No, NASA (Still) Has Not Discovered Proof of Alien Life

It seems that every few months or so, breathless claims surface on the internet that NASA is about to make an Earth-shattering announcement about aliens … or UFOs … or killer asteroids … or some other sensational assertion. Or better yet, NASA is hiding these ‘facts’ from us.

The latest claims says that “NASA Is About to Announce the Discovery of Intelligent Alien Life,” and this one might be receiving more attention and credence than usual because the group making the claim is Anonymous, the notorious hacking and activist group.

However, before we get into their claim, for the record, this morning NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, tweeted, “Contrary to some reports, there’s no pending announcement from NASA regarding extraterrestrial life.”

Anonymous’ video has been viewed over a million times, and the video’s description claims, “Latest anonymous message in 2017 just arrived with a huge announcement about the Intelligent Alien Life. NASA says aliens are coming!”

The video is a rambling (over 12 minutes), rather incoherent collection of statements and quotes from various people and NASA websites. The main quote that is attributed to the alien life claim is from Zurbuchen, speaking at a House Science Committee hearing in April. The quote, taken a little out of context, is, “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.”

If you watch the House Science Committee hearing, Zurbuchen is talking about upcoming missions like the Mars 2020 rover and the Europa Clipper mission — both of which will look for sign of life and conditions suitable for life – as well as current missions like the Kepler telescope that has discovered and confirmed thousands of planets around other stars. Of course, Zurbuchen is talking about these missions in the most exciting way possible to make sure Congress is excited about these missions, too. But he certainly does not say that NASA has found alien life, or that they have evidence they will be revealing soon. He tweeted about that this morning, too.

Another quote in the video is a very old one from former NASA astronaut Dr. Brian O’Leary, who passed away in 2011. He was a planetary scientist who ended up leaving NASA in 1968 and never flew in space. I met O’Leary in the 1990’s and can confirm the statement on the Wikipedia page about him that he “increasingly explored unorthodox ideas.”

The video goes on to talk about the well-known discoveries of the Kepler mission, saying “Twenty-five years ago, we didn’t know that planets existed beyond our solar system. Today we have confirmed the existence of over 3,400 exoplanets that orbit other suns, and we continue to make new discoveries.”

It also discusses other well-publicized discoveries such as finding the key ingredients for life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, but offers no sources of facts when the Guy Fawkes look-alike says, “There are many who claim that unofficially, mankind has already made contact with aliens and not just little micro-organisms floating around inside a massive alien ocean, but advanced space-faring civilizations.”

All the claims in the video that “aliens are on the way” are nothing but speculation and the quotes from NASA officials and scientists are all in the public domain, easily found online, so there is nothing being “revealed’ here. I’ve talked to scientists from all around the world, and if NASA or any other space agency had found evidence of alien life, they’d be shouting it from the rooftops, not hiding it.