NASA Is Not About To Announce Discovery Of Aliens, So Don’t Be Too Excited

The American space agency, NASA, has no sensational announcement to make about the discovery of alien life, contrary to a report that it was poised to do so. A spokesperson from the agency has said that it is not announcing anything about the detection of extraterrestrial life.

According to CNET, the hacking group Anonymous Global had posted a video on YouTube last week. The contents of the video suggested that the U.S. space agency was going to make a huge announcement about the discovery of life beyond Earth, thereby exciting millions of people. However, it seems that was akin to a hoax as Anonymous Global had taken the meaning of another NASA announcement out of context and made the video based on that.

During April this year, NASA science chief Thomas Zurbuchen had given a testimony during a hearing of the House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology. The chief had laid out the advances the space agency had been making in the search for life in the universe during a segment in the hearing called "Advances in the Search for Life." During the course of the segment, Zurbuchen talked about the thousands of exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope. He also mentioned points about the recent detection of hydrogen in the geysers blasting from Enceladus’ south pole as well as the likely discovery of water vapor plumes being emanated from Jupiter’s moon Europa.

"Taking into account all of the different activities and missions that are specifically searching for evidence of alien life, we are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history," Zurbuchen had added during the hearing. The second part of the sentence was misconstrued and highlighted by Anonymous Global to mean something else.

To clear the confusion and stop the hoax from spreading further, via the viral video, Zurbuchen recently took to Twitter. "Contrary to some reports, there is no pending announcement from NASA regarding extraterrestrial life," he tweeted. "Are we alone in the universe? While we do not know yet, we have missions moving forward that may help answer that fundamental question."