Obviously the dude was invested in alien lifeforms before Blink-182's breakout album, Enema of the State, but we didn't truly learn of Tom DeLonge's space craze until hearing "Aliens Exist" in 1999. The lyrics outline an abduction, the guitarist singing, "I am still the skeptic, yes you know me / Been best friends and will be till we die / I got an injection / Of fear from the abduction / My best friend thinks I'm just telling lies." Was this inspired by real events? Is the truth really out there? We may never know.

After the success of Enema and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, Tom found himself delving deeper into the world of government secrecy, alien existence and UFOs. In this rare clip (we're estimating it's from 2002), DeLonge opens up about some of the research he's begun participating in. "I have a friend that's been working to out the secrecy of UFOs for like 10 years," Tom started. "He spent 10 years filming over 500 top-secret witnesses that work for the government."

When Blink-182 first announced their hiatus in 2004, fans around the world were left with the burning question: What would they do next? For Mark and Travis, it meant starting a new band, +44, together. For Tom, it meant launching Angels & Airwaves as a musical group but also a conceptual project, due in large to the fact that he wasn't around for much of 2004. The reason? Conspiracy theorists say the singer was abducted. 

Cracked.com jokes:

"The reason Tom DeLonge made no statements and no public appearances in the 10 months following the breakup of his band was because he wasn't on Earth to make them. You see, this is when the Wardens of the Stellarverse snatched him right out of California and tossed him into space like Lance Guest in The Last Starfighter. Much like Mr. Guest's righteous video game skills in that classic film, DeLonge's years of UFO proselytizing had finally gotten the attention of an extraterrestrial empire. What the rest of the world mistook for rock star big-headedness was actually the beginning of one man's journey beyond the cosmos."

I mean, hello, the band is called Angels & Airwaves! Their aesthetic is spacey to the Nth power. Their first album, We Don't Need to Whisper, featured extraterrestrial artwork. And singles like "The Adventure" were conceptual documents of life on another planet. 

DeLonge took this otherworldly obsession to new heights by launching his own publication dedicated to the subject, Strange Times. It's not as popular as one would hope, but definitely sheds light on just how seriously Tom takes this stuff. 

In 2011, nearing the height of Angels & Airwaves' career, Tom and crew released LOVE, a music film. In it, an astronaut goes on a journey alone, eventually losing contact with Earth and dying up there. Heavy stuff.

The publication learned of DeLonge's obsession and decided to grill him. Choice quote from Tom:

"A lot of researchers tend to dive into one area of it, pretty hardcore, you know? ‘Hey, I’m going to write a book about Roswell.’ Or someone else comes in and says, ‘I’m going to write a book just about Majestic-12 documents.' I’m the kind of guy that...I’m pretty broad about all the subjects. I’ve gone deep on a lot of them. I’ve kind of surpassed the icing on the cake, and now I’m kind of digging down into the main ingredients of the cake."

You write a few records and songs about space, you make a movie...what's left? A children's book, of course! Two years ago DeLonge released The Lonely Astronaut on Christmas Eve. You can probably gather what it's about based on the title.

The reason Tom's love of space has made headlines recently is because of his tell-all interview with Paper Magazine from earlier this year. In it, DeLonge is candid, expressing his belief in alien existence as if it was a religion. It ends where a lot of his interviews begin: What would you say to one of these lifeforms? "I don't know what I would ask them. I'd ask them, 'How did it all start?' I bet you they wouldn't even know."