If you wondered if “Arrival” gave a realistic look at aliens and human meeting, a YouTuber with the name Anonymous Global says you’re about to find out: A video uploaded last week claims NASA is about to announce it has made contact with aliens.
Too bad NASA has no evidence of alien life.
The 12-minute video rests almost entirely on testimony by NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen before the House Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
“We are on the verge of one of the most profound discoveries, ever. And as we know from experience, NASA’s scientific discoveries of today continually drive impactful research for tomorrow that goes far beyond the initial observations,” Zurbuchen said at the April 26 hearing, entitled “Advances in the Search for Life.”
The masked person in the video takes Zurbuchen’s words as proof that an announcement from NASA about alien life is imminent.
What the video — which also includes references to several outlandish alien conspiracy theories — doesn’t mention is that Zurbuchen shot down the idea that the agency has found proof of life in that same testimony.
“While we haven’t found definitive signs of life elsewhere just yet, our search is making remarkable progress and astrobiology is a focus of a growing number of NASA missions,” he said.
A NASA spokesperson directly shot down the video’s claims in a statement to the Washington Post: “While we’re excited about the latest findings from NASA’s Kepler space observatory, there’s no pending announcement regarding Extra-Terrestrial life.”
The Washington Post also points out that though the YouTuber’s username references Anonymous, the collective “is not an organization of hackers or anything else, but rather ‘a shape-shifting subculture’ of anti-establishment Internet users.”
The paper continues, “It’s an open-access brand, essentially, and anyone can claim allegiance to it.”
That includes a random masked YouTube user whose monetized conspiracy video has racked up more than a million views.