'Anonymous' says NASA has found alien life, but let's all slow the hell down

The shadowy hacker collective Anonymous believes that NASA is about to announce that it has discovered alien life of some kind.

We've looked into these claims and concluded they are, at best, a bone-headed misunderstanding of mundane statements from a NASA official in April, or, at worst, a bold-faced lie playing all of us for clicks.

Either way, it's not worth our time to fully debunk or yours to deeply consider. Simply put, there's no evidence that NASA is about to reveal that it's found aliens.

Anonymous cites out-of-context testimony from Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, given during an April 26 hearing before the House Science, Space and Technology.

Consider what Zurbuchen actually said in his written testimony [emphasis added]:

"... 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."

That’s a far cry from saying something like, “Oh boy, oh wow, we've definitely found little green men, but I can't tell you about it yet because we're a very secretive government agency,” which seems to be what Anonymous heard.

Oh, and also, Zurbuchen flatly denies the Anonymous report.

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Here are some other stories to catch you up on what NASA has actually been up to on its hunt for life in the solar system:

• NASA's newest treasure trove of alien planets will help us find our place in the galaxy

• These seven planets could be where we find alien life

• NASA confirms discovery of nearest rocky exoplanet to Earth so far

• Potentially habitable planet found orbiting our neighboring star

• If we keep using 'Earth-like' to describe alien planets, it will become meaningless

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to write about something else now.

UPDATE: June 26, 2017, 12:23 p.m. EDT This story was updated to include tweets from Zurbuchen related to the Anonymous report.