NASA Scientist Assumes Extraterrestrials Are Progressive Environmental Nitwits In Agreement With Al Gore | Flopping Aces

Some important points of clarification
So here’s the thing. This isn’t a “NASA report.” It’s not work funded by NASA, nor is it work supported by NASA in other ways. It was just a fun paper written by a few friends, one of whom happens to have a NASA affiliation.

A while ago, a couple good friends of mine (Seth Baum and Jacob Haqq-Misra) approached me about a paper they were writing, and asked if I wanted to join them on it. The paper was a review of all the different proposed situations for contact with an alien civilization. I didn’t think this was particularly important. After all, I consider the likelihood of contact with an alien civilization to be low. It certainly wasn’t urgent, as I don’t expect this to happen anytime soon. But… it sounded like fun and I decided to join in on it. So we wrote the paper, but I have to admit that Seth and Jacob put in the vast majority of the work on it. One of the scenarios we considered in the review was the possibility that an alien civilization would contact us because they were concerned about the exponential growth of our civilization, as evidenced by climate change. This isn’t an entirely new idea; remember, this was a review effort. Indeed, Keanu Reaves recently played a similar alien in the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” There were lots of other ideas we reviewed, but this was probably the most provocative.

Well, the paper came out a couple months ago. Today, for some reason, The Guardian picked it up, publishing an article about it with the following title: “Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientist: Rising greenhouse emissions may tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report for NASA.” That then was picked up by The Drudge Report, with this headline:
“NASA REPORT: Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilizations…”

UH OH. Now that is a bit problematic.
So here’s the deal, folks. Yes, I work at NASA. It’s also true that I work at NASA Headquarters. But I am not a civil servant… just a lowly postdoc. More importantly, this paper has nothing to do with my work there. I wasn’t funded for it, nor did I spend any of my time at work or any resources provided to me by NASA to participate in this effort. There are at least a hundred more important and urgent things to be done on any given work day than speculate on the different scenarios for contact with alien civilizations… However, in my free time (what precious little I have), I didn’t mind working on stuff like this every once in a while. Why? Well, because I’m a geek and stuff like this is fun to think about. Unfortunately, there is not enough time for fun. Indeed, I felt guilty at times because this has led to a lack of effort on my part in my interactions with Seth and Jacob. Beyond adding some comments here or there, I did very little for the paper.

But I do admit to making a horrible mistake. It was an honest one, and a naive one… but it was a mistake nonetheless. I should not have listed my affiliation as “NASA Headquarters.” I did so because that is my current academic affiliation. But when I did so I did not realize the full implications that has. I’m deeply sorry for that, but it was a mistake born our of carelessness and inexperience and nothing more. I will do what I can to rectify this, including distributing this post to the Guardian, Drudge, and NASA Watch. Please help me spread this post to the other places you may see the article inaccurately attributed to NASA.

One last thing: I stand by the analysis in the paper. Is such a scenario likely? I don’t think so. But it’s one of a myriad of possible (albeit unlikely) scenarios, and the point of the paper was to review them. But remember – and this is key – it’s me standing for the paper… not the full weight of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. For anything I have done to mis-convey that to those covering this story, to the public, or to the fine employees of NASA, I apologize.

via floppingaces.net

Written by Shawn Domagal-Goldman of NASA’s Planetary Science Division who is apologizing for conveying the imrpession that the article mentioned was an official publication of NASA.

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[Tesa]

the larger one on the top left looks like a sun flare to me, i nticoe in certain frames it takes a very hexagonal shape (sun flares in photos and videos do this) better quality could help clear the argument, as to the one below the space station to the right, could be a sattilite with beacon light, or reflecting sun ray for a short period, or itcould be a UFO.who knows really

[Debgopal]

When I uploaded the ISS live feed at 10 am on Feb 6, there was only a stitac picture. This picture then disintegrated into jumbled pixels at 10:16 this am, then the same stitac picture was shown. After about 15 minutes, there was a stream with a moving ISS for a short while, then only the same stitac picture again. At 11:54 am and again at 12:04 pm, pixels jumbled again, followed by the same stitac picture. No picture at all as of 12:07 pm, just slightly green darkness. At 12:14 pm there was chatter between the ISS and ground control about a problem with another channel interfering with their link. Ground advised there would work with ISS on a channel change and at 12:18 their picture came back on, and current chatter seems normal, which would seem to negate any issues with alien interference. But I would like to know whether the stream encounters these problems often.