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Subscribe to RSSRumors and speculation are swirling on the Internet about the subject of a news conference to be carried live at 2 p.m. ET Thursday on NASA TV "to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."
"Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe," NASA explains in its advisory. And that's about as much as the space agency is saying about the discovery right now. However, the advisory includes a list of the speakers for the briefing. That's what led to the online guessing game.
Among those speakers is Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey who says she's concentrating on "arsenic biogeochemistry, cyanobacteria, novel uses for as yet undescribed metalloenzymes and of course, arsenic-based life!"
Other speakers include NASA astrobiologist Pamela Conrad, who specializes in planetary habitability assessment; Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, who studies the chemical foundations of biology; and Arizona State University's James Elser, who focuses on life in extreme environments.
Blogger Jason Kottke put all those pieces together and speculated that Thursday's announcement would be about the discovery of life on Saturn's moon Titan. But that suggestion was shot down as false in a Twitter post from The Atlantic Monthly's senior editor and science blogger Alexis Madrigal.
Will the secret survive until Thursday? Back in August, NASA let information slip out an hour before the embargo lifted on a report in the journal Science about the discovery of two giant planets in constantly changing orbits. In that instance, NASA made its news release and other information about the discovery publicly available. Going even further back, to 1996, there's the famous case of the Mars meteorite study that leaked out in advance of publication in Science.
What do you think has been found? Feel free to weigh in with your comment, but please respect any information known to be under embargo.
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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It has been leaked. Have you heard of the 1947 flying saucer crash at Roswell where the craft and alien bodies were recovered by the military? It is and has been a large gov't cover-up where lots of military and civilians have come forward, leaking the truth about it happening. Read, "Witness at Roswell" and "Crash at Corona."
What difference does it make if the "BIG" announcement is that the building blocks for life have been found elsewhere or that they have actually found life. When it is all said and done we will destroy that life and call ourselves the greatest nation in the world... correction in the Universe cause we killed what we did not like or did not understand!!
They will finally admit that our solar system has been visited by alien life forms for thousands of years......
they are here and have been for a long long time.........and they have an agenda
If it is to announce that several new extremeophiles found on Earth that could exist on the chemical profiles of rocks on the Moon, Mars or other places in our Solar System, is it really news?
I guess it could be news, if the proper experiments and tests have proven that this newly discovered biology can exist on our best guesstimate of what they think composes extraterrestrial soil.
Or it could go beyond our Solar System...it could be that they have matched the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet to what as extremeophile would love to eat. That would be news, I guess.
We still are refining our ideas about how the formation, geology, environment and life evolved on Earth.
I would always welcome firm, hard science that gets us closer as a species to the correct answers about our Earth and the Universe of which we are just the tiniest bits. We must applaud these scientists that strive to find the "How" for us. The "Why" questions are the ones to which we will never know the answers.
Hey! I just found a Coke can on my desk! Do you think there could be other Coke cans out there?
But wouldn't that mean there would have to be a "trinity", such as Pepsi ( the son) and Diet Sprite ( the holy ghost)?
You got to love the people who stick their head in the sand and then call the ones who keep an open mind about the unknown - fruitcakes, completely ignoring ANY evidence whatsoever that is contrary to their belief system or world view. What about the evidence from pilots who, by the hundreds have seen UFOs exhibiting behavior that they know is not from craft manufactured here on earth? (And don't give me the bull about top-secret this and that when some of the craft are the size of aircraft carriers.) These seasoned professionals all fruitcakes too? Sure there's some wingnuts out there - but that doesn't mean everyone who believes is - and that also doesn't mean just based on your limited evaluation of those wingnuts that there isn't some modicum of truth to what's being proposed here about ETs.
I also grow weary of the idea that if ETs had visited wouldn't they land on the Whitehouse lawn and shake hands with the president, wouldn't we know about their arrival, etc.etc. It's similar to wondering why we haven't started diplomatic relationships with pill bugs. If ETs have, in fact, visited earth by definition they must be hundreds if not thousands of years ahead of us just to travel here - whether that's across conventional or interdimensional space. Understanding what a culture like that must be like using human-based analogies is a stab in the dark, at best.
You gotta believe P.T. Barnum was right when people will take, what boils down to, "lights in the sky" as proof of super intelligent beings from outer space. Then to defend their lack of any tangible proof they will come up with the idea that all the governments of the world are conspiring to hide ET. A reasonable question would be “Ok, they are visiting our planet, why haven’t they contacted us?” The “Believer’s” answer only further denies reason, “Who knows! We can’t begin to understand their culture or thinking process.” And so the debate continues, reasonable questions met with unsupported beliefs that rival those of any religion.
They found life in the most unthinkable and hostile enviroment, Sara Palin's brain.
Really!? Wow! I didn't know oxygen can penetrate that level of density.
I'm betting NASA has discovered that dinosaurs and early humans are coexisting on Venus thus proving the "New earth creationist theory" while simultaneously refuting the notion that there is intelligent life on earth.
h Grape Minkoff
Right. This is not news. Real news is about how Clinton fingered the staff, gays have the right to be in the military or how the super rich need their tax cuts and unemployment insurence is making people lazy.
Lights in the sky? Who said anything about lights in the sky? Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can make that mistake - and does. But we're talking about a whole different animal when a pilot reports huge, brilliantly-lit craft, exhibiting right-angle turns at supersonic speeds buzzing around their aircraft.
"...brilliantly-lit craft..." again with the lights in the sky. Yeah the pilot saw it but I'll bet you the local radar didn’t. Supersonic speeds? Bet the local doppler radar didn't see it either. If you tell me it was out over the ocean beyond radar coverage then my answer is "How convenient."
My problem with the cult of ET is two fold.
1) No tangible proof. ET is only ever seen as a UFO in the sky, never on the ground where tracks or some kind of physical evidence could be left. If ET has been here for eons of time as Fruitcake said then where are the artifacts; alien remains, crashed ships, builds, trash, anything that shows someone other than humans lived here.
2) Logical hopscotch. Any “UFO” that aviation experts, government experts or scientist can’t explain is attributed by the Believer to ET. What is the logical progression from “I don’t know what that was” to “It must be ET”. Why not say “I don’t know what that was” and respond with “It must be some phenomena that we haven’t discovered yet.” One response is just as valid as the other but the second at least opens a path for investigation. The first leads to questions of ET’s purpose and intent but when these go unanswered and doubt is cast upon the ET hypothesis the rabid believer say “They are so alien that it’s impossible to know their purpose.” Thus cutting off any further reasonable discussion and elevating ET to an idea based on faith and not reason.
Someone tell this sites webmaster that a majority of browsers don't support html5 yet.
This site is a mess in Firefox 3!
You should get a serious browser. upgrade to i.e. 8 ;p
These guys are just begging to get probed.Seriously, any skeptics of the U.F.O phenomena can go to a place known to be infested with them and see them for themselves,but since they don't believe them to be real,why would they go.They might have to purchase corrective lenses and stay up past their bedtimes.But the world needs ditch diggers too.
Ok, I'll bite. Where is this place?