host of social policies, including sex education in schools, the legalization of gay marriage and same-sex adoption, reproductive rights and transgender rights.Anti-gender protestors during a 2018 Equality March in Kraków, Poland.Silar/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA The anti-gender movement is no longer fringe but rather well funded, organized and transnational. For example, 40 countries have signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an international pact proposed by the first Trump administration and supported by anti-gender campaigners as a way to deny abortion rights internationally. In the U.S., where the majority of Americans support gay marriageand abortion rights, targeting trans rights has become one of the conservative movement’s galvanizing issues. A flood of state bills not only ban books and discussions of gender, sexuality and race in schools but also criminalize abortion, ban gender-affirming health care and legalize discrimination in housing and employment on religious grounds.
What we talk about when we talk about gender
How gender is researched and taught in universities has becomea key target of anti-gender campaigns across the globe, in part because the study of gender raises questions about the universality of traditional social roles and the inequalities that can result from them. Gender is a focus of inquiry not only in gender studies classes but in literature, sociology, law, government, history, anthropology and cultural geography, among many other fields. Anti-gender campaigners argue there is nothing to understand about it because gender is given by nature or God. For them, gender is equivalent to sex, which is taken to be straightforward and without exception male or female. Scientific evidence suggests, however, that sex is not always binary. In biology, sex refers to genes, reproductive organs, hormone systems and observable physical characteristics; different combinations of these lead to variations in sex. Far from straightforward, then, sex is complicated. And a person’s assigned sex at birth does not always align with their deeply held sense of self – their gender identity. Gender is both a feature of individual people and a mode of organizing social life. At the individual level, people have a subjective sense of and embody their gender by dressing and behaving in ways that encourage other people to see them as they want to be seen. A man might wear a tie at the office to convey masculinity. People will interact differently with a woman when she is wearing high heels and makeup than when she goes barefaced or dons a swimsuit. Someone who is gender fluid may appear more masculine or feminine at different times and experience prejudice and discrimination.Gender roles shape society and culture in both subtle and glaring ways. Gender shapes societies through norms and rules on everything from what you wear to how families operate, whom you are allowed to partner with and what jobs you are likely to hold. Whether in the spheres of culture, family, economic or civic life, gender roles and norms intersect with class, race and other social differences and shift across cultures and historical eras. Indigenous societies across the globe have long recognized more than two gender categories, and historical and contemporary examples of gender diversity abound. A ban on learning about gender would sweep aside all this variation in favor of a homogeneous worldview that deliberately ignores biology, history and lived experience. Denying the diversity of gender makes it easier to impose a conservative worldview and roll back rights.
Education as a political target
Anti-gender campaigners view education as a major battleground in the fight over societal values. In the U.S., conservative efforts to ban the study of gender and sexuality initially centered on K-12 education, exemplified in bills such as Florida’s 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” law. But the movement has also affected colleges and universities. Texas A&M’s president fired a professor in September 2025 after a student recorded her confrontation with her for discussing gender diversity in a literature course. The student alleged the course was “not legal” because it contradicted “our president’s laws” and her own religious beliefs. The university president also later resigned under pressure. The same month, the chancellor of the Texas Tech University system, citing Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology,” banned all faculty members across its five universities from recognizing “more than two sexes” in any course or classroom.Controlling thought is a means of repressing social movements.AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall As the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors reminds its members, faculty have a constitutional right to teach and discuss “all matters related to the subject matter of a class” without interference from administrators, politicians or government officials. Despite this, states led by conservative lawmakers have useda rangeof tacticsto eliminategender studies programs or curriculum from colleges. These attacks on universities are attempts to control thought, subdue social movements advocating for change and promote an orthodoxy that upholds those in power.Books on gender are among those conservatives are purging from libraries and classrooms.AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Restricting rights, eroding democracy
These attacks on education are not only academic matters. They disempower women and marginalized groups that have achieved some legal protection or rights in recent decades. And they contribute to the erosion of democracy. Authoritarian approaches to governing rely on scapegoating people, policing thought and speech, and punishing dissent. This is true whether it’s Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Donald Trump’s United States. By prohibiting questions and challenges, autocrats gain the power to limit how people think and control their bodies.Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Sociology; Science and Technology Studies, Wesleyan University and Elizabeth Anne Wood, Professor of Sociology, Nassau Community College This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Leading with Purpose in the Age of AII: Cognizant guides organizations in AI adoption, addressing challenges like talent shortages and governance while empowering employees to transform business practices and achieve lasting impact.
(Family Features) In today’s AI-powered economy, transformation is no longer optional – it’s essential. Enterprises are eager to embrace generative and agentic AI, but many lack the clarity and confidence to scale it responsibly.
As a global leader in technology and consulting services, Cognizant is helping organizations bridge that gap – turning possibility into progress.
The Moment is Now
AI is reshaping industries, redefining roles, and revolutionizing decision-making. According to Cognizant Research, 61% of senior decision-makers expect AI to drive complete business transformation. Yet, 83% feel unprepared to embed AI into their organizations, citing gaps in talent, governance, and culture.
This disconnect presents a powerful opportunity.
“In the age of AI, transformation isn’t just about technology, it’s about trust, talent and the ability to turn possibility into progress,” said Shveta Arora, head of Cognizant Consulting. “The true impact of AI is delivered when organizations build trust, invest in adaptable talent and embrace bold ideas. By empowering people and embedding AI responsibly, leaders can bridge the gap between potential and progress, ensuring lasting value for business and society.”
A Trusted Voice in AI
As a recognized leader in AI strategy and enterprise transformation, Cognizant brings credibility and clarity to this evolving space. It has been named a Leader and Star Performer by Everest Group in their 2024 AI and Generative AI Services PEAK Matrix Assessment, underscoring its strategic vision and execution.
With thought leadership in AI strategy and enterprise transformation published across thousands of U.S. outlets, its position as a trusted voice in shaping the future of AI has been reinforced. It has also been recognized across the industry for excellence in client service and innovation.
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Its platforms – Neuro, Flowsource and the Data and Intelligence Toolkit – are driving real-world impact across industries. Furthermore, a strategic collaboration with a leading enterprise-grade generative AI provider enables secure and scalable deployment of agentic AI in regulated settings, ensuring adherence to compliance and data governance standards
Bridging the AI Adoption Gap
When a leading property intelligence provider’s IT systems were hampering progressing turnaround times, the company turned to Cognizant’s Gen AI-powered Data as a Service and Neuro Business Process (BP) platform. Driven by AI insights and learning, Neuro BP centralized business processing. It automated data collection, case reviews and decision-making to align with the client’s goals. Powered by the platform, the organization saw a reduction in processing time and errors and an increase in productivity.
Stories like these are still the exception.
Despite enthusiasm and investment – global businesses are spending an average of $47.5 million on generative AI this year – many feel they’re moving too slowly. The barriers include talent shortages, infrastructure gaps and unclear governance. These challenges can be overcome by moving from experimentation to execution. With clarity, credibility and conviction, organizations can scale AI responsibly and effectively.
Accelerating Enterprise AI Transformations
Unlike traditional software, AI models are contextual computing engines. They don’t require every path to be spelled out in advance but instead interpret broad instructions and intent, and adapt based on the context they are given. Agentic AI systems lacking business-specific knowledge can lead to generic or unreliable outputs.
To address this, enterprises need systems that can deliver the right information and tools to AI models – enabling accurate decisions, alignment with human goals, compliance with policy frameworks and adaptability to real-time challenges. This is the role of context engineering, an emerging discipline focused on delivering the right context at the right time to agentic systems. Context refers to the sum of a company’s institutional knowledge, including its operating models, roles, goals, metrics, processes, policies and governance – essential ingredients for effective AI.
To guide clients through their AI journey, Cognizant developed the Strategic Enterprise Agentification Framework, an end-to-end model designed to unlock productivity, market expansion and new business models.
At its core is the Agent Development Lifecycle (ADLC), which guides the development of enterprise agents and agentic AI systems across six distinct stages. Designed to align with real-world enterprise dynamics, ADLC supports seamless integration with business applications. This unique approach embeds context engineering into ADLC, ensuring agents are tailored to support real-world enterprise dynamics.
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To help bridge vision and execution, businesses can utilize the Neuro AI Multi-Agent Accelerator. This no-code framework allows rapid deployment of custom multi-agent systems.
People Power the Progress
Technology alone doesn’t transform enterprises – people do. With an AI-driven Workforce Transformation (WFT), Cognizant helps organizations reskill employees, redesign roles and build AI fluency. Integrated with the Agentification Framework, WFT is designed to accelerate transformation and support long-term resilience.
From Possibility to Progress
From strategic frameworks to enterprise platforms to workforce readiness, Cognizant equips organizations with the confidence to harness AI responsibly and at scale. In the age of AI, it’s not just about transformation – it’s about leading with purpose.
The science section of our news blog STM Daily News provides readers with captivating and up-to-date information on the latest scientific discoveries, breakthroughs, and innovations across various fields. We offer engaging and accessible content, ensuring that readers with different levels of scientific knowledge can stay informed. Whether it’s exploring advancements in medicine, astronomy, technology, or environmental sciences, our science section strives to shed light on the intriguing world of scientific exploration and its profound impact on our daily lives. From thought-provoking articles to informative interviews with experts in the field, STM Daily News Science offers a harmonious blend of factual reporting, analysis, and exploration, making it a go-to source for science enthusiasts and curious minds alike. https://stmdailynews.com/category/science/
Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Sociology; Science and Technology Studies, Wesleyan University and Elizabeth Anne Wood, Professor of Sociology, Nassau Community College This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
