Are there aliens? And if so, why don't we know about them?

No one knows the true answer to these questions, but many speculate the answers might have something to do with Area 51.

Area 51 is a highly known and widely debated Air Force Base located in Nevada, about 80 miles outside of Las Vegas. Its official purpose is to test military aircraft technology; however, it is rumored to contain the remains of alien spacecrafts that have crashed as well as communication with extraterrestrials, according to Time. This is due to all of the supposed UFO sightings surrounding the area. The government claims that the information from the base is classified for national security purposes, which only helps confirm in the minds of many that their suspicions are correct.

But how did all of these ideas start?

While there have been many possible UFO sightings, the most compelling and widely talked about is the Roswell incident of 1947. Sometime in early July of that year, an unknown object crashed in a ranch outside of Roswell, N.M., according to the Huffington Post. The owner of the ranch, W.W. Brazel, collected some of the debris, took it to the local sheriff, George Wilcox, who eventually notified the FBI.

From there, Maj. Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer for one of the local Air Force bases, was brought to inspect the crash site. On July 8, the Roswell Daily Record printed an article stating that the Roswell Army Air Field had captured a flying saucer. The next day, a second article was run stating that a mistake was made and the crash material was from a weather balloon, according to the Huffington Post.

Since 1947, there have been many investigations and reports published by both the military and civilians to find out what really happened in Roswell. After the initial article was published, both Marcel and Brazel rescinded their claims that the crash site contained a flying saucer and possible alien bodies, but in recent years they have both again claimed that they believed that these original statements were true.

As strange as this all may sound, there is also another conspiracy theory that suggests Area 51 is being used to study time travel and teleportation technology, although this theory is not nearly as popular as the theory on extraterrestrial communication and cover-ups.

These theories, to me, may hold some water due to the uncertainty revolving around the existence of extraterrestrials, although I am not entirely convinced. However, we will never really know the answer to these questions, so unfortunately what Area 51 contains and what really happened in the Roswell incident will probably remain a mystery.