The most difficult part of the discovery of an extraterrestrial life can announce it. Here’s how NASA can interrupt the news.

• Alien life has not yet been confirmed through science or UFO study (or UAP).

• NASA’s biggest challenge may be to explain any alien discovery to the public.

NASA does not declare the existence of an extraterrestrial life.

James Web Space Telescope has found a possible sign for it.

On Wednesday, a reviewed study reported new observations of an ocean-covered planet called K2-18 B, about 120 light-years from Earth. Web has found an abundance of molecule that is known to come only from living organisms such as algae.

The discovery is intriguing, but it is not a smoking gun for extraterrestrial life. Many additional studies are needed to exclude the non -biological sources of this signal.

If scientists ever violate news about alien life, the world may have problems with understanding.

Just look at the last few years of the UFO craze – or more recently a mania for “unidentified abnormal phenomena” or UAP. (This is the government term for the mysteries most people call UFO.)

Do you remember the “Chinese spy balloon” that the Pentagon removed in 2023?

Suddenly, the US seemed to notice mysterious flying “objects” everywhere, and the American fighters fired three more into the sky over Alaska, Canada and Lake Huron. Even Elon Musk was weighed with an alien joke.

Then last year there were drones. Starting in New Jersey, UAP night observations are spread across the east coast and then the whole country, which prompted wild speculation and more than 5,000 tips to the FBI.

Observers and enthusiasts also expressed their feelings for the aliens to the NASA’s independent UAP survey team, which he concluded in 2023 that there was no evidence that UAP was of extraterrestrial origin.

During their survey, the team was confronted with “nasty and hostile” online harassment, according to David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation and chairman of the team.

The harassment and threats were so bad, staff said that they initially refused to share the name of NASA’s best UAP employee.

These breathless rumors and hostile messages are just a peek at what NASA scientists and leaders can face if they ever find real evidence of life beyond Earth.

“You cannot overwork how important this discovery would be. How will we confirm this and declare it responsibly, I think it is a really important question,” said Lori Glaz, who heads the NASA Planetary Science Department at the time, at the Business Insider at the US Geophysical Union meeting in 2022.

“The biggest challenge is to try to maintain this communication evenly keel, right? With excitement, and yet to understand that we have to set the expectations that we need to follow the scientific process.”

How can NASA scientists explain all alien findings – gradually

Perhaps James Weba’s space telescope finds a Telltale molecule in the atmosphere of a far -off planet similar to Earth. Perhaps samples from Mars from perseverance Rover reaches the Earth after a decade, and scientists find fossils of ancient germs inside them.

Many astrobiologists (exactly what sounds – people who study the idea of ​​biology beyond Earth) believe that evidence of extraterrestrial life can appear soon.

However, it is unlikely that any evidence will be completely, irrefutable, apparently aliens. Scientists probably will not agree and will not be 100% confident. This can be difficult to explain to the public.

“It will be very, very difficult to make the scientific community, in my opinion, to agree – unless we really see something move around and wave us, which is unlikely,” Glas told BI.

Therefore, NASA has tried to develop a procedure for evaluating and sharing such a monumental, sensitive discovery. The conversation continues, Glas said, but in 2021 the agency published a framework as a starting point. This can help scientists, journalists and NASA itself explain science.

It is called the “Trust of Life Discovery” scale (cold), an assessment of scientific confidence in any potential detection of extraterrestrial life on a scale of one to seven. Possible detection can be climbed to higher levels of confidence as the evidence is being built.

For example, the level finding the first may be the detection of a molecule that can be related to life in the sample of Mars’s perseverance. The evidence will end at level two after scientists confirm that there is no pollution in the sample or tools that could affect their discoveries. By excluding non-biological sources of the molecule or confirming that it comes from a lifelong environment, scientists can move it further to scale.

Other scientific teams will need to measure the samples themselves from Mars, with different methods, and confirm the initial finding until the completion of level six.

According to NASA, in this example of the Mars molecule, additional evidence from a different part of the Red Planet may be needed to bring it to level seven – where it is probably life.

Any new level of trust can mean a new public message.

The discovery of extraterrestrial life is likely to be a slow accumulation, not an explosive moment of Eureka.

“So far, we have created the public to think that there are only two options: it is a life or not a life,” said Mary Vicek, the head of NASA’s astrobiology program when the new scale was published. “We need a better way to share the excitement of our discoveries and to demonstrate how each discovery builds on the next one so that we can bring out the public and other scientists during the trip.”

The President or other countries may participate in the announcement that an extraterrestrial life exists

The announcement of the existence of alien life would be an administration level, said Glas, citing US Presidency. It would not be just NASA to be explained at press conferences.

NASA may not even be the first entity to find evidence of the life of another planet. Another nation’s space agency can find it first.

The opening of intelligent Alien life would be even more outrageous the earth. This will come with your own puzzles: how do we communicate with them? What about? And how can they react?

Even if he shines small hints of himself in the void, it was controversial. In 1974, astronomers sent radio signals containing the numbers one to 10, information about the composition and structure of DNA, a figure of a person and our global population and the graphics of the solar system with the emphasized Earth.

Critics like Stephen Hawking said contact with some alien intelligence could be an existential risk to humanity.

Needless to say, any discovery of alien life would probably lead to chaos – at least in public discourse.

Glass said NASA’s goal is to be a reliable, transparent source of clear scientific information. This may be the agency’s biggest challenge so far.

“I’m not sure we even have words to describe it,” she said. “The confirmation that we are not alone in the universe is, in my opinion, will be similar to the realization that the universe does not rotate around the earth. This is a completely different way of thinking about who we are, where we came from.”

This post has been updated to include new events. It was originally published on February 18, 2023.

Read the original Business Insider article