The statements by the hacker group Anonymous that NASA scientists have found traces of alien life on Enceladus, a satellite of Saturn, but hide it, are not true, said Thomas Zurbuchen, deputy head of NASA's scientific division.
“Contrary to some reports circulated in the media, we are not preparing any statements related to the study of extraterrestrial life. Are we alone in the universe? We do not yet know whether this is so or not, but we are preparing missions that will help us find an answer to this fundamental question,”the scientist writes in his microblog on Twitter.
A week ago, representatives of the Anonymous hacker group posted an unusual video on Youtube, in which they claimed that NASA would soon announce the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Such a conclusion, as noted by the online edition Space.com, they made not on the basis of "leaked" data or hacked correspondence of representatives of the space agency, but on the basis of Zurbuchen's speech before the US Congress in April this year. As part of this report, the scientist told American parliamentarians about the success NASA has achieved in the search for analogues of the Earth and extraterrestrial life.
One of the main points of this speech was that Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn, is today the main candidate for the role of the first "cradle" of extraterrestrial life, since its warm subglacial ocean contains everything necessary for the origin of life - water, nutrients, minerals and energy source. This source, a molecule of hydrogen, was discovered quite recently while studying the emissions of Enceladus geysers with the Hubble telescope and the Cassini probe.
Then Zurbuchen said that NASA and humanity "are on the verge of the most amazing and significant discoveries in the history of the Earth." Anonymous representatives, as noted by Space.com, considered this statement sufficient to suggest that NASA has already discovered traces of life in the geysers of Enceladus, but so far it is hiding it and is preparing to announce it in the near future.
Zurbuchen himself denies that this is actually the case, but at the same time the NASA leadership has not yet made any official statements on this score.