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NASA Space Science

Sorry, But Anonymous Has No Evidence That NASA Has Found Alien Life (popsci.com) 166

From a Popular Science article: In a new video, the hacker group known as Anonymous claims that NASA has discovered alien life. But before you freak out, let's talk. Sadly, the group of activists and hacktivists doesn't seem to have found any new evidence to support their extraordinary claim. The video is mainly based on NASA quotes taken out of context, and what appear to be videos and information from conspiracy theory websites. The crux of the argument is based on something Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, said during a hearing in April. These sorts of hearings are organized to educate the House Science Committee on the latest research in a particular field of study. During this one, Zurbuchen said: "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." That's the quote Anonymous is pegging their video on. But if you watch his opening statement, he actually explains his reasoning just before he gets to that part. He mentions the Mars 2020 rover, which will look for signs of past life on the red planet. The Europa Clipper mission is slated to search for conditions suitable to life on Jupiter's ocean-filled moon. In a statement, Zurbuchen said, "While we're excited about the latest findings from NASA's Kepler space observatory, there's no pending announcement regarding extraterrestrial life. For years NASA has expressed interest in searching for signs of life beyond Earth. We have a number of science missions that are moving forward with the goal of seeking signs of past and present life on Mars and ocean worlds in the outer solar system. While we do not yet have answers, we will continue to work to address the fundamental question, 'are we alone?'"
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Sorry, But Anonymous Has No Evidence That NASA Has Found Alien Life

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  • by rijrunner ( 263757 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @02:44PM (#54693659)

    Anyone can claim to be part of it and then push any lie they want and the blame will fall on that group..

    • But who would want to?

      Claiming to be part of Anonymous is going to get you some unwanted attention from law enforcement authorities. Anonymous may get the blame for your bogus claims but you now are associated with all the illegal garbage they are assumed to have done.

      It's a two way street... The knife cuts both ways... Or any number of proverbs most would remember...

      • Some people just wish to be remembered or to seek attention. Whether it's for great achievements, psychotic murder, or just a constant cry for attention.

      • Claiming to be part of Anonymous is going to get you some unwanted attention from law enforcement authorities.

        That is why you do it anonymously.

    • by Zeio ( 325157 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @04:04PM (#54694315)

      This could be government psyops. Recent leaks have shows state sponsored attacks are capable of leaving false fingerprints behind. If state sponsored attackers were able to compromise anonymous, even briefly, they could release garbage like this to attack the organizations overall credibility. On top of that anonymous would then have to choose to ignore, claim they themselves were compromised or refute. Difficult position to be in. The other option for state level attackers is to compromise all key members in such that they are forced to veer off course to damage credibility behind held by threats against life and limb. I've always wondered if folks like Alex Jones were psyops. Put enough nuggets in to pique interest and remain somewhat plausible but then act crazed most of the time to further discredit. Its a situation where you could be revealing the actual truth through a channel like that and discredit it because of the delivery mechanism.

      Information these days is totally warped. How do you even know google/facebook/etc are even letting you see what everyone else is seeing? You are being served up your own version of reality based on preferences.

      Its going to get incredibly hard to follow the truth in the coming years. I already suspect most information is being cleansed and customized by the big boys and "underground" areas are riddled with enough moonbats to keep them from becoming trusted sources.

      The "resistance" needs a ton of discipline not present today to expose the engineering of information going on right now. Underground groups need to protect themselves from key-man issues and master password issues and implement dead-mans-switches (DMS) - sometimes the most damning information needs to be withheld and put into a DMS to allow the group to keep operating.

      Good luck out there.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        Stop watching TV, it is bad for people like you.

        • by KGIII ( 973947 )

          And you don't compromise Anonymous. You can just join 'em. I'm pretty sure half of 'em are FBI agents already.

          • by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @05:06PM (#54694689)
            Well thats ok, the other half are NSA agents.

            Both sides unknowingly investigating the pretended activities of the other, never getting any real evidence, so it just continues forever.
            • by KGIII ( 973947 )

              I would watch a short film based on that idea - and I generally only watch documentaries.

              • jeez you're old. Sounds like my grandfather when I was a kid. Documentaries, MASH, and Cooking shows.

                • by KGIII ( 973947 )

                  I am. I am not a grandparent, which is unfortunate. Presumably, that's because my kids haven't figured out how to make babies yet. They're grown adults but I'm fearful that they're stupid. I've tried bribery. I offered the first one to make me a grandfather a reasonable house and an SUV of their choice. They know damned well that I'll cover any/all expenses they ever have.

                  And they don't make me a grandfather...

                  I'm pretty sure they just don't know how. One's married and the other in a long-term relationship.

                  • Hell can I be your son? I'm in Vegas and only semi stupid. Learning how to terminate fiber today. But with bribes like that I'll pump you out a grand baby! But seriously maybe they don't want to being more people into this over populated hell hole of a world we now have. I know that's my one fear about having a child is them turning out like me because of all of the stupidity of the world. I'm a 30 year old cynical asshole. Been in the gutters and brought myself back. I don't want that for my child.

                    • by KGIII ( 973947 )

                      They are at a significant advantage. I sold my company ten years back and got a rather obscene amount of money for it. Put it this way, it had to have SEC filings. They don't actually have to worry about money but I'm kinda a prick. I'll give them enough money to survive - I won't give them enough so that they don't have to work. Even when I'm dead, they don't get it all - it is already structured to maintain itself and will pay them reasonable amounts, provide for charitable donations, and other such thing

                    • by KGIII ( 973947 )

                      A good portion of the desire to have a grandkid is *also* to be able to spoil it a bit and then send it home to its parents - with very, very noisy toys. I am going to get them a drum kit, dirt bike, stereo, and huge Marshal stacks to go with the electric guitars I buy them.

                      I confess, it's immature revenge. I fully admit my petty behavior. Those of us who are parents will understand.

                    • What is that supposed to even mean? but lets face it the world is a hell hole, and its caused by places like Vegas.

                    • by KGIII ( 973947 )

                      I suppose I'll do you a favor.

                      They didn't vomit in the vomitorium. Vomitorium just means an exit, they exited into the vomitorium which was like a foyer and no longer in the central room. Sometimes, this was directional - as in, you'd enter on one side of the building and exit on the other side. It's not entirely dissimilar to the idea of a outer space that people can spill over and into.

                      They didn't actually vomit in the vomitoriums, as a general rule.

                      Sheesh....

                      Also, if it matters to you, you should know th

                    • by KGIII ( 973947 )

                      There exists some small chance that the results would have been different, had you had the humility to ask without the idea that you'd need a threat. I do have a few bucks, and I will probably continue to have a few bucks because I don't randomly go around buying people stuff like a house.

                      I'd probably buy you lunch, but not a house. I'd certainly not bother to buy someone a house who tried to threaten me with something so trivial as their judgment of me. You can think me an ass, a jerk, and even Satan himse

            • Much like G.K. Chesterton's "The Man who was Thursday".

            • Old joke (because I'm bored with this thread already).

              Why do Bulgarian Secret Policemen go around in threes?

              One can read.
              One can write.
              - And one is there to keep an eye on those two suspicious intellectuals.

      • So to summarize, fake news.
      • I've always wondered if folks like Alex Jones were psyops.

        Yes, but I recently saw an article that said a judge wouldn't believe him and he lost his kids anyway.

        Don't work for the CIA if you want to have kids someday.

      • Anonymous does not need state sponsored assistance in spawning garbage.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Equally, anything attributed to Anonymous can be disavowed as the ultimate No True Scotsman.

  • We have to stay here...

    • Science says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

      Yet some Scientists say that an argument against there being alien life is that they have never come to visit us.

      • Yet, science has shown that moving objects have a different perspective on what the speed of light actually is. Everybody sees the same speed from their perspective, but the passage of time runs at varying rates for other objects that are moving in relation to the observer.

        Let that sink in....

      • From my physics classes (from way back when I was a physics major - before I hit Quantum Mechanics): Nothing prevents an object from travelling faster than the speed of light. It just can't start below light speed and accelerate beyond light speed. However, the equations do work - sort of - with speeds greater than the speed of light. "Sort of" being that it introduces an imaginary number (square root of negative one). This might mean it's impossible or it might mean something else entirely. We're not quite

        • Assuming that Special Relativity holds, FTL travel is time travel. If you can travel faster than light in two different reference frames, you can go backwards in time.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @02:54PM (#54693747)
    They may have discovered Hooloovoos by spectral analysis of exoplanets.
  • by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @02:57PM (#54693763)

    NASA isn't hiding any aliens from us. Discovering alien life would be the best thing that could happen for NASA. Nothing would boost their budget more, or get the public supporting them more.

    The last thing NASA would possibly want to do is hide the existence of ETs from us.

    • You would also disprove about 90% of Earths religions and given 0% of our elected officials are non-religious I think an amendment to the constitution regarding the further funding of space exploration would be the only bill with 100% bipartisan support before the announcement was even complete.

      • by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @03:09PM (#54693885)
        >> disprove about 90% of Earths religions

        Religions are already adapting so that such news would not conflict with their worldview. For example, here's the modified Catholic story:
        https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2017/02/23/catholicism-handle-discovery-extraterrestrial-life/

        >> 0% of our elected officials are non-religious

        Hmmm...better do some Googling before you claim an absolute like that.
        • by Anonymous Coward

          If life were found on another planet, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic World - 90% of the World's population (I think the GP meant that) - would totally freak out. Their mythology is based upon we humans being created here on Planet Earth in God's Image.

          Now, there's nothing I know of in any religious texts that says that their god created other planets and and other people, but it is assumed that we are It in the Universe.

          I mean really, those people are freaking out over our globalized World and the increasing s

          • by Anonymous Coward

            Now, there's nothing I know of in any religious texts that says that their god created other planets and and other people, but it is assumed that we are It in the Universe.

            LDS (Mormon) texts talks about this in a few places. One example is God and Enoch talking about it:

            "And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations;"

            Now you know of at least one.

            • Only the Mormons consider themselves a 'Judeo-Christian' religion. The rest of the religious world just, politely, doesn't raise the subject (I'm a heathen).

              • by KGIII ( 973947 )

                To be fair, I've seen you post about having read the article. That does, indeed, make you a heathen - and probably a heretic.

                • It's a fair cop: I read part of the Gwyneth Paltrow article yesterday, but it was about yonis, so...

                  • by KGIII ( 973947 )

                    I did not read it. I did consider clicking but an AC noted that there weren't any webm or animated gifs. So, I declined.

                    Also, you said "yoni."

                    Even Cowgirls Get The Blues? Yoni Yum?

                    (I confess, I actually also like the movie.)

          • by Anonymous Coward

            would totally freak out

            Naw. Look at the precedents:

            Scientists: It turns out the Earth is not the center of the Solar System.
            Religions: Oh, God must have done that on purpose.
            Scientists: Evidence suggests life evolved over billions of years.
            Religions: So, that's how God created life! What great evidence of his hand in creation.
            Scientists: We are starting to understand the brain. No evidence of a soul, though.
            Religions: This complex organ is just more evidence of God's impressive design.
            Scientists: We found aliens.
            Religion

            • by guruevi ( 827432 )

              You're forgetting how for ages, anyone proving that Earth was the center of the Universe simply got their heads removed - Galileo wasn't very popular. People (Christians too) are still blowing up things up today over evolution and procreation. Sure, some are easily adaptable in this day and age but the majority of religious people aren't so keen (look at Islam)

            • Scientists: We found aliens.

              Religion: God has been busy!

              I'm not a religious man (I'm not a religious woman either); however, I've got to say, nothing in any religious text I've ever read suggested that God couldn't have created other worlds and other sapient beings.

              If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why wouldn't he create other intelligent beings to entertain himself? It would explain why earth ISN'T the centre of everything, because we're not even his only project... heck, we might not even be his main project.

          • Considerably fewer than 90% of the people in the world are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Many of them are not particularly devout (in fact, I'd suspect that a good many people listed under those headings are not actual believers).

            Religious texts omit a lot of things, and people realize this. I don't know of any major one that claims that Earth is the only planet with intelligent life (if you know of one, please correct me). Religious science fiction writers like C.S. Lewis, R.A. Lafferty, and James Bl

          • The athiests aren't freaking out that life isn't forming in all these planets, moons, exo planets, whatever. If evolution is so likely, or whatever, there should be life all over the stinkin place.

            The athiests didn't freak out when Darwin's attack on genetics turned out to be false and mildly ridiculous either.

            People are just deciding how they want to live and then backing their world view into it.

            Live happy, I say.
        • I'm not him, and I'm not going to bother doing that research, but I can say that it's hard to get elected to public office in these United States unless you're a 'good Christian' or at least can fake it well.
          • As anonymous coward pointed out above, Trump isn't religious and got the top job.

            I remember seeing research a while back that listed different groups and how many people would consider voting for them. The lowest group of all was "atheist". Below "poor", below "black", below "muslim", below "ex-convict".

            The average American is less likely to vote for an atheist than any other demographic. I suspect that is because many Americans have the stereotype of the atheist like one of those Dawkins disciples who g

            • by nasch ( 598556 )

              The point is, he pretended well enough that people were willing to vote for him. He said he went to church, he said things like "God bless America", and so on. If he had regularly said things like "I don't believe in God", the election probably would have gone very differently.

              • The point is, he pretended well enough that people were willing to vote for him. He said he went to church, he said things like "God bless America", and so on. If he had regularly said things like "I don't believe in God", the election probably would have gone very differently.

                Quite possibly, although I don't think anyone was really convinced. This was a fairly unusual election though. Both main parties fielded unusually weak candidates that did not get the true backing of their party. Clinton's nomination was down mainly to the presence of super delegates and probably would have lost in a fair fight against Sanders. Trump's approval rating with republicans was in the 30% or lower range for most of the nomination process, he only got nominated because he ran a populist campai

              • I guess in summary what I'm saying is that Trump didn't get elected because he was religious. He got elected because he snuck through the nomination process, which is where he normally would have been filtered out.

      • by gnick ( 1211984 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @03:14PM (#54693931) Homepage

        You would also disprove about 90% of Earths religions...

        Established religions won't tolerate being disproved. The best you could hope for is encouraging them to re-interpret their holy writings to fit the new reality.

        ...0% of our elected officials are non-religious...

        I think that a lot of them are less religious than they let on. That's not to say that their religious facade won't impact their actions.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Using Christianity as an example, would much even need to change? Missionaries have long being heading out into the world to spread their dogma, which implies that those parts of the world and all the people who lived and died there before the missionaries arrived had no opportunity to be saved from God's wrath and eternal damnation, so why would aliens be any different?

          They already got past the earth being the centre of the universe, the only other major obstacle that I can see.

      • You would also disprove about 90% of Earths religions and given
        Actually it would not.
        First of all in most religions "human" simply stands for "god like" - "intelligent being" and not necessarily "looks like a human on earth" and secondly many religions have not the idea that mankind was made by a god or gods.
        There are basically only the Abrahamic religions where the idea that mankind is "made" by a god is a key feature.

        In the end, there is nothing to prove about religions anyway.
        Buddhists e.g. believe in r

      • by tsqr ( 808554 )

        You would also disprove about 90% of Earths religions

        Nah. The Christian religions would just cite John 10:16 ("And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.") and be about their business. And I'm sure the non-Christians would find a way to rationalize alien life as well. There's just too much money and power at stake to give up easily.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by invid ( 163714 )

        You would also disprove about 90% of Earths religions.

        It depends on the aliens. If we can talk to them and they say "Your God is BS, you should worship Flarg instead." I'm sure it would cause lots of confusion. Or they might clumsily try to get on our good side by lying. "Oh yeah, we know Jesus. Yep, he visited our world last year. We thought about killing him too, but we couldn't decide on a method. Nailing on a cross, we'll remember that the next time we see him."

      • They'll either claim that it's a bunch of lies created by Satan-loving 'scientists', or that the alien life itself is of Satan, inherently evil, and exists only to sway the Faithful; religious leaders will tell the Faithful to ignore it all and 'stay stong in their Faith, believe the Word of God, blah blah blah' and so on. You could have sentient, technologically advanced, interstellar aliens land on Earth in their starship, and they'd declare them False and Evil and Of Satan. You'd have religious nutjobs t
      • You would also disprove about 90% of Earths religions

        As if. They've survived dinosaurs, evolution, the Big Bang, and countless other discoveries that contradict them.

        • by guruevi ( 827432 )

          But it hasn't been without it's beheadings, torture, tar-and-feathering etc. It's only in the last few decades that religions have been more civil and then only in the western world.

      • They don't live like they're religious ... the politicians, that is.
    • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      The last thing NASA would possibly want to do is hide the existence of ETs from us.

      I read someplace that designing a spacecraft with goal to determine if there is life at [insert planet/moon here], then problem would be if none found then no follow up mission. i.e. Project Viking in 1970s goal was to find life on Mars. It found none and we never went back until 20 years later. Nowadays it is endless Mars mission but it seems nobody wants to have detecting life as a requirement (if none found, end of funding for future missions). But then there's more to detecting life than just a yes/no a

      • I read someplace that designing a spacecraft with goal to determine if there is life at [insert planet/moon here], then problem would be if none found then no follow up mission.

        Except there's a nearly infinite number of [insert planet/moon here]s.

        You might not get a follow-on to the same celestial object, but there's lots of celestial objects.

      • Project Viking in 1970s goal was to find life on Mars. It found none and we never went back until 20 years later. Nowadays it is endless Mars mission but it seems nobody wants to have detecting life as a requirement

        That's because NASA learned the hard way that it's difficult to distinguish between life and "funny soil chemistry" (FSC). Viking results are still heavily debated.

        To do it "right" probably requires devising progressively more-specific experiments based on early ones to distinguish between compe

    • There are people who take aliens and UFOlogy seriously. Hard evidence may not be easily produced, but YouTube has plenty of footage on the UFO topic, including astronaut testimony, a Dan Aykroyd documentary, a Bob Lazar documentary, claims by William Tompkins, and something called Sirius Disclosure. Altogether, it has the appearance of a cottage industry. Additionally, some of the mythology can be interesting.
  • by k6mfw ( 1182893 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @03:26PM (#54694017)
    I mean we need a new space alien look instead of the same retread from 20th century big eyes, small mouth, big head with slender body. We need diversity instead of same little green men. Also why are all space aliens naked? It seems anyone that travels interstellar distances at superluminal speeds would want a flight suit with cool patches.
    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      What? Trump isn't alien enough for you. He's got the weird hair, beady little eyes, Messiah complex you see in any Hollywood alien leader. The only thing he's missing is some funny costume, maybe like Rick Moranis in SpaceBalls, that would really complete the look.

      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Trump isn't alien enough for you[?] He's got the weird hair, beady little eyes, Messiah complex you see in any Hollywood alien leader. The only thing he's missing is some funny costume

        such as a frumpy suit, long red tie, and goofy MAGA cap?

        But you'd think an interstellar species would have a cure for A.D.D.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      That depends. If you are talking about alleged actual sightings, then most tend to resemble what you describe: "the Greys". But Hollywood aliens seem to have a lot of variety. Look at the 1953 War of the Worlds flick, 1958's "The Blob", or the 1979 "Alien" alien.

      As far as clothing, in Star Trek aliens usually have clothes. Even the Gorn had a metallic skirt-like thingy.

      It seems in general, Hollywood thinks aliens are scarier without clothes, as if it invokes more primitive fears. After all, the dancing ali

    • by c ( 8461 )

      It seems anyone that travels interstellar distances at superluminal speeds would want a flight suit with cool patches.

      The rumour I heard is that they started the trip wearing flight suits with cool patches, but nobody remembered to bring change for the space laundry machines.

    • Did you just say diversity?

      What if these little green men do the job just fine? Hiring tall grey girls just for the sake of diversity isn't going to get the job done any quicker y'know?
      And no don't link me your "stats" about how Reptilians are underpaid by as much as 20% compared to their little green counterparts, that was debunked eons ago.

    • by nasch ( 598556 )

      Or as Major John Sheppard said, "Is he supposed to be naked like that?"

  • Few politicians understand that science is something that we need to continually advance even if it there is no profit in it. This means you have to make them feel it's "worth it" somehow which leads to grand statements like,

    we are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented, discoveries in history.

    The only mystery here is how smart hackers can be so easily fooled by there own confirmation bias.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Senator, you should support science because if you get cancer and you haven't given us any money for research, we won't give a flying rat's ass about your ass. Oh, and yer kid will be working at McDonald's just before he gets replaced by a bot.

  • As per Ryan Sohmer's comic (http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20170605/), it is quite clear that the US government has no contact with aliens, wizards, or psychics.

    Because there is NO way that Donald "Covfefe" Trump could have kept that to himself. Similarly, Bin Laden was the author behind 911 and Obama had him killed.

  • I was looking forward to trying the alien's cuisine. I wonder once the announcement is made how long it'll take Virgin Galactic to do flights ;P
  • It pays to keep in mind that Anonymous also tacitly support Donald Trump.

    Recall last year when they said they could sabotage Mr Trump's election campaign any time they wanted, then didn't do it.

    That means either the blame for todays US Presidency rests squarely on the shoulders of Anonymous, or they are nothing more than saber rattlers and completely full of shit.

  • LIES!! Everything discovered on 4chan is 100% authentic and legitimate. The media is lying! Aliens are real!

    REEEEEEEEEEEEE!!
  • It's like concluding that trolls exist based on an offhand remark made by Norway's prime minister.
  • The truth is out there ! :)
  • Admittedly I didn't watch the entire video, but I've seen enough of it to know that Anonymous didn't set out to claim that NASA *currently has* evidence of the existence of alien life. They claimed NASA would soon reveal the evidence, based on the amount of resources poured into finding said evidence.
  • They'll say it's not proof of extraterrestrial life, even if they believed it is, just to keep people calm. Only last week, there was a report that astronomers were looking at a distant star and something passed in front of it and momentarily blocked their view of it. It wasn't "natural", because it came back passing the opposite way, which astral bodies can't do, and even changed speed.

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