Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth: THE MOON
It was on this second purported trip into space that Adamski was shown — on a viewing screen — the surface of our Moon. His descriptions have given rise to ridicule, yet some are intriguing: I was amazed to see how completely wrong we are in our ideas about this, our nearest neighbour. Many of the craters are actually large valleys surrounded with rugged mountains, created by some past terrific upheaval within the body of the Moon . . .
True, some of the craters had been formed by meteorites hitting the Moon’s surface, but in every such case, these craters showed definite funnel bottoms. And as I studied the magnified surface of the Moon upon the screen before us, I noticed deep ruts through the ground and in some of the imbedded rock, which could have been made in no other way than by a heavy run-off of water in times past. In some of these places there was still a very small growth of vegetation perceptible. Part of the surface looked fine and powdery, while other portions appeared to consist of larger particles similar to coarse sand or fine gravel . . .
With the obvious exception of the ‘very small growth of vegetation’, all these descriptions were confirmed years later. Prior to unmanned landings on the Moon, astronomers argued about its surface structure. Dr Thomas Gold of the Greenwich Royal Observatory, for example, stated in 1955 that the lunar maria (‘seas’) were covered with a layer of dust so thick that anyone attempting to land in one might be swallowed up.
Neil Armstrong, speaking from first-hand (or first-foot) experience, dispelled those speculations as he stepped down from Apollo XI’s lunar excursion module on that memorable 20 July 1969. ‘The surface is fine and powdery,’ he reported. Adamski’s most ardent detractors have to be impressed by the identical descriptions in each case; however, his description of ‘a small animal . . . four- legged and furry’ that he saw on the lunar surface through the viewing screen has not been confirmed!
Adamski’s perhaps most outlandish claim was made relative to his third claimed flight into space, on 23 August 1954, when he was again shown the Moon on a viewing screen. On this occasion he was shown views of the other side, supposedly depicting a temperate section around the equator, with snow- capped mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and even a ‘fair-sized city’ where, he was informed, human beings could live comfortably, given sufficient depressurization.
In defence of this claim, Desmond Leslie pointed out that several photographs taken by the Apollo VIII crew show pronounced greenish hues on the lunar surface, giving the impression that one is looking at high-altitude forests. One picture shows what looks like a beautiful blue lake. If the best cameras on Earth recorded the Moon in this way, Leslie argued, then Adamski can be forgiven for falling victim to an ‘optical illusion’. He also points out that Adamski had poor sight (he suffered from a cataract), but hated to admit it and never carried his glasses around with him.
The poor eyesight may explain some inconsistencies in his descriptions, but it hardly explains the fact that he claimed to have been told by his hosts about the forests, lakes and rivers, and so on. Adamski reported that during a trip to Holland in May 1959, he was listening in his hotel room to a BBC Radio programme — The News of Europe — when he was surprised to hear a report by a Russian scientist stating that the Moon was not composed of volcanic dust, but rather of granite formations similar to Earth.
Furthermore, many green spots that looked like vegetation had been observed on the other side of the Moon. The greenish hues in some of the Apollo VIII photographs are remarkable. I have a superb exhibition print of the Schmidt crater. There is no denying the impression of possible ‘moss-type’ vegetation conveyed by the dark-green colour surrounding the crater, while the crater itself is a mixture of white, fawn and pinkish-coloured areas (see colour plates). Even astronomer Patrick Moore credited the possibility of vegetation on the lunar surface. ‘On the whole moon there is no living thing,’ he stated, ‘apart perhaps from a few scattered patches of lichens or moss-type vegetation on the floors of some of the craters.’
John McLeaish of NASA informed me that the greenish tint is due to a slight underexposure of the Ektachrome (S0-368) film: Color films tend to produce a color when viewing a slightly underexposed neutral subject . . . In general the far side of the moon is topographically higher than the side we view from earth. A major exception is the crater Tsiolkovsky and its mare. It is the darkest location, densitometrically on the moon (greenish in some photos) and it is believed to be the lowest topographic point on the moon by many scientists.
While it is correct that improperly exposed film can produce false colour, the extent depicted in some Apollo VIII photos seems extreme, and my photograph of the Schmidt crater, for example, has been perfectly exposed.
A few weeks after hearing from McLeaish, I received an unsolicited letter from Paul D. Lowman Jr. of NASA’s Planetology Branch: Your interesting letter on the apparent green color of the lunar surface has been supplied to me . . . I doubt if the green color is authentic. I base this opinion primarily on the eye-witness accounts given by the flight crews. For example, Bill Anders (Apollo 8) was emphatic that there was essentially no color on the lunar surface. Other crews have modified this, saying that it appears a brownish color. However, none have reported any green . . .
I asked General Thomas Stafford what colours, if any, he had seen while orbiting the Moon. He replied that in the early morning the mountain peaks showed a reddish glow as the sun came up; later, the surface assumed a light tan colour, changing to a dazzling white at noon. He reports never seeing green colours, and believes the Apollo photos showing such colours are caused by photographic processing effects.
Fred Steckling, a staunch supporter of Adamski who claimed to have had several meetings with the ‘space people‘, argued that the areas on the Moon which Adamski described as being inhabited were in fact protected by giant invisible domes created by ‘magnetic rays’ which effectively maintained the air pressure at 7.5 pounds per square inch, thus shielding the occupants from the vicissitudes of the lunar environment (temperatures range from 230 degrees Fahrenheit at noon on the equator to -290 degrees Fahrenheit at night; the atmosphere is practically nonexistent, and the gravity is one-sixth that of Earth’s).
The French researcher Rene Fouéré earlier proposed a similar hypothesis to account for Adamski’s description of rivers, lakes and forests. If the extraterrestrial colonists on the Moon were technologically superior to us, he argued, might they have been able to produce and contain an artificial atmosphere — ‘a giant atmospheric bubble, within which lakes could be created, rivers made to flow, and snow made to fall . . .’?
Fouéré proposes another interesting hypothesis to account for Adamski’s description; a hypothesis to which I shall return later in this chapter. Pointing out that the images of the Moon were projected on to a screen, Fouéré goes on to speculate that these might have been faked.
If Adamski really did meet extraterrestrials, one might have thought the latter had deliberately shown him a false picture so that our men of science, reading Adamski’s books later, might be convinced of the author’s intellectual folly and dishonesty and, at the same time, of the nonexistence of extraterrestrial craft.
After all, the extraterrestrials, if they exist, may perhaps not be so keen that we should believe in their existence . . . It is possible that they are out not to draw attention to themselves and that, if they had indeed had dealings with Adamski, they might have been able to condition him psychically in such a manner that, once out of their hands, he would go off and spread incredible fables around the world.