Anonymous recently claimed that NASA is about to announce the discovery of alien in the universe. The group's revelation was made via YouTube and went so viral that it forced NASA official to reveal the truth.
In the video, Anonymous quoted Robert Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, saying the space agency is on the verge of "making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history." The NASA official stated that during a hearing on House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in April. However, the activist group loosely used Zurbuchen statement. Zurbuchen said that to educate the House Science Committee on the latest research in a particular field of a study and not on finding aliens.
"Contrary to some reports, there's no pending announcement from NASA regarding extraterrestrial life," Robert Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said earlier this week.
Nonetheless, Zurbuchen statement does not rule out the chance of finding intelligent life-form outside our planet. Right now, institutes and astronomers around the globe are working hard to launch a giant space observatory and build many telescopes to improve the chances of finding alien life in the universe.
In 2018, NASA will launch the James Webb Space Telescope, which can observe chemical elements in far distances of the universe to locate life on other planets. The telescope will observe biosignatures--gases, water, and other chemical elements--in other solar systems to find life-supporting planets.
Aside from James Webb Space Telescope, scientists are also preparing for the establishment of three big, modern telescopes:
- The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is expected to be three times larger than any current telescope.
- The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will give 12 times sharper images than the Hubble Space Telescope.
- The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will have a mirror the size of half a soccer field, making it bigger than TMT and GMT.
"I think we're probably going to be able to detect life on another planet in the next decade or so," Christopher Impey, author of numerous popular science studies and astronomer at the University of Arizona, told Yahoo News. He added the discovery of Earth-like exoplanets in large numbers is giving hope to scientists that life-supporting planets will be discovered very soon. Exoplanets are planets that exist outside of our solar system.
Two weeks ago, NASA announced it had found ten Earth-like planets in our Milky Way Galaxy that could potentially support alien life. The discovery raised the possibility of finding life outside our planet. The newly discovered exoplanets are located in the so-called habitable zone around their stars, where the temperature is right for liquid water to exist. Water is to one of the indications that a planet can support life.
