We recently received these interesting photos. We believe that the photos are fakes - copies from photos available elsewhere on the net and doctored up in Photoshop or some other image program.

At left are the pictures we received, along with links to what we consider are the originals.

It seems like the angle was reversed on the photo of the jeep and blue sky was exchanged for the poles in the tripod picture. Otherwise, the light, shadows and details seem to be the exact same.

Ok, here is my experience... About 4 years ago, me and a bunch of buddies from University (University is like College in the US) went to Las Vegas for 3 weeks on our Summer off. We decided not to spend all three weeks in Vegas and wanted to go to the legendary Area 51.

Well, we weren't too familiar with the terrain so we bought the best map (by our standards) that we could find. The map was topographic and didn't show any sign of a base (which was expected). Anyway, we started to hike towards the boundary of the area (after a bumpy car ride). We were politely greeted by two well mannered security officers, and were told that we were in a government area and he suggested we leave as soon as we could. So, we stayed for the night (in Andy's $2000 new tent) and in the morning we set off inwards, despite the officers suggestion. We heard of the signs that told us that the use of lethal force was authorized so we avoided them so as to plead ignorance to the officers when we were stopped (That was Jeff's idea. Smart Eh!).

We continued [hiking] and then we saw a tripod thingy. So, of course, Jeff wanted to see what it was. As we approached it we saw that it had three satellite dishes and a white sphere (the sphere is more than likely a 360 degree camera). At the base there is a red box shaped thing that says CAUTION: HIGH VOLTAGE: KEEP AWAY and on every part of the equipment it says GOVERNMENT PROPERTY: TAMPERING WITH GOVERNMENT PROPERTY IS PUNISHABLE BY UP TO $150 000 FINE AND 20 YEARS IMPRISONMENT. That alone was enough to tell us to stay the hell away.

About 2 minutes later, our trip came to an end when two cream colored jeeps pulled up, [security] put us all face down in the dirt and cuffed us. He asked us what we were doing in the area and told us that lethal force was authorized, but since we did not see the signs we did not know. Tehe! We were all fined $1500 dollars each and were held for about 12 hours so that they could tell us to stay away from the area. I have the restraining notice hanging on my wall in my room.

After some e-mail back and forth, the author couldn't reproduce the restraining order (against the law he said) but he was able to scan these images.

We believe that the photos are clever copies from the ones on Area51Web.What do you think?

Tell us here or via e-mail to comment_now@yahoo.com