Area 51 is located 120 miles (200 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas, near the small towns of Rachel and Hiko. The title "Area 51" seems to come from the designation the base had on Atomic Energy Commission maps, with this name sticking in the mind of the public but mostly unused by the military.

Originally used as a testing site for the U-2 spy plane, the base would go on to be used for the testing of other well-known aircraft such as the Archangel-12, the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter.

The testing of new and secretive military aircraft is likely responsible for much of the connection between Area 51 and UFOs, especially when considering that the term "UFO" doesn't directly refer to alien spacecraft, despite how it is often perceived in pop culture.

"It's true that strange lights and aircraft can sometimes be spotted in the area, so it's an obvious leap to UFOs, but of course, new aircraft might look identical," Radford explained. "The basic, flawed premise behind the Area 51 mythology can be boiled down to this: The government won't reveal what's going on there, so it must be something ultra-super-amazingly secret."

What we call Area 51, he added, is only one of many military bases, national laboratories and government scientific research centers across the country that deal with classified  — even Top Secret  — information, and where workers and visitors need security clearances.

"There's no reason to think that anything UFO-related is going on," Radford said. Aside from the sightings of strange craft, Area 51 mythology was enforced in 1989 when a man named Robert Lazar claimed that he worked on extraterrestrial technology inside the base.

Lazar told Las Vegas television reporter George Knapp that he had viewed autopsy photographs of aliens inside Area 51 and that the US government used the facility to examine recovered alien spacecraft. Lazar himself was discredited, but his claims resulted in numerous government conspiracy theories, most of which involve extraterrestrial life.

"A lot of the legend has been fueled by hoaxers like Robert Lazar, who appeared in the 1980s telling a story to TV stations that he worked there and saw alien bodies and crashed flying saucers first-hand," Radford recalled. "It got a lot of attention, but it was later revealed that he fabricated not only his employment at Nellis [Air Force Base in southern Nevada] but indeed his entire background. Almost nothing of what he said was true."
Lazar had set the ball rolling, however. No matter how fallacious the rumors of alien tech and Area 51 were, the connection was cemented into the public consciousness and pop culture.