Calm Down: NASA Hasnt Found any Aliens.
You may have heard in your wanderings through the blogosphere and in the internet today that NASA will be holding a press conference on December 2nd in which they will make an announcement regarding information the search for extraterrestrial life. And that this announcement involves astrobiology, the study of life outside what we know about here on Earth. While true, it is nothing to get worked up about.
Speculation abounds that this is, the big one, and that an announcement will be made that extraterrestrial life has been discovered. You can find this speculation at Kottke.org, io9, Gawker, and a lot of other places.
To be clear, there is almost no chance that the press release will be announcing little green men or little brown bacteria anywhere. Follow along for the long explanation below the fold.
Heres what the press release is titled: NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery: Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2. All this means is that Science Journal will be publishing some results related to astrobiology that are under embargo until that time. The embargo system is a basically a way of allowing journalists to see scientific results and get interviews and do research on an article before its published, but only if they promise to publish their information after the original publication does so. It makes sense, and it works most of the time to the benefit of almost everyone.
NASA regularly like every day announces upcoming press conferences and releases, and embargoed press releases float around to science writers like those of us here at Universe Today. This in itself is nothing out of the ordinary, and anyone with an email address can sign up to have these announcements delivered to their inbox or view them on NASAs website. These emails are meant mainly to notify members of the press that there is something coming up worthy of being a phone-in listener of, the details of which require you to have press credentials.
I still say, mind you the highly competitive nature of academia when it comes to the outskirts of our solar system sphericity (a billion light years). The feeling of impunity and end up leading the motivations for fraud: if others create violent metaphors, like the explosion of a star of plasma (massive they say they have reached the end of life). Or the merger of two stars (plasmas of neutron - stars particularly thick), or two black holes (and their overwhelming power) and get along, why not plagiarize about UFOs. Speculation abounds that this is a "major" and that an announcement will be made that extraterrestrial life was discovered by NASA.
Do you agree?
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